this belated enlightenment mean you’ll stop feeling queasy whenever anyone cites the quotation: "All things work together for good to them that love God"?’
‘ No, I still think that’s the most infuriating sentence St Paul ever wrote — which reminds me: why have you taken to writing it over and over again on your blotter?’
‘ It calms me down when someone rings up and wastes my time by drivelling on about nothing.’
‘ It wouldn’t calm me down,’ said Lyle, removing the counterpane from the bed as I stood up. ‘I’d just want to grab a gun and shoot St Paul.’
Whenever possible on my day off I played golf, but on this occasion bad weather had ensured that I stayed at home. The winter so far had been very cold. There had been blizzards in January, and although a dry spell had now been forecast there was as yet no sign of it beginning in Starbridge. I had spent the morning working on my new book about the early Christian writer Hippolytus and the sexually lax Bishop Callistus, and my glamor ous part-time secretary Sally had taken dictation for an hour before returning home to type up her notes. Sally had been wearing a shiny black coat, which she had told me was made of something called PVC, and tall black leather boots which had appeared to creep greedily up her legs towards the hem of her short purple skirt. After viewing this fashion display the sexually lax Bishop Callistus would undoubtedly have dictated some weak-kneed thoughts about fornication, but since I was anticipating an intimate afternoon with my wife, I had been able to say to Sally with aplomb: ‘What an original ensemble!’ and deliver myself of some intellectually rigorous thoughts about Hippolytus’s theology. There are times when I really do think the case for a celibate priesthood is quite impossible to sustain.
Lyle and I were now alone in the house. Our cook-housekeeper had gone home at one o’clock; the chaplains had disappeared to their nearby cottages after a quick glance at the morning post to ensure there was no crisis which needed my attention, and Miss Peabody, who shared my day off, was nd doubt doing something very worthy elsewhere. The house was not only delightfully quiet but delightfully warm as the result of the recent installation of a central heating system, an extravagance paid for out of my private income and now periodically triggering pangs of guilt that I should be living in such luxury while the majority of my clergy shivered in icy vicarages.
‘ Isn’t the central heating turned up rather high?’ I said con science-stricken to Lyle.
‘ Certainly not!’ came the robust reply. ‘Bishops need to be warm in order to function properly.’
I thought Hippolytus would have made a very acid comment on this statement, but of course he had not been obliged to endure the numbing effect of an English February. Fleetingly I pictured Bishop Callistus toasting himself without guilt in front of a brazier of hot coals as he planned his next compassionate sermon to adulterers.
Our bedroom at the South Canonry faced the front of the house, and from the windows we could see beyond the huge beech-tree by the gate and across the Choir School’s playing-field to the southern side of the Cathedral: the roof of the octagonal chapter house was clearly visible above the quadrangle formed by the clois ters, and beyond this roof the central tower rose high above the nave to form the base of the spire.
‘Why are you gazing glassy-eyed at the curtains?’
‘I was thinking of the Cathedral beyond them. Since you’ve just apologised for throwing the ashtray at me all those years ago, let me now apologise for wanting our bedroom to face the back garden when we moved here.’
‘ Thank you, darling. But of course I realised that was because you were slightly neurotic about Starbridge at the time. Imagine wanting to face a boring old back garden when you had the chance to face one of the architectural wonders of Europe!’
I
‘ No, I still think that’s the most infuriating sentence St Paul ever wrote — which reminds me: why have you taken to writing it over and over again on your blotter?’
‘ It calms me down when someone rings up and wastes my time by drivelling on about nothing.’
‘ It wouldn’t calm me down,’ said Lyle, removing the counterpane from the bed as I stood up. ‘I’d just want to grab a gun and shoot St Paul.’
Whenever possible on my day off I played golf, but on this occasion bad weather had ensured that I stayed at home. The winter so far had been very cold. There had been blizzards in January, and although a dry spell had now been forecast there was as yet no sign of it beginning in Starbridge. I had spent the morning working on my new book about the early Christian writer Hippolytus and the sexually lax Bishop Callistus, and my glamor ous part-time secretary Sally had taken dictation for an hour before returning home to type up her notes. Sally had been wearing a shiny black coat, which she had told me was made of something called PVC, and tall black leather boots which had appeared to creep greedily up her legs towards the hem of her short purple skirt. After viewing this fashion display the sexually lax Bishop Callistus would undoubtedly have dictated some weak-kneed thoughts about fornication, but since I was anticipating an intimate afternoon with my wife, I had been able to say to Sally with aplomb: ‘What an original ensemble!’ and deliver myself of some intellectually rigorous thoughts about Hippolytus’s theology. There are times when I really do think the case for a celibate priesthood is quite impossible to sustain.
Lyle and I were now alone in the house. Our cook-housekeeper had gone home at one o’clock; the chaplains had disappeared to their nearby cottages after a quick glance at the morning post to ensure there was no crisis which needed my attention, and Miss Peabody, who shared my day off, was nd doubt doing something very worthy elsewhere. The house was not only delightfully quiet but delightfully warm as the result of the recent installation of a central heating system, an extravagance paid for out of my private income and now periodically triggering pangs of guilt that I should be living in such luxury while the majority of my clergy shivered in icy vicarages.
‘ Isn’t the central heating turned up rather high?’ I said con science-stricken to Lyle.
‘ Certainly not!’ came the robust reply. ‘Bishops need to be warm in order to function properly.’
I thought Hippolytus would have made a very acid comment on this statement, but of course he had not been obliged to endure the numbing effect of an English February. Fleetingly I pictured Bishop Callistus toasting himself without guilt in front of a brazier of hot coals as he planned his next compassionate sermon to adulterers.
Our bedroom at the South Canonry faced the front of the house, and from the windows we could see beyond the huge beech-tree by the gate and across the Choir School’s playing-field to the southern side of the Cathedral: the roof of the octagonal chapter house was clearly visible above the quadrangle formed by the clois ters, and beyond this roof the central tower rose high above the nave to form the base of the spire.
‘Why are you gazing glassy-eyed at the curtains?’
‘I was thinking of the Cathedral beyond them. Since you’ve just apologised for throwing the ashtray at me all those years ago, let me now apologise for wanting our bedroom to face the back garden when we moved here.’
‘ Thank you, darling. But of course I realised that was because you were slightly neurotic about Starbridge at the time. Imagine wanting to face a boring old back garden when you had the chance to face one of the architectural wonders of Europe!’
I
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