Free Glittering Images by Susan Howatch Page A

and help me postpone the dreaded moment when I have to open my paintbox and pretend to be an artist!’
    To encourage her I said, ‘If you’re in the mood to gossip, I’m certainly in the mood to listen – after my clash with the Bishop last night I find I’m gripped by a curiosity to know more about him.’
    ‘In the circumstances,’ said Lady Starmouth drily, ‘I’d say curiosity was an admirably charitable reaction. Now let me see, shall I launch straight away into the saga of the baby or shall I begin with Jardine’s arrival in Mayfair? I warn you, I’m rather a menace when I start talking about the Bishop because I find him so intriguing that I tend to prattle away happily for hours.’
    ‘I’m sure you never prattle, Lady Starmouth – I can only imagine you discoursing alluringly!’
    She laughed. ‘How wonderful to have such a flattering audience! Very well, let me try to discourse with all the allure at my command!’
    Lounging on the lawn beneath the hot sun I prepared to give her my fullest attention.

IV
    ‘Jardine’s had the most unusual life,’ said Lady Starmouth. ‘I’m not sure how much you already know about his career, but twenty-one years ago in 1916 he was promoted from an obscure chaplaincy in North London to St Mary’s, Mayfair – and of course that’s one of the smartest parishes in the West End. Henry and I did our best to welcome the new vicar, and because he was unmarried I made a special effort to introduce him to suitable girls. Did you know Jardine married late? He was thirty-seven when he met Carrie, but before the move to St Mary’s he couldn’t afford a wife. Unfortunately he had a most peculiar father who had wound up heavily in debt, and Jardine had to support the family on his small stipend.’
    ‘Someone mentioned a peculiar father –’
    ‘The whole family,’ said Lady Starmouth confidentially, ‘was most odd. In addition to the peculiar father there was a very strange Swedish stepmother and two sisters, one of whom went mad –’
    ‘This sounds like a Jacobean tragedy.’
    ‘No, they didn’t all kill each other – unfortunately – but you’re right to relate it to literature. It was like a novel by Gissing about the ghastliness of genteel poverty.’
    ‘Were the Jardines so genteel? What did the peculiar father do for a living?’
    ‘Nobody knows. In fact I’ve never plumbed the depths of Jardine’s lurid family background because he prefers not to talk about it, but the sister – the one who didn’t go mad – was painfully genteel, poor thing, a very refined accent and a ghastly way with a teacup – and my guess is that they were all upper-working-class but trying to be lower-middle. God, how crucified so many people are,’ said the aristocratic Lady Starmouth carelessly but with genuine feeling, ‘by the English class system.’
    ‘Did the whole family accompany Jardine to Mayfair?’
    ‘No, the peculiar father and the mad sister were dead by that time, but Jardine moved into the vicarage with his surviving sister and his sinister Swedish stepmother and immediately began to cast around for a wife –’
    ‘– whom you obligingly provided for him!’
    ‘Not quite! But I did go to the dinner party where he and Carrie met for the first time. The meeting was wildly romantic, love at first sight, and four days later he proposed.’
    ‘
Four days
?’
    ‘Four days,’ said Lady Starmouth, enjoying my astonishment. ‘Carrie’s family were in a tremendous tizzy, of course, because of Jardine’s odd background, but on the other hand he had this stunning position as Vicar of St Mary’s and that made it hard to object to him as a suitor.’
    ‘Did the family make trouble?’
    ‘They somehow managed to restrain themselves. I suspect it was because Carrie wasn’t so young any more and the family had begun to worry that she might wind up on the shelf.’
    ‘It’s hard to imagine someone as pretty as Mrs Jardine winding up on the