Free Scandalous Risks by Susan Howatch Page B

intellectually slipshod, and I agree with him,’ said Charley, exuding outraged virtue as he heaved my bags up on to the rack. ‘My father and I always agree on everything.’ Closing the carriage door he pulled down the window and began to scan the platform.
    ‘Tedious for you,’ I said. ‘My father and I are in perpetual disagreement. Life’s just one long glorious row.’ But Charley, leaning out of the window, was too absorbed in some private anxiety to reply.
    ‘Bother the infant,’ he said at last, glancing at his watch. ‘He’s cutting it very fine.’
    ‘What infant’s this?’
    ‘I doubt if you’d know him – he’s only twenty. He’s supposed to be staying tonight with us at the South Canonry.’ Again he hung out of the window in an agony of suspense but a moment later he was bawling ‘Hey!’ in relief and wildly waving his arm.
    A tall, pale youth, earnest and bespectacled, appeared at the door and was hustled into the carriage. He wore very clean jeans and a spotless blue shirt with a black leather jacket. All he was carrying was a duffle-bag. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘I got lost on the underground.’ Unaware that Charley and I knew each other he wasted no time looking at me but removed his glasses and began to polish them with an exquisitely ironed white handkerchief. In the distance the guard’s whistle blew and after a preliminary jerk the train began to glide out of the station.
    ‘Venetia,’ Charley said, remembering his manners, ‘this is Nicholas Darrow. Nick, this is the Honourable Venetia Flaxton.’
    ‘I find it more comfortable these days to drop the Honourable,’ I said. ‘Hullo, Nick.’
    Replacing his spectacles he looked me straight in the eyes and at once I felt as if I stood in a plunging lift. ‘Hi,’ he said politely without smiling. His eyes were an unnaturally clear shade of grey.
    ‘Have we met before?’ said my voice. I sounded as unnerved as I felt, but I knew that the obvious explanation for my loss of poise – sexual bewitchment – was quite wrong. He was a plain young man. Yet somehow he contrived to be compulsively watchable.
    ‘No, we haven’t met,’ he was answering tranquilly, opening his duffle-bag and pulling out a book. It was Honest to God.
    ‘ Nick’s father was principal of the Starbridge Theological College back in the ‘forties,’ Charley said. ‘Maybe Nick’s jogging your memory of him.’
    ‘No, that’s impossible. I wasn’t involved in Starbridge ecclesiastical circles until the Aysgarths moved to the Deanery in ‘fifty-seven.’
    Charley obviously decided to dismiss my confusion as a mere feminine vagary. ‘Nick’s reading divinity up at Cambridge just as I did,’ he said, ‘and – good heavens, Nick, so you’ve bought Honest to God! What’s your verdict so far?’
    ‘Peculiar. Can it really be possible to reach the rank of bishop and know nothing about the English mystics?’
    ‘Maybe he can’t connect with them,’ I said. ‘I certainly can’t. I think Julian of Norwich’s description of Christ’s blood is absolutely revolting and borders on the pathological.’
    The grave grey eyes were again turned in my direction and again I wondered why his mysterious magnetism should seem familiar.
    ‘Well, of course it’s very hard for a layman to approach these apparently morbid touches from the right angle,’ Charley was saying with such condescension that I wanted to slap him, ‘but if one takes the time to study the mystics with the necessary spiritual seriousness –’
    ‘You’re a church-goer,’ said Nick suddenly to me.
    ‘Now and then, yes.’
    ‘But you’re not a communicant.’
    ‘I watch occasionally.’ I was still trying to work out how he had made these deductions when Charley exclaimed in delight: ‘In college we debate about people like you! You’re from the fringes – the shadowy penumbra surrounding the hard core of church membership!’
    ‘I most certainly am not!’ I said,