Glittering Images. Susan Howatch

us. ‘I’ve just been urging Carrie to get dressed. It’s no good lying in bed after a touch of insomnia – I told her to get up and have a busy day so that she’d be thoroughly tired by bed-time. I remember when I was in India –’

      ‘I was only saying to Dr Ashworth how interesting you were about India – but do excuse me, I must go and see Carrie myself,’ said Lady Starmouth, and escaped adroitly across the lawn.

      My next witness had delivered herself to me with an admirable sense of timing. Fighting my reluctance I smiled at Mrs Cobden-Smith and suggested that we might sit on the garden bench to enjoy the sunshine.

      III

      ‘It’s nice to sit down for a minute,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith. ‘I’ve been rushing around the town trying to buy horsemeat for the dog and the right cough-syrup for Willy. If Willy doesn’t have a dose of cough-syrup every night he coughs like a chimney-sweep and if George doesn’t have horsemeat three times a week he gets lazy – and talking of laziness, it seems you’ve been shirking your work, young man! I thought you were supposed to be closeted in the Cathedral library, not dancing attendance on Lady Starmouth! You’re as bad as Alex – he likes to dance attendance too, but of course in his case he’s just savouring the fact that Adam Jardine from Putney is now the clerical pet of a peeress. Did you know Alex spent the first thirty-seven years of his life being called Adam? It’s his first name. But when Carrie fell in love with him we said’ to her: “My dear,” we said, “you simply can’t marry a man called Adam Jardine – it sounds like a jobbing gardener!” So she found out his second name was Alexander and we rechristened him Alex. His stepmother was livid, I can’t think why.’

      I finally had the chance to speak and I thought I had been offered a promising opening. ‘What a coincidence!’ I said. ‘Lady Starmouth was just telling me about Dr Jardine’s stepmother.’

      ‘Everyone was always rather appalled by the old girl,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith comfortably, quite uninhibited by any desire to be discreet about a dead relative of her husband’s brother-in-law. ‘She was a very strange woman – Swedish, and of course we all know the Scandinavians are peculiar. Look at their plays.’

      I ignored this dismissal of the giants of the modern theatre. ‘But I’m told the Bishop was very fond of his stepmother.’

      ‘Devoted. Very odd. Carrie hated her, but when Alex’s sister died something had to be done about the old girl, who was by then confined to a wheelchair with arthritis and so of course Alex announced: “She’s coming to live with us!” Ghastly. Poor Carrie. I can’t tell you the havoc that decision caused.’

      ‘How did Mrs Jardine cope?’

      ‘You may well ask,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith, using a phrase which I was soon to realize was a favourite of hers. ‘It was five years ago, just after the move to Starbridge from Radbury, and Carrie was going through the – well, it was an awkward time for her – and everything was at sixes and sevens. I said to Willy, “Carrie will have a nervous breakdown, I know she will”, but of course I’d reckoned without Miss Christie. The old girl took to Miss Christie in the biggest possible way, gave Carrie no trouble and died good as gold six months later. I said to Willy, “That girl Christie’s a miracle-worker”.’

      ‘Is there any problem Miss Christie can’t solve?’

      ‘You may well ask,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith a second time. ‘It was strange how she tamed the old girl, I must say. I remember it occurred to me once that there was a curious resemblance between them – not a resemblance in looks, of course – the old girl weighed a ton while Miss Christie’s so small and slim – but there was some odd resemblance of the personality. I suspect that the old girl, when she was young, had that same cool competence which Miss Christie now displays so noticeably. Alex’s real mother died when he was six, the father was left with eight children under twelve, or something frightful, and the stepmother restored order to the home – rather as Miss Christie pulled the Deanery together when she first came to Radbury.’

      I was now offered a choice of two openings; I was tempted to ask about Radbury, but I was also curious to discover more about Jardine’s obscure background. Finally I said: ‘What happened to all the other little Jardines?’

      ‘One sister went mad and died in an asylum, three brothers went to the Colonies and died of drink or worse, one brother went bankrupt in London and hanged himself and the last brother simply disappeared. That left the younger sister, who eventually looked after the old girl, and Alex.’

      ‘Dr Jardine obviously had a miraculous survival!’

      ‘It was the hand of God,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith with that matchless confidence of the layman who always knows exactly what God has in mind. ‘Of course none of us knows for certain what went on in that family, but I’ve pieced a few lurid details together over the years and there’s no doubt the background was a nightmare. I used to talk to Alex’s sister Edith – a nice woman she was, terribly common but a nice woman – and she occasionally let slip the odd piece of information which made my hair stand on end.’

      ‘Lady Starmouth liked her too, said she’d had an awful life –’

      ‘Unspeakable. The father was a lunatic – never certified, unfortunately, but quite obviously potty. He suffered from religious mania and saw sin everywhere so he wouldn’t let his children go to school for fear they’d be corrupted.’

      ‘But how on earth did Dr Jardine get to Oxford?’

      ‘You may well ask,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith once more, enjoying her attentive audience. ‘It was the stepmother. She finally got him to school when he was fourteen and kept his nose to the grindstone until he’d won the scholarship.’

      ‘In that case,’ I said, ‘since Dr Jardine owed her so much, wasn’t it a rare and splendid piece of justice that she should spend her final days with him in his episcopal palace?’

      ‘I dare say it was,’ conceded Mrs Cobden-Smith with reluctance, ‘although Carrie didn’t see it that way at the time. Thank God Miss Christie tamed the old girl before poor Carrie could have another nervous breakdown!’

      ‘Another nervous breakdown? You mean – ?’

      ‘Dash, I shouldn’t have said that, should I, Willy would be cross. But on the other hand it’s an open secret that Carrie’s a prey to her nerves. I’ve often said to her in the past, “Carrie, you must make more effort – you simply can’t go to bed and give up!”. But I’m afraid she’s not the fighting kind. I’m quite different, I’m glad to say – I’m always fighting away and making efforts! When I was in India …’

      I let her talk about India while I waited for the opening which would lead us back to the subject of Mrs Jardine’s nervous breakdown. The characters in Jardine’s past were revolving in my mind: the eccentric father, the doomed siblings, the surviving sister who had had ‘a ghastly way with a teacup’, the mysterious Swedish stepmother who had exerted such a vital influence – and then after the years of darkness, the years of light and a new world with new people: Carrie and the Cobden-Smiths, the subtle charming Lady Starmouth, the clever American girl struggling from the ruins of a disastrous marriage –

      ‘– disastrous marriage,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith, remarking how fortunate it was that Carrie had avoided marrying an officer in the Indian Army. ‘She would never have survived the climate.’

      ‘No, probably not. Mrs Cobden-Smith, talking of survival –’

      ‘Of course, Carrie’s had a hard time surviving marriage to a clergyman,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith, playing into my hands before I could risk a direct question about Mrs Jardine’s difficulties at Radbury, ‘although the ironic part is that in many ways she’s cut out to be a clergyman’s wife – everyone likes her and she’s a very good, devout, friendly little person, but she should have been the wife of an ordinary parson, not the wife of a fire-breathing adventurer who periodically runs amok