Another voice

Book of Golden Deedes

Auberon Waugh

The Good Book is amazingly precise on the proper punishment for this sort of thing. In Deuteronomy xxii 21 we read that

any bride who is not a virgin on marriage should be taken to the door of her father's house and stoned to death by the men in her city. The next verse recommends that where a man is found with a married woman, both should die, Next we learn that if a virgin who is already engaged to someone else lies with another chap, they should both be stoned to death, although under the cir- cumstances it should be at the city gate. In the case of rape (verses 25-27) only the chap should be stoned to death. It is the next in- struction which is most puzzling: 'If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her and lie with her, and they be found; Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all of his days.'

Fifty Israeli shekels seems a piteously small price for a virgin even if one reckons it by the ancient weight of silver, where a shekel was a sixtieth part off a mina, weighing about one pound avoirdupois. Fifty shekels would thus be worth about £65, compared with the admittedly rather absurd figure of £70,000 being touted around as the cost of raising a child nowadays in Britain. Even then Colonel Keays would have to prove his daughter was a virgin before he could collect.

There does not seem to be any punish- ment prescribed specifically for a married chap who gets his leg over an unmarried, unbetrothed lady, whether virgin or other- wise. In fact it is not absolutely clear to me that the Old Testament definition of adultery (disregarding its use to mean idolatry) embraces this activity at all. So far as chaps are concerned, they are expressly forbidden (Leviticus xx 10-21) to commit adultery with other men's wives, and also to fornicate with unmarried sisters, aunties, etc, but otherwise the field seems clear.

So much for the Old Testament. It was my intention not to write about the matter at all. So far as I can remember I have never met Mr or Mrs Parkinson or Miss Keays, and certainly know nothing of the cir- cumstances which led Mr Parkinson into his imprudent relationship. What is there to say? Much the same line was taken by the amiable and eccentric Bishop of Birm- ingham, Dr Hugh Montefiore, who will always be remembered, whether he likes it or not, for raising the question of whether Jesus had homosexual tendencies:

'Although adultery is always wrong, it is not for us to pass judgment on adulterers. We do not know the full story — only God knows that,' he wrote in last week's News of the World under the headline: 'We must all learn from this scandal'. As chairman of the Church of England Board for Social Responsibility, however, he feels bound to point out that 'the actual cost to the State of all this [adultery, divorce, etc] is pro- bably more than El billion a year .... '

After this somewhat pilgeric excursion, and the good flannelly sentiment that by en- couraging us to 'look again at what is hap- pening in this country it will have done some good', we come to the nub of his recommendations: 'A public figure ought to be allowed to lead his or her private life. Everybody needs some privacy. Their sex life is their own affair, provided it does not impinge on the security of the realm. This doesn't mean that high standards aren't expected of them, as of all of us, but this remains a private affair — unless and until it becomes a matter of public knowledge and debate. When the private life of a public figure becomes known, the situation has changed. What we, the public, should demand of our public figures is personal integrity.'

Oh dear, oh dear. I know Dr Montefiore to be an intelligent and humane man, but was it really worth saying anything if this string of more or less contradictory platitudes is all there is to be said? I had hoped he would give us some guidance on the shekel question, but Dr Montefiore seems to have lost all interest in shekels when he shed his Sebag by the seashore and embraced the New Testament.

'He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her' (John viii 7) is plainly the message of the moment. I do not know about conditions around Galilee at that time, but I would have thought these were rather dangerous instructions to give in Combe Florey. I may be wrong, but I would be surprised if many of the people in my village ever get round to committing adultery. In fact, I would be surprised to learn that more than a small minority of people in Somerset had ever committed it.

But amid all the boredom and the gloom of it, amid all the blacks and whites merging into sludgy grey, one hero and one villain can be clearly seen. The villain is Mr Charles Douglas-Home, who published Miss Keays's statement, unchecked, as a 'scoop' for his worthless newspaper. The statement contained an extremely damaging misrepresentation of his rival newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, which anybody within ten miles of Fleet Street would have known to be untrue. This did not stop all the other newspaper reproducing the statement next day, of course, but the initial dispensation came from the Times.

In case anyone missed it, I shall repro- duce the text. Miss Keays gave as among her reasons for ratting on the agreement to make no further statements that she had been insulted by the Daily Telegraph: 'For the Daily Telegraph (Monday, Oc- tober 10) "the moral logic is that a quiet abortion is greatly to be preferred to a scan- dal". I was not aware that political ex- pediency was sufficient grounds for an abortion under the 1967 Act, quite apart from the fact that I could not have con- templated it ... . . According to the view expressed in the Telegraph I should have sacrificed my baby's life for Mr Parkin- son's career and the government's reputa- tion.'

What the Telegraph in fact said was ex- actly the opposite of that, as anybody who knew the Telegraph would have guessed, and any half-trained sub-editor would have established in two minutes. But this was no ordinary slip on an unimportant story. Tremulous with excitement over his 'scoop' Douglas-Home held the statement back un- til his last editions and then splashed it all over the front page. Not since Anthony Blunt was given his exclusive smoked trout in the Times boardroom has it had such a scoop — purely by virtue, in both cases, of its old reputation as a responsible and authoritative organ.

This behaviour did no service to the Times or to Miss Keays, revealing her as someone prepared to pilgerise what might otherwise have been a strong case. But, as Dr Montefiore might say, if the affair makes us look again at what is happening in this country it will have done some good. The person to emerge as a hero from this ugly episode, straight out of Arthur Mee's Child's Book of Golden Deeds, is the editor of the Daily Telegraph. His letter, written with no apparent sign of rancour, should be used as a model for anyone who feels he has been misrepresented in the press. There is no bluster, no threat to sue, no mention even of the Press Council After quoting the words actually used, he merely concludes:

'While I appreciate that Miss Keays's statement was made under emotional stress, I have to point out that by misreading the argument and then ignoring the last sentence she has drawn, and attributed to us, a conclusion precisely opposite to what we wrote.'

Not a word of rebuke to Douglas-Home, but what a mammoth snub one reads! Mr William (`Golden') Deedes, now 70, cut his teeth as a cub reporter with Evelyn Waugh nearly 50 years ago in Abyssinia. Twenty- five years later, he helped guide my first faltering steps in the Peterborough office of the Daily Telegraph. I am proud to know him. Sense and decency still exist in the land.