Ultimate Prizes

by Susan Howatch

  Another nod. More tears began to fall.

  Rising to my feet I took off my jacket and hung it carefully over the back of the nearest chair; because of the heat I had changed from my archidiaconal uniform to a plain clerical suit immediately after lunch. Then I removed my collar and slumped down on the bed again. These trivial movements helped to calm me. My voice was still devoid of resentment when I said: “Well, it’s no good having anything but a candid talk, is it? We’ve got to try to solve this problem.”

  Grace made yet another attempt to mop up her tears, but by this time her eyes were red and swollen. I realised it was going to be impossible for her to go down to tea.

  “Now,” I said, trying to take control of the situation by adopting a brisk sensible manner, “the first thing we have to do is to find out why you’re so unhappy. I’m not talking about your present misery. I’m talking about the more general unhappiness which I know has been afflicting you for some time. When exactly did it all begin? Was it when we found out Sandy had been conceived and you started to worry about how you were going to cope?”

  I was, of course, busy laying the foundations for an unanswerable argument that we should employ a live-in nursemaid, so I was expecting her to reply “Yes” to my question. It came as a considerable shock to me when she said: “No, this has nothing to do with Sandy. He simply complicated a situation which already existed.”

  I stared at her. “You’re saying this unhappiness existed before Sandy was conceived in 1940?”

  “Yes, I first became aware of it when we moved to Starbridge in ’37, but now that I look back with the wisdom of hindsight I believe the seeds of my unhappiness were sown in 1932.”

  “At Willowmead? But that’s impossible! You were so happy there!”

  “Yes, but that’s when things started to go wrong.”

  “But what on earth happened at Willowmead in ’32?”

  “You met Alex Jardine. As soon as he started taking an interest in you he was a malign influence on our lives.”

  I was speechless.

  “I’ve never liked Alex,” said Grace in a rush. “Never. I know you were always ambitious, but I felt he stoked up your ambition so that it blazed in all the wrong directions—”

  “What on earth are you talking about? It was his sympathetic interest which gave me the confidence I needed to make the most of my God-given abilities!” I was now very shocked indeed. “My dear Grace, I can hardly believe you feel like this about Alex! He’s always admired you so much and said what a perfect wife you were for a clergyman!”

  “Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I dislike him—I always feel he sees me as no more than an appropriate accessory, like a pair of gloves. Poor Carrie! No wonder they’re unhappily married.”

  “But they’re devoted to each other!”

  “I don’t think he’s devoted to her at all. Think of all the times we’ve heard him being sarcastic when poor Carrie makes one of her stupid remarks!”

  “Well, I agree there’s a large amount of surface irritation, but I’m sure that underneath he’s—”

  “Underneath I think he’s actually a rather nasty piece of work—and I’m absolutely convinced that his influence has had a disastrous effect on our marriage.”

  “But how can you possibly blame Alex for—”

  “Very easily. It was Alex who singled you out from all the other clergy in the diocese and gave you ideas above your station—”

  “Ideas above my station? Good heavens, Grace, which century are you living in? I’m not a Victorian servant!”

  “No, you’re a Yorkshire draper’s son on the make—and Alex has been constantly encouraging you, bringing you to Starbridge, giving you grand ideas by introducing you to people like the Star-mouths, spoiling you with that glamorous preferment which I often think quite turned your head when you were too young to know better—”

  “Well, of course I know you’re a cut above me socially and entitled to look down on me if you please, but I must say I find your attitude offensive and your accusations insane. But then women are notoriously irrational when they’re upset, and wives are notoriously peevish when they find they can’t keep up with their husbands any more—”

  “And who put us in a position where I can’t keep up with you any more? Who turned my gentle, sensitive, shy, romantic husband into someone else altogether?”

  “Nobody’s turned me into anything. People evolve, Grace! They don’t just stand still! You can’t expect me to remain as I was when we first met on the beach at St. Leonards!”

  Once again she dissolved into tears of despair.

  “My dearest love …” I suddenly realised that I too was in a state of extreme emotional distress. There was a knot of tension in my stomach and I was aware of a vague nausea which threatened to become acute. In the end all I could say in a stricken voice was: “You don’t really think of me as just a Yorkshire draper’s son on the make, do you?”

  Still crying she shook her head and flung her arms around my neck. Eventually she managed to whisper: “Forgive me.”

  I suddenly felt I could not bear her misery a second longer, and wanting only to terminate this truly appalling scene I said unevenly: “I’m the one who should be asking for forgiveness. My dearest love, tell me what I can do to make you happy again—I’ll make any sacrifice for your sake, I swear it.”

  Grace screwed her sodden handkerchief into a ball and gripped it so hard that her knuckles shone white. “Give up your archdeaconry. Give up Alex. And give up that double-faced little bitch who’s bent on ruining you.”

  I was silenced. As I automatically took a pace backwards she raised her head to look me in the eyes. “Well, you did say,” she said in a shaking voice, “that you’d make any sacrifice.”

  “I’m sorry but in my vocabulary ‘to make a sacrifice’ doesn’t mean ‘to commit professional suicide.’ ” I got a grip on myself and managed to add in a calm polite voice: “I can’t resign my position as Archdeacon; I honestly believe I’m doing the work God’s called me to do. As for Alex, I’m sorry, but I can’t give him up; it would be the height of ingratitude after all he’s done for me. I’ll make an effort not to inflict him too often on you in future, but it’s quite unthinkable that I should ever say to him—”

  “And Dido Tallent? Don’t let’s pretend, Neville. I know you find her attractive. Wives always do know when their husbands’ attention strays in that particular way.”

  “If you think for one moment that I’ve ever done anything wrong with her—”

  “No, of course I don’t think that! I’ve lived with you for sixteen years and I know better than anyone what a very good, devout man you still are in spite of everything—and that’s exactly why this present crisis is such a nightmare. I feel you’re on the brink of going to pieces in some very profound way which I’m unable to understand.”

  “Going to pieces? Me? But my dear Grace, you’re the one who appears to be disintegrating!”

  “Yes, but I’m only disintegrating because you’re going to pieces! Neville, there’s something dreadfully wrong here, I’m sure there is, and to tell you the truth I don’t really believe our fundamental problem is my unhappiness. I think my unhappiness is just a symptom of something far more complex and sinister.”

  “You’re raving.” Turning aside from her, I replaced my collar and jacket. My Bible was lying on the bedside table. Trailing my fingers across the cover, I said: “I’m not going to pieces. There are no fundamental problems in our marriage. The only difficulty I have to resolve is how I can make you happy again, and now, by the grace of God, I’m going to work out exactly what I have to do to put matters right.” Picking up the Bible I headed for the door, and it was only when my fingers clasped the handle that I added casually over my shoulder: “Of course I’ll terminate my association with Miss Tallent. I can see clearly now that I’ve been in the wrong there, and I’m very sorry if my acquaintance with her has contributed to your unhappiness.”

&nb
sp; I made my exit. My mind was in chaos. In the hall I got in a muddle and dived down the wrong marble passage, with the result that I left the house by an unfamiliar side door. Skirting the kitchen-garden I staggered through an orchard and steered myself around a succession of high yew hedges. I was just beginning to feel like one of Kafka’s characters, lost in some nightmarish metaphysical maze, when I found myself back in the rose-garden—and there by the wishing well stood my disciple, quite alone at last, dark hair combed and curled to perfection, dark eyes glowing with a bewitchingly artless delight as I found myself propelled down the grass path to her side.

  “Archdeacon dee-ah!” she exclaimed, mimicking the drawing-room drawl of an earlier generation of society women. “How too, too lovely!”

  “I think not,” I said, reaching the well. “Miss Tallent, I regret to have to inform you—”

  “What a ghastly phrase! That’s the sort of jargon people in trade use when they tell a customer that some important item’s going to be out of stock for six months! Now stop being so beastly pompous, Archdeacon dear, and let me tell you that your sermon this morning was quite wonderful and I was so proud of you and I felt so spiritually uplifted that I soaked two entire handkerchiefs! Isn’t life absolute heaven?”

  Without a second’s hesitation I said: “Yes, I feel as if it’s spring again after a long dull winter!” And having delivered myself of quite the most reckless remark any married clergyman could have uttered to a flirtatious young woman, I abandoned my Bible on the parapet of the wishing well and impulsively clasped both her hands in mine.

  4

  “Passion cannot be eliminated: it can be kept uncontaminated, be sublimated, as the jargon of today would say.”

  CHARLES E. RAVEN

  A WANDERER’S WAY

  1

  THE CLASP LASTED THREE SECONDS. THEN, RELEASING HER, I found myself muttering idiotically: “Sorry. Most unedifying. Thoroughly unseemly,” and those adjectives, so well-worn by an earlier generation of clergymen, added an air of bathos to my horrified reaction; with a few antique words it seemed I had turned a silly slip into melodrama. Finally, to pile indignity upon indignity, I began to blush, and turning my back on Dido I grabbed my Bible from the parapet of the wishing well. I instinctively knew that my hands should be fully occupied before they succumbed to a second catastrophic urge to wander.

  “Dearest Stephen!” said Dido enthralled. “Why on earth are you apologising? I can’t see anything wrong with an affectionate hand-clasp between friends!”

  All I could say was: “You promised not to call me by that name.” I was still unable to look at her.

  “Archdeacon dear, please don’t be so upset! Of course I adore you passionately, but why should sex ruin our beautiful friendship? I’d never go to bed with any man unless I was married to him, and as I can’t marry you, you’re absolutely safe. Meanwhile you can have no possible desire to go to bed with me—how could you when your wife’s so much prettier and nicer than I am?—so that takes care of beastly old sex, doesn’t it, and leaves us free to enjoy our glorious romantic friendship as you guide me along my spiritual way!”

  “Miss Tallent,” I said, “before I met you I’d have thought it impossible that a woman should be both very sophisticated and very naive. May I congratulate you on achieving such a remarkable paradox? But I’m afraid the time has come when you must set your naivety aside.”

  “Oh, I adore it when you’re being so stern and austere! Now, Archdeacon dear, stop looking as if you’d like to spank me, and calm down for a moment. I’m not in the least naive; I’m the last word in down-to-earth common sense. If I don’t misbehave with you—and I’ve no intention of doing anything which would wreck our beautiful friendship—how can you misbehave with me? Adultery’s a two-way street.”

  I cleared my throat. “Not entirely. Theologically speaking—”

  “Oh good, I did so hope there’d be a fascinating theological angle—how delicious!”

  “Miss Tallent—”

  “Dearest Archdeacon, don’t worry. I’ll leave you alone now so that you can glue together your shattered nerves, and I shall keep a chaste distance from you for the rest of the weekend, but when you get home do write and explain all the theological aspects of adultery!”

  “I won’t have time. I’m leaving on Wednesday for my holiday in the Lake District.”

  “Will you send me a postcard?”

  “No, that would be quite improper.”

  “But you’ll pray for me!”

  I said in a voice of steel: “I pray regularly for all the souls in my care,” but to my horror I realised I was smiling at her.

  “Well, so long as God’s brought into the situation we can’t go far wrong, can we?” said Dido, smiling radiantly in return.

  “I think you’d better leave, Miss Tallent, before I really do give way to the urge to spank you.”

  With a laugh she danced away from me across the rose-garden.

  2

  Collapsing on the wrought-iron garden seat where earlier Lady Starmouth had declared with such incomparable style how very hard it was to be a clergyman, I clutched my Bible as if it were a life-belt and forced myself te face the unspeakable. I had fallen in love. Hitherto I had believed that only irrational women could succumb to the full force of an amour fou, yet here I was, collapsed in a heap, almost asphyxiated by the reek of red roses, and shivering with desire from head to toe. This was no middle-aged inconvenience. This was a passion of the prime of life. Nothing like it had ever happened to me before. I was appalled.

  Automatically I started recalling my seven-year courtship of Grace, but although I had embarked on that period of my life in a fever of calf-love, my feelings had matured into a solid reliable devotion and I had never experienced the suspension of my rational faculties. On the contrary, I had plotted my marriage campaign with military precision, calculating down to the last farthing when I would be able to afford the trip to the altar, scheming how I might win my future father-in-law’s consent while I was still so young, rehearsing the necessary speech to my mother until I was word-perfect. By no remote stretch of the imagination could I describe myself as having been demented with love. In fact in the light of my present madness I was almost tempted to wonder if I had ever really loved Grace at all—but that was an insane thought which only indicated the disintegration of my reason. Of course I had loved Grace. I had adored her. She had been exactly the kind of wife I knew I had to have.

  “Such a fetching girl!” said my mother benignly in my memory. “So quiet and refined—and with a hundred and fifty pounds a year of her own! Darling Neville, I couldn’t be more pleased …”

  The memory terminated. Wiping the sweat from my forehead I pulled myself together and resolved to fight this monstrous insanity which had assailed me. Why was I loafing amidst the nauseating stench of roses and thinking of my mother? That was hardly constructive behaviour. I had to start planning how I could cover up the disaster as efficiently as a cat burying a mess, and while I was engaged in this vital task I had to pretend to the whole world—but especially to Grace—that I was my sane, normal self.

  That was the moment when I remembered our forty-eight-hour second honeymoon, which was due to take place before we embarked on our family holiday. Common sense, liberally garnished with a strong instinct for self-preservation, now told me that this was not the time, in the sixteen-year-old history of my perfect marriage, to spend forty-eight hours entirely alone with my wife. My most sensible course of action was to hide from her among the children as I shored up my defences and made myself impregnable to the violent assaults of my irrationality.

  Leaning forward with my elbows on my knees, I clasped my hands, squeezed my eyes shut and said to God silently in desperation: “Lord, help me, save me, protect me so that I can consecrate myself afresh to your service.” Then I waited, trying not to feel as if I were whistling in the dark, but I experienced no easing of my fear and anxiety. Evidently my prayer was not going to
be answered in any simple straightforward way, and at last, wiping the sweat again from my forehead, I nerved myself to return to the house.

  3

  “Darling,” I said to Grace as I entered the bedroom and found her struggling into an afternoon frock, “I feel I’ve been at fault in failing to realise how very unhappy you are when you’re separated from the children. Why don’t I start my task of making you happier by suggesting that we forget our little holiday alone together this week? Instead of leaving for Manchester on Wednesday we’ll travel north with all the children on Saturday and go straight to the cottage.”

  She was pathetically grateful. “Well, if you’re sure you wouldn’t mind—”

  “Say no more. It’s settled.” Having given her a kiss, I eyed the frock and said: “You don’t really want to go down to tea, do you? I’ll say you have a migraine.”

  “Well, I know I look a fright after all those tears, but I hate the thought of putting you in an awkward position—”

  “That doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you should be happy. Are you sure you even want to go away on our family holiday? Perhaps you’d rather just stay at home and rest.”

  “Don’t be silly, I could never rest at home—there’s always so much to be done! No, I can hardly wait for the holiday—although now that we don’t have to abandon the children with Winifred I do wish it wasn’t too late to alter our plans again and go to Devon as usual.”

  “It’ll be fun to have a change.”

  “I’m not very good at changes,” said Grace.

  I thought: And not very good at fun either.

  But that comment was contemptible and I despised myself for letting it loose in my consciousness.

  It was then that I first began to have misgivings about our family holiday in the Lake District, but I had no premonition of disaster. I was no mystical dreamer, and as a good Modernist I didn’t believe in clairvoyance.