Ultimate Prizes

by Susan Howatch

  “I fooled myself into thinking I’d get better. Now let’s not mention the quarrel—let’s just put it behind us and make the most of this lucid interval of mine. There are certain things I have to tell you—no, don’t be alarmed! This is no deathbed confession. We’ll leave that sort of fandango to the Papists. But I want to ask a favour of you, and you won’t understand my request unless I explain one or two mysteries first.”

  “Mysteries?”

  “Well, let’s start with the mystery which I know has troubled you—the mystery of my idle retirement. The truth is I couldn’t have worked as a clergyman in any capacity. I’d lost my faith.”

  I stared at him. Automatically I said: “I don’t believe you.”

  “Oh, I’ve recovered it during these last months of illness! Let me hasten to assure you that you haven’t been summoned to minister to an unbeliever, but back in 1937 I felt I was an apostate. There was no heart trouble. I resigned because it was morally, not physically, impossible for me to continue as a bishop.”

  But I could only shake my head. “No,” I said. “No, that’s not credible. You had the kind of religious sincerity which can’t be faked. If you’d lost your faith I’d have known.”

  “I tell you I lost it! And I tell you that you had no idea!”

  “But I was so close to you in 1937—”

  “We know so little about even those who are closest to us,” said Alex. “We’re all mysteries to one another—and often we’re profound mysteries to ourselves.”

  “That’s not true.” I was at once deeply disturbed. “I know myself through and through—and you know me through and through as well—”

  “No,” said Alex. “I realised as soon as you embarked on your pursuit of Miss Tallent—Mrs. Aysgarth, I should say—that I knew nothing about you at all. However, let’s keep to the subject under discussion. I’m telling you that I lost my faith and you’ve got to accept that this is true.”

  “But why did you lose it, Alex—why? I’m sorry, I do want to believe you, but—”

  “I discovered that the Modernist road leads eventually into a void. If you pursue certain radical approaches far enough you end up with nothing—and that, of course, is why the Roman Catholics suppressed Modernism so brutally. They knew it was the gospel of the Devil, not the gospel of God.”

  With shock I realised he was mentally unhinged, although whether this was as the result of his illness or of a spiritual breakdown or of the two combined, it was impossible to discern. As I struggled to beat back my horror I could only protest feebly: “Alex, surely you’re not going to start talking like a nineteenth-century Evangelical!”

  “Oh, I know there’s no room for the Devil in that cosy ivory tower which the Modernists inhabit! But the Devil exists, I know that. He’s a force. Evil’s a force, sin’s a force—and we’re all tainted by that force, we’re all sinners, we’re all under judgement—”

  “Alex, this is the neo-orthodoxy of Karl Barth! I can’t believe a Liberal like you could have succumbed to Crisis Theology!” But as I spoke I was remembering that his father had undergone a mental breakdown which had assumed the form of a rabid fundamentalism, and abruptly I realised I had to alter my course. It was futile to expect someone who was not only dying but mentally impaired to conduct a rational argument. Adopting my most soothing voice, I said: “Well, never mind all that. I’m only relieved that by the grace of God you’ve managed to regain your faith, and I do urge you not to become so obsessed with sin that you overlook the forgiveness Christ grants all sinners who repent.”

  “If you respond to my request I’ll finally be able to believe myself forgiven.”

  “What request?”

  “That brings me to the second disclosure I must make. Are you ready? Brace yourself. It’s about Lyle. She’s my daughter.”

  “Your daughter?” I could only assume he was raving.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake stop looking at me as if I’m certifiable!” cried Alex with such a healthy irritation that I was at once driven to doubt my diagnosis of insanity. “She was the result of a final fling I enjoyed not long before I was ordained—the woman was already engaged to a soldier named Christie but he was away somewhere in the Army and we were at one of those Edwardian house-parties where everyone visited everyone else after the lights were out—”

  “My God.” It says much for my stupefaction, as I started to believe him, that I forgot to substitute the acceptable exclamation “My goodness.”

  “So that’s why—”

  “That’s why there was such a strong bond between Lyle, Carrie and me. That’s why Lyle stayed with us for ten years and why we always regarded her as a daughter. That’s why we became so fatally possessive, an ill-assorted childless couple who had always longed for a child to unite them—”

  “Yes, I see. Yes, of course—it all makes sense now. So when Ashworth wanted to marry Lyle—”

  “We behaved atrociously, unable to bear the thought of being on our own again after enjoying a happy family life which had so miraculously alleviated our unsatisfactory marriage. In the circumstances was it surprising that Ashworth leapt to the conclusion that our emotional dependence on Lyle was thoroughly unwholesome and that we should keep out of her way in the future?” Alex sighed before adding unexpectedly: “The irony of it all was that I liked Ashworth so much. I only wish I could believe now that he’ll come back from the war, but I don’t think he will—and that leads me on to my big request. Neville, if he doesn’t come back, could you see that those children are all right? Boys need a father. I’m not so worried about the little one, Michael—I can see him gliding successfully through life, just as Ashworth himself did before the war—but Charley … Charley’s temperamental and sensitive, and life won’t always be easy for him. If I knew there would be a man he could rely on—someone who’d give him a helping hand whenever life became intolerably difficult—”

  “Say no more, Alex. I’ll do all I can for both those boys, I promise.”

  “But especially Charley—”

  “Especially Charley, yes.”

  Alex slumped exhausted into the depths of his chair. “Then he’ll be all right,” he said. “Thank God.” And he added in a whisper: “That’s a sign. That’s forgiveness at last. ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.’ ”

  I leant forward, unsure if he wanted me to assume a professional role. “Alex, I know you made that remark about leaving deathbed confessions to the Papists, but would you like me to—”

  “No, I won’t ask you to celebrate Communion. The sands of time are running out on this interview, and it would be better to communicate later when I’m not distracted by pain … But perhaps the General Confession wouldn’t be inappropriate in the circumstances.”

  “Of course.” I gave him the lead of “Almighty and Most Merciful Father,” and then we recited together the beautiful words from the Book of Common Prayer. Afterwards when I had pronounced the formal words of absolution and benediction, I saw Alex was greatly moved.

  “I feel justified now,” he said, using the word in its technical religious sense. “I’ve got the faith to believe that by grace I stand right with God. Call the nurse for the morphia—no, wait! How selfish I’ve been, thinking only of myself … How’s your wife?”

  “Oh, she’s fine. Absolutely fine.”

  “And you’re happy?”

  “Couldn’t be happier!”

  “I was so frightened that you’d marry the wrong woman, just as I did. Such a mistake, my stepmother Ingrid always said it would be a mistake … You remember me talking of my stepmother, don’t you? My father didn’t really love her. It was my mother he loved, and after she died he only wanted a housekeeper who’d go to bed with him. Ingrid told me once how hurt she’d been when she finally realised that … Oh, how I loved Ingrid! She protected me from my father, got me an education, made sacrifice after sacrifice for my sake … but then the truest love thinks nothing of the self. Looking back now I can see so c
learly how much she meant to me, just as I can see so clearly how in my eyes she reduced all other women to mere sources of sexual satisfaction. So she was a malign as well as a benign influence on my life—but that’s a reflection of the existence we live on earth, isn’t it? Beneath all the goodness lies the malignant force of evil … Poor Neville, I’m embarrassing you again—put yourself out of your agony by calling the nurse to put me out of mine!”

  After the injection had been administered I helped him lie down on the makeshift bed in the corner of the room, and when the nurse had departed he said casually, as if the pain had already begun to ease: “And talking of Ingrid, I must just issue a word of advice about my autobiography: Don’t bother to read it. It’s all true and yet it’s all false, a preposterous literary paradox. I never disclose how much I loved Ingrid. I never disclose that my marriage was a failure. I never disclose my true relationship with Lyle. I never disclose how much I hated my father for driving my elder sister mad with his incest. I never disclose—”

  “Incest! I’m sorry, obviously I misheard you. For a moment I thought you said—”

  “I did. He committed incest with her over a period of months when Ingrid was keeping house for me at the start of my career. After my sister was admitted to an asylum Ingrid found out what had been happening and went back to him before he could start on my younger sister. Oh, nobody knows the half of what goes on in people’s lives, all the sin and the suffering, the mess and the misery, the souls screaming and writhing in an endless hell of dereliction and pain—”

  “But Alex—”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot. You have to have your happy ending with everyone living in perfect bliss for ever more. My God, no wonder Karl Barth moved in after the First War to grind the Liberal Protestants into the dust! There’s something almost criminal about such innocent idealism when the whole world’s screaming in agony!”

  “My dear Alex, no Liberal Protestant would deny that terrible things go on in this world, but”—I was so shocked I hardly knew what I was saying—“but one must never give up hope, never—the hope that we can work for a better world—the belief in Christ the Redeemer—the knowledge that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, the knowledge that suffering can be commuted and transformed, the knowledge that all sin and evil can be overcome—”

  “Oh, yes, yes, yes,” said Alex impatiently, “that’s all true too.”

  “But when the Liberal Protestants and the neo-orthodox Protestants oppose each other so violently, how can their theologies both be true?”

  “All the most profound truths lie in paradox—and death itself is a paradox, the end yet the beginning, all quite indescribable but all utterly real—another paradox—and in the end the ultimate reality—that ultimate prize, as you might say—lies beyond myth, beyond metaphor, beyond symbol, beyond analogy, beyond words, beyond the breath of life itself … Ah, the morphia’s working at last, it takes longer to work nowadays … Sometimes when it works I see Ingrid. She’s a symbol, of course, a symbol of Love, of Christ, of God … so in the end even the hallucinations are real—another paradox—and where there’s paradox there’s eternity, because beyond all the paradoxes lies the eternal truth.” He closed his eyes. Then suddenly he said very clearly: “Oh God, how we all lie to one another!” and sighed with a profound resignation.

  They were the last words I ever heard him say. It seemed such a bizarre final statement from such a famous fighter for truth.

  3

  When I emerged from the study Carrie Jardine was waiting in the hall. To my relief she was calm; she thanked me for coming, asked after Dido and said she did so hope the weather had kept fine for the honeymoon. Fortunately before this banal conversation could be prolonged we were interrupted by her current companion, a bossy female called Miss Jenkins, who announced that the gardener wanted to know where to plant the new rose-bush. Escaping into the drawing-room I found Lyle, gliding around in a slinky black frock and a pair of very high-heeled shoes. Forgetting Garbo in Ninotchka, I began to toy with my memories of Marlene Dietrich.

  “Well?” she said, halting abruptly. “How did it go?”

  “Fine,” I said, but then realising that this comment could only sound ridiculous in the circumstances I added: “But of course he’s in a bad way and sometimes he didn’t make much sense.”

  “Did he tell you about me?”

  “Yes.” I felt embarrassed enough to look away. “That was the one point in the conversation which rang true. But as for the rest … To be frank I found it hard to judge where fantasy ended and truth began.”

  “What’s so unusual about that? If you ask me we spend most of our lives floating about in a fog of illusion and very rarely glimpse reality at all.”

  I was still so shattered by the interview that I found myself unable to control my impatience. “That’s a well-known point of view, I admit,” I said curtly, “but in my opinion it’s grossly exaggerated. I for one don’t spend most of my life floating around in a fog. I move clear-eyed through a well-defined landscape.”

  “Yes, I always did think you were revoltingly smug beneath that prim exterior. How that nice first wife of yours put up with you for all those years I really can’t imagine.”

  I was so stunned, not only by the insults but by the spectacular nonchalance with which they were delivered, that for a moment I was speechless. Then I said: “It’s a pity that as a clergyman I can’t call you by the name you deserve,” and walked out, slamming the door.

  Having paused in the hall to take three deep breaths to restore my equilibrium, I plunged into the dining-room in the hope of downing a quick drink before lunch, but my plan to raid the sideboard was foiled. The little boy was sitting at the dining-room table. He was writing with a much-chewed pencil on a large sheet of notepaper.

  “Hullo,” I said, trying not to sound annoyed. “What are you up to?”

  “I’m writing to Daddy. Just because the Germans won’t let him answer our letters any more, it doesn’t mean he can’t read them. I’m telling him I’ve got a Union Jack to wave when he comes home.”

  “Ah.” There was a pause while I forgot the bitch in the drawing-room and focused my full attention on the child before me. I felt as if I were seeing him for the first time, and I could now clearly detect the resemblance to his grandfather. It lay not only in the wide mouth but in the eyes, which were no longer, so it seemed to me, the colour of pale mud but of dark golden sand.

  “I’ve got the best daddy in the world,” said Charley, writing busily, “and when I grow up I want to be just like him.”

  This remark, curiously moving in its extreme innocence and passionate sincerity, reduced me to silence. I could only wonder if any of my boys had ever paid me such a compliment when talking to a stranger. Certainly none of them had yet expressed an ambition to be a clergyman. I kept hoping Christian would bring up the subject but he never did, and suddenly I felt jealous of Charles Ashworth as I stood looking at his son. A second later the envy had vanished, swallowed up by my non-combatant’s shame that I should be safe in England while Ashworth was lost in Europe, and at once I found myself praying fiercely that he might still be alive.

  Returning to the hall I met the bitch as she emerged from the drawing-room.

  “Still in a huff?” she enquired. “I thought Christians were supposed to turn the other cheek when they were insulted.”

  “Are you having the insufferable nerve to lecture me on my Christian duty?”

  “Oh, for the love of God, stop being so priggish and stupid! Haven’t you any sensitivity at all? Can’t you, a clergyman—a clergyman, for heaven’s sake!—see that I’m absolutely in extremis and make allowances for me?”

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “Oh yes, yes, yes, you’re in extremis too—we’re all in extremis—so let’s have a truce and at least make some effort to behave as if we’re not both itching to slap each other!”

  It suddenly occurred to me how much I would enjoy adm
inistering a hearty slap. Very quickly, killing the fantasy at birth, I said mildly: “Any chance of celebrating the truce with a quick drink before lunch?”

  “There’s claret and sherry on the dining-room sideboard—help yourself. I’d better go and rescue Carrie from that ghastly companion.”

  Little Charley scampered into the hall. “Mummy, read my letter to Daddy and see if you like it!”

  Instantly I made a second beeline for the decanters on the dining-room sideboard. I had just realised that I was starting to think the unthinkable—and the unthinkable, of course, was that Lyle was very much prettier than Dido and, at this tormented stage of my life, at least ten times more desirable.

  4

  After lunch Lyle drove me back to the station at Oxford. We travelled in silence. It was only when she halted the car that she said: “By the way, did he mention that he wants you to conduct the funeral? The request’s in his will.”

  I was greatly taken aback. Unless the circumstances are exceptional, a clergyman should avoid conducting the funerals of those closest to him. Apart from the obvious fact that his own grief will impair his ability to conduct the service professionally, he will be in no fit state to offer an adequate pastoral sympathy to the mourners.

  “I personally think it’s a rotten idea,” Lyle was saying, “and quite unfair on you, but the trouble is he’s drifted apart from the clerics he used to know, he doesn’t get on with the local vicar and he’s obsessed with the idea of having what he calls ‘a decent Protestant funeral.’ You know how opposed he is to Anglo-Catholicism, and he feels you’re the one man he can trust to do the job properly.”

  “Poor Alex.”

  “Yes, one can only hope for his sake that the funeral’s sooner rather than later … Oh, and if you’d find it more convenient to stay overnight in Stoneyford after the funeral, don’t waste money on a hotel. There’ll be room for you at the house.”

  “Thanks. That’ll please my bank manager,” I said and managed to extract myself from the car without offering her my hand, but once physical contact had been avoided I felt I could afford a smile. “Sorry about all the friction,” I added. “Nice seeing you again. Good luck”—I remembered just in time that I was a clergyman—“and God bless you.”