Ultimate Prizes

by Susan Howatch

  As far as I could gather, God and the Devil were now both busy fighting for the possession of my soul. Could a good Modernist, who shunned all mention of the Devil, seriously resort to such old-fashioned symbolism? Apparently. But perhaps I was more deranged than I realised.

  Abandoning all hope of exercising the charism of discernment, I stopped wondering what on earth God wanted me to do and drove down to the village to confront the unfortunate clergyman who, like me, was quite obviously on the brink of a breakdown.

  7

  The church in Flaxton Pauncefoot had a youthful look; I judged it to be no more than three hundred years old and I wondered what had happened to the medieval church which must have stood on the site. Inside by the alms-box I found a pamphlet which gave the explanation: Cromwell’s soldiers, judging the church to be a peculiarly revolting example of idolatry, had been unable to resist the urge to commit arson. Having been brought up to regard Cromwell as a hero who had rescued England from the Papist influence of a foreign queen, I never failed to be shocked by evidence of his followers’ hooliganism.

  In the vestry I checked the cupboards for empty bottles but found only Communion wine. The key to the wine cupboard was placed trustfully on top of the door-frame but this was not unusual; many country parishes were still living in blissful ignorance of the post-war crime wave.

  Leaving the church I crossed the graveyard to the large dilapidated house which sprawled beyond an uncut hedge. Weeds were thriving in the drive. The garden was a wilderness. Faded lettering on the broken gate proclaimed that this run-down dwelling was the vicarage. Walking up to the shabby front door, I tried ringing the bell but it was broken. I resorted to the knocker. No one came but the door was on the latch and creaked inwards. Warily I stepped into a dark dirty hall.

  “Hullo?” I called. “Anyone at home?” And to my surprise a man’s surly voice replied reluctantly from a room nearby: “Just a minute.”

  I heard the clink of a glass knocking some metal object and then the click of a closing cupboard door as the evidence of the afternoon drink was concealed. A moment later a man emerged into the hall. I judged him to be about my age. He had some hair like steel wool growing in a fringe around his bald pate, pale eyes behind thick spectacles, and a damp unhealthy look. His lips were moist, hinting that he had just licked them nervously. When he saw my uniform he was appalled.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” I said, very civil. “My name’s Aysgarth. If you’re not too busy, I’d like to have a word with you.”

  “Delighted, I’m sure,” he said, looking wretched, and led the way into a dishevelled study where the dust lay over the furniture like a pall of brown frost. “Do sit down,” he added, removing a pile of junk from a worn chair.

  “Thanks.” I waited till he too was seated before I said: “I’m here on behalf of the Archdeacon of Starmouth, who’s engaged elsewhere at present.”

  “That’s welcome news. I can’t stand that man Babbington-French.” With an unexpected flash of humour he added: “And now I suppose you’ll say he’s a personal friend.”

  “My acquaintance with Mr. Babbington-French is purely professional.”

  “Heavens, that’s cagey! I can see you’re one of the Church’s diplomatists, effortlessly gliding up the ladder of preferment to the palace at the end of the rainbow. I’ve heard of you, of course. You’ve got a house in the Close and a society wife. Well, good luck to you, I say—good luck! I’m glad there’s at least one clergyman of my age who’s not buried alive in a rural tomb on a salary which would make a dustman laugh—and you can tell that to the Bishop. And talking of the Bishop, why am I being visited by his henchman? Has someone been complaining about the drink again?”

  “No, but if you regularly throw sobriety to the winds at four o’clock in the afternoon, it can only be a matter of time before someone does.”

  “I never drink before a service. Never.”

  “Congratulations. What do you do with the bottles?”

  “Bury ’em in the garden. If you think I’m too far gone to keep up appearances, I assure you—”

  “Where do you buy them?”

  “Starmouth. You don’t think I have a standing order at the local off-license, do you?”

  “Whisky, is it? Gin?”

  “At twenty-two-and-six a bottle? How could I afford it?”

  “It’s amazing how many tight-fisted bank managers become sentimental at the sight of an impoverished parson.”

  “Ah. Yes. Well, as a matter of fact—”

  “Name of the bank?” I said, taking out my notebook. “The Westminster at Flaxfield. But the loan’s only a hundred pounds!”

  “That’s too much for someone in your circumstances. It’ll have to be mopped up.” I wrote down: “Debt: £100 (£200?) WB @ Flax.” and added aloud neutrally: “Once a loan gets into three figures it’s best if the diocese pays off the bank in order to avoid the risk of scandal; three-figure loans have a fatal habit of rapid expansion. Then once the bank’s out of the way we work out how the incumbent can pay back the diocese and still live within his income. Have you been borrowing from church funds?”

  “Are you accusing me of embezzlement?”

  “No, I’d assume there was no criminal intent to defraud.”

  “Well, actually I do borrow the odd fiver from the organ fund every now and then, but I always pay it back in the end—”

  “How much is currently outstanding?”

  “Twelve pounds five-and-six.”

  “You’re quite sure of that figure?”

  “Are you accusing me of—”

  “I’m not making accusations, I’m ascertaining facts. All right, let’s get down to the fundamental cause of this situation; so far we’ve only been discussing symptoms. What do you see as your real problem, the problem that’s driving you to drink, debt and despair? Bereavement? Loneliness? Intellectual isolation? The depressing atmosphere of this obsolete hulk of a house? Middle age? Women? Choirboys?”

  “My God!” To my relief I realised his horror was genuine. No clergyman normally uses God’s name as an expletive, least of all a clergyman in the midst of an awkward interview with an archdeacon.

  “Lost your faith?” I persisted, determined to ram my advantage home while he was in shock.

  However shock was now giving way to anger. “Lost my faith? Certainly not! And will you kindly stop bullying me this instant? I feel as if I’m being repeatedly hit over the head with a hammer!”

  It was time to explain my technique and soften him up. “I’m sorry,” I said sympathetically, “but I find that these very difficult interviews usually run more easily if all the unspeakable possibilities are dragged out into the open right at the beginning. Otherwise one can tiptoe tastefully around for hours—with the result that by the time the truth’s exposed, the poor victim, who’s probably already under strain, is only fit for a lunatic asylum. You may scoff but I honestly feel I’m being cruel only to be kind.”

  He plainly saw the logic of this argument; he looked first mollified and then relieved as it occurred to him his plight could be worse. At least there was no trouble with choirboys. “Well,” he said, spurred to honesty by the desire to convince me that he wasn’t such a bad fellow after all, “I suppose my main problem is that I’m bored.”

  I kept my face expressionless. “Could you elaborate on that statement, please?” I said politely while I asked myself how a bored believer could transform himself into a raging heretic. The true raging heretic is usually the product of passionate emotions, not of an impoverished middle-class ennui.

  “I’m bored with being poor,” said Mellors, “bored with having no wife and being unable to afford another, bored with all the bovine parishioners, bored with rural life, bored with knowing I’ve smashed up all hope of preferment by hitting the bottle after my wife died, bored with having no future, bored, bored, BORED. So you see, all I’m suffering from is sloth. Trust me to choose the most boring of the seven deadly sins. Boring of me, is
n’t it?”

  “Speaking from a practical point of view, I’d rather you were indulging in sloth than in illicit sexual activity,” I said good-humouredly, beavering away at the task of appearing friendly and sympathetic. “Sex is always so much harder to cover up. But let’s put worldly considerations aside and spare a passing thought for God. I assume you’re bored with Him too.”

  “Not in the least, although I’m sure He’s very bored with me. I repeat: I haven’t lost my faith. I still believe God exists, but the trouble is I seem to be in some sort of a—how can I put it—”

  “Wasteland.”

  “—wasteland—thank you—which is so boring that He can’t be bothered to enter it.”

  “Must make sermonising a bit tricky.”

  “Well, it did for a while,” said Mellors as I fought a losing battle to preserve my detachment, “but then I found the cure. I had to go to Starbridge not long ago to see my dentist about a tooth which was making a nuisance of itself, and afterwards I visited the library of the Theological College. I suppose I felt guilty enough about my sloth to want to ginger up my sermons with a dash of current religious thought. Anyway, I was just browsing through an issue of The Modern Churchman when I discovered the most amazing article by Bishop Barnes of Birmingham.”

  “Ah! Light begins to dawn on the horizon!”

  “Exactly what I thought. An end to boredom, courtesy of Bishop Barnes! But really, that man’s a disgrace. If that’s what Modernism is all about—”

  “It’s true Barnes is a trifle eccentric and often lays himself open to being misunderstood, but essentially he’s a good man.”

  “Possibly, but all I can say is he makes me want to shout HERETIC! at every Modernist in sight. However at least he gave me the inspiration to do a bit of quick research into current Modernist thinking, and for the next three Sundays I sailed into the pulpit and lit a fire under all the bovine members of the congregation by preaching a lot of Modernist rot—you know the sort of thing: all a myth, no resurrection, no incarnation—”

  “I hate to disillusion you, Mellors, particularly when you were obviously enjoying yourself for the first time in months, but that’s not true Modernism. True Modernism holds fast to the divinity of Christ.”

  “What about the resurrection?”

  “Modernists believe in that too, although of course they think the actual mode of the resurrection is open to—”

  “But how can Modernists believe in the resurrection when they don’t believe in miracles?”

  “They don’t class the resurrection as a straightforward old-fashioned miracle which is clearly either a fable or a metaphor. They see the resurrection as a unique event which can’t be explained by our current knowledge of the laws of physics.”

  “But how can the Modernists possibly know for certain what’s a fable, what’s a metaphor and what’s scientific ignorance? Personally I think the whole Modernist attitude shows the most revolting spiritual arrogance—this worship of science is nothing but a perverted form of idolatry! Science doesn’t know all the answers! How can it? And if one believes in an utterly transcendent God—”

  “Ah well,” I said, having long since forgotten that I was supposed to be an archdeacon on the warpath, “if you make the mistake of seeing God as utterly transcendent, a remote force which shoots off the occasional impossibility whenever it chooses to do so, then of course you’ll wind up by deciding He’s above the laws of science and you’ll be seeing miracles everywhere. But the Modernists prefer to think of God as immanent in the world, working through the laws of science and nature. They believe that if only one can dispose of this archaic and unhelpful model of the transcendent God, one can form a theology which is far more pertinent to the mid-twentieth century.”

  “What utter rubbish! If we’ve got to be alive in the middle of this abominable century, the last thing we need is an immanent God who’s wallowing around in this disgusting pig-sty with us—we want a God up above the mess who can lean down and haul us out of it! It’s your model of God which is unhelpful and archaic!”

  “But it seems to me that people who harp on a transcendent God always end up by undervaluing the importance of Christ. If one keeps in mind that the Incarnation symbolises God’s immanence among humanity—”

  “Oh, I’ve no patience with this cosy, benign God whom you Liberals dress up in Christ’s clothes and reduce to your own mundane human level! God’s no soft-hearted Liberal! He’s harsh, firm—even brutal if necessary—”

  “But if God is love—”

  “Sometimes love requires harshness and firmness—and yes, even brutality too. What use is a parent who doesn’t care enough to discipline a child who goes wrong? Of course the Modernists say no one ever goes wrong, they deny the existence of sin, but in my opinion—”

  “They don’t deny the existence of sin, Mellors! They simply say we should consider wrong-doing in the light of modern psychology and sociology—”

  “They can consider evil in whatever light they please, but they’ll never alter the basic fact that we’re all sinners—and we’re all under judgement! We all need to be redeemed, and contrary to what you Modernists think, redemption isn’t to be had by sidling up to God with a winsome smile and lisping: ‘Excuse me, Lord, I think I’ll repent now—can I have my ration of sweetness and light, please?’ The road to redemption is decked in blood, sweat and tears, not in moonlight, red roses and a bunch of angels twanging harps!”

  “My dear Mellors,” I said, “why aren’t you preaching this stuff in the pulpit instead of flagellating your congregation with pseudo-Modernist claptrap? There’s nothing wrong with a fashionable neo-orthodoxy!”

  Mellors said flatly: “I was bored.” Then he said: “My own struggle for redemption’s been too difficult. One day I woke up and found I’d run out of strength.” And finally he whispered: “I’ve ruined myself. I had such high hopes and now they’re all dead. I’ve no hope left any more.”

  “You say that because you’re standing in your wasteland, but—”

  “What do you know about my wasteland?” shouted Mellors in a paroxysm of rage and despair. “What do you know about grinding poverty and drinking too much and feeling utterly cut off from God?”

  “More than you think.” I stood up abruptly. “I’ll talk to the Bishop and try to ease this situation as soon as possible.”

  “You mean you’ll recommend that I should be kicked out of the Church!” He was trying to sustain his anger but his voice broke. Taking off his spectacles he began to polish them furiously with a filthy handkerchief.

  I sat down again. “Mellors,” I said, “you completely misunderstand the nature of my mission. My task is to enter your wasteland and work out how you can best be cut down from your cross, not to crucify you all over again.”

  There was a silence, and when I realised he was incapable of replying I added: “My first recommendation to the Bishop will be that you should have a holiday. You’ve been worn out by all your unhappiness. Then I shall recommend that you have regular talks with a sympathetic older clergyman who’s good at sorting out clerical problems. And finally I shall recommend that after you’ve had sufficient rest and help, you should resume your work—though whether here or elsewhere in the diocese is a question which only the Bishop can decide.”

  His pathetic attempt to maintain a stiff upper lip failed. I sighed, reminded of the more harrowing aspects of my work among the Germans. I never knew what to do when men wept. It was all so deeply embarrassing and reminded me what a ham-fisted pastor I was. Yet my Germans had written—and Dr. Bell had said—

  “Sorry,” said the wretched Mellors, mopping himself up with his filthy handkerchief.

  “That’s all right. I’ve shed a tear or two myself recently, as a matter of fact. Sort of thing that could happen to anyone.”

  To my surprise Mellors seemed to find this idiotic remark comforting. As he accompanied me to the front door he even said: “I’m glad it was you who came and not that
pompous prig Babbington-French.”

  Not for the first time I wondered how Dr. Ottershaw and I were going to appease Babbington-French after my pastoral sortie into his archdeaconry. Babbington-French was jealous of me and resented my influence over the Bishop. I foresaw trouble ahead, and suddenly for the first time in my career as an archdeacon I experienced a powerful urge to plunge into fresh woods and pastures new.

  Having shaken hands with Mellors I remembered to give him my telephone number in case his frail new hope lapsed into a suicidal despair which required a prompt verbal antidote. Then with my mind beginning to seethe with chaotic thoughts about the future, I embarked on my journey to Starbridge.

  8

  When I arrived back at the palace the chaplain greeted me with the news that Dr. Ottershaw was in a dither; Darrow had finally deigned to reveal his plans for the extension of the Theological College.

  “This is my fault,” I said. “Amidst all my domestic troubles I quite forgot to warn the Bishop that Darrow was planning to go on the rampage again.”

  “It’s noble of you to take the blame, Archdeacon, but you can hardly be held responsible for Darrow waltzing in, cool as a cucumber, and demanding thousands of pounds in the name of the Holy Spirit. Honestly!” said Hampton scandalised. “You’d think, wouldn’t you, that a famous spiritual director would know better than to behave like a gangster extorting money at gunpoint—oh, and talking of high-handed gangsters, how was Lord Flaxton?”

  “Breathing fire but I managed to apply water.”

  “And the heretic?”

  “He’s no heretic. He’s just been having fun and games with Modernism.” Abandoning Hampton in the hall I entered Dr. Ottershaw’s study and found him poring over one of the large blue diocesan finance files. There was a worried expression on his face and an untouched cup of tea at his elbow. “My dear Bishop,” I said firmly, recognising my duty to cut him free from this worldly thicket into which he had been so brutally dumped, “if you’re trying to work out how to pay for Darrow’s pipe-dream, stop worrying this instant. All calculations can be left to the Board of Finance. It’s quite unnecessary for you to bother yourself with complex arithmetic when you have better things to do.”