Ultimate Prizes

by Susan Howatch

  “Idealism is also a reality—the reality to which we must all continually aspire.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Christian, I’ve had a long hard day, I’ve wound up in a hovel and quite frankly I’m not in the mood to discuss theology. Can we continue this debate later?”

  “I’m sorry, I just wanted to have a real conversation with you for once.”

  I stared at him. “But we always have real conversations!”

  “No, they’re usually about Latin and Greek and how well I’m doing at school.”

  “Well, what’s so unreal about all your splendid successes?” I stood up with one arm encircling Sandy and held out my free hand to Primrose. “Bed-time, my love,” I said to her, “and let’s hope that tomorrow morning after a good night’s sleep we’ll find our holiday taking a turn for the better.”

  “It could hardly get much worse,” said Christian.

  But he was wrong.

  6

  Norman’s condition showed no improvement the next morning. Grace—perfect as always—had remembered to bring a thermometer, and when we discovered he had a high fever I trekked to the nearby village in search of a doctor. Influenza was diagnosed. Grace was obliged to spend most of her time caring for the invalid. The weather was not only wet but cold. The younger children quickly became fractious.

  It was on the fifth day after our arrival, just as Norman’s condition began to improve, that Grace fainted. Rushing upstairs in response to Norman’s frightened yell for help, I found she had collapsed on the bedroom floor.

  “I haven’t felt well for some time,” she whispered later, “but I was afraid you’d think it was the last straw if I couldn’t cope.”

  When the doctor returned he ordered her sternly to stay in bed. Afterwards he told me that she had probably made matters worse by ignoring all the signs that she had caught Norman’s influenza.

  But Grace did not have influenza. She had caught a chill after being soaked on a shopping expedition—it could never have happened in Devon, where the village shop stood next door to our cottage—and now she was suffering from pneumonia.

  At eleven o’clock that night she began to have difficulty with her breathing. On arrival the doctor took one look at her and said: “She must go to hospital at once.” He made no attempt to summon an ambulance. He drove us to the hospital at Keswick in his own car. I remember thinking what a blessing it was that Christian was old enough to be left in charge at the cottage.

  Soon after she was admitted to hospital she became delirious and the pneumonia was finally diagnosed. I telephoned her sister Winifred in Manchester. To my great relief she at once offered to come to my rescue. I was unable to leave the hospital, and although Christian was capable of taking charge of four children for a short time I could hardly leave him without assistance for more than twenty-four hours.

  The day passed. Winifred arrived and could barely bring herself to leave the hospital. I had to remind her sharply that if she wanted to help her sister she should attend to the children. Winifred cried but left. More time passed. The sympathetic nurses offered me cups of tea but I could hardly drink. Eating proved quite impossible.

  For some time Grace was unconscious, but in the evening when the sun was setting far away in the other world beyond the hospital walls, she opened her eyes and said clearly: “I can’t go on. But I must. She’d never care for the children.”

  For a long moment I was so appalled, so overpowered by my guilt and my shame, that I was unable to speak. Then leaning forward I clumsily clasped her hands as if I could somehow infuse her with strength, and stammered: “You mustn’t say such things. You mustn’t even think them. I love you and no one else but you, and you’re going to live.”

  She died a minute later.

  5

  “Passion may be dangerous, but for all that it is the driving-force of life …”

  CHARLES E. RAVEN

  A WANDERER’S WAY

  1

  INSTINCTIVELY I KNEW THAT MY BEST CHANCE OF MAINTAINING an immaculate self-control was to organise the chaotic aftermath of the tragedy with the efficiency of the born administrator. I dealt with the hospital personnel. I made the necessary urgent telephone calls. I drew up a list of the other essential matters which required my attention. I prepared a short speech to deliver to my children and memorised it; I even bought extra handkerchiefs to mop up all the tears.

  After dealing with the children I dealt with the local vicar, who called in performance of his Christian duty, and I dealt with Winifred, who by this time was well-nigh prostrated by her shock and grief. Having drafted the notices for The Times and the Daily Telegraph, I wrote the innumerable necessary letters and decided which of Grace’s favourite hymns should be included in the funeral service. I was ceaselessly active. Sleep was shunned as far as possible because I was afraid of what might happen when I could no longer control my thoughts. From past experience I knew that if one wanted to preserve one’s sanity in adverse circumstances one had to ring down the metaphorical curtain in one’s mind in order to hide the horrors which had taken place onstage, and how could one be sure of keeping the curtain down once sleep had impaired one’s ability to play the stage manager?

  After a while I realised that the curtain was trying to rise even when I was fully conscious, and I became engaged in a deadly struggle to keep it in place. It tried to rise when Christian stammered: “How could God have allowed such a dreadful thing to happen?” and although I embarked on an answer I found I was unable to complete it as I would have wished. I did manage to say: “In a world where nothing bad ever happened we’d be mere puppets smiling at the end of manipulated strings,” but then the curtain began to rise in earnest and I could not speak of the great freedom to be, to love and, inevitably, to suffer which made us not unfeeling puppets but human beings forever vulnerable to tragedy. Instead all I could say was: “We’ll talk about it later,” as I struggled to nail my curtain to the ground.

  But no sooner was the curtain back in place than Winifred was exclaiming in a burst of detestable feminine emotion: “Neville, you don’t deserve this—you were such a devoted husband, and everyone always said what a wonderful example you and Grace were of a truly Christian marriage!”

  Once more the curtain started to rise and once more I managed to grab the hem before it could sail out of reach. I said woodenly: “Tragedy’s so difficult to discuss, isn’t it? Better not to try,” and with a mighty effort of will I heaved the curtain down, but I was to have no respite. The curtain was developing a sinister life of its own.

  “Are you sure Mummy’s happy with Jesus?” said Primrose. “No matter how nice Jesus is, I think she’d be happier with us,” and a second later my nurse, Tabitha, was saying in 1909: “Your Pa’s gone to heaven to be with Jesus.” Then in my memory I heard Willy cry outraged: “How dare he!” while Emily asked: “When will Jesus let us have him back?” A world had ended then and a world had ended now, the new tragedy eliding with all my most terrible memories as the curtain began to go up and up and up … But I hung on to the hem with my last ounce of strength and doggedly refused to let go.

  The funeral service was held at St. Martin’s-in-Cripplegate before the private interment at the cemetery, and when the Bishop himself offered to help I was spared the task of finding another clergyman to take the service I would have been unable to conduct. The ancient church, originally founded for the benefit of the workmen who were building the Cathedral, was packed with mourners, and the small graveyard too overflowed with those wishing to pay their respects.

  The Bishop was superb. Dr. Ottershaw had his Episcopal shortcomings; as his Archdeacon I knew them better than anyone, but he was a good, decent man, and in his goodness and his decency his Christian message of hope lightened the darkness which must always surround the mystery of suffering. There were no sentimental clichés from Dr. Ottershaw, only profound religious truths expressed with exquisite simplicity, and I felt not only relieved but grateful that
my children were at last able to hear the message which my fear of emotional breakdown had prevented me from giving them.

  It occurred to me that my disciple would have soaked at least one handkerchief as she listened to the Bishop, but of course I could not allow myself to think of Dido.

  I glimpsed her before the service and she spoke to me afterwards, but only the briefest of conversations was possible. After the exchange of greetings she merely said: “I’ll write, I promise. I was too upset to write before,” and as she disappeared I saw her eyes shone with tears. Perhaps she was merely feeling emotional in the wake of Dr. Ottershaw’s address, but perhaps too she was temporarily overcome with all manner of ambiguous feelings.

  After the concluding rites in the cemetery I continued to deal with everyone who required my attention until at last, much later, I found myself alone with my brother and sister in the vicarage kitchen as my curtain once more tried to rise. I was struggling fiercely with the hem, but to my terror I realised it was sliding out of my grasp. I thought: I mustn’t look at the stage, can’t look, won’t look, no one can make me look. Then I suddenly realised I had spoken the words aloud. As Willy and Emily looked at me appalled I muttered: “Sorry. Mind wandering. Very tired,” and covered my face with my hands.

  Emily said drearily: “I’ll make you some tea.”

  “For God’s sake, woman!” exploded Willy. “He’s already drunk enough of your tea to float Noah’s Ark! Neville, where the hell’s the bloody whisky?”

  “There isn’t any. I don’t drink spirits.”

  “Well, all I can say is it’s about time you started!”

  “Really, Will!” said Emily scandalised. “What would Mother say if she were alive!”

  I said: “I don’t want to talk about Mother.”

  “Neither do I,” agreed Willy. “Let’s keep the old girl buried six feet deep or else I’m going to hit the bottle in the biggest possible way.”

  “Really, Will!” said Emily again in her primmest voice. “How can you talk like that after what happened to Father!”

  I said: “I don’t want to talk about Father.”

  “Good God, Em, you don’t believe all that bloody rubbish about Father dying of drink, do you? That was just a vile slander put out by Uncle Willoughby!”

  Leaping to my feet I shouted: “I don’t want to talk about Uncle Willoughby!” But then I collapsed in my chair and once more covered my face with my hands.

  Willy said: “I’m going to the off-license to buy some whisky.”

  Emily said: “I’m going to make tea.”

  Recognising their desire to offer comfort, I was soothed by their careful avoidance of emotion, and after a while I thought I was strong enough to drag down the curtain again. But I was wrong. I was so weak that I glanced at the stage first, and there waiting for me in 1909 was Uncle Willoughby, rich, robust and ruthless as he hitched up his coat-tails to warm his backside at the parlour fire. “… and I’ll not say one word against your father, poor miserable idle stupid fellow that he was, because it’s not right to speak ill of the dead, even when a weak selfish thoughtless fellow with a wife and three children has the intolerable effrontery to die in penury. So all I’ll say is this: If you two lads want to save yourself from hell and damnation—”

  “Here’s your tea, Nev,” said Emily in 1942.

  “—if you two lads want to save yourself from hell and damnation,” bawled Uncle Willoughby, outshouting her in 1909, “and save yourselves from the miserable fate of winding up a failure in a coffin before you’re forty, you’ll work and you’ll work and you’ll work until you’ve dug yourself out of this shameful black pit, and you’ll never forget—never as long as you live—that there’s only one road to salvation and that’s this: You’ve got to go chasing the prizes if you want to stay out of the coffin—you’ve got to go chasing the prizes if you want to be happy and safe—you’ve got to go chasing the prizes in order to Get On and Travel Far …”

  “Poor Nev,” said Emily in 1942. “You can shed a tear if you like. I’ll look the other way and afterwards we can pretend it never happened.”

  “For God’s sake!” I shouted and blundered out of the kitchen into my study. Willy arrived five minutes later with the whisky and banged on the door until I let him in.

  “Em driving you round the bend? How her husband stands all that tea I don’t know. What a mystery marriage is, but of course I’m just a bachelor schoolmaster who observes society’s mating customs from afar … Do you remember when you said to me on the beach at St. Leonards all those years ago: ‘I’m going to marry the perfect girl and have the perfect family and live happily ever after’? I’d never even considered getting married, and yet there you were, seventeen years old, with that misty look in your eyes, the look of the dyed-in-the-wool romantic, the look Father always wore when he read us ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’—”

  “Shut up and give me some whisky.”

  “But my dear Neville, I speak only in admiration! How many other romantic idealists have the guts and the drive to make a success of such a notoriously difficult venture as marriage? It was a tremendous achievement, and nothing can ever take that away from you, not even this appalling tragedy—”

  “Shut up, Will—shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!”

  He shut up, looking shocked, hurt and considerably puzzled. Left on my own I drank three large tots of whisky, stumbled upstairs to bed, and for the first time since Grace’s death I slept for eight unbroken hours.

  It was a merciful release from my torment.

  2

  The next day I sorted out the messages of sympathy into separate heaps, refilled my fountain pen and selected the letter which lay on top of the most important pile. It read:

  Archdeacon dear,

  I’m very, very sorry—she was so lovely and so good too, which is rare because many people who look lovely aren’t good at all, quite the reverse as we all know, but she was very good, especially to me at Starmouth Court, though I think she did find me a little puzzling and indeed I expect I would have been puzzled too if I’d been in her shoes, which is why I so admired her for being so quiet and serene, qualities which always seem quite beyond my reach. But perhaps it’s because I’m so noisy and restless that I deeply admire someone who possesses the virtues which I know I shall never have, and I did so admire Mrs. Aysgarth and envied her too, I confess, because she had so much and I had so little, I mean so little of what really matters, but of course she deserved to have so much and I deserve very little really, as I know all too well. I’m glad that even though she died young she had so much, my Laura did too, and in fact it’s not the length of life but the quality that counts, isn’t it? Of course it’s terrible for those left behind, but it seems to be one of the hardest truths of life that suffering can in the end have beneficial results and certainly I know that was true in my case, because if Laura hadn’t died I’d still be frittering my time away aimlessly and it was her death which made me see my life in a new light. But I must stop now because sympathy letters should be short and this is already much too long, so I shall just say that I send you my deepest, deepest condolences, and of course I shall say lots of prayers for you, though I’m not very good at praying yet, but I firmly believe more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, as Lord T. says, and I’m sure you agree.

  Ever your most devoted disciple,

  DIDO TALLENT.

  I read this communication three times before deciding that any attempt to answer it immediately would be most unwise. Then I examined the next letter. It came from Lady Starmouth, who had written:

  My dear Archdeacon,

  Permit me to send you a word of the most heartfelt sympathy as you endure your tragic bereavement. Your wife was clearly a most exceptional woman, and I shall always regret that I did not take advantage earlier of the opportunity to know her better, but at least I can treasure the memory of her at Starmouth Court. Please let me know at once if there’s anything I can do to
help.

  After doodling on the blotter to make sure the ink was running smoothly from my pen, I wrote:

  My dear Lady Starmouth,

  Thank you so much for your kind, thoughtful letter. The bereavement is indeed devastating. Grace and I were married for sixteen years and were acquainted for seven years before our wedding day, so I’m sure you will understand that I find it impossible to imagine life without her. Originally, I confess, our relationship was a mere youthful romance, but by the grace of God this immature affection was translated into a rich, rewarding married life which brought us both an unflawed happiness. For so many years the sun shone brightly upon us, and even now that night has fallen at last I shall remain always profoundly grateful for those unclouded skies from which the light shone so radiantly for so long.

  This letter was not, as might be supposed, a cold-blooded exercise in hypocrisy. It was a method of alleviating emotions which were genuine but so complex that they could not be accurately expressed at all. It is also a fact that when all emotion is suppressed in public, writing a florid letter in private can act as a catharsis. I recalled how in adolescence I had been shy with my mother, whom I seldom saw, but how in my letters to her I was able to compensate myself for this failure in verbal communication by writing with a stylish fluency. Remembering my mother I thought how she would have enjoyed my letter to Lady Starmouth. She had always savoured the old-fashioned epistolary convention which permitted naked sentimentality to be lavishly expressed when bereavement was under discussion, and I thought that Lady Starmouth, despite her sophistication, would remember her Victorian youth and savour the convention too.

  Feeling greatly fortified after this stylised emotional bloodletting, I decided I was now capable of attending wisely to my disciple, and pulling a fresh sheet of paper towards me, I wrote without hesitation: