Ultimate Prizes

by Susan Howatch

  “Of course, Father,” said Christian, Abandoning the examination of his fingernails, he turned to Norman and said: “Well, what are we waiting for? We must behave like gentlemen and offer Father our best wishes.”

  “Oh yes,” said Norman. “Yes, of course.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “That’s very good of you both.” But in the small, deadly pause which followed I heard Christian complaining in my memory about the unreality of our conversations.

  I made a great effort. Looking him straight in the eyes, I said: “You should take it as a great compliment to your mother, Christian, that I find I can no longer live without a woman in my home.”

  “Oh, I quite understand that living without a woman must be very awkward for a clergyman.”

  I suddenly felt much too hot. “I’m not talking about sex.”

  “No, of course not. You never do.”

  I started to sweat. As the knot of tension began to thicken in the pit of my stomach I somehow managed to say in my most neutral voice: “I don’t thunder on the subject of sex like a Victorian paterfamilias because it’s my firm belief that if a boy’s been given a Christian upbringing and set a good example he should be able to work out for himself exactly where he stands on matters relating to personal conduct. Now—” I had run out of breath. I had to pause for air. “Now, if I may return to the subject under discussion, I was saying—”

  “You were saying that Mother is quite irreplaceable but you’ve made the decision to replace her.”

  I was finally silenced.

  “Well, that’s fine,” said Christian, effortlessly self-possessed. “We wish you well and we’re quite willing to be friends with Miss Tallent. But just don’t expect us to treat her as a substitute for Mother. Mothers, unlike wives, are quite irreplaceable.”

  I realised the conversation had to be terminated at once. “I don’t think you quite understand my point of view, Christian,” I said as the waitress arrived with the pudding I knew we would be unable to eat, “but I trust I’ll be able to clarify it later. Meanwhile may I say how much I appreciate your willingness to accept the situation in a friendly spirit and how convinced I am that everything’s going to work out well in the end.”

  We toyed with our pudding. I made another short speech about the wedding. Both boys nodded at intervals and assumed expressions of courteous interest. At last, as Christian began to examine his fingernails again, I paid the bill, took the boys back to school and escaped.

  Fortunately I had my car with me, and so despite the fact that I was wearing a clerical suit I was able to smoke a cigarette as soon as I could halt in a secluded spot. Winchester was not too far from the diocesan border and so there had been no extravagant use of extra petrol coupons. As I smoked I tried to work out why Christian had upset me so much. Perhaps I merely resented the fact that my talent for debate, a talent which had earned me the nickname of “The Sledgehammer” long ago at the Oxford Union, had been used against me with such a devastating result. “You were saying that Mother is quite irreplaceable but you’ve made the decision to replace her …” That was demolition work at its best, a sledgehammer’s tour de force. One had to admire his forensic skill, but on the other hand Christian was not supposed to pound my carefully crafted speeches to pieces, just as he was not supposed to make awkward remarks about sex. Christian was supposed to be perfect. Christian was perfect, but if he was perfect why had he deliberately made me look hypocritical and foolish? I felt psychologically bruised in a way not easy to define. I only knew I felt upset when my prizes deviated from my expectations and assumed an unauthorised life of their own.

  I lit a second cigarette as I made a new attempt to regain my equilibrium. Was I in fact such a hypocrite as Christian had made me appear? No. I had genuinely loved Grace. The fact that after many years of marriage I had begun to outgrow her (or so it now seemed) could not in any way invalidate the reality of all the happiness we had shared. Thus, although I was now in a new phase of my life, a phase which required a wife like Dido, I could talk without hypocrisy of the cherished memories of my first marriage.

  This concept of the new phase, as I suddenly realised, was the key to rebutting Christian’s implied criticisms. The fact was that I had become a different person. As the old Neville I could say with perfect truth that Grace had been irreplaceable, but as the new Neville I could talk without difficulty of replacing her. Contrary to what Christian had supposed, I was not being hypocritical. I was merely trying to express a peculiarly complex truth. Paradox demolished, problem solved. Heaving a vast sigh of relief I stubbed out my cigarette and reached for the ignition key.

  Yet halfway back to Starbridge I thought: Why, after all those years of marriage, did I change into someone else? And why did I change into the person I’ve apparently changed into? And why did this stranger decide that he had to have a wife like Dido, who in so many ways is such an unsuitable wife for a clergyman?

  I had to stop the car again, and as I lit my third cigarette I suddenly saw my obsession as others saw it—as extraordinary, as incomprehensible, as utterly out of character. It was at that moment, nearly three years after my first meeting with Dido, that it finally occurred to me to wonder what, underneath all the tempestuous trappings of grand passion, was really going on.

  No answer presented itself.

  Then it occurred to me that in fact I was more than two persons. I was the old Neville, the new Neville and the Neville who was now standing outside them both and wondering whether I was demented. It also occurred to me that the new Neville had not arrived in the world out of the blue at the Bishop’s dinner-party, but had in fact been around for a long time, living with the old Neville, while the third Neville somehow kept the peace between them. But who exactly was this third Neville who sat smoking a cigarette in a secluded corner of the diocese and regarding the new Neville and the old Neville with detachment? And with these three Nevilles all milling around in my consciousness, who on earth was “Neville” anyway?

  It was time to pull down the curtain before the men in white coats arrived to remove me to the nearest lunatic asylum. Morbid introspection was an activity I always found inexcusable; I entirely disapprove of people wasting time by agonising over themselves when they could be out in the world making themselves useful, and besides, I was convinced that so long as I went on working hard and winning the prizes nothing too dreadful could happen to me. The more prizes one collected the more secure one felt, and now that one of the greatest prizes I had ever encountered was finally within my grasp, I was sure I stood on the brink of unparalleled happiness and good fortune.

  Six weeks later I married Dido at St. Mary’s Mayfair and the grand disaster of my second marriage began.

  8

  I have now reached the point in my life when I almost committed adultery. Well, perhaps! haven’t quite reached it. But I hardly think, in the light of what I have already written, I shall surprise anyone when I reveal that the honeymoon was a catastrophe. Dido was unable to face consummating the marriage and I was unable to decide what to do next. A clergyman can never justify rape, no matter how desperate he feels on his honeymoon, but so desperate did I become that I even considered rape as a serious possibility. Fortunately reason gained the upper hand and I realised our marriage would have no chance of survival unless she gave herself to me of her own free will. Dido might chatter blithely about her approval of masterful men, but I thought she would be shocked to the core and permanently alienated from me if I were to demonstrate the dark side of a masterful masculine nature.

  In shame I stopped brooding on violent solutions and told myself I should see the consummation of the marriage as yet another prize, something to be won by guile, not grabbed by brute force. Immediately I felt better, and I was still telling myself I would succeed in bringing the honeymoon to a triumphant conclusion, when Dido ran away.

  We had been staying at a smart Scottish hunting lodge on her father’s estate, but as the tension between us increased, th
e lodge’s romantic isolation had become so oppressive that Dido had suggested we withdraw to Edinburgh. The day after our arrival I had left the hotel early in order to attend the Sunday celebration of Holy Communion, and on my return I had discovered her disappearance. On the bedside table I found a note which read:

  Darling Stephen,

  I’ve gone to stay with Merry for a few days in order to sort myself out. Please don’t try to follow me because I can’t think—I mean think—when you’re breathing non-stop passion all over me. I’m afraid that our marriage wasn’t one of your brighter ideas, was it? I should never have said yes, but you went on and on and on at me until I was too exhausted to say no. Do you think we could possibly agree to have a quiet tasteful little annulment and part good friends?

  Love,

  DIDO.

  I sent her a telegram which declared: ABSOLUTELY NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES WHATSOEVER STOP I ADORE YOU STOP STEPHEN. Then I took the train home to Starbridge, announced to the world that Dido was visiting her gravely ill sister in Leicestershire, and tried to work out how I could save myself from ruin.

  9

  I was halfway through my third whisky—or was it my fourth?—when the telephone rang. I pounced on it. I was expecting a call from my sister-in-law.

  “Hullo?” I said hopefully into the mouthpiece.

  “Neville, it’s Alex. Thank God you’re back from your honeymoon.”

  I was so disappointed not to hear Merry’s affected society drawl informing me that Dido was coming home that at first I failed to register the identity of my caller.

  “Alex Jardine,” he said as the silence threatened to become embarrassing, and added with his familiar caustic humour: “I know we haven’t been on speaking terms for two years, but I hope I wasn’t flattering myself when I assumed you’d remember me.”

  “My dear Alex!” Belatedly I struggled to pull myself together. “Forgive me for being so slow—what a welcome surprise to hear your voice! How are you?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact I happen to be dying. I trust you’re not similarly inconvenienced.” He paused, but when I was too shocked to reply he added tersely: “You won’t have forgotten how I hate the telephone, so let’s keep this conversation brief. I’m sorry about that idiotic quarrel. I need to see you urgently. I’ve only got a month to live—perhaps even less—and there are matters which have got to be discussed. How soon can you come to Stoneyford?”

  Without a second’s hesitation I said: “I’m on my way.”

  6

  “I am not easily shocked: school and the classics and a normal curiosity and, I hope, an abnormal imagination had given me a wide acquaintance with aspects of life and sex usually taboo: facts are facts, and I have no wish to run in blinkers.”

  CHARLES E. RAVEN

  A WANDERER’S WAY

  1

  MY PROMISE THAT I WOULD LEAVE IMMEDIATELY FOR Alex’s house at Stoneyford proved to be too optimistic; I was short of petrol coupons, there was no convenient train at that hour, I had to delegate various matters to my curates, my housekeeper had to be warned of my impending departure, and the younger children had to be reassured that although I was disappearing into the blue for the second time in two weeks I would only be absent for a day. It was not until the morning after Alex’s telephone call that I was finally able to walk to the station and catch the fast train to Oxford.

  By this time I was in such a muddle about Dido that even Alex’s imminent death could almost be welcomed as a diversion. I was conscious of an enormous relief that I could temporarily ring down the curtain on my private chaos, and as I began to grapple with the knowledge that Alex was approaching the end of his life it occurred to me to wonder if his autobiography was finished. Then suddenly I was certain not only that he had completed it but that in consequence he had come to regard death as preferable to an empty life. Again the mystery of his misspent retirement confronted me, and sensing that I was on the brink of unravelling a tragedy which was as enigmatic as it was profound, I began to grieve at last for the friend I was to lose.

  2

  I saw her as soon as I walked out of the station. She was sitting in the driving-seat of a black Morris and smoking a cigarette wedged into a black holder. From a distance it was impossible to tell she was my age, forty-three; she looked a sophisticated twenty-eight, cool, aloof and infinitely alluring. I was reminded at once of Greta Garbo in Ninotchka.

  When she saw me she wound down the window and produced the famous chilly smile which had broken the chaplains’ hearts in the old days at Starbridge when she had been employed as Carrie Jardine’s companion, the smile which had prompted less susceptible males to refer to her as “the ice-maiden.” Cocooned by my perfect marriage, I had judged Lyle Christie—Lyle Ashworth as she now was—to be a virgin engaged in a discreet passion for Carrie, but now, with my perfect marriage finished and my emotions rubbed raw by Dido’s preposterous behaviour, I saw with blinding clarity that this femme fatale, gleaming in her smart white belted raincoat, was no stone-cold lesbian. Her wavy dark hair had a hot reddish tinge. Her eyes, which one of my former curates had called “soulful” and another had described as “sultry,” were the colour of rich, luscious, utterly sinful dark chocolate; I was at once reminded of that golden moment in my youth when during a visit to the cinema I had watched Clara Bow oozing “It” as I sank my teeth into a sumptuous peppermint cream.

  “Hullo,” she said casually in a voice which would have stopped Attila the Hun dead in his tracks. “Get in.”

  I got in. As I closed the passenger door I managed to say lamely: “What a surprise!”

  “I arrived yesterday. Carrie sent me a cri du coeur which I couldn’t ignore.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Considering Carrie treated you as a daughter I always thought your determination to prolong the estrangement was a great pity.”

  She had been on the point of turning the ignition key, but now she paused and gave me a look which would have turned steam to ice. “Do you usually dish out stinging criticism to someone who’s in the midst of doing you a favour? If you can’t be civil you can damn well get out and walk!”

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “Anyway we ended the estrangement back in 1942. Dr. Jardine came to see me. I thought you knew.”

  “Yes, I did. Look, I do apologise—I’m afraid I’m rather on edge at the moment—”

  “Later I met Carrie in London and made up the quarrel with her as well. I admit that until yesterday I hadn’t seen either of the Jardines since 1942, but what with the ghastliness of wartime travel and my reluctance to leave the children—”

  “Are the boys well?” I said, hoping to change the subject.

  “I believe the word is ‘high-spirited.’ If I didn’t have Nanny I’d be in a lunatic asylum.”

  We set off. She drove well, very well for a woman, and conveyed an impression of fluent ruthlessness which I found curiously exciting. I found myself casting surreptitious glances at her small fine-boned hands as they caressed the steering wheel and at her small elegant feet as they massaged the pedals. Her ankles and wrists were exquisite.

  “How’s your wife?” she said at last.

  “Fine. Any news of your husband?”

  “None.” Her voice was bleak.

  “I’m very sorry.” Ashworth, taken prisoner at the fall of Tobruk, had been transferred from one camp to another in 1944 and since then there had been no word from him.

  After a short drive we reached Stoneyford. It was an unspoilt village, picturesque and compact, and the Jardines lived in a small Georgian house opposite the church. Lyle halted the car at the gate, and as we walked up the flagstone path through the front garden the elder of the two Ashworth boys opened the door. He was about seven years old, small and fine-boned like his mother but without her good looks. He had dark hair which stood up in the wrong places and eyes the colour of pale mud.

  “Hullo, Charley!” I said with a smile. “I didn’t realise you were here!” />
  “Mummy was able to bring me because I’m not sick on trains as Michael is.” He beamed at me. I had never formed the habit of calling regularly on the Ashworths, but occasionally when I was visiting their area on business I looked in as a courtesy, and I had had a soft spot for Charley ever since he had confided to me that he wanted to be a clergyman when he grew up.

  “Carrie’s pottering in the back garden,” said Lyle to me. “We’ll leave her for the moment. Come in and see Dr. Jardine straight away.” She glanced at her watch. “He’s timed his drugs so that he’ll be at his best now.”

  “What exactly—”

  “Cancer of the stomach. This way, please.” Leading me into Alex’s study she announced abruptly: “He’s here, Bishop,” and withdrew at once to the hall.

  A very old man, shrunken and faded, a waxen wraith of his former self, was sitting in a high-backed armchair by the fireplace. As always he was dressed in smart clothes, but now the material of his expensive suit hung on him in folds. I found it almost unbearably distressing that in a dogged attempt to cling to the debonair stylishness which had marked the high noon of his episcopate he was again wearing a carnation in his buttonhole.

  “Alex.” There’s little room for social pleasantries when a man’s dying. Clasping his dry cold hand in mine, I sat down silently at his side.

  “My dear Neville,” he said, “how very good it is to see you again and how very kind it was of you to respond so quickly to my summons.”

  “I wish you’d sent for me earlier.”