Ultimate Prizes

by Susan Howatch

  His casual arrogance never failed to set my teeth on edge. Realising that I was yet again being obliged to deal with an attempt to create havoc in my archdeaconry, I reflected that he was incurably addicted to playing a lone hand. He would dream up an idea, implement it without consulting anyone and then be both amazed and offended when those in authority failed to be convinced that his pipe-dream was a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. I thought of his faith-healing phase and shuddered. I could still see an ashen Dr. Ottershaw reaching for his indigestion tablets.

  “And what does your wife think of your plans to requisition her family home?” I enquired, blissfully oblivious of my own troubles by this time and unable to resist the temptation to lunge straight at the jugular vein. “I suppose she sees it as a nice little retirement job for you.”

  “Retirement?” Darrow was scandalised. “Who said anything about retirement?”

  My worst suspicions were confirmed as I realised he was planning to slip into his favourite role: the wonder-worker. “My dear Darrow,” I said, “this may surprise you, but you can’t possibly be in two places at once. Either you run the Theological College or you run the extension—assuming the diocese can afford it—but you can’t do both! However, since you’re now nearer seventy than sixty, I quite see that this may well be an appropriate moment for you to step down from your present position and—”

  “Age is quite irrelevant!” Darrow was now outraged. “Anyone would think, to hear you talk, that I was going to be seventy tomorrow! In fact I’ve only just celebrated my sixty-sixth birthday, I’m extremely fit and I’m more than capable of supervising—with the appropriate delegation of authority, naturally—both the College and the extension.”

  I gave up and spent the rest of the journey plotting the advice I should give to the Bishop. It’s not easy when a clerical buccaneer like Darrow goes on the rampage in pursuit of a power-mad pipe-dream. In fact it’s enough to make strong archdeacons weep.

  I was still meditating on this magnificent diversion from my troubles when the Rolls reached the parish of Starrington Magna and purred down the main street of the village. Beyond the last cottage lay the Manor, tucked away behind the high brick wall which encircled the grounds. The house was large but not nearly so grand as Starmouth Court, and even poor Grace had been able to enjoy her visits there. Although Anne Darrow was very much a member of the county aristocracy, her unpretentiousness, her sincerity and her down-to-earth common sense had combined to put Grace at ease, with the result that an unlikely but genuine friendship had been formed. Anne was Primrose’s godmother; Grace and I had been guests at Anne’s small, quiet wedding in 1940. Liking her as I did I could only wish she had married someone other than Darrow.

  The Manor appeared to have grown out of the soil like some eccentric species of vegetation, an illusion created by the fact that the colour of its pale golden bricks blended so pleasingly with the lawns, shrubberies and trees which surrounded it. As the Rolls drifted up the drive I saw a child’s tricycle parked on the gravel sweep in front of the main entrance. Beyond the steps leading up to the porch the front door stood open, instantly creating the atmosphere of a tranquil country life. For a moment I imagined the tricycle’s owner, growing up in such idyllic surroundings but only realising years later what a paradise he had enjoyed when he had been too young fully to appreciate his good fortune.

  “How’s your boy?” I said civilly to Darrow. As I was to be his guest I had decided it was time to make amends for my assault on his jugular vein.

  “Fine, thanks.” Darrow, who had not only children but grandchildren from his first marriage, was never loquacious on the subject of his progeny, but whenever the subject of this latest offspring was raised he seemed to vibrate with pride. I supposed that any man who had achieved fatherhood at an advanced age was entitled to be proud of himself, but I still felt that procreation was an unsuitable activity for elderly clerics.

  As we emerged from the Rolls the child came out of the house to meet us. He was not yet four but was sturdy and tough, with thick fair hair and eyes the colour of flint. He was rumoured to be a terror at tea-parties, but at that moment he looked mild enough. He was carrying a huge tabby-cat which appeared to be in ecstasy. The purring was clearly audible as we advanced towards the porch.

  “Hullo,” said Darrow. “How well you’re carrying William! Is Mummy in?”

  The little boy shook his head and impulsively offered Darrow the cat.

  “We’re late for lunch,” said Darrow to me as he accepted the offering, “so my wife probably decided she couldn’t wait for us. She’s very busy at the estate-office at the moment.” Entering the hall he nodded towards the room on his right and added: “Have a seat in the library while I tell Cook to take the food out of the oven.”

  He and the boy went off hand in hand, the cat still purring in the crook of Darrow’s arm, and the child’s nanny came through the green baize door to meet them as they headed in the direction of the kitchen. Retiring obediently to the library, a chaotic room where dusty Victorian volumes on field sports fought for wall-space with glass cases of stuffed fish, I reflected that what I wanted most at that moment was not a seat, as Darrow had offered, but a drink. Fortunately before leaving the house that morning I had taken the precaution of filling a small cough-syrup bottle with whisky, and now, whipping the bottle out of the inside pocket of my jacket, I quickly unscrewed the cap. I was on the point of taking a hefty swig when Darrow crept into the room and caught me red-handed.

  “A makeshift hip-flask,” he said. “I thought so.”

  I said in my flattest voice: “You told me you were going to the kitchen.”

  “I delegated that task to Nanny. If you’d care to give that bottle to me, Aysgarth, I’d be delighted to look after it for you.”

  “That’s quite unnecessary, thank you. If you think I need to abstain at present, then I’ll abstain.”

  “I’m relieved to hear that abstention’s so easy for you, but nevertheless I’d feel happier if the bottle was in my care.”

  I could keep my temper no longer. “How dare you imply I can’t control my drinking!”

  Darrow walked to the nearest wall of books, plucked out a Bible in the manner of a magician producing a white rabbit from a hat, and dumped the book on the writing table in front of me. “Put your hand on that and swear you haven’t been drinking far too much lately.”

  I grabbed the Bible, stuffed it back on the shelf and blazed into the hall with my bottle. There was a cloakroom under the stairs. Striding to the basin, I poured the whisky down the drain while Darrow watched. “There!” I said, thrusting the bottle into his hands. “So much for your theory that I’m incapable of abstaining whenever I choose!”

  Darrow rinsed the bottle thoroughly, sniffed it to make sure no whiff of whisky remained and finally dumped it in the wastepaper basket below the basin. All he said was: “Ready for lunch?”

  Rigid with rage and shame, I followed him in silence to the dining-room.

  5

  Darrow pronounced a brisk grace, poured me a glass of water and said: “We won’t talk while we eat. A conversation would encourage you to pretend this is a mere social occasion, and I think we need to cut down ruthlessly on your opportunities to act as if nothing’s amiss. The incident with the bottle shows that your inclination to deceive yourself remains strong.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake let’s forget the wretched bottle!” I said, and felt pleased that I had managed to avoid an obscenity. Regaining control over my language meant that I was stronger. I hoped Darrow had noticed. As I attacked the shepherd’s pie on the plate before me I savoured the pungent aroma of minced lamb and admired the crisp thatch of mashed potatoes. To my surprise I found that I was hungry.

  Eventually an elderly maid tottered into the room with a bowl of stewed apples and a jug of real custard; the Darrows’ cook had access to the eggs hatched on the Manor’s home farm. When I had scooped up every morsel on my plate I eyed Darrow speculati
vely and tried to decide if he would seethe at the sight of a cigarette. I was beginning to feel as if I had been consigned to the care of a formidably strait-laced nanny.

  At last I demanded: “Are you going to get upset if I smoke?”

  “You can smoke so long as you don’t drink.”

  “How can I drink when I’ve poured away my whisky?”

  “Well, we do keep wine and spirits in the house.”

  I stared at him. “You think I’m an alcoholic, don’t you?”

  “The word ‘alcoholic’ is like the phrase ‘nervous breakdown,’ ” said Darrow. “It arouses all sorts of emotional reactions, none of which are very helpful. No, of course I don’t think you’re the sort of drinker who reaches for the brandy bottle every morning when he wakes up! If you were, you’d have got into trouble long ago. But I do think you might be the kind of drinker who would find it useful to know that I’ve noted the levels in the decanters on the sideboard and that I’ll know at once if you filch a tot when my back’s turned.”

  I lit a cigarette. Then I said in my pleasantest voice: “Why is it that I keep wanting to punch you on the nose? It’s such an embarrassing urge for a clergyman!”

  To my astonishment Darrow at once said with great seriousness: “That’s a very interesting question—in fact I wonder if you realise just how interesting it is. The obvious answer, of course, is that we’ve always been incompatible and the stress of the present circumstances is exacerbating that incompatibility, but I have a hunch there’s a great deal more going on than that. Naturally we must allow for the fact that you feel humiliated because someone you dislike is seeing you when you’re vulnerable, and naturally we must allow for the fact that you’re so horrified by what’s happening to you that you’re trying to cover up your horror with a display of pugnacious behaviour. That’s all obvious. But why is it that when you have your back to the wall you only seem capable of hearing advice when it’s couched in aggressive terms? You may find this hard to believe, but I don’t usually behave like a sergeant major with men who are in distress. Yet although I adopted my customary serene manner at our first conversation earlier today, you were never fully at ease until I was telling you brutally in my toughest voice that you’d hit rock-bottom hard enough to crack cement. You liked that. You responded with gusto. For the first time I felt I was really getting through to you. Tough talk is obviously the only language you can understand when you’re frightened, but why? Was there perhaps someone long ago who taught you to survive by giving you a series of verbal batterings which called forth an aggressive but life-saving response?”

  I was amazed. Then to my extreme annoyance I also realised I was impressed. But of course I didn’t want Darrow knowing he had impressed and amazed me. Summoning up my most irritated manner I retorted rudely: “Oh, go and set up a fortuneteller’s tent in the Cathedral churchyard! I’m sorry, Darrow, I know you’re a very able man in many ways, but I can’t stand it when you play the magician and try to mind-read. It always makes me want to—”

  “Punch me on the nose. Quite. Was it your father who applied these verbal batterings?”

  “Certainly not! My father was the gentlest, kindest, mildest—”

  “Then perhaps it was your mother.”

  “Don’t be absurd! No woman gives me verbal batterings. My mother was a highly intelligent and exceptional woman who doted on me.”

  “And did you enjoy being doted on?”

  “Well, of course I did!”

  “Why ‘of course’? It doesn’t necessarily follow at all. Some people find it oppressive to be doted on.”

  “I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Darrow, but you seem to be completely off course. I wasn’t able to see my mother often, but over the years we conducted a most entertaining correspondence which we both enjoyed enormously—and if you want to make some sort of Freudian capital out of that, I’ll—”

  “—punch me on the nose, yes. This conversation’s beginning to resemble one of those old-fashioned ballads with a recurring chorus. I hesitate to prolong it, but there’s one discrepancy which puzzles me. I remember hearing that you’d had a tough childhood, yet this delightful father and this doting mother would suggest a family paradise. Was the talk of a tough childhood exaggerated?”

  “No, my father died bankrupt when I was seven and the home was broken up. My brother and I were sent away to be educated, given a series of miserly hand-outs and told we could either Get On or Go Under.”

  “That’s tough talk indeed,” said Darrow, “and may I ask who it was who did the talking?”

  “No, you may not! I’m sick of you behaving like Sherlock Holmes in a dog-collar. It makes me want to—”

  “Yes, yes, yes—full chorus followed by the final chord.” Darrow tossed his napkin aside and stood up. “I’ll show you to a bedroom where you can rest while I see the architect.”

  “If you don’t mind,” I said, making a Herculean effort to be civil, “I’d prefer to go for a stroll in the grounds. After all, I did spend a large part of the morning in bed.”

  “So you did. Very well, perhaps I’ll step outside with you for a moment. That sunshine looks inviting.”

  Leaving the house by a side door we strolled across the lawn towards the shrubbery which bordered the woods. The air was warm, the garden peaceful. Aware of my irritation declining, I found myself recalling with reluctance the extraordinary deductive skill Darrow had shown earlier.

  Finally, after a period of prolonged hesitation, I was unable to resist saying fascinated: “Darrow, how far do you follow Freud? For example, if a man confessed to you that he’d dreamt he’d bashed his mother to pulp, how would you interpret such a dream?”

  “That would depend on the mother—and it would depend on the man. I wouldn’t follow Freud slavishly—in fact I might well not follow him at all.”

  “Is there any chance, would you say, that the dream could be entirely meaningless?”

  “If dreams are part of the brain’s way of sorting itself out before the next bout of consciousness, then one can argue that even the most absurd dream has its purpose and is therefore not without meaning. However, perhaps the question you’re really asking is: When does a dream, absurd or otherwise, become significant in any study of a disturbed psyche? I confess that not being a psychiatrist, I wouldn’t bother about dreams much unless they either recurred or caused particular distress—or both.”

  “But if the man were to tell you that he had indeed been caused particular distress by this dream about his mother—”

  “I think I’d ask if he still felt distressed. You know what happens even with the worst nightmares: you wake up in a sweat but within sixty seconds you’re laughing at the absurdity.”

  “And if the man said he did still feel distressed—”

  “Then I should probably conclude that the dream was significant. But that wouldn’t mean the significance was necessarily of crucial importance.”

  “But wouldn’t it inevitably mean that he wanted to murder his mother?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” said Darrow vaguely. “He might be harbouring a death-wish against someone else and be using his mother as a substitute—perhaps the mother’s already dead, a situation which would allow him to discharge his violent feelings in the knowledge that they could do her no harm.”

  “Ah!” I felt myself relax.

  “Or alternatively he might feel irritated by all females and be using his mother as a mere symbol for womanhood. Or he might feel violent towards himself and be projecting the violence onto the first person who entered his head. There are in fact numerous possible explanations, but without knowing more about the dreamer it’s impossible to come to any firm conclusion about the dream.”

  “Yes, I see. Yes, of course.” Having been so impressed by his perception of Uncle Willoughby’s malign presence in my life that I had been tempted to test his skill further, I now felt so impressed by his authoritative comments on the puzzle I had posed him that I was temp
ted to confess the nightmare was mine. Tentatively, fearful that I might regret the admission but unable to resist the opportunity for further reassurance, I said: “I’m the dreamer. I had the nightmare this morning when I was dozing at the Theological College.”

  “Oh yes?” said Darrow, assuming a tone of mild surprise, as if the idea had never occurred to him. I realised then that I had been naive in thinking I could fool him so easily. “And do you, in fact, still feel upset about the experience?”

  “No, not now I understand what was going on. Obviously I was just using my mother as a substitute for Dido. So that’s all right.”

  “Is it?”

  “Oh yes—I was only so upset because I couldn’t bear the thought of feeling violent towards my mother.”

  “You mean you can bear the thought of feeling violent towards your wife?”

  “No, no, no!” I said exasperated. “I don’t feel violent towards anyone! Of course I don’t want to kill Dido any more than I wanted to kill my mother; I just want her to get out of my life and be happily married to someone else, that’s all. So it seems the dream was symbolic. What I was really wishing dead was the marriage, and my violence was all tied up with my emotional distress about the baby. When I’m emotionally distressed I often want to take a swing at someone to relieve my feelings.”

  “So I’ve noticed. And do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Do you ever take a swing at anyone?”

  “Good heavens, no, of course not! Clergymen just don’t do that sort of thing!”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Darrow, falling back on his vague manner again. “I don’t see why a clerical collar should have an infallible power to neutralise violent feelings, particularly when the violent feelings are usually the result of something that happened long before the man ever thought of being ordained.”

  “Are you trying to tell me you’ve actually counselled violent clergymen?”

  “Well, I admit I don’t run across such people every day, but I do remember a couple of wife-beaters.”