Ultimate Prizes

by Susan Howatch

  “In London we were boarded out with a doctor and his appalling wife, both Primitive Methodists, both friends of Uncle Willoughby, and eventually attended, as I’ve already mentioned, the City of London School. We were given no pocket-money on a regular basis, just the occasional hand-out. ‘That’ll teach you how to survive!’ said Uncle Willoughby. ‘Either you Get On or you Go Under, but don’t expect me to lift a finger to help you if you wind up a failure like your father!’ So we knew we had to Get On.

  “ ‘You’ll be grateful to me one day!’ said Uncle Willoughby. I can see him now, a tough stout little man with a pugnacious chin and angry blue eyes. ‘I’m teaching you how to win wealth, fame and success—all the prizes that make life worthwhile! You’ve got to go chasing the prizes,’ said Uncle Willoughby, ‘if you want to make sure you survive.’ Oh yes, I can see him now, very smart in his expensive suit, his gold watch-chain glinting on his paunch; Uncle Willoughby the survivor, Getting On, Going Far.

  “I won a scholarship to Oxford and Willy joined me a year later—his schooling had been interrupted by a long bout of glandular fever. Uncle Willoughby paid his fees, but in fact he’d lost interest in Willy by that time. I was the blue-eyed boy. He was in ecstasy when I won my scholarship. ‘You’ll be a real gentleman now,’ he said. He was misty-eyed. ‘I couldn’t be prouder,’ he said, ‘not even if you were my own son.’ He’d married soon after my parents’ wedding but he had no sons, only three ghastly daughters. ‘You’ll read for the bar later and go into politics!’ he said. ‘And just you make damned sure you wind up Prime Minister!’ He was so carried away by the thought of this ultimate prize that he even forced himself to part with five pounds. ‘Mustn’t spoil you,’ he said, ‘but you deserve a generous present.’ Mean old devil, he could never bear to be parted from his brass …

  “I read Greats up at Oxford and enjoyed my time there very much. The only blot on the landscape was Uncle Willoughby who seemed to be constitutionally incapable of leaving me in peace—and I knew why. The old devil was living vicariously through me; I was now leading the life he hadn’t travelled far enough to lead, so whenever he had the chance—which seemed to be all too often—he’d be chugging south from Yorkshire to see me.

  “Well, I was just getting very fed up with these constant visits when I received the biggest possible diversion: my call to be a clergyman.

  “I must say straight away that I’m not a mystic and I haven’t a psychic bone in my body. But this call wasn’t the quiet kind, the gradual evolution which most people seem to experience. This was the road-to-Damascus call, the blinding light coming out of the blue. I heard that Charles Raven was preaching in Christ Church Cathedral and I knew at once that I wanted to hear him.

  “By that time I was used to the Church of England—I’d been attending services regularly for some time. After all, if one wanted to Get On up at Oxford one didn’t go trekking off to a Methodist chapel in the wrong part of the city. One pretended one was Church of England, born and bred—and I enjoyed doing that; it seemed a pleasant way of rebelling against my chapel upbringing.

  “I’d heard of Raven. I’d been told he was an electrifying preacher but I knew nothing about his theology. I didn’t know he was a biologist who took an evolutionary view of Christianity, supported the Modernists and stood in the forefront of Liberal Protestantism. But as soon as he started to speak I became aware that his thought was curiously familiar to me—I didn’t quite feel that I’d heard it all before, but I felt he was repeatedly jogging my memory.

  “Then it happened. He was talking of the principle of evolution in nature and applying it to the evolution of mankind towards the Kingdom of God, when all of a sudden he stopped in mid-sentence. He flung out his arms—Raven has a whole series of dramatic pulpit gestures—and he appeared to look straight at me with those brilliant eyes of his and he cried: It’s all a unity! ‘It’s all one!’ And then I saw the light which had shone on St. Paul.

  “The world—the world of Neville Two—Uncle Willoughby’s world—ground to a halt. I was back on the moors again as Neville One and my father was there with me—I could actually see him—and Christ was there too, I knew he was—there on the Maltby moors, there in Christ Church Cathedral, there standing shoulder to shoulder with Charles Raven, and it was all a unity, all one—and then as I experienced that unity, Uncle Willoughby’s world was rent from top to bottom, like the curtain in the Temple when Christ was crucified, and I saw the way back at last into that paradise which had been lost.

  “Well, it wasn’t easy telling the old villain that his dreams of calling on his nephew the Prime Minister at Ten Downing Street weren’t going to come true, but the next time he came pitter-pattering south to see me I told him without mincing my words that I was going into the Church. One didn’t mince words with Uncle Willoughby. One called a spade a spade and looked as aggressive as possible. That was the only way to win his respect.

  “At first I thought he’d have apoplexy, but then he said: ‘That’s a fine palace the Archbishop of York has at Bishopthorpe—and I shan’t have to journey so far to see you in my old age!’ The old rogue! I was livid that all he could think of was Getting On and Going Far. The spiritual implications of my decision completely eluded him.

  “It was then that I lost my temper and … well, we had the most almighty row. I suppose it had been brewing for a long time. I don’t think I need describe it in detail. Suffice it to say that afterwards we never met again.

  “My mother said she was delighted that I’d decided to be a clergyman. That surprised me because she too had dreamed of Downing Street, but as soon as Uncle Willoughby disappeared from my life my mother seized the chance to move closer to me. We’d always corresponded regularly, but now the correspondence changed; it became sharper, wittier, more affectionate. My mother had a great gift for letter-writing—in fact I began to enjoy her letters so much that I made the effort to visit her more often at St. Leonards. After a while I realised that although my mother was hopeless with small children she came into her own once they were grown up. I found myself bathed in approval and affection. ‘Darling Neville!’ she would exclaim. ‘So charming, so clever, so attractive and so good—what have I done to deserve you?’ I suppose this sort of dialogue should have seemed revoltingly sentimental and silly, but it didn’t. In fact I have to confess I lapped it up. I hadn’t been petted and pampered like that since the days when Tabitha looked after me.

  “I was a little nervous when I announced my engagement to Grace after a long courtship, but I needn’t have worried. My mother wasn’t a fool and she knew when she was well off—she knew Grace was the kind of daughter-in-law who would never give her any trouble, and besides she could see as clearly as I could that Grace was the perfect wife for a clergyman. Grace was devout, beautiful, intelligent, kind, generous, sensitive, unselfish—and always so feminine, always conforming so exactly to the image of the ideal woman. ‘Such a delightful girl!’ said my mother. ‘I’m devoted to her!’ When she said that, I remember I felt so relieved. I didn’t want to marry anyone who would have roused my mother’s jealousy. That would have driven a wedge between us. My mother had been very jealous of Uncle Willoughby’s wife even though she’d despised her for all those pressed wild-flowers.

  “In 1938, when I’d been married for twelve years, my sister Emily finally managed to get to the altar and Mother had no one to look after her any more. Grace and I discussed the situation, and when Grace was quite perfect, saying our Christian duty was plain, I asked Mother to come to live with us. ‘Darling Neville!’ said my mother. ‘How often I’ve dreamt of living with my favourite child! How happy we’ll be, discussing literature, politics and theology every day—I can hardly believe my good fortune!’

  “Well … You can guess what happened, can’t you? It was a disaster. My mother and I … she … I … no, I can’t quite explain it, but we didn’t get on. For a long time we pretended we did—we used to have the most appalling phoney dialogues. ‘Neville
darling, how wonderful, how devoted, how noble, how Christian you are …’ ‘Darling Mother, how adorable of you to say so, but of course I’m only following your example …’ Ugh! Yes, our conversations became quite unreal and eventually … Well, she was being much too possessive with me and much too beastly to Grace and in the end I had to draw the line. At least … to be absolutely candid … there was a little dust-up. A tiff. But fortunately Emily came to the rescue and bore Mother away to her home in the South London suburbs. Mother and I were reconciled soon afterwards, of course, but somehow the relationship was never quite the same again, and after she died … After she died I felt very, very upset. I adored her, you see. And she adored me. But we shouldn’t have tried to live under the same roof. That was a mistake.

  “She died in the September of 1941 and Grace died in the August of 1942. It was a most difficult year for me, and when Grace died I … well, it’s hard to explain, but it was so terrible when she died that I felt all I could do was pull down the curtain and not think of her any more—but that doesn’t mean I didn’t love her. On the contrary it was because I loved her that I couldn’t bear to think about her after she died. I had to pull down the curtain, had to … And after I’d pulled it down I began to court the lady who last year became my second wife.

  “She led me quite a dance, but I never gave up. I chased and I chased and I chased because she was such a prize, you see, such a prize, and once I was chasing the prizes again I felt safe and secure, in control of my life, winning … And I did win. I won my prize. I won everything I’d ever wanted—and then I found I didn’t want it any more. Obviously it’s once more time to ring down the curtain, but this time there’s no curtain waiting to be pulled down. I’m saddled with her indefinitely and how I’m ever going to stand it God alone knows … But that’s the future. I’m digressing. You only wanted to know about my past, and that’s it, I’ve finished. That’s the truth, pure and simple.”

  Sinking back in my chair I took a quick look at the old boy across the table. His one visible eye bore a kindly expression. I managed to stifle a sigh of relief, but as the silence lengthened I couldn’t resist asking: “Well? Have I told you all you wanted to know?”

  “Oh dear me, yes,” said Lucas. “I like your truth, pure and simple, very much. I always had a weakness for Victorian melodrama. But alas! I fear Victorian melodrama has very little to do with reality.”

  My heart thudded in my chest. I sat bolt upright in my chair. “What the deuce do you mean? Are you implying—”

  “Yes, I’m afraid I am. It’s a lovely yarn, lad, but you’ll have to do a little better than that.”

  “Are you calling me a liar?”

  “I hope I wouldn’t be so ill-mannered. But let’s lean on this pure simple truth for a moment and see if it doesn’t keel over—let’s take another look at your Uncle Willoughby, the stage villain, the character everyone loves to hiss as soon as he walks onstage. Brutal, avaricious, worldly, ugly, fierce—I think you’d agree, wouldn’t you, that by using these adjectives I’m not misrepresenting him?”

  “Certainly I’d agree! He was a monster and I detested him!”

  “Yes, but during the course of your narrative I repeatedly received the impression that what you said about him bore little relation to what you actually felt. I think,” said Lucas in his gentlest voice, “that contrary to all you’ve said, you were really very fond indeed of your appalling Uncle Willoughby.”

  12

  “No man, be he lawyer, doctor, priest or poet, can correctly describe the real history of another … The little events that determine the growth of the soul the secret memories that colour his mentality, the hidden springs from which arise his motives and his actions, these no friend however intimate can fully know.”

  CHARLES E. RAVEN

  A WANDERER’S WAY

  1

  I felt as if someone had slid a skewer straight into the centre of my memory. Instantly the past started to swing out of control and I knew I had to drag down the curtain, but I was paralysed. All I could do was stare at Lucas in the manner of a man hypnotised by a serpent.

  “And now let’s lean on this pure simple truth of yours again,” he was saying calmly. “Let’s take another look at your father, the tragic hero—who occupies far less space in your narrative than your wicked uncle. Curiously enough it’s not his heroic qualities you emphasise. After a passing reference to his good looks, you talk of his delicate health, his nervous temperament, the lack of education which encouraged his nature-mysticism to veer towards pantheism. The picture you draw is of an ineffectual romantic, and finally you conclude with a bitterness which you’re quite unable to conceal: ‘Was there ever a man less suited to run a draper’s shop?’ I suggest that you actually feel a profound ambivalence towards this man. After all, what really happened when you were seven? He left you, didn’t he? He left you destitute and vulnerable—in fact it was he, not your uncle, who broke up your happy home.”

  I leapt to my feet. My voice cried: “I deny every word you say!”

  “Very well, let’s move on to your mother, whom you rather surprisingly label the noble heroine. Here we have a woman who is apparently content to abdicate her parental responsibilities and—”

  I shouted: “No man insults my mother in my presence!” and walked out.

  Slamming the door so violently that it shuddered on its hinges, I blazed down the passage to the hall. Only the sight of the doorkeeper brought me to a standstill. “Can I help you, Father?” he asked as I hesitated, and at once, unable to control myself, I exploded: “Yes—you can stop addressing me in that distasteful fashion! I’m no Catholic priest—I’m a Protestant Archdeacon!”

  “I’m so sorry, Archdeacon, I had no idea.”

  This immaculate courtesy in the face of my extreme rudeness I found so unbearable that I wanted to hit him. The impulse frightened me. Obviously I had to remove myself from the house before I committed some horrifying atrocity, but even as half my mind was urging me to abandon my pride and run, the other half was ordering me to conquer this humiliating desire to bolt and stand my ground.

  I was still dithering when a large, grand monk glided into the hall with a sheaf of papers in his hand. He had thick silver hair which needed cutting, horn-rimmed spectacles parked on the end of a Roman nose, and a cool, snooty air of authority. The repulsive jewel-studded cross on his chest immediately reminded me of the Pope. With a sinking heart I recognised the Abbot-General, Francis Ingram.

  He said casually to the doorkeeper: “If anyone calls I’m not available—except to the Archbishop, of course.” Then he became aware of me, cowering in the mouth of the corridor which led to the guest-wing of the house. Holding my breath I prayed he would experience no twinge of recognition, but my prayer went unanswered. I should have remembered that the most able men in managerial positions train themselves to remember faces.

  “Good evening,” he said pleasantly to me. “Forgive me—I’m sure we’ve met, but I can’t quite place you.”

  “This is the Archdeacon, Father,” said the doorkeeper in a disastrous attempt to be helpful, and almost at the same moment Lucas said behind me: “It’s Jon’s visitor. I’m about to show him to his room.” As I spun round I saw he was carrying the overnight bag I had forgotten.

  Meanwhile the Abbot-General, prompted by the word “Archdeacon” and no doubt recalling memories of his visit to Darrow’s diocese in 1941, had remembered who I was and was busy glossing over my identity. “Ah yes, of course—welcome to our London house!” he said sociably. “I’m delighted that you have the opportunity to meet Father Lucas!”

  I managed to utter the words: “Thank you, sir,” but I was appalled by the loss of my anonymity. Ingram would know every bishop on the bench and might feel it his duty to be lukewarm in the future when I was considered for a major preferment. Word would then get around that I was unsuitable. I wondered what Darrow had said to him when my visit had been arranged. “I have a clergyman here who—” No
, Darrow never used the word “clergyman” unless he was among rabid Protestants. “I have a priest here who’s gone off the rails and needs urgent attention …” Despair overwhelmed me. I felt as a drowning man must feel when he realises that the water has closed for the final time over his head.

  “This way,” said Lucas gently, piloting me back into the guest-wing towards some distant stairs.

  As soon as we were alone I blurted out: “The Abbot-General recognised me,” but Lucas remained tranquil.

  “I assure you that’s of no consequence. He’ll treat the matter as he would treat information disclosed to him in the confessional.”

  “But what can he possibly be thinking? An archdeacon seeking anonymity—”

  “We receive distressed visitors from all ranks of the Church. If Father Abbot-General’s paused long enough to think twice about your presence in his house, I dare say he’s respecting you for having the humility and good sense to seek help from an older priest.”

  I was sufficiently reassured to wipe the sweat from my brow with a steady hand. Then as we reached the top of the stairs I realised he was still carrying my bag. “Here, I’ll take that,” I said, grabbing it. “I’m sorry, I’m treating you as if you were a porter.”

  “And I’m afraid I treated you as if you were a novice who wilfully refused to make an adequate confession. I apologise for upsetting you.”