Ultimate Prizes

by Susan Howatch

  “Well, it was bad enough him being stupid about business matters, but the trouble was he was also stupid about Real Life. Now, you know what I mean by Real Life, don’t you, Nev? I mean everything that doesn’t happen in romantic fairy-tales. Your father wanted to live in a romantic fairy-tale—that was his trouble—and so, for a time, did your mother. Well, a woman can be excused for wandering around with her head in the clouds when a handsome young man pays court to her, but there’s never any excuse for a man to keep his head anywhere except on his shoulders. Marriage, as we both know, has nothing to do with living in a romantic fairy-tale. Marriage is about facing up to Real Life, and what did poor Arthur know about that? Absolutely bloody nothing.

  “Of course he should never have married her. Only a stupid man would ever imagine he could be happy with a wife like my sister. Adelaide was the most wonderful woman in the world, but she should have been a man. Maybe that was why she was so wonderful. No fluttering, no cooing, no sickly feminine chatter—just wit and charm and fascinating conversation about things which interest clever men—what a woman! But a man, if he knows what’s good for him, wants a soft, mild, biddable woman to look after him, not a tough intellectual siren, and he wants someone who can bring up his children properly, not someone who … well, we won’t go into your mother’s shortcomings on that score. You’d have thought, wouldn’t you, that God in His wisdom would have made her sterile, but no, there she was, fertile as a rabbit. What a mess! And all because poor Arthur hadn’t the brains to see he was marrying a man in a woman’s body.

  “Mark you, it did occur to me years later that this might have been exactly what he wanted. He was shy with soft, mild, biddable women, and he was always much happier when he was down at the cricket club with the boys. Not that I’m implying anything nasty, mind. They were a very decent and wholesome bunch of lads down at the cricket club, and no one was more decent and wholesome than your father, but all the same … He was a strange boy in some ways, all that gentleness and innocence. Sometimes, now that I’m a wicked old man who’s seen everything, I wonder if he was a woman in a man’s body and that the pair of them, he and Adelaide, were better suited than I’d ever dreamed. Carnality’s a funny thing, Nev, you mark my words. It’s not half so simple as you think when you’re young. Then you just think lads are lads and lasses are lasses and every thing else in between is a disgusting aberration of nature, but later you realise that the most amazing thing about nature is its infinite variety—and who can say with any certainty where aberration begins and ends?

  “Anyway, there was no doubt Adelaide was an aberration—but not a disgusting one, of course. She had the makings of a good mistress, I always thought, guaranteed to cheer a man up in no time by the sheer strength of her conversation, but unfortunately as a respectable girl that career wasn’t open to her. But even if she hadn’t been respectable, you can be sure Arthur would have married her anyway. Too romantic to do anything else. You may find this hard to believe—I certainly did—but it turned out he was a virgin when he married her; Adelaide said he swore there’d never been anyone else. Can you imagine anyone being quite so stupid? Selfish too, no consideration for his bride-to-be, and of course you won’t be one bit surprised if I now tell you that their intimate life was a disaster.

  “The really stupid part was that it needn’t have stayed a disaster. My wife, being just as respectable as Adelaide, also hated all the goings-on at first, but in the end she didn’t mind them in the least—and why was that? I’ll tell you. Number one, because I had the brains and the experience to take trouble—I didn’t go lumbering all over her like a hippopotamus taking a bath; number two, because I showed consideration—I didn’t inflict her with annual pregnancies; number three, because when she finally felt, if I may borrow a cricketing term, that her innings at the marital wicket was over, I let her retire to the pavilion with good grace and no hard feelings. Of course I was never faithful to her, but that wasn’t adultery, that was sheer Christian charity—and don’t you go telling me God wouldn’t have understood! God and I understand each other very well. I’ve always been on excellent terms with Him, paying my respects at chapel every week and leading a hard-working, law-abiding life. What more can He want, I’d like to know?

  “Well, there was poor Arthur, too stupid to be a resourceful husband, and there was poor Adelaide, trying to work out how to make life endurable for herself. How much did she love him, you may ask (since love’s supposed to conquer everything, even an aversion to copulation), and that’s a good question. Of course she swore she was passionate about him, and perhaps she was in a way, but I think her primary emotion wasn’t love at all but gratitude. She didn’t marry because she wanted to be loved; she was already loved—by me. No, she married because she was terrified of winding up on the shelf, a failure as a woman, and Adelaide wanted to be a success. Like me, she wanted to go chasing the prizes, and as we both know, even today after all that female emancipation rubbish the suffragettes churned out, the greatest prizes for a successful woman are still marriage and motherhood—and if she can manage to catch a tall, dark, handsome hero and produce a string of fetching children, all bright as buttons, so much the better.

  “She liked Arthur, there’s no denying that, but love? If you ask me, he was the one who was genuinely in love, because he married her for herself. She had no money, no pretty face, no alluring figure, no exalted rank, yet he married her anyway. And I’ll tell you this: I think if he’d lived she’d have come to love him in the end. They were good friends beneath all the romantic twaddle, and they could always make each other laugh. In fact I’ll wager they’d have wound up a real Darby and Joan once all the passion had been spent. It was spending the passion that destroyed them. Your father wouldn’t show consideration by taking a mistress, so in the end poor Adelaide got desperate and decided to have babies continually to get away from him.

  “Mark you, they might well have ended up producing babies continuously anyway, Arthur being the man he was. I can’t see him ever making a success of anti-conception, although to be fair to Arthur, I have to admit he did offer to withdraw; he had a nice nature. But poor Adelaide was so desperate she just said that was against her religious principles. Adelaide told me that. Adelaide told me everything. Adelaide and I …

  “Well, I tried to keep out of their marriage, but it wasn’t so easy, particularly when she tried to drag me in. After the last miscarriage she decided she was fed up with childbearing and she finally nerved herself to tell him straight that she didn’t want any more marital intimacy. And what happens? Pathetic scenes. Misery. Disaster. Does he get off his backside and take a mistress? No, he gets off his backside and takes to drink. Stupid fellow! Adelaide wanted me to speak to him, and in fact when I saw how miserable she was I wouldn’t have minded trying to drill some sense into him, but I knew I shouldn’t interfere, so although I promised Adelaide I’d have a word with the silly fellow I kept putting it off. And then … he died. That was stupid too. Stupid, stupid, stupid … Drink up your champagne, lad, you look as if you’re about to pass out. Maybe I’ve been too blunt. You did say I was to tell you the whole truth, but perhaps—”

  “Yes, that’s what I want. Uncle Willoughby, about my father’s death—”

  “My God, what a nightmare that was! How I survived it I’ll never know, but then of course I’m a born survivor.”

  “Uncle Will—”

  “I can remember it all as if it was yesterday, your mother weeping and wailing, that old besom Tabitha having hysterics—”

  “Uncle Will, about my father’s death—”

  “There’s no need to shout, lad! I may not hear as well as I used to, but I’m not deaf as a post! What is it you want to ask?”

  “Did Father commit suicide?”

  “Did he what?”

  “Kill himself.”

  “Your father? Don’t talk such piffle! That one was much too stupid to kill himself successfully—that one was the sort of man who’d play Russian
roulette and forget to put any bullets in the gun!”

  “But I can remember Mother whispering to you—”

  “Whispering! She bloody nearly screamed the house down! And as for that illiterate interfering old besom Tabitha, she made a noise like a bloody foghorn. Disgusting. Of course if it hadn’t been for her your father would be alive today.”

  “But good heavens, Uncle Will, what are you saying? Are you trying to tell me that Tabitha—”

  “It was an accident, lad. It was all a bloody accident. The old besom went and poisoned him by mistake.”

  4

  “Adelaide and I agreed never to tell you children because we knew how fond of the old besom you were,” said Uncle Willoughby. “We also agreed that Dr. Buller would have to be muzzled, but luckily that presented no difficulty because I happened to know he was carrying on with one of his female patients, so—”

  “But how on earth did such a catastrophe happen?”

  “I’m telling you, aren’t I? Dr. Buller had prescribed two bottles of medicine, a potion for your mother to help her sleep—we called it laudanum because we called all sleeping draughts laudanum in those days, but in fact it was called—no, I can’t think of the name. Veronal? Don’t remember. Damnation. Usually I remember everything, even though I’m eighty-two—”

  “Never mind the name, Buller prescribed a sleeping draught for Mother—”

  “—and a potion for your father to ease his innards after a stomach upset. Your father’s innards were always troubling him; nerves and too much bloody gin. Anyway, there were the two bottles, standing side by side in the kitchen, and that old besom Tabitha—who should have been hung, drawn and quartered for lethal busybodying interference—takes it upon herself to play Florence Nightingale.

  “ ‘Make sure we take our medicine tonight, Tabitha,’ says Adelaide, meaning, of course, ‘remind us,’ and the old fool adds the medicine to their evening cups of cocoa. Being illiterate she couldn’t read the labels, and the bottle she thought was Adelaide’s was Arthur’s and the bottle she thought was Arthur’s was Adelaide’s. So your father got a hefty dose of the sleeping draught, and on top of his usual ration of bloody gin it bloody killed him! Poor Arthur! But wasn’t it typical that he should die as the result of stupidity?”

  I leant forward, elbows on my knees, and put my head in my hands. All I could say was: “I should have been told.”

  “Rubbish! It’s nearly killed you now, when you’re a man of forty-four. What would a truth like that have done to a boy of seven? Besides, we wanted to avoid a scandal—the last thing we needed was the old besom on trial for manslaughter and all Maltby wallowing in the details of your father’s gin-swilling—and how can one ever trust a child to keep its mouth shut? No, the less you knew the better, and anyway the old besom pleaded on her knees that you and Willy should be kept in ignorance for ever. She doted on you both so much that she couldn’t bear to think of you hating her for what she’d done.”

  I let my hands fall. “But if it was only an accident, why couldn’t you have provided for her properly? Why did you leave her to die in a workhouse?”

  “That one never died in a workhouse!”

  “But Mother said—”

  “Adelaide just told you that because she was afraid you might go looking for her later. It was true the old besom had to go to the workhouse as a temporary measure as your mother couldn’t bear to have her in the house, but later I arranged for her to go to her sister in York and she lived happily ever after on the pension I provided—which was more than she deserved, silly old woman.”

  All I could do was repeat: “I should have been told,” and again Uncle Willoughby retorted: “Rubbish! From a practical point of view the connection had to be severed—and about time too! That old woman spoilt you—little terrors you and Willy were! I could see at once, when I stepped in to clear up the mess, that you both had to be taken very firmly in hand, but the trouble was I was so overcome by the bloody awfulness of the mess your father left behind that I daresay I took you in hand too severely. You know what upset me most years later when we had our final quarrel? You, raking up that incident when I wouldn’t lend you the money to buy back your toys from the bailiffs. Poor little lad! And you remembered, even after all those years! I was too harsh, I can see that now, but you’ve no idea what a state I was in. What with the bankruptcy and the manslaughter and the blackmailing of Buller—”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I do understand.” I tried to breathe very slowly and evenly. “So that’s how it really was. That’s the whole story.”

  “Whole story my arse!” said Uncle Willoughby. “Just you wait till I tell you what happened next …”

  5

  “It wasn’t just the bankruptcy, the manslaughter and the blackmail that turned my hair snow-white,” said Uncle Willoughby. “It was your mother. She couldn’t come to terms with your father’s death, and she went into a decline. All guilt, of course. She kept wishing she’d been nicer to him in bed. ‘For God’s sake, Adelaide!’ I’d say. ‘What’s done’s done! Let it alone, let it be!’ But she couldn’t. She sobbed and sobbed and said what à failure she’d been as a wife and how much she despised herself. Poor Adelaide—and she was such a wonderful aberration! ‘Never mind,’ I said to cheer her up. ‘I’ll always love you just as you are.’

  “Well, that was all very fine, but I’ll tell you straight: it led to problems. She eventually assuaged her guilt about your father by canonising him, having his photograph everywhere and talking about him in reverent whispers, but at first she was in such a state that she had to be looked after—so naturally I took her into my home along with little Emily, who could be cared for by my daughters’ nurse. You boys had to go to boarding school, no choice. The nurse couldn’t have managed two noisy spoilt boys, your mother couldn’t have managed anything, my wife felt a bereaved sister-in-law was as much as she could stand—and more. So off you went and of course you were soon whining that the school was too tough, but I knew it was a decent Christian place just as I knew you had to be toughened up. ‘I’m letting my little boys be tortured!’ Adelaide would sob. ‘Rubbish!’ said I. ‘It’ll be the making of them!’—but she couldn’t accept that. She just went on and on about what a failure she was as a mother. ‘I hate myself!’ she’d weep. ‘I’m not fit to live!’ Poor Adelaide! Pathetic … I suppose nowadays they’d say she was having a nervous breakdown.

  “Anyhow, I put up with all this because I loved her, and Ella put up with it because I told her to, but eventually Ella got fed up and who can blame her? She’d never liked her sister-in-law, and now here was Adelaide, taking up all my time, just like a demanding wife, whenever I was at home. In fact I began to feel I had two wives—and what was worse, I knew I loved the wrong one best. Carnal desire didn’t come into it, I hasten to add—I had a very fetching mistress at the time and besides, neither woman appealed to me in that way. But we were in some sort of peculiar eternal triangle, no doubt about that, and eventually Ella told me she found the situation intolerable.

  “Well, I knew my Christian duty. My wife had to come first, so I rented a little house for Adelaide and eased her out of my home.

  “But in fact that solved nothing. I found myself calling on Adelaide every day, and as she recovered and became her old entertaining self again I used to spend an increasing amount of time with her. She was such fun and Ella was so dreary … But I was in the wrong, I knew I was, and finally Ella told me she’d had enough.

  “Meanwhile Adelaide had decided she wanted Ella out of the way so that she could have me all to herself, and it was at this point that she made her fatal miscalculation. In an attempt to force my hand and push me into a marital separation, she said: ‘I can see there’s nothing else I can do but go and live a long way away!’—expecting that I’d reply: ‘Oh no, no, no! I’ll never let you leave Maltby!’ But I didn’t say that. For several seconds I didn’t say anything. I just thought of my girls, their future prospects blighted by gossip. I
thought how my hope of becoming mayor would come to naught if Ella and I separated. And I thought of Ella’s money, tied up snugly in my investments. Then finally I said to my sister: ‘Yes, I think it would indeed be best if you went to live somewhere a long way away.’

  “She never forgave me. Never, never, never. Oh, she pretended she did. Once she was in St. Leonards she began to write me long witty letters—ah, no one could write letters like your mother! What a masterpiece of an aberration she was!—but she never forgave me. I found that out after you and I quarrelled and I went all the way to St. Leonards to beg her to act as a mediator. ‘Of course!’ she said, honey-sweet. ‘Dearest, dearest Will and dearest, dearest Neville—what could give me greater happiness than to reconcile the two people I love best?’ But she did nothing. That was when she paid me back. ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned …’

  “In the end, when I realised she’d done nothing, I returned to St. Leonards to have it out with her. St. Leonards-on-Sea! I was there yesterday. I would have been there every year since she died, but the South Coast was closed to visitors during the war and afterwards the big hotels took time to reopen for business. I came to this particular hotel because it was recommended to me as well-mannered—you wouldn’t credit how snobbish some of these places can be once they hear a Yorkshire accent. Couldn’t stay in St. Leonards itself, of course. Too many memories. I’ve only been there to lay flowers on the grave.

  “It was Dr. Buller who recommended St. Leonards to her as being not only genteel but cheap for an invalid in need of sea air. We had to pretend she was still an invalid; she had to have a good excuse for leaving Maltby, and it seemed easiest to say she was leaving on medical advice to live in a warmer climate, but in fact there was nothing much wrong with her by that time. If she played the role of invalid it was because she liked it—it gave her plenty of time to lie around reading books—and as things turned out, she liked St. Leonards too. ‘No one here knows what a failure I am,’ she wrote to me once. ‘Everyone thinks I was a successful wife and mother.’ That meant everything to her. Poor Adelaide, she did so long to be a success in life … I suppose if she’d been young today—and born into another class, a class in the South—she’d have wound up a member of Parliament or a tutor in one of those women’s colleges at Oxford. But she wasn’t young today and she wasn’t born into the right home, so all those brains went to waste.