Ultimate Prizes

by Susan Howatch

  “After that my demon didn’t have to wait long for the chance to take control, but the apparent cause of that final quarrel with my mother was so trivial that it’s a wonder I can still remember it. She made some casual criticism of Grace’s choice of curtains for the nursery. Then without warning the demon burst free. I turned on my mother and said: ‘What the devil do you know about nurseries? You spent all my childhood keeping out of mine!’

  “Then the violence began. That was the moment when all the acting had to stop. That was the moment when reality broke into the theatre and swept our long-running drama right off the stage.

  “The verbal violence came first. It always does. That’s the warm-up. Words streamed out of me, words I never thought I’d ever utter, words expressing all the emotions I’d buried so deep for so long. I told her she was rubbish, a caricature of a woman, a contemptible monstrosity which any normal man could only despise and ridicule, and then when she tried to defend herself, I—

  “Then the demon wiped me out. No, I can’t say that. That sounds as if I’m disclaiming responsibility for what happened. I must say: I let the demon wipe me out. But no, I can’t say that either, that makes me sound passive. And I wasn’t passive at all.

  “I was actively expressing what I can only describe as an ecstasy, the vilest and blackest of ecstasies, a perverted rush of power. At that moment I was the demon; he wasn’t a separate entity any more. It was a moment of very great evil and I committed a very great sin. I must say that. I have to say it out loud. I was inflicting physical, mental and emotional pain on an old woman who loved me. I hit her and hit her and … oh, God only knows what would have happened if Grace hadn’t heard my mother’s screams and rushed into the room, but as soon as Grace appeared … Darrow, it was the most extraordinary thing. I know you think I’m absurdly infatuated with science, but this really was like the illustration of some immutable scientific principle; it was as if two substances had been placed in a test-tube and one had somehow instantly dissolved the other—”

  “No demon can withstand the power of Christ.”

  “That’s it. I suppose a Modernist would say it was the Christian principle in action, and talk about the power of moral force on a dissociated mind. But in the end descriptions aren’t important; all that matters now is that my demon couldn’t stay in the same room as Grace. He had to scuttle away and bury himself in the woodwork of my mind again. She was so good, you see. She’d never liked my mother, but without hesitation she took her in her arms and tried to comfort her—she couldn’t have been more gentle and kind. My mother hated her for that, of course. She didn’t want Grace to know what had happened—she didn’t want anyone to know, and neither did I. Later, as I discovered today, she broke down and told Uncle Willoughby, but at that moment all we wanted to do was crawl back into our fantasy world as soon as possible because the world of reality was far too terrible to endure. In the end we rang down the curtain by agreeing to treat the incident as if it had never happened.

  “So my mother went to live with Emily and we began writing our witty letters again as if nothing was wrong. Meanwhile I’d made it clear to Grace that I never wanted to speak of the quarrel, so naturally, perfect as always, she never referred to it. But perhaps she was too frightened to refer to it. I don’t know, but time passed and nothing was said and in the end I was able to tell myself: I’m fine now, I’m safe, I’m surviving …

  “But I wasn’t. That was just a delusion. I wasn’t surviving at all.

  “I can’t describe to you how terrible I felt when my mother died in 1941. I kept thinking: I won’t feel guilty, I won’t. But then the curtain would go up—all the curtains would go up—and I’d remember my mother loving me, my uncle loving me, my father loving me—and I knew I’d rejected them all. I told myself I was justified, I made myself believe that everything I’d done could be justified, but it was becoming harder and harder to keep this fiction nailed in place because once my mother was dead my private myth inexorably began to disintegrate. Then a very curious thing happened. I became aware that a black hole had opened up in my life, a gnawing emptiness which was stealthily expanding. At first I thought it was just a bizarre form of bereavement—and I suppose it was, in a way. But it wasn’t a true bereavement. It was the addict’s deprivation.

  “All my life, in one way or another, I’d been bound up with my great prize, and now she was gone I found I didn’t know what to do without her. I forgot the nightmare scene in 1938, blotted it right out. All I could remember was the thrill of the chase, the thrill which made me feel so powerfully alive—and then it occurred to me that if only I could embark on another delirious chase I could keep the horror perpetually at bay.

  “I became restless. I became irritable. And my wonderful Grace, up there on her pedestal, began to seem so dull, so dreary, so incapable of providing me with the excitement I knew I just had to have … and which I finally found, in the May of 1942, when I met Dido for the first time.

  “Oh, how happy I was! The demented addict had at last found a new supply of dope—and what a supply it was, what quality, what a perfect antidote to my malaise! Here was a brand-new eccentric female, sharp as a needle, deliciously amusing, withholding her love and absolutely unobtainable. What more could I possibly want? Only the freedom to chase her—which, as you’ll remember, I soon received.

  “I chased and I chased and I chased—oh, how I enjoyed myself! And every time she rejected me and humiliated me I thought: I’ll pay her back in the end. The curious part was that I made exactly the same mistake as I made with my mother, and fooled myself into believing that the ultimate prize I was chasing was her love. But perhaps the mistake was inevitable; I’d buried the truth about my mother deep in my subconscious by that time, and looking back I can see clearly that during my long pursuit of Dido I never succeeded in analysing my behaviour truthfully. By that time I was incapable of it. I was even incapable of linking Dido consciously with my mother—although all those déjà vu experiences were certainly hints of the truth I didn’t dare acknowledge. It was only when the baby was born dead and I read Dido’s letter, in which she finally told me she loved me, that I realised I’d been re-enacting the whole appalling ritual with my mother. Part of me was saying to myself: That’s it, there’s no prize left to win, what on earth do I do now? And the other part, the part I had to shovel out of sight behind the curtain, was whispering: Now you claim the real prize. You tear up her love and fling it back in her face and beat her till she screams for mercy.

  “I couldn’t look the truth squarely in the face, but I knew it was there. That was when I realised I’d wound up in a black pit with my demon. He’d finally triumphed; I was in the coffin and he was nailing down the lid. He’d put me through one revolting ritual and now he’d put me through the same disgusting charade all over again—”

  “I’m afraid the hallmark of an unexorcised demon is a mania for repetition.”

  “But it’s no use talking of exorcism now, is it? He’s destroyed me, I’ve lost my battle with him—”

  “No,” said Darrow. “The battle’s finished, but you haven’t lost. Your days as a loser are over, Aysgarth. This is where you start to win.”

  2

  “You’ve grasped the truth,” said Darrow. “You’re demonstrating with every syllable you utter that you repent. Can’t you see your demon’s vanquished, cowering with terror in his pit?”

  “You’re saying this is another example of the Christian principle in action, but it can’t be.”

  “Why not? If you’ve repented, then Christ is on your side, and if no demon can withstand the power of Christ—”

  “Christ couldn’t possibly be on my side.”

  “Why not?”

  “I may have repented, but I can’t expect to receive his compassion and forgiveness. I’m too contaminated by what I’ve done.”

  “My dear Aysgarth, you know as well as I do that provided a genuine repentance is present, not even the most contaminated man
on earth is unforgivable!”

  “I know that intellectually, yes. It’s what we’re taught to believe. But—”

  “You feel the forgiveness has no reality for you. I understand. But do you seriously believe that Our Lord’s response to this agony of yours would be: ‘Go your way and never darken my door again’?”

  “No, of course in theory he’d say: ‘Go your way and sin no more.’ I know that intellectually too. But I still can’t believe that if I were actually to meet him face to face now in 1946, he’d ever be able to bring himself to say such a thing to me.”

  Darrow said suddenly: “What did your uncle say to you today when you actually met him face to face? Did he say: ‘Bugger off, you bastard, and never come near me again’?”

  I was transfixed.

  “He didn’t say that, did he?” said Darrow. “Yet he knew what you’d done not only to him but to your mother. So if even an old Yorkshire rogue still loved you enough to forgive you in such very unpromising circumstances, how much more likely it is that Our Lord—”

  But I was no longer listening to him. I could only whisper: “The old boy killed the fatted calf,” and then the demon began to die at last as the black pit filled with light.

  3

  It was at least five minutes before I could speak again. I remember being vaguely interested in the fact that Darrow kept quiet as a mouse and never bothered me. That was good. All speech would have been an intrusion and any physical contact an impertinence. But no doubt his telepathic intuition would have told him that. I didn’t believe in telepathy, of course, but I could see how useful it was in pastoral work.

  After I had finished revolting myself by snuffling despicably in this disgusting fashion, I managed to say: “I’ve been so busy going off my head that I haven’t yet thanked you for flogging me along to see Uncle Will. It was the most important thing you could possibly have done.”

  “Can you tell me about the meeting now, do you think? I’d like to hear how he illuminated the past.”

  I talked for some time before concluding: “So in fact there were no heroes and villains, as in my melodrama. There were just three ordinary people who got in a mess and wound up in a tragedy. I can understand them all now.”

  “And having understood them—”

  “Yes, I can forgive them. My poor pathetic parents—and that funny old villain talking today about his loveless marriage and his lonely life … Poor old sod. I promised I’d go up to Maltby in August to see him.”

  “And if your mother were alive, would you go and see her?”

  “But she’s not alive.” It took me a great effort of will to add in a level voice: “I’ll never be able to tell her I’m sorry. I’ll never be able to say to her: ‘Forgive me for being so stupid and ignorant, not understanding anything, forgive me for never realising how unhappy you were, forgive me for causing you so much pain.’ I’ll never be able to make amends for what I did.”

  “That’s the negative side of your new enlightenment. But now look at the positive side. Having repented, your anger towards her’s dead. You don’t really want to go around hitting women any more, do you?”

  I could only shudder in revulsion.

  “Well, isn’t that a step forward? Of course we mustn’t make the mistake of thinking you’re miraculously cured of your weakness for violence; you’ve got a tough aggressive streak which thrives on combat, and that’s not going to change. But what can be changed is your susceptibility to demonic infiltration. We’ve got to make sure this aggressive streak isn’t kidnapped by the next passing demon who thinks he spots an attractively violent home.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “We find you a resourceful older clergyman whom you can consult whenever you’re tempted to sweep violent feelings under the rug and ring down the curtain. With any luck he’ll be able to ring up the curtain, whisk away the rug and disarm those dangerous emotions before they can fester and cause trouble.”

  I considered this solution carefully and said at last: “You could do that.”

  Darrow smiled. “I hope I’ve been useful to you in this emergency,” he said in his best modest voice, the one he used on those rare occasions when he genuinely wanted to be humble and friendly, “but I’m sure Aidan would be the first to agree I couldn’t help you in more normal circumstances. I rub you up the wrong way, with the result that I stimulate just the kind of aggressive feelings you can do without—and besides, our professional lives are too interconnected. Once we start wrangling about the College extension—”

  “Yes, it would be disastrous. You’re right.” I heaved a sigh before adding: “It’s a pity, because I can see how gifted you are at this kind of work. That remarkable intuition of yours must make up for your lack of personal experience.”

  Darrow looked startled. “Lack of personal experience?”

  “Well, I’m sure you never had any trouble with your parents, did you? I remember your wife saying once to Grace that you were an only child brought up in a quiet happy home.”

  Darrow at once commented dryly: “I concede I never had an uncle to complicate family life!” Then he added: “Don’t worry for the moment about your new counsellor. He’ll probably turn up in exactly the right place once your future becomes clear.”

  “The future! Good heavens, I’d forgotten about it. What on earth’s going to happen next?”

  “Aysgarth, I know you think I’m a fortune-teller manqué, the sort of charlatan who ekes out a living in a booth on a seaside pier, but I assure you that I have no esoteric knowledge of your future. However I’ll tell you this: I think the future will become clear very soon. You’ve faced up to your past; the present has been transformed by your new understanding and the stage is now all set for the next act.”

  “Please don’t think I’m being sarcastic,” I said, valiantly beating back the sarcasm, “but do you really think there’ll be a magic moment when I’ll clap my hands, shout ‘Eureka!’ and know beyond all doubt whether I’m to work for Bell in Europe or in London among the aristocracy?”

  “Oh, those are just side-issues,” said Darrow with the authority which I had once found so infuriating but which now commanded my respect. “The crucial question, which you seem to have forgotten, is: How do you survive your marriage in order to have any career in the Church at all?”

  I felt close to despair once more. “Well?” I demanded. “What’s the answer?”

  “There you go again, treating me as if I can produce a detailed synopsis of your future just by flicking a switch in my brain! Aysgarth, there’s no board outside this office which says: ‘Fortune-Telling by Appointment.’ All I can tell you as a priest is that you’ve sinned, you’ve repented and now by the grace of God you’ll be redeemed—although the manner of the redemption is still to be revealed.” He glanced up at the clock. “And talking of your wife, I see it’s time you were on your way to visit her. Can you give me a lift to the station?”

  “Yes, but I don’t think I can visit Dido tonight—I feel too exhausted. I’ll phone the hospital and say—”

  “No,” said Darrow so firmly that I jumped.

  “But I just don’t have the strength at present to play the devoted husband! And I certainly don’t have the strength to listen to her rattling on and on and on about herself in her usual tiresome fashion!”

  Darrow suddenly became very tough. I was reminded of Aidan taking one of his daring risks.

  “Aysgarth, has it never occurred to you to wonder why your wife rattles on and on and on about herself?”

  “Well, I always assumed it was simply part of her egocentric personality—”

  “That’s not much of an assumption, is it? It explains nothing. Have you never asked yourself if she’s perhaps trying desperately to attract your attention? Is it not possible, do you suppose, that this unattractive egocentricity might even be a cry for help? What in fact is the hidden message here which your wife is so frantically trying to convey to you amidst the torrents of self-ce
ntred monologue?”

  I could only stare at him.

  “Why does she indulge in her famous eccentric behaviour?” pursued Darrow ruthlessly. “Is it because she’s discovered in the past that it guarantees people notice her? If so, why is she so afraid of being passed over and ignored? How far can it be attributed to the fact that she was the youngest of a large ebullient family? Was she neglected when she was young? What was her childhood relationship with her mother, the mysterious woman who, so I hear, is kept out of sight in Scotland and only allowed to visit London for her daughters’ weddings? What was your wife’s childhood relationship with her father, who was probably too busy making his millions to bother much about the last daughter in his family? Does your wife’s intense devotion to the sister closest to her in age indicate that she had failed to find a worthy object for her devotion elsewhere in the family? Does it hint at some kind of emotional deprivation analogous to your own at that time when you came to depend so heavily on your brother’s companionship? In other words, to cut a long list of unanswered questions short, what’s really going on in your wife’s psyche? How well, in fact, do you know her? Have you ever made any profound attempt to understand why she’s the way she is? Aysgarth, now is not the moment, believe me, to play the wilting flower and claim you’re too exhausted to see her. Exert your very considerable will-power, give the appropriate instructions to your ox-like constitution and get over to that hospital to minister to this stranger who so desperately wants to communicate with you.”

  No argument was possible. Mute with shame, I levered myself to my feet and trudged outside with him to my car.

  4

  When we reached the station Darrow said troubled: “I don’t like leaving you, but I promised my wife I’d be home at a reasonable hour.”

  “I’m better now.”

  “Telephone me later this evening.”

  “Very well—if I’m still conscious.”