Ultimate Prizes (41 page)

“Ah!” I said. “But as Oscar Wilde wrote in
The Importance of Being Earnest—
”

“Poor Oscar simply wanted to be amusing. I tell you, there’s no mystery about the past, Neville. None at all.”

“Then could you be very kind and explain to me what on earth was going on?”

“Why not?” said Willy affably, reaching for the decanter, and this time, no longer able to resist the temptation, I held out my glass for a refill.

5

“The truth, pure and simple,” said Willy, “is that Father died of liver failure, just as the coroner said. Of course that old rogue Uncle Willoughby talked to us about cirrhosis and tried to make out that Father was a drunkard, but quite obviously he was motivated by malice. The most likely explanation of the tragedy is that Father had a weakness in the liver which drinking—any drinking—aggravated.”

“I can remember him drinking quite a bit—”

“So can I, but can you remember him roaring drunk? I certainly can’t, and I refuse to believe he was an alcoholic even though he was trapped in that appalling marriage which would have driven even the most devout abstainer to hit the bottle—”

“You honestly see the marriage as appalling?”

“Well, of course it was appalling! I’d have thought that was obvious in retrospect. What could it have been like for a sunny-natured sensitive man like Father to be obliged to live with a female who spent all her time exuding a noxious miasma from a chaise-longue?”

“Emily takes a very different view. She sees Mother as a tragedy queen victimised by men.”

“What complete and utter balls! The truth about Mother is that she was absolutely frightful. A lot of mothers are; it’s not unusual—you should see some of the horrors my boys have to put up with! It’s only romantics like you who think that all women are instinctively brimming over with mother-love—and how you’ve preserved
that
illusion after years of maternal neglect in the nursery, I can’t imagine!”

“Mother wasn’t good with small children, I agree, but she was willing enough to brim over with mother-love later on.”

“God alone knows what she was brimming over with,” said Willy, “but in my opinion it certainly wasn’t mother-love. She washed her hands of me, gave Emily hell and had that peculiar flirtation with you that all ended in tears—”

“But Willy, if Mother was really so frightful, why did Father marry her?”

“My dear Neville, good men regularly marry frightful women; it’s one of the great mysteries of life. Of course I’m well aware that you think I’m an ignoramus about such matters because my sexual experience has been limited to onanism ever since that ghastly encounter you egged me into up at Oxford—”

“I didn’t egg you into anything!”

“Oh yes, you did! You bragged about how you’d lost your virginity to a Woolworth’s shopgirl, so naturally I felt I had to lose mine too—except that I couldn’t—”

“Well, you can’t blame me for that!”

“God knows who I blame, sometimes I wish I’d been born bloody queer, at least I’d know then where I stood—in the cupboard alongside all the other social outcasts—oh God, what a bloody bore sex is, how we all stand it I’ll never know. Anyway as I was saying, I’m well aware that you think I know nothing about women, but I’m neither wholly blind nor wholly stupid and I can recognise the women like Mother who make a profession of giving men hell.”

“She never gave Uncle Willoughby hell.”

“That was because she knew he’d biff her on the nose if she tried. My God, what a thug that man was! But I’m beginning to see why you played Prince Hal to his Falstaff. You were so angry with Father for (so you thought) abandoning us, that you adopted Uncle Willoughby in revenge—and that’s why you remained dedicated to chasing the prizes even when you were grown up and old enough to know better.”

“Willy—”

“All right, I know you think I’m just a case of sour grapes, but when I had glandular fever and spent that year feeling rotten, I had the chance—given by God, as a clergyman might say!—to work out what life was really all about. At first I was panic-stricken because I was falling behind at school and failing, as Uncle Willoughby would have put it, to Get On As I Should. And of course I hated the thought that you, my younger brother, would be overtaking me—I was eaten up with jealousy and despair because I thought you’d carry off all Uncle Willoughby’s so-called Prizes of Life while I remained an invalid with nothing. But after a few months of feeling enervated I realised that contrary to all my expectations I was happy. In some mysterious way I’d been set free from our perpetual rivalry and set free from that awful chase for the prizes. Then I saw that all I really wanted was a room of my own lined with books, congenial work in pleasant surroundings, and a reasonable amount of civilized conversation with intelligent people. I didn’t want to read for the bar! I didn’t want to be Prime Minister! And I certainly didn’t want to give Uncle Willoughby the pleasure of living his life over again for him on a grander scale, because when all was said and done my life didn’t belong to Uncle Willoughby. My life belonged to
me.
”

“I understand all that, Willy—don’t forget I rebelled against Uncle Willoughby myself.—and of course I’ve always respected your decision to be a schoolmaster—”

“No, you haven’t! You’ve privately written me off as a failure, just as
he
did—a sad sort of person, perpetually consigned to the margin of life. Poor Willy, you think, stuck in that dreary school, no ambition to be headmaster, no wife, no children, no prizes, nothing. But now just you think again! I have my room lined with books. I have my congenial work in beautiful surroundings. I even have my civilised conversations with intelligent people now and then. I’m content, I’m at peace with myself—and that’s the real prize, Neville, the prize you’ll never win, because no matter how many prizes you tuck under your belt you’ll always feel there’s a better prize ahead which has to be chased. You’re in a muddle, you say? Then forget that old rogue, stop putting on the act which was guaranteed to please him, and be yourself at last!”

All I could say after I had drained my glass was: “I don’t put on an act. If you think my call to be a clergyman isn’t genuine—”

“Of course it’s genuine! That’s why you disturb me so much—I see a deeply religious man who behaves like a power-mad
arriviste
. You’ve married a society girl, you hobnob with the aristocracy, you devote yourself to stroking that nice old pussy-cat of a Bishop—and you’re probably already designing your future study at Lambeth Palace. But all that has nothing to do with
you
at all. The real you is the little boy with the Yorkshire accent who told Tabitha that when he grew up he wanted to be an engine-driver and give free rides to the poor. The poor! My God! When was the last time
you
went visiting the slums of Starbridge? Oh no, I forgot! Starbridge has no slums worth mentioning, does it? Beautiful picture-book Starbridge, the idyllic cathedral city ringed by wealthy landowners—just the place for a smart young archdeacon with ambition!”

“My dear Willy, if you could somehow bring yourself to stop being so bloody-minded for a moment you’d have the justice to concede that not all clergymen are called to specialise in difficult pastoral work! My talent is to be a church executive. I know that sounds very secular and not at all spiritually exciting, but—”

“Your talent’s for winning the prizes. But that’s not a call from God. That’s a call from Uncle Willoughby.”

“Oh, drop it, Will, for heaven’s sake—”

“But don’t you think Father would agree with me if he were alive?”

“Don’t you dare fling Father’s name in my face like that! If it hadn’t been for Father, deliberately abandoning us to a hell of deprivation, I’d never have been forced to model myself on that villain in order to survive!”

Willy’s mood instantly switched from truculent hostility to appalled concern. “But Neville, you can’t
seriously
believe in the suicide theory!”

“He killed himself. This is all his fault. He was the villain and Uncle Willoughby was the hero. But I can’t bear that, so Uncle Willoughby has to be the villain and Father has to be the hero—which is impossible. So it seems I love Father although I hate him—and hate Uncle Willoughby although I love him—and that’s impossible too, two conflicting truths perpetually grinding me towards dementia, a hideous dialectic which I’ve somehow got to surmount—oh, if only Father had lived! Then I wouldn’t be in this mess, wouldn’t be in hell, wouldn’t be—wouldn’t be—”

“However Father died it was a tragedy,” said Willy, swiftly welding me together as I threatened to come apart at the seams. “But at least we have our happy memories of him; we can remember him as the hero he was to us. Perhaps if he’d lived our memories would be neither so happy nor so heroic. Maybe God was being merciful—even outstandingly generous—by giving us a few perfect years of paternal care rather than decades of increasingly tarnished paternal imperfection.”

“So that was how you came to terms with it all.” My voice was steady again. Grasping the decanter I poured myself a little extra claret, hardly more than a mouthful, just the merest drop of comfort to sustain me as I struggled to keep facing the pain. Then I said flatly: “Convince me he didn’t commit suicide.”

“He loved life. He loved nature. He loved us. And he was the perfect example of a nineteenth-century optimist—something unbelievably wonderful was always just about to evolve.”

“That’s all very well, but if you’d heard the fear in Mother’s voice when she whispered about the laudanum—”

“You were in an emotional state at the time and your child’s imagination concocted a fantasy.”

“How I wish I could believe you!”

“But you don’t.” Willy sighed. “Have some more claret.”

“No, I must be on my way.”

“What, no Church gossip?” Willy made a vain attempt to lighten the atmosphere. “Stay a little longer! We haven’t pulled the Church to pieces since Churchill finally got off his bottom, trampled Bell underfoot and sent Fisher to Canterbury!”

“Bell will be remembered when Fisher’s forgotten.” Rising to my feet I began to head for the lavatory.

“What’s this? Don’t tell me you’ve become one of Bell’s supporters! I remember you saying he was a dangerous idealist whom any sane churchman would avoid like the plague!”

“Smart young archdeacons really can’t afford to say anything else about Dr. Bell,” I said. “Smart young archdeacons aren’t soft on Germans. Smart young archdeacons approve the bombing of Dresden and support Churchill and cheer the translation of Fisher to Canterbury. If they did anything else they wouldn’t be smart young archdeacons, would they?”

I reached the sanctuary of the lavatory just as the tears began to stream down my face. Disgusting. It was all the talk about my father. Dreadful. Time to calm myself by thinking of Aidan again as he mixed compassion and cunning into a knock-out cocktail, clever perspicacious old masterpiece, far away now, travelling home, back to that land I could never revisit, back to Yorkshire, horrifying Yorkshire, where long ago my mother had imprinted on my mind that the father I loved had deserted me.

I somehow succeeded in regaining my self-control. Then after using the lavatory I went next door to the bathroom and sluiced some cold water over my face. To my dismay I saw my eyes had a faint pink rim.

When I finally summoned the strength to return to the study, Willy said: “Look, I’m sorry I lambasted you like that. If you want to stand up for that pig-headed white knight George Bell, that’s fine. It would remind me of the little boy who wanted to give free train-rides to the poor.”

“I don’t give a fig about Bell,” I said. “He’s nothing to me. What do I care if he messes up his career by being soft on the stupid Huns?”

“Nevertheless I shouldn’t have said—”

“Perhaps it needed to be said.” I bolted for the door.

He caught up with me as I stepped outside. “Neville, if there’s anything I can do—”

“You’ve done it. You’ve told me what you thought. That was what I wanted.” I offered him my hand and when he had shaken it anxiously I said: “I’m glad you’re happy, Will. I can see now you’ve made a great success of your life. Father would have been very proud.”

I said no more, but then no more was required to be said. Releasing his hand before I could make another disgusting exhibition of myself, I turned my back on him and walked rapidly down the drive to the road.

  14  

“
What is needed and given is always the same—a new manifestation of the divine, a new vision of life as God wills it and we desire it—a new contact with the Spirit to set the man’s career against a wider background…
”

C
HARLES
E. R
AVEN
THE CREATOR SPIRIT

1

H
AVING THUMBED A LIFT TO THE STATION
, I
WAS LUCKY
enough to catch an express train back into London. I wound up at Victoria, took another extravagant taxi across the river to Waterloo and just managed to haul myself aboard the Starbridge train before it drew away from the platform. When one considered the post-war facts of life, which included an erratic railway service, this was successful travelling. Collapsing against the filthy upholstery (another post-war fact of life), I put a handkerchief over the back of my head to protect myself from lice and sank into a brief coma of exhaustion.

I arrived home at five o’clock. After a joyous reunion with Sandy and Primrose in the hall, I straightened my back to find my sister-in-law hovering disapprovingly in the drawing-room doorway.

“Dido was very upset when you didn’t turn up this morning, Stephen.”

“I did ring the hospital and leave a message.”

“Yes, and very unsatisfactory it was too! Where on earth have you been? That rather stunning clergyman, the tall one with the matching grey hair and eyes, rang up just now and wanted to know where you were. I said: ‘I thought you were looking after him!’ and he said he’d loaned you to someone else for a few hours but I wasn’t to worry. Stephen, would it be too much to ask you frankly what the hell’s going on?”

“Yes.” I bolted into the study to phone the Theological College.

“Are you all right?” said Darrow as soon as the call was connected to his room.

“Yes. Sorry I didn’t ring earlier. On Aidan’s advice I’ve been visiting my brother and sister.”

“Shall I come and see you?”

“No, I’m off to the hospital to see Dido, and as soon as I get back I’m going to bed. I’m exhausted.”

“Very well, but before you ring off there’s one matter I must discuss with you. I’ve arranged the funeral for tomorrow morning at nine-thirty in the cemetery, and your senior curate will be taking the service. However, if you don’t feel up to attending a funeral yet—”

“No, that’s fine. Thanks.”

“I’m still not sure if it should go ahead. I thought your wife had seen the baby, but your sister-in-law tells me—”

“Dido will never see that baby.”

“It would be much better for her if she did. My wife’s offered to visit the hospital and talk to her about it.”

“That’s very good of Anne, but she’d be wasting her time. Keep the funeral arrangements as they are.”

“Very well, if you insist … How was Aidan?”

“Why bother to ask?” I said. “You’re the famous clairvoyant. I’m sure you saw the entire interview in Technicolor on your very own private screen.” I hung up, instantly regretted my burst of aggression and rang him back. Darrow would hardly be anxious to help me in the manner Aidan had suggested unless I made an effort to behave myself.

“Sorry,” I said when the call was reconnected. “No offence meant. Thanks again for arranging the funeral.”

“Aysgarth, have you eaten today?”

I tried to remember. “I had a bit of cottage pie.”

“
You must eat
. Have something before you go to the hospital, and
drink tea
. Do I make myself entirely clear?”

“Yes, Nanny.” I hung up, decided Aidan had been mad to imagine I could ever get on with Darrow, and wandered into the kitchen in search of something edible. My housekeeper offered me a quick snack of baked beans on toast with a poached egg. While she was cooking I started to trudge back to my study but I changed my mind. I was too afraid I might remember the whisky bottle behind the Oxford Dictionary.

Sandy joined me as I sat down at the dining-room table.

“Daddy, is it really true that before the war biscuits used to be covered with pale chocolate on both sides?”

“Milk chocolate, yes.”

“Well, now the war’s over how much longer will we have to wait for them to come back? I want a biscuit with pale chocolate on both sides!”

“So do I. I like chocolate too.”

“Did Mummy like chocolate?” said Sandy, hauling himself purposefully onto my knees to ensure he retained my full attention.

“Be quiet, Sandy,” said Primrose, entering the room. “We don’t talk to him about Mummy. Daddy, Aunt Merry says the baby’s funeral’s tomorrow, but Sandy and I don’t have to go, do we?”

“Maybe you’d like to go.”

Primrose shuddered. “No, thanks. Christian says funerals are revolting and should be banned by law.”

I was jolted out of my exhausted apathy. “When did he say that?”

“After Mummy’s funeral.”

“You said not to mention Mummy to him!” protested Sandy, but Primrose took no notice.

“I said to Christian: ‘I wish I’d been old enough to go to Mummy’s funeral,’ and he said: ‘No, you don’t. Funerals are revolting and I never want to go to another as long as I live. They should be banned by law.’ ”

The housekeeper arrived with my snack but as soon as she had gone I said: “It’s obvious Christian was very upset when he said that, Primrose, and he may well feel quite differently now. Funerals are important. Going through a formal ritual helps people to come to terms with the death by providing an opportunity to grieve.”

“But Christian didn’t want to grieve,” said Primrose, “and neither did Norman and James. James told me they were all so afraid of crying and letting you down.”

“I tasted pale chocolate once,” said Sandy. “It was in the food parcel Dido got from America.” Casually he ate one of my baked beans. “Dark chocolate’s very nice but pale chocolate’s better.”

I suddenly realised I was unable to eat. “I must talk to the boys,” I said to Primrose. “It sounds as if there’s been a slight misunderstanding.”

“Oh Daddy, don’t let them know it was me who told you they were afraid of crying! Christian said you were never to know because you get so upset when anything’s not quite perfect.”

There was a long silence. Sandy ate another baked bean. Finally I pushed away my plate, swung him down from my knees and stood up. “I’ve just remembered another important telephone call I have to make,” I said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

I bolted to my study. Breathing quickly, I took a look behind the Oxford Dictionary. The bottle was still there but, as I already knew, it was almost empty. If I finished it I would be doing myself a favour because then there would be no whisky left in the house.

I finished the bottle. Then I returned to the dining-room, said goodbye to the children and set off resolutely, with the aid of my triple whisky, for my next dreadful meeting with Dido.

2

I arrived at the hospital to find Dido unconscious, heavily sedated after another bout of hysterics. Apparently someone had again tried to persuade her to see the baby. Feeling unutterably relieved that I had been spared another of our unreal conversations—and unutterably ashamed that I had disregarded Aidan’s warning not to use alcohol as a crutch when I was desperate—I scribbled her a note to say I adored her, and fled back to the Close.

I felt much too exhausted to think clearly but now I was afraid to go to bed; I was sure sleep would elude me and I would be tormented by the most unbearable anxieties. I told myself I had to avoid worrying about my children while I was enduring my crisis, but I found I was haunted by the image of Christian struggling to ring down the curtain on his pain as he lectured his siblings on the need to appear perfect. The vignette presented by Primrose had devastated me. I saw now that something had gone very wrong with my entire family life, but in my weakened state that was a truth I found much too terrible to face and I could only push it in panic from my mind.

However my panic only increased as I contemplated the inevitable deterioration in my health which would result from a sleepless night. If I was to keep breakdown at bay in my already fragile mental state, I knew I had to have some respite, no matter how brief, from the wasteland which had suddenly acquired such a hideous new dimension.

I prayed for the courage to go to bed and face the possibility of being tormented throughout the night, but when I parked the car I could not even bring myself to enter the house. I sat rigid with despair in the driving-seat, and then gradually, very gradually, I became aware that I was staring at the Cathedral, that beating heart of Starbridge, that vast pale intricate concoction of stone and glass exuding its subtle message of human hope, that monster of architectural perfection, faultless, matchless but faintly sinister in its eerie power to ravish the eye and seduce the soul. It was one of those times when the Cathedral seemed to be no mere inanimate building but a living presence. I saw the windows of the west front suddenly glow gold in reflection of the shifting sunset, and as I held my breath, momentarily overwhelmed by the extraordinary glitter of the glass, the Cathedral seemed to hold its breath too, its stones honey-coloured in the evening light, its great spire radiant against the sky. I began to breathe again—and so did the Cathedral, invisibly but powerfully, and its breath was the breath of life to me as I toiled in the coils of my sickness. As if drawn by a magnet I left my car, I crossed the sward, I stretched out my hand to touch the walls—and at that moment in the depths of the building the organist began his evening practice with one of Bach’s mysterious, unearthly fugues.

Trailing my hand against the stones I moved towards the north porch, and the fugue glided on and on, unravelling mystery after mystery, running backwards and forwards, up and down, weaving pattern after pattern of complex music until at the end, as I stood in the porch, all the threads were both united and transcended in a single final chord.

The enigma had proved capable of being solved. The message was clear. Hope was renewed. For a long moment I remained where I was, listening to the silence, the silence of the Cathedral, the silence of God. Then, knowing that I would now be able to sleep and escape for a few life-giving hours from my torment, I struggled home once more across the sward.

3

The next morning I arose early, just as Aidan had suggested, and tried to follow his advice on prayer and reading, but I was soon so appalled by my poor concentration that I stopped. I then tried to reflect carefully on the interviews with Willy and Emily, but when my confusion continued unabated I was forced to realise how spiritually disabled I was. I tried to read again; I thought Aidan would want me to keep trying, and as I thought of him I wished he were with me to watch and listen on my behalf for the word from God which he had felt so sure would come. It seemed obvious now that I was spiritually far too blind and deaf to be capable of receiving the word myself.

This was such a depressing conclusion that I felt I could only stare out of the window in the hope of drawing strength once more from the Cathedral. The sun was now rising higher behind the spire and the building was again a living presence, constantly reflecting the changing angle of the light. As I watched, the sun moved a fraction to the south. Instantly the transept windows were ablaze and the north gargoyles were black demons rampant against an orange and azure sky. The room remained silent, but in my mind I could hear the Bach fugue.

I suddenly realised with great clarity that Aidan had been right to push me towards Darrow and that I had been wrong to resist him. I still wanted to resist, but I knew now that digging in my toes and playing the pig-headed Yorkshireman represented a luxury I could no longer afford. I somehow had to conquer my pride. I had to accept that a man who was blind and deaf needed a guide-dog. And I had to accept that in this emergency the best guide-dog within reach was Darrow.

Having read the office I prayed for the strength to survive the day ahead, but I found it hard not to feel I was asking for the moon.