Ultimate Prizes Read online

  I was just wondering if I should hold daily services at lunch-time for all the city workers who would be experiencing a strong compulsion to pray for deliverance, when the door of my study opened and Alex strode in. There was a spring in his walk, a smile on his face and a carnation in the buttonhole of his smart lounge suit.

  “Do I deduce that the hatchet was safely buried?” I said amused after we had exchanged greetings.

  “I think it would be more accurate to say that we managed to ease the hatchet into a coffin to await a full burial later—but at least that’s a step in the right direction! We sat in the garden and drank tea for twenty minutes.”

  “Only twenty minutes?”

  “She had to attend a committee meeting of the Women’s Institute. But she sent her love to Carrie, so it would seem the ice is definitely broken.”

  “Splendid! And what did you think of her boys? That little Charley says he wants to be a clergyman.”

  “So he told me.” Alex, who had been pacing around the room in his usual restless fashion, now stopped jingling the coins in his pockets and started eyeing the telephone. “I’d so much like to tell Carrie about the meeting,” he said. “Would you mind if I put through a call on your extension upstairs?”

  “Not at all—go ahead,” I said, and embarked on a letter to the Red Cross about the parish food parcel for British prisoners of war.

  I was halfway through this task when I was interrupted by the arrival of my diocesan bête noire, a clergyman named Darrow about whom I shall say more later. I mention him now only because it was at this time that he began his career at the Theological College in the Cathedral Close, a fact which became of considerable importance to me in 1945 after I had almost committed adultery.

  On that morning in 1942 when Darrow arrived without warning on my doorstep and breezed arrogantly into my study, the Theological College was in the midst of a crisis because of the war-time shortage of staff, and on the previous evening at the palace Alex had been able to provide Dr. Ottershaw with the vital information that Darrow had had experience in the training of clergymen. Darrow had had experience in many other clerical fields too—driving archdeacons well-nigh round the bend was only one of his more esoteric activities—but now is not the moment to expand on his buccaneering career in the Church. His purpose in calling at the vicarage that morning was to thank Alex for recommending him to the Bishop, but he wound up by delivering an insufferably priggish lecture on the theme that the ultimate prize for any priest—as a bigoted Anglo-Catholic he always called clergymen “priests”—could only be union with God.

  “How did I manage to keep a civil tongue in my head?” demanded Alex as soon as Darrow had stalked out. “I must be getting saintly in my old age! And to think that according to Lyle her husband remains one of Darrow’s most devoted admirers!”

  “Ashworth’s busy being an Army chaplain in North Africa. If he was trying to run an archdeaconry where Darrow was on the rampage, he’d soon modify his admiration, I promise you! What on earth will life be like at the Theological College once that pirate prances through the front door?”

  “I prophesy charismatic wonders, incense in the College Chapel and a collective nervous breakdown for the remaining staff. And talking of nervous exhaustion … Am I forgiven for speaking my mind to you about Grace last night?”

  “Of course.”

  “I really am sorry if I upset you, Neville.”

  “My dear Alex, let’s ring down the curtain on the scene and forget all about it!”

  “Very well, but before the curtain finally reaches the ground, may I just ask if you’re taking my advice about bearing Grace off on a second honeymoon?”

  “Drop the subject, Alex, there’s a good fellow—just drop it,” I said, brandishing a voice of steel alongside my friendliest smile, and he hastily began to talk of other matters.

  But that night in the bedroom I found myself saying to Grace: “How would you like a week’s rest before the school holidays begin? We could leave Primrose and Sandy in Manchester with Winifred and go to a hotel in the Lake District.”

  Grace, who had been brushing her hair, paused to stare at me in the triple mirror. “But is it still possible to take holidays there?”

  “I’m sure it is. Holiday-makers are only banned from the south and east coasts.”

  “But I couldn’t possibly leave Sandy with Winifred! He’d wear her out.”

  “Maybe she wouldn’t mind being worn out in order to give you a rest! After all, you’re always saying what a wonderful sister she is.”

  “Yes, but she’s not as patient as I am, and—”

  “No one’s as patient as you are with that little monster! Personally I think a touch of impatience now and then would do him no harm at all!”

  “But Neville—”

  “Why are you beating around the bush like this? The issue’s really very simple: Do you or don’t you want a second honeymoon?”

  “I suppose I’ll have to say I do, won’t I?”

  “For heaven’s sake!” I exclaimed, no longer making an effort to conceal my exasperation. “What sort of answer’s that?”

  “The sort of answer which I’m sure you require of a perfect wife.”

  “Grace, if you weren’t so constantly obsessed with perfection you wouldn’t make such ridiculous statements!”

  “I obsessed by perfection? But Neville, you’re the one who’s obsessed! You—chasing the prizes of life, never able to rest, never being satisfied—”

  “What rubbish—of course I’m satisfied! I’ve got the perfect wife, the perfect home, the perfect family—I’ve won all the ultimate prizes of life! Well, nearly all of them—”

  “Darling, listen to me.” Rising to her feet, she turned her back on the triple mirror and we faced each other. “I’m not a prize. I’m a person. I can’t just be kept in a glass case on a mantelshelf. I have to move in the real world, and in the real world I can’t be this perfect wife of your dreams. I do try to be—I keep trying and trying—I try so hard because I don’t want to disappoint you, but—”

  “You could never disappoint me.”

  “No? Supposing I tell you that I don’t want to go away to the Lake District unless we take Sandy and Primrose with us? Darling, we simply can’t dump them on poor Winifred for a week! It’s just not fair to her, and besides I wouldn’t enjoy myself—I’d spend my whole time worrying in case they were unhappy. I admit I do want a rest, but I’d much rather wait until our family holiday in July.”

  “Very well.” I turned away.

  “Neville—”

  “No need to say another word. You’ve spoken your mind and I still think you’re perfect. Happy ending. Now let’s ring down the curtain on the scene and forget I ever mentioned the idea,” I said in the most equable voice at my command, and withdrew at once to my dressing-room.

  5

  I found myself unable to concentrate on the evening office, and an attempt to pray proved futile. However when I eventually returned to the bedroom in my pyjamas, Grace said at once: “Darling, could we compromise? If we changed our plans and spent our family holiday in the Lake District instead of Devon, we could leave all five children with Winifred for the first forty-eight hours and have that little holiday alone together after all. I don’t think Sandy could destroy Winifred in two days, and since Christian and Norman are old enough to be helpful with the younger ones, I wouldn’t spend all my time worrying about how they were getting on.”

  “Splendid! I’ll cancel Devon immediately.”

  “We’ve left it rather late in the day to change our plans—and of course it would involve a longer journey just when the government’s telling us we shouldn’t travel unless we have to—”

  “We do have to—and I’m sure we can easily find a cottage to rent. I’ll look at the holiday advertisements in today’s Church Gazette.”

  She kissed me. “You’re not cross with me any more?”

  “My dearest love!” I said. “When hav
e I ever been cross with you?” And before either of us could answer that question I took her in my arms.

  6

  The letters began to arrive. Dido wrote as she talked: fluently, with eccentric punctuation. She used a pencil, which always began sharp and ended blunt, probably as the result of her copious underlinings.

  Dear Archdeacon,

  Before I bare my soul to you I must tell you all about my background so that you can see my troubles in some sort of illuminating perspective …

  I learnt that her father had made a fortune by profiteering during the First War and had consolidated his wealth by adventurous skulduggery in the City. He was currently chairman of an enterprise called the Pan-Grampian Trust and played golf regularly with various luminaries of the Bank of England in an effort to consolidate his hard-won respectability. In addition to his house in Edinburgh and his nine-bedroom flat overlooking Grosvenor Square he had not only the usual millionaire’s castle in the Highlands but a country mansion in Leicestershire, where his daughters had pursued their passion for hunting. His wife, however, never left Edinburgh.

  … poor Mother is a good person but very shy. How glad I am that I haven’t inherited this devastating handicap! Fortunately Father’s mistresses have all possessed gregarious dispositions in addition to superb connections in Society, so my sisters and I have been able to surmount the difficulties which were inevitably created by Mother’s beautiful retiring nature.

  Merry (that’s my sister Muriel, now Lady Wyvenhoe) and darling Laura (who became the Honourable Mrs. Anthony Fox-Drummond) and I (who’s so far become no one at all) were always invited everywhere, and since Father spent money like water on our coming-out, I can’t say I ever found it a handicap to be a jumped-up Scot—indeed quite the reverse, we were all regarded as exciting novelties and given a license to be entertaining. So no matter how outrageous we were, people just said: “Poor little things, they don’t know any better, but what a gorgeous breath of fresh air they are, blowing away all the boring cobwebs from London Society, let’s invite them to masses more balls and tea-dances and cocktail parties so that we can all continue to be madly amused!” So that was what happened and we were a simply enormous success, even when for a laugh we put on our Scottish accents, although of course our governess was told to make sure we knew how to talk like English ladies and in consequence we grew up bilingual.

  Anyway, Archdeacon dear, you may disapprove of me talking faultless English and so pretending to be what I’m not, but let me assure you that in every other respect I’m entirely honest. I always say to a new friend right from the start: “My father’s a self-made man (though one of Nature’s Gentlemen, of course) and my mother doesn’t go out and about in Society because she’s afraid she’ll be thought common (a fear naturally enhanced by her beautiful retiring nature)”—and once all that’s been said everyone relaxes because they know exactly where they stand and no one feels in the least deceived …

  In another letter she told me about her three brothers, all employed in her father’s financial empire, but I realised that since they were many years her senior they had played little part in her growing up.

  … but I’ve always been very close to my sisters—well, we had to stick together, you see, because since Father was so busy making money and my brothers were so busy at public school learning how to be English gentlemen and Mother was so busy being retiring, no one had much time for us except Blackboard our Governess (Miss Black) and even she was always wishing she was somewhere else, so Merry and Laura and I formed what we called The Triple Alliance in order to conquer the world and make everyone take notice of us. I was devastated, simply devastated, when Merry married that sporty bore Wyvenhoe, all polo and fishing and shooting thousands of poor little birds in August (I think he only married Merry to gain permanent access to Father’s grouse-moor). Her marriage destroyed our Triple Alliance and I knew things would never be the same again and I was right, they never were. She lives up in Leicestershire now, although of course she has a house in London, and I seldom see her. But I recovered from losing Merry. It was losing Laura that nearly killed me.

  Darling Laura was the light of my life, we were closer than most twins, only twelve months apart, we did everything together, everything, Merry was always the odd one out as she was two years older than Laura, three years older than me. Laura and I were presented at Court together and shared our first Season, and later the Prince of Wales (I’m sorry, I know he’s the Duke of Windsor now, but for me he’ll always be our gorgeous Prince of Wales)—he said he would have danced with both of us simultaneously if he had had two pairs of arms (my dear, Mrs. Simpson was simply seething!) and life was thrilling, such fun, how we laughed, and then Laura, darling Laura, fell in love with Anthony, and at first I minded dreadfully but after a while I told myself it was wicked of me to begrudge her such happiness, so I made up my mind not to be jealous of him, and once I’d done that I realised he was such a nice man, so sweet-natured, the son of a peer but really quite normal, and they got married in 1938 and they were so happy, living in London—which meant I could still see Laura every day—and then she started a baby and she was so thrilled—we were all so thrilled, even me, although I did have a little shudder at first at the thought of having to share her with yet another person—ugh! how contemptible of me, I despised myself for being so selfish!—and then …

  Disaster, tragedy, DEATH. Why do such things have to happen, why, why, why, I cried for days, I felt as if half of myself had been amputated and all the world seemed such a dark place without Laura’s special fight—and when I looked back at all the parties, all the champagne and the caviar, I could only think: Death always wins in the end. Oh, what a dreadful moment that was, so black, so brutal, so absolutely terrifying—and suddenly all my party memories seemed so sinister, I seemed to see a death’s-head grinning at every feast, and that was the moment when I knew parties would never be the same again because I would always be thinking: EAT, DRINK AND BE MERRY FOR TOMORROW WE DIE, and the word DIE would always remind me of horrors past and horrors still to come.

  Well, when I realised there was no escape from that terrible truth, no escape on the dance-floor, no escape in the saddle at a hunt, no escape among the cocktails at Grosvenor Square, I saw that the only thing to do was not to run away but to stand my ground and try to look Death straight in the face—and once I’d done that I knew I had to live, and when I say live I mean not frittering away time but using time profitably—I knew I had to find some way of life which was real, as real as Death, the toughest reality of all.

  At that moment the war arrived, and as I told you, I thought the answer was to join the Wrens, but that hasn’t worked out as I’d hoped. What I now find—and this is really most peculiar, in fact highly unnerving—is that the person I appear to be in public, the person everyone thinks I am, has nothing to do with my new true self. Everyone thinks—including you, I suspect, Archdeacon dear—that I’m still just a frivolous little piece of nonsense, but that old false selfs smashed to bits now, all the fragments are gone with the wind, and my current great task is to find the right life for my new true self and so make myself into a real person at last—because only when I become a real person, living in harmony with my new true self, will I be able to face that other real person, Death, on equal terms and not be afraid of him any more.

  Well, I know that all sounds rather turgid, so I’ll spare you further soul-searching by announcing that I believe I see the first step I have to take: I must get married. (I mentioned this when we met, but now I can explain the decision in its proper context.) The plain fact of the matter is (as I more or less implied earlier) that despite emancipation and women voting and being doctors and bus conductresses and so on, our society considers any woman who’s not married is a failure, and I think that if I’m to have a meaningful life and be truly me, I’ve got to be a success. I mean, I wouldn’t be happy otherwise, and how could I live meaningfully if I was miserable?

  Now, Arc
hdeacon dear, I know you were terribly original and said it could be fulfilling to be celibate (by which I assume you meant not only unmarried but chaste although I believe, strictly speaking, to be celibate merely means to be unmarried) but to be brutally frank I don’t think celibacy would suit me at all. I wouldn’t mind doing without sex, which has always seemed to me as if it must be quite dull in comparison with hunting—although darling Laura said it was all rather heavenly—sex, I mean, not hunting—after all, hunting’s really heavenly, no “rather” about it—and … oh bother, I’ve lost my way in this sentence, I’ll have to start again. I wouldn’t mind doing without sex (as I was saying) but I simply couldn’t bear the social stigma of being unmarried. But please don’t think I’m just enslaved by a rampant pride. You see, the one thing I’m good at is being social, so I feel sure that God’s calling me to be a social success, but of course now I realise it can’t just be the kind of facile self-centred success I used to enjoy when I was my old false self. It must be a meaningful social success—the social success of a wife who strives to help her husband (who of course must be a really worthwhile man) in his dynamic and outstanding career. Then I could feel useful and fulfilled knowing that he was feeling useful and fulfilled and I’m sure we’d both live happily ever after.