Ultimate Prizes - Susan Howatch

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of despair.

      ‘My dearest love …’ I suddenly realized that I too was in a state of extreme emotional distress. There was a knot of tension in my stomach and I was aware of a vague nausea which threatened to become acute. In the end all I could say in a stricken voice was: ‘You don’t really think of me as just a Yorkshire draper’s son on the make, do you?’

      Still crying she shook her head and flung her arms around my neck. Eventually she managed to whisper: ‘Forgive me.’

      I suddenly felt I could not bear her misery a second longer, and wanting only to terminate this truly appalling scene I said unevenly: ‘I’m the one who should be asking for forgiveness. My dearest love, tell me what I can do to make you happy again – I’ll make any sacrifice for your sake, I swear it.’

      Grace screwed her sodden handkerchief into a ball and gripped it so hard that her knuckles shone white. ‘Give up your archdeaconry. Give up Alex. And give up that double-faced little bitch who’s bent on ruining you.’

      I was silenced. As I automatically took a pace backwards she raised her head to look me in the eyes. ‘Well, you did say,’ she said in a shaking voice, ‘that you’d make any sacrifice.’

      ‘I’m sorry but in my vocabulary “to make a sacrifice” doesn’t mean “to commit professional suicide”.’ I got a grip on myself and managed to add in a calm polite voice: ‘I can’t resign my position as Archdeacon; I honestly believe I’m doing the work God’s called me to do. As for Alex, I’m sorry, but I can’t give him up; it would be the height of ingratitude after all he’s done for me. I’ll make an effort not to inflict him too often on you in future, but it’s quite unthinkable that I should ever say to him –’

      ‘And Dido Tallent? Don’t let’s pretend, Neville. I know you find her attractive. Wives always do know when their husbands’ attention strays in that particular way.’

      ‘If you think for one moment that I’ve ever done anything wrong with her –’

      ‘No, of course I don’t think that! I’ve lived with you for sixteen years and I know better than anyone what a very good, devout man you still are in spite of everything – and that’s exactly why this present crisis is such a nightmare. I feel you’re on the brink of going to pieces in some very profound way which I’m unable to understand.’

      ‘Going to pieces? Me? But my dear Grace, you’re the one who appears to be disintegrating!’

      ‘Yes, but I’m only disintegrating because you’re going to pieces! Neville, there’s something dreadfully wrong here, I’m sure there is, and to tell you the truth I don’t really believe our fundamental problem is my unhappiness. I think my unhappiness is just a symptom of something far more complex and sinister.’

      ‘You’re raving.’ Turning aside from her I replaced my collar and jacket. My Bible was lying on the bedside table. Trailing my fingers across the cover I said: ‘I’m not going to pieces. There are no fundamental problems in our marriage. The only difficulty I have to resolve is how I can make you happy again, and now, by the grace of God, I’m going to work out exactly what I have to do to put matters right.’ Picking up the Bible I headed for the door, and it was only when my fingers clasped the handle that I added casually over my shoulder: ‘Of course I’ll terminate my association with Miss Tallent. I can see clearly now that I’ve been in the wrong there, and I’m very sorry if my acquaintance with her has contributed to your unhappiness.’

      I made my exit. My mind was in chaos. In the hall I got in a muddle and dived down the wrong marble passage with the result that I left the house by an unfamiliar side-door. Skirting the kitchen garden I staggered through an orchard and steered myself around a succession of high yew hedges. I was just beginning to feel like one of Kafka’s characters, lost in some nightmarish metaphysical maze, when I found myself back in the rose garden – and there by the wishing-well stood my disciple, quite alone at last, dark hair combed and curled to perfection, dark eyes glowing with a bewitchingly artless delight as I found myself propelled down the grass path to her side.

      ‘Archdeacon dee-ah!’ she exclaimed, mimicking the drawing-room drawl of an earlier generation of society women. ‘How too, too lovely!’

      ‘I think not,’ I said, reaching the well. ‘Miss Tallent, I regret to have to inform you –’

      ‘What a ghastly phrase! That’s the sort of jargon people in trade use when they tell a customer that some important item’s going to be out of stock for six months! Now stop being so beastly pompous, Archdeacon dear, and let me tell you that your sermon this morning was quite wonderful and I was so proud of you and I felt so spiritually uplifted that I soaked two entire handkerchiefs! Isn’t life absolute heaven?’

      Without a second’s hesitation I said: ‘Yes, I feel as if it’s spring again after a long dull winter!’ And having delivered myself of quite the most reckless remark any married clergyman could have uttered to a flirtatious young woman, I abandoned my Bible on the parapet of the wishing-well and impulsively clasped both her hands in mine.

      ‘Passion cannot be eliminated: it can be kept uncontaminated, be sublimated, as the jargon of today would say.’

      CHARLES E. RAVEN

      Regius Professor of Divinity, Cambridge, 1932–1950 A Wanderer’s Way

      I

      The clasp lasted three seconds. Then, releasing her, I found myself muttering idiotically: ‘Sorry. Most unedifying. Thoroughly unseemly,’ and those adjectives, so well-worn by an earlier generation of clergymen, added an air of bathos to my horrified reaction; with a few antique words it seemed I had turned a silly slip into melodrama. Finally, to pile indignity upon indignity, I began to blush, and turning my back on Dido I grabbed my Bible from the parapet of the wishing-well. I instinctively knew that my hands should be fully occupied before they succumbed to a second catastrophic urge to wander.

      ‘Dearest Stephen!’ said Dido enthralled. ‘Why on earth are you apologizing? I can’t see anything wrong with an affectionate hand-clasp between friends!’

      All I could say was: ‘You promised not to call me by that name.’ I was still unable to look at her.

      ‘Archdeacon dear, please don’t be so upset! Of course I adore you passionately, but why should sex ruin our beautiful friendship? I’d never go to bed with any man unless I was married to him, and as I can’t marry you, you’re absolutely safe. Meanwhile you can have no possible desire to go to bed with me – how could you when your wife’s so much prettier and nicer than I am? – so that takes care of beastly old sex, doesn’t it, and leaves us free to enjoy our glorious romantic friendship as you guide me along my spiritual way!’

      ‘Miss Tallent,’ I said, ‘before I met you I’d have thought it impossible that a woman should be both very sophisticated and very naïve. May I congratulate you on achieving such a remarkable paradox? But I’m afraid the time has come when you must set your naïvety aside.’

      ‘Oh, I adore it when you’re being so stern and austere! Now Archdeacon dear, stop looking as if you’d like to spank me and calm down for a moment. I’m not in the least naïve; I’m the last word in down-to-earth common sense. If I don’t misbehave with you – and I’ve no intention of doing anything which would wreck our beautiful friendship – how can you misbehave with me? Adultery’s a two-way street.’

      I cleared my throat. ‘Not entirely. Theologically speaking –’

      ‘Oh good, I did so hope there’d be a fascinating theological angle – how delicious!’

      ‘Miss Tallent –’

      ‘Dearest Archdeacon, don’t worry. I’ll leave

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