Ultimate Prizes. Susan Howatch
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write and explain all the theological aspects of adultery!’
‘I won’t have time. I’m leaving on Wednesday for my holiday in the Lake District.’
‘Will you send me a postcard?’
‘No, that would be quite improper.’
‘But you’ll pray for me!’
I said in a voice of steel: ‘I pray regularly for all the souls in my care,’ but to my horror I realized I was smiling at her.
‘Well, so long as God’s brought into the situation we can’t go far wrong, can we?’ said Dido, smiling radiantly in return.
‘I think you’d better leave, Miss Tallent, before I really do give way to the urge to spank you.’
With a laugh she danced away from me across the rose garden.
II
Collapsing on the wrought-iron garden-seat, where earlier Lady Starmouth had declared with such incomparable style how very hard it was to be a clergyman, I clutched my Bible as if it were a life-belt and forced myself to face the unspeakable. I had fallen in love. Hitherto I had believed that only irrational women could succumb to the full force of an amour fou, yet here I was, collapsed in a heap, almost asphyxiated by the reek of red roses, and shivering with desire from head to toe. This was no middle-aged inconvenience. This was a passion of the prime of life. Nothing like it had ever happened to me before. I was appalled.
Automatically I started recalling my seven-year courtship of Grace, but although I had embarked on this period of my life in a fever of calf love my feelings had matured into a solid reliable devotion and I had never experienced the suspension of my rational faculties. On the contrary, I had plotted my marriage campaign with military precision, calculating down to the last farthing when I would be able to afford the trip to the altar, scheming how I might win my future father-in-law’s consent while I was still so young, rehearsing the necessary speech to my mother until I was word-perfect. By no remote stretch of the imagination could I describe myself as having been demented with love. In fact in the light of my present madness I was almost tempted to wonder if I had ever really loved Grace at all – but that was an insane thought which only indicated the disintegration of my reason. Of course I had loved Grace. I had adored her. She had been exactly the kind of wife I knew I had to have.
‘Such a fetching girl!’ said my mother benignly in my memory. ‘So quiet and refined – and with a hundred and fifty pounds a year of her own! Darling Neville, I couldn’t be more pleased …’
The memory terminated. Wiping the sweat from my forehead I pulled myself together and resolved to fight this monstrous insanity which had assailed me. Why was I loafing amidst the nauseating stench of roses and thinking of my mother? That was hardly constructive behaviour. I had to start planning how I could cover up the disaster as efficiently as a cat burying a mess, and while I was engaged in this vital task I had to pretend to the whole world – but especially to Grace – that I was my sane, normal self.
That was the moment when I remembered our forty-eight-hour second honeymoon which was due to take place before we embarked on our family holiday. Common sense, liberally garnished with a strong instinct for self-preservation, now told me that this was not the time, in the sixteen-year-old history of my perfect marriage, to spend forty-eight hours entirely alone with my wife. My most sensible course of action was to hide from her among the children as I shored up my defences and made myself impregnable to the violent assaults of my irrationality.
Leaning forward with my elbows on my knees I clasped my hands, squeezed my eyes shut and said to God silently in desperation: ‘Lord, help me, save me, protect me so that I can consecrate myself afresh to your service.’ Then I waited, trying not to feel as if I were whistling in the dark, but I experienced no easing of my fear and anxiety. Evidently my prayer was not going to be answered in any simple straightforward way, and at last, wiping the sweat again from my forehead, I nerved myself to return to the house.
III
‘Darling,’ I said to Grace as I entered the bedroom and found her struggling into an afternoon frock, ‘I feel I’ve been at fault in failing to realize how very unhappy you are when you’re separated from the children. Why don’t I start my task of making you happier by suggesting that we forget our little holiday alone together this week? Instead of leaving for Manchester on Wednesday we’ll travel north with all the children on Saturday and go straight to the cottage.’
She was pathetically grateful. ‘Well, if you’re sure you wouldn’t mind –’
‘Say no more. It’s settled.’ Having given her a kiss I eyed the frock and said: ‘You don’t really want to go down to tea, do you? I’ll say you have a migraine.’
‘Well, I know I look a fright after all those tears, but I hate the thought of putting you in an awkward position –’
‘That doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you should be happy. Are you sure you even want to go away on our family holiday? Perhaps you’d rather just stay at home and rest.’
‘Don’t be silly, I could never rest at home – there’s always so much to be done! No, I can hardly wait for the holiday – although now that we don’t have to abandon the children with Winifred I do wish it wasn’t too late to alter our plans again and go to Devon as usual.’
‘It’ll be fun to have a change.’
‘I’m not very good at changes,’ said Grace.
I thought: And not very good at fun either.
But that comment was contemptible and I despised myself for letting it loose in my consciousness.
It was then that I first began to have misgivings about our family holiday in the Lake District, but I had no premonition of disaster. I was no mystical dreamer, and as a good Modernist I didn’t believe in clairvoyance.
IV
Nine weeks after that fatal dinner-party at the Bishop’s palace Starbridge remained intact, but Canterbury had been battered as a reprisal for the RAF’s formidable raid on Cologne at the end of May. In both cities the cathedrals remained standing, monuments to hope in a world demented with the lust for destruction. Hitler, bogged down in Russia but boosted by Rommel’s victorious manœvrings in the Desert, had apparently in a fit of absent-mindedness turned over the Baedeker page which described Starbridge, but it was too soon to take our escape for granted, and meanwhile the ruins of Bath, York, Norwich, Exeter and Canterbury served to remind us of the nightmare which could still come true.
‘How wonderful it’ll be to escape from all thought of air-raids for two weeks!’ said Grace, but of course there was no real escape from the war. At the start of the school holidays, following advice from the Government, I warned the children about the dangers of playing with long metal tubes, metal balls with handles, canisters which looked like thermos flasks and glass bottles of every description. It seemed unlikely that we would come across unexploded bombs in the Lake District, but the Luftwaffe sometimes jettisoned their cargo in unexpected places, and I felt nowhere in England was completely safe.
Meanwhile on a more mundane level Grace had been struggling with the bureaucratic regulations attending the issue of the new ration-book which was to replace at the end of the month the three ration-books already in use. Rationing was on the increase. The children were aghast to hear that the supply of sweets was about to be limited, and as soon as the older boys returned from school they rushed out to splurge their pocket-money on tuppenny-ha’penny blocks of ration chocolate in defiance of the slogan ONLY ASK FOR IT IF YOU REALLY NEED IT. Neither Grace nor I had the heart to stop them. All chocolates and sweets were being removed from the automatic machines, and at fêtes and funfairs sweets were forbidden to be donated as prizes. The heavy hand of wartime government was closing upon us ever more tightly for the big squeeze. SAVE BREAD, we were exhorted and given fifty different