Ultimate Prizes. Susan Howatch
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God helps those who help themselves I had never agonized over the rightness of contraception; it had always seemed plain enough to me that it was my responsibility, not God’s, to protect my wife’s health, and so the question which bothered me most about contraception was not whether I should practise it but how it could be achieved. French letters may have been widely available since the end of the First War, but a clergyman can hardly be seen to purchase them. Nor can he seek help from his doctor who might be scandalized by such a questionable resolution of the Church’s murky official attitude.
I knew from the start of our marriage that the responsibility for regulating the arrival of children must be mine; it was inconceivable that Grace should be soiled by the knowledge which should belong only to fallen women, and after Christian’s birth I made the sensible decision to ignore the ancient religious disapproval of coitus interruptus. This form of contraception has a dubious reputation, but if one regards it as a discipline which is capable of developing one’s control and thus enhancing one’s performance, the obvious disadvantages soon cease to be intolerable.
I confess I didn’t practise this discipline all the time. That would have been too demanding, even for a man who enjoyed a challenge, but Grace’s monthly health was so regular that it was easy to work out when special care was required. After Christian’s birth in 1927, Norman arrived in 1930, James in 1933 and Primrose in 1937. No exercise in family planning could have been more successful, and that was why we were so shocked by Alexander’s conception. None of the other children had begun life as an accident.
After he was born I pulled myself together, made the necessary unpalatable deductions and began my travels in ‘mufti’ to the port of Starmouth to forage anonymously for French letters. I disliked these sordid expeditions very much. I felt they constituted conduct quite unbecoming to an archdeacon, but I refused to regard my behaviour as morally wrong and I had no doubt that Christ, who had held marriage in such high regard, would forgive these unsalubrious machinations to protect my wife’s health, maintain my emotional equilibrium and preserve my happy family life.
By this time that happy family life had become more than a little frayed at the edges, and although my new approach to contraception prevented further unravelling, I became conscious, as time passed, that the frayed edges were failing to repair themselves as swiftly as I had hoped. In fact by the May of 1942 when I met Dido I had begun to be seriously worried about Grace as she struggled to survive the stresses and strains of life at the vicarage.
It’s not easy being a clergyman’s wife. Parishioners make constant demands. Social obligations multiply. Her husband requires her support in a multitude of ways both obvious and subtle. Even in a peaceful country parish these responsibilities can be oppressive but we were no longer living in the country. The archdeaconry of Starbridge was attached to the benefice of St Martin’s-in-Cripplegate, a famous ancient church in the heart of the city, and I was also an honorary canon – a prebendary, as they were called in Starbridge – of the Cathedral. I knew everyone who was anyone in that city, and as my wife, Grace was obliged to know them too. Grace was a cut above me socially; her father had been a solicitor in Manchester, but people from the North can be intimidated by people from the South, and Starbridge, wealthy, southern Starbridge, was not a city where Grace could easily feel at home.
Alex had appointed me to the archdeaconry in 1937, shortly before Primrose had been born. Christian had been away at prep school but Norman and James had still been at home. Struggling with two active small boys, a newborn baby, a large old-fashioned vicarage, unfamiliar surroundings, a host of unknown parishioners and an increasingly elaborate social life, Grace had slowly sunk into an exhausted melancholy. Alexander’s arrival had been the last straw.
In vain I suggested remedies. I proposed extra domestic help, but Grace found it tiring enough to cope with the charwoman who came every morning of the working week. I offered to engage a live-in nursemaid instead of the girl who appeared in the afternoons to take the children for a walk, but Grace, who was the most devoted mother, could not bear to think of another woman usurping her in the nursery. I told her not to get upset if the house became a little dusty or untidy but Grace, who was a perfectionist, could not endure living in a home which was other than immaculate. Thus the melancholy exhaustion had persisted, aggravated when she was unable to live up to her impossibly high standards, and on the evening of the Bishop’s dinner-party she had been too depressed to attend.
‘I’ve nothing to wear,’ she said. ‘Nothing.’ I refrained from pointing out that this was inevitable so long as she persisted in spending all her clothing coupons on the children, but when I assured her that she would always look charming in her well-worn black evening frock all she said was: ‘I can’t face Lady Starmouth.’ This was an old problem. Lady Starmouth, effortlessly aristocratic, faultlessly dressed and matchlessly sophisticated, had long been a source of terror to Grace. I saw then that any further attempt at argument would be futile; I could only plan a suitable apology to offer the Ottershaws.
When I arrived home from the palace that night I was alone. Alex was staying with us, but he had lingered at the party, as befitted the guest of honour, and we had agreed earlier that we would return to the vicarage separately. As my wife was supposed to be suffering from a migraine it would have looked odd if I had failed to leave the palace early.
My key turned in the lock, and as soon as the front door opened I heard the baby howling. Seconds later Grace appeared at the top of the staircase. She was white with weariness and looked as if she had been crying. ‘I thought you were never coming home! I’m so worried, I can’t think properly – Sandy can’t keep his food down, won’t go to sleep, won’t stop crying, and I can’t bear it, can’t cope, can’t –’
‘My dearest love …’ As she staggered down the stairs into my outstretched arms and collapsed sobbing against my chest I thought of all the letters which I had written to her during our long courtship. After we had become secretly engaged I had always addressed her in my romantic correspondence by those same words. ‘My dearest love, today I finally put my schooldays behind me …’ ‘My dearest love, today I arrived in Oxford for the start of my great adventure …’ ‘My dearest love, today I finally gave up all thought of a career in the law, so I’m afraid I shall never make my fortune as a barrister …’ ‘My dearest love, I know young men aren’t supposed to marry on a curate’s salary, but if one takes into account the little income you inherited from your grandmother, I see no reason why we shouldn’t be together at last …’ How I had chased my prize of the perfect wife and what a delectable chase it had been! In fact the chase had been so delectable that I had even feared marriage might be an anti-climax, but fortunately I had soon realized there would be new prizes to chase on the far side of the altar: the perfect home, the perfect marital happiness, the perfect family life …
The baby, bawling above us in the nursery, terminated this irrelevant exercise in nostalgia. ‘My dearest love,’ I said firmly, ‘you really mustn’t let the little monster upset you like this! Go to bed at once and leave him to me.’
‘But he vomited his food – I think he might be ill –’
I finally succeeded in packing her off to bed. As she stumbled away I noticed that the hem of her nightdress had unravelled and for a second I knew I was on the brink of recalling Dido Tallent, smart as paint in her naval uniform, but I blocked that memory from my mind by invading the nursery.
Alexander was standing up in his cot and looking cross that he had been obliged to scream so hard for attention. He fell silent as soon as I entered the room.
‘I’m afraid this behaviour is quite impermissible,’ I said. I never talk down to my children. ‘Night-time is when we sleep. Noise is not allowed.’
He gazed at me in uncomprehending rapture. Here indeed was entertainment for a fourteen-month-old infant bored with his mother. I patted his springy brown hair, which reminded me of my brother Willy, stared straight into the blue eyes which were so like mine and picked him up in order to put him in a horizontal position on the sheet. He opened his mouth to howl but thought better of it. Instead he said: ‘Prayers!’ and looked so intelligent that I laughed. ‘That’s it!’ I said. ‘Prayers come before sleep.’ I felt his forehead