Kitabı oku: «Ultimate Prizes»

Susan Howatch

ULTIMATE PRIZES

COPYRIGHT

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1989

Copyright © Leaftree Ltd 1989

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constrains in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780006496915

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2012 ISBN: 9780007396429

Version: 2018-10-08

PRAISE

From the reviews:

‘This superbly intricate ecclesiastical tale … irresistible’

Church Times

‘A fascinating story’

Publishers Weekly

‘Howatch writes thrillers of the heart and mind … everything in a Howatch novel cuts close to the bone and is of vital concern’

New Woman

‘A mesmerising storyteller’

Daily Telegraph

‘One of the most original novelists writing today’

Cosmopolitan

‘She is a deft storyteller, and her writing has depth, grace and pace’

Sunday Times

CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

PRAISE

PART ONE: CRISIS

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

PART TWO: UNDER JUDGEMENT

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

PART THREE: SALVATION

ONE

TWO

THREE

KEEP READING

AUTHOR’S NOTE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

PART ONE CRISIS

‘It is in the failure to achieve integration … that personalities too often make shipwreck, either breaking down (physically or mentally) under the strain of conflict or abandoning any real desire for an effective synthesis.’

CHARLES E. RAVEN

Regius Professor of Divinity,

Cambridge,1932–1950

The Creator Spirit

ONE

‘Many of us have a hard fight to control our passions …’

CHARLES E. RAVEN

Regius Professor of Divinity,

Cambridge, 1932–1950

The Creator Spirit

I

The most appalling feature of the morning after I nearly committed adultery was my lack of surprise. I was scared out of my wits, racked by regret and almost prostrated by shame, but a virtuous amazement was notably absent. For some time my life had resembled a ball of wool kidnapped by a kitten, and now, after the preliminary unravelling, I was apparently experiencing the start of the inevitable tangled mess.

As we all know, adultery is far from uncommon, particularly in springtime and particularly among people in the prime of life, but it happens to be an activity which disqualifies me from my job; if a clergyman commits adultery he becomes spiritually disabled, unfit for further service. Even in that spring of 1945 when the entire population of England was no doubt gripped with the desire to celebrate the war’s end by wallowing in corybantic copulation, clergymen were still expected to keep their minds on God and their eyes on their wives. And why not? In my opinion such exemplary behaviour is the least that the Church of England should expect of its men. Everyone knows that all the best clergymen live in domestic bliss and never have an adulterous thought in their lives.

I was one of the best clergymen. I was forty-three years old and had already risen to a rank usually occupied by men in their fifties and sixties. ‘What is an archdeacon?’ my Germans had asked in their prison-camp on Starbury Plain, and when I had begun to explain how the diocese of Starbridge was divided into two archdeaconries, one of the Grade C men, the unrepentant Nazis, had exclaimed impressed: ‘Ah, so you’re the Bishop’s Gauleiter!’ I was sure I was no such thing, but the implication that I was a man of power and authority was true enough. As my Uncle Willoughby would have said, I had ‘Got On’ and ‘Travelled Far’ in my chosen profession, with the result that any possibility of moral failure was now quite unthinkable.

I thought about it. ‘Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall,’ St Paul had written to the Corinthians, and on the morning after I almost committed adultery I found these words had assumed a new and sinister immediacy.

I knew what I had to do: I had to repent (which I did, with every fibre of my being), pray for forgiveness (which would be granted because of my genuine repentance) and go on being the first-class archdeacon which I undoubtedly was. Yet when I sank to my knees I found the formula was failing to work. My repentance, though genuine, was ill-defined and ultimately ineffectual. I did not understand why I had wound up in such a mess, and without understanding, how could I promise that my appalling behaviour would never be repeated?

I remained kneeling, not chatting garrulously to God like some woolly-minded mystic, but trying to concentrate on the spiritual force of Christ as I struggled for enlightenment, and gradually I felt strong enough to face a very unpalatable truth. The main reason I was now in such a spiritual mess was because three years ago, in the May of 1942, I had met Miss Diana Dorothea Tallent.

With a shudder I began to recall that seductive first meeting with Dido.

II

The fatal dinner-party was given by my Bishop, Dr Ernest Ottershaw, at his episcopal palace in Starbridge. This statement evokes a grandeur which unfortunately, by that stage of the war, was little more than a memory. Gone were the lavish sophisticated dinner-parties of Dr Alex Jardine’s pre-war episcopate. Dr Ottershaw, who had succeeded Alex in 1937, offered a hospitality which wartime economies and the increasing dearth of servants had systematically drained of glamour.

Both wings of the palace were now closed. In the main section of the house the Ottershaws were cosseted only by the butler Shipton, a famous ancient monument, and by a couple of elderly maids who were obviously retained more for charitable than for utilitarian reasons. It was rumoured that Mrs Ottershaw had learnt how to boil an egg to present to her husband at supper on Sunday nights when the servants were resting their varicose veins, and it was even said she was keen to acquire more advanced culinary skills, but Shipton refused to countenance such ambition. He was still recovering from the Bishop’s attempt to learn to drive after the chauffeur had gone into the army – we were all still recovering from that well-meaning episcopal whim which had destroyed one of the palace gateposts – and Shipton, an archconservative, was firmly of the opinion that bishops and their ladies should never develop ideas below their station.

Heaven alone knows who had produced the food on the evening when I met Dido, but it was well in accord with the recent Government edict which proclaimed that no restaurant could charge more than five shillings for a meal or serve more than three courses. Rationing had become increasingly severe; in the dark mysterious stew which emerged from the episcopal kitchen, lonely chunks of meat could occasionally be glimpsed swimming alongside the potatoes and carrots. Pudding consisted of bottled plums covered by a sauce which Mrs Ottershaw tried to pass off as custard. She even said it contained a real egg, a disclosure which made me wonder if the Bishop had nobly volunteered to forego his Sunday supper that week. Fortunately the meal was redeemed by a claret provided by one of the guests, the Earl of Starmouth, who had a reputation for being benevolent to the clergy.

Lord and Lady Starmouth were the most aristocratic guests present but they were not the guests of honour. The dinner was being given for Dr Ottershaw’s predecessor, my mentor Alex Jardine, who had been living near Oxford since his premature retirement in 1937 and who was now visiting Starbridge to consult the official records of his episcopate; he was working on his autobiography. Alex was keen on claret and lukewarm towards Dr Ottershaw, two facts which led me to suspect that the Earl of Starmouth had provided the legendary St Estèphe not merely out of Christian charity but in a desire to ensure that the dinner-party fell well short of disaster.

The other guests consisted of the Dean and his wife, who were almost as old as the Ottershaws but not nearly so endearing, their neighbour in the Cathedral Close General Calthrop-Ponsonby, who could talk of nothing but the Boer War, the Ottershaws’ unmarried daughter Charlotte, now a Wren at the naval base in Starmouth, and Charlotte’s new friend, the former debutante of the year and the darling of the society gossip columnists, Miss Dido Tallent. Marooned improbably among so many nineteenth-century relics, she exuded such vitality that I was at once reminded of a diamond, glittering wickedly among a prim collection of pearls.

Like Charlotte Miss Tallent was serving in the navy, and as soon as I saw her I thought how appropriate it was that she should be able to call herself a Wren. She was slight, bright-eyed, quick, sharp and volatile. Her dark hair was immaculately waved, her sleek uniform swooped in and out of a dramatically small waist and her scarlet lipstick emphasized the whiteness of her teeth. She had a small bosom, but that was of no consequence to me. I’m not one of those men who are obsessed by the symbols of motherhood. I like legs. Naturally I was unable to see Miss Tallent’s legs from top to bottom, but one glimpse of her ankles inspired me to imagine firm gleaming thighs. In fact so absorbed was I by this potent fantasy that I barely heard Charlotte Ottershaw’s introduction and had to ask for the name to be repeated.

‘Haven’t you heard of me?’ exclaimed Miss Tallent amazed. ‘What a sheltered life you must lead!’

‘Archdeacons never lead sheltered lives!’ retorted Charlotte. ‘This one’s constantly roaming the north and west of the diocese in order to pounce on any clergyman who misbehaves!’

‘What happens in the south and east?’

‘Not much. The other archdeacon prefers to play croquet.’

‘What’s wrong with croquet? I adore all games with balls,’ said Miss Tallent in a formidably innocent voice, and gave me a very straight look with her impudent bright eyes.

I cleared my throat, wondered dizzily if the ambiguity had been intentional and asked myself why I was so suddenly unable to think of anything but sex. Who exactly was this fantastic creature? I had heard of her but my knowledge was sketchy because I never read gossip columns unless the sexton accidentally left his Daily Express behind on the churchyard bench; like all good clergymen I confined my excursions into the world of secular journalism to The Times. However with the aid of the sexton’s Express and the glossy magazines which nervous tension drove me to read in the dentist’s waiting-room, I had learnt that Miss Tallent moved in the best society despite the fact that her father was a self-made Scottish millionaire. I had of course long since dismissed her as a frivolous creature I would never meet, and yet here she was, in a bishop’s drawing-room – in my bishop’s drawing-room – giving me impudent looks and talking about balls. I could hardly have felt more confused if I had been confronted by one of Orson Welles’ invaders from Mars.

‘Dido, how can you possibly say you enjoy all games with balls?’ Charlotte was protesting, sublimely unaware, just as a bishop’s daughter should be, of the sensational double entendre. ‘Only the other day you remarked that cricket –’

‘Oh, don’t let’s start discussing English perversions! What did you say this distinguished clerical gentleman’s name was?’

‘Neville Aysgarth.’

‘Neville! How dreadful, I am sorry! Mr Chamberlain’s ruined that name for all time. I think you should be called Stephen, Archdeacon, after the Christian martyr. It has such noble, serious, earnest associations, and I can tell you’re noble, serious and earnest too, blushing at the mere mention of such a frivolous sport as croquet … Oh, there’s the exciting Bishop Jardine – introduce me, Char, quick, quick, quick! I’m simply passionate about controversial clerics …’

She skimmed away. After a while I became aware that Shipton was offering me a glass of sherry and I had to make an effort not to down the drink in a single gulp. Images of gleaming thighs and croquet balls chased each other chaotically across my mind until the Dean, buttonholing me purposefully, began to hold forth on his current nightmare: Starbridge Cathedral’s possible destruction. The Germans had recently announced plans to bomb every illustrious British city which had been awarded three stars in the Baedeker guide, and although Baedeker in fact never awarded more than two stars no one believed that this little inaccuracy meant the Nazis were joking. Three heavy raids on Exeter had damaged though not destroyed the Cathedral; Starbridge, not so many miles east of Exeter, was now in the front line.

‘Read any good books lately?’ I said when he paused for breath. The prospect of a blitzed Cathedral was so appalling that I preferred not to talk about it. The Dean might choose to relieve his anxiety by speaking the unspeakable, but I preferred to tell myself that once all precautions had been taken to minimize the damage there was no sense in agonizing over something which might never happen.

‘Books? Ah, it’s interesting you should ask me that …’ Diverted at last from his Cathedral the Dean began to talk about the fashionable Crisis Theology which was now sweeping through the English ecclesiastical ranks in a tidal wave of gloom and doom, but I soon ceased to listen. I was aware that Miss Tallent was trying to vamp my mentor while Alex appeared to be greatly enjoying the experience. His wife Carrie had not accompanied him to Starbridge, and Alex, a youthful sixty-three, was a past master at cultivating the amitié amoureuse, that peculiar pre-1914 relationship between the sexes in which close friendship was celebrated while sex remained taboo. I found this concept delectably erotic and only regretted that the changed moral climate currently made any attempt to achieve such a liaison far too liable to misinterpretation. Nowadays the only men who could safely take such a risk were men like Alex – a retired bishop well over sixty who could not conceivably be suspected of wrong-doing. On that evening in 1942 I had only just turned forty and any flirtation, even of the most innocent kind, was out of the question.

‘Neville dear,’ said my hostess Mrs Ottershaw, massive in moss-coloured velvet, ‘will you take Miss Tallent in to dinner before Dr Jardine bears her off and upsets Lady Starmouth?’

This was a shrewd request. Lady Starmouth, who looked about forty-five but was probably pushing sixty, was Alex’s closest platonic friend. She was watching Miss Tallent’s antics with an indulgent smile which was rapidly becoming glazed, but possibly she was merely trying to keep awake as General Calthrop-Ponsonby expounded on the siege of Mafeking.

‘Why did Bishop Jardine retire so early?’ Miss Tallent asked me as we advanced together to the dining-room, and after I had explained that a mild heart complaint obliged Alex to lead a quiet life she commented: ‘How boring for him! I suppose his wife has to toil ceaselessly to keep him entertained – or is she too antiquated to be amusing?’

‘Mrs Jardine’s not as young as she used to be, certainly, but –’

‘Poor thing! It must be awful to be old!’ said Miss Tallent with feeling, and as she spoke I perceived the source of her charm. She was curiously artless. She said exactly what she thought. Her sincerity, as she spoke compassionately about Carrie Jardine, was genuine. In the artificial world of high society this honesty, coupled with her vitality, would make her so striking that few people would notice how far she was from being pretty. In addition to her irregular features she had a white scar on the side of her forehead and a nose which looked as if it had been broken more than once in the past; by the end of the first course I was telling myself firmly that I had never seen such a plain girl before in all my life.

‘I expect you’re wondering how I got my broken nose and my fascinating scar,’ she said, tearing herself away from her other neighbour, the Earl of Starmouth, in a burst of boredom half-way through the stew. ‘I fell off a horse. I’ve fallen off lots of horses. I like to live dangerously.’

‘So do I,’ said the prim Archdeacon, chastely encased in his archidiaconal uniform. ‘That’s why I went into the Church. Charles Raven once wrote: “Religion involves adventure and discovery and a joy in living dangerously.”’

She was captivated. ‘Who’s Charles Raven?’

‘One of the greatest men in the Church of England.’

‘Singing my praises again, Neville?’ called Alex, teasing me from his position on the far side of the table.

‘Don’t be so naughty!’ said Lady Starmouth. ‘You heard the name Raven just as clearly as I did!’

‘The greatest man in the Church today must surely be William Temple,’ said Dr Ottershaw, naming the new Archbishop of Canterbury who had indeed dominated the life of the Church for decades.

‘Temple’s a very remarkable man,’ said Alex, ‘but I distrust his politics, I distrust his philosophy and I distrust his judgement.’

‘So much for the Archbishop!’ said Lady Starmouth as Dr Ottershaw looked appalled. ‘Now let’s hear you demolish Professor Raven!’

Alex instantly rose to the challenge. ‘How can one take seriously a churchman who favours the ordination of women?’

‘My dear Alex!’ I protested. ‘You can’t write off Raven on the strength of one minor eccentricity!’

‘Very well, I’ll write him off on the strength of his major eccentricity! How can one take seriously a churchman who in this year of grace 1942 is still a pacifist?’

‘But his pacifism proves he has great moral courage,’ said the Dean, unable to resist gliding into the debate, ‘and great moral courage should always be taken seriously. For example, none of us here may agree with Bishop Bell’s criticism of the government, but his moral courage is surely –’

‘Oh, we all know George Bell’s been soft on Germans for years,’ said Alex, ‘but I’d call that pig-headed foolishness, not moral courage.’

‘I must say, I rather agree,’ said Lord Starmouth, ‘although nevertheless one can’t doubt Bell’s sincerity. What do you think, Archdeacon?’

I said in my most neutral voice, the voice of an ecclesiastical diplomatist who was determined never to put a foot wrong in influential company: ‘Dr Bell’s a controversial figure and it’s hardly surprising that his views are hotly debated.’

‘Speaking for myself, I adore the Bishop of Chichester!’ said Dido, as if anxious to inform everyone that despite her ignorance of Professor Raven she knew exactly who Bell was. ‘He’s got such beautiful blue eyes!’

‘You’ve heard him preach?’ I said at once, hoping to discover an interest in church-going.

‘No, I heard him speak in the House of Lords ages ago about the internment camp on the Isle of Man – no wonder they say Bishop Bell makes Mr Churchill foam at the mouth! It’s all terribly Henry-II-and-Becket, isn’t it?’

‘Let’s hope Dr Bell doesn’t wind up a corpse on the floor of his Cathedral.’

The mention of the internment camp stimulated a discussion of the proposed camp for prisoners of war on Starbury Plain, and it was not until some minutes later that I had the chance to resume my private conversation with Miss Tallent.

‘Are you a member of the Church of England?’ I said, mindful that the Scottish father might have been a Presbyterian.

‘But of course! My father – being a self-made man – was most anxious that his children should have all the social advantages he never had!’

‘How amusing for you – and does the Church rank above or below Henley, Ascot and Wimbledon as a place where a successful society girl should take care to be seen?’

She laughed. ‘I’ve shocked you, haven’t I?’

‘No, fortunately for you I have a sense of humour. Do you ever actually go to church at all?’

‘How dare you imply I’m a heathen! Of course I go to church – I’m devoted to the Church – why, I go every Christmas, and I never miss any of the vital weddings and christenings in between!’

I at once spotted the omission. ‘What about the funerals?’

The vivacity was extinguished. Her plain, impertinent little face was shadowed and still. After a pause she said flatly: ‘The last funeral I attended was the funeral of my favourite sister. She died in 1939. After that I vowed I’d never go to another funeral again.’

I saw her wait for me to make some banal religious response, but when I remained silent she added unevenly, ‘She died after childbirth. The baby died too. Afterwards I felt as if someone had chopped me to pieces. I’m still trying to stitch myself together again.’

‘Easier said than done.’

‘Yes, sometimes I think I’ll never get over it. At first I thought that the war would be a ghastly sort of blessing as it would give my life a purpose – I saw myself as a noble heroine, sacrificing my comfortable life in order to join the navy and fight Hitler – but of course I was just being stupid. I’m not required to be noble. I’m just a chauffeuse at the naval base. I have a wonderful social life, heaps of friends – and every day I despair because life seems so pointless and unheroic.’

‘Heroism comes in many shapes and forms. Your heroism may lie in the fact that you’re struggling on, day after day, even though you’re bored and miserable. I think you’re being very brave – and I also think that if you keep struggling you’ll eventually break through into a more rewarding life.’

She stared at me. Her bright eyes were now opaque, suggesting endless layers of mystery beneath the artless candour of her conversation. All she said in the end was: ‘I wish I’d met you after Laura died.’

Recognizing the oblique appeal I said at once: ‘You must tell me about Laura,’ but at that moment we were interrupted by Alex, who was keen to lure Miss Tallent back into the general conversation, and her opportunity to confide in me was lost.

At last the stewed plums and the extraordinary custard were either consumed or abandoned, the ladies withdrew and the gentlemen, with the exception of General Calthrop-Ponsonby who had been mercifully reduced to silence by the legendary St Estèphe, began to talk in a desultory manner about current affairs. I was afraid the Dean would start talking about the Baedeker raids again, but instead he showed signs of wanting to resume our earlier theological discussion. I wondered if I ought to warn the Bishop that the Dean was drifting dangerously towards neo-orthodoxy. In my experience conversions to Crisis Theology – or indeed even to the more moderate forms of neo-orthodox thought – inevitably meant fire-and-brimstone threats from the pulpit and much embarrassing talk about sin, not at all the sort of clerical behaviour which would be welcomed by the visitors who attended services in the Cathedral.

‘… of course Niebuhr’s modifying Barth’s theology in important ways … If Hoskyns were alive today …’

I broke my rule about allowing myself only one glass of port, and reached for the decanter to drown my irritation.

By the time the Bishop led his flock to the drawing-room I was sagging beneath the impact of the Dean’s enthusiasm, but as I crossed the threshold my spirits revived. Miss Tallent pounced on me. My pulse-rate rocketed. I was aware of a reckless urge to take risks.

‘Will you think me terribly fast,’ said this dangerous creature whom I knew very well I had a duty to avoid, ‘if I invite you to walk with me to the bottom of the garden and gaze at the river? I feel I need a calm beautiful memory to soothe me during the next air-raid on Starmouth.’

‘What a splendid idea!’ I said. ‘Take me away at once before the Dean begins a new attempt to convert me to Crisis Theology!’

Could any response have been more inappropriate for a dedicated archdeacon?

‘What’s Crisis Theology?’ demanded Miss Tallent as we drifted discreetly outside on to the terrace. ‘It sounds thrilling!’

‘Do I look thrilled?’

‘No, you look wonderfully serene and austere – in fact I was thinking just now in the drawing-room how simply miraculous it is to stumble across a man who’s not utterly beastly. Speaking confidentially, Archdeacon dear, I’ll confess to you that the main reason why I’m not married is because men are in general so utterly beastly to women …’

By this time we had left the terrace and were wandering across the unkempt lawn towards the river which glittered beyond the willows. The moonlight was very bright. I thought of the Baedeker raids, and for a split second I prayed for Starbridge, perhaps under sentence of death for the crime of being beautiful, for the sin of earning two stars in a famous travel guide.

‘… and in fact I wouldn’t mind not marrying at all, but of course a woman has to be married if she wants to be a success in life, and I burn to be a success. So what am I to do? I’m twenty-seven years old. I’ve got to take action soon or I’ll wind up a spinster, and one can’t be a successful spinster, it’s a contradiction in terms. I did think of being a successful nun, but they keep such peculiar hours and I’m sure I’d hate being deprived of my silk underwear –’

‘I agree it does sound as if you’re not called to celibacy in the cloister –’ I somehow managed not to dwell on the image of Miss Tallent in her silk underwear – ‘but plenty of women are called to celibacy in the world and manage to live happy, successful, productive lives. The big question here is not, as you seem to think: how will society judge me if I don’t marry, but: what kind of life does God require me to lead?’

‘As far as I can make out, God just wants me to loaf around Starmouth fending off passes from drunken sailors.’

‘Fine. Keep loafing and fending and I’m sure the way ahead will eventually become dear.’

‘But dearest Archdeacon –’

Despite the drunken sailors I can’t quite understand why you’re so convinced most men are beastly to women.’

‘Well, it’s all that pawing and pouncing, isn’t it? Heavens, why I haven’t been pounded into dust years ago I really can’t imagine, and it’s entirely because most men can think of nothing but sex – sex, sex, sex, sex, sex – and it ruins everything, simply ruins it, and sometimes it all seems so sad I want to cry. But I’ll tell you this, Archdeacon dear: if I ever do marry it’ll be to someone high-minded who won’t just look at me and think: “What a nice pair of legs!” I can’t possibly settle for a man who isn’t high-minded, not possibly, anyone low-minded is quite unthinkable.’

‘If a man loves you he’ll see far beyond your legs. I mean – good heavens, what am I saying –’

‘But how do I know if a man loves me, Stephen? You don’t mind if I call you Stephen, do you, it’s such a good pure noble high-minded name –’

‘Miss Tallent, I hate to say this, but I think you’d be bored to death by someone high-minded. Think of that prig Arabin in Barchester Towers! Everyone agrees he’s quite the most tedious hero in Victorian literature.’

‘But if it’s a question of choosing between someone high-minded and someone who’s sex-mad –’

‘Why choose? Why not have someone high-minded and sex-mad?’

‘Heavens, what an amazing suggestion! But does such a man exist?’

‘The human race is infinitely diverse.’ I glanced back over my shoulder at the house. ‘Well, now that we’ve seen the garden by moonlight perhaps we should –’

‘But I want to go down to the river! I want to sit on that wooden seat underneath the willows and have an enthralling discussion with you on the heroes of Victorian literature!’

I looked at the wild garden shimmering in the pale light. I looked at the willow trees, swaying against the night sky. I looked at the glittering water of the distant river. I looked into the land of countless fairy-tales where the hero is changed from a frog to a prince by the casual wave of a magic wand, and I said: ‘Well, all right. But only for five minutes.’

As I had already confessed to her, I liked to live dangerously.

III

The river curled around Starbridge in a loop to divide the city from the suburbs, but at the point where the water glided past the Cathedral Close there were no buildings on the opposite bank, only water meadows, woods and farmland. The inter-war building developments had taken place on the other side of the city where there was no river and no need to build expensive bridges. The water meadows and fields, owned by the Dean and Chapter, were leased to the nearest farmer and bore silent witness to the fact that Starbridge, though a county town, was not an industrial centre driven to expand in all directions. The countryside remained unspoilt beyond the river, and the line of willows at the bottom of the Bishop’s garden completed the illusion that we stood many miles from a city.

‘This was a great garden in Bishop Jardine’s day,’ I said as we sat down on the ancient bench by the riverbank. ‘But when the gardeners went into the army Dr Ottershaw had no alternative but to sanction a wilderness.’

‘Much more exciting! I think the garden in Tennyson’s Maud could have been a wilderness, all tangled and steamy and exotic –’

‘I wouldn’t have thought a modern young woman like you would be interested in Victorian literature.’

‘It was the only thing our stupid governess knew about.’

‘You never went to school?’

‘No, and if I had I’m sure I’d have run away and begun my outrageous society life much earlier – with the result that I’d now be worn out. In fact if I’d been the heroine of a Victorian novel –’

‘Oh, you’d have died of consumption by now, no doubt about that,’ I said, making her laugh, and we began to talk of all the literary heroines who had paid the price demanded by society for the flouting of convention.

The conversation glided on, just like the river, glinting, glittering, gleaming, a hypnotic pattern coalescing into a unity beneath the white bright slice of the moon. Time glided on too, the time which should have been spent in the drawing-room, and every few minutes I told myself we should return to the house. Yet I never moved. The fairy-tale in which I was travelling had become more clearly defined; I now realized I was enacting the role of a male Cinderella and that when the clock began to strike twelve I would be compelled to flee from my princess, but meanwhile I preferred not to think of those inevitable midnight chimes. I thought instead how amazing it was that I, entombed in my sedate cathedral city, should be enjoying a scintillating dialogue with a society girl, and beyond my amazement lurked the absurd satisfaction that I, Norman Neville Aysgarth, the son of a Yorkshire draper, should be conversing in a palace garden with a millionaire’s daughter who had danced with the former Prince of Wales. I always tried hard not to slide into the repellent snobbery of the social climber, and of course I knew a good clergyman should be quite above such embarrassingly worldly thoughts, but the night was very beautiful and Miss Tallent was very amusing and I was, after all, only human.

The metaphorical midnight arrived so suddenly that I jumped. Far away by the house Charlotte Ottershaw called: ‘Dido! What have you done with Neville?’ and I saw my fairy-tale draw to a close.

‘I’ve ravished him!’ yelled Miss Tallent, and added crossly to me: ‘What a bore! Now we’ll have to return to the drawing-room.’

‘And I must be getting home.’ In my imagination I heard Cinderella’s clock relentlessly chiming the hour.

‘Must you? Already? But why?’

The moment had come. I had reached the point in the fairy-tale when Cinderella had been reclothed in her rags after her unforgettable night at the ball. ‘Miss Tallent,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry, I should have told you earlier but I’m hardly at liberty nowadays to keep late hours with charming young ladies. I have a wife waiting for me at my vicarage. We’ve been married sixteen years and have five children.’

For one brief moment she stared at me in silence. Then heaving a sigh of relief she exclaimed: ‘Thank God! Now I shall never have to worry about you pouncing on me, shall I? After all, what could possibly be safer than a married clergyman with five children?’

‘What indeed?’ I said, smiling at her, and that was the moment when I realized what a prize she was, so clever, so stimulating, so attractive, so rich, so celebrated and – most alluring of all – so utterly beyond my reach. The familiar powerful excitement gripped me; I was always deeply stirred by the sight of a great prize waiting to be won. Then I pulled myself together. This prize at least could never find its way into my collection. There was no other rational conclusion to be drawn. In my politest voice I said: ‘It’s been a great pleasure to meet you, Miss Tallent. I doubt if our paths will cross again, but I shall certainly pray that you find the happiness you deserve.’

‘Don’t be silly!’ She was aghast. ‘Isn’t it patently obvious that our paths are already divinely interwoven? As soon as you told me at the dinner-table that I was heroic I knew God had sent you to my rescue! Now look here. I want to begin a meaningful new life: I want to be good, I want to be wise, I want to be Christian. You can’t just say blithely: “I doubt if our paths will cross again,” and sail away into the night! Of course I know how busy you must be and naturally I wouldn’t want to take up too. much of your time, but if you could just write me a little spiritual note occasionally –’

‘But my dear Miss Tallent –’

‘You see, I feel I’ve reached the time of life when I simply must have a spiritual adviser. You can write and explain God to me – oh, and you must tell me all about Professor Raven and Bishop Bell and Archbishop Temple and all the really vital people whom I ought to know about – and that reminds me, talking of vital people, I’d simply adore to meet your wife. May I call at the vicarage tomorrow?’

I cleared my throat. ‘How kind of you to offer, but unfortunately my wife’s unwell at present. That’s why she didn’t accompany me this evening.’

‘What a pity! But perhaps next time I’m in Starbridge –’

‘I’m sure she’d be delighted to meet you,’ I said, diplomacy personified, but I already knew that Grace wouldn’t care for Miss Dido Tallent at all.

IV

No doubt I have now succeeded in conveying the impression that I’m a sex-obsessed, claret-mad, world-fixated ecclesiastic who deserves to be defrocked without delay. One always runs the risk of creating a false impression when one sets out for the purest of motives – honesty and humility – to portray oneself ‘warts and all’; the warts have a habit of commandeering the artist’s canvas. Let me now try to redress the balance.

First, I doubt if I’m more obsessed by sex than the average man. I admit this mythical ‘man on the Clapham omnibus’, as the lawyers call him, probably spends too much time thinking about sex, but the point I’m trying to make is that I doubt if I’m in any way abnormal when I meet an attractive woman and find myself picturing gleaming thighs. Nor need these harmless fantasies signify a tendency to immoral behaviour. A childhood spent among ardent chapel-goers ensured that I learnt early in life about the wages of sin, and out of an acute desire to avoid these terrible deserts I later acquired immense self-control in sexual matters. As a young man I was earnest, idealistic and chaste (more or less; one really can’t expect adolescent boys not to masturbate). Grace had been my first and indeed my only woman – apart from a disastrous lapse before my marriage when I had been an undergraduate up at Oxford. Embarrassment prevents me from disclosing much about this incident, so I shall only say that it followed my introduction to champagne and that the female was a shop assistant at Woolworth’s. From that day to this I can never cross the threshold of any branch of Woolworth’s without experiencing a small secret shiver of shame.

The truth is that on moral issues I hold views which are currently held to be old-fashioned. I believe fornication is degrading to women, who should be treated with the utmost reverence as befits their unique contribution to humanity as wives and mothers. Adultery I look upon not merely as a moral error but as a crime, breaking sacred promises, destroying trust, poisoning love, wrecking the lives not only of the guilty but of the innocent. Sex is like dynamite. If it is used in the right place and at the right time the results can be beneficial, but unless the proper regulations are observed there can only be a disastrous explosion. Those people who indulge in sexual activity as casually as they would down a couple of cocktails are always the sort of people who would find it amusing to play with matches in a bomb factory. As a clergyman I would be guilty of a most unchristian lack of charity if I bounded around yelling ‘Stupid!’ at all these fools, but I do find it an effort sometimes to treat the perpetrators of such mindless incidents – as a Modernist I won’t use that Victorian word ‘sinners’ – with compassion.

My strict attitude to sexual licence extends to the human race’s other pastime which causes so much trouble: drink. The Primitive Methodists of my childhood used to thunder away on that subject with as much verve as they devoted to sexual immorality, so it was hardly surprising that I became a most abstemious young man. In fact my catastrophic initiation into the pleasures of champagne up at Oxford shocked me so much that not another drop of alcohol passed my lips until the day I told Uncle Willoughby that I was going into the Church, but contrary to what the preachers had always proclaimed, this benign brush with whisky failed to consign me to perdition. I was much too poor to afford whisky regularly, and moreover as soon as I became a clergyman I knew I had to be careful in my drinking habits. Successful clergymen never drank spirits. Even as time passed and my tastes became more sophisticated I always made it a rule to drink moderately, and although I concede that on the evening of my meeting with Dido I bent this rule by tossing off an extra glass of port, this was an exceptional, not a commonplace, lapse.

I never drink twice a day. I do smoke, I admit, but never in public and only in my bedroom, usually after sexual intercourse. I like eating, but only wholesome food such as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. I was brought up to believe that frivolous snacks, such as chocolate, stimulated the sin of gluttony and constituted an unforgivable extravagance. It was only when I was a young man courting Grace that I finally dredged up the nerve – and the money – to rebel against this austerity. I took Grace to the cinema and bought a box of chocolates. I can still remember the fearful guilty thrill of watching Clara Bow oozing ‘It’ as I sank my teeth into a sumptuous peppermint cream.

Now, no doubt, I’ve created the impression that I’m not a rake worthy of defrocking but a prig worthy of a kick on the bottom. How hard it is to get the balance of a self-portrait right! Let me stress that I try very hard not to be priggish. Christ came into this world to be at one with us, not to stand apart and look down his nose at our antics, and as a Liberal Protestant who believes strongly in the centrality of Christ I can hardly ignore the example he set. Certainly, despite my strict views on morality, I never feel morally superior. How can I, when every time I pass a branch of Woolworth’s I remember that I’m as prone to error as anyone else? Moreover although I have strict moral standards I don’t consider myself strait-laced, and I suggest that anyone who does consider me a trifle on the sober side has no idea what being strait-laced is all about.

Being strait-laced, as anyone brought up among strict Nonconformists knows, means not only spurning extra-marital sex, chocolates and the demon drink but avoiding the theatre, the cinema, the wireless, playing cards and novels. I have insufficient time and money to go often to the cinema or the theatre nowadays, but I enjoy playing cards with the children and I never miss the broadcast of ITMA, that most perfect of comedy programmes. I also read modern novels for relaxation. I may not read about sex in the News of the World; that would be dabbling with prurient trash. But I do read about sex in the work of D. H. Lawrence; that, I submit with all due respect, is keeping abreast of modern literature.

Grace enjoyed reading in the old days, but by 1942 her life as an archdeacon’s wife and the mother of five children barely allowed her enough time to open a book. At this point I must state unequivocally that Grace was the most wonderful woman in the world and the best possible wife for a clergyman and I adored her. I do want to make that absolutely clear. For sixteen years we had enjoyed the most perfect married life without a single cloud marring the marital sky. At least, if I’m to be entirely accurate, I have to admit little wisps of cloud did occasionally appear but they seldom lasted long. Even the most perfect marriages have to suffer little wisps occasionally. One is, after all, obliged to exist in real life and not between the pages of a romantic novel.

Garnishing my perfect marriage, like gilt lavishly bestowed upon the gingerbread, were my perfect children. I know that as their parent I may be judged hopelessly prejudiced, but people outside the family did constantly comment on my offsprings’ good looks, good manners, high intelligence and remarkable charm, so I venture to suggest I can’t be entirely deluding myself. Needless to say, it was a matter of the very greatest satisfaction to me that I had succeeded in winning two of the ultimate prizes of life: a perfect marriage and a perfect family.

Now I suppose I sound smug, worthy of another kick on the bottom, so let me add honestly that family life did have its ups and downs. However the problems never seemed insuperable and the children never seemed intolerable. My favourite was Primrose, who I thought quite beautiful, although I know men always view their daughters through rose-tinted spectacles, particularly when they have only one daughter to view. Grace and I had called her Primrose in memory of the first flower I had given Grace many years before at St Leonards-on-Sea, the genteel resort on the Sussex coast where my mother had spent her widowhood in the company of my sister Emily. My brother Willy and I had never lived at St Leonards; we had been boarded out in London in order to receive our education, but three times a year, at Christmas, Easter and in the summer, Uncle Willoughby had given us the money for the train journey to Sussex, and it was on one of these seaside holidays that I had met Grace, who was visiting cousins. I was seventeen; she was two years younger. When I gave her the primrose she kept it, pressed it, framed it and finally gave it to me on our wedding night seven years later. Even now the memento still hung over our bed. In view of this flagrant – but not, I suggest to any revolted cynic, unusual – sentimentality, it was hardly surprising that we should have decided to call our first daughter Primrose, and finally after the advent of Christian, Norman and James, Primrose made her grand entrance into the world. Our perfect family was now complete. All that remained for me to do was to work out how I was going to pay for the public-school education of three sons.

It was at this point that one of those little wisps of cloud appeared in the sunlit marital sky, and unlike all the other little wisps in the past this one failed to fade away. Grace and I discovered to our shock that Primrose had not after all completed our perfect family, and in 1941 Alexander (named after my mentor Bishop Jardine) arrived at the vicarage.

When I had finished accepting the will of God, just as a good clergyman should, I decided I would have to adopt a much more rigorous approach to contraception. This subject, I need hardly add, is one of the most awkward matters with which a clergyman can ever become involved. As far as I can gather, everyone in the Church practises contraception, even bishops, but no one in a clerical collar will ever admit to such behaviour because the Church can never surmount its ancient conviction that interfering with procreation is a bad thing. The last Lambeth Conference had barely softened this negative attitude, and a vast amount of hypocrisy had attended the debates on married life. It was noticeable that those bishops who thundered most eloquently on the evils of contraception were always the celibates. The married bishops with their neat little families of two or three children tended to sink into a deafening silence.

Having been brought up to believe 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 casually but it was obvious he had no fever and I suspected he had only vomited out of a desire to discover how much fuss he could create. As he watched fascinated I recited the Lord’s Prayer for him, said firmly: ‘Good night, Sandy,’ and retired to examine the picture of Peter Rabbit which hung on the far wall. After a while I glanced back over my shoulder and when I saw he was watching me I exclaimed: ‘How quiet you are! Well done!’ At that point he smiled and allowed his eyes to close. I was still taking another long look at Peter Rabbit when I heard the welcome sound of even breathing and knew I could safely creep away.

‘The Kraken sleeps,’ I said to Grace as I joined her in our bedroom. By this time she was dry-eyed but very pale.

‘How on earth did you do it?’

‘I let him know who was the boss. Sometimes I think you’re too soft with him.’

‘I’m not soft with him! I’m just a normal loving mother, and if you’d ever had a normal loving mother yourself –’

‘My mother adored me.’

‘Well, I suppose she did in her own peculiar way, but –’

‘Grace, is this really the moment to start talking about my mother?’

‘It’s never the moment to start talking about your mother!’

‘Then why drag her into the conversation?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry–’ Once more Grace dissolved into tears.

Guilt smote me. ‘My dearest love … forgive me …’ Sinking down on the bed I kissed her in despair but when the tears continued I announced: ‘I’m going to say my prayers,’ and escaped to the dressing-room. For ten seconds I concentrated on breathing deeply. Then having steadied my nerves I stripped off my clothes, stood naked in the middle of the floor and stretched myself until my muscles ached. This manœuvre also proved soothing. When I shed my clerical uniform I felt younger, more flexible, possibly more light-hearted, certainly more adventurous. Perhaps women undergo a similar psychological liberation whenever they shed their corsets.

Having donned my pyjamas I said my prayers at a brisk pace, gave the Bible a thoughtful tap, stared into space for two minutes and came to the conclusion that my next duty was to embark on a ministry of reconciliation. Accordingly I extracted the necessary item from the locked box at the back of the wardrobe and returned to the bedroom.

Grace had dried her eyes. That boded well. She had also brushed her hair. That boded well too. Grace had long straight dark hair which during the day she wore twisted into a coil on the top of her head. That was how she had worn her hair when her mother had first allowed her to abandon her pigtails, and I had never allowed her to wear it in any other way. During the 1920s she had wanted to cut her hair short but I had said: ‘Why destroy perfection?’ and the crisis had passed. Later, in the 1930s, she had wanted to curl her hair, but that idea too I had refused to countenance; I had always felt that Grace’s delicate Edwardian look was the last word in beauty and elegance. She was five foot four inches tall, a height which was perfect because even when she was wearing high-heeled shoes there was no risk of her being taller than I was. Even after bearing five children she was still remarkably slender and graceful – not quite as slender as she used to be, certainly, but then one really can’t expect one’s wife to look like a young bride after sixteen years of married life.

As soon as I returned to the bedroom she said in her calmest, most sensible voice: ‘Darling, I’m very, very sorry. How boring for you to come home to such a tiresome scene! How was the dinner-party?’

I was conscious of a relief of gargantuan proportions. My wife was being perfect again. All was well. ‘Oh, dreadfully dull,’ I said, sliding into bed and giving her a kiss. ‘I envied you missing the meal. There was a most extraordinary custard which was supposed to have had an egg in it.’

‘What sort of an egg?’

‘Mrs Ottershaw wasn’t saying.’ I switched off the light.

‘Was Charlotte there?’

‘Yes. With a friend.’

‘A man? How exciting! I do hope Charlotte gets married!’

‘Unfortunately it was just another Wren. And General Calthrop-Ponsonby was there, still breathing fire against the Boers, and Mrs Dean was holding forth about the Girl Guides as usual while her husband tried to convert me to Crisis Theology or neo-orthodoxy or whatever one wants to call the latest variation on the theological rubbish fathered by Karl Barth –’

‘How glad you must have been to get home!’

‘I’m always glad to get home,’ I said, unbuttoning the flies of my pyjamas.

‘Darling, I really am sorry I was so awful earlier –’

‘No need to say another word about it. We’ll ring down the curtain on the scene, pretend it never happened and celebrate your splendid recovery. At least … you have recovered, haven’t you, darling?’

‘Oh yes!’ she said at once. ‘I’m fine now. Everything’s absolutely fine, just as it always is.’

A vast relief overwhelmed me again as I prepared to bring my ministry of reconciliation to a triumphant conclusion.

It never even occurred to me that I might be grossly deluding myself.

TWO

‘First loves do not always keep their glamour.’

CHARLES E. RAVEN

Regius Professor of Divinity,

Cambridge, 1932–1950

A Wanderer’s Way

I

I had just stubbed out my post-coital cigarette when I heard the front door close in the distance and realized that Alex had returned from the palace. Beside me Grace had already fallen asleep. Leaving the bed I pulled on my discarded pyjamas, grabbed my dressing-gown and padded downstairs to attend to my guest.

Alex had paused to read the headlines of the Starbridge Weekly News which had been delivered that morning and abandoned on the hall chest. He was a man of medium height, just as I was, but we had different builds. I’m stocky. He was thin as a whippet and as restless as a cat on hot tiles. His thinning grey hair was straight, sleek and neatly parted. His ugly yellowish-brown eyes radiated an impatient vitality which was defiantly at odds with the heavy, sombre lines about his mouth. As always he was immaculately dressed.

‘Would you like some tea before you turn in, Alex?’

‘A corpse-reviver would be more appropriate! Why on earth did Ottershaw invite that old bore Calthrop-Ponsonby?’

‘I think he feels sorry for him.’

‘How typical! Ottershaw would even feel sorry for a man-eating tiger who wanted to eat him for breakfast … How’s Grace?’

‘Sleeping.’

‘Hm.’ He dropped the newspaper abruptly on the hall chest. ‘Can we go into your study for a moment, Neville? I’ll decline your kind offer of tea but there’s something I’d like to say to you.’

Obediently I led the way across the hall. I was anxious to return to bed as I was now very tired, but Alex was not only my present friend but my past benefactor and I always made every effort to oblige him.

I had first met him in 1932 when he had become the Bishop of Starbridge. Having long since decided that it was best to live in the South if one wanted to Get On and Travel Far, I had pulled all the Oxonian strings at my disposal and sought ordination from Alex’s predecessor Dr Hargreaves who had been scholarly, moderate in his Protestantism, tolerant of Modernist thought – and in fact exactly the type of leader I had had in mind when I had been called to enter the Church. Eventually I had become a curate in a village only two miles from Starbridge, and every morning I had been able to look out of my bedroom window at the distant Cathedral spire as it soared triumphantly upwards, symbolizing my high hopes for the future.

After my curacy I had been appointed Rector of Willowmead, a picturesque market-town in the north of the diocese, and it was here, after Dr Hargreaves’ death in 1932, that Alex had entered my life.

I disliked him at first. He was abrupt to the point of rudeness, but I discovered later that he had had many problems on his arrival in the diocese and the strain of solving them had temporarily taken a toll on his charm. The next year, on his second visit to my parish, he was at his best. He inquired courteously about my life history and when he discovered we had much in common – the early loss of a parent, the grinding experience of genteel poverty and the increasing determination to triumph over the inequities of the British class system – I was at once adopted as a protégé. Possibly I would have been promoted without his special interest but that was by no means certain. In a national institution such as the Church of England, which was hidebound by tradition and dominated by men of the upper classes, a self-made man could only rely on help from another self-made man who knew what it was to struggle against prejudice and discrimination. Alex was a Fellow of All Souls, but he had never been to public school. United by our modest backgrounds we had long since entered into the conspiracy which had enabled me to squeeze under the closed door of the established order into the privileged room beyond, and it was this tacit comradeship, acquired on the battlefield of the class system, which gave our mutual respect a strong emotional edge. Of course we never displayed emotion to each other; we were, after all, Englishmen. But although we belonged to different generations I considered him my closest friend.

In the summer of 1937 he began to have trouble with the Archdeacon of Starbridge, an elderly man who had developed the habit of flying into senile panics, and after this millstone had been manipulated into retirement Alex offered me the archdeaconry. I myself was not sorry to leave Willowmead. I had organized the parish into a model of Christian efficiency and had been secretly longing for some time for new worlds to conquer. My translation to Starbridge came at the most appropriate moment, but unfortunately no sooner had I been installed at St Martin’s in the September of 1937 when Alex was obliged to retire from the bishopric.

At first I was much upset, not only because I was fond enough of Alex to be concerned about his health, but because I was acutely aware that I could ill afford to lose such an influential patron. I awaited Dr Ottershaw’s arrival with trepidation, but to my great relief my fears proved groundless.

In general there are two types of bishops: holy bishops and what I call chairman-of-the-board bishops. The latter are by nature businessmen with gregarious personalities and a flair for organization; their inevitable worldliness is mitigated by the spirit of Christ, and their success as bishops depends on the degree of mitigation. Holy bishops, on the other hand, usually have no talent for administration and need much time to themselves in order to maintain their spiritual gifts; their success as bishops depends less on the grace of God than on their willingness to delegate their administrative duties continually to talented assistants.

Alex was a chairman-of-the-board bishop. Dr Ottershaw was a holy bishop. I was the talented assistant who thrived on delegated administrative duties – and within a month of his arrival I had realized that Dr Ottershaw and I were made for each other. I even realized that had Alex remained in office we would almost certainly have quarrelled. Alex had a notoriously combative manner; I had an equally undesirable weakness for wielding a verbal sledgehammer. That premature retirement might have been unfortunate in many ways, but at least it had enabled us to preserve the friendship which now in 1942, ten years after our first meeting at Willowmead, we both valued so highly.

As we entered my study that night he said almost before I had closed the door: ‘Will you think me intolerably impertinent if I offer you some paternal advice?’ and at once I said lightly: ‘You know very well I enjoy your impertinence – go ahead!’ But I was alarmed. I have an aversion to people in authority who dole out paternal advice. Such behaviour always reminds me of my Uncle Willoughby.

‘It’s about young Miss Tallent.’

‘Oh yes?’ I said, somehow contriving to remain cool as the temperature in the room appeared to soar to a tropical heat.

‘Yes.’ Alex, whose hatred of hypocrisy and endless crusades for truth had won him plenty of enemies during his episcopate, was hardly a man to be deterred by coolness. ‘Neville, next time you meet an alluring young woman at a dinner-party, don’t disappear into the moonlight with her for more than five minutes. And next time you meet Miss Tallent – if there is a next time – don’t disappear with her at all. I’m a great believer in the pleasures of an amitié amourcuse, but such friendships are best conducted with happily married women escorted by their happily married husbands. Dabbling with a fast little miss isn’t conducting an amitié amoureuse. It’s playing with fire and asking for trouble.’

‘Quite.’ To my fury I realized I was blushing; this unfortunate adolescent handicap is one which I have never quite managed to outgrow. Deeply embarrassed I turned aside to realign the photographs of my children on the mantelshelf.

After a pause Alex said tersely: ‘I’m sorry if I’ve upset you, but I always speak my mind, as you know, and on this occasion I’m speaking purely out of a concern for your welfare. You mean a great deal to me, Neville. I’m very fond of you – and I’d hate to see your career take a wrong turn.’

I was outraged. To spell out his affection – to indulge in sentimental utterances – to violate our delightful friendship by acting like some mawkish heavy-handed father – it was intolerable. Speech was quite beyond me. I could only grab the photograph of Grace and start polishing the silver frame furiously with my sleeve.

‘Don’t misunderstand,’ said Alex at last. ‘I’m sure the little escapade tonight was innocent. But where an attractive woman’s concerned any man – even a clergyman – perhaps especially a clergyman – has an almost limitless capacity for self-deception.’

I finished polishing the frame and set it back on the mantelshelf. Then I said in my politest voice: ‘I take your point. Thank you for your advice. Is there anything else you wish to say?’

‘Well, as a matter of fact there is.’ I should have remembered that when Alex was exercising his compulsive candour he was virtually unstoppable. ‘Can you tell me if there’s a financial reason why you don’t have a nursemaid living in to attend to my delightful godson in his more exuberant moods? Because if there is indeed a financial reason I hope you won’t be too proud to accept my offer of help. I’ve money to spare and I’d be happy to do anything which might ease the situation.’

Once more I was appalled. In my stiffest voice I said: ‘What situation?’

‘My dear Neville, I’ve been staying here for three days and I’m neither blind nor deaf! It’s patently obvious to me that Grace is at the end of her tether!’

‘Nonsense. I concede she’s a little tired at the moment because she’s still recovering from the Easter holidays, but now that the three older boys are back at school she’ll soon recover. Very good of you to offer help but it’s not necessary. No problems financially. No problems of any kind, thank you.’

‘Neville, I know you’re a proud man, but wouldn’t you find it helpful – just for once – to admit that everything in the garden isn’t quite as lovely as it ought to be? If Grace is so exhausted that she can barely cope with her domestic duties, how can she possibly deal satisfactorily with her responsibilities as an archdeacon’s wife? She deliberately evaded the dinner-party tonight, didn’t she? Well, as it happens that wasn’t a disastrous evasion, but what are you going to do when a really crucial engagement turns up, an engagement vital for the well-being of your career? Or in other words, how is Grace going to summon the extra energy she’ll need to keep up with you in the future? If you were to engage a nursemaid –’

‘That’s not what Grace wants. She couldn’t bear another woman constantly in the nursery.’

‘Then engage a full-time cook-general!’

‘That’s not what Grace wants either. She couldn’t bear another woman constantly in the kitchen.’

‘I’m getting rather tired of hearing what Grace wants! What do you want? It seems to me, judging from your behaviour tonight, that you’re beginning to feel short-changed!’

Somehow I managed to control my temper. I heard myself say in my most colourless voice: ‘You couldn’t be more mistaken, Alex. You’ve utterly misread the situation, but on the other hand, why should I expect you to read it correctly? The truth is no outsider can really know what goes on in any marriage.’

‘Well, that’s true enough,’ said Alex dryly, deciding to wipe the tension from the conversation by exercising his caustic wit. ‘No one knows the half of what’s gone on in mine.’ He turned aside but as he opened the door he was unable to resist the urge to proffer still more unwanted advice. ‘Deposit Primrose and Sandy with a kind neighbour,’ he said, ‘and take Grace away for a second honeymoon before you get tangled up with another fast little miss.’

‘There won’t be another fast little miss. Perhaps you can’t be blamed for drawing quite the wrong conclusions from my idiotic behaviour with Miss Tallent, but let me assure you now, once and for all, that Grace is a perfect wife and I adore her.’

‘Splendid! Very well, I’ll now stop overstepping the mark in my usual outrageous fashion and take myself off to bed before you try to hit me with those clenched fists of yours. Good night, Neville. God bless you. And do try to remember that I’ve spoken only with your welfare in mind …’

II

I was so angry with this cavalier attempt to meddle in my marriage that although I was tired I lay awake fuming for over an hour in the dark. I hated Alex thinking that Grace was temporarily less than perfect. I hated him telling me facts I already knew. And I hated him suggesting facile solutions when I knew very well that the problem was more complex than he in his ignorance supposed. I could not simply impose a cook-general or a nursemaid on Grace against her will. After all, it was she, not I, who would have to deal with the woman, and if Grace felt unable to cope with a stranger in either the kitchen or the nursery, any effort on my part to employ someone suitable would only be a waste of time. Also I knew from past experience that Grace interpreted my suggestions about employing additional help as implied criticisms of her ability to be the perfect wife and mother. Then no matter how hard I tried to reassure her that no criticism was intended, she became more depressed than ever. Eventually, I was sure, the problem would be alleviated when Sandy ceased to need constant maternal supervision and embarked on his career as a schoolboy, but until that golden moment when he skipped off to begin his first day at kindergarten, it seemed my best course of action was to help Grace by being loyal, loving and endlessly sympathetic. I had to make up my mind never to complain about her melancholy, never to reproach her for shying away from the social life she should be sharing with me and never, never, never to lose my temper. I was always mindful of the fact that Sandy could hardly have been conceived without my assistance, and if he was now complicating our lives I had a moral duty to ameliorate the situation by being a perfect husband.

Remembering my loss of temper earlier I winced, but at least I was able to console myself by recalling my subsequent ministry of reconciliation. How wrong Alex had been to assume that I was being short-changed in the bedroom! Even after sixteen years of marriage I was never deprived in that area – except on those occasions when Grace was in an advanced state of pregnancy or suffering from migraine or too exhausted to do anything but pass out. However, those exceptions were of no consequence, since one could hardly expect married life to be one long sex romp. Even D. H. Lawrence had never tried to describe Mellors and Lady Chatterley with five children. My brother Willy had smuggled a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover into England after a holiday in Paris and I had read the book with interest, but personally I thought it was greatly inferior to Lawrence’s other work.

Remembering that Lawrence’s own marriage had been childless I began to think of Alex again. His childless marriage was certainly far from successful, and it occurred to me to wonder how far his own marital discomfort had influenced his interpretation of my dilemma.

Alex had said lightly that no one knew much about his marriage, but I suspected I knew all too well what had gone on. Having married his intellectual opposite after a whirlwind courtship, it seemed clear that he had long since regretted his folly. Even with no children to distract her his wife Carrie had been unable to master her increasing responsibilities as Alex had travelled rapidly up the Church’s ladder of preferment. In 1927 when he had been appointed Dean of Radbury he had even been obliged to engage someone to keep her life in order, and it had been this companion, an icy virgin with a deceptively steamy appearance and a brain like an adding machine, who had run first the deanery at Radbury and later the palace at Starbridge. The companion had eventually left to get married, much to the Jardines’ fury, and since 1937 a variety of women had been hired and fired in the unending struggle to keep Carrie organized. Even now Alex was living quietly in a small village, Carrie was incapable of running her life without help. What a burden for any husband! Alex used to joke bravely about his ménage à trois, but I thought his marriage must be the height of dreariness.

The one redeeming feature was that Carrie in her elderly way was still pretty. It had seemed logical to assume the Jardines enjoyed something which resembled a sex life – how else could Alex have made his marriage tolerable? – but now I found myself wondering if the heart condition which had terminated his career had also terminated the intimate side of his marriage. Curiously enough he always seemed very fit, bursting with energy, but if he had been so quick to detect a nonexistent sexual frustration in my marriage it seemed logical to deduce he was no stranger to sexual frustration in his own.

I sighed, feeling sorry for him, and with my anger finally conquered I succeeded in falling asleep.

The next morning I was confused to discover that I still felt angry with him but for a different reason. I could accept that he had spoken out of the best of motives; I could even accept that he had been justified in feeling concern about Grace; but what I found hard to accept was the way he had conducted the interview. Displaying the delicacy of an elephant and the sensitivity of a rhinoceros he had charged around trying to impose his conclusions upon me without regard for my willingness to accept them, and although such behaviour might possibly be forgivable when displayed by some well-meaning Victorian father I thought it was quite unforgivable when displayed by a clergyman. I myself had no great pastoral gifts. My talent was for administration, but I knew enough about pastoral work to realize that when counselling someone in trouble one’s prime duty was to listen, not to make speeches, to nurture trust, not to destroy it. In some fundamental way my trust in Alex had been impaired by that bruising interview. I still admired him as a man; I still respected him as a friend. But I did not want to discuss my private life with him ever again.

This was a disturbing conclusion, but fortunately in the early mornings I was always too busy to dwell on unpleasant thoughts. My first task was to make the tea. I always performed this chore because I felt that the least Grace deserved was a husband who delivered the early morning tea to her in bed. Having accomplished this ritual I withdrew to my dressing-room, read the Office and meditated conscientiously on the appointed verses from the Bible. Being Low-Church in inclination if not in practice – my services were carefully aimed at the middle-of-the-road moderate majority in the Church of England in order to avoid unfortunate controversy – I preferred to focus my spiritual exercises on the Bible before applying myself to my prayers.

After this interval I shaved and dressed. Usually I wore my archidiaconal uniform, but if my engagements were informal – or if the weather was so hot that the wearing of gaiters became intolerable – I had enough courage to resort to a plain clerical suit. I’m not the kind of man who enjoys tripping around in an antiquated fancy dress.

When I eventually left my dressing-room I headed for the nursery, where Sandy would be waking up, and put some toys in his cot to keep him quiet. By seven o’clock I had reached my study where I aimed to put in an hour’s work before breakfast. On that particular morning I caught up with my sympathy letters – after three years of war one had to take great care that the sentiments expressed sounded genuine – paid a couple of bills and studied two archidiaconal files, one relating to new gutters for a church with a persistent damp wall and the other concerning a parish quarrel over a new font. I decided it would be prudent to ask the diocesan surveyor to look at the old gutters and even more prudent to ask the diocesan lawyers to advise on whether the font was, legally speaking, a font. The outraged churchwarden was insisting that it reminded him of a lavatory.

I yawned. The archdeaconry was quiet. No fallen steeples, no dispute about plastic flowers on graves, no rural dean suffering from delusions of grandeur, no curate going berserk with choirboys, no vicar letting off Anglo-Catholic liturgical fireworks, no verger blowing his brains out. Finding myself with five minutes to spare before breakfast I drew up a plan for my Sunday sermon and plucked a few pertinent quotations from my trusty memory. My brother Willy always said I had a mind like a vacuum cleaner; I can effortlessly absorb any information from the sublime to the ridiculous and regurgitate it, sometimes years later, with an efficiency bordering on the robotic.

At breakfast I admired the new bow in Primrose’s hair, glanced at the headlines of The Times, read the latest letter from Christian at Winchester, answered the telephone, picked Sandy’s rusk off the floor twice and asked Alex if he intended to spend all day in the Cathedral library, where he was studying the records of his episcopate.

‘No, I’m having a rest from my autobiography today,’ he said, surprising me. ‘I’ve decided to take a train to Starvale St James and call on Lyle.’

Lyle, now Mrs Charles Ashworth, was the icy companion who had run the Jardines’ household so efficiently before her unwelcome defection to the state of matrimony in 1937.

‘She probably won’t want to see me,’ Alex was saying as he idly applied marmalade to his toast, ‘but I thought it would be too ridiculous if I left the diocese without calling on her. I intend to arrive on her doorstep waving the olive branch of peace.’

‘Better late than never, but why not phone her first? Your olive branch will be wasted if you arrive on her doorstep and find she’s gone out for the day!’

‘I’ll take the risk. If I ring she might simply slam down the receiver – I can’t tell you what a tangle we all got into back in 1937 –’

‘I always thought it sounded the most grotesque storm in a teacup and I can’t believe Lyle won’t welcome the chance to end the estrangement. Do you want a lift to the station?’

He accepted the lift. I noted with compassion that he had bought expensive presents for Lyle’s two sons. Evidently he was anxious that his olive branch should be substantial.

‘Remember me to Lyle, won’t you?’ I said. ‘As it happens I’ll be coming her way soon. An incensed churchwarden at Starvale St James is complaining that the new font looks like a urinal.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Alex vaguely, and when he failed to smile I knew his thoughts were far away.

Leaving him at the station I called at the diocesan office on Eternity Street to collect my special allowance of extra petrol coupons, suffered myself to be cornered by various officials who saw me as a channel to the Bishop, escaped into the High Street to buy cigarettes and finally parked my car in the old vicarage stables behind Butchers’ Alley just as the clock of St Martin’s chimed the half hour. I was fractionally late for the morning conference with my curates, but to my relief I saw no bicycles parked outside the vicarage gate. I disliked my curates arriving ahead of me and looking insufferably virtuous as I walked into the room. Much better that they should arrive panting and apologetic while I was sitting coolly behind my desk.

I opened the front door. I withdrew my key from the lock. And I paused, paralysed with shock, as my hand remained on the latch. I had heard a laugh in the morning-room where we received the parishioners who called on us, but this laugh belonged to no one who lived within the parish of St Martin’s – in-Cripplegate. Automatically, without stopping to think, I blundered forward into the hall.

Grace was saying: ‘That’ll be Neville. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just tell him you’re here.’

I plunged across the morning-room threshold. Grace, who had almost reached the door, hastily recoiled. As our visitor sprang to her feet I saw us all as three puppets jerking on the ends of some exceedingly erratic strings.

‘Hullo Stephen!’ said Dido, whose memory I had, of course, been conscientiously suppressing all morning, and gave me a bold, bright, impudent smile.

‘Good morning, Miss Tallent,’ I said, rigid with rage behind my clerical collar. I was acutely aware that Grace was wearing her oldest dress, the one she only wore around the house, and that she looked faded, fatigued and unfashionable. In contrast Dido, seemingly poured into her sleek naval uniform, looked saucy, sexy and scintillating. I could have slapped her.

Suddenly I became aware of Sandy’s presence. In the profound silence which followed the formal exchange of greetings he staggered across the floor and offered me one of his toy bricks.

‘Thank you, Sandy.’ I took the brick and gripped it so hard that my fingers ached. Then in a passable attempt to achieve a smooth social manner I said to Dido: ‘How kind of you to call, but I’m afraid you must excuse me. I have an urgent meeting now with my curates.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t dream of troubling you when you’re so busy!’ exclaimed Dido with that wide-eyed candour which I found so fatally compelling. ‘I just called to leave my card and enquire if your wife was better.’ Giving Grace her warmest smile she added confidentially: ‘You didn’t miss much at the Bish’s dinner-party – your husband was the only redeeming feature.’

The doorbell rang.

‘I’ll go!’ said Grace, scooping up Sandy.

‘No, I’ll answer it –’

‘No, it’s all right, Neville –’

We collided in the doorway before Grace succeeded in escaping into the hall.

‘I’m obviously causing chaos as usual,’ said Dido. ‘I’ll leave at once.’

I realized I was still holding Sandy’s brick. It was bright red, the colour of violence, volcanic fire and technicolour blood. It also matched Dido’s lipstick. Setting the brick down on the table with meticulous care I somehow managed to say to Dido in my politest voice: ‘If you feel you must go, then I shan’t try to detain you, but I apologize if you’ve been made to feel unwelcome.’

‘Oh no, your wife was charming! We got on terribly well!’

‘Miss Tallent –’

‘Oh, I do wish you’d stop calling me that! Why don’t you call me Dido, just as everyone else does?’

‘I’m most flattered that you should wish to be on such friendly terms with me, but I’m afraid a clergyman has a duty to be formal towards a young lady he’s known less than twenty-four hours.’

‘But I’m sure Jesus would have called me Dido without a second thought! He never bothered to be formal with the good-time girls!’

I opened my mouth to say coldly: ‘I fear I can only consider that remark to be in excessive bad taste,’ but the words were never spoken. To my horror I realized I was smiling. ‘You’re outrageous!’ I exclaimed in despair. ‘What on earth am I going to do with you?’

‘But don’t you remember? You’re going to be my spiritual guide and write me uplifting letters!’

‘But my dear Miss Tallent –’

‘You didn’t think I was serious, did you? You didn’t think I meant what I said, but I swear to you I’m deeply in earnest and absolutely desperate. I know you think I’m stupid and frivolous and not worth bothering about, but –’

‘Everyone’s worth bothering about. But don’t you think your local clergyman would be better placed than I am to give you the guidance you need?’

‘That celibate fish? He’s only fit to be lightly grilled on both sides and served to the congregation with parsley sauce!’

I made a quick decision, the kind of quick decision capable administrators make, a cool practical decision untainted by emotional involvement. There was no doubt this girl was genuinely distressed and adrift. It seemed reasonable to suppose she was suffering from that particularly debilitating confusion which so often follows a severe bereavement, an appalled recognition of her own mortality and a consequent questioning of her way of life. With the right help this self-examination could lead to a vital spiritual growth. Who was I to regard her with such unchristian cynicism because she had spent too many years as a mindless society girl? In a very real sense Dido’s tasteless comment about Jesus had hit the mark of truth. He would never have walked past her with his nose in the air, and since I was one of his followers neither should I.