Ultimate Prizes (6 page)

2

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 organised. Even now, when 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 realise 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 tea-cup 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 wore only 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 realised I was still holding Sandy’s brick. It was bright red, the colour of violence, volcanic fire and Technicolor 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 apologise 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 realised I was smiling. “You’re outrageous!” I exclaimed in despair. “What on earth am I going to do with you?”