Ultimate Prizes

‘No, but this is the one occasion where you must be ruthless – or if you really can’t face tackling Nora I’ll tackle Emily. I’ve no scruples at all about imposing on my sister in urgent circumstances.’

‘I always feel so awkward about asking Emily to have the children when she has no children of her own –’

‘Nonsense – they’ll provide a welcome diversion from that dreary husband of hers! Now listen to me, Grace. I quite understand why you should feel this weekend will be an ordeal, but it’s an ordeal you’re perfectly capable of surmounting – all you’re being required to do is to look pretty and be polite. I’m not trying to throw you to the lions. I’m just trying to ensure you don’t miss out on an exciting and worthwhile excursion. Make up your mind you’re going to enjoy yourself! Why not? Why shouldn’t it all be great fun?’

But Grace only said in despair: ‘How I wish we’d never left Willowmead!’ and I heard her stifle a sob as she rushed from the room.

II

‘I didn’t mean it, Neville – of course I didn’t mean it – I just feel nostalgic about Willowmead sometimes, that’s all …’

I had followed her to our bedroom where she had retreated to calm down, and as we faced each other we could hear the charwoman talking good-naturedly to Sandy as she worked in the drawing-room below us. Primrose was at nursery school as usual. I was supposed to be on my way to a diocesan committee meeting, and I was acutely conscious of the clock ticking on the bedside table as I was obliged to delay my departure.

‘I know how much you loved Willowmead,’ I said, ‘but we’ve been happy in Starbridge too and we’re going to go on being happy here.’

‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry.’

‘To be honest, I find the Starmouths intimidating as well. But one can’t spend one’s life cowering in corners just because one feels socially inferior!’

‘No, of course not. Will there be a maid, do you think, to unpack our suitcases? I don’t want anyone seeing my darned underwear.’

‘In that case I’ll tell the servant we don’t require help with the unpacking. Now Grace, stop worrying yourself into a frenzy, there’s a good girl, and make up your mind you’re going to be strong, brave and resourceful!’

‘Yes. All right. I’ll try,’ she said, but my heart sank as her shoulders drooped.

Willing myself not to despair I hurried off to my meeting at the diocesan office on Eternity Street.

III

Starmouth Court stood not, as might be assumed, near the port of Starmouth in the south of the diocese, but eighteen miles from London in the county of Surrey; the Earl’s connection with Starmouth was lost in the mists of antiquity. When we eventually arrived at our destination on a sunlit Saturday morning in July, I was just as horrified as Grace to discover not a friendly country house but a tall stout elderly mansion of forbidding proportions. Accustomed though I was to calling at the various grand houses in my archdeaconry, I had never been invited to stay the night in these places and the thought of being a guest in the Starmouths’ overpoweringly dignified country seat made me feel for a moment like a fallen woman obliged to take refuge with a formidable maiden aunt.

Built high on a hillside the house was surrounded by trees and approached by a long winding drive which strained both our nerves and the engine of the chauffeur-driven motor which our hostess had sent to meet us at the station. ‘“Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came,’” I muttered to Grace before the Dark Tower was revealed as the plump Queen Anne palace. I allowed myself one quick shudder before resolving fiercely to appear self-possessed. ‘Isn’t it exactly like the country house in a detective story?’ I murmured to Grace with a heroic attempt at nonchalance. ‘I foresee corpses in the library, a sinister butler lurking behind the green baize door and Hercule Poirot hovering in the shrubbery!’

But Grace was too terrified to reply.

We were admitted by a stately footman to a hall the size of a tennis court. Vast pictures of men in togas were suspended from points so remote as to be barely visible. An enormous arrangement of flowers stood in what appeared to be a pseudo-Greek vase. Then I realized there was nothing pseudo about the vase. It had that dim ancient look which is impossible to reproduce, and it reminded me of countless visits to the British Museum on wet Saturday afternoons in my childhood when Willy and I, boarded out with strict Methodists, had taken refuge once a week in the sights of London.

‘Nice flowers,’ I said casually to Grace in an automatic effort to signal to the footman that I found the hall itself too mundane to merit a comment. ‘Very well arranged.’

I had barely finished speaking when a door banged, footsteps pattered swiftly in our direction down a distant corridor and the next moment someone was bursting joyously into the hall. A familiar peel of laughter rang out. A well-remembered voice cried: ‘Welcome to Starmouth Court!’ And with horrified delight I recognized my disciple.

IV

‘Did you know she was going to be here?’ demanded Grace as soon as we were alone in the bedroom which had been assigned to us, but my stupefaction was so obviously genuine that she never doubted my denial. Moving to the window I saw that the room was placed at the back of the house and overlooked a formal garden which unfolded upwards in a series of terraces before rolling out of sight over the summit of the hill. On the lowest lawn twin rows of classical statues eyed each other across a sward dotted with croquet-hoops. The sun was still shining radiantly, reminding me that I felt much too hot.

‘She should have told me,’ I said as I automatically took advantage of the opportunity to remove my clerical collar. ‘Why on earth didn’t she mention it in her last letter?’

‘I suppose she thought it would be fun to surprise you.’ Grace was already unpacking her darned underwear before a servant could materialize, like the genie of the lamp, between her and the open suitcase.

‘I don’t like those sort of surprises.’ I began to roam around the room. The brass bedstead gleamed. Lifting the counterpane I absent-mindedly fingered the very white sheets.

‘I suppose they’re real linen,’ said Grace. ‘And look at those towels by the washstand! Can they possibly be linen too?’

‘Must be pre-war. But expensive things always look new for years.’ I stared around at the room’s luxury, so subtly sumptuous, so tastefully extravagant, and before I could stop myself I was saying: ‘I suppose you’re still wishing you hadn’t come.’

‘Oh no!’ said Grace at once. ‘Now that the adventure’s begun I’m enjoying myself – in fact I’m sure you were right and it’s all going to be great fun!’

I did realize that Grace was belatedly exercising her intelligence, but I found I had no desire to consider the implications of this new canny behaviour. I merely smiled, gave her a grateful kiss and began to unpack my bag.

V

Everyone was very kind to Grace, who despite her tortuous self-doubts was as capable as I was of being socially adept in unfamiliar circumstances. Certainly no one was kinder than Dido who lavished attention on her to such an extent that I was almost ignored. More than once I told myself conscientiously how relieved I was that my disciple was on her best behaviour; it seemed all I now had to do, in order to survive the weekend with my clerical self-esteem intact, was to stick close to my wife and keep my eyes off Dido’s legs which seemed to shimmer like erotic beacons whenever I glanced in her direction. I even thought in a burst of optimism that I might soon be able to write off my embarrassingly carnal preoccupation with Dido as an example of that well-known phenomenon, the middle-aged man’s vulnerability to the charms of youth. However although I was keen to reduce my feelings to a trivial inconvenience I suspected I was still too young to be in the grip of a middle-aged malaise. Or was I? If my diagnosis was correct I could only shudder. If I was like this at forty, what would I be like at fifty? I had a fleeting picture of myself at sixty, an elderly lecher surrounded by young girls, and it was not at all a cheering vision for a churchman who had always been anxious to Get On and Travel Far.

The weekend gathering at Starmouth Court was hardly ‘smart’ in society’s sense of the word, although Lady Starmouth ensured that the atmosphere was friendly and cultivated. In addition to my disciple, who was on a seventy-two-hour leave, the guests consisted of a residentiary canon of Radbury Cathedral and his wife, a contemporary of the Earl’s from the House of Lords, a bossy lady of uncertain age who worked in London for Jewish refugees and who talked of Bishop Bell with the enthusiasm women usually reserve for film stars, an etiolated civil servant from the Ministry of Information, and the Starmouths’ youngest daughter Rosalind, who had been a debutante with Dido in 1933; her husband was now serving with the Army in India. I soon felt confident that I could hold my own in this company, even with the Canon who was at least twenty years my senior, but nonetheless I was careful to temper my growing self-confidence with a quiet unassuming manner. Alex had warned me more than once that the upper-classes disliked a newcomer who was too strident.

‘Whatever you do,’ I said to Grace as we changed for dinner on the night of our arrival, ‘don’t mention to that bossy Miss Wilkins who’s obviously in love with Bishop Bell that I may be having contact with German prisoners in the future at the new camp on Starbury Plain. Once one starts discussing the Church’s attitude towards Germans Bell’s name’s bound to come up and I don’t want to get involved in any conversation which is politically controversial.’

‘But I thought you admired Bishop Bell!’

‘Yes. Privately. But I don’t want anyone thinking I’m “soft on Germans”.’

‘I’m sure no one would think –’

‘Oh yes, they would! The trouble is that politically speaking Bell’s dynamite. Why has he been passed over for senior bishoprics? Because over and over again he’s stood up in the House of Lords to hammer away at the government and in consequence even though he’s no pacifist people are convinced he’s soft on Germans!’

‘But he’s not soft on Nazis, is he? The people who accuse him of being soft on Germans aren’t really being fair –’

‘No, but I just don’t want to get into one of those arguments about whether it’s possible in wartime conditions such as these to make a distinction between the Nazis and the non-Nazis in Germany – I don’t want to get into any argument about the morality of saturation bombing. Of course Bell’s right to champion the cause of the suffering Germans – all the Christian and Jewish refugees before the war, all the Christians and Jews now in the concentration camps, even all the Germans who are loathing every moment of Hitler’s rule but have somehow managed to stay free – and of course it’s absolutely wrong to say, as that ass Babbington-French says, that the only good German’s a dead German, but Bell shouldn’t try to tell Churchill how to run the war. It’s madness, absolute madness – as well as professional suicide – and I can’t support it. We’ve got to stay solidly behind Churchill, got to – how else are we going to survive this appalling ordeal?’

‘Oh darling, I do understand and I do agree with you – please don’t think I’m criticizing! Where would we all be now if it wasn’t for Mr Churchill? Not at Starmouth Court, that’s certain! It’s just that I can’t help admiring Bishop Bell for standing up for Christian values in such very adverse circumstances and at such personal cost to himself –’

‘Yes, he’s a hero.’ I moved to the window to stare out at the terraced lawns. ‘Charles Raven stays in his academic ivory tower and preaches pacifism,’ I said, ‘but George Bell’s out there in the chaos, battling away doggedly for God in a world gone mad. I used to admire no churchman more than Raven, but now I think … well, never mind what I think. As I said earlier, it’s best to keep quiet on the subject of the Bishop of Chichester.’

Much to my surprise Grace suddenly kissed me and said: ‘I’m glad you admire him so much. That’s the real you, isn’t it?’

‘Real me?’ I was much pleased by this unexpected gesture of affection.

‘The man behind the successful archdeacon.’

‘The successful archdeacon’s the real me too.’

‘Yes, but –’

I suddenly caught a glimpse of the time. ‘We ought to be going downstairs,’ I said, trying not to sound nervous at the thought of the grand meal ahead. ‘Are you ready?’

We hurried down to dinner.

VI