Ultimate Prizes (52 page)

“Sorry to be such a mess,” I said afterwards.

“It’s a very brave mess.”

“How can you say that when it must be patently obvious I’m scared out of my wits?”

“Scared out of your wits but struggling on. That’s brave.”

He accompanied me outside to my car. It was a cool morning, windless and serene. “As soon as you get back from Brighton,” he said, “come straight to the College. I’ll be waiting.”

“One day,” I said vaguely as I dumped myself into the driving-seat, “when all this is over, I suppose I’ll find the words to thank you. If I survive, that is.”

“You’ll survive, Aysgarth. I foresee numerous stimulating debates over the College extension as we revert with relief to our roles of piratical principal and axe-swinging archdeacon.”

“I must remind the Bishop to replenish his stock of indigestion tablets.”

There seemed no more to say. Starting the engine I rammed the car into gear and began my drive south to the port of Starmouth.

5

The train arrived at Brighton soon after noon and I took a taxi from the station to the Metropole Hotel on the Esplanade. A soft blue sea was simpering beyond the shingle beach. I was reminded of all my visits to St. Leonards. Entering the hotel abruptly before I could lose my nerve, I walked across the foyer to the reception desk.

“I think you’ll find Mr. Stoke in one of the lounges, sir,” said the receptionist in response to my request that a messenger-boy deliver a note to the bedroom to announce my presence. “I noticed him crossing the hall with Miss Stoke about half an hour ago.”

My immediate reaction was one of relief that the meeting would take place in a public room; it would lessen the risk of a violent scene. On the other hand, if either of us succumbed to rage anything could happen. Rigid with dread, I opened the glass swing-doors and stepped into the nearest of the reception rooms.

I saw him straight away. He was sitting by the window which faced the sea, a stout old man with wispy white hair and a red face. I was surprised how small he was; he had always conveyed the impression—an illusion accentuated in my memory by the passing years—that he was at least six feet tall. He was wearing a grey suit, a Maltby cricket club tie and black-framed spectacles. His hands, gnarled and ugly, clasped the pink pages of the
Financial Times
.

Beside him sat my middle-aged cousin Mercy, knitting a long purple garment which defied identification. She had scraped her grey hair into a bun and was wearing a shapeless frock garnished by a cardigan. I was reminded unexpectedly of Emily.

I walked over to them. By this time my legs were moving as awkwardly as if I were wading knee-deep through mud, and every step seemed a considerable achievement. I approached unobserved. It was only when I halted by Mercy’s chair that Uncle Willoughby glanced up from the newspaper. At once I said two words in my politest voice. They were: “Good morning.”

The world continued to turn. I remained upright and, apparently, conscious. I could hear Mercy as she gave a little shriek and cried: “Heavens above!”

Uncle Willoughby opened his mouth, shut it again and slowly removed his spectacles. As he did so I realised for the first time that his blue eyes, a little faded now but still capable of exuding their hot bold glare, were a recognisable reflection of my own. Moreover his firm straight mouth, which I had always associated with his brutal ruthlessness, was the mirror-image of my own mouth, which I had always thought manifested my praiseworthy strength of will. When I was young and he was middle-aged, I had been blind to the family resemblance between us, but now that I myself was middle-aged I could clearly see the likeness we had once shared with my mother.

I was speechless. Meanwhile Mercy was gabbling indignantly: “I don’t believe it, it can’t be true, it’s Neville—look, Father, it’s Neville—did you ever—can you believe—after all these years—” And as Uncle Willoughby, as speechless as I was, remained motionless in his chair, she rose majestically to her feet to face me. “Well, you’ve got a nerve, I must say! Dead silence for over twenty years and then you turn up, bold as brass, without even so much as a by-your-leave—and all you can say is: ‘Good morning’! The insolence of it! How dare you! You threw Father over, you broke his heart—
and
after all he did for you—oh, it’s a scandal, that’s what it is, a
disgrace
, and how a clergyman could ever behave in such a cruel, wicked way I just don’t know! In fact in my opinion—” She broke off.

Uncle Willoughby had raised his hand to terminate the stream of abuse. In the silence that followed he carefully set aside his newspaper and levered himself to his feet. Age had removed an inch or so from his height. He was smaller than I was now, but I barely noticed. He was still capable of appearing six feet tall.

Looking me straight in the eyes he said: “So you’ve come back.”

“Finally. Yes.” No four syllables had ever cost me greater effort.

“Well!” said Uncle Willoughby in his most aggressive voice. “Don’t you believe for one moment that
I
don’t know what to do! If you think I’m just a senile old man who’s forgotten his Bible, you’ve made a very big mistake!” He turned to his daughter. “Ring the bell for the waiter.”

“The waiter? But Father—”

Again he held up his hand and again the whining voice ceased. Then he said to her proudly: “My boy’s come back at last—kill the fatted calf! Neville and I are going to drink champagne.”

  18  

“
If I can find someone who forgives, that is, refuses to be embittered and estranged, someone who, bearing the effects of my sin, loves me still; then the power of that appeal is, I think, to all normal people—and I would venture to say in the last resort to all human beings—irresistible.
”

C
HARLES
E. R
AVEN
THE CROSS AND THE CRISIS

1

H
E ORDERED ME TO SIT DOWN, TERRIFIED THE WAITER, WHO
tried to tell him that the hotel’s pre-war stock of champagne had long since been exhausted, and dispatched Mercy by reminding her that she never drank at noon. “And I’m tired of that nasty purple piece of nonsense you’re always mauling,” he added. “Go away and knit it somewhere else.” Mercy did try to protest but when he glared at her and growled: “Don’t you be missish with me, my girl!” she sloped off with her mouth well turned down at the corners.

“Now!” He beamed at me. “So you’re an archdeacon, wearing a fancy uniform so that everyone can see what a successful clergyman you are! I know all about archdeacons. When Emily wrote in her 1937 Christmas card that you’d been promoted I visited the library in Huddersfield to find out exactly what was going on. You’re ‘The Bishop’s Eye.’ You bring to his attention what needs correcting or praising. You hold visitations in your archdeaconry to keep all those vicars up to the mark and to see that the fabric and contents of each church are as they should be. You present the candidates at an Ordination Service. You launch a new vicar in his church once the Bishop’s given his approval. You’re entitled to be addressed as ‘The Venerable’ on all correspondence. And all this was going on when you were only thirty-five years old! I said to Ella—she was still alive back in ’37—‘Ella,’ I said, ‘that’s champion, that is! My boy’s Getting On and Going Far.’ ”

I was still far beyond speech. All I could do was listen.

“Of course,” said Uncle Willoughby, ignoring me as he reflected on the memory, “Ella behaved as Mercy did just now.” He adopted an astonishing falsetto as he aped his wife’s voice. “ ‘Oh, how can you still speak of him when he’s turned his back on you so wickedly!’ Silly woman! I said to her: ‘Why shouldn’t he turn his back on me if he wants to? There’s a price to pay for everything,’ I said. ‘Nothing’s free. I set my heart on that boy Going Far, and the price I’m paying, now that he’s travelled out of sight, is that he doesn’t want to know me. But so what? It’s a price I’m proud to pay—and if it was necessary I’d pay it all over again! I gave that boy the gift that was beyond price—the opportunity to be the man he had the ability to be—and my reward doesn’t lie in him visiting me regularly with gritted teeth in order to be dutiful. My reward lies in knowing he’s a success in his chosen profession, with the best of his career still to come!’ But Ella still didn’t understand, silly woman—she thought we should be slobbering over each other every Christmas and writing sentimental letters every week, but I’m not sentimental and I don’t slobber. That’s not my nature,” said Uncle Willoughby as the champagne arrived, and added dourly to the waiter: “You took your time! Now show me that bottle. Don’t think you can get away with some nasty imitation by hiding the label in that bucket! Did the manager produce the pre-war stuff or didn’t he? Because if he didn’t—”

“He did, sir,” said the unfortunate waiter faintly. “It turned out there were one or two bottles left after all.”

“There always are in a place like this—for those who can pay.” He read the label, grunted and said: “That’ll do.” By this time the waiter was so unnerved that he could hardly untwist the wire around the cork.

I finally managed to speak. “Uncle Willoughby—”

“No need for you to put on that posh voice for me, lad. You can be yourself now.”

“This
is
myself. I mean, nowadays—well, I always speak like this. I don’t think twice about it.”

“My God, that’s bloody marvellous! Last time I saw you, you talked posh for Oxford and natural for me. What a long way you’ve travelled! You’re a real gentleman now!”

The waiter succeeded in extracting the cork.

“Why isn’t the champagne foaming out of the top?” demanded Uncle Willoughby. “It must be flat!”

“I assure you, sir—”

“Very well, get on with it, man—we don’t have all day!”

The champagne, pale gold and perfectly preserved, effervesced in the delicate glass. Uncle Willoughby grabbed the stem, took a sip and pronounced: “Could be worse.” Almost reeling with relief the waiter filled both glasses and fled.

“Well, what shall we drink to?” said Uncle Willoughby. “The past? The present? The future?”

“It’s all a unity,” I said. “It’s all one.” And once more I felt as if my father was moving silently to my side.

2

“Let’s drink to the future,” said Uncle Willoughby. “Plenty of that still left. I’m going to live to be a hundred. Look at me—eighty-two years old and happy as a lark! But that’s because you’ve come back, and I’ll wager I know why you’ve come. You’ve been promoted to bishop and you couldn’t resist the temptation to brag about it to me!”

“I’m a little young for that kind of preferment, Uncle Will, and anyway I’m surprised you think I’m worthy of a bishopric. Look, I must say this—it’s got to be said—it’s about that final row we had—”

“Oh, that! A lot of silly nonsense. What does all that matter now?”

“Well, I want to say I’m very, very sorry I hit you. I—”

“I hit you first, didn’t I? If you hadn’t hit me back I’d have wondered what was wrong with you!”

“But since I’d decided to be a clergyman it was utterly unforgivable of me to—”

“Well, you weren’t a clergyman then—you were just a young lad in a muddle.” He paused to toss off some champagne. “Now stop harping on things that don’t matter any more and tell me what’s brought you here.”

“I was hoping you could help me.”

“Help you?” He was baffled. For a moment his razor-sharp intelligence, unblunted by age, examined this mysterious statement warily. Then he exclaimed: “Well, speak up! No beating about the bush! Is it money?”

“No.”

“Women?”

“No.”

“Oh well, you’re all right, then. You had me worried for a moment. I thought it was something serious.”

“It is. I want to talk to you about the past.”

“The past?” He looked indignant. “What sort of an old woman do you take me for? It’s only sentimental old females who sit around mooning about the good old days and viewing the past through rose-tinted spectacles!”

“I’m not interested in rose-tinted spectacles, Uncle Will. I want you to tell me about the way things really were back in Maltby before my father died.”

He boggled. “Why?”

I reached for the one explanation which I knew he would understand. “I’m in such a muddle about the past that it’s affecting my work, and unless I sort myself out very quickly I’ll be out of the running for the next prize. So if you could tell me the truth about my parents and their marriage—the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth—”

“Can’t see what good raking over those old ashes will do you, but if your future’s at stake—”

“Everything’s at stake, Uncle Will. Everything.”

“Sounds to me as if you’re off your head. Sure you won’t start hitting me again if I tell you things you don’t want to hear?”

“I’ve got to hear everything.”

“So be It. Pour me some more champagne.”

I topped up his glass. “What I really want to know about my father,” I said, “is—”

“Poor Arthur!” said Uncle Willoughby, ceasing to listen to me as he set out on his long journey back into the past. “So stupid, but such a nice nature. A good man in his own way. In fact,” said Uncle Willoughby, very mellow as he sipped his champagne, “now that I can look back on the whole tragedy from a distance of nearly forty years, I can see I was really rather fond of poor Arthur …”

3

I exclaimed: “But you despised him!”

“Yes—when he got in such a stupid mess. And before that I was jealous of him, of course, but nevertheless—”

“Jealous?”

“Yes, why not? I was short and ugly and had to make my own way in the world. He was tall and handsome and set to inherit his father’s business. Gnashed my teeth, I did, whenever I saw him being a hero at the cricket club! And then to cap it all, he came between me and my sister, and I didn’t like Adelaide doting on someone else. It took me some time to get used to that, but poor Arthur, he was so nice-natured that he put everything right. He was like a dog that walks up to you and stands there, wagging its tail. In the end you can’t resist giving it a pat, and then the next moment it’s offering you a paw and you’re its friend for life. So it was with your father, although mark you, I always had my suspicions he was stupid. Stupid in life, stupid in death, stupid, stupid, stupid.”

“Uncle Will, about my father’s death—”

“No, you be quiet, my boy, and let me tell this story the way I want to tell it! I’m not having you barging in and interrupting me the whole time—you’ll put me off my stride! Now where was I? Ah yes, Arthur’s stupidity. Poor Arthur …

“Well, when I say ‘stupid’ I don’t mean he was block-headed stupid. He was an intelligent man—all those books! All that poetry!—but he was what one might call worldly-wise stupid, so naive and innocent and trusting. The way he used to treat his servants! He nearly mollycoddled them to death, and as for his employees—ridiculous! I never met such a pampered, over-paid, idle bunch of workers in all my life! No wonder the business went to the wall … Poor Arthur. Very sad.

“Well, it was bad enough him being stupid about business matters, but the trouble was he was also stupid about Real Life. Now, you know what I mean by Real Life, don’t you, Nev? I mean everything that doesn’t happen in romantic fairy-tales. Your father wanted to live in a romantic fairy-tale—that was his trouble—and so, for a time, did your mother. Well, a woman can be excused for wandering around with her head in the clouds when a handsome young man pays court to her, but there’s never any excuse for a man to keep his head anywhere except on his shoulders. Marriage, as we both know, has nothing to do with living in a romantic fairy-tale. Marriage is about facing up to Real Life, and what did poor Arthur know about that? Absolutely bloody nothing.

“Of course he should never have married her. Only a stupid man would ever imagine he could be happy with a wife like my sister. Adelaide was the most wonderful woman in the world, but she should have been a man. Maybe that was why she was so wonderful. No fluttering, no cooing, no sickly feminine chatter—just wit and charm and fascinating conversation about things which interest clever men—what a woman! But a man, if he knows what’s good for him, wants a soft, mild, biddable woman to look after him, not a tough intellectual siren, and he wants someone who can bring up his children properly, not someone who … well, we won’t go into your mother’s shortcomings on that score. You’d have thought, wouldn’t you, that God in His wisdom would have made her sterile, but no, there she was, fertile as a rabbit. What a mess! And all because poor Arthur hadn’t the brains to see he was marrying a man in a woman’s body.

“Mark you, it did occur to me years later that this might have been exactly what he wanted. He was shy with soft, mild, biddable women, and he was always much happier when he was down at the cricket club with the boys. Not that I’m implying anything nasty, mind. They were a very decent and wholesome bunch of lads down at the cricket club, and no one was more decent and wholesome than your father, but all the same … He was a strange boy in some ways, all that gentleness and innocence. Sometimes, now that I’m a wicked old man who’s seen everything, I wonder if he was a woman in a man’s body and that the pair of them, he and Adelaide, were better suited than I’d ever dreamed. Carnality’s a funny thing, Nev, you mark my words. It’s not half so simple as you think when you’re young. Then you just think lads are lads and lasses are lasses and every thing else in between is a disgusting aberration of nature, but later you realise that the most amazing thing about nature is its infinite variety—and who can say with any certainty where aberration begins and ends?