Ultimate Prizes

V

I found myself unable to concentrate on the Evening Office, and an attempt to pray proved futile. However when I eventually returned to the bedroom in my pyjamas Grace said at once: ‘Darling, could we compromise? If we changed our plans and spent our family holiday in the Lake District instead of Devon, we could leave all five children with Winifred for the first forty-eight hours and have that little holiday alone together after all. I don’t think Sandy could destroy Winifred in two days, and since Christian and Norman are old enough to be helpful with the younger ones, I wouldn’t spend all my time worrying about how they were getting on.’

‘Splendid! I’ll cancel Devon immediately.’

‘We’ve left it rather late in the day to change our plans – and of course it would involve a longer journey just when the government’s telling us we shouldn’t travel unless we have to –’

‘We do have to – and I’m sure we can easily find a cottage to rent. I’ll look at the holiday advertisements in today’s Church Gazette.’

She kissed me. ‘You’re not cross with me any more?’

‘My dearest love!’ I said. ‘When have I ever been cross with you?’ And before either of us could answer that question I took her in my arms.

VI

The letters began to arrive. Dido wrote as she talked: fluently, with eccentric punctuation. She used a pencil which always began sharp and ended blunt, probably as the result of her copious underlinings.

‘Dear Archdeacon, before I bare my soul to you I must tell you all about my background so that you can see my troubles in some sort of illuminating perspective …’

I learnt that her father had made a fortune by profiteering during the First War, and had consolidated his wealth by adventurous skulduggery in the City. He was currently chairman of an enterprise called the Pan-Grampian Trust and now played golf regularly with various luminaries of the Bank of England in an effort to consolidate his hard-won respectability. In addition to his house in Edinburgh and his nine-bedroom flat overlooking Grosvenor Square he had not only the usual millionaire’s castle in the Highlands but a country mansion in Leicestershire where his daughters had pursued their passion for hunting. His wife, however, never left Edinburgh.

‘… poor Mother is a good person but very shy. How glad I am that I haven’t inherited this devastating handicap! Fortunately Father’s mistresses have all possessed gregarious dispositions in addition to superb connections in society, so my sisters and I have been able to surmount the difficulties which were inevitably created by Mother’s beautiful retiring nature.

‘Merry (that’s my sister Muriel, now Lady Wyvenhoe) and darling Laura (who became the Honourable Mrs Anthony Fox-Drummond) and I (who’s so far become no one at all) were always invited everywhere, and since Father spent money like water on our coming out, I can’t say I ever found it a handicap to be a jumped-up Scot – indeed quite the reverse, we were all regarded as exciting novelties and given a licence to be entertaining. So no matter how outrageous we were, people just said: “Poor little things, they don’t know any better, but what a gorgeous breath of fresh air they are, blowing away all the boring cobwebs from London society, let’s invite them to masses more balls and tea-dances and cocktail parties so that we can all continue to be madly amused!” So that was what happened and we were a simply enormous success, even when for a laugh we put on our Scottish accents, although of course our governess was told to make sure we knew how to talk like English ladies and in consequence we grew up bilingual.

‘Anyway, Archdeacon dear, you may disapprove of me talking faultless English and so pretending to be what I’m not, but let me assure you that in every other respect I’m entirely honest. I always say to a new friend right from the start: “My father’s a self-made man (though one of Nature’s Gentlemen, of course) and my mother doesn’t go out and about in society because she’s afraid she’ll be thought common (a fear naturally enhanced by her beautiful retiring nature)” – and once all that’s been said everyone relaxes because they know exactly where they stand and no one feels in the least deceived …’

In another letter she told me about her three brothers, all employed in her father’s financial empire, but I realized that since they were many years her senior they had played little part in her growing up.

‘… but I’ve always been very close to my sisters – well, we had to stick together, you see, because since Father was so busy making money and my brothers were so busy at public school learning how to be English gentlemen and Mother was so busy being retiring, no one had much time for us except Blackboard our governess (Miss Black) and even she was always wishing she was somewhere else, so Merry and Laura and I formed what we called The Triple Alliance in order to conquer the world and make everyone take notice of us. I was devastated, simply devastated, when Merry married that sporty bore Wyvenhoe, all polo and fishing and shooting thousands of poor little birds in August (I think he only married Merry to gain permanent access to Father’s grouse moor). Her marriage destroyed our Triple Alliance and I knew things would never be the same again and I was right, they never were. She lives up in Leicestershire now, although of course she has a house in London, and I seldom see her. But I recovered from losing Merry. It was losing Laura that nearly killed me.

‘Darling Laura was the light of my life, we were closer than most twins, only twelve months apart, we did everything together, everything, Merry was always the odd one out as she was two years older than Laura, three years older than me. Laura and I were presented at Court together and shared our first season, and later the Prince of Wales (I’m sorry, I know he’s the Duke of Windsor now, but for me he’ll always be our gorgeous Prince of Wales) – he said he would have danced with both of us simultaneously if he had had two pairs of arms (My dear, Mrs Simpson was simply seething!) and life was thrilling, such fun, how we laughed, and then Laura, darling Laura, fell in love with Anthony, and at first I minded dreadfully but after a while I told myself it was wicked of me to begrudge her such happiness, so I made up my mind not to be jealous of him, and once I’d done that I realized he was such a nice man, so sweet-natured, the son of a peer but really quite normal, and they got married in 1938 and they were so happy, living in London – which meant I could still see Laura every day – and then she started a baby and she was so thrilled – we were all so thrilled, even me, although I did have a little shudder at first at the thought of having to share her with yet another person – ugh! how contemptible of me, I despised myself for being so selfish! – and then …

‘Disaster, tragedy, DEATH. Why do such things have to happen, why, why, why, I cried for days, I felt as if half myself had been amputated and all the world seemed such a dark place without Laura’s special light – and when I looked back at all the parties, all the champagne and the caviar, I could only think: Death always wins in the end. Oh, what a dreadful moment that was, so black, so brutal, so absolutely terrifying – and suddenly all my party memories seemed so sinister, I seemed to see a death's head grinning at every feast, and that was the moment when I knew parties would never be the same again because I would always be thinking: EAT, DRINK AND BE MERRY FOR TOMORROW WE DIE, and the word DIE would always remind me of horrors past and horrors still to come.

‘Well, when I realized there was no escape from that terrible truth, no escape on the dance-floor, no escape in the saddle at a hunt, no escape among the cocktails at Grosvenor Square, I saw that the only thing to do was not to run away but to stand my ground and try to look Death straight in the face – and once I’d done that I knew I had to live, and when I say live I mean not frittering away time but using time profitably – I knew I had to find some way of life which was real, as real as Death, the toughest reality of all.

‘At that moment the war arrived, and as I told you I thought the answer was to join the Wrens, but that hasn’t worked out as I’d hoped. What I now find – and this is really most peculiar, in fact highly unnerving – is that the person I appear to be in public, the person everyone thinks I am, has nothing to do with my new true self. Everyone thinks – including you, I suspect, Archdeacon dear – that I’m still just a frivolous little piece of nonsense, but that old false self’s smashed to bits now, all the fragments are gone with the wind, and my current great task is to find the right life for my new true self and so make myself into a real person at last – because only when I become a real person, living in harmony with my new true self, will I be able to face that other real person. Death, on equal terms and not be afraid of him any more.

‘Well, I know that all sounds rather turgid, so I’ll spare you further soul-searching by announcing that I believe I see the first step I have to take: I must get married. (I mentioned this when we met, but now I can explain the decision in its proper context.) The plain fact of the matter is (as I more or less implied earlier) that despite emancipation and women voting and being doctors and bus conductresses and so on, our society considers any woman who’s not married is a failure, and I think that if I’m to have a meaningful life and be truly me, I’ve got to be a success. I mean, I wouldn’t be happy otherwise, and how could I live meaningfully if I was miserable?

‘Now Archdeacon dear, I know you were terribly original and said it could be fulfilling to be celibate (by which I assume you meant not only unmarried but chaste although I believe, strictly speaking, to be celibate merely means to be unmarried) but to be brutally frank I don’t think celibacy would suit me at all. I wouldn’t mind doing without sex, which has always seemed to me as if it must be quite dull in comparison with hunting – although darling Laura said it was all rather heavenly – sex, I mean, not hunting – after all, hunting’s really heavenly, no “rather” about it – and … oh bother, I’ve lost my way in this sentence, I’ll have to start again. I wouldn’t mind doing without sex (as I was saying) but I simply couldn’t bear the social stigma of being unmarried. But please don’t think I’m just enslaved by a rampant-pride. You see, the one thing I’m good at is being social, so I feel sure that God’s calling me to be a social success, but of course now I realize it can’t just be the kind of facile self-centred success I used to enjoy when I was my old false self. It must be a meaningful social success – the social success of a wife who strives to help her husband (who of course must be a really worthwhile man) in his dynamic and outstanding career. Then I could feel useful and fulfilled knowing that he was feeling useful and fulfilled and I’m sure we’d both live happily ever after.

‘It’s a glorious vision, isn’t it? Or so I think now, but when it first unfurled itself I confess I did have grave doubts because I knew very well I felt so lukewarm towards men that I couldn’t quite conceive of ever summoning the desire to marry one of them. I did tell you at the dinner-party, didn’t I, about my lukewarm state, but I wasn’t quite honest with you about my reasons for being anti-man. I said I couldn’t bear the way men regarded me as just a pair of legs, but there’s rather more to my antipathy than that. You see, I’m still recovering from being in love with the wrong man for six years. His name’s Roland Carlton-Blake. (If I tell you he likes to be known as Rollo you’ll guess at once what kind of a man he is, so I shall merely confirm your suspicions by telling you that before the war he called himself a gentleman of leisure and other people called him a playboy). Now he’s a soldier in Cairo and as he’s got some sort of desk job I doubt if he sees any fighting, but I can imagine him passing his leisure hours by riding around the pyramids and pretending to be Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik.

‘Why did I fall for this ghastly creature, you ask? Well, primarily for all the usual reasons, he was so handsome, so glamorous, he rode to hounds so beautifully, and life always seemed to be so gay and amusing when he was around, but the real reason why I liked him was that he never tried to jump on me and I appreciated this so much that I began to believe he really did love me for myself and not just for my legs. So I wound up thinking: That’s the one man I could bear to marry – I shouldn’t even mind if he was disgusting when he was having sex – because quite frankly, I don’t see how men can avoid being disgusting when they have sex, so the great thing is not to mind when they do.

‘Anyway, earlier this year before he was posted to Egypt I decided to propose to him. After all, it was obvious after six years that he wasn’t going to do it, so I proposed and then he told me he was in the midst of an affair with an actress.

‘As a matter of fact I knew her, she was rather nice, but when I found out I felt absolutely crushed, and I said to Rollo: “Why did you never ask me to be your mistress if you’re the kind of man who does that sort of thing?” He just laughed. He said: “You’d have said no and slapped my face!” – which was actually true, as I can never see the point of coming second (being a mistress) when one can come first (being a wife). I’ve always thought fornication was a dead-end career for a woman, almost as futile as lesbianism.

‘Very indignantly I said to Rollo: “All right, I admit I wouldn’t have been your mistress, but I could have been your wife and then you wouldn’t have had to skulk around fornicating in such an undignified manner.” Oh, how cross he was when I said that! “I’m always very dignified when I fornicate!” he cried indignantly. “All my mistresses consider me a paragon of discretion!” “ALL your mistresses?” I shouted. “You mean you’ve had others?”

‘Oh Mr Aysgarth, you’ll think me very naive, especially as I’m a society girl who’s supposed to be the last word in sophistication, but you see, I loved him and love is blind and I wanted so much to believe he was pure and noble behind his dashing façade, quite different from all the other men in the world who appear to see me as a cross between a cream cake and an ice-cream cornet. Even Father, who’s so well behaved with his mistresses, only having one at a time and never in the same city as Mother – even Father and my brothers seem to see me as no more than a box of chocolates whenever they take time off from their full varied interesting lives to remind themselves of my existence. How I wish I’d been born a man! Gender’s such a prison sometimes, especially when one wants one’s new true self to be recognized and respected.

‘Anyway to return to Rollo I said: “How would you feel if I were to tell you that I’d been sleeping with everyone in sight for six years despite the fact that I’d regularly been saying that I loved no one but you?” And Rollo said as if I was being very stupid: “Oh, that wouldn’t have been playing the game at all! A man with mistresses is just living a normal life. A woman with lovers is just being a slut. That’s the way of the world, isn’t it?” At which point I drew myself up to my full height and looked him straight in the eyes and declared: “Your world, perhaps. But not mine.”

‘I told him I never wanted to see him again, but the awful part was I did want to, I missed him terribly, and it was just as well he was sent to Egypt or I might have weakened. I still loved him even though I could see he was just a selfish lout with the brains of a flea. I thought: that’s the last straw – I’ve lost first Laura and now Rollo, why don’t I just fling myself in the Thames? But I couldn’t bear the thought of being a failure and anyway I’m not the suicidal type, so I staggered on day after day until finally I had a big stroke of luck: I met Charlotte Ottershaw when I was transferred to the Starmouth Naval Base, and as soon as she started talking about her father the Bishop I saw my salvation. It was the Church of England. I thought: there’s where I can find a man who’s good and noble and pure, who won’t see me just as a box of chocolates and who’ll never betray me with someone else! Clergymen have to be virtuous because it’s all part of the job, and so adultery and fornication would be absolutely OUT.

‘Well, Archdeacon dear, I knew at once that I’d had a revelation and I was fearfully excited because I thought I could see the way ahead at last, but then I started feeling depressed again because I realized I knew nothing, beyond a few random facts, about the C. of E. and absolutely nothing about theology and philosophy and all the earnest things good pure noble men talk about. So I told myself that I’d got to find someone who’d teach me what I needed to know because my good pure noble man would at least expect his wife to be able to talk church language intelligently, it would be a sort of minimum requirement for the job. I think I’m actually quite clever, though it’s a wonder I ever learnt anything from Blackboard. Father thought education for women was a waste of time and Mother thought it was positively harmful so I suppose I’m a victim of a bizarre form of child neglect, but although I expect I often appear quite scatterbrained I’m not really stupid at all.

‘So now that you’ve agreed to be my Guide, Philosopher and Friend I must urge you not to assume I’m a fool and water down your erudition accordingly. I want to know everything, even the difficult bits. Can we start with the Church itself? I’d be so grateful if you could give me some information about the most important people, the sort of information which isn’t in Who’s Who – although I had such a fascinating time with Who’s Who the other day, I looked up the Archbishop of Canterbury and I think it’s so extraordinary that his father was Archbishop of Canterbury too – I wonder what the odds are against such a thing happening? It makes the Temples into a sort of dynasty, doesn’t it, and fancy Frederick being over sixty when William was born, maybe more men should take up religion so that they can keep bounding around when rakes like Rollo are chairbound with gout and hardened arteries.