Ultimate Prizes. Susan Howatch

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СКАЧАТЬ to your service.’ Then I waited, trying not to feel as if I were whistling in the dark, but I experienced no easing of my fear and anxiety. Evidently my prayer was not going to be answered in any simple straightforward way, and at last, wiping the sweat again from my forehead, I nerved myself to return to the house.

      III

      ‘Darling,’ I said to Grace as I entered the bedroom and found her struggling into an afternoon frock, ‘I feel I’ve been at fault in failing to realize how very unhappy you are when you’re separated from the children. Why don’t I start my task of making you happier by suggesting that we forget our little holiday alone together this week? Instead of leaving for Manchester on Wednesday we’ll travel north with all the children on Saturday and go straight to the cottage.’

      She was pathetically grateful. ‘Well, if you’re sure you wouldn’t mind –’

      ‘Say no more. It’s settled.’ Having given her a kiss I eyed the frock and said: ‘You don’t really want to go down to tea, do you? I’ll say you have a migraine.’

      ‘Well, I know I look a fright after all those tears, but I hate the thought of putting you in an awkward position –’

      ‘That doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you should be happy. Are you sure you even want to go away on our family holiday? Perhaps you’d rather just stay at home and rest.’

      ‘Don’t be silly, I could never rest at home – there’s always so much to be done! No, I can hardly wait for the holiday – although now that we don’t have to abandon the children with Winifred I do wish it wasn’t too late to alter our plans again and go to Devon as usual.’

      ‘It’ll be fun to have a change.’

      ‘I’m not very good at changes,’ said Grace.

      I thought: And not very good at fun either.

      But that comment was contemptible and I despised myself for letting it loose in my consciousness.

      It was then that I first began to have misgivings about our family holiday in the Lake District, but I had no premonition of disaster. I was no mystical dreamer, and as a good Modernist I didn’t believe in clairvoyance.

      IV

      Nine weeks after that fatal dinner-party at the Bishop’s palace Starbridge remained intact, but Canterbury had been battered as a reprisal for the RAF’s formidable raid on Cologne at the end of May. In both cities the cathedrals remained standing, monuments to hope in a world demented with the lust for destruction. Hitler, bogged down in Russia but boosted by Rommel’s victorious manœvrings in the Desert, had apparently in a fit of absent-mindedness turned over the Baedeker page which described Starbridge, but it was too soon to take our escape for granted, and meanwhile the ruins of Bath, York, Norwich, Exeter and Canterbury served to remind us of the nightmare which could still come true.

      ‘How wonderful it’ll be to escape from all thought of air-raids for two weeks!’ said Grace, but of course there was no real escape from the war. At the start of the school holidays, following advice from the Government, I warned the children about the dangers of playing with long metal tubes, metal balls with handles, canisters which looked like thermos flasks and glass bottles of every description. It seemed unlikely that we would come across unexploded bombs in the Lake District, but the Luftwaffe sometimes jettisoned their cargo in unexpected places, and I felt nowhere in England was completely safe.

      Meanwhile on a more mundane level Grace had been struggling with the bureaucratic regulations attending the issue of the new ration-book which was to replace at the end of the month the three ration-books already in use. Rationing was on the increase. The children were aghast to hear that the supply of sweets was about to be limited, and as soon as the older boys returned from school they rushed out to splurge their pocket-money on tuppenny-ha’penny blocks of ration chocolate in defiance of the slogan ONLY ASK FOR IT IF YOU REALLY NEED IT. Neither Grace nor I had the heart to stop them. All chocolates and sweets were being removed from the automatic machines, and at fêtes and funfairs sweets were forbidden to be donated as prizes. The heavy hand of wartime government was closing upon us ever more tightly for the big squeeze. SAVE BREAD, we were exhorted and given fifty different ways of serving potatoes. IS YOUR PURCHASE REALLY NECESSARY? we were repeatedly asked, and when we arrived at the station to begin our journey north the first poster we saw was the Railway Executive Committee’s stern directive: DO NOT TRAVEL. I at once felt guiltily that we should have stayed at home after all.

      To my dismay I discovered that in a new burst of austerity the restaurant car had been withdrawn from the train, but fortunately Grace – perfect as always – had foreseen this danger and packed a picnic basket. The children alleviated the tedium of the journey by guzzling biscuits which for some reason were one of the few foods still in plentiful supply.

      I mention these details of life on the Home Front not merely to underline the essential dreariness of the war, punctuated as it was for us by the almost inconceivable horror of random murder by travel guide, but to show that I was living in an atmosphere of austerity and repression which drove better men than I to seek refuge in the insanity of a grand passion. I’m not offering an excuse for myself, and I’m certainly not suggesting my madness had its origins in a two-ounce sweet ration and a shortage of bread, but when deprived in one area of life human beings tend to compensate themselves in another, and if a fully accurate picture of my crisis is to be drawn, an explanation of my insanity must include the drab stress of existence on the Home Front.

      A clergyman with a wife and five children can seldom afford the luxury of taking his family on holiday to a hotel, and even when the children were fewer in number I had found it less awkward as well as more economical to rent a neat, clean, spacious cottage near Woolacombe in Devon for our annual sojourn by the sea. I had discovered this idyllic retreat while exploring the advertising columns of the Church Gazette, and when in May I had embarked on a search there for a cottage in the Lake District, it had never occurred to me that I might not repeat my earlier success. Having spotted an advertisement which lyrically described an appropriate haven for my large family I had written without a second thought to the owner to secure a booking.

      When we eventually arrived at this idyllic retreat after an exhausting journey on an erratic train, a bone-jolting excursion in a decrepit bus and a muddy walk up a lonely lane, I realized in rather less than three seconds that I had brought my family to a rural slum. The key lay under the front doormat, just as the landlord had promised, but no other facility matched my expectations. Fortunately, since it was summer, the evening was light; the prospect of being obliged to master oil lamps and an old-fashioned kitchen range was bad enough, but in the dark it would have been intolerable. I can never understand why people become dewy-eyed and sentimental about the past. Life without gas, electricity and decent plumbing must have been one long unromantic round of time-consuming inconvenience.

      Primrose, stupefied by tiredness, began to wail that she was hungry. Christian, after a speedy reconnaissance, reported: ‘There appears to be no lavatory. Shall I start digging a hole in the garden?’ Grace said: ‘I think I have a migraine coming on,’ and sank down on the nearest chair. Sandy, who had been asleep in her arms, was woken by this abrupt manœuvre; he promptly started to scream. James said: ‘I don’t want to go to the lavatory in the garden,’ and Norman commented gloomily: ‘I wish we were in Devon.’ Setting down the heavy suitcases which I had been carrying, I dredged up my last ounce of strength, tossed off a quick prayer for divine support and prepared to perform any miracle not contrary to the laws of physics.

      Grace was ordered to lie down on the moth-eaten material which covered СКАЧАТЬ