Ultimate Prizes. Susan Howatch

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      ‘Mrs Ottershaw wasn’t saying.’ I switched off the light.

      ‘Was Charlotte there?’

      ‘Yes. With a friend.’

      ‘A man? How exciting! I do hope Charlotte gets married!’

      ‘Unfortunately it was just another Wren. And General Calthrop-Ponsonby was there, still breathing fire against the Boers, and Mrs Dean was holding forth about the Girl Guides as usual while her husband tried to convert me to Crisis Theology or neo-orthodoxy or whatever one wants to call the latest variation on the theological rubbish fathered by Karl Barth –’

      ‘How glad you must have been to get home!’

      ‘I’m always glad to get home,’ I said, unbuttoning the flies of my pyjamas.

      ‘Darling, I really am sorry I was so awful earlier –’

      ‘No need to say another word about it. We’ll ring down the curtain on the scene, pretend it never happened and celebrate your splendid recovery. At least … you have recovered, haven’t you, darling?’

      ‘Oh yes!’ she said at once. ‘I’m fine now. Everything’s absolutely fine, just as it always is.’

      A vast relief overwhelmed me again as I prepared to bring my ministry of reconciliation to a triumphant conclusion.

      It never even occurred to me that I might be grossly deluding myself.

TWO

      ‘First loves do not always keep their glamour.’

      CHARLES E. RAVEN

      Regius Professor of Divinity, Cambridge, 1932–1950 A Wanderer’s Way

      I

      I had just stubbed out my post-coital cigarette when I heard the front door close in the distance and realized that Alex had returned from the palace. Beside me Grace had already fallen asleep. Leaving the bed I pulled on my discarded pyjamas, grabbed my dressing-gown and padded downstairs to attend to my guest.

      Alex had paused to read the headlines of the Starbridge Weekly News which had been delivered that morning and abandoned on the hall chest. He was a man of medium height, just as I was, but we had different builds. I’m stocky. He was thin as a whippet and as restless as a cat on hot tiles. His thinning grey hair was straight, sleek and neatly parted. His ugly yellowish-brown eyes radiated an impatient vitality which was defiantly at odds with the heavy, sombre lines about his mouth. As always he was immaculately dressed.

      ‘Would you like some tea before you turn in, Alex?’

      ‘A corpse-reviver would be more appropriate! Why on earth did Ottershaw invite that old bore Calthrop-Ponsonby?’

      ‘I think he feels sorry for him.’

      ‘How typical! Ottershaw would even feel sorry for a man-eating tiger who wanted to eat him for breakfast … How’s Grace?’

      ‘Sleeping.’

      ‘Hm.’ He dropped the newspaper abruptly on the hall chest. ‘Can we go into your study for a moment, Neville? I’ll decline your kind offer of tea but there’s something I’d like to say to you.’

      Obediently I led the way across the hall. I was anxious to return to bed as I was now very tired, but Alex was not only my present friend but my past benefactor and I always made every effort to oblige him.

      I had first met him in 1932 when he had become the Bishop of Starbridge. Having long since decided that it was best to live in the South if one wanted to Get On and Travel Far, I had pulled all the Oxonian strings at my disposal and sought ordination from Alex’s predecessor Dr Hargreaves who had been scholarly, moderate in his Protestantism, tolerant of Modernist thought – and in fact exactly the type of leader I had had in mind when I had been called to enter the Church. Eventually I had become a curate in a village only two miles from Starbridge, and every morning I had been able to look out of my bedroom window at the distant Cathedral spire as it soared triumphantly upwards, symbolizing my high hopes for the future.

      After my curacy I had been appointed Rector of Willowmead, a picturesque market-town in the north of the diocese, and it was here, after Dr Hargreaves’ death in 1932, that Alex had entered my life.

      I disliked him at first. He was abrupt to the point of rudeness, but I discovered later that he had had many problems on his arrival in the diocese and the strain of solving them had temporarily taken a toll on his charm. The next year, on his second visit to my parish, he was at his best. He inquired courteously about my life history and when he discovered we had much in common – the early loss of a parent, the grinding experience of genteel poverty and the increasing determination to triumph over the inequities of the British class system – I was at once adopted as a protégé. Possibly I would have been promoted without his special interest but that was by no means certain. In a national institution such as the Church of England, which was hidebound by tradition and dominated by men of the upper classes, a self-made man could only rely on help from another self-made man who knew what it was to struggle against prejudice and discrimination. Alex was a Fellow of All Souls, but he had never been to public school. United by our modest backgrounds we had long since entered into the conspiracy which had enabled me to squeeze under the closed door of the established order into the privileged room beyond, and it was this tacit comradeship, acquired on the battlefield of the class system, which gave our mutual respect a strong emotional edge. Of course we never displayed emotion to each other; we were, after all, Englishmen. But although we belonged to different generations I considered him my closest friend.

      In the summer of 1937 he began to have trouble with the Archdeacon of Starbridge, an elderly man who had developed the habit of flying into senile panics, and after this millstone had been manipulated into retirement Alex offered me the archdeaconry. I myself was not sorry to leave Willowmead. I had organized the parish into a model of Christian efficiency and had been secretly longing for some time for new worlds to conquer. My translation to Starbridge came at the most appropriate moment, but unfortunately no sooner had I been installed at St Martin’s in the September of 1937 when Alex was obliged to retire from the bishopric.

      At first I was much upset, not only because I was fond enough of Alex to be concerned about his health, but because I was acutely aware that I could ill afford to lose such an influential patron. I awaited Dr Ottershaw’s arrival with trepidation, but to my great relief my fears proved groundless.

      In general there are two types of bishops: holy bishops and what I call chairman-of-the-board bishops. The latter are by nature businessmen with gregarious personalities and a flair for organization; their inevitable worldliness is mitigated by the spirit of Christ, and their success as bishops depends on the degree of mitigation. Holy bishops, on the other hand, usually have no talent for administration and need much time to themselves in order to maintain their spiritual gifts; their success as bishops depends less on the grace of God than on their willingness to delegate their administrative duties continually to talented assistants.

      Alex was a chairman-of-the-board bishop. Dr Ottershaw was a holy bishop. I was the talented assistant who thrived on delegated administrative duties – СКАЧАТЬ