Ultimate Prizes (24 page)

“Very commendable,” said Darrow, “but the trouble with those sort of curtains—the ones that hide the past—is that they tend to develop such an unfortunate habit of going up at the wrong moments.”

My immaculate nonchalance shattered. “What utter rubbish!”

“Is it? But if the present is only the past continuing, and if, as Mr. Eliot writes, all time is eternally present, then ringing down the curtain on the past is actually a metaphysical impossibility.”

Monstrous, meddling old charlatan, hitting me over the head with mystical claptrap! It took me a vast effort to grab hold of my temper again, but I somehow contrived to reply in a colourless voice: “If you’d been born and bred in Yorkshire, you’d understand that when one travels south, becomes a southerner and thrives in a southern world, it’s psychologically easier to adjust to one’s new self by ringing down the curtain on the past. I’m sorry, Darrow, but it’s quite obvious we don’t talk the same language.”

“Aidan Lucas was born and bred in Yorkshire,” said Darrow. “He once travelled south, became a southerner and thrived in a southern world. He’ll talk your language. Would you like me to write you a letter of introduction?”

I was livid that I had been outmanoeuvred. “Darrow, I told you right at the start of this conversation that I didn’t want to see a monk! Why don’t you listen properly?”

“Oh, I listened!” said Darrow mildly. “I heard not only every word you said but every word you couldn’t bring yourself to say. Ah, here’s Ryder at last! Come along, Aysgarth, stop looking as if you’d like to punch me on the jaw and act the Archdeacon for
The Church Gazette.
”

In walked Jack Ryder, a bright-eyed, bustling individual, bursting with eagerness to spot any deviation from the clerical norm.

“Hullo, Father,” he said, shamelessly awarding Darrow his Anglo-Catholic title. I knew very well that Ryder was a staunch Protestant, but some journalists will do anything to curry favour once they scent a good interview. “Oh hullo, Archdeacon! Coincidence! You didn’t see me, but I was at the back of the church in Stoneyford yesterday. Thought I’d just pay my parting respects to a bishop who always provided such good copy—and of course the
Gazette
wanted a paragraph or two for the Friday edition.” He turned beaming to Darrow. “The Archdeacon preached an absolutely first-class sermon, Father, to a packed congregation which included six bishops, three deans, two professors of divinity and a gaggle of fellows from All Souls. I foresee great things ahead for our friend Aysgarth!”

“Well, as it happens,” said Darrow blandly, “I’ve just been asking myself if Aysgarth might be on the brink of interesting times.”

I ignored this masterpiece of sinister ambiguity. Thanking Ryder for his generous compliments, I wished him a pleasant lunch, bid Darrow a firm goodbye and finally escaped from the hotel.

4

As I opened the front door of my home I saw the suitcases in the hall and realised that one aspect at least of my crisis had been eased. The last remnants of my hangover dissolved; I was conscious of a vast relief.

“Stephen!” As I closed the front door she rushed out of the drawing-room and hurtled into my arms. “Oh Stephen!” She began to shower me with kisses.

“Hullo,” I said. “Nice to see you. Staying long?”

“Through all eternity!”

“Oh, fine.” I gave her a peck on the cheek and started to toil up the stairs.

“Darling, can you ever, ever forgive me?” She was bobbing along feverishly in my wake.

“I might.”

“Stephen, I simply adore it when you’re so deliciously cool and austere!”

“Oh yes?” I plodded across the upstairs landing into the bedroom.

“Yes, it’s so madly sexy. I want to pin you against the nearest wall, rip off all your clothes and rape you. Or at least … Can women rape men? I suppose they can’t.”

Entering the bedroom, I dropped my overnight bag on the floor, leaned against the nearest wall and said: “They can try.”

“Stephen, how thrilling—you’re about to set a new trend in seduction!”

“No, to be honest I’m about to pass out. Are you going to pin me against the wall and rip my clothes off or do I merely collapse in an unviolated stupor on the bed?”

“Poor darling, did Alex’s funeral exhaust you? Merry said I should have gone with you, but you know how bad I am at funerals, and … oh Stephen, can you ever forgive me for being such a dreadful failure on the honeymoon? Merry said that if you hadn’t been a clergyman you’d have beaten me up and tossed me over a cliff, and I do realise that I’ve behaved absolutely dreadfully, but you see, I’ve been in such a ghastly muddle and when I’m in a ghastly muddle I can’t
think
, it’s as if some sadistic demon’s strangling my brain—”

“Dido,” I said, “I can forgive you for everything except for prattling away at the wrong moment. If you can’t bring yourself to rape me, would you like me to rape you?”

“But if you’re on the point of collapsing in a stupor—”

“I appear to be experiencing a miraculous revival.”

“Darling, how simply too exciting, but does this mean you’ve genuinely forgiven me for being so absolutely frightful?”

“Apparently.”

“You’re not secretly loathing me and wishing I was dead?”

“Not yet.”

“You really do still love me?”

“I adore you.”

“Oh Stephen, you’re so wonderful, so compassionate, so patient, so—”

“Dido, do you really want me to beat you up and throw you over a cliff?”

“No, Archdeacon dear, I want you to make mad passionate love to me from dusk till dawn.”

I laughed. Then leaning forward I grabbed my prize before she could once more slip through my fingers, and pounded hell-for-leather down the finishing strait to victory.

5

Afterwards I thought: Is that all there is? And I wondered incredulously how I had managed to whip myself into such a fever of desire for so long. I could only reflect blankly that after the chase for a prize, victory was so often an anticlimax; as soon as the glow of satisfaction began to fade, one was left wondering what to do next, and never did my glow of satisfaction fade faster than after the ludicrous and pathetic consummation of my second marriage.

Because of my recent excessive consumption of alcohol I was hardly at my sexual best but at least I was still capable of taking trouble over the preliminary rituals. Conscientiously I made the required effort but I was wasting my time. Dido wriggled or stiffened until at last she exclaimed in an agony of impatience: “Oh Stephen, do get on with it and stop fussing around!” How I did manage to “get on with it” after this insensitive exhortation had further undermined my debilitated physical state must remain forever a mystery. I could only conclude I had the constitution of an ox, the hide of a rhinoceros, the stamina of a Byronic hero and the obstinacy of a Yorkshire village idiot.

I managed to keep going for a couple of minutes, but then succumbed to the lingering aftermath of the whisky, the lack of practice and Dido’s obvious longing for the torture to finish. Lighting a post-coital cigarette I asked myself whether, despite the consummation, there was any conceivable hope for our marital future. As far as I could see, any affirmative answer to this question would be pushing my Liberal Protestant optimism far beyond the bounds of credibility.

Meanwhile Dido was chattering away in the artless fashion which I had once judged so delectable and now found so dreary. “I’ve done it, oh Stephen, I’ve done it, thank God, oh my goodness, what a dreadful hurdle, but now we can settle down and live happily ever after—because of course we
will
live happily ever after, I shall become absolutely
sizzling
at sex and satisfy you utterly, just as a successful wife should, and God knows no one deserves to be satisfied more than you do. Oh Stephen darling, how can I ever thank you for being so kind, so patient, so—”

I suddenly had a revelation. I saw that Dido’s artless prattle might be a behavioural mirror-image of Carrie Jardine’s monotonous monologues; behind the apparent normality might lie an abnormal grinding pain.

“Just a minute.” I handed her my cigarette to keep her quiet and lit another for myself. Then I said in a firm but not unfriendly voice: “Let’s get this straight. I think it’s time we established, for better or for worse, what on earth’s going on. I believe that you only married me because you felt that (a) spinsterhood and a successful life were incompatible, and (b) once you were thirty and still unmarried, failure would be staring you in the face. Now, am I right or wrong?”

“Well, I suppose you’re right, more or less, but Stephen, I would never have married you if I hadn’t admired and respected and adored you! I’d have married someone else.”

“Who?”

“Well …”

“There wasn’t anyone else, was there? Not by that time. You’d overplayed your hand, the hand which dictated you had to be hard to get, and I was the only admirer still on offer.”

“True—but that doesn’t alter the fact that during the time you spent chasing me I came to adore you!”

“I believe you’re sincere when you say that. But I put it to you that your use of the word ‘adore’ tends to be highly idiosyncratic.”

“Oh darling, do stop behaving like prosecuting counsel! ‘I put it to you’—honestly! What a phrase!”

“I knew you didn’t love me in the conventional sense,” I pursued, riding roughshod over this uneasy protest. “At least I was a clear-eyed romantic. But my mistake was to believe that when you kept exclaiming: ‘I adore you,’ those words meant more than: ‘I’m grateful to you for getting me off the shelf.’ I honestly thought that you were fond enough of me to come to love me later.”

“But I was—I am!”

“Again, I believe you’re sincere when you say that, but I’m now convinced that you haven’t faced up to the fact that the way things ought to be in our marriage has as yet no relation to the way things really are. That’s why this whole sex business has been such a nightmare for you. Sex in marriage is the place where one hits rock-bottom reality, and so long as rock-bottom reality has no connection with the romantic froth you’re trying to pass off as the truth, you’re going to be buckling at the knees with horror whenever you catch sight of a double bed.”

“But Stephen—”

“Let me now tell you what I think is really going on beneath your romantic froth. I think you find me quite amusing in an odd sort of way. I’m sure you’re genuinely grateful to me for sticking to my guns and marrying you. However I doubt that you respect and admire me much; I think it’s far more likely that you despise me for putting up with your bad behaviour for so long, but on the other hand, I suppose there’s always the possibility that you might admire my fanatical determination to get what I want. You find the fact that I’m a clergyman mildly stimulating (all that black cloth—so erotic!), but you feel it’s a bore that I can’t ride to hounds, talk horses with you and lead a fast social life. Nevertheless you probably appreciate the fact that I’m not a fool. As acquaintances go I can be classified as passable, but as a husband I’m a disaster. I’m not tall, dark and handsome; I’m not rich, well-bred and well-connected; the earth never moves for you when I enter a room and—let’s be quite frank—if I fell under a bus tomorrow you’d soon recover from your bereavement. Carlton-Blake was the one you loved and it’s my bet you love him still. You’d leave me tomorrow if he asked you to—but of course he never will, and that’s a brutal fact which I suspect you still, subconsciously, can’t bring yourself to accept. So exactly where do you now find yourself? I’ll tell you: in hell. You’re utterly miserable, married to a man you don’t love. You feel trapped, defeated and despairing. You may pat yourself on the back for crawling off the dreaded shelf, but the truth is you’ve wound up flat out on a filthy floor.”

I stopped speaking. I had never before made such a long speech to Dido and received no interruption. Silence enfolded us. Then she flung down her cigarette in the ash-tray and burst into tears.

I remained unmoved. All I said was: “I’m right, aren’t I? That’s the truth. That’s the way things really are.”

On and on she wept but finally I heard her whisper: “I suppose I’ll never be a successful wife now. I must give up all hope.”

At once I experienced an electrifying enlightenment. “
Give up all hope?
” I shouted, making her jump. “Don’t be ridiculous! This is where the fun really begins!”

She was so amazed that she forgot her tears. “What on earth do you mean?”

“I’ve managed to marry you. I’ve managed to go to bed with you. But there’s still something left to win. My dear Dido,” I concluded, radiant with relief as my disastrous situation was once more transformed into a delectably addictive challenge, “I’ve now got to win your heart, mind and soul—your love’s my new prize!”

Of course I was mad as a hatter.

6

“You’re mad!” said Dido, laughing through her tears, and added: “But you’re very splendidly mad and I think perhaps I do love you after all.”

“Never use the word ‘love’ unless you really mean it, please. Otherwise how will I know, when the time comes, that you mean what you say?”

“Can I go on using ‘adore’ in my special way, meaning a deeply grateful approval?”

“Yes, but not too often.” Greatly invigorated, I sprang out of bed and started pulling on my clothes. “What’s for lunch? And why hasn’t Sandy battered down the door and demanded to see me?”

“He and Nanny had lunch early and went down to the river to feed the swans. Oh darling Stephen, do you really think I can still be a success even though I’ve wound up flat out on a filthy floor?”

“Of course. I’m going to haul you up inch by inch.”

“But how?”

I paused in the act of tieing my shoe-laces and took a quick hard look at possible strategies. “The first problem to solve is sex,” I said briskly. “We must reach a
modus vivendi
. Now, I’m reluctant to force you into a regular performance when it’s clear that at present this is the last thing you want, but on the other hand, I think that the more you do it the easier it’ll get. I’m not suggesting we should hammer away every night, but if you can grit your teeth sufficiently hard to stand sex twice a week, I suspect your disgust will quickly be eroded by boredom—and boredom is easier to deal with than repulsion.”