Ultimate Prizes by Susan Howatch

Author:Susan Howatch [Howatch, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction
Published: 2011-09-15T03:30:18+00:00

VII

To my surprise my spirits rose as soon as the train swung out of Starbridge at the start of the ninety-minute journey to London; escaping from home enabled me to forget for a brief interval the horrors of the present and the prospect of worse horrors to come. I had a deep affection for London, scene of my adolescence and of my first successful attempt to Get On by working hard at school. I liked not only the mindless bustle of metropolitan life as the city flexed its muscles day and night, but the intellectual excitement emanating from the bookshops, the museums, the art galleries, the theatres and the concert halls. The dirt, the noise and the smell might be detestable, particularly the smell of unwashed bodies, but I had long since accepted the fact that my early poverty had given me an unquenchable thirst for luxury, and I refused to feel guilty just because I had received no call to serve God in the slums.

But as I glanced down from the train that evening upon the mean streets which flanked the approach to Waterloo station, I did feel a twinge of discomfort that throughout my career I had unobtrusively managed to avoid the urban poor. I knew now, after my months of working among the German prisoners, that it was not so much the deprivation which repelled me but the fear that my limited pastoral skills would be exposed. This was a bleak piece of self-knowledge, and certainly in my present state I was hardly strong enough to dwell on my inadequacies as a clergyman, so to cheer myself up I thought of Geoffrey Fisher, now Archbishop of Canterbury, a man who was neither a spiritual leader cast in a heroic mould like George Bell, nor a brilliant philosopher-politician like the late William Temple, but a capable administrator, just like me. The post-war era was the grey, unglamorous age of the administrators as they toiled over reconstruction; it would be my age if only I could surviveto enjoy it, but thoughts of survival only drew me back into the heart of my present ordeal and reminded me that even the faint outline of the signpost marked ‘Salvation’ was liable to fade whenever my despair became overwhelming.

London looked more crucified by war than ever, blackened, battered, blitzed, a warhorse ripe for the knacker’s yard. In an attempt to beat back my increasing depression by making a reckless gesture of extravagance I ignored the signs to the Underground and took a taxi over the new Waterloo Bridge. Beyond the river Somerset House slumbered in the hazy sunshine, and glancing east I could see the dome of St Paul’s, miraculously preserved from destruction and silhouetted against the smoky May sky.

‘What number, guy?’ shouted the taxi driver when we eventually hurtled up the Fordites’ street north of Marble Arch.

‘It’s the big house down there past the bomb site.’

‘The place where they wear black-and-white fancy dress? What’s a respectable C. of E. clergyman like you doing at a nasty R.

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