I felt obliged to say: ‘He did stand by me – even when I came to blows with the Master of Novices James resisted the demands that I should be thrown out. When he called in Father Darcy it wasn’t because he wanted to get rid of me but because he thought the poltergeist activity demanded a first-class exorcist.’
‘How Father Darcy must have enjoyed himself! But as soon as he met you, he knew James was right about your potential, didn’t he? So he didn’t investigate your call in detail either. He was much too busy shaping your future to waste time burrowing into your past.’ Francis picked up a page from the file and added: ‘Let me read you part of James’ opinion recorded after his preliminary interview with you in 1923 when you were still outside the Order. He writes:
‘“Jon tells me that he’s wanted to be a monk ever since his wife died in 1912. He loved his wife very dearly and they had nine happy years of marriage which were blessed by the gift of two children: Ruth (born 1904) and Martin (born 1905). Jon is clearly devoted to his children and during the eleven years since his wife died he has worked hard to support them even though his call to the cloister was becoming increasingly strong. He tells me that despite his happy marriage he realized that a life of domesticity, charming and rewarding though it might be in many ways, proved difficult to combine with his unusual and distinctive spirituality, and when his wife died he knew he must remain celibate in order to serve God best. He is also convinced that in the world he will always be tormented by the temptation to marry to satisfy his carnal inclinations, and he believes that only in a monastery will he be able to serve God without distraction and develop his spiritual gifts to the full. In my opinion he is patently sincere, mentally well-balanced despite his psychic powers and is obviously a man of high intelligence and considerable pastoral ability. In the past he has been led astray by a desire to exploit the glamour inherent in those psychic powers, but I believe that with sufficient training and dedication a truly charismatic power can be developed for the
service of God. I told him I would accept him as a postulant, and I believe that in time he will prove a considerable asset to the Order.’”
Francis closed the file. For a long moment we looked at each other in silence. Then he said mildly: ‘Jonathan, I don’t want to appear cynical but it sounds to me as if you manipulated that unworldly man with all the skill your “glamorous powers” could command. During those nine years of happy marriage, what exactly happened which made you feel the trip to the altar was the one journey you never wanted to repeat?’
‘James spells out the truth clearly enough,’ I said. ‘I came to realize that despite my successful marriage I could serve God best without the distraction of family life.’
‘But was your marriage really so happy as James apparently believed it was?’
‘No, of course not. My marriage was like the vast majority of marriages; sometimes it was heaven and sometimes it was hell. Betty and I enjoyed the heaven, survived the hell and on the whole rubbed along very tolerably together. I certainly felt I was entitled to present the marriage to James as a success.’
‘Tell me about the times when the marriage was hell.’
‘You’re most unlikely to understand how unimportant our difficulties really were. If you’d ever been married yourself –’
‘Oh, good heavens!’ Francis was suddenly at his most theatrical. He groaned, shaded his eyes with his hand and twisted his mouth into a mournful grimace. ‘I did hope I’d never hear a monk of your calibre try to trot out that hoary jibe of the snide layman. If you’re not careful you’ll drive me to trot out the equally hoary jibe of the Roman Catholic priests that the onlooker sees most of the game.’
Despite my tension I laughed and apologized.
‘I can see I must tiptoe up to this delicate subject by another route,’ said Francis. ‘How did you meet your wife?’
‘After I was ordained in 1903 I went to work at the Mission for Seamen in Starmouth, and a week later I met Betty in the park. She saw me, failed to look where she was going and stumbled over a patch of uneven ground. Naturally I rushed to assist her.’
‘Just like a romance from Mudie’s Library. What was her background?’
‘Her father owned a tobacconist’s shop.’
‘Dear me, how awkward! What did your schoolmaster father think of your desire to marry below your station?’
‘How could he complain? He’d married a parlourmaid – as Father Darcy never ceased to announce to all and sundry whenever he wanted to rub my nose in the mud and induce a spirit of humility.’
‘Am I to deduce that you married a working-class woman because you wanted a wife who was just like your mother?’
‘No, you can forget your obsession with Freud and deduce that I married a working-class woman because I couldn’t afford to marry a lady on my modest salary as a chaplain.’
‘If you had no private means I’d have thought that any marriage would have been out of the question for a young man of twenty-three. Surely your father advised you to wait!’
‘My father was a quiet scholarly man who didn’t find it easy to talk to me – indeed I both mystified and frightened him. His predominant reaction to my desire to marry seemed to be relief that I wanted to settle down.’
‘And your confessor – who, of course was none other than dear old James himself at our recently-founded Grantchester house – what did he think of your decision?’
‘He was the one who urged me to marry as soon after my ordination as possible.’
Francis said dryly: ‘It’s amazing how dangerous these unworldly holy men can be. However I mustn’t be too harsh on poor old James – after your shady career at the Varsity I suppose it was inevitable that he should doubt your ability to stay chaste for long … Did you continue to see him regularly between
your ordination in 1903 and your entry into the Order twenty years later?’
‘No, there came a point when I realized he was incapable of counselling me, so I decided to dispense with a confessor.’
‘You mean you had no direction at all?’
‘Oh, I was never completely adrift! I always had some older priest with whom I could discuss spiritual matters but I never made a formal confession and I never talked in detail about my private life.’
‘In other words you abandoned Anglo-Catholicism.’
‘Not entirely. It was easy enough to drift back into the fold later when I realized I wanted to be a monk. I never lost my admiration for Bishop Gore and the High-Church party.’
‘What was the matter on which James failed to give you acceptable counsel?’
‘Contraception.’ I hesitated but when Francis merely waited I said: ‘Betty could barely manage two children under two. The strain was affecting her health as well as our marriage, and when she threatened to seek an abortion if she became pregnant again I saw contraception as the lesser of two evils.’
‘Meanwhile James, I suppose, had told you to behave like a eunuch. How far were you able to share the spiritual aspects of this dilemma with your wife? Was she devout?’
‘No. She believed in God as children believe in Father Christmas – with a mindless innocence. Religion for her was little more than a charming superstition.’
‘How very difficult for you!’
‘Not at all,’ I said at once. ‘She supported me by coming to church on Sundays and she was very good in bed. What did I have to complain about?’
‘Well, Jonathan, I’m just an ignorant old bachelor, as you tried to tell me a moment ago, but I seem to remember hearing somewhere that there should be more to marriage than sexual intercourse and I’m quite sure there should be more to being a clergyman’s wife than turning up in church on Sundays. Tell me, was your wife intelligent?’
‘No, she was really rather stupid. But that didn’t matter. I
prefer to discuss intellectual matters with men, and anyway when a man gets home after a hard day’s work the last thing he wants is to hear his wife expounding on intellectual or spiritual matters. He wants a kiss and a hot meal and the latest report on the domestic front, preferably the more banal the better.’
‘The wife you’re describing seems to be little more than a housekeeper,’ said Francis. ‘Or is it a glorified parlourmaid?’
‘If you’re still clinging to the theory that I wanted to marry a woman just like my mother, I assure you that you couldn’t be more mistaken! Betty and my mother were utterly different.’
‘Tell me about this mother of yours. Were you the only child?’
‘Yes, but she didn’t spoil me. She trained me much as she used to train her cats – firmly and without sentimentality.’
‘How old were you when she died?’
‘Fourteen. Can we stop this digression now, please, and return to more relevant matters?’
‘Why are you becoming so flustered about your mother?’
‘I’m not flustered! It’s just that one doesn’t always welcome the opportunity to share cherished memories, particularly if one’s in the middle of an inquisition. Why are you so obsessed with the Oedipus Complex?’
‘You don’t ask the questions, Jonathan; you answer them. Why do you suppose you married a woman who was so utterly different from your mother?’
Losing patience I said with sarcasm: ‘No doubt you’d advance the theory that when I failed to find my mother’s replica among the women I met through my Cambridge acquaintances, I married my mother’s opposite in despair.’
‘Never mind the theory I’d advance. Let’s hear you advance a theory of your own.’
‘I don’t have a theory; I have knowledge. I married Betty because I loved her and although the marriage had its difficult aspects I must absolutely insist that it was happy and successful.’
‘But my dear Jonathan,’ said Francis, ‘can’t you see that you’re trying to harmonize two statements which are fundamentally incompatible? On the one hand you’re insisting that you were happily married – yet on the other you’re insisting that the
marriage made you so maimed spiritually that you were unable to serve God to the best of your ability. I put it to you that either you were happily married and not spiritually maimed; or that you were spiritually maimed and unhappily married. But a priest like you can’t possibly be both spiritually maimed
and
happily married. That would be a psychological impossibility.’ He terminated the interview by laying down his pen. ‘Now go away and consider what I’ve said, please, and when you return tomorrow I trust you’ll be a good deal more explicit about your curious marriage than you’ve deigned to be today.’
After supper I retired to my cell to examine the new development in my ordeal. I could now perceive the dimensions of the rack, just as I could sense that Francis was steering me towards it, and I knew I had to take defensive action. I felt no guilt in admitting this because I knew Francis was on the wrong track; my duty at this point was clearly not to wave him on his way but to do my best to steer him back on to the right road.
I sat plotting how I might best deflect him and escape the rack. Of course I could not tell lies. I had to be as truthful as possible but that meant I had to calculate with precision where the boundary between the possible and the impossible lay. It would be unfortunate if I were to discover in mid-sentence that I had allowed myself to be strapped to the rack despite all my efforts to avoid it.
I saw then that the next interview would be fraught with danger, and on the following morning in the workshop I barely glanced at the doorkeeper’s daily news. The war beyond the cloister was receding in my consciousness. I was too busy fighting a desperate private war of my own.
‘I’m sorry you thought I was being so paradoxical yesterday,’ I said to Francis when we next met. ‘With your permission I’d now like to explain my marriage in a more comprehensible way.’
Francis kept his expression bland and motioned me to continue.
‘What I was really trying to imply,’ I said, ‘is that I was probably as happy with Betty as I would have been with any other woman. The problem wasn’t Betty; it was marriage itself – the whole business of living in close proximity to another person. The truth was I shouldn’t have married at all, but as I was neither a eunuch nor a homosexual it never occurred to me at the tender age of twenty-three that I’d be better off as a celibate. So I married and was often very happy. It’s true that I did find my spiritual vitality was being sapped, but since I loved my wife and children I was prepared to tolerate that. All marriages involve some degree of compromise and mine was certainly no exception.’
But Francis merely said: ‘I do see the distinction you’re trying to make when you blame your discomfort on the institution of marriage rather than on your wife, but nevertheless if living in close proximity to another person was so difficult for you one can’t help but wonder if that other person might be part of the problem. Forgive me for asking, but did you in fact marry her for any reason other than the sexual and the economic?’
‘No, but that doesn’t mean the marriage was doomed. Most marriages founder over either money or intimacy. It was our modest bank balance and our intimate relationship which held the marriage together.’
‘Well, there wasn’t much else to hold it together, was there?’ said Francis bluntly. ‘She shared none of your intellectual interests; she was spiritually illiterate; she came from a different
class, a fact which must have complicated your professional and social life in all kinds of difficult ways –’