At first I was surprised that Ruth had concealed this incident from me; her jealousy ensured that I usually heard promptly whenever Martin had been disagreeable, but then I realized that she had not wanted me thinking of Martin when for the first time for many years she had me all to herself.
‘He’s asked for money before, of course,’ Roger was saying, ‘but he never pays it back and this time I decided to put my foot down. I dare say you’ll think me uncharitable, but –’
‘Not at all. Charity isn’t always synonymous with giving money. It may be better for Martin if he’s taught that he can’t continue to extract money from you on demand.’
Making the mistake of thinking I was entirely unsympathetic to my son, Roger said aggressively: ‘Perhaps he’ll now make more effort to get a job. Why can’t he seek appropriate work
like any other decent pacifist instead of loafing around as an out-of-work actor? In my opinion it’s a pity he can’t be press-ganged into the Army tomorrow – it would straighten out his drinking and make a man of him. I can’t stand all this weak-kneed pacifist talk, and if you ask me I think Martin’s decision to swim with the pacifist tide is just his immature way of showing off and calling attention to himself.’
I waited for five seconds until I had myself absolutely in control. Then I said in a voice which was devoid of emotion: ‘Personally I’d rather Martin stood up for his beliefs by talking weak-kneed rubbish than compromised his integrity by talking strong-armed claptrap.’
Ruth, re-entering the room seconds later, found us sunk deep in a hostile silence. ‘Coffee’s ready!’ she said brightly, trying to conceal her dismay, but I could only profess my need for an early night and escape once more to my room.
The next day I did not present myself in the dining-room until Roger had departed for his office. It was curious to be confronted by a cooked breakfast again. I was torn between finding the bacon and eggs repulsively rich and savouring such a nostalgic reminder of my youth.
Ruth was closeted with her ‘daily’ and Janet was playing with her friend next door, so in my solitude I was free to read the newspapers which had already been delivered to the house. Setting aside
The Daily Telegraph
I began my first inspection for seventeen years of that popular rag
The Daily Express.
Amazed, aghast and wholly absorbed by the bold headlines and even bolder photographs I marvelled at the violent, sex-obsessed, trivia-infested world I had been called to rejoin. This was indeed a world far removed from the decorous columns to which I had become accustomed. Guiltily I wondered what Father Darcy would have thought as I skimmed through the latest society divorce case and allowed my glance to linger on a picture of an
exceedingly fetching actress, but I did not think of Father Darcy for long. I was too busy imagining the actress in one of the astoundingly brief modern bathing costumes which were displayed in an adjacent advertisement, and I was just wondering in alarm if I could be experiencing the onset of Monks’ Madness when Ruth returned to the room.
‘Now, Daddy, it’s quite obvious you need a woman to take you in hand,’ she said, sublimely unaware of the image which this normally innocuous phrase at once conjured up in my disordered imagination. ‘I’m going to drive you to the shops. You simply must have some more clothes, and Roger and I have decided to give you a suit as a coming-out present.’
‘How very kind,’ I said, ‘but the two suits I have at present are quite sufficient.’
‘What utter nonsense! Daddy, you can’t possibly go off to this hotel next week with no decent clothes – do come down to earth and be realistic for a moment! You must have a dressing-gown, pyjamas, slippers, some ties, a couple of ordinary shirts, some grey flannels and a sports jacket – and oh my goodness, I nearly forgot! Daddy, your
underclothes!
When we met outside the bathroom this morning –’
‘I concede,’ I said with dignity, ‘that I need new underclothes, and of course if you and Roger truly wish to give me a suit it would be most ungracious of me to refuse to accept it, but the other items will have to wait. I can’t possibly put you to such expense.’
‘Yes, you can – we’re not poor, and it’s very important that you should get everything you need before they bring in clothes-rationing. Stop being so huffish and proud!’
Realizing that any further argument would only upset her I refrained from any mutinous comment, but I found Ruth demonstrating her love by well-meaning bossiness almost as exhausting as Ruth demonstrating her love by staging an emotional scene.
Half an hour later we motored to the centre of Starmouth, and there I was firmly led, like a small child dragooned by a nanny, to the gentlemen’s tailors and outfitters’ shop which I
had patronized earlier in my life. There a surprise awaited me. I had expected merely to be measured for the suit, but it had already been bespoken. My measurements had been on file, Ruth had placed the order as soon as she had received word of my return to the world and the little tailor, who remembered me well, was now beaming as he offered me his latest sartorial masterpiece.
I said: ‘It’s navy blue,’ and somehow succeeded in keeping the horror out of my voice.
‘Isn’t it lovely?’ said Ruth pleased. ‘So much nicer than dreary old black!’
The tailor said soothingly to me: ‘The navy blue is very dark, sir, and perfectly seemly for a gentleman of your calling.’
Realizing I was on the brink of behaving badly I pulled myself together. ‘I’m extremely pleased,’ I said. ‘This is a wonderful surprise. May I try it on?’
I was shown into a curtained alcove and abandoned with my new suit. The colour still looked unbearably frivolous and common but I told myself I had to stop thinking in such ascetic terms and that my snobbery was not only unattractive but in all probability out of date. Perhaps nowadays even aristocratic clergymen ran around in blue suits during their leisure hours. I held the material up to the light. The colour was indeed very dark. Perhaps at night or on a wet day it might be mistaken for black. That prospect seemed the best I could hope for.
Keeping my back to the looking-glass I slowly exchanged the old for the new, the sacred for the profane, but despite my antipathy I had to admit the suit felt a perfect fit. I allowed myself a moment of unedifying pride as I reflected how little my figure had altered in seventeen years, and then, fortified by my vanity, I nerved myself to face the glass.
I was appalled. A layman, smart and barely recognizable, confronted me. He looked like a successful actor playing the role of a celebrated politician – or possibly of a celebrated surgeon. Pride, arrogance and an aura of reckless ruthless individuality emanated from the reflection with a force which recalled all my most horrific memories. I felt I was glimpsing
again the young undergraduate who had so unscrupulously used his gifts for his own aggrandisement, and this sinister exposure of the dark side of my personality made me yearn in panic for my black and white habit which, like some metaphysical corset, had encased my faults and concealed them behind the façade of a corporate identity.
‘Does it fit?’ Ruth was demanding, reminding me of Betty as she slashed my consciousness with the razor of her conversation. ‘Can I come in?’
‘I suppose so.’ I disliked all this womanish bustling.
‘I was sure you hadn’t put on any weight, but even so I – DADDY! Darling, you look stunning, just like a film star! What a wonderful transformation!’
This was exactly the judgement I had no wish to hear. The last thing I wanted was to be transformed; that way lay danger, error and nightmare. ‘It’s a most generous gift, Ruth. Thank you very much,’ I said with difficulty, but all the time I was longing for my pectoral cross and my abbot’s ring.
‘Daddy, is anything wrong?’
‘No, I just feel odd dressed as a layman. I’ll be fine once I’m back in my clerical suit.’
‘But aren’t you going to wear –’
‘I’ll save it for later.’ I got rid of her, changed back into my familiar clothes and felt better, but when I emerged from the cubicle I found she had been rapidly buying a host of other items, shirts and ties to go with the new suit, the promised grey flannels and sports jacket, the pyjamas, dressing-gown, slippers – and even the underclothes.
‘You need new shoes too,’ she said. ‘We’ll leave everything here and just slip across the road to the shoe-shop –’
‘Ruth, I’m quite sure you can’t afford all this gross and unnecessary expenditure –’
‘Now don’t start being proud and huffish again!’
I gave up and allowed myself to be marched to the shoe-shop but as soon as we left I asked to be taken to the nearest church.
‘Church!’ She was much taken aback but after a moment’s hesitation she said uneasily: ‘I’ll take you to the one nearest the
house so that it’ll be easy for you to walk home … Daddy, what is it? What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. I just want to be in church for a bit, that’s all. It feels so odd not to have been in church yet today.’
‘I suppose you want to be alone. I can remember Mummy saying to Grandma: “In the end no matter what I do he always has to be alone.”’ And as I flinched she added in a rush: ‘I’m sorry, I know talking about Mummy always upsets you. I’ll shut up now and give you some peace.’
She left me at the church, a Victorian replica of the conventional Norman design, and drove away looking injured. I dragged myself inside. The interior was dusty and dark. Kneeling in a corner by a pillar I wrestled with my misery for a long time but eventually I sat back in the pew, took my Missal from my pocket and read the noon office. That soothed me, and afterwards I was at last able to concentrate on framing my personal prayers.
‘What on earth have you been doing?’ cried Ruth, opening the front door as I toiled up the drive in the middle of the afternoon. ‘You’ve been gone for hours! I’ve been so worried – I thought you’d got lost, had an accident, suffered a heart attack – I even went down to the church to look for you but you weren’t there –’
‘I went for a walk. Then I found another church and –’
‘Well, you might at least have telephoned to say you were missing lunch!’ Once more she was deeply hurt. It was tempting to express my guilt and despair by shouting at her in exasperation but of course there could be no shouting, no scenes, no reaction other than a saintly contrition.
‘I’m so sorry, how very thoughtless of me.’
‘And now I suppose you’ll say you want to be alone again!’
With a supreme effort I managed to say levelly: ‘My dear, you mustn’t take it as a personal insult. The truth is I’m just not used to the world yet and I need time to recuperate. Please try to understand and make allowances.’
Silently she stood aside to let me pass and awkwardly, feeling guiltier than ever, I slunk away up the stairs to my room.
The depression began, stabbing deep deadening fingers into my psyche and casting a dark dragging shadow over my powers of reason. I knew that I was suffering from a reaction to the elation I had experienced when I had found myself free to respond to my new call; I knew I was emotionally dislocated, deprived of my cherished way of life; I knew I had to calm myself not only with prayer but with the knowledge that my distress would almost certainly pass, but I found prayer so difficult in that alien environment and the belief in my ultimate recovery was of small comfort. Meanwhile my psychic vitality was continually sapped by the unfamiliar noise of the world, from the meaningless conversation at mealtimes to the irritating stream of sound on the wireless. I began to feel increasingly debilitated and desperate.
However after three torturous days Sunday arrived and I had a chance to conquer my apathy by embracing the disciplined structure of corporate worship. I attended the early service of Holy Communion, which was tolerably well conducted, and later went to Matins and Evensong. Both sermons struck me as slipshod and unedifying. So did the music; the choir made much noise but sang flat. I felt saddened by the lack of men in the congregation and the predominance of elderly women. However at least I was participating in some form of familiar routine. It had a stabilizing influence on me, and as I walked home after Evensong I made up my mind to. stop pining for my Grantchester chapel, for the voices of my brethren singing the office, for the ascetic atmosphere which I had found so conducive to a rich inner life. To recoil from the world was to fall into the trap of Dualism. No one could deny, in 1940, that evil was present in the world, but the world itself was good, a place to be loved and cherished, and it ill became a priest to regard the work of God with despair.
The next morning I found I had the will to battle against my
melancholy, and although I was still tempted to incarcerate myself in my bedroom I left the house, took a motor-bus into the countryside and went for a long walk. Fields, hills, valleys, streams – all seemed radiantly beautiful in the summer light, and as I walked I felt the depression loosen its stranglehold on my mind. I was wearing one of my new shirts with my new grey flannels, and so for the first time in seventeen years I was able to enjoy hot weather without being burdened by heavy robes. I decided that there might after all be compensations for relinquishing the monastic life, and later when I stopped at a village inn for a pint of ale I sat peacefully in the small spare masculine saloon without once wishing myself back in the cloister.
When I returned to Ruth’s house in the early evening I felt physically tired but mentally strong enough to surmount any emotional hurdle which my family might heave across my path – or so I thought. I did not ring the front doorbell. I sensed little Janet was waiting for me in the back garden so I strolled around the side of the house and pushed open the tradesmen’s gate. However as I entered the garden I found that my intuition had been only partially correct. Someone was indeed waiting for me but that someone was not Janet.