I can never quite understand why women find me attractive, but since there is consistent evidence that they do I have been obliged to accept the attraction as a fact. And of course this fact is highly gratifying to my pride. (Small wonder that Father Darcy thought my ministry should be only to men.) But once pride is cast aside and the female attitude viewed dispassionately the root of the attraction remains embedded in mystery. I am not in the least handsome in any conventional sense of the word. I have a bony angular face which often looks positively ugly when I shave it in the harsh light of early morning. I also have a pallor which in a woman could be described as ‘interesting’ but which in a man can only appear sinister. Apart from my unusual height the most striking detail of my appearance is that my hair and eyes are a matching shade of grey but this is a recent development, and when I was a young man with mouse-coloured hair and pale eyes framed by spectacles I could only judge myself very plain indeed. However even in those days plenty of women appeared to disagree with me. I can only conclude that in some mysterious way my attraction lies in the powers, those ‘glamorous powers’, which have so consistently
embroiled me in trouble. Women sense them and respond. ‘You have such an unusual presence,’ a girl had said to me once, and another had added: ‘That air of authority’s so striking.’ When I was in the cloister I had assumed that my grey hair would provide me with a new respectability, countering the unsuitable raciness exuded by the powers, but now I realized in dismay that instead I had acquired a touch of distinction which only enhanced my appeal to the opposite sex. The result was that I was probably less suited than I had ever been in my life to work in a pastoral capacity among women.
Even if I had been single I would have had no desire to misbehave with any of my attentive females, all of whom I found effortlessly resistible, and we were certainly a long way from an outbreak of hysteria at matins, but the atmosphere of simmering sexuality was an intolerable distraction and very bad for everyone’s spiritual health. Women should come to church to worship God, not to ogle the priest. The priest should feel free to move without constraint among his flock, not smitten with the urge to groan when trapped in the vestry by a purposeful admirer.
I used the vestry as an office; I considered it my duty to be as accessible as possible to those who needed me, and my humbler parishioners might well have thought twice before knocking on the door of the Manor, but I was so often pestered by women who wanted to chat about nothing that I soon wound up well-nigh demented with exasperation. Most of my day seemed to be wasted on trivialities. I had little scope for my talents, and the work often appeared not only dull but unrewarding. I had struck an edifying pose to Aysgarth when I had insisted that the former Abbot of Grantchester should not be too proud to serve as a rural priest, but Aysgarth’s argument that I had a duty to find a post commensurate with my abilities in order to serve God best had in fact been the sounder spiritual position. Deprived of the opportunity to exercise my special skill, the counselling of churchmen in varying degrees of distress, and unable to make use of my special experience acquired at Ruydale, the training of men for the
priesthood, I found that my psyche was quickly invaded by boredom, frustration and restlessness.
My alienation from my new work was exacerbated by the fact that I still felt spiritually disorientated. Carefully I set aside a portion of each day for prayer and meditation, but I missed the framework of the monastic office and ever since my return to the world I had been depressed by the turgid level of worship in the churches. After seventeen years in a monastery, where worship is regarded as of the first importance, I could not help but be appalled by the poor singing, the lacklustre responses and the general air of genteel ennui. Possibly I was being too critical; probably I was setting an impossibly high standard for laymen; but the fact remained that my dissatisfaction increased my irritation with the curacy I had so unscrupulously managed to obtain.
Once or twice I started a frank letter to Francis but I tore my efforts up and sent a bland report instead. I was too proud to acknowledge the truth we both knew: that I had taken on the curacy for the wrong reasons. In addition although I was now paying the price for my self-aggrandisement I was too proud to admit the cost was proving more expensive than I had anticipated. I did see Cyril at Starwater every two weeks to make my confession but Cyril, though a formidable priest in many ways, had neither Father Darcy’s uncanny power of intuiting concealed truths nor the worldly scepticism combined with hard logic which made Francis so difficult to deceive. In other words, I found I could manipulate Cyril. However at least I was not too proud to recognize that this was a most unsatisfactory state of affairs, and finally I tried to face up to the mess by praying for the grace to improve my situation in the way which would prove most pleasing to God. It then occurred to me that instead of secretly moaning that the members of my flock were driving me mad with their trivial problems, banal activities and limp attitude to worship, I had to serve them with a verve which would rouse the entire parish from its languid mediocrity.
I had already dusted down the organist and shaken up the
choirboys; the former had been playing at a funereal pace in keys which favoured alto-tenors, and the latter had become accustomed to stuffing themselves with sweets during the sermon. (The retired canon who had been taking the services had been too blind to see this disgusting exhibition of juvenile greed.) I now cultivated the organist by encouraging him to venture deeper into the rich pastures of English Church music, and I took a similar winning interest in the choirboys; I singled them out for special attention when I visited the village school once a week to take the obligatory scripture classes. The choirboys’ mothers also benefited from my benign attention with the result that all the little surplices were washed and starched, all the little heads possessed clean, parted hair and all the little feet were clad in shining shoes.
As I had proved at Grantchester, clean people in a clean environment perform their work better, and having polished the choirboys to a high lustre I turned my attention to the church by engaging a new cleaning woman whom I judged would wage war on dirt with a zeal worthy of Ruth. I then organized my brigade of ladies into a flurry of flower-arranging and sent the altar-cloth to the cleaners.
More innovations followed. I changed the disagreeable brand of communion wine despite howls of protest from the communicants who possessed a sweet tooth. Chopping verses ruthlessly from psalms and hymns I tried to make the conventional services brighter and brisker; it is a fallacy, as both the Low-Church and the High-Church parties have proved in their very different ways, that reverent worship can only be recognized by its dreary pace and somnolent content. Then I reduced the time of the sermon. It is a characteristic of Anglo-Catholic worship that less emphasis is placed on the sermon than on the liturgy, and rather than declaiming for half an hour in true Protestant fashion I offered my congregation between ten and fifteen minutes of simple but I hoped not insignificant discourse. I am not one of those flamboyant oratorical preachers such as Dr Jardine, the former Bishop of Starbridge, but nevertheless in my own austere way I have always been able to make an incisive
impression on an audience. Preaching too is a charism, of course, and like all charisms it can be subject to abuse but I was very careful, as I strove to rouse the parish from its apathy, not to give way to the temptation to resort to the shadier methods of evangelism.
I knew from the beginning that it would be unwise for me to introduce a form of worship which reflected my High-Church inclinations into a parish where antipathy to Catholicism ran high, but when I embarked on my effort to stimulate my congregation I found I could not accept that the only Anglo-Catholic touch I was allowed to make was the reduced length of the sermon. Cautiously I introduced a few candles, and when no one objected I stealthily planted more. Still no one objected, and step by step I then began to incorporate further rich touches of Anglo-Catholic symbolism into my services. I took care to explain each innovation so that no one could accuse me of staging a mere pretty pageant, and for a while I thought I was encountering a miraculous conversion on all fronts to my belief that colourful ritual can aid devotion by making complex religious truths more accessible, but gradually rumours reached me of rebellion.
In the beginning no one made any pointed remarks except my bossy churchwarden Mr Pitkin who asked if it were true that I intended to install a statue of the Virgin and order my congregation to worship it. The worship of statues constitutes idolatry, Mr Pitkin,’ I said austerely, ‘and besides, although St Mary must be regarded by us with the greatest reverence, worship should be confined to the Trinity.’ I added to reassure him: ‘This is the English, not the Roman Church!’ and he retired satisfied, but I then made a fatal mistake. The following Sunday I announced during Matins that I intended to set aside a certain time each week for the hearing of confessions.
My purpose in making this move was not simply to gratify my longing to return to my work as a confessor; I still conducted a certain amount of spiritual direction by correspondence with men I had counselled as a monk so I was far from being wholly frustrated in this field. However I hoped that my gesture in
offering myself as a confessor to my community might identify those who were in deep need of spiritual help yet had so far been too shy to come forward. Carefully I explained to the congregation that confession to a priest was not compulsory within the Church of England, but the very word ‘confession’ reeks of Popery to a certain type of Protestant, and I found I had opened the floodgates to a tidal wave of complaints about my ‘Romish’ practices.
In vain I insisted that the Anglo-Catholics did not recognize the Pope’s jurisdiction and that the English Catholic Church had all the advantages of the Church of Rome (the heritage of the Early Church, the rich liturgical tradition, the distinctive spirituality) and none of the disadvantages (the accretion of superstition and myth, the chaotic history of the Papacy, the despotic power of a leader who purported to be infallible). To my protestant congregation only the word ‘Catholic’ was audible, and the fact that the Anglo-Catholics were within the Church of England merely provoked the response: ‘What can the Church be corning to?’
I was accused of genuflection as if it were adultery, of facing east at the crucial point of the mass as if I were a Moslem praying to Mecca, of making the sign of the cross with the frequency of a magician performing a conjuring trick and of retaining my hold on the chalice as if I feared one of my communicants might run off with it. All my attempts at explanation – and naturally I was quite prepared to justify these alien practices – were brushed aside as the complaints thundered on. I had littered the church with ‘nasty Papist candles’. I had a thoroughly objectionable habit of referring to the service of Holy Communion as mass. (It was true that after seventeen years with the Fordites I did sometimes let slip the word ‘mass’ in public, but in fact the habits of one’s early years die hard and I usually had no trouble remembering to say ‘communion’ instead.) Then I was accused not only of reserving the sacrament; I was even accused of plotting to import a pyx, but fortunately I could deny this latter charge with a clear conscience since I had had the sense to realize that to introduce perpetual
reservation at that stage would certainly have been to push my Anglo-Catholic luck too far. However I insisted that I would continue to reserve the sacrament for the sick, and my enemies, maddened by my firmness, roared back into the attack by accusing me of smuggling incense into the vestry; I had indeed planned to introduce incense into the services at Advent and had even gone so far as to order a censer, but when I saw that no one appeared able to pronounce the word ‘incense’ without a shudder my nerve failed and I protested that the incense was only for use in the village school’s nativity play.
In the midst of all this nonsense my confession-hour was overrun by my brigade of ladies, who saw it as a legitimate opportunity to talk to me alone, and the whole worthy experiment dissolved into futility.
I felt so enraged, so frustrated and so debilitated by these unedifying events that I actually sat down to pen a full confession to Francis, but the letter was never written.
The military police informed me that Martin had unsuccessfully attempted to commit suicide.
The suicide attempt had been half-hearted, no more than a cry for help from an actor unable to sustain his role, but in the military hospital the extent of his alcoholism was discovered and he remained a patient there for some weeks before his inevitable discharge from the Army. Of course I visited him but since we still seemed to be incapable of meeting without upsetting each other the psychiatrist in charge of his case deemed it wiser that I should temporarily keep my distance. I consoled myself with the thought that at least my son was being cared for in a safe place, but I was made very miserable by the incident and for a while all my other problems seemed trivial in comparison.
Anne was kindness itself to me throughout this agonizing time but I remained haunted by the anxiety that I might try her
patience too far; I was sure the last thing she wanted was to see me crucified by the legacy of my first marriage, and I was also afraid that in my distress I might betray my horror of begetting more children who might grow up profoundly unhappy. Accordingly I drew a veil over my suffering to protect her from it and renewed my efforts never to weary her with any self-centred display of grief.
I did write a brief letter about Martin to Francis who replied with sympathy and urged me to visit him, but when out of a reluctance to discuss my other problems I declined to leave the parish at that time, I suspected Anne was relieved. London was still under heavy attack, and the Archbishop, bombed out of Lambeth Palace, had even withdrawn to Canterbury; I could not help but think critically of him for his retreat from the capital in such a time of crisis, but Dr Lang was an old man now and perhaps it ill became me to criticize him when I myself was safe in the country. As all the reports made clear, London had become a nightmare, and soon the nightmare was extended when the Luftwaffe at last turned aside to bomb the provincial cities. In mid-November the great cathedral at Coventry was smashed to rubble, but no bomb could destroy the spirit that dwelt there. Immediately a cross was fashioned from the scorched beams and a month later the Christmas service was broadcast to the nation from the ruins.