‘You can invoke the deity of logic as ardently as you please, Francis, but the fact remains that you’re merely speculating.
You never met my father. You’ve no idea what he was really like –’
‘But have you any more idea than I have? You’ve just admitted the estrangement ran very deep –’
‘Of course I know what he was really like! Didn’t I live under the same roof as him for years and years?’
‘That’s no guarantee of intimate knowledge, particularly if the parties are hopelessly estranged!’
‘I don’t deny the estrangement, but if you think I didn’t know him inside out –’
‘Prove it. Sum him up in a single sentence.’
‘He was a failure.’
‘A failure?’
‘He failed me, he failed my mother, he failed himself. A wasted life. Pathetic’
In the silence which followed I suddenly became aware that Francis was engaged in a fierce struggle to control his temper. On the one hand he was telling himself sternly that a clever well-trained monk, acting as a counsellor, should never lose his grip on his self-control, but on the other hand he was mentally shouting that I deserved a punch on the jaw. So startled was I by this cerebral battle which flashed before my psychic eye that for one long moment I could only stare at him speechlessly. Then I managed to say a feeble ‘Francis?’ in an effort to express my bewilderment.
‘Oh, don’t mind me!’ said Francis. ‘You just took my breath away, that’s all, but don’t worry, you have that effect on me sometimes, it’s not unprecedented, and fortunately it only takes me a few seconds to recover.’
‘I didn’t mean to sound uncharitable –’
‘Oh, splendid! I’m so glad!’
‘Now listen to me, Francis –’
‘No, you listen to me! That flash of arrogance was quite intolerable and I absolutely refuse to let you get away with it. By what standards are you judging that man? I hardly think they can be described as Christian! Your father stood by your mother; he stood by you; he accepted his lot – and day by day,
all through his working life, he served God by exercising his gift for teaching. Thousands of boys must have benefited from his skill and had their lives enriched – how dare you call him a failure!’
I shouted: ‘But what about all the pain I suffered when he rejected me?’ Then I said violently: ‘He failed me. He couldn’t accept me as I was. He failed me.’ And without waiting for a reply I walked away, stumbling the few yards downhill to the shore of the lake.
An interval followed as Francis allowed us both time to compose ourselves. I stared at the limpid water beneath the light sky and struggled to master my misery. In an effort to turn aside from self-pity I thought of Francis, now almost certainly battling with his own distress as he reflected on the ruined interview, and resolved not to hold his harsh words against him. All counsellors, even the most successful, have their disastrous sessions when for some reason they are unable to maintain their emotional detachment, and suddenly I was recalling with painful clarity my failure to help Martin when we had met in Ruth’s garden shortly after my departure from the Order.
The pebbles crunched behind me on the little shingle beach. Francis’ voice said: ‘Sorry. My fault. What a mess,’ but as I turned to face him I answered: ‘It’s all right.’
‘That’s very kind of you to say so, but I don’t see how it can be. I lost my temper, behaved like an overbearing counsel for the prosecution and even tried to force-feed you ideas which you’re at present psychologically unable to accept! How on earth could I have made such appalling mistakes?’
At once I said: ‘Because my case means a great deal to you. Because the ordeal we both endured when you had to examine my call to leave the Order has bound us together in such a way that you feel deeply involved with my new career. Because you’re so anxious to help me overcome my troubles that you couldn’t resist trying to wind up the case in double-quick time before you’re obliged to return to London. Now do you understand why I said: “It’s all right”? The mess arose not
because you didn’t care but because you cared too much, and besides … the mess was hardly all your fault.’ I sighed as I offered him my hand in reconciliation. ‘I’m sorry too. Obviously I need much more help.’
Francis gratefully clasped my hand. The trouble is that since you’re beyond the reach of logic I’m not sure which approach to adopt next. I wonder what the old man would have done? I suppose he’d have wiped your mind clean by some esoteric exercise of his will and then claimed to have exorcized you. Ugh – how repulsive!’ And he shuddered.
‘You’re only repulsed because you’re mentally defining exorcism in the modern sense and associating it with witchcraft and quackery. But exorcism in the classical sense could be just as respectable as psychiatry. After all, what are the two facts about Christ which no one but a fool would dispute? He was a healer and an exorcist in the best possible sense of both terms.’
‘True, but –’
‘Father Darcy wasn’t Christ but he certainly wasn’t a witchdoctor either, and I’m sure that in the present situation he would have adopted a traditional mystical approach, employing the ancient symbol of the battle between the forces of darkness and the forces of light: he would have called on God for help and then embarked on the task of ejecting the demon which was burdening my psyche.’
Francis was unable to resist another shudder. ‘You mean he’d have peeled away all your defences in order to expose the raw psyche to the light of truth. What a dangerous game to play!’
‘For a quack, yes. But not for the gifted exorcist who always knows exactly what he’s doing.’
‘Well, I agree you need to see your father in the light of truth, but if you think I’m going to resort to exorcism –’
‘No, obviously you can’t do that, not because you’re incapable of healing me but because you couldn’t heal me by a process in which you’ve no faith.’
Francis meditated on this before saying tentatively: ‘I suppose it’s a question of how the healer turns on the light. I’m still
groping for the switch to turn the light on by hand but the old man would have turned it on by sheer will-power.’
‘The old man would have claimed he never turned on anything.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry my metaphor was too secular. Of course he would have said the light was the light of God bestowed by grace, not a source of power which he could flick on and off at will.’
‘Precisely. He would have seen the light as a miraculous gift which inevitably triggers a major revelation in the psyche.’
‘Like the light in your vision,’ said Francis, ‘the mysterious light from the north.’ Restlessly he stooped, picked up a pebble and threw it in such a way that it skipped across the surface of the water. ‘And that reminds me –’ He straightened his back ‘– did you ever read the magazine
Country Life
in 1931?’
I was considerably startled. What an extraordinary question! Why?’
‘Your wife tells me that there was an article in it then about Starrington Manor, complete with photographs of the chapel both inside and out. I just wondered if perhaps during one of those unusual trips to London from Ruydale after the Whitby affair you found a discarded copy of
Country Life
on the train and –’
‘My dear Francis!’
‘– and received, as it were, a preview of your vision –’
‘You appal me!’
‘Of course I’m not accusing you of lying – obviously you’ve forgotten you read the article and the memory was retained only in your subconscious mind – but it would explain the extraordinary degree of clairvoyance you achieved in your vision. Now I’m willing to concede,’ said Francis generously, ‘that every story should be allowed one big coincidence, and in this case the coincidence would be your meeting with Miss Barton-Woods, as she then was, at Allington, but as far as your vision’s concerned –’
I decided to terminate this sad spectacle of an intelligent man struggling in the toils of his earthbound logic. ‘Your trouble.
Francis,’ I said kindly, ‘is that you’re an incorrigible sceptic. I shall preserve a dignified silence which I hope will be even more effective than an equally dignified denial.’
‘A little healthy scepticism never did an honest psychic any harm! However,’ said Francis, becoming serious again much to my relief, ‘I shall respect your dignified silence and merely conclude this somewhat unfortunate session by urging you to have faith in the future and be patient. Despite your recent disaster and your continuing difficulties I’m still convinced that light will shine from the north for you in the end …’
‘Francis visited me on his way home to London,’ said Anne on the following day when I called again at the hospital. ‘He brought me those gorgeous flowers over there from the garden at Starwater. Wasn’t that nice of him? We talked a bit about the baby – and about you too, of course. He was very interesting. He said I must be sure to speak my mind to you about various things because otherwise you’d be continually imagining I was thinking thoughts I wasn’t really thinking at all.’
I said dryly: ‘I’m afraid Francis is incorrigibly sceptical about my psychic powers.’
‘Oh no, I’m sure he believes in them, but he has such a refreshingly down-to-earth approach! “Don’t rely on Jon to read your mind accurately,” he said, “because for every genuine psychic insight he receives he makes two wild guesses which have no relation to reality.”’
‘That’s quite the wrong percentage! Good heavens, what a slander –’
‘So I said: ‘That’s a relief because I don’t want to be married to a miracle-man – I’d much rather be married to an ordinary human being who sometimes gets things wrong and stumbles into messes, just as we all do now and then.” That pleased Francis very much. He said: “I thought so! Now make sure you tell him that.” So here I am, telling you.’
‘What did he say about the baby?’
‘He said I mustn’t be afraid to be angry or to show you that I was angry; anger was all part of the process of grief which had to be worked through. However I told him I didn’t feel angry any more, I’d got over it because I felt Gerald’s life would have meaning, woven into the fabric of our marriage. Then Francis said a very peculiar thing. He said that nevertheless you might need a bit of anger; he said that if I were angry with you, you could regard it as part of a penance and use it to come to terms with your guilt. “Well, I’m sorry,” I said, “but I can’t display anger where none exists, and no matter what you say I think it would be more helpful if I displayed love, not anger.” Then Francis laughed and said how lucky you were to be married to me. He really is the most charming man.’
‘Hm.’ I had my own views about Francis’ charm but I decided to keep them to myself. Anne belonged to the other sex. They saw men differently there.
However I was grateful to Francis for extracting from Anne important facts which might have taken me a long time to uncover, and on my journey back to Starwater I mentally composed him a letter of thanks. Meanwhile, as I discovered when I reached the Abbey, an equally important letter had arrived for me in the afternoon post: the Bishop had written, expressing with exquisite simplicity his sorrow that I should have suffered such a time of anxiety and grief. The service of healing was never mentioned, and in a paroxysm of guilt I immediately wrote back offering my resignation. By that time Aysgarth had recalled the retired canon to conduct the Sunday services while I recovered from my disasters, so my life as the curate of Starrington Magna had already moved into abeyance, but I thought that the least I could do in response to Dr Ottershaw’s most Christian charity was to spare him the ordeal of sacking me.
But instead of accepting my resignation with relief Dr Ottershaw invited me to the palace to discuss the future, and on the day before Anne’s discharge from hospital I found myself journeying to Starbridge to see him.
Freed from the rigours of being wound around my little finger the Bishop delivered an unexpectedly detached judgement. I saw then that I had underestimated him; he was at the mercy neither of Aysgarth, who would obviously be opposing the continuation of my curacy, or of the Pitkin faction, who after the required amnesty following the death of the infant would now also be campaigning for my removal. He was quite capable of steering a sensible course of his own.
‘I think I should abstain from any decision for six months,’ he said, ‘while you recuperate and receive regular direction from Father Ingram. It strikes me that what you need most of all at present is a breathing space – in fact I’ve always wondered if you were denying yourself the proper amount of time to settle down in the world after your long absence. Leaving the cloister’s such a big step, isn’t it, and in retrospect I confess I feel guilty that I allowed you to take on that curacy before, perhaps, you were ready for it. Yes,’ said Dr Ottershaw, setting me an admirable example in humility, ‘there’s no doubt I should share a large part of the responsibility for your present difficulties.’ And as he referred so tactfully to my spiritual breakdown I saw with a clear eye how erratically I had rocketed from one life to another without giving myself sufficient time to adjust to the world I had rejoined.
Much chastened I returned not to Starwater Abbey but to the Manor in order to resume my life at Starrington.
The next morning I arose even earlier than usual and faced a task which I had been steadily postponing: my return to the scene of the catastrophe. I felt strongly that I had to perform a ritual purification, a symbolic act which would surmount my repulsion and heal the raw wound which memory was keeping open in my psyche.