Mystical Paths (21 page)

I was able to say with genuine sympathy: ‘How very unpleasant for you.’

‘It was worse than that, Nicholas, it was extremely hurtful, but at least I knew then he was so deeply neurotic that all I could do was pray for him every Sunday in church. "Dear God," I used to pray, "please make Christian normal because darling Stephen will be so upset if he’s not." That’s why I was so relieved when Christian finally nerved himself to marry Katie — a replica of his mother she was, of course, even though she came from Hampshire and had plenty of clothes — and I was even more relieved that the marriage produced three children, but if you ask me he was absolutely ruined by that doting mother of his, absolutely spoilt rotten, and darling Stephen couldn’t redress the balance because he’s soft as butter with all his children, he can’t help himself, it’s his noble nature, but if anyone needed a walloping it was Christian. He was arrogant, snooty, snobbish, vain and self-centred — and no doubt you’re shocked that I should speak ill of the dead, but I pride myself on my candour and I’ve never had any time for that dreary oldcliché nil-nisi-bonum-thingummyjig. Well, there you are, my dear, that’s Christian for you, and don’t bother to listen to what anyone else says because it’ll all be a fantasy. Will you stay to tea?’

‘Well, I —’

‘Do stay! Elizabeth’s longing to show you her photos of Rome!’

That was what I was afraid of. ‘Well, actually —’

The door opened without warning and Dr Aysgarth returned to his study.

II

‘Stephen darling!’ exclaimed Dido. ‘I’ve just explained Christian to Nicholas and he quite understands everything now, so you don’t have to give his silly remarks a second thought — oh, and he’s staying to tea because he wants to see Elizabeth’s photos of St Peter’s, always so interesting for Anglo-Catholics, although I don’t blame them in the least for preferring the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Pope, particularly since the Romans have now admitted we were right to hold services in the vernacular. Come along, Nicholas, we’ll go and find Elizabeth. I —’ The doorbell rang — oh bother, that’ll be the Browne-Bentleys arriving — excuse me for a moment —’ And she flew away into the hall.

As the door banged shut Dr Aysgarth and I eyed each other. I had just opened my mouth to attempt yet another apology when he said abruptly: ‘Sit down,’ and returned to the chair behind his desk.

Closing my mouth again I instantly did as I was told.

‘I owe it to your father,’ he said, ‘to treat you with a little more patience than I displayed earlier. Back in the 1940s when I was trying to survive your father’s invasion of my arch-deaconry I lost count of the number of times I wanted to punch him on the nose, but I’ll say this for him: in the 196os no one could have been kinder during a couple of occasions when life became temporarily a little awkward for me. He’s mentioned to you, I daresay, that I’ve been accustomed in the recent past to drop in on him for a little tea and sympathy now and then?’

‘No, sir.’

‘No? Ah well, on second thoughts, why should he? There’s nothing remarkable about an old acquaintance calling to pay his respects — an old acquaintance who can now say with truth that he has the greatest possible respect for your father as a clergyman. So bearing all that in mind —’ He heaved a sigh as if this confession had been an exhausting exercise — why don’t we try to replay that previous scene in a way that does justice to us both? I’m sure you’re fundamentally a good boy and I’ve no doubt you mean well.’

Then I saw beyond the successful corporate manager to the priest who had the humility to say, no matter how obliquely, that he had been in the wrong and was sorry. Obviously I had been too quick to write him off with contempt as a worldly ecclesiastical careerist. I should have been more willing to remember Norman’s insistence that his father was devout.

‘It’s very kind of you to give me a second chance, sir,’ I said. ‘I’m extremely sorry I upset you so much earlier, and naturally I shan’t attempt to press you further about the subject of our previous conversation.’

He smiled at me. ‘Congratulations!’ he said. ‘That was admirably put — how well we’re both behaving! Perhaps we should now pause to pat each other on the back!’

I laughed. It came as a relief to discover he had a sense of humour. I could see now he wasn’t such a bad old boy after all.

‘However,’ he said — and as soon as he spoke that qualifying word I sensed I was being not innocently befriended but subtly manipulated, ‘much as I would like to accept your offer to drop the subject of Christian, I now find I’m quite unable to do so. That’s because my wife, by her own admission, has been giving you the benefit of her candour. Dido’s candour,’ said Dr Aysgarth, ‘is a most remarkable quality, but unfortunately her Aramaic style of speech can be a trifle misleading; all the nuancesand subtleties tend to be buried beneath a tidal wave of hyperbole, and I really do feel that I can’t let you leave this house until I’ve clarified her candour by giving you the whole truth, pure and simple. Of course Oscar Wilde said the truth was never pure and rarely simple,’ said Dr Aysgarth wittily, now sparkling away like a well-cut diamond, ‘but let me at least strive to achieve a modest accuracy devoid of exaggeration.’

‘That’s very good of you, sir,’ I said, and thought: if he’s staging this type of high-quality performance he must be damned worried about what she said to me.

‘Well, before I offer myself as a candidate for the sainthood,’ said Dr Aysgarth, still coruscating busily, ‘I wonder if I might ask you a few questions. First of all, why did you suddenly feel called to alleviate the misery resulting from Christian’s death?’

‘I had an encounter with Katie recently and I was appalled enough to try to figure out what I could do to help.’

‘Was it she who thought Christian had committed suicide?’

‘I’m sorry, sir, but the conversations I’ve had with various people on this subject have all been confidential.’

‘Naturally I don’t expect you to betray a confidence. And anyway, regardless of where the rumour came from I’m sure you wanted to help Katie by scotching it.’

‘Yes, sir. I decided to make a few enquiries in an attempt to establish he had a good reason for staying alive.’

‘And had he?’

‘All I can say is that so far I’ve turned up no convincing motive for suicide. I’ve merely come across stories about him behaving oddly in the months before he died.’

‘I suppose you’re referring to his decision to go on holiday with Perry when Katie was eight months pregnant — and his increasing obsession with sailing. I think there’s no doubt he wasn’t quite himself in those last months, but I must absolutely insist that he was in no way odd in the sense of neurotic. Dido, I’m afraid, will have declared that he was a bundle of the most extraordinary neuroses — how I wish garbled Freudian theory hadn’t become so popular on the cocktail circuit! — but the reason she insists on believing he was neurotic is because she hates the idea that anyone could dislike her quite so much as he did. It’s easier, as I’m sure you understand, for her simply to write him off as crazy.’

Dr Aysgarth paused, and suddenly I became aware of his psyche, blunt and dark but streaked with sharp bands of light, two contrasting strands of essence integrated miraculously but uneasily in that highly complex personality. I then had a strong impression of the light flaring up on all the bands, and at once it seemed to me that against all the odds he genuinely wanted to be truthful. The stylish manner, the subtle manipulative technique, the shady hallmarks of the sophisticated worldly fixer — all were set aside by a brief, tough act of will, and with surprise I found myself in the presence of a devout priest, emotionally buttoned up but passionately sincere, who was determined to live up to his ideals by being honest. At that point I realised that all three Aysgarths had been paraded before me that afternoon: Aysgarth Model A, the cosy idealist who preferred to look away from reality, had been succeeded by Aysgarth Model B, the worldly thug, who had in turn been contained and conquered by Aysgarth Model AB, who had somehow learnt how to hold the light and the dark side of his personality in a creative tension which produced a devout Christian. I thought how fascinated my father must have been by the spiritual challenges thrown up by this peculiar psyche. I could see now that the Bishop would hardly have needed to ask my father to take on Aysgarth as a desperate case in 1963; my father would have been only too willing to leap into the spiritual boxing-ring and rescue Aysgarth as he lay out for the count on the floor.

‘Very well,’ the resurrected Aysgarth was saying firmly in 1968, ‘let’s set Dido’s biased opinion aside and have a go at delivering this truth that ought to be so pure and simple. Christian —’ But he found he could no longer remain seated. Standing up he began to pace around the room.

‘Christian,’ said Dr Aysgarth, ‘was as sane and well-balanced as any normal person, but he wasn’t an unimaginative type impervious to mental anguish. He was sensitive, romantic, anidealist. If he had been less sensitive, less romantic and less of an idealist, he would have recovered from the death of his mother, but he couldn’t cope with that first brush with a harsh reality. I should have been able to talk to him, but I couldn’t — I couldn’t talk about the tragedy,’ said Dr Aysgarth, speaking much more rapidly, ‘I couldn’t talk about it, it was impossible for me. My failure, of course. My mistake. You’re not a parent yourself yet, but let me tell you that even the most loving parents make hellish mistakes. One of the worst things for me about Christian’s death is that I have no chance now to say to him: "I’m sorry. I know I was at fault. Forgive me."‘

Pausing by the window he stared out into the garden and I could no longer see his face.

‘I don’t believe he committed suicide,’ he said after another pause. ‘Of course I’ve faced the possibility that I don’t dare believe it — I’ve faced the fact that I could be shying away from all the agony such a tragedy would involve. But once I try to consider the facts dispassionately I always wind up thinking: he wasn’t the suicidal type. Something was wrong, perhaps even very wrong, but he was so like me, you see, and although I’ve gone through some horrifically difficult times in my life I’ve never once considered killing myself to escape from them.’

‘I accept that this is your considered, rational verdict, sir,’ I said, ‘but what was your initial, instinctive reaction when you heard the news?’ I hardly dared to interrupt but I felt compelled to take every advantage of his desire to be truthful.

‘Ah, now this is very odd,’ said Dr Aysgarth, not in the least put out by the question and even becoming more confidential. ‘This’ll surprise you. When I heard the news I thought: what a merciful release!’

‘As if he’d been terminally ill?’

‘Exactly. And I was so troubled by that reaction that I knew I bad to talk it over with your father. How clearly I remember that day when I drove over to Starrington to see him ... Dear old Jon, there he was, pottering around with that cat. Odd for a heterosexual male to keep a cat, I’ve always thought, and of course if he’d lived a few centuries ago they’d have called the cat his familiar and burnt the two of them at the stake. Strange how Jon’s turned into the archetypal figure of the wise old man living in solitude! When I remember how he crashed around in 1940 ... but no, I’m digressing. I think I must be playing for time while I nerve myself to deliver the truth – which, of course, is quite definitely neither pure nor simple.

When I told your father I’d reacted to the death as if Christian had been terminally ill, he said: "Perhaps subconsciously you’d felt for some time that he was very sick." And then I saw it all.

‘This is the truth, Nicholas; this is the truth your father and I worked out together: Christian
was
sick. It was a spiritual sickness. It arose because he’d turned away from God after his mother died and he’d never filled the vacuum satisfactorily. Of course there are many admirable people in this world who don’t believe in God and yet lead moral, meaningful lives, but they’ve succeeded in filling the spiritual vacuum with sound humanist principles. For a long time I assumed Christian had done that, but in the end I began to wonder and then I started to worry, because if there’s nothing substantial filling the vacuum .. . Well, as a good Liberal Protestant Modernist – dear me, how old-fashioned that sounds nowadays! – I’ve never believed in the Devil, but I do recognise that there are dark forces at work in the human mind, and I know they’re only too adept at colonising a spiritual void.

‘I said to your father that this void, this vacuum in Christian’s soul, was all my fault because I’d failed to help him when his mother died – with the result that he’d turned his back on God. I also told your father that the real tragedy was not just that a believer had wound up an atheist; it was that Christian had rejected God’s call to him to be a clergyman. I feel sure that if his mother had lived, Christian would have gone into the Church. He was so like me, you see, and ... no, it’s not just wishful thinking. He was called to be a clergyman, I know he was, but he set his face against the call.’

Dr Aysgarth returned to the window again to study the view of the garden. Then he said: ‘Your father was so kind to me,so compassionate. He declared: "I entirely disapprove of the Freudian theory that blames all a child’s troubles on his hapless parents. You may have made mistakes with Christian, but that doesn’t mean you were a bad father; it means you were human. And ultimately, regardless of your mistakes, his life was his own responsibility, not yours. Lay all your grief and pain before God," your father said to me, "and then let them go. Don’t allow yourself to be haunted by these demons. Forgive yourself and forgive him so that you can both be at peace." Well,’ said Dr Aysgarth, moving away from the window to straighten the row of photographs on the mantelshelf, ‘that was without doubt the correct advice and I’ve tried to follow it, but it hasn’t been easy – and it becomes very hard indeed when a brash young ordinand bulldozes his way into my study and blurts out abrasive remarks about Christian’s death. However, let’s forget that now and sum up the facts. One: Christian, I truly believe, died accidentally. Two: before he died he was troubled. And three: I don’t know exactly what his troubles were, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that there was a widening split between the life he should have lived and the life he was actually living. This crucial problem, which is far from uncommon and which is essentially spiritual, was triggered in this case by his atheism – for which I was responsible because of my parental shortcomings during his adolescence.’

Moving abruptly back to his desk he planted himself beside his swivel-chair and looked me straight in the eyes. ‘Now, Nicholas, I’ve been exceedingly frank with you, not merely because I’m indebted to your father for all his kindness but because I want you to see as clearly as I do that it’s both irresponsible and insensitive to run around asking questions about Christian and stirring up everyone’s pain. It’s good of you to be so concerned about poor Katie. But your enquiry into Christian’s death is misconceived and you should now let the matter rest.’

‘Yes, sir. And thank you, sir, for taking me so deeply into your confidence. I respect that very much,’ I said, good as gold, but I wondered if Aysgarth Model B, the worldly thug, had secretly been in control of the scene all the time. It was not that I thought Aysgarth Model AB, the devout priest, had just told me a web of lies; I was sure he had told me what he believed to be the truth. (Whether it really was the truth was another matter altogether.) However I had the uncomfortable suspicion he had told me the truth not primarily because he had wanted to be truthful but because he had seen it as the best way of shutting me up; he had realised that nothing less than the truth was going to stop me asking questions, and he had felt compelled to stop me asking questions because he had been so afraid that he might eventually hear other people’s answers — afraid, in other words, that there could be facts he didn’t know and couldn’t bear to know.