Mystical Paths (29 page)

Christian’s frantic words to Dinkier ‘I want to live! I’m dead and I want to live!’ suggested that he was by that time yearning to ditch the false ego which had created the inauthentic existence, and unite with his true self. He might still not have been aware of the renewed call from God to a religious life, but he would definitely be experiencing God as a constant pressure on the ego by the unconscious mind. (I should stress here that I’m not trying to explain God away by brandishing a scientific theory. I’m merely expressing His action in the language of psychology. Science destroys only the false ideas about religion; the true ideas it complements and explores.) And having mentioned the false ideas about religion, I might as well add that it’s strange how many people only picture God as transcendent, making Himself known by shooting off thunderbolts. God
is
transcendent, certainly, above the world and beyond it, outside time and space in a mode of being which is beyond the scope of our imaginations to conceive, but the God who makes Himself known to us is the immanent God, the God who’s so close that He’s at the very centre of our existence. It’s strange too how much time people spend travelling round and round the circle of existence and getting nowhere. The real journey — the journey all people are required to take to achieve integration, self-realisation and fulfilment — the ‘eternal life’ of religious language — is the journey inwards, the journey to the centre of the soul.

Viewing Christian in the light of these ancient truths, one could see him not as someone undergoing a bizarre mental breakdown but as someone enduring a profound spiritual crisis as he tried to break out of the closed circle of his inauthentic existence and embark at last on the journey to the immanent God who had designed that neglected blueprint of the man he was supposed to be. The spiritual crisis would be all the more profound for Christian because he was an atheist. Having rejected God after his mother’s death, he would automatically fight God every inch of the way as soon as the spiritual crisis began to manifest itself. Or at least, the ego would fight. The true self wanted to be rescued (I want to live!’) but the ego wasn’t going to relinquish absolute power without a fight, and the result, as with all violent revolutions, was very messy indeed.

God would keep right on, of course, pressing away on the psyche, but Christian’s ego would keep right on too, battling away in terror against the invasive force. God isn’t all sweetness and light. God can be frightening, particularly when you’ve decided that He doesn’t exist but slowly realise there’s something out there closing in — or rather, in there, welling up. Finally Christian cracked under the pressure and the ego began to fragment in the unpleasantest manner imaginable. St Paul’s ego also suffered a messy fragmentation; while God was exerting the pressure on his psyche following the martyrdom of St Stephen, Paul bucketed around persecuting Christians with a renewed and revolting vigour. What a relief when God finallytriumphed! The famous light on the road to Damascus can be seen as a pictorial representation of a mind-blowing psychic experience in which the true self, driven on by God, finally overwhelmed that false, ferocious ego.

Eventually Christian reached a crucial point on his own road to Damascus and saw what he thought was the light. What he should have done at this stage was to seek spiritual counselling as he tried to solve the puzzle of how he could merge the trappings of his old life (Katie, Marina, the children, Oxford) with a new existence which was authentic. But he was a nonchurch-goer who had never formed the habit of talking to a spiritual director. (If only my father hadn’t fobbed him off in 1963 when Christian had realised he felt uncomfortable with his life!) In 1965, as far as Christian could work out in his confused state, his only hope was to abandon his old life completely and begin again somewhere else.

Once that decision had been reached, I reflected as I idly washed the tepid bath-water over my stomach, what could be more natural than that he should seek refuge in a monastery while he tried to come to terms’ with the indisputable truth that God, not the false ego, was now in the driving-seat of his personality? In addition he would by this time almost certainly be suffering a reaction from the sexual binges indulged in during the period of fragmentation. In a monastery there would be no sexual distractions and he could concentrate on the demanding journey inwards to uncover and explore more fully that true self which he had suppressed for so long.

I hooked my toe into the chain of the bath-plug and tugged. The water began to drain away. Heaving myself to my feet I drew the shower-curtain and prepared for more sensual bliss. I loved bathrooms.

It was probable, I reflected as I luxuriated under the shower, that Christian wouldn’t have retired to a monastery with the idea of becoming a monk. He would merely have seen it as a sanctuary where he could sort himself out, and he would have stayed in reasonable comfort in the guest-quarters. But then he would have slowly realised that the monastic life was the life he wanted, a life free from the pressures of doting human beings and the demands of worldly success. In the monastery he could live quietly and happily, his emotional life, which had been so maimed in his previous existence, now made whole in the worship of God. Moreover, provided that he chose the right monastery, he could exercise his intellectual gifts. One of the great traditions of a Benedictine way of life was a devotion to scholarship.

I couldn’t see Christian ‘going over to Rome’. I thought it was far more likely that with his particular upbringing and his xenophobic streak he would have reverted to the Church of England, and as Martin had so correctly pointed out, the most suitable Anglican Order for him was that of the Fordite monks — the Fordite Order of St Benedict and St Bernard, founded in the 184os by an old rogue called Horatio Ford, whose life provided yet another example of a mind-blowing religious conversion.

In the nineteenth century the Fordites had survived less by luck or by judgement or even by holiness than by the fact that they were rich; old Ford had made a fortune dealing in slaves. It’s notoriously difficult to found an Order and most attempts usually end in bankruptcy or bickering, but because of Ford’s lavish endowment the monks only had to beat the bickering and keep themselves organised. This they achieved, even expanding sufficiently to found their Grantchester house in the 1890s, but then as so often happens in a well-heeled organisation, the dynamic impulse faded and the monks became dozy. This situation was cured by my father’s mentor, the celebrated Cuthbert Darcy, who became Abbot-General in 1908, woke up each house, dusted down each monk and embarked on a canny public relations campaign to improve the Order’s image with the Church’s hierarchy. In this he was brilliantly successful, and by 1923 when my father entered the Order, the Fordites were renowned for their scholarship and their devout way of life.

They had continued to flourish until the mid-twentieth century when, in common with all Orders both Roman and Anglican, falling numbers had obliged them to contract and regroup.

In addition to the Grantchester house, purchased long after Ford’s death, there were three other monasteries: Ford’s London townhouse, which served as the Order’s headquarters; his country seat Starwater Abbey, where I had attended the monks’ public school; and Ruydale, the sheep-farm in North Yorkshire which had been one of his property investments. But in 1963 Ruydale was closed. My father was upset by this and said the Abbot-General should instead have sold the extravagant house in London, but the Fordites were in no need of money and the Abbot-General was determined to cling to his impressive headquarters. Ruydale’s insuperable difficulties had arisen because the few remaining elderly monks could no longer cope with the sheep-farm.

However, despite falling numbers the other houses appeared secure, even in the 1960s. Starwater Abbey was safe because the school was now largely run by lay-staff. London was safe because it could run on minimal man-power. And Grantchester was safe because although it was set on five acres which required a certain amount of manual labour, it had never been seriously short of postulants. This was because it appealed to two different types of would-be monk: the devotees of the simple life, who liked the idea of self-sufficiency on a smallholding, and the devotees of the intellectual life, who relished the Order’s close association with the Divinity Faculty at Cambridge University two miles away.

My thoughts appeared to have wandered some way from Christian, but in fact, as I realised after my shower, the meditation on the Fordites had been productive because I now had no doubt that he was a monk at the Grantchester house. He would have avoided Starwater Abbey. Not only was it too near Starbridge, where the Aysgarths were so well known, but the Abbot might have insisted that he teach at the school, and if Christian longed to make a break with his past he would hardly have wanted to continue teaching. The London headquarters was a possibility, but I remembered that it had been the Grant-chester house which my father had recommended to him in 1963, and I was sure that Christian would have been irresistibly attracted by that Cambridge connection.

I tried to estimate the risk he would run of being recognised by a visitor, but I concluded it was acceptable. Cambridge for him was the ‘Other Place’, and although high-powered academics might switch from Oxford to Cambridge in the course of their careers, few Oxonians would normally venture among the ivory towers of East Anglia. There was always the risk that clerics coming to Grantchester for a retreat might be friends of his father’s, but he could keep an eye on the guest-master’s list of visitors and pull up his cowl if danger threatened. I myself had been a regular visitor to the Grant-chester house while I was up at Cambridge, but I had come down from Laud’s in the summer of 1964 a year before Christian’s death and I hadn’t been back since; the Starbridge Theological College used Starwater Abbey when it sent its ordinands on retreats. My father corresponded with the Abbot of Grant-chester, Father Wilcox, but even if the Abbot had mentioned an intellectually gifted new postulant, my father would have had no means of making an identification. Whatever name Christian was using, it wouldn’t be Christian Aysgarth – and it wouldn’t be Charles Gore or Henry Scott Holland either. Father Wilcox would certainly have boggled if a would-be monk had turned up with the same name as one of the
Lux
Mundi
crowd.

I decided I could see Christian at Grantchester. Not literally; my powers were never visual. But I thought he would like Grantchester. I thought he would consider any risks attached to entering that particular monastery worth taking. I thought –
I knew –
he was there.

I towelled myself down. Then I dressed in clean clothes and, feigning calmness, drifted back into the living-room to rejoin Martin.

V

‘You haven’t asked,’ said Martin, ‘but I assume you’re staying the night. Perhaps you feel you don’t need to ask. However, it’s generally acknowledged in civilised circles that a modest request for hospitality, preceded by the word "please’”, is required when one plans to inflict oneself on any place which isn’t a hotel. Of course I’m just an old fogey, hopelessly out of touch with today’s youth, but I think you’ll find that even in thrillingly louche 1968, a considerable number of people still believe that "Manners makyth man’”.’

Had to humour the old bugger. ‘Sorry. Please may I stay the night?’

‘You may. God, what a slog parenthood must be! I used to regret not having children, but now I see I’ve had a merciful escape.’

‘In that case why do you continue to play the father with me? I can’t tell you how irritating I find it! I don’t want you being a father – I’ve already got a father –’

‘Yes – poor Dad! Too young to cope with me and now too old to cope with you!’

‘He doesn’t have to cope. We get on.’

‘You mean you cultivate a synthetic psychic cosiness, but that’s not getting on – that’s copping out!’

‘Shut up!’

‘Dad’s very worried about you actually.’

‘
Shut up!
’

‘
You won’t believe this, but I think he and I have a far more honest relationship nowadays than –’

‘SHUT UP!’ I stormed out in fury.

He tapped on the door of the spare-room five minutes later. ‘Can we take the apologies as read and have a truce? It’s time for me to bear you off to dinner.’

I opened the door. ‘Okay.’ I had in fact been feeling hungry for some time.

‘Do you want to phone home before we leave?’ said Martin neutrally.

I called the Manor. ‘I’m staying at Martin’s flat,’ I said to Rowena. ‘Tell Father I’ve written him an interesting letter. How is he?’

‘Well, unfortunately, Nicholas ...’

Unfortunately his hands were bothering him so much that he could no longer hold a knife and fork.

‘It’s all self-induced,’ I said, rigid with rage and fear. ‘It’s a psychosomatic illness brought on by this stupid, futile, utterly self-indulgent worrying about me, and quite frankly I think it’s time you lot got off your bottoms and told him to stop being such a damned drag!’

‘Nicholas!’

I slammed down the receiver. Martin, who had been watching me, turned away without a word.

We went out to dinner.

VI

Will you be heading for home tomorrow?’ enquired Martin casually over our sirloin steaks.

‘No, I’m going to Grantchester. I want to have a chat with the Abbot and meditate for a bit.’

We munched on. The steak was spongy and pink, the chips crisp, the mushrooms succulent.

‘Great,’ I said, laying down my knife and fork at last. ‘Thanks.’

‘Glad you enjoyed it. Nicholas, why don’t you admit you’re going to Grantchester because you think Christian will be there?’

‘Look, I’ve just said —’

‘Yes, I heard what you said, but I’ve drawn my own conclusions and now I think it’s time I gave you a word of ... no, not fatherly advice. Let’s call it a word of brotherly warning. Detach yourself from Christian Aysgarth.’

‘Martin —’

‘I wasn’t exaggerating earlier when I called him a dangerousman. He nearly destroyed me, and I think, if you look around, you’ll find mine wasn’t the only life he poisoned. I believe he’s dead, but if you persist in this obsession of yours he could wind up doing you as much damage as if he were still alive — and if he is still alive, then all I can say is: run for cover. You could be opening up a box of horrors bigger than you ever dreamed could exist.’

After a long pause I said: ‘Okay,’ and finished my Coke. ‘Any hope of pudding?’

Martin silently motioned the waitress for the menu.