Mystical Paths (38 page)

X

‘But how? I just don’t see –’

‘No, you’re too frightened and confused to see the way out. That’s why we have to concentrate now on taking one step at a time; it makes life less complex and intimidating. So let’s refocus on your confession because our current step, in case you’ve forgotten, involves putting you back in good spiritual health.’ He released my hands, and suddenly I became aware that my fingers were behaving as if they had received a muscle-relaxing drug. My clenched fists had uncurled. My hands were limp. A warmth was spreading from my forearms to my shoulders. In admiration I exclaimed: ‘That’s the classic healer’s touch! How did you do it?’ and Lewis said laughing: ‘You and your passion for rational analysis!’

‘But seriously, Lewis –’

‘Seriously I think we should wrap up your confession. Are there any more girls in your life at present?’

I sighed and began to talk about Tracy.

XI

Talking of Tracy led inevitably to a description of my past life with the Doreens and Debbies on the one hand and the Lavinias and Celias on the other. ‘... and I know it was wrong,’ I concluded, ‘but compared with so much that goes on today, it wasn’t really all that bad. I mean, I don’t think the girls minded being screwed – in fact I’m sure they didn’t – and I always tried to be very kind when I traded them in.’

‘Traded them in? You’re saying you thought of them in the same way as a second-hand car?’

‘No, of course not! I was just speaking colloquially. The point I was trying to make is that whenever I broke off an affair I did it as decently as possible, gave the girl a nice present, told her I still thought she was great –’

‘This is decency?’

‘Well, what would you call it?’

‘Expensive insincerity. Tell me,’ said Lewis, ‘have you ever been traded in?’

After a fractional pause I said: ‘No.’

Lewis said nothing. I found myself shifting uneasily in my chair.

‘All right,’ I said truculently at last.
‘
All right!
Haven’t I already admitted I was in the wrong? But at least I was responsible enough to ensure the girls weren’t seriously hurt!’

‘How do you know they weren’t seriously hurt?’

‘How do I know?’

‘Yes, how do you know? After the trade-in did you look them up to see how they were getting on?’

‘But nobody does that once a love affair’s over!’

‘Maybe they should. It might prove to be quite an eye-opener.’

‘But I’m sure the girls were all right! I mean, none of them got pregnant!’

‘You think an unwanted pregnancy
is
the only damage you can inflict on a woman?’

‘No. But I’m still sure I didn’t harm them.’

‘You’re saying they cared nothing for you?’

‘No. Yes. I mean, no, I’m not saying that. They did care, of course, but –’

‘You’re saying that people who care aren’t vulnerable when they’re abandoned?’

‘No, I’m not saying that either! Okay, I take your point, maybe they did shed a tear or two afterwards, but I’m sure there was no real harm done –’

‘How can you be sure of that when you never checked on them?’

‘Well ... they weren’t the type to be harmed, were they?’

‘I see,’ said Lewis. ‘You cause considerable distress by bedding three upper-class women and you’re overcome with shame and remorse. But you can bed a bunch of working-class women and go merrily on your way without a second thought.’

‘But the circumstances were quite different! Working-class girls do it all the time, to them it’s just like having a cup of tea –’

‘You’re saying they’re a subhuman species incapable of feeling pain and humiliation?’

‘Of course I’m not saying that!’

‘Then exactly what are you saying?’

‘Well, I’m saying ... well, I ... well –’

‘You’re saying that although you rejected these girls who cared for you – traded them in as if they were inanimate objects – denied them their basic humanity – it was all good clean fun?’

After a long pause I said: ‘Okay, I was snobbish, selfish and insensitive.’

‘Is that all?’

I stared at him. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

‘Don’t you think you were also a little forgetful? The gospel of Christ, I seem to remember, teaches that each one of us has worth in the eyes of God and that therefore each one of us should be treated with love and respect. It’s common practice, of course, for non-believers to treat working-class girls like lumps of meat, but surely an ordinand who feels called to a ninistry of healing –’

‘Okay,’ I said rapidly, now feeling very hot and very uncomfortable, ‘I was unChristian. Okay. But you see, it didn’t occur to me – I mean, I just didn’t think –’

‘No,’ said Lewis, ‘you just didn’t think. But try thinking now. People’s psyches are so frail, so vulnerable, that it can never be right to be an invading force, no matter how harmless the invasion may seem at the time. That’s because an invading force contains the seeds of the demonic; in fact any ego bent on self-gratification contains the seeds of the demonic, and that’s why we live all the time in such danger that no one – not even a working-class woman – perhaps least of all a working-class woman – survives emotionally unscarred.’

After a silence I managed to say: ‘I never want to be a demonic force. I never want to side with the Dark. I want to heal people, not destroy them.’

‘And how may you best do that?’

‘By striving for integration. By trying to lead a disciplined life within the strong religious framework I need to survive. By worship. By prayer. By grace.’

There was another silence. Then again Lewis reached across the table, and again he covered my hands with his.

XII

He had only just pronounced the words of absolution after my formal confession at the prie-dieu when the bell started to toll for mass. I felt exhausted. Despite my relief that I now stood right with God after my days of alienation I barely heard the service or registered the powerful symbolism. I supposed I was experiencing a reaction after being spiritually turned inside out, washed, scrubbed and hung up to dry. I received the sacrament like a zombie. Afterwards I wanted to shut myself in my room but I knew Lewis would object if I skipped breakfast so I drank tea and ate bread.

As we left the dining-room he said: ‘I don’t want to stage the reconstruction until the sun’s at the same angle as it was yesterday at the time of the appearance. Why don’t you take the chance to catch up on your sleep?’ Then I knew he had sensed my longing to be alone. Returning to my room I fell on my bed and buried myself under the eiderdown.

When Lewis called for me later I was sitting at the table and pretending to read a psalm. The eiderdown had smothered all tears at birth but sleep had proved impossible.

‘How are you feeling?’ he said.

‘Terrible. I’m so worried about my father.’ To my horror I felt the need to burrow under the eiderdown again. Slammingshut the Book of Common Prayer I said in despair: ‘I’m so afraid he’s about to die. And when a Siamese twin dies, the other twin knows he’s got to die too.’

‘But they separate Siamese twins nowadays,’ said Lewis. As I wiped the mist from my glasses I was aware of him parking himself on the edge of the table; there was no second chair in my room. ‘It’s very natural that you should be so worried about him,’ he said, ‘particularly now that you’re finally turning to face the problem he represents, but why don’t we try to ease your anxiety by offering him psychic support? We’ll take a moment to enfold him in prayer.’

‘I don’t seem to be any good at praying at the moment.’

‘We’ll keep it simple. What we have to do is visualise our minds stroking his. What was the name of that cat you mentioned in Session One? "My father lives in one large room with a cat," you said when you described how you went to see him after the seance –’

‘Oh, that’s Whitby.’

‘
Whitby?
’
repeated Lewis as if doubting he had heard correctly.

‘As in the Synod of Whitby.’

‘Ah yes, of course.’ Lewis paused to regain his concentration before saying: ‘All right, now visualise your father’s psyche as Whitby’s fur. You’re stroking it with slow, smooth, soothing movements of your fingers. Whitby’s been feeling bedraggled but the stroking relaxes him. He’s pleased. He starts to purr.’

We fell silent. The image was faint at first but gradually it became strong enough for me to start stroking, praying wordlessly to God for my father’s healing. At last I realised I was strong enough to enfold my father’s psyche because Lewis’s psyche was enfolding mine.

Letting my hands fall from my face I said: ‘We’re better now.’

Lewis crossed himself and rose to his feet. ‘It’s time for the reconstruction.’

With enormous relief my mind slipped away from my father and began to focus once more on Christian.

XIII

We were to take it in turns to play the monk.

Lewis had borrowed a spare habit, complete with the regulation brass crucifix, and had even obtained a pair of monastic boots. The habit was tailored to fit a man of medium height (‘Too short for you,’ he said, ‘but at least I won’t be tripping over the hem,’) and the boots had been selected to fit my feet. (‘I’ve got lavatory paper to stuff in the toes when it’s my turn to play the monk,’ said Lewis, who had thought of everything.) In the back-garden I struggled into the habit and found the extreme unfamiliarity distracting. ‘Just be thankful you don’t have to put on the underwear,’ said Lewis when I complained. ‘I’m told it hasn’t been updated since the founding of the Order.’ He adjusted the crucifix hanging from my belt and stepped back to take a critical look at me.

‘That’s good enough,’ he said. ‘Now let’s review the plan: you go to the shed, you collect the rake – yes, it somehow got itself back in the shed after the appearance – and when you’re ready to start you bang the door to let me know you’re on your way. Then you emerge from behind the hedge that screens the shed, and you walk down the path to the archway. Try to get right not only Christian’s pace but the exact spot where he turned his head to look at you. After that you go through the archway, and as soon as you pass out of my sight you begin to count the seconds. We want to know how much time the monk had to disappear into thin air before you showed up in the kitchen-garden – oh, and talking of counting the seconds, how much time should I allow to elapse before I rush after you? I assume you were too shocked to rocket off the bench straight away.’

‘Yes, I was. But I can’t quite remember –’

‘I’ll count to five. Now, as soon as I shout "Christian!" you start to run. Run all the way to the back-door – I’ve got Father Abbot’s permission to enter the kitchen-garden, of course – but when you reach the back-door, don’t go in. Just wait outside and continue to count the seconds until I show up in thearchway ... Okay, pull up your cowl and let’s get going.’

I dragged the black cloth forward over my head to shadow my face and moved quickly away across the lawn, but despite the protection afforded by the cowl I was aware of the heat of the sun as it once more shone from a cloudless sky; the habit seemed intolerably heavy and cumbersome.

When I reached the shed I found that Lewis had left the rake outside, propped against the wall. For a moment I hesitated, mesmerised by the notion that Christian himself might reappear, but I felt no awareness of him and finally I accepted that he was absent. Three times I recited the Jesus prayer to steady my nerves. Then having banged the door as a signal to Lewis I began to walk, rake in hand, down the path towards the archway.

XIV

I had already spent much time trying to recall the exact spot where Christian had turned his head, and I had finally decided that the movement had been made just after he had passed the trunk of the peach-tree. Conscious that the cowl was shadowing much of my face, I began to walk past the outstretched branches to the right of the trunk, and a second later the crucial moment came: I turned to stare at Lewis and by the time I g! raced aside I found myself within two paces of the archway.

Moving into the kitchen-garden I began to count the seconds.

Lewis’s voice called: ‘Christian!’ but he seemed far away, perhaps because the wall now rose between us to muffle the sound of his voice.

Instantly I began to run, haring down the path past the vegetable beds. The habit was horrible, flapping and flopping around my legs like some dead creature out of a science fiction film. I remember wondering how women could bear to wear skirts.

Breathing hard I reached the back-door, swung round to face the garden and continued to count the seconds.

‘Bingo!’ shouted Lewis, appearing in the middle of the archway.

I hurried back to join him. ‘Sixteen seconds,’ I reported as he lounged panting against the wall. ‘I was out of your sight for sixteen seconds, and I could easily have disappeared through the back-door before you arrived on the scene.’

‘But we know Christian didn’t do that. And now look at the windows. Unlike the windows of the guest-wing, the ground-floor windows here are all raised well off the ground because of the basement. If he ran across to the house and climbed through an open window in full monastic gear in under sixteen seconds he must have had the speed and agility of a cat-burglar.’

‘And as for scaling the eight-foot kitchen-garden wall –’

‘No, he’d need wings for that. And in fact we’re talking about a time of less than sixteen seconds because you almost certainly ran across that lawn faster than I did.’

‘So that proves it – he vanished into thin air!’

‘No, all we’ve proved is that he didn’t escape into the house or over the wall. By the way, I assume those glasses give you normal distance vision; how well could you see me as I sat on the bench?’

‘Very well.’

‘If you hadn’t known I was going to be there, would you still have recognised me instantly?’

Well, I suppose I might have hesitated for a couple of seconds out of sheer surprise, but –’

‘Exactly. You’d have hesitated. Do we know for a fact that Christian had normal sight?’

‘I certainly never saw him wear glasses. Are you implying –’ ‘It’s odd that he didn’t even falter. Never mind, let’s keep going with the reconstruction before the sun moves far enough to change the angle of the shadow from the cowl.’

We swapped roles, Lewis pulling on the habit, the boots, the belt and the crucifix. I was startled how greatly the uniformaltered him; his individuality was diminished by the trappings of the corporate Fordite identity.

‘It’s an odd phenomenon, isn’t it?’ agreed Lewis when I remarked on the change. ‘It reminds me of the effect created by Middle Eastern women who wear the
chador.
’
He picked up the rake before adding: ‘Let’s run through the plan again. I’ll bang the door of the shed to let you know I’m starting out. When I appear I’m bound to look different from Christian because I’m the wrong build, but don’t let that distract you. Note very carefully where the top of my head comes in relation to the outstretched branches of the peach-tree – use the branches on the right as markers – and note also how clearly you can see my face when I turn to look at you. And once you rush through the archway in pursuit of me, don’t stop. Got that?
Don
’
t stop.
Keep right on running till you reach the back-door.’

‘Okay, but why –’

‘I’ll answer all questions afterwards.’ He set off towards the shed.

I sank down on the bench and waited, fidgeting with the little borrowed cross around my neck, but in the end I became so tense that my fingers stiffened into stillness.

The door of the shed banged. Seconds later Lewis, looking bulky in the habit, appeared with the rake from behind the hedge and walked along the path by the wall. As he reached the peach-tree my memory was jolted and I almost failed to notice, when he turned his head to look at me, that his face was in shadow. He looked away again, walking on without faltering, and seconds later he had disappeared through the archway into the kitchen-garden.

Having allowed time for my original stupefaction, I leapt to my feet. ‘CHRISTIAN!’ I shouted, replaying the scene to perfection, and once more I began to pound across the lawn.

I reached the wall, I cannoned through the arch, I erupted into the kitchen-garden.

But it was empty.

Lewis had vanished into thin air.