Mystical Paths (41 page)

V

After the meal Lewis advised me to rest before we embarked on our journey, and I realised I was being told to rid myself of any post-alcohol doziness before I put myself behind the wheel of my Mini-Cooper. By that time my fiery pugnacity had ebbed and I was more than willing to subside on my bed. To my surprise I slept soundly for twenty minutes. Then I packed my bag and left the guest-wing with Lewis soon after two. ‘How did you leave matters with Father Wilcox?’ I asked him in curiosity as we crossed the drive to our cars. Did he want you to exorcise the garden?’

‘I told him it was unnecessary and explained that in my opinion the Devil wasn’t involved. I also said I thought the garden was a mere backdrop to the incident and that the community wasn’t involved in any way.’

‘Oh, I see. Or do I? Wait a minute, are you saying —’ ‘The appearance — whatever it was — is attached to you,’ said Lewis, ‘and if you now leave Grantchester there’ll be no recurrence here.’

‘But does that mean I might witness a second appearance somewhere else?’

‘Without knowing exactly what the appearance was I can’t answer that question. And talking of leaving Grantchester, let’s get going or we won’t reach Starbridge in time to dine at a civilised hour.’

Lewis always had to think ahead to the next meal.

We drove in convoy cross-country to the Ai and then headed south-west, avoiding London by a route which I had discovered during my years at Cambridge. Eventually, after joining the A303, we turned off to Starbridge. (Those were the days before the motorway.) I had been driving in silence, but during that last stretch of the journey I turned on the radio which had been installed to stop me becoming somnolent on long journeys, and as the thump of a popular beat instantly grazed my eardrums I saw the Cathedral ahead of me in the gap between the hills.

John Lennon started to sing: "Give me money! That’s what I want!"‘ and the Cathedral vanished as the road looped back behind the hill. I’d evidently struck a request programme where current hits weren’t guaranteed to spin. When had Lennon recorded ‘Money’? Long, long ago when the Beatles still had short hair. Perhaps it had been the year of Marina’s Starbridge orgy: 1963. But I didn’t want to think about Marina.

I turned up the volume. Lennon screamed on, and suddenly at the next twist of the road the Cathedral appeared again, a little nearer, a little larger. Thump, thump, thump, went the beat. Bang went the Cathedral, wiped out again. But of course it hadn’t been wiped out. Lennon’s voice would die, the record would end, but the Cathedral would come back — again — and again — and again — The turntable stopped, the DJ whooped and chortled, Mick Jagger began to croak ‘It’s All Over Now’. What year was this? Couldn’t remember. Maybe it was 1964, the year I went to Africa, but I didn’t want to remember 1964. Thump, thump, thump, banged the Rolling Stones, insisting that it was All Over Now, and yes, some things
were
all over, but not the Cathedral, back it came again, huge on its mound now, bursting from the floor of the valley, brilliant in the red glow of the dying sun. But the voices were dying alongside the sun, dying away in a calculated fade-out, and the DJ began to whoop again as the Cathedral disappeared for the last time behind the hill. I pressed down the accelerator, the car roared towards the final curve of the road and suddenly, as the great view of the valley opened up in front of me, the DJ fell silent, the Cathedral towered above us all and I heard the opening bars of that 1960s’ song of songs, ‘River Deep — Mountain High’.

I drove down into the valley, but now I no longer saw the Cathedral. With my psychic eye I saw the Holy Spirit moving ceaselessly across those dark twentieth-centuny waters, and I knew God had not after all turned His face away from the Church in which I had grown up, from my friends with whom I still felt so connected, from the joyous, exciting, dynamic decade which the Devil had soured and ruined. The Devil might have done his worst, but the Holy Spirit would pour back over the ravaged landscape to restore and renew it, to heal the brokenness, to raise up those who suffered, to redeem death with life, and meanwhile God was there in the middle of all the mess, suffering with Katie, enduring with Marina, hurting with Venetia, screaming with Dinkie, grieving with Martin, in torment with me and a million others, right there He was, right in the midst of His creation, His spark buried deep in every one of us, and He was
here
too, just as Starbridge Cathedral was here, not standing aloof in a timeless silence, but right in the heart of that valley in the centre of that city, the Dream in our midst, the Truth in our time – and in all time – and at that moment my time
was
all time as the cross on the spire of the Cathedral stood silhouetted against the blood-red clouds and on the radio Tina Turner shouted out in ecstatic celebration of that indestructible love which proved eternally river-deep and mountain-high.

I suddenly realised that I was passing the sign which said WELCOME TO STARBRIDGE.

I glanced in the mirror to check that Lewis was still tailing me in his Volkwagen, and when I glimpsed the reflection of his face I saw him not as the off-beat priest who had become so familiar so quickly, but as the mysterious healer, brought into my life by the most mysterious force of all, to renew and raise up all that was damaged, to realign and reintegrate all that was dislocated, so that I could move forward at last on my journey to the centre and embark on the river within.

Turning aside from the Cathedral I began to head north beside the railway tracks into the drab city parish of Langley Bottom.

VI

The part of Starbridge known as Langley Bottom consisted of a network of mean streets around the railway station. On the outer rim of the area the new Starbridge by-pass, a concrete ribbon on stilts, bore a steady stream of traffic around the city. I could hear the faint drone of engines in the distance after I had parked my car in the vicarage forecourt and emerged to stretch my legs after the long drive.

The vicarage was a large Victorian house pregnant with shabby self-importance, a déclassé relation of Charley’s highly-buffed home at Fairlight Green. Nearby stood the church, also Victorian, also pretentious, a building designed by an architect determined to bring Gothic art to the slums. It had a certain sooty grandeur, but I knew the diocesan office would be impervious to its minimal charm; both church and vicarage would be ill-suited to modern needs and unpleasantly expensive to maintain.

‘A smooth journey, wasn’t it?’ remarked Lewis, removing his bag from the Volkswagen. ‘That was an excellent route of yours.’

He led the way across the forecourt to the front door. Inside I found a gloomy hall redeemed by a wide, handsome staircase which needed polishing. I wondered if the vicar, Desmond Wilton, had a wife, but any woman working on her own would have been fighting a losing battle against dirt in a house designed to be run by several servants.

As Lewis moved to the hall table to pick up some messages which had been left for him, I noticed on one wall a board similar to the boards kept in the halls of pre-war blocks of London flats to indicate whether the residents were at home. On the left-hand side of the board someone had painted the names DESMOND and, underneath, LEWIS. Opposite the names were two columns, headed IN and OUT, and in the columns were two black rectangles which could be moved from one column to the other. Both rectangles were now in the OUT column.

‘Desmond’s probably over at the church,’ said Lewis, stuffing the messages unread into his pocket and moving his rectangle from OUT to IN. We’ll go straight up to my flat.’ And as he reached the stairs he added: ‘Desmond has the ground floor, I have the second floor and the first floor is the buffer-state where we can put up guests if the need arises. Since Desmond and I both like solitude we decided right from the beginning that to make a success of sharing the house we had to live wholly apart.’

At the top of the stairs was a landing even gloomier than the hall below.

Are you officially the curate?’ I said as we began to ascend a second, more modest staircase.

‘No, there’s no money for a curacy.’

‘You mean your salary’s included in the diocesan grant for the healing centre?’

‘No, I don’t take a salary. I have a private income,’ said Lewis, and in that one sentence spoken so casually I glimpsed the past that he had concealed from me.

I thought: that home in Sussex was very large, very rich, there was a county background like my mother’s but much smarter, and the uncle and aunt who had taken him in were well-meaning but didn’t understand him, preferred their own children, secretly resented the fact that Lewis had been palmed off on them, because of course the mother had palmed him off, she was very sophisticated, very sexy, blazing away in the Roaring Twenties, lots of lovers, and Lewis had minded that, resented the scandal, become, as he had put it, a mixed-up psychic schoolboy until he had been rescued and sorted out by the monks at Starwater Abbey .. .

I suddenly realised that Lewis was speaking again. Recalling my attention with an effort I realised we were approaching the front door of his flat.

‘I’m afraid there’s nothing much in the refrigerator,’ I heard him say, ‘but I do have some interesting tins, and —’

He was dramatically interrupted. The door flew open. A woman’s voice demanded in fury:
‘
Where have you been?
’
and Lewis came gasping to a halt.

‘Good heavens — Rachel!’ he exclaimed faintly. ‘But you’re not supposed to be here till Thursday!’

‘No, Tuesday, you great big duffer,
Tuesday!
’

‘
But I wrote it down in my desk-diary —’

‘Yes — in the wrong place! I suppose you just saw the capital letter "T" and guessed the rest — it’s sheer vanity, bragging about your distance vision and never admitting you can see nothing less than twelve inches from your nose! And if you try and tell me again you’d temporarily mislaid your reading-glasses, I’ll — ‘

She stopped. She had finally seen me. And I had long since seen her. I found myself gazing at the steamiest of steamy brunettes, a girl probably no more than twenty years old. She had curvy hips, an eye-catching waist cinched in with the aid of a silver-studded belt, and long legs which were tantalisingly encased in navy-blue slacks patterned with white flowers. Above the slacks she wore a high-necked, hot-pink top, skintight, which erotically emphasised all it concealed. Curtains of long straight hair framed her face and brushed idly against the erotic outlines. She had dark eyes, full lips and a squarish, resolute, almost pugnacious jaw which I instantly admired for its originality. It both contrasted with and enhanced the femininity of that moist, passionate, kiss-me-quick mouth. I wanted to grab her with both hands and hit the nearest horizontal space.

‘Ah yes,’ Lewis was saying, still uncharacteristically flustered, ‘let me introduce you. This is Nicholas Darrow, who’s been doing some work with me before his ordination. Nicholas, this is my daughter Rachel.’

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘Hi,’ said the girl.

We each spoke very quietly, very politely. I didn’t dare offer her my hand for fear of what might happen if she touched it. I almost fancied I could hear my jeans creaking at the zip.

‘I do apologise,’ Lewis was saying to her as he moved across the threshold. ‘If I’d realised you were coming I’d have bought some food and raided the wine merchant, but —’

‘Relax,’ said the girl, turning away from me to follow him .- into the living-room. ‘I haven’t been sitting on my bottom all day. Once Desmond told me you wouldn’t be back till this evening — oh, by the way, that parish meeting tonight’s been cancelled — I trawled the supermarket, whipped up a large pot of spaghetti bolognese, slapped together a fruit trifle, cleaned the flat, ran all the towels through the washing-machine — that dish-cloth was
filthy —
defrosted the fridge and scraped the goo off the floor of the oven. All I’ve got to do now is toss the salad and warm the garlic bread. Would you like to open the Chianti Classico?’

‘My dear Rachel,’ said Lewis, ‘what on earth have I done to deserve you?’

‘I often wonder.’ She allowed herself to be kissed and patted. Then she said to me: ‘Well, don’t just loaf there in the doorway! Come on in and have a drink!’

I glided greedily forward into the room.

VII

‘I made a note of your phone calls,’ said Rachel to her father, ‘and Desmond’s left some messages in the hall. All sorts of women are gasping to see you, including someone called Miss Peabody who phoned three times.’

‘That’s the Bishop’s secretary,’ said Lewis, drawing the cork from the wine bottle. ‘I’ll deal with her before my appointments tomorrow morning.’

‘Should I myself make an appointment to see you? Or would you only write it down in the wrong place again?’

‘I’ll leave you alone with him after dinner,’ I said hastily. ‘In fact I can leave you alone with him now.’

‘Certainly not!’ said Rachel severely. ‘Stay just where you are!’

I smiled. She smiled. It was only after three smiling seconds that I realised Lewis was not amused. He was gripping the Chianti bottle as if longing to wring its neck.

‘Well, go on, Daddy!’ said Rachel brightly. ‘Pour out the wine!’ And to me she added: ‘Have a seat!’

‘Thanks.’ I settled myself at one end of the two-seater sofa and left plenty of space for her to join me.

Lewis, wearing his most inscrutable expression, poured out the wine.

‘We don’t want to eat just yet, do we?’ Rachel was saying as she retrieved a clean ash-tray from the kitchen.

‘Yes, we do,’ said Lewis. ‘I’m feeling extremely peckish.’

‘Oh, that’s all right, I bought those lovely cheese nibbles for you, the ones you like so much ...’

Lewis, outflanked, was marooned in an armchair with his cheese nibbles and the clean ash-tray while Rachel joined me on the sofa. Casually I managed to conceal the front of my jeans behind a small cushion which I began to stroke as if it were a cat. Perhaps I felt that I needed to do something to justify its presence. The Chianti tasted so pleasant that I almost forgot it was alcohol. The little sitting-room, lined with books, began to assume a rosy glow.

‘Which university are you at?’

‘How did you know I was at university?’

‘It’s your aura, your ambience, your
je
ne
sais quoi.
’

‘
What rubbish! Daddy probably told you – or perhaps you realised I’d be unlikely to have time off at the moment unless I was a student. You’ll be saying next you can tell from my
je
ne sais quoi
what subjects I’m reading!’

‘I see you studying languages – French certainly – and perhaps a little German or Italian as well –’

‘But that’s extraordinary! How did you know? I’m reading French with a German subsidiary!’

‘Ah, but I knew at once you were a linguistic sort of person, sensitive to language, musical –’

‘You’re
amazing!
How could you possibly have known that I like music?’

‘He saw the sleeve of your Berlioz record,’ said Lewis crisply. ‘It’s lying over there on the table alongside your copy of Balzac (in French) and your headscarf. Realising that I would be unlikely either to wear a headscarf or to read a book with a French title, he made the simple deduction that both the book and the record were yours and then he pretended he was being psychic. Could we have dinner now, please?’

‘Crosspatch!’ said Rachel annoyed. ‘The Berlioz record is actually a present for you – I thought you might be ready for a break from all that chamber music you’ve been so keen on lately. Excuse me, Nicholas, I must just put the garlic bread in the oven.’

‘Can I help?’ I said, rising smartly from the sofa.

‘Nicholas,’ said Lewis before Rachel could reply, ‘I’m sure you’d like a wash and brush-up after your journey. The bathroom’s at the end of the passage and you’ll find a towel in the airing-cupboard.’

‘I bet you’d like a wash and brush-up even more than Nicholas would,’ said Rachel to him. ‘You know how you always love to throw water everywhere and change your shirt after a long car journey. Would you like to lay the table, Nicholas, while you’re waiting for Daddy to finish with the bathroom?’

‘Oh, I’ll lay anything,’ I said before I realised what I was saying. ‘I mean — that’s to say, what I meant was —’

‘Super!’ said Rachel. ‘Run along, Daddy, and leave Nicholas and me to do our own thing.’

I took one look at Lewis’s face and headed instantly for the bathroom.

Having used the lavatory, washed my hands and combed my hair I returned to the living-room to find Lewis was still sitting grumpily in his armchair and a startling amount of wine had disappeared.

‘Do you fancy tossing the salad, Nicholas?’ called Rachel from the kitchen nearby, and scurrying past my host I reached the sanctuary of the draining-board where a large bowl of interesting green vegetation waited to be mixed with tomatoes, radishes and a jug of Italian dressing. A magnificent aroma had already reached me from one of the saucepans on the stove.

‘Sorry I was so long,’ I said to Rachel, ‘but I did need to spruce myself up.’

‘It’s heavenly to meet someone who doesn’t smell. Do you spruce often?’

‘More wine, Nicholas?’ said Lewis, appearing in the doorway to keep an eye on us.

‘Great,’ I said warily. ‘Thanks.’

‘Do go to the lavatory, Daddy,’ said Rachel. ‘I’m sure you must be bursting. Why are you so reluctant to leave Nicholas alone with me?’

Lewis was so livid at this direct question, which not only made him look like a neurotic parent but was impossible for him to answer truthfully, that he spilled the wine he was pouring into my glass.

Urgently I said to him: ‘It’s okay — I understand,’ and muttering something inaudible he retired wrathfully to the lavatory. ‘Sulky old bear!’ said his daughter, giving the simmering pasta a stir. ‘It’s just as well he and I don’t normally live under the same roof because if we did I’d never get anything that resembled a social life. Hung up on sex, of course.’

‘You are?’

‘No, he is! It’s all this Anglo-Catholic business. He ought to remarry but he- never does.’

‘He did mention a girlfriend and a concert —’

‘That was his lady-violinist. I quite liked her, but she drifted away, just as they all do, when she realised nothing was going to come of it. I often feel it would be easier both for him and the women if he was a Roman Catholic priest because then there’d be no question of marriage and everyone would know exactly where they stood right from the start, but he’ll never go over to Rome, he loves his Church of England too much, loves the scope it gives him to be eccentric.’

‘He certainly has an unusual ministry.’

‘Unusual! Well, I suppose that’s one way of putting it,’ said Rachel, but as she spoke I knew she had no real idea what his ministry involved. ‘I just think it’s tragic he’s not a bishop bounding around being glamorous in purple.’

‘I suppose the divorce —’

‘Oh, he’d lost all interest in a big ecclesiastical career before the divorce! Mummy simply couldn’t understand it — that’s why she traded him in and went off with someone else. She was really looking forward to living in a palace, and when she realised there was no chance of it ever happening —’

‘I somehow can’t quite see Lewis as a bishop.’

‘That’s because you’ve only seen him with hippie-ish sideburns and off-the-peg clothes, but in the old days he was really stylish. Believe me, he could have been a bishop, he could have been anything — if he hadn’t married, he could even have been the Abbot-General of those ghastly Fordite monks – he had all the necessary money and all the right connections, but look what’s happened! He’s an unpaid curate in a slum-parish attended by a horde of lame dogs!’

‘And just as big a success,’ I said, ‘as any bishop in a palace.’

‘How terribly Christian of you to say so, but let’s face it, Daddy’s choice of ecclesiastical career wasn’t quite normal and Mummy and I are both dead normal, always have been, we like all the normal things of life like amusing dinner-parties and interesting people and smart cars (that
pathetic
little Volkswagen Daddy drives! Honestly! If he’s got to have a German car why doesn’t he buy a Mercedes?) and – where was I?’

‘Interesting people, smart cars –’

‘Oh yes, and winter holidays and shopping at Harrods and champagne at the Ritz –’

‘All this is normal?’

‘All right, I admit it’s a creative interpretation of normality, but –’

‘I always admire creativity!’

‘And now I suppose you’re thinking I’m just another godless debutante, but actually I’m rather keen on religion; I just don’t see why one has to be churchy and boring about it, that’s all. Poor Mummy’s not religious any more, she says she’s had religion, absolutely
had
it, after coining second to God and the Church for years as a clerical wife, but I think it’s all rather marvellous, I love the pageantry, and it’s so nice to think of God being around somewhere, the old man with the long white beard playing peek-a-boo in the clouds –’

‘A magnificently normal heresy!’

‘Well, of course I don’t
literally
believe that –’

‘Of course not. That’s normal too. And what’s the next normal thing you’re going to do once you’re through with university?’

‘Have an extraordinary career. That’ll be thoroughly normal for girls in the 1970s. I’m going to train as a buyer for a top London store and then work my way up until I’m jetting all over Europe doing fantastic deals. Eventually, I suppose, I’lltake a few weeks off to get married and have a baby, but not until I’m at least thirty and well established in the power structure ... Why are you looking at me as if I’m pulling your leg?’ ‘But I’m not! I’m just so mesmerised by all this dynamic normality!’

‘Well, is this 1968 or isn’t it? And have we read Betty Friedan or haven’t we?’

‘Betty who?’

‘Gosh, you ordinands had better wise up fast – how do you think you’re going to deal adequately with women in the 1970s? But hey, wait a minute – why am I letting my hair down in this outrageous style when I’ve only just met you? Maybe you’ve spiked the Chianti, but no – I know what’s happened: Daddy made me so cross by behaving as if I were a Victorian heroine and you were a sex-maniac that I’ve cast discretion to the winds out of sheer rage! Quick, before he pads back from the lavatory, do tell: how on earth did you get mixed up with him?’

‘We met through the Fordite monks at Grantchester,’ I said as Lewis returned to the living-room, ‘and I’ve come back with him to discuss a case.’

‘Oh God, are you a Fordite fan too? I’m sorry I was so rude about them a moment ago, but all-male institutions always strike me as being so dreadfully abnormal ... Oh hullo, Daddy! Dinner’s almost ready.’

‘Splendid!’ said Lewis, having cunningly decided to change his tactics and produce his best behaviour. ‘Well, this is really a great treat! Thank you very much, my dear, for all the time and trouble you’ve taken today to produce such a wonderful surprise!’

Rachel, greatly mollified, gave him a radiant smile.

I thought they were probably quite fond of each other.