The Life and Loves of a She Devil (21 page)

Father Ferguson had recently received a letter from his bishop asking him not to talk to the press without prior reference to his superiors, and suggesting that he should consider seriously whether he was guilty of the sin of arrogance.

‘How can a man be humble and improve the world?’ he asked.

‘He can’t,’ she said, thus giving him permission to sin. ‘Anyway, what’s arrogance? It is a word. I am convinced; you are self-righteous; he is arrogant.’

‘How can a man stay celibate and understand his own nature?’

‘He can’t,’ she said, thus vindicating his frivolity.

He looked at her speculatively. Her two rows of crude white temporary teeth glowed an invitation.

‘Will you marry me?’ he asked.

She seemed startled.

‘A civil marriage. Let them excommunicate me if they dare!’

As he spoke he thought he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a glimmer of movement up in the gallery; the cowled shapes of men passing to and fro, but knew it could only be imagination, or the effects of alcohol, to which he was not accustomed.

‘Did you see anything up there?’ he asked.

‘Not a thing.’ But she did. ‘Only the guilty see ghosts,’ she added, which he feared might be true.

She said she wouldn’t marry him; she couldn’t: she was married already, and so far as she was concerned marriage was once and once only and until death. As for anything else, any other way of arranging their lives to their mutual benefit, of increasing the funds of his self-knowledge, of making him a better priest, they would have to wait and see.

It had not occurred to Father Ferguson that he might meet resistance. That the clergy should marry, should have carnal knowledge with the opposite sex it appeared was one thing. Whether it
could
marry, could find anyone to bed, was another. He began to see the complexities of life in the temporal world.

‘You must understand,’ he said, ‘that for a man such as myself to lose my virginity to a woman such as you could not be construed as an act of impulse, let alone carnal turpitude. It would be chastely considered and implemented: the union of such unlikely flesh that it could only imply the sharing of my soul with yours. A supreme sacrifice.’

‘You are very persuasive,’ she said, allowing herself to be persuaded. There was quite a flurry at this amongst the ghostly visitors upstairs but she stared at them boldly, and they evaporated, melting into nothingness as he led her to his room.

Beside her in bed he felt warm and protected. He had the feeling that nothing of his had gone into her — which he had assumed would be the case in sexual congress — but that on the contrary something of her had gone into him.

They had bacon and eggs for breakfast, and toast and marmalade and coffee. He did not lament her extravagance. He would have forsworn jogging in Bradwell Park, but thought this might cause comment.

‘You’re either very bad for me, or very good for me,’ he said to Molly. She put on three pounds in weight, abandoning her diet for his sake, and after that he said only, ‘You are very good for me.’

He knew he had changed because when presently he took confession from a woman who had been using contraceptives and whose husband had left her, he did not equate the sin with the consequence.

Usually in such circumstances he would say; ‘My child, your punishment has been on this earth, you are excused.’ Today he said briskly, ‘My child, I am sure our Heavenly Father would commend your good sense. You had the wit to know your husband would leave and took the responsibility of not bringing another mouth into the world for the State to feed. Peace be with you!’

And to a woman with five children, two subnormal, whose husband was a known drunkard, and violent, and insistent on his marital rights, he actually recommended a visit to the family planning clinic, forgetting his usual dictum of hard cases making bad law, a concept which worked as well in spiritual matters as in worldly ones.

He wanted to make an issue of it, of course. That was in his nature. He wanted to proclaim to the world that he was no longer a Half-Man; to claim his right to have intercourse with his housekeeper if he so decided. But Molly didn’t want that.

‘They’ll only take photographs,’ she said. ‘I hate being photographed.’

Well, he could understand her feelings.

In the third month Molly bought him new shirts and trousers out of parish funds — he had underspent for years on his personal needs. They shared Molly’s room, and when it was cold turned on all three bars of the electric heater. He began to understand, as he waited for night to fall and bedtime to come, why his flock was so insistent upon its sexual pleasures.

Molly said one night in the fourth month that the problem down in the western suburbs was not sex, which everyone knew was a sacrament, but love. Had he looked at the bookstalls lately? Did he understand that practically all the women who could read were buying romantic fiction? What hope did they have of ever reaching emotional maturity, let alone of gaining any kind of moral sense, if they read such rubbish?

‘Worldly love is a shadow of the divine,’ said Father Ferguson. ‘I can hardly believe it is as dangerous as you say.’

But he remembered what she said and at his next press conference — he had held them weekly since he received his bishop’s letter begging prudence — he remarked that since these days the purveyors of fiction (in the absence of any moral guidance from a de-vitalised Church, and they knew his views on that) were the most powerful moral force in the land, they should be brought under Church control. Writers themselves, rather than their works, should be vetted for their sense of social responsibility. The writer would then have
carte blanche
to write what he or she wished. It was not a matter of censorship, but of self-censorship.

There was a gratifying uproar, and much protest from various writers’ organisations, which made Father Ferguson feel he was really on to something. When you prodded the body politic and it squealed there was something nasty down there somewhere. But then his superiors rebuked him for interfering in matters which were nothing to do with the Church, and he let the whole question drop.

‘You take too much notice of them,’ protested Molly.

‘I must submit,’ he said. ‘I am still a priest.’

‘But you know the bureaucracy of the Church is venal. You have told me so often enough. They are politicians: you are divinely inspired, by God.’

‘My dear, I think you go a little too far.’ But he was pleased. All the same, he dropped the matter of the writers. He was beginning to feel quite soporific, almost lazy.

Molly had lost one and three-quarter stone by the fifth month, and he had put on two. He could not have jogged to Bradwell Park had he tried, which of late he hadn’t. He’d had a notice up in the Mission saying that advice and counselling was available at the clinic, and only went there once a week, by taxi, but felt guilty about it.

Molly had central heating installed in the house. He felt warmth pervading his bones: his mind no longer worked coolly and persistently but in rather agreeable sudden bursts. He was pleasantly and sensuously tired much of the time. The old oak furniture, the chests and bureaux and tables that had stood mellowing in dark corners for centuries split their seams and warped their frames in the new, hot, dry air. The ghostly visitors had gone for ever, driven out by warmth, and wine, and food and sex. They were never seen again.

Molly declared in the sixth month that perhaps Father Ferguson was by nature an administrator, rather than a field-worker. Perhaps he could give up going to the Bradwell Park Mission altogether.

‘But that would mean the Mission closing!’

‘Your function, my dear, is to be a thorn in the side of the Church, for the Church’s sake. Remember the parable of the talents?’

So the Mission closed and Father Ferguson was free of his guilt. He looked round for something to do.

‘What about your Theory of Literary Responsibility?’ said Molly.

‘Too thorny a matter.’

‘But, my dear, you are the King of Thorns!’

He wrote persuasive letters to six leading writers of romantic fiction, from a list provided by Molly. Four replied, two did not. One of the latter was Mary Fisher.

‘I think you should visit her,’ said Molly. ‘I think such defiance should not be allowed to pass. To ignore a letter from a man of the cloth? What insolence! It is almost blasphemy. It is an offence not just against you, but against the Church!’

‘I love the way you’re always on my side,’ he said. ‘I am so used to people arguing with me that to have someone agreeing with me is quite enchanting.’

Father Ferguson put on his cassock, got into his new car, and drove off to the High Tower. Molly waved him goodbye.

M
ARY FISHER LIVES IN
the High Tower and considers the nature of guilt, and responsibility. She weeps a great deal. It is a long time since she has been to bed with a man. She loves God, since there is no one else to love, and attributes to Him such qualities as Father Ferguson maintains he has.

She would love Father Ferguson too, but he is a priest and she assumes that he is celibate; it has not occurred to her that he has a sexual nature. She approaches God through him, and that is all.

Old Mrs Fisher rises up from her bed from time to time and shrieks, ‘Get that black crow out of here. Priests bring bad luck.’

As if bad luck had not been surging all around Mary Fisher like the waves of the sea around the tower ever since Bobbo left his wife to live with her.

Father Ferguson says it is not bad luck but God’s punishment for her sins. She is one of the fortunate, he says, much blessed by God. He punishes his favourites, it seems, in this world and not the next.

Father Ferguson has drunk his way through the best wines in Mary Fisher’s cellar. Not that there were many bottles there. Mary Fisher left wine-buying to men, and lately men have disappeared from her life.

It is a sign of the times: this running down, not just of people, but of things. Everywhere she looks it is the same. Garcia’s baby by Joan was born with a hole in its heart. She cannot wish the baby spectacularly well, let alone its thieving mother, but she is upset by the spectacle of their distress. Father Ferguson soothes and explains the nature of God’s love which somehow — she can never quite remember how — makes pain and suffering desirable.

Mary Fisher tells Father Ferguson about what she did to Bobbo’s wife, and to Bobbo’s children. She says she understands it was wicked. She says she knows that love is no justification for bad behaviour. She wants to know how to be good.

‘What you write is pernicious nonsense,’ says Father Ferguson bluntly. ‘You must stop. Then you will begin to be good.’

This too! Father Ferguson explains how she has damaged the lives of a million readers: she has given them false expectations. She is personally responsible for much of the misery of the female multitude. Even the modern woman’s taste for Valium he lays at her door. Mary Fisher’s writing hand trembles and stops.

Father Ferguson says God is all-merciful: He will forgive the truly repentant, if they truly believe. Mary Fisher is desperate for forgiveness. She wants to truly believe, to be converted to Catholicism, and is.

Happy in her new faith, Mary Fisher grows plump and pretty again. She and Father Ferguson pray together, twice a week. He dines on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and stays over Thursday nights. She will use her name, her fame, her reputation, to save the world, and not add to its troubles. She starts a novel,
The Pearly Gates of Love.
It is about a nun and her struggle for heavenly love. Her publishers are delighted.

Father Ferguson is less pleased. He explains to Mary Fisher that divine love and casual love are not mutually exclusive.

‘There is also a creative truth,’ says Mary Fisher, stronger in professional matters than in any other. ‘And that’s what this novel needs. And with the money I earn from it, who knows, perhaps I could build a chapel in the grounds.’

That shocks him; at any rate he rebukes her. It is Thursday night. She goes to her room, and weeps, leaving him alone. Garcia listens for the sound of Father Ferguson’s following footsteps, climbing the stone stairs to Mary Fisher’s white and silver bedroom, but hears nothing. He is glad: he has been jealous. Mary Fisher is once again the object of his desire: he is disappointed in Joan, who steals and has produced an imperfect baby. He goes to Mary Fisher’s room himself.

It is as if time, static for so long, hibernating, but now leaping and threshing, has swallowed its own tail, and she is back at the beginning. Perhaps she is cured of Bobbo, at last!

And then Father Ferguson is in the room, and Garcia is scurrying out of sight, for a priest is a priest.

Mary Fisher is appalled.

‘Be of good cheer,’ says Father Ferguson, sitting casually upon the bed. ‘This is a small and venial sin compared to the rest.’

But she doesn’t believe him. She sees it all. She believes in love but practises lust: worships God but follows the Devil. She cannot even hold on to her love for Bobbo. She sees him as a merman, a man with a tail and legs and nothing between them.

She is humiliated. She, to whom Father Ferguson credited a soul, discovered humping and grunting like an animal, no better than the Doberman bitch.

Mary Fisher sees God disappearing from her life: becoming smaller and smaller, receding into infinity, leaving her with no forgiveness, only guilt.

‘We must declare a truce,’ is all he says, ‘between good and evil, soul and body, spirit and the flesh. We must incorporate the bad within the good. The new God comes not to cast out sin, but to welcome it. Only by knowing what we are can we achieve salvation.’

And now he means to take away her guilt! It is all she has. It is the only order she can impose upon the chaos of her life.

‘All things must change,’ says Father Ferguson. ‘Sin itself must change.’ But he looks like Chaucer’s Pardoner, fleshy and greedy and happy; as if he has been there for ever, waiting to extract his price. He enfolds her little form in his large and powerful arms, wraps his brown wool gown around her. It is a fine silky fabric, not rough-weave at all. ‘We must not deny our negative impulses,’ he says. ‘We are God’s creation, every bit of us. We must glorify the flesh along with the soul.’