Authors: Susan Howatch
COMMENT
: Nicholas certainly gave my soul a tweak there. I know very well that I have a religious duty to be as fit as I can in order to serve God to the best of my ability; I know very well that I should have that blank-blank hip replaced. Great-Uncle Cuthbert couldn’t have
his
arthritic hip replaced, poor old bugger, but I’m not living at his end of the twentieth century and I don’t have to be saddled with this problem. Nor do I have to be saddled with the reputation for cantankerousness which I’ve acquired as the pain has worsened. In fact if I had the hip replaced I might even become saintly, radiating sweetness and light! What an unnerving thought—but not half so unnerving as imagining what I might get up to if I were fully mobile, unfettered by pain and bounding around like a man ten years my junior.
The unvarnished truth, which I’ve never been able to commit to paper until this moment, is that I’m using my current physical disability as a chastity belt. Instead of lining myself up with God, as a priest should, to the point where I can rely on his grace to keep me in order, happy and productive, I’m hiding behind my arthritis in a blue funk—as Nicholas has obviously realised. And do I seriously think that a successful celibate life has anything to do with repressing my problems in this way and winding up physically disabled, mentally ill-at-ease and spiritually up the creek? No. The successful celibate life isn’t about repression but about sublimation, which is a different kettle of fish altogether. Repression means refusing to think of sex, locking up one’s sex-drive and always feeling exhausted—not to mention neurotic—because it takes such an enormous amount of mental energy to convince yourself nobody has any genitals. Sublimation means facing up to sex, standing eyeball to eyeball with one’s sex-drive and, by the grace of God, figuring out how to expend all that energy creatively and productively in some way outside the bedroom.
I know all this, but as I wrestle with the unvarnished truth here it helps to set down the basics in black and white. Let me add, to cheer myself up, that in the past I’ve had many successful years as a celibate, lined up fruitfully with God and enabled to accomplish effectively the work I was called to do. I certainly didn’t feel tormented by sex then—or even needled by it. I was pro-sex, benign but not tempted. Yet now I see so clearly that this ideal equilibrium has ebbed away and my sublimation is teetering into repression. Correction: has already teetered. Once the relationship with God drifts off course—once the integration of the personality is lost—then sex becomes a threat and women become the enemy.
All very unedifying. To be fair to Simon, I must state that he
has
tried to get me to talk about the hip and my unacceptable reason for keeping it. But I just shut him up. Why can’t I ever find a spiritual director who’ll wipe the floor with me as Great-Uncle Cuthbert did? Because nowadays spiritual directors aren’t supposed to wipe floors with anyone is the answer, but what about a monster like me who goes on being monstrous until someone has the balls to use him as a floor-cloth?
At least Nicholas has just had the balls to give me a metaphorical cuff. Quite right too! I needed a smart biff to make me face up to what’s wrong, but even though I’ve now confronted the fact that my celibate life is not merely ruffled but pathetically inadequate, I still have no idea what triggered this bout of anti-women fever.
Monday, 22nd August, 1988
: A bombshell’s exploded, rocking me to the foundations. I get a phone call from the police to ask if I’m the husband of Mrs. Diana Hall. I say ex-husband, but they don’t care about the “ex.” It turns out that Diana’s had a heart attack in the street (outside Harrods—typical) and has been rushed to hospital. My name and number were in the front of her diary in the space allocated to information about the next-of-kin requiring notification in the event of an accident.
How sad that she had no close friends left who could tolerate her and no relations anxious to give her the time of day. How sad that there was no one else to name in that diary but me, the husband she despised and couldn’t wait to be rid of. Of course she could have put down Rachel’s name, but apparently she did have the decency to spare her only child from being rung up by the police if something went
wrong. Or did she? It’s hard to imagine Diana being that unselfish, especially as she and Rachel haven’t got on for years.
On second thoughts I can see it’s far more likely that Diana named me because she knew that as a priest I’d always pick up the pieces—and because she fancied giving me the hell of a shock, the silly bitch. No, no, I mustn’t say that, mustn’t write it! Poor Diana. How far I contributed to her rotten, wasted life I don’t like to think. When someone goes down the drain, those closest to them should always take a good hard look at the past to identify their part in the fiasco. Few people do, of course. Too painful. But everyone should try.
I arrive at the hospital and find she’s dead. So I don’t get the chance to say “Sorry” for the final time. Just as well. She’d only have spat in my face. Funny how I always took it for granted she’d die of cirrhosis, and yet here she is, pegging out after a heart attack.
I try to say a prayer as I stand by the bed, but nothing happens. Suppose I’m in shock. All I can think of is that amazing kiss in the air-raid shelter and then making love to her later after the all-clear on the kitchen floor of her parents’ empty house in Upper Grosvenor Street. Those wild, woolly days of the war … That was after Great-Uncle Cuthbert’s death in 1940, of course, and before I became a priest. When I think what I used to get up to before I became ordained …
Easier to think of that than to think of my marriage. How Diana hated me becoming a priest! How she hated the psychic dimension to my personality too, never understanding how becoming a priest enabled me to harness this dangerous gift at last by using it to serve God by serving others. She never even understood what Christianity was all about. All my fault, I know that now. I completely failed to communicate to her the life-saving, life-enhancing nature of my spiritual beliefs. She just wanted me to go on being the raffish young soldier she’d met in the air-raid shelter. She couldn’t grasp that if I’d gone on being raffish my self-destructive tendencies and that potentially lethal psychic gift would have done for me in no time. Great-Uncle Cuthbert was around to save me when I was fifteen but he wasn’t around to save me later, when the war was over. God did that by calling me to the priesthood and giving me a framework and purpose which allowed me not just to survive but to flourish.
Yet I could never talk properly about this great miracle to Diana. I could never talk properly to her about anything. I failed her as a husband and I failed her as a priest. I should never have married her.
After a while she bored me in bed anyway. A disaster. Whenever I remember the humiliating failures of my marriage I want to bang my head against the wall in despair.
Well, I get out of the hospital, drag myself home (hip giving me hell) and try to find Nicholas, but he’s away on business, I’d forgotten, and he won’t be back till tomorrow evening. Some bishop wants him to sort out a problem that the local diocesan exorcist has failed to solve. We seem to be getting a lot of these special requests at the moment to eradicate unsavoury phenomena. Nicholas is a consultant to several dioceses now and says the paranormal’s currently a growth area.
No one’s at the Rectory. It’s six o’clock, too late to go back to work. I’m just about to mix myself the stiffest of whiskies when Stacy clatters into the kitchen with the Communion wine salesman and announces that they’re going to have a cup of tea. I growl: “Not today,” and the salesman beats a hasty retreat. Stacy demands annoyed: “What’s your problem now, for goodness’ sake?” and I want to biff him. Insolent young puppy! (I’m very worried about Stacy but I’m not putting my reasons down on paper at the moment.) I say: “My wife’s died.” He’s shocked, stammers apologies. He’s a good boy really, but I don’t think he’s right for the ministry of healing and I’m even beginning to wonder if he should have been ordained. “Get me a whisky,” I order, “and make it a double.” He does, very efficiently. Maybe he should have been a barman.
After two double-whiskies I grit my teeth, go to my room and phone Rachel, far away in the north. She picks up the receiver. I break the news. I’m a priest, I’m trained to do this sort of thing, I work in the ministry of healing—I should be able to do this difficult but not unusual task standing on my head with my eyes shut. So what happens? I make a complete and utter balls-up. Rachel breaks down. Sobs ensue followed by wails of guilt-induced grief about Darling Mummy (whom she’s shunned for some time) and what a tragedy it all was and how everything was my fault.
I long for another double-whisky and wait for her to hang up but she doesn’t. Instead my son-in-law intervenes in his usual masterful way by grabbing the phone and saying: “Thank you, Lewis, for exercising your usual talent for upsetting my wife,” and the receiver is slammed down before I can reply.
Five minutes later when I’m on my next double-whisky he calls back. He’s a very able priest, he’s a very successful suffragan bishop
and now and then he even manages to be a good Christian. “I apologize for being too abrupt earlier,” he says glibly. He’s always very smooth. Silver-tongued Charley. Very gifted. “I was worried by Rachel’s distress. That’s certainly sad news about Diana—it must have been a shock for you, and I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?”
Just stay away, Charley. Just resist that perpetual temptation to play Mr. Bossy-Boots. Just muzzle the urge to muscle in on this particular scene.
Aloud I say: “Look after Rachel.”
“Naturally.” He’s at once ice-cool. I know he blames me for all Rachel’s problems. “That’s my job.” Then my worst fears are realised as he switches on the pastoral power again and radiates Evangelical efficiency. “Okay, leave everything to me—I’ll rejig my schedule and drive south tomorrow to organise the funeral. I’m sure you need to rest your hip.”
Bastard! Usurping my role, treating me as if I were defrocked, incompetent riff-raff, harping on my hip and implying I’m over the hill … I’d like to slug him on the jaw.
I’m so upset that I hang up on him and try to phone Nicholas, but the Bishop’s wife says she has no idea where he is.
I sit in my room, write my journal and get silently, steadily drunk.
COMMENT
: Disgraceful! Quite apart from the fact that no priest should drink himself silly, I was actually conforming to Charley’s opinion of me as a useless clerical has-been—and that makes me all the more furious about my abysmal lack of self-discipline.
Almighty God, please forgive me for all my terrible shortcomings as a husband and father and all the past pain I’ve caused my wife and daughter. Forgive me for not being more grateful that Rachel should have such a loyal and devoted husband. Forgive me for getting drunk and being such a stupid old fool. Please grant me the grace to do better in future. I ask all these things in the name of Your Son, Jesus Christ Our Lord, Amen.
Tuesday, 23rd August, 1988
: I dream of Churchill making the V-sign. Then I dream I’m drawing a big V—for Victory, I suppose—in the sand on a deserted beach. Odd. I presume that Diana’s death has triggered memories of our war-time romance. I wake up feeling like the inside of a tramp’s boot. Triple-hell.
I get Stacy to celebrate the eight o’clock mass. He does it in the manner of Laurence Olivier playing Shakespearean drama—an attractive performance but frequently over the top. I know I should have a quiet word with him afterwards but I don’t trust myself to do it properly.
During the morning I see a few of my people but I’m not much good. It’s a relief when I arrive in church for the lunch-time Eucharist—although my relief ebbs when some drunk turns up and bawls out a pervert’s blasphemy involving the Blessed Virgin Mary. Two of the Befrienders close in and steer him down to the crypt for soup and sandwiches. When I see him afterwards I find out that he’s fallen through the welfare net which our government, worshipping the principle of “every man for himself and the Devil take the hindermost,” has been busy destroying. I pass him on to Daisy and leave her ringing the Social Services to see what can be done.
At this point Francie asks to see me. We retire to my consulting room; she weeps; her husband’s beaten her up again. He never beats her where it shows, of course. It takes a middle-class thug to beat his wife with cunning. I don’t think there’s any future for her in that marriage, but it’s for her to say that, not me. All I can do is listen with sympathy and keep the Kleenex tissues flowing.
I get back to the Rectory at five-thirty and when I walk into the kitchen I find Nicholas. Thank God! He’s stuffing some shirts into the washing machine and looking abstracted so I don’t launch straight away into a recital of my troubles. I merely enquire after the paranormal problem which turned out to be just routine stuff in a council house. Then he asks what’s been happening at the Healing Centre but although I give him a quick résumé I realise he’s not listening. This isn’t particularly surprising; one often feels like a zombie after an exorcism.
To wake him up I tell him Venetia Hoffenberg has phoned twice, and I pretend I’ve no idea who she is. “Now why should the name Venetia remind me of the 1960s?” I enquire with mock innocence to remind him of his pre-ordination days when he messed around with her fast set, but just as his concentration snaps back into focus the phone rings.
It’s Venetia herself, and this time she finally gets the man she wants. As Nicholas takes the call I mix myself a drink and remember the scene a few weeks ago at Cynthia’s when she got drunk, propositioned me and was rebuffed. Meanwhile Nicholas is saying: “He’s not
my curate. He’s my colleague at the Healing Centre.” Venetia knows that perfectly well, of course. She just wants to act as if I’m a nonentity so that she can wipe me more easily from her mind.
I’m still recalling my memories of that first Sunday in July when Nicholas at last replaces the receiver and I see to my astonishment that he’s very excited indeed. “That’s the only woman I’ve ever met,” he’s saying dizzily, “who can recognise a quotation from Wittgenstein!”