Authors: Susan Howatch
Nicholas has explained to me that Alice was very much influenced by this great-aunt, a pig-headed old girl who thought churchgoing was rubbish but would have fought to the death to preserve the hatch-match-and-dispatch routines of the Church as Great British Tribal Rites. “Folk religion,” as it’s been called, may be absurdly quaint, but one mustn’t underestimate its ability to bring Christianity into the hearts of ordinary people. Alice has a Christian background. One day she may care to explore it further. Whether she does or not is up to God, working either through us or in spite of us, and I must leave the matter in his hands. Besides, the best evangelism is a Christian life well lived, not a tactless nagging or unimaginative ranting at every unbeliever in sight.
Thinking of Alice reminds me that I forgot to check the refrigerator before I retired to my room tonight. I’ve discovered that her weakness is rum raisin ice cream, a most delicious luxury which she has to keep in the main kitchen because the refrigerator in the hellhole’s kitchenette is too small to accommodate anything in the freezer compartment except ice-cubes. By checking the freezer compartment of the main kitchen’s refrigerator I can see how much bingeing she does. There was a lot going on at first, but the consumption’s declined. Only six tubs a week now. Neither Nicholas nor I ever make any comment, and Alice never asks us for any help in fighting this dis-ease which must give her so much grief and discomfort, but of course we pray for her. I light a candle too after every healing service, and one day, I firmly believe, she’s going to start to get thin …
Monday, 24th October, 1988
: Venetia and I pussyfoot at the Berkeley. Haven’t been there before, although of course I knew the old Berkeley. I remember a very steamy frolic there during the war.
Venetia talks about this man in her past, the man who messed her up to such a degree that she ricocheted into marriage with the wrong husband. What a mixed-up, pie-eyed, self-centred bastard this heart-breaker of hers must have been! But was he actually any more mixed-up, pie-eyed and self-centred than I was when I messed up Diana? Maybe not, but he was sixty-one years old and married
and
a priest, just as her husband was, and he should have known better.
Dear God, how easy that last sentence was to write! Yet who knows what I may be tempted to get up to when I’m sixty-seven, single and sporting a new hip?
My behaviour with Venetia is IMPECCABLE but I take a taxi home in dead silence.
Alice serves up toad-in-the-hole followed by jam roly-poly. I can’t describe the sheer sensual thrill of eating such perfectly cooked English classics. I’m having a hard time trying to suppress all thought of the coming butchery but Alice’s food calms me down.
James the kitten is now fully house-trained. Nicholas is supervising his education in the art of being a perfectly behaved cat. I might have known Nicholas would never be able to stay away from that animal. I ask him if he’s told Rosalind yet that there’s a cat on the premises, but he says vaguely that he hasn’t told her because he didn’t think she’d be interested.
Coward.
COMMENT
:
I’m
the coward, secretly quivering about this blank-blank operation! And to think I won all those medals in the war! I
must
pull myself together—and I
must
stop worrying that I’ll become a sex-maniac as soon as my hip’s replaced.
Why haven’t I succeeded in finding another spiritual director? Am I setting my sights much too high? Or is my desire for a new spiritual director in fact much too low?
I wish Great-Uncle Cuthbert were here to shake me till my teeth rattled …
Friday, 28th October, 1988
: I’ve decided to stop looking for a new spiritual director until after my operation. This is because I’m in such a state now about the carve-up that all I want to do is savour what could be the last few days of my life.
I start the savouring by pussyfooting with Venetia at one of those new places, a Canadian high-rise called The Inn on the Park. Very stylish in that modern, transatlantic way which always looks so peculiar in England. The pussyfoots are what the Americans call “jumbo.” Venetia and I agree they’re magnificent.
I somehow still manage to behave IMPECCABLY.
COMMENT
: If only I could stop the recurring nightmare that my surgeon will accidentally castrate me on the operating table … Am I sure it’s sheer fear alone which is causing these fiendish sleep-patterns?
Maybe I’m just eating too much at dinner. Tonight Alice served roast chicken with all the trimmings followed by rhubarb crumble, and I stuffed myself disgustingly. To cap it all I find I now have a craving for rum raisin ice cream …
Thank God I’m seeing Venetia one more time before the fatal day. Meanwhile I only hope I don’t die of overeating before I can even reach the hospital.
Wednesday, 2nd November, 1988
: Venetia and i pussyfoot at the Hilton in Park Lane. Marvellous views of London. I finally get around to telling her I’m dropping out of circulation for a while.
“Where are you going?” she asks.
I say: “It’s a sort of retreat. I’ll tell you about it later.” (Dear God, let there be a “later.”)
I’m not sure what shape I’ll be in when I escape from hospital. The specialist is encouraging, but he obviously doesn’t like to commit himself to unbridled optimism in case I take one step with the new hip and drop dead with shock. He does mutter something about crutches, but I ignore this because I’m still well under seventy and I’m sure crutches must be for the real oldies, the pushing-eighty set, who haven’t kept themselves fit by leading busy working lives and who have all kinds of things wrong with them in addition to arthritis. After all, there’s nothing wrong with me except for my hip, and once it’s replaced I’m determined to be gliding around like a lounge-lizard before I leave the hospital.
My surgeon also says I should have a “nice little holiday by the sea” in order to convalesce properly, but that’s the last thing I need; I’d die of boredom. I want my dirty old bedsit and my services at St. Benet’s and Alice’s cooking. Who needs to sit around staring at the sea? Only old crocks who never dream of pussyfooting.
As all these thoughts shoot through my head, Venetia’s saying something about what fun to go on retreat, will I be asked to beat myself with twigs, if so could she come as a beater, please, and does all this have anything to do with Jesuits.
“No Jesuits, no twigs,” I say with a sigh, and think: just a saw and a Harley Street surgeon.
Venetia sighs too and says she’ll be ripe for a retreat herself once she finishes this course of therapy, but I know her sessions are going well. She’s beginning to toy with the idea of further education. She
turned down the chance of a university education when she was young, and she’s always regretted it. Of course she couldn’t attempt a degree now, she says, but perhaps she could still do something positive with her brain instead of pickling it in alcohol … or did I think she’d left it too late?
I say firmly: “It’s never too late,” and promise that I’ll find out details for her of London University’s extra-mural courses.
I behave IMPECCABLY.
Unfortunately once I’m back home I go to pieces again. I eat two helpings of liver and bacon and two helpings of cherry tart with custard and I’m still hungry. All nerves, all an illusion, but the hunger seems gnawingly real, and when Alice offers me some rum raisin ice cream I can hardly restrain myself from eating the whole tub. The prospect of this operation is without doubt bringing out my entire neurotic side …
COMMENT
: Disgusting!
I feel totally humiliated by my extreme pusillanimity and abject lack of self-control.
Thursday, 3rd November, 1988
: My departure for hospital is imminent; I have to check in today for the assault tomorrow. I’m playing the final chorus from Bach’s
St. Matthew Passion
—good music to die to—and wondering if I’ll ever hear it again. In this life, I mean. And it’s this life I’m interested in at the moment, thanks to Venetia.
How wonderful it will be when I’m slinking around like a fifty-year-old instead of hobbling along like an old codger with one foot in the grave!
COMMENT
: The above entry is nothing but self-centred twaddle. Why aren’t I praying for my surgeon and his saw? But I suppose that would be self-centred too, since I’m so anxious for the saw not to slip.
Dear God, as I go to meet my fate, whatever that is, please enable me to behave serenely, with dignity, and kill any impulse I may have to disintegrate into a gibbering food-fixated wreck. Amen.
Oh shit, why did I ever make the insane decision to submit to this blank-blank-awful medical nightmare …
Sunday, 6th November, 1988
: I SURVIVED! My eyes opened on a day I’d convinced myself I would never live to see (yesterday) and I duly breathed a gargantuan sigh of relief. Couldn’t do much more than that, though. Drugged to the eyeballs. But today I’m less doped up and more
compos mentis
so I’m having a little scribble. (Was it Hensley Henson who said that writing a journal was as addictive as drink?)
I’m very sore but the relief from the arthritic pain is absolutely unbelievable. Three cheers for my surgeon the healer! No, make that six. (The extra three are for my genitals, still intact.) By this time I’m so euphoric, relishing my survival, that I behave beautifully, so beautifully that everyone thinks I’m a Cuddly Old Priest. However, they soon find out what a mistake they’ve made. Within hours I’m getting crusty again, fed up with bedpans and all that rubbish, and demanding fresh pyjamas, new pillows, better food and drinkable wine. Nicholas walks in just as I’m bawling: “I hate hospitals!” and behaving very badly.
He says: “You silly, cantankerous old bugger!” and gives me a hug.
Yesterday, when I was glassy-eyed and dozy, he delivered flowers from himself, Alice and Stacy. Now he brings me Penguin’s brand new reissue of Josephine Tey’s
The Daughter of Time
—very appropriate, since the hero conducts his investigations from a hospital bed—and Iris Murdoch’s
The Book and the Brotherhood
, which has also just appeared in paperback. The Tey novel I read when it was first published, but that was many years ago and I shall take pleasure in rereading it; Nicholas knows too that in these circumstances it’s less stressful to read something familiar than something new. The Murdoch novel I shall no doubt enjoy—but later when I’m feeling less like a battlefield.
In addition to the books, he’s also brought three get-well cards. Stacy’s is rude, showing a bedridden old man ogling a nurse. Typical. Alice’s is feline, showing a cat pawing a placard inscribed GET WELL SOON. Also typical. But Nicholas, original as ever, has chosen a postcard of his favourite Kandinsky painting and written on the back: “Aren’t you glad to be living in the 1980s? With a new hip you’re indisputably one up on Great-Uncle Cuthbert!”—a message which makes me smile.
In fact I feel so emotional as I paw over all these offerings that I can’t talk much, but Nicholas understands and makes the silence peaceful.
I wonder what sort of card Venetia would have sent if she knew where I was and what had happened to me …
COMMENT
: I hate the disruption of my religious routine as much as an athlete would hate the interruption of his training, but I try to maintain my equilibrium by regularly giving thanks to God for all the marvels of modern medicine. Nicholas brought the Blessed Sacrament with him, as arranged. He’ll bring it every day until I come home. I didn’t want to rely on some unknown chaplain. How lucky I am to have Nicholas to look after me, how lucky I am to have so much more than so many people, THANKS BE TO GOD, AMEN.
Saturday, 12th November, 1988
: Little Alice visits me. I’m staggered. I banned Stacy, as I knew he’d crash around breaking everything and my nerves couldn’t have stood it, but it never occurred to me to ban Alice. I never dreamed she’d want to see me.
“You’re a very kind, thoughtful young woman,” I say, unable to decide whether or not I’m glad to see her. I was so keen that no one except the hospital staff and Nicholas should see me when I was looking like a beaten-up old tramp.
Alice blushes, delighted to be praised, and produces a little tub of rum raisin ice cream from an insulated bag. Shyly she says: “I thought you might like a spoonful or two.”
I immediately decide I’m very pleased indeed to see her, and several dollops of ice cream disappear down my throat in double-quick time.
As I guzzle this treat she says with care: “I’m cleaning your room. Nicholas thought it would be a good opportunity, but don’t worry, I’m not letting Shirin in and I promise I’m not snooping.” She pauses before adding serenely: “I do understand that you wanted to guard your privacy, but everything really was rather dirty, you know.”
That’s the moment when I realise Alice is finally at ease in her new job. She has sufficient confidence to imply in the nicest possible way: you filthy old man, your nicotine-stained, overcrowded, chaotic bachelor’s bedsit offended against all the known laws of hygiene and was the most revolting health hazard I’ve encountered in my entire career as a cook.
At once I say: “Thank you, Alice. It’s very good of you to take the trouble. I don’t deserve such kindness.”
“Why on earth not?” demands Alice, so relieved that I’ve taken the news of the invasion well that the last trace of her shyness disappears, but before I can attempt a reply she’s extracting from her handbag an envelope of photographs and asking: “Would you like to see the latest pictures of James?”
The kitten is looking most attractive—and so is Nicholas, who’s holding him. Nicholas is in all the snapshots.
“Isn’t he lovely!” sighs Alice, and of course she means the cat. Or does she?
I suddenly realise I’m starting to worry about sex again.
I must be on the mend.
COMMENT
: I hope Nicholas isn’t developing a blind spot about Alice. He can’t afford to relax his vigilance, and I don’t think he was monitoring the relationship closely enough when he decided to acquire that cat. Nicholas is dopey about cats and he can’t afford any dopiness where Alice is concerned.