Authors: Susan Howatch
No. Can’t think of that. Not now. Later.
Maybe I’ll be healed but not cured. In other words, maybe I’ll never now achieve a satisfactory intimate relationship with a woman but that won’t matter because I’ll be at peace as a celibate and benign towards women in general. No more sexist remarks. No more seeing women as evil temptresses. No more saying “priestesses” when I should be saying “women priests” …
Dear God, I hope the Synod doesn’t approve the legislation for the ordination of women!
Well, it seems I certainly haven’t experienced a miraculous cure, manifested in a conversion to the feminist cause. In fact I don’t think I’ve experienced anything much yet except an enormous amount of pain and confusion, but buried in the midst of all that darkness is the spark of hope. “I’m going to survive,” I wrote at the top of this section, and by the grace of God I shall.
Looking back on yesterday evening I see so clearly now how dependent Nicholas and I are on each other as we work together at St. Benet’s. We’re like two tightrope walkers on the high wire. Nicholas saves me when I lose my balance, and when he’s tempted to play the Wonder Worker I’m there to rein him in. Yes, we’ve been very successful in outwitting the Devil’s attempts to destroy us but there’s no cause for complacency. Our old enemy’s bound to try again to shake the high wire, and perhaps next time, having failed last night in his attempt to drag me down into the mud, he’ll make Nicholas his prime target.
Well, that kind of language is all very old-fashioned and anthropomorphic, but I like to visualise evil in the form of a homicidal old bastard who’s off his rocker, and I’m sure I’m right to be nervous about the future. My psyche keeps bleeping like an Early Warning System which is picking up news of an approaching nuclear attack. I suppose I could just be overwrought as the result of the earthquake, but I could also be unusually receptive, my psyche rubbed raw by stress.
How I wish Nicholas was back at the Rectory! I feel uneasy when he’s too far away for me to keep an eye on him.
Sunday, 20th November, 1988
: I celebrate Sunday mass. The crutches are a blank-blank nuisance, but I’m all right once I’m planted at the altar. All the prayer-group are there and the atmosphere’s excellent. They don’t mind me flailing around like some sort of mutant octopus. I suppose my specialist would say I should be resting, but so what? Celebrating mass makes me feel good. Getting back into my religious routine makes me feel even better. I know how to heal myself, thanks very much! I’ll be throwing those crutches away in no time now.
To maintain my upbeat mood I get myself to St. Mary’s Bourne Street for the morning Eucharist, and later on I turn up at All Saints Margaret Street for Solemn Evensong and Benediction. I know I ought to call it a day after this, particularly since the new hip’s now acting stroppily, but I can’t resist topping off this orgy of Anglo-Catholicism by dropping in at St. Edward’s House for Compline. After all these services and taxi-journeys I feel physically feeble but mentally strong, very centred. If only I didn’t get so tired! But I shouldn’t find the tiredness surprising. This is the time when I’m supposed to be enduring an idle convalescence by the sea.
I’m sustained during my peregrinations—in icy, even snowy weather, I might add—by the magnificent lunch Alice cooks. She’s supposed to be off-duty on weekends, but she cooks anyway on Sundays because she enjoys it. Stacy and I certainly enjoy the results.
In my bathroom that night I sing a Vera Lynn song. Then I fall asleep as soon as my head touches the pillow.
COMMENT
: My psyche’s quietened down as the result of the megadose of prayer and worship. Of course I was being neurotic earlier when I thought I could sense the Devil plotting to close in on Nicholas.
I look forward to a boring and unremarkable week in which nothing abnormal whatsoever occurs.
Monday, 21st November, 1988
: I’ve just reread that idiotic last sentence. Short of saying to the Devil: “Do come in—so nice to see you!” and flinging open the front door of the Rectory with a smile, I can hardly have issued him with a more tempting invitation to unleash a volley of vicious kicks with his cloven hoof.
Switching to the language of psychology I can summarise the crisis less emotively by writing: There’s a whole range of disordered emotions swirling at present around those most intimately connected with St. Benet’s; I’ve been aware of these disordered emotions for some time, since I’m experienced enough to spot the symptoms, and the threats to our ministry became obvious today when various incidents occurred involving individuals who are either dysfunctional or alienated or neurotic—or possibly all three.
In other words, to call a spade a spade, the Devil made a multi-pronged attack and caused havoc.
The day begins well. I wake early, pray and meditate on a passage from the writings of Father Andrew, but as I dress (hip still feeling very much a foreign body) I remember an abnormality: although it’s Monday morning Nicholas is still absent. Instead of returning to the City late last night he’s stayed on in Surrey because this morning he has to drive down to the south coast. In Chichester there’s to be a discreet gathering of those in the Church who exercise the ministry of deliverance, and Nicholas is not only reading a paper at the conference but conducting a seminar. Afterwards he plans to stay the night down there with friends before driving back to London early on Tuesday morning. He’s spoken to me on the phone three times a day since our Friday evening session, but he’ll be too busy to phone today. Never mind. I’m better now. I’ve recovered my equilibrium.
On the way home from the eight o’clock mass Stacy tells me he’s going out with Tara again tonight, and he’s so bouncy that I begin to wonder if I’m completely wrong about his sexual problems. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time that Nicholas has been right and I’ve been up the creek. I decide to waste no more time worrying about Stacy at present.
So far so good. No kicks yet from the cloven hoof.
The morning passes uneventfully, and so does the lunch-time Eucharist. Another average day, I think as I heave myself home for lunch. Nothing to get excited about.
At the Rectory Alice serves a mushroom quiche, a big salad, plenty of cheese and warm brown bread. I see now I overreacted about Alice when I realised she had a psychic gift. I don’t seriously believe, do I, that Nicholas would ever fall for her? He’d have to be completely destabilised for such a thing to happen, and I can’t think of anything which would send Nicholas clean off his rocker. Any priest, of course, can suffer a breakdown if he gets the spiritual balance of his life
wrong, but I’d kidnap Nicholas and see he got the best help long before his wobble on the high wire became fatal.
After lunch I take my usual short snooze in the bedsit before returning to the Healing Centre for a conference with Stacy; I’m currently training him in the delicate art of making pastoral visits to a mental hospital. Regularly we go to see our clients who have needed to be hospitalised, but because of my operation I’ve been unable to pay visits for a while and I need to find out how Stacy’s been getting on.
He seems to have been avoiding a pastoral disaster but his notes are scruffy and inadequate. I drill into him how important it is to keep proper records but I’m careful to be encouraging as well and anyway he’s too bouncy to be downcast. “Enjoy your evening with Tara!” I call after him as he bounds out of my consulting room, and he turns to give me a radiant smile. That Tara must be really turning him on. I’m astonished.
“And what are you doing tonight, you old villain?” he asks me so fondly that I don’t even think of growling: “Insolent young puppy!” I say I’m going to the West End to buy a tape of Vera Lynn songs and then I’m going to be very “Establishment” and treat myself to a dinner at the Athenaeum.
“Who’s Vera Lynn?” says Stacy, teasing me, and skips off with a laugh when he sees the expression on my face.
Yet again, so far so good.
I spend the rest of the afternoon chairing a finance committee meeting. Nicholas said I wasn’t to do this, as I’m supposed to be convalescing, but anything as dull as a finance committee meeting is bound to be restful. Bernard, as office manager, makes a long speech about the new facsimile machine while I mentally switch off and pray for Venetia. I hate technology.
Back in my consulting room at five o’clock I’m just sorting through the pile of rubbish on my desk when I uncover a flyer for a special lecture tonight at Sion College. Some monk’s talking about Benedictine spirituality in the modern world, and I particularly want to hear him because I’ve read several of his books; the special lecture is to celebrate the fact that he’s just published another. Am I too tired to go? Certainly not! (I refuse to let this new hip get the better of me.) Leaving the Centre I hurtle down to the Embankment in a taxi and arrive at my destination ten minutes before the lecture’s due to begin.
I’d forgotten the staircase that has to be climbed. Triple-hell! I
scrabble away, trying to work out how to combine the crutches with the handrail, and various kind, well-meaning people offer to help but I brush them aside. There’s nothing wrong with my arms and nothing wrong with the handrail. I can haul myself up, and if the hip doesn’t like it, that’s too bad.
Huffing and puffing I finally reach the top of the stairs, adjust my crutches and move forward into the beautiful library where all the Sion College lectures take place. A fair number of people are already assembled: clergy, theology undergraduates from King’s and an assortment of the retired ranging from elderly gentlemen in shabby raincoats to little old ladies with hats like tea-cosies. They’re all gossiping away in the semi-circle of seats. Moving forward into the room I spot a knot of militant homosexual clergy heaving ahead of me and automatically I veer away towards the front row. Then I stop dead. I’ve briefly registered the presence of a familiar thatch of red hair. Taking another look at these homosexuals, at least two of whom, so I’ve heard, spend their Saturday nights haunting gay bars and worse, I spy in their midst none other than the curate of St. Benet’s-by-the-Wall, the Reverend Eustace McGovern. Moreover he’s bursting with vitality and obviously having the whale of a time. No sign, of course, of Miss Tara Hopkirk from the Isle of Dogs.
He sees me a second after I see him and his face turns as red as his hair.
Altering direction I edge up the half-empty row in front of him and stop opposite his chair. “Good evening, Stacy,” I say, and allow my glance to flick sardonically over his companions.
“Oh hi!” he says, trying to be casual but now crimson with embarrassment. “I thought you were going to the Athenaeum!”
“I changed my mind. I see you did too.”
Stacy hangs his head and looks the picture of guilt. I feel humiliated for him.
Meanwhile the militants, all of whom are London-based and known to me, have realised exactly what’s going on and are trying to work out how to protect their new chum. One of them makes the wrong move and drawls: “Lewis my love, I can’t tell you how intimidating you look! Are you psyching yourself up to wallop us with those crutches?” But the ringleader of the bunch, a man I detest, shuts him up by saying crisply: “John, do you really have to play Dame Edna this evening?” and to me he adds in the friendliest of voices: “How are you, Lewis? I was sorry to hear you’d been in hospital.”
“That’s past history now,” I say, “and I’m recovering fast.”
To my surprise he asks a couple of other friendly questions, just the kind of questions a good priest should ask, and in the end he says with perfect sincerity: “It’s good to see you again—won’t you sit with us?” That’s when I realise I’ve been outmanoeuvred. If I refuse, I’ll look the most unchristian of swines.
“Move over, Dame Edna,” he says to the silly one next to him, “and give up your seat to Father Lewis.”
Meanwhile a couple of heterosexual priests have spotted my plight and are trying to rescue me. “Lewis!” calls one, and: “Over here!” calls the other, patting the seat next to him, but I suddenly see the funny side of the situation. “No thanks!” I call back. “I’m making a pastoral call on the gay community!”
All the queers cheer. Dame Edna vacates his seat, lifts away the chair in front of me and enables me to step forward into the right row. The very charming, very able ringleader—of course it’s Gilbert Tucker—laughs as I plonk myself down next to him, and when he offers me his right hand I find myself trying to recall why I’ve always disliked this delightful priest so much—but the moment we shake hands I remember. Oh yes! He turns a blind eye to gay priests who kick chastity in the teeth, and says Jesus would understand and approve of their conduct. Wonderful! These priests have an unintegrated sex-life in which their sexual energy’s not channelled into their work but split off from it into episodes quite contrary to their calling, yet Tucker has the nerve to claim his support for these creatures is backed by the most integrated human being of all time. Our Lord would certainly have been compassionate in considering such conduct. But
approving?
As the tennis star Mr. McEnroe would snarl: “You
can’t
be serious!”
I spend the lecture seething that such behaviour should be tolerated in the London diocese, and I wonder what the great homosexual priests of the nineteenth century, all of whom rated chastity and obedience so highly, would have thought of such a debasement of their Christian standards.
When the lecture finishes, Stacy says a rapid goodbye to the gay set and mutters that he’ll come home with me. In the taxi he starts to stammer something but I growl: “Later!” and shut him up. On our arrival home Alice, having been instructed earlier that neither Stacy nor I would require dinner, emerges from the hell-hole to offer us a meal, but I shoo her back to her television.
“We’ll talk in Nicholas’s study,” I say abruptly to Stacy, and he creeps along behind me like a puppy that’s already been whipped.
Dumping myself in the swivel-chair at Nicholas’s desk I watch as Stacy crumples into the chair nearby. He’s now looking so miserable that I know this would be quite the wrong moment to take a tough line, so I say in my kindest voice: “My dear Stacy, this isn’t first-century Rome. You’re not about to be thrown to the lions. I assure you you’re going to survive this conversation.”