Authors: Susan Howatch
He wasn’t. I assumed some lame duck had claimed his attention as usual, and when the Egertons arrived I made an excuse about the heavy traffic on Friday nights, but as far as I was concerned Nicky had made his first mistake of the evening.
His second mistake was not to apologise properly when he rolled
up at eight. He didn’t even bother to blame the traffic. Worse still his thoughts were quite obviously elsewhere and his contributions to the conversation were embarrassingly few.
The third mistake he made was to stand up halfway through the meal and mutter: “Excuse me, but I’ve got to phone Lewis.” He made this announcement just as Bryan was reaching the punchline of a most amusing story. I did say sharply: “Nicky, surely Lewis can wait!” but he didn’t bother to reply. He just disappeared, made the call and on his return informed us that he had to go back to London straight away because there was an emergency.
I was so livid that it took me an immense effort to remain outwardly calm. But I did make the effort. Well, one always does, doesn’t one? That’s the rule. Patsy told me once that in America people scream at each other without hesitation when they get upset. At the time I had felt nothing but contempt for such foreign behaviour, but now it occurred to me how pleasant it would be to live in a culture where it was socially acceptable for angry people to scream with rage.
As I saw Nicky off I asked politely what the “emergency” was, and my fury was increased when he answered: “It’s Lewis. He’s had some bad news and he needs me.”
I said: “
I
need you, Nicky. It’s awkward for me if you leave now.” But even uttering those understatements proved almost impossible. I’d been brought up not to complain, not to be demanding. I’d been taught that in a marriage the husband’s work had the first priority and the wife always had to make allowances for him. Pre-war attitudes? Certainly. They lingered on when I was growing up in the south-west during the 1950s. But during the 1980s I’d been coming to the conclusion that the role of domestic doormat was one which I no longer had any wish to play.
Nicky was saying: “I’ll sort him out as quickly as possible and be back early tomorrow morning.”
That’s the trouble with wonder workers. They can never resist the temptation to “fix” people. They’re power-junkies hooked on deliverance, crisis-addicts mainlining on salvation. The one thing which never turns them on is dealing fairly with their nearest and dearest. I should have had priority that evening over even the most cherished of his lame ducks at the Healing Centre.
Lewis Hall, Nicky’s colleague, was in my opinion a thoroughly nasty piece of work and I always thought he was a bad influence on Nicky. Dreadful old man! He drank too much, ate too much, smoked
like a chimney and had a frightful temper. He’d been married once to some unfortunate woman who had immediately hit the bottle in the biggest possible way, and their one daughter—poor Rachel!—was a complete mess. Lewis had some nominal job at St. Benet’s. I was never quite sure what it was but thought it had probably been devised by Nicky out of kindness to make the old horror feel useful. Lewis doted on Nicky, Nicky repaid the doting with an unstoppable stream of fraternal affection, and the whole peculiar relationship, in my opinion, was more than a little unhealthy.
Anyway there I was, abandoned at Butterfold Farm while Nicky drove back to London to rescue that nasty old brute, and as soon as Bryan and Patsy had departed, I sank down in tears at the kitchen table. My golden rule was never to cry in public—well, one never does, does one?—but by that stage of my marriage I was well accustomed to shedding a private tear or two.
That night I shed many tears, and it was when I was mopping them up that I finally thought: I can’t go on.
Yet I found I could do nothing with this statement except try to forget it because in our family women always did go on. They kept a stiff upper lip and they never complained because, as Mummy had always said, that was the spirit which had built the Empire. But in 1988 the beat of a very different drum was now thundering in my ears and I suddenly found myself asking the revolutionary question: what Empire?
Then I knew my marriage had entered completely uncharted territory.
II
Later
, in bed, I tried to imagine a different future, but the revolutionary drumbeat had by that time faded, blotted out by an upbringing which had taught me to believe the direst of fates awaited those who lost control of themselves and flouted the rules. To lose control in this way was the final horror; to lose control was the nightmare scenario.
Turning my back on the future in panic I fled as fast as I could into the past.
I found myself thinking of Lewis again. It was Lewis who had encouraged Nicky to enter the ministry of healing. Nicky’s father had
never wanted that, but Nicky had always fancied it and Lewis had led him on. Lewis had eventually taught him how to conduct exorcisms, since the ministries of healing and so-called deliverance go hand in hand. I thought the whole subject of exorcism was revolting, but what could I do? Nicky’s father was dead by that time, and anyway, I wouldn’t have wanted to whinge, least of all to dear old Mr. Darrow. Good wives never whinged. Everyone knew that.
I’d always tried to be supportive whenever Nicky had confided in me about the more peculiar side of his nature, but I had lived in the hope that becoming a clergyman would make him more normal. Some hope! He’d wound up on the Church’s lunatic fringe. To be honest, I’d hardly expected him to wind up in an episcopal palace, since he’d never been the slightest bit interested in being a bishop, but I’d hoped he might eventually become the rector of some mellow market town. I used to picture that town sometimes. I used to picture the blissful normality of it all: the big, old-fashioned Georgian rectory by the medieval church, the beautiful walled garden, the warm kitchen with the Aga … It would have been the perfect environment for bringing up the boys. But the dream never came true. As a curate Nicky hated parish work and as soon as he could he escaped to become a chaplain in a large general hospital. I just couldn’t understand why he wanted such a sordid, depressing job when he could have served God just as well in a beautiful market town. But of course I took care never to complain.
Before Nicky was ordained in 1968 Lewis had founded a healing centre in our nearest city, and in those days this was considered a very daring experiment. Now that the healing ministry is so fashionable one forgets what an adventurous clergyman Lewis was back in the 1960s, but he was always very much on the margins of respectability and in 1983 he went off the rails, just as I’d always suspected he would. He got mixed up with some working-class woman who had wanted her council house exorcised. She was found murdered in the end, and it was just Lewis’s good luck that he had a cast-iron alibi. His car had been noticed during his regular visits to her house, and the police soon tracked him down. Naturally he was flung out of the diocese and naturally he wound up on the doorstep of St. Benet’s Rectory and naturally Nicky took him in. No doubt he felt he had to “fix” Lewis because back in 1968 when they had first met, Lewis had “fixed”
him
. That was when Nicky had been going through one of his many pre-ordination phases of being very peculiar indeed.
Nicky had always had his peculiar side. He was perfectly sane and in many respects normal to the point of banality—all that Coca-Cola!—but he had his peculiar streak, and when he was peculiar he was creepy. There’s no doubt in my mind that some people are psychic and have paranormal experiences; one can’t live with a psychic and remain unaware of the off-beat incidents which disrupt the normal routine. I would never try to deny that Nicky was capable of foreknowledge; he had too often predicted some event which defied anticipation. Nor was there any point in denying he was capable of ESP; I had too often experienced incidents when he knew exactly what I was thinking even though we might be separated by a great distance. But I have always felt strongly that psychic powers should never be encouraged. That was why I was so outraged when Lewis decided to “train” Nicky after sorting him out in 1968. I did accept that Nicky had been going through a weird phase at the time and definitely needed some kind of help, but what he did
not
need was an eccentric exorcist adopting the role of guru. A good psychiatrist would have sorted out Nicky’s problems, which basically stemmed from the fact that his mother had died when he was fourteen and his very elderly father had found it hard to cope with him. But of course I took care never to voice this opinion to Nicky.
Nicky’s “training” as an exorcist took place in the 1970s when he was becoming an experienced hospital chaplain, but the “training” in the proper use of his psychic powers came in 1968 around the time of his ordination. Nicky’s argument in favour of being “trained” was that as his psychic powers were running out of control and causing all manner of problems, he needed a fellow-psychic and a priest to teach him how to offer these powers to God and so ensure they were always used for the good. He said in 1968 that he’d ended up as a “wonder worker,” someone who used his special powers for his own aggrandisement, and this wonder worker had to be brought under control before he destroyed not only himself but those who came into contact with him. I was careful to receive this information politely and indeed I did see that he needed the discipline of the priesthood to keep him in order, but I still thought he should have stayed away from that ministry of healing. It was the ecclesiastical equivalent of a reformed alcoholic seeking a job in a pub. But of course I never said this to Nicky.
I never said anything to Nicky which could have been interpreted as a criticism, a whinge or a complaint, although God knows, if any
woman had cause to criticise, whinge or complain, I did. I thought of his decision to chuck up parish work without consulting me. I thought of his increasing involvement in the ministry of healing which had culminated in the move to London: the long hours, the frequent absences, the lame ducks, the sinister commissions—how
can
the Church still approve of exorcism?—and the neglect of his family. There were school prize-givings missed, although this didn’t matter since the boys weren’t academic, and sports-days overlooked, disasters which mattered very much indeed, since the boys were athletic. There were family holidays ruined because he was bored. There was my career, in which he had shown no genuine interest. There was—but why list all the grievances? Listing grievances constituted whingeing, and whingeing was for wimps. One just had to shut up and get on with it, whatever “it” was, because that was the spirit which had built the Empire.
That bloody Empire …
Suddenly I felt so unhappy, as I tossed and turned in bed that night after the wrecked dinner-party, that I felt more convinced than ever that I couldn’t stand my marriage a moment longer, but no matter how much I might curse the Empire, I still couldn’t imagine life without Nicky. We had been born in the same village and had become friends in kindergarten. The emotional connection between us now was so old and so deep that the idea of separation actually seemed not only impossible but inconceivable, and besides …
I knew Nicky would never agree to let me go.
III
The
truth was I was really rather frightened of him. I nearly always suppressed this fear—it was wimpish to be frightened—but occasionally it surfaced and gave me nightmares. Having lived most of my life with Nicky’s peculiarities I prided myself on taking them for granted, but that indifference was only achieved by willing myself not to dwell on them too deeply. Once I dwelt on them my hair would stand on end. Luckily ESP can’t be switched on like a light, and Nicky’s complete confidence in my loyalty and devotion made him psychically blind to my discontent, but occasionally he would read my mind with uncanny accuracy and I hated the invasion of my private self.
I hated too his hypnotic gifts, although nowadays I knew they were
only used in his work and in strictly controlled surroundings. Is there anything more creepy than hypnosis? Perhaps only sleep-walking, another of Nicky’s weird traits, although this seldom surfaced nowadays and was always a sign that he was overstrained in some way. I was terrified of this trait because I’d read somewhere that sleep-walkers can occasionally kill people while they’re unconscious. Nicky commented once that if people killed when they were asleep they were bound to be pretty damned peculiar when they were awake, but I failed to be calmed by the thought of early warning signs. I found myself suffering a recurring dream in which a sleep-walking Nicky murdered the boys—although, of course, I never disclosed this dream to anyone, least of all Nicky. He would have thought I was getting neurotic. Sometimes
I
thought I was getting neurotic, although I knew I wasn’t. We never got neurotic in my family. It wasn’t the done thing so it never happened.
To be fair to Nicky I have to admit his peculiarities often troubled him as much as they troubled me. I remember in particular when we were teenagers and he told me about the poltergeist activity he had triggered. Seeing how upset he was I held his hand and listened mutely, concealing my revulsion, and my reward came afterwards when he said gratefully: “I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have you to talk to, Rosalind.” I remember too, years later when we were in our mid-twenties and I’d agreed to marry him, he said urgently: “I’ve got to have someone normal, someone I can rely upon to stand by me, someone
predictable.
”
He put a high value on predictability, that dead opposite of para-normality. Every day at kindergarten he would arrive with his teddy-bear, the sacred totem whom no one else was allowed to touch. “Bear always moves in the same way,” he said, showing me how the toy’s limbs could be manipulated, “and his eyes always have the same expression. Bear’s safe.” Other children tried to play with the bear but Nicky fought them off. Even now, more than forty years later, I could remember him screaming: “No one plays with my bear but me!”
The other children became afraid of this consistent hostility and kept their distance. He was lonely but pretended not to be. “I like being alone,” he said when my nanny first brought me to play with him, but soon it became plain that he was more than willing to tolerate my company. I was shy, quiet, non-threatening. One day I was even allowed to stroke Bear. I almost swooned at the privilege, and
that afternoon his nanny said to mine: “Rosalind’s very good for Nicholas.” His parents thought so too. Nicky might dream of evil spirits and “see” hobgoblins; he might talk in his weird way about “The Dark”; he might sleep-walk and have premonitions which made him scream in terror; but at least he had a nice normal little friend who was willing to hold his hand and make him feel safe.