The Wonder Worker (34 page)

We kept in touch through adolescence but drifted apart when he went up to Cambridge and got mixed up with a fast crowd. That was when he became a wonder worker. I did go to one of the parties but was so appalled I never went to another. Nicky told fortunes and performed psychic parlour-tricks, some of which involved hypnosis. That was obscene. The worst loss of control I can imagine is being turned into a zombie and having my will vandalised. To me that’s the nightmare scenario to end all nightmare scenarios.

He never again performed psychic parlour-tricks after his ordination in 1968, but I sometimes wondered how far the leopard had really changed his spots. He was a very devout Christian. There was no question about that. And he wanted only to be a good clergyman. There was no question about that either. But sometimes, although the career as a charlatan had been completely repudiated, I thought the wonder worker still lurked, like a caged beast, in the mud at the bottom of his personality. Occasionally I could sense this beast prowling around the cage and trying to escape. Then I’d feel frightened. But always the devout clergyman would step in to draw the curtain around the cage again, and the wonder worker would disappear from view.

It was only when I was furious with Nicky that I’d call him a wonder worker, but I knew that nowadays he was an honest man, and this was the Nicky I still loved. I was frightened of Nicky the weirdo and revolted by Nicky the wonder worker, but I loved Nicky my lifelong companion and Nicky the respectable cleric. I just couldn’t stand him as a husband any more, that was the problem, and although I didn’t see how I was going to leave him I couldn’t see how I was going to go on living with him either.

As the church clock struck two in the distance, I was still asking myself what the hell I could possibly do.

But no answer sprang miraculously into my mind.

IV

Eventually
I dozed in exhaustion but at six o’clock I was awakened as Nicky returned to the house and slid into bed beside me.

“Darling—”

“I’m not awake,” I said. “I’ve had a bad night.”

He said he was very sorry to hear it, what a bore insomnia was, but he did just want to apologise again for abandoning the dinner-party—he knew how embarrassing his defection had been for me but he’d make amends, he’d devote himself to me for the rest of the weekend, we could do whatever I wanted, my wish was his command—and so on and so on. Curling himself around me and snuggling close, he finally concluded with a sigh: “At least I fixed Lewis. I hated going back but it really was the right decision.”

I thought: not for me, Nicky. For Lewis, perhaps, but not for me. And not for you either.

A moment later he was leaving the bed and pattering downstairs. He never needed much sleep and I assumed he had already snatched a few hours’ rest in London after rescuing Lewis. Later he brought me breakfast in bed, but although I tried to eat I found I had no appetite. I knew that as soon as breakfast was over he’d want to make love. That would be all part of making amends, but unfortunately I had no desire for amends to be made in that particular way. Sipping coffee I pretended to read the Saturday papers and tried to think of a suitable excuse for postponing sex, but my brain seemed to have turned to wool.

“Are you all right?” said Nicky at last, knowing I wasn’t.

“How fascinating—the gardening column’s talking about that pot-plant fatshedera!” I said with genuine interest. I liked the new trend of newspapers to billow into magazines at the weekend. “And fatsia too! Fancy!”

“Look,” he said, ignoring my irrelevant rapture, “I know it was difficult for you last night and I know you must feel very angry with me, but—”

“You know nothing of the kind! Nicky, I do so loathe it when you try to mind-read—and I loathe it even more when you get everything wrong. Just run off and stop agonising over me, would you? I’m still in a stupor through lack of sleep.”

He sighed again and drifted away. I sagged with relief, but not for
long. I was too worried about how I was going to avoid sex for the rest of the weekend. Sex was always on the agenda somewhere.

Nicky led a very predictable life when he came down to Butterfold at weekends. On Saturdays he wrote to the boys at school, wandered around the garden to see what had changed and tried to paint a water-colour. He was very bad at painting but he did it as a sort of therapy and I was careful to be kind about the distinctly peculiar results. He also spent time catching up with his reading. He read mostly books connected with Christianity, but he skimmed the occasional novel or biography as well. He prayed, of course, but always before I got up in the morning, so the habit never bothered me.

On Saturdays we often had people to lunch or dinner, but by then he would have adjusted to Butterfold life and would be capable of normal social intercourse. In the afternoon, weather permitting, he’d go for a long walk. Sometimes I’d go with him, but if I was preparing a dinner-party he’d go on his own. When I did go with him he seldom spoke. Nicky liked silence.

If our evening was free we might dine out before watching a video. He liked to browse, tongue firmly in cheek, through the early James Bond films, or, better still, to gaze dreamily at reruns he had taped of
The Avengers.
This was Nicky’s favourite cult series, and during the 1960s he had been mesmerised by its star, Diana Rigg. Many were the times when I had sat hand in hand with him on the sofa and listened to him sighing as she appeared on the screen in her black leather catsuit. Diana Rigg was what he called “a steamy brunette.” When young I’d been so grateful to Nicky for marrying me despite the fact that I fell so far short of this sultry sexual ideal.

In the 1960s he had tried to reassure me by saying: “I don’t care what you look like. I wouldn’t even care if you looked like the back end of a bus,” but later I felt this was a very backhanded compliment. Surely if one loved someone one did care what they looked like? Fortunately I never looked as plain as the back end of a bus, but I did look drab when I was young; it was my sister Phyllida who had all the boyfriends. Guided by Mummy I too often wound up wearing beige, and no local hairdresser in those days could solve the problems created by my baby-fine straight hair. It was only after Mummy died that I had the courage to go bouffant, get a rinse, wear shocking pink and make sure my stiletto heels were always several inches high. Phyl had taken to ignoring my mother’s chaste taste much earlier, but I never quite had the confidence to stand up to my mother. Neither did my father, hiding behind
The Times
at breakfast, hiding on the golf
course at weekends, hiding at the office during the week. Poor Daddy—all that hiding! But of course he never complained. I never once heard my parents have a row. Anger was the great taboo in our family and no one was ever allowed to lose control and give in to it.

I liked being in control. I liked it when I built up my floral consultancy business to such a pinnacle that I wound up controlling not only the consultancy but three shops as well. By owning the shops I had more control over the flowers. Soon I was controlling lawyers, accountants, bank managers and the people I employed to give me the time to control everything. The irony was that I myself was not a trained florist. My only qualification was a flower-arranging diploma acquired at finishing school, but that didn’t matter because my primary talent wasn’t for flower-arranging but for management. I adored the power-plays, the cut and thrust of business life, the challenges met and overcome. Nothing and no one slipped through the net and escaped being managed by me. The shy little mouse had evolved into a sabre-toothed predator, and I shall never forget the orgiastic excitement I experienced when I finally sold the business after jacking up the price to the right figure.

Why did I sell? I somehow felt uneasy after the crash of ’87. Of course the market rapidly recovered, but … well, no boom can go on for ever, can it? Better to get out while the going was good, and besides, I had a vague feeling that I wanted to go in a different direction—although what that direction was I still, even after several months of reflection, had no clear idea. Meanwhile it was nice to rest on my laurels, contemplate my bank balance with satisfaction and reflect how amazed Daddy would have been by my success.

Mummy wouldn’t have been surprised in the least. She always said I was a “sticker” and not a “bolter.” Phyllida was a bolter who had run away from boarding school in a fit of pique, but I was a sticker and I’d stuck it out and done well. Mummy knew then that I was as tough as she was, and when I pulled off the supreme feat of “marrying well” she was in ecstasy. Nicky’s father was a clergyman with no money and no background, but Nicky’s mother was a Barton-Woods, the first family in our part of the world, and she had inherited not only the family manor house but also a large estate. After she died both were eventually let, but although Nicky always said he’d return there one day, I didn’t believe he ever would. He would be quite unsuited to life as a country squire, and anyway all he wanted was to swan around London practising that ghastly ministry of healing.

I don’t mean to imply Nicky was entirely averse to country life. He
was quite capable of enjoying his weekends in Surrey, and he particularly enjoyed sleeping with me after his solitary nights during the week. That suited me very well. I liked sex. I always saw copulation as a satisfactory method of rebelling against Mummy, who regarded “sex” as another taboo word, even worse than “anger.” I didn’t like orgasms much, but once I’d worked out how to be in control of them, that little difficulty was taken care of. Needless to say, I never told Nicky the truth about that tiresome mini-blot on the sexscape. He might have wanted to take control by “fixing” me, and anyway, why go looking for trouble? The idea that a married couple should have no secrets from each other, even when the secrets involve sex, has always seemed to me not only stupid but obscene.

Nicky liked sex too, and when he made the effort he could be really good at it, but nowadays he often failed to make the effort. I was unsure why. Was it because of his age? Or because his ministry was becoming increasingly exhausting? Or because he had lost a certain degree of interest in me? Or because he secretly disliked my success as a businesswoman? There was no denying that he was forty-five—forty-six on Christmas Eve—and that he worked very hard and that we had, after all, been married for twenty years, but I did wonder if the main problem was my career. It’s hard for a man when his wife becomes unexpectedly successful, and although Nicky’s delight and admiration were genuine enough I thought that on a primitive, unconscious level he might be nurturing various resentments. I certainly nurtured various resentments when he just banged away without finesse, but of course I never said anything to him. Well, women never can say anything in those circumstances, can they? Not if they value peace and quiet in the home. Men are so sensitive about their sexual prowess that the whole subject is fraught with danger. To complain is to risk an angry response, and once anger rears its ugly head anything can happen. The whole scene might go right out of control.

Sex, with or without finesse, would usually conclude our enjoyable Saturdays, and then we’d be all set for our more religious but almost equally enjoyable Sundays. We would start by lying in bed and reading the papers, but by ten-thirty we’d be among the congregation in the village church for the weekly parish Eucharist. I always went to church with Nicky and I always took Communion, although in fact I’d ceased to be religious long ago. I didn’t exactly disbelieve in God, but by this time he seemed irrelevant. However, assuming he existed—and I felt it was always best to be on the safe side—I had no
desire to make him angry by failing to go through the right motions, and besides, if one’s married to a clergyman one really does have a moral duty to go to church once a week to be supportive. I had never found it easy to be married to an Anglo-Catholic but if necessary I could even tolerate Romish practices. Lewis Hall, dreadful old man, was very Romish, but luckily Nicky was what was now called a liberal Catholic and I found I could put up with that much more easily. My family were churchgoing Anglicans but Protestant, and we always felt traditional Anglo-Catholicism to be deeply unpatriotic.

After Sunday church came Sunday lunch and we were often invited out. In the afternoon we might go for another walk and after tea we would usually make love again. Nicky left Butterfold at nine and would be back in the Rectory soon after ten. The journey by car was easy at off-peak hours.

When the boys were home for the holidays our routine was different as we tended to do things together as a family. There would be outings and expeditions, since Nicky did at least try to make up for his frequent absences. Lovemaking would get cut back or indulged in at odd hours, usually in the mornings as the boys, like most teenagers, enjoyed sleeping late. Nicky never seemed to know quite what to say to the boys and I’d become tense. He and Benedict were currently going through a bad patch because Benedict wanted to rebel against Nicky’s world-view just as I had longed all those years ago to rebel against my mother’s taste in clothes. I understood Benedict but Nicky didn’t. Benedict was gregarious and sporty and racy and adventurous—he was like Phyllida and like my father’s sister Aunt Esmé. He was fun! But Nicky thought he was stupid and shallow—although of course he had taken care never to say so to me.

Nicky was no cleverer with Antony either. If only Nicky could have seen that Antony was different from Benedict, but Nicky never saw Antony properly because he was so absorbed in thinking what a problem Benedict was. Antony was neglected. Unfortunately he too bore no resemblance to Nicky, but he
was
like me. He was basically quiet and shy but copied glamorous Benedict just as I used to copy glamorous Phyllida, and this aping would get on Nicky’s nerves. I worried terribly about all these tensions and often wondered where the troubles would end, but there was no one to whom I could turn for help. Once I did try talking to Phyl but she just said impatiently: “Oh, brace up, Ros, for God’s sake, and don’t be such a wimp!” and at once I felt I’d let the side down.