Authors: Susan Howatch
“How’s Aisling getting on?” I asked kindly. Stacy, the baby of the family, had three sisters and adored them all. The youngest had recently married, and according to Nicky Stacy had for some time been showing her wedding photographs to anyone who displayed the remotest degree of interest. He had never quite plucked up the courage to invite me to his flat for a private viewing during my occasional brief, busy visits to the Rectory, but now that I was to be staying at the house for some days I had no doubt that the courage would soon be found.
“Aisling’s grand!” responded Stacy enthusiastically, delighted to have the opportunity to prattle about his favourite subject. “She’s planning to go to Ibiza next year for her holiday and she said she did wish I could come with them—and I wish I could too, we could have such fun, all three of us! I’ve always wanted to go to Ibiza, and when I heard she was planning to go there I—”
This most peculiar speech, implying Stacy had no idea how newly-wed couples felt about an intrusive third party, was terminated abruptly by Lewis, who clattered out of the kitchen on his crutches, growled at Stacy: “Get a move on!” and then, to my surprise, gave me a charming smile as Stacy fled in the direction of the backstairs.
“Ah!” he said genially. “Rosalind! Could you possibly spare me a moment, please?”
I was more surprised than ever, but told him he could have as
many moments as he liked. This produced another smile and an invitation into his crowded bed-sitting-room which faced across the garden towards the church.
I realise now that I didn’t describe Lewis when I mentioned him earlier; I just delivered an anti-Lewis polemic. Let me now, in the interests of accuracy, try to present a more balanced portrait of this man who had attached himself to Nicky’s ministry and was now clinging to it like the most ferocious of limpets.
Lewis was one of those eccentric upper-class Englishmen who make a great show of “playing the game” according to the rules but who are actually capable of more or less any licence or lunacy. The more immaculately he behaved and the more conventionally he dressed the more one became aware of his underlying oddness. His deepset black eyes were so sinister and his tough square build was so reminiscent of a great actor portraying a Mafia hitman that I could never feel at ease in his presence, and my discomfort was exacerbated by the fact that he was sexy. Indeed in his younger days, before his hair had silvered to give him an air of bogus respectability, I had thought he was one of the sexiest men I had ever met—although it was not the kind of sexiness I liked. Even now I could feel the automatic, mindless twinge one experiences whenever one sees male sexiness on display, but every other feminine instinct told me to give him a wide berth, with the result that I had always found him wholly resistible. Nicky refused to talk in detail about his friend’s private life, but I suspected that Lewis was one of those men who, although sexually normal, thoroughly disliked women. Such men are dangerous to any woman who values her sanity.
In Lewis’s defence I have to admit he was a very sincere, very devout Christian and completely dedicated to the task of being a good clergyman. I couldn’t help thinking this must have been an uphill struggle but he never gave up, not even in 1983 when he got in that mess in his previous diocese and was sacked by the Bishop. I admired Lewis for this persistence. But he really was a very peculiar cleric. Of course the ministry of healing and deliverance does attract these highly charismatic, potentially dangerous men, and the danger doesn’t only lie in the psychic gifts they often possess; it lies in the immense power latent in the personality, and this power is all mixed up with sex. No wonder everyone says the ministry of healing is so subject to corruption! If the healers let all that charismatic glitz get out of control—if they lose sight for one moment of the integrity of that healer
par excellence
Jesus Christ—this potent cocktail of sex, power and religion explodes with the force of dynamite and destroys everything in sight.
Perhaps I ought to steer clear of that word “charismatic”; it can be so easily misunderstood because it has different shades of meaning. When I wrote just now that the ministry of healing attracts highly charismatic men, I was using “charismatic” as we used to use it in the 1960s—as a slang-word meaning dynamic and mesmerisingly attractive. But in its strict technical sense “charismatic” refers to the special gifts of God, the “charisms” listed by St. Paul which include the gift of healing. Nicky and Lewis were charismatic in both senses; they not only had the gift of healing but were also magnetic personalities. To complicate matters I should also mention that there was a third use of the word “charismatic”—this time “Charismatic” spelt with a capital C. This referred to the people, Catholic and Protestant, who belonged to the Charismatic Movement which had spread like wildfire through the Christian churches around twenty years ago and was still going strong. The Charismatics held emotional services in which they spoke in tongues, exorcised anything that moved and were allegedly empowered by the Holy Spirit. Neither Lewis nor Nicky was charismatic in this sense, and indeed they prided themselves on reflecting the respectable Anglican Catholic mainstream.
“Do please sit down,” Lewis was saying, still very much on his best behaviour, and adjusting his crutches he stooped to flick an imaginary speck of dust from the visitor’s armchair as if only the cleanest cushion could possibly be good enough for me.
“Now,” he said when I was in my assigned place and he was seated opposite me. “I won’t beat about the bush. I know we’ve never been the best of friends and that’s exactly why I want to be straight with you here and leave no room for misunderstanding. First of all, let me make it clear that I wish you and Nicholas well in your efforts to overcome your present difficulties. Second, let me say that I regard it as my duty as a priest to do all I can to help you—and when I say ‘you’ I mean not just Nicholas but you as well. And third, let me spell out one or two facts which may not be obvious to Nicholas but which you might find useful as you try to visualise a future at the Rectory … May I proceed or should I shut up?”
I found myself reluctantly attracted to this frank approach. “I’m all ears.”
“Right. Well, if you’re going to make the Rectory your main home,
it’s important that you should feel free to make whatever changes are necessary. So here are the facts you need to know: one, I don’t have to live here; there’s no reason why I shouldn’t take a flat in the Barbican. Two, Stacy doesn’t have to live here either; nowadays curates almost always have their own home away from the vicarage or rectory. It would be too expensive to house Stacy at the Barbican, but we could afford to put him in one of the cheaper neighborhoods nearby … Am I being helpful or should I stop?”
“I’m riveted. Go on. What about Alice?”
There was a pause. I wondered if my eyes were as expressionless as his.
“Alice has the advantage of being immensely employable,” he said at last. “In the past she’s underrated her employability and not aimed high enough, but cooks of her calibre are much sought after and there’d be no need for her to return to Belgravia. She could stay in this area, where she now has friends, and set herself up as a freelance. There are four thousand people in the Barbican, many of whom are wealthy enough to hire a cook for special occasions, and as there’s an active grapevine I don’t think Alice would have a problem getting work. Accommodation could be difficult at first, but Daisy would fix her up—social workers always know the best deals available in local housing.”
“So you’re saying Alice doesn’t have to live here either.”
“Exactly. Indeed eventually she should move on anyway in order to develop her gifts further and broaden her horizons. For Alice St. Benet’s should be seen as just a staging-post along the way.”
“I see.” I examined my thumbnail before saying politely: “May I ask some questions?”
“Please do.”
“What happens to the new communal breakfast if Alice goes?”
“We can have a rota and take it in turns to cook. The same applies for lunch. It’s been important to us to have a cook-housekeeper, I admit, but if Stacy and I are to live elsewhere, it would be hard to justify the expense of retaining live-in help.”
“But surely you yourself have to live here—doesn’t the Rectory need to be manned twenty-four hours a day to cope with emergencies? What happens if Nicky and I are out and someone rings up with a problem?”
“British Telecom can provide a system for rerouting calls to my flat at the Barbican.”
“So technology isn’t quite so black as you were trying to paint it just now!”
“Every cloud has its silver lining!”
“But supposing someone turns up late at night when Nicky’s away and I’m here on my own?”
“Don’t answer the door. Anyone connected with St. Benet’s would always phone first, and for anyone else there’s always the Samaritans or the emergency services. Nicholas and I are certainly on call in an emergency to those registered at the Healing Centre, but the Centre itself isn’t manned twenty-four hours a day and there’s no law saying a rectory has to be manned twenty-four hours a day either.”
“I’ve got one final question. I don’t think Nicky realises any of this. Why hasn’t he worked it all out, just as you have?”
“He’s extremely confused at the moment. He’s had a big shock and he’s in a flat spin. That’s why I thought it was important that you and I should talk.”
I meditated on this as I gave my thumbnail another examination. Then I said: “I’ve thought of another final question: why are you being so noble, ceding your bedsit so graciously? Or in other words, what’s in all this for you?”
“Good point!” said Lewis benignly, not in the least disconcerted. “Well, I was quite sincere when I wished you well, but I admit my primary concern is Nicholas’s stability. It’s very important for his ministry that he gets his private life straight, and I am, as you know, deeply committed to that ministry of his.”
That made sense. I was tempted to end our conference at that point, but it was so pleasant to have an honest conversation which was encouraging instead of deeply upsetting that I succumbed to the temptation to linger. “I’ve thought of yet another final question,” I said. “Do you think Nicky’s being dumb about Alice?”
“My dear, that’s your third final question! No dictionary would support your definition of the word ‘final’!”
This frothy prevarication almost certainly meant the answer to my question was “yes.” “Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “Obviously there’s no danger of him leaping into bed with her. I just think there’s a level here where he’s not plugged in to reality.”
Lewis said politely: “I’m not sure I understand,” but I suspected not only that he understood all too well but that he was surprised by my insight. Driven on by his misogyny he had probably long since written me off as a materialistic robot devoid of sensitivity.
“Yesterday,” I persisted, “I told Nicky it was wrong to keep Alice here when she was clearly in love with him, but he just spouted some amazing stuff about accepting her love and offering it all back to God so that it could be sanctified—well, it sounded wonderful when he said it, so splendidly Christian, but when I woke up this morning I saw straight away it was nuts. If you’re an attractive man you don’t keep a lovelorn maiden in your basement, it’s just asking for trouble, and anyway, as I tried to explain to Nicky yesterday, it’s not fair on
her.
”
“Obviously you need to talk to him again about it.”
“Obviously I do. And by the way, while we’re on the subject of Nicky being uncharacteristically dumb I’m very miffed about that cat. Why didn’t he tell me about it? I’m not so anti-cat that I can’t see it’s the best solution to the mouse problem! So why did he have to go hatching cat-schemes—as he obviously did—with that poor plain lump of a girl whom he couldn’t possibly fancy?”
“Why indeed,” said Lewis, black eyes inscrutable, but he set his thin-lipped mouth into the toughest of straight lines.
“Oh, face it, Lewis!” I exclaimed irritated. “After all, it was you who initiated all this straight talking! Alice
is
a lump and she
is
plain and she
is
poor, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that in consequence I feel only contempt for her, because nothing could be further from the truth. As a woman I have a good deal of sisterly sympathy for her—which is exactly why I don’t want her to get mangled by an ultra-magnetic healer who’s taking time out from rational thinking to engage in cat-mad nuttiness … And talking of time out, weren’t you supposed to have a convalescent holiday after your operation? I hope you’re not succumbing to the urge to do too much too soon.”
Lewis said he hadn’t been able to tear himself away from Alice’s cooking and anyway winter was all the wrong time for an English holiday, convalescent or otherwise, and talking of holidays, how had I enjoyed my brief visit to Francie’s Devonshire cottage?
I shuddered. “It seems to have turned into a rural slum.”
“What a pity! And when you phoned Francie to ask if you could borrow the cottage,” said Lewis, “how did she seem?”
“Fine—awash with guilty relief that ghastly Harry’s away in Hong Kong. Why?”
“She called in sick yesterday.”
“Oh? Maybe she’s subconsciously pining for Harry to come back and tell her how stupid she is.”
“He’s not violent, though, is he?”
“No, the cruelty’s all verbal. Poor Francie! She ought to have a proper career and kick the brute in the teeth … but I suppose I shouldn’t say that to a clergyman.”
“People say the most extraordinary things to clergymen,” said Lewis, finally rising to his feet to escort me to the door. “That’s what makes the clerical life so interesting. Do you see much of Francie these days?”
“We meet very occasionally for lunch,” I said vaguely, anxious to soft-pedal my association with my mole, and changed the subject by thanking him for his most enlightening suggestions about the reorganization of the Rectory.
I was dimly beginning to realise I’d been swindled.