Authors: Susan Howatch
“Uh-huh. You know, I think I’ve changed my mind, I feel sleepy after the bath and now I just want to go straight to bed. But don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll be as right as rain in the morning.” Moving back into the bathroom I opened the door of the airing cupboard.
I was aware of him staring without comprehension as I pulled out fresh bed-linen. The boys’ duvet covers, printed with pictures of ancient cars, were quite different from ours.
“What are you doing?”
“Oh, I’ll sleep in Benedict’s room,” I said. “No problem. I just feel I’d like to be on my own for the rest of the night, if you don’t mind, but no offence meant. I only want total peace and quiet so that I can crash out for at least twelve hours.”
“But
I
can sleep in Benedict’s room! You sleep in our bed which you like so much!”
“How sweet of you, darling, but no thanks. I’d rather be in Benedict’s room.”
“But why?”
It wasn’t just because the thought of our bed was now repulsive to me. It was because I knew the lock worked on this particular door. Benedict had locked himself in during his last visit after a row with Nicky, and it had taken me over an hour to coax him out. “Just humour me, Nicky, would you, please? I’m so tired,” I said, and began my journey to Benedict’s room. Only a few more steps to go now until I was safe for a few hours. I’d nearly survived this terrifying and obscene ordeal. I was almost there.
“Rosalind, I really do think we should talk about this—”
“No, Nicky. I’m sorry, but no.”
“Obviously you’re angry, but don’t forget I proved that deep down you still love me. You wanted the sex, remember—you asked for it—begged for it—”
I whirled round to face him. “Shut up!” I screamed. “Shut up,
shut up
, SHUT UP!” And bolting the last yards to Benedict’s room I hurled myself inside, locked the door and began to shake from head to toe.
I’d never been so frightened in my life.
II
It was
freezingly cold in the room so I lit the gas fire before I made the bed and burrowed under the duvet. At last I managed to stop shaking, but nightmarish thoughts continued to plague me. Was there a spare key to the room? Would Nicky unlock the door when I was asleep and creep in and … Leaping out of bed I dragged the chest of drawers across the door and switched on all the lights, even the desk-lamp. Only then did I feel safe enough to close my eyes.
But I was unable to sleep. I was trying to work out what to do. Could I seek help from Lewis? No. He adored Nicky, hated me and was enough of a misogynist to decide the whole incident was my fault. And perhaps it was. Maybe I
had
led Nicky on by finding him so sexy. After all, there he was, the devout priest. If he’d overstepped the mark, I must have driven him to do so. I’d asked for sex, Nicky had reminded me, begged for it … I shuddered and shivered for some time. In the end I went to the basin in the corner of the room for fear I was going to vomit again, but nothing came up. I turned on the hot tap and tried the water. The immersion heater had been working overtime after my bath and the water was warm once more. Shedding my dressing-gown I began to wash myself over and over again.
As I did so I wondered if I might seek help from Nicky’s spiritual director, but I supposed that she would be as pro-Nicky as Lewis was, and anyway I’d never been keen on nuns. She’d probably say it was all my fault for wanting a divorce—and perhaps it was. I’d asked for sex, begged for it … Nicky himself had acted only with the very best of intentions … His sole aim had been to heal my debased state of mind which was making us both so unhappy …
I began to cry. I washed and I washed and I washed and I wept and I wept and I wept, yet still I felt filthy, guilty and degraded. My sister would no doubt have said I was being a wimp and should brace up, soldier on and stop whingeing. “So you and Nicky had a sex-orgy,” I could imagine her saying robustly. “God, you’re damn lucky! What the hell are you complaining about?” And I’d never be able to explain. I could never explain to Susie or Tiggy either. They wouldn’t understand. My marital problems were always so bizarre, so outside the range of normal people’s experience. Only Francie, as I had told myself earlier, would be capable of understanding. Not only was she so familiar with Nicky, but she was a trained listener who dealt reg
ularly with people impaled on what Nicky called “the cutting edge of reality.” I thought: Francie may not know exactly what I should do next but at least she’ll empathise and sympathise. And with relief I remembered that our lunch-date at Fortnum’s was less than twelve hours away.
I crawled back under the duvet as the clock of St. Benet’s chimed two. I wanted to sneak out to the kitchen and finish off the plonk, but I was too afraid to unlock the door in case Nicky was there.
By four o’clock, exhausted but still sleepless, I knew that hell was nothing like the pictures painted by Hieronymus Bosch. Hell was living in fear of a wonder worker who was running amok—and hell was being crucified by the dread that this apparently endless stream of soul-destroying abuse was no one’s fault but one’s own.
III
I stayed
in my room until eight o’clock when I knew Nicky would be at the Communion service. Then I dressed quickly and wrote him a note which read: “I’ve gone shopping and will grab some lunch in the West End. Back for dinner—let’s eat with the others this time. I’m sorry about last night but please don’t let’s refer to it again. R.”
I had no idea whether I would be back for dinner or not but at least I would have a few hours free of the fear that he might be pursuing me. I was now in such a state that all I wanted was to reach Fortnum’s and talk to Francie.
Having left the note on the hall table of the flat I fled from the house. Up Egg Street I skimmed and along London Wall to Aldersgate where I headed for the Barbican tube station. I was walking so fast that I felt hot in my winter coat, but so relieved was I to have escaped from the Rectory that I never once slackened my pace.
Five minutes later a train was carrying me out of the City into the heart of the West End.
IV
I had
thought I might spend the morning buying Christmas presents for the boys, a demanding task which would divert me from
the horrors I had experienced, but I soon found that any demanding task was quite beyond me; I wound up drinking coffee in the mezzanine restaurant at Fortnum’s and looking at the
Daily Telegraph
and the
Daily Mail.
I was unable to read but I spent ages examining the pictures on the front pages. After a long, long time the Fortnum’s clock chimed noon and I trailed upstairs to the St. James’s Restaurant to have a scotch while I waited for Francie to arrive.
I never normally drank scotch in the middle of the day and in fact I never drank scotch at all unless there was a crisis going on, but I felt I had to have something strong to calm me down so that Francie wouldn’t think I’d freaked out. I didn’t want to appear a complete broken reed. I could afford to appear troubled, but I had to give the impression of being in overall control of myself. Supposing Francie were to think I was having a nervous breakdown? With a shudder I hid behind the
Telegraph
but fortunately the scotch proved a most effective tranquilliser, so effective that I ordered another to ensure I stayed encased in an air of normality. By the time my glass was empty again I was no longer cowering behind the
Telegraph
but flaunting the
Mail
while silently chanting my favourite American mantra: “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.”
Summoning the waitress I told her to remove the empty glass and bring me a Perrier on ice with lemon. Image was all. Straightening my back I crossed one leg over the other, adjusted the cuffs of my blouse and was just elegantly sipping my Perrier when Francie surged in.
She was wearing a scarlet jacket, a pencil-thin black skirt, and a black blouse with frills which bounced merrily over her lapels. She was just the teeniest bit fat for a size fourteen but too thin for a size sixteen, so this presented her with a tricky fashion problem to solve, but apart from one or two straining seams she looked smart and her make-up was excellent. When we kissed I held my breath to control the scotch fumes but she let a sliver of air escape and I realised to my surprise that it was ginny. So Francie, like me, had been tanking up! But of course she was depressed at present, poor thing, and had probably needed a discreet g-and-t to oil her path out of Islington.
Having solemnly decided not to have a drink before lunch, we teetered off into the main part of the restaurant to take our seats at the table.
Francie was magnificent. As soon as I started to tell her what had happened, she rose to the occasion, shed her normal air of scatty
housewife and became the trained listener, oozing warmth and concern from every pore. Effortlessly she contrived to give the impression that I was the most important person in her life at that moment and that she was wholly dedicated to my welfare. Normally a chatty, bouncy soul she became faultlessly attentive, only murmuring encouraging monosyllables or helpful phrases at exactly the right moment. Once or twice the mask of the Befriender did slip and I saw she was beside herself with prurient curiosity, but I found I could forgive her because I knew she was only being human. We all like to be titillated occasionally and it was only natural for Francie to be riveted by a story about Nicky’s sex-life, just as it was only natural for her to derive an almost-but-not-quite-concealed thrill from hearing about a marriage on the rocks. We all like to look down our noses at people who wallow in
schadenfreude
, but who hasn’t succumbed at some time to having a similar wallow? At least Francie battled valiantly to keep her more disreputable feelings to herself and never for one moment ceased her heroic task of oozing warmth and concern from every pore.
“Ros darling,” she said earnestly at last after I had completed my story and was busy draining my glass of Chablis Premier Cru, “you shouldn’t blame yourself for
anything.
What Nick did was totally wrong.”
I was enormously grateful to her for saying this. Yet at the same time I was terrified that she was saying it only out of a desire to be kind. “But surely,” I said, “if the hypnosis uncovered my true feelings, and if I then egged him on, he’s justified in saying—” I broke off as my voice started to waver. Disaster! I was on the brink of losing control. In panic I groped for the bottle in the ice-bucket, but Francie, anticipating my every need with a brilliant display of empathy, was already refilling my glass.
“My dear,” she said firmly, “what the hypnosis did was suspend your will. So the ‘true feelings’ which were then uncovered were actually
his
feelings which he was imposing on you when you had no mind of your own.” Hastily she added: “Of course Befrienders aren’t supposed to offer opinions or advice, but since I’m here in a nonprofessional capacity—”
“Oh yes, yes, yes, never mind all that, I’m just desperate to know what you really think!”
“I think what he did was completely unethical and I’m horrified that he’s brainwashed you into thinking you led him on. Ros, before
he turned on the hypnosis, you didn’t want to sleep with him, did you?”
“Absolutely not. I told him so.”
“So what he actually did was to—”
“He took away my power to say no,” I said slowly. “He had sex with me without my consent. If I’d been
compos mentis
—”
“—you’d never have agreed to it, let alone encouraged him. Right. And when a man has sex with a woman without her consent, that’s—”
“No, don’t say it, I don’t want to hear, I can’t bear to think he could ever do something so—” I broke off, overwhelmed by tears. “Don’t look at me,” I muttered in panic as I groped in my handbag for a tissue. “You’re not seeing this, I forbid you to see it.” And finally I whispered: “I think I’d rather believe it was all my fault than believe Nicky could ever treat me like that.”
Francie passed me a Kleenex. The Befrienders were famous for never being without a supply. “Nevertheless,” she said firmly, “it’s terribly important for your sake that you don’t assume a guilt that doesn’t belong to you, so let me take a moment just to spell out what seems to have happened. I think Nick took advantage of all that ancient kindergarten affection which exists quite separately from the marriage and used it to lull you into a false sense of security. Then he switched on the hypnosis, and once he did that you wouldn’t have been responsible for anything that happened. You’d have lost all power to control the scene.”
I recognised the nightmare scenario, and although I remained physically battered, mentally shattered and emotionally annihilated I was finally able to exonerate myself from blame.
“He’s very skilled at hypnosis, you know,” Francie was saying. “Val told me once that he can put a willing subject under in a flash with no trouble at all. You might have taken longer, because you were fundamentally hostile, but once he’d neutralised the hostility by resurrecting those childish memories and regressing you into the past—”
“Yes. That’s how it was. I can see it all now.” By this time I found I was admiring Francie’s skill not just in listening but in understanding the situation and handling my distress. In the past I’d always found her warm-hearted but a bit thick. Now I saw I had underestimated her. As a St. Benet’s Befriender her gift of empathy was given full rein so that every ounce of her intelligence was maximised, and this made me realise how much even ordinary people could achieve
when they took up work to which they were perfectly suited. I thought how clever it had been of Nicky to spot her potential and recruit her to work at the Centre.
The thought of Nicky brought fresh tears to my eyes and forced me to destroy another Kleenex. How could the Nicky who was my lifelong friend and most trusted companion have treated me like that? I felt as if I had never known him; I felt as if he had destroyed the past; I felt that all my most precious memories had been brutalised until they appeared to be no more than a string of illusions. Yet alongside my cherished memories were the memories of the parlour-tricks. I’d always known he was capable of misusing his gifts, but it was one thing to hypnotise willing girls at a party and quite another to—