Authors: Susan Howatch
So why was I so reluctant to see her?
Mystery. Could it be anything to do with the fact that she was a woman? Of course not. What had I done which would be so tough to admit to a woman? Nothing. I’d made a mistake as a healer and this would be tough to confess to any spiritual director, regardless of gender, but otherwise I’d acted with the very best of intentions and my conscience was clear.
Wishing I could forget the road which good intentions notoriously paved, I returned to my study to phone the convent.
III
Clare
lived in Fulham. The sisters had owned the house near Parsons Green since the days when the area had been deprived, and even now that the tycoons were building flats for the rich on land down by the River, there were still plenty of the less privileged around. Cuts in social services had made life harder. Drug use was rife. Beneath the glittering surface of the Big Boom, dark forces writhed as if longing for the recession and ruin which would liberate them.
I left the Rectory before eight but because of a traffic jam on the Embankment it was almost nine by the time I reached the house. The Office would have been said. Breakfast would have been eaten. The nuns would be engaged in their daily tasks. Clare was the cook. Sometimes Alice reminded me of her. Christianity, with its vision of the material world being shot through and through with the sacred, was not a religion whose founder had despised food and drink. Rosalind thought I was indifferent to both, but I’m not a teetotaller and I like to be adequately fed. I prefer plain food, that’s all, and I’d rather have a dose of caffeine than a slug of some chemical which is going to make me sleepy.
The nun who opened the front door said sternly that Clare was busy peeling potatoes, so in the little room off the parlour I sat down at the table below the crucifix and prepared for a long wait. But less than a minute later Clare entered the room.
She was tall for a woman, about five foot ten, and had large hands, reddish, calloused, still scarred from the car accident long ago which had killed her husband and children. She also had a fair skin, blue eyes and a beautiful mouth, elegant, capable of a wide variety of expressions. Her smile tended to be wintry but she was neither cold
nor without humour; the wintriness was an aspect of the formal, detached persona which she found helpful to adopt in certain situations, The impression she gave was of a distinguished doctor who exuded confidence without arrogance, ability without ostentation and devotion to the patient without any displays of false charm or professional flamboyance.
“This is nice,” she said. “I’d rather see you than a sack of potatoes.”
“Sorry to foist myself on you so suddenly and at an awkward time of the day.”
“That’s all right.”
I’d risen to my feet on her arrival but now we both sat down. She wore a grey habit, spotlessly clean and well-ironed. It reminded me of the spotlessly clean, well-ironed jeans I liked to wear sometimes, but I wasn’t wearing jeans at that moment. I was dressed in a black suit with a black stock and thick white clerical collar, just as my father would have been for an appointment with his spiritual director. I wasn’t my father’s clone, yet by dressing formally for the meeting I knew I was trying to present his version of the dedicated, devout priest. My father too had made mistakes during the course of his long ministry but no one had ever questioned his dedication or his devotion to his calling. Tucked safely behind the image which reminded me of him, I tried to draw strength from his memory.
By this time I was feeling nervous. Not very nervous. Just nervous. It was the sort of nervousness which makes one want to clear one’s throat and fidget with one’s cuffs. Not the kind of nervousness where one’s sweating like a pig and trying to repress the urge to run bellowing from the room.
“I’m very upset,” I said to Clare. “I want to stress how upset I am. If I hadn’t been so upset I wouldn’t have made such a serious mistake last night. I was upset because Rosalind had told me she wanted a divorce. She told me in a note she wrote last Monday, but since then the disaster’s escalated, just as all the worst disasters do, and now there’s a big mess.”
Clare merely said: “Start at the beginning.”
I talked for some time. I described Rosalind’s flight, my pursuit to Devon, our agreement to restructure the marriage. Then I began to describe the events of the previous evening. Twice I got in a muddle, once when I was discussing my decision to use hypnotherapy and once when I described how Rosalind had screamed at me in anger before
locking herself in Benedict’s room. Those were the two occasions when Clare interrupted me. On the first occasion she said:
“I note you use the word ‘hypnotherapy’ instead of the word ‘hypnosis.’ Where is the therapy here?” But when I again explained how I’d been attempting to heal Rosalind, Clare asked if any attempt by me to heal my wife could be in accordance with professional ethics.
“No,” I said. “I’m too emotionally involved. I can see now I acted unethically, but as the situation was an emergency—”
“And unethical therapy isn’t actually therapy at all, is it?”
After a pause I said: “No.”
“So we can’t call this hypnotherapy, can we? What should we call it instead?”
“Hypnosis. Plain, ordinary hypnosis.”
“Very well, go on.”
On the second occasion when she interrupted she said: “Rosalind expressed anger? Was that all that was being expressed?” but I couldn’t think what she meant.
“Never mind. Go on,” she said again, but this time I was confused because half my mind was still groping for the message she was conveying and I knew I wasn’t able to grasp it. Obediently I continued my story, and by the time it had finished I had put my confusion behind me. I felt I had handled the confession well. I’d been frank. I’d been more than willing to admit bad judgement and foolish risk-taking. I’d had no hesitation in saying I regretted my errors and wanted to do all I could to make amends and heal the marriage.
“It’s a classic case of the road to hell being paved with good intentions,” I concluded at last. “I only wanted to prove to Rosalind that she still loves me.”
“And what, in fact, have you succeeded in proving?”
“I’ve proved that Rosalind still loves me once her self-centred individualism has been stripped away.”
“You may have proved that to yourself. But what have you proved to Rosalind?”
“Well … This is the point, isn’t it? Rosalind isn’t convinced that she still loves me. That’s why I know the risk I took didn’t come off and that’s why I know my marriage is still on the rocks and that’s why I know I’m still up excrement creek without a paddle. I did pray hard for the Holy Spirit to act through me and heal my wife, but—”
“The gifts of the Spirit can be recognised by their fruits. What are the fruits here?”
“Anger and alienation on her part. Deep anxiety on mine.”
“So?”
“So this wasn’t the Holy Spirit in action. This was just me making a mess. I thought I was aligning myself with the Holy Spirit, but all I was aligning myself with was my own ego.”
“Your ego distorted everything, didn’t it? Even your great gift for hypnosis.”
“Yes.”
“It’s a God-given gift, isn’t it, and you’ve undergone professional training so that you can use this gift for the good, in God’s service.”
“Right.”
“So where was God when you used your gift for hypnosis last night?”
“Well, obviously I … well, the trouble was …” I cleared my throat and started again. “Clearly my ego cut me off from God,” I said. “All I could think of was what I wanted—I was self-centred instead of God-centred. But Rosalind had made me so upset that I acted out of character.”
“You’re saying this was all Rosalind’s fault?”
“Well, no. Not exactly. No, it wouldn’t be right if I implied that.”
“Then what are you implying?”
“I’m simply stating that I was upset. I’m not saying I
blame
Rosalind—she’s so sick at present that she’s not responsible for her actions—but it’s a fact that she did upset me. I mean, I know very well that if I hadn’t been so upset I wouldn’t have done what I did.”
“And what exactly was it that you did, Nicholas?”
I fell silent at last. We sat there motionless beneath the crucifix as the silence lengthened. At last I said in an obstinate voice which sounded as if it should have belonged to someone quite other than my mature, rational self: “You’ve got to see this in context. My wife wrote me a cold, brutal note, she walked out, she told me she’d been unfaithful, she said she wanted a divorce, she behaved as if she wanted to go away and never come back. Then after I’d moved heaven and earth to put the central problem right, she again tells me she wants to leave. Well, I’m going to be very, very upset by this, aren’t I? I mean, this is all wrong, it shouldn’t be happening, this wasn’t part of the deal.”
“What deal?”
“Well, I married her because I knew she
wouldn’t
go away and never come back. Rosalind was always there, always, she never let me down. I couldn’t have stood being let down again.”
“Again?”
I suddenly realised what I’d said. Too late. I sucked in some air and kept it in my lungs for a moment to calm me down. Then I expelled it slowly and said: “When my mother died, she went away and never came back. Not her fault, of course, but …” I broke off. Had to grab some air again.
“You never wanted another such bereavement,” said Clare, “so Rosalind’s constancy was exceptionally important to you.”
“Right. Oh, I know how Freudian all that sounds, but Rosalind’s nothing like my mother—except that they were both thoroughly normal and both good businesswomen. But I didn’t know Rosalind was a good businesswoman when I married her, so—”
“Okay, let’s not get hung up on Freud. Let’s just focus on Rosalind. Why do you think she was so angry with you at the end?”
“Well, maybe I exaggerated a bit, maybe she wasn’t so angry, maybe she was just tired, although I still don’t see why she had to lock herself in Benedict’s room as if I was some sort of villain. Let’s face it, she wanted me to make love to her! She asked for it—begged for it—and it was all a huge success, we were so happy—”
“And on what level was that huge success taking place, Nicholas?”
“Level?”
“Of reality.”
I said at once: “It was real for
me.
It was very, very real indeed.”
“And for Rosalind? What level of reality operates when one’s under hypnosis?”
I started to sweat. This was the moment when my nervousness changed gears. I forgot to fidget with my cuffs. I forgot to clear my throat. I stopped looking around the room for a neutral object to watch. I clasped my hands till they ached and I stared at my white knuckles and I felt the sweat prick my skin beneath my hard white clerical collar.
“The hypnotist calls the shots, surely.”
I managed to nod.
“And the subject accepts the shots, whatever the shots are. But where is the reality here?”
I was dumb.
“I saw a stage-show once,” said Clare. “The hypnotist made a woman believe she was a dog. She crawled over the stage and barked. Finally she even licked his shoes. She believed that he was her master and that she adored him. But was that real?”
My voice said politely, very, very politely, as if I were a diplomat
at a five-star reception who had just realised he had been served cyanide instead of champagne: “I’m not sure I can accept that.”
“Accept what?”
“What you’re implying.”
“Fair enough, we’ll move on. What do you suppose Rosalind thought of the hypnosis once she’d recovered?”
“Well, obviously she was annoyed—she did tell me I’d been—quote—‘very silly.’ She always hated that sort of thing.”
“What sort of thing?”
“Hypnosis. She always hated it, particularly in the old days when I used hypnosis as a parlour-trick to boost my ego. But of course I don’t do that sort of thing any more.”
“Could you please repeat that last sentence, Nicholas?”
The silence which followed screamed in my ears. I found I could no longer think of Rosalind. I could only remember my father, a man of great integrity, looking stricken as he realised how far I had been abusing the psychic gifts which I had inherited from him.
I began to feel very ill.
At last Clare asked: “Why do even skilled hypnotherapists, fully trained and working for God to serve others, need to be so careful in the use of hypnosis, Nicholas?”
I whispered: “Because it’s an exercise in power.”
“You dominate another person, don’t you? You take away the will of that person and impose your own.”
I nodded.
“So when Rosalind begged—”
“Yes.”
“Whose will was she reflecting? And what relation did her actions have to the reality which she herself had been experiencing before you turned on the power?”
Sweat trickled into my eyes. I wiped it away. I said: “She does love me.” My eyes blurred again but not because of the sweat. “I know she does.”
“Yes. But before you hypnotised her, did she express any desire to go to bed with you?”
I moved my head painfully from side to side.
“Wasn’t she asking for a divorce?”
Painfully I moved my head up and down.
“Are women who are in the middle of asking for a divorce usually willing to—”
I steered my head from side to side again.
“So Rosalind was unwilling. There was this woman, unwilling to have sex with you, and what did you do next?”
“Wait a moment,” I said. “You’ve got to wait. Just
wait.
”
We both waited. The only trouble was I had no idea what I was waiting for. Perhaps I was waiting for the truth to go away. But it didn’t. It just lay there between us. On the psychic level I saw it as a huge, black, bleeding lump. I felt sorry for Clare, having to be the midwife at such a hideous birth.
After a while I heard myself say: “I know I can’t expect you to understand.”
“My dear,” said Clare in such a gentle voice that my defences were finally annihilated, “of course I understand. You love Rosalind very much. That’s why it seems, doesn’t it, that you couldn’t possibly have done what in fact you did do. How could you ever have done such a thing, you’re saying to yourself, to the person you love best in the world, your lifelong friend, the mother of your children, your wife for the past twenty years? It’s quite literally unthinkable—so you unthink it, you deny it, you turn that powerful gift for hypnosis upon yourself and you will yourself to blot such a terrible question from your mind.”