Authors: Susan Howatch
Then as I stared at him through my tears, he moved back to the table, handed me the box of Kleenex and sat down not opposite me but at my side.
VII
At that point he asked me to tell him exactly what had happened in Surrey that morning, but I found I had the greatest difficulty in forcing my memory to focus on the scenes at the farmhouse. I saw now that I could have misunderstood what had happened, and I saw too why I had been tempted to believe in the reconciliation.
“I’d recognised how jealous I was of Rosalind,” I said to Lewis, “but I suppose deep down I knew that the best I could hope for was that she and Nicholas would return to their old arrangement of being together just at weekends. If I couldn’t have him for myself—and I knew that was out of the question—then a wife who spent most of the time apart from him was for me the least painful scenario.”
“Alice—”
“The one thing I couldn’t stand,” I said rapidly, “would be Nicholas divorcing Rosalind and marrying someone else who lived at the Rectory full-time. I’d have to leave, even though that would be the last thing I’d want to do in so many ways. I’ve been happier here than I’ve ever been in my life.”
Lewis said evenly: “There are times when one’s called to move on. St. Benet’s has been a very important staging-post for you on your journey, but who’s to say that you won’t be moving on to an even greater happiness elsewhere?”
Fearful that he might propose again I abandoned the table and wandered to the dresser. The bear was looking at me with his mournful, knowing glass eyes. Picking him up I held him tightly and felt I knew something of the comfort which Nicholas had experienced long ago in his nursery. Then the moment of empathy with Nicholas coaxed my memory into action. As I recalled our conversation earlier I heard him say in describing his adult life: “There were a lot of things I didn’t find. Things I tried not to think about. Things I tried to believe weren’t as important as security.”
“Nicholas never found a genuine companionship in that marriage, did he?” I said suddenly. “There would have been no meeting of the minds. He wouldn’t have found understanding—and he wouldn’t have found true peace either because he didn’t care about his home and always wanted to be somewhere else. All he and Rosalind really had in common were the children and the shared memories of their childhood.”
“That’s all they’ll ever have in common. But nevertheless—”
“They’ve outgrown each other,” I said, not listening, wholly absorbed in reinterpreting the scene at Butterfold and the significance of Bear. “He knows that now. It’ll be very, very hard to let her go but he knows it’s got to be done. He wants the best for her and he realises he can never provide the new life she needs and deserves …” I found I was hugging the bear tightly again. “I understand now,” I said, keeping my back to Lewis as I reseated Bear in front of the Delft plate. “I didn’t want to understand because I didn’t want to think of
him getting divorced and marrying someone new who would make my life here unbearable, but it’s better to face the truth, isn’t it? When one’s grappling with the cutting edge of reality one can’t afford to start believing a lie.”
I heard the chair scrape across the floor as Lewis yet again rose to his feet, but I remained staring at the bear. “Okay,” I said, “I accept that there’ll come a time when I have to move out of the Rectory and out of his life. But that’s still a long way off, isn’t it? He’s a long way from being divorced and an even longer way from remarriage and meanwhile I can stay on here and everything will return to normal and we’ll be just as we were before all these terrible things started to happen—”
“I think not,” said Lewis in his kindest voice, and began to destroy the last of my illusions.
VIII
“Predicting the future’s a risky business,” he said, “but let me start by repeating what I’ve said to you before: it’s by no means certain that Nicholas and Rosalind are capable of separating. They may think they are, but they could be mistaken.”
“But I’m sure—”
“You can’t be sure. We’re predicting the future, an activity not known for dealing in certainties. However, if they do stay together, the marriage will have to be completely restructured since the old split-level arrangement has broken down beyond repair. Alternatively, if they somehow manage to separate, I foresee that it will be very difficult for Nicholas to adjust to the break-up and it may take him a long time to reconstruct his private life. During that long time he’ll have to wrestle with the problem of living as a priest should when he has no wife and no gift for celibacy, and how likely, do you think, is it that he’ll solve such a difficult problem satisfactorily when he’s living in the same house as a woman who’s in love with him?”
“But Nicholas would never—”
“Never be tempted? Oh yes, he would! He may be a very gifted priest but he’s also a very ordinary man in some ways, and if he no longer has Rosalind to keep him on an even keel you’ll soon become an irresistible temptation to him.”
“But Nicholas would never want me in that way!”
“Why not?”
“Well, he couldn’t! Marriage just isn’t a possibility at all!”
“I’m not talking about marriage. God only knows whom Nicholas will marry—that’s all in the remote future and may never happen anyway if he and Rosalind find long-term separation psychologically impossible.”
“Are you trying to say—”
“Yes, I am. Nicholas is a good man but he’s not a stainless steel saint incapable of sin. No one is. He’s a human being capable of making bad mistakes and getting into a lethal mess—as the events of the past few days have made only too clear.”
“Yes, but—”
“Now let me lay out the unvarnished truth for you, Alice, and this isn’t a prediction which may or may not come true. This is a fact. If Nicholas were to start sleeping with you his integrity as a spiritual leader would be shot. When any religious community goes to pieces the collapse almost always begins with a loss of integrity manifested in the form of sexual licence. The leader uses and abuses the women around him—or the men—and then the whole enterprise, fueled by an atmosphere of jealousy, suspicion and anger, descends rapidly into chaos.”
“But Nicholas must know all that!”
“Of course he does, and so far he’s kept himself honest, but he’s now facing a prolonged period of emotional stress and he’s going to find it tough enough to maintain his moral equilibrium without having to deal with your feelings for him—or his for you. Do you see what I’m saying? I believe that what first attracted you to Nicholas was his great integrity. You’re now in a position where you could destroy it—and once it was gone and he was just another wonder worker willing to devalue others to satisfy his needs, would you still love him? Or want to marry him?”
I said: “I can’t imagine not loving him.” Taking off my glasses I began to rub the clouded lenses. “But I can’t believe he’d ever want to marry me and if we did sleep together I can’t imagine that I’d ever satisfy him for long.” I replaced my glasses but they misted up again almost immediately. “I couldn’t bear him getting tired of me,” I said. “I couldn’t bear him becoming indifferent. I’d rather not sleep with him at all than leave myself open to that kind of pain.”
I waited for him to speak but all I heard was silence. “Long ago,” I said, polishing my glasses over and over again, “when I was born
and for a short time afterwards, there was a man who loved me. I have a photo of him holding me in his arms and he looks happy and proud. But that didn’t last long. He went away and never came back and I don’t know to this day whether he’s alive or dead. I’d never want to go through that sort of rejection again. Better not to love at all than risk people becoming tired of you and ceasing to care. But even so … despite all that … I can’t imagine not loving Nicholas.”
There was another long pause before Lewis said: “It’s very hard to have a parent who rejects you.”
“Both my parents rejected me. That’s why in the end I was glad to be ugly. The uglier you are the less likely people are to love you, and so long as there’s no love around then you can’t get hurt—or so I used to think—as I ate the ice cream—and all the other stuff which helped make me so ugly—”
“My dearest Alice,” said Lewis. “My dearest Alice—”
“Okay, I’ll shut up now, I’m sorry if I’ve been embarrassing.”
“I’m not embarrassed. I just want to say—”
“It’s all right, I’ll leave the Rectory. I see now it’s the only thing to do to keep Nicholas safe and me sane. You needn’t worry about him any more.”
“—I just want to say this: you’re not ugly. I’ll never reject you. The offer of marriage still stands.”
The front door closed in the distance as Nicholas returned from the hospital.
IX
He halted as soon as he crossed the threshold of the kitchen. I was scooping up the sodden tissues and heading for the swing-bin. Lewis was making a great business of washing up his coffee-mug while keeping his crutches under control. Both of us were in such a state that neither of us remembered to ask him how Francie was.
“What’s going on?” demanded Nicholas. Of course it must have been obvious to him that a fraught scene had been taking place.
Lewis said airily: “Oh, just a little speculation about the future!” and I mumbled: “Oh, just a little reminiscing about the past!” We both spoke at exactly the same moment.
“How’s Francie?” added Lewis, finally remembering to ask the right question.
Nicholas reluctantly allowed himself to be diverted. Francie, we were told, had recovered consciousness but she was very confused and had no memory of the violent scene at the Rectory. He himself had left the hospital when the doctors had taken Francie away for a battery of tests. Val was staying on to give Harry support and to meet the psychiatrist who had been summoned; she had wanted to gauge how likely he was to be helpful.
“I felt it was better anyway to leave Val with Harry,” concluded Nicholas, slumping down at the kitchen table. “As a doctor she’ll find it easier to get him the hard information which he keeps optimistically asking for.”
“Good decision,” said Lewis bluntly. “You look exhausted, and if you haven’t yet started to suffer from delayed shock you soon will. Go upstairs and rest.”
“Later. How was Venetia?”
“Extremely well.”
“Thank God we occasionally get something right.” He picked up the box of Kleenex tissues which I hadn’t had time to hide. “Who’s been using these?”
“Me,” I said, “but I’m okay now.”
“Well, if you’re not going to rest,” said Lewis to Nicholas, “I certainly am. Would you excuse me please, Alice, if I take myself off to the bedsit for a while? We’ll talk again later.”
“Yes, of course.” I was trying to work out how “okay” I really was. I felt as if all my emotions had haemorrhaged, leaving my mind bled white. Looking around for some simple task to perform I saw the kettle and filled it. Nicholas would want tea. In relief I plugged in the kettle and reached for the tea-caddy.
As Lewis’s footsteps receded across the hall Nicholas said: “Was the old boy upsetting you?”
“Yes, but it doesn’t matter.” I found the teapot hadn’t been washed. I thought of us drinking sweet tea after the scene with Francie and how Harry had arrived before I had had the chance to clear up. Later I had simply forgotten the teapot. I had been too preoccupied with making that vile sandwich and brewing the coffee which Lewis had drunk later … I suddenly realised Nicholas was speaking again.
“If you’re upset,” he said, “that matters to me.”
I rinsed the teapot and dried it carefully. I was unable to look at him.
“What happened, Alice?”
“Well, as a matter of fact,” I said, “Lewis proposed to me.”
There was a peculiarly blank silence. I turned, expecting to see a profound astonishment, but his expression was more difficult to read than I’d anticipated. The surprise was certainly there, but there were other emotions too, emotions which at that moment lay beyond my power to identify.
“It should have been humiliating,” I said, “but it wasn’t. In the end it was touching.”
Nicholas finally said: “Why should it have been humiliating?”
“Oh, he was playing the self-centred male chauvinist, talking about how he needed a middle-class slave to wait on him hand and foot as he sank into his dotage, but of course that wasn’t what was going on at all, I see that now. He was trying to kill two birds with one stone— trying to protect you while at the same time being generous and kind to me. He was
very
kind,” I said, “and
very
generous and I know he’s fond of me, but you’re the one he really loves, Nicholas. He’d do anything to ensure your safety.”
“I’m quite capable of ensuring my own safety.”
“Lewis doesn’t think so.”
“That’s because in the past he couldn’t ensure his own safety; he’s projecting his past onto my future, but my future isn’t his past and never will be … Are you going to marry him?”
“No. I couldn’t marry a man I didn’t love. I suppose in the end it’s all a question of integrity.”
We were silent for a while. I had turned away from him again to watch the kettle coming to the boil, and even when Nicholas brought the milk-jug from the refrigerator to the counter I couldn’t look at him.
At last I found myself compelled to say: “You still love Rosalind, don’t you?”
“Yes, but I can see now it’s not the kind of love that has anything to do with marriage. Rosalind was always more the sister I never had than the girlfriend I wanted to marry. No wonder I never understood poor Stacy’s problem! I was too busy repressing the knowledge of my own failure to move on from a childhood relationship.”
“But now that you understand what was wrong—”
“—I’ll be able to move on? Yes, I hope so, but I can’t move on with Rosalind. Brothers and sisters always in the end have to go their separate ways.”
“But did you never realise—suspect—”
“I was too obsessed with what she represented to me to see the relationship for what it was. Rosalind was the one who saw the truth and faced up to it. Not me.”
“How are you going to explain all that to your boys?”
“I don’t know, but I hope I’ll have the guts to be honest.” He hesitated before adding: “I realise now that they’ve been reflecting all the tensions of the marriage. I’d like to think that in the end—after the divorce—in time—I’ll be less of an alien figurehead to them and more of a genuine father.”