The Wonder Worker (82 page)
Authors: Susan Howatch
The kettle boiled. I made the tea.
“I hope that’ll be so,” said Nicholas. “I hope it will. I’ve got to hope, haven’t I? I’ve got to hope that Rosalind will find the happiness I’ve denied her for so long, I’ve got to hope we’ll each go on to a better life, I’ve got to hope that somehow all this mess and misery will be redeemed, but hope’s hard sometimes, particularly when you’re in pain. It’s hard when you’re enduring Good Friday to imagine the dawning of Easter Day.”
“But the dawn came in the end, didn’t it?” While I waited for the tea to brew I took two mugs from the cupboard. “I suppose,” I said, thinking of the black interval which lay between Good Friday and Easter Day, “all this will have a bad effect on your ministry.”
“There’ll be a downside. That’s inevitable. I must expect a lot of criticism and anger as people project their disappointed expectations onto me, but perhaps in the end …” He hesitated again.
“In the end?”
“Perhaps in the end I might compensate them by becoming a better priest. I have this unusual ministry among the sick and the broken, and now that
I’ve
been sick and
I’ve
been broken I should have a new solidarity with those I try to help. Wonder workers are never sick and broken, of course. Wonder workers never fail. But a Christian priest acquires strength through weakness and power through vulnerability, so perhaps … well, as I said a moment ago, I’ve got to hope.”
We fell silent but as I began to pour the tea he said: “The real problem will come if—when—I remarry. Francie got that all wrong, thinking there’d be no problem so long as I married someone who didn’t have a husband living. There’ll always be a problem so long as I’m a divorcé and not a widower.”
“You’d lose your job?”
“No, I’m not in parish work where a remarried divorced priest is
always an embarrassment. If the trustees at the Healing Centre back me, the Church authorities will just consider St. Benet’s a useful place to stow an awkward customer and they’ll turn a blind eye. If the trustees don’t back me … but I think they will in the end. I’ve got to hope, haven’t I? I’ve got to hope.”
“I suppose the conservative ones will say marriage should be for ever.”
“I think they’ll all say marriage should be for ever as far as a priest is concerned, but I know what I’m going to say to them in reply. I shall say I only wish I’d had a relationship with Rosalind which did allow my marriage to last for ever; I shall say that although I wanted above all else to heal the relationship and keep the marriage alive I had to recognise in the end that no healing—no cure, I should say—was possible; I shall remind them that cures don’t always happen, because God doesn’t operate by waving a magic wand. But what he does try to do constantly is to redeem what goes wrong, and in redemption is the healing. That’s why I’ve got to accept what’s happened and learn from it. It’s because the learning will in the end become part of the redemption. It’ll help me find healing by building a new life with someone else.”
I recognised my cue and prepared to tell him of my decision to leave St. Benet’s.
X
I remember being so relieved that when the moment of truth finally came my voice was steady and my eyes were tearless. I kept thinking of Lewis saying I had the potential to destroy Nicholas’s integrity. Whatever happened I had to make sure Nicholas was safe.
“There’s something I want to tell you,” I said, and as I spoke I fixed my mind resolutely on the fact that as he would never marry me, no future with him of any kind was possible. “I entirely understand that you’ll want to remarry, and that’s why I’ve decided—”
“It’s good of you to say that,” he interrupted, “but of course understanding is one thing and approval is quite another. You’d be justified in thinking, along with a lot of other people, that a priest has no business remarrying when his divorced wife’s still alive.”
“But don’t you remember what I told you in the car on the way home from Butterfold? I said it was wrong to place the burden of unreal expectations on a clergyman!”
“Yes, but nevertheless … the clergy are supposed to set an example. You must still be thinking I’d compromise my integrity if I remarried.”
“Nicholas—”
“Alice, I’ll tell you how I see it. You don’t have to agree with me, but I’ll tell you anyway.”
“I assure you—”
“No, hear me out. I think it would compromise my integrity if I were to pretend I’m called to celibacy. I think it would compromise my integrity if I pretended to be chaste but kept a mistress. I think it would compromise my integrity if I lived a lie by pretending that my dead marriage was still alive. Christianity’s about life, not death— it’s a gospel of hope and renewal, not despair and decline! I may be wiped out at the moment, I may be battered and shattered and thoroughly wrecked, but I’ve still got my faith and I’m going to go on in the belief that the best years of my life are still to come—I’m going to go on in the hope that in the end
everything
will be redeemed, healed and made new.”
I waited till I was sure the words would come. Then I answered: “You’ve said what I hoped you’d say. I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”
“You really mean that? But I thought—”
“You misunderstood.”
There was another pause before Nicholas said: “Let there be an end to all misunderstandings.”
An absolute silence fell. We stood side by side in front of the counter by the mugs of steaming tea and we listened to the silence as we held our breath. Then I heard Nicholas add casually: “Of course there’ll be difficult days ahead. It’ll be a long haul. But contrary to Lewis’s worst fears—which I can imagine all too clearly—we’ll survive, won’t we, Alice? We’ll manage.”
Yet again I removed my glasses and yet again I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. Only then did I allow myself to look at him. For a long moment we were motionless, wordlessly communicating everything that needed to be said. Then as I waited, hardly daring to believe such happiness was possible, Nicholas slipped his arms around my waist and stooped to kiss me lovingly on the mouth.
Dr. Gareth Tuckwell and the Reverend David Flagg, whose book
A Question of Healing
provides the quotations at the start of each chapter, worked together from 1986 until 1994 at Burrswood, the Christian Centre for Medical and Spiritual Care (now the Christian Centre for Healthcare and Ministry), at Groombridge in Kent.
The Reverend Christopher Hamel Cooke, whose writings are quoted at the beginning of each part, was Rector of St. Marylebone with Holy Trinity in London from 1979 until 1989, and the founder of the Marylebone Healing Centre where, as at Burrswood, doctors and priests work together to help the sick.
Any resemblance between the above authors and any character in this book is coincidental. All the characters in this book are fictitious and are based on no one at either of the above locations.
S
USAN
H
OWATCH
A Reader’s Guide
Q: You’ve previously written about Nicholas Darrow, Lewis Hall, and Venetia Hoffenberg in the Starbridge books, yet
The Wonder Worker
isn’t a sequel, exactly. What made you come back to these characters?
SH: At the end of
Mystical Paths
(book 5 of the Starbridge series) there is a flash-forward to Nicholas Darrow’s ministry of healing at St. Benet’s church in London in 1988. After the Starbridge books, I wanted to write a novel about the ministry of healing set in modern London. It made sense to pick up Nicholas Darrow’s situation and use it, spinning off three or four Starbridge characters.
Q: You often use the viewpoints of several different characters to tell a story. What are some of the difficulties in giving each character his or her own voice, and, particularly, in speaking so convincingly through different genders?
SH: I do not find it difficult to give each character his or her own voice unless the character is very like me. Fortunately, this is a great rarity—although of course there is something of myself in each character. As for gender, it’s simply an aspect of personality, of varying degrees of interest or importance. My interest in people lies way beyond the stereotypical boundaries of gender. As Jung said, a man’s soul does not reside in his genitals.
Q: You’ve described having multiple narrators as resembling “how it is after an accident: Everyone tells a different story—and none of them is entirely right.” Is there a story for you as an author that is truer than any of the individual characters’ stories?
SH: There should be a story for the reader that is greater than any one of the individual narrations. This is because the reader is put by me in the position of God—i.e., he or she has the whole overview, and knows more about the characters in the end than they know about each other.
Q: Alice’s narration opens and closes the book, which gives her version of the events more prominence. Why did you choose Alice for this role instead of one of the other characters?
SH: The fact that Alice narrates two sections instead of one does not make her more important than the other narrators. The story simply required her to do the beginning and end.
Q: Alice shares a name with the heroine of Lewis Carroll’s
Alice in Wonderland
, something that Lewis Hall notes in his section of the book. Carroll’s Alice seems to be the quintessentially sensible and down-to-earth British girl in a frequently irrational world. Do you see your Alice as sharing some of her qualities? Is she in a similar situation?
SH: Alice is certainly exploring an unknown, fascinating, and occasionally alarming world like Carroll’s Alice. But the comparison with
Alice
shouldn’t be pushed too far.
Q: The British title for this book was
A Question of Integrity
, while the American version is
The Wonder Worker
. Both titles seem to me to refer to
Nicholas Darrow.
Was that your intention? Did you mean for the titles to refer to any of the other characters?
SH:
The Wonder Worker
was my own choice of title, and I’m glad the Americans kept it. The name
A Question of Integrity
was purely a marketing decision made by my UK publishers. All the characters in the book wrestle with integrity versus fragmentation/corruption.
The Wonder Worker
applies not only to Nicholas Darrow but also to Lewis and indeed to anyone practicing the ministry of healing—it is the “shadow” side of every true, honest healer and can take over with disastrous results if ever they’re tempted to lose their integrity. Nicholas Darrow enacts this theme in the story.
Q: Nicholas begins the book very successful in his relations with others, yet ends disastrously. Alice in turn begins
disillusioned with life, yet ends believing in Nicholas after everyone else has abandoned him. Could you speak some about the themes of fall and redemption, which these reversals suggest?
SH: Once Nicholas was destabilized (by his collapsing marriage) he became self-centered instead of God-centered—i.e., he lost his integrity, his focus on a balanced life, and allowed his pride, his arrogance, and his selfishness to gain the upper hand. The story describes how he was helped to recognize this, regret it, and try very hard to turn over a new leaf and get his act together so he could begin a new life. This illustrates the great Christian themes of sin, repentance, forgiveness, redemption, resurrection, and renewal.
Alice, on the other hand, simply develops her personality as she is finally enabled to embark on a process of self-realization. This too is a Christian theme: the more fully ourselves we become, the more we can play an individually designed part in God’s creative scheme of things.
Q: One critic has written about your work, “There’s a lot of demonology in these books, but done in simultaneous translation into psychodrama, so if you prefer to think of jealousy, rage and denial in Freudian terms, rather than as the devil within you, you will be comfortable.” Nicholas and Lewis are both clerical figures, yet both speak in the language of secular humanistic self-help programs. Do you see a tension between religious belief and faith in modern psychology? Are you suggesting that this is a direction religion is taking in the modern world?
SH: There should be no tension between psychology and Christianity. They both deal with the soul and are both concerned with helping people to become more fully themselves and to lead the richest possible life. Unfortunately, some forms of Christianity and some forms of psychology hype up the differences and make them seem more opposed
than they really are. There are indeed differences between the two disciplines, but there is no reason they should not be regarded as complementary paths to the truth. There are many Christian priests who are qualified psycho-therapists/counselors/psychologists and feel comfortable speaking both languages, just as Nicholas and Lewis do in the book. I do not think it’s a particularly new direction, since long before Freud, spiritual guides were demonstrating a profound understanding of the human psyche.
Q: You yourself have made a spiritual journey as a writer, from the earlier Gothic mysteries and family epics to the Starbridge series and then this book. What led you to become a writer in the beginning, and how do you feel your writing, and your relationship to it, has changed?
SH: I write because I enjoy it. I still write because I enjoy it. I think the creative high is the most powerful form of pleasure there is. Unfortunately, for every creative high there are hours and hours of hard slog, so one isn’t always in a state of ecstasy!
Q: What is the function of the epigraphs before each section and chapter?
SH: I thought the quotes at the beginning of each chapter were an interesting reference to the actual traditional Christian ministry of healing as it is practiced in the U.K. today—it deals with a whole range of modern malaises and sheds fascinating lights on the healing process and God’s role in it.
Q: Rosalind says that wonder workers “can never resist the temptation to ‘fix’ people,” and even Nicholas uses this term, “fix,” sometimes. Doesn’t this suggest a mechanistic view of healing?
SH: Rosalind was speaking caustically about a ministry of which she totally disapproved. Nicholas uses the term “fix” when he disapproves of his own drive to power. True honest healers
don’t “fix” people. They heal by the grace of God through Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit. It’s the wonder workers who “fix” people to bolster their egos and satisfy their craving for power.
Q: The crisis in the book seems to be sparked by Nicholas and Rosalind’s estrangement, which is due to his devotion to his work at the church. Do you see a religious calling as fundamentally incompatible with most “normal” marriage commitments?
SH: A religious calling need be no more incompatible with marriage than any other career. But as with other professions, marriages can suffer if the parties don’t get the balance right. Some priests prefer not to marry, some priests do. It really all depends on what kind of person you are and how you want to organize your energy.
Q: Critics frequently refer to Trollope and C.S. Lewis when they discuss your work. Who are your strongest literary influences?
SH: Trollope. Iris Murdoch. Graham Greene. Raymond Chandler.
Not C.S. Lewis.
Q: What do you want readers to get out of this novel?
SH: Pleasure. A novelist’s primary duty is to entertain. If readers also get enriched or enlightened or inspired or whatever as a by-product of the entertainment, that’s fine, but none of that will happen unless the book is first and foremost readable and entertaining.