The Final Retreat

by Stephen Hough

  A few miles away another stomach has been torn open, pierced by a lance as it hangs on a cross, and eleven men are running away in fear and cowardice. But here, smashed on a rock, supper for insects, gagging for oxygen, a man is resplendent with joy, with unspeakable love. Judas looks into two eyes:

  ‘Today thou shalt be with me in Paradise.’

  59 Final morning

  ______________________

  I’m sitting in the chapel. Alone. Packed. Breakfasted. The eight days are over. I look over at the altar with glazed eyes, as unseeing as two lychees. I’m tired. Sadness sits just under my ribcage, at rest but still on its haunches.

  My mind turns to my parishioners. They put their trust in me, but I have abused that trust. My heart tears apart as I think of this, as if I had been asked to guard a baby in a pram outside a shop but had walked away, leaving it unattended.

  I think everyone else has left now. Cars have been firing up and bumping away down the muddy path for the past hour, one after another. Outside the window I hear the continuing rain and inside a vacuum cleaner is whining in the corridor in preparation for the next guests. It’s time to go. I’m putting the cap on my pen.

  60 The end

  ______________________

  It’s now a couple of weeks since the retreat. Leaving Craigbourne and driving home in the rain I felt fragile but healing. The wound was still there but so were the stitches, and something (someone?) was giving me confidence to take the small steps ahead, despite everything that awaited me.

  But as I arrived home, parked the car, opened the boot, lifted out and carried my bags to the house, turned the key in the front door, pushed it open, pulled out the key, laid down my bags by the stairs, closed the door, took off my wet anorak, hung it loosely by its hood on the banister, then walked into my cold, damp study with its foggy memories of mediocrity and worse, there was a disconnect. It felt like I had woken up after a heavy slumber — an unrefreshing nap wasting the best part of the day. The dream of recovery had vanished. The small consolations which I had collected in the latter part of the retreat had now evaporated. The Gospels were dead letters to me once more — just blank sheets of paper. Only that one-sentence note of encouragement from Bishop Bernard remained as a watermark under the surface. An espresso shot for sure, but ultimately an ephemeral stimulation on which it was not possible to build an entire spiritual life. I am a priest. I am meant to have resources of spiritual strength for others. Sitting down at my desk again next to a pile of unopened post in the darkening afternoon I realized that my fuel tank was empty. Only dregs remained. The engine was dead.

  But I was reluctant to admit this and with a reflex of conformity and mendacity I started to write a letter to the bishop. Pen on paper, phrases flowing... ‘the courage to make a new start’... ‘the resolve to try again’... ‘leaving everything in the hands of God’... ‘a new humility’... but it was all so hollow. Someone else was writing the words with my hand. I scrunched the paper into a tight ball and dropped it into the wastepaper basket. I looked around my study with all of its mess, the children’s liturgy handbooks, the Bibles, the bills, the junk. The sheer ugliness and dreariness of my life. Turning on my computer I logged on to check my emails — 78 messages.

  I scrolled down the list and there was one from William. He’d never sent me an email before, only phone calls and texts, but now he knew where I lived he’d obviously been able to find the address on the parish website. His message had a paperclip symbol next to the ‘subject’ heading. My lethargic melancholy flashed to panic and I felt a prickling across my head. I knew what it contained and although I was not going to open the attachment I did click on the email itself to see if there was an accompanying text.

  ‘Hi Father, what’s up? Movie time :-)’

  I should just have ignored it, deleted it, carried on sorting out my inbox, but I felt the strangest cocktail of emotions: fear — the blackmail had begun again; zeal — to be for William what the bishop had been for me; and lust — a flush around my loins. My body was a triptych of contradictions: head sweating with panic, heart dilating with compassion, groin throbbing with desire. I dialled his number.

  ‘William, I just got your email. I... ’

  ‘Hey Father’ he interrupted, affably. ‘Haven’t heard from you for a while! Why don’t you come over? I’d really like to see you.’ My hands trembled and my resolve began to crumble. I wanted to run away, but also I wanted to help him. I could see the path ahead and it was not just dangerous but hopeless. I knew he was a mess, no money, no job, on drugs. But then with an insane illogic I convinced myself that I could be a pastor for him, as if I were some heroic, self-sacrificing priest like the Curé of Ars. After all, I have the same grace of state as the saints. God would surely protect me and enable me to bring comfort to this troubled soul. And what a supreme act of forgiveness it would be for me to help William, despite him causing me such distress.

  I shut my brain down and began to think only with my heart, to embrace the danger as if on a battlefield carrying the Sacrament to a dying soldier. I began to feel an awakening of evangelical fervour, as if after twenty-five soporific years of mediocrity my vocation might finally have found its meaning. I thought of those holy pictures in my mother’s missal, of missionary priests lifting up crucifixes in alien lands, trekking through dense jungles to hear Confessions, saying Masses in tin shacks in remote villages, founding orphanages for abandoned children and hospitals for the dying. Suddenly I had a sense of the logic and beauty of traditional piety and of Catholicism’s clean, clear, neatly ordered doctrinal system. I imagined myself back in the library at Craigbourne but this time taking Tanquerey’s The Spiritual Life back to my room and delving into it, studying it, underscoring the more challenging passages, carrying a battered copy under the arm of my cassock.

  ‘I’ll be over as soon as I can.’ I grabbed my wet anorak and got back into my car, leaving behind the emails, the problems of the other souls in my care, the handing-over from my supply priest, the note unwritten to my bishop, my bags still unpacked in the hallway. I was fired up by the thought that I could rescue William. Of course I realize today that I am the last person who could have done this. I didn’t grasp that he was not going to see me in a new light after only nine days. The retreat had seemed to me like a whole chapter of my life; for him it was just an unread page, an incomprehensible irrelevance. Driving along the familiar roads I might as well have been on horseback in a Hollywood movie. I couldn’t see it clearly at the time but my awakened missionary spirit was a temporary, immature, emotional reflex. And it was shot through with vanity. This was all about me playing the romantic lead. It was all about my sentimentality, my self-justification, my heroism.

  I parked outside his house and walked up to the front door. As I pressed the cold, stainless-steel buzzer I was suddenly overwhelmed with memories and my resolve began to weaken. I was tempted to walk away, drive home, without a word. I should have done so. It would have been kinder to him and to me. Too late. The front door sprung open and I walked up the staircase, its familiarity both sickening and comforting. It felt like I’d been there the day before but also like it had been years since my last visit. I reached his flat and the door was ajar — I could see he was standing inside. I paused for a second, then stepped into the space where I’d spent so many hours... of sex, only sex. The flare of excitement before and during; the sad subsidence afterwards. Condom packets torn open, sperm shooting, then Kleenex boxes emptied, grubby twenty-pound notes counted out, the shameful slinking away. The lie of our physical passion: closer than close in the sticky embrace and in the one-flesh of penetration, then distant and cold as a star in the slow aftermath.

  We stood by his dining table with the grease-stained pizza box and the empty beer cans. Unlike before I was not here to have sex and I realized that I had nothing to say to him, that I really didn’t care about him at all. My pastoral impulses were fast fading. The holy pictures had slipped out of the missal.
>
  ‘I’ve missed you,’ he said, smiling. His insincerity riled me even if his smile charmed a little. He was still hot, sexy. He walked over and put his arm around me, giving me a kiss on the cheek and caressing my neck. We said nothing. I wanted to speak, to say the words of priestly consolation which had flowed so easily in the car, but now they had dried up. He kept caressing my neck, moving across to my shoulders in a gentle massage.

  ‘Feel good?’ He undid a couple of buttons on my shirt.

  I stopped him abruptly.

  ‘William! I want to talk to you.’ His eyes flashed with surprise and he stood back. I fastened the two buttons of my shirt and started to speak, more formally, stiffly than I intended. ‘I’ve been on retreat and things have changed in my life. I’m not going to be seeing you or any other prostitutes again. I’ve been stupid and I’m determined to change, to turn over a new leaf. I told you I’m not going to give you any more money and I’ve driven over here to... ’ I hesitated as I couldn’t think of the right words to describe why I was standing there in the first place. I could have said all of this in a phone call or even an email. I started up again. ‘I’m determined to make a clean break. I wish you well, William, but I don’t want to see you anymore. You need to go to rehab and sort out your drug problem and get yourself a proper job. Prostitution is never a good way to live. Your shelf life is limited and then what will you do?’ I was on a roll now, a smug, garrulous roll. I felt like I had escaped through a trap door and was turning the energy of my relief into pompous verbosity. ‘I suggest you delete that film and we’ll forget any of this ever happened. You do realize that you were blackmailing me, which is a criminal offence — I have evidence. I’ve spoken to my bishop and told him everything and he’s completely supportive of me. It’s so nice when the boss understands,’ I crowed, with a soft chuckle.

  Thinking back to this just two weeks later I can’t believe I said such stupid, trite things. I could see him getting angry, his body tensing like that of an animal in danger, but I felt like I was safe, as if standing next to a locked cage at the zoo. I was almost taunting him in my new flush of confidence. I’d written him off. He was history. I’d caught the train and I could see him, standing on the platform, left behind. My schadenfreude was fairly innocuous though: I dearly hoped he would catch the next train but I was just terribly pleased that I would get there first.

  ‘You fuck.’ He spoke quietly, almost in a whisper. I looked into his face and it was contorted with hatred. I’d never seen an expression like this, on him or anyone else. I smiled and was about to say something else lighthearted and jocular to defuse the situation.

  ‘You fuck!’ he shouted now and stepped closer to me.

  ‘You miserable, pompous shit. How can you stand there like some fucking schoolteacher.’ He paused and looked me up and down with contempt. ‘And “shelf life”? You were never on the shelf, you ugly fucker. You think I fancy you coz we screw around. You make me sick. You’re ugly and boring. I hate it after sex when you wanna talk and be all romantic and shit, arm around me, hands through my hair. Makes me wanna fucking throw up. I was thinking money every bloody second. And now you tell me to get a job and sort myself out and stop scoring tricks. Go to hell!’

  I was red with embarrassment. I began to realize how sanctimonious and insensitive I must have sounded. I looked around his bedsit again and realized how hard it would be for him to change, to leave this wretched life. He came over to me and put his arm around my neck, but tightly this time.

  ‘Fucker,’ he said quietly, looking into my eyes. I couldn’t hold his stare and began to tremble. Now I was really scared. I thought he was going to punch me. His face was almost touching mine and I could smell his breath, see the malice in his wild eyes, feel his body tense next to mine. Then his body was actually against mine, front to front. He hugged me tight, teeth bared, and began to grind against me. It was a simulated sex act but violent and cold. He was strong and I had no chance against him. Continuing this strange dance of gyration he moved me towards the bed and flung me down on the mattress. I was terrified and completely unaroused. Every other time I’d been on this bed there had been piano music playing on his CD player but now all I could hear was the occasional car or squeal of children playing in the street outside. He started to undress me and I tried to resist, tried to push his arm to one side, to kick him off me, but it was no good. I gave up the struggle, thought it was safer. I lay limp on the bed whilst he pulled down my trousers and underpants. He then grabbed a remote control, pointed it at the television and pushed a button. A porno video started on the screen, two impossibly beautiful young men having sex by a swimming pool in glamorous grounds on a sunny day, most likely somewhere in Southern California. He looked intensely at the images for a while, holding me down, then he unbuttoned his jeans and began stimulating himself to an erection.

  No condom, no lubrication, no words. After ten minutes of pain and humiliation to the utmost degree, his eyes on the

  television screen the whole time, he had his orgasm, inside me. I had become numb and vacant on every level, as if I’d just jumped off a high building into an abyss. I’d been raped. What next? He cleaned himself up, buttoned up his jeans, stood up and lit a cigarette.

  ‘Does that feel better, Father? You didn’t get a hard-on today though. Tired after your retreat?’ He clicked the video off and picked up his phone to check for messages. The room was dark and silent. My heart was as if skinned alive. We had both wallowed in self-loathing. There was nothing to say. I left the flat and drove home in pain. Utterly empty.

  I’m so scared. Of so many things. I’m constantly panicky.

  I just can’t function as a priest anymore. I can’t bear to talk to people in the parish. I don’t want to eat. I can’t read. I sit in front of the television without watching it. I go to bed early, tired but unable to sleep. I wander around in a daze. I’ve lost all interest in sex. I’m scared of my future but scared that I don’t even want a future. I just can’t imagine how it’s possible to continue like this. And I’m frightened of William. He’s sent me three texts since the rape mentioning again the film of us having sex. He can send it to anyone, anytime, with one click of his mouse.

  Then this morning he showed up at Mass, the only person in the small congregation who was under sixty and not female, and sat at the back playing around with his phone. At the end of the Mass after everyone had left he remained in his pew and I went over to where he was slumped. I warned him again that the bishop knew everything and that I had evidence of criminal blackmail. Yet how could I ever face taking him to court? The jury watching my leering, lascivious face on the video.

  I suppose the only cure now would be some kind of spiritual radiation but my tumour is too far gone and I’d rather just let nature take its course. I could never be a St Alphonsus. Mortification would be to me an extension of my self-hatred. I couldn’t take it seriously. The breakdown of my cells is inevitable. A creeping decay... until nothing is left.

  EPILOGUE

  From: Rev. Luke Tremont

  To: Bishop Bernard Smith

  Subject:

  Date: i December 2010 8:04 am

  ________________________

  Memorial of blessed Charles de Foucauld

  Your Grace,

  I’ve just got off the phone with the housekeeper of Sacred Heart parish in Sale. She discovered the dead body of Fr Joseph Flynn this morning in his study. It looks like it was suicide as there were knife wounds to his wrists. I’ve notified the police and I’m about to drive over there to see if there’s anything I can do. I’ll phone you later.

  In Christ,

  Fr Luke

  Secretary to the Bishop of Altrincham

  From: Bernard S.

  To: Chiwetel

  Subject:

  Date: 15 December 2010 11:26 am

  __________________________

  My dearest Chiwetel,

  I’ve been trying to phone you for the past two days. Is everyt
hing OK?

  This business with Fr Joseph is so upsetting. The police came to see me this morning as it seems there’s some doubt as to whether he actually killed himself. It looks like there were suspicious circumstances — a head wound in addition to the slashed wrists. They wanted to ask me some questions and they left me some notebooks they found in his desk at the time of his death which they’ve asked me to read. I just can’t bear to do this at the moment.

  I need to see you. I just want you to hold me in your arms tonight. How blessed we are to have each other! Can you come over later? Send me an email or phone me.

  Love you!

  Bernard x

  The Final Retreat

  ______________________

  © Stephen Hough, 2018

  Stephen Hough is a concert pianist,

  a composer and a writer. Named by The

  Economist as one of 20 Living Polymaths, he

  was the first classical performer to be awarded

  a MacArthur Fellowship and was made a

  Commander of the Order of the British

  Empire in 2014. He has been published

  by The Times, The Guardian and

  The Daily Telegraph.

  ______________________

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to

  actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is

  purely coincidental. The right of Stephen Hough

  to be identified as the author of this work has