The Heartbreaker

by Susan Howatch

He tried to speak but it was too difficult. He had to wait a moment and try again. “The words ‘thank you’ have never seemed so inadequate.”

  “But they’re all that needs to be said.” In an effort to divert him from the cheque I asked: “How did you meet this guy who proved to be such bad news?”

  “Through a mutual friend.” The cheque was still trembling between his fingers but as I watched he folded the paper and slipped it into his pocket. “The trouble was,” he said, “he wasn’t just some run-of-the-mill hunk with no table manners. He was an absolute stunner—so sexy, so handsome, so smart, so amusing—but he was also a five-star heartbreaker incapable of loving me in any way that could have made a real relationship possible. God, how I despise myself for being pathetic enough to fall for him! I’ve never felt so horribly humiliated.”

  And as I heard this uncanny echo of Richard Slaney’s suffering I knew exactly who the heartbreaker was and why Gil’s debts had spiralled out of control.

  IV

  At once I saw I had to stop him realising I had guessed the truth. It was bad enough for him that I knew he had picked the wrong man. If he realised I knew the man was a prostitute, this repulsive fact would lie like a corpse between us and putrefy our relationship. At that moment I could not have explained why this should be so; I only knew instinctively that my assessment of the situation was right. It seemed there was an invisible line marking off how much I was prepared to tolerate when I was faced with a clerical aberration—and yet the line upset me because I felt it shouldn’t exist. I was a liberal, benign towards gay priests and more than ready to declare that the Church was being unrealistic in its expectation that they should be celibate. So, logically, I could only call myself a hypocrite as I now recoiled from the mess Gil had made of his private life.

  This time I could not even convict myself of jealousy because he had been to bed with Gavin and I hadn’t. When Moira had been trashed I had still been in the grip of my sexual attraction to Gavin, but I now found Gavin’s extreme vulnerability was the very reverse of a sexual turn-on. The strong feelings he aroused in me—compassion, protectiveness, empathy with his sufferings and a burning desire to help—were by this time so extensive and so deep that lust, whether repressed or sublimated, barely got the chance to flicker.

  But if lust wasn’t colouring my negative response to Gil, what was? I thought the answer to this question would emerge as I digested the disaster, but no rational explanation presented itself. I also found I was increasingly worried about Gil as he struggled on, battered and burned out, with no one to help him. I had no intention of ever betraying his secret, but one day early in the new year I was disturbed enough to seek an interview with Nicholas after work, and when we met in his study at the Rectory I said: “Can we talk about Richard Slaney?”

  V

  Naturally Nicholas was surprised by my request, but after raising an eyebrow for a second he said: “Of course!” and invited me to continue.

  “I’ve been bothered by one of the issues Richard raised,” I said. I had been planning this opening manoeuvre very carefully. “Not the gay issue—that was no problem. It was his humiliating infatuation with Gavin that was the chiller, but why? We’re all capable of making bad choices in our relationships, so as a rational, logical, thoroughly modern liberal, why can’t I accept Richard’s rotten choice without automatically thinking ‘yuk’?”

  “Because what you’re actually saying to yourself is: ‘Screwing people for money is wrong,’ and you’re entitled to say that, it’s an acceptable moral position. Just because you’re a liberal doesn’t mean you have to throw all your moral values out of the window.”

  “True.” The next manoeuvre was tricky; I had to turn the subject from straying laymen to straying priests, but the switch had to look unpremeditated. Carefully I said: “I do realise I shouldn’t be judgemental about Richard. After all, it’s not as if he set himself up as a role model for leading an integrated life, is it? He wasn’t, for example, a schoolmaster— or a priest. I know I’d find it very difficult not to be judgemental about a priest who wound up in the kind of mess Richard was in.”

  Nicholas said without batting an eyelash at this transition: “Any priest, heterosexual or homosexual, who uses a prostitute is certainly behaving unacceptably and needs help.”

  “But even if I found out a priest had been using a prostitute, I shouldn’t be judgemental, should I?”

  “Ideally no, but you’d be only human if you felt angry and disillusioned. Priests have a responsibility to practise what they preach. Of course we all fail in some way or other and we all need forgiveness, but none of us should be surprised if laymen get upset by clerical behaviour which is just plain wrong.”

  My nails were digging into the palms of my hands by this time but I made an immense effort to sound casual and detached. “Well, this isn’t really relevant to Richard,” I said, “but you’ve got me interested in this clerical angle. Supposing there’s a hypothetical gay priest, and supposing this hypothetical gay priest goes off the rails and gets involved with a hypothetical male prostitute. Is that the fault of the priest’s spiritual director?”

  “No, it’s the fault of the priest. The first thing someone who goes off the rails has to do is face up to what he’s done and not blame it on anyone else.”

  “Ah,” I said, and with dread realised I was unsure what to say next.

  “Unfortunately once a priest starts going off the rails he may well ditch his spiritual director out of guilt and try to go it alone,” added Nicholas to help me along, “and that’s usually a recipe for disaster.”

  “I can imagine.”

  We sat thinking about hypothetical gay priests having hypothetical disasters with hypothetical male prostitutes. I was still desperately trying to work out how I could move from the hypothetical to the actual, but much as I longed to blurt out: “Gil’s in desperate trouble—please help,” I knew I could never do it.

  I suddenly became aware that my clasped hands were white-knuckled, but before I could eliminate this giveaway body language Nicholas murmured vaguely: “Gay priests are under a lot of pressure these days, and the stress makes disasters easier to happen. In fact I know a gay priest,” said Nicholas, picking up a pen and beginning to draw on the A4 pad in front of him, “who worries me very much. He has a demanding ministry and an unsatisfactory private life and he works too hard. It’s a classic recipe for burn-out.”

  I held my breath.

  “Too many vulnerable priests like him wind up in trouble . . . but that needn’t mean they’re bad priests. Often they’ve just been sliced up by the cutting edge of reality—and that can happen to any of us, can’t it? It happened to me in 1988 when my first marriage broke up. It happened to you in 1990. One gets sliced up and stressed out and then the disasters start to multiply.”

  I slowly expelled my breath. A few feet away Nicholas was close to finishing his quick sketch and I saw he had drawn a cat. Nicholas was very fond of cats.

  “If Richard Slaney had been a priest,” he said, “you’d have a right to feel angry when you learned he’d been using a prostitute. But after a while, perhaps, you’d come to see this stress-related behaviour was the result of deep unhappiness, and although you’d still want to say ‘yuk’ you might well remember your own experience of being mangled by the cutting edge of reality—and having got that far, you might also find to your surprise that the forgiveness you want to feel is then possible because you’d have the empathy and understanding to put the painful situation in the right perspective.”

  We sat in silence while Nicholas put whiskers on the cat. Then I said: “That’s helpful. Thanks.” And having counted to five I added very, very tentatively: “This gay priest you’re so worried about—”

  “As a matter of fact I’ve been meaning to talk to him for some time but I never got around to it. I’ll give him a call.”

  “He ought to see your nun. But as she’s a Roman Catholic he probably thinks she’s inflexible abo
ut gays.”

  “I’ll put him straight.” Setting down his pen he smiled at the unintentional pun and at last looked at me directly. “I’m glad your hypothetical case reminded me of him.”

  I nearly passed out with relief.

  But the moment I was able to set aside my anxiety about Gil I found I was free to start worrying again about Gavin.

  VI

  Soon after Christmas I heard that Gavin had paid a deposit on a house in Docklands, the area of London worst hit by the collapse of the property market. I could understand his desire for a place of his own but I thought it was unwise of him to commit himself to buying a house when his situation was so far from settled, and I blamed the witch-bitch for egging him on to shell out his money. I was now more consumed than ever by the conviction that she was determined to cut me out of his life and that his removal from the Rectory was the next step in her master plan.

  I was just wondering if Susanne was keeping him locked up, like some character in a horror novel, when I caught him slinking through the main hall of the Rectory one morning on his way to the gym; I had deliberately left the door of my office open so that I would see him if he flitted past. Shooting out of my chair I reached the hall before he could open the front door.

  I wasted no time on casual chat. “Did you know that Susanne’s been refusing to let me speak to you?”

  He looked embarrassed. “I’m not much good with people at the moment,” he said unhappily, eyes averted, and at once I felt stricken. So the decision not to see me had been his and not hers. I felt guilty for pestering him and furious with myself for feeling as rejected as if we had been lovers.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, “I only wanted to help but I see now I’m doing the opposite.”

  He said, oddly shy: “I’m always glad to see you. It’s just that I don’t have the energy for socialising, but of course after the trial it’ll be different.”

  “After the trial,” I said. “Yes.”

  There was an awkward pause before he asked: “How are the wedding plans going?”

  “Stickily. Eric says it might be better to run away and get married on a beach in the Caribbean, but neither of us can bear to give up St. Benet’s.”

  “Susanne and I are getting married,” said Gavin casually, “but don’t tell anyone—it’s not official yet.”

  “Great! Happy ending.”

  “Yeah, brilliant!”

  We exchanged delighted smiles.

  “Well,” said Gavin, opening the door, “I’ll be on my way. Gotta keep fit.”

  “Flex those pecs!”

  “You bet!” He slipped out.

  The door closed.

  Sinking down on the nearest chair I wondered when I had last felt so depressed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Gavin

  Life is lived as if in a dream because reality is hell, and the face smiles as if to prove nothing is wrong.

  A Time to Heal

  A REPORT FOR THE HOUSE OF BISHOPS

  ON THE HEALING MINISTRY

  We perceive evil differently as a child, as an adolescent and as an adult . . . Not only individuals but whole societies may grow or regress in their understanding of evil.

  Mud and Stars

  A REPORT OF A WORKING PARTY CONSISTING

  MAINLY OF DOCTORS, NURSES AND CLERGY

  I don’t know when I’ve last felt so depressed. Why did I tell that braindead lie to Carta about getting married to Susanne? Because I don’t want Carta to know how much I mind her getting married to that flabby heap of red curls. Because I want her to think I’m a normal bloke, capable of coping with a wife-scene. Because . . . oh stuff it, stop being so pathetic.

  Of course I want to marry Susanne and at least try to be a normal bloke, but she’d never agree to it. She’s got plans which don’t include me. She must have. That’s why, when I gave her the ring, she never brought up the subject of why blokes give girls diamond rings, and I certainly wasn’t going to bring it up when it was plain she wanted to pass the ring off as just a piece of extravagance. I’m useful to Susanne at the moment, that’s all. I’m good for free board and lodging plus a sex life, and the cat doesn’t have to worry about where its next bowl of Whiskas is coming from. But after the trial they’ll both be off. Susanne doesn’t really want to live in Docklands with a loser like me. That’s just a fantasy she’s created to help me along.

  “What’s up with you?” she demands the evening after my conversation with Carta. We’ve just watched EastEnders and I’m still staring like a zombie at the screen.

  “Saw Carta today.” I zap the volume to mute.

  “Oh, bugger that wonder-woman! Why can’t she leave you alone? Every time you see her you get upset!”

  “She says she and Eric are tempted to get married on a beach in the Caribbean.”

  “So what’s stopping them? What does it matter how you get married so long as you do it? I’d do it anywhere!”

  I perk up. “Didn’t know you were interested in marriage.”

  “Why the hell shouldn’t I be? I suppose you think an ex-tom’s not good enough to be married, but let me tell you, Mr. Middle-Class-Surrey-Snotty-Snob, I want the lot—husband, kids and a nice home with a Jacuzzi and one of those oak kitchens with a whatsit in it!”

  “What’s a whatsit?”

  “The big thing that’s always hot.”

  “Sounds like a randy husband.”

  “It cooks as well as it heats and it’s on all the time—”

  “A useful randy husband.”

  “Oh, stop clowning around and tell me what it’s called!”

  “An Aga,” I answer obediently, but I’m hardly aware of what I’m saying. I’m hypnotised by the thought of Susanne seeing a husband in her long-term future. But of course she’s not thinking of me, can’t be. She’ll be angling for one of those filthy-rich Essex men, dripping with gold medallions and draped in naff leisurewear and drenched in putrid aftershave.

  “Women have to slave to get a man to marry them,” she’s saying as I morosely picture Del or Tel or whatever her future husband’s likely to be called. “If a man can get away with a live-in shag he will, but if a girl’s got a line on her face or if she looks like a pig she never even gets to do a live-in. It’s bloody unfair.”

  “Well, you can’t blame a bloke for not wanting to shag something pig-like, and lots of blokes do get married, don’t they, I mean it still happens—”

  “You’d never do it!”

  “Oh yes I would, but who’s going to look at me now and see a potential husband?”

  “You serious? You have the bloody nerve to sit there, looking like a film star, and say—”

  “But I want someone who understands what goes on beneath the looks!”

  “Oh, women love doing that, they’ll be falling over themselves to understand you, you’ll find some cream-and-peaches, college-educated, middle-class—”

  “You’re totally hung up on class, you know that? But the class system’s dead as a dodo!”

  “God, another of your fantasies! Listen, I’m a realist. You’ll marry Peaches and I’ll have to make do with some East End git who’s migrated to Chigwell—”

  “I’d fight him off.”

  “Not if you were married to Peaches you wouldn’t!”

  “I’m not marrying Peaches! How could she ever understand what I’ve gone through?”

  “You won’t want to think about what you’ve gone through!”

  “But how could I ever forget? No, my wife’s got to be someone who can accept both me and my memories, someone who’s always going to understand, someone who’s brave and tough and smart and sexy and dances to ‘In the Mood’ better than any other girl on earth—”

  Susanne screeches: “How dare you wind me up like this? I’ll kill you!”

  I zap the picture, roll over on the couch and grab her to show I mean what I say.

  “We’ll do it after the trial,” I say as soon as we come up for air, “and preferably on
a beach.”

  “Okay, but it’s got to be a real wedding, just like in films and on telly, and on second thoughts, forget that beach rubbish. I want a church, I want a long white dress, I want flowers, I want music—”

  “Hey, wait a minute, this is all getting much too complicated—”

  “Typical man—shitting bricks at the idea of a decent wedding! Okay, forget it, I never thought you were serious anyway.”

  I promise her a white wedding in church—after the trial—and an Aga in the kitchen.

  I’m so dazzled by all these plans for the future that I barely notice when Carta marries Eric and sets off on her honeymoon. They did invite us to the wedding but of course we didn’t go.

  By this time I’m longing to do some preliminary shopping around for my boat, but I decide to rein myself in. I need to keep the remainder of my capital intact until I figure out how I’m going to earn my living. I tell myself I’ll make a decision on my future career after the trial. Everything’s on hold till after the trial, everything. After the trial I’ll do this, after the trial I’ll do that, after the trial I’ll—

  And suddenly the trial’s upon us.

  My eating habits have been better but now they go to pieces again. We moved into our house in March as soon as the builders had finished it, and I’ve kept my anxieties at bay by embarking on a demanding DIY programme—bookshelves, fun lighting, a little office for the computer— but now everything comes to a halt. I feel as if I’ve been breathing clean pure air on a mountain-top but someone’s just sneaked up behind me and pulled a black bag over my head.

  The trial’s going to take place in the number one court at the Old Bailey, and if you’re talking criminal law you can’t get more mega than that. Visiting the courthouse beforehand, I stand outside and look up at the golden statue on top. It’s Justice—or rather Justice Personified. Decked out primly in classical draperies she’s blindfolded as if she’s taking part in some sinister S&M game, but she’s got a sword in one hand and a pair of scales in the other so you know she’s no pushover. She gleams in the sun, like the gold cross on top of St. Paul’s Cathedral, a stone’s throw away, and she dominates this side of Ludgate Hill. Old Bailey is the name of the street where the courthouse stands, but a lot of people don’t know that. You say “Old Bailey” and everyone thinks: criminal courts, the ones where the big horrors get aired.