The Heartbreaker

by Susan Howatch

  “Shit, you’re still so mental!” says Susanne exasperated.

  “You mean you’d stay even if I was zombified?”

  “I’d stay even if you were an embalmed corpse!”

  I’m so encouraged by this reassurance that my impotence comes to a sensational end. “Hey, look at that!” I shout, like Christopher Columbus discovering America.

  “God, that’s pervy! I say ‘embalmed corpse’ and you get stiff enough to drill concrete!”

  “Do you think it’ll peg out if I put it in?”

  “Well, don’t just lie there asking, pinhead—give it a go!”

  I keep the erection. I’m ecstatic but terrified. “It’ll peg out. It’s bound to peg out. Or it’ll pop off. It’s bound to pop off. Shit, I can’t believe I’m actually doing this—”

  “Oh, stop wittering and get on with it! Didn’t I always tell you your cock would perk up once it’d had a good rest?”

  I keep going for two whole minutes. I know that sounds pathetic, but two minutes is a long time when you’ve been unable to do it for weeks. Afterwards I wallow in euphoria—only to be slugged by post-coital tristesse. I’ve taken a big step back to normality, but I’m still nowhere near cured of my phobia about touching men.

  I decide an assault has to be made on this phobia. Waiting for it to go away won’t do. This is because I can’t bear the thought that I may soon be fully recovered from agoraphobia and bulimia but still be unable to lead a normal life, mingling with other people.

  Lewis and I agree that now’s the time for me to attend one of the St. Benet’s healing services, but having made this bold decision I go wobbly and back down from fixing a date. Supposing the healing doesn’t work?

  “You can try again later. It’s not an all-or-nothing situation,” says Lewis soothingly, and reminds me of the difference the St. Benet’s team makes between a healing and a cure: a complete cure can never be guaranteed, but a healing, an improvement in the quality of life, is always possible. “One should think of health as a journey towards a cure, a journey punctuated by healings,” says Lewis. “And anyway one can argue that a complete cure is never possible because no one can be completely well in mind, body and spirit—such perfection simply doesn’t exist in this life. It’s the journey towards the cure that’s so vital.”

  “I feel my journey’s grinding to a halt again,” I say, still bogged down in pessimism.

  “Then it’s all the more important to keep praying for progress.”

  “But nothing happens!” I’ve already prayed myself puce, begging The Bloke to shatter the glass walls that the phobia’s built around me, and now I just want to yowl with frustration.

  “You mean nothing’s happened yet,” says Lewis, “but to continue to pray is in itself a gesture of faith, signalling that we trust God to heal you when the time’s right.”

  “But why isn’t the time right now?”

  “There’s clearly another block on the road, but I’m sure you’ll get past it once you work out what it is.”

  I think I’m just afraid of failure, and it’s the thought that I’ll fail to be healed which is doing my head in.

  I’m in despair.

  Lewis cheers me up. He points out what a success I’ve been, achieving the difficult reconciliations with Hugo and my mother, and now overcoming the nightmare of impotence. (I waited a while to tell him in case I had a relapse, but no, I’m okay.)

  Lewis says we should have a drink to celebrate these successes, so we swill some red wine and I show him the letter I’ve just received from Mum. She says we don’t ever have to talk of my London life before the trial. I want to tear my hair at this attempt to sweep my career as a prostitute under the rug, but Lewis suggests that she should be allowed to assimilate the past at her own pace and that I should try to be patient, resisting the urge to fling the truth at her.

  I know he’s right. Do I really want to talk to Mum about my life as a shag-star? Do I need to? Mum knows what I was, so my nervous urge to parade my past in lurid detail’s not only OTT but possibly a revenge-impulse disguised as honesty. Yuk! No, I’ve got to be kind to the old girl and rein myself in.

  “Excellent!” says Lewis, pleased that I’ve produced this insight. “Well, at least you’re being very clear-eyed about your relationship with your mother.”

  I’m just about to preen myself when I realise this is a loaded sentence and we’re now in the middle of a pregnant pause. This is because Lewis has laid the emphasis not on the phrase “very clear-eyed” but on the word “mother.”

  “Hey!” I say. “What other relationship do I have to be clear-eyed about now I’ve got both Mum and Hugo explored, explained and sorted?”

  But of course I know.

  “If you’re thinking of Dad,” I say to Lewis, “you can forget him. He’s not a problem—he was just a boat-freak who got his stethoscope in a twist. I’ve got no hard feelings about him now.”

  But the instant these words get uttered I know my feelings are hard as granite.

  Dr. Heartbreaker. The bloke who was so screwed up he wasn’t there for any of his family when it mattered most.

  What a shit.

  “He was no use when Hugo was dying,” I say ferociously to Lewis later. “He was no use to my mother when she was so ill with depression. And he was no use to me after Hugo died. He never stopped me trying to become a doctor although he knew I’d never had any interest in medicine.”

  “Maybe he simply told himself that if he could become a doctor to please his father, you could too.”

  “But he shouldn’t have been so angry when I failed!”

  “Maybe you weren’t the one he was really angry with.”

  I stare. “Meaning?”

  “Perhaps he was angry with himself. Perhaps he was wishing he’d failed those exams when he was young. Perhaps your escape from medicine reminded him of how he was still imprisoned in it.”

  I chew this over but wind up saying: “He still shouldn’t have taken it out on me.”

  “No, he shouldn’t. It was a very painful rejection, wasn’t it, even worse than his emotional withdrawal after Hugo died.”

  “Bastard.” I’m shuddering. I try to stop myself but I say the word again. “Bastard.” This time I sound violent. A huge rage fills me as I think of him being bored by his doting patients, oppressed by his marriage, indifferent to everyone and everything but his boat. I can still hear the click of that lock as he withdrew to his study and shut the door in my face.

  “He hurt people,” I say. I’m breathing really hard now. My lungs feel as if they could burst. “He hurt people. Think how he treated my mother! He broke her heart!”

  “Ah yes,” said Lewis without expression, “but heartbreaking’s a symptom of profound unhappiness, isn’t it? Anyone who systematically hurts other people is usually carrying a load of unhealed pain.”

  All the violence drains from my body, and I cover my face with my hands.

  Seconds slip by. Nothing else happens except that I try to swallow and find there’s some kind of football lodged in my gullet.

  “Your father was an angry man, trapped in the wrong life,” says Lewis at last. “It’s painful to be trapped in the wrong life, as you yourself well know. It stifles the spirit when you lead an inauthentic existence, out of tune with the person you really are. Indeed, the person you really are becomes crushed and maimed.” He paused before adding: “This was what happened to your father. But luckily—even, one’s tempted to say, miraculously—alongside all the sad memories of his distorted self, you have this magnificent memory of him as he really was. Think of that voyage past the Needles! Your father loved you then, didn’t he? He loved you, he loved the sailing, he loved the beauty of the seascape—he was at one with himself, and that’s the father you want to remember.”

  More seconds drift past. I want to retreat to my room and close the door and sit in silence as I yell in my head for the pain to stop—

  Or in other words, I want to behave ju
st like my dad.

  Trying to give myself a break I mumble: “Well, it’s no use beating myself up over this. He’s dead now.”

  “Yes, but he’s still alive in your head, isn’t he? The only reason you haven’t noticed him until now is that Hugo was making so much noise.”

  That’s true. I know it’s true. In my head Dad’s been another angry, disapproving presence, forever critical and hostile.

  “I can forgive him for being a heartbreaker,” I say at last, “but he’ll never forgive me for what I’ve done with my life. I know he must have forgiven me for not becoming a doctor—Mum said he was keen to find me when I disappeared—but he’ll never forgive me for becoming a prostitute.”

  “But you’re no longer a prostitute, are you? Don’t you think that your father, who loved you, would forgive you now you’re trying to lead a new life?”

  All I can say is: “I won’t believe it until he tells me himself.” How irrational can you get? But fortunately Lewis, as usual, never turns a hair.

  “Maybe it’ll be easier than you think for your father to forgive you,” he suggests. “After all, he contributed to your lost years, didn’t he? Maybe he now feels guilty.”

  “I could never work out what he was feeling.”

  “But you knew exactly what he was feeling when you sailed together past the Needles!”

  “He’ll never come back to me as he was then.”

  “Never’s a long time, Gavin. Don’t give up hope of receiving word that forgiveness has taken place.”

  “Well, I’m not waiting for that before I go to a healing service!”

  “Fair enough, I agree there’s no need to hang about, particularly now you’ve looked at your father with your eyes wide open. Do you want to fix a date?”

  But I can’t. Supposing I do get healed and can finally live like a normal person? Then I’d have no choice but to ask myself how I’m going to earn my living, and I still can’t face the massive anxiety that question raises—just thinking of it makes me want to binge and throw up, even though my bulimia’s been so much better lately.

  “You need a rest,” says Lewis comfortingly. “You’ve gone a long way very fast and now it’s time to catch your breath. So let’s forget about your father for a moment, and I’ll tell you about mine.”

  I perk up and prepare to be entertained.

  “He was a serial killer,” says Lewis poker-faced. “You name it, he murdered it: tigers, lions, elephants, birds, rabbits, foxes—oh, and Germans. Naturally he survived the First World War.” And as I laugh, relaxing just as he intended, he adds: “He died when I was very young so at least I was spared the task of trying to please him by following in his footsteps.”

  “I suppose Great-Uncle Cuthbert was a father to you instead,” I say, still smiling, but Lewis answers seriously: “Great-Uncle Cuthbert was my mentor, and that’s not the same thing. All young men growing up need older men who can be mentors, but unfortunately not all fathers have the mentor mentality.”

  At once I’m deeply interested. “You’re my mentor even though I’m grown up, aren’t you, Lewis?”

  “That’s for you to say. My job’s to be useful to you. If you care to define that as being a mentor, so be it, but it’s not something I have the right to name and impose.”

  “Could you still be my mentor even after I’m well?” I ask, worried by this self-effacing reply, but Lewis assures me that mentors are useful at any stage of life and even if one’s fighting fit. Mentors in matters of the spirit are particularly important in adult life, he says, and if I want him to be my mentor in the future he’d be more than happy to oblige.

  Instantly I feel more secure. Even when I’m well Lewis will be there as I struggle to lead a normal life again. And talking of leading a normal life—

  I resolve to disclose to him my massive anxiety about getting a job.

  “I just don’t know what to do,” I say on his next visit. I’ve now been trying to review this employment problem intelligently instead of freaking out and running to the fridge, but my brain just behaves as if it’s mislaid fifty points of IQ. “I don’t want to be an architect any more. Don’t want any long expensive training. I could be a builder, but how would I learn? Anyway, stacking bricks all day long could be boring. I’d rather build boats, but how could I do that with no qualifications?”

  Round the mulberry bush I go for the umpteenth time. I’m such a dreamer, Susanne says, and there’s always such a gap between my dreams and reality. But what is the reality here, and what have I been designed to do at this particular stage of my life?

  “Well, I can think of one thing you already do very successfully,” says Lewis without hesitation.

  I’m sunk in gloom. “Yeah. Prostitution.”

  “Raise your sights a little higher.”

  “You mean . . .” God, I’m beginning to be seriously worried about my brain. How could the idea of fundraising never occur to me? Because I associated it with the Life, that’s why, but if I now uncouple it . . .

  “I can’t imagine fundraising in a non-prostitution setting,” I say, going defeatist out of sheer nervous fright that there might actually be a job out there I could do. (How do I get an interview when I’ve no CV? How do I explain that my big experience in raising money is to screw for it?) In panic I retreat into fantasy. “Maybe I could be a mentor like you, Lewis,” I say, picturing myself rescuing some pint-sized shitlet who thinks turning tricks at Piccadilly Circus is the last word in sophistication.

  “You’d have a lot to offer as a mentor,” says Lewis, stunning me. “You’ve been around, learning about life the hard way, and there are plenty of people out there who could benefit from your wisdom and experience.”

  Maybe the image of the shitlet wasn’t such a fantasy after all. “Runaways, you mean?” I say. “Kids who wind up penniless in London, like I did, and get involved in drugs and prostitution?” I think about this but can’t visualise the route to getting involved. Would I need to become a social worker? A policeman? A—no, scrub the word “priest.” I’d never be good enough for that.

  “There are organisations which help these young people, of course,” says Lewis, “and a good fundraiser is always in demand. I realise the problem of having no CV, but Nicholas would give you a reference.”

  I’m stunned all over again as the word “fundraising” uncouples itself from the word “prostitution” and floats alluringly before my eyes. I’ve glimpsed the future and I like it. And most important of all, it’s do-able— it’s not just a dream which could never come true.

  Telling myself exuberantly that all I have to do now is get healed, I decide to fix a date when I can attend the healing service.

  Bloody hell, I’ve backed away from fixing a date again, but I can’t help it, I’m in a flat spin.

  My brand-new anxiety creeps up on me unawares and is innocently triggered by Nicholas, who drops in for a chat. He thinks the fundraising-for-runaways plan is brilliant and he says of course he’ll give me a reference. He makes me feel very happy, but when Lewis next visits I’m horrified to hear that Nicholas is thinking of leaving St. Benet’s.

  “But he can’t!” I protest. “It’s not possible!”

  Lewis smiles and says: “He thinks it’s time he went home.”

  “Home” is home in a literal sense this time. Lewis is referring to that old manor house where Nicholas grew up. But surely he’s much too young to retire?

  Lewis starts to explain. Nicholas has now been at St. Benet’s for twelve years, and once the expansion of the Healing Centre’s completed it could well be the right time for him to change direction, depending on what God has in mind. No one’s indispensable, Lewis points out briskly, and even the most successful healing teams can become fossilised and lose their cutting edge. Better to make the change before this happens and leave on a high note. The Holy Spirit blows in all kinds of directions, says Lewis, and the trick is to recognise which way the wind’s gusting so that one can go with the flow.r />
  The flow is currently making Nicholas take a hard look at this country house he inherited from his mother. It’s been let for years to an Order of Anglican Benedictines—Great-Uncle Cuthbert’s Order—but the monks are getting old now, and the retreat-house they established must come to an end.

  “Nicholas has been thinking of starting a different kind of healing centre there,” says Lewis. “It would be modelled on Burrswood in Kent and would be like a small hospital with convalescent facilities where doctors and priests could work together, just as they do at St. Benet’s. There’s a very beautiful chapel in the grounds, rather like the chapel at Little Gidding . . .”

  I stop listening. The panic’s slugged me. If Nicholas is going home not to retire but to found St. Benet’s Mark Two, surely he’ll need the help of the greatest oldie of all time, the mentor I can’t possibly afford to lose?

  “What about you?” I say, nearly passing out with the effort to sound casual. “He’ll want you to go with him, won’t he?”

  “Nicholas and Alice have indeed invited me to continue living with them,” agrees Lewis, “and that’s most kind of them, but I’ve cluttered up their home quite long enough and besides, living in the country wouldn’t suit me. I’d miss the concerts and the art exhibitions.”

  The relief’s cosmic. “You’ll stay on at St. Benet’s?”

  “That wouldn’t be fair on the new rector. And besides, without Nicholas . . . no, I must move on. I’m not sure yet where I should move to, but I’m sure God will make his wishes clear in due course.”

  Panic slugs me again. Supposing God decides to send him to his family? His daughter’s married to one of the northern bishops, and their vibrant city has both a concert hall and an art gallery . . . But I don’t like to ask him any more questions. I’d look such a wimp if he realised I was freaking out at the thought of him being a long-distance mentor.

  The result of all this panic is that I look at my future plans much more nervously. And this may be no bad thing, because in my nervousness I sense I’m becoming more realistic. Even when I’m well I don’t think I’ll have the confidence to plunge straight away into a high-powered fundraising job (always assuming I’m offered one). I need something to bridge the gap, some modest job which will allow me to get office experience and build up my confidence. But how do I go about it? And what the hell would I be capable of doing in an office anyway?