The Wonder Worker

by Susan Howatch

  I somehow still manage to behave IMPECCABLY.

  COMMENT: If only I could stop the recurring nightmare that my surgeon will accidentally castrate me on the operating table … Am I sure it’s sheer fear alone which is causing these fiendish sleep-patterns?

  Maybe I’m just eating too much at dinner. Tonight Alice served roast chicken with all the trimmings followed by rhubarb crumble, and I stuffed myself disgustingly. To cap it all I find I now have a craving for rum raisin ice cream …

  Thank God I’m seeing Venetia one more time before the fatal day. Meanwhile I only hope I don’t die of overeating before I can even reach the hospital.

  Wednesday, 2nd November, 1988: Venetia and i pussyfoot at the Hilton in Park Lane. Marvellous views of London. I finally get around to telling her I’m dropping out of circulation for a while.

  “Where are you going?” she asks.

  I say: “It’s a sort of retreat. I’ll tell you about it later.” (Dear God, let there be a “later.”)

  I’m not sure what shape I’ll be in when I escape from hospital. The specialist is encouraging, but he obviously doesn’t like to commit himself to unbridled optimism in case I take one step with the new hip and drop dead with shock. He does mutter something about crutches, but I ignore this because I’m still well under seventy and I’m sure crutches must be for the real oldies, the pushing-eighty set, who haven’t kept themselves fit by leading busy working lives and who have all kinds of things wrong with them in addition to arthritis. After all, there’s nothing wrong with me except for my hip, and once it’s replaced I’m determined to be gliding around like a lounge-lizard before I leave the hospital.

  My surgeon also says I should have a “nice little holiday by the sea” in order to convalesce properly, but that’s the last thing I need; I’d die of boredom. I want my dirty old bedsit and my services at St. Benet’s and Alice’s cooking. Who needs to sit around staring at the sea? Only old crocks who never dream of pussyfooting.

  As all these thoughts shoot through my head, Venetia’s saying something about what fun to go on retreat, will I be asked to beat myself with twigs, if so could she come as a beater, please, and does all this have anything to do with Jesuits.

  “No Jesuits, no twigs,” I say with a sigh, and think: just a saw and a Harley Street surgeon.

  Venetia sighs too and says she’ll be ripe for a retreat herself once she finishes this course of therapy, but I know her sessions are going well. She’s beginning to toy with the idea of further education. She turned down the chance of a university education when she was young, and she’s always regretted it. Of course she couldn’t attempt a degree now, she says, but perhaps she could still do something positive with her brain instead of pickling it in alcohol … or did I think she’d left it too late?

  I say firmly: “It’s never too late,” and promise that I’ll find out details for her of London University’s extra-mural courses.

  I behave IMPECCABLY.

  Unfortunately once I’m back home I go to pieces again. I eat two helpings of liver and bacon and two helpings of cherry tart with custard and I’m still hungry. All nerves, all an illusion, but the hunger seems gnawingly real, and when Alice offers me some rum raisin ice cream I can hardly restrain myself from eating the whole tub. The prospect of this operation is without doubt bringing out my entire neurotic side …

  COMMENT: Disgusting!

  I feel totally humiliated by my extreme pusillanimity and abject lack of self-control.

  Thursday, 3rd November, 1988: My departure for hospital is imminent; I have to check in today for the assault tomorrow. I’m playing the final chorus from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion—good music to die to—and wondering if I’ll ever hear it again. In this life, I mean. And it’s this life I’m interested in at the moment, thanks to Venetia.

  How wonderful it will be when I’m slinking around like a fifty-year-old instead of hobbling along like an old codger with one foot in the grave!

  COMMENT: The above entry is nothing but self-centred twaddle. Why aren’t I praying for my surgeon and his saw? But I suppose that would be self-centred too, since I’m so anxious for the saw not to slip.

  Dear God, as I go to meet my fate, whatever that is, please enable me to behave serenely, with dignity, and kill any impulse I may have to disintegrate into a gibbering food-fixated wreck. Amen.

  Oh shit, why did I ever make the insane decision to submit to this blank-blank-awful medical nightmare …

  Sunday, 6th November, 1988: I SURVIVED! My eyes opened on a day I’d convinced myself I would never live to see (yesterday) and I duly breathed a gargantuan sigh of relief. Couldn’t do much more than that, though. Drugged to the eyeballs. But today I’m less doped up and more compos mentis so I’m having a little scribble. (Was it Hensley Henson who said that writing a journal was as addictive as drink?)

  I’m very sore but the relief from the arthritic pain is absolutely unbelievable. Three cheers for my surgeon the healer! No, make that six. (The extra three are for my genitals, still intact.) By this time I’m so euphoric, relishing my survival, that I behave beautifully, so beautifully that everyone thinks I’m a Cuddly Old Priest. However, they soon find out what a mistake they’ve made. Within hours I’m getting crusty again, fed up with bedpans and all that rubbish, and demanding fresh pyjamas, new pillows, better food and drinkable wine. Nicholas walks in just as I’m bawling: “I hate hospitals!” and behaving very badly.

  He says: “You silly, cantankerous old bugger!” and gives me a hug.

  Yesterday, when I was glassy-eyed and dozy, he delivered flowers from himself, Alice and Stacy. Now he brings me Penguin’s brand new reissue of Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time—very appropriate, since the hero conducts his investigations from a hospital bed—and Iris Murdoch’s The Book and the Brotherhood, which has also just appeared in paperback. The Tey novel I read when it was first published, but that was many years ago and I shall take pleasure in rereading it; Nicholas knows too that in these circumstances it’s less stressful to read something familiar than something new. The Murdoch novel I shall no doubt enjoy—but later when I’m feeling less like a battlefield.

  In addition to the books, he’s also brought three get-well cards. Stacy’s is rude, showing a bedridden old man ogling a nurse. Typical. Alice’s is feline, showing a cat pawing a placard inscribed GET WELL SOON. Also typical. But Nicholas, original as ever, has chosen a postcard of his favourite Kandinsky painting and written on the back: “Aren’t you glad to be living in the 1980s? With a new hip you’re indisputably one up on Great-Uncle Cuthbert!”—a message which makes me smile.

  In fact I feel so emotional as I paw over all these offerings that I can’t talk much, but Nicholas understands and makes the silence peaceful.

  I wonder what sort of card Venetia would have sent if she knew where I was and what had happened to me …

  COMMENT: I hate the disruption of my religious routine as much as an athlete would hate the interruption of his training, but I try to maintain my equilibrium by regularly giving thanks to God for all the marvels of modern medicine. Nicholas brought the Blessed Sacrament with him, as arranged. He’ll bring it every day until I come home. I didn’t want to rely on some unknown chaplain. How lucky I am to have Nicholas to look after me, how lucky I am to have so much more than so many people, THANKS BE TO GOD, AMEN.

  Saturday, 12th November, 1988: Little Alice visits me. I’m staggered. I banned Stacy, as I knew he’d crash around breaking everything and my nerves couldn’t have stood it, but it never occurred to me to ban Alice. I never dreamed she’d want to see me.

  “You’re a very kind, thoughtful young woman,” I say, unable to decide whether or not I’m glad to see her. I was so keen that no one except the hospital staff and Nicholas should see me when I was looking like a beaten-up old tramp.

  Alice blushes, delighted to be praised, and produces a little tub of rum raisin ice cream from an insulated bag. Shyly she says: “I thought you might like
a spoonful or two.”

  I immediately decide I’m very pleased indeed to see her, and several dollops of ice cream disappear down my throat in double-quick time.

  As I guzzle this treat she says with care: “I’m cleaning your room. Nicholas thought it would be a good opportunity, but don’t worry, I’m not letting Shirin in and I promise I’m not snooping.” She pauses before adding serenely: “I do understand that you wanted to guard your privacy, but everything really was rather dirty, you know.”

  That’s the moment when I realise Alice is finally at ease in her new job. She has sufficient confidence to imply in the nicest possible way: you filthy old man, your nicotine-stained, overcrowded, chaotic bachelor’s bedsit offended against all the known laws of hygiene and was the most revolting health hazard I’ve encountered in my entire career as a cook.

  At once I say: “Thank you, Alice. It’s very good of you to take the trouble. I don’t deserve such kindness.”

  “Why on earth not?” demands Alice, so relieved that I’ve taken the news of the invasion well that the last trace of her shyness disappears, but before I can attempt a reply she’s extracting from her handbag an envelope of photographs and asking: “Would you like to see the latest pictures of James?”

  The kitten is looking most attractive—and so is Nicholas, who’s holding him. Nicholas is in all the snapshots.

  “Isn’t he lovely!” sighs Alice, and of course she means the cat. Or does she?

  I suddenly realise I’m starting to worry about sex again.

  I must be on the mend.

  COMMENT: I hope Nicholas isn’t developing a blind spot about Alice. He can’t afford to relax his vigilance, and I don’t think he was monitoring the relationship closely enough when he decided to acquire that cat. Nicholas is dopey about cats and he can’t afford any dopiness where Alice is concerned.

  Is it my imagination or is Alice thinner? I notice she didn’t bother to have any rum raisin ice cream.

  Monday, 14th November, 1988: The soreness has eased and the freedom from arthritic pain still seems miraculous, but the bad news is that my specialist’s muttered prophecy has come true, I’m obliged to use crutches whenever I leave my bed, and despite all my determination to believe otherwise I know I shall be unable to chuck them aside the moment I go home; so for a while I’ll be sidling along like a drunken crab. To make matters worse—and this is why I won’t be thrown out of here just yet—the physiotherapist has explained to me that I have to relearn my walking; because I didn’t take action on the hip earlier I learned to walk in the wrong way and this is now handicapping my recovery. Triple-hell! How can I present myself to Veneria when I’m in such a patently decayed condition?

  I’m so upset that I have a row with one of the junior doctors when he says shouldn’t I be showing more Christian patience. Impudent young whippersnapper! I bare my teeth and growl. He flees.

  Nicholas arrives. Trying to divert myself from my furious disappointment I badger him to tell me all the news, even the worst items, and eventually he abandons his high-minded decision not to bother me with our current cliff-hanger at St. Benet’s. It turns out that Francie left her husband (again) but returned (again) after the usual forty-eight hours with her mother; the husband’s promised (again) to reform and Francie refuses (again) to get any kind of help.

  “So what else is new?” I say dryly to Nicholas, but apparently the answer isn’t quite: “Nothing.” Nicholas has suggested to Francie that she might like to talk to our tame psychiatrist up in Hampstead to try to examine the “destructive dynamic” in the marriage, but this very reasonable proposal has also been rejected by Francie, and Nicholas is now more willing to believe she could be fantasising. Our psychiatrist—a friendly, sympathetic female—has helped us before with battered women, and Nicholas feels that if Francie’s problem really is a violent husband she would by this time welcome the chance of first-class medical help from someone who specialises in the field of abusive relationships.

  “On the other hand,” I comment cautiously, “maybe she feels that to see a psychiatrist is to admit she’s nuts.”

  “She surely wouldn’t be that naive, not after working for years at St. Benet’s! Besides, I was careful to take the line that it was primarily Harry who needed the psychiatric help; I suggested Francie’s interview with Jane would be more of a conference than a consultation as they worked out how to deal with him.”

  “So what did Francie say when she finally turned you down?”

  “The usual. Harry would reform. No outside help was necessary. Her love would see them through.”

  “If Harry’s the sadist she says he is, that’s a grand illusion. If he’s not the sadist she says he is, that’s just the fantasy continuing. Either way she’s up the creek.”

  There’s a pause while we meditate gloomily on this verdict. Then Nicholas says: “I wonder if the reality’s quite as clear-cut as that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, Francie could be telling the truth when she says Harry’s a sadist, but she could be lying about the nature of the abuse.”

  I stare at him. “You mean the abuse may not be half as bad as she says?”

  “No, I mean it could be much worse than she says. Maybe she’s so traumatised that she can neither put into words what’s going on nor make any attempt to do more than let us know she’s in trouble. That would at least explain why she’s turned down the therapist, the self-help groups and the psychiatrist; she’d feel she was way beyond being able to articulate the problem to strangers.”

  I’m interested but sceptical. “What sort of problem do you have in mind?”

  “A sexual deviation by the husband.”

  We mull this over and I find that running through a choice list of sexual deviations certainly takes my mind off my post-operative difficulty. I even begin to feel in the mood which that Victorian, Great-Uncle Cuthbert, would have described as “bobbish.”

  “So what’s the next step?” I demand.

  “I think all we can do at the moment is keep the lines of communication open, so I’ve asked Francie to come to see me twice a week for a ten-minute update on the situation.”

  “That means she’s got your special attention!” I exclaimed. “You mark my words, Nicholas, those little ten-minute chats will soon expand into fifty-minute sessions!”

  “I think she’ll trip up and be forced to come clean long before that happens—if she’s a fraud. And if she’s not a fraud, then she deserves some special attention.”

  “But you’re taking a big risk, Nicholas! If she is seriously disturbed and unacceptably fixated on you—”

  “The truth is I still find it hard to believe that Francie’s suddenly gone over the top.”

  “It’s not sudden! These tales of wife-beating have been going on for some time! And besides, don’t forget that even the most stable people can go off their rockers if a chemical imbalance develops in their brains!”

  “That’s true, but I see no sign of psychosis here. The most likely explanation is that she’s suffering from an abuse which she’s working herself up to articulate to me.”

  “I disagree. If Francie was being subjected regularly to some disgusting perversion, I think she’d have broken down by now or at the very least shown some sign of stress in her work, but she’s still functioning normally, isn’t she? Nobody at the Centre except us has the remotest idea she’s in trouble, and in my opinion—”

  Seeing I’m getting overheated Nicholas diverts me with what appears to be good news about our other major problem. “Talking of people functioning normally,” he says, making a skilful interruption, “that reminds me: I almost forgot to tell you about Stacy. He took out Tara Hopkirk at the weekend. They went to a film at the Barbican and had a very successful evening.”

  Tara Hopkirk is one of the church cleaners. She lives in the Isle of Dogs, always dresses in sweatshirts and outsize jeans, comes to the lunch-time Eucharist once a week and looks like the back end of a
bus. In other words she’s a downmarket, churchgoing version of Alice.

  “Not much class there,” I observe.

  “So what? Stacy’s hardly blue-blooded, is he, and Tara’s a splendid girl, very good-hearted!”

  I can imagine Tara feeling delighted by this surprising initiative from the curate, but what’s Stacy feeling? I decide it would be wiser not to venture a comment.

  Sensing my scepticism Nicholas switches subjects again and this time he talks about the latest case-conference on Venetia. Apparently he wants to pussyfoot with her in my absence, just to check that she’s on an even keel without her regular fix of Lewis Hall. This first bout of therapy is set to end in mid-December, although she’ll almost certainly need to continue the therapy after she and Robin assess her progress at Christmas. If she then feels she needs to explore the past in detail she can elect to try psychoanalysis, but that’s a possibility which can be discussed later. In the meantime she’s attending AA meetings and keeping off the booze. So far so good.

  I give him permission to pussyfoot but tell him he’s got to overcome his aversion to grand hotels in order to pussyfoot with style. Nicholas sighs. However, he’s very fond of Venetia and he’s passionately committed to her rehabilitation. He’ll grit his teeth and face Claridge’s for her sake.

  “I was hoping to impress Venetia by walking like a much younger man when I next see her,” I say, unable to resist confiding my disappointment to him. “But as it turns out I’ll be looking older than ever and hobbling along on crutches. What am I going to say to her when she asks for an explanation?”

  “There’s no need to give any explanation at all. Just be enigmatic and elliptical.”

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  “Say: ‘I hope that one day I’ll be able to tell you the whole story, but meanwhile—alas!—my lips are sealed.’ ”