“I like the ‘alas’! But supposing she just laughs and accuses me of talking codswallop?”
“She won’t. She’ll be fascinated but tactful. After all, she likes you, doesn’t she?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then she won’t force you to talk about a subject which you’ve clearly labelled verboten”.
I feel more cheerful.
He gives me the Blessed Sacrament and we pray together. Then he performs the laying-on of hands, and afterwards I feel not just more cheerful but wonderfully better, full of hope, relaxed and at peace. The nurse comes in later, looking as if she wishes she were wearing a bullet-proof vest, but all she finds is this cuddly old priest sporting a soppy, beatific expression. “Well, whatever happened to you?” she asks astonished, and I explain that I’ve received healing from a great priest, devout, humble and well integrated—and in consequence capable of being wholly at one with the power of the Holy Spirit.
How magnificently far removed my Nicholas is from being a power-mad, self-centred wonder worker on an ego-trip!
I feel so proud of him.
COMMENT: I mustn’t get so sentimental about Nicholas. I must stop writing “my” Nicholas, like a doting father mooning over his idolised son. Sentimental old men are embarrassing, and I don’t want the one successful relationship in my life to get bogged down in gooeyness. Sentimentality always distorts the truth. I must never forget that Nicholas has his faults and his weaknesses, and that my job as his brother-in-Christ is not to view him through the rose-tinted spectacles of a sentimental affection but to see him through the clear lense of a genuine love. Only then can I be of real service, helping him if he stumbles, steering him back on course if he strays.
Almighty God, please keep Nicholas safe while I’m not at home to look after him. In the name of Christ, Amen.
Wednesday, 16th November, 1988: I’m to be allowed to go home tomorrow, but unfortunately I’m not through with hospitals as I have to have regular physiotherapy. But the physiotherapist seems confident that in three months’ time few people will guess I’ve had hip trouble.
Good news.
Meanwhile my surgeon is most displeased to hear that I’m not going off for a little holiday by the sea. With asperity he declares that I mustn’t rush back to work; I must walk a certain amount each day but avoid violent exercise of any kind; there must be no late nights, no driving cars and please could I seriously consider giving up smoking.
I’m so cross I want to shock him rigid by asking how soon I’ll be able to have sex, but ragging a stuffed-shirt layman by implying I can’t wait to commit fornication is hardly justifiable behaviour for a priest.
Keeping my mouth clamped shut I start to dream of pussyfooting …
COMMENT: Is my impatience with the surgeon and my longing to go home a mere normal desire to return to much-loved surroundings, or is there a psychic twinge involved? I keep praying for Nicholas as if I’m worried about his safety. So, to pose the question more bluntly: am I just being a stupid old man, playing the neurotic father with a man who’s perfectly capable of looking after himself, or am I latching on to a hidden threat which has somehow taken root in the world of the unseen and is stealthily expanding to dangerous dimensions? It’s hard to pinpoint this threat. All I know is that the Devil must be hating Nicholas’s success as a Christian healer. What I might very well be sensing is that cloven hoof twitching as it revs up for the big kick.
Sometimes only metaphorical language can convey truth.
I felt the kick of that cloven hoof back in 1983 when my previous ministry was destroyed. What would I have done if Nicholas hadn’t taken me in and rehabilitated me? I don’t like to think. God acted through Nicholas, of course, redeeming the mess, renewing me, breathing fresh life into my shattered career. But I’ll never forget the kick of that cloven hoof when I was self-satisfied, overconfident and doing so well that I no longer bothered to battle with my pride. I turned into a wonder worker, that was the truth of it. Even the best healers are subject to corruption, and perhaps the most successful are particularly likely to be booted down the drain into the sewer. Success breeds pride; pride distorts one’s vision of reality; a distorted vision means you never see the kick coming from the cloven hoof … And then the next moment you’re in the filth and smashed to pieces.
I see so clearly now that the wonder worker is the shadow side of the Christian healer. The wonder worker’s there all the time, deep in the psyche, but so long as he’s confronted and owned he can be subjugated. Once he’s neglected or ignored he’ll get restless and slide stealthily out of control. The healer’s got to be very fit spiritually to see off that particular challenge, but see it off he must. It’s a matter of life and death.
Watch out, Nicholas, watch out! You were the ideal healer whenever you visited me in hospital, but back at St. Benet’s you’re self-satisfied about Stacy’s phony date with Tara and you’re overconfident in your conviction that Francie’s not deranged. If you’re not careful, that arrogance of yours will blind you to reality, particularly if I’m not there to hold the unvarnished truth constantly before your eyes, and then one day …
One day all hell will break loose.
Almighty God, please help me get fit as soon as possible so that I can be of maximum use to Nicholas in fending off any kicks from the cloven hoof. Amen.
Thursday, 17th November, 1988: I leave hospital, AH the nurses drool over me. I try to apologise for the episodes of truly appalling behaviour but the girls say they’re always so glad to meet a patient with a fighting spirit. I seem to have established a reputation as a “character.” Extraordinary.
I arrive home. To mark the occasion Alice is dressed in her best tent, now too big for her, and the kitten has a bow around its neck. My bedsit is so clean I can hardly bear to light a cigarette in it. I potter around, puffing away at my nicotine fix, and touch all my favourite items—the crucifix, the icons, my best books, my picture of Rachel and the grandchildren.
Alice has baked a magnificent cake which has WELCOME HOME written on the top in royal blue icing. I sit in the kitchen, drink Madeira, eat cake and feel very happy. Eventually I go to my room and phone Rachel. “Oh, and I’ve had my hip done,” I say casually at the end of the conversation. “I’m okay now.”
Rachel hits the roof. Why didn’t I tell her I was having it done? Supposing I’d died—think what a shock it would have been for her since she hadn’t even known I was in hospital! How could I have been so selfish? And how had I dared deprive her of the chance to send cards—flowers—presents—what on earth could the nurses have thought of her neglect?
“They didn’t think anything,” I say. “I never told them I had a daughter.”
Rachel takes violent offence, bursts into tears and hangs up.
As usual Nicholas straightens us out. He rings her back and explains that I was trying to spare her anxiety.
I’m put on the line. Rachel sobs that she’s sorry, she didn’t mean to be beastly to me, she was just in shock, but now she’s recovered she’ll send cards, flowers, chocolates, champagne—
“Very nice,” I say. “Thanks. Vintage Moët would do,” and we finally manage to part on an affectionate note.
After this I feel in urgent need of a light-hearted interlude, so I phone Venetia.
“How was your retreat?” she enquires.
“Successful. How were your pussyfoots with Nicholas?”
“My dear, he tried to drink Coca-Cola but I wouldn’t let him. It was sheer inverted snobbery—he wanted to cock a snook at Claridge’s!”
“Disgusting! I’ve missed our pussyfoots. Can we meet?”
“Name the day.”
“Tomorrow? At the Connaught?”
“No,” she says, and for the first time she hesitates. “Not the Connaught. Somewhere larger and noisier where no one will pay attention to what we’re saying.”
I deduce she wants to talk about her therapy. “We could go back to the Hilton.”
&nb
sp; “Fine. Tomorrow at six-thirty?”
Almost delirious at the thought of pussyfooting I return to the kitchen and find Alice making soup for lunch. “If you’re looking for Nicholas,” she says, “he’s gone over to the church.”
I glance at my watch and discover with surprise that the time’s much later than I thought. The lunch-time Eucharist will be beginning in ten minutes.
I’m anxious to attend, but for a moment I’m diverted because I’ve suddenly realised how odd it is that Alice never abbreviates Nicholas’s name. Why has this habit never seemed odd to me before? Because it’s not odd, is the answer; it’s unusual but not odd. So why does it seem odd to me now? Because my psychic antennae are vibrating away, picking up any hint that Nicholas could be in danger and converting any unusual feature of the familiar landscape into a potentially sinister threat.
Apart from me—and apart from Rosalind, who clings to the “Nicky” he was called in kindergarten—everyone calls him Nick. I was the only one left who called him Nicholas, just as his father did, but I’m the only one no longer. Alice has annexed all three syllables so that she stands out from the crowd of Nick-people. Alice has taken a stand which makes her special.
The kitten’s up to his old game of chewing my shoelaces. Stooping to pick him up I say casually, very casually, so casually that no one would ever suspect my nerves are jangling: “Alice, why do you never call Nicholas Nick?”
She pauses in the act of stirring the soup and gives this question serious consideration. “Nick Darrow’s the star of the Healing Centre,” she says at last, “but Nicholas Darrow is his whole self, not just the Nick-part but the other parts of his personality as well. There’s the part he shares with Rosalind, for instance, and there’s the part we see here when he’s off-duty. And finally there’s that very mysterious hidden part which is invisible, the part which enables him to understand people so well. It’s a sort of dimension,” she explains, not sure she’s found the right word but confident she’s describing something real. “I’m sure I’m not imagining it.”
I stare at her. She reddens and starts stirring again. “Sorry,” she mutters. “I’m sounding weird.”
“Not to me. You’re being most perspicacious,” I say, keeping my voice casual, but I’m stunned. Little Alice, who can so easily be written off by people like Rosalind as a dull lump, has just displayed intelligence and intuition on the grand scale; she’s described not merely the self which belongs to Nicholas but the psychic strand of that self, the gift which Nicholas never discusses except with me and his spiritual director.
I’d bet heavy money that no one at the Healing Centre knows about this hidden strand of Nicholas’s personality. People know he’s charismatic (in the technical sense), but the charisms of healing or preaching or teaching—or any of the other gifts listed by St. Paul—can be displayed by psychic and non-psychic alike, and outwardly Nicholas gives no hint of his psychic powers. They’re private, dedicated to God, never to be flaunted or exploited for personal gain. It’s only the wonder workers who use such powers for their own aggrandisement.
It’s a long time now since Nicholas played the wonder worker. It’s a long time since he used psychic parlour-tricks to boost his ego, a long time since he told fortunes by stroking the palms of pretty women, a long time since he pretended to relay messages from the dead by reading the minds of the living. He’s offered his psychic gifts to God in humility, and as a result they’re nowadays so seamlessly incorporated in his ministry that they’ve become a hidden asset instead of an ego-distorting handicap. Yet Alice has recognised the extrasensory perception which makes him exceptionally intuitive when dealing with clients and exceptionally adroit when dealing with paranormal phenomena. She’s recognised it even though this extremely discreet and disciplined use of psychic power is beyond the recognition of most people. It takes a psychic to know a psychic like Nicholas—and little Alice, I now see to my profound astonishment, knows the Nicholas all the non-psychics never meet.
But wait a minute, maybe there’s a simpler explanation. Maybe Cynthia said something to Alice about the psychic gifts. Both Cynthia and Venetia knew Nicholas way back in the Swinging Sixties before his ordination when he was playing the juvenile wonder worker and getting up to all manner of mischief.
But no, that explanation doesn’t quite pan out. Cynthia might possibly have mentioned to Alice that Nicholas was a psychic, but she could never have described the psychic dimension of Nicholas’s personality as Alice has just done. In Cynthia’s eyes Nicholas was just someone who used to perform psychic parlour-tricks but who now wouldn’t be seen dead with a crystal ball. She had no grasp of the fact that the gift was still used but in a completely different way.
I say idly as I stroke the kitten and pretend the conversation’s about something normal: “It sounds as if you’re a sensitive, Alice.”
“A what?”
“A psychic.”
“Oh no!” she says horrified. “I don’t believe in that kind of thing at all. Aunt always said it was rubbish.”
That great-aunt of hers was without doubt a pig-headed old trout. (What a curious piscine vision that phrase conjures up! But I’m too annoyed to amend the metaphor.) Austerely I say: “Well-developed psychic ability is a gift, like a talent for music, and like a talent for music it doesn’t automatically make you a better person than those people who don’t have the gift. That’s because spiritual gifts and psychic gifts aren’t the same thing, although since both deal with the unseen they can overlap.”
“But surely scientists don’t admit—”
“A true scientist should keep an open mind and examine the evidence—as scientists in America and Russia are doing right now in order to find out more about what they call ‘psi.’ Both countries have been spending fortunes on research in the hope that ‘psi’ can be used in espionage.”
Alice is round-eyed with surprise but still valiantly sceptical. “Do you really believe that?”
“I believe they’ve been spending fortunes and doing research on the assumption that ‘psi’ exists. Those are matters of fact. What I don’t believe is that they’ll ever be able to harness the ‘psi’–factor for espionage. ‘Psi’ isn’t suited to such a concrete activity—it couldn’t possibly be reliable enough because even the best psychics have blind spots and make errors.”
“I don’t believe in any of it,” persists Alice stoutly, as loyal to Great-Aunt Beatrice as I am to Great-Uncle Cuthbert—ye gods, what power these eccentric old monsters acquire when they rescue abandoned children! I perfectly understand why Alice feels compelled to adopt a blind faith in disbelief, but I understand too that Alice, whether she likes it or not, has a psychic gift that she’s repressed. However, with the great-aunt out of the way, it at last has the chance to open up—and to put her right on Nicholas’s wave-length. She and Nicholas are two of a kind, I see that now.
I’m horrified.
COMMENT: Thank God Alice is a plain girl with no sex-appeal. But wait a minute. If she’s got psychic potential has she also got physical potential? Let me try to see her in a way that censors out the fat.
That means I have to reverse my usual order of priorities. Instead of noting (a) bosom, (b) legs, (c) bottom and (d) face, I’ve got to start with the face and ignore the rest. An intriguing challenge! But let’s have a go.
Alice has dark hair, which shines nicely when it’s washed, and she’s got those velvety-brown doggish eyes which could be more flatteringly described as doe-like. She has white, even teeth—she’s a non-smoker, of course—and a wide, appealing smile. She’s got an extremely well-endowed bosom, and—no, hold the censored portrait right there. What do I see? I see a potential version of the type of woman Nicholas misbehaved with in his disturbed preordination days. When I first met Nicholas in 1968 and helped him sort himself out he told me exactly what his preferred type of woman was. “I like steamy brunettes,” he said. Then he went and married a blonde who wouldn’t remind him of the girls with whom he�
��d sown his wild oats. Big mistake. I never wanted him to marry that woman. And now he’s been married for twenty years and he’s at that dangerous age, the mid-forties, and …
Do I hear the Devil knocking at the door?
Triple-hell! Alice will have to go. The situation’s too dangerous. I know it’s too dangerous, but how will I ever convince Nicholas? He’ll think I’m just a nutty old coot, paranoid about women. Damn it, he’s already accused me of demonising Francie!
I mustn’t rush this. I’ve got to take my time and tread very carefully.
Dear little Alice, what a shame. I’m really very fond of her …
Friday, 18th November, 1988: I was going to write PUSSYFOOTING WITH VENETIA at the top of this entry and underline it in red ink to mark my joie de vivre. I was looking forward so much to doing that. I was looking forward to doing so many things, few of them realistic. Well, we all have our dreams that can never come true.
I don’t want to record what happened but I know I’ve got to try. I always regard writing this journal as a form of therapy. There’s a healing dimension to it. Or there can be, if one’s not feeling too beaten up to be healed. So …
I meet Venetia at the Hilton, as arranged. She looks very smart in magenta, hips curving, legs flashing, Medusa locks spun around her head in rakish, snakish coils. Diamonds everywhere as usual. Eyelids sagging with false eyelashes. In other words she’s looking exactly what she is: a true British eccentric.
I lurch in bumpily on my crutches and probably look like a centenarian escaping from an old people’s home. I’m also in some degree of pain—not arthritic pain, thank God, but the pain of using muscles which have become unfamiliar and a hip which doesn’t yet seem to belong to me. I don’t mind the pain but I do mind the lurching. I mind it very much.
“My God!” exclaims Venetia appalled. “Was the retreat rather more than you bargained for?”
“I suppose it was. I kept wishing you were there with twigs.”
She laughs before demanding: “What happened?”
“I hope that one day I can tell you the whole story, but meanwhile—alas!—my lips are sealed.”
The Wonder Worker Page 20