The Wonder Worker

by Susan Howatch

  Anyway there I was, abandoned at Butterfold Farm while Nicky drove back to London to rescue that nasty old brute, and as soon as Bryan and Patsy had departed, I sank down in tears at the kitchen table. My golden rule was never to cry in public—well, one never does, does one?—but by that stage of my marriage I was well accustomed to shedding a private tear or two.

  That night I shed many tears, and it was when I was mopping them up that I finally thought: I can’t go on.

  Yet I found I could do nothing with this statement except try to forget it because in our family women always did go on. They kept a stiff upper lip and they never complained because, as Mummy had always said, that was the spirit which had built the Empire. But in 1988 the beat of a very different drum was now thundering in my ears and I suddenly found myself asking the revolutionary question: what Empire?

  Then I knew my marriage had entered completely uncharted territory.

  II

  Later, in bed, I tried to imagine a different future, but the revolutionary drumbeat had by that time faded, blotted out by an upbringing which had taught me to believe the direst of fates awaited those who lost control of themselves and flouted the rules. To lose control in this way was the final horror; to lose control was the nightmare scenario.

  Turning my back on the future in panic I fled as fast as I could into the past.

  I found myself thinking of Lewis again. It was Lewis who had encouraged Nicky to enter the ministry of healing. Nicky’s father had never wanted that, but Nicky had always fancied it and Lewis had led him on. Lewis had eventually taught him how to conduct exorcisms, since the ministries of healing and so-called deliverance go hand in hand. I thought the whole subject of exorcism was revolting, but what could I do? Nicky’s father was dead by that time, and anyway, I wouldn’t have wanted to whinge, least of all to dear old Mr. Darrow. Good wives never whinged. Everyone knew that.

  I’d always tried to be supportive whenever Nicky had confided in me about the more peculiar side of his nature, but I had lived in the hope that becoming a clergyman would make him more normal. Some hope! He’d wound up on the Church’s lunatic fringe. To be honest, I’d hardly expected him to wind up in an episcopal palace, since he’d never been the slightest bit interested in being a bishop, but I’d hoped he might eventually become the rector of some mellow market town. I used to picture that town sometimes. I used to picture the blissful normality of it all: the big, old-fashioned Georgian rectory by the medieval church, the beautiful walled garden, the warm kitchen with the Aga … It would have been the perfect environment for bringing up the boys. But the dream never came true. As a curate Nicky hated parish work and as soon as he could he escaped to become a chaplain in a large general hospital. I just couldn’t understand why he wanted such a sordid, depressing job when he could have served God just as well in a beautiful market town. But of course I took care never to complain.

  Before Nicky was ordained in 1968 Lewis had founded a healing centre in our nearest city, and in those days this was considered a very daring experiment. Now that the healing ministry is so fashionable one forgets what an adventurous clergyman Lewis was back in the 1960s, but he was always very much on the margins of respectability and in 1983 he went off the rails, just as I’d always suspected he would. He got mixed up with some working-class woman who had wanted her council house exorcised. She was found murdered in the end, and it was just Lewis’s good luck that he had a cast-iron alibi. His car had been noticed during his regular visits to her house, and the police soon tracked him down. Naturally he was flung out of the diocese and naturally he wound up on the doorstep of St. Benet’s Rectory and naturally Nicky took him in. No doubt he felt he had to “fix” Lewis because back in 1968 when they had first met, Lewis had “fixed” him. That was when Nicky had been going through one of his many pre-ordination phases of being very peculiar indeed.

  Nicky had always had his peculiar side. He was perfectly sane and in many respects normal to the point of banality—all that Coca-Cola!—but he had his peculiar streak, and when he was peculiar he was creepy. There’s no doubt in my mind that some people are psychic and have paranormal experiences; one can’t live with a psychic and remain unaware of the off-beat incidents which disrupt the normal routine. I would never try to deny that Nicky was capable of foreknowledge; he had too often predicted some event which defied anticipation. Nor was there any point in denying he was capable of ESP; I had too often experienced incidents when he knew exactly what I was thinking even though we might be separated by a great distance. But I have always felt strongly that psychic powers should never be encouraged. That was why I was so outraged when Lewis decided to “train” Nicky after sorting him out in 1968. I did accept that Nicky had been going through a weird phase at the time and definitely needed some kind of help, but what he did not need was an eccentric exorcist adopting the role of guru. A good psychiatrist would have sorted out Nicky’s problems, which basically stemmed from the fact that his mother had died when he was fourteen and his very elderly father had found it hard to cope with him. But of course I took care never to voice this opinion to Nicky.

  Nicky’s “training” as an exorcist took place in the 1970s when he was becoming an experienced hospital chaplain, but the “training” in the proper use of his psychic powers came in 1968 around the time of his ordination. Nicky’s argument in favour of being “trained” was that as his psychic powers were running out of control and causing all manner of problems, he needed a fellow-psychic and a priest to teach him how to offer these powers to God and so ensure they were always used for the good. He said in 1968 that he’d ended up as a “wonder worker,” someone who used his special powers for his own aggrandisement, and this wonder worker had to be brought under control before he destroyed not only himself but those who came into contact with him. I was careful to receive this information politely and indeed I did see that he needed the discipline of the priesthood to keep him in order, but I still thought he should have stayed away from that ministry of healing. It was the ecclesiastical equivalent of a reformed alcoholic seeking a job in a pub. But of course I never said this to Nicky.

  I never said anything to Nicky which could have been interpreted as a criticism, a whinge or a complaint, although God knows, if any woman had cause to criticise, whinge or complain, I did. I thought of his decision to chuck up parish work without consulting me. I thought of his increasing involvement in the ministry of healing which had culminated in the move to London: the long hours, the frequent absences, the lame ducks, the sinister commissions—how can the Church still approve of exorcism?—and the neglect of his family. There were school prize-givings missed, although this didn’t matter since the boys weren’t academic, and sports-days overlooked, disasters which mattered very much indeed, since the boys were athletic. There were family holidays ruined because he was bored. There was my career, in which he had shown no genuine interest. There was—but why list all the grievances? Listing grievances constituted whingeing, and whingeing was for wimps. One just had to shut up and get on with it, whatever “it” was, because that was the spirit which had built the Empire.

  That bloody Empire …

  Suddenly I felt so unhappy, as I tossed and turned in bed that night after the wrecked dinner-party, that I felt more convinced than ever that I couldn’t stand my marriage a moment longer, but no matter how much I might curse the Empire, I still couldn’t imagine life without Nicky. We had been born in the same village and had become friends in kindergarten. The emotional connection between us now was so old and so deep that the idea of separation actually seemed not only impossible but inconceivable, and besides …

  I knew Nicky would never agree to let me go.

  III

  The truth was I was really rather frightened of him. I nearly always suppressed this fear—it was wimpish to be frightened—but occasionally it surfaced and gave me nightmares. Having lived most of my life with Nicky’s peculiarities I prided myself on taking them for granted, b
ut that indifference was only achieved by willing myself not to dwell on them too deeply. Once I dwelt on them my hair would stand on end. Luckily ESP can’t be switched on like a light, and Nicky’s complete confidence in my loyalty and devotion made him psychically blind to my discontent, but occasionally he would read my mind with uncanny accuracy and I hated the invasion of my private self.

  I hated too his hypnotic gifts, although nowadays I knew they were only used in his work and in strictly controlled surroundings. Is there anything more creepy than hypnosis? Perhaps only sleep-walking, another of Nicky’s weird traits, although this seldom surfaced nowadays and was always a sign that he was overstrained in some way. I was terrified of this trait because I’d read somewhere that sleep-walkers can occasionally kill people while they’re unconscious. Nicky commented once that if people killed when they were asleep they were bound to be pretty damned peculiar when they were awake, but I failed to be calmed by the thought of early warning signs. I found myself suffering a recurring dream in which a sleep-walking Nicky murdered the boys—although, of course, I never disclosed this dream to anyone, least of all Nicky. He would have thought I was getting neurotic. Sometimes I thought I was getting neurotic, although I knew I wasn’t. We never got neurotic in my family. It wasn’t the done thing so it never happened.

  To be fair to Nicky I have to admit his peculiarities often troubled him as much as they troubled me. I remember in particular when we were teenagers and he told me about the poltergeist activity he had triggered. Seeing how upset he was I held his hand and listened mutely, concealing my revulsion, and my reward came afterwards when he said gratefully: “I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have you to talk to, Rosalind.” I remember too, years later when we were in our mid-twenties and I’d agreed to marry him, he said urgently: “I’ve got to have someone normal, someone I can rely upon to stand by me, someone predictable.”

  He put a high value on predictability, that dead opposite of para-normality. Every day at kindergarten he would arrive with his teddy-bear, the sacred totem whom no one else was allowed to touch. “Bear always moves in the same way,” he said, showing me how the toy’s limbs could be manipulated, “and his eyes always have the same expression. Bear’s safe.” Other children tried to play with the bear but Nicky fought them off. Even now, more than forty years later, I could remember him screaming: “No one plays with my bear but me!”

  The other children became afraid of this consistent hostility and kept their distance. He was lonely but pretended not to be. “I like being alone,” he said when my nanny first brought me to play with him, but soon it became plain that he was more than willing to tolerate my company. I was shy, quiet, non-threatening. One day I was even allowed to stroke Bear. I almost swooned at the privilege, and that afternoon his nanny said to mine: “Rosalind’s very good for Nicholas.” His parents thought so too. Nicky might dream of evil spirits and “see” hobgoblins; he might talk in his weird way about “The Dark”; he might sleep-walk and have premonitions which made him scream in terror; but at least he had a nice normal little friend who was willing to hold his hand and make him feel safe.

  We kept in touch through adolescence but drifted apart when he went up to Cambridge and got mixed up with a fast crowd. That was when he became a wonder worker. I did go to one of the parties but was so appalled I never went to another. Nicky told fortunes and performed psychic parlour-tricks, some of which involved hypnosis. That was obscene. The worst loss of control I can imagine is being turned into a zombie and having my will vandalised. To me that’s the nightmare scenario to end all nightmare scenarios.

  He never again performed psychic parlour-tricks after his ordination in 1968, but I sometimes wondered how far the leopard had really changed his spots. He was a very devout Christian. There was no question about that. And he wanted only to be a good clergyman. There was no question about that either. But sometimes, although the career as a charlatan had been completely repudiated, I thought the wonder worker still lurked, like a caged beast, in the mud at the bottom of his personality. Occasionally I could sense this beast prowling around the cage and trying to escape. Then I’d feel frightened. But always the devout clergyman would step in to draw the curtain around the cage again, and the wonder worker would disappear from view.

  It was only when I was furious with Nicky that I’d call him a wonder worker, but I knew that nowadays he was an honest man, and this was the Nicky I still loved. I was frightened of Nicky the weirdo and revolted by Nicky the wonder worker, but I loved Nicky my lifelong companion and Nicky the respectable cleric. I just couldn’t stand him as a husband any more, that was the problem, and although I didn’t see how I was going to leave him I couldn’t see how I was going to go on living with him either.

  As the church clock struck two in the distance, I was still asking myself what the hell I could possibly do.

  But no answer sprang miraculously into my mind.

  IV

  Eventually I dozed in exhaustion but at six o’clock I was awakened as Nicky returned to the house and slid into bed beside me.

  “Darling—”

  “I’m not awake,” I said. “I’ve had a bad night.”

  He said he was very sorry to hear it, what a bore insomnia was, but he did just want to apologise again for abandoning the dinner-party—he knew how embarrassing his defection had been for me but he’d make amends, he’d devote himself to me for the rest of the weekend, we could do whatever I wanted, my wish was his command—and so on and so on. Curling himself around me and snuggling close, he finally concluded with a sigh: “At least I fixed Lewis. I hated going back but it really was the right decision.”

  I thought: not for me, Nicky. For Lewis, perhaps, but not for me. And not for you either.

  A moment later he was leaving the bed and pattering downstairs. He never needed much sleep and I assumed he had already snatched a few hours’ rest in London after rescuing Lewis. Later he brought me breakfast in bed, but although I tried to eat I found I had no appetite. I knew that as soon as breakfast was over he’d want to make love. That would be all part of making amends, but unfortunately I had no desire for amends to be made in that particular way. Sipping coffee I pretended to read the Saturday papers and tried to think of a suitable excuse for postponing sex, but my brain seemed to have turned to wool.

  “Are you all right?” said Nicky at last, knowing I wasn’t.

  “How fascinating—the gardening column’s talking about that pot-plant fatshedera!” I said with genuine interest. I liked the new trend of newspapers to billow into magazines at the weekend. “And fatsia too! Fancy!”

  “Look,” he said, ignoring my irrelevant rapture, “I know it was difficult for you last night and I know you must feel very angry with me, but—”

  “You know nothing of the kind! Nicky, I do so loathe it when you try to mind-read—and I loathe it even more when you get everything wrong. Just run off and stop agonising over me, would you? I’m still in a stupor through lack of sleep.”

  He sighed again and drifted away. I sagged with relief, but not forlong. I was too worried about how I was going to avoid sex for the rest of the weekend. Sex was always on the agenda somewhere.

  Nicky led a very predictable life when he came down to Butterfold at weekends. On Saturdays he wrote to the boys at school, wandered around the garden to see what had changed and tried to paint a water-colour. He was very bad at painting but he did it as a sort of therapy and I was careful to be kind about the distinctly peculiar results. He also spent time catching up with his reading. He read mostly books connected with Christianity, but he skimmed the occasional novel or biography as well. He prayed, of course, but always before I got up in the morning, so the habit never bothered me.

  On Saturdays we often had people to lunch or dinner, but by then he would have adjusted to Butterfold life and would be capable of normal social intercourse. In the afternoon, weather permitting, he’d go for a long walk. Sometimes I’d go with him, but if I
was preparing a dinner-party he’d go on his own. When I did go with him he seldom spoke. Nicky liked silence.

  If our evening was free we might dine out before watching a video. He liked to browse, tongue firmly in cheek, through the early James Bond films, or, better still, to gaze dreamily at reruns he had taped of The Avengers. This was Nicky’s favourite cult series, and during the 1960s he had been mesmerised by its star, Diana Rigg. Many were the times when I had sat hand in hand with him on the sofa and listened to him sighing as she appeared on the screen in her black leather catsuit. Diana Rigg was what he called “a steamy brunette.” When young I’d been so grateful to Nicky for marrying me despite the fact that I fell so far short of this sultry sexual ideal.

  In the 1960s he had tried to reassure me by saying: “I don’t care what you look like. I wouldn’t even care if you looked like the back end of a bus,” but later I felt this was a very backhanded compliment. Surely if one loved someone one did care what they looked like? Fortunately I never looked as plain as the back end of a bus, but I did look drab when I was young; it was my sister Phyllida who had all the boyfriends. Guided by Mummy I too often wound up wearing beige, and no local hairdresser in those days could solve the problems created by my baby-fine straight hair. It was only after Mummy died that I had the courage to go bouffant, get a rinse, wear shocking pink and make sure my stiletto heels were always several inches high. Phyl had taken to ignoring my mother’s chaste taste much earlier, but I never quite had the confidence to stand up to my mother. Neither did my father, hiding behind The Times at breakfast, hiding on the golf course at weekends, hiding at the office during the week. Poor Daddy—all that hiding! But of course he never complained. I never once heard my parents have a row. Anger was the great taboo in our family and no one was ever allowed to lose control and give in to it.