The Wonder Worker

by Susan Howatch

  I liked being in control. I liked it when I built up my floral consultancy business to such a pinnacle that I wound up controlling not only the consultancy but three shops as well. By owning the shops I had more control over the flowers. Soon I was controlling lawyers, accountants, bank managers and the people I employed to give me the time to control everything. The irony was that I myself was not a trained florist. My only qualification was a flower-arranging diploma acquired at finishing school, but that didn’t matter because my primary talent wasn’t for flower-arranging but for management. I adored the power-plays, the cut and thrust of business life, the challenges met and overcome. Nothing and no one slipped through the net and escaped being managed by me. The shy little mouse had evolved into a sabre-toothed predator, and I shall never forget the orgiastic excitement I experienced when I finally sold the business after jacking up the price to the right figure.

  Why did I sell? I somehow felt uneasy after the crash of ’87. Of course the market rapidly recovered, but … well, no boom can go on for ever, can it? Better to get out while the going was good, and besides, I had a vague feeling that I wanted to go in a different direction—although what that direction was I still, even after several months of reflection, had no clear idea. Meanwhile it was nice to rest on my laurels, contemplate my bank balance with satisfaction and reflect how amazed Daddy would have been by my success.

  Mummy wouldn’t have been surprised in the least. She always said I was a “sticker” and not a “bolter.” Phyllida was a bolter who had run away from boarding school in a fit of pique, but I was a sticker and I’d stuck it out and done well. Mummy knew then that I was as tough as she was, and when I pulled off the supreme feat of “marrying well” she was in ecstasy. Nicky’s father was a clergyman with no money and no background, but Nicky’s mother was a Barton-Woods, the first family in our part of the world, and she had inherited not only the family manor house but also a large estate. After she died both were eventually let, but although Nicky always said he’d return there one day, I didn’t believe he ever would. He would be quite unsuited to life as a country squire, and anyway all he wanted was to swan around London practising that ghastly ministry of healing.

  I don’t mean to imply Nicky was entirely averse to country life. He was quite capable of enjoying his weekends in Surrey, and he particularly enjoyed sleeping with me after his solitary nights during the week. That suited me very well. I liked sex. I always saw copulation as a satisfactory method of rebelling against Mummy, who regarded “sex” as another taboo word, even worse than “anger.” I didn’t like orgasms much, but once I’d worked out how to be in control of them, that little difficulty was taken care of. Needless to say, I never told Nicky the truth about that tiresome mini-blot on the sexscape. He might have wanted to take control by “fixing” me, and anyway, why go looking for trouble? The idea that a married couple should have no secrets from each other, even when the secrets involve sex, has always seemed to me not only stupid but obscene.

  Nicky liked sex too, and when he made the effort he could be really good at it, but nowadays he often failed to make the effort. I was unsure why. Was it because of his age? Or because his ministry was becoming increasingly exhausting? Or because he had lost a certain degree of interest in me? Or because he secretly disliked my success as a businesswoman? There was no denying that he was forty-five—forty-six on Christmas Eve—and that he worked very hard and that we had, after all, been married for twenty years, but I did wonder if the main problem was my career. It’s hard for a man when his wife becomes unexpectedly successful, and although Nicky’s delight and admiration were genuine enough I thought that on a primitive, unconscious level he might be nurturing various resentments. I certainly nurtured various resentments when he just banged away without finesse, but of course I never said anything to him. Well, women never can say anything in those circumstances, can they? Not if they value peace and quiet in the home. Men are so sensitive about their sexual prowess that the whole subject is fraught with danger. To complain is to risk an angry response, and once anger rears its ugly head anything can happen. The whole scene might go right out of control.

  Sex, with or without finesse, would usually conclude our enjoyable Saturdays, and then we’d be all set for our more religious but almost equally enjoyable Sundays. We would start by lying in bed and reading the papers, but by ten-thirty we’d be among the congregation in the village church for the weekly parish Eucharist. I always went to church with Nicky and I always took Communion, although in fact I’d ceased to be religious long ago. I didn’t exactly disbelieve in God, but by this time he seemed irrelevant. However, assuming he existed—and I felt it was always best to be on the safe side—I had no desire to make him angry by failing to go through the right motions, and besides, if one’s married to a clergyman one really does have a moral duty to go to church once a week to be supportive. I had never found it easy to be married to an Anglo-Catholic but if necessary I could even tolerate Romish practices. Lewis Hall, dreadful old man, was very Romish, but luckily Nicky was what was now called a liberal Catholic and I found I could put up with that much more easily. My family were churchgoing Anglicans but Protestant, and we always felt traditional Anglo-Catholicism to be deeply unpatriotic.

  After Sunday church came Sunday lunch and we were often invited out. In the afternoon we might go for another walk and after tea we would usually make love again. Nicky left Butterfold at nine and would be back in the Rectory soon after ten. The journey by car was easy at off-peak hours.

  When the boys were home for the holidays our routine was different as we tended to do things together as a family. There would be outings and expeditions, since Nicky did at least try to make up for his frequent absences. Lovemaking would get cut back or indulged in at odd hours, usually in the mornings as the boys, like most teenagers, enjoyed sleeping late. Nicky never seemed to know quite what to say to the boys and I’d become tense. He and Benedict were currently going through a bad patch because Benedict wanted to rebel against Nicky’s world-view just as I had longed all those years ago to rebel against my mother’s taste in clothes. I understood Benedict but Nicky didn’t. Benedict was gregarious and sporty and racy and adventurous—he was like Phyllida and like my father’s sister Aunt Esmé. He was fun! But Nicky thought he was stupid and shallow—although of course he had taken care never to say so to me.

  Nicky was no cleverer with Antony either. If only Nicky could have seen that Antony was different from Benedict, but Nicky never saw Antony properly because he was so absorbed in thinking what a problem Benedict was. Antony was neglected. Unfortunately he too bore no resemblance to Nicky, but he was like me. He was basically quiet and shy but copied glamorous Benedict just as I used to copy glamorous Phyllida, and this aping would get on Nicky’s nerves. I worried terribly about all these tensions and often wondered where the troubles would end, but there was no one to whom I could turn for help. Once I did try talking to Phyl but she just said impatiently: “Oh, brace up, Ros, for God’s sake, and don’t be such a wimp!” and at once I felt I’d let the side down.

  But now I knew I had to have a rest, not just from that souldestroying spirit which built the Empire but from all manner of exhausting problems which I couldn’t master. My life during the week had become a desert since the sale of my business, while my life at weekends had apparently become so fraught that I could no longer face sex. Obviously I was approaching some sort of mega-crisis. Could I be on the brink of a nervous breakdown? Absolutely not. Breakdowns were for wimps, and anyway no one in our family ever broke down. It wasn’t the done thing.

  But there was no denying I was currently behaving like a wimp. God, I couldn’t even work out how to avoid sex for the rest of the weekend! Obviously something had to be done quickly before a nightmare scenario unfolded in which I lost control of the situation altogether and went bananas.

  Staggering out of bed I reached for my Filofax and tried to convince myself I was about to make some efficient
, sensible decisions.

  V

  I began by looking through the addresses. It had occurred to me that what I really needed to do was to get right away from Butterfold for at least three days in order to think. A change of scenery well away from Nicky would not only stimulate my flaking brain but would with luck produce a detachment which would enable me to visualise a viable future.

  My fingers drifted to a halt in their journey through my Filofax as it then dawned on me that I had to resist the temptation to stay with friends. To get my brain ticking over briskly I had to be alone. Moreover, it was important that I didn’t tell Nicky, because once he knew something was definitely wrong he’d be buzzing around trying to “fix” me. Eventually, of course, I’d have to enlighten him, but by that time I would have “fixed” myself. The whole point of beating my brains out in solitary confinement was that I had to work out how to tell Nicky without sending him into orbit and driving us both round the bend.

  There was no problem about disappearing for three days between weekends. Nicky and I seldom spoke during the week, and if I left the appropriate non-committal message on my answering machine to cover all callers … My thoughts slithered on, twisting and turning as I worked out how to guard my privacy without arousing suspicion.

  Having made the decision to flee on Monday I then had no alternative but to solve the problem of how to survive the rest of the weekend, and finally I pretended to be ill. I cancelled the lunch-party we were due to attend, and languished in bed with a Ruth Rendell mystery while Nicky brought me tea on a tray plus a little vase containing a very late flowering, boudoir-pink St. Swithun rose. The weather was about to give a death-blow to the flowers which bloomed till late autumn and the rose did look distinctly wan, but I thought it was so nice of Nicky to want to cheer me up by bringing me something beautiful from the garden. In fact he was so nice and so kind that as soon as he had left the room I plunged fathoms deep into depression. How could I conceive of leaving him? But that was the problem. I couldn’t conceive of it yet it had to be done and that was exactly why I was going away to beat my brains out and come up with a viable plan. Sternly I reminded myself how utterly impossible he was as a husband.

  I’d discovered soon after the wedding that Nicky wasn’t very clever at being married. The problem was his compulsion to pour himself out into his ministry and be wonderful to everyone in sight. There was little space in his life, I soon realised, for a wife and virtually none for children. The problem was that he had had an off-beat upbringing; although he had been much loved his parents had been preoccupied with their own lives and he had emerged from childhood with little idea what a normal family life was like. When the children were small he was appalled by the noise and mess they generated. I suspected that his inability to cope with this disruption was the primary reason why he had escaped into a chaplaincy which, unlike a parish job, meant he didn’t have to work from home. Sometimes, seeing how ill-at-ease he was with family life, I thought he should never have married at all, but of course as a clergyman he had to marry in order to have a sex-life. Perhaps, realising how difficult marriage would be for him, he had felt he could only risk a trip to the altar with a friend who could be trusted not to bolt when the going got tough.

  When we were engaged I had found myself wondering more than once why he wanted to marry me. I’d always wanted to marry him, but my motives were easier to understand. I was so mousey while Mummy was alive that I had no boyfriends who were seriously interested in me and I often felt frustrated by my inability to attract the opposite sex. Nicky was the only young man who showed me affection, and even then his affection was mostly fraternal. He was rather plain in his youth. He was too thin and he had to wear spectacles, but even in his plain days he had a fluent, easy way of moving which made him stand out from the crowd, and as the years passed the plainness stealthily diminished. By the time he was forty and able to give up wearing glasses he had an excellent figure and a subtle sex-appeal which was all the more lethal for not being obvious. With his unremarkable brown hair and pale eyes and angular features he was hardly classically handsome, but these low-key looks formed the perfect backdrop to his powerful, hypnotic personality.

  Before we were married he did tell me he had been “a bit wild” with various members of the fast set who had adopted him when he was younger, but he swore this period of his life was now past. He still maintained his friendships with the survivors but soon they too were settling down and becoming respectable—except for that wreck Venetia Hoffenberg. I didn’t care for his friendship with that woman at all, but long periods would go by when they never saw each other and in the end I convinced myself she was no threat to my peace of mind. I’ve no time for losers who when the going gets tough just chuck in the sponge and drink themselves silly. When the going gets tough the tough should damned well get going—as I intended to do if only I could get my act together and stop being such a dithering wimp.

  I got my act together speedily when Nicky moved to St. Benet’s, and my God, some tough decisions needed to be made then to keep the marriage from disintegrating! I knew straight away that he’d never be able to cope with his family if we were living at the Rectory and getting under his feet, so I said the City was an impossible place to bring up children and I worked out the blueprint for the split-level marital life in which he and I were apart during the week and together at weekends. The scheme was a brilliant success, although sometimes I thought I might die of loneliness. But I solved that problem, didn’t I, by starting my own business and working so hard that I had no time for wimpish self-pity. If you don’t like a situation you should change it. You’ve got to get on top of problems, control them before they can control you.

  But how could I control a divorce? That was the question. If things got out of hand … No, it was better not to think of that, and I had to stop myself thinking of Mummy too. I had to make up my mind not to hear her saying: “You’ve got to stick to your marriage. You’ve got to play the game and not let the side down.” But it was impossible not to hear those words. I couldn’t shut them out, and although in my head I screamed at her: “But I’ve put up and shut up for long enough, and I can’t take the unhappiness any more!” Mummy just said tight-lipped: “No shouting, Rosalind, please, and no scenes. We don’t behave like that in our family.”

  The forbidden anger turned inwards. Dragging the duvet over my head I squeezed my eyes shut to control the tears and despised myself for my lack of Empire-building spirit.

  VI

  Well, I got over that. Despair’s for wimps. Telling myself I had to postpone all thought of the future until Monday, I bent my will towards surviving the weekend.

  When I awoke the next morning I pretended I was still unwell and Nicky went to church without me. The closing of the front door seemed to give my brain a welcome jolt, and suddenly, after all the hours of brain-dead torpor, I thought of the ideal bolt-hole.

  It was a holiday cottage which belonged to a couple who had once been friends of ours, although nowadays I never saw the two of them together because the husband had degenerated into a nasty piece of work and neither Nicky nor I could stand him. It was the wife who remained my friend, and unknown to Nicky I met her regularly for lunch. The secrecy was because she was my mole at St. Benet’s. I was fairly sure Nicky was too immersed in his work to have the energy to be unfaithful, but the prudent wife of a one-time wonder worker should always be well informed about any groupie who tries to muscle in on her territory.

  Propping myself up on the pillows I reached once more for my Filofax and phoned my old pal, Francie Parker.

  6

  Anger can disrupt our emotional as well as our physical health. Anger within may well cause depression. In particular, depressive reactions to crises like divorce … have been linked to anger seeking expression.

  GARETH TUCKWELL AND DAVID FLAGG

  A Question of Healing

  I

  Francie and I had met at finishing school longer ago than
either of us now cared to remember. I had wanted to stay on at boarding school and do A-levels but Mummy had thought that would be a waste of time as all I needed to know for my future as a Nice Girl, destined for marriage and motherhood, was how to cook decently and arrange flowers with flair. I took my revenge by refusing to go to finishing school in Switzerland. Daddy, who had been hiding behind The Times when this polite altercation had taken place, supported me when I said I hated “Abroad,” but the truth was that I hated the idea of being compared to Phyllida and found wanting. Phyl had cut a terrific dash in Switzerland and had had a passionate but unconsummated affair with an Italian prince who had wanted to buy her oodles of clothes in Paris. Aping Mummy I said this was all very vulgar, but in private I was madly jealous.

  “Francie darling!” I exclaimed, wrenching my mind back to the present as she answered the phone. “It’s Rosalind. How are you?”

  “Rosalind!” Francie sounded a trifle bouleversée, as Phyl would have put it after the racy year in Switzerland. “Darling, what a surprise! Why aren’t you in church with Mr. Glamour-Puss?”

  “Why aren’t you in church yourself, you old slacker?”

  “I’m too busy enjoying Harry’s absence! He’s gone to Hong Kong for a few days and I must say it’s rather heavenly without him—no one complaining if I get the sections of the Sunday Times muddled or if the roast beef isn’t pink in just the right places. My dear, what we girls have to put up with from these ultra-successful men …”