The Wonder Worker

by Susan Howatch

  VII

  He came after me as I stood trembling at the kitchen sink, but when I told him to keep his distance he remained by the door. I concentrated on taking deep breaths to fight off the nausea, and eventually, when I remained silent, he said in a level, reasonable voice: “Although I would deny the truth of that accusation, I do concede that in trying to care for you to the best of my ability I’ve nevertheless managed to get a lot wrong. Well, I’m very sorry and now I want to redeem my mistakes by putting everything right.”

  “Of course you’re going to say that,” I said, clutching the edge of the sink so hard my fingers ached. “That’s the Christian game, isn’t it? You confess, you repent, you’re forgiven, and then everything’s a glorious resurrection, but I’m sorry, I’m not playing that game any more and I don’t want this marriage to be resurrected. I want—I need—”

  He suddenly let his anger show. “Oh, ‘I’—‘I’—‘I’! Rosalind, have you any idea how fantastically egotistical you sound? Unless you draw the line now your self-centredness is going to make a lot of people—including yourself—very miserable!”

  “Don’t you bloody preach to me!” I cried, but I was rattled. Violent anger certainly demolishes me but I’m also no good at coping with scenes when non-violent anger is on open display. I have to have the anger muzzled and veiled. That’s what I’ve always been used to and that’s what I can handle competently. Naked anger knocks me off balance.

  “I’ll damn well do as I choose!” shouted Nicky, careful to sound angrier than ever. Of course he knew exactly how disconcerting this was for me. “Why shouldn’t I preach to you? Good preaching means telling a few home truths about reality, and a few home truths about reality are obviously just what you need to hear!”

  “Don’t shout at me, don’t shout—”

  “Shut up! Now just you listen to me! You accused me of realising myself at the expense of our sons, but what do you think you’ll be doing if you smash up our marriage? In fact how can you even think of doing this to the boys?”

  “But they’d be all right! They’d go on living with me at Butterfold and the disruption would be minimal—”

  “Rosalind, I don’t know what corner of cloud-cuckoo-land you’re inhabiting, but I suggest you come back to earth right now and stop messing around with this very dangerous fantasy. You have two adolescent sons, one very disturbed, the other shaping up to go the same way, and yet you casually propose to sever them from any masculine influence in the home! Okay, I know I’m not the world’s most perfect parent, but even though I haven’t been around as much as I should have been, those boys know I care about them, they know I’m utterly committed to their welfare, and no matter how much they whine at some of my decisions, they know I’m never going to realise myself at their expense, wash my hands of them and walk out. So if you think I’m going to sit back and let you deprive Benedict and Antony of the love and security I represent—”

  Guilt instantly exacerbated my burgeoning panic. “But you’d have visiting rights! I’d never, never do anything which would harm Benedict and Antony—”

  “Then why are you talking of smashing up the marriage? Can’t you see that if you do that you’ll smash up the boys?”

  “Oh, but—”

  “I think it’s time you took a long, hard look at yourself, Rosalind, I really do. You’ve been ready enough to criticise me, but I think if you turn the spotlight on your own behavior, honesty will force you to admit you’re not entirely without blame yourself! For instance, you’ve convinced yourself that I was the one who wasn’t able to cope with family life at St. Benet’s, but in fact the non-coper was you, wasn’t it? You couldn’t face life in London without at least an acre of garden to nurture! And talking of nurturing, what about your shortcomings as a mother? If you hadn’t spoilt Benedict so rotten, Antony wouldn’t have felt compelled to imitate him to gain your attention! You never had a clue how to deal with them sensibly—in fact if you hadn’t secretly been more interested in bringing up flowers than bringing up children, those boys wouldn’t be the rowdy yobs they are at the moment and my job as a father trying to repair the damage you’ve caused would be one hell of a lot less tedious and painful!”

  I had no strength left to fight. He’d drained it all out of me, drop by drop, with vilely skilled precision. I felt trumped, tricked, trashed and trounced.

  Breaking away again I burst into tears and ran sobbing back to the living-room.

  VIII

  I fought for self-control and lost. I felt as if I were drowning in a rising tide of guilt and grief, and now all I wanted was to escape to some private haven where I could abandon myself to despair, but no escape was possible because Nicky was on the brink of shoring up his victory. Slumping down beside me on the sofa as I wept, he gathered me into his arms and I no longer had the strength to push him away.

  That was the moment when I knew my brief, brave sprint for freedom was over. I was to be comforted, counselled, remodelled, “fixed.” In the end I would be just another name on Nicky’s long list of successfully treated clients, just another testament to his powers as a healer. And that would be a happy ending, wouldn’t it? Obviously I’d spent years being a selfish wife, refusing to share his ministry, and a rotten mother, capable only of producing rowdy yobs. If anyone needed “fixing” I did.

  The awful thing was that I knew these desolate thoughts were a gross travesty of the truth, but I found myself powerless to repudiate them. All decent mothers suffer agonies of guilt if their children become troublesome, and I’d often worried myself sick by wondering how far I was to blame for the boys’ problems. By zeroing in on my guilt and magnifying it, Nicky had converted my shortcomings into a burden which I couldn’t, in my present shattered state, throw off. The result was that I could only think: yes, I must abandon any idea of divorce or else the boys will be destroyed and I’ll wind up being the worst mother in the world.

  I thought of Mummy talking of soldiering on and keeping a stiff upper lip. I thought of Daddy playing the game and not letting the side down as he endured silently behind his newspaper. How could I even think of desecrating their memory by chucking in the towel and doing a runner? A deserting wife was beyond the pale. A deserting wife could only be condemned. A deserting wife had lost control.

  My whole body seemed to throb with shame as my upbringing finally reclaimed me. I couldn’t withstand it. My defences had been destroyed and my will had been broken. All I could do now was to lie like a lump in Nicky’s arms and listen, wet-eyed and passive, as he talked in the gentlest and most soothing of voices.

  “Now darling, don’t despair,” he was saying. “We’re going to get over this. The thing to do is to take one step at a time, and the first step is to end this split-level way of being married—we must be together during the week as well as at weekends, and what I suggest is that we begin by living together at the Rectory until the boys come home for the holidays. We’ll have to spend the holidays in accordance with the old regime because we certainly don’t have time for radical reorganisation before mid-December, but if you now come back with me to London you could make a start on planning how to adapt the Rectory for family life.”

  He paused, waiting for a comment, but when none came he continued with increasing confidence: “During the holidays we can involve the boys in our new plans—the change should be presented to them as exciting, a move which will give them a lot of interesting opportunities. Then when they return to school in the new year you can go ahead with renovating the Rectory, making plans for the garden and so on … Okay, I know the garden’s a wilderness at the moment and I know how inferior it must seem to the garden at Butterfold, but it’s got great potential, and there are two unused rooms next to Alice’s flat—they could be thrown into one to make a garden room for your plants. The boys, of course, will need their games-room but that’s all right, we can divide the curate’s flat; there’s no need for Stacy to have so much space. Yes, I can see the house taking shape … and
we’ll be together at last, just as we should be. It’s the split-level living that’s undermined us but once we put a stop to that we’ll be on our way to a much better relationship.” Kissing my cheek lightly he gave me a reassuring squeeze.

  I managed to whisper: “And Butterfold?”

  “We’ll keep the farmhouse as a second home,” he said at once. “I know how much it means to you, and besides, we’ll still want to escape to the country sometimes, particularly during the summer.”

  “I suppose … I suppose there’s no question of you leaving St. Benet’s in the immediate future?”

  “None. It’s going from strength to strength. Incidentally, I don’t know if you’ve had any ideas yet about what you want to do next, but there’s plenty of opportunities for voluntary work at the Healing Centre, and—”

  “Yes.”

  “—and I’m sure we could use your special gifts in some creative way. On the other hand,” he added rapidly as he failed to detect any sign of an enthusiastic response, “if you wanted to return to domesticity—” He broke off.

  I waited before it suddenly dawned on me that he was having trouble phrasing his next suggestion. Memories of a very awkward subject surfaced, triggered by the concept of domesticity, and at once I tried to turn the conversation elsewhere. “I shall enjoy taming the garden,” I said feverishly. “Would I need to get permission from the Archdeacon if I wanted to build a conservatory?”

  But Nicky’s thoughts were far from conservatories and he refused to be diverted. “Look,” he said urgently, “I know you’ve always been cool in the past when we’ve discussed the possibility of having another child, but I see clearly now why you were against the idea. You thought, didn’t you, that I wouldn’t be around enough to give you the necessary support, but if we now eliminate the split-level life—if our marriage moves into a new phase—if you were to fancy a return to domesticity—”

  “No, Nicky. I’m sorry, but no.”

  “Well, I realise we’re both a bit old for that sort of thing, but women often have babies when they’re over forty these days, it’s not unusual—”

  “It’s not unusual but in my case it’s impossible,” I said flatly, so unnerved by this time that I could do nothing but blurt out the truth. “I had myself sterilised four years ago when I went into hospital for that D and C, and there’s no way I’m going to try to reverse the operation.”

  IX

  He stared at me in stupefaction.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated, stumbling over my words, “but I just couldn’t face discussing it with you.”

  “But why on earth did you do it?”

  “I got fed up with contraception.”

  “But I would have taken on the contraception!”

  “I didn’t trust you not to want to skip it every now and then. I knew you always wanted a daughter because you were so disappointed in your sons.”

  “I was never disappointed in them!”

  “Oh yes, you were, Nicky! Oh yes, you were!”

  “I admit I’m sorry neither of them share my interests, but—”

  “Sorry? You’re devastated! In fact only someone irrationally upset on the subject of offspring would suggest that we should have another child in these particular circumstances!”

  “Forgive me, but I’m not prepared to be diverted by these wild accusations—I’m still reeling from this truly appalling disclosure and I still don’t understand why you decided to be sterilised. You couldn’t just have done it because you were fed up with contraception!”

  “Well, I did. I hated taking all those hormones and then I hated risking a perforated uterus with the coil and then I hated scrabbling around with a diaphragm—and anyway, it was my body! Why shouldn’t I have my tubes tied if I wanted to?” Sheer fright was making me sound much more belligerent than I really was, but the effect of the belligerence was disastrous.

  “I can’t believe you could have been so criminally selfish!” exclaimed Nicky, turning on the anger again. “That’s the kind of behaviour which gives the Women’s Movement a bad name! You’re talking as if you exist in isolation from everyone else and owe nothing to anyone but yourself!”

  “Well, that was how I felt after being married for all those years to you!” I shouted, determined now not to collapse again in the face of his anger, and in consequence becoming uncharacteristically shrill.

  “What a cheap remark! Damn it, this confession of yours makes me wonder what else you’ve concealed over the years! Have you ever had a lover?”

  “No, of course not!”

  “That’s the wrong answer. You should have said: ‘Don’t be stupid!’ and looked hurt!”

  “Well, I’m saying: ‘No, of course not,’ and I hope I’m looking bloody furious!” I was in better control of myself now. I’d remembered that attack was the best form of defence, and that enabled me to harness my anger so that it became an asset instead of a handicap. “And what about you?” I demanded. “What have you been keeping quiet about during the last twenty years? I noticed earlier, when I said I always felt I loved you more than you loved me, that you never came right out and said you’d always been faithful!”

  “I didn’t think it was necessary! And anyway it’s not true to say you always loved me more than I loved you!”

  “Oh yeah? Would you be able to swear on the Bible that you’ve been faithful to me since the day we married?”

  “Well, of course I would! Don’t be ridiculous! I couldn’t sustain my ministry—particularly this ministry—unless I live as I should. If I were to start screwing around on the side I’d be finished, just as poor Lewis was back in 1983. You can’t lead a double-life and preserve your integrity—you can’t exploit others without damaging not only those others but yourself and maybe innocent bystanders as well. We’re all too interconnected for exploitation not to have an adverse effect somewhere along the line.”

  “Well, if we’re talking of exploitation—”

  “Okay, so you’ve been feeling exploited. But if I’d only known—”

  “So why the hell didn’t you know? The truth is, Nicky, you were never sufficiently interested to bother to imagine what I was feeling!”

  “The truth is I never dreamed you were capable of deceiving me on such a cosmic scale!”

  “Oh, for God’s sake! Just because I had a minor operation—”

  “Minor?”

  “I admit it had a major consequence, but technically—”

  “Forget it, all that really matters is that you deceived me. Now let’s hear about the other deceptions. If we’re going to start a new phase of our marriage, I’m not tolerating any no-go areas—”

  “There aren’t any.”

  “Of course I did wonder occasionally what you got up to down in Surrey while I was in London, but I always tried to have faith in you, I always willed myself to believe that for the boys’ sake, if not for mine, you wouldn’t go messing around with one of those bone-headed Surrey businessmen who can only talk about money—”

  I suddenly had an inspiration. If I confessed, he would back off. He would see that the marriage couldn’t possibly be continued. Reality would dawn. He’d come to his senses, accept a new vision of the future, release me. It was my one remaining chance of escape.

  Dizzy with fear again but driven on by desperation I interrupted: “All right, I’ll tell you. He was a Surrey businessman and he did talk about money, but he wasn’t bone-headed. He was my accountant, and he was shy and rather sweet. If you’d ever bothered to meet him you’d have written him off as dirt-common and dead-boring, but I liked him a lot. I only broke off the affair after the take-over because I felt he was getting too involved and I didn’t want things to get out of control.”

  I stopped. I’d been staring down at my hands, but the silence which followed my last sentence was so loud that I looked up. At once I saw Nicky was shattered. Evidently he had not after all suspected me of infidelity. The gibe about a lover had been a mere reflex, an automatic seek
ing of a reassurance which he had never seriously doubted would be forthcoming.

  Now it was my turn to be shattered. I stammered: “I’m sorry, I never intended—never wanted—you to know, but I was so lonely, you see, and you couldn’t share the business with me in any way, and Jim found my success so exciting—”

  “But I thought you said your accountant was a young man who’d only recently qualified!”

  “Yes, he was a lot younger than I was. I wouldn’t have had the courage to approach someone older. I wouldn’t have felt in control.”

  There was a deadly pause. Nicky’s face was very pale and set, his eyes slatey and expressionless.

  “I feel sorry for young men today,” I said, so driven to fill the terrible silence that I hardly cared what I said. “They’re so grateful to meet an older woman instead of the usual sex-mad teenage girl who expects them to know every position in the Kama Sutra and deliver multiple orgasms on demand.”

  A second, even deadlier pause began. All Nicky said when he broke it was: “How many others have there been?”

  “Only two. One was a young man I met last summer when I was organising the flowers for that enormous wedding down on the Sussex border, and the second was a young American I met by chance at Fortnum’s, but both affairs were very brief and I wouldn’t have wanted to prolong them.”

  Nicky looked away. Then suddenly, wholly unexpectedly, he wiped his eyes with his cuff, levered himself to his feet and blundered from the room.

  X

  My heart felt as if it was bursting. Groping my way forward, unable to see properly, I followed him upstairs and found him lying face down on the double-bed in the largest room. I lay beside him, my arm around his shoulders, and wept silently for a while. It was only when he tried to push my arm away that I managed to whisper: “I didn’t love any of them, but I felt so cut off from you and they made life bearable.” When he failed to reply I added in misery: “I know this means you can never trust me again and that going on with the marriage is impossible, but I do care for you, I always will, and I wouldn’t want us to wind up enemies.”