The Wonder Worker

by Susan Howatch

  At seven o’clock there was still no sign of Nicky and I put the oven on a low setting before buzzing Alice on the intercom to enquire if she knew when the men planned to resurface at the Rectory. I was told that an important meeting was taking place at the Healing Centre and was clearly taking longer than anyone had anticipated. Returning to the kitchen I fiddled again with the oven and then roamed around the living-room with increasing irritation until finally, at twenty-eight minutes past seven, the Rector of St. Benet’s-by-the-Wall deigned to appear. The first words he uttered were: “Why are you waiting up here? Alice is all set to dish up downstairs!”

  I was flabbergasted. “But I took it for granted that we wouldn’t be eating with the others!”

  “Why on earth did you take it for granted?”

  “Because I’m married to you and not to them!”

  “But Alice has made fish pie for five!”

  “Well, I’ve made honey-roasted breast of guinea fowl with glazed shallots for two!”

  “But why didn’t you tell Alice you were planning to do this?”

  “Oh, the hell with Alice!” I cried, by that time feeling thoroughly exasperated as well as unpleasantly nervous, and swigging back the wine in my glass I poured myself some more plonk with a trembling hand.

  Moving to the intercom Nicky buzzed the kitchen downstairs. “Lewis, I’ll be eating with Rosalind up here,” I heard him say.“Would you apologise to Alice, please, and say we’ll work out a system to ensure such a mix-up doesn’t happen again? Thanks.”

  Abandoning the intercom abruptly he opened the door of the refrigerator, ignored the plonk and extracted a can of Coke. “Okay,” he said, not looking at me. “Let’s eat.”

  I stormed over to the stove to fry the radicchio.

  When we eventually embarked on the meal he shovelled in his food with an undisguised lack of interest while I, having lost my appetite, pushed various fragments of my culinary masterpieces around a succession of plates and waited in vain for him to display at least a nominal politeness by complimenting me on my cooking.

  “Right,” he said at last at the end of the meal after he had retrieved another can of Coke from the kitchen. “What’s your problem? Obviously you’re upset.”

  “God, you’re just not in touch, are you! You’re gliding along totally disconnected with reality!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve just finished yobbishly wolfing a meal which I spent a great deal of time and trouble preparing—”

  “I’m sorry, it was good. Thank you. But what I meant was, what’s your real problem? I can feel your nerves screeching like a bunch of overstrung violins, and it can’t be just because I was so hungry that I hit the food without drenching you with compliments.”

  “The problem’s you, Nicky.”

  “Are you trying to say that just because I stuffed down that rather good fried rabbit-food and that very sexy bird which had smeared itself with honey—”

  “I’m not talking about that. You know I’m not talking about that. I’m saying the problem is that you’re not facing up to the truth here.”

  “What truth?”

  “This reconciliation isn’t going to work, Nicky. I’m very sorry, but we made a mistake down in Devon and I’m going back to Butterfold tomorrow.”

  He went white. For a moment I thought he was too shocked to reply but then he said very distinctly: “I’m not going to let you do this. You’ve got it all totally wrong.”

  “No, I’m the one who’s got it right!”

  “You? Got it right? You’re proposing to smash up your marriage, your family and your entire life and you’re telling me you’ve got it right?”

  “Nicky, I know this is hard for you, but if you could only listen to me for a moment instead of—”

  “You’re obviously very sick,” he said, “much sicker than I thought. But don’t worry, I’m going to put things right. I’m going to heal you.”

  I was terrified.

  IV

  I said panic-stricken, stumbling over my words: “If you start trying to manipulate me again I’ll never forgive you.”

  “Oh, don’t be so ridiculous! There was no manipulation in Devon—I just showed you the truth, and the truth was you were trying to make a catastrophic mistake!”

  “Nicky—”

  “Okay, let’s calm down while I try to understand why you want to abandon the decisions you made yesterday. Are you willing to calm down and conduct this conversation sensibly?”

  “Well, of course! That’s what I want, but—”

  “Fine. In that case, let’s take a moment to review what you decided in Devon. One: you agreed that our marriage needed to be restructured since the split-level life we’ve been leading since 1981 was clearly no longer working. Two: you agreed that the Rectory should be our primary home but that we should keep the farmhouse as a country retreat. And three: you agreed to stay at the Rectory until the school holidays begin in order to explore how it can best be turned into a family home. Now, would you say that was an accurate summary of what took place?”

  “No. I didn’t actually agree to anything. You just steamrollered me into coming here, and this morning I suddenly realised—”

  “Why do you now think you can’t live at the Rectory?”

  “Because I want to live full-time in my own home! Is that so unreasonable?”

  “But I never suggested we should sell Butterfold! I suggested—”

  “The farmhouse is quite unsuited to be a second home, Nicky—it requires too much daily attention. Anyway I’m not prepared to relegate it in that way—I love that house, my whole life’s bound up with it—”

  “You’re making an idol of bricks and mortar and worshipping it!”

  “But it’s my home! Surely—”

  “Home is where the people you love are. Good heavens, think of all the clerical wives who regularly accompany their husbands from job to job and would never dream of whingeing like this!”

  “Well, even if I was willing to leave Butterfold I wouldn’t want to live here in this horrible house! It would cost thousands to make it even partially decent!”

  “I’m prepared to spend the money—my money, not yours—on having the place renovated. I’ll do anything you want in order to make you happy here.”

  “Would you get rid of Lewis, Stacy and Alice?”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re cluttering up the landscape and making it impossible for me to turn this house into our family home!”

  “What nonsense! There’s room here for everyone—and anyway their presence is absolutely essential!”

  “But Lewis informed me this morning—”

  “Yes, he told me exactly what he’d said to you, but I saw straight away that he was just making a quixotic, unselfish attempt to put our welfare before his own. The truth is it would be quite wrong for me to turn Lewis out; he needs to live among other people because if he’s on his own he’ll get in a mess. And the same applies to Stacy, who’s still not adjusted properly to life away from that family of his. Stacy needs special care at the moment—and so does Alice. What you’re completely failing to understand is that we’re not just a bunch of independent individuals—we’re a group of interdependent people living in community, and we all support each other. If you weren’t so hung up on self-centred individualism—”

  “Oh, shut up! If you weren’t so hung up on the power you’re getting out of managing this group of lame-duck losers, you’d see your family ought to come first on your list of priorities, and if you think the boys and I will ever be happy, confined to this ghastly flat because the rest of the house is being used to accommodate your lame ducks—”

  “Ghastly flat? Have you any idea, Rosalind, any idea at all how some people in this city have to live? This flat has four bedrooms, two reception rooms, a kitchen, a bathroom and a lavatory. Convert the fourth bedroom into an extra bathroom and the place will be perfectly adequate for our needs—and don’t
forget you can still have a garden-room downstairs and the boys can still have a games-room in the attic. What on earth have you got to complain about? You should be excited—stimulated—brimming over with creative ideas!”

  “Well, I’m not. The rock-bottom truth is—”

  “The City’s a great place! There’d be so many opportunities for you to build a new life here! For instance, if you could only try to take part in the life of St. Benet’s—”

  “I’m not churchy. You know that. It’s just not my scene.”

  “But why shouldn’t it be? We have a dynamic community on the cutting edge of reality. What’s that got to do with being ‘churchy’—which I always understood to be a description of people being prim and pious in some middle-class ghetto fifty years behind the times?”

  “I can’t help it, Nicky, this place just isn’t ‘me’ at all, and the boys won’t like it either, I know they won’t—”

  “But life in London will be much more fun for them than life in the Surrey backwoods!”

  “No, it won’t! They’ll be miserable, cut off from their friends and familiar activities. They’ll take to drugs, hang around the wrong places, get mixed up with the wrong people—”

  “They’re much more likely to do that in Surrey if they’ve got nothing to occupy them but sport and pop music!”

  “You don’t understand those boys!” I shouted in despair. “You never have and you never will!”

  “I’m sorry, but I refuse to have a slanging match about Benedict and Antony. I’m going down to my study until you feel willing to stop this self-indulgent screaming and talk sensibly.” He began to head for the door.

  “How typical!” I bawled, making sure my voice was louder than ever. “You walk away and leave me shut up in this horrible box! Well, I’m not going to stay shut up here and you’re not going to make me!”

  He turned his back on the door. “Stop that!” he ordered in his sharpest voice. “You’re hysterical. Stop that at once.”

  “God, that’s a classic male put-down—why, I don’t know how you have the nerve to trot it out! Men always call women hysterical when they want to control them!”

  “Well, I call a woman hysterical when I want her to know she’s hysterical.”

  I screamed in sheer rage. At once he tried to grab me but I shot sideways and put the table between us.

  “Nicholas Darrow,” I said very clearly in a shaking voice. “I am not, repeat not, going to let you treat me as you treated Bear!”

  “Treated who?”

  “Bear!”

  “You’re out of your mind! What’s Bear got to do with any of this?”

  “Well, since you’re so busy being the wonder worker,” I yelled at him, “why the hell can’t you just wave your magic wand and see the answer written in the sky?” And unable to endure the scene any longer I bolted to the bedroom to escape from him.

  But the key refused to turn in the lock.

  V

  He didn’t shove his way in. He waited until I’d finished scrabbling with the key and then he tapped politely on the panel before walking in, but his restraint made no difference to the fact that he was pursuing me. By this time my stomach was churning. All the naked anger was taking its toll. Breathlessly I gasped: “I don’t want to make love to you. Let me make that quite clear,” but he only exclaimed exasperated: “Oh, for heaven’s sake! Just because you’ve been screwing around lately in the worst possible way with children not much older than Benedict, you needn’t think all men are panting to bed you!”

  “My God, I knew you’d soon throw that in my face—I knew you would, I knew it! You hate the thought that I’ve been unfaithful to you, you haven’t forgiven me at all and now in revenge you want to shut me up in a box like Bear and stop me living the life I was meant to lead—”

  “Could you kindly stop talking such pathetic and bathetic drivel? I mean, it’s actually quite funny, and if we weren’t in the middle of our worst row of all time I might even split my sides with laughter—”

  “Well, split away—split yourself in any way you choose, I don’t give a shit so long as you go away now and leave me alone. Right from the start of this conversation you’ve been condescending, patronising, chauvinistic and just plain vile!”

  “And you’ve been obstinate, bloody-minded, hysterical and just plain nuts—which reminds me, I still don’t see the relevance of Bear! Why do you keep dragging him in?”

  “You were peculiar about him. Remember that party when you brought Bear along and got into a fight with Dicky Hampton just because he tried to touch Bear’s glass eyes?”

  “He tried to rip the eyes out—and it wasn’t Dicky, it was Peter Woodstock. The fight took place at that party where the conjuror produced a white rabbit which made a mess on the carpet—”

  “No, no, no—that was Phyllida’s birthday party much later and you didn’t bring Bear then, you were old enough to leave him behind. The party I’m talking about was Dicky’s—it was the one where you had double portions of everything at tea because you had to eat for Bear as well as yourself, and you wound up vomiting all over Caroline Pottinger—”

  “Old Potty! I never liked that girl!”

  “Neither did I! She used to dribble when she screamed.”

  “I remember you spitting at her.”

  “I never spat at anyone!”

  “Oh yes, you did! You pretended to be a cat because you knew I liked cats so much,” he said laughing, and suddenly as I remembered the incident I found that I was laughing too. Weakly I sank down on the edge of the bed.

  “Oh, Nicky, Nicky …” My anger had gone and I was in despair. Once more I was the Siamese twin trying to tear herself away from the much-loved sibling and once more I was failing to achieve the life-giving separation.

  “Darling Rosalind,” Nicky said, putting a comforting arm around my shoulders, “what on earth are we doing, beating each other up like this?”

  And to my horror I felt so confused that I was no longer sure of the answer.

  VI

  Seeing my confusion, Nicky gave me a comforting squeeze but made no attempt to kiss me. “I love you,” he said, and it was impossible to doubt his sincerity. “I love you so much. You do believe that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but …” I struggled for the right words but they were so hard to find. “It’s not real, Nicky.”

  “It’s the most real thing in the world to me.”

  “Yes, but what I mean is … what I’m trying to say is … well, it’s not me you really love. I’m like Bear. You thought it was Bear you needed, but in fact—”

  “I’m starting to pine for Bear! When we go back to Butterfold for the school holidays I must get the tuck-box down from the attic and take a look at him!”

  “Nicky, I don’t want you coming back to Butterfold. I’m afraid you’ve really got to accept that I—”

  “Okay, I recognise your anger—I accept that I behaved like a bastard when I raked up that confession of yours, and I’m very, very sorry I said what I did. Now, let’s forget all the slanging matches, let’s calm down, let’s concentrate on what’s really important here. You do believe, don’t you, that I believe I love you?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Right, hold on to that. Let’s just pause there to think about it, let’s just pause, let’s not say anything for a moment, let’s just think of love and how we both need it and how all human beings need it, and let’s focus on love because love is good and if we focus on love we can’t go far wrong.”

  After all the searing tension I was prepared to take time out for a breather. I went on sitting limply on the edge of the bed while he wandered around the room as if he too was welcoming the chance to unwind. I wasn’t frightened now. We were friends again, the old chums who had been to the same children’s parties long ago. I was very fond of Nicky when we were enfolded in this strand of our relationship. The shared memories bonded us together as if we were siblings, and this deep connectedness, I kn
ew, would survive the disintegration of our marriage.

  “All right,” he said at last, sitting down beside me on the bed. “I feel calmer now. How about you?”

  “Yes, I’m calmer too. Thanks for the breather.”

  “I got overheated. Literally.” He took off his pectoral cross and his jacket and began to remove his clerical collar.

  “Why are you wearing one of those old-fashioned collars?” I said vaguely. “I thought you preferred the modern clerical shirts with the plastic strip.”

  “I had a meeting just now with the trustees, at least two of whom are old enough to disapprove of mere plastic strips, so it seemed politic to go ‘putting on the style’ … Remember that Lonnie Donegan record?”

  “Uh-huh.” I watched him remove the collar and the black stock. Nicky had beautiful hands, very sexy, and all his movements were so graceful that even watching him undo a button on his jacket was an aesthetic pleasure. I noticed that his nails were spotlessly clean. His brown hair, barely flecked with silver, was immaculately cut, freshly washed, shining. Faultlessly groomed and faultlessly attired in that very conventional uniform, he seemed quite unaware of the erotic charge he generated merely by stripping to his shirt-sleeves.

  “That’s better,” he murmured when the stock was finally set aside. “Now, where were we? Oh yes, we were thinking about love and the fact that I love you. You do remember me saying I love you, don’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “But how well do you remember?”

  “Mega-vividly. Really, Nicky, I’m not suffering from Alzheimer’s!”

  “So if I were to snap my fingers now, what would be the first words to enter your mind?”

  “You love me. Okay, you’ve made your point: your feelings are important here. But all the same—”

  “Wait a moment, I want to get this absolutely straight, I want to express the situation in the simplest possible language. I love you—and you love me too, don’t you? I know you do, deep down.”