The Wonder Worker

by Susan Howatch

  “You mean the best way to wake him up is to shock him to the core?”

  “Yes, if you were to pick someone who from the point of view of his ministry is absolutely verboten—”

  “Well, I’m sure I’d have no luck if I tried to seduce the Bishop, and I can’t think of anyone else who—Francie! What is it? Why are you looking as if you’re about to explode?”

  “Because I’ve just had the most fantastic brainwave! Darling, the solution’s simple: you must seduce Stacy McGovern.”

  VI

  The waitress chose that moment to collect our plates but as soon as she had departed I said: “Francie, you’re nuts.”

  “But it would show Nick, wouldn’t it? It would send him slamming up against reality so hard that he’d have no choice but to face the facts. He’s responsible for Stacy’s welfare—the implications would be horrific—”

  “Which is why I could never do it. Poor little Stacy!”

  “Little? That huge uncoordinated red-headed hulk? Listen, if you taught Stacy a thing or two you’d be doing him a favour! He’s so shy and emotionally retarded that he can only think of dating Tara Hopkirk!”

  “Francie, I can’t seduce the curate. I may have my failings, but there are some lines I will under no circumstances cross. Seducing Stacy wouldn’t just be immoral; it would be naff.”

  “But it would solve everything!”

  I stared at her. She was bright-eyed, pink-cheeked, vibrant with enthusiasm.

  “Well, I must say, Francie,” I remarked, “for someone who’s been off work for depression, you’ve certainly made a spectacular recovery! Have you ever thought of being a marriage guidance counsellor? You’d be on a perpetual high!”

  Francie immediately looked contrite. “Sorry, darling, I didn’t mean to sound as if I’m deliriously happy as the result of this ghastly mess—I’m just fired up because I’m so passionately keen to help you.”

  “And I’m hugely grateful for the help. But as far as Stacy’s concerned—”

  “Ros, I don’t think you can afford to pull your punches now, I really don’t. Can’t you see that you’d actually be doing Nick a favour by giving him the biggest possible jolt? He really does need to snap out of this dangerous fixation of his before it starts affecting his ministry.”

  “I agree, but I still can’t see myself bedding Stacy … Who’s Tara Thingummy-jig?”

  “Oh, haven’t you met her? She’s one of the church cleaners and looks like the back end of a bus.”

  “But why should Stacy settle for anyone like that? What’s his problem?”

  “My dear, how should I know? I’m not the one who’s the expert on young men! He can’t be gay, can he?”

  I paused to consider this question. “No,” I said finally. “Not possible.”

  “Well, I have to admit he does seem to be a hundred per cent masculine.”

  “It’s not that. It’s just that Lewis would never consent to hiring a homosexual curate. He regards homosexuality as a handicap.”

  “Lewis is so old-fashioned,” said Francie primly.

  “Well, I don’t know,” I said, producing my compact again. “As a woman I can’t help thinking it is a handicap not to be able to relate in depth to the opposite sex. And as a woman I personally don’t like being rejected on the most fundamental level of all for reasons which make my flesh creep.”

  “My God, Ros, you can’t go around saying that sort of thing nowadays!”

  “I’ve just said it.” Steeling myself I faced my nightmarish reflection in the mirror and finally began to make the necessary repairs. “Can you get the waitress and order coffee? If she looks at me in my present state she’ll run screaming from the room.”

  Francie obediently ordered the coffee but was still rattled by the fact that I’d expressed my deeply unfashionable views without batting an eyelid. Apparently it was all right to advocate even the naffest form of adultery; adultery was just fine. But if one so much as breathed a word against a bunch of people prone to sodomy, one was absolutely beyond the pale.

  “As a matter of fact I don’t give a damn what homosexuals do,” I said as I finished off my repairs by powdering my nose. “I just wish to hell they’d have the good taste to do it discreetly like the rest of us and stop whingeing about being persecuted. I hate whingers—which reminds me, I do apologise for this awful whinge all the way through lunch! I’ve been far worse than any homosexual activist! Now darling, tell me about you and your problems!”

  “Oh, they’re all trivial,” said Francie quickly, “not even worth mentioning, but how sweet of you even to think of asking when you’re in this terrible situation … Are you sure you’re so dead against seducing Stacy?”

  “ ‘Get thee behind me, Satan!’ Yes, I draw the line there, I’m afraid.”

  “I think you’re a saint,” said Francie. “If I’d been through what you’ve been through, I’d seduce Stacy out of a lust for revenge.”

  “If you’d been through what I’ve been through, you’d be lusting only for freedom from fear, I assure you.”

  Francie at once invited me to stay with her but I said no, Nicky would only turn up and break the door down. She then made the more practical suggestion that I should see a top divorce lawyer at the earliest opportunity, and she promised to ask Harry to recommend someone as soon as he returned from Hong Kong. “And meanwhile,” she added, “if you won’t take refuge with me I think you should go to Phyllida. Isn’t her husband keen on hunting? He could defend you with a horsewhip if Nick went on the rampage.”

  “Tommy’s keen on shooting too. I don’t want him reaching for a gun.”

  “He sounds exactly the kind of macho thug you need—fly to Phyl without delay!”

  But I had no desire to appear wimpish to my sister and anyway ghastly Tommy was quite capable of siding with Nicky in the name of masculine solidarity. I began to think I might have to adopt a pseudonym and disappear for a while until the boys came home from school to chaperone me. Where would Nicky never dream of searching? Northern Ireland was a possibility, but I didn’t want to risk being blown up. I could disappear into Europe but no, I had to go to a place where English was spoken because I was too upset to cope with speaking a foreign language …

  I suddenly realised I was on the pavement outside Fortnum’s and Francie was kissing me goodbye. Gratefully I kissed her back and told her how wonderful she had been. What a blessing it was, I reflected as I took a taxi back to the City, to have such a loyal and devoted friend supporting me as I struggled to survive this horrible crisis …

  VII

  When I reached the Rectory my lack of sleep and my emotional exhaustion combined to overwhelm me, and locking myself in Benedict’s room again I escaped into unconsciousness beneath the duvet.

  Later, when I was waiting for the kettle to boil for tea, I went into the drawing-room to pull the curtains, and as I glanced down into Egg Street I saw Stacy chatting with a stout girl who looked as if she might be Tara the cleaner. I stood watching them. They talked on, unaware that they were being observed, but at last Stacy turned away and as he did so he saw me standing at the lighted window.

  He waved, smiled, bumped against my car which was parked in the Rectory’s forecourt.

  I waved and smiled back before drawing the curtains.

  As I made the tea I realised that Francie had been right; if I were to seduce Stacy Nicky would be forced to face the truth that I was determined to end the marriage, and then once he was facing reality he would see that he had no choice but to let me go. Moreover the sooner this happened, the sooner I would be free from fear. Even if I now did a runner to Northern Ireland, I’d still be living in terror in case he somehow managed to trace me, and meanwhile what on earth was I going to do when he returned to the flat after work that evening? Supposing he wanted to have sex with me again to make sure everything really was forgiven and forgotten, as I had put it so glibly in my terrorised state last night? Supposing—and this was even more frightenin
g to contemplate—he tried to “talk it all through” with me in an attempt to provide “healing,” and somehow managed to brainwash me all over again? He didn’t need to resort to hypnosis to be highly manipulative, and if he once more piled on the emotional pressure I might crack up altogether and become like one of the women in that horrifying film The Stepford Wives, a doll-like creature with no mind of her own, utterly subservient to her husband.

  Suddenly I found I could imagine the previously unimaginable: I could see myself having a complete mental breakdown and losing all control over my life indefinitely as Nicky signed the papers which would commit me to an asylum. I could even hear him say: “Darling, I’m doing this because I love you and because I know you love me too …”

  It was the ultimate nightmare scenario.

  I thought: I can’t live like this, I can’t live with this constant fear, I can’t live with the vile memory of last night and the crucifying dread that he might somehow manage to abuse me again.

  Then I thought: why the hell should I live in such torment? And deep down in my mind the anger ignited again at last, the anger which this time was going to empower me.

  I reminded myself that I’d been tricked and violated. I reminded myself that I wasn’t responsible for anything I’d done after my mind had been hijacked. I reminded myself that what I had to do now was not to turn my anger inward so that I drowned in guilt and shame but to turn my anger outwards until it was focused on the correct target.

  Aloud I said very clearly in the quiet room: “That bastard deserves to be punished for what he did.” And the next moment I had understood that what I truly wanted was not revenge but justice. A just punishment would ensure that Nicky stopped playing the wonder worker, a just punishment would set me free to live in peace, and a just punishment was what I now had to serve up with every ounce of strength and ingenuity I still possessed.

  Someone knocked on the front door of the flat.

  I jumped, but in fact I wasn’t entirely surprised. Luck was going to start running my way now, I was sure of it, just as I was sure that I wasn’t going to sit back and wait for justice to be dumped in my lap.

  Screw morality, I told myself fiercely, and who cares about being naff? Screw scruples, screw convention, screw the spirit that built the Empire, screw every damn thing that stands in the way of justice! And above all, screw being a victim! When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

  I opened the door.

  “Hi!” said Stacy, bright-eyed and bouncy, like a friendly puppy. “You know you said yesterday morning that you wanted to inspect my flat? Well, you can inspect it now if you like, and then I could show you the pictures of my sister Aisling’s wedding!”

  I never hesitated. “Lovely!” I exclaimed. “Can’t wait to see them!” And leaving the flat without a backward glance I set off on my journey out of the frying-pan into the fire.

  Part Four

  NICHOLAS

  The Escalating Disaster

  Judgment, properly understood, is the logical consequences of the choices we make. So the Christian counsellor does not himself judge. He knows that he too is under judgment—having to live with the consequence of the exercise of his own free will.

  CHRISTOPHER HAMEL COOKE

  Healing Is for God

  10

  The healing movement itself becomes sick when bad pastoral practice is cloaked in spiritual phraeseology; when the “strong” insist that the “weak” believe for a cure; when “deliverance” is seen as the only resort if the helper is stuck; when carers, driven by their own needs, always need to solve everything. There is potentially a frightening level of abuse.

  GARETH TUCKWELL AND DAVID FLAGG

  A Question of Healing

  I

  I wrecked my marriage on Wednesday the twenty-third of November, 1988. Afterwards I slept for six hours. Wrecking things is an exhausting occupation. Nothing life-enhancing about it at all.

  At half-past five the next morning I awoke and realised I was up shit creek. I knew the marriage could be fixed. That went without saying, since the alternative was inconceivable, but meanwhile it was shredded. For a time I pretended I was hooked up with God and engaged creatively in prayer. Then at six, when no further pretence of this kind was possible, I abandoned my study and knocked on Lewis’s door.

  Lewis always arose before six but never dressed until seven. On that morning he was looking disreputable in his thirty-year-old, custom-made, claret-coloured dressing-gown which was frayed at the cuffs and mended at the elbows with iron-on black patches. There were no buttons any more, and above the slackly fastened belt I could see the message inscribed on the T-shirt he was wearing instead of pyjamas. The words read: MY BARK IS WORSE THAN MY BITE. The T-shirt had been a gift last Christmas from the church helpers.

  I said: “I’ve got a problem.”

  Lewis raised an eyebrow but waved me without hesitation across the threshold. No astronaut lost in space could have had a calmer response from Mission Control.

  There was a small table by one of the windows, and I slumped down on a chair there. The big double-room was crammed with furniture. In one half a wide bed jostled for space with a Victorian wardrobe, a tallboy and a prie-dieu, while in the other half the table with its two chairs stood cheek by jowl with a desk, a couple of armchairs, a matching pair of bookcases and modern shelving designed to hold his CDs, his LPs and even his ancient 78s; there was no television but plenty of hi-fi. In front of the prie-dieu was a miniature altar adorned with two brass candlesticks and a cross, and on the wall above this arrangement hung an icon of the Virgin and Child. Lewis liked icons. He kept several smaller ones dotted around alongside photographs of his family. In the centre of the bedroom mantelshelf was the photograph of his great-uncle, Cuthbert Darcy, shaking hands with Archbishop Davidson shortly after the First World War. Father Darcy was revealed in this picture as a silver-haired, squarely built adventurer with a vulpine look. Lewis had now reached the age when this description also fitted him.

  “So?” he said, sitting down opposite me at the table and reaching for his packet of cigarettes.

  “There was a scene last night with Rosalind.”

  Lewis could hardly have looked less surprised. I watched him as he lit the weed and inhaled some smoke.

  “I think I may have taken the wrong line,” I said. “In fact I know I did. In fact I realise now I made a monumental balls-up. But it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  Recognising the classic epitaph on a catastrophic decision, Lewis turned a shade paler.

  “Rosalind said she couldn’t live at the Rectory after all, she wanted to go home, wanted a divorce. Immediately it seemed plain to me that this rabid individualism of hers had finally spun out of control and was now a destructive force which had to be neutralised straight away. In other words,” I said, watching the smoke drift towards the nicotine-stained ceiling, “I decided she was someone who required radical healing.”

  I paused in case he wanted to make a comment. None came.

  “The real Rosalind,” I said, ploughing on as he took another drag of the weed, “the Rosalind who still exists beneath this false persona which has been growing like a cancer on her personality, still loves me. I know that. So I reasoned that if I were to bypass the false persona I’d be able to prove to her that the desire for divorce was madness. I figured this would be a valid path to healing and wholeness: excise the cancer, heal the damage with love, enable Rosalind to develop a new integration. It all seemed to make sound clinical sense. The therapy, in its own way, would be a form of deliverance from this spiritual sickness which was oppressing her.”

  “Nicholas,” said Lewis, and I knew the hair was standing on end at the nape of his neck, “what exactly did you do to that woman?”

  “Well, I … well, this isn’t going to sound too good, but I administered a mild form—a very mild form—of hypnotherapy. I mean, she was barely under. I mean, I just wanted to make it crystal clear that she lo
ved me and I loved her and—”

  “Are you seriously trying to tell me—”

  “All right, I know it was a risk, but I thought the risk was worth taking! I thought the hypnotherapy was a valid tool in the circumstances!”

  “Nicholas, I just can’t believe I’m hearing this.”

  “Okay, okay, okay, I made a mistake! I got things a bit wrong. Well, very wrong. I know that, because the treatment didn’t work. Yet at the time—”

  “Wait. I want to make sure I haven’t misunderstood what happened. Are you saying you hypnotised Rosalind in order to have sex with her?”

  “No, no, no! I hypnotised Rosalind in order to excise the cancer on her personality and uncover her true self! Then we had sex. Well, of course we did. Once she realised she still loved me, she—”

  “But what about when the hypnosis wore off?”

  I shifted restlessly in my chair. I tried to frame a sentence but no pattern of words seemed right.

  “Nicholas?”

  I abandoned the attempt to form a pleasing verbal pattern. “She vomited,” I said. I was no longer gazing at the smoke. I was staring at a patch of worn carpet. “I found vomit later on the rim of the lavatory bowl. After the vomiting she had a bath, a long one. I waited outside the bathroom but when she came out she didn’t want to talk. She just said I’d been silly but it was all forgiven and forgotten. Then she went to Benedict’s room and locked herself in. Before that she’d indicated she was very angry. That was when I realised I’d made a big mistake, but of course it’s just a temporary setback. I know she loves me, and once she accepts that the hypnotherapy was a valid medical procedure adopted with her best interests in mind—”

  Lewis grabbed his crutches and stood up. Moving awkwardly to the phone he picked up the receiver and held it out to me. All he said was: “Phone your spiritual director.”