She went away, leaving me feeling as if I’d been washed, scoured, scrubbed, spin-dried, ironed and starched. I wondered if she did the laundry as well as the cooking. It would explain why her habit always looked so exceptionally clean and well-pressed.
Staggering outside I drove raggedly back to St. Benet’s for the next stage of my mid-life nightmare.
11
The first stage of grief is a shock reaction and we cannot absorb the painful truth in one go … The unreality theme of “somehow I still can’t believe it” recurs throughout the grief process. We hope we will wake up from the dream.
GARETH TUCKWELL AND DAVID FLAGG
A Question of Healing
I
“I think I could start to like this woman,” said Lewis.
“Don’t strain yourself. At your age it could be dangerous.”
We were sitting in his bedsit after my return to the Rectory. Over at the church Stacy was conducting the lunch-time Eucharist with the assistance of Brother Paul, the Anglican Franciscan friar who helped part-time at the Centre, but I was bypassing the service in order to make my formal confession. Lewis had just granted me absolution. He had removed his stole and was lighting a cigarette.
“I’m glad you’re mellowing towards Clare,” I said, “but you don’t know yet what she said to me.”
“I know that you left here this morning out of touch with reality and that you’ve come back capable of making an honest confession! Without doubt that woman’s given your soul an effective spring-cleaning—no mean task, as I well remember.”
“Her name is Sister Clare Veronica.”
“So you keep telling me.”
“Aren’t you going to ask what advice she handed out?”
“I refuse to meddle in your relationship with your spiritual director.”
“Since you’ve just told me to make a three-day retreat as a penance, I thought you’d be interested to hear that Clare advised me to make a short retreat as soon as possible.”
“So what? I don’t find the coincidence in any way remarkable. Obviously you have to take a break at this point and obviously you need the kind of break that only a retreat can provide. Even an ordinand could draw such a conclusion!”
“You’re cross because Clare’s been a good priest to me and you can’t admit any woman could be capable of such a thing!”
“Oh yes, I can! My arguments against the ordination of women are purely theological!”
“Then why in heaven’s name are you being so cantankerous about her?”
Lewis sighed. “I suppose I’m jealous. I know I can’t be your spiritual director any more now that we’re living in each other’s pockets, and I know I mustn’t interfere in your relationship with this woman—”
“Sister Clare Veronica.”
“—but I still mind about her role in your life. The fact that I mind is both ridiculous and pathetic. That’s why I’m sunk in cantankerous gloom. Satisfied?”
“You silly old sod!” I was very fond of Lewis when he dedicated himself to presenting what he called “the unvarnished truth.” It takes guts to be that honest. Reaching across the table I patted his forearm consolingly. “But you can still give me fraternal advice!”
“Not in these circumstances—oh, come on, Nicholas, wake up! I’m not getting into discussions with you about your marriage. Rosalind and I have never got on—I’d be undermined by all manner of prejudices and couldn’t possibly give you the kind of clear-eyed advice you need at present. I’ll stand by you whatever happens and I’ll pray for you, but my role here is to be supportive, not directive.”
We sat in a silence broken only by the murmur of the gas fire. Glancing at my watch I saw we had ten minutes before the Eucharist ended and the staff returned to the Rectory for lunch. Despite all Lewis had just said I remained desperate to talk to him in his old role of mentor. Tentatively I asked: “Do you think I’m unfit at present to do any work?”
“Well, you’re no longer spiritually unfit; you’ve confessed, repented and received absolution, and I certainly believe you’ll now bust a gut to behave as you should, but the trouble is you’re almost certainly still in a state of emotional exhaustion and that means you could make bad mistakes—not sins necessarily, but errors of judgement which could lead you into a dead-awful mess.”
“Perhaps I should make a retreat for longer than three days.”
“Make the three-day retreat first and then see what your spiritual director advises.”
“I admit I do hate the thought of taking time off work.”
“That’s what all the workaholics say. Nicholas, no problem is more pressing than your spiritual and emotional health. Take whatever time you need and I think you’ll find the Healing Centre will survive your absence.”
“Yes, of course,” I said mechanically, but at once started worrying about Francie Parker and Stacy, two people who in their different ways presented me with a major problem to solve.
On my return to London from Devon on Tuesday Lewis had informed me that Francie had called at the Rectory on the previous evening. His conversation with her had been confidential so he had given me no hint of what she had said, but he had thought I should be informed of her visit. He had also disclosed that earlier during that same evening he had had a talk with Stacy. This conversation too had been confidential, but again Lewis had thought I should know it had taken place. In both cases I was assured that he had everything under control.
Obviously there had been trouble, but Lewis’s message was that although I had to be warned so that I could be on the alert for a sudden crisis, I was on no account to go wading in and trying to fix things. This situation was not uncommon at the Centre where we dealt frequently with disturbed people and confidentiality was an important issue; I trusted Lewis’s judgement just as he trusted mine, and I was prepared to stand back and let him cope, if that was what he wanted. But on this occasion it was hard not to want to know more. Stacy was my curate. Francie was the Centre’s chief Befriender. We weren’t talking about clients but about personnel.
My brain began to flicker over the morally acceptable ways of obtaining more information. Priests do have ways of signalling the contents of confidential conversations but Lewis and I were agreed that signalling could only be justified in a white-hot emergency. Lewis had given no signal about the contents of either conversation. Paradoxically this was itself a signal, proclaiming there was no white-hot emergency. But it could be red-hot. In fact with two members of staff it had to be. Staring into the flames of the gas fire I tried again to figure out what had taken place at the Rectory on Monday night.
Our basic concern had long since been shared. Francie we suspected of fantasising about her husband’s sadism in order to win extra attention from me, and Stacy we knew was bogged down in an immaturity which manifested itself in … But here Lewis and I disagreed. There was no doubt that Stacy had sexual problems, but this fact distracted attention from the central question: whether or not Stacy was suited for the ministry of healing.
Cautiously I said to Lewis: “Is Francie back at work today?”
“No, I phoned her this morning and she said she wanted to take another day off. But I think she could be back at the Centre tomorrow.”
“She’s feeling better?”
“She must be. She told me she was having lunch with an old friend at Fortnum’s today.”
“What exactly was this malaise of hers?”
“Oh, she just felt a bit down. No need for you to worry. I’ve been phoning her every day and monitoring the situation.”
“You’re saying her depression doesn’t justify a visit to her GP?”
Lewis thought for a moment before saying: “If she wanted to see her doctor I wouldn’t stop her, but she’s expressed no desire to do so.”
So he did think Francie needed medical help. “Should I try to talk to her again,” I suggested, “about seeing a psychiatrist who specialises in abused women?”
“No, wha
t you’ve got to do is leave her well alone, Nicholas, and when I say ‘well alone’ I mean well alone. I’ll deal with her.”
If I had to be kept apart from Francie it could only mean that her harmless hero-worship of me had indeed spiralled, just as we’d feared, into a neurotic fixation.
Sceptically I said: “Are you sure she’ll be fit to return to work tomorrow?”
“No, and neither’s she. But don’t worry, if she does show up I’ll see she does no befriending. She can help me with the music therapy.”
“What I’d like to know is why Francie’s suddenly gone over the top like this! Why should—”
“Nicholas, you don’t know whether or not Francie’s gone over the top, and I think you should now stop your attempt to pump me for information.”
I sighed. I’d been enjoying my break from lacerating myself with thoughts of Rosalind. “And Stacy?” I enquired, hoping to extend the holiday.
“Nothing I can say on that subject at the moment.”
“No? How’s he getting on with Tara?”
“Ask him.”
No signals of any kind there. Sighing again I said: “I dislike the thought of going away when we have those two major problems on our hands. I feel I might be needed here.”
“No one’s indispensable.”
“Yes, but—”
“Nicholas, you’re behaving as if you’re hooked on people needing you—as if you can’t wait to grab a magic wand and go around fixing everyone in sight. But that’s the attitude of the wonder worker. Now shape up, ship out and rest up before you start making some really bad decisions.”
Better not to upset the old boy by arguing further. Anyway I knew I’d be fit for action again once I’d made my three-day retreat. The three days would seem like an eternity, I realised that, but once they’d been endured I wouldn’t need more time off. Patting his shoulder reassuringly I headed for the door. “I must go upstairs,” I said. “It’s time to tell Rosalind she’s welcome to return to Butterfold for a while.”
It was a good exit line. Glancing back as I opened the door I saw Lewis quiver with the desire to ask me how I’d been led to this decision, but he stuck to his guns and refused to cross-question me further about my interview with Clare.
Taut with dread at the prospect of facing Rosalind, I toiled reluctantly up the stairs to the flat.
II
At that point I received a reprieve. On entering the flat I found a note from Rosalind which informed me that she was lunching in the West End. As if to reassure me of her friendly intentions she then suggested we dined that night with the others, and as if to erase completely any lingering impression of hostility she apologised for the incident last night. She also suggested that we never referred to it again.
I sat down in the living-room and brooded on this communication until Lewis buzzed me from the kitchen to remind me I was missing lunch. I said I would be downstairs shortly. Then I resumed my examination of the letter. I noted that Rosalind had implied the incident was her fault. Confused rape victims often did assume a guilt which didn’t belong to them, and I had certainly encouraged her to assume it. I also thought her desire to gloss over the incident indicated not friendliness at all but fear, while her suggestion that we dined with the others was born merely of a desire to appease me. Her flight to the West End underlined her longing to escape from the whole sordid mess.
In short the letter stank. I hated myself for driving her to write it. I hated myself for what I’d done. I knew that by repenting and confessing to a priest who had given me absolution the spiritual slate had been wiped clean, but I still felt soaked in grief, guilt and shame. The absolution had no psychological reality for me yet. And it wasn’t the only thing my psyche was finding hard to grasp. As a new wave of grief swept over me I found the aftermath of the rape was providing me with a reality which was almost unendurable. I thought: this can’t be happening to me. I’ll wake up soon. For by this time it had occurred to me in horror that not only was I in shock but that I was behaving as if I’d lost Rosalind for ever. Although of course I hadn’t. I’d get her back. Eventually. But meanwhile …
Meanwhile it was as if the marriage had died and I was grieving over the corpse, but that wouldn’t do at all and I had to pull myself together. With determination I shredded Rosalind’s letter and dumped it in the swing-bin, but afterwards I found I was unable to rest until I’d scooped out the shreds and burnt them in the sink. The letter, that terrible reminder of the true state of my marriage, had to be wholly annihilated. Only when the ashes had been washed down the drain did I go downstairs and pretend to eat lunch.
After five minutes I went to my study, shut the door and prayed hard for a while. Nothing happened except that I shed a few more tears of self-hatred. I went on grieving for Rosalind, missing her, mentally pawing over the damaged structure of our marriage. How was it going to be mended and redeemed? But perhaps my best hope of staying sane now was not to try to visualise the future but to move on doggedly, taking one day at a time, and always fighting any desire to abandon hope.
Deciding to begin this fight I dragged myself over to the Centre to attend to some paperwork. Despairing priests could never face paperwork. Therefore if I could face it, I wouldn’t be in despair. My morning appointments had been taken by Lewis, who had a flexible schedule designed to cope with emergencies, and my afternoon appointments had been cancelled by him. But the committed workaholic can always find something to do, even if his colleague has decided he’s unfit to work. On arriving at my office I embraced the paperwork with relief and felt almost normal again.
I dictated some letters to Joyce, my secretary, but she kept having to correct me and the letters sounded jerky when she read them back. Finally I dismissed her and started filling in a form relating to a diocesan enquiry, but I changed my mind so many times about what to put down that in the end I tore up the form and binned it. Let them send another.
By this time it was four o’clock. To kid myself I was still at work I picked up some brochures left by the computer salesman and told Joyce I was retiring to my study at the Rectory to read them. I was wondering if Rosalind was back, but there was no one in the flat. However, her coat had been dumped on Benedict’s bed. So she was back but somewhere else. Still clutching my brochures I padded downstairs again to the study and began to fidget with my computer.
The Applemac was new. Benedict had taught me how to use it. It had finally given us something to talk about. Benedict was a brash, unreflective young man who was unable to bear either silence or solitude. Recently I had read an article about public school lager louts and had realised that Benedict was a prime example of this species. I found it hard to believe we were related—but perhaps we weren’t. Perhaps my wife had been unfaithful to me for longer than she had chosen to admit. Maybe my happy marriage had been one long grand illusion.
Hadn’t really forgiven the adultery, of course. I’d said “I forgive you” and I had indeed wanted that statement to be true, but the forgiveness proclaimed so nobly had had no psychological reality. It was a tricky thing, this business of the psychological reality being at odds with the proclamations of the intellect and the will. I’d often witnessed the phenomenon in my clients and now I was seeing it happen in myself. In this case my battered psyche hadn’t caught up with the demands of my Christian conscience. The psyche was lagging behind, bruised and bloodied, still screaming silently with the pain of damage sustained and loss endured.
Drained of energy by this new insight I abandoned my computer and began to thumb through the brochures for the new Psion Organiser, the all-in-one alternative to diaries, filing systems, calculators and address-books at a price of £195.95, but in the end I had to abandon even this stimulating technological diversion. The pain was so stupefying, shredding my thoughts and stirring up profound feelings of rejection and failure. I was trying not to think of my mother and all the grief which had followed her death, but I could still feel those old scars breaking open and bl
eeding all over my mind. Love had been lost. Security had been wiped out. Chaos had been enthroned. And now it was all happening again—except that of course this time, with Rosalind still alive, I’d beat back the chaos, recapture the love and security and win through. But meanwhile …
Meanwhile I was thinking that huge personal disasters, striking at the root of one’s stability, had a way of escalating until they terminated in catastrophe. My mother’s death had had a variety of consequences for both my father and myself, but the most serious had been the removal from our lives of someone who personified normality. If she’d lived I wouldn’t have become such a troubled, oddball loner in adolescence, and if I’d been able to rely on ordinary social skills in order to make friends I wouldn’t have wound up abusing my psychic powers to impress people and becoming the paranormal pet of that fast set which had adopted me when I was barely out of my teens. My father had tried to set me straight but he’d been too old and hadn’t been able to cope. In the end I’d almost wrecked my chance of being ordained. If Lewis hadn’t intervened …
But it was better not to think of the catastrophe which had lain at the end of that escalating disaster. It was enough to recall that I was bucketing around, out of control, a wonder worker who allowed himself to be used and bruised by the powers of darkness, until the inevitable day came when I made the wrong decision and was almost wiped out. That certainly taught me a lesson. Maybe all arrogant, know-it-all, bone-headed young idiots, psychic or otherwise, should have a short, sharp brush with death to bring them to their senses. It certainly brought me to mine.
After Lewis had saved me he trained me. I owed everything to him. In 1983, when he wound up dead drunk on my doorstep, Rosalind could never understand why I’d bent over backwards to rehabilitate him, but then Rosalind had never understood how far I was in Lewis’s debt. She thought I would have pulled myself together anyway after the crisis which nearly destroyed me in 1968. But she was wrong. Without Lewis I would have gone under. God had worked through Lewis to haul me back from the abyss, I saw that now, but I’d been lucky. I was well aware of how fortunate I’d been, and ever since then I’d lived in dread of the disaster which escalates, the disaster which the powers of darkness use as a surfboard to surge all the way up the golden beach into the heart of the kingdom of light.
The Wonder Worker Page 41