The Wonder Worker

by Susan Howatch

  My hand automatically clasped my pectoral cross as I expressed my intense desire to make contact with my Creator. I was so horrified that I couldn’t frame an extempore prayer of any kind, but my memory regurgitated the lines from the Litany which begged for deliverance. Meanwhile Francie was sitting back again in her stall with a sigh of pleasure. My flesh crawled. I went on clutching my cross and trying to think coherently. Should I bolt or should I stay? I was aware of a strong urge to bolt, but at that moment the choir began to sing the Introit as they stood gathered around the nave altar, and seconds later they were processing into view. Bolting would still have been possible but it would have been awkward, especially as the members of the choir were now taking their places in the rows directly below us. I decided I had to stay and use the time to figure out what on earth I was going to do.

  It seemed plain to me now that Lewis had seriously underestimated Francie’s condition … Or had he? No, probably not. Probably he had played it down because he knew that if I had realised the size of the crisis I’d have wanted to postpone my retreat. He had been helped by the fact that his crucial conversation with Francie had been confidential, enabling him to censor the truth with a clear conscience. Yet Lewis had clearly said she was neither psychotic nor possessed. Would he have told an outright lie? No. So that meant …

  I then realised that the truth could be more of a muddle than I had anticipated. Probably Lewis had both tried to play down Francie’s condition and seriously underestimated it, although to be fair to Lewis I had to remember that Francie’s illness, whatever that was, might not be in the same stage now as it was when he had made his diagnosis last Monday night. Sick people can deteriorate rapidly. The borderlines of mental illness aren’t clear-cut, and in the general haziness the patterns of different illnesses can emerge, blend, fluctuate, disappear and emerge dominant. And what did we really know about Francie anyway? We only saw her at the Centre when she wore her mask of Befriender. Once that was discarded all manner of abnormality might be surfacing at her house in Islington but no one would be around to see it. I thought of Alice, who occasionally called there, saying: “Francie isn’t quite the simple, friendly soul everyone thinks she is …” The more I thought about this the more sure I felt that Alice, who was highly intuitive, had been picking up the vibes of profound abnormality.

  Francie certainly wasn’t behaving normally now. She was surfing on big waves of adrenaline, living in an unreal world. By this time I was sure she wasn’t unbalanced merely in the area of her life which related to me. The euphoria made me start thinking again of manic-depressive psychosis. Or if she was completely out of touch with reality maybe I was seeing some form of paranoid schizophrenia. Or maybe—

  But I had to stop speculating. I was a priest, not a doctor, and anyway even if a posse of psychiatrists had been present they might well have been unable to agree on what was going on. The one undeniable fact was that Francie was sick. The second undeniable fact was that this sickness was very dangerous to me. And the third undeniable fact was that if I wanted to survive this nightmare I had to calm down so that I could correctly work out when and how to escape.

  By the time I reached this conclusion the service was well under way. I had risen to my feet for the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, subsided into my stall for the readings and sunk to my knees for the Collects. As the choir began to sing their anthem I tried some covert observation of Francie, but found myself agreeing with Lewis that there was no sign of possession. Apart from the total absence of all the more florid symptoms, she seemed without fear and without awareness that something was very wrong. It was true that her febrile excitement was unnatural—bright eyes, dry lips, shallow breathing, hand slightly unsteady as she turned the page of her prayer-book during the psalm—but this could be explained entirely by the fact that she was sitting so close to me. Or in religious language, the demon of lust was certainly present, but there was no sign that the Devil had taken up residence. In which case why did I feel so convinced that the situation was thoroughly evil and that I stood in very great danger? I reminded myself that although I was spiritually debilitated at present there was no diminishment of my psychic powers. Quite the reverse. Stress always had the effect of rubbing my psyche raw and making it even more perceptive than usual. That was why I had been so keen earlier to fight my way clear of the paranormal rubbish tip. The trouble with going through an ultra-perceptive phase is that one picks up far too much, most of it meaningless junk. Yet I didn’t think the impression I was currently receiving from Francie was meaningless junk at all, particularly now that the fog had cleared from my brain and I knew exactly why I had fallen into the trap of arranging a meeting with her. I was always wary of psychic twinges, but this wasn’t a twinge, it was a thump. I knew myself in danger just as I knew Francie showed no outward sign of wishing to harm me.

  The next moment I found myself toying with an unusual but not impossible explanation of what was going on. Maybe Francie’s obsession with me was a way of blotting out the fear caused by the initial symptoms of possession. Maybe she was even using the obsession on an unconscious level to hold on to her identity which was being consistently undermined by an alien force. I reminded myself that at the Healing Centre she had always been completely in control of herself. If her trouble had stemmed from a chemical imbalance in the brain she would have been unable to regulate her behaviour in that way. But maybe it wasn’t Francie who had been doing the regulating.

  I suddenly realised I was on my knees and reciting the grace which concluded the service. Was Francie able to say the words “Jesus Christ”? Yes. I had also heard her say the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed without faltering. As I had already noted, there were no signs of possession. Yet my forehead was damp with sweat and my fingers ached from gripping the cross and my psyche, picking up the disordered emotions of the woman sitting next to me, was reacting as if it were being beaten up. I felt as if I might be wiped out at any moment by an invisible assassin.

  This was hardly a pleasant thought. Maybe the Devil had triggered it. With an enormous effort I remembered the saving power of the Holy Spirit and prayed in Christ’s name for deliverance, but I still felt as if I were about to be liquidated by some malign side-effect of the rough, tough, brutal process of creation. I knew my Creator was there, desperate to save me, but maybe I’d jumped so far into the jaws of darkness that he would be able to do no more than toil to redeem the mess left by my destruction. All creators are omnipotent in their created world, but they can only work with the material at hand and sometimes the material proves fatally intractable.

  I prayed feverishly again for deliverance.

  There was no organ music in the Abbey that night so the choir and the clergy padded away in silence. After that the congregation knelt for a moment of private prayer, but a moment later, still clutching my cross, I was obliged to rise from my knees.

  “Wasn’t that a beautiful service!” breathed Francie starry-eyed, allowing her arm to brush mine.

  “Very professional.” I deliberately selected an unromantic judgement but it had no effect. She remained starry-eyed. Obviously she believed I had lured her to the Abbey for the thrill of sitting close to her and was now entirely convinced we were on the brink of an affair.

  Leaving the quire we paused to exchange a few words with the canon in residence before moving to the other side of the nave. I threaded my way through the rows of chairs to the north aisle, and as Francie bobbed along behind me I realised she was still chattering about the service. On reaching the end of the row I pulled out the last chair and set it well back at right angles to its neighbour. Since I was now deprived of the protection afforded by the choirstalls I wanted to ensure that Francie and I didn’t wind up sitting too close together.

  “Have a seat,” I said, gesturing to the chair which was now the last in the row, and sank down on the chair I had detached.

  “This is so wonderful of you, Nick—such a divine idea—”

  “I agre
e it’s always a good idea to go to church and keep in touch with reality,” I said dryly, “but I don’t think it’s particularly wonderful of me to suggest it. In fact it seems to me to be a pretty mundane suggestion for a priest to make. Now, Francie, let’s try and remain in touch with that reality spelt out by the service—let’s try to—”

  “Now that we’re away from the Centre we can really talk, can’t we?”

  “No, we only have a few minutes because the Abbey closes at six in winter. Francie, I just want to say—”

  “I’ve got the car parked on a meter behind Dean’s Yard. Why don’t we go there straight away and I’ll drive us both back to Islington?”

  “Francie, you’re a trained listener. Could you please listen for a moment?”

  She laughed. “Sorry, darling! It’s just that it’s all so wonderfully exciting—the consummation of all my dreams—”

  “I repeat: could you please listen for a moment?”

  “Oh gosh, sorry, there I go again!” She gazed at me with glowing eyes and fell silent.

  Carefully I said: “I’m afraid I’ve made a mistake in arranging this meeting. I now think it would be better if we met at the Centre on Monday. Then Robin can be present.”

  “Robin?” She looked blank. “But what on earth’s Robin got to do with us?”

  “I think it could be useful to include him in a discussion about the viability of your position at St. Benet’s.”

  “About the—oh, vulnerability! For a moment I thought you said viability. Don’t worry, darling, I’m tougher than you think! I can take the bitchy comments when people realise you’re leaving her for me!”

  I saw I had to abandon the subject. “I’m afraid you can’t hear what I’m saying,” I said evenly, “but never mind, we’ll put the matter on hold until Monday. And now, if you’ll excuse me, Francie—”

  “But of course I can hear, don’t be so silly! I won’t let you leave until you’ve explained why you wanted to meet me here!” She leant forward and gave my arm a playful pat.

  Hurriedly, wanting only to avoid further playful pats and terminate the conversation without delay, I said: “I’d thought I might tell you something about Rosalind, but since this is obviously entirely the wrong moment—”

  “Rosalind! Oh my dear, it’s not necessary for you to say a single syllable! She’s told me everything—everything—and I must just say that although I took care to tell her exactly what she wanted to hear, my sympathies, darling, were entirely with you. No wonder you had to hypnotise her to get some decent sex! I always knew she was frigid. Promiscuous women so often are, aren’t they? Always searching for the orgasm they never find!”

  There was a pause. Nothing much seemed to happen. The huge shadowy interior of the Abbey was still dotted with people, and the faint drone of multiple conversations mingled with the sound of muffled footsteps. It was just the end of another day at the Abbey. No one around me knew that an entire cherished private world had suddenly come to an end.

  It had ended silently, without a whimper, and smoothly, without encountering an impediment. The safe, secure world of my marriage had finally died not from confessions of adultery and not from mud-slinging rows but from the knowledge that my wife had told this deeply disturbed woman details which should never have been disclosed to anyone but a priest or a doctor or some other professional qualified to help us. Moreover she had lied to me afterwards to conceal the depth of her betrayal. Could I argue that Rosalind had lied merely to spare me from pain? No. That would be giving her a moral stature she didn’t possess. The truth was she had lied in order to avoid a scene. In her view anything was better than enduring a scene: lies, writing cruel notes, two-faced behaviour—anything.

  I saw then how shallow she was, how unreliable, how utterly lacking in integrity, and it seemed strange to me that I should have derived such security for so long from a woman who could in truth offer me no security at all. I had trusted her love and loyalty, but I saw both had been illusions, conjured up to meet my own emotional needs. I’d been projecting qualities onto her which contained and neutralized my own flaws and problems, and beneath the projection was a woman I scarcely knew. I’d been obsessed with an image—how typical of the 1980s’ preoccupation with “style”!—but reality had all the time lain elsewhere.

  It was at that moment that I suffered the most horrific shock. One moment I was drowning in pain, every inch the crucified victim, and the next moment the truth had exploded before my eyes so that I saw myself in quite another light.

  The trigger was the word “obsessed” which had just skimmed across my mind. I had been obsessed, I had told myself, by an image. I HAD BEEN OBSESSED.

  My whole consciousness seemed to shift and bend almost to breaking point before snapping agonisingly into a new and unbearable position. It was like an earthquake: the grinding roar followed by the ear-splitting cracks as the earth ruptured and re-formed at lightning speed. I had been obsessed, obsessed, OBSESSED—as obsessed as this mad woman in front of me, and in Francie’s shining eyes I finally saw my own insanity reflected.

  The earthquake roared again, the ground breaking open with a volley of whiplash cracks, and at my feet I saw the abyss open up to reveal the unspeakable, indescribable darkness churning below. I shrank back, but not before I had seen the horror I had inflicted on Rosalind, the unreasonable demands, the violent pursuit, the mental and physical oppression. No wonder she had finally snapped, blurting out all her despair and terror to someone who was not only an old friend but a trained listener! I’d driven her to it. I’d broken her integrity. And to think that a moment ago I’d been wallowing in injured pride and accusing her of shallowness and betrayal! I was the shallow one, never seeing my wife in any depth, never making any effort to understand how she must be feeling. I was the expert in betrayal, kidding myself I’d been a loving husband yet leaving her to struggle on alone, running my home and bringing up my children. And to think I’d accused her of self-centredness! To think I’d sermonised to her about the evils of individualism and the virtues of living in community! I’d neglected my primary community, my family. I’d gone my own individual self-absorbed way under the guise of helping others. No wonder worker, it seemed to me at that terrible moment of revelation, could have gone more adrift in his arrogance and his vanity, and no wonder worker could now be better set up for the just retribution of a grisly and scandalous end.

  “Nick?” Francie was saying somewhere a long way away but I barely heard her. In my head I was with Rosalind, the beloved childhood friend with whom I would always feel so deeply connected. In my head I was saying to her: “It’s all right. I understand now. I understand.”

  “Nick, is something wrong?”

  I didn’t answer. I wasn’t there. I’d broken free from my father and I was scrambling to the top of the bonfire to save Bear from his attempt to immolate himself. “He’ll be free now,” my father had said. But I didn’t want my bear to achieve freedom by death. I wanted him to have freedom through the gift of a new life.

  “Life.” I suddenly realised I had spoken the word aloud. “Life.”

  “Oh yes, darling!” cried Francie in ecstasy, her words scoring deep gashes across my consciousness. “Life, life, life with a capital L—just you and me, together always in an utterly glorious future!”

  The picture of Bear atop the bonfire was wiped out. As my mind abruptly snapped back into alignment with the present I realised that I was in Westminster Abbey with Francie Parker, who was mad. Then I remembered. I had to fix Francie. But there was a problem: I couldn’t. My strength had been used up. I could only stare at her dumbly and wish she would go away.

  “You’ll be a new man once you get away from Rosalind!” Francie was saying with manic enthusiasm. “Poor darling, how ghastly it must have been for you to have a frigid wife!”

  I said automatically: “Rosalind’s not frigid.”

  “But of course she is! Why else would you have needed to hypnotise her to get some sex?
”

  “You’ve jumped to all the wrong conclusions. About everything.”

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  “I mean you haven’t a clue what’s going on.” I stood up. “Excuse me, please. I’ve got to go.”

  Francie’s eyes widened. “Oh, poor Nick!” she exclaimed passionately, leaping to her feet. “Poor, poor Nick, you’re the one who’s jumped to all the wrong conclusions if you think that sheer Christian charity can continue to save this marriage! My dear, I know for a fact that Rosalind’s planning to have another affair to drill home to you that the marriage is beyond salvation!”

  I stared at her. She was breathing hard, eyes glittering, bosom heaving in an almost sexual satisfaction, lips shiny and moist with saliva, and suddenly I felt revolted. I no longer cared about “fixing” her, whatever that meant. I just wanted to shove her aside and escape. With my patience exhausted I snapped: “That’s nonsense. I don’t believe it.”

  “Oh darling!” cried Francie powerfully. “You’re in denial! Listen, I know exactly what her plan is—she’s going to seduce Stacy!”

  At once I said: “That’s not just rubbish, Francie. That’s disgusting rubbish.” I was moving forward as I spoke. Increasing my pace I began to hurry down the side-aisle to the west end of the nave.

  “It’s true, it’s true, it’s true!” She rushed after me. “She said she realised she could only get you to see the truth by doing something so frightful that you’d have no choice but to let her go!”

  I spun round to face her. “Be quiet! Be quiet at once! You’re lying, you’re deluded, you’re—”

  “Rosalind’s made up her mind to seduce Stacy, I tell you—why, she’s probably already done it! That’s why I said to you when you rang up: ‘Is it about Stacy?’ I thought you must be calling because she’d done it and you’d found out!”

  I suddenly realised she was telling the truth. And as the shock swamped my mind I saw the waters of darkness roaring towards me in a filthy, annihilating tide.