The Wonder Worker

by Susan Howatch

  “What language?”

  “The language we use to describe and categorise what’s going on. People mistake symbols for reality and treat the symbol as reality itself, but the purpose of a symbol is to point the way to reality—to make reality easier to grasp when there are no precise words to describe it. Another problem is that words used to describe a phenomenon are treated as an explanation and they actually explain nothing; they just allow the phenomenon to be placed in a category.”

  “I don’t follow.” This was an understatement.

  “Well, schizophrenia, for example, was originally just a description of various symptoms, yet now, if you say someone’s schizophrenic, you’re probably saying that to explain why someone’s behaving in a certain way. In fact it doesn’t actually explain anything. And take the word ‘demon,’ used in its modern sense. Some people think a demon really is a little creature with horns but other people think this is just a visual symbol for one of the dark forces of the unconscious mind.”

  “And who’s right?”

  “It doesn’t matter because the only thing that matters is that the patient is suffering and needs help. When you’re working at the cutting edge of reality, there’s no time to meditate on semantics.”

  “But when you helped Francie just now—”

  “I treated her by naming the demons and casting them out. That’s the religious language. Or you can switch languages and say in the language of psychology: I dealt directly with the unconscious mind, bypassing normal thought processes and flinging out words which triggered the release of certain malign archetypes—”

  “Wait, wait, wait, I’m getting all muddled and only understanding about one word in twenty—”

  “Okay, let me try again. There are various medical words which can be used to describe Francie’s condition but I don’t think they’re going to prove adequate as explanations when she makes a reasonably quick recovery.”

  “You think she’ll recover?” The idea seemed inconceivable.

  “She’ll need a lot of treatment, but yes, I believe that in the end she’ll be the same person as she was before the other personality muscled in on her.”

  “And when you say ‘the other personality,’ you mean—”

  “A psychiatrist might try and float the theory that she’s suffering from a multiple personality disorder, but since that particular illness usually stems from a long history of severe abuse and since Francie’s abuse was a fantasy—”

  “She was possessed, wasn’t she?”

  “That too is just a description, and in the end ‘possessed’ is as hazy a word as ‘mad.’ To be quite honest I’m still by no means certain what was going on.”

  “But you must be—you were certain enough to exorcise her!”

  “Strictly speaking that wasn’t an exorcism. The rite to exorcise the Devil takes a lot of time to set up and the patient has to consent.”

  “But you called on Satan!”

  “I blew it and made a mistake. Well, I nearly blew the whole thing—”

  “But Nicholas, if that wasn’t an exorcism, what on earth was it?”

  “It was an emergency rite of deliverance, but I’m not at all keen on that sort of thing—I’m not one of those glitzy Charismatics who see demons everywhere—”

  “But the deliverance worked!”

  “By the grace of God, yes—or did it? What exactly was the right button which switched her off? I’m not at all sure certainty’s possible here.”

  By this time I was far more confused than I had been at the start of the conversation. “Nicholas, I don’t understand why you’re floundering around like this! Aren’t you supposed to be an experienced exorcist?”

  “Yes, and that’s exactly why I’m floundering. I know enough to know how little I know for sure. Sometimes I think the Christian ministry of healing isn’t so much about problem-solving as mystery-encountering.” He smiled at me unexpectedly.

  “You mean that even though you’re so experienced—”

  “This was very different from the type of experience which normally comes my way. I usually only exorcise places. That’s pretty mundane; one can be well prepared and business-like. As for deliverance, I like to set up the rite well in advance after a great deal of prayer and counselling and with a doctor in attendance. My ministry’s about being low-key, not about shouting at demons and waving a crucifix around like a magic wand—and it’s not about using hypnosis without medical supervision either … Of course there are doctors who would say I overpowered Francie by the power of the will and not by the rite of deliverance at all.”

  “But in the end you ditched the hypnosis,” I said at once. “You ditched everything except the crucifix.”

  He seemed surprised that I’d noticed. “That’s true,” he said, “I did—I had to. The hypnosis was successful in calming Francie, but I couldn’t have hypnotised that other personality. It was much too strong.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t the Devil?”

  “I’m not sure of anything. I’m shell-shocked.”

  On the floor Francie moaned, making us both jump, but she remained unconscious.

  “I was lucky to survive,” said Nicholas, looking down at her. I saw him shiver.

  “But you couldn’t have got killed—you called on Jesus Christ!” I was unsure how far I believed this.

  “But not to save me. To save Francie—and I believe she would have been saved even if I myself had been killed in the process. But it would have been entirely my fault if I’d been killed. I’m so debilitated at present that the last thing I’m fit for is the ministry of deliverance.” He finally allowed himself to sink down on the swivel-chair at his desk and close his eyes in exhaustion.

  Withdrawing to the kitchen I made us both some sweet tea. I was still feeling shattered but it helped to go through the familiar routine of tea-making, and when I returned to the study I found Nicholas had also been on the move again. He had covered Francie with a blanket from the bedsit and opened a bottle of lavatory cleaner from Lewis’s bathroom. A pungent chemical odour was now masking the stench from the body.

  As I gave him his mug of tea I said: “Why did you call on Jesus for help? Why not just call on God?”

  “Jesus is by tradition the Light that drives back the Dark, but there’s more to it than that. Today we would say Christ is a symbol of integration—he was the one human being who was so totally integrated, so totally at one with his Creator, that he was divine, and Francie at that point was almost subhuman, her personality abnormally fragmented. By evoking such a potent image of integration I was calling on God to draw the fragments together by the power of the Spirit and cast out the destructive forces which were annihilating her.”

  I sipped my tea and restrained myself from muttering “Weird!” through chattering teeth. Then it occurred to me to wonder how the supposedly non-weird doctors would cope. “Nicholas, what will they do to her at the hospital?”

  “Oh, put her on a psychiatric ward, give her a brain-scan, drug her to the eyeballs, but don’t worry, she’ll survive. I doubt if she’ll remember much. Alice—” He broke off as if too upset to continue.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m just so sorry this has happened. I would never have wanted you to witness this side of my ministry.”

  “Why not?” I said astonished.

  “Well, I know normal people find it a complete turn-off—”

  “What normal people? What’s ‘normal’ anyway? And why are you suddenly aping Lewis and treating me as a Victorian maiden whose purity mustn’t be sullied? I don’t have to be wrapped in tissue paper, you know, and preserved in a box like your bear!”

  I was still smiling at him, still savouring the fact that my teeth were no longer chattering, when once more we heard the doorbell ring in the hall.

  “That’ll be Val,” said Nicholas, hurrying forward at once, but again his ESP was malfunctioning. As I followed him into the hall he opened the door and I saw that the
caller was a stranger to me. He was a tall man of about forty-five, handsome, well dressed and, quite obviously, terrified.

  “Nick!” he exclaimed, swaying in relief. “Thank God you’re here—you’ve got to help me!”

  “Alice,” I heard Nicholas say, “meet Francie’s husband, Harry Parker.”

  19

  There is no simple way round the bearing of griefs and sorrows. Easing the way through involves some understanding of the path of grief and a confidence in the Lord whose risen life proclaims that every Good Friday gives way to a new Easter Day.

  GARETH TUCKWELL AND DAVID FLAGG

  A Question of Healing

  I

  It may seem strange but I had been so absorbed in the attempt to murder Nicholas that I had quite forgotten Francie’s boast that she had murdered Harry. Nicholas had remembered; he had phoned the Parkers’ number after she had passed out, and I realised now, as the truth dawned, that he had had his suspicions about the throat-cutting. Francie had been too vague. I also realised that the reason why Harry hadn’t answered the call was because he had been on his way to the Rectory.

  “We’ve sent for an ambulance,” said Nicholas after showing him Francie’s unconscious, blanketed body, “and Val’s on her way here as well.”

  “Who?” Having flinched at the sight of the body, Harry flinched again as the odour of lavatory-cleaner fluid and human ordure hit his nostrils.

  “The doctor who works with me, Val Fredericks. Alice, sweet tea for Harry, please.”

  “Sweet tea?” yelped Harry. “Christ, don’t mess around! Give me a double-brandy if you don’t want a second body on your floor!”

  Nicholas made no attempt to lecture him about the best medicine for shock. He merely nodded to sanction the request before saying: “You’d better sit down.”

  When I returned with the brandy I found Harry had collapsed in a chair in the hall out of reach of the worst of the stench and Nicholas was standing nearby on a spot which allowed him to keep an eye on Francie as he listened to Harry’s monologue.

  “Christ Almighty,” Harry was saying in a daze. “Jesus Christ.” Now that I had the chance to observe him closely I saw he had blue eyes, bloodshot with tiredness, a florid complexion, hinting at a fondness for alcohol, and a peculiarly curly mouth which conjured up vaguely repulsive images of gluttony and lust. But this impression of a sexy bon vivant was blurred by the shock he had received. The curly mouth no longer looked as if it longed to wrap itself around the rim of a glass of vintage claret at some upmarket restaurant. His lips trembled. He could hardly slurp down the brandy. When he finally embarked on a monologue his voice was unsteady.

  “Well, I realised some time ago that she was getting peculiar,” he said between gulps. “I remember coming home from Australia last spring and being greeted with the news that she was going to study for a diploma in counselling. Francie! Study for a diploma! Hell, the only academic qualification she’s got is an O-level in art! Okay, I’m not saying she doesn’t have a flair for dealing with the sad stuff that turns up at your Healing Centre, but she’s got the kind of brain that just doesn’t function in an academic setting. I tried to tell her that but then she slid even further off her trolley and threatened to get back at me by telling everyone I was cruel to her! Well, I ask you! What was I supposed to do? In the end I just laughed it off, decided it was hormones and hoped it would go away.

  “But it didn’t.

  “You know what happens next? She says she’ll tell everyone I’m a wife-beater—me! Christ, I can’t even bring myself to give the dog a whack when he eats my slippers! Francie was always saying I was just a big softie but now all of a sudden I’m cast as a macho hard man. ‘Hey, what is all this?’ I say to Francie. ‘What the hell’s going on? Because whatever it is I think you ought to have medicine for it!’

  “Okay, okay—maybe that wasn’t the brightest comment to make, but damn it, I was so rattled by that time that I wasn’t about to win first prize for diplomacy.

  “And you know what happens next? After I drop this hint that she should see a doctor she comes at me with flailing fists and screeches that I ought to be castrated! Bloody hell! I get the real bugger of a black eye and everyone at the office wants to know what’s going on. A wife-beater? Me? Don’t make me laugh! All the beating was done by her.

  “Well, life became diabolical then, it really did. I mean, there I was, slaving away all day sweeping up the legal crap my multinational generates and practising self-defence all night with this harpy who’s for ever screeching and punching and chucking the dinner in my lap—for Christ’s sake, she even threw my whisky in my face, and it was Johnnie Walker Black Label too, not some bloody supermarket’s Own Brand! Christ, it’s been a nightmare, it really has—and now it’s become a bloody horror-movie.

  “Anyway, by the end of last September I’m so desperate that I trundle along to the family doctor. ‘Hey, Rupert,’ I say, ‘Francie’s gone peculiar. Haul her in, would you, and stuff her with pills—Valium would do nicely for starters,’ but all he does is mutter about her ‘time of life’ and give me dodgy looks. That’s when I realise she must have been fantasising to him that I’m the world’s number one sadist, and my God, that’s when I really start to worry. How long has this been going on for, I ask myself, and who else has she been bitching to? Well, at that point I panic. ‘Now look here, Rupe,’ I shout, showing him the bruise on my arm where I’d parried a blow from the frying-pan, ‘stop talking crap and get busy with the prescription pad! That woman’s got to be calmed down!’ But bugger it, he says he can’t force-feed Francie pills and if she doesn’t come to see him there’s nothing he can do.

  “Okay, I do try to persuade Francie to see him but she just says the Healing Centre gives her all the medical help she can ever need. So then I toy with the idea of coming to see you, but I never do it, do I? My mistake. The trouble is I’m not religious, as I’m sure you know—no offence meant—and I’m not really into all this healing stuff—although I’m sure you do a great job in your own way—and so I wind up telling myself that if Francie’s so besotted with the Centre, you yourself could be part of the problem and maybe even compounding it.

  “It was easier to reach the decision not to consult you because I knew I’d got a breather coming up—the two-week trip to Hong Kong. But I did tell myself that if she wasn’t better by the time the kids came back from school for Christmas you and I would have to talk. Normally I’m not the kind of chap who talks about his domestic problems to another chap—it was bad enough telling the family doctor, and as for telling a clergyman … But I could see the situation might in the end call for desperate measures.

  “Well, I make my great escape—work like a dog among the Chinks—and as soon as I get back last night I see she’s very much worse, not with it at all, and there were even times when she didn’t seem to be there—mentally, I mean—God, it was bloody eerie, it was just as if she’d turned into someone else. Anyway I get up this morning—jet-lagged to pieces, of course—and I trail down to the kitchen and I find she’s got a huge knife and a huge amount of liver—pounds and pounds of it—and she’s stabbing and chopping and slicing away at all this damn offal and muttering to herself like a bag-lady. There’s blood all over the table, blood all over everywhere, the kitchen’s as good as a slaughter-house. I don’t like to comment, since she looks exactly as if she wants to chop me up, so I just say airily: ‘What’s new?’ and sit down at the table as if there’s nothing out of the ordinary going on. And do you know what she says next? Now, this proves beyond all doubt that she’s a certifiable lunatic. She says: ‘Rosalind Darrow slept with Stacy McGovern and as a result he went and hanged himself!’

  “Well, I ask you! What a fantasy! Of course we all know Rosalind would never in a million years stoop to have an affair with anyone, least of all her husband’s curate! Anyway, the moment I heard this preposterous statement something in me snapped—I just felt so angry and so fed up that I threw all caution to the winds
and yelled at her: ‘You silly bitch, you don’t seriously think anyone’s going to believe that sick fairytale, do you?’ and she growled: ‘Arrrgh!’ and plunged her knife all the way through the nearest slice of liver before rushing upstairs.

  “Well, I’ve just finished making myself some coffee—and I’m so rattled that I spill the instant all over everywhere—when down the stairs again she comes and surges back into the kitchen. She’s all cleaned up and she’s dressed as if she’s off to a wife-swapping party. ‘What’s going on?’ I say but she takes no notice. She just grabs the knife and shoves it in her handbag and walks out. ‘Hey, wait a minute!’ I shout, but that was a bad move because the next moment she’s swinging round and coming back towards me—she’s making a hissing sound and in between hisses she’s cursing in the vilest language you can imagine. Then comes the climax—she crowns the whole performance by vomiting all over me. Jesus! Was I shattered! Then to my unutterable relief I hear the front door bang and I emerge from my traumatised stupor to realise she’s gone.

  “That settled it. It took me a while to clean myself up and put on fresh clothes, but then I came straight here to ask your advice.

  “Christ Almighty, Nick, what’s going on? It’s got to be a brain tumour, hasn’t it—she’s had a complete personality change, but how am I going to explain it to the kids? I mean, I’ll stand by Francie—provided she can get back to the way she was before she became someone else—but what’s the prognosis? Can she be operated on, do you think? Is it certain to be cancer or is there a chance the growth’s benign? And even if she survives the tumour, is a full recovery remotely possible?”

  He finally stopped. His blue eyes, stricken, earnest, almost childlike in his extreme bewilderment, peered mistily, trustfully up at Nicholas. He was clutching the arms of his chair hard enough to crack them.

  Nicholas said: “I think she may soon be a little better. Would you like me to come with you to the hospital to talk to the doctors?”