He unlocked his hands and began to examine his thumbnail as if he had never seen it before. Each word was now being carved laboriously from his vocabulary. I could almost see him sweat over the choosing and the extraction. I could almost hear him pant over the extreme effort required to form each sentence. Yet the sentences when they emerged were smooth and fluent, spoken in a calm, unruffled voice.
“You know what I mean by sheepdog trials, don’t you?” he said. “They’re open-air exhibitions of the skills dogs show when herding sheep, and the judge has to decide which dog is the most skilful. Well, once upon a time, my father said, a man and his small son were on holiday in the Lake District and they saw a sign directing them along a road to some sheepdog trials which were being held on a nearby hillside. The little boy said: ‘Oh, I’d like to see a trial!’ so his father agreed to take him, but when they arrived at the scene the little boy was very disappointed. He said to his father: ‘But where’s the jury? And where’s the judge in the black cap, like the judge at the Old Bailey who sentences murderers to hang?’ (This was long before the abolition of capital punishment.) Then the father had to explain that it wasn’t that kind of trial. No dog was going to be condemned to death or sentenced to prison. Every one of them was there to be affirmed and valued and encouraged, and if some of them didn’t come up to the mark they were always told they were welcome to come back later on when they had learned how to be more skilful.”
My eyes once more filled with tears but even as I dashed them away Nicholas looked straight at me and said simply: “Kim will be all right now, Carter. He’ll be shorn at last of Mrs. Mayfield’s ‘Jake,’ because in the end we all belong to God, not to the Powers, and God is like the judge of the sheepdog trials, not like the judge in the black cap at the Old Bailey. So mourn for all the happy times you and Kim had together, grieve for all the suffering you both had to endure, but then have the courage to let him go to be loved and healed by his maker—because nothing in the end can separate us from the love of God, nothing, of that I’m quite sure.”
He stood up suddenly, not waiting for my reply, but instead of moving to the door he walked to the window, drew back one of the curtains and stared out into the dark night. “Yet sometimes it’s not so easy to let a spouse go, I realise that,” I heard him say. “No matter how much went wrong with the marriage there was still that profound commitment in the beginning, and how very sad it is, isn’t it, to be forced to witness the painful death of so many cherished hopes and dreams.”
There was a long, long silence.
Then I rose from my chair and moved to his side to comfort him.
TWENTY-TWO
In his brief ministry Jesus did his best to give short-term help in healings and feedings.But the thrust of his teaching was to get at the roots of evil and suffering, and his message of the Kingdom of God was about a healing which involved love, trust, compassion, forgiveness, and radically inclusive hospitality. He faced the fact that that sort of healing can only be offered by those who embody it, whatever the cost.
DAVID F. FORD
The Shape of Living
I
As we stood looking out over the moonlit church, Nicholas was finally able to say: “It’s not that I don’t love Alice. But I’ve needed time.”
I told him I understood. I also told him I was sorry I had been so rough with him in the past whenever the subject of his private life had slithered into our conversations.
“But it was good for me to hear what you had to say!” he answered at once. “That was what my spiritual director found so interesting. You always spotted my weaknesses and rooted them out for me to look at.”
“I was bloody rude . . . Do you still love Rosalind?”
“I still miss her. The real problem is that I’ve never before had to live without her being in my life. She’s like the sister I never had.”
“Ah.”
“I realise that sounds a trifle strange, but—”
“Not at all. As it turns out, I married a man who was like the father I never had. Probably there are loads of people out there who marry either to replicate a family relationship or to create a version of one which never existed.”
Nicholas said simply: “You loved Kim, didn’t you?”
There was a pause before I was able to answer: “I certainly found I didn’t want him lined up for the long roast.” Then after another pause I said: “I loved the man he might have been.” But finally I could say: “I loved the man he managed to be with me for a little while before his past dynamited him and Mrs. Mayfield’s ‘Jake’ came between us.”
“You’re talking of the real Kim.”
I nodded before blurting out: “But I’ve been so tormented that he might have been just a worthless illusion conjured up by a pathetic thirty-something past her sell-by date.”
“No, he was real. I caught a glimpse of him on the night of Sophie’s death when he came to the Rectory. He said: ‘I wanted Carter to love me for the man I really was, deep down, the man I now feel I can claim and become.’ Do you remember him saying that? And he added: ‘I wanted to keep her quite separate from that other person, the shit who’d mistreated Sophie and messed around in the world of Mrs. Mayfield.’ ”
“I remember . . . But how did you know he was telling the truth?”
“Because I saw his statements rang true for you. You were hostile and sceptical towards him but at that point I could see from your reaction that something very real had been disclosed.”
“But how did you know my love for him hadn’t been wiped out altogether by those final nightmare events at Oakshott? Most people would just assume I was glad to be shot of him after all that . . . I thought at first I was glad to be shot of him after all that . . . so what made you so sure there was still some love left that you clambered up here with that bear at half-past twelve in the morning to reassure me that this man, whom ninety-nine people out of a hundred would have judged a complete villain, wasn’t due for the long roast?”
“As I told you once, I leave judgement to God. He’s the only one who knows the whole truth about any of us.”
“Yes, but—”
“You and Kim had some happy months together, didn’t you, both before and after you were married? When a marriage ends catastrophically, one tends to focus on the catastrophe but after a while the memories of love resurface . . . or so Rosalind seems to have found.”
“God, are you saying—”
“My marriage ended catastrophically. My fault. It still makes me ill to think of it. But we did love each other once and that can’t be rewritten—no catastrophe can rewrite it.”
“No?”
“No, because love, as the Christian mystics said, is the Great Reality. And my father admired a non-Christian philosopher called Plotinus who used to say that nothing that really is can ever die. So perhaps one can say that despite all that went wrong in your relationship with Kim—despite all the deceptions which created such unreality and illusion—there was still something there which was intensely real, something worth remembering, something which enriched your life by making you more fully yourself. And some day, maybe a long way off, maybe sooner than you imagine, you’ll think to yourself: yes, I’d like to take another look at that Great Reality, if I’m ever lucky enough to encounter it again.”
Tentatively I said: “And you got lucky sooner rather than later.”
“Too soon. That’s why it’s all been so difficult.”
“I suppose there’s no chance that you and Rosalind—”
“No, we can’t go back. But I’ve come to hope we can be friends again instead of embittered strangers. I’ve accepted now,” he said, standing up and moving over to his bear, “that I can’t stay stuck in the past, the past which ran all the way back to the nursery and my earliest memories of Rosalind. I’ve accepted that I’ve got to let it go.” But as he stroked the bear’s black-thread mouth with his index finger, he was unable to stop himself heaving a huge sigh.
; “Relax!” I said drily. “I’ll look after him for you, but when does someone else get to look after that portrait in your office?”
“I’ll take it down to Rosalind this weekend.” He sighed gustily again.
I bit back an acid comment and said mildly instead: “If you both agree you have to move on, why has the divorce got bogged down?”
“Rosalind feels she can’t cope alone at the moment with our elder boy’s problems.”
“But you’re not going to vanish into thin air after the divorce! And how old’s this child anyway?”
“Nineteen.”
“Nineteen? Good God, Nicholas, if he’s old enough to get married, die for his country and vote, he’s old enough to do without Mum and Dad breathing anxiety all over him! Boot him out of the cradle, give away the babyfood and for God’s sake get on with your lives!”
Nicholas finally managed to laugh. “There you go again, telling me exactly what I need to hear!”
“Then that’s a fair exchange, isn’t it? You’ve certainly told me what I needed to hear.”
I thought those remarks would conclude our conversation but he suddenly became very still, as if an important idea had occurred to him but he was unsure how to slide it into the conversation. At last he said: “You had a catastrophe once before in your life, didn’t you?”
“Did I?”
“When the bailiffs came and your parents split up.”
“Oh, that! Past history. I’ve got it all sorted now.”
Nicholas seemed not to hear. “By the way,” he said, “before we leave the subject of catastrophes, let me just ask you this: do you now think that Kim could have been helped to gain control over his addiction and achieve a better quality of life?”
“Yes, I do.”
“You believe now that no one’s beyond redemption if they repent and want to start afresh?”
“Yep.”
He turned away, glancing at his watch before murmuring: “One needs to pray very hard for such people, of course. Prayer underpins our whole ministry here at St. Benet’s. Praying’s such an important act.” Unexpectedly he swung back to face me. “Shall I say a prayer to round off this conversation?”
It seemed right to seize this chance to show respect for him after all my rudeness, so I listened politely while he said a few words asking God to look after me and added a brief request that Kim’s soul should rest in peace. He even included a prayer for my family, a gesture which I felt was hardly necessary, but I kept my mouth shut and let him finish. When it was over he made no comment on what had been said but glanced at his watch again and remarked that he needed to catch some sleep in order to be wide awake for the weekly healing service, due to take place in a few hours’ time.
“Couldn’t you give it a miss for once?” I said, somehow resisting the urge to tell him again what a workaholic he was.
“I could, since the healers on duty don’t have to be priests, but I’m reluctant to miss the service when I need healing as much as anyone else who’ll be present.”
“You mean you get the healing too?”
“The healers always lay hands on one another. We may be physically fit but none of us is perfect. We all carry damage and pain around with us in some form or other.”
I said: “I hope the magic works for you today.”
“There’s no magic. Just Christ the Healer. He’s always there.” Patting his bear one last time he murmured: “Goodbye, old friend.” Then he said good night to me and left the flat without looking back.
II
I fell into bed and slept. There were no nightmares, and when I returned to consciousness I found I had slept for a long time. It was almost ten o’clock. For a while I lay in bed and thought of Nicholas talking of the sheepdog trials, but although tears filled my eyes again they were tears of relief. I found I could think of my dolphin and know I was remembering something real, something which cast light on all the darkness and altered the quality of my memories so that they became bearable. But I still could not imagine ever wanting to risk embracing such a reality again.
On my way to the kitchen I paused to give the bear a proper assessment. In the light of day he was looking more haggard, but he had a striking pair of glass eyes and an appealing air of world-weary wisdom. Peeking under his new clothes I discovered that although he was threadbare in places his joints all moved, and I was sure he had been very beautiful in his youth, far more beautiful than my cheap floppy number who had disappeared into the bailiffs’ van long ago.
When Alice came upstairs five minutes later to check how I was, she found me sitting in an armchair with the bear on my lap.
“I noticed him earlier!” she exclaimed at once. “What’s he doing up here?”
That Nicholas certainly needed lessons in how to communicate with his fiancée. Quashing the familiar surge of irritation I managed to say mildly: “Didn’t Nicholas tell you? He’s given him to me.”
Alice was beside herself with excitement. “He has?” Evidently the symbolic meaning of the gesture was all too plain to her.
“Yeah, he’s finally crawling out of the nursery and saying goodbye to all his old playmates . . . Hey, why didn’t you tell me that little what’shis-face Darrow is a full-grown hulk of nineteen?”
“I assumed you already knew!”
“Nicholas never talks about his kids.”
“That’s because he feels guilty that he was never around much when they were little, but of course when he and I have children it’ll be different.”
“Are you honestly sure you want to marry him, Alice? I mean, excuse me, I do like him now, but let’s face it, any middle-aged man who makes a symbolic gesture of giving away his teddy-bear has to be quite seriously peculiar.”
Alice exclaimed laughing: “We’re all peculiar in some way or other!” and looked radiantly happy. She even picked up Mr. Bear and gave him a hug.
I decided she was clearly in the grip of the Great Reality.
I also felt more determined than ever to avoid skewering myself in this way again.
III
I wandered over to the church later to light a candle. Perhaps I had been impressed by Tucker’s dedication to melting wax for me, but I lit a candle for Alice and hoped she would now speedily become the second Mrs. Darrow. Having completed this task I then read every request on the prayer notice-board nearby. I had done this before when I had ventured into the church out of curiosity. I had found it comforting to be reminded that I was not the only person enduring a fraught time, and now I browsed for some minutes among the slips of paper written by or on behalf of those in need. My wandering gaze was eventually arrested by a message requesting prayers for David, a drug-addict, currently in some rehab centre but no doubt at risk of relapse when he emerged.
I stared at the message. The word DAVID, printed in capital letters, seemed to dance before my eyes, and the next moment I was remembering Nicholas talking of catastrophes, asking me if I believed Kim could have been helped, praying inexplicably for my family. My memory, locked into replay, suddenly spun into total recall. Lines of dialogue flashed by, some blaring, some muted. “I loved the man he might have been . . . I loved the man he managed to be with me for a little while,” I heard myself say of Kim, but now I was thinking of my father, and a second later Nicholas was telling me: “Nothing that really is can ever die . . . No catastrophe can rewrite it.”
Catastrophe! What a very elegant word that was for such gut-wrenching horror and pain.
“You had a catastrophe once before in your life, didn’t you . . . do you believe now that no one’s beyond redemption . . . one needs to pray very hard for such people . . . Praying’s such an important act . . .”
Lewis elbowed Nicholas aside in my memory.
“You have to use your new knowledge so painfully acquired . . . You’ll find the Powers don’t have the final word . . .”
“DAVID!” shouted the capital letters on the notice-board.
“You must act! ” yelled Le
wis in my head.
I stepped forward. That was an act. I took a prayer-slip from the box on the table below the board. That was an act. By the box was a pencil and I picked it up. That was an act. Then I wrote: “Please pray for DAVID GRAHAM who needs help with a gambling addiction,” and that was the most important act of all.
As I pinned the note to the board I found myself saying soundlessly to Kim: “I couldn’t do this for you while you were alive, but I can do it for someone else and remember you as you’d want to be remembered.” And as I framed those words I knew I could do those things because love was the great reality and nothing that really is can ever die.
I was still standing there, still staring at my message and wondering if Tucker had ever heard of that philosopher Plotinus, whom Nicholas had quoted, when a hand touched my arm.
I turned, and found myself facing Val.
IV
“You’re looking better!” she said approvingly.
“I had nine hours’ sleep.”
“Followed by breakfast?”
“Don’t expect miracles!”
“Am I being guilty of false optimism?” she said laughing. “Or am I only guilty of hope?” And before I could reply she added idly: “Coming to the healing service?”
“Well—”
“Oh, do come! You’ll give me moral support—I’m one of the people doing the laying-on of hands today, and I always feel nervous beforehand.”
I said evasively: “Nicholas was telling me that the healers don’t have to be priests.”
“That’s right, anyone can have a go. Nick says that’s because we’re all connected—we’re like islands in an archipelago, he says, all joined together below the surface of the sea . . . ah, there is Nick—excuse me, I must just have a word with him . . .” She skimmed away.
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