‘Yes.’
‘Whereas others – most of us, I would say – muddle along, if only because we are not quite dear what our conscience is telling us to do.’
‘Yes.’
‘Some of us, even, are not even sure that there is a right path or a wrong path …’
‘Yes.’
‘Most trust to a kind of gravity which will pull us, like a meandering river, down towards the sea.’
‘I guess that applies to you and me …’
‘But not Andrew. Ever since he was a child he was determined to be on the right side of the law, and he was always very anxious that there should be a law to give an inflexible structure to his life.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know for sure. I’m not a psychoanalyst. But I think an analyst would say that it was partly because our mother was such a bully, and yet so erratic, that we never knew where we stood with her, what would make her pleased with us, or what would put her in a rage.’
‘He told me …’
‘While our father, who might have provided some consistency in our lives, was a weak man who could not stand up to her and, eventually, as you know, ran off with his secretary leaving us at the mercy of our mother until, in Andrew’s case, he came upon Father Lambert.’
She drank from her glass and nodded to Henry to go on.
‘Now Father Lambert not only exemplified all those qualities which had been so poorly represented in our father; he was also the priest of a religion which offered a definite and detailed code. It inevitably appealed to someone like Andrew, who had always wanted to know whether he was doing right or doing wrong.’
‘Sure.’
‘So he found, both in the man and in the religion, a clear answer to what the Freudians might call the yearning of his super-ego, and a way to cope with the frightening urges of his libido. The libido, however, can never be successfully repressed or denied. If it cannot flow on the surface, then it runs underground and in his case, I suspect, expressed itself in his affection for you …’
She nodded.
‘And only surfaced again as undisguised sexual desire when, for a moment, your father’s claim for his discovery enabled Andrew to throw off the inhibitions implicit in his commitment to a priestly vocation …’
‘Go on.’
‘At first he thought he was in paradise, but quickly discovered that life outside a monastery is neither as innocent nor as simple as it seems.’
She blushed. ‘Because I told him about you?’
He looked at her but did not blush. ‘Yes. He said nothing at all to suggest that he blamed either of us for what had happened, but clearly he had had as idealistic a conception of sexual love as he had of everything else, and to discover so soon that we make mistakes or, rather, that we settle for the relative while awaiting the absolute, threw him into confusion.’
‘For me he was the absolute,’ said Anna.
‘I know. And I am sure that in time he would have realized that. But before he could recover from that first confusion, he suffered the second setback, the discovering that the find was a hoax, and he felt impelled to return to the structure which had served him so well before, but within which he had committed himself to the celibate life of a monk.’
Anna stood up. ‘Shall we go eat?’ she said abruptly, to hide from Henry her burgeoning tears.
‘Yes.’ He finished his drink and together they went down into the warm streets and walked to a restaurant in Chelsea. There, after they had ordered, Anna described in greater detail what she had learned from Louvish.
‘Will the story get into the press?’ Henry asked her.
‘I don’t think so. Cardinal Memel didn’t mention it. Louvish certainly won’t leak it. Nor will Dad.’
‘And you?’
She shook her head. ‘No. It would ruin Dad.’
‘What will he do now?’
‘Ma wanted him to go back to the States, but he won’t hear of it. He says he now loves Israel more than he did before.’
‘But not in the same way?’
‘Not at all in the same way.’
‘And Jake?’
‘He’s gone to Gaza.’
‘And you?’
She looked sad. ‘After the Congress of Biblical Archaeologists at Oxford, I guess I’ll go back to the States.’
‘You’re giving up on Britain?’
‘I think Britain gave up on me.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s funny,’ she said. ‘I’ve been dropped before, and I’ve felt bad about it at the time, but I’ve never before felt that it needn’t have turned out like this, and I’ve never hated a rival like I hate the Catholic Church.’
Henry looked perplexed. ‘Can you blame the Catholic Church for our emasculating mother?’
‘No. But, as you always said, the Simonites are short of vocations, so don’t tell me that, now they’ve got him back in their clutches, they aren’t painting me as a Jezebel who will lure him out and lead him to damnation.’
‘And will you?’
‘What?’
‘Try and lure him out?’
‘I don’t even know if he’ll see me.’
‘I’m going to visit him tomorrow. I’ll find out.’
Twenty-six
At ten the next morning Henry went to the Simonite monastery, where Gerry, the porter, called Andrew down from his cell. He was wearing the grey habit of the order, with a rope tied around his waist. Though calm, he seemed thin, and had a tired look on his face, as if he had been fasting or keeping an all-night vigil.
He greeted Henry with a kind of measured friendliness and led him back to his cell. Henry, who loathed all institutions, but felt particularly repelled by the mixed smell of floor polish, incense and the monks’ breakfast which always permeated the air, followed him obediently up the stairs.
‘They moved me to another cell while I was away,’ said Andrew, as they walked along the corridor on the second floor.
‘Promotion?’
‘In a way.’
They reached the cell, and Andrew opened the door before standing back to let his brother go in before him.
Henry looked around at the book-lined walls. ‘Who was here before?’
‘Father Lambert.’ He closed the door. ‘It was much simpler to move me up here than to move all his books and papers down to my old cell.’
‘But doesn’t it give you the creeps?’
Andrew frowned. ‘It reminds me, naturally … but that’s as it should be.’ He directed Henry towards the wooden armchair and himself sat down at the desk.
‘You seem to be busy,’ said Henry, glancing at the pile of papers.
‘I’ve not only been asked to clear up his papers, but also to take over some of the things he was to do for the Congress of Biblical Archaeologists.’
‘They must be relieved that you came back.’
Andrew blushed. ‘I’m also relieved to have something to do.’
‘Of course. And I won’t waste your time. I just wanted to see that you were all right, and to tell you that Anna came back last night.’
‘Ah, good. I must ring her,’ he said in a tone of contrived detachment.
‘She’ll be at the Congress. Her father’s coming too. But then she means to go back to America.’
He frowned. ‘Won’t she finish at Huntingdon?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘No, well, I can see why she might not want to. She only came, after all, to study under Father Lambert. Without him, it’s only to be expected that she might go elsewhere.’
‘I don’t think that it’s because of that that she’s leaving,’ said Henry.
Andrew looked out of the window. ‘No. There must be other reasons. I realize that.’
‘Do you realize that she still loves you?’ asked Henry.
Andrew’s expression did not change. He still looked out of the window at nothing in particular. ‘And I still love her,’ he said in a flat tone of
voice. ‘There was never any question of an absence of love.’
‘I know, but …’
‘It was only a matter of what kind of love it should be.’
‘Are you sure … are you absolutely sure that you know what kind of love it should be?’
He sighed and looked back into the room. ‘She agreed,’ he said in an irritated, almost exasperated tone of voice, ‘we both agreed, that we weren’t meant by God to be man and wife.’
‘How can you be so certain?’
‘I can be certain because, well, because at the root of what took place between us was the lie – the biggest lie of the Prince of Lies – that Jesus did not rise from the dead. And I believed that lie because I wanted to, just like Father Lambert, and like him I ignored all the usual procedures, and spurned all reasonable doubt, and I seduced Anna just as Father Lambert seduced Mrs Dunn. But, while he died in despair, and in mortal sin, God in his mercy has given me the chance to redeem myself and repent.’
‘I can see that,’ said Henry gently, ‘or, rather, I see quite clearly how it can seem like that to you. But I wonder if God would want you to save your soul at her expense.’
‘But don’t you see,’ said Andrew urgently, ‘it isn’t just a question of my soul? If it was just that, it would be easy.’
‘You mean that hers is at risk?’
‘Not hers. His.’ He looked back towards the window.
‘Father Lambert’s?’
He nodded.
‘You feel that by becoming a Simonite monk, you can save his soul as well as your own?’
‘Yes. By seeing it through, right to the end, my life for his life – a return, no more, for what he did for me.’
‘But that’s …’ He was about to say ‘mad’, but stopped himself for fear of tipping his brother over the edge. Instead he said: ‘It makes God seem vengeful – to try and placate him in that way.’
‘It’s not to placate God, it’s to cheat the Devil.’
‘You mean the Devil can claim the soul of Father Lambert …’
‘Unless I offer up my life to expiate his sin, just as Jesus did for the sin of Adam.’
‘So it is not to save your soul that you have returned?’
‘No. His.’
‘And if you were to discover, somehow, that he had died in a state of Grace?’
‘Then, of course, there would be no debt to pay. But I found him there, hanging, and I heard from her lips of his sin with a woman, and I saw the skeleton, and, like him, I doubted, and I denied Christ’s divinity – so easily, so quickly, so shamelessly …’ He shuddered.
Henry shifted in his chair. ‘You may like to know,’ he said, ‘that I went to see Veronica Dunn.’
Andrew looked up suspiciously. ‘When?’
‘Yesterday. Before I fetched Anna from the airport.’
‘Did she ask to see you?’
‘No. I had promised to tell her how things turned out …’
‘Of course. She must have been relieved to know it was a hoax.’
‘She knew that already.’
‘How?’
‘From faith. She said she always knew. In fact, I’d made a bet with her about it and went to tell her that she’d won.’
‘And was she all right?’ asked Andrew.
‘Yes. She seemed fine.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘She was worried about you.’
He frowned. ‘She shouldn’t be.’
‘We agreed …’
‘What?’ asked Andrew, almost irritably.
‘It’s awkward for me to say this,’ said Henry in a quiet but deliberate voice, ‘given what passed between Anna and me, and what passed between her and Father Lambert, but we both agreed – we both felt quite certain – that you are not meant to be a priest or a Simonite monk but Anna’s husband and the father of her children.’
‘Meant by whom?’
‘By … God.’
‘But you don’t believe in him.’
‘I’m no longer so sure …’
‘Take care,’ said Andrew gravely. ‘Don’t believe unless you must. Faith is a terrible burden.’
‘Didn’t Christ say that his yoke was easy and his burden light?’ asked Henry.
‘Yes,’ said Andrew sadly, ‘and at times it is. But at other times God withdraws and the Devil renews his temptations – to give up, to abandon one’s vows and solemn resolutions.’
Henry smiled. ‘Am I an agent of the Devil?’
Andrew did not smile. ‘Are you? I don’t know. Not knowingly, certainly, but perhaps … you mean well, I know, but love is so complicated – so selfish, sometimes, and at other times so pure.’
‘Has it occurred to you,’ asked Henry, ‘that perhaps, before making any final decision, you should seek advice of some kind?’
‘I have my confessor.’
‘A Simonite?’
‘Yes.’
‘You should consult a priest, perhaps, who is not a Simonite, or a lay counsellor of some kind.’
‘Do you mean a psychiatrist?’
‘I suppose I do.’
He laughed. ‘I’m not mad,’ he said, ‘or only in so far as anyone who aspires to be holy will always seem mad.’
‘I didn’t mean to suggest that you were mad,’ said Henry, ‘but only, perhaps, that you were unhappy.’
‘Of course I suffer,’ said Andrew. ‘If I didn’t suffer, then what would I have to offer to save his soul?’
‘And her suffering?’ asked Henry. ‘What should she do with that?’
‘Endure until it passes,’ said Andrew, ‘and then find a better man than me.’
Sensing that the conversation had become too painful for his brother, Henry talked a little longer about other things and then told Andrew that he must leave. He insisted that he could see himself out and left his brother at the door of Father Lambert’s cell. Impatient to escape the claustrophobia which always came over him in an institution of this kind, he made his way back along the polished corridor and down the heavy wooden stairs.
At the entrance, however, he was waylaid by the porter, who asked if he could spare a moment to speak with the Prior. He was led back along the corridor on the ground floor and shown into Father Godfrey’s study, with its comfortable armchairs and the portrait of St Simon Doria on the wall.
Father Godfrey rose from his desk as Henry entered and, with a friendly gesture, guided him towards one of the chairs. ‘I’m so glad you could look in,’ he said. ‘I knew you must be worried about Andrew … so were we, so were we … and I wondered how you found him? Whether, indeed, you are reassured?’
Not knowing what the Prior knew – or whether he was Andrew’s confessor – Henry looked at him uncertainly. Father Godfrey, as if realizing that Henry might feel constrained, lowered his voice and added: ‘He has told me everything, I think, of what happened in Jerusalem – certainly about the skeleton, the deception and Miss Dagan.’
‘It seems clear to me,’ said Henry, ‘that the two are very much in love and should get married.’
Father Godfrey frowned, as if pained that anyone should speak so bluntly. ‘You may be right, you may be right,’ he muttered, ‘but it seems to us that that was the aberration …’
‘What?’
‘The love affair. A result of the shock, surely, at seeing what appeared to be the skeleton of Our Lord.’
‘A shock which some might say brought him to his senses.’
Again the Prior frowned. ‘I know, of course, that you are not sympathetic to the idea of the religious life, but I would have hoped, for your brother’s sake, that you would try and judge his case with some objectivity.’
‘I am no longer so opposed to the religious life as you assume.’
‘You can see its value?’
‘Clearly, if one accepts that Jesus was God, then one might feel that he wished you to devote your life to him in an uncompromising way.’
The Prior looked relieved. ‘Then you accept that his vo
cation might be genuine?’
‘It could be, but I am convinced that it isn’t.’
‘Even though he has felt it, now – apart from this short aberration – for over six years?’
‘Yes.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘I know him very well. He is very open, affectionate and kind.’
‘Of course. But these are qualities which may suit a priest as well as a married man.’
‘I know. And if I felt that God did want him as a priest, I would do nothing to dissuade him. But I can see so clearly the psychological forces which have driven him to it – above all, his obsession with Father Lambert …’
‘I know, I know. He was always very influenced by Father Lambert, and naturally feels an obligation towards him.’
‘And is that a proper basis for a religious life?’
‘Not in itself, no, but as a manifestation of love …’
‘To give up his life for the sake of another?’
‘“Greater love hath no man …”’
‘But does God bargain in that way?’
‘He does, yes, or so it would seem from Scripture. Look at Lot, who haggled to save Sodom, or even the barter implicit in the new Covenant – our salvation in return for the sacrifice of Christ.’
‘And you are happy to have Andrew back on that basis?’
The Prior avoided his eyes but said: ‘It is not for me to turn away someone whom God has called to join our order.’
For a moment, Henry felt impelled to argue further, but he knew that it would be futile – not just because Father Godfrey seemed so determined to hold on to Andrew, but because Henry himself no longer felt certain that what the Prior said was untrue.
He left, and escaped from the gloomy monastery into the street. He walked towards his car, which he had parked at a meter. When he reached it, he stopped, turned, and looked back – not at the grim monastery in which Andrew was imprisoned, but at the shabby church which stood next to it, with grass growing in its gutters and weeds from the crevices between the wide, worn steps: and, just as three weeks before he had felt curious enough to enter St Patrick’s in Soho, so now he turned and went back into the church of St Simon.
It was cool and musty, with the sombre green light of dawn. There was a particular smell – a mixture of condensation on the tiles of the floor, and smoke from the guttering candles in front of the statue of the Virgin and St Anne. He walked down the right aisle, looking up at the stained-glass windows representing the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; then at the painted bas-reliefs at each station of the cross, depicting the suffering of Jesus in Jerusalem. What trouble and expense had gone into the decoration of this church with works of art which were now ignored. How incongruous that, in an age when man finally seemed to have mastered the world with steam, gunpowder and reason, these painters and sculptors of the Victorian age should have returned in their imaginations to the Middle Ages.
On the Third Day Page 28