Absolute Truths (49 page)
Authors: Susan Howatch
Tags: #Historical, #Psychological, #Sagas, #Fiction
I bent my head. The woman — Sheila, Lyle, whoever she was —
raised her face for the kiss, and so it came to pass that after my long journey through the arctic wastes of bereavement, I finally
managed to crawl out of the cold.
PART THREE
PARADOX AND
AMBIGUITY
‘
We learn by the bitter experience of temptation that the
spiritual life is not a marter of devout feeling or mere desire
to be good. It
is though
temptation that most of us compre
hend how serious a matter it is — a very matter of life and death, involving struggles for survival which are fierce and
primitive.’
REGINALD SOMERSET WARD
(1881-1962)
Anglican Priest and Spiritual Director
The Way
ONE
‘
Temptation is what distracts us, beguiles us or bullies us off
the path. Temptation is what makes real life different from
the world of our dreams. We dream a world which is wax
under the moulding of our
ambitions
or of our
aspirations; we meet
a world which faces us with trials we have not the
character to surmount, and with seductions we have not
the
virtue to resist.’
Warden of Keble College, Oxford,
1960-1968
A Celebration of Faith
One of the Desert Fathers, living his ascetic life many centuries
ago, said that if one thinks of
fornication
one can avoid committing
it, whereas if one fails to give it sufficient consideration one inevitably winds up in the wrong bed. Abba Cyrus of Alexandria was no stranger, it seems, to the dangers of allowing powerful drives
to remain hidden in the unconscious mind.
I had stopped consciously thinking about fornication the
moment I had entered Sheila’s flat. It had never occurred to me
that fornication would be possible with a bishop’s widow who
was the soul of propriety, and when the opportunity to err pre
sented itself with such peculiar suddenness, I certainly did not
observe to myself: I am about to commit fornication. This is a sin.
I must desist at
once
. Indeed I cannot remember conducting any interior dialogue with myself at all. The sexual drive, which I had been suppressing so hard, merely rose to the surface of my mind and wiped out all the thoughts I should have had — the rational
thoughts, the moral thoughts, the thoughts of a bishop, a theo
logian and a man not inexperienced in the ways of the world. In
the resulting amnesia I only knew that my battered self, tormented
beyond endurance, had at last been reprieved from pain.
Sheila’s nightdress was a very pallid shade of yellow. I remember
feeling surprised that Lyle should have chosen to come back to
me in such an anaemic colour, and this surprise indicates how far
I was beyond the processes of rational thought. Certainly I was
f
ar beyond remembering Abba Cyrus of Alexandria making pithy
comments about the psychology of fornication.
There followed, as I can see now, a very typical episode of casual
sex, and I cannot, in all honesty, dress it up by saying I ‘made
love’ to Sheila. This is because the episode had nothing to do with
love and almost nothing to do with Sheila; any woman exuding
a passionate sympathy would have sufficed, although I concede
my initial reaction was to feel more comfortable with a woman
whom I had every reason to believe was discr
e
et. Nor can I dress
up the act by saying (in the manner which was so fashionable in
the 1960s) that I was being ‘healthy’ and ‘natural’ in behaving in
this way. I was not in the least ‘healthy; I was maimed by bereave
ment and utterly destabilised by a series of events over which I
had lost control. And it was certainty not ‘natural’ either for me
to use a woman as a painkiller of
only
slightly more significance
than a couple of aspirins. I liked women; for me to treat a woman
as a mere
convenient object was contrary not only to my religious
beliefs but to my nature. The truth is that even normal sex, when it
takes place in depersonalising circumstances, can be very unnatural
indeed.
But these were all thoughts which came later. At the time I
was entirely preoccupied with physical matters, but I think some
memory of my normal self must have stirred in my anaesthetised
brain because afterwards I automatically tried to personalise the
impersonal. I gripped her hand, kissed her cheek, held her tightly
for another moment. Eventually I asked if she was all right. She
said she was. She sounded mildly surprised, as if we had met on
a cloudless afternoon at a church fete and I had asked about the
likelihood of rain. After that there seemed nothing more to say so
she went to the bathroom and I retrieved my cigarettes from my
jacket. Neither of us turned on the light. When she returned I
offered her a cigarette before I remembered she was a non-smoker.
The prospect of smoking alone after intercourse seemed odd. But
this was hardly the moment to think of Lyle because if I did I
would have to face my fanciful belief (which I now knew to have
been insane) that she had come back to me through Sheila.
I decided to go to the lavatory instead, and when I returned I
found I did not want a cigarette after all; to smoke without Lyle
in
such circumstances was too difficult. Eventually Sheila, tactful as ever, asked: ‘Do you want to be alone now?’ but at least I had
the humanity to say ‘no’ without a second’s hesitation.
She pressed close to me in gratitude. It was strange how large
she seemed, but I realised that she only seemed large because Lyle
had been so small. But I had already decided to save all thought
of Lyle for later. I now decided to save all thought of everything
for later. A queasiness in the pit of my stomach indicated all too
clearly that thought in these circumstances was a luxury I could
no longer afford.
Having given Sheila one last kiss I turned away from her and
closed my eyes in exhaustion.
When I awoke the next morning I f
ound myself alon
e. Faint
sounds of activity came from the kitchen across the hall. The time
was
twenty minutes to eight.
Memory blasted me to an upright position on the edge of the
bed, and then the implications of all that I remembered began to
spread smoothly, stickily, slimily across my mind like mud poured
from a bucket over an uncarpeted floor. Rigid with horror I sat
on the edge of the bed for some time.
However at last my instinct for survival stirred and I stopped
harbouring such demented thoughts as: it never happened – I shall
wake up in a minute. And: if I don’t think about it, it’ll go away.
Picking up my clothes I dragged myself to the bathroom and found
that a woman’s razor had been placed by the basin alongside a
note which stated: ‘The water’s hot if you want a bath.’ I did take
a bath, a rapid one to sluice away all the physical traces of what had happened, but I ignored the little razor; I was unable to face
looking at myself in the glass. As I dried myself clumsily I became
aware of my overpowering desire to escape, but I knew I had to
restrain the impulse to blunder immediately from the flat. My
entire future could depend on what I did next. Pulling on my
clothes I began to focus my mind, sharpened now by fear and
dread, on the task of severing myself from this woman whom I
knew so imperfectly yet so very much too well.
On my return to the drawing-room I found that the bed had
been reduced to a sofa and all the curtains had been drawn back.
A shaft of sunlight was filtering into the courtyard beyond the
French windows. Slowly I moved to the kitchen. Sheila was drink
ing coffee and reading the
Daily
Telegraph
at the small table in the
centre of the room. After I had forced myself to kiss her she said: ‘Do you want a cooked breakfast?’ and I contrived to answer in a
casual voice: ‘Not this morning, I think.’ We might have been
married for years.
‘
I’ll make some toast.’ She was pouring
out a
cup of coffee for
me as she spoke. ‘Do look at the paper – I can always finish it
later.’
I hid behind the
Telegraph
for a couple of minutes but read
nothing.
When the toast had been placed in front of me she enquired
tranquilly: ‘Was my razor no use?’
‘It looked so dainty that I was afraid of breaking it.’
She smiled, and it occurred to me that she was looking not only
happier but smarter. She was wearing a straight dark skirt and a
green jumper with a row of pearls. Her hair waved smoothly in
all the right directions. She was immaculately made up. She might
have been the hostess of a large country house, a chatelaine well
accustomed to providing for unexpected guests.
‘
But that’s exactly what I was!’ she exclaimed when I had voiced
this opinion. ‘People were always descending in droves on the
palace at Radbury – Derek used to leave me notes saying: ‘There’ll
be thirty for dinner tomorrow."‘
‘I’d say that was grounds for divorce!’ .
‘Oh, Derek knew I enjoyed the challenge!’
‘
Lucky old Derek.’ I drank some coffee and resumed staring at
the front page of the
Telegraph,
but I was unable to read beyond
the headlines.
’Don’t you want the toast, Charles?’
With dread I realised I could no longer go on hiding behind
the
Telegraph
and producing the occasional remark. Setting the
paper aside I began to butter my toast as I tried to work out how
to speak the unspeakable, but in the end it was she who made the
first move. She said suddenly: ‘Don’t worry. It’s all right.’
This attempt to be direct was admirable but I was at a loss to
know how to reply. Obviously I could not say: ‘No, ifs not all right and I’m worried to death.’ At all costs I had to avoid any
comment which she might feel was unchivalrous. I looked down at the butter, now melting on the toast, but as the silence began
to lengthen I set down my knife, removed my reading-glasses and
looked her straight in the ryes.
Tm very grateful,’ I said, ‘that you’re being so understanding.’
One can never go too far wrong by expressing gratitude.
‘Sudden bereavement’s such a shock. It’s enough to make anyone
act out of character, so please – don’t feel embarrassed by last
night! d so like us to be friends!’
Here at last was the sentence which chilled me to the bone and opened up an appalling vista into the future. Looking down at my
toast I saw the butter had congealed and I knew the thought of
eating now revolted me. Finally I managed to say: ‘Of course we
can be friends, although you must forgive me if I’m not at present
the best of correspondents.’
‘
I do realise you’ll have to be very discreet. Clergymen are
allowed a "lapse", aren’t they, but not a regular mistress ... You
see? I know the rules of the game.’
Too devastated to reply I finished my coffee and rose to my
feet. ‘I’d better rescue my car before it falls foul of the parking
regulations.’ I was amazed by how casual my voice sounded. No
claustrophobic locked in a cupboard could have experienced a
stronger desire to escape than I experienced that moment in that
kitchen.
‘... lovely to see you again ...’
‘
... many thanks ... wonderfully kind and sympathetic .. .
most grateful for all your understanding ...’
The hideous dialogue seemed incapable of termination but at last the front door was opening and I was steeling myself for the
final kiss. She was wearing scent, I noticed, the kind of tasteful,
lilies-of-the-valley fragrance sold for middle-aged women at Boots.
Lyle had scrimped and saved and bought expensive scent at Har
rods. Once I had bought her scent for her birthday, but this had
been considered a deprivation of her pleasure. She had enjoyed
the scrimping and the saving. It had made the extravagance more
fun.
‘Charles?’
‘
Sony. Just trying to work out the best way back to Mayfair.’ I
said a final goodbye, and having forced myself to ascend the base
ment steps at a leisurely pace, I hurtled back in panic into the
Pimlico grid.