Glamorous Powers (54 page)

‘You mean he approved?’

I was silent.

‘Jon, I do wish you’d confide in me! I’ve got this nasty feeling that you’re busy tying yourself into a knot again –’

‘Nonsense!’

‘Is it? If you think I can’t see that Francis has upset you in some way –’

‘He merely reminded me of the difficulties attached to my new work and advised me to discuss the situation with Cyril.’

‘Thank God. When are you going to Starwater?’

I was somewhat taken aback by this excessive display of relief but I told myself allowances should be made for the emotional moods of pregnant women. ‘If you can spare the motor I’ll go this afternoon,’ I said soothingly, ‘but my dearest, you really
must try not to worry so much about me! If there’s one thing I know beyond any shadow of doubt it’s that all will eventually be well …’

‘I must confess to anger,’ I said to Cyril five hours later. ‘I was furious with the Archdeacon and furious with Francis.’ And I told him not only about the interview with Aysgarth but about Francis’ epistolary counselling.

Cyril was small and wiry with a curiously military presence; I always felt he ought to be sporting a moustache and wearing a khaki uniform. Twenty years of managing the boys’ school at Starwater Abbey had made him brisk, bossy and a trifle too hearty. I found myself missing Aidan’s subtle understatements and wily silences in the confessional at Ruydale.

‘If you’re so confident about the validity of this call,’ said Cyril, ‘why are you getting so rattled?’

‘Am I getting rattled?’ I said smiling at him.

‘Well, aren’t you? No beating about the bush! Two people express disapproval, one in the world and one out of it, and immediately you’re on fire with indignation! Why don’t you just say compassionately: “Poor chaps! They don’t understand!” All this anger suggests something being covered up. You know your Shakespeare: “One must be suspicious of people who protest too much!”’

‘Yes, Headmaster!’ I said, smiling at him.

‘You’re fencing with me, Jon,’ said Cyril severely. ‘Come along, roll up your sleeves and work harder.’

I worked harder, which meant that I still fenced with him but disguised it. Cyril began to shift in his chair. His bushy eyebrows twitched. The Fordites use no confessional box, as the Roman Catholics do, and confessor and penitent sit facing each other across a table in a small plain room with an oratory in one corner. The difficulties are discussed first. Then the penitent makes the formal confession on his knees before the cross. Cyril and I were still facing each other across the table.

‘I see no sign that you repent of this anger,’ said Cyril at last. ‘How do you expect me to absolve you?’

‘How can you say you see no sign of repentance when I’ve had the insight to realize that my anger stems from injured pride in the face of justifiable criticism? I always repent of my pride!’

‘Yes, yes, yes, don’t we all, but what’s really going on here, Jon? Since we seem to be going round and round the mulberry bush and getting nowhere, I suggest we now approach the problem from a different angle. Suppose you suddenly realized your new call was a delusion; what would you do next?’

‘Continue with the curacy, pray for enlightenment and wait.’

‘Yes, but supposing the war ends, the vicar returns and you’re out of a job. What then?’

‘I’d have to find other work. I couldn’t just sit back and live on my wife’s money.’

‘Why not? Maybe God’s provided you with a rich wife so that you can concentrate on your work as a spiritual director without having to worry about where the next penny’s coming from!’

I stared at him. ‘But I’ve had no hint from God that I’m to continue with my work as a spiritual director beyond maintaining my correspondence with those I used to counsel.’

‘My dear Jon,’ said Cyril, ‘you’re so busy being too proud to live on your wife’s money that you wouldn’t see a hint from God even if it were written in the sky in letters of fire! Now let’s try and view this situation without pride – and without any preconceived opinions. If this call to heal is in fact a delusion, what would be the most likely work that God would wish you to do?’

‘Spiritual direction. But –’

‘Very well, supposing God allows for your weakness and realizes that you’d die of shame rather than be supported entirely by your wife. What would be the next most likely work he’d call you to do, work which would earn you a salary?’

After a pause I said: ‘Teaching.’

‘Exactly!’ said Cyril, pleased. ‘Now supposing, just for the sake of argument, I were to tell you that I’m having a tough time here at present as so many of the lay teachers have left to serve in the war, and supposing I were to offer you a job. Would you construe that as a call from God?’

‘No, I’d construe it as a call from you.’

‘I agree it wouldn’t be suitable for you to come back to work among the Fordites – too disturbing both for you and for us – but there are other educational institutions in desperate need of teachers at the moment. The Theological College at Star-bridge, for instance –’

‘I’m not called to teach, Cyril.’

‘But you did wonders at Ruydale!’

I said nothing.

Suddenly Cyril said: ‘Why do you feel you’re not called to teach?’

I still said nothing. If I were once to admit I disliked the idea of teaching Cyril would say that I was putting my self-centred inclinations before the possible will of God.

‘Do you know what I think?’ said Cyril at last. ‘I think all this – the compulsion to heal, the reluctance to teach – is in reality a gigantic rebellion against your father.’

The silence was absolute. I had stopped breathing. Perhaps Cyril had too. We stared at each other for a long moment before Cyril added as an afterthought: ‘Your spiritual father, I mean. Father Cuthbert. Father Darcy, as you always insist on calling him – correctly now, I suppose, since you’ve left the Order.’

I said the first words which entered my head. They were: ‘Francis and I always thought Cuthbert was such an absurdly inappropriate name for him.’ I had started breathing again.

‘I can’t think why! St Cuthbert,’ said Cyril, unable to resist the temptation to play the pedagogue, ‘was a most remarkable man, tough as old boots, who lived a Christian life of great power and acquired a band of followers so devoted that they even took his bones with them when the community had to flee from the Norsemen. And you’re carrying your Cuthbert’s bones with you, aren’t you, Jon – except that they’re not bones,
they’re memories. He forbade you to heal; he wanted you to teach, and now that he’s dead and you’ve left the Order you’re suffering from a compulsion to rebel against him, just as some of my pupils rebel against me when they leave school and start sowing their wild oats.’

There was a pause. Cyril looked at me expectantly and at last I said: ‘You could be right.’

Cyril looked relieved, as if an exceptionally dense pupil had finally comprehended the solution to a simple problem. ‘What you’ve got to do, Jon, is to sort out all these convoluted feelings of yours about Father Cuthbert, and then I’m sure the way ahead will become clear.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right.’ I assumed a humble, thoughtful, chastened expression, the expression of a man who understood his errors sufficiently to profess a valid repentance of his anger and pride.

‘The truth is,’ said Cyril, ‘that in your heart you feel guilty that you’re defying Father Cuthbert on the subject of healing, and this is why you reacted so strongly when you received criticism. You don’t want to admit the guilt and you’re too proud to concede the call could be mistaken. The road to repentance lies in summoning sufficient humility to reconsider your situation from a completely unbiased perspective.’

‘Yes, I understand. I’ll try.’

The penitent had professed a genuine repentance. Cyril was satisfied. Absolution was now inevitable. ‘Of course I’m not suggesting you don’t need a lot more help here,’ he said, ‘and certainly I’m willing enough to try to give it to you, but ideally, I think, you should make a retreat under the direction of Father Abbot-General who’s so much better acquainted with you than I am.’

‘Unfortunately it’s impossible for me to leave my wife at present.’

‘What a pity! Yes, I suppose it is.’ For a moment Cyril looked cross that I should be inconvenienced by such a distracting object as a pregnant wife but then he recollected himself sufficiently to say: ‘In that case you must come back and see me as
soon as possible – in fact now that we’ve identified the source of your difficulties we should meet every week.’

‘I’d like nothing better, but there’s a growing problem of obtaining petrol for the motor, and –’

‘Leap on a train!’ said Cyril briskly, as if he were addressing a slothful prefect. ‘Why not? You’re surely not so old that you have to be carted everywhere in that delightful Rolls-Royce!’

‘No, of course not, but the train journey is really most awkward –’

‘Tolerate it. What’s a little awkwardness once a week when your spiritual health is at stake?’

To keep him happy I smiled and pretended that I fully accepted his advice.

When I arrived home I retired to my cell, knelt at the oratory and in protestant fashion confessed my sins directly to God. I knew very well that my Anglo-Catholic confession before a priest had gone so seriously adrift that I could consider it a nullity. Cyril was the wrong confessor for me. I thought how Aidan, that wily old fox, would have said: ‘You were silent for a long time. There’s something you’d like to tell me, perhaps, about that silence.’ And Francis would have said: ‘You’re being wonderfully meek and contrite, but why is it that I always feel suspicious when you start behaving like a model monk?’ And Father Darcy would have said as usual: ‘You’re saying the words you want me to hear but I hear the words you can’t bring yourself to say.’ Yet Cyril, springing energetically from conclusion to conclusion with the zest of a mountain-goat leaping from crag to crag, had been too enchanted by his admirably plausible theory to realize he should have looked deeper and listened harder in order to extricate me from my difficulties.

However I felt it was unfair to condemn Cyril for a failure which sprang primarily from my inability to be honest with him, and in an effort to demonstrate my repentance I rose from
my knees, sat down at the table and tried to approach my current situation with humility. There was, of course, no possibility that I might give up the healing – how could I when I knew beyond all doubt that my call was genuine? – but since I had embarked on such a difficult, dangerous ministry I might be wise to seek advice from someone who was far more experienced in the art of healing than I was.

This struck me as a pleasingly humble acknowledgment of my fallibility, and accordingly I wrote to Wilfred, the infirmarian at Ruydale, explained how I had been approaching my work as a healer and asked him not only for helpful hints but for stern criticism of any errors. This exercise in humility certainly soothed my conscience, and I then found I could face Francis’ suggestion that the showing of Nicholas had been a delusion drummed up by my subconscious mind to allay my fear of parenthood.

Deciding that my most sensible course was to refresh my memory of the photograph I wrote to Ruth, to whom I had given all the family memorabilia when I had entered the Order, and asked her to send me the appropriate album. Fearful of tiresome questions I merely mentioned that I wanted to show Anne a photograph of my parents. My correspondence with Ruth had been sporadic since her disastrous visit to the Manor, and although we had formally patched up the quarrel I had made no effort to invite her to Starrington again.

I was still waiting to hear from Wilfred when the album arrived, and to my surprise I found I could hardly bring myself to open it; the thought of seeing my parents again aroused such powerful emotions, but eventually I managed to confront the picture taken on their wedding day. My father, tall, trim and bespectacled, looked dignified, decent and dull. My mother, her slender figure discreetly veiled in elaborate draperies, looked elegant, enigmatic and alluring. They were standing very close together but not touching each other at any point. Abruptly I turned the page and saw my mother holding an undistinguished bundle in a christening robe. She looked as if her thoughts were far away but she was holding the bundle with authority. More
studio portraits followed – taken in the days before my father acquired his camera – and at last I found myself confronting the photograph I remembered, the picture of myself at the age of four.

I stared, trying to decide if Nicholas had been a hallucinatory mirror-image, but I was quite unable to make up my mind. The difference in clothes was distracting. Encased in a formal black suit with a frilly shirt I might have inhabited a different planet from the little boy in the dungarees, yet the eyes were the same and the bone structure was certainly similar. The hair should have been different but my mother had kept mine unfashionably short. I did think I appeared tougher than the child in my vision, but perhaps the unfamiliar camera had stimulated me to display the pugnacious side of my nature.

Later when I showed the album to Anne she was much intrigued. ‘You look like both your parents,’ she said. ‘How strange! I somehow got the impression you took entirely after your mother.’ And after studying the photographs again she remarked: ‘He’s got a sad face. Was he happy as a schoolmaster?’