False Gods (18 page)

Sandra, by whom I was, as anticipated, seated, was not a pretty young woman. She was short and firmly built and had a set, square-chinned countenance, but there was something appealing, perhaps even sexy, in her intent brown stare and her sharp clear articulation. One felt that she had a fund of passion to offer the right purchaser, if he should ever turn up, which she seemed to doubt.

"I hear you're a great diner-out, Father," was her somewhat aggressive opening. "How can you stand it?"

"You find it so boring?"

"Unutterably so. But perhaps you're looking for converts. Is that it? Are you seeking to stretch that camel's eye for the benighted rich?"

I laughed. "And then steal around behind them to shove them through? I like the idea."

She glanced scornfully around the table. "If heaven is going to be full of the likes of these, it's not for me."

"The state of the soul takes curious shapes, Miss Douglas. But the soul is still there. Surely you believe that?"

"Oh, I suppose I must." She shrugged impatiently. "But I may as well tell you, Father, I found it very hard when my sister Beatrice took the veil. A young healthy woman with a whole rich life before her! I'm afraid I've been in something of a rebel state ever since."

So
that
was what was worrying Mrs. Douglas. "We can't decide for others what will make them happy," I responded in a softer tone. "Your sister may have achieved a peace of mind beyond anything a lay life could have given her. I'm sure your mother sees it in that light."

She pushed her chin forward as she glared at me. "Has Mother ever had a doubt?"

"She is blessed indeed if she hasn't."

"Oh, she always seems to be blessed. Everything goes her way. She's the greatest one for having her cake and eating it. She shudders at the ugliness of Catholic churches here and looks down on Philistine Irish priests, but she can go to Saint Patrick's, which she condescends to find 'handsome if derivative,' and manages to be confessed by a sophisticated archbishop when she can't find a cardinal. I'm sure it was the beauty and pomp of Catholic churches in France and Italy that converted her."

"But those things can be innocent persuaders. If they help to bring us to the true faith, is that a bad thing? Isn't it better than a fear of damnation?"

"But is it honest, Father?"

"I sometimes think that honesty is the primrose path. I'm sure it is for many Protestants."

"Which is the direction you see me headed, I suppose. No, Father, if I should ever leave the frying pan, it would not be to fall into what makes it fry. What I sometimes think is at least a kind of dishonesty in Mother is the way she cloaks all her pleasures in godliness. When she goes to a concert or picture gallery, or when she's reading poetry or admiring some old temple in Greece, she's never just on an art jag, like anyone else. Oh, no! She's worshipping God."

"And she isn't?"

"Oh, I don't go quite that far." Sandra seemed exasperated that she wasn't making her point. "I guess what I really object to is her impregnability. She does everything she jolly well wants to do. She crams all the beauties of earth in her pocket and looks serenely forward to taking them with her to heaven!"

"But she gave up. a career as a concert pianist to rear six children! That hardly smacks of selfishness, if that is what you are attributing to her."

"She was multiplying herself, wasn't she? And we'll never know whether that concert career would have panned out."

"You
are
hard on her. Has her life really been such a bed of roses? She may be properly proud of your sister, but to lose a daughter to so rigorous an order is surely a trial for any mother's heart."

To my shocked surprise Sandra burst out laughing. "That shows you were born a Protestant! No born Catholic priest would admit it was anything but a glory. No Irish one, anyway. And it shows how little you understand Mother. She was enchanted by Beatrice's vocation. What was her loss compared with her child's gain?" She laughed again, this time in a rather nasty tone. "Indeed, one wonders whether there was any real loss at all. If Mother had lived in the seventeenth century, she might have been like that horrible Madame de Sévigné, who conspired with her son-in-law to stuff her poor little granddaughter into a convent to save her dowry for the heir."

"That was a different era."

"How different? Do you know something, Father? I once thought seriously of taking vows myself. Five years ago, when I was eighteen. And do you know what stopped me? I couldn't abide the idea of Mother's pleasure!"

I felt the conversation was getting out of hand. "You have no idea, Miss Douglas, what grief your mother may have suffered under a stoic exterior."

"It's true I don't. But don't think I underestimate her. She may well be one of God's saints. Saints are not overtaxed with human weaknesses, such as family loyalties and ordinary affections. Perhaps that is why they are so often made martyrs."

"Your mother would have been a great one!"

"And how she would have loved it! Can't you see her, clad in white, marching into the arena as the lions roared? Tableau! It would have been the ultimate art. But enough of Mother. There's something I want to ask you. To be perfectly frank, it was why I asked Dad to invite you tonight. Mother, after meeting you, wasn't so sure that you were the right person to consult. That meant for me you
were.
Well, here goes, before we have to switch the conversation." She glanced distastefully towards the stout gentleman on her other side. "It's about a friend of mine. She wants to marry a divorced man. Is there any way she can do it with the sanction of the church?"

I was pretty sure now who the "friend" was and why I had been summoned. Except that my bid had come from her father, whose views on the church were, to say the least, controversial. "Is he a Catholic?"

"They both are. Except she's never been married."

"And was he married in the church?"

"Oh, yes. And to another Catholic."

I shook my head. "I don't see how it can be done, unless he gets an annulment. Are there grounds?"

"I don't suppose so. There are two children."

"It looks bad."

"But, Father, the happiness of two people depends on it!"

"I didn't make the laws of our church."

We both noticed that her mother was staring down the table at us. Did she suspect my Protestant antecedents might weaken my rigor? With a brief nod, she gave us the signal that the time had come to talk to our other dinner partners.

"I suppose God wants me to yack with the man on my left," Sandra said sulkily. "Or at least to listen to him, for he never stops. Anyway, I want to send my friend to talk to you. Will that be all right?"

I was surprised. "Quite all right, of course. But what is her name?"

"It isn't she; it's he. Hadn't you guessed that the she was myself? But you'll know him when you see him. He's an old friend of yours."

And with this she turned away to leave me to the lady on my right, who was waiting, I soon discovered, to tell me of another peccadillo.

Early the following morning Mother's old butler knocked on my bedroom door to tell me that a Mr. Chappell was waiting to see me in the library. Frank Chappell! I had seen him off and on in the year that had elapsed since I moved home, but nothing in our renewed relations had led me to suspect his romance with Sandra. I knew, of course, that his marriage to a beautiful debutante, whose selection of him had surprised his friends, had disastrously foundered, and that he had become a disconsolate "extra man" at the larger dinner parties, making up for his taciturnity by his punctuality and availability. But none of this had suggested a great passion.

That day, anyhow, he had the demeanor of a man subject to one. His countenance was wan and grim. "Sandra thought, because of our old friendship, and because it was I who brought you into the church, that you might be persuaded to marry us."

I threw up my hands. "But, Frank, my dear old friend, it's not in my power!"

"You could go to the Archbishop." His tone seemed close to despair. "He could appeal to Rome. To the Pope himself, if necessary. I have plenty of money, now that my father's gone." He paused and then added ominously: "Reggie, you have no conception of what hell my marriage with Annabel has been. If I can't marry Sandra, there's no telling what I may do."

"What do her parents say?"

"Oh, Mrs. Douglas is adamant, as you might imagine. She doesn't even get angry. She simply shakes her head and repeats over and over: 'But, Sandra, darling, you don't seem to understand. He's already married.
Married.
M-A-R-R-I-E-D.'
Her old man is not more help. He seems almost to enjoy the whole mess. 'To hell with the true and only church,' he tells me the moment his wife is out of hearing. 'Do what you want. Are you a man or a mouse?'"

There was a terrible sincerity in Frank's eyes; it put me in mind of a fire burning in a white enamel stove. His features, his arms, his body were immobile; everything about him was the same seemingly lethargic Frank except for that spark in his pupils.

"Are you thinking of leaving the church? Is Sandra?"

"I believe she might. But do I dare take the responsibility for her soul? I would for my own. I've already been in hell. My marriage was that. Oh, Annabel was amiable enough. But she slept with every man in sight, even the elevator men in our apartment house. I've heard people say that nymphomaniac is a silly term, but how else would you describe Annabel? She couldn't help herself. She even apologized for it and begged me to leave her. My faith for a long time was the only thing that kept me from despair. But when her promiscuity reached the point where she carelessly left the door open, I had to divorce her to protect the children. And then Sandra came into my life, and I began to live again. She not only took care of me; she looked after my little son and daughter. And now my church chooses to put a bar between us! Reggie, it doesn't make sense to me!"

"Nor to me!"

Had
I
said that? My pulse was beating rapidly and my thoughts seemed to be jumping up and down with my sense of the passion between him and Sandra. His stolidity, even his old apathy seemed to have been ignited by her intensity into a leaping fire. It seared me with a vicarious sexual excitement. Was it because of my envy, my sick, pulsating, throat-clogging envy, that I had first tried to thrust the cross roughly between them? Was I attracted to Sandra? Or was it even possible that I was attracted to the new Frank? We have now learned from Vienna that anything may exist in the
id.
And worst of all, if the latter supposition were true, might it not have been
that
which led me into the church? We know that God works His will in strange ways, but surely not as strange as that!

He was staring at me. "Did I hear you right?"

"Listen to me, Frank. You say you're willing to take responsibility for your own soul. Very well. You're not consulting
me,
and I'm not advising
you.
But as for Sandra, I believe her marriage in a civil ceremony would be at most a venial sin. It would not be a marriage at all in the eyes of the church, but it would give her complete social respectability. Do I have to say anything more?"

Frank rose and threw his arms around me, hugging me tight. "Not another word, old pal. And you can count on me never to give you away. I'll tell no one but Sandra."

Frank's departure left me in a flurry of agitation. I was glad that I had agreed to accompany Mother on her annual rest cure at Hot Springs. Comfortable in the Mammon of that vast caravanserai while she took her baths, I prayed not for enlightenment but for darkness. But when darkness came at last, it flickered with all the fires of hell.

Frank and Sandra, as I learned after their fatal accident, had decided on a civil ceremony. He had chartered a small plane to fly to Montana, where the ceremony was to be held and where they would afterwards spend their honeymoon on the ranch of a friend. The plane ran off course in a heavy storm and struck the side of a mountain, killing both pilot and passengers.

If the Almighty had used strange methods to get me into the church, was He using even stranger ones to get me out?

Mother really came out of herself for once. Never had she offered me greater sympathy. I was so disturbed that I couldn't even go to the dining room, and she ordered our meals to be served in the sitting room of our suite. She even mixed the cocktails herself, insisting that I needed to be "braced."

"You must try to see this, dear boy, as one of God's mysterious ways of working out His will."

"Very mysterious."

"There are so many things we cannot understand. Why should we expect to understand this?"

"I suppose you think God was saving Frank and Sandra from committing a mortal sin. But what was He saving the pilot from?"

"How do we know? It's like
The Bridge of San Luis Rey.
Maybe it was the right time for all three. Or maybe God was saving someone who was not on that plane at all."

"Who?"

"You, dear child."

I was appalled. I had told Mother, of course, of my conversation with Frank. But could she really believe that God had had
me
in mind?

"Why was I more important to God than Frank and Sandra?"

"Because you're one of His priests. He may have thought it best to save you from the consequences of your advice."

I wondered whether perhaps my greatest mistake had not been in converting Mother. I urged her now to return to her efficacious baths and promised that I would accompany her to the dining room for dinner that night.

When Mother and I returned to New York a week later, I called at the Douglases' and was told that Mrs. Douglas was playing the piano in the drawing room, but that I could go right in.

The piano was at the far end of the room; pausing in the doorway, I could see Claire in profile. It struck me at once that her composure had a marble quality. As she leaned forward to exert greater pressure on the keys for the soaring phrases of the nocturne, she might have been playing in a concert, utterly intent on her rendition, to the exclusion of any awareness of an audience that might or might not be there. I remained rigidly still; there could be no thought of interrupting her. Something in her poise, in the beautiful music she was creating, made me feel that I simply wasn't there, that I had ventured into a space where I didn't exist. It was awesome; I shivered.