Glamorous Powers (52 page)

On the appointed day I rose early in order to celebrate mass by myself in the chapel. Then I fasted, prayed and meditated in absolute seclusion until two o’clock when I walked on my own to the village church. In the interests of austerity I was tempted to wear an unadorned black cassock, but I reluctantly concluded that this would make me look striking in a way which might stimulate quite the wrong response among the ladies, so on reaching the vestry I donned my white surplice in the hope that it would exude a suitably asexual aura.

Emerging from the vestry I noted that the pest Pitkin was conspicuous by his absence, but Colonel Maitland and his team of sidesmen were directing the assembling hordes into the pews with unruffled efficiency. My heart sank when I spotted four men emanating the insatiable curiosity of journalists, but I refused Maitland’s suggestion that they should be asked to leave. Possibly these men were religious. Possibly as the result
of the service they might become religious. Certainly they were entitled to charitable treatment, and I thought they should be given at least the chance to behave with decorum.

Anxious to be self-effacing in such special circumstances, Anne was sitting halfway down the nave instead of in her usual front pew, and beside her, I noticed with a disagreeable shock, were the Aysgarths. I had not expected Aysgarth to attend and I disliked the thought of him being present. My resolve to conduct a dignified service hardened; retreating once more to the vestry I said my final prayers and then, taking my courage in both hands, embarked on my new adventure.

Afterwards I was so exhausted that it was impossible for me to talk to anyone, but I had anticipated this extreme debility after such a massive outpouring of my powers, and Anne had ensured that the motor was waiting beyond the back wall of the churchyard.

‘Darling, you were utterly wonderful!’ she exclaimed shining-eyed as I collapsed beside her in the back seat, but although I was immediately aware of a blissful security I was too exhausted to do more than grunt in gratitude. As soon as we arrived home I hauled myself upstairs to my cell, sank on to my camp-bed and slept for fourteen hours. The ban on intimacy had by this time been lifted, but I had kept the camp-bed in my cell to ensure chastity on the nights before I attempted any concentrated sessions of healing at my twice-weekly ‘surgery’. The rock-bottom truth about sexual intercourse, a truth which it is becoming increasingly fashionable to forget, is that no matter how delightful the experience it only wastes energy which could be more profitably spent elsewhere.

However I had now had fourteen hours’ sleep, my exertions as a healer lay for the moment behind me and I felt as exuberant as the most incorrigible hedonist. Waking promptly at half-past five I invaded the kitchens, and in the absence of the servants
who never began work before six I made a great mess assembling an enormous breakfast for myself. Then much stimulated by this rare descent into gluttony I bounded back upstairs, bathed, shaved and slid naked into bed with Anne. I was feeling as frisky as a kitten and could hardly wait to prove that the humiliating weaknesses of old age were still a million light years away.

‘You were such a success yesterday!’ sighed Anne when she finally had the chance to speak. ‘I was so proud of you!’

For ten seconds I luxuriated in the warmth of her approval. Then I remembered her companions at the service. ‘What did Aysgarth think?’ I said with reluctance.

‘It’s hard to know what he thinks when he puts on his poker-face, but I’m sure he was impressed by your integrity – in fact I don’t see how even your worst enemies could find fault with you this time!’

‘Rest assured that they’ll try,’ I said dryly, and sure enough a day later I received a letter from Aysgarth in which he invited me to Starbridge for a ‘frank and friendly’ discussion of my ministry at Starrington Magna.

‘It is my earnest wish,’ said Aysgarth with a pompous air which made me suspect he was nervous, ‘that this interview be conducted in a Christian spirit, Mr Darrow, without the animosity which has characterized too many of our previous conversations.’

‘Such an aspiration strikes me as being entirely admirable,’ I said with a mannered politeness worthy of a character in Jane Austen’s novels, ‘and I assure you I shall do my best to see that it’s fulfilled.’ But as I spoke I was remembering Whitby, humouring a mouse by letting it think it could dictate the terms of the battle and then moving in with his paw for the big pounce.

We were seated in Aysgarth’s study at his vicarage, a rambling townhouse adjacent to the church of St Martin’s-in-Cripplegate.
The study, cosy and bookish, exuded an atmosphere of intellectual polish which pleased me despite the fact that the room was the antithesis of my uncluttered cell at the Manor. I was interested and not a little perturbed to see that Aysgarth’s taste in reading was dangerously eclectic; below the works of theology, below the classics of English literature, below the tomes of history and biography, lurked a range of modern novels whose spiritual value was reputed to be questionable. I confess that even I, who had argued so fervently to Father Darcy that priests should not be too narrow in their reading, could only boggle at the sight of a volume with D. H. LAWRENCE inscribed boldly on the spine. Aysgarth was not a monk and there was in fact no reason why he should not read widely to extend his knowledge of human nature, but I really did think that a man who was not only a priest but an archdeacon should take the trouble to encase the work of a writer like Lawrence in discreet brown paper before consigning it to a shelf in his library. However no doubt Aysgarth, being a member of the younger generation, would have judged this reaction to be a typical example of Victorian hypocrisy. I shall only add that there are times when I think ‘Victorian hypocrisy’, the younger generation’s label for an attitude which values tact, discretion and good taste above boorishness, boastfulness and vulgarity, has been greatly maligned.

Since the books occupied most of the walls there were no paintings in the room, but the mantelshelf was adorned with framed photographs of his pretty, radiant wife and his bright-eyed, good-looking children. This flaunting of a successful family life irritated me, but I told myself all jealousy should be ruthlessly suppressed. I made a new resolution to be well-behaved.

Meanwhile Aysgarth, prim and proper in his archidiaconal uniform, was looking as if he had never heard of D. H. Lawrence, and this impression of a double-image, of a man with racy tastes living alongside a man who was the soul of propriety, intrigued me deeply. To some extent we all have our double-images, our public and private selves, but there are cases
when the split between the two can widen into such an abyss that an intolerable strain is put on the psyche. I had encountered such cases during my work as a director of souls, and since all the men afflicted had wound up in a state of spiritual debility I now wondered anew about Aysgarth’s inner life. However I was uncomfortably aware that such critical speculation ill-became a priest who had shied away from his own spiritual director for some months while making only the most perfunctory confessions to the Abbot of Starwater.

‘I was most interested in the service of healing,’ Aysgarth was saying as I recalled my wandering attention, ‘and I congratulate you on maintaining control of the congregation in such a charged emotional atmosphere.’

I at once said: ‘Hysteria’s actually very rare.’

‘Is it? In circumstances such as this when the clergyman attempts to assume extraordinary power over the congregation and stimulate the most primitive emotions? I had heard otherwise. However,’ said Aysgarth, giving me no chance to comment, ‘let’s not dwell on the dangers you were skilful enough to avoid. How successful was the service in terms of healing?’

‘Most of the sufferers have claimed improvement, but in some cases – particularly the ones involving sight and hearing – it’s still too early to look for marked results.’

‘You’ve had success with cases involving sight and hearing?’

‘Certainly, but that’s an area where healers are often effective.’

‘Dr Garrison,’ said Aysgarth, speaking with great care, ‘has ventured the opinion that your successes are achieved entirely by a hypnosis which eventually wears off, leaving the sufferer’s condition unchanged.’

‘Balls.’

Aysgarth looked as shocked as if I had uttered a blasphemy and I began to feel exasperated. ‘Come, come, Archdeacon!’ I said smiling at him. There are no ladies present, and you can’t tell me they don’t use words like that up in Yorkshire!’

Aysgarth said with an insufferable priggishness: ‘I think a clergyman has a duty to avoid vulgar language even when there are no ladies present.’

This of course was true but I was deeply annoyed that my attempt to lessen the stiffness of the atmosphere by injecting a casual masculine informality had been so ruthlessly rebuffed. Then I realized with fury that he had outmanoeuvred me. The word had not shocked him in the least but by pretending that it had he had seized the chance to tilt the balance of power in his favour by administering a justifiable rebuke.

I tried to tilt the balance back. ‘May I suggest we dispense with the debate on clerical etiquette and stick to the subject under discussion? Let me state as firmly as possible that I’m not a quack performing tricks with hypnosis. I’m a priest offering myself to God as a channel for –’

‘Do you deny you use hypnosis?’

I spared a second to reflect that this young man was wasted in the Church; he should have been sporting a barrister’s wig and battering witnesses in a court of law.

‘No,’ I said, trying to remain unruffled but aware that I was not entirely succeeding, ‘I don’t deny I use hypnotic techniques occasionally as a tool, just as a surgeon would use a scalpel, but I tend to confine these techniques to situations where the patient is distraught. Certainly at the service of healing I made no use of hypnosis at all.’

‘What about the hypnotic power with which you controlled the congregation?’

‘There was no hypnotic power. I was merely exercising the charism of leadership.’

‘You’re saying the charism of leadership never involves hypnosis?’

‘I’m saying the gift of leadership bestowed by God doesn’t need hypnosis! It’s the gift of leadership bestowed by the Devil that runs amok with hypnotic power – compare Hitler with Churchill!’

‘You don’t have to tell me that the gifts of the Spirit can be recognized by their fruits, sir, but since you admitted using hypnosis as a tool when you exercised the charism of healing I thought you might also regard it as a tool when you exercised the charism of leadership.’

He was relentlessly driving me into a corner and I knew I had to punch my way out. ‘Let’s get this straight,’ I said. ‘Are you accusing me of abusing my powers? Because if you are, I’d like to assure you that I would never under any circumstances sink to manipulating people for shady purposes.’

‘No?’ said Aysgarth blandly. ‘You seem to have been doing rather nicely with the Bishop.’

I sprang to my feet. So did he. He was very pale and I sensed he was frightened of me, but I sensed too that he was determined not to let his fear stop him from speaking his mind and doing what he conceived to be his duty. I respected him for this admirable display of courage. But I was seething. I did not like this jumped-up pipsqueak of an Archdeacon casting aspersions on my ministry of healing; I particularly disliked this jumped-up pipsqueak of an Archdeacon implying that I, the famous spiritual director, was not as spiritually healthy as I should be, and I loathed this jumped-up pipsqueak of an Archdeacon spotting the chink in my armour and moving in ruthlessly for the kill. I felt as Whitby would have felt if the mouse had stood up on its hind-legs and smartly bashed him on the nose.

‘Enough of this skirmishing,’ I said tersely at last. ‘No more beating about the bush. I take it you hated the service.’

‘Yes, I thought it was thoroughly dangerous and should never have taken place, but in fact that’s not the main issue at stake here. The main issue is that the service was just one more example of how you’ve torn that parish apart by your – I’m sorry but I must say this – by your arrogant, reckless and thoroughly insensitive behaviour. Please don’t delude yourself that no one objected to this service except Pitkin and Garrison. There were many others who strongly resented their parish church being used to give a spurious air of respectability to practices which are generally held to be dubious in the extreme.’

He stopped speaking. There was a silence while I mentally reeled under the impact of such monstrous insolence but at last I was sufficiently recovered to say in my coolest voice: ‘Aren’t you exceeding your authority? An archdeacon may be “The Bishop’s Eye” but only the Bishop himself should deal with
disciplinary matters. I’m not obliged to listen to your offensive lectures, Aysgarth, and I strongly object to being judged on the biased information provided by my enemies!’

‘You shouldn’t have enemies,’ said Aysgarth, cutting me down to size yet again with his ruthless forensic skill. ‘You pass judgement on yourself merely by using the word. As for Dr Ottershaw I shall now go to him and say that in my opinion an episcopal intervention is required. I regret that I’ve given you offence but I quite understand that you’re far too proud to accept any criticism from a mere archdeacon.’

I was so unused to being trounced in debate that for a moment I could only flounder speechlessly again, but then the instinct for survival asserted itself and I realized that the last thing I wanted was to be hauled before the Bishop. Anne would be upset and Anne had to be protected at all costs from any incident which showed me in an unattractive light. With a vast effort I pulled myself together.