Glamorous Powers (61 page)

‘Later we repaired the relationship. He was so good, so kind, so decent, always writing to me so regularly when I was at school, always coming to see me whenever he could, always looking after me so conscientiously whenever I was home for the holidays. How could I have gone on hating someone who was such a model father? I couldn’t have lived with my guilt – and indeed I began to think that my one hope of keeping the guilt at bay lay in playing the model son. So we went on living this fiction that I was growing up into a replica, but finally the day arrived when I had to confess I wanted to read theology, not English, up at Cambridge.

‘Francis, I can’t describe to you how frightened I was of telling him! I worried myself into a frenzy, I hardly slept for nights on end – but in fact he took the news wonderfully well. He still couldn’t accept that I didn’t want to teach, of course. He merely saw me teaching theology instead of English literature, and even later when I broke the news that I wanted to be ordained he still couldn’t accept that I wanted to be a priest doing pastoral work, not an academic clergyman teaching in a Church-of-England public school.

‘However when I was ordained I was finally obliged to tell him that I’d made up my mind not to teach. What a terrible moment that was! I was waiting for him to discard his mask and roar with rage at last – in fact I was almost looking forward to it because I thought we could then have an honest conversation, but Francis, he kept that mask in place. I’ll never know how he did it. He was so kind, so decent, so full of enthusiasm and admiration – ugh! How unreal it all was! I wanted to hit him, but of course I didn’t; I smiled and shook
his hand and said how grateful I was to him for understanding … and so it went on.

‘Later when I was in my mid-twenties he remarried. That was when I realized that the boot was on the other foot at last and he was the one who was frightened. He hardly knew how to break the news, but Francis, you can’t imagine how good and kind and decent I was, how magnificently Christian! I gave the performance of my life and I gave it because I was my father’s son and I knew that this was how one had to behave when one was upset, yet all the time I was being so saintly I wanted to shout: “You bastard, how dare you be so disloyal to my mother’s memory!” But of course I said nothing and soon he had married this plump frothy little widow, someone from his own class at last, and he was so happy that I hated visiting them, hated it, but I did visit them, I visited them regularly, had to, no choice, because I knew that was my Christian duty.

‘I wondered if he was still hoping for a little replica but none arrived and perhaps now that he was so much happier he lost interest in the idea of living vicariously through a son. But I always knew I’d disappointed him by not being a replica, and I never forgave him for … for what? For refusing to accept me as I was? For trying to relive his life through me and thus putting me under an intolerable psychological strain? For failing to send for me when my mother was dying? For turning his back on her memory years later? Why can’t I forgive him and exactly what is it I can’t forgive?

‘Sometimes I think it’s the lack of honesty which I find so unforgivable, and then I blame that pride which drove him into such a destructive dissimulation. But sometimes too I think I can’t forgive him because I know, in my heart of hearts, that he came to regret marrying my mother and I’m sure this would have made her unhappy. Outwardly they seemed a contented couple, but who really knows what goes on in any marriage? I could so often sense the emotion swirling around him like a tornado and now when I look back I can see how he must have felt. After all, he’d given up his most precious ambitions to
marry this woman – and what was the result? My mother was an excellent housekeeper and made him very comfortable, but when all was said and done she was still the cat that walked by herself. Marrying her must have been like grasping shining water and seeing every drop slip through one’s fingers. I know he always said he loved her, but how can I be sure he meant it? Of course he’d say he loved her! His pride wouldn’t have permitted him to say anything else.

‘Naturally he wanted me to marry well. I’ve often wondered if the main reason why I married Betty was to hit back at him – to be able to say: “You wanted a replica. Well, here I am, marrying a working-class girl out of lust, just as you did! Aren’t you pleased and proud?” He was always immaculately civil to Betty but my marriage must have been a horrible disappointment to him – which of course was exactly what I had in mind. I
wanted
to disappoint him. Teach? Good God, no, never! The idea of being a schoolmaster revolted me. That was what
he
wanted and he bloody well had to be disappointed. I felt that if I disappointed him I’d make him angry and if I made him angry the mask would slip and if the mask slipped I’d have the chance to communicate with him,
with him,
my real father, the true self he kept locked up, but no, he wouldn’t share himself with me, he didn’t love me enough because I wasn’t a replica, and so everything was cheating, everything was lies, everything was false,
false,
FALSE from beginning to end.’

I stopped speaking and gave a violent shudder. Around us in the sparsely populated canteen the low murmur of voices droned on in my ears and I could hear the clink of cups as they were collected on a trolley nearby, but these were only background sounds, unimportant, and only the silence which followed my monologue was meaningful. I felt numb. My psyche lay limp, stripped naked. There was a large hole where years of hidden grief had been gouged out, and gradually I became aware of Francis’ own psyche padding around the gaping hole as delicately as a velvet-pawed cat and patting it gently at the edges to staunch the flow of blood. When he said: ‘Now at last I see what has to be done,’ I sensed the presence of the Spirit and
knew that by the grace of God I would eventually be healed. Despite all my charismatic power and my psychic gifts, despite all my confidence and my pride in my ability to heal others, I had always been quite unable to heal myself.

I felt as if God had reached out with a long scythe and slashed my arrogance to shreds.

It was a moment of the profoundest humility.

At nine o’clock that night Anne was delivered of a son. Romaine came to tell me the news minutes afterwards. ‘She’s all right,’ he said, ‘and I see no reason why she shouldn’t continue to be all right, but I’m afraid the news isn’t so good about the baby.’

I was so overpowered by relief that Anne should be alive that I failed to comprehend the last part of the sentence.

‘I’m afraid he’s very premature,’ said Romaine.

I grappled first with the pronoun, then with the present tense but could register neither. ‘Of course it’s dead,’ I said, ‘but I’d expected that.’

‘No, he’s alive.’

This information was very difficult to grasp. For months I had been expecting Nicholas and although this illusion had shattered I had had no time to develop a new mental image of the infant. Moreover Anne’s miscarriage had led me to assume that no new image was necessary. I began to struggle with the idea that somewhere in the hospital was a small being quite unknown to me for whom I was now responsible.

Francis was saying to Romaine: ‘We’d better not delay the christening.’

‘The hospital chaplain’s been sent for.’

I roused myself. This was a detail I could understand. I myself had been a chaplain accustomed to spiritual emergencies. Firmly I said: ‘I’ll christen it.’ Then I remembered the infant was a boy. ‘Christen him,’ I corrected and tried to imagine a son who was
neither Nicholas nor Martin. The mystery of this unknown person began to intrigue me. I allowed myself to picture his future.

‘I think that might be too much for you, Jon,’ Francis said as my imagination conjured up a fair-haired choirboy in a spotless surplice. ‘Why not leave it to the chaplain? I’m sure he’ll be very competent.’

‘I’d be competent too!’ I protested, but I was beginning to feel confused, aware that I had one foot on the shore of reality and one foot in the boat of illusion while the water widened inexorably between the two. Uncertainly I added: ‘All the same, perhaps you’re right and I should leave it to the chaplain. The baby’s not real to me yet.’

‘Let me take you upstairs,’ said Romaine as if he not only understood my confusion but wanted to help me grasp reality. ‘I’m sure you want to see both the baby and your wife.’

I saw Anne first. She looked real, even surprisingly normal, deep in sleep after her anaesthetic, and I was reassured by her peaceful breathing. Then I was shown the infant, a little bundle of skin and bones in a blanket.

‘Are you sure he’s alive?’ I said amazed to Romaine.

‘Yes.’

‘But surely he must be dying!’

‘Yes.’

‘Ah, I thought so,’ I said, but in fact I had no idea what I had been thinking. I see,’ I added, but my psychic eye was confronting only the blankness of a future which would never happen. I felt increasingly distressed that he had no reality for me beyond the idealized dreams concocted by my imagination.

The chaplain arrived, an elderly man who spoke in a whisper, and on Romaine’s recommendation the baby was christened not in the distant chapel but in the empty side-ward next to Anne’s room. Remembering Anne’s wishes I chose the name Gerald. The baby never cried, not even on the application of the water. I still had difficulty in believing that he was not already dead.

‘Of course I must stay here till he dies,’ I said afterwards to Francis, ‘and of course you must now set off for Starwater.’

‘Even if you told me you wanted to be alone with him I’d simply wait in the motor.’

‘I doubt if there’ll be long to wait,’ said Romaine before I could attempt to argue, and minutes later the baby’s condition began to deteriorate.

I saw myself as if from a great distance as I stood up and I heard my voice as if from a long way away as I said: ‘He’s almost there.’ I knew the moment had come because the walls of finite time had become fluid and now as I watched they curved to form the mouth of the tunnel. There were gates but they were open and as I saw the great darkness which marked the start of the journey I knew at once I had to tell him there was no need to be afraid. ‘God is love,’ I said, ‘and love is stronger than death,’ but of course I was attempting to reach him with words, impotent inexact useless words, words which he had never had time to learn, and I knew that communication must lie elsewhere. Picking him up I held his minute hand firmly with my thumb and forefinger to tell him he was not alone, and suddenly I felt the flash of psychic recognition as the departing soul, perfectly formed, utterly individual, brushed mine lightly, gratefully, lovingly in the dark.

I cried: ‘He’s alive!’ For love is the great reality, and in that moment, the moment of death, he became real to me at last. Then the gates of finite time closed soundlessly after him as he began his journey through the darkness to the bright light at the end of the tunnel, and the moment I was alone I found myself finally face to face with the full horror of what had happened.

I laid the infant on the empty bed of the side-ward, and suddenly I stood not in the hospital at Starbridge but in the Abbot’s room at Ruydale. I was facing Father Darcy across Whitby’s corpse and Father Darcy was saying:
‘You
killed that animal with your disobedience, your vanity and your utterly intolerable pride.’

I turned to Francis. I said as my son’s lifeless body lay between us: I killed him,’ and the next moment I had broken down completely beneath the weight of an unendurable grief.

‘Truth is one of the absolute values, and those who seek it must follow the gleam, humbly but confidently.’

W. R. INGE
Dean of St Paul’s 1911–1934
Mysticism in Religion

Everyone was very kind – Romaine, the sister on duty, even the chaplain who talked in such an irritating whisper – but they all seemed so far away, like figures glimpsed through the wrong end of a telescope, and Francis was the only one who was near. When someone in a white coat offered me two pills I said: I never take drugs,’ but Francis exclaimed: ‘Why are you turning up your nose at conventional medicine? What arrogance!’ and this language, so harsh yet so familiar, was the only language I could still understand. I took the pills. Francis bore me off to Starwater. I had expected to be housed in the guest-wing but Cyril took me to a little room off the infirmary where a very large monk offered me an evil-smelling concoction of herbs. I said: ‘Where’s Wilfred?’ but I was confused by the drugs and wanted only to sleep.