Glamorous Powers (62 page)

I slept for ten hours and when I awoke I found Francis was once more at my side.

‘I’m staying on here for a few days,’ he said after I had remembered where I was and what had happened. ‘Cyril has some difficult war-time problems concerning the school and I need to study them carefully so that I can help him reach the right solutions. I suggest you stay on too until your wife
comes out of hospital. It’s very important that you should be property looked after.’

‘But I must see Anne!’

‘Edward will drive you to the hospital every day while I’m here, and after I return to London Cyril will arrange for one of the local people to provide the necessary transport.’

‘But Francis, you don’t understand the difficulties of travelling at present – non-essential journeys are discouraged –’

‘But of course it’s essential that you should see your wife every day!’

‘Yes, but what I’m saying is that you’ll never be able to get the necessary petrol coupons –’

‘Nonsense, these things can always be arranged,’ said Francis with a superb nonchalance. ‘Whenever I want extra coupons I simply ring up a most charming gentleman in Whitehall.’

I boggled and then bowed to the inevitable.

My first visit to Anne was very difficult. During the opening minute I was incoherent and the words of remorse were repeated in a feverish fashion until it dawned on me that Anne was much more concerned about my health than my guilt. Then I realized that I was much more concerned about her own health than about my self-centred need to indulge in an expression of penitence. Having at last sorted ourselves out and agreed we were both on the road to recovery it was then Anne’s turn to display remorse. She said in a small voice: ‘Can you ever forgive me for writing to Francis behind your back?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous – it was the wisest thing you could possibly have done!’

‘I was very nervous before he arrived,’ said Anne, ‘because you said he looked like one of Shakespeare’s wicked cardinals. How could you have misled me like that? He’s not in the least like Beaufort or Wolsey – he’s more like an avuncular Prospero! Anyway before I knew where I was I’d dissolved into tears and
told him everything – I didn’t mean to, I kept thinking how angry you’d be, but he was so kind and understanding that I just couldn’t help myself. He held my hand and gave me the most beautiful handkerchief to cry into and –’

‘This all sounds most improper!’ I said, and when we laughed I felt we had passed a small but significant milestone along the road to recovery. Realizing that we were now strong enough to discuss our loss I said gently: ‘Have you seen the baby yet?’

‘No. I don’t think I can. I don’t think I could bear it. So long as I don’t see him he’s not quite real and I can beat back the pain, but if he were to become real –’

‘He
was
real.’ I told her about my psychic experience at the moment of death, and when she began to cry I said: ‘Grief’s nothing to be afraid of. Nor is it something to be swept under a rug and forgotten. Your grief is a symbol of your love for him, and why should you want to lock up your love like some monster which must never see the light of day?’ I let her weep for a little longer before I added: ‘If you never see him then we can share him only through my memories, and in the long run will that really be good enough for you?’

She shook her head, but still she wept.

‘I think that in days to come you’ll want a memory which belongs to both of us,’ I said, but she was barely listening. Drying her eyes at last she whispered: ‘He mustn’t feel that I’m rejecting him. He mustn’t feel unloved,’ and then I knew she had already embraced his reality.

Leaning forward I rang the bell for the nurse.

Later when she was holding him she said: ‘Are you aware of his spirit now?’

‘No, he’s too far away. It’s only older people who have the psychic strength to imprint themselves on the atmosphere for a few days after death.’

We were silent for a time before she said unsteadily: ‘Dr Romaine said I might have miscarried anyway. Seven months is a very common time for miscarriages and the cause isn’t always known.’

‘He told me that too when I broke down and blamed myself for what had happened.’

Anne said fiercely: ‘You mustn’t blame yourself. That makes it seem as if this were all a punishment, but I refuse to believe God kills babies to punish people.’

‘That would indeed be a very primitive view of God and not at all compatible with the teachings in the New Testament.’

‘Then why –’ The ancient question was again hammering on the door of mystery, the great mystery of the imperfect world, the great mystery of a Creator who would permit the impermissible, the great mystery of human suffering. “Why did Gerald have to die?’ said Anne. Why did this have to happen? What’s the point of putting him in the world only to take him away again?’

Recognizing the call of a soul drowning in the sea of mystery I set off at once to the rescue in the lifeboat of mysticism. Those hard painful questions only seem unanswerable,’ I said, ‘because you’re viewing them from the wrong position: you’re in the world and looking out. But now step outside the world and look in. The first thing you’ll notice is that it’s a world of change. There’s this huge dynamic force, life, which is constantly banging against the walls of time and space as it contracts, expands and develops. Now step closer and you’ll see that this continual change can’t be represented by a vertical line, only by a circle. Half the circle is dark and half is light. The dark side of change is suffering, the light side is growth, development, flowering, and the dark and the light follow each other endlessly in the great cycle of birth, death and resurrection. Now this means that the light and the dark sides of the circle aren’t merely related to each other; they’re interdependent, and this interdependence means that without suffering there can be no growth, no development, no flowering. Without suffering, in fact, there would be no life as we know it; we’d all be wooden
images, utterly static, in a world where nothing ever happened and where God’s love would fall on barren soil.’

‘That’s all very well, but –’

‘Now step back and look at the world from yet another angle. Look at it as an idea in the mind of God, a brilliant dynamic idea which we ourselves can’t fully grasp except that its dynamism ties us to the change we can’t escape. But beyond the idea, beyond the mind of God, is God himself, the unchanging perfection of ultimate reality. In other words, this cage we live in, this prison of time and space, isn’t ultimately real. Gerald may have slipped out of the cage ahead of us, but that doesn’t mean he’s ceased to exist. As part of the ultimate reality his existence is reflected back into the world of time and space in the form of the absolute values, the values which can never die, and the value in which we can most clearly see him reflected is love.’

‘Yes, but –’

‘Love transcends suffering, and it’s love that gives Gerald’s life meaning. What we have to do is to weave our love for him into the fabric of our marriage so that our love for each other becomes richer, stronger and more complex. The truth is the wheel of change is still turning – and beyond the suffering the new growth, the new development and the new flowering are all waiting to begin. What we have to do now to make Gerald’s life meaningful is to scramble up on to the back of the darkness and then use it as a springboard to leap into the light.’

I paused for breath but I had not spoken in vain. Amidst the profusion of symbols which I had thrown out to her in the manner of a sailor heaving a succession of life-belts to a drowning man, one had been gratefully clutched and embraced.

‘I like the idea of our love weaving Gerald into the fabric of our marriage,’ she said. I can see our marriage as a Persian carpet, very unusual and interesting, and he’ll be a small beautiful pattern which recurs in unexpected places.’

I relaxed. Then I said to conclude my rescue as I hauled the victim into the lifeboat: ‘You see how important his reality is for us? Plotinus the pagan summed it all up in that single famous sentence: “Nothing that really
is
can ever perish” – or as St
Bernard wrote from a Christian viewpoint: “Love is the great reality.” And for both of them, Christian and pagan, that great reality is eternal.’

Anne was crying again, hugging the baby tightly, but when I stopped speaking she dashed away her tears, kissed him and pulled the little blanket over his face. ‘I’m glad we’ve both seen him,’ she said. ‘It’ll make it easier to weave him into the fabric. I feel better now.’

Leaning forward I took her in my arms.

Gerald was buried three days later next to Anne’s brother in the churchyard at Starrington Magna, and I conducted the service myself. I sensed this shocked some people who felt I should be bowed down by grief or even bowed down by shame after my very public spiritual collapse, but I had done my grieving, and since I was still a priest I saw no reason why I should crawl into a corner like a defrocked villain when my son required burial. I also felt that conducting the funeral would be an act of love, similar to the holding of the infant’s hand as he approached death, and since I knew his individuality would remain distinct as his soul merged with others in the stream of eternity, I could not regard the funeral as a gloomy acknowledgement of his extinction. As Plotinus wrote, at death the actors merely change their masks.

Since I had announced the time of the funeral to only a handful of people, I was not required to drum up the courage to face a crowd. Anne was still recovering in hospital, but the Maitlands came with the land-agent and his wife, and Aysgarth’s wife surprised me by travelling all the way from Starbridge to attend the service. But my biggest surprise came when Romaine slipped belatedly into a back pew, and as I allowed him a moment’s prayer before I began the service I remembered Charles telling me that Romaine was a churchwarden in his parish of Starvale St James.

Afterwards I said to him: ‘How very good of you to come,’ but he only answered: ‘It’s hard when a child is lost.’

On an impulse I invited him back to the Manor where I had planned to spend the day before returning to resume my convalescence at Starwater. The invitation astonished me for I had thought I wanted to be alone, but when we sat down together in the drawing-room, I with my small glass of sherry, he with his cigarette and his whisky, I wondered if I had been instinctively seeking a healing presence. I found he had a soothing effect on me; he was calm and relaxed and seemed quite untroubled by my long silences.

‘Does Father Ingram’s absence mean he’s gone home?’ he inquired idly after a while.

‘No, he’s still at Starwater but I wouldn’t let him come to the funeral. Monks in an enclosed order shouldn’t be required to leave their cloister unless it’s absolutely necessary.’

‘I rather thought Father Ingram was taking absolute necessity in his stride! Incidentally, how does he get the petrol for that fantastic machine of his?’

‘I think it’s probably wiser not to ask.’

Romaine laughed but said nothing else and suddenly I realized that his silence was the silence adopted by doctors and priests when they want to encourage confessions, the sympathetic, deeply intuitive silence of the listener who signals that he has all the time in the world to hear whatever needs to be said. Then I realized that there were indeed questions which I wanted to ask a medical man with a wide experience of the world, but even though my pride had been so severely chastened there were some fears which I was still reluctant to air.

In confusion I said tentatively: ‘I’m glad you’re here.’

At once Romaine recognized that I wanted to communicate with him. ‘How are you feeling?’ he said casually. ‘You look better than I thought you would, but after so much distress I dare say you still feel considerably shaken.’

With relief I grasped the chance he was offering me to be honest. ‘Well, to tell the truth,’ I said, I do feel much older than usual.’

‘Disturbing.’

‘Very.’

‘Worried about staying in good working order?’

As soon as I heard this peculiarly apt phrase I realized that no detailed explanations would be required; he had already guessed the cause of my anxiety. Gratefully I said: ‘I’m not too keen on being over sixty. In fact sometimes I feel thoroughly depressed about it.’

‘Very natural,’ said Romaine comfortably, puffing away at his cigarette. ‘When I turned sixty I was so depressed I nearly ordered my coffin.’

‘Really?’ I was deeply interested.

‘Ate, drank and smoked too much. Couldn’t even cheer myself up in bed any more.’

‘Really! But how did you –’

‘My wife took me in hand. Put me on a diet, rationed my cigarettes, locked up the drink and packed me off to the golf club twice a week for exercise. Wonderful! Within six months I was a new man.’

‘Ah! So now –’

‘– so now my wife makes sure I stay that way. But you don’t need a fierce wife to keep you in order, do you? You’re naturally strong-minded.’

‘Well, I don’t smoke, certainly, and I’m not much of a drinker and I take a fair amount of exercise on my bicycle –’

‘My dear fellow, you’re an example to us all! Keep going along those lines and I assure you that you stand an excellent chance of ticking over briskly for some time to come.’