Heartbreaker (56 page)

V

Lewis instantly turned to me but I needed no prompting. Springing to my feet I shot around the table, stooped over Gavin and hugged him. How self-centred I had been, merely seeing Sir Colin as a walking chequebook! “This is better than any donation Colin could make,” I said strongly as I sat down at Gavin’s side. “A good job with a good company—it’ll be just what you need once you’re well!”

Gavin wiped his eyes on the cuff of his sweatshirt and whispered: “I could never accept it.”

I was shocked. “But he obviously wants to help!”

He turned to Lewis. “Explain to her.”

“It would be as if Gavin were continuing to profit from a client,” said Lewis evenly, and added before I could protest: “But it’s an interesting letter, isn’t it, Gavin? Sir Colin, it seems, is rather more than just a run-of-the-mill City hatchet-man.”

Gavin managed to say: “I’ll read the letter now. But I can’t touch it.” So I spread both sheets of paper in front of him on the table.

After he had stared at the handwriting for some time he said: “It was good of him to apologise, good of him to say nice things about me, good of him to try to help. But he’s got it wrong about colluding with Elizabeth. It wasn’t my clients’ fault that all I could do to make a living was sell myself.”

“It’s right that you should want to take responsibility for your actions,” said Lewis, “but it’s right too that Sir Colin wants to take responsibility for the part he played in keeping you in business. And it’s especially right that he should now want to make amends by stressing that you’re brave, that you deserve better in future and that you’re worthy of support and encouragement.”

But Gavin could only comment: “I still can’t accept his offer.”

I opened my mouth to argue but Lewis pushed my foot to shut me up.

“Very well,” he said to Gavin, “but would you like me to write to him that you’re not well and won’t be job-hunting for a while? You might feel the letter requires some kind of response.”

“Yes, but I’m the one who’s got to respond—he’d be furious if he knew someone other than me had read all that.” Retrieving a pad of notepaper and a pen from the nearby desk he sat down again at the dining-table and eventually, after several false starts, he produced a note which read: “Dear Colin, I appreciated your generous letter. Thanks. But I’m ill now and not job-hunting and I feel RCPP wouldn’t be viable anyway. Sorry. GAVIN.” At that point he paused, chewing the top of his pen for several seconds before adding rapidly: “P.S. It’s not AIDS.”

“That’s thoughtful,” I said.

“They all worry about it. I worried about it.” As he looked at me directly I saw all the emotional damage reflected in his eyes. If the damage had been physical, the eyes would have been bruised and bloodied. It was eerie how a person could be so hurt yet have no scars to show for it, just the haunted expression of extreme pain stoically endured. “I’ve had my final AIDS test,” he said to me. “It was clear. I’m all right. I’m going to live.” Tears spilled down his cheeks again as he turned his head sharply away. “I was so afraid of getting it,” he said. “So afraid. All the time.”

I hugged him again, and as he leaned trustfully towards me I thought how we had clasped hands at the Healing Centre, I thought how we had clung to each other after Mrs. Mayfield’s sentencing, I thought of all our nerve-jangling encounters when we had been exploring our relationship as fellow travellers, deeply and mysteriously connected, on a journey neither of us could have foreseen.

He said: “Please don’t wash your hands of me.”

And I said: “Never. I’m here for you and I’ll go on being here for you.”

“The people I loved in the past either went away or never loved me back.”

“I love you, Gavin. I won’t let you down, I promise.”

We sat there at the table in that quiet room, and Lewis, utterly still, sat opposite us. Outside the sun was shining and seagulls wheeled across the flat landscape in a flicker of arcs bleach-white against the blue sky.

“I often wondered what it would be like to have a sister,” said Gavin, “but of course I only had a brother.” Releasing my hand he rubbed his eyes and began to fold the letter he had written. “Lewis wants me to talk about my family,” he added, “but it’s hard.”

“I sympathise—I always find it hard to talk about my family too. My father was a compulsive gambler and that created endless problems when I was small.”

“Then I feel lucky,” said Gavin, “because when I was small I had no problems.” He sighed before adding painfully: “Hugo was the most wonderful brother to me. I had wonderful parents and a wonderful home. Everything was wonderful, but the trouble was I couldn’t hold on to it, I wasn’t good enough, it all just slipped through my fingers.”

“But why didn’t someone hold on to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, my mother held on to me. She kept me from being taken into care when my father made a mess of our life in Glasgow. She married again and moved to Newcastle because she saw that as the chance to give me a decent home. I would have slipped through her fingers if she hadn’t hung on so tightly, and if I
had
slipped it wouldn’t have been my fault. It would have been hers.”

Gavin thought about this but finally shook his head and said: “You were probably a terrific kid and worthy of all those efforts your mum made. But I wasn’t. I just couldn’t measure up.”

“To Hugo?”

“To everyone.”

“All those wonderful people who weren’t wonderful enough to see you were slipping through their fingers? Ugh! Pardon me if I puke! If they left you feeling that everything was your fault, there’s something seriously wrong with your definition of ‘wonderful’!”

Gavin’s expression was at first shocked but then, reluctantly, enchanted. With amusement he said to Lewis: “She’s not like a therapist, is she? No therapist would be that outspoken.”

“I can almost hear the mewing as Robin has kittens.”

We all laughed before Gavin said carefully to me: “As you’re not a therapist, you won’t try to rearrange my head, will you?”

“No, I just want to rearrange the heads of all those wonderful people. Preferably by banging them together.”

“Then I’ll talk to you,” he said. “I’ll tell you about my family.” And at last, often pausing to fumble for the right word, he began to speak of the past.

VI

“Let me make one thing clear from the start,” said Gavin. “This story isn’t about sibling rivalry. Hugo was the best of brothers to me. We got on. I idolised him.”

He hesitated so I nodded to show him I had taken this information on board without wanting to swing a hatchet at it. Across the table Lewis was so motionless that I wondered if he was still breathing.

“In fact,” said Gavin, “I loved Hugo so much that when he was dying I promised to live his life for him once he was dead—and I did try to do that, I really did, but I just wasn’t up to it. So I broke my promise to him and I failed to compensate my parents for his loss. That was when I knew I had to go. I had to spare them any further grief.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “I’m not quite with you. How did you try to ‘be’ him, as you put it?”

“I tried to read medicine. Hugo was going to be a doctor, but not just an ordinary GP like Dad. Hugo was going to be a surgeon, a Harley Street specialist, a real high flyer. Mum and Dad were so proud of him.”

“But what did you really want to do?”

“Be an architect, but Dad said I wasn’t pushy enough to hustle for commissions. He said I’d be happier teaching in a private school where there were no discipline problems—and maybe he got that right. I could have spent those long school holidays sailing.”

“Why didn’t you go into the Navy?”

“Dad said I was too much of a loner to make a go of it.”

“Your dad seems to have been—no, sorry, let’s not get diverted. You made this doomed decision to be a doctor, you said—”

“—but it was so boring, I couldn’t get interested, I failed all my early exams—”

“Well, of course you did! How could you do well at something you had no aptitude for?”

“Ah, but Hugo couldn’t accept that. I’d invited him into my head so that he could enjoy me living his life for him, but when I reneged on the deal he turned hostile, and every day since then he’s told me I’m shit. In fact sometimes I think he hates me so much that he’ll never rest till I’m as dead as he is.”

At once I knew I could carry the conversation no further, but simultaneously Lewis commented: “I can understand Hugo’s disappointment, but he’s very wrong to vent his anger on you.”

“But he refuses to accept he’s doing anything wrong!”

“That’s because he’s not being approached in the right way.” Lewis leaned forward in his chair. “Maybe I can help here. I’ve come across this kind of case before, and I know that the unquiet dead can cause a lot of problems for the living.”

“That’s what Elizabeth said.”

There was a deep silence before Lewis asked sharply: “You’re saying she helped you in some way?”

“She called it psychic healing,” said Gavin in a bleak voice as I shuddered from head to toe.

VII

“I believed in it at the time,” said Gavin, “because I was so desperate, but later I came to see it didn’t work, and after that I hated all that psychic rubbish.”

Lewis said: “I understand, but can you tell me exactly what happened?”

“I told Elizabeth about Hugo and said: ‘I’ve tried drink, I’ve tried drugs but nothing shuts him up for long, nothing,’ and Elizabeth just said: ‘Leave him to me.’ I think she hypnotised me then although she never used the word ‘hypnotism’ and it was all very subtle, not like the hypnotist stuff you see on TV. After we’d made love she’d massage my head and say she was smoothing away Hugo so that he wouldn’t bother me any more. And it worked for a while. But in the end the effect wore off and that approach never worked again . . . I didn’t tell Elizabeth, though. I was afraid she’d be angry and say it was all my fault that I’d failed to stay cured.”

I shuddered again, but Lewis was saying evenly: “People who are sick should never be made to feel guilty if a cure isn’t forthcoming. A wonder-worker on an ego trip may want to preserve his self-esteem by laying the burden of failure on the patient, but a healer working to serve God shouldn’t be worrying about his self-esteem.”

Cautiously Gavin said: “You’re saying it’s integrity that separates the good healers from the bad.”

“Yes, but let me stress that all healing comes from God, and God can use anyone or anything to achieve his healing purposes. However, because the ministry of healing deals with exerting power over others, it’s immensely vulnerable to corruption. And if the patient puts his faith in a corrupt healer, the risk of adverse consequences is very great.”

Gavin mulled this over before asking: “Do you think that beneath all the corruption Elizabeth had a genuine healing gift?”

“Possibly, but there’s a sense in which any gift is neutral—it’s what you do with it that counts. For instance, take Elizabeth’s psychic gift, which she used in order to boost the healing gift she had—or which she used in order to make people think she had a healing gift. The words ‘psychic powers’ often appear in a sinister context, but in fact there’s no reason why they should be associated with evil rather than good— the powers themselves are neutral. If Elizabeth had chosen to offer her psychic gift to God so that he could use it as a force for the good, I’m sure a great many people would have been spared a great amount of unhappiness.”

Gavin did some more mulling but finally said: “You’re a St. Benet’s healer. You do healing right. But how do I know you’ll be any more successful than Elizabeth was at fixing Hugo?”

“You don’t. And I can’t guarantee success. But if you want me to try to help you, I’d be very willing to give it a go.”

Gavin gave a great sigh, and when he said simply: “Where do we begin?” I knew his journey had restarted again after the crisis which had brought him to a halt.

VIII

“The first thing to understand,” said Lewis, “is that compulsion won’t work here. In other words, we can’t just say to Hugo: ‘Get lost!’ Instead we have to establish a situation where he can see his journey back to God as a homecoming rather than an undeserved journey into exile.”

“But how—”

“Let me take a little time to think and pray about this. Then I can come up with a plan of action, but meanwhile there are some questions I need to ask. First of all, did Hugo have any other ideas about life after death apart from existing as a spirit in your head?”

“No, neither of us believed the Christian stuff about the resurrection of the body. That’s just contrary to common sense.”

“So is much of the world revealed by modern physics! But let me merely say that St. Paul didn’t think resurrection involved the flesh. It all depends how you define ‘body’ and in this case the word ‘body’ is probably a codeword for the whole person, a pattern produced by a certain mind, spirit and body all working together. This pattern—a pattern of information, you could call it—would be capable of being lifted from its original context and replayed in another environment. Like written music which gets to be played in the concert hall.”

I could see this intrigued Gavin but his only comment was: “Hugo says he’s more than just a pattern of information.”

“Tell Hugo that all analogies ultimately break down but they’re useful if not pushed too far . . . Now, here’s my next question: what did your parents think about this idea that you should live Hugo’s life for him after he died?”

“Oh, I never discussed it with them! But obviously they must have been glad to see that I was doing all I could to make amends for the fact that I was the one left alive.”

I wanted to cry out in protest but I knew I had to leave the response to Lewis. Calmly he said: “Did your parents ever come right out and say they wished you’d died instead of Hugo?”

“No, of course not! But I knew that was how they felt. Hugo was so special.”

“You never thought they might be thankful to have one son left?”

“No, not after I failed my medical exams and it was obvious I couldn’t take Hugo’s place. I did think of killing myself,” said Gavin as an afterthought, “but I decided it would mean so much hassle for them, and as I’d caused them so much trouble already I didn’t want to cause them any more. Disappearing seemed cleaner somehow—more considerate.”

“I understand . . . And what did Elizabeth have to say about your parents?”

“She said I was well rid of them,” said Gavin, but I could see he was barely concentrating on what he was saying. It was obvious a terrible thought had occurred to him. “Talking of Elizabeth . . . do you think it’s likely—do you suppose—could Elizabeth have decided to join forces with Hugo now to will me into total insanity, the kind you don’t recover from? Am I ill because I’m being possessed by Hugo’s evil spirit?”

“Absolutely not!” said Lewis robustly. “For one thing, you show none of the signs of possession, and for another, Hugo is not an evil spirit. He’s an unhappy, angry, immature spirit who’s got himself stuck in the wrong place—your head—and now needs help in going home.”

Gavin sagged back in his chair but still looked shattered.

“Courage!” said Lewis, smiling at him. “We have an interesting task in front of us! We have to help the dead rest in peace and we have to ensure the living move on towards the life they’re called to lead, but meanwhile I’d like to congratulate you on taking this enormous step forward and talking of these very difficult matters. Well done! I’m extremely impressed!”

Gavin gazed at him with an expression in which hope and trust mingled with fear and dread. “You really think Hugo will forgive me in the end?”

“We’ll work at helping him understand that neither of you can be blamed here. You were both too young to know better.”

“You mean that when Hugo and I agreed I should live his life for him—”

“You picked the wrong form of healing. The promise to live his life was a magnificent gesture on your part, but it didn’t heal the spiritual wounds caused by the knowledge that he was dying before his time. It only anaesthetised them by promising a future that could never have worked out.”

Gavin’s face crumpled.

“We’ll stop there,” said Lewis, standing up. “I’ll come back on Monday with my plan of action—unless, of course, you want to cancel. Don’t forget you’re never under any obligation to see me.”

Gavin nodded. Tears were streaming down his face, but before I could embrace him again he was gone, rushing upstairs to his room as if finally overwhelmed by all his pulverising memories.