Mystical Paths (17 page)

‘In that case I hesitate to add to your uncertainty, but I feel I must tell you that the suicide theory isn’t new to me. You’re not the only one who wonders if the death was accidental.’

‘Bloody hell, I hope to God this never reaches the old man! But Nick, why would Christian have committed suicide? I mean, it’s just not good enough to say he went mad, as if he’d been taken over by an evil spirit. We don’t believe in evil spirits any more, do we?’

‘Yes, we do,’ I said, ‘but they’re called by different names now.’

‘Sorry, I don’t follow, but never mind, don’t bother to explain, I must toddle off home. I think it’s all right to leave Norman. I’ve wedged him on his side so that he doesn’t suffocate if he vomits.’

‘Would you like me to stay with him?’

‘My dear chap, I couldn’t possibly ask —’

‘You’re not asking, I’m volunteering. To tell the truth, James, I’m being an opportunist. I need a bed for the night.’

‘Oh well, in that case make yourself at home ... Damned decent of you, though. Three cheers for the Church! There’s life in the old girl yet,’ said James obscurely, and tottered in a remarkably straight line outside to his car.

I wondered how much he had had to drink at his club while he was waiting for Norman to appear. Then as the Rover’s rear lights disappeared beyond the archway at the far end of the mews, I stepped back into the hall and closed the door.

II

In the drawing-room I found that Norman had succeeded in rolling over on to his back but I wedged him on his side again by rearranging the pillows, two of which reeked of scent. This was the smelliest house I had ever encountered but at least the reek of putrefied lamb had died. Upstairs in the main bedroom I found a telephone extension and rang the Manor. ‘I’m staying the night with Norman Aysgarth,’ I said when Agnes answered. I gave her the number before adding: ‘How’s Father?’

‘Oh, very poorly! The eczema on his hands is getting worse – Rowena said she even saw blood on the bandages this afternoon.’

I was silent.

When are you coming home, Nicholas?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But your father does so worry about you when you’re away! In my opinion –’

I hung up and returned downstairs to inspect the contents of the kitchen refrigerator. Immediately I was assaulted by the stench of sour milk. I threw it out. I was beginning to find the house deeply revolting. It had a bad aura too, heavy and unhappy. To distract myself I switched on the television. Junk spewed forth. Norman moaned in his coma. I flicked off the switch and inspected the bookcases. Legal tomes reflected Norman’s profession; legal literature, such as Henry Cecil’s humorous novels and Cyril Hare’s detective stories, disclosed his taste in light reading, but I saw no book that obviously belonged to Cynthia.

I decided to water the dying pot-plants. That took some time. Then I sat down and tried to think, but the aura was so oppressive that I was glad when I remembered my car, parked off Piccadilly and requiring to be rescued before it fell foul of the parking regulations at eight-thirty on the following morning. With relief I recalled the signboard saying the mews was a private road. That meant the car could sit outside Norman’s front door indefinitely.

It took only a short time to perform the rescue because I got a taxi at once in the Fulham Road, and when I returned I was still in no mood for bed. I tried the television again. More junk. I switched on the radio instead and picked up the indignant squeaks of some old piece of dead-wood who said society was going to pieces and the Church was responsible. He could havebeen right but he just made me want to wear a garland of flowers and smoke pot. Changing wave-lengths I got the Rolling Stones shouting the same tired old drivel. Boring, boring, boring, almost worst than the piece of dead-wood. I switched off the radio but for once I found the silence hard to take. It was the aura.

Returning to the kitchen, now the cleanest-smelling room on the ground floor, I tried to recite the mantra but got lost after five minutes. That was bad news. Unable to rest my mind in this way I concentrated instead on framing a series of short spoken prayers in an effort to divert my attention from myself to others. I prayed briefly, shuddering, for Katie and Marina. Then I prayed at length, smoothly, for Cynthia, for the autistic child and for Norman. I even prayed for the au pair girl, severed from her French home and thrust among horrors.

After that I felt better. I decided I could finally face going to bed, but Norman and Cynthia’s unkempt room stank of stale cigarette smoke, the stench of cheap scent in the French girl’s room repulsed me, and I was too big for the cot in the nursery. I inspected the top floor, built beneath the dormer roof. Here the autistic child had been kept. I found barred windows and a smell of urine, but next door was the room which had belonged to the nurse. Since it proved to be neat and clean I decided I could at least try to sleep there.

Having found some string in the kitchen I tied my ankle to the bed in order to abort any bout of somnambulism, and wished I could have said the Office properly but there was neither a Prayer Book nor a Bible in the house. Having muttered the General Confession (more shudders), I recited from memory the Twenty-third psalm, the Magnificat, the Nunc Dimittis and the daily evensong Collects before I concluded this formal attempt to communicate with God by begging Him to let my father live to be a hundred. Then I shouted to my father in my head: ‘STOP TORTURING ME – GET WELL,’ and fell asleep.

Appalling dreams, which I forgot the instant I woke up, hounded me constantly. The third time I awoke I sat bolt upright with a gasp as if I were in acute danger, and realised I had heard sounds downstairs. Norman must have surfaced. Untying the string around my ankle I left my bedroom to see what was going on.

‘Norman, it’s Nick!’ I called as I reached the hall. He was being sick in the downstairs cloakroom.

‘I’ll make you some tea,’ I said as I passed the open door on my way to the kitchen.

He staggered out just as the kettle boiled. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘James and I thought it might be a good idea if one of us stayed.’

‘Christ, that’s all I need. A bloody clergyman.’ He reeled back into the drawing-room and collapsed on the sofa. He looked about seventy.

‘No milk,’ I said as I brought him a steaming mug, ‘but tea tastes good naked.’

‘Go to hell.’ He turned his back on me. I sat down and. waited. After a while he started to snore but I knew he was shamming. He just wanted to get rid of me so that he could cure his hang-over by hitting the bottle again.

‘Okay,’ he said, finally realising that play-acting was getting him nowhere. ‘Give me the tea.’

I handed over the mug. He drank, making a face. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘You can go now. Thanks for playing the nursemaid. Sorry I was a bit abusive.’

‘I’d prefer to stay in the house for a while, if you don’t mind. It’s three o’clock in the morning.’

‘No wonder I feel like a tramp’s armpit! Okay, you can stay but go back to bed, please.’

‘I don’t think that would be helpful at the moment, Norman. Have some more tea.’

‘Now look here, you sod —’

‘Talking of sods,’ I said, ‘were Christian and Perry lovers at Winchester?’

Norman boggled, miraculously diverted from all thought ofalcohol. ‘No, of course not! I don’t know what went on at your school, but —’

‘Absolutely nothing, as far as I could see. The monks at Starwater Abbey had a talent for nipping "particular friendships" in the bud.’

‘Well, there you are! The story that public schools are rife with homosexuality is a slander put out by the working-classes ... God, my head feels as if it’s about to drop off. Get me some Alka-Seltzer, there’s a good chap — top shelf, bathroom cupboard.’

I sped upstairs and sped back but I still wasn’t quick enough. By the time I returned with a foaming tooth-mug he had found the bottle of scotch.

‘My God!’ he said appalled. ‘Who’s been knocking this back?’ ‘James. Don’t worry, Norman, I’ll look after the whisky. You focus on the Alka-Seltzer.’

‘Oh, go and be a clergyman somewhere else!’

‘No thanks, I’m getting interested in your case. Are you sure Christian never had any homosexual escapades at school?’ ‘Of course I’m sure! Neither of us did. If Father had ever heard we’d messed around like that it would have killed him.’ ‘Your father means a lot to you all, doesn’t he?’

‘Of course. That’s because he’s always been a first-class father — except when he married Dido. God, what a catastrophe that was! Carved up the whole family. Christian never forgave him.’ ‘How old was Christian when your father remarried?’ ‘Eighteen.’

‘That’s old enough to stage a big rebellion. Did he run around getting drunk, driving too fast and screwing every girl in sight?’

‘You’re joking — this was
_1945,
not 1968! We weren’t living in the permissive society then, teenagers didn’t even exist. But Christian did rebel. In his own way.’

‘By not going into the Church?’

‘Exactly. And I followed suit, even though back in the ‘forties I still believed in God. But Christian never believed in God after Mother died.’

‘What did he believe in?’

‘Nothing.’

‘People usually believe in something. Nature abhors a vacuum.’

‘He believed in himself. Getting on, going far, winning every prize in sight ... God, this Alka-Seltzer tastes foul! Pass me the whisky so that I can give it a decent flavour.’

‘Are you busy today, Norman? I mean, do you have to be conscious for any reason?’

‘What day’s today?’

‘Saturday.’

‘Oh my God, I’m supposed to be going down to Surrey to have lunch with the old boy himself! Okay, hide the whisky and make me some more tea.’

The crisis was averted. I hid the whisky, made more tea and provided him with an ice-pack. Norman groaned and swore beneath his breath but fought tooth and nail to attain sobriety.

‘Lucky you asked that question,’ he said at last. ‘I’ve got to pull myself together for Father. You won’t tell anyone, will you, that I passed out at Perry’s? If Father ever found out that I occasionally drink a little more than I should —’

‘Relax. I’m about to become a priest, not a gossip-columnist.’

‘Thank God.’ Norman sagged back among the pillows on the sofa. ‘Sorry I’ve been so bloody to you,’ he said. ‘You’re not a bad chap, I know that, but you’re just so damned odd. Why are you asking all these questions about Christian?’

‘I’m trying to find out if he committed suicide.’

Norman’s dark eyes widened. Then without a word he clawed his way to his feet and bolted to the cloakroom for a second round of vomiting.

III

I found a jug in the kitchen, and by the time Norman staggered back to the drawing-room I had a substantial supply of cold water waiting for him.

‘Thanks,’ he said. He was becoming steadily nicer as the effects of the alcohol waned. I could now look at him and remember the Norman I had met at Marina’s Starbridge party in 1963, the smartly-dressed, sociable young barrister who was thriving in the field of academic law. ‘Why should you think,’ he said a glass and a half later, ‘that Christian committed suicide?’

‘There’s a rumour going around.’

Norman began to shudder. In alarm I wondered if I was witnessing the onset of delirium tremens but it was merely an attack of revulsion. A moment later he had controlled himself sufficiently to say: ‘I know nothing about any rumour, but I’ve always wondered about the possibility of suicide, and that scared me shitless because if Christian committed suicide it would make a nonsense not only of his life but of mine as well ... Sorry, I know that’s far from lucid, but my brain feels like a wet sponge.’

I said cautiously: ‘I think I see what you mean. You and Christian were ploughing similar furrows. If his life ended in nightmare, then a shadow falls not just across your furrow but across your decision to devote your life to ploughing.’

‘That’s it.’ He groped for a cigarette but his hand was shaking so badly that he had trouble manipulating the lighter. ‘But maybe I was just projecting my own unhappiness on to him;’ he said. ‘Maybe my suspicion of suicide tells you more about me than about Christian.’

‘If the two of you were ploughing similar furrows then your · unhappiness could well be a mirror-image of his. Norman, what drove you and Christian to set out with your ploughs in this particular field?’

‘Nothing. It just seemed the right and obvious thing to do.’ He wiped the sweat from his forehead before adding: ‘We were all brought up to succeed. Work hard, get on, travel far — that was my father’s motto, the motto of the self-made man, and there’s nothing wrong with that
per se.
It’s what the Yanks call the Protestant Work Ethic. But as an idol it can have its problems for worshippers.’

‘So you’re saying that because of the example your father set you when you were growing up —’

‘Don’t misunderstand. My father did weave the gospel of worldly success with the Gospel of Christ — somehow — but it was really only the former that came over loud and clear. I don’t mean he gave us lectures. The message just seemed to ooze out of him as he travelled up the ecclesiastical ladder towards a top job. Yet I’m not saying he was corrupt and I’m certainly not saying he wasn’t religious. Father’s dedicated to Christianity, one hundred per cent sincere. It’s just that he has the brains and the toughness and the ambition to succeed in any big corporate structure ... Do you follow what I’m trying to say?’

‘All too clearly.’

‘Well, when I realised I couldn’t go into the Church I cast around for another career which offered status and glamour at the top, and I picked the law. Fine. Father was very pleased, said the law offered wonderful opportunities to get on and travel far, so off I headed into the golden sunset.’

‘What went wrong?’

‘Well, sometimes when I’m drunk I say that Cynthia ruined my career by refusing to leave London — she thinks Oxford and Cambridge are too provincial — but in fact my present lectureship at King’s is a good job which could lead me right up the academic ladder. But it won’t. Because deep down —
deep
down — I don’t want to be a lawyer at all, and now I’m in my late thirties I’m running out of energy trying to hold down a job that no longer interests me.’

What do you want to do instead?’

Write poetry — and if you laugh I’ll hit you.’

‘I’m not laughing.’

‘I always wanted to be a poet. I started writing poetry in adolescence but unlike so many other teenage scribblers I kept on into my twenties. Published a few poems in various literary magazines when I was up at Oxford. Father said it was a nice little hobby. Of course I never dared tell him that what I wanted to do was to eke out a living in journalism and create as much spare time as possible for writing poetry. I knew a girl at the time who said I should, but I couldn’t. Oh God, I can’t forget that girl, I keep thinking about her, she’s even started to turn up in my dreams —’

‘Were you in love with her?’

‘Yes, but she was the wrong class so nothing could come of it. I forgot all about her when I started to chase Cynthia. A duke’s daughter! And keen on
me —
the grandson of a Yorkshire draper! What a catch, I thought, how well I’m doing, getting on, travelling far ... oh, how
bloody
stupid it all seems in retrospect — and occasionally it even seemed stupid at the time, but whenever I had doubts I could always reassure myself by looking across at Christian, ploughing his parallel furrow and luxuriating amidst his wonderful career, wonderful wife, wonderful family. And I thought: if he can achieve happiness that way, I can too.’

‘So if he did commit suicide — if this happiness was just a sham —’

‘It proves to me beyond all doubt that I’ve wasted my entire life chasing a grand illusion.’

‘Not your entire life, Norman. Go back to writing poetry.’

‘Oh, I can’t write poetry any more — I can’t even bear to read it, can’t bear to have any books of poetry in the house. Christ, what a mess!’ And he buried his face in his hands.

I realised that now was not the time to push the poetry and remind him of his lost opportunities, so in the hope of diverting him from the subject I bent the conversation back to his brother. ‘You were fond of Christian, weren’t you, Norman?’

‘Of course I was. Best brother a man ever had.’ He somehow kept his upper lip stiff. Odd how often people talk in clichés when they’re profoundly upset. It’s as if the clichés become symbols pointing to a reality which lies beyond verbal expression. ‘Look,’ he said when he finally trusted himself to speak, ‘I don’t know what I said earlier about Christian at Perry’s, but I’ve got a feeling I wasn’t very complimentary. I never am when I’m drunk. It’s because I start to remember then what I make myself forget when I’m sober: that our friendship went down the drain and it was all my fault.’

‘There was a row?’ I said, feigning ignorance as I realised his memory of the tirade at Perry’s was minimal.

‘Yes, I thought he was meddling in my private life, giving me unsolicited advice about Cynthia and Billy, but in fact the real reason why I got so angry was because he was underlining that my life was in a mess while he was still luxuriating happily in his perfect furrow. The underlining wasn’t intentional, but I just couldn’t take it. I suppose you could say jealousy finally won.’

‘You weren’t jealous of him before?’

‘Thanks to my mother, no. She brought us up to love and respect each other – with the result that we became friends with plenty in common. But in the end –’

‘In the end the Dark blotted out the Light.’

‘Good God, what an extraordinary thing to say! You really are the oddest chap I’ve ever –’

‘I meant that your inauthentic existence prompted psychological disturbances which manifested themselves in inappropriate emotions. Like jealousy.’

‘Exactly. Well, as I was saying –’

‘You were implying that you were estranged from Christian when he died.’

‘That’s right. We had the row in ‘sixty-four and he died a year later. I spent those last months trying to blot him out of my memory so that I didn’t have to think of him luxuriating in his furrow while I ploughed my way into the abyss – but I found I couldn’t blot him out, I was too deeply connected to him, and I just couldn’t get him out of my mind.’

‘Was it easier once he was dead?’

‘No, harder. I began to feel as if his memory had become a corpse which was strapped to my back, and that was such an irony because when he died my first reaction was relief.’

‘No more being tormented by the demon of jealousy who had converted Christian into a destructive force?’

‘
Demon?
Oh, come off it, Nick! This is the twentieth century!’

‘Right. You mean that you thought his death would enable you to make a satisfactory psychological adjustment to the malign aspects of his memory and neutralise the phobic reaction which was making you unhappy.’

‘Yes, but I was wrong. Nothing was neutralised and gradually I’ve become not just unhappy but bloody frightened. I now feel it’s exactly as if Christian can’t rest until he’s driven me too to suicide – oh my God, listen to me, I’m more or less saying I’m being haunted by his ghost – unable to exorcise the demon that’s infesting me –’

‘Oh no, no, no,’ I said, very soothing. ‘What you’re really saying – of course – is that you’re very troubled about that broken relationship which was unhealed when he died, and that your unassuaged guilt is now so massive that it’s inducing all kinds of repulsive and terrifying thoughts.’

‘Well, I suppose that does make me sound slightly less certifiable, but –’

‘You’re not certifiable, Norman. You’re just a normal man who’s going through a traumatic time, but you do need help. You need –’

‘If you say "a psychiatrist" I’ll knock you down, and if you say "a clergyman" I’ll knock you out. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with me that can’t be cured by will-power and a stiff upper lip! All I’ve got to do is say to myself firmly: "Christian committed suicide, but I –"‘

‘No, wait a moment, Norman, hang on. We don’t know for a fact that he did commit suicide, and so far I’ve turned up no convincing reason why he should have killed himself. Does one really commit suicide out of boredom and a spot of marriage trouble?’

‘My God, it was a bit more than that, wasn’t it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, Christian had this utterly surreal private life with three people who were all crazy about him. Surely you realised that!’

‘But he had his eternal quadrangle so well organised! No sex with Marina or Perry, everyone knowing their place, no one overstepping the mark –’

‘Balls. The truth was that he was in love with Marina but he didn’t want to destroy Katie by leaving her. God knows what they all got up to, but you can bet your bottom dollar it wasn’t that nice cosy little triangle they all pretended it was!’

‘I’m sure he didn’t have sex with Marina,’ said the man who had just relieved her of her virginity.

‘God knows what he had with her, but if all three of them failed to end up in one bed I’d be very much surprised. Meanwhile, of course, Christian was taking time out from the two women to sleep with Perry.’

I nearly fell off my chair. ‘But you said just now —’

‘I said they never carried on at school, and I’m sure that’s correct. But you can’t convince me there was nothing between Christian and Perry at the end. My God, he even went on holiday with Perry when Katie was eight months pregnant! What kind of a husband does that?’

‘But Norman —’

‘This is how I see it: he was bored with Katie. I’d guess she wasn’t too interested in sex. He wanted sex with Marina but had the brains to see that a full-scale love affair with her could trigger an explosion which would cripple his career. When these two women had driven him to the end of his tether he turned to Perry out of sheer desperation, but eventually he suffered a reaction from all these huge emotional dramas and decided he hated everyone, including himself. Result: suicide while the balance of the mind was disturbed. Or in other words: his outstanding worldly success ultimately counted for nothing and he ended his life when he realised how meaningless it was.’

‘But Norman, do you really think Christian would have dabbled in homosexual behaviour once he was grown up? I mean, I can just about accept that he might have messed around with Perry at school, but surely —’

Where sex is concerned everyone’s capable of anything.’

‘I don’t think that’s true,’ I said frankly. ‘For instance, I know very well I’ll never copulate with a sheep.’