Mystical Paths (24 page)

‘It’s okay, I’m not serious,’ I said, but I knew I was and suddenly before I could stop myself I was saying: ‘I think Christian went down the drain. I think the Devil grabbed him by the hair, tossed him into the lavatory with all the shit and flushed him screaming into the sewer.’

‘Nick, if I were you I’d stop this Christian Aysgarth investigation – I can see he’s getting to you in some peculiar way, and that’s not healthy. Look, why don’t you stay here for a few days? You can assist me at Communion tomorrow, and –’

‘I’d really like that, Charley, but my father will be disappointed if I don’t turn up for mass in the chapel.’

‘Okay, but do talk to your father about this! You don’t want to get overstrained just before your ordination.’

‘Right.’ I retired to the spare-room he had allocated me and spent some time sitting motionless on the edge of the bed. At least I’d managed to escape from his Communion service without making him suspicious. No choice but to get out of it; I knew how very far I was from being in a state of grace. No more self-deception. And no more pseudo-confessions which were worse than useless. I needed help — a lot of help — and as soon as I had solved the mystery surrounding Christian I’d go straight to Father Peters to be rehabilitated.

But meanwhile .. .

I began to plan a secular Sunday.

X One of my foibles is that I have to wear clean clothes; the fashion for being dirty, even smelly, passed me by. I had now been wearing the same clothes for two days and I knew that unless I went home I had either to raid Marks & Spencer for a new supply or to sit stark naked in a launderette while my clothes were being washed. As Marks & Spencer was closed on Sundays and since I had no wish to be arrested for indecent exposure, I was compelled to return to my wardrobe.

I timed my arrival for eight o’clock when my father and the Community would be at mass. Having changed my clothes, I packed my shaving equipment and teeth-gear into a bag alongside some extra underwear and shirts, but when I looked for an additional pair of jeans I realised nothing clean was available so I was reduced to taking away a pair of ordinary trousers. I chose black ones to remind me that I would soon be a priest. I also grabbed my Prayer Book to convince myself that I hadn’t yet gone down the drain.

Then I headed back to London.XI I went to matins in Westminster Abbey and sat amidst a congregation of boggling tourists sternly stuffed into the transept seats by sidesmen skilled in crowd management. I felt I really couldn’t let Sunday pass without attending church, particularly since Easter was now so close.

The service was straight, decent and well-oiled, no High-Church frills, no Low-Church fulminations, just the soothing, tasteful, uncontroversial splendour of the Church of England’s famous ‘Middle Way’, the broad valley between the opposing mountain peaks. Thinking of those ecclesiastical factions reminded me of Charley, embedded in Middle-Way churchmanship but thundering like a Low-Church tub-thumper as he hammered home his conservative views. Earlier in the twentieth century the Evangelical wing of the Church had faded through lack of effective leadership and the Anglo-Catholic wing had grabbed the reins of power, but now, with Liberalism acting as a plague to the Anglo-Catholics and a spur to the Evangelicals, I thought Charley could be a portent of changing times. I saw him as one of a new breed, an Evangelical who was embarrassed by the anti-intellectual aura of old-fashioned fundamentalism, an Evangelical well-educated enough to read the Bible with sophisticated eyes, an Evangelical with a brain. The Anglo-Catholics needed to watch out. Unless they stopped living off their past glories they’d wake up one day to find that the Evangelicals had grabbed the reins of power at last, and then — And then the great Catholic tradition of the Church of England would fragment beneath the wheels of a militant Protestantism. Was that what I wanted? No. But maybe that was what God wanted. Fewer elaborately beautiful, liturgically meaningful rituals and more roaring tub-thumpers to win back the decade from the Devil. Fewer limp-wristed performers in fancy dress and more fire-breathing, high-testosterone zealots. What a picture! Sex shouldn’t come into the situation at all, of course; we were all equal in the sight of God — men, women and hermaphrodites – so why did sex keep muscling in on religion along with the faction-fighting, the power-grabbing and the money-grubbing? If I were God I’d despair. I was Nicholas Darrow and
I
despaired. Better to blot out that manmade Church, so painfully unsatisfactory, and tune in to the great truths beyond.

I looked at the rose window in the north transept and flicked the switch in my head to receive the Light.

Strange that it should be the
north
rose window, the one that never saw the sun. And how strange that the red glass should be so opaque, reminding me not of roses but of clotted blood. In fact I could see now it was a very dark window, heavy and threatening, and there was no light there, none, only a great blackness surging through the glass and streaming down on me in a huge, silent tide I switched off, sweating. One of the canons was preaching in the pulpit but I couldn’t hear him, couldn’t register what he said. I managed to recite the mantra soundlessly: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner; Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner; Lord Jesus Christ ... I began to relax but almost at once realised that this had nothing to do with the mantra. I was relaxing because another force was now invading my psyche, a benign force this time but painful and anguished. It was the Light emanating from my father as he came psychically to my rescue and enfolded me in a love that was distorted by his anxiety. I wanted to push him away, I wanted to be independent, but I didn’t dare. I had to let my psyche interlock with his so that he could keep me safe. Twenty-five years old I was, and still I hadn’t worked out how I could survive the onslaughts of the Dark without my father constantly propping me up and protecting me. Pathetic. And terrifying. If he were to die .. .

The Dean of Westminster pronounced the blessing that concluded the service.

Staggering out into the diesel fumes of Parliament Square I leant against the railings by St Margaret’s church. Big Ben was chiming. After a while I realised I was by the tube station but I had no memory of getting there. Nearby was a shop defying the Sunday trading laws by selling tourist junk. Hardly knowing what I was doing I bought an ice-cream, but as soon as I sank my teeth into the flavourless white mess the chill jolted me back to normality. It was as if I had finally got the stopper back on a bottle of sewage after I had opened it in the belief that it contained perfume.

I finished the ice-cream as I stood on Westminster Bridge and stared downstream. Then I returned to the tube station, found a phone-box and called my friend Venetia.

XII

It was curious how I always thought of her as ‘my friend Venetia’ because the truth was we were mere acquaintances who occasionally bumped into each other, but as soon as we had been introduced in 1963 I had known she was to be special to me, just as I was to be special to her. This sense -of unusual relatedness had nothing whatsoever to do with sex. The fact is that we’re all interconnected with one another, but some people are more interconnected than others.

This vision of linked lives made me continually interested in her. When I suffered the annihilating shaft of foreknowledge in which I experienced the Coterie’s ruin, I knew Venetia stood in great danger but I had no idea what that danger was or how I could save her from it. Could any would-be knight-errant have been more useless? I thought not, but later realised that God had no wish for me to play the knight-errant with Venetia; that glamorous role would only have gratified my ego. My role was to be powerless, but in my powerlessness I would eventually prove stronger than any knight-errant on a white horse.

It was with shock that I recognised this situation, but perhaps it’s always a shock when a religious principle, accepted in faith, becomes a concrete, experienced reality. I had apparently been chosen to act out the great Christian paradox of strength achieved through weakness, the weakness which ultimately out- strips and triumphs over all the forces of evil. I had never pretended to understand how this mystery worked. All I knew was that in the end it would be proved true.

Over the years I regularly remembered her in my prayers, and often, not understanding the mystery, I wondered why I bothered, particularly when her life went from bad to worse. But I did bother. I went on praying and after a while it dawned on me that she hadn’t overdosed on heroin, she hadn’t died of cirrhosis, she hadn’t slashed her wrists. The ranks of her friends had been decimated, but she was still alive. I read somewhere recently that the love of God is like a reservoir and when you pray you turn on the tap which releases the water. I turned on the tap for Venetia, and perhaps it was this small but constant flow of water which prevented her from dying of dehydration as she drifted farther and farther into her private desert.

She was now thirty-one, the same age as Christian’s sister Primrose who had once been her closest friend; Venetia’s father, Lord Flaxton, was a landowner in the Starbridge diocese and an old crony of Dean Aysgarth’s. However the friendship with Primrose had withered, Primrose taking up the Church and Venetia taking up anything in trousers or a bottle. It was well-known in the Coterie that her marriage was a disaster. I had heard of spaced-out happenings at her country house in Norfolk. Her husband seldom went there.

Something had gone very wrong with Venetia’s life even before she married, but I didn’t know what it was. I could only be there periodically in her darkness and offer her a profound but unspoken sympathy. She liked me but found me juvenile. However she took my psychic powers seriously enough; she had believed me at our first meeting when I had told her I would recur in her life, and she used to say that after any encounter with me something extraordinary happened, not necessarily pleasant. Sometimes she called me her Halley’s Comet, that recurring phenomenon blamed for unwelcome events, but usually she referred to me more flatteringly as her Talisman, a mysterious object which produced unusual effects. ‘And how’s my Talisman?’ she enquired, opening the frontdoor of her large cream-coloured house off Queensgate. ‘Still treading your mystical paths?’

Venetia was tall, about five foot seven even when she was wearing low-heeled shoes, and at first glance she appeared unattractive, having broad shoulders, a flat chest and no hips. This shortage of curves gave her an androgynous look, and her face, with its heavy dark eyebrows and prominent jawline, conveyed an air of sullen aggression in repose. So much for the casual observer’s first glance. A second glance saw someone much more intriguing, a woman who had extraordinary hair – long, thick, dark, wavy and usually all over everywhere – and magnificent eyes, jungle-green and fringed with long black eyelashes which spectacularly enhanced her eccentric glamour. An exotic taste in clothes completed this impression of a five-star Hollywood vamp who rose from her couch only to kick convention in the teeth. On that morning she was wearing a scarlet robe which was neither a dressing-gown nor a kimono nor an evening dress; it had a zip up the front, suggesting it was designed for casual occasions, but the low neckline and trailing sleeves suggested formality. The scarlet silk was lavishly embroidered with green dragons. She also wore high-heeled black slippers, open at the ends, and carried a very long cigarette-holder. Her toe-nails were painted to match the dragons.

‘Have a drink,’ she said, leading the way into the drawing-room and waving the inevitable bottle of Veuve Clicquot in my direction. She spoke in a husky contralto, very sexy.

‘A bit early for me, thanks.’

‘Oh, don’t be so square!’ She poured me a glass of champagne and set the bottle down on the coffee-table amidst the
Observer
and the
Sunday Times.
‘We’ll drink a toast to your engagement,’ she said agreeably, ‘although I must say I was surprised when Marina told me the news. I wouldn’t have thought Rosalind Maitland was quite your style.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought your husband was quite yours.’ That pulled her up short. Raising an eyebrow she gave me her best debonair smile, the one which was supposed to signal how worldly she was and how amusing she found life, but her pain lacerated my psyche so strongly that I flinched.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Oh Venetia, I’m sorry, sorry, sorry –’

‘I can’t imagine why! I was being catty about your fiancée and you quite rightly gave me a verbal biff on the nose. But darling, don’t let’s be
sombre,
it’s so boring – electrify me by spilling the beans about your new mystical path! According to Marina, you’re padding along with your crucifix in one hand and your crystal ball in the other while you pursue THE TRUTH about Christian’s death so that you can help Katie, but frankly, my dear, I don’t think anything can help Katie at this stage except either a religious conversion or a roaring love affair, preferably with another woman. (No man, of course, could ever measure up to Christian.) How far have you got with your investigation?’

‘I’m beginning to feel I’m lost in a maze.’

‘Can I take you by the hand and lead you down the path to the centre?’

‘I wish you would. Venetia, what on earth was going on during the last few months of Christian’s life? Was he about to leave Katie? Had he finally fallen uncontrollably in love with Marina? What really went on with Perry Palmer? And regardless of whatever was going on with Perry, was Christian having a homosexual affair with someone else? Was he always bisexual? Or did he –’

‘STOP!’ thundered Venetia, holding up her hand, and as I obediently fell silent she exclaimed laughing: ‘My dear, what a pornographic farrago! Are we talking about Christian Aysgarth? Or are we talking about some demonic anti-hero conjured up by your baroque Anglo-Catholic imagination?’

I took a deep breath. ‘Okay, let’s start from square one: how did you yourself see Christian?’

‘He was my friend,’ said Venetia.EIGHT

‘Today there is in our society ... a dwelling upon sex: the sex problem, the adjustments of sex, instruction for sex, adventures of sex, stories of sex, what to do with sex, brighter and better sex .. . But just as the uprush of sexuality in the decaying Graeco-Roman world was not due to sex impulses in themselves but to frustrations which caused men and women to turn to sex as an escape, so does it ‘seem to be today.’

MICHAEL RAMSEY Archbishop of Canterbury 1961-1974
Canterbury Essays and Addresses
I I suddenly realised that her eyes were shining with tears. But the next moment she had blinked them back, reached for her glass and taken another dose of champagne.

My voice said: ‘You loved him.’

‘No. I loved someone else. But Christian ... oh, I can’t explain, but he reminded me of this other man ... Never mind, it doesn’t matter.’ She reached for the bottle to top up her glass. ‘Nothing matters any more.’

‘
You
matter, Venetia.’

‘Oh, I matter least of all – I’m just another decadent fool wasting all my opportunities, but don’t let’s talk about me; let me tell you about Christian. He was a good person, and when I say that, I don’t mean he was churchy or priggish. He was kind, sensitive and ... decent. Does "decent" have any real meaning in 1968, or is it merely a pejorative adjective to be applied with a sneer? He loved Katie. He used to say that when he married he was happy for the first time since his mother died. He loved his children too, but he wasn’t demonstrative about it – Christian wasn’t demonstrative at all, but he did care for people and I believe that deep down he was very emotional, very idealistic. The glamorous manner was just part of a "persona", a mask, which he used to keep people at a distance. He didn’t like people coming too close. He was afraid of emotional involvement. He said that after his mother died he never wanted to be so close to anyone again because he could never run the risk of a second bereavement on that scale. That’s why it took him so long to marry Katie. He’d known her for years but he had to dredge up all his courage to take the risk.

‘I think he did love Marina, but not in a way which endangered his marriage. If Katie had objected he’d have given Marina up, but Katie realised it was all quite safe. Poor, hurt, muddled little Marina! She was such a "little girl lost" behind
her
glamorous façade, and she wouldn’t be planning to marry Michael now if Christian hadn’t been so kind and decent, proving to her beyond dispute that not all men are bastards.

‘Marina suited him too, of course, because she didn’t threaten him by trying to come too close. It was the same with Perry. I think he loved Perry and I’m sure Perry loved him, but if Perry had ever tried to take the friendship too far Christian would have ended it instantly. The only reason he let Perry get so close was because he trusted him never to overstep the mark. I’ll be quite frank and say I have no idea what goes on in Perry’s life. All I know is what didn’t go on between him and Christian.

Now, if all this absence of consummated love seems odd to you it’s because you’re looking at it with a mind rooted in 1968. The Victorians would have thought the friendships normal, even commonplace, particularly the one between the two men. Strange how each generation is so utterly brainwashed by the times in which it lives ... but Christian’s psychology ensured that he behaved like someone from another age.

‘By this time you’ll have grasped the nature of the relationship I had with Christian after I joined Marina’s Coterie back in 1963. Once I’d summed up the situation I was careful to offer him merely a warm, asexual friendship – and he took it, with gratitude. He got so tired of women slobbering all over him. In fact when they did overstep the mark he could be brutal in pushing them back – which meant he acted out of character, because brutality wasn’t part of his real nature at all. Looking back I can see he must have been even more damaged than I realised by that bereavement in his teens. In many ways he made a good recovery, but there were some scars which never completely healed and in the end ... in the end they broke open and began to suppurate.’

Venetia paused. I was sitting motionless opposite her, my full glass of champagne clasped tightly in both hands as I leant forward with my elbows on my knees. At last I said: ‘What happened?’ And she answered without hesitation: ‘The Great Pollutant came. I call it the Great Pollutant because ... well, we don’t talk of the Devil, do we, not nowadays, people just laugh.’

‘The word’s a symbol that’s lost its power,’ I said, ‘but the force the symbol represents is still going strong.’

‘Stronger than ever. It slammed into the whole Coterie in · the end. I suppose it’s a timeless phenomenon, isn’t it? One moment the world’s bright and clean and shining, and life’s gay and carefree; then suddenly a crack opens up, and through that crack ... In the end everything’s dark and soiled and sordid and Death keeps turning up to leave his card. What happened to Christian, I’m convinced, is that a crack opened up in his life and the Great Pollutant began to spew its filth all over him.’

She finished her champagne and stubbed out her cigarette. ‘It started about six months before he died,’ she said. ‘For some time I was dimly aware of it happening but I chose not to notice because it was so sinister. Then finally he did something so vile that I couldn’t turn a blind eye any longer.’

Again I said: ‘What happened?’

‘He had the most brutal row with Katie, told her she was a boring old cow and went off with Perry for a continental holiday. Katie was eight months pregnant and God only knows how she managed to avoid going straight into labour. I heard all this from Marina, of course, who was shocked to the core and needed to consult someone in confidence.’

‘What happened when he came back?’

‘Then Katie did go into labour and the longed-for boy arrived. Happy ending, I thought, Christian will be thrilled. But within days he was having a blazing row with Marina. She made the mistake of telling him exactly what she thought of his jaunt to the Continent, and he told her she was becoming as big a bitch as Dido — which was the nastiest thing he could have said because no one hated Dido more than Christian did. Anyway, at that point I realised I couldn’t stand on the sidelines any longer. I had to get involved.’

‘Did he wind up quarrelling with you too?’

‘No, because I was very careful not to criticise him; by that time I felt the most important thing was to discover
why
he was behaving so grossly out of character. I invited him here for some lethal champagne cocktails — guaranteed to destroy any emotional reserve on contact — and after he’d tossed off two of them he confessed he was worried about his work. After he’d tossed off a third he admitted he wanted to change his life radically. "If I had the freedom to choose," he said, "I’d like to get right away from all women and sever myself from everyone I know." And when I said: "Thanks a lot!" he answered with a laugh: "I’ll make an exception where you’re concerned — you can visit me once a year with a flask of champagne cocktails!" At that point I took my courage in both hands and said: "What’s gone wrong?" but he only said: "Nothing that champagne cocktails can’t cure." It was not until I was standing up to produce a fourth round that he dropped the bombshell: he asked if I knew where to get heroin.