Mystical Paths (37 page)

VI

As the silence lengthened I stared down at the coarse-grained wood of the table in front of me. The kitchen, brightly-lit, seemed to be without shadows. I felt like a fugitive with no place to hide.

At last I said, ‘I can’t be me, can’t separate myself from my father, it’s too late.’

‘Your first task,’ said Lewis, ‘is to separate yourself from Christian, not just because you’ve been using him to avoid facing up to your central problem, but because his message for you is demonic. If he’s alive, he did a terrible thing by abandoning his family and disappearing into the blue. That’s not self-realisation, the subjugation of the ego and the emergence of the true self in a fully integrated personality; that’s selfishness in its most lethal form, the ego running rampant and trampling underfoot God’s design for the true self. You can’t build an integrated life on the sufferings of others; your new house will rest only on the shifting sands of guilt. And if Christian’s dead, all one can say is that he died while pursuing a self-destructive course which indicates a mind falling apart under pressure. Whichever way you look at his life, Nicholas, there’s no message for you there. You can only say to yourself: Christian lost and went under, but I’m going to win and survive.’

‘But I can’t survive once I’m separated from my father! I’m just a shadow of him and once he dies the Dark will blot me out!’

‘Of course no shadow can exist without the presence of light. That’s why you have to give birth to your true self, the self that won’t be a shadow, the self substantial enough to exist whether your father’s present or not. Don’t you see, Nicholas? It’s the replica, not your true self, that can’t withstand the Dark! It’s impossible to create a living truth out of a lie.’

‘But if I ditch the replica my father will get so upset that he’ll die and then I’ll be crucified by guilt and then the Devil will take me over and then –’

‘Never mind the Devil for the moment. Let’s give him a well-earned rest. And never mind your father for the moment either. We’ll deal with him later. Let’s take this situation one step at a time – and the first step, as I see it, is to detach you from Christian by solving the mystery surrounding his death.

.Then you’ll be free to set him aside and confront your real problem.’

I found these rational statements calming. Making a big effort I tried to analyse the current state of my attachment to Christian. ‘Could one say,’ I began tentatively, ‘that Christian has to be exorcised from my psyche? Could one say that the shadow side of him has been converted into an evil force which by infesting me has almost driven me mad?’

‘Well, if you really want to sound like an actor in a Victorian melodrama, I’m not going to stop you,’ said Lewis, ‘but since we’re trying to give the old-fashioned language a rest, why don’t we just say you’ve been experiencing an obsession which we now have to terminate by uncovering the truth and allowing you to make a satisfactory adjustment to reality at last?’

‘But if you, an exorcist, had to describe what was going on in religious language -’

‘Let me hold my fire until after the reconstruction. There are certainly demonic elements in this case, but so far I’m not convinced that the Devil’s directly involved ... One of the dangers of being an exorcist,’ remarked Lewis, moving to the sink to rinse out the teapot, ‘is that one tends to see the Devil everywhere – just as Senator McCarthy and his anti-communist fanatics saw reds under every bed.’

I dried our cups and saucers as he washed up. Eventually I managed to say in a nonchalant voice: ‘I’m a little worried about attempting to sleep again. It bothers me that I untied the string when I was unconscious.’

‘It would bother me too, but I’ve got a hunch tonight’s episode represents the end of your current bout of somnambulism. Now that your conscious mind has acknowledged the shadow side of Christian, there’s no longer any need for your unconscious mind to put you through such unpleasant hoops.’ ‘Even so –’

‘Even so, I’ll keep my door open and if necessary I’ll play the Duke of Edinburgh again to make sure you come to no harm.’ As we went upstairs I suddenly realised I was exhausted, and in my room I paused only to give him back his crucifix and slip his cross around my neck. Then once I was alone I tethered my ankle once more, fell into bed and sank instantly into unconsciousness.

VII

When he woke me at six-thirty I was so deeply asleep that he had to wake me again five minutes later. I dragged myself out of bed. Shaving was obviously a task to be postponed. Standing by the basin I stared blearily at the taps and remembered the horrors of the night.

‘Time for the confessional,’ said Lewis, appearing for the third time. ‘Are you ready?’

I wasn’t. He had to wait while I finished buttoning my shirt. Meanwhile I was reflecting that the very last thing I felt like doing was confessing – or rather, not confessing. Staggering after him downstairs I tried to summon my wits and think intelligently.

He himself seemed unaffected by the broken night. He was wearing his green sports-shirt again with his black suit, but despite the absence of a cassock he contrived to exude an aura appropriate for a priest. He was shaved, washed, brushed and neat. In contrast I felt less like an ordinand than like a hung-over hippie.

Entering the confessional where we had talked before, we sat down again at the table for the informal discussion which would precede the formal confession at the prie-dieu.

‘Okay, how’s the batting going under stress?’ said Lewis, selecting a casual opener to put me at ease. ‘Any particular fallen wicket you’d like to examine?’

‘Anger,’ I said promptly. ‘I’ve got to be more tolerant of the Community – I was very struck when you mentioned yesterday how hostile my attitude towards them was. And I’ve got to stop being angry with Martin too – I quite see I must work at improving that relationship.’

‘Any idea why you should feel so angry with these people?’

‘It’s all bound up with pride. I feel superior to Martin because he’s queer and superior to the Community because they’re cranks. But could I be subconsciously compensating myself for a poor self-image? It’s just possible that I’m looking down on these people because I have a psychological compulsion to boost my ego.’

‘What an intriguing theory! But how does it link up with your anger?’

Well, my pride means I classify these people as fools, and I don’t suffer fools gladly – or in other words, I get angry when I think people are stupid. What I have to do in future is fight this pride by reminding myself that I can often be stupid too. The way to be less angry,’ I said, very meek, very earnest, ‘is to adopt an attitude of greater humility.’

‘I see. Go on.’

Well, that’s my main fallen wicket and I do realise it’s a very unattractive one. Now let me see. Gluttony: no. Avarice: no — except that I rather coveted your VW! I like that groovy flower on the door.’

‘My daughter’s handiwork. Tell me, how far do you blame your current stressful situation for this anger of yours?’

‘Oh, the stress only aggravates a situation which already exists. I don’t want to make excuses for myself,’ I said, pitching the remorse just right and hitting the humility spot-on. ‘I just want to lay the sin before God and pray for the grace to do better in future.’

‘Uh-huh. Anything else that’s particularly bothering you?’ ‘No, only sex – I suppose I ought to give that a mention, but there’s nothing special going on there, just the usual impure thoughts – oh, and masturbation, but of course that’ll all sort itself out when I’m married. Meanwhile I’m very sorry about the lapses and I’ll try hard to keep myself on the rails while I’m waiting for the wedding.’

‘Splendid,’ said Lewis.

Well,’ I said, ‘that’s about it, I suppose. Anger, pride, a little dash of lust – and a few very minor incidents which I can list at the prie-dieu –’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ said Lewis, shedding his casual manner so suddenly that I jumped. ‘If you think I’m going to let you offer such a load of rubbish to God, you’ve made a verybig mistake. Why don’t you leave the room, come back and begin all over again?’

I stared at him. I did open my mouth to reply but found I could only slide my tongue around my lips in the classic manifestation of guilt. When I finally managed to speak I could only utter the feeble lie: ‘But I’ve told you everything!’

‘No,’ said Lewis, grinding the lie into dust. ‘You said the words you wanted me to hear, but I heard the words you couldn’t bring yourself to say.’

I freaked out.

VIII

‘
Who
are
you?’ I whispered. ‘What
is
this? What the hell’s going on?’

‘My dear Nicholas!’ exclaimed Lewis with pardonable astonishment. What on earth are you talking about?’

I floundered in the search for words but eventually managed to say: ‘This is the past being replayed. You’re Father Darcy and I’m my father.’

Lewis stared at me. Then he ran his fingers through his hair and said in his firmest, kindest voice: ‘No, I’m Lewis Hall, you’re Nicholas Darrow and reincarnation is quite definitely not on the psychic menu today.’

‘But you used Father Darcy’s exact words — the words he used to unsatisfactory penitents!’

‘So what? He never took out a patent on them!’

‘But if you were never a monk, how could you have known one of his favourite phrases?’

‘Good heavens, you don’t imagine he confined his
mots justes
to the monks, do you? Remember, I was educated at Starwater Abbey in the 1930s when Darcy was in his third decade as Abbot-General, and that particular saying of his was notorious. We all knew about it.’

I took off my glasses and rubbed my eyes as if I were erasing a hallucinatory view. Then I said: ‘Sorry. You must be thinking I’m ripe for a strait-jacket after all.’ And replacing my glasses I added as crisply as possible: Where were we?’

‘You’d just realised you had to revise your neat little shopping-list of sins.’

‘Ah yes.’ I tried to concentrate on forming a new list but found my curiosity was overpowering me. ‘How did you know the list was no good?’ I demanded. ‘Was it sheer psychic "gnosis"?’

‘Nicholas, I’m a Christian priest. I leave "gnosis" to the Gnostics.’

‘Then how did you know I was holding out on you? I was so convincing!’

‘
Convincing?
But it was quite obvious you were lying to the back teeth! For instance, although I found it easy to believe that you weren’t sleeping with that "nice girl", your fiancée, there were a number of reasons why I thought you might be having trouble with sex. One: it’s 1968 and unfortunately some of today’s ordinands, particularly cool, hip young ordinands in jeans, delude themselves into thinking that a little discreet sex is acceptable behaviour. Two: your unflinching exposition of the theory that you could be a repressed homosexual suggested to me that you were in fact secure in your heterosexuality and that your security almost certainly arose from regular experience. Three: your roll-call of glamorous ladyfriends implied that women find you attractive and that the opportunities for you to misbehave, particularly recently, would have been considerable. And four: despite your sinister boast that you can hypnotise women instantly — a skill which must have enhanced your confidence with them — you seem strikingly reticent about the opposite sex. I don’t think for one moment that you’ve formed the habit of seducing a different woman every week by abusing your hypnotic powers, but this modest silence on the subject of girls certainly contrasts with the need of so many young men to talk big to boost their self-esteem.’

‘Say no more,’ I said. ‘Obviously this is the most catastrophic confession I’ve ever —’

‘My suspicions increased,’ pursued Lewis, ‘when I remembered you were under stress yet obviously not interested in relieving the tension by an over-indulgence in food and drink. Moreover, when I raised the subject of sex last night you nearly fell over yourself trying to bolt from the room — and when you yourself raised the subject this morning, you behaved very shiftily indeed, wriggling in your chair and assuming a bashful air which was so patently false that I could only consider it a mercy you’ve never been tempted to follow your brother on to the stage. By this time it’s quite clear you’re not being honest about your sex-life, just as it’s equally clear to me that you’re not being honest about this anger that’s consuming you, but I think you may genuinely not understand yet why you’re so angry. What I’m sure you do understand is — but no, it’s not for me to say out loud what you’ve been doing. That’s your task, as I believe you’ll agree.’

I finally faced the fact that this was the one man I could never manipulate, and at last, knowing there was no alternative, I embarked on an honest confession.

IX

‘Every time it happened,’ I said after I had told him about the episodes with Katie, Marina and Venetia, ‘I said to myself: well, that’s it — I can’t possibly be a priest now, it’s clear I’m unsuited, the call’s false. And I felt relieved. Yet at the same time I felt horrified because I knew very well I did still want to be a priest. Ever since I first heard about Jesus the healer I knew not only that I wanted to be a priest but exactly what kind of a priest I wanted to be.’

‘I remember you saying you felt drawn to the ministry of healing.’

‘Then you’ll remember I also said my father was dead against it. He doesn’t want me to work on the fringes of orthodoxy.’

‘So long as the ministry’s conducted in the right manner by a priest with a genuine call, it ought to fall well within orthodox boundaries,’ said Lewis firmly, but added in a more neutral voice: ‘Maybe because your father failed in this particular ministry he now has a subconscious urge to run it down.’

I felt driven to say: To be fair to my father I think he honestly believes that it’s too dangerous for a psychic to work in an area where there’s such a risk of demonic infiltration.’

‘And I’m afraid that objection merely suggests to me that he’s fallen into the parental trap of being over-protective. There’s no reason why a psychic shouldn’t take on a high-risk ministry so long as he operates within a strong, traditional religious framework which will keep him in order.’

‘The framework of the Catholic tradition?’

‘I’m sure it could also be Protestant. But the Catholic tradition is the one that’s worked for me, and given your background it’s probably the one that’ll work for you.’

‘And within this framework you feel safe from demonic infiltration?’

‘As safe as I’m ever going to feel. It’s all a question of spiritual health; if you devote the necessary time and energy to a keep-fit programme which has been tried and tested for many hundreds of years, you’re less likely to fall sick when you move into areas’ of infection.’

I was unable to resist saying: What I can’t understand is why my father, who’s so very orthodox and Catholic, came to grief when he tried his ministry of healing. What do you suppose went wrong?’

Not knowing your father I can only speculate, but it’s possible he took up the ministry for the wrong reasons. Or maybe he took it up from the right reasons but found he was temperamentally unsuited to it. But no matter why he failed he’s wrong to think you’d be automatically doomed to fail too.’

‘He’ll never believe he’s wrong. He believes —’

‘He believes you should be one sort of priest but you believe you should be quite another — and what you were saying a moment ago, I think, was that your frustration is now so great that you’re tempted to chuck up your whole call; you were saying that the sex with these girls was part of a subconsciousattempt to convince yourself you had no option but to reject ordination.’

‘But at the same time I was also trying to play the healer with them, trying to convince myself I really was cut out to be the kind of priest I wanted to be —’

‘So in fact what you were doing was rejecting your father’s vision of your call while simultaneously affirming your own.’

‘But even that’s not a complete picture of what was going on,’ I said in despair, ‘because my pride was mixed up in the mess too — I wanted to appear strong and powerful because I knew I was really so weak, so utterly dependent on my father —’

‘A fact which you no doubt resented —’

‘— because it underlined to me that I couldn’t be free of him, couldn’t be my true self, and that made me feel very angry, but I can’t be angry with him, can’t be my true self, because if I am he’ll get upset — and once he gets upset he could die — and once he dies the Dark will wipe me out —’

‘Wait.’ Lewis paused in his task of playing midwife to the truth and sought to calm me down. When I was silent he said mildly: ‘That Gnostic shorthand of yours makes it sound as if you’re describing something uniquely sinister, but before you die of fright let me at least make some attempt to cut your nightmare down to size. Isn’t this situation really rather commonplace?’

‘
Commonplace!
’

‘
I believe the nightmare you’re describing is simply this: people who spend their lives trying to be something they’re not become very unhappy. When people are unhappy they try to blot out their unhappiness in various ways — taking to drink is the most obvious example, but of course there are others. This self-destructive behaviour saps the will to change and so leads into a downward spiral which results ultimately in despair, a spiritual death; this spiritual death, as we know from suicide figures and the prevalence of diseases such as cirrhosis, is all too often linked to physical death.’ He paused before concluding: Wouldn’t you say that was a fair longhand translation of your shorthand sentence: "The Dark will wipe me out"?

And wouldn’t you agree that far from being a unique nightmare it happens all the time everywhere?’

I knew the answer to both questions was ‘yes’, but all I managed to say was: ‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’ ‘No, it’s supposed to strip away the melodrama so that we can see exactly what’s going on; then we’ll be better equipped to deal with it. Now let’s take the translation a step further. You know that only your father’s sustaining love and prayers are preventing you from being drawn into that downward spiral; that’s why you’re so convinced you can’t do without him. A stranger might think that once your father’s dead you would at last have the freedom to be yourself, but you know this isn’t true; you know your father has such a hold over you that you’ll feel crucified by guilt if you try to be anything other than his replica – and we all know what happens to people crucified by guilt: it’s the main gateway into the downward spiral. In short, you’ve wound up in a very tight corner, and although you love your father you’re also very angry with him for leading you into it. Now take a look at Martin again. Can you finally begin to see why you’re angry with him too?’

My voice said: ‘I’m jealous. I’m jealous because he
has
realised his true self, he’s done it, he’s got a happy successful life independent of our father, and he’s not in this terrible mess I’m in. And neither’s Gerald – lucky little sod, I hate him too for leaving me all alone to carry this crushing burden, sometimes I hate everyone, I even hate the members of that pathetic Community because they’re the lucky ones, they’re living authentic lives, the lives they feel God’s calling them to lead, whereas I . I’m cut off from what I should be, I’m being twisted into the wrong shape, and although I have this longing to heal I can’t heal myself, I just keep getting sicker and sicker, I’m trapped in a blind alley with no way out, and all I can think is: the Dark will wipe me out. I’m going to die.’

I could say no more. I could only sit in my chair and stare at my clenched fists on the table in front of me.

There was a long silence.

Then Lewis’s hands covered my fists and Lewis’s psyche wrapped itself around mine in an infusion of hope and Lewis’s voice, very calm and matter-of-fact, said simply:

‘You’re going to live.’