The Wonder Worker (43 page)

I

The flat
was so cold, so drab and so uninviting in that grey winter light that as soon as I entered the hall I suffered an overwhelming desire to escape. Grabbing my coat I slipped on some comfortable shoes and set off for the Barbican, that twelve-gated city-within-a-city, with its skyscrapers and mews houses, its duplexes and triplexes, its penthouses and studios, its cinema, theatres, restaurants, library, schools, offices, shops, gardens, fake-lakes and fake-waterfall. I enjoyed the Barbican. There was something sexy about all that crude concrete brutalism and that rampant, no-holds-barred architectural adventurousness which had marked—and marred—the twentieth century. I found the peculiar landscape stimulating, rather as an astronaut would be stimulated by seeing something so far beyond his earthly experience as the far side of the moon.

At Gate Six I climbed the stairs to the podium, crossed Gilbert Bridge and entered the centrally heated comfort of the Arts Centre. In the cafe I toyed with a Danish pastry and gazed out across the fake-lake to the dome of St. Paul’s while I waited for my brain to thaw.

The more it thawed the more clearly I realised that I’d been swindled. It was as if Nicky had put my brain on ice in Devon but Lewis’s straight talking had initiated a melting process, and I was only
halfway through my Danish pastry when I said to myself: wait a minute. Just how the hell have you wound up losing your beautiful home and languishing in that horrible house which you’d be more than happy never to see again?

I tried to argue that I hadn’t lost my beautiful home, since Nicky had agreed to retain it, but I knew the farmhouse wasn’t suited to the part-time occupancy he had in mind. It was too big. It required too much daily attention. There needed to be someone in full-time residence—me—who could supervise the cleaner and the gardener, and besides, if a house is only sporadically occupied, it soon falls prey to vandals or burglars. I shuddered as I thought of the possible ravages. Another hazard was the central heating. Supposing it broke down in winter with the result that the pipes froze?

The truth was that unless one was rich enough to afford live-in staff, second homes needed to be small, filled with cheap furniture and designed to require the minimum of upkeep. Anyway the two-home syndrome was hell for women. It was all very well for Nicky to live in two homes—he merely had to drive down to Surrey and everything was waiting for him: food, wife, clean sheets, the lot. But if
I
had to manage two homes I’d soon be bogged down in cooking, shopping and cleaning, and in no time at all I’d be transformed into a household drudge.

The emotional cost of having two homes would also be unbearable. How would I be able to endure leaving Butterfold at the end of each brief visit and returning to exile at the Rectory? No, the scheme would never work. What was more, I was sure that Nicky had known it would never work but he had been clever enough not to suggest selling the farmhouse immediately. He had been gambling that by the time I discovered the Butterfold-as-second-home scheme was unworkable I’d be so thoroughly committed to the Rectory that I’d be willing to pull up my Surrey roots.

Nicky wouldn’t miss Surrey. He had no root there to pull up, but my whole life was there, my circle of friends, my garden—everything. I loved Butterfold, and
so did the boys.
What were they really going to think of life at the Rectory? How were they going to get on with Nicky, and how was Nicky going to cope with having his family bobbing around him all the time during the school holidays? None of the old problems, the problems which had driven me to suggest a split-level marriage seven years ago, had actually been solved and none of my unhappiness had been alleviated either. In fact it had been exac
erbated because I knew that this new togetherness in a place I hated would only serve to underline the fact that the marriage had broken down. I still wanted out of the marriage, I could see that now, just as I could see I had been mad to wind up playing the docile wife at the Rectory.

The full dimensions of my unhappiness finally resurfaced. The fact was that I was so lonely and so miserable with my part-time, uncomprehending husband who dropped in at weekends for sex that for some time I had been showing clear signs of coming apart at the seams. I winced as I remembered my erratic behaviour in recent months. I didn’t approve of adultery. It offended my sense of fair play. It was all very well to feel smug about my dexterity in bedding beautiful young men, but the rock-bottom truth was that this kind of frolicking was very trashy and vulgar, quite unsuitable for a woman of forty-five who wanted to retain her dignity and self-respect. What was I trying to prove and to whom? Nicky the clergyman would have judged me off-centre, floundering around in a spiritual vacuum as I struggled to blot out my unhappiness, and Nicky the clergyman would have been right. The marriage was driving me not just to act out of character but to slide into lunacy, I could see that now, and unless I took action very soon there would inevitably be further shoddy, freaky behaviour culminating, no doubt, in a fullscale nervous breakdown.

I shuddered again and bought a second cup of coffee.

I then began to do what I had planned to do in Devon: to work out a better future for myself. I would stay at the farmhouse. The boys would remain there too during the school holidays, although Nicky would have visiting rights. I would finish my year’s sabbatical, ride out the backchat of the village gossips, who would naturally be delighted by the spectacle of a clerical marriage on the rocks, and afterwards, strengthened by the support of my many loyal friends, I would embark on a new career. I thought I could take a diploma—or why not a degree?—in horticulture so that I had a qualification which would set me apart from the amateurs. I could study at Kew or Wisley—perhaps even qualify as a landscape architect eventually—and then … YES! I could start a business designing gardens. That would allow me to satisfy my business talents
and
engage my creative instincts, such as they were, on a deeper level. Flowers had served me well but now I wanted something more—a wider canvas, a bigger vision, a better challenge—AN EMPIRE! Yes, that was it. I wanted to build an empire over and over again. Each garden would be an em
pire. I’d be a horticultural Mrs. Thatcher, a neo-imperialist Britannia togged out in green Wellies and a Barbour jacket!

I reined myself in, smiling at this droll fantasy but recognising with excitement the alluring reality which underpinned it. I had no doubt whatsoever that such a new career would make me happy, and once I was happy I knew I’d be stable and well behaved again. There would be no more pathetic batting around with young men. I’d find someone of my own age—–well, perhaps five to ten years younger, that would be quite acceptable—more or less—and it would be someone who shared my interests, some elegant widower from the National Trust perhaps, who loved beautiful houses and beautiful gardens and who believed in the great tradition of English Country Life and who voted for Mrs. Thatcher, scintillating Mrs. Thatcher, who proclaimed that every English family should have its own home—and that was such a wonderful goal, wasn’t it, because deep down
every
normal person wanted their own home—and their own garden—and I was no exception to this very human desire.

I wasn’t peculiar like Nicky. I was a normal English person in 1988, just one of the countless millions who had voted for Mrs. Thatcher because she alone understood what all we normal English people wanted: homes and gardens, law and order, pleasure and leisure, health and wealth—with a full orchestra playing “Land of Hope and Glory” in the background and a forest of Union Jacks stretching as far as the eye could see.

Well, was it such a crime to be normal?

No. But Nicky had behaved as if it were a crime for me to vote Conservative, just as he was now behaving as if it were a crime for me to want to lead the life that was right for me. Down in Devon he had obviously decided that I was no better than a loony criminal who needed to be radically rehabilitated, so he had brainwashed me by playing the wonder worker. The honest Christian clergyman had disappeared and I had been manipulated, browbeaten and catastrophically outmanoeuvred by this charismatic horror who had mixed power-plays with sex to such devastating effect that I had wound up conceding
everything
while he had wound up conceding
nothing.
As a Christian healer he should have tried to set aside his own wants while he explored as sympathetically as possible the reasons why I was so unhappy, yet instead he had decided, without once pausing to consult me, that my entire life-style should be destroyed. All that talk of “restructuring” our marriage! The restructuring was to be undertaken
solely by me as I was compelled to slot into his London life! I was supposed to live in a horrible house with a horrible garden while he simply carried on regardless and made no changes to his own life-style whatsoever. Of course he’d still have no time for me during the week, but with luck he might come to life as usual at weekends. Big deal! In other words we’d be exactly as we were before—marriage on weekends—but I would have lost my home, my garden and my entire cherished way of life.

I saw then that Lewis, cunning old villain, had probably deduced all this from the start but had realised it would be easier to wake me from my browbeaten, brain-dead state than to tackle Nicky with the truth when Nicky himself was too shell-shocked to think clearly. Lewis would have grasped that to talk positively and encouragingly about converting the Rectory into a family home was the best way to make me realise not only how much I hated the idea but how far Nicky had lost touch with reality. The truth was Nicky hadn’t even begun to face up to this crisis. He had merely made the snap decision that if he could keep me at the Rectory like some sort of mindless lucky mascot, we would live happily ever after. What an absurdly childish dream! But he showed no sign of abandoning it. How could I get him to wake up, grow up and relinquish me? Queasily I remembered the little boy who had declared to his class at kindergarten: “This is my bear and no one plays with my bear but me.”

He still had that bear. It was wrapped in tissue paper and kept in his old school tuck-box in the farmhouse attic. Before we were married he had said he was keeping the bear for our future children, but when the boys came it had never been exhumed.

I thought: I’m not going to be shut up in a box like that bear. And amending little Nicky’s declaration to the kindergarten class I added to myself: this is my life and no one controls my life but me.

I set aside my coffee-cup. No more procrastination. Procrastination was for wimps. Leaving the cafe I marched back over Gilbert Bridge and headed south out of the Barbican to St. Benet’s.

II

On returning
to the Rectory, however, I found I had no choice but to procrastinate as Nicky was out, slaving away as usual at the task of being wonderful to everyone in sight. In the flat I turned
on the drawing-room’s gas fire and crouched in front of it for five minutes to combat my incipient hypothermia. After that I realised I was yearning for a dose of sympathetic female companionship so I phoned the Healing Centre and asked for Francie. I was very put out to be told she was still off sick. Grabbing my Filofax I tracked down her home number and started to dial.

“Francie, it’s Rosalind,” I said after she had uttered a dreary “hullo” into the receiver. “I hear you haven’t been befriending lately—what’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing serious! At least … well, actually that’s a complete lie, I’m so depressed that I feel it could be terminal, but never mind, it’s not important. How’s Devon?”

“I’m not in Devon, I’m at the Rectory. I’ve been depressed too, but it’s bloody well not going to be terminal! Let’s meet. Lunch at Fortnum’s?”

“God, I don’t think I could make it as far as Piccadilly.”

“Oh, don’t be so feeble, Francie! Why the hell are you so depressed?”

“Perhaps it’s the menopause.”

“Oh, fuck the menopause! You’re not secretly pining for Harry, are you?”

“No, I want to murder him.”

“Super—I want to murder Nicky. Maybe we should do a swap, like those two men in
Strangers on a Train
, and kill each other’s husbands so that we can each stage a cast-iron alibi for the appropriate murder.”

“But good heavens, why on earth do you want to murder Nicky?”

“Because he’s being totally impossible and I’m fed up to the back teeth,” I said recklessly. “For God’s sake let’s meet before I start invading the Healing Centre and giving primal screams!”

“Well, maybe I could make it to Piccadilly after all,” said Francie, reviving at a brisk pace. There’s nothing like the prospect of a riveting gossip for dispelling the blues. “But I can’t make it today. Harrods rang up this morning and said they were going to deliver Harry’s new desk at one-thirty.”

“Okay, let’s make it tomorrow. Twelve-thirty upstairs at Fortnum’s, and if you OD on tranx before we can let our hair down I’ll never forgive you,” I said, looking up Fortnum’s number in my Filofax even before I had replaced the receiver.

Having reserved the table I realised I was feeling better. Thank
God for devoted and loyal girlfriends! To boost my morale still further I called Susie in Tetbury and Tiggy in Winchester. I was meticulous in keeping up a front for my more recent girlfriends in Surrey, but Susie and Tiggy, orbiting in different areas of the Conservative heartlands, could remember me in a gym-slip so I felt I could indulge in a modified whinge without letting the side down. (“Nicky wants to revamp our marriage—my dear, the
challenge!
I’m so stimulated that I feel ripe for a strait-jacket …”) This veiled breast-beating let off some steam, but I was aware as I spoke that I could only be utterly frank to Francie. She was the only one of my friends who had firsthand experience of the ministry of healing; she was the only one who would understand how thin the line could sometimes be between the honest Christian healer, committed to serving God, and the shady, manipulative wonder worker, committed to serving his own interests.