My Name is Legion

by A. N. Wilson

  ‘Why don’t you take a grip on yourselves?’ That had been Lily’s question. She knew by the time she’d parted from Peg Montgomery that sometimes a grip was impossible to sustain.

  She knew, for instance, even as she was agreeing to it, that it was a mistake to allow a journalist to come with her when she went for an interview with the Bishop. Some things, obviously, were better kept private.

  ‘It’s kind of you,’ Lily said, ‘but for this – seeing the Bishop – I’d better be alone. It’s so – it’s so personal. It’s not just to do with Peter, it’s my whole family, it’s my faith itself …’

  She never, afterwards, attempted to justify herself. She despised self-justification. She did recognize, however, that her weakness and confusion sprang not simply from the fact that she was star-struck – Peg Montgomery in Lily’s own flat! – but because for weeks she had been in a state of miserable shock and grief. It was a form of bereavement. She had not felt so lonely or so tired since the news came of her mother’s death in Nassau in 1977.

  The thought that, for all those years, Father Vivyan had been nothing better than one of those child-molesting homosexuals you read about in the Legion made Lily uncontrollably angry. People spoke of suffering as a blow. They spoke of being knocked sideways by bad news. Well, she’d been hit, bruised by the shock. It disturbed her very depths, those deep places in her heart where she had never imagined that dark or doubt could come. If this could happen, then not merely the Church but God Himself was a sham.

  She thought of the periods, sometimes ten minutes, sometimes half an hour, when she had sat in silent prayer with Father Vivyan in his room. She thought of the hundreds of his masses she had attended. She had supposed him to be one of the saints, just as much of a true saint as Francis of Assisi or Vincent de Paul, whose statues stood on either side of the cast-iron grilles leading into Our Lady’s shrine. You could feel God in Father Vivyan’s presence. And if this man … with her boy, her grandson … Even while he was dressing the boy up in a cassock and cotta and telling him how to serve mass … how to hold the censer … All her idols crumbled. It was not just Father Vivyan who had fallen. God Himself was the last idol.

  None of this could be said to Peg Montgomery. She sensed that the famous journalist was not in tune with things of the spirit. On the other hand, it was impossible not to remember the woman’s triumphs. That crooked cop – fourteen years inside, after he’d been exposed taking bribes from drug traffickers, prostitutes, strip-joint proprietors. Or that surgeon: fifteen babies had died at his hospital in three years. Later, when the scales had fallen, Lily would see that Peg Montgomery had not contributed anything to the downfall of the crooked cop or the negligent surgeon. She had merely moved in on the stories and sensationalized them. The surgeon was unmasked because the parents of one of the dead babies complained to the local health authority; the rotten copper was unmasked by an internal investigation in the Met. But in each case it looked, from the way the Legion printed Peg’s ‘exclusives’, as if she had single-handedly uncovered abuse. Lily, when she had contacted Peg Montgomery for advice, had felt that this journalist alone could punish the Church with a sufficiently glaring spotlight.

  During that period of despair, Lily had written to the Bishop, to The Daily Legion, to her local MP. The Bishop had telephoned, himself, personally, and she was impressed by that. There were things she needed to talk about to him. After all, a bishop was first and foremost a priest. She could talk to him about her sense of spiritual desolation since all this began.

  ‘Perhaps another day …’ Lily was saying. ‘Perhaps if you came and talked to me … if I went to the Bishop …’

  ‘First things first, Lily.’ Peg switched on a gleaming smile. There were dolls who could be made to smile by pulling a string in the middle of the back. Peg’s on-off gleams of sympathy were similar. ‘You rang me – you rang The Daily Legion because you wanted your story told clearly, truthfully …’

  ‘I did … I know I did …’

  ‘And we both know that without the support of a big organization – like the Legion, frankly – the private individual hasn’t got an earthly. Not against the big guns. It’s like the Lotley story.’ Someone pulled the string again and the puppet grinned to the audience. That was the other odd thing about Peg. Though she was only speaking to Lily, she had the demeanour of someone making a speech to a theatre full of fans. Her cigarettey voice was posh, but not aristocratic like Father Vivyan’s: it was smart, Kensington posh. She had very bright lips and her face looked much older than it was (fifty?) because of the nicotine-induced wrinkles.

  ‘And money, frankly,’ Peg was saying. ‘Now all I want you to do is sign this and then I can have the pleasure …’

  It seemed to Lily quite incomprehensible, when she looked back in the weeks and months which followed. She must have signed some contract or agreement, selling exclusive rights in her story to the Legion. It was hard to imagine how she had done so; she had never before felt the allure of money. But when she saw the cheque – £10,000! – this produced, on top of all the other sensations of shock, its own extraordinary effect. She went to pieces, began to spend it, in her thoughts, dividing it between the three grandsons and Mercy. Ten thousand!

  ‘… no more, frankly, than you deserve …’ Peg was apparently saying. As soon as the contract was signed, folded, snapped into her handbag, Peg was on her feet, exploring the flat – into Lily’s room, Peter’s, with its posters, its tapes, the toilet.

  ‘Could I be awful … ciggie?’

  Strings pulled. Grin. Mascara fluttered. And when a few puffs had been inhaled – she puffed so desperately, Lily wondered if she’d ever breathe out – ‘The Legion will look after you. This is a Legion story now …’

  Instead of the expected bus ride to see the Bishop in his office, there was the car, with a driver.

  ‘Now, you aren’t to let yourself be brow-beaten,’ said Peg. ‘They’re very good, those Anglican oh-aren’t-we-so-liberal men, at being old-fashioned bullies? You know?’

  So, the words never quite came. In the car, they talked about Lily’s work as a nurse, about Mercy’s other two boys. (Afterwards, Lily swore to Mercy she hadn’t told Peg some of the stuff: said she must have got it all from somewhere else. She knew, though, that she had been indiscreet, ridiculously so, even feeling, for an hour or two after the cheque was safely in her handbag, that she owed it to Peg to spill a few beans.)

  When a young priest opened the door, Lily had truly intended, at once, to come clean, to say, ‘This is a journalist.’ She felt ashamed to do so – it was only a step away from admitting that she had just accepted £10,000 for her story. So she kept quiet, as the young priest, the chaplain evidently, showed them both into the Bishop’s study.

  And there he was, a half-balding bland figure with specs, pale grey suit, purple shirt and pectoral cross.

  The chaplain announced their names, simply their first names, Peg and Lily, as if they came as a pair. And while the Bishop sat them in chairs on either side of the fireplace, Peg was asking, ‘Is it the eighth deadly sin if I smoke?’

  The Bishop’s faint frown conveyed obvious distaste. On the other hand, this was a very delicate situation. He could hardly deny to visitors in obvious distress whatever relaxant they needed. For a second or two, his expression suggested that he might be brave enough to forbid smoking, but he soon relented into a forced smile.

  ‘Of course – we must find you an ashtray.’

  Then, the inevitable palaver ensued; the chaplain coming in with an ashtray, the requests, ‘Tea or coffee?’ At last the Bishop could say, ‘This is a very serious situation, and a very sad one. And, Lily,’ he put his fingers together and studied his blotter, ‘what I want to say first is – I have been praying for you, I’m here for you. I don’t want you to feel let down by the Church, Lily.’

  All Lily’s High Church prejudices had been prepared to keep herself at a distance from this Protestant in a suit; yet now she felt hersel
f heaving, sobbing – and out came all her disappointments with her tears.

  ‘He’s taken … he’s taken … my vision,’ she sobbed. ‘Such a vision of goodness I had in that man … and he was a good man … such a good man, I thought … and he knew Peter was so vulnerable …’

  ‘Peter … is your grandson, no?’

  ‘… and to fix on Peter … when he knew he was like he is … not quite … It’s so, so unfair. Mercy, my daughter, makes it worse, says Peter’s lying, and comes up with a story of Father Vivyan at a parish mission … making improper advances to her if you please, and as if that make a thing better … first de mother, den de son. I’m telling you, when we trusted him, we trusted …’

  Peg sat smoking, while all this was being half articulated.

  ‘It’s hard … very hard for you,’ said the Bishop.

  ‘You bein’ so kind, too.’ Tears splattered Lily’s lap as she spoke.

  Now the Bishop got up and sat on the arm of Lily’s chair, placed a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘We trusted … we arl trusted dat man …’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  He massaged her shoulder.

  Peg stubbed her Marlboro with the decisiveness of a good director watching a hard story of human sorrow turning into schmaltz. She did not quite shout ‘Cut!’ but she did interrupt, with her mascara fluttering as a call to order.

  ‘This is all very well’ – there were nerves in her voice, which the Bishop detected – ‘but saying sorry and let’s all hug one another’s not going to undo the fact that a criminal offence has been committed. This is a clear case of sexual abuse … abuse of trust – and I’m sorry, Bishop, but the buck stops here.’

  There was a silence before the Bishop spoke.

  ‘I’m sorry, but who are you?’

  ‘I’m Peg Montgomery.’

  She uttered the words calmly, with the certainty that they could not make more impression had she said, ‘I’m Field Marshal Montgomery of Alamein.’ The fact that the Bishop did not recognize the name made her visibly furious.

  ‘Are you some friend of Mrs d’Abo?’

  ‘Peg Montgomery. Daily Legion.’

  ‘A journalist.’

  The invisible hand and string yanked a smile for the gallery, and the mascara fluttered to the invisible audience. She shook out her blonde curls and reached again for a fag.

  Lily moaned, ‘I … I … I …’ but no words came forth. She might have been giving utterance not to the first person pronoun, but to the primeval shrieks of astonished grief – Aiai, aiai – spoken in Greek tragedies.

  The Bishop had stopped stroking Lily and had sat down again behind his desk. His fingers drummed his blotter.

  ‘Now, look here,’ he said. ‘I was under the impression that this was a pastoral visit, and that Mrs d’Abo wanted to speak to me in confidence. We didn’t want any of this to get out and become …’

  While he toyed between ‘tittle-tattle’ and ‘common gossip’ as suitably contemptuous terms, the smoke-breathing Peg went on the even-more offensive.

  ‘You bet you didn’t want it to get out! You think you can palm this woman off with a lot of flannel about Jesus loves you when we’re talking about a man who’s been abusing children for years – okay, so he doesn’t limit his attentions to the children if he can get his hands on the mothers. We’re talking about crimes – no, I’m sorry, Bishop – and we’re talking about a cover-up …’

  ‘Tea and bikkies!’ chirruped the chaplain, entering with a tray.

  ‘Graham,’ said the Bishop, ‘will you escort this person to the door, and will you also telephone for the police? We have an intruder, you see.’

  ‘That’s not a very good idea,’ said Peg. The smile now made no pretence at mirth; it was simply a signal of menace.

  Lily had managed to speak. She was saying, ‘I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.’

  ‘You’ve got questions to answer,’ said Peg, shaking a ballpoint pen at the prelate.

  ‘Not to you, I haven’t. To you I have nothing to say. No apologies. No explanations. Got that? Father Chell has been suspended from his parish. That is what the Church did – it shows how seriously we take Mrs d’Abo’s allegations. Lily, I repeat what I said to you – the Church is here for you, we are praying for you. But you’re not going to help your cause at all by bringing in The Daily Legion.’

  ‘You mean you’re going for a cover-up,’ insisted Peg.

  ‘I mean that the police have found no evidence against Father Chell, and if they don’t press charges then he can go back to his parish. Frankly, I’m inclined to think this has more to do with his witness against General Bindiga – in which I’m right behind him – than it has—’

  ‘Please, please …’ Lily was still crying. ‘We’ll go.’

  ‘I think you can see who your real friends are,’ said Peg; once more the histrionic effects of her words were slightly spoilt by the tremolo. ‘Not an all-male, all-white conspiracy of silence, but a paper that’s prepared to get to the truth …’

  ‘Will you please leave …’

  ‘… stick up for a boy who’s been abused …’

  ‘… Graham – please show this person—’

  ‘Go – go – go!’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The next morning, Mrs Thorn asked to speak to his lordship alone. Monty Longmore knew that there was something seriously amiss when he saw that she had not removed her brown overcoat. She did not belong to the hat generation, quite, and light raindrops had settled on her thick grey hair like dew on traveller’s joy in the hedgerow.

  ‘Is it still raining?’ Monty asked, inconsequentially.

  ‘Hardly so you’d notice,’ she said, in a hard, unforgiving tone. The weather was to be pushed well to the margins of conversation; probably excluded from the agenda altogether. On most mornings, Mrs Thorn and Lord Longmore could spend five or even ten minutes dwelling upon its changing faces, and wondering whether there had been a wetter year on record. (Not, according to the Radio Two man who jabbered non-stop to Mrs Thorn in the kitchen.)

  ‘Well, you’d better come into the office,’ said Monty, sensing an important occasion.

  The estate office was colder than the kitchen, much. It was a predominantly brown room. Large brown Victorian shelves, vaguely Gothicized, followed the high wall from frayed Turkey carpet to yellowing dado. The shelves contained files in boxes, ordered with some neatness. Dates of long-vanished twentieth-century years were written in faded fountain-pen ink on the spines of these records. There was an abundance of telephone directories. Above them, works of reference, such as a Burke’s Landed Families for 1926, several Whitaker’s Almanacs, Who’s Whos, Debrett. There were also books about pig breeding, and several bound volumes of a magazine for poultry breeders, their spines long ago faded. In a corner, lying against these shelves, were a number of air rifles in brown canvas cases. There were also croquet mallets. On an opposite wall were photographs, one of King George V in the uniform of C-in-C Armed Forces, one of Praze, who had been gamekeeper at Throxton in Monty’s and Vivyan’s boyhood, and one of their father in a tweed cap, taken at some agricultural show.

  A black and white photograph of Kitty in a cardboard mount leaned on the chimney piece beside a pipe-rack, and a picture of Vivyan surrounded by African children in the Louisetown township. The one of Kitty was taken when she was twelve. She was wearing a velvet riding cap and grinning as she held the bridle of Gumdrop, the pony with which she had just won a gymkhana. On the wall in frames were photos of some of Monty’s father’s horses – Blaze Away which had won the St Leger in the 1920s, Dusty Answer, which came third in the Derby, and Harvest Home, a winner of innumerable minor races at Wincanton or Newbury.

  All these fading sepia images in their oak frames added to the air of Dutch chiaroscuro into which Mrs Thorn, with her brown overcoat, blended and brooded.

  Normally apple-cheeked, she was now blushing, to the roots of her wiry hair. Words which would never normally ha
ve come into Monty’s head when thinking of Edith Thorn (whom he had known since she was a child) came now: hard, peasanty, flinty. The sense of hostility which she gave off was quite overwhelming.

  She opened a large clasped bag and produced a copy of The Daily Legion.

  ‘You’ll know why I’ve come,’ she said curtly.

  ‘No, no … Mrs Thorn, I … er, no, I’ve no idea …’

  ‘What’s in there,’ she said, not as a question, but as a statement.

  ‘What is in there?’

  He could guess the kind of thing; he did not want to see in detail.

  He said feebly, ‘May I?’

  Peg Montgomery was a name which meant nothing to Lord Longmore. He had never heard of her. Her features, smiling winsomely under a blonde perm, at the top of her page, were totally unfamiliar. His newspaper-reading life was limited to one broadsheet, which in his view had been getting steadily more common, and less informative, since he had first begun to read it as a young man of twenty. He now limited himself to a quick perusal of its front page, a careful scanning of the death column, a little look at the letters, before concentrating on the crossword puzzle. This he usually managed to finish in about half an hour. The whole world of the newspapers, the world which was all-in-all to Mary Much and Lennox Mark, the world which had dazzled and affrighted Rachel for seven years, was completely unknown to Monty Longmore. He had seldom read the vulgar papers before his children grew up; and once Kitty had become, for quite arbitrary reasons as far as her father could make out, one of the characters endlessly written about in the gossip columns, he made it his business actively to avoid looking at them, even if he saw one lying on the table opposite him in a railway carriage or in the smoking room of his London club. The sight of the things had become too painful to him.