by David Lodge
Adrian read out some letters of support, mostly anonymous, for the group’s aims, which included some poignant case histories and memorable cris de coeur (“What is love? What is conjugal love? Why did God make it so nice?” wrote one correspondent with five children and a wife suffering from high blood pressure). Then a somewhat embarrassed-looking Father Brierley was paraded for their edification, rather like an Iron Curtain defector at a press conference. His sports jacket, trousers and roll-neck shirt were ill-co-ordinated in colour and glinted with the sheen of cheap synthetic fabric. He stammered out a speech of thanks for the group’s support – financial as well as moral, for he was not receiving any stipend while under suspension. Catholics for an Open Church had received only a curt acknowledgement of its original letter to the Cardinal, and now Adrian read out the draft of a second, follow-up letter for the meeting’s approval. The membership quickly split into two factions, one anxious to be respectful and conciliatory, the other determined to be bold and challenging. Amendments and counter-amendments flew backwards and forwards. The man in sandals made a determined effort to get coitus reservatus into the text somehow or other. Tempers rose. It was hard to tell whether the speakers were more hostile to HV or to each other. Adrian grew hoarse and irritable, he glared contemptuously at the members like the captain of a mutinous crew, and Dorothy, who was taking the minutes, put down her pen with a theatrical flourish, folded her arms and lifted her eyes to the ceiling. Then Edward – Edward, who had slipped into the back of the hall unnoticed by Michael and Miriam – stood up and took some of the tension out of the atmosphere with a self-deprecating joke and moved that Adrian and Father Brierley should be left to revise the letter in the light of the comments expressed. Michael seconded the motion and it was carried by a large majority. The meeting was closed, and Adrian announced that Father Brierley would say mass for the members before they dispersed. Strictly speaking, he wasn’t supposed to do this while under suspension, but as a jovial African supporter said, mixing his proverbs a little, “Hang my lambs, hang my sheep.”
At the mass, real wholemeal bread was consecrated and broken, and handed round in baskets, and the congregation also shared the chalice. At the words, “Let us give each other the sign of peace,” several couples embraced instead of giving each other the customary handshake. Michael and Miriam spontaneously followed suit and, because of the novelty of the circumstances, Michael experienced a perceptible erection as their lips touched. He was not abashed, as at a similar occurrence at the St Valentine’s Day mass long ago; after all, that was what they were all gathered together here for, to assert the compatibility of eros and agape, to answer positively the questions, what was love, what was conjugal love, why did God make it so nice? Both agreed that the mass was the most meaningful liturgical event they had ever participated in.
Afterwards, they sought out Edward. “Hello, you two,” he said. “What do you mean by joining this seditious rabble?”
“What about you, then?”
“I’m an infiltrator, paid by the Vatican in indulgences. And why are you wearing those extraordinary trousers, old man?”
In spite of his quips, Edward looked tired and drawn, and was evidently in some pain from his old back injury. “There is an operation, but I don’t fancy it,” he said. “I know too much about surgeons. And hospitals. Forty per cent of my patients who have surgery pick up secondary infections in hospital. Take my advice, stay out of hospital if you possibly can.”
“I intend to,” said Michael.
“I should knock off that stuff, then,” said Edward, with a nod at Michael’s cigarette.
“I only smoke ten a day,” said Michael.
“Fifteen,” said Miriam. “Twenty, some days.”
“Each one,” said Edward, “takes five minutes off your life expectancy.”
“You’re a cheerful bugger, I must say,” said Michael, stubbing out a rather longer dog-end than usual.
They exchanged news about their families and mutual friends. Adrian and Dorothy joined them.
“I thought Angela and Dennis might have come,” said Adrian, with a slight tone of grievance. “They did join.”
“Angela rang me, she sent her apologies, but she’s tied up organizing some bazaar today. And Dennis isn’t much interested in the Church these days. Ever since Anne….” Miriam’s explanation tailed away.
“Yes,” said Edward, shaking his head, and looking at his toecaps, “That was too bad.”
Adrian and Dorothy had not followed this and had to have it explained to them, as will you, gentle reader. Two years after Nicole was born, Dennis and Angela’s next youngest child, Anne, was knocked down by a van outside their house and died in hospital a few hours later. I have avoided a direct presentation of this incident because frankly I find it too painful to contemplate. Of course, Dennis and Angela and Anne are fictional characters, they cannot bleed or weep, but they stand here for all the real people to whom such disasters happen with no apparent reason or justice. One does not kill off characters lightly, I assure you, even ones like Anne, evoked solely for that purpose.
“Of course, they blame themselves for the accident, one always does,” said Miriam. “Though it could happen to anyone.”
They were silent for a moment, trying to imagine what it would be like if it happened to them, and failing.
“Well,” sighed Adrian, “I’m not surprised they didn’t come. They must have enough on their plate.” The last vestige of his romantic interest in Angela dissolved with this news. Before the meeting he had been conscious, against his own reason, of a quiver of expectation at the prospect of seeing her again, a foolish wish to shine in her eyes by his conduct of the meeting. Now the thread of sentimental reminiscence that linked them was finally broken, and he recognized her as irrevocably separated from him, robed in her own tragedy, burdened with a grief that he could neither share nor alleviate.
“Have you been in touch with any others of the old crowd?” Edward asked him.
“Eh? Oh, yes. I got on to quite a few. I spoke to Miles, but he didn’t sound very keen to get involved. As a matter of fact, he seemed distinctly hostile. Let me see, who else …? Polly I didn’t bother to trace, I gather she left the Church years ago. Ruth was sympathetic, but she was just off to America.”
“Good Lord, what for?”
“Visiting various convents, I gather, to see what they’ve been up to over there since Vatican II.”
“She’s still a nun, then? And Violet?”
Adrian grimaced and Dorothy rolled her eyes heavenwards. “Ever since Adie got in touch with her,” said Dorothy, “she’s been ringing him up at all hours.”
“To discuss her personal problems,” said Adrian.
“She’s still married to Robin?”
“Just about.”
At Edward’s suggestion they adjourned to a nearby pub to continue the conversation, which came round inevitably to the great debate about Humanae Vitae and the Safe Method and the question of why they had themselves for so many years persevered with that frustrating, inconvenient, ineffective, anxiety-and-tension-creating régime. “It was conditioning,” said Edward, who no longer advised patients on the use of the basal temperature method. “It was the repressive power of the clergy, wielded through the confessional,” said Adrian, a strong supporter of the new rite of Penance being mooted in advanced liturgical circles, with general absolution and no invasions of privacy. “It was guilt about sex, the way we were brought up not knowing anything,” said Dorothy, who had not yet forgiven her mother for the debacle of her wedding night. “It was fear,” said Michael. “Let’s face it, it was the fear of Hell.”
Well, yes, they had to agree that had been at the bottom of it: the fear of Hell. And looking at each other, with faintly embarrassed grins as they sipped their drinks, they realized then, if they had not realized before, that Hell, the Hell of their childhood, had disappeared for good.
5
* * *
How They
Broke Out, Away, Down, Up, Through, Etc.
IN AMERICA, RUTH travelled from city to city, from convent to convent, like a medieval pilgrim, making notes about the changes that were taking place in the lives of nuns. She had been awarded a six month’s travelling scholarship for this project, but when her time was up she felt that she had only scratched the surface of the subject and wrote home for permission to stay longer. She relied on the religious communities she visited for food and accommodation, repaying their hospitality with whatever work was appropriate. She did substitution teaching in schools, auxiliary nursing in hospitals, helped look after senior citizens and mentally handicapped children. Sometimes she donned her habit and gave talks about the Church in England to parochial groups. Afterwards people would come up to her and shake her hand warmly, sometimes pressing into it a large-denomination dollar bill “to help with your expenses, sister.” At first she was embarrassed by these gifts, but after a while she got used to them, and indeed came to rely on such gratuities for her pocket money.
American nuns, she soon discovered, were in a state of upheaval that made England seem quite tranquil by comparison. In Cleveland, Ohio, she came across a community that had until recently been enclosed, supporting itself precariously by embroidering priests’ vestments, and had suddenly decided to train all its members in chiropody and turned itself into a foot clinic. In Detroit, Michigan, a nun in high boots and a mini-skirt ran a free school for juvenile deliquents and led a successful rent-strike against profiteering landlords. In St Louis, Ruth interviewed a sister who was secretary general of an organization dedicated to opposing male chauvinism in the Church. She wore a trouser suit and scattered words like “crap” and “bullshit” in her conversation. On the wall behind her head a poster depicted Moses telling the Israelites: “And She’s black …” In Texas, Ruth visited a community of nuns who came down to breakfast with their hair in huge plastic curlers. After a hasty grace (“Good food, good meat, good God, let’s eat”) they tucked into hot cakes and bacon; then, immaculately coiffed, and clad in smart clothes, they swept off in huge shiny convertibles to their jobs as personal secretaries in downtown Houston. In the evenings they had dates with priests, who took them out to restaurants and movie shows.
Ruth herself had adventures. Travelling through the night on a Greyhound bus, dressed, as was her custom now, in ordinary clothes, she realized that the man in the next seat had placed his hand on her knee. She froze, wondering what to do. Scream? Cut and run? Stop the bus? After half an hour she dared a look sideways. The man was asleep, his limbs limp, his mouth open. Slowly, carefully, Ruth lifted his hand from her knee and restored it to his own. Eventually she slept herself and woke to find her head on the man’s shoulder. “I didn’t like to waken you,” he said with a smile, chafing his numbed arm. Ruth blushed crimson and muttered her apologies. “You’re welcome,” said the man. At the next rest stop he insisted on buying her coffee and doughnuts and telling her the story of his life. He was a shoe salesman, recently retired, going to spend a vacation with his son and daughter-in-law in Denver. “You’d really like them,” he assured her. “They made a trip to London a few years back. You’d have a lot in common. Why don’t you plan to stay over in Denver a whiles?” When they got back into the bus, Ruth took a seat next to a black woman with a baby on her lap and pretended not to see the hurt and longing looks the shoe salesman sent in her direction across the aisle. At the time, this episode distressed her, but afterwards she was vexed to think how upset she had been, or “uptight” as the feminist nun in St Louis would have put it. When, some time later, an ugly but genial man tried to pick her up at Dallas airport, she didn’t panic, but waited patiently for an opportunity to mention that she was a nun. “No kidding!” he said, staring. “Hey, I wouldn’t have made a pass at you if I’d known. Jesus – sorry – wow! Hey, I went to a parochial school myself, you know? I mean, I was taught by sisters.” He seemed almost afraid that they would rise up out of the past to punish him. He took out his wallet and tried to press a donation on her. Fending off the proffered dollar bills, Ruth glimpsed a woman on a nearby bench observing them with disapproval. “Put your money away, you’re giving scandal,” she said, giggling. She dined off the story more than once.
At last she came to the coast of California, which seemed as far as she could go. Her Mother Superior wrote reluctantly agreeing to a three-month extension of her leave. The letter was fretful and discouraged. One nun had just left the community and another was on the brink. There had been only two new postulants admitted to the mother house that year. By the same post Ruth received a copy of Crux, the COC newsletter: Adrian had put her on the mailing list even though she hadn’t paid a subscription. It contained articles, news items and book reviews, mostly written by Adrian and Dorothy, correspondence with editorial comments by Adrian, and the text of the third Open Letter to the Cardinal.
Michael had been correct in predicting that the governors of his College, who included several members of the clergy he liked to describe as somewhat to the right of Torquemada in the spectrum of ecclesiastical politics, would disapprove of his membership of Catholics for an Open Church. When the second open letter to the Cardinal, bearing his signature, was published in The Times and the Tablet, the Principal suggested that it would be in Michael’s own interest to resign from the group. His professional association offered to take up the case, but Michael was tired of the place anyway, and applied successfully for a more senior post elsewhere. This was another Catholic College of Education, but only recently established, and known to be progressive in its outlook, dedicated to the spirit of Vatican II, with a lay Principal and a largely lay staff. In preparation for the new life they expected to lead there, Michael and Miriam let their hair grow, he to his shoulders and she to her waist. When Miriam thrust her head forward in the excitement of argument now, a shimmering curtain of copper-coloured hair would fall forward over her green eyes, and she would flick it back with an impatient toss of the head. Michael also grew a moustache, hoping it would distract attention from his snouty nose. He gave up smoking, and Miriam started baking her own bread.
They looked forward to seeing more of some old friends in their new location, for the College was situated on the outskirts of the city where Edward had his practice, and was not far, therefore, from Dennis and Angela’s dormitory village. To the same city, in due course, came Father Brierley, to study at the Polytechnic. His dispute with the bishop had been resolved, at least temporarily, like other crises in his priestly life, by sending him on a course – this time for a degree in psychology and sociology.
Father Brierley’s bishop was not, in fact, the ogre that Adrian liked to make him out to be. He did not wish to lose Father Brierley, whom he recognized as a sincere, hardworking priest, especially as the diocese was chronically under strength; nor did he personally have very strong feelings about the issue of birth control. The bishop had successfully sublimated his own sexual urges thirty years ago, and didn’t understand why Catholic couples couldn’t do the same after having a few children. As a young man he would have liked to experience copulation once, just to know what it was like, and to live with that curiosity unsatisfied had been a genuine sacrifice at the time. That people should want to go on doing it, again and again, long after the novelty must have worn off, strained his understanding and sympathy. But he acknowledged that there were a lot of sins worse than spilling the seed, and thought it was very regrettable the way this one issue had come to obsess people.
For the bishop, the controversy was purely a management problem. What Father Brierley said to folk in the confessional was between God and his conscience, but if he was allowed to get away with publicly repudiating HV, all the young tearaway curates in the diocese would soon be doing the same, and the older ones baying for a heresy hunt, and then the fat would be in the fire. The bishop put this to Father Brierley, frankly and freely, one man to another, sitting opposite him in the episcopal study in an easy chair, and offering Irish whi
skey and cigarettes. Austin Brierley apologized for causing him so much trouble, but stood his ground. The bishop sighed, lit a Senior Service, and asked Father Brierley if he had a girl friend. Austin Brierley flushed and denied the suggestion indignantly.
“Hold your horses, Father,” said the Bishop, “it was just a shot in the dark. It’s only that every priest I’ve had trouble with in the past few years has turned out to be in love. The poor fools think they’ve got problems of faith and doctrine but subconsciously they’re looking for a way to get out of Holy Orders and into the arms of some woman or other.”
“That isn’t my situation,” said Austin Brierley.
