“How very inconvenient when you’ve come here to drink! Should I arrange for the pussyfoot to be administered intravenously?”
“I’ll unseal a crack for the straw.”
She laughs again and I order the pussyfoots, but I’m enormously relieved she asks no further questions. I know now I’ll never tell her about the hospital. Why bore her with geriatric tales of hip replacement? It would only underline the fact that I’m sixteen years her senior and vilely, terminally old.
After a while she says: “You seem rather piano. Are you sure you’re okay?”
I say: “Absolutely! Ignore outward appearances,” and chatter brightly for a while about nothing.
However, soon another pause develops and I suddenly realise I’m not the only one having trouble relaxing this evening; she’s uneasy too. “What’s up?” I say, dreading some tale of an alcoholic binge, but that’s not the problem at all. In fact there’s no problem. She’s just uneasy because she can’t quite work out how to tell me how magnificently her rehabilitation’s coming along; it’s coming along so magnificently that already she’s beginning to see a constructive, interesting future for herself. She tells me that once her first tranche of therapy comes to an end she wants to leave London and all her alcoholic friends and begin a new life elsewhere—on her own.
“I want to spend time in Cambridge,” she says, not looking at me as she fidgets with the ashtray. “I want to try and get that degree I passed up when I was young. It all began when you said: ‘It’s never too late.’ That was when I saw I shouldn’t settle for less than what I really wanted, and when I discussed the idea with Robin he told me about the Lucy Cavendish College which is specifically for women older than the normal undergraduate. So I wrote off and got all the information and …”
She’s going to read theology. She has to take an entrance exam, but she’s had an interview with the principal and she thinks she has a good chance of making the grade. She was interested in theology long ago, but after that rogue cleric of a heartbreaker wrecked her she shied away in revulsion from anything to do with religion. Now it’s time to make good that damage, time to get in touch with what really interests her, time to grapple with reality instead of running away from it.
I can see that it’s probably not a coincidence that some of the more influential people in her life—the heartbreaker, the husband, Nicholas and now even me—have all been priests. The likelihood is that we symbolise an intellectual “attrait” of hers which she’s repressed. She’s still not religious, she says, but that doesn’t matter because a lot of non-religious people study theology nowadays; it’s such a magnificently rational intellectual discipline and far more in touch with the basic issues of existence than modern philosophy. She’d be unable to start the degree until next autumn, but she’ll need the extra time to complete sorting herself out—oh, and she might do a course in New Testament Greek while she waits. That would give her a head-start, and since she’s so old she wants all the head-starts she can get. She’s going up to Cambridge tomorrow to take a look at some flats which are for rent. Of course it’ll be hard to leave London, but … well, she’s discussed the plan with Nick as well as with Robin, and she’s sure now she has to seek fresh woods and pastures new.
“Or do you think the idea’s crazy?” she says, suddenly losing her nerve. “Do you think I’m bound to fail?”
Venetia’s whole future’s at stake and I mustn’t wreck it by creating some self-centred scene. As I pray for the grace to behave as I should, I know that when people genuinely love others, they don’t cling; they don’t try to imprison them for their own use or batten on them to serve their own needs. They open the palms of their hands and they step back. They set those they love free to do what they’re called to do and be what they’re required to be.
I say: “Bound to fail? You? Nonsense! You’ll be enjoying yourself so much that you won’t even remember what the word ‘failure’ means!”
“You really think I can do it?”
“I don’t just think,” I say. “I know.” I speak with absolute confidence and wind up sounding indestructibly positive. “What a long way you’ve travelled since we met last July, Venetia!” I exclaim. “I’m very proud of you, and of course I wish you every happiness in your new life.”
But as I speak I’m aware of a terrible pain beginning. It’s an old pain resurrected; it’s chillingly familiar. It’s the pain I felt when my mother said there was no place for me in Paris where she’d fled with her new lover. But I mustn’t think of that now. I mustn’t vent on Venetia all the rage which at my worst moments I still feel towards my mother, but how do I find the strength to control all my chaotic, unhealed emotions which are trying to muscle in on the scene and wreck it?
“There’s something I want to say.” She’s whispering and I can barely hear her. There are tears in her eyes. “I want you to know”—she stumbles but recovers—“I want you to know that I can never thank you enough for what you’ve done. You’ve redeemed what he did. You’ve played it as he should have played it all those years ago. There’s been no abuse this time, no exploitation, no folie à deux—and as a result you’ve given back what he took away: my self-respect, my hope for the future, my belief that life has value and meaning … Oh yes, Robin was wonderful, of course, and Nick too, but in the end it was you who finally rewrote the past and enabled me to believe in a future where everything was made new.”
I forget my mother. I find I have the strength to say: “I’m glad I could help. I’m glad I was put across your path.” Then I start to get into difficulties. I try to say: “I’ve so enjoyed our pussyfoots,” but I have to grope instead for a cigarette.
“I’m sorry,” she says very rapidly, very unsteadily. “Forgive me—I’m sorry—”
But I’m all right. When the crunch comes, I’m all right. I keep thinking of that shining future and how very, very much I want her to have it. “There’s nothing to forgive,” I say, “and no need to apologise.” By this time I’ve found a cigarette but although I’m ferreting in my pockets for my lighter I can’t find it. That’s hardly surprising. It’s lying on the table, and Venetia spots it before I do.
“Here—” She grabs the lighter. The flame flares.
“Feminist!” I growl. “Lighting other people’s cigarettes is a man’s job!”
The touch of humour helps. Laughing shakily she says have I ever thought of being exhibited in a museum as a relic. I try to laugh too and suddenly we’re just a couple of friends chatting over our pussyfoots as if nothing’s happened. But that’s an illusion. Everything’s happened, and soon it’s time to part.
“I’ll see you home,” I say, stubbing out my cigarette, but she answers: “No, not this time. This is where I have to go on alone.”
I don’t hesitate. I stand up and offer her my hand. I’m a very small but very vital cog in the healing process which is now blinding my eyes and deafening my ears as it sweeps Venetia away from me, and it’s very important that I don’t break down.
“So long,” my voice says, sounding almost debonair. “I wish you luck—all the luck in the world—and if you chicken out now and stay in London I swear I’ll come after you with twigs and beat you all the way to Cambridge!”
She smiles but the tears are streaming down her face.
Then she turns and stumbles away.
***************
(The asterisks represent the fact that I had to take a breather at that point. Couldn’t give my pen the necessary steady push. But I’m better now.)
Well, back at the Hilton I down a double-brandy and stagger out, remembering my dream of gliding around like a lounge-lizard. How pathetic that dream seems to me now.
I collapse into a taxi. When I struggle out, the driver asks if I’m all right. I must look like death. I certainly feel ripe for a coffin. I go straight to my room and lock the door. Eventually Alice taps on the panels and asks if I want my dinner. I say: “No thanks!” and sound cheerful so that she won’t wo
rry about me. It’s Friday night and Nicholas has already left for Surrey.
As I start on the whisky I remember Venetia mentioning that she’d discussed her plans with my colleagues. So Nicholas would have known what was in store for me, but she must have told him in confidence; otherwise he would have warned me in advance.
I’m sure he’s thinking of me and praying for me now, but I don’t want his thoughts and his prayers. I want him to be with me in person. I’m a smashed-up, carved-up old wreck and he’s the only one who can help me. I want my Nicholas.
Five seconds later the phone rings. It’s Nicholas. “Sorry,” he says. “I wanted to wait at the Rectory till you got back, but Rosalind had invited some people to dinner and in the end I had to leave.”
“That’s okay.”
“As soon as they’ve gone I’ll come back and collect you. You can spend the weekend at Butterfold.”
“No need for that.”
“Well, I’ll come back to the Rectory anyway and keep you company.”
“No. You need your weekend’s rest. I’ll be all right.”
There’s a pause before Nicholas orders: “Buzz Stacy on the intercom and get him on the line. I want to ask him to drive you down here.”
“No, Nicholas. Rosalind wouldn’t like it. And anyway it’s better for me to be alone at the moment.” I know this last statement’s untrue, but I’ve got to stop him wrecking his weekend and making Rosalind fed up.
Replacing the receiver before he can argue further, I lie down on my bed to give myself a break from the crutches, but after a while I realise that all I want to do is make for the nearest working-class pub and … But I’m too much of an old crock to make the trip worthwhile. Or am I? Not necessarily. A lot of tarts prefer old crocks. Gives them a break from all the plunging puppies. So …
A long time passes while I wrestle with temptations best not described. A very long time. Maybe even as long as an hour and a half. But finally I quit the wrestling match. Easing myself off my bed, I shed my clerical suit and stock, place my pectoral cross on the bedside table, heave my way to the wardrobe and take a look inside. Five minutes later I’m wearing my old corduroys, a sweater and an anorak. God knows what I look like; I take care not to glance in the glass, but I feel like a gambler who’s lost all his money and is about to hit rock-bottom. Having checked my wallet for cash, I adjust my crutches, unlock the door of the bedsit and step into the hall to listen.
The silence hurts my ears. Looking at my watch I wonder how easily I’ll be able to get a taxi. Can’t phone for one. Don’t want to call attention to the fact that I’m beginning my journey from a rectory. But I can get as far as London Wall and I’m bound to find a taxi there in the end. The only trouble is I don’t feel like walking even up the street to London Wall. I’m tired and sore, but the emotional pain’s so great that I can’t stand it, can’t live with it, can’t rest till I’ve blotted it out—and got my revenge on my mother—by proving I can survive being dumped—and that means I can’t just get drunk to kill the pain, I’ve got to—
I think about what I feel driven to do but because I’m so dislocated I feel no disgust. I’m totally out of alignment with God, totally disconnected. My whole psyche’s screaming in agony. I feel as if at any moment I’m going to disintegrate—split into a million pieces—
I reach out to open the front door, but my hand never touches the latch because a sound outside makes me stop dead. Someone’s inserting his key in the lock. Someone’s coming to my rescue in the nick of time. Someone’s pushing the door wide open and pausing on the threshold to survey the wreckage.
I’m face to face with Nicholas.
***************
(Another breather required. Don’t know when I’ve last found a journal entry so hard to write. But I can go on now.)
Nicholas steps into the hall.
We say nothing.
He takes his key from the lock, shuts the front door, sheds his coat. I turn back to the bedsit. Once I’m there I take off my anorak and hang it up in the wardrobe. I remove my sweater, which I put away neatly in a drawer, and I remove my corduroys which I replace in the wardrobe alongside the anorak. Then I put on my clerical suit again and my black stock. I replace my pectoral cross, and finally I haul my way to the kitchen where I sit down slowly and painfully at the table. By this time Nicholas has made some tea and mixed me a darkish whisky. Closing the kitchen door he sits down at my side and we drink. During all this time not a single word has been exchanged between us.
At last I say: “Rosalind won’t like this.”
“Oh, she’ll understand.”
This could be the overoptimistic view of the overconfident husband, but I don’t argue with him. I’m just so glad to be rescued. Between sips of whisky I say: “It was all right. I let Venetia go and wished her well. I did what was required of me.”
“It was a very great victory over adversity.”
“Yes, she thoroughly deserves her new life and the last thing I want to do is stand in her way.”
“I wasn’t referring to Venetia.”
The silence begins again. I drain my glass and reach for the bottle but he doesn’t stop me. He just tops up the next dose of whisky with water.
Unsteadily I say: “No need to treat me as a hero. I just did what had to be done.”
“That’s what all the best heroes say.”
“But just now I was all set to fall flat on my face in the mud!”
“I wonder. I think you’d have turned back long before you reached the pub.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“After behaving like a hero you’d have found you had no valid reason to abuse yourself by taking a roll in the mud.”
“Behaving like a hero doesn’t alter the fact that I’m bloody useless at relationships! God, no wonder all the women I meet want to dump me in the end—I can’t even get it right with my own daughter! I’ll never get it right with any woman, I can see that now—I’ve ruined every chance I’ve ever had with the result that I’m currently washed up with nothing left to hope for—which of course is the fate I deserve because I’m worthless, useless, I let down every single person I care about—”
“You’ve never let me down,” says Nicholas.
I scrub my eyes with my fists like an infant and bawl: “Shut up!” but he doesn’t.
He says Venetia doesn’t think I’m worthless or useless. She phoned him when she arrived home from the Hilton. She thinks I’m the best priest in London, in the Church of England and in the entire Anglican Communion. Venetia doesn’t feel let down at all.
“Nevertheless she’s still dumped me exactly as my mother did—”
“Exactly? Come now, Lewis, be honest! What’s the unvarnished truth here?”
Then the fog clears from my mind and I can see that the past and present are quite dissimilar. My mother was on her way into the dark, to an existence which resulted in an early death. Venetia’s on her way into the light, to live the life she’s been designed to lead. “But the pain of loss still feels the same,” I say dimly to Nicholas.
“What loss? Venetia has to travel on alone for a while, but Cambridge isn’t the other side of the moon—it’s less than seventy miles from London. And Venetia never said goodbye, did she? She told me she blew the ending by dissolving into tears, but if she’d stayed calm perhaps she’d have said not adieu but au revoir.”
I think about that. “She’ll marry some academic,” I say at last, “and even if she doesn’t it’ll be too late for me when she finally graduates from Cambridge. I’ll be seventy and past it.”
“Surely not! Think how boring that would be for your spiritual director!”
I try to smile but it’s too difficult. However, I feel better. That’s because I can hope a bit. I can believe Venetia might after all want to pussyfoot again with me one day. I can see clearly now that she didn’t dump me. She parted, with great reluctance, from a man whom she said had rewritten her past and transformed her future
.
I say uncertainly: “Maybe I’m not such a failure after all.”
“You can be certain that in this case you were a very great success. Think of Venetia, setting out at last on a rewarding life—what was that famous sentence of Churchill’s you used to like so much? Something about coming back from hell—”
“ ‘We came back after the long months from the jaws of death, out of the mouth of hell, while all the world wondered—’ ”
“That’s it. And that was where Venetia was coming from. From the jaws of death, out of the mouth of hell—”
“I liked Churchill,” I said. “He never used namby-pamby language.” I thought again of Venetia having the chance for a worthwhile life at last after eking out a maimed existence for so many years, and suddenly I was exclaiming: “Why aren’t I on my knees thanking God for all this instead of whining away like a child who’s been deprived of a bar of chocolate?”
“Because when you were young you were deprived of very much more than a bar of chocolate.”
I mutter a very rude word and guzzle some scotch before saying firmly: “I was better off without my mother. I was a bloody fool to mind being dumped.”
“No, you weren’t, Lewis. You were a vulnerable adolescent, not a bloody fool, and vulnerable adolescents are allowed to mind when their mothers walk out. It’s acceptable.”
“Not to Great-Uncle Cuthbert.”
Nicholas says nothing. He says nothing so loudly that my ears tingle and I forget the scotch. It’s time once more to burnish the golden memory of my saviour.
“Great-Uncle Cuthbert was right!” I declare. “My mother was a disaster, no use to me at all, I was well rid of her!”
Nicholas utters two syllables. They are: “Uh-huh.” Meanwhile his face is so inscrutable that I want to biff it, and this mindless spasm of violence makes me uneasy. What’s going on? Why is Nicholas behaving as if he’s counselling someone who’s seriously disturbed? Nicholas always plays along with me over Great-Uncle Cuthbert, always. We’ve got this routine. Whenever I drivel on about the old man, Nicholas nods and smiles and offers harmless little comments and eventually I feel better and shut up. But now for some reason Nicholas isn’t playing that particular game any more; Nicholas is changing the routine.
The Wonder Worker Page 21
