The Wonder Worker

by Susan Howatch

  I feel threatened. “Hold it!” I bark. “What are you up to? What are you thinking?”

  “I’m not sure you really want to know.”

  “Oh yes, I do! I want the unvarnished truth—lay it on the line!”

  “Well, when you talk about Great-Uncle Cuthbert, I sometimes wonder what it is you’re really trying to say. It’s as if you’re revving yourself up to deliver a very unvarnished truth indeed but in the end your nerve fails and the delivery never happens.”

  “You’re off your rocker,” I say automatically and decide this judgement concludes the conversation. I don’t want to think of the painful past any more. I want to keep my eyes fixed on the future, the future with a possible pussyfoot in it.

  “Okay, I’m off my rocker,” Nicholas is saying, “but there’s still something I’d like to ask.”

  “About what?” I say dozily, mind on the imaginary pussyfoot.

  “About Father Cuthbert Darcy, religious genius, Victorian eccentric, dictator, hero, monster, Abbot-General of the Fordite monks from 1908 until 1940. Did he, as a good Christian, tell you to forgive your mother?”

  “Of course. He was faultlessly Christian throughout. He never put a foot wrong.”

  “So here we have an example of Great-Uncle Cuthbert as hero and religious genius, not as Victorian eccentric and monster.”

  I feel restless again, edgy, and all I want to do is sit quietly and dream of pussyfoots. Irritably I snap: “He did tell me, I assure you, to forgive my mother. It wasn’t his fault if my attempts to forgive her never had any psychological reality.”

  “Whose fault was it, then?”

  “Well, mine, obviously.”

  “You were a boy of fifteen. He was a tough, sophisticated despot in his seventies—”

  “He was an extremely wise and holy man!”

  “But he had the advantage over you, didn’t he? You hardly met on equal ground and he was a formidable personality. I don’t think he can be entirely blameless here.”

  “Well, he was. He was perfect. He saved me.”

  “I’m more than willing to concede that he gave you stability and affection and a sense of purpose, and that all those things were crucial in helping you to survive that adolescence. But what bothers me is this business of forgiveness. How far would you say he himself forgave your mother?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, her scandalous life must have been an embarrassment to him—she must have made him very angry. And then he was put to a lot of trouble and expense, wasn’t he, when he was obliged to make you a ward of court. That must have made him angry too. So—”

  “He always said it wasn’t for us to judge her.”

  “Then how did he explain the need for forgiveness to you? That would have involved making a judgement that there was something to forgive.”

  “Great-Uncle Cuthbert never explained,” I say grandly. “He just told me what I had to do to survive. He said: ‘You’ve got to let her go by forgiving her because if you can’t let go you’ll make yourself mentally and spiritually ill. It’s all very simple,’ he said. ‘You must face the unvarnished truth and accept it in order to overcome this damage and be healed. Always pursue the unvarnished truth,’ said Great-Uncle Cuthbert, ‘because that’s the truth that comes from God. We sinners always try to varnish it to suit our own purposes, but we must never flinch from trying to strip off the varnish at every opportunity and see the truth as it really is.’ ” I stop and look at Nicholas expectantly. “Perfect, wasn’t he?” I say proudly. “Faultless. He could be a tricky old bastard at times, I’m not denying that, but fundamentally he was a great man.”

  “Okay, I’ll go along with that. But what was his version, Lewis, of the unvarnished truth about your mother?”

  “It wasn’t a version. It was the unvarnished truth. He said: ‘Your mother’s a slut and a disgrace and you’re well rid of her. She’s forfeited all her rights over you by her disgusting behaviour, but I’m here to look after you and so long as you do as I say you’ll be safe and everything will be put right.’ And I did do as he said. And everything was indeed put right. Well, most of it. Almost everything.”

  Nicholas embarks on another deafening silence. At last I manage to say: “All right, so he passed judgement on her. But it was the correct judgement, wasn’t it? She was a slut and she was a disgrace and her behaviour was disgusting, and when she slunk back from Paris at last with VD and cirrhosis and wanted to see me again before she died, she wasn’t entitled to see me again and she had forfeited her rights. And that was the unvarnished truth.”

  “Looks pretty varnished from where I’m standing.”

  “You’re up the creek! You’re off your—”

  “Sure. Look, Lewis. For twenty years I’ve listened to you struggling to crack the varnish which covers this particular truth, but you’ve never succeeded in cracking it because you’ve never had the right tool to help you. But now, thanks to Venetia, the sledgehammer’s finally materialised. Shall I put it in your hand or shall I lock it up in a cupboard out of harm’s way?”

  “You’re totally—utterly—”

  “Okay, I’ll lock it up.”

  “No, wait a minute, wait, wait, wait—”

  He waits. I think rapidly, chaotically, breathing hard. First I think: I just want to dream of pussyfooting. Then I think: you blank-blank coward. And finally I think: I’ve lost everything—what more do I have to lose?

  So I say: “Pass me the sledgehammer.”

  Nicholas says neutrally, without hurrying: “Venetia has a daughter. She abandoned that child because she had so many problems that she couldn’t cope with motherhood. Because of those problems she drank, she drugged, she slept around, she wasted herself. Now, supposing that abandoned child came to you and said: ‘How should I feel towards my mother?’ And supposing she said: ‘Should I forgive her?’ ”

  There are no words. I can’t reply. I can hardly breathe.

  “Think of Cynthia’s catastrophic lunch-party,” says Nicholas. “Didn’t you tell me that Venetia was called a slut and a disgrace? On a surface level, the level where the varnish lies, that judgement was true. But below the varnish, deep down on the level which matters most, the judgement was radically false. Venetia’s a far finer person than that, as we both know.”

  My eyes are blind. My voice is being smothered by something which feels like a concrete block sitting on my vocal cords, but I can still whisper. I say: “No one at that lunch-party understood the pain Venetia was in, how much she hated herself, how completely her self-esteem had been destroyed. If Vanessa Hoffenberg ever came to see me”—my voice is coming back—“if that girl ever came to see me, I’d say: ‘Your mother was greatly wronged in the past. Don’t stop loving her, don’t turn your back—-forgive,’ I’d say, ‘FORGIVE—no one’s asking you to forget all the sins and omissions, but forgive and break the cycle of pain, tell her she’s forgiven.’ I couldn’t tell my mother that,” I say so indistinctly that my words are barely audible. “I wasn’t allowed to tell her, I didn’t dare tell her because I was afraid Father Darcy would be angry and I depended on him for everything. I was afraid in case he washed his hands of me and the court put me in an orphanage.”

  “He despised her, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Demonised her, even.”

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t forgive her, did he?”

  “No.”

  “Wasn’t very Christian, was it?”

  “No.”

  “So we see him here not in his role of heroic religious genius but in his role of eccentric Victorian monster. And as an eccentric Victorian monster, he didn’t always get it right, did he?”

  “No. But I have to believe he did,” I say, fighting my way through a fog of emotion, “because otherwise it gets too difficult. I have to believe he got this right … although I suppose I’ve always known … unconsciously … that he didn’t get this quite so right as he ought to have done—
”

  “Stop there,” says Nicholas, but I’ve already run out of words. I’ve cracked the layer of varnish from end to end but the underlying truth is still too terrible to face. I have to cover it up now, I realise, veil it in small talk, turn my attention elsewhere.

  “Did you notice?” I say. “I called him Father Darcy, just as I always had to in the old days. Why did I ever start referring to him in our conversations as Great-Uncle Cuthbert?”

  “Perhaps you wanted to domesticate him, make his memory easier to handle. He was such a tough customer, wasn’t he, Lewis?”

  I agree he was but insist gloomily that I loved him anyway. “Hit me over the head with the whisky bottle,” I beg, “and shut me up! I don’t want to talk of him any more.”

  Nicholas pours me another whisky.

  Then after I’ve knocked it back he steers me to my room and puts me to bed.

  COMMENT: I have to believe Great-Uncle Cuthbert was always right, because if I believe he got it wrong about my mother I’ll feel so guilty I’ll want to cut my throat. All those times she wrote and begged to see me again! All those times I proudly tore up her letters in front of Great-Uncle Cuthbert in order to impress him! All those times I … No, it doesn’t bear thinking about, no wonder I repressed the whole putrid mess.

  And I still want to repress it. I’m too battered at the moment to face something so profoundly upsetting. I just want to fall back into the comforting, familiar pattern of hating my mother and revering Great-Uncle Cuthbert. That way security lies. I shall feel safe, as safe as I felt long ago when I realised this mind-set would guarantee me a roof over my head.

  I liked my little room in the guest-wing of the monastery. I liked flinging up the window in summer and smelling the new-mown grass of the lawns and hearing the far-off, non-stop drone of the traffic circling Marble Arch. I liked helping in the garden and learning carpentry in the workshop and being taken for a daily walk by one of the monks in Hyde Park, as if I were a dog requiring regular exercise. I didn’t like the food and I didn’t like the services in the chapel and I didn’t like playing chess with Great-Uncle Cuthbert, but it wasn’t a bad life. Most of the monks were kind. Funny to think of them all now … Ambrose the doctor … Francis the Prior … Yes, Francis was fun. I always thought he secretly fancied my mother, who stormed the house a couple of times to try and see me … though of course she never did. Great-Uncle Cuthbert forbade it, and I went along with his decision …

  No, I can’t face all that now.

  But I’ll have to face it eventually, won’t I? Must face the unvarnished truth.

  But not now.

  Later.

  Saturday, 19th November, 1988: I wake very early and write up my journal for yesterday. I’ve obviously experienced some sort of earthquake on the psychological level but I still don’t feel I can deal with it and I’m determined to make no more demands on Nicholas. He’s done enough. Do I need a therapist to help me process the information the earthquake has thrown up? Maybe. But first of all I’ve got to see my spiritual director and make my confession without delay. I shudder to think how close I came last night to going off the rails.

  At seven I buzz Stacy and ask him to take the eight o’clock Saturday mass for the handful who turn up from the prayer-group; Nicholas has already left again to resume his weekend in Surrey. By nine I’m back once more in my old home, the headquarters of the Fordite monks, and making my confession. Simon’s amazingly good. In fact he’s so good that I even feel tempted to talk a little about the earthquake, and to my stupefaction he’s most adroit, not making stupid comments and not egging me on when I run out of steam. It occurs to me that he has a head-start over any therapist I might consult because he knew Great-Uncle Cuthbert and can picture my peculiar adolescence all too clearly. In fact he can dimly remember me as I was then. Simon is years older than I am but he entered the Order in 1938 when I was seventeen and still quartered in the monks’ guest-wing.

  I leave feeling that I want to talk to him in depth about the earthquake. What an unexpected surprise! Maybe I’ll never want to sack him again …

  COMMENT: I’m going to survive.

  Better still, if all goes well, I shall emerge from this upheaval with a new attitude to women. Or will I? It depends. It depends how far I can face up to the unvarnished truth and master it. It depends on whether I can achieve a genuine forgiveness of my mother. It depends on whether I can forgive Great-Uncle Cuthbert for brainwashing me and manipulating me and—

  No. Can’t think of that. Not now. Later.

  Maybe I’ll be healed but not cured. In other words, maybe I’ll never now achieve a satisfactory intimate relationship with a woman but that won’t matter because I’ll be at peace as a celibate and benign towards women in general. No more sexist remarks. No more seeing women as evil temptresses. No more saying “priestesses” when I should be saying “women priests” …

  Dear God, I hope the Synod doesn’t approve the legislation for the ordination of women!

  Well, it seems I certainly haven’t experienced a miraculous cure, manifested in a conversion to the feminist cause. In fact I don’t think I’ve experienced anything much yet except an enormous amount of pain and confusion, but buried in the midst of all that darkness is the spark of hope. “I’m going to survive,” I wrote at the top of this section, and by the grace of God I shall.

  Looking back on yesterday evening I see so clearly now how dependent Nicholas and I are on each other as we work together at St. Benet’s. We’re like two tightrope walkers on the high wire. Nicholas saves me when I lose my balance, and when he’s tempted to play the Wonder Worker I’m there to rein him in. Yes, we’ve been very successful in outwitting the Devil’s attempts to destroy us but there’s no cause for complacency. Our old enemy’s bound to try again to shake the high wire, and perhaps next time, having failed last night in his attempt to drag me down into the mud, he’ll make Nicholas his prime target.

  Well, that kind of language is all very old-fashioned and anthropomorphic, but I like to visualise evil in the form of a homicidal old bastard who’s off his rocker, and I’m sure I’m right to be nervous about the future. My psyche keeps bleeping like an Early Warning System which is picking up news of an approaching nuclear attack. I suppose I could just be overwrought as the result of the earthquake, but I could also be unusually receptive, my psyche rubbed raw by stress.

  How I wish Nicholas was back at the Rectory! I feel uneasy when he’s too far away for me to keep an eye on him.

  Sunday, 20th November, 1988: I celebrate Sunday mass. The crutches are a blank-blank nuisance, but I’m all right once I’m planted at the altar. All the prayer-group are there and the atmosphere’s excellent. They don’t mind me flailing around like some sort of mutant octopus. I suppose my specialist would say I should be resting, but so what? Celebrating mass makes me feel good. Getting back into my religious routine makes me feel even better. I know how to heal myself, thanks very much! I’ll be throwing those crutches away in no time now.

  To maintain my upbeat mood I get myself to St. Mary’s Bourne Street for the morning Eucharist, and later on I turn up at All Saints Margaret Street for Solemn Evensong and Benediction. I know I ought to call it a day after this, particularly since the new hip’s now acting stroppily, but I can’t resist topping off this orgy of Anglo-Catholicism by dropping in at St. Edward’s House for Compline. After all these services and taxi-journeys I feel physically feeble but mentally strong, very centred. If only I didn’t get so tired! But I shouldn’t find the tiredness surprising. This is the time when I’m supposed to be enduring an idle convalescence by the sea.

  I’m sustained during my peregrinations—in icy, even snowy weather, I might add—by the magnificent lunch Alice cooks. She’s supposed to be off-duty on weekends, but she cooks anyway on Sundays because she enjoys it. Stacy and I certainly enjoy the results.

  In my bathroom that night I sing a Vera Lynn song. Then I fall asleep as soon as my head touches the pill
ow.

  COMMENT: My psyche’s quietened down as the result of the megadose of prayer and worship. Of course I was being neurotic earlier when I thought I could sense the Devil plotting to close in on Nicholas.

  I look forward to a boring and unremarkable week in which nothing abnormal whatsoever occurs.

  Monday, 21st November, 1988: I’ve just reread that idiotic last sentence. Short of saying to the Devil: “Do come in—so nice to see you!” and flinging open the front door of the Rectory with a smile, I can hardly have issued him with a more tempting invitation to unleash a volley of vicious kicks with his cloven hoof.

  Switching to the language of psychology I can summarise the crisis less emotively by writing: There’s a whole range of disordered emotions swirling at present around those most intimately connected with St. Benet’s; I’ve been aware of these disordered emotions for some time, since I’m experienced enough to spot the symptoms, and the threats to our ministry became obvious today when various incidents occurred involving individuals who are either dysfunctional or alienated or neurotic—or possibly all three.

  In other words, to call a spade a spade, the Devil made a multi-pronged attack and caused havoc.

  The day begins well. I wake early, pray and meditate on a passage from the writings of Father Andrew, but as I dress (hip still feeling very much a foreign body) I remember an abnormality: although it’s Monday morning Nicholas is still absent. Instead of returning to the City late last night he’s stayed on in Surrey because this morning he has to drive down to the south coast. In Chichester there’s to be a discreet gathering of those in the Church who exercise the ministry of deliverance, and Nicholas is not only reading a paper at the conference but conducting a seminar. Afterwards he plans to stay the night down there with friends before driving back to London early on Tuesday morning. He’s spoken to me on the phone three times a day since our Friday evening session, but he’ll be too busy to phone today. Never mind. I’m better now. I’ve recovered my equilibrium.