The Wonder Worker

by Susan Howatch

  I was still slumped in my swivel-chair, still clutching the receiver, when Lewis, that battle-scarred old torn, sidled in on his crutches to announce that Venetia had returned to London after a reconnaissance trip to Cambridge and wanted to show him her Polaroid pictures of the flat which she was tempted to acquire. He had agreed to meet her for lunch on Saturday at the Dorchester Grill.

  “But don’t worry!” he added hastily. “I promise I shall behave impeccably!”

  I assumed my most courteous expression but offered no comment.

  “Booked your retreat yet?”

  “I was just about to make the call.”

  “Then don’t let me stop you. I assume you’ll be leaving first thing tomorrow morning and returning on Sunday night?”

  “If you’re seeing Venetia on Saturday maybe I should stick around.”

  “No, no, no—quite unnecessary! I’ve got myself well in control now, and I’m just glad that I have this opportunity to part from her in a calm civilised way. It was such an upsetting mess when we parted at the Hilton.”

  “Uh-huh. Do you plan to rerun this final farewell often?”

  “Oh, of course Venetia will eventually find out how impossible I am, but meanwhile … Hold it, I hear that red-headed nitwit thudding downstairs like a stray elephant—” He plunged out of the study to start venting his fury.

  I allowed the diatribe to last twenty seconds. Then I followed him into the hall, sent a white-faced, silent Stacy on his way and reminded Lewis that he was supposed to be resting. On my own again I finally summoned the energy to call the Fordites, and having reserved a room in their guest-wing I realised with a sinking heart that I could no longer postpone my next meeting with Rosalind.

  I trudged upstairs to the flat.

  II

  Rosalind was having a bath. That was a bad sign, indicating she still felt polluted by my behaviour, but I was relieved to have the excuse to postpone the ordeal of facing her. I wandered around trying to decide what to do next and finally concluded it was time to check in again with Venetia, currently my prize client, the horse who had not only consented to approach the water but had been willing to slake her thirst.

  “Hi,” I said as she picked up the receiver at her house in Chelsea. “It’s your Talisman.” Venetia often called me that. Accepting the prediction I had made long ago that we were destined to weave in and out of each other’s lives, she claimed that whenever I crossed her path something unusual happened, not necessarily pleasant. The current crossing of our paths, which had lasted since our accidental meeting that summer, had for the first time been truly beneficial, as if all the years I had spent praying for her had finally borne fruit. I’d always known that my task was to pray for her. Since I was several years her junior there’d been no question of romance when I was twenty years old and meeting her for the first time, and I’d known at once that I was merely to be a sign, a marker, a friend of the spirit, a representative of a reality which continued to exist even though she refused to acknowledge it. The call to serve her in this way had been a thankless task over the years as her life had gone from bad to worse, but I’d never given up and now it seemed the big pay-off was at hand.

  My relief and joy, mingling with my terror that something might still go wrong, were so acute that I realised how much I’d come to love her. I also realised that the depth and quality of my feelings could explain why the healing was finally happening. Non-possessive, non-demanding and totally focused on her welfare, the love provided an unclogged channel for the creative and redeeming power of the Holy Spirit. All human beings have power to heal one another; it’s part of the mystery of consciousness and personality. But my power to heal Venetia was being jacked up and magnified by the force which was the source of all power, all love and all creativity. In this particular case I’d finally got the alignment with God right—yet still I had to remember that I was utterly dependent on God’s grace; I had to kill any desire to pat myself on the back, because if I fell into that particular trap, the alignment would be lost, the channel would be clogged and the Devil would slither in at the last moment to block the healing. God Almighty, let nothing block it now! I sweated again at the thought of me or Lewis or both of us making a balls-up, I through pride and he through lust fuelled by his hang-ups. “Keep Venetia safe,” I said feverishly to God, “keep her safe, safe, safe from your all-too-human and pathetically fallible servants …” I suddenly realised Venetia was talking. With an effort I focused on the conversation.

  “Nick, how lovely—divine to hear you!”

  “You okay?”

  “Darling, radiant!” Venetia nearly always talked like this. The fact that it was a camp, upper-class patois didn’t mean she was insincere.

  “Huh!” I said agreeably but infusing this useful syllable with a faint air of scepticism designed to encourage truthfulness.

  “What’s that grunt supposed to mean?”

  “What do you think it means?”

  “No, don’t lob the question back at me, you beast!”

  “What’s so beastly about it?”

  Venetia and I often had these sort of dialogues. Sometimes I thought we sounded like a certain type of married couple, the bickering kind, who masked a deep connectedness by giving vent to frequent bursts of irritability.

  “I suppose you’ve been talking to Lewis!”

  “Yep. How come he gets to see the Polaroid snaps and I don’t?”

  “You can see them later, sweetie-pie, but right now Lewis needs to see them more than you do.”

  “Huh!”

  “Don’t you want to ask what the hell I’m up to with him?”

  “Nope. None of my business.”

  “What I can’t bear about men,” said Venetia acidly, “is their high-minded attitude to gossip. It’s so inhuman—any woman would be panting to know all the details!”

  “Well, since I’m not about to change sex—”

  “Thank God, I can’t bear mutilation. Listen, darling, it’s okay about Lewis, it really is—he’s being absolutely perfect and I adore him.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You swine, is that all you have to say?”

  “I was just reflecting how vulnerable Lewis is beneath that buccaneering exterior.”

  “He and I are two of a kind,” said Venetia, for one brief moment setting aside the patois and speaking straight from the heart. “We can be vulnerable together.” Then as my heart sank at this revelation of a shared romantic illusion, the patois was resumed. “How’s the Fair Rosalind?”

  I quickly pulled myself together. “Having a bath.”

  “Dear Rosalind, always so clean. Well, my pet, much as I adore listening to your cryptic comments and sexy grunts, I’m going to have to love you and leave you now or I’ll never get to the AA meeting on time. Keep praying, please.”

  “Take care, Venetia. Remember that you count, you matter, you’re important. Remember that I’m with you every step of the way.”

  She told me she adored me and made various kissing noises. I barely heard the stifled sob before she hung up.

  I remained motionless, praying. To Christ the Healer I said: “Give Venetia the strength to FIGHT ON!” I prayed this over and over again. Then I framed another short prayer asking for help in dealing with her relationship with Lewis. Obviously she was genuinely keen on him. That was bad news. When Lewis had been in hospital and I’d met Venetia for a pastoral chat at Claridge’s, her favoured haunt, she’d been very casual, calling him “a dear old pet” as if he were some lovable pensioner whom she happened to find rather amusing. I hadn’t accepted this line of hers, but I’d thought she was merely covering up the fact that she’d flirted with him out of habit and been firmly turned down. Now I realised she had been concealing deeper feelings.

  I was sunk in gloom. Supposing the admirable plan to move to Cambridge came to nothing? Supposing the two of them went mad and married on an impulse? I prayed fervently for them to be delivered from such insanity, but in th
e silence that followed, the silence of God, I remembered Lewis talking not of Venetia but of the most important lesson that an arrogant psychic can ever learn. Twenty years fell away. I was back in 1968, a walking disaster who had finally found the mentor capable of training him, and Lewis was commanding: “Nicholas, say to yourself very calmly, very rationally: ‘I CAN BE WRONG.’ ”

  It was time to admit that I might be mistaken about the nature and potential of the relationship between Lewis and Venetia. Maybe they were destined for wedded bliss after all.

  But I doubted it.

  Thinking of wedded bliss reminded me of marital hell, and I was just wondering for the hundredth time what on earth I was going to say to Rosalind when I heard the bathroom door open and knew my ordeal was about to begin.

  III

  When Rosalind joined me in the living-room she was wearing a black skirt and jersey with a peacock-blue jacket. No jewellery. Hardly any make-up. She looked exhausted, but she still had enough energy to clasp her glass of white wine so hard that I feared the stem might snap.

  I said: “Ah. There you are. Right. Oh, you’re having a drink. Good. Excuse me while I just get one for myself.”

  Bolting to the kitchen I grabbed a Coke from the refrigerator and took a swig straight from the can. I’d broken out in a cold sweat. My heart was thumping at an unnatural speed. Somehow I got myself back into the living-room. I didn’t sit beside her on the sofa in case she felt threatened. Instead I dumped myself in one of the armchairs.

  “Busy day?” she enquired idly, making an enormous effort to be casual.

  “Uh-huh.” I did some more Coke-guzzling. “I went to see Clare. She recommended a cooling-off period for us both.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, so tomorrow I’m off to the Fordites for a three-day retreat and you can go back to Butterfold. I mean, you can go back if you want, I’m not trying to dictate to you, but I expect you’d welcome the chance to get back and I just want you to know that’s fine by me, I see now I was being very unreasonable, expecting you to leave Butterfold at the drop of a hat and come to live at the Rectory.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yes, so what I thought was we could stay apart, cooling off, until the boys come home for the holidays. Then we can put the problem on hold until term begins—we won’t say anything to the boys, we’ll just focus on giving them a good Christmas—and you needn’t worry about me bothering you, I’ll sleep in the dressing-room and you can lock the bedroom door every night, no problem, I accept now that the marriage has temporarily broken down.”

  This time Rosalind said nothing at all, not even an “oh” or an “ah.” Had I gone wrong somewhere? I tried not to panic. “But it must all be entirely as you wish,” I said rapidly. “Believe me, I’m not trying to impose a decision on you. We can talk about it all later, if you’d prefer, after the cooling-off period. In fact yes, I can see now that this would be best. Further discussion at a later date. When we’re calmer. We can have a mediator—go to Relate—do whatever you want.”

  “Hm,” said Rosalind.

  My nerve finally failed me. I was unsure whether it failed because of her reluctance to respond positively or because the hardest part of my speech was still to come. Abandoning the Coke I marched to the kitchen, grabbed a tumbler and filled it to the brim with the white stuff. There’s no doubt alcohol does have a calming effect in a time of fear. This was definitely a time of fear. Taking a deep breath I soundlessly recited Jesus’ words “Be not afraid” three times, swigged half the wine and returned to the living-room.

  “There’s something else,” I said. “Clare made me face up to exactly what I did last night. I see now that you didn’t want to have sex but I forced you to have it, I raped you, I messed around with your mind and abused you and behaved like a complete and utter shit. But now I want you to know how sorry I am—well, no words can really express the horror and shame I feel, I can hardly believe I did such a thing to the person I love best in all the world, and I don’t expect you to forgive me straight away but I’ll do anything to make the marriage come right, anything, I love you so much—”

  I broke off. The speech was degenerating into a rant which might upset her. I swilled some more wine and tried to work out what to say next. “Well, I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am,” I said. “I just wanted to make everything clear.” I paused again, waiting, praying, longing for a response which would give me a flicker of hope, but all Rosalind said in the end was: “I see. Thank you.” However, although she spoke with such formal politeness she didn’t appear to be either angry or revolted. Or was the politeness masking unprecedented depths of anger and revulsion? I nearly bolted to the kitchen for more of the white stuff, but before I could lurch into action Rosalind said abruptly: “Look, I’m sorry but I can’t face dinner with the ménage tonight after all—in fact I don’t think I can face any kind of dinner. I had the most enormous lunch at Fortnum’s today with Francie.”

  I was so startled that I was jolted not only out of the fear and shame generated by my confession but also out of the confusion and panic generated by the non-event of her reply. Blankly I repeated: “You had lunch with Francie?”

  “Yes, she was a bit depressed to start with but I cheered her up and by the end of the meal she was quite her old self again.”

  A horrific thought overwhelmed me. “You didn’t tell her about last night!”

  “No, of course not.” Rosalind stood up, retrieved the bottle from the fridge and refilled both our glasses.

  By this time I was beating my brains out trying to square this astonishing information with the bizarre scene witnessed by Alice on Monday night. Cautiously I asked: “Why did you have lunch with Francie?”

  “I often have lunch with her.”

  “But I thought you hardly saw her any more!”

  “Well … yes, for a time we drifted apart. But then we drifted back together again.”

  “You never mentioned that!”

  “No, but there were a lot of things I never mentioned to you. You weren’t around enough.”

  A silence ensued. When I could no longer stand the pain of listening to it I poured some more wine down my throat and said: “What do you think’s going on with Francie at the moment?”

  “Not a lot. She’s pretty damn fed up with Harry, but she’ll never leave him. Too much of a masochist.”

  “Does he beat her up?”

  “That’s odd—Lewis asked me that yesterday. No, the cruelty’s all verbal … Why are you both toying with the idea that Harry’s a wife-beater?”

  “We’ve no concrete evidence. But of course we’re going to wonder what’s at the root of her depression, particularly when she’s too low to face coming to work.”

  “Oh, I think it’s just mid-life blues.”

  “Yet she perked up, you said, towards the end of the lunch?”

  “Yes, by the end she was radiant, bursting with vitality! All she needed was a chat with her best friend.”

  “You mean it was she who suggested the lunch?”

  “No, I suggested it. I felt I needed a break from all the horrors.”

  “And she accepted without hesitation? She wasn’t antagonistic towards you in any way?”

  “No, of course not! Why on earth should she have been?”

  “Depressed people do behave erratically—”

  “Well, she wasn’t that erratic! I admit she was a bit slow off the mark when I issued the invitation, but that was just the depression making her apathetic.”

  “Yes, of course. How interesting. Lewis will be glad to hear she’s so much better. In fact maybe I’ll just go down and pass on the good news.” Knocking back the rest of my wine I headed for the door.

  “Oh Nicky, do apologise to Alice for me, please—I really am sorry to bugger up the dinner numbers yet again—”

  I muttered a word of reassurance and hurtled downstairs to the bedsit.

  IV

  Lewis was still resting. He had changed into
a heavy green sweater and a pair of grey flannels and was listening to a Bach cantata as he lay on his bed. He looked cross when I interrupted him.

  “This is the best bit, Nicholas. Sit down and keep quiet for two minutes.”

  I did as I was told. I was by no means indifferent to music, but given the choice I preferred silence, and on this occasion I tuned out the cantata in order to worry about Lewis. I was sure he was doing too much whenever my back was turned. Worse still I suspected he wasn’t obeying his physiotherapist and doing his post-operative exercises regularly. Lewis’s drive to treat his recent operation as a mere minor inconvenience was all part of his fury that he was now nearer seventy than sixty.

  The cantata concluded. Lewis sighed, opened his eyes and said: “Yes?”

  I said: “Francie’s not beaten up. She’s fed up. As a result, her acceptable admiration of me has spiralled into an unacceptable erotomania and she’s now showing signs of manic depression.”

  Lewis’s eyes widened. Sharply he said: “Not manic depression, Nicholas. She’s been a bit down because she’s realised that recently she made a fool of herself, but there’s been no plunge into a serious depression and certainly no corresponding manic euphoria—indeed I’d dispute that she’s clinically depressed.”

  “And the erotomania?”

  “Nicholas, this is a fishing expedition—you’re just flinging out these extravagant diagnoses in an attempt to find out what’s going on!”

  “You dispute the erotomania?”

  “Look, this is just a menopausal woman with an unhappy marriage! Obviously she needs help for her little compensating trips to fantasy-land, but I’m aiming to get her into therapy with Robin as soon as she returns to work.”

  “I think there’s something more sinister going on.”

  “Nicholas—”

  “Okay, try and wrap your mind round this one: Francie began her lunch-date today in a state of depression but ended up—quote—radiant and bursting with vitality. And you know who my source is? Her companion at Fortnum’s, Rosalind!”

  Lewis eased his legs painfully off the bed and sat bolt upright on the edge. “That’s not possible.”