The Wonder Worker

by Susan Howatch

  “Now look here, Nicholas. Try and keep this in perspective. What you did to Rosalind was morally wrong, no question about that, but you didn’t knock all her teeth out, did you, or force her to have sex with a dog? Or in other words, your behavior wasn’t so degrading, was it, that she ended up a gibbering wreck who required hospitalisation? If she went along with Francie’s suggestion about Stacy, that was her decision, made when she was very distressed but still sane, and you must allow her some responsibility for her actions.”

  “Even so—”

  “I think you should set Rosalind aside for the moment. She’s currently safe, back at Butterfold with her garden. And I think you should set Francie aside too. She’ll have her hands full attending to Harry. But the one person you can’t set aside is Stacy. You’ve somehow got to rescue him from the hell he must be in.”

  “Right.” I struggled to think constructively. “But how on earth do I do the rescuing?”

  “The real problem is the opening dialogue. After that you can bring in a mediator.”

  “Gil?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid it’ll have to be him, since he’s the one person Stacy trusts, but maybe he’ll surprise me by performing a pastoral miracle.” Lewis wiped the sweat from his forehead again and groped for another cigarette. “Incidentally, did Tucker offer you any advice when he spoke to you last night?”

  “Yes, he did,” I said, finally diverted from my despair. “He said I should do nothing about Stacy for two weeks.”

  “Two weeks?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “But what’s the point of the long interval?”

  “No idea.”

  We stared at each other. “I think he said something about giving Stacy time to get his act together,” I said at last. “He was glad I was going on retreat—and glad Rosalind wouldn’t be at the Rectory, yes, I remember that now—”

  “Well, that makes sense, but the two weeks on ice certainly don’t. Nicholas, I know you think I’m hopelessly prejudiced against Tucker, but even if he was radiating heterosexuality from every pore, I’d question that particular pastoral judgement. He doesn’t know Stacy well, does he?”

  “He does now—and I’m sure the right thing to do is to ask him to act as a mediator, but I still can’t think how we’re going to handle our return to the Rectory tonight. What in God’s name do I say to that boy?”

  We stared at each other again as we tried to imagine the unimaginable.

  VI

  “So this is what we do,” said Lewis after ten minutes of painful and erratic speculation. “We arrive home. I go up to the curate’s flat and tell Stacy you’ve cancelled your retreat, you’re back at the Rectory and you want to talk to him about Rosalind. If he’s innocent and we’ve been dead wrong in all our deductions, he’ll be astonished and uncomprehending. If he’s guilty, as I now believe he is, he’ll panic. I then calm him down by saying you’ve no wish to beat him up but you do want to see him. I float the idea that after this preliminary conversation a mediator should be present—”

  “I’m beginning to think we should skip the preliminary conversation. Let’s haul Gil over straight away.”

  “No, I believe that would be a psychological mistake, Nicholas. Stacy might not be able to cope straight away with an outsider being present—in fact he might baulk again at the whole idea of a mediator. You don’t want to look as if you’re strong-arming him into accepting this particular way forward.”

  “Okay, we keep the preliminary conversation. I say to Stacy—”

  “No, concentrate on what you don’t say. Don’t mention Francie—keep her right out of it. Don’t go into explanations about how you know what’s happened. Just focus on the fact that you want to do all you can to redeem the disaster by easing his distress and steering him back onto a positive spiritual path—focus entirely on your position as his Rector. Your aim should be to soothe him, convince him forgiveness isn’t just a Christian pipe-dream—”

  “But Stacy may actually want me to be angry with him, and if I just play the spiritual pussy-cat I’m going to sound false as hell!”

  “That’s true, but don’t forget your first task is to throw Stacy a lifeline as he wallows in his self-hatred and despair, and the life-line should clearly signal that you’re not going to play Pontius Pilate and wash your hands of him. You can certainly vent your anger later, but that must wait until there’s a mediator present.”

  That made sense. I felt sure now he was right, but the trouble was I also felt sure I wanted to take a swing at Stacy, maybe even beat him up. The idea of behaving like a saint and assuring him I only wanted to guide him back to the correct spiritual path seemed to bear no relation whatsoever to reality.

  “Nicholas, you’ve got to act! You can’t afford to dither around here playing Hamlet!”

  “The trouble is I feel more like playing Othello.”

  “Then stop thinking of yourself and start thinking about that boy! In fact the more I think of Stacy the more clearly I see that we have to act as soon as possible. Tucker may think this problem can be kept on ice for two weeks, but we know Stacy better than he does, we know he’s now reached the stage where he can’t work, can’t face anyone, can’t do anything except shut himself up in that flat—”

  “Obviously he’s in a bad way, but Gil may still be right in saying Stacy needs time to get his act together. If we were to leave him alone over the weekend—”

  “Nicholas, you’re adrift. You’re still not plugged in.”

  “But—”

  “Let me spell out how this hellish situation looks to Stacy right now this minute. He hero-worships you—and that’s an understatement—but by a succession of bizarre events which he certainly never anticipated and still can’t quite believe have taken place, he slept with your wife. He knows he’s betrayed his ordination vows but what to him seems infinitely worse is that he’s betrayed you. He’s now living in terror because he knows that once you find out (and he’s sure you will) it’ll mean the end of the affair—not the consummated fling with Rosalind but the unconsummated relationship with you. He’s feeling mad with grief and remorse, slaughtered by guilt, crucified by the very blackest despair—”

  I finally understood. Automatically I leapt to my feet and said: “Let’s go.”

  VII

  As soon as we reached the Rectory I rushed up the backstairs. Lewis, ignoring my order that he should spare the hip and stay on the ground floor, clambered upwards more slowly. The door of the flat was locked. I started to hammer on the panels.

  “Stacy!” I yelled. “Stacy, it’s okay—let me in!”

  There was no response. I rushed back downstairs, passing Lewis on the first floor landing, and retrieved the spare key from my study. By the time I returned to the top floor Lewis was there, waiting for me. His eyes were pitch-black in his white tense face.

  I flung wide the door.

  The living-room was empty. So was his bedroom. I started to open the doors of the spare rooms.

  “The bathroom,” said Lewis behind me. “That trap-door to the roof-space.”

  “Roof-space?”

  “It has beams.”

  It also housed the rope which we kept on the top floor in case of fire.

  “The door’s locked.” My scalp crawled. I was sweating. Rattling the handle I shouted: “Stacy! Stacy, open up—it’s all right!” But it wasn’t all right. It wasn’t all right at all. It was all wrong, and no one replied.

  “Kick the door in,” said Lewis. “I’d do it myself but—”

  “For God’s sake stop pretending you’re Action Man.” I kicked and shoved. In films people break down doors by just the tap of a toe or the shove of a shoulder. The non-realism is a form of poetic license. But this was the cutting edge of reality and there was no poetry here, just nausea, sweat and fear.

  “Wait,” said Lewis. “There must be something in the kitchen we can use to force the lock.”

  He went away to look. I grabbed a woo
den chair from the room next door and began to smash the panels. The wood finally caved in. Shoving my arm through the hole I turned the key and burst into the room.

  He was there. The rope had been fastened to one of the beams and he was hanging below the open trap-door.

  He was quite dead.

  VIII

  Lewis rejoined me. Eventually he led me away and made me sit down in the living-room amidst all the framed photographs of Stacy’s mother and sisters. The pictures of his sister Aisling’s wedding were still lying on one of the side-tables. The room was very cold.

  After a while Lewis got up and began to move around the room as if he were searching for something.

  “What are you looking for?” I said, but I knew.

  We found the note on the bedside table. The envelope was addressed to me so I broke the seal. I didn’t think the police would be too upset by that. So far we had disturbed nothing except the door of the bathroom, but I felt I was entitled to read a letter which was addressed to me.

  Stacy had written: “Dear Nick, I can’t go on, there’s no future for me with you and the Church, you’re the best priest in the world and that’s why I have to stop letting you down all the time, I should never have been a priest, I’m not fit, I’ve no calling left, I just hate myself so much, but please never let my family know what a failure I was, it would break their hearts. This way there’s a good chance they’ll never know, this way I’m doing them a favour, I’m acting out of love to protect them, it’s redemption, and although God will be very angry with me I think he’ll understand I did it out of love and he’ll forgive. I’m very, very sorry for everything—EVERYTHING—please ask Lewis to pray for me, I know I’ve no right to ask you. You had faith in me yet I turned out to be nothing but shit. STACY.”

  I read this letter aloud to Lewis because he didn’t have his reading-glasses with him. I was hardly able to read to the end. Afterwards I let the paper slide through my fingers to the floor and pressed my hands against my aching eyes.

  After a long time Lewis said: “Let’s go downstairs. I want to get my glasses and read the letter myself. I think he’s protected you but I want to be sure.”

  We went downstairs. While Lewis studied the note I made tea. It gave me something to do. I also needed another dose of tea and sugar. The shock was reaching me. The numbness had worn off and I kept shuddering with cold.

  “We must call the police,” I said, spooning sugar into both mugs.

  “Yes. But not just yet.”

  Automatically I said: “No cover-up.”

  “I was hardly about to suggest we dumped the body in the river! But we need to do some hard thinking, not just for the sake of you and your ministry but for the sake of the Church. It could mean the difference between a single paragraph in the broadsheets and banner headlines in the tabloids.”

  I knew this was true but I remained quite unable to see the way forward. “My brain’s seized up.”

  “Mine hasn’t. Suicide’s no longer a crime but the coroner could still ask some very awkward questions. Stacy’s protected you in this note by never mentioning sex, but you can bet your bottom dollar that the subject of sex will come up and when it does we’ve got to know what we’re going to say.”

  “You mean what we’re going to omit.”

  “No, we know what we’re going to omit: everything and anything to do with Rosalind. But if we get this right we can still respond to the inevitable questions with a succession of truthful statements.”

  “Can we?”

  “Well, no one else is going to bring up Rosalind’s name, are they? That means we won’t be asked directly about her, and if there are no direct questions—”

  “What about Gil? Of course he’ll want to protect me, but if the police go knocking on his door—”

  “Why should they? You and I are the only people who know he’s connected with this fiasco, and Tucker’s not going to go out of his way to break the seal of the confessional even though Stacy’s dead. He’ll stand by you, Nicholas.”

  But I was already surveying another minefield. “Supposing the press start digging and turn up details of Stacy’s affair with that man in Liverpool?”

  “No, that’s not a problem,” said Lewis at once. “The affair ended long before Stacy was ordained and so it couldn’t constitute a scandal for the Church.”

  “But once those homophobic tabloids scent a homosexual angle—”

  “I’m sure we’d survive because there’s no evidence whatsoever that Stacy’s had a homosexual affair since he became a priest. But what the tabloids absolutely mustn’t find out about is—”

  “—the episode with Rosalind.”

  “Exactly—and there’s no way they can find out about that, Nicholas. If Tucker, Rosalind, you and I all keep our mouths shut, there’s no one else who—” He stopped.

  I gasped.

  In horror we had both remembered Francie.

  IX

  At last Lewis said: “As things stand at present Francie too is going to want to protect you. We’ll worry about her later. What we’ve got to do now is work out our answers to the inevitable sex questions, and then call the police.”

  “We must tell Alice first. She’s going to be so upset. We can’t let her find out only when the police arrive.”

  “I agree. All right, you go and break the news to her while I write down a list of questions for us to consider. We’ve got to move fast now—if we delay too long in reporting the—”

  The phone rang. We both jumped. “Don’t answer it,” said Lewis.

  “It might be Rosalind.” I picked up the receiver on the sixth ring. “Rectory.”

  “Nick! Why aren’t you on retreat?”

  It was Gil Tucker.

  X

  I slumped against the wall. “I cancelled,” I said. For the moment I could say no more.

  “Maybe that’s all for the best—I was becoming increasingly worried about Stacy. Is he there?”

  “No.” I tried to say more but nothing happened.

  “Well, I’ve phoned him several times at his flat but there’s been no reply. So I thought I’d phone you—or rather Lewis, since I believed you to be away—to see if he had any idea where—”

  “We’ve just found him.”

  “You have? You mean he’s in his flat but not answering the phone?”

  “Yes.” I waited for him to acknowledge his worst fears before I confirmed them.

  “You don’t mean—you can’t mean—”

  “Yes. He killed himself.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Since we last spoke,” I said, “I’ve found out a great deal and I’m certain now I know what Stacy confessed to you yesterday.” I paused before adding: “I’m sure it concerned Rosalind.”

  The silence returned, a stricken silence, heavy with shock and grief.

  “Gil?”

  “Yes, I’m still here. Nick, if I’d thought for one moment that he might—”

  “Lewis and I knew him far better than you did and even we couldn’t get to him in time.”

  “But he promised—he swore he’d be all right—he gave me his word he’d do nothing before the two weeks was up—”

  “What two weeks? What was that all about? What was going on?”

  Gil said rapidly: “I took him to my doctor in Harley Street at lunch-time today for an emergency appointment.”

  “An emergency appointment?”

  “For the test. And you know what a long time it takes to get a result.”

  “You mean … are you saying …” But I knew exactly what he was saying. I knew that for the homosexual activist there was only one test which needed no qualifying description. I felt cold again, but much, much colder than I’d felt before. My lungs felt as if they were icing up.

  “Rosalind told Stacy she wasn’t sleeping with you, so I knew you were in no danger, but …”

  I ceased to listen. I had ceased even to think of Stacy and his former lover in Liverpo
ol. At that moment I could think only of Rosalind, and as I pictured her savouring her return home in blissful ignorance, I knew the escalating disaster had finally exploded into a catastrophe which stretched as far as the eye could see.

  Part Five

  ALICE

  The Cutting Edge of Reality

  We confess that there is no health in us and in doing so begin to find it. Elusive, intangible, always evading us and escaping us, it is our wholeness and our holiness.

  CHRISTOPHER HAMEL COOKE

  “Health and Illness, Pastoral Aspects,”

  an entry in A Dictionary of Pastoral Care

  15

  We all carry pain and “disease” in some areas of our lives but because inner pain is less acceptable and costlier to share, it is more often the physical pain and disease that is readily encountered and demands attention. Yet, on listening, we may find that the root of real distress and pain is not in physical illness but rather is held within the emotional, psychological, social or spiritual experience of the individual.

  GARETH TUCKWELL AND DAVID FLAGG

  A Question of Healing

  I

  It was Nicholas who broke the news to me. I was taking in the waistband of my best skirt and listening to the television. The news presenter was droning on about the usual global disasters, but my little living-room was warm and serene. Violent death always happened elsewhere to people I had never met, and the Rectory was an oasis of peace, immune from the carnage which raged in the surrounding desert—or so I had always thought until that evening when Nicholas came to tell me what had happened to Stacy.

  I knew straight away that something was wrong because no one ever disturbed me in the evenings unless there was an emergency, and besides, Nicholas was supposed to be away for the weekend. I had heard Lewis return to the house with someone half an hour before, but it had never occurred to me that the someone might be Nicholas. Normally at that hour I would have been in the kitchen cooking, but since Nicholas was supposed to be away and Stacy had retired sick to the curate’s flat, Lewis had given me the evening off.