I experienced a sharp disappointment. In despair I said: “But I don’t believe in all that stuff!”
“I’m sure you’ll understand what I’m driving at if I translate it into a language which is more accessible to you. Each profession spawns its own language, doesn’t it? For instance, you lawyers often talk to one another in jargon a layman can’t understand.”
“Quite. But—”
“Priests are just the same. We have our special language and catch-phrases. ‘No demon can withstand the power of Christ,’ I said. But now listen to this: ‘No urge to self-destruct can withstand the power of the drive to integration when that drive is properly channelled.’ How does that sound?”
I stared at him. “Well, I can understand that sentence, of course. But do you mean—”
“I’ll tell you what I mean. Christ is a symbol of integration and wholeness. Demons are symbols of fragmentation and sickness. Human beings have an inbuilt capacity to repair themselves (which is always so useful to doctors) and an inbuilt drive to achieve what Jung called ‘individuation’ (which today we’d see as a state of well-integrated wholeness, a state of realised potential). This inbuilt capacity for repair and this inbuilt drive to be integrated have the power to triumph over damage and fragmentation.”
“Not when people die!”
“Even death can be redeemed, but what I’m primarily talking about now is the dynamic of being fully alive. I’m saying that if we can tap into this great inbuilt desire for healing and integration we’ll win out over the compulsion to fragment. Or to put the situation in religious language: there’s no darkness so dark that it can’t be redeemed in some way by the light, and no willed wickedness (such as Mrs. Mayfield’s attempt at mind-control) which can’t be beaten back by prayer to God in the name of Jesus Christ.”
“But I can’t pray!”
“Nonsense, it’s easy, children do it without thinking twice. It’s just talking to God—or to Christ. (Humans find it easier to talk to a man than to a great big indescribable entity called God.) All you do is—”
“But I couldn’t!”
“Oh, don’t be so feeble—surely a tough woman like you can talk to anyone? All you do is this: hold this little crucifix in order to centre yourself on what you’re doing, and then shoot off prayers like arrows. You’ll be tuning in to the great integrating principle in your unconscious mind and thus lining yourself up with the power which sustains all life everywhere. Just say: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, help me,’ or simply: ‘Jesus—help!’ He’ll get the message. He’s the integrating principle. Tune in to him— connect with your inbuilt drive to wholeness in the right way—and Mrs. Mayfield’s power to split you into fragments doesn’t stand a chance.”
I was silent. Lewis waited. I went on being silent and Lewis went on waiting, but at last I said slowly: “When I talk to him . . . will I feel a sort of presence?”
“You might.”
“A sort of unseen companion?”
“Possibly.”
“How would I know he wasn’t wish-fulfilment?”
“He’d surprise you in some way. He wouldn’t be quite what you thought you wanted. Maybe he’d even be very different from what you thought you wanted. But you’d recognise him ‘in the breaking of the bread,’ as we say. There’d be something about him which would ring a vital bell.”
“Such as?”
“It varies, but usually there’s a powerful sense of wholeness, the kind of completeness you feel when you’re deeply cared for and cherished. Love is the most powerful integrating force on earth.” He opened another drawer of the desk and pulled out a postcard with a printed inscription. “Here,” he said, “have one of these to help you along.”
“What is it?”
“A famous prayer called ‘St. Patrick’s Breastplate,’ which is excellent for concentrating the mind to repel malign attack. Read it in the night if you’re feeling anxious—oh, and make sure Alice shows you how to work the intercom. You can buzz me at any time during the night if you feel the need for reinforcements.”
“So that gets me through tonight. But what about all the nights after that?”
“Tomorrow we’ll do our stuff at the flat, and I think you’ll find not only that the atmosphere will be much improved but that the balcony will be a safe place again. However, to keep up the level of protection I’ll get our prayer-group to pray for you until you feel the danger’s passed. We often pray for those under psychic attack from people like Mrs. Mayfield.”
I was silent again, fingering the crucifix, but finally I slipped the chain around my neck and said: “I like straight talkers. If you could just remember never to treat me as some kind of ape who flunked a ‘homo sapiens’ rating, you and I could get along.”
“I’ll crank up my ancient memory straight away.”
“And tell Nicholas I’m sorry I zapped him just now. I do realise I was only dumping on him all the anger and frustration I was feeling about Kim . . .” I destroyed another Kleenex and held up the box. “Can I take this upstairs?”
“Let me give you a new one.”
“I’ve never known a house so stuffed with Kleenex!”
“Well, it certainly beats ironing handkerchiefs.”
He produced another box for me from some cache on the other side of the desk.
Then he took me upstairs to join Alice.
XI
The attic flat was large, freshly painted in that dreary colour magnolia, and carpeted with a boring beige woolly nylon product, but the modern furniture was brightly upholstered so the atmosphere was far from downbeat. I was hardly in the mood to spare much thought to the interior decoration but I was relieved to find I hadn’t been billeted in a slum.
“We refurbished the flat eighteen months ago,” said Alice after Lewis had departed. “It had seen a lot of sadness but Nicholas held a service of blessing in it and it got better. The curate used to live here but we don’t have a curate at present.”
“The flat’s been unoccupied for eighteen months?”
“No, there was a woman deacon who stayed for a time but she and Lewis didn’t hit it off so she left.”
I was shown a clean, neat bedroom with sloping ceilings, and when we moved back to the living-room she demonstrated how to work the intercom.
“I expect you’re sick of tea by now,” she said. “Nicholas is always pouring tea into his clients, but would you like some hot chocolate? I’ve got some delicious stuff which is only forty calories a sachet . . .”
It was a relief to postpone the moment when I had to be on my own, trying to sleep, and although I was too tired to talk much the silences were not uncomfortable. In her cherry-red dressing-gown Alice seemed cosy and comforting, effortlessly exuding the non-intrusive attentiveness of a skilled nurse with an ailing patient.
“Thanks for being here,” I said at last. “I should have thanked Nicholas too for his hospitality but I was too busy bucketing around like a menopausal harpy on uppers.”
“People in extremis often behave out of character,” said Alice with supreme tact. “I’m sure Nicholas understood.”
I put down my empty mug and started to fidget with the keys Kim had given me. Eventually I said: “What do you think of Eric Tucker?”
“Oh, he’s much improved! I like him now.”
“What was wrong with him?”
“Well . . .” There was a pause while Alice worked out how to continue being supremely tactful. “He had some financial problems which made him unhappy, and unhappy people are often quite difficult, aren’t they? But last year he went back to live at Gil’s vicarage—he’d lived there before—and that was such a good thing because Gil makes rules and creates structures for him, and I think that deep down this is what Eric wants. He needs order.”
“Order?”
“Yes, just like a spoiled child secretly does after being allowed to run wild. I suppose you could say Gil’s completing Eric’s upbringing.”
“Gil must be some kind of s
aint!”
“Oh no!” said Alice with enthusiasm. “He’s very controversial and always getting into trouble with the bishop!” She hesitated before confiding: “Gil’s gay.”
“Yeah. Too bad for us women.”
“Never mind, we’ve got Eric. Gil says Eric’s so heterosexual he ought to be adopted as a mascot by the anti-gay lobby at the Church of England’s General Synod.”
I stared at Kim’s keys and thought of Tucker.
Of course I had already worked out that I had to go back to the flat well before nine on the following morning. But I had worked out too that I was incapable of going on my own.
THIRTEEN
There is an added twist to the agony (of suffering) when, as so often happens, the suffering is connected with malice, selfishness, indifference, injustice, or some other form of evil.
DAVID F. FORD
The Shape of Living
I
Once I was in bed I grabbed the crucifix like a baby clutching a rattle and read the prayer called “St. Patrick’s Breast-plate,” but I was so tired that the words made no sense. I turned the light off but immediately switched it on again.
I decided I might try praying—but not just yet. That extreme measure could wait until I was desperate. Meanwhile I was hoping that my unseen companion would make himself known again, but although I did summon the nerve to close my eyes nothing happened so I assumed he was attending to people far needier than I was. I told myself I was fine, lying on the bed with my eyes shut. Sleep was out of the question, but people could survive without sleep for some time before they had to be removed to a mental hospital. Surviving the next few hours should be well within my abilities.
I wondered if Lewis was praying for me or whether he was now asleep. I thought he was probably asleep but gradually, as time passed, I became obsessed with the thought that someone was praying for me somewhere. Maybe it was Gilbert Tucker over in Fleetside . . . I thought of Gil saying: “It’s all right. You’re safe here. Come on in,” and the next moment, as I began to traverse the rim of consciousness, I knew that in the replayed memory lay the prayer which I had been too inhibited to articulate. I knew too, the split second before my companion fell into step by my side, that my prayer was going to be answered by someone who felt I was far too valuable to be neglected—and then as I once more rounded the curve into King Edward Street, my companion took my hand to lead me uphill again to the Cathedral, where the brilliant light blasted apart the darkness of Mrs. Mayfield’s velvety, voluptuous night sky.
II
I had set the alarm on my watch for six o’clock and the moment I awoke I sat upright, knowing I had a vital task to accomplish. I had to see those papers which Kim had been desperate enough to remove from the house at Oakshott. By this time I had realised that although I believed his horrific confession about Sophie, it did not relate in any way to the mystery of the blackmail story which both Nicholas and Lewis had found unconvincing.
I had already spent time worrying in case Kim had gone to Mrs. Mayfield to obtain the copy of his front door key, but I reasoned that he would not want to give me proof that she had had the means to achieve the final trashing of the flat. I thought that no matter how much he wanted to re-annex the files he would not turn up at the flat until nine when we had all agreed to meet there.
Tiptoeing to the bathroom I removed the crucifix from around my neck and washed myself all over as I stood at the basin. There was no shower and I did not want to wake Alice by running a bath. Later I borrowed her deodorant, which she had obligingly left on the bathroom shelf along with her other overnight essentials, but I was unable to use her make-up as her skin-tones were different from mine. However, I felt this misfortune had to rank as the least of my worries. Pulling Tucker’s card from the hip pocket of my jeans I padded into the living-room to the phone.
He answered on the first ring. “Yep?”
“It’s me. Are you asleep?”
“Don’t be funny, this is prime time! I’m working.”
“Oh God, I’m sorry—”
“It’s okay, just let me mentally climb out of my Spitfire—”
“I’m about to offer you another ride into the sky but not in a WWII plane. Can you face taking the lift with me to the thirty-fifth floor of Harvey Tower?”
“With exceptional ease. When?”
“Now. The trouble is I’m still too fluffed out to face that place on my own but I’ve got to go there to retrieve some vital papers. Can you borrow Gil’s car again?”
“Your chauffeur will be at the Rectory in ten minutes. Do I need to shave?”
“I’m asking you to be a pillar of strength, Tucker, not a snogger’s delight.”
“Too bad,” he said, and hung up.
III
In the kitchen I found a ballpoint pen attached to a block of paper inscribed “SHOPPING LIST,” and scribbled on the top page: “Alice— Gone home to pick up some stuff. Back soon. Love, C.” Having attached the note to the door of the fridge with a butterfly magnet I then withdrew to the living-room to watch for Tucker.
The elderly white Ford trickled over the cobbles of Egg Street a few minutes later. Noiselessly I crept downstairs. I was worried in case there was an alarm which I would not know how to deactivate, but to my relief I discovered in the hall that Nicholas was already up, a fact which probably meant the alarm, if one existed, had been switched off. There was a light shining beneath the closed door of his study. What could he be doing at such an early hour? But perhaps the mysterious activity was part of some clerical routine.
Noiselessly easing the latch away from the lock I stepped outside and shut the front door behind me with only the smallest of clicks before I paused to glance at my watch.
The time was twenty minutes to seven.
IV
“Let me give you a briefing,” I said to Tucker, the business language surfacing in my mind with a comforting familiarity. “There’s a problem with my flat. It keeps getting disarranged. The clerics have diagnosed poltergeist activity but I don’t accept this, (a) because it doesn’t accord with my world-view, and (b) because my husband admitted last night during a hellish conference at the Rectory that he was at least partly responsible. He also admitted he was aided and abetted by a truly revolting number who calls herself Mrs. Mayfield and who uses up people as fast as I’ve recently been using up Kleenex. Don’t ask me how my husband got involved with this old crone, who Nicholas tells me has a criminal record; it’s sufficient to state that he—Kim—refuses at present to give her up. Now, before joining me at the Rectory last night, Kim left two files at the trashed flat—or, to be accurate, a bilious-yellow file and a large brown envelope—and it’s those files I have to retrieve, but before you start worrying about the prospect of facing my husband in his pyjamas, let me set your mind at rest by saying he won’t be there. I insisted on taking his keys to stop him going back to the flat and destroying the files, so he’ll have spent the night in a hotel.”
Tucker made no comment on Kim but asked with interest: “What are the clerics proposing to do about the alleged poltergeist activity?”
“Various things. But there’s also another weird happening they have to take care of, and to do this they’re turning up at the flat at nine to stage some kind of religious production. I wasn’t too keen when this idea was first mooted, but the truth is the flat’s currently so uninhabitable that anything seems worth a try, even a procedure which doesn’t accord with my rational world-view.”
Tucker said carefully: “Does Nick know what you’re up to at this moment?”
“I left a note for Alice.”
“Okay, but when we get to the flat, let’s give him a call to say what’s going on. If this is a tricky case I’m sure he’d want to be kept informed.”
“It’s not worth a call, Tucker! We’ll be in and out of that flat in a couple of minutes!”
“Wonderful, but I don’t like the sound of Mother Mayfield.”
“Right now she’ll
be tucked up in her dinky little villa in Fulham with her grey wig hung up on the bed-post.”
Unfortunately I was by this time so relieved to have survived the night and so pleased to be junketing around with Tucker again that I never paused long enough to visualise an alternative programme for Mrs. Mayfield. If I had, I would hardly have pictured her snoozing in bed. I would have imagined her fully dressed and drinking herb tea as she plotted Kim’s next move.
V
In the garage below Harvey Tower I said to the attendant: “We won’t be long—where can my guest leave his car?” and the attendant directed us to an empty bay right by his booth. “That’s handy!” I said to him as I got out. “Can I have it again later?” And I explained how I would be returning with two clergymen. The attendant, suitably impressed, printed in his book for the attendant who would be taking over from him at eight: “BAY 12 RESERVED FOR TWO CLERGYMEN VISITING FLAT 353 (BETZ).”
“My stock’s gone up,” I murmured amused as I led the way to the lift-lobby, but Tucker’s attention had been diverted.
“Hey, look at all this!” he exclaimed. “What an evocative use of concrete—it makes me think of a WWII bunker!”
“That’s probably the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about the car-park level of Harvey Tower.”
Tucker was wearing blue jeans and a black leather jacket which was open to reveal a fresh-looking white T-shirt. The crotch of his jeans seemed to present a more worn shade of blue than was visible elsewhere, but jeans often look patchy in interesting areas, particularly when viewed in artificial light. His curls crept below the collar at the nape of his neck but were tucked tidily behind his ears, while his facial hair, which was busy converting itself from a designer stubble to an undesigned beard, seemed dark at a distance but more ambiguous in colouring when seen close up in the lift. The faint aroma of the T-shirt’s fabric softener reached me. It was mingling with the smell of macho mouthwash combined with something which might once have been extra-strong coffee.
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