Capcir Spring (19 page)

John stared silently ahead for a few moments. Was that a description of Derek? One so barricaded against real involvement that his coldness was the strongest feeling you were left with after meeting him.

He replied, "I think you are very hard on your idea of what it is possible for a priest to understand. When detached from the world I believe that you can have a more objective understanding. I certainly have lived for most of my life believing strongly in the great value and indeed privilege of such detachment. It is a sacrifice we make and it can cause much pain but the rewards are immense Freedom from involvement with the emotional entanglements of the world gives one a rare and perceptive insight for looking at things as they really are. An ability too to get alongside and see things through the eyes of another. But having said all that I admit though that in recent weeks and months I have come to see that the detachment we pride ourselves on can often be a cop out. An excuse to avoid involvement in the very real decisions that people have to face where there are no clear cut rights and wrongs. Those times when the human passions and emotions dictate against what training, custom and belief indicate one ought to feel."

As Mary listened to John's unspoken words she thought, correctly as it turned out, that she was beginning to see something of the conflicts of inside the man.

They both seemed reluctant to pursue further the conversation at this stage and a comfortable silence fell between them.

Mary thought of the strange assortment of senior clergymen (and they were all men) with mixed motives who came to bring her support and comfort after James was committed and taken away for good. There had been the bishop, well meaning but barely able to articulate anything beyond the familiar platitudes that he was used to dishing out to all ladies of the diocese who doted on him. The archdeacon, who Mary had long known to be reputed to be a womaniser, had come and certainly exceeded his reputation. Was he, she wondered at the time and later, aware at all of the effect his advances had on women at their most vulnerable hours? Perhaps he and his easy charm took in some people. Perhaps the church would one-day wake up to what he was really like but then he was shrewd and professional and had influential friends in high places. He was one of the sorts of people who seemed to do what ever they wanted and always got away with it. And there was the vicar of her mother's parish who was as gay as a daisy but loved the company of young women. But there she couldn't relax in his company no matter how much he tried to be one of the girls for her. Perhaps John honestly believed that as a Jesuit he was different to the others. Or was the realisation of his being as all other men linked with his taking a long holiday abroad.

John during this time was thinking hard about how far he should go in telling Mary about himself. He had disclosed so little, and at the same time she had already disclosed so much about herself. Could he dare to tell her about Kate. Perhaps that would be the answer. Perhaps that would allow her to see him as he really was. It made sense. If he could share his past with her then perhaps if he knew that she knew about Kate this would tell the recesses of his stubborn sub conscious to stop confusing Mary and Kate. If he was no longer involved in hiding Kate from Mary then perhaps the living Mary could help bury the ghost of Kate who so often still seemed so real. If But not just yet. He was never good at conversations in cars. There was no eye contact. And he always felt afraid of the affect anything that provoked a reaction would have in distracting a driver's eye from the road. As a non driver he felt this extremely vividly and was disconcerted when taxi drivers chattered away endlessly to him.

They were now entering the outskirts of the village. "Do you fancy a coffee?" asked Mary, keen to re open the conversation on her home ground. "We'll go past my flat and I can take you up to your cabin later."

"Sounds an attractive idea" John replied, "But I'll walk home after as it is a lovely clear starlit night."

Mary felt peaceful in John's presence now. He was good company in that he demanded little of her and his presence made her realise how much time she had been spending on her own recently. Perhaps it was just this one thing that she missed most of all after splitting with James, a constant companion with which to share the minutiae of life with. It was not good to be alone.

As they sat coffee mugs in hand Mary asked, "How come you are taking a long break abroad. Let me guess. You are searching for a lost vocation? You no longer know whether there is a God or not and your Bishop told you to go away for a while to a lonely place as a kind of retreat to find yourself and encounter the divine."

John stared at the bubbles spinning in his cup where he had recently finished stirring and was grateful that he didn't have to search for an opening to explain himself. He took a deep breath and begun,

"Very close but not quite accurate. I haven't fallen out with God. I still know God as well as I ever did. My problems come from a much more human level. I am a Jesuit but haven't been a parish priest for a long time. For an number of years I have had a very specialised ministry in a counselling centre in an inner city area. It is part of the churches attempt to get relevant and meet the needs of the people. Anyway this all went well for a while and I was good at my job and we helped a large number of people and then I started counselling a disturbed teenage girl called Kate. Now Kate had many problems but inside, just occasionally she showed that she was a lovely and loving person. I did the inexcusable thing for a counsellor. I became emotionally involved with a client. A double taboo if you have taken vows of celibacy. We had an affair. I enjoyed it. I can't pretend it was against my will for I really thought that I was in love. And then we were discovered. And the full force of the Jesuit secret service came into force against me. I was taken away to a monastery and they tried to hush her up."

"Now when I was taken away I ceased to have any contact with or influence on her. I never saw her again. Perhaps if I could have seen her again we could have worked something out, But I wasn't allowed. She went over the top, but worse than she had ever done before. She came to the counselling centre one afternoon and smashed up the pot plants and magazine racks in the reception area. She terrorised the receptionists and threw a chair through the window into the general administrative office. If we had not been in an inner city area she might have stood on the street and lobbed bricks through our windows but they all had wire grills on. She then disappeared before the police arrived. But they of course all could identify her. She was a regular client of course. When the police went round to where she was living she had overdosed. It was a massive overdose so there was no hope I'm told. If the paramedics had reached her faster they might have saved her but they didn't. And that was the end of Kate."

"They didn't tell me for a week after this had happened because they were afraid for my mental state. I think they thought that I might do a Romeo to her Juliet and kill myself too. They kept me under observation for quite a while with the best spiritual head shrinks they have got all having a go at me. But I have been in this game too long. I know all the counselling techniques and ploys and none of them were able to get through to me. There was only one who understood me really and that was Derek, my superior. We go back a long way together. He saw through the game of non co-operation that I was playing so he sent me away here on my own to sink or swim. He knew that I am the sort of person who will only sort himself out in his own time and in his own way. So I came here. And that's almost the end of my sad and sorry tale. I'm trying to forget and understand the madness that has altered the course of my life. I only wanted to give her the love that she never had in her short and sad life but I ended up screwing her up so much that she destroyed herself. Perhaps she wanted me to be the loving father she never had but I couldn't. I became first of all flatterer then lover and then killer."

Mary remained silent for a while wondering if there was anything that she could say to be helpful or even appropriate to follow such a story. Her mind was a blur of whirring images and she felt strangely sorry for the man who thought he had found love but lost his life and called totally into question his vocation. At length she said,

"I sense that you are really full of guilt about this. You feel that it is your entire fault for what happened and the tragic way that it all turned out. But as the saying goes it takes two to tango. She has gone now and what you have told me indicates that she was a very mixed up youngster. She was seriously disturbed. You cannot blame yourself completely."

"But I do. I am still here. I am still reasonably healthy for my age. I was older, wiser and should have known better. I killed her. I killed her with my love."

"She was disturbed. She was irrational and went completely over the top. Its sounds to me that you were just the latest emotional prop that was taken forcibly from her and pushed her over the edge. Don't you find comfort and forgiveness from your religion"

"If my religious order hadn't taken me away and incarcerated me in that Gothic hell hole that they call a retreat house. If I hadn't let them and could have stayed with her then she might still be alive." John had ignored her interjection and carried on his tirade, "I now realise that she wanted me to be a father. Did she want a real father figure because her real father had raped her? She had very little respect for any man. And I am given the opportunity to be a surrogate father and so what do I do but do the same as her real father."

"Perhaps it was because of her real father that she looked on you in the same way. Perhaps it was that she could only see relationships developing in one direction with any man. It cannot have all been your fault."

"What can you know of the very depths of guilt. The feeling of complete betrayal of all you have stood for. It is a betrayal of your very self. The vow of celibacy, though not taken seriously by some, was something that I relied on to allow me to do things that others couldn't. People trusted me. They believed in me. They knew what I stood for behind that collar. I had my sexuality hidden away neatly behind the façade of priesthood and now that façade has collapsed under the power of my emotions. It is as if the whole central plank of my being has been taken away and I don't know what to do. Don't get me wrong. I'm not crying to have my lost virginity restored. I loved every moment of loving that I experienced. But without my vows I am nothing. You can't imagine what an impact such can have on someone who has been celibate for life. You forget what these organs of your body are for and then suddenly you realise they have a powerful control over your heart and mind and will and all reflection, rules, ethics, training and conditioning go out of the window. We are animals and I have learnt over these past months how strong the base animal instincts are. Celibacy never was a problem for me before but now I don't know. I really don't know. Day and night I am in torment. You asked me about my religion. I find that more depressing rather than illuminating when on the rare occasions it strikes home. I was reading a psalm earlier today in my daily office. It was full of wallowing in anguish and despair. In one sense it suited my mood but I couldn't say it helped me in any way.

"But there are also many psalms of hope."

"They seem just empty words. If my religion is going to mean anything to me then God is going to have to jump out of the printed page and grab me by the throat and say to me You have been a naughty boy but I'm still here for you. I still love you despite all that's happened and I want you for me. At the moment though I don't seem to be able to hear anything like that."

Mary looked thoughtful. "I think you need to reread Psalm no 32 after what you have said tonight". She smiled. He looked puzzled, unable to bring to mind the precise verse she was referring to.

"In the good early years of my marriage I was a model vicars wife. I attended all the daily offices morning prayer, evensong and often it was just James and myself chanting across the echoing empty nave. You remember many verses from the Psalms when you are chanting them week in and week out. I even believed them then."

It was late. The coffee was drunk. They were both exhausted from concentrating so deeply on each other's words. They both sensed that they could go no further together until they had both had time to consider all that the other had said. John thanked her and left, taking a big breath of fresh air as he slipped into the cool clear night. On the threshold they agreed the time they would meet so that he could come with her to help her final measurements in the morning.

Mary went straight to bed. What a strange day it had been. What a story he had to tell. Did that make him safe or dangerous? Does knowing about his past help her to deal with his present? But she was tired. The sleeping pill worked its magic and even though these thoughts were going round and round in her mind she soon was sinking deeply into sleep.

The beautiful clear night cleared John's head of its late night muzziness as he walked home. He looked up at the clear sky and saw millions of pinpricks of light twinkling. Another verse from a psalm came to his mind "when I look into the heavens, what is man... " What am I he thought. What is this strange existence that I have been living for all my adult life. Am I a priest or am I a man. Can I be a man and think as I know all men think and still be a priest. And what on earth does Psalm thirty-two have to say of relevance. He was more agitated by this than anything else at the present. Why was it that though he read a psalm every day of his life he now couldn't place what was special about this one. What was Mary trying to say to him?

John entered his chalet quickly and went straight for his Psalter and flicked the thin well-thumbed pages quickly until he came to Psalm thirty-two. Is this what she meant me to read he asked himself.

"All the time I kept silent, my bones were wasting away with groans, day in, day out; day and night your hand lay heavy upon me; my heart grew parched as stubble in summer drought. At last I admitted to you that I had sinned; no longer concealing my guilt, I said, `I will go to the Lord and confess my fault.' And you, you have forgiven the wrong I did, have pardoned my sin." He read on and one or two other phrases leapt off the page and into his heart. "I will watch over you." "Grace enfolds the man who trusts in the Lord."

He sat in silence perched on the arm of his chair where he had squatted as he dashed into the room and thought about the words Mary had pointed him in the direction of. These were verses about God granting absolution and a sense of peace to those that confess honestly and trust God. It contained nothing new or startling and yet tonight, after his conversation with Mary it felt somehow different. It almost felt as if she, a woman, had granted him absolution in some strange and mysterious way. She couldn't of course. Only God could grant absolution and God acted, as he had known from his earliest days through the intermediary of a priest. The very word priest means one who acts between God and humans. Had God used her as a channel, an intermediary. Had she been used perhaps even unknowingly as an intermediary of the almighty to convey a channel of his grace? He listened to the silence of the night and wondered. He certainly felt at peace. He felt more at peace than he had felt since, well since it all began. Was he experiencing forgiveness? But then did feelings really matter. He knew he was guilty and if he felt not guilty had he somehow escaped his responsibilities? He pulled himself up sharp as he realised the implication of the question he had just asked himself. All his professional life as a counsellor he had been involved in helping people to feel better about themselves. Edging people incrementally towards a change in self-image that would have a positive contribution to make to their lives. And now he had some inkling in his life of a changed self-image he doubted its reality. God's forgiveness that he had been pronouncing at absolutions for as long as he had been a priest must have really worked. Why then did he find it so difficult to believe?

Then a new thought struck him. Could he ever return to an all-male priesthood when he had personally experienced a sense of absolution through the agency of a woman? It was certainly far more than any of the blessed monks could do for him. It is strange yet he could not mistake the sense of inner peace and calm that had descended on him. Perhaps she was a Cathar priestess?

He slammed the book shut, shrugged his shoulders and decided that it was too late to be thinking clearly. Perhaps things would seem clearer in the morning. And he went to bed with very mixed emotions. He felt in many ways better than he had felt for a long time. It was as if a fever had passed and he was savouring good health for the first time in ever so long. But he was also troubled with a deep underlying sense of unease that nothing would ever be the same again. And the thought of that scared him like nothing had ever scared him before.

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