The Wonder Worker (49 page)

Suddenly I found I could imagine the previously unimaginable: I could see myself having a complete mental breakdown and losing all
control over my life indefinitely as Nicky signed the papers which would commit me to an asylum. I could even hear him say: “Darling, I’m doing this because I love you and because I know you love me too …”

It was the ultimate nightmare scenario.

I thought: I can’t live like this, I can’t live with this constant fear, I can’t live with the vile memory of last night and the crucifying dread that he might somehow manage to abuse me again.

Then I thought: why the hell should I live in such torment? And deep down in my mind the anger ignited again at last, the anger which this time was going to empower me.

I reminded myself that I’d been tricked and violated. I reminded myself that I wasn’t responsible for anything I’d done after my mind had been hijacked. I reminded myself that what I had to do now was not to turn my anger inward so that I drowned in guilt and shame but to turn my anger outwards until it was focused on the correct target.

Aloud I said very clearly in the quiet room: “That bastard deserves to be punished for what he did.” And the next moment I had understood that what I truly wanted was not revenge but justice. A just punishment would ensure that Nicky stopped playing the wonder worker, a just punishment would set me free to live in peace, and a just punishment was what I now had to serve up with every ounce of strength and ingenuity I still possessed.

Someone knocked on the front door of the flat.

I jumped, but in fact I wasn’t entirely surprised. Luck was going to start running my way now, I was sure of it, just as I was sure that I wasn’t going to sit back and wait for justice to be dumped in my lap.

Screw morality, I told myself fiercely, and who cares about being naff? Screw scruples, screw convention, screw the spirit that built the Empire, screw every damn thing that stands in the way of justice! And above all, screw being a victim! When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

I opened the door.

“Hi!” said Stacy, bright-eyed and bouncy, like a friendly puppy. “You know you said yesterday morning that you wanted to inspect my flat? Well, you can inspect it now if you like, and then I could show you the pictures of my sister Aisling’s wedding!”

I never hesitated. “Lovely!” I exclaimed. “Can’t wait to see them!” And leaving the flat without a backward glance I set off on my journey out of the frying-pan into the fire.

Part Four

NICHOLAS
The Escalating Disaster

Judgment, properly understood, is the logical consequences of the choices we make. So the Christian counsellor does not himself judge. He knows that he too is under judgment—having to live with the consequence of the exercise of his own free will.

CHRISTOPHER HAMEL COOKE

Healing Is for God

I

I wrecked
my marriage on Wednesday the twenty-third of November, 1988. Afterwards I slept for six hours. Wrecking things is an exhausting occupation. Nothing life-enhancing about it at all.

At half-past five the next morning I awoke and realised I was up shit creek. I knew the marriage could be fixed. That went without saying, since the alternative was inconceivable, but meanwhile it was shredded. For a time I pretended I was hooked up with God and engaged creatively in prayer. Then at six, when no further pretence of this kind was possible, I abandoned my study and knocked on Lewis’s door.

Lewis always arose before six but never dressed until seven. On that morning he was looking disreputable in his thirty-year-old, custom-made, claret-coloured dressing-gown which was frayed at the cuffs and mended at the elbows with iron-on black patches. There were no buttons any more, and above the slackly fastened belt I could see the message inscribed on the T-shirt he was wearing instead of pyjamas.
The words read:
MY
BARK
IS
WORSE
THAN
MY
BITE
. The T-shirt had been a gift last Christmas from the church helpers.

I said: “I’ve got a problem.”

Lewis raised an eyebrow but waved me without hesitation across the threshold. No astronaut lost in space could have had a calmer response from Mission Control.

There was a small table by one of the windows, and I slumped down on a chair there. The big double-room was crammed with furniture. In one half a wide bed jostled for space with a Victorian wardrobe, a tallboy and a prie-dieu, while in the other half the table with its two chairs stood cheek by jowl with a desk, a couple of armchairs, a matching pair of bookcases and modern shelving designed to hold his CDs, his LPs and even his ancient 78s; there was no television but plenty of hi-fi. In front of the prie-dieu was a miniature altar adorned with two brass candlesticks and a cross, and on the wall above this arrangement hung an icon of the Virgin and Child. Lewis liked icons. He kept several smaller ones dotted around alongside photographs of his family. In the centre of the bedroom mantelshelf was the photograph of his great-uncle, Cuthbert Darcy, shaking hands with Archbishop Davidson shortly after the First World War. Father Darcy was revealed in this picture as a silver-haired, squarely built adventurer with a vulpine look. Lewis had now reached the age when this description also fitted him.

“So?” he said, sitting down opposite me at the table and reaching for his packet of cigarettes.

“There was a scene last night with Rosalind.”

Lewis could hardly have looked less surprised. I watched him as he lit the weed and inhaled some smoke.

“I think I may have taken the wrong line,” I said. “In fact I know I did. In fact I realise now I made a monumental balls-up. But it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Recognising the classic epitaph on a catastrophic decision, Lewis turned a shade paler.

“Rosalind said she couldn’t live at the Rectory after all, she wanted to go home, wanted a divorce. Immediately it seemed plain to me that this rabid individualism of hers had finally spun out of control and was now a destructive force which had to be neutralised straight away. In other words,” I said, watching the smoke drift towards the nicotine-stained ceiling, “I decided she was someone who required radical healing.”

I paused in case he wanted to make a comment. None came.

“The real Rosalind,” I said, ploughing on as he took another drag of the weed, “the Rosalind who still exists beneath this false persona which has been growing like a cancer on her personality, still loves me. I know that. So I reasoned that if I were to bypass the false persona I’d be able to prove to her that the desire for divorce was madness. I figured this would be a valid path to healing and wholeness: excise the cancer, heal the damage with love, enable Rosalind to develop a new integration. It all seemed to make sound clinical sense. The therapy, in its own way, would be a form of deliverance from this spiritual sickness which was oppressing her.”

“Nicholas,” said Lewis, and I knew the hair was standing on end at the nape of his neck, “what exactly did you do to that woman?”

“Well, I … well, this isn’t going to sound too good, but I administered a mild form—a very mild form—of hypnotherapy. I mean, she was barely under. I mean, I just wanted to make it crystal clear that she loved me and I loved her and—”

“Are you seriously trying to tell me—”

“All right, I know it was a risk, but I thought the risk was worth taking! I thought the hypnotherapy was a valid tool in the circumstances!”

“Nicholas, I just can’t believe I’m hearing this.”

“Okay, okay, okay, I made a mistake! I got things a bit wrong. Well, very wrong. I know that, because the treatment didn’t work. Yet at the time—”

“Wait. I want to make sure I haven’t misunderstood what happened. Are you saying you hypnotised Rosalind in order to have sex with her?”

“No, no, no! I hypnotised Rosalind in order to excise the cancer on her personality and uncover her true self! Then we had sex. Well, of course we did. Once she realised she still loved me, she—”

“But what about when the hypnosis wore off?”

I shifted restlessly in my chair. I tried to frame a sentence but no pattern of words seemed right.

“Nicholas?”

I abandoned the attempt to form a pleasing verbal pattern. “She vomited,” I said. I was no longer gazing at the smoke. I was staring at a patch of worn carpet. “I found vomit later on the rim of the lavatory bowl. After the vomiting she had a bath, a long one. I waited outside the bathroom but when she came out she didn’t want to talk.
She just said I’d been silly but it was all forgiven and forgotten. Then she went to Benedict’s room and locked herself in. Before that she’d indicated she was very angry. That was when I realised I’d made a big mistake, but of course it’s just a temporary setback. I know she loves me, and once she accepts that the hypnotherapy was a valid medical procedure adopted with her best interests in mind—”

Lewis grabbed his crutches and stood up. Moving awkwardly to the phone he picked up the receiver and held it out to me. All he said was: “Phone your spiritual director.”

“Does that mean—are you trying to tell me—”

“You’re an emergency case, Nicholas. You need help without delay.”

II

After
a profound silence I said doggedly: “I’m prepared to admit I took a risk which didn’t come off. I’m prepared to admit I was too emotionally involved to attempt to heal her. I’m prepared to admit that as the result of this mistake my marriage is in a bigger mess than it was before. But what I’m not prepared to admit is that Rosalind doesn’t love me and that the marriage is washed up.”

“Nicholas, if I attempted any comment here I’d only be trespassing on your spiritual director’s territory. Phone her.”

There was another profound silence before I said: “I’m not sure I can talk to Clare about this.”

Lewis slammed down the receiver and started to radiate belligerence. “So my worst fears are confirmed—you have no-go areas with your spiritual director! Well, of course I always did think it was the biggest possible mistake for a man like you to see a female about matters which are of such crucial importance—”

“Oh, sod off!”

“No, I won’t sod off! You’re being driven by pride! You can’t bear the thought of this woman seeing you in an unattractive light! You want her to dote on you just as all the other women do—you want cosy little chats on prayer and soapy little compliments about how spiritually splendid you are, but let me tell you this: if Great-Uncle Cuthbert were here in this room with us—”

“Oh, sod off about Father Darcy!”

“—he’d say your reluctance to see your spiritual director was very unedifying, indicative of severe spiritual problems, and he’d be right.
Nicholas, if you really feel you can’t talk to that woman about the decisions you made last night—decisions which call into question not only your judgement as a healer but your present fitness to work as a priest—”

“No need to exaggerate!”

“I’m not exaggerating! Moreover, let me make it crystal clear to you that if you attend mass at eight I shall refuse you the Sacrament!”

“Now you’ve gone completely over the top!” I said in disgust, but by this time I was disorientated, as if I’d somehow wound up driving in France without crossing the Channel.

“I may have gone over the top,” Lewis was saying furiously, “but you’ve hit rock-bottom! Now go and see that woman, and if I find when you get back that she hasn’t succeeded in banging some spiritual sense into your head, I’ll—”

“Could you kindly stop referring to my spiritual director as ‘that woman’? Her name’s Sister Clare Veronica.”

“I don’t care if her name’s Mother Teresa, she’s no damn use here—why, she can’t even hear your formal confession! If you’d only go for spiritual direction to a priest of the Church of England instead of pitter-pattering around with this Roman nun—”

“Wake up! It’s 1988! We don’t make nasty remarks about Roman Catholics or women any more!”

“I wouldn’t have made any remarks, nasty or otherwise, about your nun if you hadn’t said straight out that you couldn’t talk to her about this!”

“Okay, you win, I’m going. I’ll see Clare and tell her everything.”

Lewis sagged with relief. The verbal bashing could now be terminated. I liked the way he gave me a verbal bashing whenever he thought it necessary. It made me feel safe. All healers need to be slammed back on course occasionally. Particularly when they’re up shit creek without a paddle.

Of course the old boy had lathered himself into the most unnecessary sweat and of course he had made a number of statements which could only be classed as exaggerations, but basically he had given me the right advice. I had to take action before the acute anxiety about my private life affected my ministry, and taking action meant having the humility to tell my spiritual director I’d made a first-class balls-up. Then we’d work out what to do to put matters right. Clare would be sensible and sympathetic, I had no doubt of that. Her suggestions were certain to be helpful.