Glamorous Powers. Susan Howatch
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fairy-tales, had always called Pussy-Boots. In my dream Betty was slopping some milk into a saucer for the cat and as she stooped I could see past the open neck of her nightgown. ‘You look like a cat facing a bowl of cream!’ she said laughing, and as I took her in my arms the ginger cat watched us, a stupid cat, not trained to be clever, but unfortunately I was away too much at sea to ensure his education.
‘You’re going to talk to me about that cat,’ said Father Darcy, walking into the scriptorium at Ruydale, and suddenly there was Whitby, proud arrogant Whitby, leaping through the window with an exuberance which made the novices laugh, and Aidan was saying: ‘I’m not sure I understand; I’m not even sure I want to understand; but whatever’s going on must stop.’
Then in my dream Ruydale dissolved into London and I was searching the Fordite headquarters for Father Darcy. I searched every room, floor after floor, but he had disappeared and finally I had to confess to Aidan: ‘I can’t go on without him. It’s too difficult.’ But before Aidan could reply in walked Lyle Ashworth, small and slender in an open-necked nightgown, and as she lay down on the bed I turned to Aidan to say: ‘I lied to Francis – I did have an erection after all,’ but Aidan had vanished and when I turned back to the bed I found that Lyle had been replaced by Betty. Betty had taken off her nightgown and the next moment I was consummating my marriage, sunk deep in the folds of the most exquisite pleasure, and yet all the time I was so lonely, so isolated, so ravaged by unhappiness and despair –
I woke up sweating.
The room was filled with the dawn light. For some time I prayed for the further revelation which would validate and clarify my vision of the chapel, but no message imprinted itself on my mind and at last, rising reluctantly from my knees, I trudged to the basin to shave.
XIV
I shall not record the mental torment of the next four weeks as I examined each of my interviews with Francis and lurched from confidence to doubt and from despair to hope. Suffice it to say that I meditated on my crisis as conscientiously as I could and somehow, amidst bouts of the most crippling anxiety, contrived to present a semblance of normality to my community as I went about my daily work. Day after day I prayed for a further divine communication, but God, the utterly transcendent God of Karl Barth’s repellent anti-mystical theology, appeared to have withdrawn from that scrap of finite time in which my soul was imprisoned and no matter how hard I prayed for a manifestation of his immanence I was disappointed.
In Europe God also appeared to be absent. The Germans slaughtered thirty thousand people in Rotterdam, bombed the Channel Islands and abolished the famous motto of France, ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’. In their shock and fear the British seemed to find such events almost impossible to digest; they twittered about tea-rationing (my drones were very cross) and talked righteously about the evils of the ‘chatterbugs’ who threatened the national security by their gossiping. But we all listened to Churchill with a new intensity. I fell into the habit of reading aloud his speeches, printed in The Times, to my men after breakfast; the national peril was so great that I did not think it right that they should be obliged to wait a full week before hearing the news in the Saturday recreation hour. Monks may live apart from the world but they do not reject it, and day after day we prayed for all those whose lives were being ravaged by the war.
However I was eventually diverted from this urgent work by the inevitable summons from Francis. Three weeks after my return to Grantchester I received a communication which read: ‘Please confirm that you will return to London on Monday to re-examine the matter which we discussed last month,’ and at once I sent an obedient message in reply.
The most arduous part of my ordeal was now confronting me.
I began to steel myself for the inquisition.
XV
‘So here we are again,’ drawled Francis, ‘in spite of Hitler’s attempts to interrupt us. I suppose that if the Germans invade they’d shoot all monks on sight? Atheistic Nazism combined with the German folk-memory of Luther’s repudiation of religious orders certainly doesn’t encourage optimism on the subject.’
‘At least you’d be spared the ordeal of interrogating me.’
‘So I would. But perhaps I’m to be spared it anyway. Have you finally succeeded in taking your mind out of those mystic mothballs and deciding your vision was a delusion?’
‘I’m sorry but –’
‘No, don’t bother to apologize. I never seriously allowed myself to hope that you’d walk in here, prostrate yourself at my feet and announce: “I was deluded.”’ Francis swept back his mane of silver hair and allowed himself a theatrical sigh of resignation. Then he said curtly: ‘Very well. Come back at four this afternoon and I’ll start the task of taking you apart.’
‘St John of the Cross even said of a nun who claimed to have had conversations with God: “All this that she says: God spoke to me; I spoke to God, seems nonsense. She has only been speaking to herself.’”
W. R. INGE
Dean of St Paul’s 1911–1934 Mysticism in Religion
I
‘Before I wheel on the rack,’ said Francis when we met five hours later, ‘I must give you the chance to rebut all the insinuations I made during your last visit, but please, Jonathan, please don’t offer me any fey mystical claptrap. I want rational propositions from you, not romantic waffle. Now first of all, what makes you think this vision was real and not a fantasy triggered by an emotional disturbance?’
Without hesitation I said: ‘Apart from the north light at the end there was no obvious distortion of reality – no six naked women, as you put it, dancing in the glade. If the vision had been triggered by a sexual difficulty I feel some form of sexual symbolism would have shown up.’
‘What about the rich woman’s bag?’
‘I don’t believe that was a sexual symbol. If it were then I suspect the lid would have been open to reveal a feminine garment such as a nightgown.’
‘Very well, but let’s stay with the subject of your sexual difficulties. I concede there was no sexual symbolism in the vision but that might have been because you’d obtained physical relief earlier that night. How can you be sure that the vision wasn’t triggered by a far more complex sexual malaise arising from a disintegrating adjustment to the celibate life?’
‘Primarily because I’ve been through much worse times without any vision being triggered. The truth is this difficulty with my celibacy wasn’t as bad as you’re trying to make out.’
‘And Mrs Ashworth?’
‘With all due respect I think you should guard against turning that particular molehill into a mountain. Obviously I find the woman more attractive than I want to admit and obviously I’ve been protecting myself from that weakness by stressing my dislike of her, but I’m not in love with the woman, I’m never likely to be in love with her and such attraction which exists is only of the most trivial kind.’
‘So might the ageing Antony have said when he saw the still youthful Cleopatra – but I take your point. And now we’ve reached the subject of ageing let me ask you this: why are you so sure that your current crisis isn’t the result of your panic when you awoke on the morning of your sixtieth birthday and realized old age was staring you in the face?’
‘There was no panic. I’m a mature man, not an elderly adolescent clinging to a lost youth! I admit I disliked the idea of being sixty, but what’s so abnormal about that? You yourself admitted that you spent three days sunk in gloom after your own birthday this year – how are you enjoying being sixty years old?’
‘Well,