Susan Howatch - Mystical Paths

I can just remember my mother’s old chauffeur, who died in 1946. The Rolls, which I can remember clearly, died – or rather, was retired with honour – in 1947. Those were the days of the Labour Government when the rich had to tighten their belts, so my mother economised by replacing the Rolls with a Bentley and not replacing the chauffeur at all.

My mother worked. That was very unusual in those days for someone of her class. She ran the Home Farm which formed part of her estate at Starrington Magna, and every morning she would drive away to her office. I would stand on the doorstep of our manor house with Nanny and wave goodbye. Naturally I had no idea what a privileged childhood I was having, and naturally I took my doting parents and my beautiful home for granted. Nanny tried to bring me up sensibly but I soon mastered Nanny. By the time I was five I had evolved into a miniature tyrant.

This unpleasant phase of my development was brought to an end when I was nearly expelled from kindergarten for fighting over a boiled sweet. I remember it as the first time my father actively intervened in my life. Before that he had merely appeared at intervals and enfolded me in unqualified approval. But now the approval was withdrawn.

All he said was: ‘This won’t do, Nicholas,’ and when he looked me straight in the eyes I suddenly realised that no, it wouldn’t do at all because nothing was more important than that he should remain pleased with me. This insight in turn enabled me to articulate a truth which it seemed I had always known but had never been able to put into words. I said: ‘You’re magic. You keep the bad things away,’ and as I spoke I knew that if he withdrew the protection of his magic anything might happen, anything, hobgoblins could haunt me, a witch could kidnap me, a monster could come down the nursery chimney and swallow me up. So I clutched the pectoral cross which my father always wore and I cried: ‘Save me from the Dark!’ – a plea bizarre enough to alarm my mother, but my father merely wrapped his mind around mine to keep me safe, patted me on the head and said: ‘The word you want isn’t “magic”. It’s “psychic”.’

I liked this word but my mother didn’t. She said sharply to my father: ‘Don’t put ideas into his head!’ but my father answered: ‘They’re already there.’

‘Nonsense!’ said my mother, and when she abruptly walked out of the room I realised that ‘psychic’ could be a dangerous word, risky, not acceptable by some people, definitely not a word to be used with no thought for the consequences.

I tried the word out on Nanny and received the firm response: ‘That’s not a nice word, dear, that’s peculiar and we don’t have peculiar things in this nursery.’

At kindergarten we were asked to write a sentence about our parents, and burning with curiosity to test my teacher I wrote: ‘Mummy is a farmer and Father is a sykick who saves me from the Dark.’ My teacher was appalled. In fact she was so disturbed that she even sent the composition to my mother, but my mother only commented briskly to me: ‘Silly woman! She might at least have taught you to spell “psychic” correctly before she had hysterics.’ And to my father she said: ‘I refuse to let Nicholas go peculiar. What’s all this rubbish about the Dark?’

‘It’s his way of referring to malign psychic forces.’

‘Well, I won’t have it, it’s bad for him, it’ll give him nightmares.’

‘But my dear Anne, you can’t alter the way he sees and senses the world!’

A flash of intuition lit up my juvenile brain. ‘I’m psychic too,’ I said triumphantly. ‘I’m just like Father!’

‘Oh no, you’re not!’ said my mother, magnificently normal, superbly sane. ‘One Jon Darrow is all I can cope with. Two would finish me off altogether!’ Then before we could get upset she kissed him, hugged me and declared: ‘You’re Nicholas. You’re not “just like” anyone. You’re you, your special self.’ And to my father she concluded sternly: ‘ No replicas .’

I asked what a replica was, and after he had given me the definition my father said: ‘But of course your mother’s quite right and you must become not my replica but the special person God’s designed you to be.’

‘Supposing God’s designed me to be exactly like you?’

‘Impossible!’ said my mother robustly. ‘That would be very boring for God – much more fun for him to create someone different. And Nicholas, while we’re talking of peculiar ideas, I think it would be very clever of you and much more grown up if you kept all psychic talk specially for your father, who understands such things. Other people don’t understand, you see, with the result that they become uncomfortable, and a true gentleman must always do everything he can to lessen the discomfort of others.’

I resolved to be a true gentleman.

And that was the beginning of my tortuous relationship with my father.

‘Beware of those glamorous powers!’ my father said to me years later before I went up to Cambridge. ‘Those psychic powers which come from God but which can so easily be purloined by the Devil!’

This warning I wrote off as an exaggeration, a typically Victorian piece of melodramatic tub-thumping. More fool me. Having noted the psychic affinity which formed the bedrock of my relationship with my father, I must now sketch my disastrous career as a psychic.

I followed in his footsteps by reading divinity up at Cambridge, but after my finals I decided not to proceed immediately to theological college to train for the priesthood. This decision arose out of a conversation I had with Christian and I shall describe it fully later, but at present it’s sufficient to say that at twenty-one I was tired of living in all-male ghettos and hankered to experience what I called ‘The Real World’. In consequence I wound up doing voluntary work in Africa, but within months I got in a mess with a witch-doctor and had to be flown home.

My father begged me to proceed without further delay to theological college, but I was determined to complete the two years I’d set aside for voluntary work; I felt the need to wipe out the failure by being a success. Accordingly I took a job at the Mission for Seamen, fifty miles from home on the South Coast, but again disaster struck: two sailors got in a fight over me and wrecked the canteen. In vain I protested to my supervisor that I wasn’t a homosexual and had given neither sailor encouragement. I was judged a disruptive influence and asked to leave.

Despite my father’s renewed pleadings I still refused to abandon my two-year plan but my third job also ended chaotically. I started work as an orderly at the Starbridge Mental Hospital, but before long a schizophrenic girl fell in love with me and slashed her wrists when I explained to her (kindly) that I was unavailable for a grand passion. She survived the slashing, but I was very upset, particularly when I realised the doctors were looking at me askance. Worse was to follow. Plates began to be smashed mysteriously in the empty kitchens at night, and when the senior psychiatrist asked with interest if I had ever been involved in the phenomenon popularly known as poltergeist activity, I decided it would be smart to resign before I was sacked.

At that stage I realised I had to do something drastic before my father expired with worry, so I headed for Starwater Abbey where I had been a pupil at the famous public school. Standing in the Starbridge diocese not far from my home at Starrington Magna, the Abbey was run by Anglican-Benedictine monks from the Fordite Order of St Benedict and St Bernard. My father had been a Fordite monk once, and as the result of his special knowledge of the Order he had arranged for Starwater’s resident expert on the paranormal to keep an eye on me during my schooldays. It was to this man that I now turned.