Susan Howatch - Glamorous Powers

‘No. And I haven’t been hearing voices either. I’m not a paranoid schizophrenic’

‘The most difficult patients, as any doctor will tell you,’ said Ambrose, smiling at me, ‘are always the ones who like to run their own interviews and dictate the results to their unfortunate physicians.’ He stood up before adding: ‘However I have to admit that in my opinion you’re physically very fit for a man of sixty, and I’m not surprised you feel no older than forty-five.’

At last I was able to relax. ‘Thank you, Ambrose!’ I said, smiling back at him, but after I had left the infirmary I realized he had ventured no opinion on my mental health at all.

‘I’ve been reading your file,’ said Francis when I returned to his room at four o’clock that afternoon. ‘Of course I’d read it before – I plucked it from the safe as soon as the old man had breathed his last – but in the light of the present situation I find it doubly fascinating.’

Father Darcy, like all efficient dictators, had kept files on those subject to his authority so that he always knew who was likely to cause trouble. The information had been acquired not only from the regular reports of his abbots but from his annual visitations to their houses.

I said dryly: ‘I doubt if a fascinating file should be a source of pride.’

‘That shows a promising spirit of humility.’ Francis, entrenched behind his theatrical mannerisms, began to flick idly through the assorted papers in the bulging cardboard folder, and suddenly I wondered if he were feeling insecure, playing for time while he steadied his nerves. ‘The part I enjoyed most,’ he was saying amused, ‘was the section about Whitby the cat. Whitby! Was he named about the Synod?’

‘Of course.’

‘You’ll be surprised to hear Father Darcy gives him a favourable mention. “A very superior animal,” he writes, “much admired by the community.”’

I said nothing, but the mention of Father Darcy seemed to give Francis the confidence he needed and he embarked on the necessary speech. ‘This is how I intend to proceed,’ he said briskly. ‘Every afternoon at this time you’ll come here and we’ll discuss certain aspects of your situation. Let me hasten to reassure you that at this stage I’ve no intention of behaving like either a prosecuting counsel or a member of the Spanish Inquisition; I merely want to shine a torch, as it were, into various obscure areas to try to widen your perspective on what I suspect is a very difficult and complex reality. Then I’ll send you back to Grantchester for further reflection.’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘After a month of further reflection,’ said Francis, soothed by my immaculate docility and steadily gaining in confidence, ‘if you still feel called to leave the Order, you must return here so that I can wheel on the rack, take you apart and poke around among the pieces. It’ll be very unpleasant but I’ve no choice; I’m responsible as your superior for the care of your soul, and I can’t possibly release you from your vows until I’m absolutely certain that this call comes from God and not from – but no, we won’t talk of the Devil. Father Darcy would, but I’m not Father Darcy, and to be honest I think he was a great deal too obsessed with demonic infiltration and very much too fond of exorcism.’

This confession intrigued me. It was the first time I had ever heard Francis disagree with our mentor or hint at his own private spiritual attitudes. Cautiously I said: ‘Father Darcy was a psychic and it’s easier for psychics, I think, to talk symbolically of forces which they can perceive so clearly but which normal people find opaque.’

‘Oh, don’t misunderstand!’ said Francis at once. ‘I’m not one of those liberal theologians who cheerfully write off the Devil as passé! Obviously demonic infiltration exists – look at Hitler. But you’re not Hitler, Jonathan, and I think that any corruption of your call is going to come from the dark side of your personality within you, not from the dark forces of the Devil without.’

‘Father Darcy would say –’

‘Father Darcy would say the Devil could be at work in your psyche, but that would just be his old-fashioned Victorian shorthand for what you and I know to be the disruptive force of the subconscious mind.’ Francis, who had discarded his theatrical mannerisms as his confidence increased, now leant forward across the desk to hammer his point home. ‘So let me repeat: it’s not the Devil we have to fear here but a dislocation of your personality, possibly brought on by emotional strain or overwork or some cause which is at present hidden from us.’

There was a pause while I debated whether it would be wiser to make no comment but finally I was unable to resist saying: ‘A dislocation of the personality is by no means always incompatible with a genuine call. Indeed in some cases a call can’t be heard until some dislocation occurs to open the spiritual ears.’

Francis immediately felt intimidated. ‘I trust you’re not intending to carp and snipe at everything I say.’

‘No, Father, I’m sorry.’

‘It may indeed be the case that God is calling you by putting you under psychological pressure,’ said Francis irritably, ‘but how can we tell that until we uncover the exact state of your psyche and see whether the pattern reveals the hand of God or the self-centred desires of your disturbed ego?’

‘Quite.’ As I assumed my meekest expression, Francis suddenly realized that if he persisted in his ill-temper I could outflank him by taking a saintly stance which would make him look both petulant and foolish. His innate cunning triumphed over his insecurity; at once he altered course.

‘Once I believe your vision is a gift from God,’ he said with a smile, ‘I’ll be the first to shake your hand and give you my blessing. But meanwhile …’ He gave a theatrical sigh ‘… meanwhile I have a duty to be sceptical.’ Effortlessly he began to exude an aura of benign concern. ‘Now Jonathan, I’m not going to give you orders about how you should spend your time in between our daily interviews, but I do urge you to relax as much as possible. Ambrose thought a little holiday would do you no harm at all –’ This was the first proof I had that Ambrose felt ambivalent about my mental health ‘– so please don’t exhaust yourself in excessive spiritual exercises. Oh, and I forbid you to fast. I don’t want you having visions brought on by lack of food.’

The interview having thus been terminated on a relentlessly friendly note, I retired with relief to my cell.

My cell was in fact not a cell at all but one of the distressingly well-appointed bedrooms set aside for visiting abbots. It lay on the same landing as the Abbot-General’s sumptuous bedchamber, and faced west across the immaculately tended grounds which were bordered by a high brick wall. Our founder Mr Ford, an adventurer who had made his fortune from slave-trading before his miraculous conversion to Anglo-Catholicism in the 1840s, had lived in style on his ill-gotten gains, and his Order, supported from the start by the greater part of his massive wealth, had husbanded their resources with skill.

I have no wish to imply that there is anything wrong with a monastic community which skilfully husbands its resources; on the contrary, every abbot has a duty to make ends meet. But I found it unedifying that a religious order should spend such a large part of those skilfully husbanded resources on maintaining such a luxurious headquarters. I was offended not merely by the antiques in the Abbot-General’s office. The atmosphere of debilitating affluence permeated the entire house and even the novices were pampered by having linoleum on the floor of their scriptorium. As I returned to my grossly over-furnished chamber that afternoon I wondered, not for the first time, how I was expected to pray in it, and to counter my disgust I embarked on some alterations.