Читать книгу Glamorous Powers - Susan Howatch - Страница 13

Neither Lyle nor Martin replied to my letters but when Dame Veronica wrote to say that Lyle had visited her I realized with relief that my counsel had not been ineffective. However I continued to hear nothing from Martin and soon my anguish, blunting my psyche, was casting a stifling hand over my life of prayer.

By this time I had exhaustively analysed my vision and reached an impasse. I still believed I had received a communication from God but I knew that any superior would have been justifiably sceptical while Francis Ingram would have been downright contemptuous. It is the policy of the religious orders of both the Roman and the Anglican Churches to treat any so-called vision from God as a delusion until proved otherwise, and although I was a genuine psychic this fact was now a disadvantage. A ‘normal’ man who had a vision out of the blue would have been more convincing to the authorities than a psychic who might be subconsciously manipulating his gift to reflect the hidden desires of his own ego.

I wrote yet again to Martin and this time, when he failed to reply, I felt so bitter that I knew I had to have help. I could no longer disguise from myself the fact that I was in an emotional and spiritual muddle and suddenly I longed for Aidan, the Abbot of Ruydale, who had looked after me with such wily spiritual dexterity in the past. As soon as I recognized this longing I knew I had to see him face to face; I was beyond mere epistolary counselling, but no Fordite monk, not even an abbot, can leave his cloister without the permission of his superior, and that brought me face to face again with Francis Ingram.

Pulling myself together I fixed my mind on how comforting it would be to confide in Aidan, and embarked on the letter I could no longer avoid.

‘My dear Father,’ I wrote, and paused. I was thinking how peculiarly repellent it was to be obliged to address an exact contemporary as ‘Father’ and absolutely repellent it was to be obliged to address Francis as a superior. However such thoughts were unprofitable. Remembering Aidan again I made a new effort to concentrate. ‘Forgive me for troubling you,’ I continued rapidly, ‘but I wonder if you’d be kind enough to grant me leave to make a brief visit to Ruydale. I’m currently worried about my son, and since Aidan’s met him I feel his advice would be useful. Of course I wouldn’t dream of bothering you with what I’m sure you would rank as a very minor matter, but if you could possibly sanction a couple of days’ absence I’d be most grateful.’ I concluded with the appropriate formula of blessings and signed myself JONATHAN.

He replied by return of post. My heart sank as I saw his flamboyant handwriting on the envelope, and I knew in a moment of foreknowledge that my request had been refused. Tearing open the letter I read:

‘My dear Jonathan, Thank you so much for your courteous and considerate letter. But I wonder if – out of sheer goodness of heart, of course – you’re being just a little too courteous and a little too considerate? If you have the kind of problem which would drive you to abandon your brethren and travel nearly two hundred miles to seek help, I suggest you journey not to Ruydale but to London to see me. I shall expect you next week on Monday, the seventeenth of June. Assuring you, my dear Jonathan, of my regular and earnest prayers …’

I crumpled the letter into a ball and sat looking at it. Then gradually as my anger triggered the gunfire of memory the present receded and I began to journey through the past to my first meeting with Francis Ingram.