Читать книгу Glamorous Powers - Susan Howatch - Страница 30

‘Once upon a time,’ said Francis, ‘there was a hero, but he wasn’t a prince as most heroes are in fairytales; he was a monk. At his christening long before he became a monk, two fairies were present. The good fairy gave our hero a range of unusual gifts which would one day make him an outstanding monk, but the bad fairy made him proud, arrogant, stubborn, wilful and opinionated. Our hero grew up and had an interesting career in the Church but it was blighted because despite his gifts the bad fairy’s curse made him unable to develop them to the full. However when he at last became a monk the miracle happened and he met his fairy godfather, the godfather who knew how to wave the magic wand so that all those nasty qualities bequeathed by the bad fairy could finally be overcome.

‘Our hero endured many vicissitudes but thanks to his fairy godfather, who constantly waved the magic wand, our hero flourished, became happy in his new life and eventually allowed himself to hope that he might climb right to the top of the monastic tree. But then one day a terrible thing happened: the fairy godfather retired to live in fairyland, and our hero suddenly found himself not only abandoned, deprived of the magic wand, but also blocked from reaching the top of the monastic tree.

‘Because he was a good monk he did his best to go on as usual, but slowly the bad fairy tiptoed back into his life and all those unfortunate flaws in his personality began to emerge again. Our hero became restless and dissatisfied. He fought to overcome these feelings by diverting himself with hard work, but this only made him exhausted and once the exhaustion began he slipped into a depression. Then slowly, very slowly, as life in the monastery became increasingly dreary, he began to think how nice it would be to abandon the soporific routine of his monastic life and ride off bravely, just as all heroes should, to join the great crusade against the Devil which was currently being waged in the world beyond the walls of his cloister.

‘But of course he knew he couldn’t leave the Order just to satisfy his own desires so he slogged heroically on – until a really terrible thing happened, so terrible that it sent him into a panic. He had a birthday, a particularly nasty birthday for a man, the sort of birthday which made him realize he wasn’t just middle-aged any more, he was OLD. And before he could stop himself he was thinking in terror: I’m old, I’ve got nothing to look forward to except a few more years of living in this dreary backwater and I can’t bear it, I’ve got to get out, I’ve got to live by joining in the Crusade somehow and proving I’m not as old as the calendar says I am! Because he was such a good monk he did attempt to suppress this thought but at that moment the bad fairy pounced, sneaking into his subconscious and showing him the perfect way to escape from his dilemma. And on the morning after that terrible birthday he had a beautiful vision, just as beautiful as any vision from God should be, so beautiful that he had no doubt at all, in his pride and arrogance, that he was being called to leave the Order.’

Francis stopped speaking. With a supreme effort of will I maintained my silence, while far away on the mantelshelf the hideous china clock ticked so abrasively that I longed to smash it to pieces.

‘Now, Jonathan,’ said Francis, smiling at me with great charm, ‘having, I trust, soothed your nerves by spinning you that quaint little tale which of course you’ll deny has any relevance to your current situation, I shall conclude this interview by asking you to meditate on the following questions: how vulnerable are you as a monk now that you’ve been deprived of your mentor? How vulnerable are you as a man who’s just turned sixty? Why did you so fiercely deny to Ambrose that you might be seriously depressed? Why did you resent Ambrose asking about your age? Why, when Ambrose began to talk about carnal matters, were you first withdrawn, then evasive and finally downright annoyed? Why have you been so busy insisting both to Ambrose and to me that everything in the garden’s lovely when it’s quite obvious that some very nasty weeds have begun to flourish in the flower-beds? Forget that pride of yours for a moment, Jonathan! Try and see yourself for once as the, vulnerable man you really are instead of as the superhuman mystic whom your vanity requires you to be – and then perhaps we may have some hope of unravelling this most complex of mysteries … Now go away, please, and when you return here tomorrow I trust you’ll have made up your mind to display very much more honesty and infinitely more humility than you’ve deigned to display so far.’