Читать книгу Glamorous Powers - Susan Howatch - Страница 49

‘Curiosity stirred in my mind this morning, Jonathan, and it occurred to me to wonder what you’ve been doing since we last met four days ago. Any more enthralling psychic dramas?’

‘No, Father. I’ve been helping Edward to make an altar-table.’

‘Maybe I can solve your entire problem by ordering you to remain here as a carpenter. Obviously the strain of being an abbot sent you off your head.’

‘Naturally I shall obey any order you care to give me, Father.’

Francis made a noise which sounded like ‘Arrrgh!’ and slumped back in his chair. ‘Very well, Jonathan, let’s have a truce. Sit down.’

Once more we sat facing each other across his desk. I was beginning to feel tense again although the relaxation provided by the carpentry had strengthened me mentally, just as Francis had no doubt intended; a nervous collapse would only have made the task of discernment more protracted. Perhaps he had also intended to strengthen me mentally by severing me from the outside world; I had received no invitation to ‘listen in’ to the wireless which had finally been acquired to give him immediate news of the continuing crisis, and I had been granted no access to The Times. However fortunately for my sanity the monastic grapevine was active. The postman and the milkman were clay in the hands of the doorkeeper, who with impressive journalistic skill jotted down a few pertinent sentences and delivered the scrap to the kitchens. It usually reached the workshop shortly before the office at noon.

‘I’ve reached the conclusion that we must make a completely different approach to this problem of yours,’ Francis was saying. ‘As things stand we’re now firmly entrenched behind fixed positions and no further progress is possible, so we must abandon our survey of the recent past, I think, and turn to the more distant past in our quest for enlightenment.’

Dutifully I said: ‘Yes, Father,’ and assumed an interested expression.

‘What I now want to do,’ pursued Francis, changing the nib of his pen, ‘is to compare your new alleged call to leave the Order with your old call to enter it and uncover the common denominators.’

I was sufficiently startled to exclaim: ‘But there aren’t any!’ However I added at once: ‘I’m sorry. That’s not a helpful attitude and I must do my best to be more constructive.’

Francis said after an eloquent pause: ‘Thank you, Jonathan.’ Throwing the old nib in the wastepaper basket he dipped his pen in the ink and wrote at the top of a new page of foolscap: ‘THE CALL TO BE A MONK’. Then he undid the ribbon which bound my file and opened the folder to reveal the earliest entry.

‘The first point of interest about your original call,’ he said, ‘is that it’s poorly recorded, but I suspect I know why. You were accepted as a postulant by your predecessor in the Abbot’s chair at Grantchester, and we all know now that dear old James Reid, God rest him, was so soft-hearted that he welcomed into the Order almost anyone who knocked on his door. I’d wager your call was never comprehensively investigated. In the end that didn’t matter, since your call was genuine, but no doubt when you quickly became so disruptive poor James thought he’d made a disastrous mistake.’

I felt obliged to say: ‘He did stand by me – even when I came to blows with the Master of Novices James resisted the demands that I should be thrown out. When he called in Father Darcy it wasn’t because he wanted to get rid of me but because he thought the poltergeist activity demanded a first-class exorcist.’

‘How Father Darcy must have enjoyed himself! But as soon as he met you, he knew James was right about your potential, didn’t he? So he didn’t investigate your call in detail either. He was much too busy shaping your future to waste time burrowing into your past.’ Francis picked up a page from the file and added: ‘Let me read you part of James’ opinion recorded after his preliminary interview with you in 1923 when you were still outside the Order. He writes:

‘“Jon tells me that he’s wanted to be a monk ever since his wife died in 1912. He loved his wife very dearly and they had nine happy years of marriage which were blessed by the gift of two children: Ruth (born 1904) and Martin (born 1905). Jon is clearly devoted to his children and during the eleven years since his wife died he has worked hard to support them even though his call to the cloister was becoming increasingly strong. He tells me that despite his happy marriage he realized that a life of domesticity, charming and rewarding though it might be in many ways, proved difficult to combine with his unusual and distinctive spirituality, and when his wife died he knew he must remain celibate in order to serve God best. He is also convinced that in the world he will always be tormented by the temptation to marry to satisfy his carnal inclinations, and he believes that only in a monastery will he be able to serve God without distraction and develop his spiritual gifts to the full. In my opinion he is patently sincere, mentally well-balanced despite his psychic powers and is obviously a man of high intelligence and considerable pastoral ability. In the past he has been led astray by a desire to exploit the glamour inherent in those psychic powers, but I believe that with sufficient training and dedication a truly charismatic power can be developed for the service of God. I told him I would accept him as a postulant, and I believe that in time he will prove a considerable asset to the Order.’”

Francis closed the file. For a long moment we looked at each other in silence. Then he said mildly: ‘Jonathan, I don’t want to appear cynical but it sounds to me as if you manipulated that unworldly man with all the skill your “glamorous powers” could command. During those nine years of happy marriage, what exactly happened which made you feel the trip to the altar was the one journey you never wanted to repeat?’