Mystical Paths. Susan Howatch

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СКАЧАТЬ fatally undermined. He became a recluse. He did eventually resume his spiritual counselling on a modest scale but he conducted the work almost entirely by letter. Meanwhile I had become what Matron at school called ‘strange’ and my father had to drag himself out of seclusion to make special arrangements for my care. That was when Aelred Peters had been recruited to sort me out. Eventually plates stopped smashing themselves in the Abbey kitchens and inkpots stopped overturning themselves in unlikely places. Staggering home for the school holidays I hoped for further help from my father but instead found myself obliged to grapple with his continuing bereavement.

      I would sit with him for short periods of complete silence. Sometimes we stroked the cat together. My father always had a cat and the cat was always a tabby. After the death of my mother’s cat William (annexed by my father after his marriage), he acquired Whitby the Second (died young of a kidney complaint), Whitby the Third (run over aged ten) and Whitby the Fourth. Whitby the First, a companion of my father’s monastic years, had left a potent memory behind him and had been the hero of countless bedtime stories narrated to me by my father in the nursery.

      When my father began to talk again it was the cat he spoke about. ‘Whitby’s very fond of you,’ he said suddenly in the midst of one of our long silences. ‘That’s because you’re like me, good with cats.’ Then he paused before adding: ‘You’re really very like me, Nicholas. Very like me indeed.’

      Unsure what to say I at first remained silent, but gradually it dawned on me that he was wrestling with some profound temptation. In an effort to be sympathetic and encouraging I then said: ‘Great. So what are you worried about?’

      The invisible wrestling-match continued. My father pursed his lips and rubbed his nose and fondled the scruff of Whitby’s neck before he at last managed to say: ‘There’s something I’d like to tell you but Francis always said it would be better for you not to know.’ Francis Ingram, a Fordite monk, had been his confessor.

      I never hesitated. ‘But Francis is dead,’ I said, ‘and everything’s changed. You do exactly what you want, Father. You do whatever makes you happy.’

      And then he told me the most extraordinary story.

      V

      He had seen me in a vision well over a year before I was born. He had seen me, aged three or four, in the garden of the Manor and had realised at once that I looked exactly as he had looked at the same age. Afterwards, during his struggle to interpret the vision, he had been tempted to believe God had given him the promise of a replica-son in order to cheer him up for the difficult times he had endured since leaving the Order, but Francis Ingram had later disputed this self-indulgent interpretation, and in fact my father had firmly believed that no parent should expect or desire his child to be a replica.

      ‘But nevertheless …’

      Nevertheless my father, longing for a son who shared his interests, had been unable to stop himself finding the vision irresistibly attractive.

      ‘And then, Nicholas …’

      Then, when I was three and a half the vision had been enacted in reality and my father had fallen in love with it all over again.

      ‘It was in 1946,’ he said. ‘Neville Aysgarth was visiting the Manor – Archdeacon Aysgarth, as he was in those days. As he crossed the lawn to join us, Nanny called your name from the terrace and you ran away to meet her – and I realised my vision had been replayed. I was so stunned that at first I could hardly hear a word Aysgarth said. I could only think: it’s all come true. I have this son who’s exactly like me and it’s all according to God’s plan. Although of course,’ said my father quickly, ‘I did realise you weren’t a replica. Not exactly. Not quite. But nevertheless … It’s extraordinary how like me you are! I’ve been telling myself I’ve nothing to look forward to now Anne’s dead, but that’s not true, is it? I’ve got you to look forward to, Nicholas. I shall so enjoy watching you live my life for me all over again – that’s to say, I shall so enjoy watching you develop into the man that God obviously wants you to be. You won’t be a replica, of course – never think that I want a replica, but –’

      But he did want a replica. I could see he longed for a replica. And what was more I could see the thought revived him, entranced him, gave him not only a new interest but the will to live which would ensure his survival.

      ‘– but one can’t deny the very exceptional likeness between us,’ he was saying, ‘and why shouldn’t that be a comfort to me in my old age? Francis said I should never tell you about the vision because you might start believing you had to be a replica, but you wouldn’t think that, would you, Nicholas? Francis was wrong. On this point I know best – I know you’ll reverence my cherished vision as a gift from God, just as I do, and so therefore it can’t possibly have a malign effect. I’m right, aren’t I? I know I’m right. I know it.’

      Proud, arrogant, ancient, miserable and misguided, he glared at me in a pathetic plea for reassurance.

      Taking his hand in mine I said: ‘Of course you’re right, Father. You always are.’

      No doubt my mother would have made some very robust comment at that point.

      But my mother was no longer there.

      VI

      The next holidays I returned from school to find that a cottage was being built for my father in the grounds by the chapel. He said it would make it easier for him to be secluded. Then he said I could visit him whenever I wished because I was quite different from everyone else and he didn’t find my presence a strain. As an afterthought he added that he couldn’t bear to go on living at the main house now that my mother was no longer there; he’d never liked living there much anyway; his middle-class upbringing as a schoolmaster’s son had ensured he had never felt at ease in my mother’s county setting.

      I was stunned. My father, educated on scholarships at public school and university, had appeared to fit neatly into my mother’s world. I had had no idea he had such a chip on his shoulder about class. I knew, of course, that his mother had been a parlourmaid, but my own mother had said how interesting that was and what a remarkable woman my unknown grandmother must have been to succeed in marrying ‘above her station’, so I had accepted my grandparents’ mésalliance as merely an unusual piece of family history. Now for the first time I saw that my father also had married ‘above his station’ and it occurred to me that my parents’ marriage too had been, in a less obvious way, a mésalliance which had caused problems.

      I was still recovering from the shock that my father had never felt at ease in the home I loved when he began to explain to me his plan for ensuring that my inheritance was properly looked after: he intended to let the Home Farm and found a small religious community which would run the house and tend the grounds.

      I disliked this scheme – though I said nothing for fear of upsetting him – but as time passed I realised how clever the plan was. Not only did I never have to worry about the property but I never had to worry that my father was failing to take care of himself when I was away. The members of the Community tended the garden, looked after the house and worshipped my father whenever they weren’t busy worshipping God. Their devotion was my passport to a normal life unburdened by abnormal anxieties.

      I finished school, went up to Laud’s, my father’s old college at Cambridge, came down with my degree, dabbled disastrously with voluntary work and dabbled disastrously with Debbie. My father was still living as a recluse in his cottage, but now in 1966, nine years after my mother’s СКАЧАТЬ