Glamorous Powers

By that time we were in our final year and I was more ambitious than ever. It was true that I was reading theology out of a genuine interest to learn what the best minds of the past had thought about the God I already considered I knew intimately, but I was also possessed by the desire to ‘get on’ in the Church and I saw an ecclesiastical career as my best chance of self-aggrandisement; I used to dream of an episcopal palace, a seat in the House of Lords and invitations to Windsor Castle. Naturally I had enough sense to keep these worldly thoughts to myself, but an ambitious man exudes an unmistakable aura and no doubt those responsible for my moral welfare were concerned about me. Various members of the divinity faculty endeavoured to give me the necessary spiritual direction, but I was uninterested in being directed because I was fully confident that I could direct myself. I felt I could communicate with God merely by flicking the right switches in my psyche, but it was a regrettable fact that my interest in God faded as my self-esteem, fuelled by my social success, burgeoned to intoxicating new dimensions.

‘How divinely wonderful to see you – I’m in desperate need of a magic healer!’ said Francis’ new ‘chère amie’ when I arrived to ‘dine and sleep’ one weekend at her very grand country house. A widowed twenty-year-old, she had already acquired a ‘fin de siècle’ desire to celebrate her new freedom with as much energy as discretion permitted. ‘Dear Mr Darrow, I have this simply too, too tiresome pain in this simply too, too awkward place …’

I was punting idly with the lady on the Cam two days later when Francis approached me in another punt with two henchmen and tried to ram me. I managed to deflect the full force of the assault but when he tried to use the punting pole as a bayonet I lost my temper. Abandoning the lady, who was feigning hysterics and enjoying herself immensely, I leapt aboard Francis’ punt and tried to wrest the pole from him with the result that we both plunged into the river.

‘You charlatan!’ he yelled at me as we emerged dripping on the bank. ‘You common swinish rotter! You ought to be castrated like Peter Abelard and then burnt at the stake for bloody sorcery!’

I told him it was hardly my fault if he was too effete to satisfy the opposite sex, and after that it took five men to separate us. I remember being startled by his pugnacity. Perhaps it was then that I first realized there was very much more to Francis Ingram than was allowed to meet the eye.

In the end his henchmen dragged him away and I was left to laugh at the incident, but I only laughed because at that moment my psychic faculty was dormant and I never foresaw the future. A month later the lady, who had been telling everyone I had miraculously cured her abdominal pain, became violently ill, and in hospital it was discovered that her appendix had ruptured. She died twenty-four hours later.

I knew that because I had temporarily removed the pain she had refrained from seeking medical advice until it was too late, and as the enormity of the catastrophe overwhelmed me I perceived for the first time the danger in which I stood. Contrary to what I had supposed my psychic powers made me not strong and impregnable but weak and vulnerable, a prey to any passing demonic force. I had used my powers to serve myself and the result had been tragedy. I now realized I had to use my powers to serve God, not merely in order to be a good man but in order to survive as a sane rational being, and as I finally recognized a genuine call to the priesthood I stumbled through the meadows which separated Cambridge from Grantchester and knocked on the door of the Fordite monks.

IX

At that stage of my life I had no thought of being a monk. I was merely desperate to obtain absolution from someone who, unlike the stern authorities at Laud’s College, might hear my confession with compassion, and if anyone had told me that one day I would myself enter the Order I would have laughed in scorn.

It would be edifying to record that my spiritual problems were solved once I came under the Abbot of Grantchester’s direction, but although James Reid was the holiest of men he was quite the wrong director for me. I liked him because he was fascinated by my psychic gifts and this, I regret to say, enhanced my pride by making me feel special. The result was that I fell into the habit of using my powers to manipulate him until we had both fooled ourselves into believing that we had achieved a successful ‘rapport’. In retrospect the truth seems obvious: I was still so spiritually immature that I could only tolerate a director who cocooned me in indulgence, and beyond my genuine desire to devote my life to God’s service, my psyche was as disruptive and undisciplined as ever. The years of my troubled priesthood had begun.

I saw no more of Francis after we came down from Cambridge, and for a time I was so absorbed by my preparations for ordination that I never thought of him, but five years later when I was a married Naval chaplain I heard the astonishing news that he had entered the Order. He began his monastic career at the Starwater house, some forty miles from where I worked at the Naval base in Starmouth, but I had lost touch with the Fordites by that time and I saw no reason why I should ever meet Francis again.

However word of his progress continued to reach me as he rose with lightning speed to the office of Bursar, no mean post in a place like Starwater Abbey where there was a large school to run and complex accounts to be kept. He was still at Starwater when I myself entered the Order in 1923, but as my career was unfolding at Ruydale we never met. Nor did we correspond. He represented a past which I could remember only with shame, and I suspected that I represented a similar burden of guilt to him. But then in 1930 he was transferred to the London headquarters in order to assist its ailing Bursar, and in a flash of foreknowledge I knew that our lives were drawing together again after completing some enigmatic circle in time.

Our reunion came sooner than I had anticipated. I underwent a period of crisis which I have no intention of describing so I shall only record that it concerned the house-cat, Whitby, and nearly terminated my career as a monk; Father Darcy had to be summoned to Yorkshire to set me back on the spiritual rails. I recovered from my crisis, but six months later Father Darcy decided to reassure himself that I had fully surmounted the disaster which was now known as ‘The Whitby Affair’, and I was summoned to London for an inspection.

The summons was most unusual. No one ever visited London from Ruydale except Aidan, who was obliged to travel there once a year for the Abbots’ Conference, and although I was apprehensive at the prospect of being inspected by Father Darcy I was also flattered that I was to receive special attention. However when I arrived in London in a state of wary but not unpleasant anticipation it was a rude shock when I found myself welcomed not by the Guest-Master but by the new Bursar, Francis Ingram.

‘So you’re still as lean as a lamp-post!’ he exclaimed. ‘But what happened to those owlish spectacles?’

‘My sight improved with age. What happened to the greyhound?’

‘He died of a surfeit of champagne.’

We laughed, shaking hands as if we were the oldest of friends, but I was unnerved by his aura of hostility. It lay like a ball of ice beneath the warmth of his welcome; to my psychic eye it was unmistakable, and immediately I heard myself say: ‘Perhaps we should agree to draw a veil over the past.’

‘Should we? Personally I think it’s more honest to face one’s disasters and chalk the whole lot up to experience. After all,’ said Francis, suddenly fusing his middle-aged self with the undergraduate of long ago, ‘Wilde did say that experience was the name men give to their mistakes.’

I said with as much good humour as I could muster: ‘Still quoting Wilde? I’m surprised our superior permits it!’

‘Then perhaps now’s the moment to make it clear to you that I’m the favourite with a licence to be entertaining,’ said Francis at once, and as he smiled, making a joke of the response, I recognized the demon jealousy and knew our old rivalry was about to be revived in a new form.

I said abruptly: ‘You’ve told him about the past?’

‘How could I avoid it? As soon as the rumour reached London that you’d got up to something thoroughly nasty with a cat I said: “That reminds me of my salad-days.” And then before I knew where I was –’

‘He’d prised the whole story out of you.’

‘But didn’t he know most of it anyway?’

‘I admit I told him about the Cambridge catastrophe, but I never mentioned you by name! And now, of course, he’s decided it would be amusing as well as edifying to batter us into brotherly love – he’s summoned me here not just to put my soul under the microscope but to purge us of our ancient antipathy!’

This deduction proved to be all too correct. Every evening after supper Father Darcy would summon us to his room and order a debate on a subject of theological interest. The debates lasted an hour and were thoroughly exhausting as Francis and I struggled to keep our tempers and maintain an acceptable level of fraternal harmony. Afterwards Father Darcy would pronounce the winner, dispatch Francis and embark on a fresh examination of my spiritual health. By the end of the week I was so worn out that I could hardly drag myself back to Yorkshire.

Before my departure I said in private to Francis: ‘I hope the old man doesn’t intend to make a habit of this. All I want is a quiet life at Ruydale.’

‘Dear old chap!’ said Francis. ‘You don’t seriously expect me to believe that, do you? After a few years of living on the Yorkshire moors a man of your ambition would feel like Napoleon marooned on St Helena!’

‘I don’t think that’s funny, Francis.’

‘I’m hardly delirious with amusement myself.’

‘Obviously you see me as a rival, but I assure you –’

‘Don’t bother. I’m not in the mood for hypocrisy.’

‘What’s this – a nursery tantrum? I’ve never seen such an unedifying exhibition of jealousy in all my life!’

‘And I’ve never seen such a plausible performance of a holy man devoid of ambition, but my dear Jonathan, just answer me this: has it never occurred to you that for a holy man devoid of ambition you seem to be carving out a quite remarkably successful career?’

I turned my back on him and walked away.

X

It is a relief to record that this disgraceful scene was not repeated; no doubt Francis was afterwards as ashamed of our hostile exchange as I was, and when we met again he even took the initiative in apologizing for the incident.

I paid six more visits to London before I was transferred to Grantchester, and each time Father Darcy pitted us against each other in debate, dragged our antipathy into the open and, in a metaphorical sense, rubbed our noses in the mess to discourage us from further antagonism. I was reminded of how one house-trains a cat. In the end Francis and I were so chastened by this remorseless spiritual purging that we almost became friends, but I never felt I knew him well. My psychic faculty, blunted by the antipathy which we both learnt to master but not erase, was dead in his presence. I received no insights which would have offered me the key to his character, nor could I perceive the texture of his spiritual life. Our debates had revealed his powerful intellect, but I came to the conclusion that although he was intellectually able he was spiritually limited and that this fact lay at the root of his jealousy. He was quite intelligent enough to know his limitations, more than intelligent enough to conceal them whenever possible and certainly human enough to resent a man who displayed the gifts he secretly coveted but knew he would never attain. He was also, I soon realized, deeply envious of the effortless psychic understanding which existed between Father Darcy and myself, and when I realized how much he depended on our mentor’s approbation I found myself driven to question the propriety of their relationship.

Father-son relationships are as forbidden in the cloister as the notorious ‘particular friendships’ which prurient laymen find so titillating, but I thought that Father Darcy, in characteristic fashion, might be riding roughshod over the rules in order to give Francis some form of psychological security which could prove beneficial to his character. I was not jealous. I had no desire whatsoever that Father Darcy should treat me as a son; I had a tough enough time surviving his attentions as a spiritual director. But I did wonder if Father Darcy were taking an unwise risk, and I wondered too, as time passed, if he were using Francis to gratify some immaculately concealed emotional need.

I knew I was of intense interest to Father Darcy but the interest was essentially detached; I was just the parlourmaid’s son who had presented him with the challenge of a monastic lifetime but who could nonetheless be kept at arm’s length in Yorkshire. But Francis was the man from his own class with whom he could feel at ease, the man who had to be transferred to London not merely to supervise the Order’s financial affairs but to keep the Abbot-General company in his old age. Such a situation was all very comfortable for Father Darcy, but was it good for Francis? I often considered this question but could never answer it with any degree of confidence. Perhaps Francis needed this special attention in order to make the most of those limited spiritual gifts. It was possible. With Father Darcy any bizarre monastic situation was possible – as I realized all too clearly when he lay on his deathbed and declared that his successor must be a man who could tell vintage claret from Vin ordinaire’.

Francis took care to say to me afterwards: ‘I’d like to think that despite the old man’s appalling final antics we can somehow contrive to be friends.’

‘Of course. Why not?’ I said equably before retreating to my cell to seethe with rage.

‘I fear I shall still worry in the future about you and Francis,’ confessed Aidan to me after the funeral, but I only answered with all my most fatal arrogance: ‘I can’t imagine any difficulty arising which can’t be easily resolved.’

Less than two months later I received my summons to London and I travelled there in the knowledge that I was deep in difficulties which were incapable of an easy resolution. Moreover after years of rivalry Francis now had me where he wanted me: in a position which was utterly subject to his will.

It was a bitter pill to swallow.

XI

Journeying beyond the walls of one’s cloister was always a disturbing experience – I shall never forget my first journey from Ruydale to London when I encountered the amazingly exposed legs of two flappers on the train – and now I found myself more disturbed than ever. But this time I barely noticed the female passengers. I was too busy reading The Times. It seemed the French had collapsed; Pétain had ordered a cessation of the fighting and was in touch with the Nazi command. For weeks the countries of Europe had been falling to the Nazis and now after the collapse of Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium it appeared that France too had been conquered. Without the French we would be quite alone. More than fifteen hundred years of Christian culture hung by a thread and the Devil’s breath was hot upon our necks.

I found myself thinking that the chaos in the world mirrored the chaos in my psyche. I saw my career as a monk hanging by a thread, and as I forced myself to acknowledge that my vision could have been a delusion I was aware of the demonic menace which always had the power to annihilate me. A second later I was trying to recover my equilibrium by telling myself I should put my trust in God, but the trouble was, as I well knew, I was quite unable to put my trust in Francis Ingram.

Unless I wanted to be judged an apostate I could not leave the Order without his permission, and that meant my entire future rested on his ability to exercise the charism of the discernment of spirits, the gift from God which enabled a man to perceive whether a situation was divinely or diabolically inspired. Francis, as I had long since decided, was spiritually limited. This did not mean he was incapable of exercising the charism of discernment, for with God’s grace even the most unlikely people can display charismatic powers, but it did mean that I had ample opportunity to worry about how far he was capable of placing himself in God’s hands so that he might act as a channel for the Holy Spirit. Francis was a clever, cunning, efficient, ambitious, jealous, charming and outwardly devout monk. But was he a good one? I found I could derive no reassurance from reflecting that Father Darcy would hardly have willed the Order to a monk who was merely a first-class administrator. Sickness had undermined Father Darcy’s powers at the end of his life, and it was more than possible that in a moment of weakness he had given way to the temptation to leave the Order not to the best monk he ever trained but to the best son he never had.