Glittering Images (32 page)

‘Now take a little rest on your bed,’ said the monk, speaking to me as if I were an exhausted child who had been thoroughly overstimulated by too much excitement, ‘and I’ll tell Father Abbot you’re here.’

‘He already knows,’ I said, kicking off my shoes and slumping back against the pillows.

The little monk smiled and disappeared.

The room began to revolve.

Closing my eyes I at last escaped into oblivion.

Someone came into the room not long afterwards but I never saw him. Someone unpacked my bag and put it away on top of the wardrobe, someone put my prayer-book by the Bible, someone put two aspirins and a glass of water on the bedside table. Someone, without doubt, paused to say a prayer for us both.

Then the light was turned out, the door was closed and I was left to sleep dreamlessly in the dark.

I awoke in excruciating pain. My head was hurting, my stomach was hurting, my intestines were hurting, and beyond them my mind was hurting, every grain of it, and my soul was screaming steadily but soundlessly for relief.

But relief was absent and meanwhile I had to grapple with physical humiliation. I got my eyes open. They were aching. I struggled upright but had to bend over low to keep conscious. I crawled to the basin. I vomited. And all the time my soul was screaming steadily but soundlessly for relief.

I crawled back to the bed, saw the aspirins and somehow managed to swallow them, but I was too ill to be helped by pills and the next moment I was vomiting again. I only just managed to reach the basin in time. I levered myself upright, shuddering, shivering, stupefied with the pain, and when I looked in the mirror above the basin I saw myself as if in a distorted glass and recognized the stranger I was too afraid to know.

I backed away, nearly fainted, crashed into the table, slid down by the bed. ‘Oh God …’ The pain was overwhelming me. I wanted to die. I knew it was a sin to pray for death but the pain was beyond all endurance and the never-ending scream of my soul, as it surveyed the enormity of my shattering failures, was finally finding expression in the agonized words which streamed from my mouth like a haemorrhage. ‘My God, my God – forgive me, don’t leave me, help me,
help me
, HELP ME –’

The door of the room opened and in walked Father Darrow.

‘You will realise that the care of your health is a religious duty.’

More Letters of Herbert Hensley Henson
Bishop of Durham 1920–1939
ed.
E. F. BRALEY
.

I gasped: ‘I’m cut off from God.’ I was in terror. I was shuddering from head to foot. Tears were streaming down my face. ‘He’s gone. He’s rejected me. He’s not here –’

‘He’s here but you can’t see him. You’ve been blinded.’

‘Blinded –’

‘It’s only temporary but meanwhile you must do exactly as I say. Let’s try and get you up from the floor – and on to the bed – that’s it –’

‘I’m being invaded.’ I was shuddering again, gasping for breath. ‘Without God – all the demons – taking over – telling me I’m not fit to –’

‘Take this.’ He shoved his pectoral cross hard into my hand. ‘The cross bars their path. No demon can withstand the power of Christ.’

‘
But He’s not here
–’

‘He’s here. He’s here whenever his followers are gathered together in His name. He’s here.’

I looked past the cross and saw the Spirit. It was there in his eyes, absolutely real, immediately recognizable. The demons retreated. I said not to Darrow but to the Spirit, ‘Don’t leave me.’

‘There’s no question of abandonment. When you’re calmer you’ll realize that, so your first duty to yourself – and to God – is to be calm. Keep holding the cross in your right hand and give me your left. That’s it … And try to breathe better, take deep breaths … Good. Now I’m going to say a prayer for you, a silent prayer, and I want you to listen with your mind and try to hear what I’m saying.’

Silence fell. I obediently listened but I heard nothing. However after a while I became aware in my darkness of a strange heat. The cross slipped as my right hand began to sweat, and my left hand, enclosed between Darrow’s palms, began to tingle. Thinking it was afflicted with cramp I tried to shift its position but he at once tightened his grip and the tingling continued. I was so fascinated that I made no further movement but sat docilely on the bed with my eyes closed. He had pulled up the chair from the table and was sitting within inches of me but on a higher level.

Slowly my hand was released. I opened my eyes to find he was watching me, and as our glances met he said: ‘Did you hear the prayer?’

‘No. But I remembered Our Lord saying: “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world”.’

‘And now you’re calm.’ He smiled, quite unsurprised by my reply, and as I belatedly realized that the words of comfort without doubt reflected the essence of his prayer, I saw he was not only satisfied with my progress but pleased with his own uncanny skill. Slowly I said, ‘You’re a healer. You helped me not only by prayer but by channelling power through your hands. That was the charism of healing.’

‘You’re very flattering,’ he said, ‘but one could also say you healed yourself by breathing deeply, concentrating your mind on a fixed task and cutting off the supply of adrenalin which was drowning you.’

I thought about that. He let me think about it. There was no attempt to hurry me. We continued to sit calmly together, I dirty and dishevelled in my grey trousers and crumpled shirt, he crisp and clean in his black habit with the white sleeves. As I continued to clutch his cross I became aware that life was, for the moment, bearable. My soul had stopped screaming. I was experiencing a remission of pain.

At last I said: ‘I suppose I’m having a nervous breakdown.’

‘Oh, I’ve always thought that a very unhelpful term – why don’t we leave it to the medical gentlemen?’ said Darrow carelessly with that touch of confidence excusable in a healer who knows he may succeed where doctors fail, and suddenly he seemed so approachable, so compellingly easy to trust. Before I could stop myself I said, ‘I don’t want to go to a lunatic asylum.’

‘There’s no question of you going to a lunatic asylum.’

‘You don’t think I’m –’

Obviously you’re going through some profound spiritual ordeal but defining it in questionable medical terms is simply a waste of breath; it does nothing to solve the problem.’

I managed to say, ‘How does the problem get solved?’

‘If I may use the terms you employed so intriguingly yesterday, I’d say we have to examine the mystery and then look at the mystery beyond the mystery in order to locate the source of your pain and heal it. But first we must attend to practical matters. You’re going to be here for some time. Are there any engagements you should cancel, any matters which have to be attended to?’

I remembered my car at the Blue Boar and gave him the telephone number of a friend who would remove it to Laud’s. As he jotted down the information in a notebook I added that Lang would be expecting to hear from me, but before I could say more I found to my horror that my eyes were filling with tears. ‘I can’t talk to him,’ I whispered. ‘I can’t talk about –’ But I was unable to finish the sentence.

‘Leave him to me,’ said Darrow as if the Archbishop were a troublesome schoolboy. ‘Is he expecting to hear from you this morning?’

‘No, there’s no great urgency, but –’

‘We’ll draft a message for him later. Now, Charles, your next duty to yourself – and to God – is to regain your physical fitness because as far as I know no one’s yet tackled a spiritual ordeal successfully when they’re worn out and hung over. How much did you drink yesterday?’

I tried to tot up the large drinks and the little sips but lost count.

‘Was yesterday just a binge or have you been drinking heavily for some time?’

‘A binge. But –’ I hesitated before forcing myself to add, ‘I’ve been drinking more than I used to.’

‘How do you behave when you’re drunk? Do you become the life and soul of the party? Or do you merely fall asleep? Or do you perhaps become someone you most definitely don’t want to know when you’re sober?’

‘The latter. I become angry and aggressive.’

‘The angry stranger … Yes, well, we’ll take a look at him later but meanwhile you must rest. I absolve you from reading the morning office because you’re too sick to do it properly, but I’ll bring you a book to look at if sleep proves difficult. Could you keep the aspirin down? No? Very well, I’ll bring you some alka-seltzer.’

‘If I could have some black coffee –’

‘No, I want you relaxed, not stimulated, and besides any liquid serves to flush out a hangover.’ Removing my glass he refilled it from the basin. ‘Now I’m going to leave you for five minutes,’ he said, replacing the glass on the bedside table, ‘and while I’m gone you’re to put on your pyjamas and get between the sheets.’

I clutched the cross and fought my panic but panic won. ‘Don’t go.’ Shame overwhelmed me. ‘I’m sorry – I’m being so stupid, so weak –’

‘Michael, whom you met last night, will come at once if you call him. But I’ll be holding you in my mind,’ said Darrow in the enigmatic language used by those who regard abnormal powers as merely a commonplace aspect of reality, ‘and I won’t relax my grip. You won’t need to call Michael.’

I believed him. Mind triumphed over matter. Darrow was again exercising his charism.

On his return he gave me another cross which I could wear instead of his own, and once the alka-seltzer had been consumed he produced the book he had brought from the library. It was
Mystics of the Church
by Evelyn Underhill.

‘This is very light reading for a man of your background,’ he said, ‘and as it was published after you concluded your life as an undergraduate I doubt if you’ve ever troubled to read it. However a glance at mysticism can often prove to be the shot of oxygen which revives a debilitated theological mountaineer, so if you can’t sleep skim through a chapter or two and when I return after the office at noon you can tell me whether or not you find the book mildly diverting …’

I was asleep when he returned. I had not even opened the book because sleep had overpowered me when I was still waiting for my headache to ease. I was woken at half-past one by the little white-haired monk who brought me a mug of soup, two hunks of bread, a plate of vegetables in a cheese sauce and a dish of plums. A glass of milk also stood on the tray.

‘Father Abbot says you’re to eat it all,’ said the little monk. ‘Remember your duty to God to be fit, he says. He says when you’ve finished you’re to have a shower and get dressed and he’ll come back and see you at three. The water won’t be hot, Doctor, not in the middle of the day, I’m sorry, but Father Abbot says you’re not going to be killed by a cold shower.’

I was beginning to feel like an athlete in the hands of a ruthless trainer. Assuring Michael that I could well survive a cold shower I sat up, savouring the absence of nausea, and resumed the struggle to return to normality.

When Darrow returned at three o’clock I was dressed in my clerical suit and seated at the table as I read Miss Underhill’s book. I had discovered that I could function normally so long as I did what I was told; no doubt this was why Darrow had given me such precise orders.

‘That’s better,’ he said as he saw me. He was carrying a chair which he placed opposite me at the table. ‘Did you forget to shave?’ he asked as he sat down. ‘Or was there some difficulty – other than the lack of hot water – which made you feel shaving was best avoided?’

‘You didn’t tell me to shave.’

‘That’s true, but nevertheless you must have considered the idea, if only out of habit … Was the difficulty centred on the razor? No, I knew there’d be no risk there. Then it was the mirror, wasn’t it? You were frightened, perhaps, in case you saw the angry stranger, the one who takes you over when you’re drunk.’

I nodded but had to shade my eyes with my hand to conceal my distress.

‘When you understand him better,’ said Darrow, ‘he won’t seem so alarming, but before we concentrate on these problems of yours, let’s dispose of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Since you became distressed when his name arose earlier, am I right in assuming he has some connection with the mystery which you went to Starbridge to solve?’

‘Yes, he gave me this – this commission –’

‘All I need at present is some short message such as: “Commission completed, full details later.” Then I can telephone His Grace, give him the message and say that as you’ve been working very hard lately I’ve insisted that you make a lengthy retreat – in fact I can even say with perfect truth that I wanted you to begin the retreat earlier but you postponed it because you were so anxious to complete his commission.’