Mystical Paths (10 page)

It was not until later that I found out about his brief, unsuc- cessful attempt to be a healer. Naturally he had assumed, since I was so like him, that if I tried to be a healer I would fail too.

But the fascination with healing had persisted, and now, years later, I found myself seduced by the challenge of restoring Katie Aysgarth to full mental health. The result was that I planned the pseudo-séance in a haze of euphoria.

Disgusting. No wonder my father prayed daily for another religious thug like Cuthbert Darcy to knock the hell out of me. I was like one of those typhoid carriers who bounce through kitchen after kitchen and leave a trail of disaster in their wake.

God knows how anyone I met ever survived.

II

The girls came down from Oxford the next morning. It was a showery April day, cool and fresh. Marina was wearing a white coat which matched the Jaguar, and a scarlet mini-dress. Katie, seven years her senior, was dressed more conventionally in a mustard-coloured suit. She looked pale, drawn, fragile.

Starrington Manor was a large house, but since I shared it with the Community I had been obliged to take measures to ensure my privacy: I had designated certain areas for my use only and I had devised stringent rules to restrict intrusion to a minimum. The library, a long room lined with unreadable books and cases of stuffed fish, was part of my territory, although Rowena and Agnes were allowed in to clean it. Here I received visitors. I liked the library better than the drawing-room, which always reminded me too painfully of my mother.

The entire area upstairs in the main section of the house was also my domain. I slept in the room which had once been my father’s study – his ‘cell’ he had called it in memory of his monastic years – and I spent my leisure hours nearby in the room which had once been my parents’ bedroom. Curiously, this area didn’t remind me of my mother; my father had imprinted his personality too strongly there. Rowena and Agnes were never allowed to clean in this upstairs domain.

Once a week I changed the sheets on my bed and showed the Hoover to the carpet. I seldom dusted, but the bathroom fittings received my regular attention. I rather liked muscling around with the Vim. That was a masculine art. Dusting’s just for women.

Meanwhile, as I kept my domain utterly private and tolerably clean, the Community milled around on the ground floor (excluding the library) and slept in the wing which had been converted for the Theological College ordinands after the war. My father sometimes came up to the house for meals but usually he stayed in his cottage. In the chapel the Community said matins and evensong each day and my father celebrated mass. I always went to mass when I was at home, but except on Sundays I tended to avoid matins and evensong. I found that a little of the Community went a very long way.

When Marina and Katie arrived that morning I showed them into the library and brought them coffee to revive them after their journey. I could have held the pseudo-séance there, but I thought Rowena and Agnes might be tempted to listen at the door, so as soon as the coffee had disappeared I took the visitors to my sitting-room. None of the Community would have dared trespass on my upstairs domain without a valid reason. My father, who supported my quest for privacy, would have been too angry.

‘I feel it ought to be night-time,’ said Marina as she sat down at the round table which I had pulled to the centre of the room. ‘Doesn’t one get better results in the dark?’

‘One gets better fakes. People can be more gullible and the mediums more fraudulent.’ I moved around the room at a measured pace in order to exude the right air of authority; in any ritual it’s important to create a calm, dignified atmosphere which will not only impress the participants but put them at ease. I felt vaguely priest-like, pleasingly powerful. Having flicked an imaginary speck of dust from the table, I placed a heavy dictionary on top of the stack of
Private Eye
magazines by the bookcase, put away a couple of stray pencils in the top drawer of my desk and readjusted the engraving of Starbridge Cathedral which hung over the mantelshelf. Everything had to be securely in place. Although I was avoiding a traditional séance there was still the danger that Katie’s psyche could create a disturbance, and I didn’t want the magazines whooshing across the floor or the picture plunging off its hook. Such manifestations of kinetic energy can provoke hysteria.

Finally I drew the curtains. There was still plenty of light in the room afterwards and we could see one another clearly, but the fractional dimming was another device aimed at helping the girls relax.

‘Okay,’ I said, sitting down with them at the table, let me explain what I intend to do. Forget all the junk you may have read in books. I’m not going to grunt and groan and speak in a strange voice and say I’m the spirit of Tutankhamen, specially sent with a message from the astral plane. Nor am I going to conjure up mysterious tappings which spell out the letters of the alphabet. We’re going to keep this very straight, very orthodox — no frills, no fancy touches, no Mumbo Jumbo.’

I paused. They were enrapt. So far so good.

‘First of all,’ I resumed, ‘we’ll all hold hands while I say a prayer. After that we’ll keep holding hands as we remember Christian in silence; we’ll picture him as clearly as possible and pray that we may share with him the peace which he now experiences as a departed soul enfolded by the love of God. We’ll be silent for approximately five minutes. That’ll probably seem a long time to you, but keep picturing and keep praying. Then I’ll end the silence with another spoken prayer which will reinforce our silent prayers by asking for God’s love to flow into us so that we may be at one with Christian’s spirit. You’ll know then,’ I said directly to Katie as I put the full force of my personality into my eyes, ‘that you’re with Christian and he’s with you because you’ll feel this great peace and love ... peace and love ... peace and love.’

I saw her eyes film over as her will knuckled under to mine. Easy. Emotional, romantic, very feminine women are never a problem to hypnotise. They like to be dominated by men. I glanced at Marina. Her blue eyes were round as saucers. I wondered whether to put her under too but decided against it. No need. Katie was the one who required healing. Marina, a far tougher personality, had survived her bereavement with her psyche scarred but unsplit.

‘Are we ready?’ I said. We were. I took Katie’s right hand in my left and Marina’s left hand in my right while the girls’ spare hands touched and clasped. Then I said in my best priestly voice: ‘Almighty and Most Merciful Father, have pity, we beseech Thee, on Thy servant Katherine in her grief. Grant that she may accept her severance from her husband in this life so that she may now experience through Thy Grace the peace and love in which Thou enfoldest him. Help her to understand that this peace and love is eternal and that when we share in it, no matter how briefly, we are united with those who have gone before us into that world beyond time, beyond space, beyond the scope of our minds to conceive. Almighty Father, we make these requests in the name of Thy Only Son, Our Saviour Jesus Christ, who healed the sick and gave peace to those in torment. Lord, have mercy upon us and hear our prayer. Amen.’ I paused before saying with great care and clarity: ‘And now let us remember Christian in silence and pray again that we may share with him the peace he experiences as a departed soul enfolded by the love of God.’

When I stopped speaking they started picturing Christian and exuding the silent yearnings which approximately reflected my suggestions to them, but I embarked on a mental recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. I did this to keep at bay any discarnate shreds of former personalities who might have been attracted to the psychic activity and tempted to participate in it. I didn’t want any uninvited guests muscling in on the action — or, to put the problem in modern terms instead of old-fashioned picture-language, I didn’t want any irrelevant clutter stirring in the inaccessible realms of our unconscious minds and rising to the surface with bathetic results. This invasion from an unknown world would have corresponded to the point in a traditional séance where King Tutankhamen can drop in to say he’s frightfully worried about the papyrus which fell in the Nileand he’d simply adore a spot of tea to soothe his fractured nerves.

‘Our Father,’ I recited silently, ‘Which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven; give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us; lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from —’

Katie moaned just as the word ‘evil’ was projected from my brain, and at once my concentration snapped. It was an odd moan, not right, by which I mean off-key, not the kind of moan you would expect from a contralto like Katie. It was high-pitched, soul-less, abnormal.

‘Lead us not into temptation,’ I repeated aloud, automatically trying to will her back on course, ‘but deliver us from evil —’

Above the mantelshelf the engraving of Starbridge Cathedral fell with a crash to the floor.

As Marina screamed I thought: bloody hell! Not the best of expletives for an ordinand, but I was very rattled. However I knew what was happening. It wasn’t King Tut muscling in on the action. It wasn’t even an anonymous discarnate shred. It was Katie’s disturbed psyche generating a level of energy that I hadn’t anticipated. I’d been prepared for the odd breeze or two, but only a hurricane could have driven that carefully-adjusted picture clean off the wall. Obviously she was too far under and I had to yank her upwards in order to put her back in control of her mind.

‘It’s okay,’ I said swiftly to Marina, ‘nothing to worry about, just a bit of energy on the loose.’ And to Katie I said: ‘Up — you’re coming up — you’re waking up — up — up —’ I paused but nothing happened. She merely moaned again and her eyes remained closed. Instantly I thought of Debbie sunk in that trance I had been unable to break. But that had been in my younger days. Flexing my will, I steeled my psyche and tried again, doing my best to ignore the fright that was now crawling around the pit of my stomach.

‘Katie, open your eyes. Wake up. Katie, I say to you in the name of Jesus Christ, open your eyes and —’ She opened them.

Thank God. ‘Katie, you’re all right, you’re fine, you just got diverted. Now think hard of Christian again —’

‘Christian,’ she whispered. ‘Christian.’ Her lips were almost bloodless and her skin had a greyish tinge.

‘Yes, that’s it, think of Christian and I’ll say the next prayer,’ I said, curtailing the allotted five minutes of contemplative silence, but then I found myself distracted by the wall where the fallen engraving had been hanging. The picture-nail, though still attached to the wall, was pointing downwards. Maybe the incident had had nothing to do with an explosion of kinetic energy but had been caused instead by the collapse of the nail, an event which would have happened anyway, no matter what was going on in the room. Glancing at the engraving on the floor I was astounded to see that the glass in the frame was intact, and at once this survival seemed far more freakish than the fall of the picture.

‘Let us pray,’ I said, recalling my attention with an effort, but then Katie started to weep and immediately I broke off the prayer because I knew I had to put her under again. If I didn’t she’d never experience peace and then the whole healing session would have been a failure.

‘It’s all right, Katie,’ I said. ‘You’re all right now, Christian’s at peace, you’re at peace, you’re both at peace, both of you .. She was under. Instantly I wrapped my psyche around hers to stop it sinking too far through her subconscious mind, but this was a mistake. I should have been concentrating on the prayer to God, not taking time out to play the hypnotist, and the result was we had now reached a stage where no one was praying; I was channelling my power in another direction, Katie was too unbalanced to focus and Marina was too worried about Katie to remember what she was supposed to be doing. Then the inevitable happened. I suddenly became aware of a discarnate shred elbowing its way into our circle, and it certainly wasn’t King Tut turning up for tea. I experienced the shred as a strong, sinister pressure on the psyche.

Automatically I said: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

The pressure eased, but I had relaxed my psychic grip on Katie and she was giving that eerie moan again.
Hell.
Had to control Katie, had to control the shred, had to control Marina who was now on the brink of panic, had to control, control, control — The table started to rock.

Marina screamed again.

Bloody
hell, what was happening — Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God — ‘It’s okay, Marina!’ — have mercy on me, a — yes, that was better, I’d got the table back on its four legs and now all I had to do was calm down. Katie had been shooting off a gale-force blast of energy again, that was all, it was just an inconvenience, no reason for panic, but why couldn’t I imprint the words PEACE and LOVE on her mind, why could I now make no contact with her whatsoever? It was as if during that moment of chaos someone had bolted and barred her psyche against mine — as if the sinister discarnate shred, repelled from my mind by the Jesus prayer, had slid sideways into hers and I suddenly realised the shred was closing in on me for another attack.

I could feel the pressure mounting, I could feel the power behind the pressure, and the next moment I knew that beyond the power, blasting it forward, was I leapt to my feet, my chair flew backwards and simultaneously the glass shattered to pieces in the frame of the fallen engraving. I had a fleeting glimpse of Marina’s terrified face, and then as I slammed my psyche shut against the Dark by a colossal act of will I heard myself shout out: ‘IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST, SATAN,
BE
GONE FROM THIS ROOM!’

The curtains billowed violently by the open window and Katie slumped forward across the table in a dead faint.

III

‘Marina, get some water – bathroom across the passage – tooth-mug by the basin –’

She obeyed me instantly. No idiotic questions. Admirable. Gathering Katie in my arms I tried to revive her by patting her cheeks and calling her name, but I was so frightened that I might have driven her over the edge of the abyss into insanity that I hardly knew what I was doing.

Marina rushed back with the mug of water. I pressed it to Katie’s lips but she was still unconscious. ‘Throw it over her,’ said Marina tersely. That too was admirable. Nothing’s more helpful than a strong dose of common sense when one’s scared out of one’s wits. I threw the water. Katie moaned and her eyelashes fluttered. Thank God.

‘Wake up, Katie,’ I repeated, trying to wipe out both the hypnosis and the mental disturbance. ‘You’re all right now. Wake up.’

She murmured our names.

‘Yes, I’m here, darling,’ said Marina, grabbing her hand. ‘It’s all right – it’s over.’

What happened?’ Her voice was louder, clearer, almost normal. I felt sick with relief.

‘We made contact with a hostile force,’ I said glibly, ‘but that had nothing to do with Christian. He’s at peace with God, Katie, I promise you, and now that you know he’s at peace you’re at peace too.’

‘I don’t feel at peace,’ she whispered.

That disturbed me very much. She was supposed to wind up calm, serene and strengthened, not shattered, shocked and more tormented than ever. My attempt at healing by hypnosis coupled with prayer seemed to have been a complete failure, but the hypnosis should at least have had a temporary calming effect even if the prayer had failed to produce a permanent improvement. ‘Marina, fetch some more water,’ I said, trying not to sound as baffled as I felt, ‘and bring a towel from the bathroom so that she can mop herself up. Katie, you must liedown on my bed in the next room. No, don’t try and get up – I’ll carry you.’

She was as light as a famine-victim, and when I became aware of the weight-loss which the cut of her suit had concealed I realised her mental disturbance had affected her physical health. I knew then I should never have meddled with her. She needed a doctor, not an ordinand playing the wonder-worker, and as this stark truth ploughed through my mind I felt overpowered by my guilt and my shame.

‘Couldn’t find a towel,’ said Marina, reappearing with the refilled tooth-mug. ‘There was nothing on the rail.’

Laundry day. I’d forgotten. I’d turned in my towel after breakfast. ‘I’ll get one from the airing cupboard – hang on, Katie – this way, Marina,’ I muttered, grabbing her wrist and drawing her out of the room. In the corridor I said rapidly: ‘Listen, I’ve got to talk to you, got to explain what happened so that you can understand what’s got to be done. All those disturbances were caused by
her.
When a psyche’s under extreme stress it can generate the paranormal happenings we witnessed just now when objects appear to move by themselves. The phenomenon’s sometimes called poltergeist activity – it comes out of the unconscious, out of something we don’t understand and don’t normally have access to. When I said just now that we’d made contact with a hostile force, that was just old-fashioned picture-language – like talking about poltergeists. What we actually encountered was a violent emanation of psychic energy from Katie’s unconscious mind.’

‘Then why did you yell out that command to Satan?’

‘Oh, forget that, it was just a safety precaution. What I was really doing was gaining control over the emanations.’

‘But –’

‘Look, just concentrate on the facts: Katie’s disturbed. It’s not the kind of disturbance that can be put right by prayer and meditation. She’s got to see a psychiatrist.’

Marina was shocked but remained well in control of herself. My admiration for her deepened. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘I’ll wheel on the big guns of Harley Street, but meanwhile how on earth do I get her home?’

‘I’ll fix her up, no need to worry, just give me an hour. Go for a drive.’

‘But what are you going to do?"

‘Talk tc her, make her some tea, try anything that’ll get her back on her feet, but it’s better if you’re out of the way. Then I can focus on her without distraction.’

‘Okay, I understand.’

‘And as soon as you get her home call a doctor.’

‘Right.’ She glanced at her watch and walked briskly off down the corridor towards the main staircase.

I waited till I heard the front door close far away in the hall. Then I took a clean towel from the airing cupboard and returned to Katie.

IV She was crying. She lay face down on the bed like a discarded doll and her body shook with sobs. As I came in she raised her head from the pillow and turned over to lie on her back. Her eyes were swollen, her skin looked like parchment, her hair was matted. I barely recognised her.

‘I feel so guilty,’ she whispered.

I made what I prayed was the right response: wordless sympathy. Sitting down on the bed beside her I took her hand comfortingly in mine.

‘I failed him somehow,’ she said. ‘Lloved him so much but it wasn’t enough.’

She was putting us both in the confessional – which meant I was being given the chance to behave like a priest instead of a psychic maverick. Desperate to redeem my catastrophic error I said earnestly: ‘I know you loved him,’ and I clasped her other hand so that a symbolic double-lifeline was established. Then I tried to concentrate on supporting her damaged psyche. The image of the discarded doll was helpful; I pictured an imaginarychina doll, very beautiful but chipped and cracked; then I visualised myself sealing up the cracks, painting over the chips and attending to each detail with immense care.

‘In books love conquers everything,’ she said, ‘but it’s not like that in reality. My love didn’t conquer everything. My love ended in failure.’

I had to be very cautious here. Some kind of reply was required but I was afraid of uttering a sentence which might be either a banality or simply untrue. I raised a metaphorical aerial to improve my reception of her thoughts but sensed nothing I could readily interpret. It was her guilt that interested me. I knew a surviving spouse could feel overpoweringly guilty – my father had been a classic example of that syndrome – but why Katie should be so full of guilt when she had done her best to be a model wife was not easy to perceive.

‘I know he was disappointed when Grace and Helen were born,’ she said, sparing me the need to reply as she spoke of her daughters, ‘but I did put everything right in 1965 when John arrived and Christian had the son he’d always wanted. I was so happy. But then it began all over again.’