Mystical Paths (6 page)

‘This is Dinkie,’ said Michael, having nobly abandoned his squeezing in order to look after me. Although nearly three years my senior he always took a benevolent interest in my welfare.

‘Hiya, gorgeous,’ said the steamy brunette in a show-stopping American drawl.

‘Hi.’ Of course I could think of nothing else to say. What hell it is to be young.

‘I just love to make passes,’ said this fabulous creature, ‘at guys who wear glasses.’

This indeed was an education. I had lost my virginity a month after my encounter with Marina the previous summer, but I still knew very little about girls and I still thought my reflection in the mirror fell far short of the masculine ideal which would be demanded by any discerning steamy brunette. I was glad to be tall but I hated being so lanky and angular. I was glad not to be blind but I hated having to wear glasses. I was glad to be white, since life in England was such hell for blacks, but I hated the unusual pallor of my skin. I was glad not to be a hermaphrodite but I hated being so unremarkable below the waist. Since the loss of my virginity I had accepted that average-sized genitals were quite sufficient to see me through life, but nevertheless I remained discontented because I had hoped to be compensated for my plain looks by being supremely well-endowed sexually. (What
hell
it is to be young.) No wonder I was so tempted to rely for sex-appeal not on my physique but on my psyche. It was all very well for my father to drone on about those ‘glamorous powers’ which could be so easily purloined by the Devil, but at the insecure age of twenty it was hard to resist parading all the glamour at my disposal once a steamy brunette appeared on the horizon.

‘A soothsayer, huh?’ purred Dinkie Kauffman at Marina’s party that night. ‘Tell my fortune, Wonder-Cat, and be sure you make it cool!’

But before I could begin to produce the usual intuitive rubbish, Christian clapped his hands to gain everyone’s attention and I realised that the climax of the party had been reached. The lights were switched off, the curtains pulled back and as the floodlit Cathedral was revealed beyond the window, Christian proposed a toast to Starbridge. I had long since finished my Coke but I thought I might eat, rather than drink, the toast so I sidled to the buffet under cover of darkness and grabbed another of the sausage rolls. As I did so Dinkie suggested that we should all dance on the Cathedral roof and for some reason everyone seemed to think this was a brilliant idea. Funny the whims people get when they’re drunk. But maybe the concept of polluting a numinous place by idiotic behaviour just has no meaning for non-psychics. For me it would have been like throwing paint at the Mona Lisa.

Deciding it was time to leave I stuffed the last two sausage rolls into my pocket to keep me happy on the journey home, but unfortunately the lights were turned on again before I could complete this manoeuvre and my friend Venetia saw the second roll vanish. Immediately I felt embarrassed by my brazen greed, but almost before I had time to register her smile of sympathy my embarrassment was wiped out as the horror began.

The power was switched on in my psyche.

Knowledge began to be hammered directly into my brain, but this wasn’t just a brief rattle of the computer keyboard followed by a quick flash on the blank screen. This was the long slam which seemed as if it would never end, this was the keyboard pounding so fast that the keys were no more than a blur to the psychic eye, this was the big print-out which cascaded all over my mind.

The shock was so profound that I almost lost consciousness. I could neither move nor speak. I could barely breathe. The Dark began to pour into the room.

III

Sometimes foreknowledge is known as ‘second sight’, but when I suffered such attacks they were never visual. In that respect I was less gifted than my father. As a psychic I experienced two kinds of special knowledge: one was the quick flash which could sometimes be written off as intuition; the other, much rarer, was the long slam which bore no more resemblance to intuition than an elephant bears to a mouse. Such episodes had a peculiarly vile, lucid quality which, unlike intuition, seemed to leave no room for ambiguity. This instant, uncontrollable destruction of all the shadows we depend on to shield us from searing truths was horrific. No wonder I nearly passed out with shock. It was as if I’d been sitting in an armchair by a cosy fireside and had been brutally blasted into Belsen.

Many people think it must be fun to be a psychic. Fun!

When as a small child I first experienced the long slam I screamed non-stop until my father arrived to stitch up my shredded little psyche. Fortunately my mother was out at the estate office, but poor Nanny thought I’d gone mad. My father held me in his arms for a long time but eventually he slipped his pectoral cross into my hand and told me I was safe.

‘No demon can withstand the power of Christ,’ he said, and when he spoke the name of the greatest exorcist who had ever lived, the image of the Light captured my brain and the Dark was conquered.

Much later in my life I read about autistic children. What interested me was that some doctors believed these children could be helped by being held tightly for long periods by a loving adult. I was never autistic; nor were all my profound psychic experiences equally terrifying. But they could be horrific enough to produce a reaction akin to mental illness, and never, by any stretch of the imagination, could they be described as ‘fun’.

As soon as the Dark began to pour into the room that night at Marina’s party, I was not only physically immobilised but mentally booted on to a plane not normally accessible to the conscious mind. I looked around the room and all the objects in it seemed to be hammering out messages to me, they were all speaking, although of course there were no words, no sounds, but I stood in that room, Lady Markhampton’s drawing-room it was, the drawing-room of that house called the Chantry which stood in the Cathedral Close, and because all the objects there were vibrating with information I experienced her essence quite clearly; the image was slapped on the computer screen of my psychic eye. That meant I could ‘see’ her – but psychically, not visually – and at once I thought: nice old girl, sharp tongue, kind heart, well read, cleverer than her husband – and then I experienced the husband’s essence too: old buffer, drank too much, liked cricket and Havana cigars, stupid old bore, forget him, and anyway the love of Lady Markhampton’s life hadn’t been her husband, it had been a slim, striking, middle-aged man with golden eyes – golden eyesjust like Charley Ashworth’s, how odd – and he was wearing a frock-coat and gaiters, a fact which was odder still, but no, he wasn’t an actor in a costume melodrama, he was a twentieth-century bishop in full episcopal gear, interesting, fancy Lady Markhampton being in love with a bishop, but of course she’d kept her secret, and neither the bishop nor the silly old husband had ever guessed.

Then time suddenly went way out of alignment, and I knew that in that drawing-room, so civilised and elegant, a priest had been killed during the Civil War when the Roundheads had smashed up Royalist Starbridge. There was wall-to-wall blood, I couldn’t see it, but it was there, I was wading in it, and all at once the Force – the psychic force – roared into top gear, like a gale it was, no, a hurricane, no, a nuclear wind, and it nearly deafened me, although of course there was no sound, just print-out, print-out, print-out, slam, slam, slam on the computer keyboard, and the word which kept flashing on the screen was DEATH, DEATH, DEATH, DEATH, DEATH.

Then I looked at my companions, that
jeunesse dorée,
those glamorous friends of Marina Markhampton all glittering in the Light, and I knew the Dark was closing in on them, I knew the Coterie was doomed. But Michael Ashworth was going to survive – odd how sure I was of that when popular opinion wrote him off as a rake who could only go from bad to worse, but no, Michael was going to live and someone else was going to live too, one of the girls – was it Marina, surviving with Michael? – but I couldn’t quite read the name in the print-out – oh God, let it be my friend Venetia! – and meanwhile the keys were slamming on and the horrors were coming up brilliantly lit upon the screen.

I looked at Dinkie, the steamy brunette, and knew she’d become a walking corpse. I looked at Christian’s brother Norman and knew his body would rot long before he died. I looked at Norman’s wife Cynthia and heard her screaming in a locked room. I looked at Marina’s friend Holly Carr and felt the pain as she slashed her wrists. I looked at Katie Aysgarth’s brother Simon and knew the waters would close over his head. I looked at my friend Venetia and the word that roared through my brain was DANGER, DANGER, DANGER — and I thought: I’ve got to save her, got to act, got to speak — But when I stepped forward Marina intercepted me. Nicky —
Nicky!
You’re not listening — what’s the matter, have you gone deaf? I want you to tell all our fortunes once we get up to the Cathedral roof ...’

I said something, don’t know what, anything to brush her off, and then, thank God, Venetia saw me. She was on the other side of the room. I began to stagger towards her, and I think she realised I had a message to deliver because she came to meet me, but when we were face to face at last I was tongue-tied. I found I had no way of imparting my psychic knowledge; the ‘gnosis’ wasn’t transmissible to that part of the brain which controls speech, and when I finally opened my mouth the only words that came out were: ‘Don’t go to the Cathedral.’

Venetia’s expression changed from curiosity to an amused indulgence. What a dear little psychic poodle, she was thinking, a nonsensical warning delivered with such an earnest expression, he really is rather adorable.

Overcome by an embarrassed fury I bolted into the hall. Someone — something — the cosmic equivalent of a hand — switched off the Force.

I just managed to reach the cloakroom basin before I threw up. Then I dashed cold water on my face and willed myself to stop shaking. I was wearing no cross but I tried to roll back the Dark by silently reciting the old Orthodox prayer which I used as a mantra. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God — Someone rattled the cloakroom door. ‘Yoo-hoo! Who’s monopolising the lavatory? Hurry up!’

Struggling out I found Marina giggling with her girlfriends, Holly and Emma-Louise.

Nicky, do change your mind about coming to the Cathedral!’

Incapable of speech I merely shook my head, hurtled acrossthe hall to the dining-room, which had been set aside for the guests’ coats, and began to rummage around for my leather jacket.

‘Ah, there you are!’ said Christian, walking into the room a second later. ‘I was afraid you’d already gone. This hasn’t been much fun for you, has it? Marina’s very bold in bringing together widely differing age-groups, but it’s a risky strategy for a hostess to adopt.’

‘I didn’t mind.’ I pawed at a mink stole and finally found my jacket. ‘It was okay.’

Was it? You look a bit green.’

‘Too many sausage rolls —’

— and not enough champagne!’ he said laughing. To my surprise he added: ‘Look, I’m sorry I didn’t have much chance to talk to you — I think you were probably the most original person in the room and I always admire originality. Come to Oxford to see me if ever you can tear yourself away from the Other Place!’

And then as he smiled straight into my eyes, the Force blasted back across my psyche and I thought: you’ll die young.

THREE

‘sin because we are part of a sinful situation ...’

MICHAEL RAMSEY

Archbishop of Canterbury 1961-1974

Canterbury Pilgrim

I

He died two years later in the summer of 1965. I met him only three times after that first encounter, but those meetings ensured I became involved in the mystery of 1968. They all took place within weeks of Marina’s party.

I was anxious to respond to his invitation to Oxford, so as soon as my second-year exams were finished I wrote him a note which read: ‘Dear Dr Aysgarth, If you have a moment to spare I’d like to ask you how far Joachim of Flora’s philosophy predates Karl Marx’s theory of history. I could come up to Oxford any time now. Yours sincerely, N. DARROW.’

In reply he wrote back: ‘Dear Nick, How nice to hear from you! Now that term’s ended and my undergraduates have finished having nervous breakdowns, I’m free as air. Come up for the weekend and we’ll pull Joachim to pieces! Yours, CHRISTIAN.’

I went up for the weekend. He had an unexpectedly large house in North Oxford, a fact which reminded me that Katie came from a wealthy family. There was a tousled garden with a bumpy tennis court in the middle of it. The house was comfortable, but its youngest inhabitants, two little Aysgarths aged five and two, ensured that it was not oppressively tidy. I knew little about children in those days, but these girls seemed unusually bright and well-behaved. An au pair female pitter-pattered in the background but Katie did most of the cookingherself. The food was Frenchified but plentiful. I ate voraciously and remembered to offer to help with the washing up. Katie said no, no, but was pleased I had volunteered. Christian said no, no, and bore me off to his study for mind-stretching conversations about Joachim of Flora, but since people kept dropping in and the phone kept ringing, our discussions tended to be fragmentary.

I was impressed by the Aysgarths’ popularity and even more impressed by their ability to remain unflurried by the numerous interruptions. A successful partnership, I thought, a well-suited couple. I forgot that obscure moment of tension between them at Marina’s party.

On the Sunday of my visit Christian showed me around his College and we attended matins in Christ Church Cathedral. It was after this that I felt sufficiently self-assured in his company to say: ‘Since you’re a church-goer, I suppose your decision not to be ordained had nothing to do with a loss of faith.’

‘I don’t usually go to church. But I happen to be fond of that Purcell anthem they sang this morning.’

I was so startled by this confession that I was glad he gave me no chance to comment. ‘To tell the truth,’ he added, ‘I never intended to be ordained. I read theology just to please my father.’

Automatically I heard myself say: ‘But how on earth did you break the news to him that you weren’t going on to theological college?’

‘I said something like: "Brace yourself — tough news — I’m not going to be ordained." And he said: "Oh dear. Never mind, we can’t all be Archbishop of Canterbury. Have a drink and tell me what you intend to do instead."‘

‘What a fabulous father!’ I exclaimed impressed, but Christian merely said: ‘I doubt if he was surprised. I think he’d already worked out that my decision to read theology was my way of discharging any filial obligation I had to follow in his footsteps.’

‘Even so,’ I said, ‘he took it very well. If I decided not to be ordained, I believe my father would sink into a depression and die.’

‘What about your mother?’

‘She –’

‘Oh God, no, I’m sorry, she’s dead, isn’t she?’

‘Yes, she died when I was fourteen.’

‘I was fifteen when my mother died,’ said Christian. ‘It was absolute bloody hell. However, at least your father never remarried. Count your blessings.’ And when I heard the edge to his voice I knew he hated his stepmother.

I heard from her three weeks later. I was at home, trying to work out how I could trade in Lynda (my first girl, acquired in a frenzy the previous summer after my encounter with Marina in the punt) and take on something with longer legs. I was just fantasising for the umpteenth time about Dinkie when Morgan, one of the Community, banged on the door of my private sitting-room and said: ‘The intercom’s not working and that crazy wife of the Dean of Starbridge is on the phone screeching for you. Are you in or out?’

I opened the door. Morgan was an ex-pop-singer who was now trying to write an opera about God in order to justify the free meals which he received as a member of the Community, but I didn’t mind him. He was harmless. The members of the Community who drove me up the wall were Rowena and Agnes, the wives of the ex-monks, Mark and Luke. I detest bossy old bitches who think priggishness is part of the Christian way of life.

‘Okay, I’ll take the call,’ I said, intrigued by Morgan’s news, and moved to the bedroom, where I kept the phone.

‘Nicholas my dear,’ said Mrs Dean the instant I announced my presence, ‘this is Dido Aysgarth – as that peculiar man who answered the phone may or may not have told you, and really, I can’t think why your father has to surround you with a bunch of cranks instead of engaging some motherly soul who would be a proper housekeeper, but then there’s the problem of the garden, isn’t there, and gardeners are almost impossible toobtain nowadays as I well know. Nevertheless it seems unwise to rely on religious maniacs, such a tragedy your mother died young, although she worked so hard running that estate that it’s hardly surprising she had a massive stroke and personally I think women should stick to being wives and mothers and leave the masculine work in this world to men – and talking of men, my dear, Christian’s coming down next weekend with his family and since he’s taken a fancy to you he’s insisting that I invite you over for Sunday lunch, and I thought
what
a good idea because it’s years since you’ve seen Elizabeth and although she’s only fourteen she’s very mature – and in my opinion quite ravishing as well as utterly brilliant – but of course I’m prejudiced as I’m her mother, and talking of parents, I almost hesitate to ask for fear of hearing bad news, but how
is
that poor old father of yours?’

‘Very well.’

‘So sad your mother’s death unhinged him. All right, Nicholas, we’ll look forward to your visit, Christian will be so –’ And she hung up, cutting herself off. Probably she continued to talk even after the receiver had been replaced.

It says much for my desire to see Christian that I turned up at the Deanery despite the outrageous style of the invitation. Unfortunately I at first had no chance to talk to him. Mrs Aysgarth was ruthless in clamping down on my efforts to escape from Nymphet-Elizabeth, Starbridge’s very own version of Lolita, and when I did succeed in heading for the seclusion of the lavatory, Sandy-the-Greek-Freak waylaid me in the hall. I was just wishing I were a hundred miles away when Christian came to the rescue and bore me off for a stroll around the Close.

As we passed the South Canonry where the Ashworths lived he said: ‘Are you really psychic or is that just a fantasy of Marina’s?’

‘I get a bit of foreknowledge occasionally.’

Hearing my guarded tone he realised I was nervous of ridicule and at once he sought to reassure me. ‘I ask purely out of friendly curiosity,’ he said, ‘not hostile scepticism.’

‘I’m not good at talking about it. In fact my father says I shouldn’t talk about it, because in his opinion there are many futures and not all of them come true. You’ve got to allow for man’s free will, you see, so when I do experience foreknowledge —’ I repressed a shudder at the memory of Marina’s party ‘— I always have to remind myself that the disclosed future may never happen.’

‘But presumably it does sometimes happen, and that’s extraordinary in its implications, isn’t it? It would seem to support Plato — to suggest that the world we know is only the shadow of another world, the real world where all time is eternally present. How can one see the future unless time, as it’s popularly understood, is an illusion? What a kick in the teeth for modern philosophy, refusing to acknowledge any reality other than the one we perceive with our senses!’

‘My father says modern philosophy is wholly unreal, just the spirit of the Enlightenment reaching its inevitable dead end. My father says the logical positivists prove only one thing: that it’s possible to have a brilliant intellect and still wind up a spiritual ignoramus out of touch with ultimate reality.’

‘I’d like to talk to your father,’ said Christian, ‘but I hear he doesn’t see anyone new nowadays.’

‘Oh, he’d see you, I’m sure,’ I said at once, ‘if I were to ask him.’

‘Would he? Then if you could mention my name I’d really be most grateful. Like the spirit of the Enlightenment, I seem to have reached a dead end.’

I stared at him in astonishment, and when he saw my expression he said rapidly: ‘I’ve got everything a man could wish for, of course. But I feel I need a wise man like your father to give my life a new direction for the future.’

This statement at least I could understand. Anyone could benefit from skilled spiritual direction, even those whose lives were successful and happy. My father had never confined himself merely to counselling the troubled in order to help them to pray; a considerable part of his ministry had consisted of advising those who were doing well in their journey along the spiritual way and wanted to sustain their progress. So I didn’t automatically assume that Christian had severe personal problems. In fact I thought it far more likely that he had reached a point where his secession from the Church bothered him and he was keen to re-examine whatever beliefs he still retained.

‘I’ll speak to my father as soon as I get home,’ I promised, pleased by the opportunity Christian had given me to repay his kindness, but to my dismay my father refused to see him.

‘I’m not interested in Aysgarth’s over-educated sons who are "now finally realising that intellectual prowess is no substitute for spiritual growth.’

·‘But Father —’

‘I’m over eighty,’ said my father crossly, ‘I’m retired and nowadays I see only the people I want to see. However —’ Realising that he was behaving like a very stubborn, tiresome old codger he made a big effort ‘— I’ll write Christian a letter referring him to the Fordites at Grantchester. Since they’re so close to Cambridge the monks there are well accustomed to helping clever men who have lost touch with their souls.’

‘I don’t think he’s lost touch with his soul. He just wants advice on shaping his future.’

‘When someone talks about reaching a dead end you can be certain his soul’s well out of reach of his fingertips,’ said my father tartly, and pottered off to his little kitchen to prepare Whitby’s evening fish.

I was so embarrassed by my failure to secure Christian an audience that I made no attempt to contact him, but in September, just as I was preparing to return to Cambridge for my final year, I received a phone call from his friend Perry Palmer in London.

‘I’m throwing a party on the Saturday after next,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Any chance you’ll be able to come? Marina and the gang will be there so you won’t be entirely marooned among old fogeys in their mid-thirties like me.’

I felt sure Christian had prompted the invitation. ‘Thanks, Perry,’ I said. ‘Great.’ As an afterthought I added warily:

‘Elizabeth Aysgarth won’t be there, will she?’ but Perry answered with a laugh: No, I don’t go in for nymphets!’ I then had to work out where I could stay the night. On previous visits to London I had stayed with the Fordite monks in the guest-wing of their headquarters near Marble Arch, but I knew from past experience that the guest-master became stroppy if I stayed out late. I decided I was tired of stroppy guest-masters, tired of my father behaving as if London were one big moral cesspit, tired of being treated as anything less than a fully-grown adult male.

‘I’ll stay with one of my friends,’ I said to my father. ‘That’s not acceptable to me, Nicholas. If you’ve got to go to London, you must stay with the monks.’

‘But that’s such a pain in the neck!’

We eyed each other balefully. This was the danger zone where the generation gap yawned and my desire to be independent in the manner of the 1960s clashed with my father’s antiquated ideas about what was proper for a young man of twenty.

‘If you refuse to stay with the Fordites,’ said my father, ‘then you must stay with Martin. He’ll look after you.’

‘I don’t need looking after! Maybe I’ll cadge a corner in Michael Ashworth’s pad — surely you can’t object if I stay with a bishop’s son!’

‘You may stay with Charley but not with Michael,’ said my father, who had somehow found out that Michael had been chucked out of medical school for laying every nurse in sight. ‘However, I must say that I don’t approve of this modern habit of scrounging hospitality, and in my opinion you should always wait to be invited before you turn up on a friend’s doorstep and put him to a certain amount of inconvenience. With members of one’s family, of course, it’s different. They have a duty to provide for you, but even so, a thoughtful, unselfish man will be scrupulous in trying not to impose himself on any household merely in order to make his life easier.’

Hopeless old Victorian. ‘People are more casual nowadays, Father.’

‘Yes, I’ve noticed the decline in good manners over the last half-century. Now, Nicholas, why don’t you approach Martin before you approach Charley? I’d really feel much happier if —’

‘The last thing I’m going to do is stay with that old creep!’

Bad move, Nicholas. Bad, bad move. But the old man was driving me up the wall. Taking a deep breath I tried to grab some patience out of thin air. Mustn’t upset the old boy. If he had a stroke and died ‘Father, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound so rude, the words just sort of slipped out, but you see, Martin and I ... well, I mean ... okay, I know we’ve got you in common and I know he’s a good son, coming down here regularly and gushing all over you, and I’m sure you’re right when you say he has many fine qualities, but ... he’s so old, you see, and not quite my sort of person, and —’ I stopped before saying the words ‘I can’t stand him’ but my father heard them anyway as they flashed across my mind.

‘I’m extremely disappointed by that speech,’ he said in the kind of voice priests use for funerals. ‘You’ve upset me very, very much.’