Duval was pleased with both his writing and his guest. As he had always hoped, his interests were coalescing because they were mutually inspiring. His relationship with the Bishop of Guildford, however, was deteriorating, if it were possible for it to become any worse. It reached a nadir during lunch the next day: the bishop, surprisingly, had invited Duval to a meal in the Napier Hotel, an ornate red-brick Edwardian edifice near the River Wey. Duval was a little taken aback by the written invitation, but it was the kind of gesture the Americanised cleric might make. “A good public relations move, as they would say in the US of A,” Duval said aloud in an exaggerated southern drawl. The invitation worried him-he realised that it would be more than a friendly chat over good wine.
Bishop Templeton was already sitting at a reserved table when Duval arrived promptly at one. Duval’s superior indulged himself, while sipping sherry, in a zestful diatribe about cricket for twenty minutes before moving on to Church matters.
Templeton launched immediately into his views on the liberal trends in the American Church, complaining that the papacy was using its strength to downgrade the role of theologians and fill vacant bishoprics with yes-men. “Rome,” he said, in his nasal version of received pronunciation, “is trying to reverse all the progressive developments we have made on the Pill, on marriage annulments and upon attitudes towards sex, including homosexuality.”
Duval’s energetic views on the principle of individual relationships with God made him a natural opponent of the over-centralised, over-dogmatic Church, but like all zealous converts he was at heart a traditionalist. Besides, he felt he had to engage the bishop in Church matters beyond Guildford, if only to distract him.
“Surely, Your Grace, the papacy is by definition authoritarian.” Duval’s voice was not as confident as his words. “There is a very long history supporting the papal right to appoint bishops. Christ did not form a subcommittee of apostles, did He? He did not take a vote on the subject of His own crucifixion.”
Bishop Templeton raised his eyebrows slightly, and recommenced his tirade: “Maybe not, but recently cardinals have been treated like altar boys. There is a culture of fear, a culture of passivity…Rome is out of touch, especially with the Church in the Third World. Take the ‘liberation’ theology in Latin America. We can’t stand against it because if we do so we’ll lose the people. We have to understand the constant conflicts between authority and conscience. And we must be on the side of conscience.”
“But where do you stop?” Duval asked with some passion. “The history of the Catholic Church has depended on its unity, its uniformity. It has survived all other empires in history because of its centralising strength. If you start saying that Latin America can do this, Africa can do that, there will be another schism. You have to hold the line…”
“Against the tide of moral relativism?” The bishop bestowed upon his words a smug smile.
“Yes. Absolutely,” Duval said indignantly.
“And so Rome becomes as rigid as Moscow?” countered the bishop. “QED, I’d say.”
Duval had recently said as much to Marda. He was losing the argument, so he switched to another tack: “Perhaps, your Grace, it’s not a question of papal dogma. I accept the Pope’s infallibility on matters spiritual. I think some of the errors made, and there have been many, relate more to personal factors-old age, tiredness and stress. Clearly the cardinals and bishops should support the pontiff more wholeheartedly, not add further problems.”
“What further problems?” Templeton tilted his head quizzically, and looked directly at the priest.
“Well, I mean specifically abandoning the old rites and rituals,” Duval said. “The liberal position often regards these shibboleths as meaningless gibberish. They say they have to ‘dump’ Latin services for the sake of the worldwide flock. I know that few could understand the liturgy, but it is not mumbo jumbo. In word and form Church Latin is beautiful, the crystallisation of fifteen hundred years of intellect, of a love of God and a healthy terror of His divine anger.”
Duval was into his stride now: “Trendy guerrilla priests in South America or folksy fathers in New York strumming guitars will not create a populist, or popular, Church, but will destroy the authority built up over centuries.”
Duval examined the bishop’s expression to see whether he should continue. He did not see a stop sign. “I do not deny the need for Rome to be flexible, but this…this… sociological Church will no longer stand as a beacon against evil. Soon anything will go. The brightest and most sincere priests will leave and soon there will be few male priests, celibate or not. You will have to ordain women, God forbid! Why not make the Pope a woman? That’s the logical conclusion to liberalism.”
The bishop smiled; he thought they were both now debating for the sake of it, not from principle. None of these things was likely to happen. He couldn’t quite accept that Duval was in deadly earnest.
Over dessert, Templeton came to the point of the lunch: “Michael, I know we’ve had our difficulties in the past, and I’ve always tried to, er, smooth them over and find a way forward. But it would seem that, in spite of not inconsiderable effort on my part, some of the problems are coming to a head.”
Duval looked only slightly pained: “You are referring,” he said, “to complaints from my congregation, I presume.”
“Yes and other little sundries that keep occurring. I don’t need to rehearse them again. The Lord knows, I’ve tried to help you: you’ve been given reduced responsibilities for some three years now. You are almost sine cura, although admittedly partly at your own request so you can complete your, er, book. How’s it coming along, by the way? Have you found a publisher yet?”
“It is almost completed.” Duval was guarded.
“When may I see something of it?” asked the bishop politely. “You have always been so reluctant to let anyone see it.”
Duval shifted in his seat. “Well, Bishop, it is rather unorthodox. It is, as I explained in the synopsis, a modern interpretation of the role of contemplation in the fourteenth century. It is not a scholarly work as such, but rather an attempt to interest modern, by which I mean popular, readers in this neglected area of Church practice. That’s my concession to populism, if you like, and it is mainly aimed at women readers. I think sometimes we tend to neglect the largest group within the Catholic community, don’t you?”
The bishop ignored the diversionary cue: “It’s a pity, then, that it’s women who’ve complained about you, but I shan’t dwell on the details because we have discussed this already. However, I do look forward to seeing your book. And I would expect you to show it to your superiors before it’s published, especially if, despite your conservatism, it’s perhaps a mite unorthodox-but don’t let me put you off. You know that I’m trying to move the Church forward as fast as I can, without undermining her sacred tenets, of course.”
The bishop patted the small golden cross that hung from his neck. “What I really wanted to talk to you about was a change of direction for you. In the light of the flurry of criticisms, I don’t want you to suffer any possible scandal…”
“But…”
“Hear me out, Michael. I want to do what’s best for you, and this is what I’ve decided. I think a period of missionary work in South America might suit you.”
“Bishop, I must object…”
“You can see some of this newfangled liberation theology at first hand. With your intellectual gifts I’m sure you will begin to understand the new theories and you will certainly master Spanish quickly. In fact, I’ve arranged a language course for you for three months in a seminary near La Paz.”
“Bolivia?” asked Duval, unable to conceal his astonishment.
“Indeed,” continued Templeton firmly. “After that there are two missionary stations in rather more remote parts of the country which would benefit from your talents. Once you’re there you can decide which one is suitable. After all, you have shown a great interest in anchorites, so you can hardly object to being cut off from the busy world for a while, can you? Consider it not as the back of beyond, but as God’s front-line. It would provide precisely the right sort of spiritual refreshment.”
Duval’s face clouded, while Templeton fiddled with the stem of his wineglass before continuing. “Some of the women in your congregation find your behaviour decidedly odd. I have already cautioned you informally and in writing. Sometimes you seem to be behaving as if the outside world does not exist. I have to pull you out before anything untoward happens. I will simply not tolerate a scandal in my diocese. Need to nip things in the bud and all that. Frankly, Michael, Guildford needs a change from you, and you need a change as well. A fresh challenge.”
Duval was fuming, but there was little he would be permitted to say, especially after his little disquisition on the need for authority in the Church. Intellectually, he had boxed himself in, and both he and the bishop knew it.
“When do you plan to send me?”
The bishop inhaled deeply. “I shall give you time-say, four to six months-to wind up your affairs. I shall release you, with immediate effect, from all your remaining duties to allow you the chance to prepare, perhaps start on some Spanish, and to sort out your house. Yours by inheritance, is it not?”
“Yes, yes,” Duval said distractedly. “I don’t want to sell it. I had always wanted to retire here. Rather sentimental, really. Belonged to an aunt. It’s a sort of family association.”
“Quite, quite. I understand.”
“And my dog?”
“Ah, these encumbrances you have on your ministry, Michael. I’m sure someone can be found to care for the poor creature while you’re away.”
Templeton has never owned a dog, thought Michael.
The bishop coughed politely as he cleared his throat for the disagreeable details. “I don’t want to order you to go to South America, Michael. The Church doesn’t do that any more. I don’t want to do that, but I fervently believe that it’s right for everyone, for you, for the Church.”
Michael wanted to say, “And for you, you patronising old soak.”
“Just think about it for a while. My assistant will provide you with all the details. Think about it very seriously, Michael.”
By this time Bishop Templeton was enjoying his third glass of wine, and was more inclined to return to the state of English cricket. Duval had no interest in the subject, but was obliged to nod and smile in the right places until lunch had finished, promptly at 2:15 p.m., and the bishop elegantly dismissed him.
Duval drove his old Morris at full speed on his return to Shere, realising his life had just been altered forever. He considered his alternatives: theoretically he could leave the Church, but it was his whole life. All that he owned was his house, although Duval had never thought of himself as materialistic. The house meant nothing to him in terms of pounds, shillings and pence, but his work in Shere, his writing, and now Marda-these were not things, they were tools of his spiritual work, not material goods. They were his vocation, they were not shameful worldliness.
And Marda was at home waiting for him. He was finally achieving what he had worked on for years, and now it was all threatened by a sanctimonious sports obsessive who believed he was a trendsetter. Duval wanted to get drunk and then resign from the Church, but he could do little except curse the bishop.
Unconsciously, his vanity had propelled him into believing that the Church needed him as much as he needed it. He was altering reality to preserve his sanity. He was afraid of being alone, not least alone and without the Church; regardless of how much he railed against it, he would be lost without her mantle of protection.
He hated Templeton and all his kind, but just as he wanted to control, so, too, he understood that, in the final analysis, he had to be subservient to the authority of Rome and its episcopal appointees, even if they were bibulous oafs such as Templeton. But Duval would not give in, even though the Church had failed him yet again. He had not failed; the Church had failed to understand his mission. The more the success of that mission seemed to fade, as near-victory slipped into defeat, the more destructive his soul became.
In his subconscious, probably, and certainly in the rambling confessions in his diary, Duval the erstwhile spiritual champion was becoming more and more Duval the destroyer. Perhaps something deep inside his psyche, well hidden, told him that he could never succeed in his mission, that he never really wanted to. His psychotic streak was enhanced by his paranoia. He was a gambler who was satisfying what he truly wanted, to appease his hatred and his lust for destruction without compassion.
He still had some compassion for “her,” and, for that matter, his dog. But everything else was like background music on the radio, the real world had become barely observed wallpaper in a room full of frenzied lunatics. He was only interested in his thoughts, desires, wishes and plans; other people mattered only in that they could be used for his own ends.
Duval was not completely psychotic, however. The sadist in him demanded his victims’ surrender, but not necessarily their annihilation. He could still control himself, despite the traumatic news from Templeton. He could still maintain his denial of the contradictions which permeated his existence: a vegetarian who killed people; a priest who imprisoned innocents; a theologian who could not love yet who preached Christ’s message of charity and hope; a man obsessed by compulsive cleanliness who forced his would-be disciples to live in their own squalor. He was stimulated only by the helpless, not by the strong. On the surface he showed courtesy and correctness, but these social graces were a superficial veneer over his demonic inner drive. Perhaps only a priest could juggle for so long with so many masks.
For Duval there was still the ideal of the anchoress. He had once loved his mother, but she had failed him, and he had come to love the Church instead. He had been passed over for promotion. As a keen Latin scholar he had wanted to work in the Vatican, but had been turned down, then he had failed as a military chaplain, and had finally ended up in a dead-end post in Guildford. The Church had rejected him even though he was convinced of the power of his spiritual views. In the end only God could know, and so Duval would submit only to Him. He liked to quote from St. Paul: “If you are led by the spirit, no law can touch you”; no law of Church or Caesar really mattered when it came to the search for absolute truth, so he would explore the only route to God available to mortals-holy, absolutely solitary contemplation. Duval had attempted to follow this path on numerous retreats in the most austere of monasteries, but he understood in the end that it was not his vocation. Nevertheless, the path was righteous, and this had led to his study of the extreme mystics of the Middle Ages.
After his sister’s death, he had cut himself off from his mother and grown to hate all women. The Virgin Mary was a respite, the temporary but vital exception to a total misogyny that would have toppled him into insanity. Then he reached out to one mystic, one holy anchoress, whom he had pursued for years in thought and writing, but for all his love for the historical Christine, she needed a physical embodiment. He sought living flesh to clothe the skeleton of Christine, which haunted his mind, but that flesh had rotted in his cellar. Only Marda now stood between him and total madness, only she could save him and his vision. She had become both Marda and Christine.
When he reached his house the thought of Marda calmed him. She was his now, but he could possess her only for six more months, at the very most. He would have to accelerate his special ministry for her. Yes, if she became totally acquiescent to his plans, he would leave the Church and maintain his life with her. He could just afford to retire, keep her and share their spiritual union, together until death. But what if she refused to understand that this would be a perfect future for her? He might be forced to let her starve herself to death. Duval dreaded the thought of losing her. He would, for her own good, make her believe. She would live then, with him, forever. Marda would be his lasting spiritual project, but he couldn’t contemplate another failure. No, he would make her believe, and he would complete his book. He gave himself three months.
The first thing he did was to make a pot of coffee and take it down to Marda’s cell. He desperately needed to be with her, the one living person who brought some meaning to his life.
Marda, who had learned that it was wise to be supportive, noticed at once that he was troubled. “What is it, Michael?” she asked solicitously. “Has someone died? Or has someone stolen your book-you told me you had only one copy?”
“No, Marda”-sometimes when he was angry he refused to address her directly; she felt good to be a person with a name rather than an animal in a living tomb-“I still have the manuscript. I haven’t finished it yet. There is much more we have to do until it is complete. No, it’s my bishop again.”
Marda had not heard him mention the bishop in such terms. That there was a chain of command, that there was somebody in charge of him, sent a fresh surge of hope rushing around her brain.
“What has he done, Michael?”
“He wants to send me away from here. From my work, from you.”
Marda realised that a sign of relief could be fatal. She listened intently as Duval explained the bishop’s plans for him.
“Do you have to go?” she said cautiously.
“No, I could resign and stay here with you. It depends on you.”
“How?”
“Well, your studies have gone well. You are a willing and able student. I like teaching you.”
“But what is all this learning for? Do you want me to become a nun in a convent?”
“No, I don’t want you ever to leave me.” He said this with an utter conviction that horrified Marda.
“Then what? Surely you don’t want to keep me locked up here for ever.”
“No, of course not.”
They were both standing in the cell, a few feet apart, their eyes locked on one another.
“Then I don’t understand. May I ask: do you intend to leave the Church in order to get married? To me?”
Duval appeared shocked, but he managed a hollow laugh. “Good Lord, no. It’s quite simple what I want. I want to share my life with you, but on a spiritual level. I want you to become”-he had never really defined it so succinctly to himself, let alone to any of his guests-“to become, as it were, a modern anchoress…I will always teach you and spiritually support your seclusion. I intend to renovate a room upstairs that will be more comfortable. You would be secluded from the world, but it would have a small window, in the shape of a quatrefoil, looking on to the rear garden. You need some light, not this dungeon.”
He hesitated, uneasy at how this young girl could make him seem foolish. “But a period of penance,” he said with forced authority in his voice, “is good for the contemplative life. I want above all for you to desire this yourself. In the end I cannot force this vocation upon you.”
“So if I said no, you would let me go?” She knew she was risking all with this question.
Duval hesitated for a second. “No, I cannot let you leave me.”
“Even if I swear on all the religious meaning you have given me that I won’t tell anyone, the police, my family…”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, although it would be hard to hide so many months’ absence.”
He looked uncomfortable as he tried to do something with his hands. He searched around in his jacket pocket for his pipe and started to fill it with tobacco. Marda sat on her bench, deflated.
“I cannot bear you to live without me,” he confessed. “Perhaps I should say I cannot bear to live without you.”
Marda wanted to contrast his comments about her spiritual renunciation and the hypocrisy of his wanting to possess people, but she said, “If you go to South America, can’t you free me then? You will be so far away and I’ll be grateful for all you have taught me. I’ve been cold and hungry and I did hate you at first, but I’ve learned so much. I’ve come to understand a great deal about life and intellectual ideas. If you go, will you let me go?”
Then a final stab at persuasion: “Perhaps I could come to South America?”
Duval looked at her, incredulous but half-pleased. “I don’t think the bishop has a female companion in mind. I haven’t decided anything yet. Perhaps you are right: if I do go to South America I can let you go then. Unless you decide you want to stay with me…I need to think, Marda. And so do you. I shall give you a small fustian kerchief to embroider. It will aid your reflections.”
He walked out and carefully locked the cell door.
Duval, sitting bolt upright in his cold bath, beat himself with a walking stick. His self-mortification was brief, but some of his anger and frustration were lifted. Deliberately not shaving after his bath, he threw on some old clothes and slouched on the wooden seat by his desk. He glared at his typewriter for a while before rolling in the first white page.
July 1333
Christine, crouching on her bench, stared at the pattern on the embroidery she was doing as part of her penance. It felt strange being enclosed again after the months of sunshine, greenery and people, but the smells and sounds of Guldenford, the bustle of a visit to the town, even the domestic clamour in Ashe Cottage, had been overwhelming.
She summoned her senses to commune again with nature, to commune again with her God by worshipping the sounds of His Creation. Before dawn she listened intently to the churring of a nightjar; the song thrush then began its beguilingly repetitive chorus. She anticipated eagerly the two entirely different songs of the wood warbler, and, although she could not see them, she knew that the wood pigeons and stock doves would squabble with the jackdaws. Her hearing was beginning to reach the intense levels of her previous enclosure, and she could almost sense the beating of tiny wings as butterflies perched on the ledge of her external grille. That summer the large tortoiseshell butterfly, with its tiger-like markings, and the peacock butterfly, with two blue-black eyes on its wings, would affirm the glory of the Creation and her place within it. As the light faded, the woodcocks’ duck-like call announced Vespers, and, at Compline, the tawny owls promised food to their hungry youngsters. When a moth fluttered on to her ledge, she knew that the long-eared brown bats, one of the most delicate of God’s creatures, would emerge from their roost in the church’s eaves to feed. To complete the cycle, the nightjar sang once more to announce that it would share its nocturnal nesting duties with its mate. All awaiting the miracle of another sunrise.
Nature would aid her contemplation, her insight into God; perhaps soon the calor, the heat of divine approval, would descend on her, and finally she would reach the canor, the ability to hear the sound of heaven, the musica spiritualis.
That was the future. As she listened to the Mass in the church of St. James, she took stock of her past life: the events that had led to her calling as an anchoress and the two years enclosed in the cell; the horrific news that her sister had been grossly abused at the hands of the same tormentor, her search for guidance and what she believed was the blessed sign from God; her escape in time to comfort poor Margaret and the birth of her nephew; her sister’s death; the harrowing trial and Sir Richard’s punishment; the blessed personal intercession of the Pope himself and, finally, her re-enclosure. Her short life had been very full, and now it was time for reflection, peace…
“Christine, are you ready for communion?”
The familiar voice startled her, but she responded quickly. “Aye, Father Peter,” she said resolutely. “I shall commune here forever. Enough venturin’ have I done for life. By the grace of God, I shall die within these sacred walls.”
***
Duval stopped writing and rubbed both his hands over the stubble of his beard. Although Christine had inhabited his inner life for years, he could no longer see the face he had long imagined. Now he saw only Marda. Before, he had hoped to instruct Marda by example-Christine’s example-and by slow, methodical preparation. But Templeton, the Church, were stealing his time away, risking the corruption of his vision. He needed to write more directly for Marda, because his inspiration was not diminishing, it was changing.
The keys of his typewriter waited sullenly, mocking his determination to define his mission. A sudden rush of energy surged through him, and he started to jab at the keys.
Yet there was a paradox: only by participating in the divine do we become human. Christine-Marda-could not know it, but there was a God-shaped hole in her consciousness. All cultures in all time have created an archetype, an image of God, a model of how hapless humans should behave. All the philosophers in all of time have groped to shape the symbols, the replicas of the divine world. They searched for unity of purpose, whereas in the modern world we tend to see autonomy and independence as supreme values.
Man is teleological by nature: he must search for God to prove himself human, or more than human, with that greater sense of self. After an intense emotion of tragedy or pleasure, it is a common experience to feel that we have missed something greater that remains just beyond our grasp.
Those who think they have grasped it simply make their own God. They assume that He loves what we love and detests what we detest, but this endorses our prejudices instead of forcing us to transcend them. Personalising God can produce a fatalism, a facile belief that any and all disasters are the will of God. “It is the will of Allah,” say Muslims. We accept things that are normally unacceptable.
There is a mighty difference in making God like ourselves and then blaming Him for everything, and each one of us having the right to seek for ourselves the Godhead. For so long, the Catholic Church has discouraged the individual route to God because it threatened the very basis of its authority. Mysticism was rife in the immediate aftermath of Jesus, but then Christianity became fossilised. For a brief period in the Middle Ages, the Church allowed mysticism-what it called the individual path-to flourish. Some of the mystics, the solitary seekers after truth, were canonised; some were burnt as heretics. Soon the Church in Europe crushed all individualism with the power of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Yet in England, where the inquisitors of the Holy Office rarely ventured, mysticism was entrenched in the soul of the Mother Church. Only a few records survive of these enlightened ones: the unknown author of The Cloud of Unknowing, together with Richard Rolle, Walter Hinton and the saintly Julian of Norwich. The greatest of these visionaries discovered the insights to which the mystics of Islam and Judaism also alluded.
Although each great religion has produced magnificent visions which are culturally conditioned, each shares a similar concept of the true searcher being able to ascend to a vision of God; something that human adventurers who have honed their spiritual talent have always wanted to do. The mystical experience of God has characteristics that are common to all faiths in all times. These spiritual voyagers have sought a journey through the imagination, not through a process of scientific or logical reasoning.
Yet all established religions have feared these individual journeys, and so most mystics became outcasts…
Duval felt the silence of his study, the contrast with the frenzy inside his head. He thought of his pupil entombed below, the vessel of all his hopes. He believed in Marda, but could she really understand his mission? For her sake he hoped fervently that she could, because it would save her life. He had done his work, at a more rapid pace it was true, but in the end it was her role, her destiny, to understand. Yes, she could understand. He was simplifying two thousand years of the search for God into just a few pages…
Mysticism is still unpopular in Christianity; today the word is allied with charlatans, gurus and hippies. These self-indulgent cranks seek three things on their selfish path: to feel in control; to feel good about themselves; and to feel that there is a future. But for these misguided people, individualism comes first and last. They have abandoned searching-the ego is enough for them. And their chemical drugs.
Yet the themes of inner contemplation seen in yoga or Buddhism and the fashion for psychoanalysis all display a form of mysticism. It is no accident that both Freud and Jung turned instinctively to myths to explain and explore the inner world of the psyche. So today there is a need for an alternative to a purely scientific explanation of our existence. It may be the only way of preventing the destruction of this world-unless we hold fast to the notion that God will not allow His Creation to become a nuclear wasteland. Perhaps God Himself will bring His Armageddon in the last decades of this second millennium, as a prelude to His Second Coming. Time is short, Marda. I feel events pressing on us. These must be the End Times. I can almost smell the destruction of the world.
Yet the discipline of solitary contemplation can help the skilled and sensitive soul to return to the One, the primordial beginning of mankind, and the ability to create a constant state of God’s presence by tapping into the energy field which surrounds this Earth, God’s energy for God’s Earth. But such a journey to the centre of light and energy, and to the centre of the mind, can entail great personal risks because one soul may not be able to endure what it finds there. Madness is always nudging at our elbow.
I, myself, fight off madness every day, and I walk in the world. A world I often hate, despite God’s creatures, perhaps because of God’s creatures…
So defeat, despair and loneliness affect us all, but especially the solitary seekers. The mystical journey can be undertaken only with the guiding hand of a tutor, a sympathetic and patient expert, who can monitor the experience and guide the apprentice past and beyond the terrors, to give him or her strength when it is needed. Marda, let me be your true guide. But there are also false guides. Pseudo-science says the patient in psychoanalysis needs the guidance of a therapist, except that this is a selfish search for the ego inside, not God outside.
The joy and peace of enlightenment through solitary contemplation can only be attained for a few minutes at a time, and after a titanic struggle between the spirit and the world, God and the Devil as it were. Then, finally, the overflowing taste of God’s sweetness comes as the reward. The soul has to battle its way out of the darkness that is its natural habitat.
There are many ways, all arduous, of achieving this glimpse of spiritual Nirvana, Valhalla, Paradise, Heaven…call it what you will. One example I have tried is a form of Christian yoga, where breathing exercises systematically help to wean the mind away from the passions of pride, fear, greed, lust and anger which tie it to the ego. The self has to be forgotten in the search for the light. Charismatic sects claim literally to see this light which transforms, but the instant “cure” of the evangelicals is no substitute for the long, sure process of learning the love of God.
God is not necessarily an external objective fact, but an essentially subjective and personal enlightenment. The path to God is not, therefore, necessarily taken via a building, an organisation or even reason, but through the creative God-given imagination. The Catholic Church cannot admit that God, in some profound sense, may be a product of the imagination, but it is self-evident that imagination must be the basis of faith. I can see that you have real imagination, Marda.
Imagination is the motor behind all major advances-in science and art as well as religion. The imaginative idea of God, the absent reality, has inspired men and women since the Creation, because it transcends all sectarian divides. The only way we can conceive of a God who remains imperceptible to the senses and impervious to logical proof is by means of symbols and visions, which it is the duty of the imagination to interpret.
That symbol, Marda, is often a woman…
Duval realised he was writing his testament exclusively for Marda. His long-suppressed subconscious motivations were being explained by him, to him. He was being as explicit as he could in order to direct her soul and save her life. The priest wondered whether he should end his own life if Marda could not, or would not, understand his desperate attempts to help her. It would be easy: fly agaric and hemlock in a vial.
A movement in the darkened study distracted the writer: Bobby rubbed against his legs and looked with devoted eyes at his master. Duval, feeling ashamed of himself, instantly dismissed thoughts of suicide; for the moment he was needed. He would not cave in to the pressures of spiritual minnows such as Templeton. Patting Bobby affectionately, he returned to his manifesto for his modern anchoress.
The youthful mystical poet Dante Alighieri was inspired when he saw Beatrice Portinari in Florence. His love for Beatrice became the symbol of spiritual love in The Divine Comedy, where he constructs an imaginary journey through hell, purgatory and heaven to reach a vision of God.
Since each man or woman can have a unique experience of God, it follows that no one religion can express the whole of the supernatural mystery. Any moral chauvinism about one’s own faith at the expense of other people’s is therefore unacceptable, since no single faith can contain the whole truth about God. To a hidebound Catholic this would be heresy. But a true man or woman of God should be equally at home in a temple, chapel, synagogue or mosque, since all provide a valid meaning of God. The pure vision of God is not imagined by conflicting faiths but by a coalition of them.
God is alive, not dead, as is suggested by some current thinkers. Auschwitz killed our God, say some Jews. The socialist utopia has replaced Him; besides, He never existed, say the Marxists. Since we are on the point of creating our own Armageddon with nuclear weapons, man, not God, will destroy the world, say the liberals. Even if God exists, then it is necessary to reject Him since the idea of God negates our freedom, or so the existentialists argue. And some say that religion is an immaturity which science will overcome.
But can we feel positive about a godless humanism so soon after the Holocaust, or confident of scientific rationalism in the shadow of Hiroshima? Frankly, I could never trust man’s rationality after the Americans dropped their damnable atomic bombs. So the search for God is a necessity for all mankind; a deep-rooted anxiety is part and parcel of the human condition. This anxiety is not neurotic; it is ineradicable and no therapy can dispel it. We constantly fear the terror of extinction, both individually and collectively, as we watch our bodies slowly but surely decay. As long as there is death, there must be God.
The whole idea of human life has been directed towards the future. We experience our lives as incomplete or unfinished. We always want more: to find that “something” out there that is beyond us. If Marxism dies, as it must, God as utopia will return to more than just the few pilgrim souls. Marxism is merely a temporary secular religion. As for science, in its core is God. Even Einstein appreciated mystical religion. Science may one day find the Great Mechanic of the universe, but the scientific method is not required. Subjective experience, fired by our imaginations, is the true way. This requires long periods of training and considerable time, helped by an expert. We can create God within ourselves. God cannot come ready-made and pre-packaged. He cannot be conjured up by the instant ecstasy of the revivalist preacher.
Human beings cannot endure the emptiness and desolation of no God. The truth is…
The phone rang. It was the American professor wanting to meet for a chat over a beer. Duval put him off with a curtness bordering on rudeness.
The priest looked back over his hours of writing. He knew he was losing his way with Christine’s story. He wanted so desperately to work on the final chapters of the successful search for ecstatic visions, but he had drifted off into a prospectus for Marda. Re-reading it, he knew he was rambling. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say: to describe the purpose of an anchoress in straightforward language was almost impossible. He would work on the draft again in the hope that Marda would understand it and act on it.
Beneath him Marda was also trying to distil her hopes for the future.
Dear Jenny,
Middle of December (I think) 1967
Michael has told me he might have to go to South America. That means that I can leave my cell. Or I can stay with him forever, he says. Not in here, though. That is the most important thing, getting out of this coal-hole. I cannot survive much longer in this tomb. He says he doesn’t want to marry me, which I thought at first might be his ambition. Which is to the good because he is far too old for me, but in different circumstances I might even have been a little flattered. It would be really odd for a Catholic priest to ask me to marry him, I know.
He has been much kinder to me and we get on very well-under the circumstances. I can exercise in the corridor and he has promised me a room upstairs. I still won’t be able to go out but at least I shall be in a proper room. Perhaps I can even go into the kitchen, or-who knows-watch a little TV, if I can persuade him to hire one. I miss Coronation Street and the Forsyte Saga. If you are allowed to visit me-I may be allowed some visitors-you will have to bring me up to date.
I am quite happy to learn more about religion because I do feel closer to God, both emotionally and intellectually. I know I never was an intellectual or anything before, especially as I wasn’t that brilliant at school. But I am learning, growing inside my head.
Sometimes I think my head will expand to bursting point with the new ideas. I had never thought of becoming a nun but I am sure there are some good aspects to it. I suppose you could say I have already converted to Roman Catholicism. It’s good to have a religious belief in life. Something to explain death.
If Michael leaves-I don’t know if he will-then I shall have to change my life anyway. If we both leave this house then he will go to South America, but I intend-at the very least-to become a regular churchgoer. I know that I have sinned many times in my life.
And I would like to go to university. I know that I am a bit too old, but some colleges take mature students, I think.
I feel much more positive about life and religion. I know that Michael doesn’t mean to hurt me. He has been so kind after the first difficult period when I had to learn to settle in. He gives me cigarettes and recently even newspapers.
But I do miss you and my family so much. I miss someone to hold. I miss the sun so much. I have forgotten what the colour green is. I want to see fields, and trees, even a blade of grass. I miss my freedom, even if only to choose what I do with my life. Michael says that Jesus Christ is the key which unlocks the doors of the prison cell of our own making. Perhaps that is right. I do know that enslavement against your will is the worst condition of life. I want to choose freedom, if only for the chance to be a better person. There is so much I want to do.
As always, your best, best friend.
Love
Marda
PS. Have a lovely Christmas. Please remember that we will be celebrating the birthday of Christ. Perhaps you will go to church and say a prayer for me. I certainly shall be praying for you.
Dear Christine,
I suppose this is a little crazy, but I feel I need to talk to you, somehow, despite the gap of over 600 years. I have been reading your story, and trying so hard to understand you. Michael has explained the spiritual aspects of your search, but I want to know how you feel…about being cut off from your family above all. I suppose they can…
Marda crossed out the present tense, and shifted to the past tense.
…could at least talk to you, but didn’t you feel like hugging them, especially your little brother or nephew? I would give anything to hug mine. Or talk to my parents at least. God must give strength…to us both, but does that mean that He gives more strength the more we are cut off from those we love? How did you cut off your feelings for Simon? It must have been such a difficult thing to give up all hope of having children, but life must have been very different in your time. I have been reading about the Middle Ages. Sometimes, I wish I could hold your hand and lead you through today’s Guildford-the place you called Guldenford. There are cars, trains, jet planes, TV. I wonder whether all these modern inventions would have affected your faith, your desire to be secluded? Was it easier then than now? God doesn’t change, but we do. How do we adapt?
I haven’t finished your story yet, but I hope-no, I pray-that you found what you were searching for. I will write to you again when I know more about you.
With affection,
Marda
Marda wrote a series of letters throughout the rest of the afternoon, using pages from her supply of exercise books. When she had finished, she climbed on to her bench and managed to winkle out the tiny folded squares that constituted her previous archive in the air vent. She destroyed the old ones by soaking them in the well of the paraffin heater and letting them burn bit by bit. Clearing away the ashes, she put them in her waste bin. Satisfied with her rewriting of history, she put the new letters in the vent.
Duval brought down some coffee and slices of chocolate cake around 5:30. That’s what his watch said, but she didn’t know whether it was morning or afternoon; the nature of the food indicated it was probably the latter.
He seemed much more relaxed, so she asked about his book: “I’ve read up to her returning to St. James’s church. I know there’s an Amen at the end, but you said you were still working on a conclusion. If you’ve finished it, can I see it? I know so much about Christine up to the age of twenty-two-is that right? — but what about her later years as an anchoress? Did she stay there, or did she leave again?”
Michael smiled at her transparency. “I haven’t finished the conclusion, but I will show you soon.”
He talked for a while on what he had read about Bolivia. At the end of his long monologue, Marda said simply, “Seems all jungles and revolutions.”
As she finished her last piece of cake, she said, in a patently wheedling tone, “Michael, I have a favour to ask. I don’t like to think about…the other rooms. But from what I have learned-from what you have taught me-I would like your other guests to have a proper burial.” She paused, trying to read his facial expression, but she could not discern the impact of her question.
Marda continued, “I suppose it would be too…difficult…to arrange a church burial, but couldn’t you do something in the garden? You said it’s quite secluded. And then you could say a blessing, even though it’s not holy ground. Excuse my presuming to tell you about Christian rites, but it would seem proper. Or have I spoken out of turn?”
“No, I had considered the same thing myself,” said Duval in a very conciliatory fashion. “They were suicides, they starved themselves, so I felt I could not take them to consecrated ground. But they should be treated with some dignity. It would be wrong to leave them where they are, especially if I do go to Bolivia. If.
“I should have done it before. I do apologise to you for not giving them a Christian burial. I will do it in the next few days, but I will tell you beforehand. I shall close your door and close the grille-I don’t want you to get upset again.”
Smiling, he added, “Is that to your satisfaction?” He enquired as though he were promising to take a favourite young niece to the funfair.
Marda heard the faint chime of a doorbell for the first time. She realised that he must have left the main cellar door open for the sound to carry this far.
He pretended to look unconcerned. “Ah, I was not expecting a visitor. Too late for the post. Perhaps somebody to do with the local elections, or a Jehovah’s Witness.”
The bell rang again. He quickly excused himself and, without shutting the cell door, hurried up the stairs.
Marda waited for a few seconds, and then put her head around the door. She ran along the corridor and up the short wooden stairs to the main cellar trapdoor, begging God that it would be unlocked. She tried the handle gently at first, then more and more frantically while trying to avoid being too noisy. It was locked. She thought of trying to shout through it. To scream. To bang.
She didn’t.
Marda returned to her cell, her eyes brimming with tears, the first for more than a month. She sat picking up bits of cake crumbs with her fingers and waited.
He returned within ten minutes, seriously agitated.
“Who was it?” Marda tried to ask as casually as she could.
“Bishop Templeton. Insufferable intrusion. Some excuse to drop off information about Bolivia. Said that he had to visit a friend in Shere anyway. He just wanted to snoop around my house. Blast him!”
Marda didn’t know what to say; she let him rant. Eventually she said, “The bishop doesn’t understand what you’re trying to do. You always get men higher up in a bureaucracy who are afraid of new ideas.”
Duval turned on her. “Don’t give me this Job’s false comforter routine. If I hadn’t locked the door, you would have been out screaming for the bishop to lock me up, I know. Don’t lie to me.”
Marda looked at his blazing eyes and felt utterly forlorn. She didn’t think he could have heard her fiddling with the lock.
“No, no, Michael. I was sitting here waiting for you. I was just trying to be kind because you seemed so upset. I want to help you.”
“You’re a liar. Just like the rest of them.” As he stormed out of the cell, he spluttered, “Yes, I’ll bury them, and you…if I can’t trust you.”
He locked the cell door, switched the light off and closed the grille.
Marda felt the fear again, that same cold fear of her early incarceration. She prayed that it was not entirely her fault, just a tantrum because of the bishop’s unexpected visit. He had been severely rattled. She would not cry, she swore to herself, but she needed to do something, not just endure as a passive victim of his moods.
She sank on to her bench and lit up a cigarette. For a change, it was quite warm in the cell; she pulled up her robe and rubbed her legs a little, feeling the hairs she had not shaved for months. As she puffed a smoke ring in the dim light of the paraffin heater, she moved her hand up her legs to remind herself of human touch. Utter desolation closed in on her soul, as she longed to touch someone who loved her. And to be held. She was held now by the dark, cold walls of a tomb.
She pulled her bare legs to her chest and curled into a foetal position. Through the black despair she thought of her mother’s comforting arms around her when she’d suffered nightmares as a child. She was not a promiscuous person, but she had always enjoyed physical contact. Marda remembered the warmth and kindness of her first real lover, Gerard. Where is he now? she wondered. Hours of gentle passion on balmy evenings in Bordeaux seemed to belong to the memory of another person, another life, another planet; that kind of intimacy was almost impossible to imagine, then, now or ever again. She worried that her sexuality had drained away for all time.
She recalled how intense and sensual Gerard had been, the immaculate manners over dinner and in bed, so strong and yet so tender. He loved to undress her slowly, delicately, patiently; “Rushing love-making is as ungraceful as galloping through a fine meal,” he had told her in his lilting French, grinning boyishly, with his charm an essential ingredient of his being-rather than the often superficial tactic of the English. Effortlessly but with utter concentration, he would ensure her orgasm before he penetrated her-she remembered how she would involuntarily arch her back and raise herself into the air, and he would laugh, and kiss her, and continue to satisfy her, not ending until her series of orgasms, and her moans and shouting, had excited him sufficiently to reach his own climax. And then he would hold her closely in his arms, and say that he loved her, and she believed him then-and she believed him now, and would tell him so over and over again, in the most romantic language on earth, if only he were here…
She stroked her arms and then her legs, trying to stimulate her dying senses. Tentatively, she massaged her inner thigh. She had not touched herself like this since she was a teenager, and it felt good. All sexual thoughts had evaporated the moment she had been captured. Occasionally, and very weakly, they drifted back, but she tried to suppress them, for her only connection with humanity was her gaoler. She knew precious little about sadomasochism, yet she feared that new sexual stirrings might somehow be connected with him. She shuddered at such a depraved idea.
She willed the priest from her thoughts, and forced herself to concentrate on Gerard: his jet-black hair, his tanned limbs, the smile which reminded her of a schoolboy pirate, the little notes he sent her, the occasional bouquet of flowers, and always his sense of mischief and irreverence. And she spoke to the darkness: “Why did I stop seeing you? We never quarrelled, and there has never been anyone else, at least for me…if only I could reach out and phone you, to say I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch, and that I love you.” She had never been able to say it to Gerard’s face, but she could now.
Her struggle for sheer survival had dominated nearly all her thoughts, but her longing for human touch, physical contact, sexual passion, all overwhelmed her. Suddenly, and just for a moment, she needed sexual release more than anything in the world, and just as suddenly she decided on what she must do with her tormentor.