Glamorous Powers - Susan Howatch

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thin-lipped, ice-cold. The coldness was so extreme that it seemed to burn with heat, and as I at once recognized the powerful psychic aura I experienced a curious mixture of fright and relief. The fear was because I knew this was the one man I could never manipulate and I felt powerless; the relief was because I knew he would heal my disorder. In fact so great was my relief that I forgot to wait for permission to speak but said rapidly: ‘I’m causing the trouble but I can’t help it because my meditation techniques don’t work.’

      He sat in his chair and looked me up and down. Then he said: ‘Do you know who I am?’ and without hesitation I replied: ‘You’re the Abbot-General.’

      ‘I’m not just the Abbot-General,’ he said. ‘I’m the one man who can get you out of this spiritual cesspit of yours. Now answer me this: do you want to be a monk or don’t you?’

      When I immediately answered: ‘I don’t just want to be a monk – I want to be the best monk in the Order,’ he smiled.

      ‘What ambition!’ he exclaimed. ‘But of course your pride would hardly let you settle for less.’ Then the smile vanished, the aura of ice intensified and he said: ‘Stand up straight, fold your hands properly, keep your mouth shut until you’ve been given permission to speak and wipe that arrogant smirk off your face. You’ve been three months in the Order – are you so unreachable that you haven’t yet learnt how to behave? No doubt you think you’re such a wise mature priest with your Cambridge degree and your twenty years in Holy Orders, but I’m here to tell you now that psychically you’re no better than an ignorant spoilt child and that as a monk you’re at present only capable of play-acting.’

      He waited in case I dared to argue with him but I was speechless. This interview was far removed indeed from my cosy chats with Abbot James.

      ‘Shall I explain to you,’ said the brutal stranger, ‘what’s really going on here? Like many people whose psychic powers are freakishly well developed you’re used to manipulating people whenever you want your own way. What you want here is to be petted and pampered so you’ve entranced your Abbot, you’ve tied your poor Novice-Master into a humiliating knot, and now, just like a spoilt child, you’re calling attention to yourself by being disruptive in the hope that by causing chaos you’ll make everyone realize how special you are!’

      ‘But I swear I’m not doing this deliberately –’

      ‘Of course that’s what you swear! You’ve hypnotized yourself into believing in your own innocence, hypnotized yourself into believing you can’t control these ridiculous outbursts of energy! But this is where the hypnosis ends if you want to survive as a monk. We’ve no room in the Order for confidence tricksters who perform psychic parlour-tricks! What you’ve got to understand is that there’ll be no spiritual progress unless you learn humility and obedience, no hope of acquiring true charismatic power unless you starve that crude psychic force of yours of the pride which makes it so destructive. How can you expect God to use you as a channel for the Holy Spirit when you not only invite but welcome the Devil into the driving-seat of your soul?’

      I attempted a defence. I said I was not wicked, merely disappointed and unhappy. I told him the community was lax, that Abbot James was weak and that the Novice-Master was a fool.

      Then the stranger rose to his feet. He was not a tall man but at that moment he seemed twice as tall as I was. I flinched. I believe I even took a step backwards. But he never raised his voice. He simply said: ‘And who are you to pass judgement on this community? Obviously you’re in an even worse state than I’d feared and radical measures will have to be taken. You must be taught a lesson in humility, a lesson you’ll never forget, and afterwards you must begin your life as a monk all over again elsewhere.’

      Then he had taken me to London and after a night spent in the punishment cell where I had been taught the lesson I would never forget, I had been dispatched to Ruydale to make my fresh start.

      The memory terminated. I returned to the June of 1940, but I continued to think of Father Darcy and after a while I closed my eyes so that I might imprint his image more accurately on the retina of my psyche. To attempt to call up his spirit was out of the question; such practices are dangerous as well as arrogant and in my opinion the Church is entirely right to discourage them. It is not for us to interfere in our hamfisted way with the great reality of eternal freedom which lies beyond our brief existence in the prison of time and space, and such discarnate shreds of former personalities which linger within the prison walls are usually either trivial or demonic.

      So I made no attempt to summon Father Darcy but when I had constructed his memory as accurately as possible I tried to imagine his response to my current dread that stress would seriously impair my psychic control, and at once the word DISCIPLINE was firmly imprinted on my mind. Finding my timetable I stood looking at it. Then sitting down at the table I opened my bible, made an intense new effort to concentrate and began to read St Paul’s mighty epistle to the Romans.

      X

      ‘Further to our conversation which was so rudely interrupted,’ said Francis the next day, ‘I’d just like to clarify a couple of points about this unfortunate interview with your son. Presumably you were very distressed after he left. What did you do?’

      ‘I dashed off a letter of apology to him. Then I forced myself to make my usual appearances in the chapel and in the refectory, but after Compline I retired to my cell again and read Romans. That always calms me. I think of St Augustine and Luther reading it and going on to change the course of history; it makes me feel I’m close enough to draw strength from people of great spiritual power. I didn’t sleep before the night office but by the time I went downstairs to the chapel I knew I was in control of myself again.’

      ‘And after the office?’

      ‘Then I admit I had difficulties.’ I paused to drum up the courage to be honest. ‘Once I was faced with the task of sleeping all the symptoms of stress returned. I felt isolated, unhappy … If I’d been a married man I’d have turned to my wife for consolation.’

      ‘But as you weren’t a married man –’

      ‘I behaved like an ill-disciplined novice and consoled myself, as I implied earlier, with my wife’s memory.’

      ‘You mean –’

      ‘I gave way to temptation, obtained the relief I needed and fell asleep around three. How Father Darcy would have despised such a failure of the will! I shall always remember him saying that the body should be an obedient servant, not a tyrant balking at the most rudimentary discipline.’

      ‘Personally I always found Father Darcy’s lectures on the power of the will deeply depressing. After his hypnotic persuasiveness had worn off I was left contemplating my weaknesses in despair.’

      ‘I was certainly depressed when I awoke the next morning at five-thirty – and not just because of the failure of my will. I was depressed because I’d allowed myself to get into such a state that a failure of the will was inevitable, and I was still sitting on the edge of my bed, still well-nigh immobilized by my depression, when the vision began.’

      Francis said with great delicacy as if he feared one careless word might shatter this miraculous frankness: ‘When you said just now that you obtained the relief you needed, am I to understand …’ His delicacy was so extreme that he left the sentence unfinished.

      I thought I could understand his difficulty. ‘You doubt that a sixty-year-old man who was emotionally worn out and sexually spent at three o’clock in the morning could manifest the symptoms of sexual excitement during a vision less than three hours later.’

      ‘Not at all,’ said Francis with an urbanity I could not help but admire. ‘It’s a fact that psychics may command unusual reserves of energy, and anyway where sex is concerned anything’s possible, even for sixty-year-old men who ought to be decently exhausted. If I hesitated it wasn’t because I was boggling at your energy reserves but because I was thinking that if you did achieve a complete release earlier it

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