Mystical Paths - Susan Howatch

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well, of course I’ve heard that name before – isn’t there a rather heavenly manor house at Starrington Magna? And – gosh, wait a minute! Is your father the holy man who lives on communion wafers in a wood?’

      ‘He’s a priest who lives quietly in retirement.’

      ‘Exactly! Granny’s told me all about him. Are you reading divinity in order to follow in his footsteps?’

      ‘Yep.’

      ‘How sad – another good man lost to the Church!’

      ‘Don’t knock the Church too hard,’ I said, trying to work out where I could park the pole so that I could have both hands free to grab her breasts. ‘It could be in your future.’

      Instantly she was enthralled. ‘You sound as if you tell fortunes!’

      ‘Of course I tell fortunes!’ I said, and as I spoke a vision of how I could succeed with the sirens unfolded before my eyes. But still I couldn’t work out where to park the pole.

      Meanwhile Marina was stretching out her right hand and demanding: ‘Read my palm!’ as her breasts appeared to float magically towards me in the moonlight.

      ‘I don’t go in for palmistry,’ I said. ‘I just tune into the vibrations.’ And still clutching the pole with one hand I grasped her proffered fingers with the other. By this time my erection was so uncomfortable that I thought I might have to jump into the river to get my genitals under control.

      ‘Go on – spill the beans!’ said Marina impatiently. ‘How’s the Church going to be in my future?’

      I had no idea but I remembered the grandmother who lived in the Cathedral Close.

      ‘I see you living in the shadow of a great cathedral,’ I invented, taking care to speak in portentous tones.

      ‘Impossible! I never stay with Granny nowadays, there’s no time, I simply drop in occasionally.’

      ‘Nevertheless I see that long shadow cast by the cathedral – and I see a man in your life there.’

      ‘There are always men in my life everywhere!’ she said fractiously, and as she spoke I detected a touch of boredom with the male sex, perhaps even a trace of disappointment.

      ‘This’ll be a special man,’ I said, clued in by her tone of voice and deducing that the average panting male left her cold. Really, fortune-telling’s so easy that I can’t think why more people don’t do it. All you have to do is put up a mental aerial to receive the unspoken signals and then wait for the subject to give herself away.

      ‘The only special man I know,’ said Marina with a sigh, ‘is quite unobtainable.’ And as she disclosed this piece of information the alcoholic fog cleared in my psyche, my metaphorical aerial began to pick up strong signals and I understood that an unobtainable man was, in some mysterious way, exactly what she wanted. I was too young at the time to make the obvious deduction: that a desire for an unobtainable man coupled with a distaste for the men available hinted at a sexual hang-up. I just thought – and when I say ‘I thought’ I mean I knew, it was the special knowledge I called ‘gnosis’: she doesn’t do it. I’m wasting my time.

      ‘The funny thing is,’ Marina was musing, ‘this man does actually have a connection with the Cathedral Close at Starbridge. But I don’t see how I could ever wind up there living with him.’

      ‘I didn’t say you would. I said you’d be living – or perhaps just temporarily staying – in the shadow of a great cathedral, and this man would at last be significantly present in your life.’

      ‘Will I get anywhere with him?’

      ‘Yes, but not in the conventional sense,’ I said, inventing the answer I knew she wanted to hear, but then without warning I received the print-out that circumvents the ordinary processes of thought, the message that’s hammered directly into the brain from some unknown source and appears instantly on the screen of the psyche. Without stopping to think – because thinking had been by-passed – I said: ‘You’ll be very close to his wife. In fact she’s already a friend of yours.’

      ‘Glory!’ said Marina astounded. ‘You really are amazing! How could you possibly have known about my new friendship with Katie?’

      And that was the moment when I elided the Cathedral Close connection with the wife called Katie and realised that the man we were talking about was Christian Aysgarth.

      II

      Since I had promised my father not to behave like a shady charlatan by performing psychic parlour-tricks, I felt guilty enough about the punt episode to try to avoid Marina afterwards, but she was like a child with a shrimping-net who had seen an exotic creature swimming in a rock-pool; she found herself compelled to kidnap me for her very own private aquarium.

      I was netted, compulsorily enrolled in her Coterie and treated not as a fish but as a very expensive poodle. Marina called me the Coterie’s soothsayer-in-residence. I hated all this rubbishy behaviour but of course I was flattered to have been singled out by the dazzling Marina Markhampton. Having been unsure how much sex-appeal I had (if any), I liked the way Marina made me feel like Errol Flynn and Elvis Presley rolled into one. No wonder I retained a soft spot in my heart for her afterwards and could never quite bear to sever myself completely from her boring old Coterie.

      Ironically, sex was no longer a serious ingredient in our friendship once I’d sobered up. Marina’s persistent pampering was based on the kind of attraction a smart woman feels towards a supremely original fashion accessory; it was covetousness, not lust, which lay at the root of her liking for me, and it was a flattered ego, not a libido in overdrive, which lay at the root of my liking for her. In fact once I was no longer drunk enough to feel like laying every woman in sight, I was surprised to discover how resistible I found her. The Venus de Milo type of torso has never been to my taste, and I happen to be one of those gentlemen who don’t prefer blondes. I like steamy brunettes with large breasts, slim hips and legs that go on for ever. Marina was supposed to be a flawless example of feminine beauty, but I thought she looked like an intelligent sheep, all light, blazing eyes and angular facial bones.

      In the May of 1963, less than a year after our first meeting, she went to live temporarily in the Cathedral Close at Starbridge. (This reflects no credit on my fortune-telling skill, of course. My invented prophecy had merely given her an idea about how she could best further her friendship with Christian, and if I’d kept quiet in the punt it would never have occurred to her to offer to house-sit for her grandmother while Lady Markhampton was away in the south of France.)

      Inevitably Marina threw a party and inevitably I was invited and inevitably I was afflicted by my usual ambivalence: I felt satisfaction that I should have been included, curiosity to see how the jeunesse dorée lived and annoyance that I was to be trotted out once more as Marina’s psychic poodle. My friend Venetia seemed to think that the Starbridge party was the first occasion that Marina had displayed me as a fashion accessory, but there had been previous occasions in London when to my disgust I had been unable to resist being exhibited.

      I now made a new resolution to waste no more time in this idiotic fashion, so I turned down the invitation to Lady Markhampton’s house by saying I was too busy swotting for my second-year exams. Unfortunately Marina refused to take no for an answer. Discovering that I was planning to slip back to Starrington that weekend for my father’s birthday she bludgeoned me again with her invitation and almost before I could say ‘parlour-trick’ I found myself mutinously turning up at the party – the ‘orgy’ as Marina chose to call her parties in those days.

      As a gesture of rebellion I arrived late and left early. In fact I behaved very badly, but then so did Marina, introducing me to her current gang as the Coterie’s soothsayer-in-residence and fawning over me until I wanted to puke. There were about sixteen people present; Marina either gave small parties where couples continually formed and re-formed as everyone tried out everyone else, or she gave big bashes

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