Capcir Spring Page 12

  John smiled and stepped back opening the door for her to go past him into the sitting room. She sat down in the chair he had just vacated. As she sat down his breviary slipped off the arm of the chair and fell onto her lap. She picked up the thick leather bound volume with the many coloured marker ribbons and it fell open at the days set office.

  Mary stared silently at the book, as if something familiar had fallen into her hands and yet something she viewed with suspicion. She looked up at John who was settling himself uncomfortably in the other soft chair and looking strangely at her. He held out his hand in silence for the book and she passed it over to him without saying a word, a thousand unspoken questions half-forming in her mind. He took the book, closed it carefully, checking the ribbons were not disturbed as he did so and then turned and looked straight at her.

  "I'm a priest, a Jesuit." was all he said. After a pause he added "I'm here for a rest."

  Mary remained silent for a moment and then said, "I think I had already guessed. It explains your knowledge of Cathars and Gnostics. I have mixed with a large number of clergy in my life and for many years I was married to one. I knew there was something about you but I couldn't put my finger on it. In a way I'm glad. I suppose its confession time. I'm divorced. I suppose that's an evil thing to you but let me tell you all. I came to ask for your help tonight. But perhaps I had better make a clean breast about me and then leave it to you to see if you want to help me or not."

  "Nothing that is done with good intentions can be truly evil. Those who have the audacity to pronounce on morality all too often speak isolated from the reality of the passions behind what they call evil. Evil exists in the eyes of those who look for evil. Good exists in the striving and searching for something better and the land of the longings of the heart." He spoke slowly and deliberately as if searching deep inside himself for just the right words and Mary sensed in those words a depth of suffering that had been forged on an anvil of pain. Perhaps she began at that moment to recognise in John something of a kindred spirit.

  Mary paused as the words sank in. This didn't really sound like orthodox Jesuit teaching. As she did so she reflected that it wasn't so many months ago that she could not have been alone in a room with a clergyman without having a panic attack. She looked hard at John. She could detect no threat there, but then she hadn't with James, so what did she know. At least the vibes he gave off seemed harmless enough. If she felt anything for him it was empathy for in some way he seemed to be carrying ghosts of the past around with him too. But then she didn't really trust her intuitions especially where clergymen were concerned. She continued,

  "James was an Area Dean. He suddenly had a breakdown and became seriously mentally ill. He was ambitious and talented and really believed that he was going to the top in the church. He had a brilliant brain. He was a popular preacher and a tireless worker. He was on many diocesan boards as he had a gift for being the sort of person that got things done. He was always thought of as kind and loving. He had loads of concern for everyone and he took many hopeless cases under his wing. He was shrewd too. I suppose he was a political animal. He manipulated people and events to his advantage but without many others realising what he was doing. But now he.. well its almost as if he is dead. The man I married no longer exists. He is in a secure hospital where his violence will not injure himself or others. Perhaps that is the cost. He gave himself to the utmost so that all that remains is what could not be given. Who knows. He attacked me, with a knife. The doctors told me there was no hope really though perhaps I gave up on him too soon. Anyway I cut and run. I could never trust him again. I hardly trusted men after that and instead went back to my academic life that I had left to become a vicars wife. It was a very difficult time: sleepless nights, hours of counselling, and then gradually I began to see a way forward. I threw myself wholeheartedly into history and so here I am today. So that is my story. But I didn't come here to burden you with all that. I am worried, and I want your help and advice."

  John had listened intently to her story, nodding at the appropriate places and showing in his body language that he was giving her his full attention. The request for help was more than he could believe. A young attractive woman asking him again for something that he was so eager to give. Oh the poor thing, he thought, as he struggled to suppress the urge to take her into his arms and give her a huge hug and soothe and caress away the hurts. The strength of this intuitive response surprised him. He had often felt pity and even affection for people when they told him of their sufferings but this was different.

  In an instant he was back in one of the little desks in the class in seminary and old Father Gillian was telling the fresh faced adolescents beginning on their long journey towards the letters SJ "Never confuse an emotional impulse such as pity or affection with a pastoral response. If you are only pastorally effective for those who you truly care about you will end up only as the pastor of those you like." Father Gillian hadn't even entered the fringes of his consciousness for over twenty years. John wondered what had prompted him to return to mind now but his mental training was good and he was firmly in command of himself. Keep questions for which there is no immediate answer until there is time to ponder them properly. And more importantly, keep all inappropriate feelings hidden inside and deal with them later.

  "I'll help in any way I can" he replied, anxious not to sound too eager.

  "Today I was burgled. I was out at the site and someone broke into my apartment and stole my survey maps and my portable computer with all the text of my research project on. I have been to the police but they don't seem to believe any conspiracy theory. Apparently it is all too common for holiday places to be broken into.

  "Have you lost all your work?"

  "No, I still have all the rough drawings that I made notes on to make up the big map and thank God I still have the floppy disks with all my writing backed up on. I had hoped to finish tomorrow but will now have to stay another day as there are some measurements and levels that were recorded on the plan that was stolen that are nowhere else."

  "Can I help you the tomorrow by holding the end of your tape measure or something?"

  She smiled, "Now that would be a luxury. I have done all the work up to now on my own. It would also be good to have someone else up there with me. I find the valley is losing its magic now."

  John nodded. He knew only too well what she meant by landscapes loosing their magic.

  "That though wasn't they way that I was going to ask you to help, though of course I'm glad you've offered. What I am really concerned for is tonight. There is a man up on the new age traveller encampment that is an expert in folklore and history and local religious movements. He also knows a great deal about these hills, but I am rather suspicious that he might be somehow involved with my burglary. I certainly know he knows that there are things going on in the local area that I don't know about and I want to go but your moral support tonight would be much appreciated."

  "Do you think I'm going to be much of a minder if things get rough," John smiled, "I have lived for so long dedicated to non-violence I wouldn't know what to do if fists started flying!"

  She smiled. "You chump, I have been invited for a meal. They are all peace and love types. I want moral support not a bodyguard"

  "OK I will come as your chaperon tonight on one condition."

  "Hmm?"

  "You let me cook you a slap up meal here tomorrow night as it will be your last night in the village here."

  "You've got a deal." She surprised herself by not hesitating in giving agreement. They both smiled. They really smiled: not just with their lips but with their eyes and each recognised in the other something unlike other smiles that either had seen recently. Perhaps it was just the warmth of a developing friendship and both dared not hope for more.

  John escorted her to the door. On the threshold they made arrangements for the time she will collect him later and then as suddenly as she had come into his life she was gone.


  After he shut the door behind her he leant up against the door frame and tried to calm his racing mind. This had been the first important and emotionally charged conversation he had engaged in for a very long time. He could now begin to see more clearly the depths of this blond academic and understand the shadows in the depths of her eyes. He made his way slowly over to the chair and slumped down, the breviary now forgotten. Can I tell her about me. His thoughts raced.

  She has been a victim of a terrible tragedy, whereas I am the instigator of something far worse. Father Gillian was a wise old monk. Had I remembered his words before then, well who knows..

  He closed his eyes and suddenly felt very tired. It was the tiredness not of a long walk or healthy exercise but the emotional tiredness of hearing confession all day. He closed his eyes to try to sort out the conflicting thoughts and re-impose order onto the emotions that seem to be taking control of his life again to an extent that frightened and at the same time excited him. And with his eyes closed he drifted semi consciously to the time when another young woman came regularly to his rooms.

  *****

  John's flat was little more than an attic room high in the eaves of what had once been a sizeable presbytery. Now with the closure of the church and the establishment of the counselling centre in the former presbytery he and some of the others had flats here. His was the smallest and darkest, and because of his seniority in the order he had insisted that he take the poorest accommodation for himself. Recently he had wondered about his self sacrifice in the light of what he had seen of Derek's opulence but he had all his time there believed that creature comforts were a snare of the enemy and in this garret he could come to no harm.

  The wooden furniture was all dark. The wallpaper and paint various tones of greens and browns that had so deepened with layers of grime over the years that there was an overall sense of coloured harmony in the muddy tones. He had an electric kettle. There was no need to prepare food as there was a communal kitchen and dining room downstairs. There was a sink, which was also his washbasin. But the room had a comfortable feel to it. And it was warm. The central heating that the lay social workers considered essential for their conditions of employment piped efficiently even to these nether regions of the huge house.

  One room. Dingy. Furnished with a single bed alongside the wall, desk and chair, bookshelf and big soft leather armchair. No dining table as he never ate there. No second chair as he never entertained, for entertaining was for the public rooms. No desk or computer as he shared an open plan office with the other counsellors on the first floor.

  But it was this room that became for him and Kate something special. Those dreary walls that became witnesses to passion that he had never previously in all his years known. He dreamt long afterwards of the way Kate's presence brought a brilliant spark of colour to those drab surroundings.

  He remembered clearly the first night she had come. There had been a heated argument in their hour long counselling session earlier in the day. She had insulted him. That in itself was nothing new but she had been more personal than usual making sexual innuendo and yes she was very aware that she had evoked a response. He knew that she had seen in his eyes the interest that he had so long repressed. He had been tired. He had been called out the night before to the hospital to perform an emergency baptism of a poor, weak infant that was not expected to last the night. He had lost four hours in the night. His defences were weakened. He showed what normally he would have kept hidden. Tiredness, a subtle snare of the deceiver increased as it always does the vulnerability to temptation.

  He sat dozing on the chair. He had, irony of ironies, been reading GM Hopkins...

  "Wert thou my enemy., O thou my friend,

  How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost

  Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust

  Do in spare hours more thrive than I spend,

  Sir, life upon thy cause. "

  When the knock came to the door.

  "Come" John muttered unthinking. And in she came.

  She had been crying. Her face was streaked with black lines from her mascara soaked tears.

  John looked surprised. How was she here. The session had ended hours ago. The place below was closed for the night, receptionists had long gone home and the lights in the offices and counselling suites extinguished. Only the resident members of the order were sleeping or dozing or reading or what they will in their small self contained flats on the upper floors. How? Why? Most unprofessional. And his first mistake.

  "Kathryn, you're still here and you've been crying."

  In spite all the insults he really believed that he cared for each of the youngsters that he helped in an avuncular and dispassionate way. And he hoped that they realised he cared as the first part of their rehabilitation.

  "What is the matter." It was a reflex response coming from a life lived out talking love and comfort. Very tired. Thinking part of brain switched off. He actually held out his arms for her to come to him. It must have been the surroundings. Those dull familiar walls. If he had seen her in the smart and sparsely furnished office or one of the counselling rooms downstairs his automatic reaction would have been different.

  She had moved to his arms and burst again into tears. His shoulder was broad and he took her onto his lap. It had been so soft and gentle, so natural and easy, so willing on both parts to continue and go one step further each time. And on.

  The bed was narrow but together they felt there was a whole hay meadow of space to give and receive pleasure in ways that he had never imagined even in the wildest moments that he had confessed. It was a pleasure after pleasure. The idea of sin, mortal sin, the damnation that he had been told was surely going to be his reward for fornication was far from even entering his mind as he soaked up with his senses things that his consciousness never before had allowed his imagination to know existed. It was pure concentrated pleasure.

  She was in his arms for one night, then night after night until the inevitable happened and they were caught. But the shame, the humiliation was nothing to the pleasure of the passion. It had been worth it. Nothing else would have been like that.

  The touch of her lithe and supple young... revelry filled his heart as he relived moments of the deepest emotion and then as he stared again on to Kate's oh so young but world weary face it was not Kate he saw. The hair had turned from dark to the lightest Blond. It was Mary. She was there she was doing the things that together he and Kate had done and the pleasure was just as intense. It was growing more so. She was there.

  His leg was painful, so much pain from sleeping in an awkward position and as the pins and needles came as the blood started to flow the pain was such that he wanted to cry out. But that was not his main concern. He was hot. So hot. So much perspiration. His red plaid shirt was soaked with sweat. But that was not his main concern either.

  As the remnants of the dream lingered round his waking brain and he slowly came back into the present. But with the coming to he realised that he was enjoying the recollection. The mixed up memory, the interweaving of history and fantasy was far more pleasurable than the past had been for it held within it a promise of pleasure as yet unfulfilled. It was the idea that his past was polluting his present that so concerned him. He had counselled many clients whose lives had been blighted by traumatic past events and now he recognised the same blight creeping into his own life.

  But with wakefulness also came rationality and reflection. The self-critical facilities returned and he realised the state he was in. He was creating fantasies from the roots of his own unhappy past and imposing them on what is real and present.

  Mary. Was this the beginning of a new and interesting friendship. Where if anywhere would it go? He sat up straight in the chair and buried his head in his hands and prayed to be released from the fantasy that was disturbing his grip on reality. Kate is dead and that is real he told himself. Poor sweet Kate. She is dead and it was my entire fault. Tears came, tears that stru
ggled to pierce the long dry tear ducts. Tears for Kate and for his lost life and for all that had been that had been so good. Tears that he had held within himself for so long now. Tears of loss. But most of all tears for his own poor, sad, lost Kate.

  After a while he looked at his watch and decided he had better have a quick shower to make himself presentable for a hippie encampment.

  *****

  Mary was prompt and together in what seemed an embarrassed silence, (though neither of them fully understood why) her car wound its way up through the village of Formigueres up out onto the open hill side. They drove past the now deserted buildings of the ski station and then the road degenerated into a rough track. On it wound up through the forests one minute and then out into high mountain meadows the next. The road took them twisting back and forward and around a series of hairpin bends. The only sign of human presence in the hills were the pylons of the ski tows heading rigidly straight up the slopes that the track was climbing back and forth across.

  The end of the track there was a barrier across the roadway with a notice indicating that beyond this point was a nature reserve and access by vehicle was only allowed by special permit. They looked at the barrier and then realised that they had just come past the encampment, half hidden in the trees just down off the track to their right. Mary reversed back a few yards and then pulled off into a clearing. There was an odd assortment of vehicles. Two elderly looking coaches, caravans, 2 trucks converted by the occupants into camper vans and a few tents. There were neatly ringed stone fireplaces and piles of cut brushwood. They both looked surprised at the order and the surprisingly little litter. Playing around were some sparsely clad mixed race children who looked healthy and well fed if a little grubby. As they parked and got out they spied Andre's green Citroen Dyane parked under a nearby tree and they made for it, but as they did so Andre himself hailed them from the door of one of the old coaches, now a camper vans.