22

Sally, promptly for eight o’clock, walked up the garden path of Father Ewan’s house. Built in the latter half of the nineteenth century for Waldringhythe’s head gardener, it was situated on the far periphery of the Abbey grounds, affording total privacy and seclusion. Whilst too large to be a cottage and too small to be a villa, it was heavily gabled, with traditional Victorian features of a slate roof, prettily carved soffit boards and multi-paned windows; the type of house that buyers would kill for in Monks Bottom. Its mellow red bricks were grown over with flowering climbers, and to the rear a rambling garden overlooked the panorama of the estuary. A wild, brackened place where its shrubs and trees had become overgrown and blousy. A place that would be foraged at night by shy, nocturnal creatures and invaded at daybreak by a hundred rabbits. The house he’d always known as his childhood home.

He opened the door wearing the leather trousers, a black, collarless Indian-style shirt that hung to his thighs and thick-soled clog mules. He shook her hand warmly and hung a ‘Do Not Disturb’ notice on the front door.

‘Welcome, Sally. Give me your coat and go on through to the sitting room.’

She entered a large, high-ceilinged room, enhanced with its original embellishments of elaborate cornicing, picture rails, and a tiled, black-iron fireplace. It was tastefully furnished, with a button-backed Chesterfield, two deep-seated Edwardian armchairs and an ornately carved American rocker, but the walls were conversely hung with the contemporary prints of Chagall, Dali, Klee and Hodgkin. Surprisingly, there were no crucifixes, no Madonnas and no religious pictures; in fact, no signs that this was the home of God’s disciple. Soft lighting came from a selection of large table lamps, an old station clock ticked evenly on the wall and a high-piled log fire slumbered in the grate. He offered her an armchair at the side of the fire, and, as she sat down, she noticed a small velvet bed in the hearth, where a black cat lay sleeping. It woke up briefly and blinked its yellow eyes.

‘That’s Lucifer,’ Father Ewan said. ‘He’s the devil incarnate. Keeps me well in order. Now, before we start, how about a glass of wine? Or any other drink? Fruit juice? Coffee? A cup of tea?’ She accepted a glass of pinot grigio.

He took a seat opposite her in the rocker, pausing to light a cigarette without the usual courtesy of asking her if she minded.

‘Well, Sally. It’s good to meet you at last, and I must immediately thank you for your superb care of Marina Proudfoot. Over the years she’d become something of a personal friend, and her loss has saddened me deeply. We spoke frequently on the phone until her voice gave out, and she talked at great length about you. How perceptive and kind you were, how your support exceeded the bounds of your professional nursing contract.’ He paused to lift a file containing her application and references. ‘So, let’s get down to business. Career-wise you’ve been working as a Macmillan nurse, but two years ago you completed the London University Course in Grief and Bereavement Counselling under Freya Godberg. You qualified with distinction, and I congratulate you. Freya’s course is very demanding but we’ve never seen eye to eye on a professional level. I spoke to her earlier today and she told me you were an outstandingly sensitive pupil. On a domestic note, you’re separated from your husband, your daughter’s in her first year at Cambridge and you seek a new beginning. Sally, I’ll get straight to the point. Your qualifications and references are first class, and I’d like to offer you a position here as a one-to-one counsellor. It’ll be a six-month initial contract with an offer of residency. After that we’ll appraise the situation and discuss how you see your future career. I’m really looking forward to working with you, and hopefully you’ll accept my offer.’

‘Thank you, Father Ewan,’ Sally said, smiling. ‘I accept with pleasure.’

‘Excellent. I sincerely hope you’ll be very happy here, but can I now use this opportunity to talk to you a little more deeply on a personal level? You may think it’s none of my business, but I really need my counselling team to be at peace with their own lives. Are you at peace, Sally?’ The leather of his trousers creaked as he raised his right leg and rested the ankle on his left knee. He leaned back and rocked gently, awaiting her answer.

Her tutor, Freya Godberg, a committed feminist, had called this position the ‘Chanticleer.’ Confident, controlling and in full cock display; the body language of the male in domination. It incensed the vitriolic Freya, and all men in her presence who affected this position (both students and patients) were asked to sit up straight. Sally wished she had the courage to be so bold with Father Ewan, but she had to think very quickly. Body language, or in any language, she’d been thrown off guard.

‘Roger and I have been emotionally estranged for many years,’ she replied. ‘Louise is well established in her degree course, and we both feel it’s time to go our separate ways.’

He raised his head in question. ‘So you have no conflict within yourself about this sudden change?’

She nodded her head confidently. ‘Absolutely none.’

‘Are you sure?’ Father Ewan was showing himself to be exactly what he was known to be. A skilled and intuitive interviewer, choosing his words, pauses and physical gestures to great effect.

‘I can assure you, Father Ewan, my life is in perfect harmony.’

‘And I can assure you, Sally, that I know exactly what you’ve just left behind you. Over the many years Marina came here, we talked a great deal about it all. Firstly Tim and Roger, then Tim, Roger and Sally, then Tim, Roger, Sally and little Louise, and finally, full circle to Marina and Sally and Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all.’

‘But how did she know?’ Sally asked quietly. ‘It was a closely guarded secret.’

But as she spoke, she realised that Marina, knowing she wasn’t supposed to know, had, like herself, securely masked the truth. She suddenly felt very angry with the cool, cocksure Father Ewan; as if he’d suddenly exposed her as a pathetic victim. Obviously, he must have encouraged Marina to reveal anything in her life she was at odds with, but by the same token, he wasn’t at liberty to break her confidence. She was tempted to challenge him aggressively; something Freya Godberg would have called, in professional terms, a volley, but in private, a powerful smack in the balls. But the voice of her mother deflated any brief thought of attack. ‘Always be a lady in company,’ she’d ingrained into her. ‘It’s most common to raise your voice.’

‘I really had no idea she knew,’ Sally said, now affecting the expression of a superior headmistress. ‘But surely, Father Ewan, you had no right to break the confidence of a patient?’

‘Sally, once Marina’s final prognosis was known we were able discuss it without fear. I told her that you’d applied to come and work here when she died, and she gave me full permission to reveal that she concealed the facts only as a protection to the status quo.’ He shrugged. ‘What other choice did she have?’

Sally sighed. ‘To think I lived in ignorance for so many years of my marriage, and all the time a perfect stranger called Father Ewan McEwan knew everything.’

‘I’m afraid it’s the burden of being a Father Confessor,’ he admitted. ‘I saw Marina at least once a month for over twenty-five years, and at the start of every session she always relayed the latest details of her home life. She jokingly called it the Monks Bottom version of The Archers, and it helped her enormously to unwind. Please be assured there was no voyeurism involved on my part, and forgive me if I’ve upset you.’

‘And I’m sorry for being so caustic. It’s you who should forgive me.’

‘Sally, can I help you to overcome any anger or sadness you may be feeling? No real counselling or analysis. Just some plain, old-fashioned talking.’

‘Thank you. I’d really appreciate the opportunity.’

The conversation had come to a halt, but he didn’t seek an opening gambit. He stared into the fire, seeming to disappear completely into his own thoughts, while Sally listened to the tick of the clock, the occasional fizz from the log fire and the cat’s low purring. But then he spoke.

‘Sally, there’s something else, but please don’t think this is a huge mountain to climb. Your CV says you’re an atheist. I’m never going to stuff religion down your throat, but on the other hand, I’d like to know why.’

‘It’s very simple. I was brought up as an observing Anglican, but my father was a Major in the British Army. He was blown up by a bomb in Northern Ireland. Lured into a trap by a minor roadside incident. It’s a sure fact that the people who made that bomb called themselves Christians. I’m so sorry, but doctrinaire Christianity has little appeal for me.’

‘I didn’t know, of course. I’m so sorry. You sound very bitter.’

‘I’m not really bitter.’

‘Another lie, Sally,’ but his face was kind as he looked at her. ‘You’ll know that Marina was a card-carrying atheist too.’

Sally nodded. ‘I expected her to capitulate and ask for the last rites as she neared the end, but it didn’t happen. Tim was convinced she had some sort of heavenly vision at the precise moment of her death, but I’m sure he was looking for it. He adored her to the point of stupefaction, and her existence in the afterlife must have been a salve to his misery.’

‘I’ve prayed for her soul. I shall miss her greatly.’

‘She was devoted to you, Father Ewan. She said you saved her from madness.’

‘Perhaps I saved her on that level, but a part of her remained frozen and I was never able to thaw her completely. The reputation of Waldringhythe is built on helping the bereaved come to terms with their loss. All races and creeds and non-believers are welcome, but, as you well know, different cultures address loss in different ways. Take Asian religions and even European Latins. They grieve publicly. They wail in the streets, and their mental anguish is spewed out in a noisy explosion of release. It’s not the Anglo-Saxon way, but I believe it helps. I’ve always regretted that I didn’t encourage Marina to yell and scream.’

‘Freya Godberg rejects this theory as a quick fix. A dramatic window dressing that denies examination of true interior feelings.’

‘Do you believe that?’

‘Oh, Father Ewan, I don’t know. All I can say is that Freya treated grief counselling as a pure, personal therapy, and found the religious aspect superfluous.’

‘Let’s be honest. It’s not my religious beliefs she can’t come to terms with. It’s what she sees as my innocence and subservience. As if I’m buried down here in the dark, like a little Hobbit, with no real knowledge of the world outside the confines of Waldringhythe. It’s very near-sighted, as I really do try to research the human condition. Every summer I take a short holiday in Capri, and then I go out for a month into what’s laughingly called “the community.” I go to learn. I’ve worked in prisons, hospices, psychiatric units, women’s refuges and hostels for the homeless. This year it’ll be an HIV centre, so you see I’m not entirely blinkered and ignorant.’

‘Well, whatever your professional jostling she had all your books on the curriculum reading list. In teaching the course she might have tried to steer us towards other schools of theory, but… we… well… this is rather embarrassing. We rather deified you.’

‘Thank you. I’m most flattered, but please don’t think I’m always wholly successful. I still have terrible struggles, and even the odd complete failure. Maybe Marina was one of them.’

‘Father Ewan, last week she could only speak in a whisper, but she told me that every bone in her body was at peace because she’d loved and she’d been loved in return. She knew it was a clichéd conclusion to her life, but she said it was the epitaph she wanted, and what had given her the strength to face death. I feel sure it was her admission of spiritual fulfilment.’

‘Then perhaps I didn’t fail completely.’

‘Rest assured you did not.’

He nodded and leaned forward to attend to the fire. He rattled it with a poker and added another log, disturbing Lucifer who screwed his face up and stretched his claws. After touching the cat’s head with affection, Ewan sank back down again into his rocking chair. Leaning back, he removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes and stared ahead of him in a studied mask of thought. One side of him was illuminated by a large lamp and the other by high, yellow flames. In this unusual mix of light Sally was able to examine him closely.

His bare crown was tight and shiny, stretching over a perfectly shaped oval skull; a feature that could have aged him, but actually gave him the regal essence of an ancient king. His residual hair was pure white, of a thick, coarse texture and without its restraining band would probably fall past his shoulders. In stunning contrast his eyebrows and beard were of the darkest brown, perhaps black, and his large eyes a pale, clear blue. With his high cheekbones and firm jaw, it was a face of intense beauty. But this was a man born with a hole in his face; the only tell-tale sign being a small diagonal scar in the upper lip line, softened into disguise by the curl of his moustache. What pain had his affliction caused him? How often had his blight forced him to be singled out for the second look of momentary pity?

Within seconds he replaced his glasses, normality returned to the room and after a few minutes of trivial exchanges, asked if he could talk to her further. ‘On Sundays breakfast is served in the Refectory from nine, so would 10.00a.m. be convenient?’

She agreed. ‘It’ll give me time for a good walk. If there’s one thing I know I’ll miss about my old life it’ll be my early morning rambles with Finnegan.’

He got up and saw her to the door. ‘Good night, Father Ewan.’

‘Goodnight and God bless, Sally. Oh, and by the way, it’s just Ewan. All my friends and colleagues call me Ewan.’

‘Good night, Ewan.’

She returned to her room but she was far too agitated for sleep. She pulled back the curtains to see dark, fast-moving clouds flying across the sky and tiny spots of moving light on the estuary water. Her mind meandered back to Father Ewan’s isolated house. She looked through the kitchen window. She saw him rinsing two wineglasses under hot running water and pouring a saucer of cream for his cat. She followed him up the staircase and watched him ease the band from his ponytail. His fingers rubbed and soothed the nape of his neck and his hair fell like a shroud around his shoulders. He removed his shirt to reveal his lean Crucifix Man shoulders and taut upper body. His leather trousers creaked like an old gate as they fell from his narrow hips.