The Anchoress of Shere

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