Holy Disorders

Geoffrey and Frances had left Fielding at the Whale and Coffin to unpack and were sitting together, talking a little restrainedly. Now they were alone, Geoffrey felt even more attracted by her, and she quieted his bachelor’s misgivings (which she may have suspected) by an almost timorous reserve. The evening sunlight lay green and gold on the broad lawn outside the French windows, glistening on the thickly-clustered yellow roses and the shaggy chrysanthemum blooms. A faint scent of verbena drifted in from a plant which clung to the grey wall outside.

It appeared that since Brooks’ arrival at the hospital little more had been heard of him. The nature and cause of his insanity were still unknown, except perhaps by the doctors who attended him, and no friends had been allowed to see him. Of near relatives he had only a brother, with whom he had been on the worst possible terms. This brother had been summoned by telegram, but had not appeared, and indeed it seemed doubtful whether he would have been the slightest help to anyone if he had. This much Frances knew, and no more.

There was still no sign of Fen.

Geoffrey asked who would be at dinner that night.

‘Well, Daddy’s coming over,’ said Frances. ‘And then there’ll be Canon Garbin and Canon Spitshuker, and little Dutton, of course – the sub-organist. Oh, and Sir John Dallow’s dropping in for coffee – there’s to be some sort of meeting afterwards. Have you heard of him? He’s the big noise on witchcraft in this country.’

Geoffrey shook his head. ‘Is Canon Garbin married?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘There was a Mrs Garbin in the compartment we travelled down in. With a young clergyman.’

‘Oh, that was probably July Savernake. Come to think of it, he did say he’d be back today. I expect he’ll be at dinner too.’

‘What about him?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, what sort of person is he?’

She hesitated. ‘Well…he’s Vicar at Maverley, about twelve miles from here. Got the living almost as soon as he was ordained.’ Geoffrey sensed a deliberate reservation behind the recital of facts, and wondered what its cause might be. ‘He spends half the year buying expensive books and wine and playing the curé bon viveur, and the other half having to economize, and playing the “poore persoun”. A see-saw sort of existence.’ Frances laughed apologetically. ‘That doesn’t tell you much, I’m afraid. But you’ll be meeting him, anyway.’

Fielding came in, and Frances left to supervise the final preparations for dinner. ‘Hideous little room I’ve got,’ said Fielding mournfully as he fell into a chair, ‘but it will do. How are you feeling?’

‘A bit nightmarish.’

‘It is rather like that. Do you know, I’ve been wondering if those attacks on you weren’t bogus from beginning to end – designed to conceal the reason for something else. Probably the attack on Brooks. All those preposterous warnings! That would bring you into the limelight all right – which is just what they wanted. I suppose they didn’t care whether you were killed or just injured. Whoever it is, and whatever they’re after, it seems they can afford to waste lives like water.’

Geoffrey lit a cigarette and sucked at it without pleasure. ‘It sounds plausible, but there might be some other explanation.’

‘There’s only one way of testing it out,’ said Fielding emphatically, ‘and that is by keeping quiet about it. If we once let out that we’ve rumbled it, they’ll abandon the whole business. But if they think it’s taking people in, they’ll probably try something else – try to kill you again, for example.’

Geoffrey sat up in annoyance. ‘A nice thing,’ he exclaimed bitterly, ‘asking me to keep quiet about a beastly theory, so as to encourage somebody to murder me. It’s undoubtedly someone here, by the way. The postmark on that letter was Tolnbridge, and it must have been someone connected with the cathedral to know I’d been sent for…’

He broke off. Footsteps were approaching outside, accompanied by two voices raised in argument, the one shrill and voluble; the other deep and laconic. A touch of acerbity and resentment was audible beneath the tropes of polite discussion.

‘…But my dear Spitshuker, you apparently fail to realize that by taking the universalist view you are, in effect, denying the reality of man’s freedom to choose between good and evil. If we are all to go to heaven anyway, then that choice has no validity. It’s as if one were to say that a guest at a tea-party has freedom to choose between muffins and crumpets when only crumpets are provided.’

‘I hardly think, Garbin, that you have grasped the essential point in all this, if you will forgive my saying so. You would concede, of course, that the Divinity is a god of Love?’

‘Of course, of course. But you haven’t answered –’

‘Well, then. That being so, His aim must be the perfection of every one of His Creation. You will agree that even in the case of the greatest saint, perfection is impossible of attainment in the three-score years and ten which we have at our disposal. I am inclined, therefore, to believe that there must be an intermediate state, a purgatory –’

The door swung open, and Canon Spitshuker came into the room, closely followed by Canon Garbin. Canon Spitshuker was a little, plump, excitable man, with swan-white hair and a pink face. By contrast, Canon Garbin was tall, dark, morose, and normally laconic; he walked soberly, with his large, bony hands plunged deep into his coat pockets, while the other danced and gestured about him like a poodle accompanying a St Bernard. Their juxtaposition as canons of the same cathedral was a luckless one, since Canon Spitshuker was by long conviction a Tractarian, while Canon Garbin was a Low Churchman; furious altercations were constantly in progress between them on points of doctrine and ritual, never resolved. Unlike parallel lines, it was inconceivable that their views should ever meet, even at infinity.

The unexpected presence of Geoffrey and Fielding cut short Canon Spitshuker’s oration. He spluttered for a moment like a faulty petrol-engine, then recovered himself, dashed forward, and wrung Geoffrey by the hand.

‘How do you do?’ he said. ‘I’m Spitshuker, and this’ – he pointed at the other, who stood regarding the scene with a faint but unmistakable disgust – ‘is my colleague, Dr Garbin.’

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