‘There was a time – you won’t remember, you are too young – but when he was younger he could become agitated and morose. That calm and that cheerfulness only came with time. And yesterday it was as if he wanted to go back to the past, to go back and begin again.’
‘How could he go back?’
‘Of course he couldn’t, but he thought he could and I …’ She stopped, blushed and looked away. ‘He was worried about you.’
‘About me?’
‘Yes. He thought that when you knew …’
‘Knew what?’
‘That he no longer believed – or why he no longer believed – then you would suffer a dreadful disillusion.’
‘At least I have learned,’ said Andrew quietly, ‘that my faith does not depend on his.’
‘No. Nor does mine.’
‘Weren’t you upset by what he said?’
‘Yes, of course, of course, but for him, not for me.’
‘You thought that he might kill himself?’
‘Not at first, no, although for a man to abandon what he has lived for for so long … But after …’
‘After?’
She looked down at her hands. ‘I knew … I told him, that you can’t go back and begin again.’
Now, for the first time, a few tears ran down her cheeks, but her grief was as reserved as the rest of her behaviour.
‘I don’t really understand,’ said Andrew.
She looked at him kindly. ‘How could you? You are so young.’
‘I … I would like to,’ he said, ‘because it is important to me to know why Father Lambert took his life.’
‘But if I tell you … if I tell you everything …’ Her voice petered out.
‘What?’
‘Then your memory of him …’
‘That is secure.’
‘You are not a priest yet, are you?’
‘No.’
‘But I could trust you, as if you were?’
‘Of course.’
She sighed – the sigh of a child. ‘Some years ago, when my husband left me, I was very unhappy. I went to your church to speak to a priest. Quite by chance it was John. I saw him from time to time and I ceased to be unhappy because, well, because I fell in love with him.’
‘But you were married,’ said Andrew.
She looked at him coolly. ‘Yes. My husband had left me for another woman, but in the eyes of the Church I was still married and had two children. Nevertheless, I fell in love with him and he … he fell in love with me.’
‘How terrible.’
She smiled bitterly. ‘Yes. It was terrible. Terrible is just what it was, for us both, because I was married and he was a priest, and we could so easily have become lovers but we didn’t. God triumphed over the Devil. We stopped seeing each other. We lived only a mile apart but we never met alone until nine or ten years later when we both felt old enough and safe enough to be friends once again.’
She paused and glanced at Andrew, but the young monk’s face was hidden in his hands – to conceal an expression not of disgust or disapproval but of outright astonishment that Father Lambert had ever been tempted by a woman, particularly a woman as conventional as Veronica Dunn. He looked up, glanced at her, then looked away – revealing the very thoughts he had hoped to conceal. ‘It must have been hard,’ he said lamely.
She smiled with the sour understanding of a woman who is past her prime. ‘Other people’s passions are always difficult to imagine,’ she said, ‘particularly when you are young and they are middle-aged.’
‘Not at all,’ he said chivalrously.
‘They are even harder to remember,’ she said, ‘and, as I told him, impossible to revive.’
Now an unpleasant feeling overcame Andrew, similar to that he had felt the day before when he recognized the body hanging from the window. He became afraid that the woman in front of him was about to tell him something he did not want to know; but as strong as his reluctance to listen was her urge to confess. ‘I told him, yesterday,’ she went on, hesitating, blushing, but continuing inexorably all the same, ‘that we could not go back and relive the past in a different way, but he said that our love was now the most precious thing in his life and that he did not want to die with it unfulfilled.’
Andrew looked at her, appalled, but she had moved her gaze towards the window and did not catch the expression in his eyes. ‘He was so agitated, so determined, and I felt, still … well, that if it mattered to him so much … The house was empty, so I agreed.’ She turned back from the window and glanced, involuntarily, at the sofa upon which Andrew was sitting, then was silent.
Andrew, too, said nothing as he tried to digest the disgust he felt at the image she had conjured up – not just of a priest and a woman untrue to their vows, but at two aged bodies making love in the middle of the day.
‘It was a matter of a moment,’ she said quietly, ‘and I am afraid that he was dreadfully disappointed. He had imagined, I think, something altogether more magnificent.’
‘And did he show remorse?’ asked Andrew.
‘I don’t know. He apologized …’
‘For what he had done?’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Or for what he felt he had done … badly. He said it would take time, but I knew from the look in his eyes that it would never happen again, and that was why I was afraid that after this second disillusion …’
‘Yes, of course. It makes suicide more certain.’
She looked at him, puzzled. ‘Why more certain? Was it ever uncertain?’
‘I thought that there was room for some slight doubt.’
‘Could it have been an accident?’
‘No, not an accident, and at first sight, clearly, he seemed to have hanged himself; but I noticed – or I thought that I noticed – that his things were tidy. That is, they were always tidy, but that they were tidy in a particular, unusual way.’
Mrs Dunn frowned. ‘Are you suggesting that someone might have killed him?’
‘No.’ His brow, too, was wrinkled as he tried to see the implications of what he was saying. ‘One can’t really suggest that someone could have killed him – like that, to make it seem like suicide – because one cannot think of any reason why they should. But if someone had been there, going through his things …’
‘Was anything missing?’
‘Yes. His notebook.’
‘Stolen?’
‘Not necessarily, no. He might have left it in Israel.’
‘You should surely have called the police.’
‘The Prior thought that the greater good was served by avoiding scandal.’
‘But if he was murdered …’
‘It is very hard to think of a motive for murder, whereas suicide, well, you yourself felt that he may have had it in mind.’
‘I know, I know. So the mystery is not how he died, but how he lost his faith.’
‘There are apparently priests who do.’
‘Of course. I know. And he knew that too. So many of his friends abandoned the priesthood in the years which followed the Council; and John himself was pessimistic at times about the direction in which the Church seemed to be going.’
‘I know.’
‘That’s why he placed so much hope in you. He told me that so many of the younger priests had been corrupted in the seminaries by the liberal theologians. They were no longer taught to believe in Hell, but without Hell the whole idea of salvation loses its meaning and there is no point to the suffering of Christ.’
‘He believed in Hell,’ said Andrew gravely.
‘Until yesterday, yes, he believed in Hell, but then suddenly he behaved as if he knew for certain that there was nothing beyond the grave.’
Andrew left Edwardes Square soon after eleven and, catching a bus which went towards Huntingdon College, he sat down on the front seat on the top deck trying hard to make sense of what he had just heard from Veronica Dunn.
That Father Lambert had slept with her hours before he di
ed was an appalling revelation, but it was only further evidence of that dreadful doubt and despair which had clearly overwhelmed him upon his return from Israel. More astonishing to Andrew, and far harder to digest, was the discovery that nine or ten years before, shortly before Andrew had met him and when Father Lambert had been in his prime as a priest, he had been deeply in love with a woman.
Of course, Andrew knew that many priests found celibacy an ordeal. He himself, when considering the priesthood, had had misgivings on this account. He had instincts common to a man of his age, and novices were then encouraged to be candid about their sexuality. Indeed his novice-master, a veteran of Vatican II, had even expressed doubts about the Church’s wisdom in insisting upon celibacy in all its priests. It had been Father Lambert who had persuaded him that it had a value beyond the sacrifice of something pleasant for God, or the avoidance of the encumbrance of a wife and family so as to dedicate oneself entirely to the Lord.
In a priest, he had said, the man must transcend the male: holiness was incompatible with the qualities which women sought in their lovers. That was why Jesus had been celibate, and had asked those who would follow him à outrance to make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of God.
Andrew had been readily persuaded. The only contrary opinion came from his brother Henry, whose cynicism about women had always made Andrew feel that it would be as well to leave them alone. There were times when he had wondered what it would be like to know the warmth and comfort of a woman’s love; but, by and large, he had accepted that the great reward for renouncing a wife and family of his own was the freedom to love both God and his neighbour in an entirely unstinting and unselfish way. Although called to serve God principally as an archaeologist, he had also worked as a stretcher-bearer at Lourdes, helped at a hostel for down-and-outs in Waterloo, and was always ready, at Huntingdon College, to listen to the troubles of his fellow students when their love affairs went wrong or their parents let them down.
Now, sitting on the bus, and digesting what he had just learned about Father Lambert’s passion for Veronica Dunn, he could not suppress the feeling that somehow he had been misled, if not actually deceived. He felt like a boy who had caught his teacher reading a pornographic book. Did it mean that the teacher was depraved? Or that the lewd passages were not as corrupting as he had been told? Was it possible that when Jesus had said that only the man who hates his life in this world will keep it in the next one, he had not meant it to be taken as literally as he had supposed? Was there some way, perhaps, in which a Christian could have his cake and yet eat it?
Five
Andrew got off the bus at Holborn, still in some confusion, and walked through the elegant streets and squares of Bloomsbury to the ugly post-war buildings which housed Huntingdon College. There he went straight to the Master and told him how his Professor of Archaeology had died from a stroke. He then broke the news to those who worked in Father Lambert’s own department. One of the older lecturers, who happened to be in the office, blanched as if struck by the thought that it could very easily have been him, while the secretary sobbed quietly into a paper handkerchief.
Andrew went in search of Anna Dagan, and caught sight of her coming out of a seminar which he himself should have attended. From the way she greeted him, and the cheerful look on her face, it was clear that she had not yet heard the news. He walked with her down the corridor without saying anything in particular, past the notice-boards towards the canteen where both picked up trays and helped themselves to some lunch. It was only when they were seated at a table in the corner of the canteen that Andrew told her that Father Lambert was dead.
Anna looked at him quizzically as if he was playing some kind of joke, but seeing the grave expression on his face, she sank back, shaken, on the hard canteen chair. ‘But he always seemed so well,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe he died just like that.’
Andrew did not answer. He faced a dilemma. He had just told everyone at Huntingdon College, in obedience to his superior’s instructions, that Father Lambert had died of a stroke. With Anna, however, he was tempted to tell the truth, not just because she was his friend, but because she was well placed, as Michal Dagan’s daughter, to find out what Father Lambert had done in Israel. With the kind of quick casuistry which comes easily to the young, he decided that, since the secret had innocently escaped him in the presence of Veronica Dunn, it was no longer as such a secret. Just as Father Godfrey in good conscience could decide that a greater good would be served by lying, so he, Andrew, could equally well decide that a greater good would be served by telling the truth. He therefore repeated the whole story to Anna who, for the first time since Andrew had known her, listened without interruption to every word he had to say.
In normal circumstances, she would tease Andrew almost every time he opened his mouth. She made the most of the fact that he was a Simonite monk, saying that she had been sent by God to test him. She was small, with short black hair, sallow skin, brown eyes and an innocent, child-like face. She was often taken for sixteen instead of twenty-two, and part of her sharpness was undoubtedly to disabuse those who thought her as innocent as she seemed. She was clever, but also contrary, and had made life so, difficult for her parents in Israel that they had sent her to study for a postgraduate degree with Father Lambert in London.
Here Andrew had befriended her, putting up with her relentless teasing and her occasionally cruel moods because he was amused by her jokes and enlivened by her intelligence. He also felt sorry for her, sensing the uncertainty behind the shield of her caustic humour. He knew from Father Lambert that she got on badly with her family, particularly her brother Jake, and so came to regard her as an adopted sister. As a result, it seemed entirely proper to tell her not only about Father Lambert’s suicide, and the possibility that someone had searched his rooms, but also about his fall from grace with Veronica Dunn.
Anna, who could not stop a slight smirk coming onto her face when she heard this last piece of news, said: ‘Well, it’s good to know he had it in him.’
Andrew frowned. ‘That’s a banal thing to say.’
‘Yes. I’m sorry.’
Since she rarely apologized, her words dissipated his irritation. ‘What is odd, surely,’ he said, ‘is not that he fell in love with a woman – that can happen to any priest – but that he went back to her yesterday after ten years.’
‘You say she had grey hair?’
‘Yes. She was really quite old.’
‘I guess people keep at it longer than you’d think.’
Andrew blushed. ‘I don’t think … I mean, she seemed to think it was … unusual. It was almost as if it was symbolic.’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘Symbolic sex. Yuk.’
‘I do see that if he had lost his faith …’
‘He’d want to lose his virginity?’
‘He might want to know what it was he had missed – from curiosity as much as … desire.’
‘One of the things I can never understand about your creepy religion is why faith and sex are incompatible.’
‘They aren’t,’ said Andrew.
‘I know, I know,’ said Anna in a tone of affected weariness. ‘A married couple with the blessing of the Church can do it so long as they bear in mind that it might lead to a baby and don’t take any precautions to make sure that it won’t. Great. That damns ninety-nine point nine per cent of all lovers. So my statement stands. The Catholic Church hates sex.’
This was not one of Andrew’s favourite topics of conversation. He sensed that Anna knew more about the subject than he did, but he preferred not to know the details of her experience. ‘You shouldn’t see it as being against sex so much as beyond sex,’ he said. ‘The full Christian life, which is what a priest aspires to, transcends our natural condition …’
‘Then why are you eating those sausages?’
‘I have to keep alive.’
‘You could have had bread and water.’
‘One can legitimately tak
e pleasure in God’s creation.’
‘As the bishop said to the actress, or Father Lambert to Mrs Dunn.’
Andrew blushed. ‘Please don’t.’
She opened her mouth to say something more but shut it again before a word had escaped, and looked from under her fringe at Andrew as if to gauge whether or not he was genuinely upset. Seeing that he was undoubtedly in a vulnerable condition, she said, in a much softer tone: ‘I really am sorry he’s dead, you know. I loved him too.’
‘Of course.’
‘And I think, for your sake, we ought to try and find out why he suddenly threw all his eggs out of his one basket.’
‘I would like to know.’
‘Even psychologically it’s interesting …’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll call Dad and ask him what happened in Israel.’
‘Do you know why he wanted Father Lambert to come to Jerusalem?’
She shook her head. ‘Not exactly. It was something to do with a dig by the Western Wall.’
‘When will you ring him?’
She looked at her watch. ‘We could try him now.’
They left the canteen and went up to the Department of Archaeology where the secretary, who was used to Andrew acting as Father Lambert’s assistant, let them into his office. Anna took the telephone and dialled first for an outside line, and then the code and number for her father’s office in Jerusalem. When she got through she asked, in halting Hebrew, to speak to Professor Dagan.
When her father came on the line she reverted to English. Andrew stood looking out of the window into the street as she gave him the news of Father Lambert’s death. He heard her say that he had had a stroke, and then abruptly ask: ‘Can you tell us, Dad, if anything happened to him while he was in Israel? I mean, did he seem OK to you?’
There was a pause as she listened to her father. Then she said: ‘Sure, he’s here,’ and held out the telephone to Andrew. ‘He wants to talk to you.’
Andrew took the telephone and heard the deep, gentle voice of Michal Dagan on an extraordinarily clear line.
‘Andrew, I am so sorry. This is terrible. I cannot believe it. But it is true?’