Free Heartbreaker by Susan Howatch Page B

close as brothers. He had been Nicholas’s spiritual director at one time and even now often assumed the role of mentor.
    Although Lewis had officially retired he still helped out at the church and still saw a certain number of people for spiritual direction. He was reputed to be better at dealing with men than women, and indeed he always cited his divorce as evidence that he had never been good at long-term relationships with the opposite sex, but for some reason he and I had always got on well. Since Lewis disliked feminism, female high flyers and women who prized their independence, and since I disliked crabby old heterosexuals who were convinced a woman’s place was in the home, our friendship was all the more remarkable, but he had been very kind to me after my marriage ended, and very helpful as I had struggled to understand the Christianity of the Christians who had come to my rescue. Lewis dished out certainties. It’s all very well for liberal Christians to sneer at clergymen who do this, but when one’s starting out on the spiritual journey and making a serious attempt to understand a complicated major religion, one needs certainties in order to find a patch of firm ground to stand on; the sophisticated approach can come later. I had reached the stage where I had dug myself in on a patch of firm ground but had so far been unable to work out how to move on.
    The truth was that I was a mere beginner in a situation where an Oxford degree in law did not guarantee enlightenment. I don’t mean to imply that the intellectual side of Christianity is irrational. How can it be when it’s engaged the best minds of Western Europe for hundreds of years? I merely mean to stress that academic prowess doesn’t necessarily produce spiritual wisdom—the ability not just to see the world as it really is but to make sense of it so that one can live in the best possible way.
    “I can’t make sense of this,” I said to Lewis after I had described the row with Eric and given him a bowdlerised account of my meeting with Gavin. “I know I love Eric so why can’t I make a full commitment to him? And I know Gavin Blake’s scum, so why do I have this suicidal urge to swoon into his arms like a pre-feminist airhead?”
    “Personally I’m rather partial to pre-feminist airheads.”
    “Lewis!”
    “I’m sorry, my dear, let me haul myself out of my dotage and address this problem. Can you give me a little more information? How exactly did you meet this man?”
    Knowing I could say anything in a one-to-one conversation with a priest, I escaped with relief from the bonds of confidentiality and told him that I had encountered Gavin through Richard. Lewis and Richard had never met, although Lewis had been introduced to both Moira and Bridget at one of the healing services, and he knew Bridget was being treated for anorexia.
    When I had completed my story, his comment on Richard’s homosexuality was: “The family was obviously dislocated—it was clear there was a hidden dimension somewhere which was causing trouble.”
    “Did Nicholas suspect that Richard was gay?”
    “I don’t know. Nicholas is bound by confidentiality over Bridget Slaney’s case, and it’s not one of the cases where I know all the details— nowadays I no longer attend every case-conference.”
    “But how could Richard’s homosexuality have dislocated the family when he went to such enormous lengths to cover it up?”
    “I’d say that if you consistently lie to those closest to you and invest enormous energy in pretending to be what you’re not, you’re almost begging for dislocated relationships. People, particularly children, pick up falseness on a psychic level and feel not just alienated but frightened and confused. Then even if the unease is never fully brought to consciousness it can manifest itself in ill-health or inappropriate behaviour . . . And talking of dislocated relationships, let’s get back to your most immediate