and every time I felt his mind prying into mine I mentally evicted him by thinking about cricket.
Back we come again to the relationship with my father, now clouded by my chaotic career as a psychic and muddied by his agonising anxiety.
Of course sex is a subject which children often find impossible to discuss with their parents, but in my case this wasn’t my father’s fault; certainly I don’t mean to imply that just because he was a priest he was incapable of speaking frankly on the subject.
‘Christianity has been much misunderstood on this matter,’ he had said to me at exactly the right moment in my adolescence, ‘but it has always claimed –’ Here centuries of clerical misogyny were swept aside ‘– that sex is good and right.’ With the slightest of smiles he conveyed the impression of surveying numerous pleasurable memories. ‘It’s the abuse of sex, that gift from God, which Christianity condemns. That’s a manifestation of the Devil, who hates God’s generosity and longs to wreck it by converting a gift of joy into a trap of suffering.’
This made sense to me. I liked it when my father talked in old-fashioned picture-language of the Devil in order to convey the strength of the Dark, that psychic reality which I had recognised at such an early age. But then my father stopped talking about the reality of the Dark and began talking of the unreality of the sexual rules. It turned out that almost anything was an abuse of sex. In fact in a world which was overflowing with sexual possibilities – and which was soon to explode into a sexual supermarket – he insisted that for the unmarried only deprivation was on offer. With a marriage certificate tucked under one’s pillow one could have sex twenty-five hours a day and God would never bat an eyelid (provided that the sex was what my father called ‘wholesome’; I never failed to be amazed by his use of archaic language). But for the Christian it was either feast or famine where sex was concerned. No wonder the unchurched masses thought Christianity was peculiar on the subject.
‘I expect you’re thinking now that this is all idealism which has no relation to reality,’ said my father, reading my mind so accurately that I jumped, ‘but human beings must have ideals to look up to and examples to copy if they’re not to sink to a most unedifying level.’ (More fascinating archaic language. Unedifying! Ye gods!) ‘In this world no one’s perfect. But one can aim high and try to be good. To do so is a sign not only of maturity but of –’ My father made a vast verbal leap forward into the twentieth century ‘-psychological integration. Religion is about integration, about successfully bringing the selfish ego into line with the centre of the personality where God exists, as a divine spark, in every human being. Religion is about helping man to live in harmony with his true self and become the person God’s designed him to be.’
We seemed to have wandered away from the subject of sex, but the next moment my father was saying: ‘Casual sex is just the gratification of the ego. The ego sits in the driving-seat of the personality, but unless it’s aligned with the true self it’ll steer an erratic and possibly disastrous course.’
‘Hm,’ I said. I thought it was about time I said something.
‘In addition, casual sex is the exploitation of another, and to exploit people is wrong …’
Later I felt he had exaggerated this. Later, when I was no longer so innocent, I thought: what exploitation? The girls loved it. I loved it. No one got hurt. Where was the harm? Of course there would always be people who made a mess of their pleasures, I realised that. But I wasn’t one of those people.
After the disaster at the mental hospital I yielded to my father’s pleas to bring my voluntary service to a premature end. By that time I had whiled away twenty months of the two years I had allotted myself, and I was due to begin my training at theological college that autumn, the autumn of 1966. The summer stretched before me, and telling my father that I was going to embark on some serious theological reading I loafed around listening to my records and dipping into books on reincarnation.
It was then, quite without warning, that I got into a mess with a girl, but being me I didn’t get into the usual mess young men get into with girls. It was a psychic mess. Typical.
Back we come again to my disastrous career as a psychic. ‘Beware of those glamorous powers!’ my father had droned to me years earlier before I had gone up to Cambridge, and I had thought: yes, yes, quite so, of course I shall always be psychically well-behaved. But during my years as an undergraduate I had found it increasingly hard to resist a psychic flourish now and then. The girls loved it. I loved it. No one got hurt. Where was the harm?
In that summer of 1966 I found out. I was twenty-three years old and spending my Saturday nights with a little dolly-bird typist called Debbie who had a bed-sitting-room down in Langley Bottom, the working-class end of Starbridge. I’d met her in the Starbridge branch of Burgy’s, which I had discovered was the ideal place for picking up girls whom I couldn’t take home but couldn’t do without. Being currently intrigued by the research into reincarnation I hankered to reproduce the Bridey Murphy experiment, and with Debbie’s eager consent I hypnotised her in order to find out if she could recall a past life. She could. Greatly excited I took notes as she described her life as a medieval nun. Then the disaster happened: I was unable to bring her out of the trance.
By that time she had stopped talking and evolved into a zombie, eyes open, responsive to my commands but unable to communicate. I panicked, terrified by the thought that I had produced permanent mental impairment. Having manoeuvred her into my car I headed for the emergency department of Starbridge General Hospital, but then I suffered a second bout of panic. Supposing they thought she was traumatised as the result of a sexual assault? Supposing a scandal aborted my career as a priest before it had even begun? Bathed in the coldest of cold sweats I drove past the hospital and fled home with the zombie to my father.
He asked me only one question. It was: ‘What’s her name?’ and when I told him he took her hand in his and said: ‘Debbie, in the name of JESUS CHRIST I command you to return to your body and reclaim it.’ The cure was instant. There was no permanent mental impairment. But I never went to bed with her again. She wanted me to; she cried, she pleaded, but I couldn’t. I’d seen the Dark. I’d felt the Force. It had been shown to me very clearly how vulnerable my psychic powers made me to demonic infiltration, and in my revulsion Debbie now seemed fatally contaminated.
‘You used that child,’ said my father, hammering home the truth with a fury which failed to conceal his terror that I should be so vulnerable. ‘You exploited her in order to satisfy your curiosity about a psychological mystery which has been adopted by those who believe in the heretical doctrine of reincarnation. You’ve behaved absolutely disgracefully and I’m ashamed of you.’
Strong words. I hated myself. Worse still, the temporary withdrawal of his love made me more aware of my vulnerability than ever. I saw that even though I was now a grown man of twenty-three I still had to have his powerful psyche enfolding mine in order to keep the Dark at bay.
‘I shan’t comment on the sexual relationship which you’ve obviously had with the girl,’ said my father. ‘You know exactly what I think of young men who are too selfish and immature to do anything with women but exploit them. Please don’t attend mass until you’ve made a full confession to Aelred Peters.’
This was the final horror. I couldn’t bear the thought of Father Peters knowing how I’d behaved. ‘You hear my confession,’ I begged my father, but he refused.
‘Confessing to Aelred would be a real penance,’ he said. ‘Confessing to me would be a soft option. Off you go to Starwater.’
Away I sloped to the Abbey, but cowardice overwhelmed me as soon as I crossed the threshold, and although I told Father Peters
