Southampton Row - Anne Perry [89]
“I thought I would understand,” Patterson said desperately. “I’ve been a minister in the church for almost forty years! God knows how many people I’ve comforted in their loss, and now all those words I’ve said so carefully mean nothing to me.” He peered up at the Bishop. “Why? Why don’t I believe them when I say them to myself?”
Isadora waited for the Bishop to reply that it was shock, anger at pain, and he must give himself time to heal. Even expected death is a huge and strange thing and takes courage to face, no less by a man dedicated to God’s service than by any other. Faith is not certainty, and belief does not take away the hurt.
The Bishop seemed to be floundering for words. He drew in his breath, and then let it out again in a sigh. “My dear man, we will all experience great trials of faith during our lives. I am sure you will rise to this with all your usual fortitude. You are a good man, rest in the knowledge of that.”
Patterson stared up at him, the agony in his face as naked as if he were oblivious of Isadora’s presence. “If I am a good man, why has this happened to me?” he begged. “And why do I feel nothing but confusion and pain? Why can I see no hand of God in it, no whisper of the divine anywhere?”
“The divine is an infinite mystery,” the Bishop answered, staring across Patterson’s head at the far wall, his face intensely troubled, his eyes fixed. He looked as if he saw no more comfort than Patterson did himself. “It is beyond us to comprehend. Perhaps we are not meant to.”
Anguish contorted Patterson’s features, and it seemed to Isadora, afraid to move in case she drew attention to herself, that he was on the edge of screaming with the sheer frustration that boiled up inside him, unanswered by anything he could ever reach towards.
“There’s no sense in it all!” he cried out, his voice strangled in his throat. “One day she was alive, so alive, her child within her. She glowed with the joy of her time coming . . . and then nothing but suffering and death. How could it be? How? It’s senseless! It’s cruel and wasteful, and stupid, as if there is no meaning in the universe.” He drew in a great sob. “Why have I spent my life telling people there is a just and loving God, that it all makes a perfect pattern that we will see one day, and then when I need to know that myself . . . there’s nothing but darkness . . . and silence? Why?” His voice grew more demanding, angrier. “Why? Was my whole life a farce? Tell me!”
The Bishop hesitated, shifting his weight to the other foot, his body awkward.
“Tell me!” Patterson shouted.
“My dear man . . .” the Bishop sputtered. “My dear . . . man, these are dark times . . . we all have them, times when it seems the world is monstrous. Fear covers everything like a descending night and no dawn is . . . is imaginable . . .”
Isadora could not bear it. “Mr. Patterson, of course your sense of loss is terrible,” she said urgently. “If you truly love anyone then their death has to hurt, but most especially if they are young.” She moved forward a step, ignoring the Bishop’s startled expression. “But to lose is part of our human experience, as God intended it to be. The fact that it hurts to the very limit of our ability to bear is the whole point. In the end it comes down to one question, do you trust God, or not? If you do, then you endure the pain until you can come through to the other side of it. If you don’t, then you had better begin to think exactly what you do believe, and exercise yourself to your very soul.” She lowered her voice very gently. “I think you will find that your life experience tells you that your faith is there . . . not all the time, but most of it. And most of it is enough.”
Patterson looked up at her in amazement. The anguish eased out of him as he began to consider what she had said.
The Bishop turned towards her, incredulity slackening his face until it held exactly the same expression he had when he was asleep, an uncanny vacancy waiting to be filled by thought.
“Really, Isadora . . .” he