The Contrite Heart

By Kathy Farmer

The Contrite Heart is a powerful novel that portrays, in a vivid way, how beautiful young love between a young man and woman were crushed through parental Victorian prejudices. The story then moves forward to the womans eventual conventional marriage to another man when her sweetheart moves away. We learn how this marriage was completely devoid of mutually satisfying physical love, which drove her to having an affair, and the subsequent guilt, which laid a heavy burden upon her. The story is woven around her Christian ministry and how the weight of guilt made her decide to consider becoming a nun after the death of her husband.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Oct 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524665111

Kathy Farmer

Kathy Farmer lived for many years on the borders of the Welsh Marches. She now lives with her husband in Pembrokeshire, in the beautiful seaside town of Tenby. She is a Reader in the Church in Wales within the Diocese of St Davids and is a member of Tenby Arts Club. Kathy is a countrywoman, and for many years she rode her Arab mare around the hills in the Welsh Marches, and along Offas Dyke.

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© 2016 Kathy Farmer. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 10/25/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5246-6512-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-6511-1 (e)

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Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Previous novels by the author:

Cry of the Curlew

The Lost Ring

Father of all, we give you thanks and praise,

That when we were still far off you met us in your son

And brought us home. Dying and living, he declared your love,

Gave us grace and opened the gate of glory.

The wind howled around the high building of St John of the Cross Convent. All night it had pounded like thunder against the gaunt stone walls, keeping Stella awake most of the night so that early in the morning it was a relief to join the nuns in the chapel for Lauds at 7-15am. Afterwards as she made her way into the refectory for breakfast, she stopped to stare through the windows into the garden below. Several long strands of packaging plastic had been blown by the strong winds from somewhere and had caught in the branches of the apple trees. They looked like souls writhing in torment to escape. But there was no escape, the more the plastic thrashed and struggled in the wind the more enmeshed it became, its long translucent ephemeral strands reminding her of how she felt. Was this why she was here? Would she ever feel free? She shook her head and moved on. She had come here on her own. It was the season of Lent, a time of inner examination. She was on a silent retreat. There were others here beside her, a church party, but they whispered and giggled, gesticulated to each other, finding the silence too hard to keep. Stella kept her eyes down so that she couldn’t see them as she picked up a plate and made herself a piece of toast and sat down. She needed this silence. Her busy life meant that these strange thoughts had remained silent and hidden. Now, in the silence of retreat they were speaking to her and opening up the wounds of the past. She hadn’t come here for that. She had come here to change her life, perhaps test a vocation that had always lain deep within her from girlhood when she had first met Alex—an ardent convert to the Roman Catholic faith who had opened up a new world of spirituality to her that had remained dormant until their meeting. She had instantly loved him for his holy fervour and reverent adoration. He gave her books to read about the saints, St. Teresa of Lisieux and St. Teresa of Avila being her favourites. She had started to wear a rosary, using it for daily prayer, and was taking instruction from a monk in a nearby Abbey that Alex had arranged for her. Along with her spiritual awakening there was another awakening, she was falling in love with Alex. He had told Stella that he loved her and they had talked about getting married, that is, until her parents who went to the chapel down the road, were adamant that she was not going to marry a Roman Catholic, let alone become one. Stella was young and would have had to have her parent’s consent to get married. Her mother had managed to get her dismissed from the hospital where she had just started to train and where her friend Alex also worked as a junior doctor. Her mother had been to see the Matron. She had objected to the friendship between her young daughter, aged sixteen and a much older man, by ten years, Alex Henderson, whom she said, was having an undue influence on her daughter’s life that she and her husband did not approve of. The matron frowned, looking up suddenly at the woman before her, Do you mean Doctor Alex Henderson? matron asked her. A fleeting look of incomprehension suddenly flooded Stella’s mother’s face, Stella hadn’t told her that he was a doctor. She was suddenly put out, this put a different complexion on things, but it was too late now and it didn’t alter the fact that she didn’t want her daughter to become a Roman Catholic, Stella’s grandparents had been staunch Protestant Ulster Orange people who would turn in their grave if they knew that their granddaughter wanted to become a Roman Catholic. Stella’s mother just gave a nod to the matron’s question. Not wishing any trouble from their liaison the matron had no other choice than to dismiss Stella, but she gave her a good character and work reference, clearly she was sorry to lose her. All this interference in her life from her mother filled Stella with a bitterness toward her which lasted until her death.

*     *     *

This morning at Lauds in the chapel with the nuns, they had intoned psalm 51 A psalm of King David’s and Stella’s breath was suddenly suspended by the words, ‘My sin is ever before me.’—she found that she couldn’t go on. Surely, King David’s adultery with Bathsheba and the placing of her husband in the front lines of battle to ensure his death’—even for David, a king, chosen by God. It was obvious that he could never escape this terrible guilt, even though he had repented and even though God had forgiven him and called him ‘a man after his own heart.’ No, she didn’t believe it either, that anyone could erase guilt, because inevitably you sub-consciously pick at the scabs and open up the wounds of your own scar tissue so that it never heals. She wondered whether she should talk it over with one of the Sisters.

Some years ago she had poured her heart out, to her then spiritual director, when she was in training for ministry and going through the Ignation exercises with him. They had made her weep, because of its focus on sin versus the all-embracing love of God. The guilt had all flooded back to her. He had been gentle with his questioning, non-judgemental, and he had uttered over her the words of forgiveness that the authority of the church had entrusted to him as a priest. But it had never erased her guilt. And—if God had forgiven her, what did she do with her God forgiven regrets she wondered? She lived with them still, as part of her life, to be numbered as part of her self-inflicted wounds. In her life she had tried to allow the memories to prod her into doing better with those still living, allowing them to sharpen the vision and intensify the hope that one day she could throw herself into the arms of those she had hurt and say, Truly, I’m sorry.

Stella decided to go for a walk in the extensive gardens of the convent. The awful howling storm of the night had passed and a watery sun was struggling to come out. Someone had already been out and freed the plastic that had been caught in the apple tree’s branches which now seemed to be stretching their knobbly bare arms