Gerry Fenn—Sue Gates: Romantic Relationship

Gerry Fenn and Sue Gates’s romantic relationship is tested by the same events that make Fenn’s career: while his firsthand reporting on Alice Pagett’s visions and the healings turns him into an international media figure, Sue finds her faith again and sees his continued detachment as a barrier between them. Their conflict is not simply a dispute about belief. It exposes a difference in what the Banfield events mean to each of them, and whether Fenn can meet Sue in the changed emotional world she now inhabits.

Strain and Withdrawal

Fenn’s pursuit of Sue begins after a week of growing professional success. The Brighton Evening Courier has syndicated his personal account of the Banfield miracles to newspapers in Britain and abroad; magazines, periodicals, and television companies are seeking follow-up stories and interviews. Within four days he has become a media figure, his name bound to Alice Pagett’s first vision and the five further miracles of the second Sunday. The contrast is sharp: Fenn is riding high on the public attention, but his private relationship is stalled. Sue has twice hung up on him that week, and on two visits he has found her away from her flat. He goes to her door determined that, if she wants to end the relationship, she must say so directly.

When they speak, Sue explains that she is unsure whether the difficulty lies with Fenn or with herself. She has found her faith again and says she has no time for anything else. Her withdrawal therefore has a spiritual dimension, but it also reflects a specific disappointment in him. Sue believes that those present at the second Sunday’s events underwent profound experiences: they took the healings as divine acts and reorganized their lives around what they believed they had witnessed. Fenn, by contrast, can acknowledge what happened without being inwardly changed by it. To Sue, his lack of response makes him seem unreachable, and his readiness to capitalize on the story intensifies her concern that public opportunity has displaced personal and spiritual attention.

Belief and Emotional Conflict

Sue’s criticism is pointed, but the scene does not reduce her position to condemnation. She distinguishes Fenn’s reaction from Father Hagan’s: in her view, the priest is overwhelmed by the levitation of a child who saw the Blessed Virgin and by the occurrence of six miracles in his parish. Fenn objects that her comparison is unfair. Sue concedes the unfairness and clarifies what she wants instead: some sign that his cynicism has at least been pierced. The disagreement turns on the difference between witnessing an extraordinary event and allowing it to alter one’s sense of the world. Sue longs for evidence of that inward change in Fenn; he offers no comparable testimony of belief.

The argument also reveals the limits of Fenn’s customary emotional defenses. When Sue weeps, he feels irrational guilt and goes to her, kneeling and gently drawing her hands away from her face. Her misery is visible to him, and when she falls into his arms, shaking, he recognizes that his usual guardedness does not hold with her. He has learned to protect himself from other people’s demands and from the marks left by past rejection, but with Sue he cannot maintain that distance. The moment does not settle their disagreement about faith. Instead, it makes their attachment tangible within the conflict: Sue’s disappointment and Fenn’s inability to remain detached coexist in the same embrace.

Reunion and Intimacy

The pair later become physically intimate. Sue initiates a kiss, and Fenn understands her abstinence to have made her desire unusually intense; he recalls their lovemaking as exhausting and surprising in its force. The scene reverses the immediate movement toward separation: after Sue has said that she has no time for anything beyond her renewed faith, she returns to bodily closeness with him. The novel presents this as a reunion in the moment, not as proof that their earlier conflict has been resolved. Their physical intimacy answers the immediate distance between them without establishing that Sue’s religious priorities or Fenn’s skepticism have changed.

Afterward, Fenn notices Sue moving restlessly in bed. Her body is very hot, she trembles, and her breathing becomes rapid and shallow while she remains asleep. He touches her back, calls her name, and gently shakes her shoulder, wanting to wake her without frightening her. The passage places care beside desire: the intimacy does not end with their lovemaking but continues as Fenn attends to her distress. The evidence does not explain the episode or state how it affects their relationship, so its significance remains limited to this scene of vulnerability and concern.

What the Relationship Reveals

Sue’s connection to Fenn also gives her a private role in how others understand him. Father Hagan tells Fenn that he has discussed him at length with Miss Gates, and Fenn recognizes that Sue is the person being named. The exchange establishes that she has spoken about him to the priest, though it does not disclose the full content of their conversation. It places the relationship beyond the couple’s direct exchanges: Sue’s knowledge of Fenn has become part of another person’s understanding of him, at a time when Fenn’s public identity is expanding rapidly.

Across these episodes, the relationship is shaped by a contrast between public success and private responsiveness. Fenn’s account of the miracles reaches millions, yet Sue doubts that the events have reached him inwardly; she wants more than his acknowledgment of what happened. He can resist emotional exposure in many situations, but her tears undo that protection, and his later attentiveness to her physical distress shows another form of care. Their reunion is real but provisional in what the narrative establishes: affection and desire draw them together, while the difference over faith remains visible and unresolved.