The Hawk and the Dove

by Penelope Wilcock

  ‘Grief,’ Brother Tom thought. ‘It’s grief. The man’s full of it.’ Father Peregrine had been asking him a question, but he had not been listening, and now he blurted out, ‘Father, I was there, the night they found you. I can’t forget it. I’m so sorry, Father— about your hands. I don’t know how you can bear it. Is there any way I can help?’

  The abbot looked at him for a moment without speaking, and Brother Tom felt uncomfortable, and wished he had had the sense to keep quiet.

  ‘Thank you for your concern, my son,’ said Father Peregrine, evenly. ‘You might remember me in your prayers. Sometimes— there are times when I hardly know myself how to bear it. But that is not what we were discussing. I asked you, if you recall, whether things are going well for you, or if you have any difficulty.’

  As Brother Tom’s father had predicted, the monastic life did not come easily to him. The worst of it was the food; not that the food was bad, but oh, so little of it!

  Father Peregrine listened with sympathy to Brother Tom’s small and natural difficulties. He liked this straightforward young man, liked his zest for life and his candid way of speaking. It steadied him to concentrate on something other than the horrors that haunted his memory and the nightmare of his helplessness.

  When their conversation was finished and Brother Tom left, Father Peregrine sat thinking about him for a moment. ‘That young man could save my sanity still,’ he said to himself. ‘Everything that is whole and healthy and good is there in him.’

  Brother Tom, on the other hand, felt unhappy. Leaving the abbot’s house, he had a sudden memory of his mother carrying a full basin of milk to the dairy, full almost to the brim, moving with infinite steadiness and care lest she slop it over.

  ‘That’s it,’ he thought, ‘he’s like that. He’s so full of grief that he daren’t relax in case it overflows. He’s the abbot. He’s all on his own. Oh, God help him, poor soul.’

  Brother Tom thought about it through the midday office of Sext and through the midday meal. After the meal, as he was leaving the refectory on his way to work in the vegetable garden, he was still thinking about it when he was hailed by Brother Cyprian, the porter.

  ‘Brother! I’ve some letters in t’ lodge for Father Abbot. I’d thank thee if tha’d spare my old bones and fetch them over to him. Will tha do it for me?’

  ‘Gladly, Brother,’ said Tom cheerfully, and walked back to the porter’s lodge with old Brother Cyprian, suiting his steps to the old man’s slow pace. At the porter’s lodge, he stayed talking an hour or more with Brother Cyprian, who had an inexhaustible fund of stories about monks past and present, and seemed to know the history of every brother in the abbey. He was careful in his talk, giving away nothing that could embarrass or damage, but that still left him plenty. Blithely indifferent to the passing of time and to the rule forbidding unnecessary conversation, he would have gone on all afternoon, but eventually Tom’s conscience could no longer ignore the fact that he was at this moment supposed to be working in the vegetable garden, and he picked up the abbot’s letters and stood up to go.

  ‘Aye, good lad, thanks for that, Th’art going by that way aren’t tha?’

  ‘I am,’ said Tom, with a smile. He was now. He’d been going in the opposite direction in the first place. He took the letters, bade farewell to Brother Cyprian and strolled back across the courtyard, through the refectory and along the cloister to the abbot’s house. He hesitated a moment, but the door was ajar, and he knocked shyly, then pushed it open and stepped inside.

  Across the room, Father Peregrine was seated at his table, evidently engaged in study, for he had an untidy pile of manuscripts spread on the great oak table in front of him. He was not looking at them, though, nor did he see Brother Tom come in. He was sitting hunched over his table, gazing dully at nothing in particular, sitting very still, except that he was repeating one slow gesture. He was wiping the side of his scarred hand slowly across his mouth, like a little child that wipes away the crumbs of food before he runs out to play, or the old man whose frail and shaky hand wipes away the dribble of saliva from the sunken lips of his toothless mouth.

  It could have been absentmindedness, could have been the unconscious gesture of a man deep in thought. But watching, Tom realised (and the realisation wrung him) that the slow, repeated movement, the slight frown, the gazing but unseeing eyes—all were nothing to do with being lost in thought or absent dreaming. The man was tortured by unbearable misery; at last he let his hand drop, and laid his face down upon it, not weeping, hardly even breathing, just tensely, despairingly still.

  Brother Tom felt ashamed that his response was a strange, unreasonable resentment. His discomfort crystallised into a prayer, ‘Oh God, what do I do now?’

  He felt awkward about being there, witnessing the misery that lay behind his abbot’s dignified and unruffled composure. He wanted to slip away but could not ignore the question that whispered inside: ‘If it was me? If it was me—could I face it alone?’ And yet he was afraid to intrude. As quietly as he could, he stole across the room, put the letters down on the pile of books, and sat down on the stool that stood before the table, facing the motionless man. He waited a moment, leaned his elbow on the table, leaned his chin on his hand. He wanted to touch him, but dared not; wanted to help him weep, but had no idea how to.

  In the end, though, he could no longer concentrate on his own apprehension and self-consciousness. Instinct got the better of him, and reaching out his hand he laid it on the other man’s arm without even thinking.

  Father Peregrine lifted his head and looked at him. For a minute, his eyes were bewildered, unfocused in the scarred and haggard face. His lips worked a little, but no sound emerged, like a man who has forgotten how to speak.

  Then, with a sigh, he smiled, and looked with attention at Brother Tom. ‘I do beg your pardon, Brother,’ he said quietly, in a most normal, level tone, ‘I was not aware of you. Can I help?’

  Tom was dumbfounded.

  ‘I doubt it,’ he said at last, bluntly. ‘Not in the state you’re in.’

  Father Peregrine just looked at him, opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again, shook his head, shrugged his shoulders and said nothing.

  Again the picture flashed in Tom’s mind of his mother carrying the bowl of milk, carefully, oh so carefully. ‘One jog and he’ll spill the lot,’ he thought, ‘and by my faith he needs to spill that grief.’

  ‘Maybe, if you could tell me, Father… well, perhaps I could help?’ ventured Tom, unsure, feeling irritated at his own uneasiness in the face of the desolation his superior was struggling to master.

  ‘Son, it is good of you to ask,’ he said eventually. ‘But my burdens are not for you to carry.’ His voice was a little uneven, and the tension of maintaining his self-control was causing him to shake slightly. ‘My son, forgive my discourtesy. Unless your errand is urgent, might we discuss it some other time?’

  Half of Brother Tom wanted to say, ‘Of course, Father, I quite understand,’ and beat a hasty retreat. He never knew where the other half got the courage from, but he replied, ‘To be honest with you, I’ve forgotten why I came. But I know why I’m not going.’

  Without giving himself time to think better of it, he followed his impulse, and leaping to his feet dragged the heavy table askew so that he could approach his abbot—who watched him, wide-eyed, white-faced and, Tom realised with a stab of pity, scared. Brother Tom seized the stool, placed it emphatically beside his superior’s chair, and sitting on it, took the man in his arms and held him close. ‘It’s all right,’ he said gently, ‘you can let it go.’ He cursed himself for a fool as he felt the awful rigidity of him, like a man of wood; but he persisted, holding him, not speaking, his thoughts racing. ‘Oh well, might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb. Faith, I wish I’d shut the door. I hope to God nobody walks in on this. Maybe I should go now….’

  But as Brother Tom held him and the fortress of his iron self-control was replaced at last, at last,
by the fortress of the arms of someone who loved him more than he was in awe of him, Peregrine began to weep, and wept until he lost all self-control and abandoned himself to sobbing grief. ‘My hands…’ he wept, the words barely intelligible, ‘Oh, God, how shall I bear the loss of my hands? To have died would have been nothing… oh, but my hands… oh… oh God….’ and the words were lost in uncontrollable tears.

  What comfort could Brother Tom bring but his presence and his silence and his holding him?

  The bell for None began to ring, and the monotony of the bell’s clang, which normally spoke peace to Tom, suddenly infuriated him. The Office? What insane futility! When a man has lost his skills, his independence and all his sense of dignity, must the afternoon Office intrude on his grieving?

  But Peregrine lifted himself away from Tom’s embrace, and sat for a moment, shaken, his breath coming unsteadily still. He dug in his pocket for his handkerchief, and shakily wiped his eyes and blew his nose. ‘Unless I am mistaken, my son, that is the bell for None. My lateness may reasonably be excused without explanation, but I doubt if yours will. Perhaps you would spare me that disclosure and be there in good time.’

  That was the nearest he would stoop to begging Tom not to tell anyone, but Tom understood well enough, and he never did tell anyone until after Peregrine’s death.

  Brother Tom nodded soberly and, replacing his stool, dragged the table back into position.

  ‘Brother Thomas.’ The abbot’s quiet voice arrested him as he reached the door. ‘Thank you. From my heart, Brother, thank you.’

  This small incident remained a living bond between the two men ever afterward, and kindled in Brother Tom a deep protective love for his abbot. As for the rest of the brothers, Father Peregrine bore their curious glances without a word, and their pity too, and knew very well their doubts as to his fitness to rule them any longer.

  In the end, though, it became apparent to all the community that he had a new authority about him now. For whereas before he had ruled with a natural strength and ability over other men, now he was learning to cling to the grace of God and find his strength there. He had commanded their respect before, and it had been based on the fear of his power over them. He earned their respect in a new way now, respect mingled with admiration and love, because he had found out for himself what it was to be weak—weak enough to need his brothers’ help—and his authority over them now was born of humble understanding.

  Great-uncle Edward had many tales to tell of Father Peregrine, after the terrible thing that happened to him. Uncle Edward said it crippled his body, but it set his spirit free. He said that most men would have become bitter and closed in, but Peregrine did not. He used his own weakness as a bridge to cross over to his brothers, when they too were weak. Having lost everything, he gave his weakness to God, and it became his strength.

  In a way, all the tales are one tale, the tale of how God’s power is found in weakness. But that is the story of the whole of life, if you know how to read it right.

  Mother sat for a while in silence. The candle had burned low, and the room was very quiet.

  ‘Are you asleep, Melissa?’ she said then.

  ‘No. I was thinking about Tom. He was brave, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Mmm, yes. Yes, he couldn’t be sure how it would turn out.’

  ‘And his name—Father Columba, I mean. He did get gentle, like a dove.’

  ‘Yes, it was a good name after all. Everyone still called him Father Peregrine, though, and he could still be pretty fierce and tough, when he needed to be. The difference was, now they weren’t too scared to call him it to his face.’

  Mother said in the morning she was sorry she ever started to tell me about Abbot Peregrine, because that night I woke the whole family, screaming and struggling in my sleep, terrified by nightmares of those grim vengeful thugs, stamping with indifferent cruelty on the fine, scholarly hands, flung out in helplessness on the stone chapel floor.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Humble Pie

  It was one of those hot, stifling days in late June, and the classroom was stuffy. One lazy fly buzzed monotonously, occasionally colliding with the windowpane. I looked at the fly, and at the window, and my gaze was drawn outside to the school buildings and the field beyond, where there was a row of poplar trees, graceful and slender, their topmost branches stirring even on that still day.

  The teacher was writing on the blackboard, the chalk stabbing and scraping industriously. ‘Tenir,’ she wrote, and ‘Venir.’ She underlined them heavily, and pushed her glasses more firmly onto the bridge of her nose as she fixed us with her severe glance.

  ‘The compounds of tenir and venir form the past historic similarly. The same applies of course to retenir, revenir, and so on.’ She whipped round again and attacked the blackboard with the chalk once more, writing ‘je tins, tu tins, il tint…’

  I could see the sickroom through the window, across the tennis court. I had been in there twice. It was white and bare with a calendar on the wall, and a picture of the Queen Mother. I tried to imagine the infirmary at the monastery of St Alcuin. Perhaps its walls were built of big blocks of honey-coloured stone. The rooms would be smaller than elsewhere in the abbey, to allow for a sick man to lie alone in peace… in peace or in pain and fear. But great-uncle Edward had not left Peregrine alone with his pain and his fear. He had understood, and stayed with him, talking to him gently, helping him through the worst of the horror. And then Brother Tom, greatly daring, giving him a safe place to cry. I found it easy, in my mind, to wander in the infirmary, to see the brothers bending over the sick man, caring for him: but the other… I felt a strange shyness as I imagined that reserved, solitary man, racked with his grief, in the arms of the young brother. It seemed too intimate, too raw a thing even to think about, as though I should glimpse it with reverence, then tiptoe away…

  ‘Melissa, did you hear me? Are you listening at all?’

  I looked, bewildered, at the teacher, my mouth slightly ajar, and struggled to adjust my blank expression to something more intelligent-looking. She took off her glasses, the better to glare at me.

  ‘Vint à passer,’ snapped Mrs Kerr. ‘Un facteur vint à passer.’ Vint? I looked at the blackboard. From venir. Un facteur? What the dickens was that? Un facteur came to pass. Crumbs.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Mrs Kerr, I can’t remember what un facteur means.’

  ‘Un facteur,’ said Mrs Kerr, her black eyes glittering at me like little jet beads, ‘is a postman.’

  A postman. A postman came to pass. ‘Please, God,’ I begged, silently. I could feel the palms of my hands sweating. ‘I don’t know,’ I said helplessly, at last.

  ‘Melissa, you have not been paying the slightest attention to this lesson. I have just explained at some length, that when followed by an infinitive, the verb venir à takes the meaning “happen to”. Un facteur vint à passer uses the past historic of venir à, and demonstrates this use of the verb. It means “a postman happened to pass”. Now that I have explained to you what we were all concentrating on perhaps you would like to tell us what you were thinking about?’

  ‘I… I was imagining the infirmary, in a monastery long ago… what it would be like,’ I mumbled.

  Mrs Kerr was waiting. She seemed to expect something more of me. ‘It was a story,’ I explained, ‘about a monk who was terribly hurt and crying and the other monk loved him and comforted him.’ I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  She looked at me with her little black eyes. Like currants looking out of a bun, I thought.

  ‘You must learn to apply your mind to the subject before you, Melissa. You will not learn by dreaming, or by reading sentimental novels. You will learn only if you work.’ She settled her glasses back on her nose and seized the text book.

  ‘Turn to page 131 please, girls. I want you to look at section B, which deals with the omission of the definite article in the expression plus… plus…; the more, the more – as in, Plus je travaille, plus j’a
pprends.’

  I looked at the teacher, then down at my book. The page in front of me was full of words, but empty of meaning. Sentimental? Is that what sentimental is? When for once, instead of looking the other way, someone dares to stretch out a timid hand to comfort and to heal? I thought about Mother. She didn’t seem a sentimental person. Tough as old boots, Daddy said, but she had told me the story. With that same feeling of shyness, I approached the picture in my mind again… the heat and indignity of giving yourself up to sobbing in someone’s arms, someone you didn’t know very well, with your nose running and your face bathed in sweat and tears, trusting because you had to, because you couldn’t carry it alone any more…. Is it sentimental to speak about that sort of thing? Was Mrs Kerr right? I looked up at her pale, tight-lipped face and considered her rigid, ramrod-straight, thin body, buttoned up to the neck in a suit of hard, grey fabric. Perhaps it was Mrs Kerr who… maybe no one ever… did she sometimes—like me—bury her face in the pillow at night and cry for sheer sadness at the loneliness of it all?

  ‘Melissa!’ thundered Mrs Kerr.

  By the grace and mercy of God, the bell rang.

  As soon as the school day ended, I ran like the wind up the hill to the gates of the county primary school where Mary and Beth went to school. Although their day finished ten minutes before ours, the two schools were so close that if I ran I would be in time to find Mother and Cecily, waiting at the top of the hill with the other mothers.

  Halfway up the hill, I paused and shaded my eyes with my hand against the bright afternoon sun. Yes, she was still there, with Cecily and Mary and Beth milling around her. She was listening to their urgent chatter. I ran up to the top, dodging through the last straggle of mothers and children coming away from the gates.