One boy tilts his head back over the window in the darkness. The other boy has his lips on his mouth, his hands on his neck.
Look, Orion, the Plough, the Rosary. They navigate with the stars.
The world swirled. They risked everything. The plains beneath were smouldering with cane fires. The smell of cane juice was on the night air.
They had permission to swim late at the river pool. They picked ripe cashews, stained their shirts with the juice. The shade of the cocoa trees hid the yellow and red sunset, hid their naked bodies. It was siesta when their cries were drowned by the cigale in the gru-gru tree, when their sighs, their kisses, mixed with the sawing cicadas in the whispering casuarinas.
J. M., Aelred. It is Aelred the young monk, not my brother J. M., who found this poetry in himself even here in the cold of winter. He found these high words, as he calls them, in the high hills, from the tall palms, from the palmistes. He called them that, ‘high words’. He had begun to mix it all up. ‘In the valley below, the River Jordan over blue-veined rocks like the blue of Quink ink.’ High words. He writes them, the kind of words he writes as poetry, the kind of words I saw in the lavatory: lick, suck.
I hear his voice: Push it in.
They walked back in the darkness holding hands.
I eat his words. I am drunk with his blood. Words of blood soak into desk tops, on to lavatory walls. Messages. They were marooned in their desire. I become a poet.
Cocoa planter sing your calypso boy. Leave these matters to the poet. Then a world litany of abuse: queers, faggots.
What’s strange, what lights a fire?
Pouf, fairy. Pretty, funny, light as a feather.
I talked with Joe and Miriam and they explained to me these things. I’m beginning to understand a bit. Like Joe says, you can still see written up in public lavatories, ‘Who will kill a pouf for me?’
Then, when I return to J.M’s journal, he’s recorded it with another gaze.
There was the boy who touched my knee while he was sitting close on a bench, umpiring tennis. Then he left me. He looked back down the road at me after the game. He went the way the seniors went and would not talk with me. He would not say what that touch meant. There was the boy who dragged me below the water of the swimming-pool, so fiercely, that he could have drowned me and I thought he must want to. There was the boy who preened himself like a rock-and-roll star and hit me all the time to prove his toughness. I thought, it is because he knows that I know, that what he really wants to do is to kiss me, what he really wants to do are things he can’t even imagine, so he preens and preens and loves his own image. There was the boy who lay awake at the foot of his bed while I lay at the foot of my bed. We stared into each other’s eyes in the night-light of the dormitory. This was the boy who had stared at my legs and noticed there the blue in my veins.
One afternoon, while the wood smoke rose above the valley, smelling of the resin of cedar trees, this same boy leant close to my neck and told me that he wanted to kiss me as if I was a girl. He then went away and never did kiss me.
There was the boy with whom I lay in the heat of siesta reading comics. We leant against each other until our weight was as heavy as the heat which bore down on the croton hedges and made the frangipani and the poinsettia droop. In the midst of that moment, the cigale cried for rain. We leant so close that our lips, at first dry and then wet, kissed and kissed and kissed. We spoke not a word of what it meant.
After the holidays, I carried a letter for this boy, a letter of the utmost sincerity, declaring a love which never got told. The letter was eventually torn into shreds one afternoon in the forest on one of my secret pilgrimages to the shrine in the forest. I lit a small fire of dry leaves and burnt his letter, burnt my words.
These are testaments he found in himself, years after. Now I find them.
I was there, twelve, thirteen, and did not understand.
The Walk
For see winter is past, the rains are over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth.
Song of Songs
It was a time of glances, smiles, tilted hoods and ‘Agnus Dei’ kisses. Aelred liked it when he got to stand next to Benedict in choir and would receive the kiss of peace from him; when he would get to be held on the shoulders and he could hold him under the arms and they could rest their cheeks one upon the other, first to the left and then to the right: ‘Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world…’
‘Peace be with you,’ Benedict greeted Aelred.
‘And with you,’ Aelred whispered.
The seasons had changed from winter to spring and the first signs of summer were beginning. The copper beeches in Ashton Park were putting out a new sheen. The liturgical year had unfolded with its own colours: green, white, purple, gold and red. It unfolded with its own times of the year: Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter and Pentecost. Then there was green, the greening of the year. Aelred looked forward to Sunday walks.
What increasingly became important for Aelred was his attachment to Benedict; everything else fell to this, or found meaning in this as yet unspoken bond, this attraction. He felt that this was Aelred of Rievaulx’s affectus. This attraction was in a glance, a smile, a gesture, meaningful coincidences if put to work together in the garden, weeding or folding linen in the laundry. Their eyes met in choir. They exchanged smiles during meals. They spoke in signs. The limitations put upon them by the rule intensified these wordless communications. They worked under Brother Stephen’s supervision. ‘Come on now, brothers, we need that weeding finished by the end of the afternoon.’
Aelred felt that his desire was straitened.
Benedict had become Aelred’s model: the way he walked, hooded and bowed; he way he stood in choir; his singing; the way he served and read in the refectory; the way he kept his silence and studied in the library; his meditations in the cloister. He watched him. He followed him. ‘I’ll make myself like you,’ he said impulsively one day while Benedict taught him the rituals for cantor in choir.
Benedict smiled. ‘You’ll be yourself, I’m sure.’ The older man kept with his lesson.
Aelred’s imagination was fired by the reading of Aelred of Rievaulx’s book Spiritual Friendship which Benedict had given him. Lectio Divina was now a special time. Aelred began to imagine the dialogues that he could have with Benedict, fired by the dialogues between the Abbot Aelred and Ivo his monk. He read and ruminated: ‘to live without friendship was to live like a beast’. Those were Aelred of Rievaulx’s words. Dom Placid had told him the story as a boy and now he needed to know more. He had come this far, leaving mother, father, brother, sisters and land.
As recreation ended one afternoon, Aelred said to Benedict, ‘Thanks for Aelred of Rievaulx’s book. I’m deep into it. Though I’ve still got to speak to Father Justin about reading it.’
‘You see the parallels with Aelred of Rievaulx’s life?’ Benedict asked.
‘Yes, of course. I see a lot of things. Do you think we can talk more?’
‘In time. Don’t rush it. And we’ve got our rules.’
He needed all the help to grow to understand his nature, to understand his sin.
‘But you’ve not committed any sin,’ Father Basil said to Aelred during his weekly confession and spiritual guidance time.
‘Aren’t my feelings sin? Feelings like, wanting to kiss, to hold hands and more. More feelings, I can hardly describe to you. I just tell you that they’re impure.’
‘Brother, you’re young. You’ve got the passion of youth. Not because you’ve joined the monastery and desire to live the chaste life are you going to be immediately changed. It’s a life that you’ve entered. It will take a life.’ Aelred looked at the old man with the statue of the donkey on his desk. He thought of him as a young man. Did he know what he was going through because it had also happened to him? Had it taken him a life? Was it still taking him a life?
‘Sometimes I feel I should punish myself. Do you think I should ask perm
ission to use the discipline?’ Aelred was referring to the whip which monks customarily used on themselves on Friday nights.
‘No, brother,’ Father Basil smiled. ‘We don’t think that’s appropriate any more. Some of the older monks who were trained in the use of the discipline from when they were young can sometimes get permission to continue. But not someone as young as yourself. It would not help you brother. You should not dwell on these things too much. Keep the rules of our life going. These will help you.’
‘But maybe pain? Something painful could stop me feeling what I feel. So, if I whipped myself? If I fasted, maybe? That’s what the saints did.’
‘You must come and talk. You must thank God for your passion. He wants those who give their life to him to be wholehearted about it. In time, this passion will be fully changed and directed only to God.’
Aelred always felt better after meeting Father Basil. Not like when he had to see Father Justin. Then everything had to be clamped down. He felt muzzled by Father Justin.
‘Why don’t you read Francis de Sales, St John Boscoe?’ Father Justin asked Aelred at his weekly novice master’s meetings. ‘Do you think you are able as yet to understand the monastic authors of the twelfth century? It may be better to keep to tested spiritual teaching from texts which have been tried repeatedly.’
‘I thought you would be pleased with me reading monastic writers, rather than the religious life of other traditions,’ Aelred answered, trying to take the bull by the horns. He wished he could be more honest with Father Justin.
Instead Father Justin reiterated his old warning, ‘Never in twos, always in threes.’
‘What? What do you mean? Who are you talking about?’
‘Brother it’s my duty to notice these things. I’ve noticed you and Brother Benedict. Is this wise?’
‘But you know he was my guardian angel. You know that it must be because of that.’
‘Never in twos, always in threes. If followed, there can be little danger.’
Aelred did not reply immediately, but became alert and, without admitting it to himself at the time, angry. ‘He was my guardian angel. Who else should I talk to?’
‘But he’s a man, not an angel, brother.’
‘I know he’s a man. What do you mean? Of course he’s not a angel.’
And, as he left the novice master’s cell, Father Justin smiled. ‘Beware of particular friendships, brother. Follow the reading which I’ve advised.’
Aelred closed the door behind him. Then he opened the door immediately again, knocking simultaneously and standing in the open doorway. He said, ‘Is that all you can offer me: don’ts, bewares? Are there no positive things to do?’ He felt a rebellion which went right back to college.
‘Next week, brother, we will take up this subject again. Meditate upon what I’ve told you. I don’t think this kind of outburst helps, brother.’
‘Yes, father.’ Aelred closed the door as quietly as he could. He felt like banging it shut.
The change in the weather brought the longer days and a day off a week from the normal monastic day. A non-day, or a dies non, the monks called it. It was a hot, windy day and the monks tramped along the narrow country roads of Somerset, across fields and over stiles, all new to Aelred. Time had galloped on from the winter and the early spring with its surprises. And now the signs of summer, with the heat almost as of his home, were already here in May. Aelred longed for it to stay this way before the days of rain set in.
Benedict was careful to spend time with his other fellow monks and not too quickly spend his time with Aelred. They found themselves getting closer and closer on the walk, so that they could quite naturally be next to each other and it not seem in any way different to being with any of the other monks.
At last they were with each other. The rest of the group had walked on, so that there was a gap between the other monks and Aelred and Benedict. They walked, Aelred listening to Benedict, who was telling him of books he had been reading and books that he should read, and telling him about the countryside which was new to him. ‘Have you read that poet I once mentioned to you?’
‘Gerard Manley Hopkins?
‘That’s the one.’
‘Yes, I enjoyed “Felix Randal”.’
‘“The Farrier”.’
‘“Big boned, and hardy-handsome.”’
‘And “Pied Beauty” from which I quoted to you last time.’
‘“All things counter, original, spare, strange;/Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)”’
‘Who does know how?’
‘What?’ Aelred felt nervous.
‘What is not quite right.’
‘Is that what it means?’
‘I think he is glorying in the imperfections of nature and seeing beauty in them. Maybe even in the flaw in nature from original sin.’
‘Yes, I see,’ Aelred said, but uncertain what he was understanding.
‘You’ve been reading carefully.’
‘Yes, right away. And Aelred of Rievaulx.’
‘Things don’t always grow the way they should. Have you seen Brother John in the walled garden tying up the canes and training the fruit trees along the wall? They would rather twist and go their own way. They’ve got to be trained. Otherwise, they take their natural path.’
‘Things are different, not uniform.’
‘That’s it, absolutely. Even if they seem like they should be. And they’ve got their beauty in being so.’
‘Why then do they have to be trained?’
‘Perfection? The world can’t take all that variety of beauty, maybe. Nature and art. Nature and grace. One has to form the other. One is given, the other is prayed and worked for with good works. But mostly it’s given to us: grace, a gift. We have to be redeemed.’
‘I can’t wait to study. Isn’t it precisely the difference that Hopkins is praising?’ Aelred said enthusiastically, learning quickly, enjoying the debate.
‘But that’s Hopkins,’ Benedict was skating round Hopkins. ‘And then there’s Aelred of Rievaulx.’
‘Yes. He’s –’
‘A different story, but maybe the same struggle.’
They were walking close and their shoulders were brushing against each other. Their closeness was as stifling as the heat, and they were both glancing at each other and then looking away as if something should be said beyond this debate, something to shatter the peace and the innocence of what was happening on the walk and their controlled exchanges up to this time.
‘This boy, Ted? Tell me more about him,’ Benedict said.
‘You remember me talking about him at the party? He was my friend. My best friend who died.’
‘He’s dead? I’m sorry. How did he die? How old was he?’
‘Seventeen. Too horrible to talk about.’
‘You can talk, if you want, when you want. Just come to me.’
‘Thanks. But you know I can’t do that now.’ Aelred wanted there and then to tell Benedict everything, but he didn’t want to recall Ted’s death, not now. Not at this moment, this happy moment with Benedict. Was he betraying Ted?
‘Is having a best friend important to you?’
‘Yes, at school I lived for that, for time with my best friend.’
‘Were you not told that it was dangerous?’
‘Dangerous, yes. I was told by Father Justin the other day that you were dangerous, because he saw us walking down to the orchard together. Always in threes, never in twos. That’s Father’s Justin’s favourite tune.’
‘Brother, rebellious already? You must be patient with Father Justin. But what did you say?’
‘I said that you had been my guardian angel.’
‘And what did he say to that?’
‘He said that you were a man and not an angel. I know that,’ and Aelred looked at Benedict and smiled. ‘As if I didn’t know.’
The hot wind pulled at their cassocks and scapulars, flying in the breeze like Hindu prayer flags.
&nbs
p; ‘I think of you as a friend,’ Benedict said, turning to look at Aelred. ‘I do, and I keep thinking of you and wanting to speak to you of it. I’ll be your friend.’
‘That’s like my namesake, Aelred of Rievaulx. Is that why you gave him to me to read?’
‘Yes. And what do you feel?’
Aelred felt shy. He was inwardly exalted, but at this moment, shy to respond to Benedict’s confession. It was also as if he felt he could not cope with the knowledge. He could cope with his own desire, in his own mind, his fantasy. But as he had already admitted to himself, this was not as he felt for Ted. This was different, and it was so powerful and good that he immediately wanted to reject it, to deny it, not to have it said. He might lose it. He could not be loved, not by someone so good. He had not said he loved him. He had said friend. Was that the same thing? He felt flattered that the older man loved him, almost a boy still.
He wanted to say that he didn’t feel like this. He wanted to hurt Benedict for the first time. He couldn’t understand this sudden confusion. Was this not what he had wanted all the time, the friendship with this man who had been so kind? Why was he doing this?
Suddenly he felt powerful. It felt cruel. He wanted to hurt Benedict.
‘What do you feel? What does it make you feel?’ The older man had to take all his courage in his heart to say to the young novice that what he felt was a powerful feeling which was dangerous. ‘I’ll say it then. I love you. I’ve fallen in love with you, I think.’
Then, without thinking, Aelred blurted it out: ‘I don’t feel like that for you.’ Aelred turned and smiled in a cruel way. He looked about him and noticed that they were still alone. The other brothers had walked on ahead.
He didn’t understand why he was doing this, but only that, now that it had come to this, after all these months of his own imaginings, he couldn’t deal with the actual knowledge of it. What could they do with this knowledge?
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