‘You sound like Brother Marcus. Do you know what he said to me the other day? He said I wore my habit like a girl. Can you imagine? What can you do with a sack? Can you imagine it?’
‘You’re being silly. You’ve got to take responsibility for what you do, your effect on people. For instance, Edward …’
‘They must take responsibility too. What’s going on in Marcus’s mind? And what do you mean, even Edward?’
Benedict did not reply directly. Then he said, ‘We’re meant to avoid the occasion of sin.’
‘If you call it a sin, it becomes a sin. It’s rules and laws that make sins. That’s what St Paul says.’
‘You might find Aelred of Rievaulx sympathetic, but don’t quote Paul on the matter. There are other texts. And you must think of yourself and the preparation for your vows. We’re supposed to be chaste.’
‘We are chaste. I love you. That’s chaste.’ Aelred meant what he said. He knew that there was a difference in him, in the feelings which he had for Benedict, into which no guilt, or sense of sin had entered as it used to with Ted. He would gladly have gone further with Benedict because of his love, if Benedict had not all the time confronted him with his doubts. He could convince himself that this was not unchaste, that the vow of chastity was more to do with freeing oneself from a family to lead the contemplative life. What harm would there be if they went further? What would it feel like to go all the way with one you loved? Not like with Ted - only boys and clumsy.
‘But you must be aware of what you tempt me to do?’
‘I wish you would do it sometimes, like now, when we’re alone here. I wish you would do it. It sounds mad. I know it sounds as if I don’t know what I’m saying, but it doesn’t feel wrong. It doesn’t feel like a sin. It’s not like when I was made to feel it was a sin when I was a boy and a teenager with my friend Ted. It doesn’t feel like that. I don’t feel anything like sin when I’m with you. I feel good about what I want to do with your body. It just seems to me to be an extension of our love - that it is our love - and I can’t see why I can’t do it. I don’t really agree with St Aelred. He talks so violently about hating his body. I feel good about my body. Though even he allows for holding hands.’ Aelred developed his theories as he reached for Benedict’s hand and pulled him closer.
‘But what about chastity? We take a vow of chastity.’
‘But that’s not the reason why you don’t want to. You wouldn’t think this was good if we were not in the monastery and were not taking the vow of chastity. That’s not why you think it’s wrong. You think it’s wrong because we’re men.’
‘I’m not sure. I’m not sure what I think. Part of me thinks it’s wrong, but I know I love you. I love you as a boy, as a man. I must admit that. I gave you Aelred of Rievaulx to read. It’s what I believe too. How can you say that I think it’s wrong because we’re men? Aelred of Rievaulx believed that we could transform the carnal into the spiritual. Yes, we can kiss, not on the lips; we can hold hands, but not the other. What does our chastity mean if we do the other?’
‘Then don’t be afraid. Love; love me. I won’t push you any further than you want to go. I want only to rest my head on your shoulder, to hold your hand, to be embraced when I feel sad, or hug you when I’m happy. It’s bad enough that I can’t do this when I want to. It’s enough to keep that within the rules. But when we can, why not? It’s good. Please, Benedict, kiss me once more before we join the others.’
The older man took the younger man into his embrace and kissed him on the mouth. ‘How do I resist you?’
‘Don’t.’
Benedict withheld his tongue. ‘No more.’ They turned towards the walled garden when they heard the bell announce None.
‘Listen, Father Justin says Father Abbot is banning Aelred of Rievaulx’s writings from the novitiate.’
‘What? Where did you hear that?
‘Father Justin, this morning at my weekly meeting.’
‘Why? What’s happened?’
‘I don’t know. He just says I shouldn’t read it now because it needs careful interpretation. We’ve just been interpreting it.’ Aelred laughed.
‘Don’t joke. What else did he say?’
‘He asked who had recommended Aelred of Rievaulx in the first place.’
‘And?’
‘Well, I said that you had.’
‘And?’
‘Then he said that I shouldn’t’ve been talking to you in the library the other day.’
‘Did he? Oh! I know. He had a kind of word with me about that. I didn’t want to worry you. He was quite cross really. It makes me wonder how long he was in the library before we noticed him. Or whether he entered the library, realised that we were in the alcove and then went back out again, embarrassed to catch us, as it were, and then re-entering when he heard us talking louder by the desk. He didn’t talk directly or fully. It’s Father Justin’s way to be irritable about something, not tell you, and it sounds as if it’s something else. He was complaining how much time I spent studying and reading existentialists and not getting on with the syllabus. I’m now sure it was this matter. You see, he wouldn’t want to talk about it. It’s hard, isn’t it. He’s never questioned me at our weekly meetings about what I recommend to the novices. Have you returned the texts? He did say he wanted to see me specially. But he hasn’t called me.’
‘Yes, immediately, reluctantly. All the books I had are back.’
Aelred and Benedict had arrived at the watercress beds and were crossing the small rustic bridge in order to get back to the walled garden in time for the recitation of None. The rest of the novitiate had already formed themselves into two rows opposite each other beneath the mulberry tree. The hymn had already been intoned. They slipped into their places, taking their small breviaries from their pockets.
After None Brother Stephen detailed Aelred to work with Edward on the early soft fruit in the lower half of the garden. As they worked at their separate bushes, plucking and collecting them at once into the punnets, Aelred wondered what Benedict had meant earlier by saying that he disurbed other monks. Even Edward, he had said. He and Edward worked silently. Their discussion this morning had not been concluded. Aelred was still wondering what he had meant by noticing his darkness, calling him black, and mentioning coloureds in his town. Was he against black people? Did he think that he was and was that the reason he was hostile? He remembered that some of the hostility to Ted at school was because he was coloured, to use Edward’s word. Ted was mixed. This was the second time Edward had commented on the colour of his skin. He was aware of himself now, with his sleeves rolled up and his brown hands among the bushes. There was Edward close to him. Their hands were almost meeting among the bushes. His strong arms moved, with the blue veins running beneath the skin. Where he bent his neck, Aelred could see the smooth white nape beneath his blond hair. When he looked up he saw his blue eyes. They were so different.
He knew Edward’s secret was rock climbing. He had observed him again just yesterday morning. He had arrived earlier. He noticed Edward arrive and undress himself. There was something audacious the way he stood in the open, pulling his smock over his head, getting out of his overalls and standing almost naked in the open, in his tight black shorts and white vest, running his hands through his blond hair and pulling the strands behind his ears. What did rock climbing mean to him? It frightened Aelred. Not only the possibility of falling, but the feeling of naked flesh against the hard rock, the body’s utter vulnerability. It was something daring, like attempting to fly - a kind of hubris. Scaling height Conquering vertigo. Falling, always that possibility. Free-falling! He picked the gooseberries assiduously and lost himself in this reverie among the hum and drone of bees and wasps in the heat. There were some hives just a way off whose bees worked the garden, among the flowers that Brother Stephen had planted with the spring onions, lettuce and celery. There was a wonderful sense of order about the beds and paths, but the random flowers gave a sense of wildness. Ful
l-blown red poppies fell on to the small gravel paths between the beds. Honeysuckle climbed the trellises between the walled plums and apples. The top of the wall was a tangle of Russian vine. It reminded him of coralita back home, falling over the rusty galvanised fences. Aelred felt proud that he was doing so well with the names of flowers.
As he continued to pick the early strawberries, Aelred tried to keep his mind on what he had been reading in Lectio Divina that morning. The writing was encouraging him to abandon himself to God, to mould his body into a place for God to dwell. His body was the temple of God. There seemed to be writings which emphasised a relationship with God which was lonely and another which included others, and included love of others, like Aelred of Rievaulx, who said, ‘To live without friendship was to live like a beast’. Aelred of Rievaulx had faced head-on the risks of this, but nevertheless advocated it. The writings which Father Justin advised sought for the most part to leave out others, or at least to have them not as real friends, more as acquaintances, to love them with detachment, not with passion. Aelred of Rievaulx seemed to want to work through passion.
‘I see what you mean,’ Edward broke into Aelred’s meditation, ‘about the dangerous text.’
‘Oh,’ Aelred stood up and stretched and then arranged the full punnets in the wheelbarrow near by. ‘Sorry, I was somewhere else.’
‘I shouldn’t’ve interrupted your meditation.’
‘No, it’s not frowned on to exchange a few words. You were saying?’
‘About this morning, what you said about a dangerous text.’
‘Don’t bother with what I say.’
‘Well, Father Justin instructed me to take my book back to the library. Why do you think that is?’
‘Did he not tell you?’
‘He said that it was not appropriate for me at this time of my novitiate and that I should be reading the more traditional books that were in the novitiate library. Aelred of Rievaulx needed interpreting.’
‘Yes, that’s what he said to me.’
‘What do you think it is about Aelred of Rievaulx?’
‘Well you must realise, surely?’
‘You mean what he says about sex?’ Edward was blunt.
‘He recognises that attractions exist between monks. That they’re good.’
‘He doesn’t mince his words about the dangers and what shouldn’t take place.’
‘True. But he allows for much more than we are encouraged to explore. Never in twos always in threes. Hasn’t Father Justin said that to you?’
‘No.’
‘Well, maybe you’re different.’
‘Maybe you’re different,’ Edward countered.
‘You think so, don’t you? You think I’m coloured. You think I’m -’
‘Hang on.’
‘I think we’d better get back to the fruit picking. We’ll soon have to be taking these down to the shed.’ Aelred was thinking of what Benedict had mentioned about Edward finding him disturbing.
Edward volunteered to take the wheelbarrow down to the shed after they had loaded all the punnets. Aelred watched Edward and noticed every movement of his arms and legs and hips as he strode off. Then he saw him again in his tight black shorts and white vest pinned to the rock face; then falling away, falling, falling. How did he disturb him? he wondered. What had he actually said to Benedict? The sun had gone behind the hill at the top of the park. Aelred was now on the higher ground of the garden, where you could see over the wall into the fields beyond. There was still a rich light, which was descending into a soft powdery haze at the bottom of the valley. Against it, every trunk and branch, every shadow was distinct. Beyond the spinney was a pond, which held the reflections of the trees that grew at its edge. There the light was khaki. A duck webbed its way across the pond. The ripples in its wake crinkled the reflections of the trees. The novices moved quietly among the bushes. This great settling down of the day was momentarily jangled by the bells for Vespers. The novices made for the mulberry tree. Once the bells had quietened down, they recited the evening office.
Above them swallows and swifts darted and swooped like bats. In the distance two wood pigeons called to each other. ‘Dou-dou, dou-dou.’ Aelred heard Toinette’s voice. He told himself the story of Jordan.
Miss Amy of Somerset tell me to come that night by her room and she go make a comfy bed by her fire. I must not be sleeping in the damp of a cellar she tell me. Miss Amy come like a mother to me. She put aside food from the kitchens and she mend some old clothes she get from the son of the master of the house. A boy like you needs a good breeches, she says to me. And at night by the fire, Miss Amy and her old father, who she must look after all day, say to me, tell that story again, boy, of your voyage. They want to hear about my journey from St Kitts, my voyage from the island of Barbuda. They like to hear the names of islands. While those places have a horror for me and a sadness and a loss, they are like wonders to Miss Amy and her father. They like to hear of storms at sea, of shipwrecks and escape. They like to hear of the fish that fly. But when I speak of my bondage, of the flogging with rope and whip and cow-skin, they say it’s better to sleep. And Miss Amy start to clear up the fire. Any big logs she put to one side to save for the morning. I see a world in that fire as I curl up and watch it die down. I see a sunset over my village which is by a big river. I see pink flamingos in the shallows. And there in the centre of the fire I see the eyes of the tiger. When a log falls I hear the ostrich run, like the sound of the wind in the chimney. The sparks light the fire that burn my village down. I, Jordan, is in England now. I, Jordan, is with Miss Amy from Somerset.
The novices made their supper together in the warm kitchen. There was hot tea and bread and cheese and then some of the fruit they had been picking that afternoon. They stood at the counters and ate quietly. One or two took their plates into the refectory. When they had cleared up they went and said Compline privately before retiring to bed.
In the novitiate, Aelred heard someone at he door of his cell and opened it. It was Benedict. He put out his hand. Aelred took his hand and brought it to rest on his cheek. Their eyes held all their longing. Benedict withdrew; turned and left. Aelred sank to his knees by his bed and prayed for a peaceful night. He heard Edward moving about in his cell. He had a distinct cough.
Tomorrow they would bury Brother Sebastian. Aelred thought of Basil and what his thoughts might be that night. They had joined together, he had said. They had been his age, nineteen. They had had a lifetime together.
The rain dripped on the outside windowsill. A soft rain which did not last long. He heard the drip drip in the cocoa at Malgretoute.
Mungo could fly. ‘He fly back to Africa,’ Toinette say. ‘He climb the hoe in the field and fly.’
The Lodge:
4 November 1984
Most of the leaves have gone now. The drives and walks around Ashton Park are deep in dead leaves. The poplars have shaken themselves out and stand bare. I got detailed to work with Brother Malachi in the hothouses in the kitchen garden. We work in silence; words only for instructions. He smiles a lot, though. He points and uses sign language. He brought me a mug of tea he makes on the stove. I’m grateful for this time: the autumn air, the smells, the earth on my hands.
I’m part of this place, doing jobs J. M. did. Yes, my rhythm is his. I rise early. I follow the offices. I read his texts. I immerse myself in his journals, his life, their life, the whole story.
The whole passionate story, as Miriam says. This is the way to resurrect him, remember him.
I understand more. I feel more. I change as I write it out, as I make up the story that I hear. I scratch and read and write over his words. It’s beyond me to record the details of the theological debates, the subtleties of the moral questions. The young Aelred tried. But it is the sheer persistence in trying to unravel emotions that impresses. I admire them. They got so little help from directors or confessors in that first year. No, they got help from some confessors. There were one or two who
had been through it, gone before, leaving a path. The church’s teaching is so black and white, so without understanding, with so little compassion - always sin. I remember that impurity, the obsession with masturbation. A different light falls on all this now. Today, there is still the exclusion.
And the spurious distinctions between the state of homosexuality and homosexual acts, as Joe puts it.
Of course my change has to do with Joe and Miriam. They point me to history: histories that challenge centuries of moral assumptions. Joe is a social historian. He talks about an ironic freedom, which was given to gay people in the war, and then he talks of the clampdown, in the fifties and early sixties, the linking of homosexuality with crime and the underworld.
Prejudice drove it underground.
He talks of the Wolfenden Report and the reforms that did not take place.
Hypocrisy, prejudice, blackmail, he says.
I think of how lucky J. M. and Benedict were in their cloister by comparison.
There would be raids on public toilets, Joe says. Prominent people caught, not to mention all the ordinary blokes.
Joe is so intent on me loving my brother as he was that he shoves anything my way that will clean the air, as he insists. Brush out the cobwebs, he says, with a flourish. Centuries of accumulated lies and half lies, misconceptions and misinterpretations.
I’m amazed by what I read. I get to read interpretations of Aelred of Rievaulx which were not available to J. M. This is a sort of revolution for me: a leap in time to reach my brother. I have the advantage of hindsight.
History. You mustn’t internalise the filth society has made us feel about ourselves. You must reach through that to your brother, Joe insists.
Brother Malachi broke his silence. You are the brother of the ex-Brother Aelred? he asked.
I nodded.
He smiled. A good one, he said.
I smiled.
You look like him, he said. And smiled again. It’s them eyes, he said.
Aelred's Sin Page 20
