I understood how much can be said in a smile, with the eyes. He put his hand under my arm at the elbow to usher me out of the hothouse at the end of the afternoon. Touch and looking; speaking with the eyes: I was getting to understand.
I walked up through the apple orchard and looked back at the barn, metallic and blue, and the flames burning down. The sky burnt, all flame over Ashton, England. I walk the paths and fields of their story, my story.
And there are the other stories which insert themselves. Extraordinary coincidence, that it is here in this English park that I’ve had to come to reflect on the colossal history of cruelty in our islands; to confront even more deeply than in 1970 for my family, what our politics, government, judicial system and trade have been founded on - what made the West Indian Estate.
Yet human compassion can confound us. It is here that Jordan met Miss Amy of Somerset. It is here that I read my brother’s journals and in them the black woman, Toinette, echoes her ‘Dou-dou, dou-dou child’ down the years. As boys, we got a lot of loving from black women. It is here that I learn my brother’s story of Jordan, a story he told himself, a story of this place, a story that told itself. Yesterday afternoon I went and looked at the portrait on the staircase. I saw the African boy. I unlearn, learn anew.
The new Abbot seems different from the one recorded in the journals. I spent a little time with him before Vespers. It’s shocking. Benedict had hardly been eating. Over the years, it seems, some times worse than others. A little to drink, enough not to draw attention to himself. It was a condition that had become worse over the years. John Plowden, the present abbot, was a novice soon after Aelred had left. He didn’t know my brother. But he spoke of him. Extraordinary: it now appears that the stories are passed down through a generation of abbots. The events in the barn; the ‘Night of the Rain.’ Aelred’s phrases are now my phrases. It was all tidied up though, in neat phrases: a mental breakdown, lost his vocation, lost his faith. Though I think this new Abbot does not wholly go along with those simplifications. They still trot them out: neat words, empty, emptied.
You must strive to empty yourself. The things we were taught.
But Benedict, fasting? Sounds more like anorexia; odd, at his age. A history of self-abuse, diminishment. Sounds almost like suicide.
The Abbot was being discreet. I could tell. There was more, much more. I did not want to ask. It shocks me, the destruction of his body, the negation, the denial, the punishment. Now it shocks. I get angry for him. What kept him going? Words. ‘Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word which comes from the mouth of God.’
‘Domine labia mea aperies …’ ‘Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall announce your praise.’ I hear it each morning, echoing along the naves. All words now. I feed on words. I eat words.
He lived on words, his own journals. I wonder what’s in Benedict’s journals? I saw a brother clearing out what must have been Benedict’s cell. I had been detailed to polish the corridors this afternoon. He was taking out boxes of papers to an incinerator outside the kitchens. I was so tempted to rifle through the ashes for a corner of unburnt script, for a word that had not curled in flame. Oh, for a scrap of word, something left after the incineration! What’s in ashes? Sometimes the quest is too big for me. His death comes over me!
Miriam says, Everything got used: gold teeth, rings, hair, fingernails, skin. They were all used for industry.
She showed me a picture: a room of shoes. She has her story, which she returns to.
We have these stories we have to tell. Joe has his, Miriam hers. And I’ve found my story, my brother with his stories. They are stories larger than him, than us.
Deaths transfigure each other. Meanings are laid one on top the other. My grief does this.
Thank you, Amy of Somerset. There’s always one to comfort us in the most wretched of circumstances.
Rock Climbing
I opened to my beloved,
but he had turned his back and gone.
My soul failed at his flight.
I sought him but I did not find him,
I called to him but he did not answer.
Song of Songs
As the bells began their tolling, filling the whole valley with their sorrow and respect, their great solemnity, in memory of Brother Sebastian, they echoed and rechoed against the stone of the quarry. With each toll, Edward continued his climb up the steepest of the rock faces. Aelred watched him. Because of the heat, even though it was still early, Edward climbed in only his shorts. His skin glistened. The sweat forming on his back and arms trickled down his legs. His shoulders and arms, which had been burnt red, were now turning brown. He was climbing faster than usual. He moved nimbly, surefooted. Bits of shale flaked from under his boots as they pushed away. The shale clattered and fell the awful drop to where Aelred crouched, smashing into small pieces on the gravel clearing in front of him. The falling shale tore at the wild lilac and the newly budding buddleia. The purple flowers were broken and scattered. Edward’s denim smock was buried with broken rock and tatters of strewn lilac: green leaves and purple flower. Edward’s white vest hung on a branch. Aelred walked towards it, took it in his hands and buried his face in it, inhaling the smell of sweat, the odour of Edward. He opened the soft jersey and hung it again on the branch by its straps. This had become his ceremony.
The bells were now on their last toll; single tolls with ringing silences in between. Aelred looked up and was alarmed. Edward was not on the rock face. For an instant, Aelred thought he had fallen. A hawk hovered overhead. Then he realised that he must have reached the summit and must be making his descent the long way round back to his clothes. At the crunch on the gravel, Aelred spun round where he was standing, his fingers still caught in the strings of the vest. He gasped, ‘God, you gave me a fright.’
Edward was standing in front of him. He stood in the full light, bare backed, in only his tight black shorts and his climbing boots, with thick grey socks crumpled round his ankles. His soft blond hair glistened, blonder in the light on his legs and chest, thicker where it curled around his navel. Blue veins ran along his arms. His hair was wet from the sweat on his face and brow and was drawn back behind his ears. He was wiping sweat from his upper lip with the back of his hand. Aelred could smell him. He stood in front of him, confused, caught.
Edward broke the ice. ‘I can teach you to climb.’ He was still breathing heavily from his run back down. ‘Any time. We’ll have to get you some boots. Maybe Benedict could get us those from the Cellarer.’ Edward was pulling on his vest, which he shook out when he had taken it from the branch. He put his nose to it and smiled over its soft whiteness at Aelred, who was tongue-tied, standing there awkwardly, with an ear cocked for the bells for the Conventual Mass which would come soon after the tolling. He was an acolyte for the Requiem Mass. He had to be back in time. ‘I was an instructor at my school. I’ve got certificates. It would be perfectly safe. It’s a great sport. I think of it as religious. Coming out here in the early morning is uplifting. It’s like the spiritual ladder to heaven. You’ve got to take it gradually. You’ve got to learn on gentle climbs at first. Then they get steeper and rougher. More sheer. You are the rock as you climb. You almost enter the rock. What do you think?’ Edward smiled from where he was bending down and pulling up his denim overalls and pushing his head into his smock as he stood up. He pulled his leather girdle tight around his waist. ‘It would be something! Wouldn’t it? I could teach you. I’m no good at this flower arranging.’ He bunched the tattered lilacs into a bouquet and held it out in front of him. ‘What do you think? ‘Then he flung them into the bushes.
‘You’ve got burnt.’
‘Oh, yes, almost as dark as you.’ Edward smiled.
‘I think we should get back. I’ll be late and I’m acolyte at the Requiem.’
‘Brother Aelred, the perfect novice. At the sound of the bell, drops everything. You ’ll beat Thérèse of Lisieux to perfection.’
‘You mock me. You get me wrong.
’
‘No, brother. I think we’re different. I find it harder than you. This is what I live for.’ He glanced up at the steep rock face he had climbed. ‘I’d always had a sense of a vocation. I don’t know why. It was always strong. Particularly since my entering the church. I used to be C. of E. Then I became interested in the old rites, the old traditions. You know, the Sarum Rite. Maybe I won’t last.’
‘We should walk back. The old traditions? Things are changing fast now. Since the Second Vatican Council.’ Edward picked his way among the gorse bushes and the broom was already beginning to turn a glorious yellow.
‘The Second Vatican Council! Modernisation! It’ll destroy the mystery of religion. I’ve noticed you, you know. You come out in the mornings and watch me climb.’
‘I always come out here. Remember, it was me, I told you about the quarry.’
‘That’s right, you did. But I’ve noticed you.’
‘So?’
‘Speak to Benedict. I tell him my difficulties. We’re lucky to have Benedict, yes?’
‘Yes, he’s a good guardian angel. The best. I’m frightened of heights.’
‘I could tell, that first time you helped me. That was brave of you. And you didn’t let on. That was sporting of you.’
‘Discipline is up to Benedict.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. The giver of dangerous texts.’ Edward smiled. ‘But I can’t give this up.’ He looked up again at the steep rock face. It was a cloudless blue sky, high and lucid. It must have been the same hawk, now hovering over the field. Aelred ran the lines of the Hopkins poem through his mind:
I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding …
‘Striding.’ The word got enunciated.
‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing.’
The two novices parted as they came out of the silver birches into the wide open field and the track which cut across to the apple orchard.
The bells for the Conventual Mass hastened Aelred in his preparation in the washroom. Festina, he said to himself. Quickly! Images thronged Aelred’s mind. He noticed Edward’s arms. They were strong arms. Sinewy where Edward rolled up his sleeves to wash himself. They glinted with blond hair. When wet, the hair was sleek against his white skin. Aelred had noticed the novice’s arms when they were digging together in the walled garden and just now at the rock climbing. He noticed the muscles, the way his fingers went red at the knuckles. He glimpsed and stored parts of Edward’s body: his waist with his tight girdle; his slim hips; his strong legs in his denim smock; the movement of his body in his work smock; his hair above his stockings on his calves in the basement. He smelt his fresh sweat. When Edward took off his cassock to wash his neck and opened up the front of his cassock in the washroom, Aelred noticed the white of his neck and the blond hair which grew on his chest, curling up to his neck. Each revelation was a source of wonder in a world where the body was hidden under cassocks and cowls and hoods. Hair. To stroke hair, to feel it over skin. His hair would soon be shorn. Now he had thick falling hair on the nape of his neck. Under the blond curls at the edges was a pure white skin. He had never seen skin so white - white like marble with veins running blue.
Each of these glimpses was buried beneath Aelred’s dislike for Edward. He was jealous of the time he spent with Benedict. Now he talked about Benedict as if he was as intimate with him as he was. He could hardly admit all this to himself. He did not like to think of himself having these uncharitable thoughts, having impure thoughts; having thoughts of pleasure about someone he didn’t think he liked. A terrible spiral of hate and attraction began to take hold of Aelred, so that he wanted to behave in a cold way to Edward. Yet he went out to the quarry each morning to look at him. He was becoming obsessed by him. He told no one. He hardly admitted it to himself. What had Edward noticed? What had he told Benedict?
He knew that he blew hot and cold. Sometimes, he talked to Edward at recreation; other times he ignored him. He contradicted him in novitiate studies without any real reason. The new novice must think of him as immature. Edward still teased him about his funny accent - funny Welsh-sounding French. He still made remarks about his colour. Benedict sometimes joined in the humour at recreation. Edward used his Englishness over him - something Benedict had never done, nor any of the other monks. He laughed at his mispronunciation of words in the refectory when it was his turn to read.
Edward came from a posh background. That’s what Benedict said, one day in passing. He spoke differently from Benedict. He had a different accent. They laughed at each other’s accents. They laughed at the Irish brothers’ accents. Aelred was picking up these differences, picking up about English class.
Maybe Benedict felt the same for Edward as he did for him, giving him Aelred of Rievaulx. So he wanted to rival him for Edward. He felt that Benedict must notice Edward’s physical beauty: his blond hair, his blue eyes, his white skin, how tall he was, his arms and legs. Like an athlete. He made him think of Ted. Athletes yes, but one was blond and white and the other was dark and nut brown.
Aelred remained distracted throughout the Requiem Mass, which was celebrated by Father Basil. He heard the break in the old monk’s voice as he came to recall those who had died. ‘Let us pray for Brother Sebastian, our dear brother.’ The community bowed their heads. Aelred remembered Basil telling him how he and Sebastian had lain in each other’s arms in a field. Later, at the cemetery, Basil was the first to throw a small handful of dirt on to the coffin. Aelred knew that the old man would be back in the afternoon to help fill in the grave, as he had been there to dig it. Theirs had been a whole long life together from nineteen till this death.
Father Justin had arranged for Aelred to meet the Abbot after the Conventual Mass and the funeral. Aelred let the heavy door knocker drop. It was the head and shoulders of a Franciscan friar. It was made of brass. It glinted as it looked at him. It was a joke. Why would Benedictines want to be knocking a Franciscan on the head? It knocked against an open book with ‘Pax Vobiscum’ scrolled across the open pages. ‘Peace with you,’ the knocked head said. There was a pause and then the Abbot’s voice came from deep within. ‘Ave.’ Aelred opened the door, shut it quietly behind him, and stood there dropping his hood and straightening it, then putting his hands under his scapular, staring into the Abbot’s study. The room smelt of furniture polish. The Abbot was not in his study. Aelred had forgotten the Abbot’s room. Then his first brief visit soon after his arrival came back to him. He was confronted by a large lifesize crucifix with a naked Christ in a scant loin cloth. The Abbot’s chair was under this crucifix behind a wide open highly polished desk, which had hardly anything on it. There was a large blotter and an old brass inkwell with a pen standing inside it. There were some sheets of paper and obliquely, with its back to him, a bust of the Virgin Mary made out of marble. On the other side of the desk was a black telephone.
‘Is that Brother Aelred?’ Without waiting for an answer, ‘Have a seat, brother.’ The Abbot’s familiar voice echoed from within, behind a door to Aelred’s left. Aelred knew his voice mainly from sermons in the chapter house, from blessings given in the choir, prayers intoned in the refectory. It was a voice that spoke from a dais, from a throne, from the high table. It seemed odd to hear it uttered from behind a door, which was the Abbot’s bedroom, hardly a cell. He could hear water running into a basin. Then he heard a lavatory flush.
‘Yes,’ Aelred answered to the first question. Then, ‘Yes, thanks,’ to the invitation to be seated. But then he felt awkward sitting without the Abbot being there. He would have to get up when the Abbot entered. He sat on the edge of a leather upholstered chair. A tall clock tick-tocked, standing against the wall between two windows to his right. Red, green and yellow stained glass captured the light in scenes from the lives of different English saints whom he did not recognise. On th
e wall opposite, built around the closed door behind which the Abbot’s voice had called, were bookshelves stacked tightly with leatherbound tomes with Latin titles. One long shelf held the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas, each volume numbered. He could hear the Abbot moving about behind the closed door. He expected him to burst out at any moment. Once or twice he heard his cough. It seemed an interminably long time. He looked up at the lifesize crucifix that was looking down at him. Looming over him, it reminded him of the Christ on the cross in the famous Salvador Dali painting, with Christ on the cross hanging above the world, over the sea or a lake with a small boat putting out from the shore in the foreground. There was a fisherman pushing out the boat. He looked like St Peter, the boat was the barque of the church.
Then the door suddenly opened. Aelred jumped up. The Abbot came towards him. He was a small man, jumpy. He tugged at his abbatial cross, which hung on a long gold chain about his neck. It had a stone which looked like a ruby in the middle. It glinted. He was noisy. His black heavy shoes clattered on the slippery polished brown parquet floor. He dropped a book on to the desk. ‘There,’ he said. ‘All that we need to know in life.’ At the same time he held out his hand to Aelred, with his abbatial ring.
Aelred dropped to his knees to kiss the ring. Out of the side of his eye, as he knelt at the height of the desk, he caught the title of the book the Abbot had dropped there thunderously. The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis. Aelred remembered the small black volume given to him at his confirmation. It had not helped him then; would it now? He got up from his genuflection.
‘Yes,’ he said, almost inaudibly.
‘Well, I like to hear from my novices.’ The Abbot spoke in a businesslike way, pulling out his chair, almost tipping it over and indicating with a thrust-out hand to Aelred to sit again, opposite him. Aelred folded his scapular carefully from behind him and sat. He found it difficult to fill the chair. He felt his feet would leave the ground if he sat right into it and leant back into it. So he sat up, without leaning against the back. He sat with his hands under his scapular. The Abbot fidgeted with his pen and straightened his blotter and inkwell. He lifted the sheaf of papers, knocked them together and packed them into shape, holding them up and knocking them against the desk top, dropping them repeatedly. ‘You’ve settled in now. I think you’ve done splendidly. Father Justin tells me all is quite perfect.’ The Abbot smiled.
Aelred's Sin Page 21
