Licks, he said, clicking fingers like whips.
I put my head down and wrote. I must not talk in chapel. Blue Quink ink on white paper with pale blue lines, words in blood: now his poetry is mine.
When we came out of detention I saw the seniors, one or two at a time, come straggling back into the playground.
J. M. called it ‘The Raid’. He had a way with titles. Like ‘The Night of the Rain.’
There is an account in the journal. Aelred going over the ground three years later?
But I heard the seniors talking. One or two were real braggers. So bragging that it was some time before they noticed me.
The brother, they pointed.
They had it coming to them. If that’s what they want. If that’s what they like, the bullers. If that’s where they want to take it. Let them.
Did you hear them? Like they were asking for it.
PLEASE was louder than STOP. Did you hear them?
The bragger was going over the top. I saw others slink away - already ashamed now that they were back in the playground. I saw some others not even join the gang with the bragger, who were congregating into the lavatories to smoke. I slipped into a cubicle.
I heard some say, Shut up, leave it.
A fight nearly broke out. But then a core of braggers egged each other on with description. I sat in the cubicle and listened. I dared not breathe. I hardly read what was on the walls: ‘K.O. SUCKS S.T. WHO WANTS A PRICK AS BIG AS A DONKEY?’ Someone had written under it, ‘YOU DO. FOCK YOURSELF.’ An O for U. The cleaners hadn’t got here with their brushes as yet.
The bragger coughed, and the smell of smoke mixed with the smell of urinals.
Did you have them both?
One and then the other.
I saw O’Connor come out and there was blood all over his prick.
Do you know what he did? He went round. And when Macdougall went in, he shoved it down one of their mouths.
I heard him say, Suck it clean, you cunt.
They all laughed. I retched. I could not help it. I started being sick.
Who’s in there? They were kicking the door.
I sat bent over. They clambered up and looked over. When I looked up, four faces.
All said, It’s the brother.
One jumped over and opened up the door. They dragged me out. One was about to put my head in the urinals, when another boy walked in.
Leave him alone, he’s not a buller, just because he’s his brother.
It was him who shouted buller. I saw him in the refectory. You know your brother is a buller, don’t you?
Maybe his brother has bulled him, another laughed and sneered.
Get out.
They all kicked me as I passed out of the door.
Get out or we’ll all bull your fucking arsehole. Then they laughed again. Yes, come take this. One held his cock bunched in his pants and shoved it out at me. I was passed along the line, blows to the head.
Yes, your arse must be sore. They kicked me again.
What have I done with all that hurt, all these years? My hurt.
That is your hurt, Joe says, acknowledge it.
I did not see J. M. or Ted. The headmaster called me into his office that evening and said that my brother had been taken home and would not be coming back until the new term. There were still two weeks to go before the holidays. I could not imagine how they could come back. It was kept from me, kept between my parents and J. M.
During the next holidays I remember he did not play, as he used to, with me, even though I was younger. He wouldn’t come down to the savannah to play cricket. He stayed a lot in his room, reading. Was that when he went religious? I remember he used to get up early early in the morning to go to Mass in San Andres. He would take the five o’clock bus. He had a whole set of prayer books. I remember Mum saying things like: Toinette take Master J. M. lunch in his room today.
This was when I learnt to creep around him quietly. It was like I knew what had happened and knew what it was but didn’t fully bring it into my mind to see it for what it really was and cope with it. I never wanted to admit any of the things I had done and said. I suppose it was the time we were living in. Now I might’ve had a counsellor. J. M. would’ve had therapy. All that was on offer was Father Gerard’s spiritual direction and confession. Inside his heart there must’ve have been so much shame, so much guilt. And then what happened to Ted! No wonder he left and went away. And it was hardest when they had to go back into the new term to prepare for their exams.
But before the holiday, a special assembly was called on the last evening. Two boys were expelled as ringleaders, another two suspended. They let the others stay. There was a long queue outside the dean’s office late that night.
Some were strapped, some caned. All in pyjamas, dropped, naked bottoms. Ironic.
There was a new head boy. The following week there were new captains for the teams. Ted was dropped, J. M. forgotten. Forgotten?
I overheard the gym master one afternoon speaking to one of those I noticed in the lavatory, who had not been suspended at the beginning of the new term:
They had it coming to them - fairies, he said.
Now I think of angels. Wings. A fancy.
What is it Joe said that really struck me?
It’s like the church has taken possession of the body. It’s like a demolition site.
Then he asked: Why does spirituality have to entail the subjugation of sexual passion?
There’s another thesis he developed, which I find startling. It was on one of those nights when he and Miriam stayed up really late finishing the rum and getting me to play the cuatro. They want to come to Les Deux Isles. They took me down to a West Indian restaurant before for some good food. It was Jamaican.
Joe is so animated. The state wants to control the body, wants to say what you can and can’t do with your body. Then, ironically, it now says that we can kiss and touch. Well, it’s not explicit, exactly what it is we can do with our own consent, provided we are twenty-one. That has to change. We have to have the same rights for gay people as we do for heterosexuals. It will come. Sixteen! he says. Look at your story, the story of your brother and Ted. It will come because it’s enlightened and just. He talks of the Stonewall riots.
I try to imagine myself having this discussion in Les Deux Isles with the family, or just with so many friends. Of course back home there’s no protection under the law, no rights whatsoever.
Religion run amock, Joe says.
I agree, actually. Though Joe says that many countries give lip service to some UN charter. I didn’t know that.
He says, It’s barbaric. There are things afoot in this country, even now.
Miriam says, In some countries, particularly with fundamentalist regimes, it’s like concentration camps all over again, and so often in the name of God. All this done in the name of God.
Maybe J. M. died for something in the end. To make his brother think straight. Straight? Words take on a new meaning. And I always have his words, grist for my mill. I see the forming of his complex desires and where they got hidden.
I found a substitute for my love after Ted’s death among those men who reminded me of angels and would be angels in the beauty of their chanting. Their dance was so different from that of the lithe athletes.
I lingered over those pictures in those foreign books on monasticism in the library, desiring and fashioning myself on the bodies of the monks I saw there: the sharp outline of the tonsured head, the hooded head bowed in holy prayer, the folds of the cowl, the tight belt, the scapular over the cassock, the leather sandals buckled on their naked feet.
I yearned for the life I saw there. I sought to be one of those men, hard at work in rough smocks. I stared at those still lifes of hands in prayer, at a potter’s wheel, bent on a hoe in the field. I put out my fingers to stroke those perfect profiles, those shoulders at a desk, those hands illuminating sacred manuscripts.
I devoured these books like
a kind of pornography, my spirituality, an erotic mysticism.
I idealised them in the lace of their surplices, the linen of their albs and the damask and silk of their vestments, the chasuble and the cope. I drew near to their sacred dance, this liturgy, an acolyte.
As I genuflected, as I turned and descended the steps from the high altar, as I bowed, as I poured water from the crystal cruets on to the soft consecrated fingers of the priest, and swung the thurible of hot coals smoking with the perfume of incense; as I carried the Abbot’s crosier and mitre, I fashioned my face into that of an angel.
And from where they stood, the others, who had jeered and dared Ted to dive into the pool, could not touch me on my pinnacle. From there, I could pretend I was safe.
See my poetry in the words my brother found from a distance; a long gaze.
Hay-making
… if you should find my Beloved,
what must you tell him …?
That I am sick with love.
Song of Songs
From the moment Aelred woke for Matins, all through Lectio Divina, his reading of the Song of Songs echoed in his mind. It disturbed him while he was doing the house chores, and when he found it difficult to settle down to study that morning after Prime. He avoided Edward in the dormitory. He was conscious of the meeting they had arranged for after classes later that morning. He turned his own glances away, and turned from those which might come from Edward - in choir, in the refectory, in the washroom. But images of him filled his thoughts and feelings and distracted him. There was a tug-of-war between the sadness and disappointment in what had happened with Benedict and these strong feelings for Edward now crowding his mind and body. He did not know how he would extricate himself from this obsession which was taking hold of him. He had not gone to the quarry this morning, though Edward had hinted that he should, and that he would lend him his boots and guide him on a low ascent from the ground. ‘Your feet are much larger than mine,’ Aelred had said bluntly as he passed the buttery where Edward was working during housework. ‘Let’s drop the idea.’ Edward had looked disappointed, cowed by Aelred’s apparent sharpness. ‘Come on.’
But Aelred had walked away, pulling on his hood and moving down the corridor close to the wall.
He kept his head lowered and his face hidden within his hood as he went about the novitiate. The curtains of Benedict’s cell were left drawn open. The mattress was rolled up on the bed. The desk and bookshelves were bare. The small windowsill where Benedict kept more books, the ones on existentialist philosophy, was dusty. Nothing which Benedict used was here. The cell needed to be swept out; maybe Aelred would be asked to do it. Maybe he would do it voluntarily: show his acquiescence in what he now felt was brutal, cruel. He felt angry and he wanted to cry. As always when he had those feelings, he felt homesick. The window was open and the breeze lifted the white cotton curtain. A wide band of light picked up the dust from the floor. It felt as if someone had died. The iron bed looked like a hospital bed, cleared after a body has been removed.
‘Looks like our Brother Benedict has moved on. I expect he’ll be taking his final vows soon. That’ll be a grand day.’ Brother Malachi put his head round the doorway and spoke softly to Aelred, who was standing drawing patterns in the dust on the desk.
‘I’ll miss him,’ Aelred found himself saying quite naturally to Brother Malachi, without turning to face him and still distractedly drawing patterns in the dust - then wondering at once what he might make of that. He hated this feeling of guilt, this feeling of being policed, spied on.
‘We’ll all miss him, brother. He is an exemplar, a real model for us novices.’
‘Yes, he is.’ Aelred felt that he could now legitimately praise Benedict. Brother Malachi obviously did not have any suspicions of hanky-panky - a word Father Justin had giggled out nervously and of which Aelred had to infer the meaning. Aelred detested the word. His anger twisted it ironically in his mind. He enjoyed exchanging reminiscences with Malachi of Benedict as a caring, careful listener and helpful guardian angel.
The meeting in the common room between Aelred and Edward to discuss their theological differences was conducted as legitimately as possible in subdued tones. At first, they sat at the conference table and laid out their differences, which had been coming up at recreation and in the novitiate studies.
‘I suppose my passage from the kind of low church Anglicanism I was brought up with makes me theologically and liturgically conservative in my adoption of Roman Catholicism. So when I see the church that I’ve adopted taking on the customs of the church I’ve left, it disturbs me.’ Edward was speaking deliberately and carefully.
‘You mean things like the Latin Mass, communion under both kinds, bread and wine.’
‘Yes. I particularly want the old rites preserved. Of course, communion under both kinds is an old rite, so there are some things I agree with and would welcome.’
‘I suppose I’m just the opposite. Maybe it’s coming from Les Deux Isles, a missionary church, where the whole pastoral side of things is more important, so a vernacular Mass would really help people. I want things to be relevant. Mixed with that are popular devotions, which you don’t like, do you?’
‘That’s a matter of personal taste. Education I think. That’s fine on the missions - the question of relevance, the vernacular - even in parishes here, I suppose. I’ve no quarrel with that. But we’re monks, enclosed. We could be the preserver of the old rites. We don’t have a primary responsibility to the laity, as the parishes and missions do.’
‘Both things can happen at once, can’t they? We could mix the new rites with the old. I suppose some priests might be allowed to say Latin Masses if they preferred. We’re being so reasonable now. I don’t know why these points have come between us at recreation and in novitiate studies. They’ve disturbed Benedict.’
‘Maybe they’re an excuse for something else.’
‘Something else? Like what?’
‘Come on, brother. You’re not unaware that we’ve found our differences difficult.’
‘Differences?’ Aelred was now feeling shy and nervous. Edward was being straightforward and putting aside his jokes and irony.
‘Well, I mean, look at us. I don’t know many people from abroad. It seems as if we speak another language.’
‘Yes. I didn’t think there would be problems like this. You know monastic life …’
‘We’re still human …’
‘Does it bother you, really, that I’m dark and might be black? I’m not saying that I am. But …’
‘I’ve never seen a black person in my home town of Shrewsbury. In Birmingham, yes. Plenty of coloureds there. Wolverhampton.’
‘Yes. I’ve read about that. What goes on is prejudice.’
‘I suppose, it’s difficult for people, though. A whole lot of people swamping their town.’
‘Swamping? Anyway, what’s that got to do with you and me?’
‘But, I mean, what was it like for you in Les Deux …?’
‘Les Deux Isles. It really irritates me that you never remember the name of the place.’
‘I’m sorry. They are little islands.’
‘Yes, but - anyway, yes, there’s prejudice. I had a really good friend who was coloured, as you call it.’
‘And?’
‘Well, he was discriminated against. I mean Les Deux Isles is not like Little Rock, Arkansas. You must remember there - you know, segregation and all that. Well, we mixed in school, and - you know, as I didn’t have black friends come home, my home. Well, there were exceptions and we didn’t think that was abnormal.’
‘But they did. You sound a bit unsure of it all.’
‘I suppose. We teased each other, you know - things like blackie cockroach. They would call us whitie cockroach.’
‘But there was slavery. The slave trade, the history of all that, the politics of it all.’
‘Yes, I studied that. That was a long time ago. That’s true. It’s very difficult -
repercussions, I suppose. But me being dark - what’s that got to do with the slave trade? And anyway, it started here, didn’t it? In England. In Europe. Maybe even Ashton Park. Well, it didn’t start here, but Ashton Park was involved. Did you know it was connected, that the original house was built on the proceeds of the slave trade?
‘No, I didn’t. Is there something in the library?’
‘Yes …’
‘This gets to you doesn’t it?’
‘What? Yes - no, I mean.’
‘I mean between us. You’re different. The way you speak, use your hands. I don’t know.’
‘Well, this is what Benedict said we should do - air our differences. We’ve been at this a while.’
The issues were bigger than they were. They were issues of faith and race, and Aelred heard in his head that Jordan voice, telling that Jordan story. It did get to him, as Edward put it. Edward was right. He did not know how to share with him his story of Jordan. He did not feel like going into that there and then. He just said, ‘You should take a good look at the portrait on the oak staircase.’
Edward looked quizzically and said, ‘Yes, I will. I’m interested.’
The time was creeping on to Sext. They might be able to grab some time at haymaking later.
Father Justin put his head round the door. ‘I think you two should think of bringing this conference to an end soon.’ Aelred became self-conscious but Edward started again, from another angle.
‘I know that it’s wrong to judge you, but I thought you rejected me for my views.’ Edward, beginning to find it difficult to cope with this meeting, spoke looking out on to the hillside below the cemetery.
‘Well, I did, in a way, but I feel it’s about more. I feel we affect each other, and - I don’t know.’ They were stumbling upon their feelings.
‘Yes, but you seem so strong and powerful, and with your relationship with Benedict, I felt that I wouldn’t count.’
Aelred's Sin Page 24
