As I looked up into her kind eyes, I wished, I wished I could open up my heart to her. But wouldn’t that be a betrayal of my parents? I said, “Thank you, Sister. I am feeling better.”
The Sister stayed for some twenty minutes, while we talked and laughed together and shared a prayer. As she was about to leave, she took from her bag something wrapped in tissue paper. It was a candle.
She said, “This is for you,” as she placed it in the candle holder near my bed. She took some matches from her bag and lit the candle, saying, “This light symbolizes the light of Christ in the world. Your journey is to follow it and always remember that the light is also in you.”
As evening darkened, I watched the candle’s steady light, my whole soul seemingly protected by its kindly, steadfast glow. The face of Sister Mary Theresa, all one great smile, hovered over my consciousness as I drifted into gentle dreams.
I rested the journal on my lap. Anna Leigh’s gentle, confiding voice touched me. How strange to feel that I had become her absent companion, the patient, uncritical friend in whom she confided; for I felt she was inviting me, me and no one else, to respond and to complete the circle of conversation she had begun.
And I would have liked to share with her the memories she had stirred in me. For her descriptions of Father James and his hellfire sermons and the loving contrast of Sister Mary Theresa reminded me of my own childhood and the time I spent living with my great-aunt.
Like Father James, Aunt Vaughan served a stern and humourless God. And like Anna, I had found refuge, at a time when I felt no one understood me, with a loving and generous guide.
Michael… I had not thought of him in years. Michael was my aunt’s gardener. He was my friend, mentor and, I suppose, surrogate parent in those long-ago days when I felt so very alone and misunderstood.
When I was seven my father, an Army major, was posted to India. The climate in India was deemed, bizarrely, unsuitable for children. So my sister, Louisa, and I were dispatched from our village in North Wales, where I had run free among the fields and streams and circles of stone, to live with my aunt in Shropshire. In her charge, my father informed us, we would receive a good Christian upbringing.
Aunt Vaughan belonged to a strict Presbyterian church, which favoured the fire and brimstone school of theology. The pulpit was a place of high drama, with much theatrical slamming-to of the Big Bible on the lectern when the minister wished to make an important point or wake up the surreptitious snoozers. Like Anna, I found myself listening to dire warnings of judgement and punishment. I used to wonder why people went to church every week to be told off. I got told off quite enough at home.
Not that my aunt lacked a sense of humour. On one particular day she seemed to have mellowed towards me. She handed me a sweet wrapped in a silvery twist of foil. I unwrapped it eagerly, happy to think that I must have done something right for a change. Inside the foil was a smooth, round pebble. How my aunt laughed. It was my first encounter with her sense of humour, and my last. I resolved to make it my life’s purpose to annoy her as much as possible, in the hope of being sent to live somewhere – anywhere – else.
To be fair to my aunt, a rough-and-tumble child who climbed and fell out of trees and came home muddy and sometimes bloody, must have come as a shock. The photographs of me in those days show a brown-eyed little girl with a mischievous grin, her untidy dark hair in her eyes, who looks as though she is being held firmly in place by an unseen pair of hands for just long enough for the shutter to close.
My interview for the local Church of England school probably confirmed my aunt’s initial impression that I was going to be trouble. Passing through the school gate, I observed that the noticeboard at the entrance described it as a “voluntary school”. Did this mean, I asked the headmaster, as I sat under his stern scrutiny, that I didn’t have to go when I didn’t feel like it? He replied that impudence was an unattractive quality in a child, but one that was readily remedied. I had not a clue what he meant. I soon found out.
When I had been at the school a few weeks it became apparent that I was brighter than the star pupil, the headmaster’s daughter. I counted this very bad luck. There was no means of compensating for my shocking lapse and he made my life a misery.
Aunt Vaughan insisted that Louisa and I accompany her to church twice on Sunday. We always walked the four-mile round trip, rain or shine. My aunt would never accept a lift from a neighbour because she thought it sinful to travel in a vehicle on the sabbath. I used to pray every Sunday that God would send me a horse. Nor did my aunt allow us to play games or even take our dolls from the toy cupboard on a Sunday. Reading was the only activity she would permit.
On one particular Sunday I was unwell and allowed to stay at home, with instructions to read an assigned passage in my Bible. The moment I heard the click of the latch on the front gate, as my aunt and Louisa departed, I suddenly felt much better. The sun was shining, it was a lovely day and the opportunity to run free in the garden, orchard and wood was suddenly too enticing to resist.
I skipped out of the house, calling my aunt’s dog, Moses, to join me. Together we careered down the path to the wood. I remember singing loudly as I ran along the path, stopping to help myself to the Victoria plums of which my aunt was so proud. I pretended that I was a magical fairy princess who could turn frogs into princes. That put me in mind of the pond – what could be more fun than to find a frog and try out my magical powers?
That part of the garden fascinated me, because just beyond the pond my aunt had established a burial ground for her succession of dogs. Around the series of mounds that marked the grave of each departed canine companion she had planted gooseberry bushes. They yielded big, fat fruits which I would never touch, fearful that they would taste of dog.
I ran to the pond and stood at the very edge, peering in, hoping to spot a squelchy, shiny green frog. But there was no movement in the murky depths. The stagnant state of the pond had been the subject of discussion between Michael and my aunt. Michael wanted to clear it. My aunt, for some reason, wanted it to be left. I leaned over further. Surely there must be frogs. Every pond had frogs. Suddenly I lost my balance and I was in the water, struggling to swim in the slimy mass of smelly vegetation. I became afraid and started to scream.
The next thing I knew, Michael was running towards the pond. In seconds he had hold of me and brought me safely out of the water, spluttering and frightened. As I got my breath back, my first thought was that I was in deep trouble. Aunt Vaughan would be very angry. She had warned me sternly not to go near the pond and I had disobeyed her. Even Moses was dejected, putting his head down between his paws with a look that seemed to say, “Now you’re for it.”
“Well I don’t suppose you’ll do that again, will you?” said Michael, as I started to cry. “It’s a good job I was getting a bit of work done, in peace and quiet – well, until you decided to go swimming with the fishes,” he said. “Now, now, you’re safe now. Come on, let’s get you back to the house before Mrs Ogwen Lewis gets back.”
Michael led me, dripping, back to the house. I rushed upstairs and changed. But what would I do with my wet, smelly clothes? I came down to the kitchen, where Michael had prepared tea and biscuits. He said, “Perhaps you should rinse out your clothes and put them in with the laundry. Jess won’t split on you.” Jess did the cleaning and other household tasks for my aunt.
I was amazed that a grown-up should suggest such a deception. Michael smiled his twinkly smile, as though he knew what I was thinking, and said, “Discretion is the better part of valour. Sometimes it’s best just to keep people happy. But you must promise me you’ll never do anything daft like that again. On your honour? Promise?” I promised. Michael trusted me to keep my word, and that meant everything. I had found a friend. I got away with it and my spirit soared. Anything was possible now. Aunt Vaughan was not invincible after all.
She was, however, a law unto herself. When she took it into her head to do something, she proceeded like
a great swarm of killer bees, unheeding of any obstacle in her path. I used to watch in awe as she set off in gum-booted malevolence, circular saw in hand, to chop down dead trees – at least, she said they were dead.
It brought great pain to Michael. I became aware of this not long after my arrival, when I chanced upon him standing looking at a felled tree, tears in his eyes. He stretched out his hand and stroked the trunk sorrowfully, as though he were comforting some poor mortally wounded creature. I hid, realizing instinctively that this was a private moment.
But Aunt Vaughan did not get it all her own way. I discovered, with delight, that Michael frequently deflected her mad plans for the destruction of her property. He did it without openly opposing her, which, given her contrary nature, would only have made her more determined upon her course.
“These must come down,” she said one day to Michael, indicating a row of perfectly healthy birch trees. “And quick about it.”
“Right you are, Mrs Ogwen Lewis,” said Michael. “We’ll have them down next week. Mr Henderson talked you into it, then, did he?”
Aunt Vaughan and Mr Henderson, who lived next door, relished a mutual loathing.
“What has he been saying to you?” she demanded.
“Oh, nothing much. Just as how he’d like you to take these trees down. They’re blocking the light to his fruit beds, he says.”
“I’ve changed my mind,” said Aunt Vaughan. “The trees will stay.”
More memories came back to me, for the first time in many years, as I remembered with gratitude Michael’s loving care and guidance. Whatever the difficulties with my aunt, the garden and wood always felt like home – because they were Michael’s territory.
Every afternoon when I arrived back from school, I would throw my satchel into a corner of my bedroom, quickly change and run out to find him. There was nearly always some adventure to share – fishing, bird-watching, learning the names of wild flowers… Michael had seen my need for love and fulfilled my deep-seated longing to truly come home. As an adult, I had long since lost that sense of homecoming. But as I retrieved my memories of Michael, I felt a pain in my heart, a hunger to once again feel safe, comforted, accepted and loved.
Like Sister Mary Theresa and the extraordinary Julian, with her unbreakable adherence to her mission, Michael had found a straight path through life’s turbulence and pain. What had sustained him? What had made him the man he was? Michael had found meaning. Could I? I was immersed in these thoughts when the phone rang. It was Alex.
“Hi, Jo. I’ve just got back.” He sounded very downcast. “Fancy a drink?”
It was 10 o’clock. I was tired and still upset about Patrick. But Alex was a friend and he needed me.
“Sure.” I arranged to meet him at an Italian restaurant near my house.
Alex quickly downed two glasses of red wine.
“I did it,” he said. “I did it.”
“How was it?”
“Awful. Have you ever done anything like that?”
“Once – well, not really like that, but something I didn’t like doing.”
“How do you feel about it now?”
“I wish I hadn’t done it.”
“I shall always regret it,” said Alex.
He seemed to be in a bad way. My concern for him deepened.
“You’re going to have to make decisions about this sort of thing,” I said.
“I know.”
“Why did they want to cover that angle? It makes no sense. It undermines the source. The mole must be very scared. Presumably he now knows he’s going to be outed.”
“Something’s going on,” said Alex.
“What? Bribery and corruption?”
“It’s never that clear-cut, is it? You know how it works – a word here, a favour there. I’m not sure whose service I’m in any more.”
“Whose did you think you were in?” I asked.
“Truth and justice. Hah! Even I think I’m pathetic,” said Alex.
“You’re not pathetic. You’re a first-rate journalist. Don’t let them make you forget that.” But even as I reassured Alex, I was aware that I needed the same reassurance myself.
Alex asked, “Has Masterton said anything to you – about the story?”
“You know I’d never discuss work with him.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“Why do you ask?
“Because I don’t trust him. I think he’s using you.”
“You’re being paranoid. What’s brought this on?”
“Never mind. Just something someone said to me.”
“Who?”
“Geraldine Stephens, the woman I interviewed, the mother of the mole’s illegitimate child, she used to be a civil servant. She let slip that she’s afraid of someone in the Foreign Office, someone she described as ruthless and dangerous. She’s really frightened. I promised not to put anything about it in my piece.”
“Why should that be Patrick?”
“Dunno. He just gives me the creeps, I guess. Watch your back, Jo. God, I wish you would wake up and take better care of yourself.”
Alex was beginning to annoy me, so I changed the subject. I said, “Tell me more about Julian. Anna Leigh agrees she was a very brave woman.”
“OK. She was born in the mid-fourteenth century. Edward III was King. England was at war with France. Life was very hard. There were three plague epidemics before she reached her early twenties. The first killed a third of the population of England. While she was a young girl there was also an epidemic of something like Mad Cow Disease, which caused widespread starvation.”
“It’s hard to imagine suffering on that scale. I mean, it’s what we see on television, in the Third World – but to imagine it happening here…” I said.
“Life was brief and horribly insecure. If you were poor, you were always hungry; you could get sick and die at any time, from any number of diseases. The water was polluted. The meat and fish were rancid – not surprising, since animals were slaughtered for the table in the ditches where sewage was dumped. Violence was casual and routine. Life was cheap,” said Alex.
“No wonder the peasants revolted.”
“Quite right. 1381, the Peasants’ Revolt. The King imposed a poll tax to raise money for the war against France, which was then in its fortieth-plus year. It was the last straw. People had had it with authority – and that included the clergy and religious orders, who looked after their own interests while the people suffered.”
“I’m trying to imagine this nice lady reflecting in her cell while the world went mad around her,” I said.
“She would have lived through a huge amount of turbulence and civil unrest. And she would have been aware of it. She wasn’t entirely enclosed, you see. In fact, she was a kind of agony aunt; people would come to her window to tell their troubles and ask her advice.”
“Amazing that she managed to keep her book a secret,” I said.
“If she hadn’t, she’d have been forced to recant and repudiate everything she had written or be burned at the stake. And Henry Despencer, the Bishop of Norwich, would have had a personal reason for discrediting her message. He was a Crusader, known as the Battling Bishop, and he financed his expeditions by selling indulgences. These were documents that bought you time off from the sentence you were due to serve in purgatory in payment for your sins.”
“So Julian’s account of a God who is never angry and doesn’t need to be bought off would have put quite a dent in his trade,” I said. “She was a kind of revolutionary.”
“In a way. But she was also a sincere believer in the Church and its authority to deliver the Christian message. She had to struggle with that paradox, and it was a very hard struggle for her. But she did what she had to do and she didn’t compromise her integrity. Wish I could say the same.”
I said, “But she did compromise, didn’t she? But in a way that didn’t matter.” Our conversation had reminded me of something Michael had taught me. He had show
n me a way of living peacefully with my aunt, and her endless criticism, without compromising my integrity. I told Alex about it.
I remembered it so very clearly, how I had gone to the wood to search for solace and Michael, feeling very sorry for myself after yet another bruising encounter with my aunt. I had found him digging out an overgrown patch of brambles in front of an oak tree. When I told him my woes, he had straightened up, rested his arm against the tree-trunk and looked at me very seriously.
“He started talking about my aunt,” I told Alex. “He said, ‘Not the sweetest cherry on the tree, is she?’ I was amazed, because he’d always spoken respectfully of her. He told me I mustn’t believe the things she said about me because they weren’t true; that she saw things the way she did because of the way she was. All the same, he said, I shouldn’t argue with her, just let her say what she had to say and not lose my temper. He said, ‘Learn to dodge the blows. Box a bit clever. Play the Joker’s card.’ Well, it worked! I let her rant on until she’d finished. And when I handled it that way everything just went much more smoothly. And I didn’t get nearly so upset.
“Michael taught me to be kind. He said, ‘Be generous with your kindness because the world can never have enough. And always remember that you’re a little star and your light will grow brighter and stronger every day, till it’s strong enough to sustain you through anything.’”
Alex said, “Great bloke. So why are you always battling with Milo?”
“I’d forgotten. I’d forgotten a lot of things. Michael made me feel there was something in me that was worthwhile. He understood me and accepted me.”
Alex said, “And loved you…”
“Yes. What he gave me was love. Nothing else can make you feel that good.”
After rather a lot more red wine, we called it a night. When I arrived home I no longer felt tired. I curled up in bed with the journal, curious to read on in the knowledge of what Alex had told me about Julian and her world.
The Greening Page 4
