In the background hovered the other two brothers who had opted to attend the symposium, uneasy figures whom nobody could fit in, sometimes talking in a low voice together, sometimes looking on at the groups and the discussions with expressions of assumed blandness.
Discussions soon became animated, with a degree of friendly consultation between the groups. It soon emerged (as the Bishop of Peckham had already suspected) that each contributor had a quite different notion of what should be discussed in the coming days under the blanket heading of the Social Role of the Church in the Modern World. (Why on earth hadn’t they been more specific at Church House, thought Peckham; another black mark, and won’t I blow them up there.) The group around the Bishop of Mitabezi managed a degree of common ground: Simeon P. Fleishman’s absorbing interest in fund-raising was shared by the Bishop, and the uses to which the latter would put them were of some interest to Bente Frøystad, whose main concerns were the underdeveloped nations and sexual politics. This left Philip Lambton and Brother Dominic out in the cold, but the former could never be there long, and he launched with naïve enthusiasm into an enthusiastic monologue on religious motifs in recent top twenty hits. Brother Dominic, his face a veritable mask, listened or did not listen, glazed and glacial.
The other group was far less happy. Stewart Phipps launched into an inevitable tirade about American colonialism and multi-national corporations; the Bishop, goaded by his itch for paradox, defended both, as he would have defended Attila the Hun or the Marquis de Sade if they had been attacked by Stewart Phipps. Randi Paulsen was frankly bored by the discussion: the differences between the political parties in her native country were so tiny that politics had virtually ceased to exist for her long ago. After a time she turned to Ernest Clayton and with a sweet smile that said, ‘We’ll let the boys play their silly little games, shall we?’ she began to question him about Sunday school attendance in his parish. Here again the discussion was not entirely happy, for Ernest Clayton was honest enough to admit to his belief that within fifty years Christianity would be nothing more than a folk memory in his part of Lincolnshire. Finding his attitude strange and his answers unsatisfactory, Randi Paulsen decided that she would go up and fetch some educational material from her room.
‘Because it is so sad,’ she said, with a sweetly forgiving smile on her face, ‘to see the little ones growing up in such a terrible darkness, just the very ones whom Our Lord specially called to Him.’
There was nothing one could reply to this, but the Bishop, scenting a new challenge, wrenched himself from a defence of the CIA’s role in the assassination of President Allende, and, on her return bearing a pile of brightly coloured literature, turned towards her with a deceptive courtesy and interest.
‘Ah yes,’ he said, ‘this was something we were discussing this afternoon. Now what would be the figures for church attendance in Norway?’
‘We have ninety per cent membership of the National Church among the population as a whole,’ said Randi Paulsen complacently.
‘But that wasn’t quite what I asked, you see,’ said the Bishop. ‘I confess I have heard some such figure before, but it’s a fiddle, is it not? The vicar does all the birth certificates, or some such wheeze, and you don’t get one till the christening? But what I was asking about was the actual proportion who come to church.’
‘It is somewhat lower,’ admitted Randi Paulsen.
‘How much lower?’ said the Bishop, dropping his urbanity entirely.
‘About eight per cent are church-goers,’ said Randi reluctantly.
‘Ah ha,’ said the Bishop. ‘We don’t seem to hear that figure quite so often.’
‘But we are making very big efforts with our young people,’ said Randi, clambering back on to her hobby horse. ‘In a lot of the country districts we have managed to stop the cinema shows and the Saturday dances —’
‘What?’ said Philip Lambton from the next table, unable to believe his ears that such nineteenth-century obscurantism should exist anywhere in the modern world, let alone Scandinavia.
‘Yes, we’re pleased about this,’ said Randi Paulsen, ‘because these were a great temptation, and the young people are now left completely open to us and our efforts. And of course we are not being entirely negative. We’re producing some really excellent books and records on religious subjects, aimed specially at young people of all ages.’
She opened one of her books and beamed her dreadful smile around the room.
‘I wish I could play you some of the records,’ she said. ‘Such pretty songs about Jesus. But this is just one of the books, and you’ll see how lovely the illustrations are!’
She opened a large, colourful volume, which was clearly a version of the gospel story nearly digested out of existence and adapted to limited understanding and minimal vocabulary. As she spread the work out on her lap the first thing that met the Bishop’s eye was a truly dreadful work of art, in manner influenced by the lowest common denominator of Victorian religiosity, in colour outvying the worst the pre-Raphaelite palate could perpetrate: a blond, Nordic Christ, looking like a benevolent young sailor, was gazing out over a Hollywood-green landscape, and was clearly about to launch into the Sermon on the Fjell. The Bishop of Peckham screwed up his mouth.
‘That sort of thing strikes me as nothing more than religious pornography,’ he said.
Randi Paulsen looked at him for a moment in disbelief. Then she snapped the book shut, and clasped her hands over her abdomen. She seemed about to say something very cutting to the Bishop, but her Norwegian respect for rank asserted itself in time, and she merely drew her lips thinly together. After a few moments of this silence the forgiving smile began to battle its way back on to her face. In time it won, but she nevertheless spent much of the rest of the evening in silence.
But she didn’t manage to cast a blight over the rest of the company: the talk soon turned to salaries and stipends, and became general between the two groups as they all swapped poverty stories. Simeon P. Fleishman’s brain became involved in a series of complicated conversions between the dollar and the pound, and when he came up with the answers his aghast looks at the miserable condition of his denominational English brethren were a source of great delight to Ernest Clayton. The discussions rather left Brother Dominic, who presumably had renounced money along with so much else, out in the cold, but the few attempts to draw him in met with such stiff responses that all gave up after a while and launched into further fanciful discussions of means of supplementing their incomes. It was cheering to note that this was a topic which Stewart Phipps joined in as enthusiastically as everyone else, with only the occasional glance at ‘socio-economic structures’ and the like. One touch of salary makes the whole world kin.
It was Father Anselm who broke up the party. The brothers had been in the chapel at their evening service. The Bishop had suggested that the delegates should give the service a miss that first evening, in order to get to know each other better, and the sound of the singing had made a pleasant background to their discussion of ways and means. ‘How immensely spiritual,’ Simeon Fleishman had said, interrupting his exposition of a knotty point of investment policy to listen for a couple of seconds. Shortly after the singing stopped Father Anselm appeared in the archway, surveyed the assembled delegates for a moment, as if to say ‘how of the world, worldly’, and then said: ‘After compline we usually go straight to our cells. Perhaps you would care to do the same, after your hard day of travelling.’
It was a more impressive way of saying, ‘Time, gentlemen, please.’ They all got up, a little shamefaced, they knew not why. Father Anselm led the way through the low dark passages and up the stairs, his brown robe billowing out behind him. When they reached the guest wing, a broad, dim corridor with doors opening out from both sides, he merely said, ‘Good night to you all,’ inclined his head, and turned to go down the stairs again.
‘One moment,’ said the clear voice of Randi Paulsen. The voice, perhaps merely because it was fem
ale, seemed to affect Father Anselm unpleasantly. His shoulders stiffened. He turned to face her without speaking. ‘There is no lock on the door to my room,’ continued Randi, unabashed.
‘That is correct. There are no locks on any of the doors,’ Father Anselm answered.
Randi Paulsen, standing in the doorway of her room, gazed out of her window at the moors and the great barn, her lips compressed and her manner saying: ‘There may be marauders waiting for me, inside or out.’ Aloud she said: ‘It is necessary for me to be able to lock my door and my window.’
Father Anselm, with a kind of dour patience, tried to explain: ‘The decision to have no locks on the door was taken by the founder of St Botolph’s. He believed that there was no time of day or night when the devil might not perplex the mind with doubts and difficulties of the spirit. We might put the idea rather differently today, but the argument remains valid and the situation does arise — particularly as we have the occasional visitor who is in retreat to wrestle with spiritual problems. In such cases there is sometimes a need for company, so that the doubts may be met with together and fought, or so that the prayer may be communal rather than solitary.’
He turned to go.
‘That does not solve the problem,’ said Randi Paulsen.
‘It is not my problem,’ said Father Anselm. ‘The rule of the order is quite definite on this point.’
And he proceeded down the narrow stone steps.
‘I’ve no doubt you will be perfectly safe,’ said the Bishop of Peckham briskly. ‘Let’s to our beds.’ But one glance at her pinched lips and militant stance convinced him that the problem was not to be solved by the cold water of common sense. ‘Well, perhaps Miss Frøystad and you could sleep together, then.’
‘That is quite unnecessary,’ said Bente Frøystad in a thoroughly down-to-earth manner. ‘The beds are small and I need a good night’s sleep.’ She made off with a no-nonsense walk in the direction of her room, and then, as a thought struck her, turned and pointed to a heavy wooden wardrobe by the wall of the corridor. ‘Couldn’t somebody push that into her room?’
And she went into her room and shut the door in a manner designed to suggest that anyone intending to take advantage of her in her sleep would do well to think again. The rest looked at each other, while Randi Paulsen waited.
‘That’s a job for you young ones,’ said the Bishop of Peckham. ‘Good night to you all.’
So, puffing and blowing, Stewart Phipps and Philip Lambton, aided by some bulky shoves from Simeon Fleishman, pushed the wardrobe into Randi Paulsen’s room, and left it by the door. They were rewarded by a frosty nod. Randi Paulsen’s room was at the rear end of the corridor, by the stair-head and the lavatory, and those who availed themselves of the latter facility heard heavy shunting sounds as the heavy piece was pushed into position by Frøken Paulsen herself. There were sounds of flushing and running water, and the odd call from the birds on the moor outside. Then night reigned over the Community of St Botolph’s. It was the first time in its existence that women had been inside the walls, but no signs were vouchsafed of the wrath of the heavens. Most of its inhabitants slept quite soundly.
CHAPTER IV
CONFERRING
THE SYMPOSIUM got off to a reasonably good start. Early communion was followed by a simple breakfast of brown bread, cheese and milk, and though it wasn’t what they were used to (particularly the Bishop, who was quite Edwardian in his love of a heavy and varied breakfast), it made them all feel healthy and holy — at peace with the world, and even fairly well disposed towards each other.
The setting for the discussions was a moderate-sized room near to Father Anselm’s office, reached down the same dark corridor. But unlike the office, which was dark and windowless, the conference room turned out to be light and airy, and to have a good view of the kitchen gardens around the main buildings and of the Community’s wall, stretching into the distance. The occasional sheep even presented itself for inspection, giving more than one of the participants (particularly the urban-based ones) a feeling that ‘this was what Christianity was all about’, though they would have been hard put to it to explain precisely what they meant by that. Inside the room was a long, heavy table, for use if the discussion was of a large or formal character. But this was rarely the case at St Botolph’s, which liked to keep its gatherings small and intimate, so in the other part of the room there was a collection of comparatively easy chairs. It was at this end that the various delegates settled themselves.
If the principal delegates had loosened up considerably by the time the proceedings began, there was little change to be observed in the three brothers who sat in on the discussions, nor, indeed, in Father Anselm. They, of course, were on home territory, and it was natural that the first impressions they made should need less modification than for those who were among strangers, in a strange place. It was symptomatic that Brother Dominic brought upright chairs over from the table, clearly implying that he had no intention of indulging his spine. The three sat together, a little apart, Brother Dominic occasionally leaning over and talking in a low voice to the elderly, snuffed-out one, presumably interpreting what was being said. Was he deaf, Ernest Clayton wondered? And were there no brothers with unimpaired hearing who might have liked to attend, and might have been able to contribute more?
Father Anselm did take an easy chair, but it took more than comfort to make him unbend. His fearsome gravity hung over him still, like a cloud, and the air of chilling disapproval which had been evident from the arrival of the Norwegian delegation was with him still. The chief nourisher of life’s feast certainly didn’t seem to have knitted up his ravell’d sleave of care.
When the Bishop of Peckham introduced the proceedings with his little speech — cunningly delivered as if it were a complete improvisation — about how paradoxical that a symposium on the role of the Church in the modern world should meet in a community which had withdrawn itself from the world, he threw a friendly, join-the-circle glance in Father Anselm’s direction, and seemed about to address further remarks directly at him. He received in return a momentary widening of the mouth, which showed a few shadowy teeth behind the brown beard, but which could hardly be called the wintriest of smiles. The eyes remained iced over. The Bishop seemed to think again. From then on, Father Anselm took no part in the session, and no one had the temerity to try to draw him in.
In the course of the initial discussion, the various delegates began to reveal more of themselves, to get beyond their own little obsessions and show the disinterested observer what they were made of. Philip Lambton, for example, though his topic was inevitably youth and the gulf between the Church and the rising generation, took a wide view of the subject, and found some things to say that were very superior to his fatuities of the night before. He gave the impression that he might have been a useful minister of the Church if he had not been seduced by the glamour and glitter of clerical show-biz. In reply to his call for the Church to re-examine its message, Ernest Clayton put in a note of mild dissent.
‘Re-examine our message, of course, in the light of the facts of the modern world. But I sometimes think we re-examine our message in the light of every stray breeze of opinion from the popular press, and every fashionable aberration in taste and behaviour. One wonders in the long run whether it would not be better for the Church to stand — as it so often has had to in the past — changeless in the midst of change. People might come back to such a church. I doubt if they ever will to a church that is always puffing along to catch the bus five minutes after the bus has gone.’
Simeon Fleishman had little to say, and that little was embarrassing. Luckily he limited his main contribution that first morning to endorsing a plea for unity and fellowship among Christians of all kinds put out by Randi Paulsen. She seemed to have caught up with the ecumenical movement five minutes after that bus had gone — perhaps because of an invincible distrust of the Roman Catholic Church, which growled along in an undertone during the early part
of her speech. She sounded like Margaret Thatcher wooing the Trade Unions. That was, in fact, the most interesting thing about her speech, which was as a whole singularly lacking in intellectual grasp, let alone originality.
‘After all,’ she concluded, ‘we are all united in our belief in the divinity of the Lord Jesus.’
She sprinkled her Christian charity in the form of a tight-lipped smile around the other delegates, but she seemed disconcerted on hearing throat-rumblings of dissent from the Bishop of Peckham.
‘Should we lay too much stress on that, do you think?’ he said with a puckish glance at the rest.
‘At least, then,’ said Randi firmly, ‘we are united in a belief in God.’
‘Ah,’ said the Bishop, leaning back, ‘but what do we mean by the term God?’
Ernest Clayton found himself wondering about the Bishop. Obviously he had a little act all his own, which he was immensely pleased with. Equally obviously, one of the things he enjoyed doing was setting the cat among the pigeons. On the other hand, Clayton sensed somewhere a soft centre, a personal rather than an intellectual flabbiness, as if he were someone it would not do to rely on if things came to the crunch.
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