‘Absolutely.’
‘Good. You must keep this meeting between ourselves. It’s better for me that way.’
‘How can I help?’
Anselm placed the man in his early sixties. He had dark hair, silvered lightly above the ears. His speech was measured, his accent polished, his tone persuasive. Pushed to choose an occupation, Anselm would have said the CEO of a company with a strong listing on the stock exchange. Away from the office, he was dressed in an open-necked blue shirt and badly ironed beige trousers: a bachelor waiting to get back into his Savile Row three-piece. Satisfied by Anselm’s unqualified assurance he reached into a tatty briefcase and produced a brown envelope. He placed it carefully on the table, folding his hands on top as if to defeat a sudden gust of wind.
‘I’d like you to find someone, Father. Someone who’s gone missing.
As far as the police are concerned, he’s vanished off the face of the earth. I’d have thought that to be a highly improbable eventuality.’
Anselm liked the man’s sardonic humour, though the hard smile underlined the seriousness of his purpose.
‘The situation is complicated by the fact that there are vested interests involved. There are people occupying positions of considerable trust and influence who do not want this man to be found. They want him to remain hidden. Let’s say that they, too, in their own way, are constrained by their responsibilities to other people. Someone, however, must intervene, regardless of such misguided … sensitivities.’
Anselm nodded. A potential whistleblower had gone into hiding. Unlike the other board members, this CEO had a conscience. He wanted the truth out.
‘This much is certain,’ said the man. ‘He must have feared for his life. His home was wide open. The lights were left on. He took no money, no clothing and no passport. He simply ran into the night and never came back.’
‘When did this happen?’
‘Seven months ago. October the second.’
‘Did he leave a message of any kind?’
The man shook his head in such a way that Anselm didn’t bother to ask all the other preliminary questions that had no doubt been raised ad nauseam by the police. At the same time – and to his mild astonishment – Anselm could feel that the interview was drawing to a rapid close. His guest had opened the envelope and taken out a photograph. Spinning it around, he slid it slowly across the table.
‘This is the man I’d like you to find.’
Anselm looked at the sombre, clean-shaven features and made a frown. There was something familiar about the facial expression. That hint of sadness. And disappointment. Anselm stared hard, trying to tie down the recognition. Mentally, he sketched in a rough beard and then trimmed it back. After adjusting his glasses, his gaze settled on the white clerical collar.
‘His name is Father Edmund Littlemore,’ said the visitor, standing up. ‘He’s a member of the Lambertine Order. From what I understand, some of his confrères are glad he’s disappeared. And they aren’t alone. As I said, there are vested interests, and they extend beyond his immediate circle.’
‘What has he done?’ asked Anselm.
‘Nothing wrong, of that you can be sure.’
‘Then why did he run away?’
‘That is the most important question. Which is why I insist upon one preliminary step: find out why before you find him. What you discover can only help you. This is what he needs more than anything else … your assistance.’
Anselm was struck not so much by the adamant tone as by the dogged hope in his eyes. This man lacked the detachment of an interested bystander. His engagement was altogether personal. Anselm couldn’t help but wonder … was he a relative? Could he be Edmund Littlemore’s father? Whoever he might be, he was now by the door. He’d clipped shut his briefcase and shrugged on a cream raincoat.
‘Two final points,’ he said. ‘First, I would ask you to treat this matter with considerable urgency. Enough time has been lost. There is much at stake.’
‘And second?’ asked Anselm.
‘I am going to rely upon your discretion. Should we meet again in whatever circumstances, I won’t show a single sign of recognition. And if for any reason you break your word and refer to this meeting, I’ll deny it took place. I’ll deny I ever met you. Is that understood?’
Anselm gave a nod but his visitor had already opened the parlour door. Turning to the window, Anselm watched him stride along the gravel path that led to the car park among the plum trees. It was a lovely spring evening. A shade of green was emerging in the distant woodland, still hatched brown from a hard winter. The birdsong was intense. Larkwood’s mysterious guest had paused as if to allow himself a fugitive moment of recollection. Then he brusquely set off. As he rounded a corner Anselm picked up the photograph, blinking stupidly at the face on the page. What was he to do? Anselm had recognised him. He knew him. More than that, he considered him a member of the community. He was John Joe Collins, Larkwood’s handyman … a wanderer from Boston, Massachusetts, in the US of A.
3
On a cold November evening only six months previously, a homeless man in his early forties had arrived at Larkwood. He’d been soaked to the skin, filthied by the road and shivering. Such men often turned up. They left the big cities and made their way through the countryside seeking a change of horizon and often the continuation of a conversation begun months and sometimes years previously. The monks called them wayfarers. Providing for their comfort was one of Anselm’s responsibilities.
‘I’m John Joe Collins,’ he’d mumbled through a ragged beard, revealing a distinctive American accent. He’d been grateful for the offer of a bed. ‘I’ll be on my way tomorrow.’
Anselm had watched him with pity. They spoke of London night shelters. The Archway. The Viaduct. Anselm brought him some clean clothes. The next morning, dressed in the designer cast-offs of the late Mr Justice Phillimore, John Joe helped Anselm repair a broken fence, and then he’d made to go.
‘There’s no rush,’ Anselm replied, shaking hands. ‘You don’t have to leave.’
‘Then let me earn my bed and board.’
After a week the odd jobs were lining up – jobs that none of the other monks wanted to do. Every morning John Joe was ready to go; every morning Anselm told him to have another coffee. And yes, Anselm was compelled to agree: the honey was exceptionally good. That alone was a good reason to linger. As if daring to settle down, he trimmed his beard. He spoke of his past in snatches.
Born in London, he’d moved to Boston aged two with his American mother who’d left his English father behind to ponder the meaning of divorce. It was there, in the capital of Massachusetts, that John Joe had acquired the telling dialect with the broad ‘ah’ which, to Anselm’s ear, displaced the letter R almost completely. John Joe had confirmed the observation, giving ‘pahk the cah in the Hahvahd yahd’ as a classic example. Long before the ahs had slipped into place, his mother married a man with a refined aversion to things English, or perhaps it had just been John Joe. Either way, by the time John Joe became a true son of New England, he’d dropped out of school, drifting here and there until he finally crossed the Atlantic once more, seeking a father who, it transpired, had developed a crude aversion to things American.
‘Sometimes the Special Relationship ain’t that special.’
John Joe had teetered on the edge of a disclosure but then changed his mind. Anselm filled the gap with a pleasantry. But pleasantries, easing pressure, also open doors, and in due course Anselm discovered that he and John Joe shared common ground, from a dislike of mobile phones to an enthusiasm for jazz … all the way back to Papa Jack Laine, with a soft spot for the fifties revival. Bobby Hackett et al. Anselm felt he’d known him for years. And then John Joe started turning up for the Offices: first Lauds, then Vespers and finally Compline. He made a bench his own, towards the back of the nave. Their conversations shifted towards deeper water. While splitting wood, John Joe asked Anselm if he’d ever lost his faith; if he’d ever
thrown it away.
‘Frequently.’
John Joe was surprised. ‘How do you find it again?’
‘I don’t,’ replied Anselm. ‘It returns like a boomerang. You have to watch out.’
Anselm expected a laugh but John Joe didn’t oblige: it was as though the subject was too serious for joking. Later, constructing a flat-pack wardrobe, Anselm had scorned the instructions. He had to start all over again, removing all those screws and dowels before the glue could dry. John Joe checked the drawing and said, ‘What happens if there’s no going back?’
Anselm used a solemn voice: ‘There’s always a way back.’ But then John Joe flashed either anger or regret – Anselm couldn’t distinguish one simple emotion:
‘But what if there ain’t? You’re left with what you’ve done.’ John Joe was staring at the instructions with the faraway look of someone who’d sought greener fields and learned something unexpected. He calmed, like water taken off the boil: ‘I wonder where you went wrong?’
It had been these brief excursions into depth – all of them carrying the mark of unfinished business – that led Anselm to table a proposal at Chapter. A novel situation had developed (he ventured). Mr Collins would never ask to linger and it didn’t make sense to ask him to leave. Something good had been happening. Something unprecedented. ‘Why not let him stay for as long as he likes? We could do with a handyman.’ One by one, the monks voted, dropping a wooden bead into a linen bag. The proposal was easily carried. But among the black beads of assent the Scrutator, Father Damien, found two white murmurs of opposition.
The first had to have been cast by Dunstan, ‘the Weaver’. He rarely approved of anything and he’d voiced his disagreement in trenchant terms (legend had it that he’d once voted against a motion before it had even been debated). So Anselm was more concerned by the second. As a lone voice, it had grown strong in his imagination.
Gazing now along the empty path that led to the plum trees, another conversation came to Anselm’s mind. He’d been testing his Advent mead on a connoisseur.
‘Do you get those haunting notes?’ Anselm had asked.
Sylvester rounded his lips and breathed in deeply.
‘The roast goose and bread pudding … the mince pies and brandy butter of lost youth … Christmas cheer, far from the madding Zulu hordes?’
Sylvester placed his glass on the table and fixed Anselm with a determined stare.
‘Well, Prowling Wolf?’
‘It was me.’
‘What was?’
‘The other white bead.’
Anselm thought for a moment, shifting his mental standing, and then said, ‘Anyone can make a mistake.’
‘I didn’t make a mistake.’
Anselm put down his glass. ‘You didn’t?’
‘I know the difference between black and white. It’s you that’s got yourself confused.’ Sylvester pulled up the old army blanket that had almost slipped off his bony legs. ‘I’ve been a monk for a long time and there are only two types of people who want silence and seclusion: those who seek to find and those who seek to hide. We’re meant to work out who’s who. Read the Rule, Anselm. It’s all there in black and white. If anyone wants to join us, we’re meant to test ’em. We’re meant to discern the good from the bad. And we haven’t done, not this time.’
Anselm didn’t know what to say. Finally, he blurted out, ‘For God’s sake, he was in Curlew Patrol. What else do you want?’
‘I’m not so sure he was.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He doesn’t know how to tie a reef knot.’
‘You’re not serious.’
‘And he doesn’t know north from south.’
‘Neither do I.’
‘But you were never in the Scouts. And it shows.’
‘Eh?’
‘You’d do an awful lot better solving things, young man, if you’d learned some proper field craft.’
‘What the hell are you on about?’
‘Learned to read signs in front of your nose.’
‘Dear God, this isn’t happening.’
‘Baden-Powell used to say, “Be Prepared”, and you’re not. Never are, never have been and never will be.’
‘Amen. Now why didn’t you speak out in Chapter?’ Anselm was baffled. The Gatekeeper always spoke his mind, even to show that he’d lost it.
‘I should’ve done. But I didn’t want to upset you. And Dunstan likes to think he’s the only one who can spot the rotten apple.’
‘Rotten apple? You’ve always said that a wayfarer should be treated like the Lord himself.’
‘Yes, I know, but what did the Lord do after he’d been feted and fed? He cleared off.’
Anselm could no longer contribute.
‘I just hope things don’t end badly,’ said the old man, pouring himself another snifter. ‘Now, speaking of finish, the mead. For a man who tends to pick up the wrong end of the stick, you’ve surprised me. It’s good. Chocolatey. Reminds me of Easter …’
* * *
Anselm turned away from the window.
The mechanics of that election were troubling him, now. He’d started persuading people even before he raised the matter at Chapter. He’d nudged the jury towards the verdict he wanted and now the jury would find him wanting. It was axiomatic. And very monastic: when a vote went wrong everyone turned on the proposer. Leaving the parlour, Anselm sensed his life was about to become a little complicated. To start the ball rolling, he went to tell the Prior that there was more to John Joe Collins than met the eye.
4
‘A what?’ drawled Dunstan.
‘A Lambertine,’ repeated Anselm. ‘Never heard of them. Sounds like a kind of orange.’
Which was odd, because the Order had a long history, beginning in France at the end of the eleventh century. Anselm said so as if to gain a point in the ring because the Prior had narrowed the argument down to the views of its two most vocal protagonists. It was a way of flushing out the right thing to do. They were sitting in the Scriptorium, Anselm and the Prior facing Dunstan’s desk, which was completely bare save for an old Sainte Croix typewriter, a relic that, when used, made work in the adjoining library impossible. In his late nineties, the old man had lost most of his white hair. The hard lines on his oddly greying face had become smooth of late, like a stiff shirt that had lost the tightness of its weave. He was wearing light-sensitive glasses and the lenses had turned a dark brown. He was smiling.
‘My view is kick him out right now.’
Dunstan’s accent had been refined by family, Eton and inclination. Dismayed by the austerity of monastic dress, he wore a silk cravat. He had a large and colourful selection, the choice for the day always worn with patrician flamboyance, the ruff clearly visible above the frayed black collar of his habit. His manner was debonair, though Anselm always sensed an element of tension, as if he was itching for a pink gin. One elbow rested on his desk, the open hand seeming to hold an invisible decanter. A sort of monastic Wilde, often ignored, he was enjoying the importance of being relied upon.
‘Can’t say I’m entirely surprised,’ Dunstan continued. ‘I won’t repeat what I said in Chapter’ – but he did – ‘we knew nothing about him. We didn’t ask. We should have done. And now we’re entangled in the dirty laundry of some half-baked outfit with links to the French. I never liked his accent, frankly, but I kept that to myself.’
‘You didn’t,’ said Anselm. ‘And you appear to have forgotten our Order owes its existence to the French … and that my mother was French.’
The Prior was patient. ‘Don’t you think we ought to ask some questions first?’
‘God, no.’ If he hadn’t been a monk, Dunstan would have added ‘old boy’, but it hung in the air, unsaid.
‘Why not?’
‘We know enough. I’d say too much as it is.’ He reached for a pencil and began rotating it between the fingers of one hand – a trick learned to add tension during an interrogation. ‘You appr
eciate I’ve considerable experience handling people who can’t be trusted. Bent coins.’
‘I do.’
Dunstan never tired of hinting at his wartime credentials: how he’d done risky stuff in Belgium with the Special Operations Executive; how, transferred to Military Intelligence, he’d devised intricate plans to capture Nazis on the run. ‘In the Service I was known as “the Weaver”.’ No one took him seriously. Except the Prior, who said:
‘But I’m inclined to learn more. Why shouldn’t we?’
Dunstan seemed to speak to one of the slower undergraduates who’d made his later academic life a grinding chore. ‘Occam’s razor. Keep things simple. We already know he must have done something seriously wrong.’
‘How?’ interjected Anselm.
‘Let me assist: the false name, the concealed occupation – if it had ever been a vocation – and the curious fact that his own Order
… these Clementines … want him out of the way. It’s fairly obvious, isn’t it?’ – again, the ‘old boy’ hovered between them. ‘They don’t want him found because he’s made some dreadful hash of things. Something embarrassing. I’d rather not know what he’s been up to.
Thing is, you see, the more you know the more you’re involved. Not what we want. Involvement brings responsibility.’
‘Any other thoughts?’ asked the Prior.
‘Oh yes.’
‘Well?’
Dunstan’s dark glasses flashed at Anselm. He was in his element. It was like the old days, debriefing the credulous in a safe house off the Brompton Road. ‘He’s used you.’
Anselm sighed. ‘How?’
‘Made you pity him.’
‘Nonsense.’
Dunstan rotated the pencil again. ‘I wouldn’t be too sure. He tells you absolutely nothing about himself but lets you know he’s lost his faith’ – Dunstan could have been talking about an umbrella – ‘and that he’d like to get back to the Garden of Eden where every mistake’s a nice mistake. And then he turns up for Lauds to join in the singing. Oh come on. It’s all so amateur. Thought him bent then and I think him bent now. He made you his advocate. He wanted you to offer him a job. So he pulled the right levers and you did the asking. No shame in that. You lack my experience.’
The Silent Ones Page 2