by John Watt
When the time of the vacancy was come, in 1535, he performed Saint Ignatius’ spiritual exercises; in which, such was his fervour, that he passed four days without taking any nourishment, and his mind was taken up day and night in the contemplation of heavenly things.
In 1534, on the feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, Saint Ignatius and his six companions, of whom Francis was one, had made a vow at Montmartre to visit the Holy Land and unite their labours for the conversion of the infidels. They travelled, in 1536, all through Germany on foot, loaded with their writings, in the midst of winter, which that year was very sharp and cold. Xavier, to overcome his passions, and punish himself for the vanity he had formerly taken in leaping (for he was very active, and had been fond of such corporal exercises) in the fervency of his soul, had tied his arms and thighs with little cords, which, by his travelling, swelled his thighs, and sunk so deep into the flesh as to be hardly visible.
The saint bore the pain with incredible patience, till he fainted on the road; and, not being able to go any farther, was obliged to discover the reason. His companions carried him to the next town, where the surgeon declared that no incision could be safely made deep enough, and that the evil was incurable. In this melancholy situation, Faber, Laynez, and the rest spent that night in prayer; and the next morning Xavier found the cords broken out of the flesh. The holy company joined in actions of thanksgiving to the Almighty, and cheerfully pursued their journey.
After waiting a whole year in Rome to find an opportunity of passing into Palestine, and finding execution of that design impracticable, on account of the war between the Venetians and the Turks, Saint Ignatius and his company offered themselves to his holiness, to be employed as he should judge most expedient in the service of their neighbour. John III, King of Portugal, wrote to Don Pedro Mascaregnas, his ambassador in Rome, and ordered him to obtain six of these apostolic men, to be sent to plant the faith in the East Indies.
Saint Ignatius could grant him only two, and pitched upon Simon Rodriguez, a Portuguese, and Nicholas Bobadilla, a Spaniard. The former went immediately by sea to Lisbon; Bobadilla, who waited to accompany the ambassador, fell sick, and by an over-ruling supernatural direction, Francis Xavier was substituted in his room, on the day before the ambassador began his journey.
The journey was performed all the way by land, over the Alps and Pyreneans, and took up more than three months. At Pampelona, the ambassador pressed the saint to go to the castle of Xavier, which was but a little distant from the road, to take leave of his mother, who was yet living, and of his other friends, whom he would probably never more see in this world. But the saint would by no means turn out of the road, saying, that he deferred the sight of his relations till he should visit them in heaven. This wonderful disengagement from the world exceedingly affected Mascaregnas, who by the saintly example and instructions of the holy man, was converted to a new course of life.
‘Perhaps we could stop there. The story of Saint Francis Xavier is shaping like a rather long one, and promises to be a good deal longer; he’s still well short of the Indies. I think we can interrupt it to find out whether any memories are coming to the surface.’
Thomas puts the book aside. He sits back, eyes closed, arms and legs relaxed, head resting against the back of the chair. He recalls putting the book aside, a small ribbon-shaped leaf marking a page in the story of the life of Saint Francis Xavier. There is a clump of short twisted trees with narrow leaves, on a rocky headland. Under the sketchy foliage is a patch of mottled shade. He is sitting on the hard, uneven ground in this patch of shade. It is the middle of a blazing day. This is the only shelter from the sun as far as he can see in any direction; most of the headland is bare rock or low scrub only a foot or two high.
The patch of shade is barely enough for two people so although he has carefully placed the rucksack between him and Jane, she is still within arm’s reach, lying on her back, eyes closed, apparently asleep. His gaze, as if it has a life and intentions of its own, strays over her body, registering the way her breasts push up under her once-white shirt, taking in the stains of mud and sweat on her clothes, noticing that her legs have relaxed slightly apart, and a fold of her skirt has slipped into the small space between them. An intense sense of her difference, her femaleness, is strangely mixed with a sharp perception of her vulnerability. He turns his head away and tries to focus his mind on their situation.
Before he took out Lives of the Saints they had been eating a couple of biscuits each and a handful of dried fruit and nuts, washing them down with swampy water they had found the previous morning. It had tasted of roots and decaying leaves and mud. Now they have less than one small bottle left between them and a long, hot afternoon ahead. Another day tomorrow, perhaps many more.
Between the stems of the stunted trees that are throwing this sketchy shade he scans the next stretch of the coast: another long sweep of beach, with swells breaking in white foam. A fine mist of spray hangs over the line along which the waves are crashing onto the sand. Behind the beach the dunes rise higher as they march inland, starkly white in the glare, with patches of low greyish vegetation here and there. At the far end, a long way off, there is a rocky promontory. How many more repetitions of this sequence of beach and headland must they trudge over, before seeing some sign of human habitation?
Thomas’s mouth and throat feel as if they have been parched for days. He watches her for a few moments, her face half turned away from him, her breathing slow and steady. Carefully, he lifts the water bottle out of the pack, takes two or three extra mouthfuls, replaces the lid and returns the bottle quietly to the pack, thinking meanwhile, that this is only fair after all, when he is burdened with extra weight. She is relying on him to carry the food and water for both of them.
Minutes later she begins to stir, sits up with her back against the twisted stem of one of the small trees. She looks around and sees the book laid down on a slab of rock between them. After a few seconds of hesitation she speaks. May she look at it, just for a few minutes? She has noticed him deciding to carry it all this way, reading from it each day, and wondered.
Thomas feels the familiar prickly embarrassment about exposing himself to anyone outside the circle, but passes the book to her, wondering whether it will seem to her rather … odd. He goes back to scanning, or pretending to scan, the next stretch of beach and the rollers breaking on it. Out of the corner of his eye he sees her open the book where it is marked with the leaf, watching apprehensively as she looks over the double page she has opened and turns back to the beginning to read the story through. Little creases form in the middle of her forehead, just above her nose, giving her face an expression of serious concentration, with, at this moment, a suggestion of puzzlement.
She closes the book slowly and places it in her lap, staring into the distance at the beach and the line of spray hanging over it before turning towards him, hesitant. She can’t understand the story she’s just read. He takes the book from her outstretched hand without meeting her eyes, and replaces it in the pack. He was right to feel uncomfortable.
She makes another start. That bit about his mother. What’s his name—Francis Xavier? About visiting his mother. Actually about not visiting his mother. She got the impression that he was supposed to be admired for that. Is that right? Admired for passing by without taking the trouble to visit his mother?
Thomas clears his dry throat and makes a start on an explanation. It’s not just that, it’s because he chose to do God’s work instead. What God had called him to do—wanted him to do.
The young woman listens, creases still marking her forehead. It takes her some time to respond. What did God want him to do? Wouldn’t God have wanted him to visit his mother? Especially if she was old and this was his last chance. Jane was brought up a Methodist, went to Methodist Sunday School. There were prizes for learning bible texts—Golden Texts, they called them—with attendance prizes too. What they learned at Sunday School was that God wanted them to be kind t
o people, especially old people, poor people, sick people, babies, children: anyone in need of kindness. Sometimes the teacher would organise them to take a little present that they had made, like a picture they’d drawn, to one of the old folk in the area. That was what they were taught: to do things like that.
To her way of thinking, this man Francis Xavier was being selfish, doing what he wanted to do without considering his mother; and imagining that God wanted him to do this, too. That’s self-centred. What was the ambassador supposed to have learned from this example? Did he learn not to waste his time visiting his own elderly mother? As she saw it, he began with a better idea of the right thing to do. Maybe Francis needed to learn something from the ambassador.
The prickly feeling has spread from the back of Thomas’s neck across his shoulders. He struggles to put an answer together. He begins an attempt: there are some things more important than … he pauses. His throat feels tight. Perhaps, in a way, now that he thinks about it, visiting his mother might have been the right thing to do. Without answering her he looks away, suddenly aware of the discomfort of sitting on the uneven stony ground. He grabs at the stem of one of the stunted trees to hoist himself up. Reaching for the rucksack, he stands, heaving it up onto his shoulders. They need to move on. They must find water soon; it’s nearly all gone.
Jane stands too, levering herself up, rubbing her painful leg. They plod down the slope of the headland towards the next beach, Thomas trying to judge the distance to the next headland at the far end. And beyond that, how much further?
Two hours later they are still plodding through soft sand, and the next promontory still looks a good half hour away. Jane is lagging behind. When he looks back, she is limping more than in the morning. Perhaps he should have been more mindful of this and set an easier pace.
‘Wait a bit, please, Thomas,’ she calls to him.
He slows, stops, watches her struggling to catch up.
She flops down on the sand in front of him. She’s so tired. She can’t go on without a few minutes’ rest at least. And she’s so thirsty. Why don’t they finish the last of the water? It’ll run out some time very soon whatever they do.
He begins to object. Shouldn’t they be pushing on, looking for more? Then thinks again. Why not? There’s so little left. It won’t take them much further anyway. He swings the pack down, pulls out the bottle, and hands it to her.
She holds the bottle to her mouth, takes three or four small careful mouthfuls, shakes it to gauge how much is left, and hands it back. There. She’s had her share, nearly, anyway. He needs a bit more, carrying the extra weight for both of them.
Thomas feels as if something inside him is shrinking, tightening, as he remembers his secretive mouthfuls at the last stop. Has she picked up his thought, seen what he did. But she couldn’t have done. She is offering him the bigger share freely, out of generosity.
He tips the bottle, tasting the muddiness of the last dregs, wondering where the next mouthful will come from.
Choosing a spot on the sand a few feet from her, Thomas flops down and watches the rollers crashing on the beach, enjoying the cool dampness as a slight onshore breeze drifts a cloud of fine spray over them.
*
They are trekking further along the beach towards the next headland, each step requiring as much mental as physical effort. He is walking ahead, trying to pick the firmest level of the sand. Sometimes it looks better high up above the wave line; sometimes it appears to be more firmly packed where the breakers have swept up the slope of the beach leaving it smooth and wet. Thomas keeps switching from one line to the other, but the change never makes much difference.
They are walking barefoot; shoes were discarded the previous day when they both found them a handicap in the soft beach sand. But that decision is turning out to be a mistake: his feet are beginning to blister. Occasionally he slows his stride and looks back to see how far she is lagging behind. Her feet are probably beginning to blister too; she hasn’t complained about them, and he hasn’t asked. Water bottles rattle in his pack at every stride, reminding him of their emptiness. His throat is parched and an ache at the back of his head has been slowly intensifying, but they must keep moving.
The next rocky headland is much closer, and on the near side of it he can make out something different from the lines of glaring white sand-hills with the occasional scatter of pale, greyish grass and low drab bushes: a small patch of deeper green in the face of the dunes.
As he trudges on the details gradually become clearer. The darker triangle is in the mouth of a small cleft in the dunes. On the far side the higher ground of the promontory rises, but he can’t make out what is in the gap. Obviously there’s a patch of vegetation quite different from what grows in the parched dunes and the thin dry soil of the rocky headlands. But what, and why?
At closer range he thinks he can pick out something else: a small gutter in the sand emerging from the mouth of the gully. Something there is shining in the sun, high up on the beach above the tide line, but the glare from the afternoon sun ahead makes it impossible to see the details. Despite his exhaustion, Thomas puts on a faster pace, anxiety gnawing at him.
From a few yards away it is clear that a small stream is trickling out of the mouth of a gully, spilling over a shelf of pale rock and flowing a few yards, before losing itself in the beach sand well above the level at which the waves are breaking and sweeping up the slope. Surely, he thinks, so close to the sea, it can’t be fresh.
He drops to his knees without waiting to remove his pack and tries a mouthful cupped in his hand. Relief floods his mind. He turns and beckons, urgently.
‘Fresh water! Thank God!’
He thinks of the miraculous spring that gushed out at the spot struck by the saint’s staff in the story of Saint Sabas. Immediately another thought intrudes, unbidden, disrupting any idea of a miracle. This little stream was obviously here long before his arrival—here for decades by the look of the shrubbery around it. Why have conflicting thoughts like these recently been jostling for space in his mind more and more often?
*
The sand is cool against his back through his thin shirt. Thomas is lying in the dense shade cast by small deep-green trees growing in a narrow gap between the dunes. There is a faint sound of the water as it trickles down the stream bed and spills over the rock shelf at the edge of the beach. Outside the tent of leaves the glare on the beach is still harsh, but the sun is lower, dipping towards the sea to the west. He realises that he must have dropped off to sleep after drinking as much water as he could take. A few yards away Jane is still asleep, but beginning to stir.
She turns over muttering something, then abruptly sits up, rigid, looking around, eyes wide with alarm. As she turns far enough to see him watching her, the fear fades from her face. Settling back on one elbow, facing him, she explains her fright. It was a dream: she was swimming in a huge expanse of water with no shore in sight and nothing to suggest which way to swim to reach land. Then she woke suddenly and didn’t know where she was. Until she saw him, and remembered.
Jane smiles momentarily at him and lies back on the cool, shaded sand, looking up into the canopy of leaves, speaking, as if to the leaves.
‘What a godsend—this place, with the shade, and the coolness, and the water. Especially the water.’
Thomas, too, lies back on the sand looking up into the leaves, wondering about the meaning of that momentary smile. Was it a message of some sort for him? Or was it only relief at escaping from the dream? Her questions the previous day about his embarking on a celibate life—did they also have a meaning for him that he missed? He hadn’t thought about this at the time and is sharply aware that this is, for him, uncharted territory. Wilderness.
Jane sits up again. Stands, her feet sinking into the loose sand of the side of the gully. She’ll just go for a quick walk. Over this sand-hill. She’ll be back in a couple of minutes.
After some initial confusion, Thomas has grasped the coded meani
ng. He’ll do the same, over the hill on the other side of the gully. He tramps up the slope, with a backward glance at her heading in the opposite direction. Over the crest of the hill he changes direction, hurrying towards the head of the gully. Dropping to his hands and knees, he creeps cautiously to a vantage point from which, through a screen of coarse grey grass, he can peer in the direction she has taken. And there she is, glancing around quickly so as to make sure that she is out of sight. Apparently satisfied, she hitches up her skirt, pulls down her pants and squats.
Thomas is rigid with anxiety and guilt about being seen himself but continues to stare at something he has only imagined, shamefully, in the vaguest way. Excitement about seeing and anxiety about being seen—the two feelings compete for space in his consciousness.
She stands, pulls up her pants and smooths down her skirt. The unselfconscious innocence of her movements suddenly turns Thomas’s attention onto himself. What is he doing, peering at her furtively, in hiding? He feels shamed, sullied. He cringes down behind the grass screen, backing away from his vantage point, on hands and knees, taking to his feet only when he feels safer, hurrying to be back in position in time, or at least to be returning to the mouth of the gully from the appropriate direction.
He is back where the stream spills onto the beach when she pushes through the shrubs on the other slope. He watches her feet sliding and sinking in the sand, and feels, as he tries to look her in the face, another level of shame. As if he has sullied her as well as himself. And yet, what harm has he done her? If she doesn’t know?