Aelred's Sin

by Lawrence Scott

  He has died to the world, Mum would say.

  He was sort of frozen in time; would always be the guy who left. Then there would be a letter. He wrote all his letters to her. They were addressed to my father and us as well, but they were to my mother. She shared them with us all, me mostly, the last one at home, her Benjamin. I remember now I used to feel sick and have to leave the table.

  I am now back on my first morning, a winter’s day, at Ashton Park, 1963. The afternoon before, Father Dominic, the guest master, had met me in a Land Rover at the top lodge where the taxi from the station had dropped me, prevented from entering because of the high drifts of snow. ‘Brother Chrysostom was very old. Ninety. He died last night and we are keeping his vigil,’ Father Dominic said as we drove down the narrow winding drive from the top lodge down to the monastery in the small valley of Ashton Park. I couldn’t see anything because the banks of snow were so high. And though it was only two in the afternoon, it was as dark as night.

  It was like night. I think I said, It’s like night,’ and then I thought that Father Dominic thought that I was stupid. ‘I’ve never seen snow before.’ I had never felt cold. It was like putting your hand in the ice compartment of the Frigidaire. Before, cold was the drop in temperature in the mountains at school. My mother had given me a bottle-green cardigan.

  When we got to the front door with my trunk, Father Prior said, ‘Ninety-five in the shade is it, where you come from?’ He laughed. I smiled, shyly.

  The house smelt of boiled cabbage. The panelling on the parlour wall was dark oak. Dark oak: I read that in books about England, about the time of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. ‘Is there a priest’s hole in this house? I learnt that when I was doing English History. Then we changed to West Indian history, no longer kings and queens, Cardinal Wolsey, but slavery and emancipation. Wilberforce. Slave ships, black people packed in rows like bananas, and the islands changed hands many times between the European powers, like pawns in a game between the French, English, Spanish, Portuguese and the Dutch,’ I babbled.

  ‘Well, you’ll have to have a look,’ Father Dominic said, tapping the panelling, smiling. ‘And maybe there is even a secret tunnel, a runaway’s escape.’ Then we went into see Father Abbot and I had to kneel to kiss his ring.

  ‘Father Justin, this is your new charge,’ the Abbot said. The heavy door closed behind a broad monk, who smiled without opening his mouth, his lips a thin line. His hand felt like sandpaper. He smelt of pomme aracs. Later I saw the bulbs on the windowsill of his cell. Hyacinths, I learnt. I breathed in the smell of my childhood, the red fruit which looked like pears whose pulp was like cotton wool, smelt strangely like these flowers, blue like Quink ink, which grew from bulbs into fleshy leaves and petals like skin. The scent hung heavy in the room on the windowsill above the black, hot-water pipes. Father Justin took me up to the dormitory of the novitiate wing.

  ‘We’ve put an electric blanket in your bed. It’s not usual, but Father Abbot thought it best for the first night. You may dispense with it when you think you can cope.’ That night I woke thinking I had a raging temperature. I had forgotten to turn the blanket off. I was hot and then cold.

  He tells his life like a story. He wanted it told, even then. I will tell it.

  I see now that there were other things which bothered him, for instance, the special significance he gives to those boys: Redhead, Espinet, Ramnarine and Mackensie. Obviously looking back he felt guilty about the colour business. He didn’t have to go through all that we had to go through with Black Power. It doesn’t seem natural, his preoccupation with race. I mean, they are like anyone else to me. Like Krishna who works for me: he’s like any other guy. He’s a friend really. But it wouldn’t have been like that in his day. Yes, things had to change. I don’t get too wound up about it. Some black people still do. Miriam asked me the other day about it. She asked whether there were any memorials to what happened. I didn’t know what she meant at first.

  I mean, it’s nearly two hundred years ago, I said.

  But the repercussions are still there, she said. Think what it would be like if we had erased the holocaust. Slavery is like that to black people.

  It hadn’t occurred to me that she was Jewish. Things like what Miriam says make me think that these are J. M.’s adult friends; make me wonder about who he became.

  Spiritual Friendship

  Feed me with raisin cakes

  restore me with apples…

  Song of Songs

  Because of the strict rule of silence throughout the day, other than at recreation in the common room and out of necessity at work, Aelred did not have many opportunities to talk with Benedict. They might meet on the farm, in the apiary, in the orchard or walled garden, or at any of the other work places where the monks laboured to bring in their simple fare, speaking only when it was absolutely necessary, or with the signs of the hands. ‘Let leave to speak be seldom granted to observant disciples. In much speaking thou shalt not escape sin,’ said the holy Rule

  It was not possible, Aelred felt, really to feel you were ever getting to know these men who were around you. Yet he did feel close and at one with the community at work, in the chapter house, in the refectory, chanting and listening to reading. When the lights went out and there was only the wind in the copper beeches outside the window of his cell, he felt that they slept as a brotherhood.

  Copper beech, he whispered. It was a word in a dream. England. Aelred slept, caught between worlds.

  The jacaranda swayed beneath the verandah.

  ‘I don’t feel that I’m really getting to know anyone,’ Aelred said to Father Justin at his weekly meeting with the novice master.

  ‘It takes time, brother. It’ll come without noticing, without having to be told, or without much talking. Be observant of your fellow brothers’ needs. Their characters will reveal themselves. You will know them in Christ.’

  ‘Yes, I try that, but I mean like having a pardner.’

  ‘Pardner?’ Father Justin looked at Aelred quizzically.

  ‘Oh, sorry, that’s our word back home. Like a friend, someone you really get on with. Someone you feel something special with. You find it easier to talk to them about problems, feelings. And isn’t the love of God in the love that we show each other?’ He tried to sound knowing and mature in his conclusion.

  ‘Yes, but appropriately, in line with our vows, in line with our rule of silence. You can talk to God, brother. You can come and talk to me. What you are suggesting is the communication of the world. And I must warn you against particular friendships. There’s much danger in them.’

  ‘Yes, I remember that from school. In my boarding school my confessor warned me of those. But that was when I was just growing up. Will I not be able to have a friend ever for the rest of my life?’

  ‘Did you heed your confessor?’ Father Justin avoided answering Aelred’s question directly.

  ‘I tried, in a way, but it didn’t work.’ Aelred could feel himself censoring his thoughts.

  ‘Your heart should be for God, brother, and for all your brothers equally.’

  Aelred listened and thought Father Justin’s words a hard doctrine. He remembered Dom Placid at school saying that love was painful. But he did not seem to be suggesting he should avoid it. He wanted to ask Father Justin about what he had talked about with Dom Placid, but he didn’t feel encouraged to do that. He certainly didn’t feel he could mention Benedict. He wanted to love all his fellow brothers, but that wasn’t the love that seemed to be the most difficult. He would try and follow Father Justin’s way and concentrate on his private prayer with God. But it seemed that there was one self which was trying that way and then another self that wanted something quite different.

  He had not clicked with Father Justin. He found talking with him difficult. What was he going to do about that? The Novice Master was very important.

  Since the moment in the library with Benedict, and noticing the portrait of the black boy on the staircase, which he
could not get out of his mind and which distracted his meditations, as did thoughts of his relationship with Ted, he had not spoken to Benedict. Their formal meetings as his guardian angel were now over. ‘You know the ropes now,’ he had said at the end of that final formal session. He hardly saw him, except for choir and refectory. He talked to others at recreation. He had fleeting glimpses of him in the cloister. Benedict walked with his head bowed and hooded. He tried to meet his eyes, but they were downcast or averted. He had been embarrassed the last time he spoke with him in the library in passing. Then he thought he shouldn’t try to get his attention. That was precisely not Father Justin’s way.

  Was Benedict weaning him? He felt that he could at least smile at him. Had all his attention been solely because he was his guardian angel and Aelred had been his charge? Was that all there was to it? Had it only been a duty? That would be in line with Father Justin’s way. But he had felt other things with Benedict. There had been a kind of charm. He had not imagined it, had he?

  Aelred began to feel homesick again. So, the spring had not changed his feelings, nor Benedict. The spring had continued with surprises. The flowers Aelred had learnt the names of - snowdrop, crocus, forsythia, daffodil, tulip - burst and burgeoned into the full shade of trees, as well as a host of flowering plants and shrubs he could not name and pin down. There was magnolia. This world was too different and he did not know enough of it fast enough. Ashton Park was growing too quickly. He leant against the rough stone wall of the cloister which caught the sun. All around was cold despite the sun. But this one spot was hot. He thought of how lizards lay in the sun at home. He warmed himself. The lizards moved among the dry almond leaves.

  The new blossom suggested other colours, other shades, other names: poui, bougainvillea, flamboyante. In his mind the colours were too lurid for this light; smells were too rank for this soft powdery air.

  Words are a world, he thought. Muslin is for dresses, linen for sheets, cotton for shirts and aprons, broderie anglaise for bodices. He heard his mother and Toinette. His father wore a pith hat for the sun, a rim of sweat on his brow. His arms were the colour of pawpaw. His horse was sprinkled with the colour of cinnamon and flour. And she, his mother, before she came down from her room, dipped her comb in a glass of water. It was light like a hummingbird’s flicker, hovering like a halo over her hair. She smelt of l’herbe-à Madame Lalie; yellow-white lily flowers on a green lawn, collected by a black woman in her white cotton apron. She knelt and smelt of ginger and bayrum. It was Toinette. Toinette was black like bark, glossy like coral. Blue butterflies pinned themselves to a hedge of sweet lime. Marbleu. Between jalousies he could see the birdbath on the lawn at Malgretoute. Water is a mirror for a sky of enamel-basin blue. Breeze moves green palms. Palmistes! Breeze moves green hills. And again he heard Toinette’s voice: ‘Mungo have a scar right there on his neck. Like when you sweetheart give you a kiss on the neck and you could see the bite. But is no kiss. Mungo have to run. Mungo have to break his chains and run away.’

  Snatches of the story were coming back to Aelred. They reminded him that he must go back to the library and carry on his reading about Master Walter, who had an estate in Antigua. He had made a fortune in sugar and added on a wing to the house at Ash Wood. But he never stayed there long. Old Sir Dewey, his father, could no longer make the journey, and Master Dewey always had to make yet another voyage to the West Indies. He could not trust those half-breed overseers with the running of the place. There had been a fire last time he was away and the darn niggers had almost ruined the place. There had been expensive repairs to be done to the sugar mill.

  ‘Grandmammy say they always tie Mungo because he always running away and the Master can’t afford to lose a young able-bodied boy.’ Toinette’s story threaded itself in with Aelred’s readings in the library of Master Walter Dewey and his voyages to the West Indies.

  ‘But where he get the scar on his neck, Toinette?’

  Maybe if he spoke in secret, in confession, he would get some help with his other preoccupation. Aelred wrestled with his dilemma. He began in the usual way, kneeling at the prie-dieu at the side of Father Basil’s desk. ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been a week since my last confession.’ Then he was silent. He didn’t know how to start. It was not like before, with a list of sins: pride, jealousy, losing his temper, impure thoughts. He wanted to talk about a condition.

  In the end it was Father Basil who spoke. ‘Is something worrying you, brother? Is there something you would like to talk out? Take your time. We can wait like this till you’re ready.’

  ‘I’m homesick, father.’

  ‘Well, that’s only natural. And that’s not a sin.’ Father Basil smiled.

  ‘But it’s something else.’

  ‘Yes.’ Aelred kept staring at a statue of a donkey on Father Basil’s desk. He remembered the sermon Father Basil had preached one Sunday of how the donkey that had carried the Virgin Mary and the child Jesus to Bethlehem and then on their flight to Egypt had experienced its sweetest burden. He then developed this long meditation on the donkey, a beast of burden, and of the burdens that we must be thankful that we have to carry. Father Basil had a simple childlike faith and devotion. The statue of the donkey was homely and comforting. ‘And what do you miss the most, brother?’

  ‘My friends.’

  ‘Any particular friend?’

  ‘Yes, in a way.’ Aelred did not want to talk about Ted. ‘Having friends.’

  ‘Yes, that’s a big thing to give up and you’re still very young. You’ve a lot of growing to do. You mustn’t be impatient with yourself.’

  ‘But I’m not allowed to have a friend, am I?’

  ‘Do you think you know how to treat a friend? What care you must take? Why do you think you mustn’t have a friend?’

  ‘That’s what Father Justin says. That there’s a danger in particular friendships.’

  ‘There are dangers. That’s very true. That’s why I ask you whether you know how to take care and how to treat a friend in a true friendship.’

  ‘I want to be able to.’

  ‘Well, go ahead and try within our rules and with care. Think of the other. Maybe, and this is natural in one as young as yourself, you’re thinking too much of yourself and what you want. What does your friend want.? Think about that.’

  Aelred left Father Basil’s room feeling freer. He felt that Father Basil had mixed Father Justin’s way with another possibility. Once he was careful, he could try. Yes, there were the rules of silence. But there were moments when it might be appropriate to talk to Benedict. He seized his chance in the laundry one Monday morning.

  Working in the laundry room meant being confined all day in the hot steamy room with the tubs and washing machines, the electric driers, mangles and roller irons. Then the rules of silence were relaxed slightly. Brother Fergus, who was in charge, would give the signal and then they could have their break. When they had their coffee break it would be appropriate to exchange a few words.

  But Aelred could have bit his tongue to stop himself once he started speaking. Hardly were they out in the courtyard, outside the laundry room, and he found himself, coincidentally alone with Benedict, when he blurted out, ‘You’ve hardly smiled at me. You look away now.’ This was not following Father Basil’s advice. He was thinking of himself. But it did not stop him. ‘I know the rules, but you don’t have to be so cold.’

  Benedict said nothing at first in reply to this unexpected outburst. ‘There are others here. Please take care. I think of you. I pray for you at the beginning of your novitiate. It wouldn’t be right to distract you. I don’t mean to be cold.’

  ‘Well, you are. You’ve already distracted me.’

  ‘What I did, brother, was as a caring guardian angel, within the custom and practice of our community. That relationship is over now. We must meet appropriately in community. Certainly not like this. Not speaking to me like this. You must examine yourself.’

  ‘And what abou
t the other day on the staircase outside the library? You looked embarrassed last time I mentioned it.’

  ‘What, brother? What do you mean?’

  ‘You know what I mean. When I was standing looking at the portrait.’

  Benedict would not continue. ‘We must get back to work. Don’t think badly of me. I’ve got your interests at heart. Be patient with our life, with the new life you’ve chosen.’

  Aelred knew he had gone about it all wrongly.

  At recreation that evening, Benedict made a point of sitting next to Aelred on the bench in the sunken garden where the novitiate met for recreation now that the weather was warmer. ‘I’ve hardly told you about myself, have I? You’ve told me so much already about your home and your young friend, Ted.’ Aelred was immediately transformed from his depression, which had come upon him in the laundry earlier in the day.

  ‘You said that you were from the valleys up north.’

  ‘Yes, you remember.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I studied at Oxford. That’s not too far from here. Read English. Then I became a teacher for a short while. After visiting here I loved it so much I decided to join. That’s the simple version.’

  ‘Is there a more complicated version?’

  They both began to feel at ease. This was appropriate, Aelred thought. This was what Benedict was teaching him. He had to keep biting his tongue. There was so much he wanted to tell Benedict.

  The bells went for Vespers. And as they strolled up through the gardens, Benedict said, walking close to Aelred, ‘“Glory be to God for dappled things …/ All things counter …/ Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?).” Gerard Manley Hopkins, a Jesuit and a great poet. Look for him in the library.’

  This little moment enlarged the spirit of Aelred. It felt as if something special was being said to him.