Capcir Spring

by Jean de Beurre

  John moved his head and looked down at her face. On his movement she opened her eyes and looked up at him. She smiled. A great feeling of emotion and affection suddenly overwhelmed John. And in a moment of insight he recognised that this chaste night of sleeping side by side had been a more intimate moment than all the physical gymnastics that he and Kate performed. He bent over and kissed her softly on the forehead and then said, "Its morning. Time to get up and see what this day will bring."

  She smiled again but didn't immediately return the kiss. "Lets get going, I think we've got a great deal of talking to do" She kissed him gently on the cheek as she got up.

  11

  John cleared the remains of the previous evenings meal and made a large pot of coffee whilst Mary drove down to the shops in her car to get fresh, warm croissants. As she burst back through the door she said,

  "Andre and Mark were right. I think things are really starting to happen here today. There are many more cars than usual in and around the Village Square this morning and several groups of people standing talking. And it is only just 8.30."

  They sat down but had hardly spread the first jam on their croissants when the doorbell rang. A tall young man entered and looked, in some ways, a clone of Andre. He introduced himself as an old friend of Andre and he was now a writer and environmental activist and animal rights campaigner. He also explained that he was the local co-ordinator for Friends of the Earth and involved with another organisation for protecting mountainous habitats that neither of them had heard of. He accepted their offer of a coffee and there followed an intense conversation on the pressures and benefits that tourism can bring to mountainous regions. He was a skilled interviewer and John watched the way that he prized what he wanted to know out of Mary in a gentle way. They gave him directions to the site and eventually he left.

  He had hardly been gone for five minutes before the bell rang again.

  This time it was a man from the University of Perpignan and with him was a representative of the office for the protection of ancient monuments. And so it carried on for the rest of the morning. A representative from the forestry office arrived to ask about the historical significance of the site, and then an elderly cleric who introduced himself as the Archdeacon of the diocese with responsibility for redundant and disused churches. He was short, fat and looked tired and made it plain that he thought he was wasting his time. A tabloid journalist who was trying to find the human-interest side of the story followed him. This one also wanted photos of Mary. He asked many questions about Andre and who had attacked him and tried to get Mary to agree to make potentially defamatory remarks about the characters who had been involved in the events. He mistook Mary's reluctance to answer his questions as a negotiating stance for a fee for the story and so offered her a modest sum of money for a full exclusive interview. Mary found him a repulsive character and felt herself dirtied by contact with him. She was trying to convince him that she did not want to answer his questions and John was wondering about throwing him out when they were saved by the bell. He disappeared quickly when the next visitor appeared, a police inspector who had come to interview them both about the burglary, the alleged assaults and any other matters that related to the travellers. The policeman asked many leading questions and was surprised when Mary championed her friendship with Andre and Mark rather than giving him ammunition for moving them on.

  By eleven thirty they had both had enough. John had been busy keeping the visitors supplied with cups of coffee. Mary felt that she had been talking continuously for three hours.

  "Lets go to the zoo!" he suggested.

  Mary nodded at once. Ever since she had first visited the tourist information bureau on her first day in the village she had meant to visit the Pyranean mountain zoo. She pinned a hastily scribbled note to the door "back at 5pm" and they were off out of the chalet and out at the car but as they were getting in a motorcycle pulled up alongside them.

  Neither of them recognised the figure in the heavy coat and full-face helmet who switched off the engine and hauled the bike onto its stand. He dismounted and slowly removed what looked like an unfamiliar helmet. It was Mark.

  "I have just come from the hospital and I thought you would want to know that Andre is feeling much better - in fact he wants to get out but they are keeping him in for another day at least. But he is back to himself. The bump on the head has not altered him but he has been thinking. He has instructed me to go to the agency and see if I can find a cottage for a long-term lease for us to put down some roots here. He will continue doing his ski development work and I can help or I can perhaps get some other work. I have worked in a bar and a restaurant before. And then in the winter he says we will both be able to get ski patrol jobs for the ski du fond trails. I am so excited. We were getting stale of the life in the bus. We didn't really fit. It was fine for a while but oh well you know… Andre has suggested I ask around and it is likely that some of the other travelling folk will buy the bus off us - that’s how we got it in the first place."

  Mark was really bubbling with all his news.

  "We are so pleased Andre is getting better quickly", said Mary "and we wish you every success with your plans" added John.

  "Must dash - lots to do. One of the guys lent me the bike. Isn't it great!" Finished Mark and buckled his helmet back on and started the bike and was away in a cloud of dust.

  At last John and Mary were on their way to the Parc Animalier. As Mary turned the car up the road to the zoo she said, "I feel empty. Everything has been taken out of our hands now. The ruins are no longer my baby. All these French journalists and academics will take over now and their universities will take over and organise the digs. And the protection people will do their bit to see that the site and the forests are protected and we go home and forget it all." It was a beautiful late spring day. The sun was shining brightly and spreading real warmth. "And do you know I feel in some ways quite relieved."

  They got out the car and went into the Parc Animalier. It was an extensive areas of forest that had large fenced enclosures within it containing the animals at one time indigenous to the Pyrenees.

  "Tell me, were those old Cathars really such a bad lot?" asked John.

  "The Cathar doctrines struck at the roots of orthodox Christianity and of the political institutions of Christendom, and the authorities of church and state united to attack them. I think there are similarities between their ideas and contemporary so called new age ideas. Perhaps that can be a new research project. Is the Cathar heresy alive and well and living in a new age travelers camp near you?!" She was making Jokes about her work that she had never done before.

  "Do you think you have an academic future?"

  "It used to be the only future that I saw for myself. But now I don't know. I don't know at all. I'll have to go back and write up my PhD thesis. I got a good grant for doing it and I have to finish that but then? The future has become an empty void. Perhaps all that ambition was a way of hiding from getting close to people again after I had been so badly hurt by James. The things that have happened here, the dreams or nightmares are what I mean, not the sordid little development plans of Edoard, what were they all about? Were they just my fertile imagination working on the stories I was researching and intertwining them with my past. Have you studied dreams and what they mean?"

  "No more than anyone who has read widely to be a better counsellor of people with problems. I don't know if you have had visionary experiences. Perhaps you have seen the past. I heard a theory once that the rocks of certain areas where there is a high silicon content record the energy emissions of those events. We all know that in computers little chips of silicon can perform unbelievable tasks with minute pulses of electricity. The theory stated that rocks could act as recording devices of past traumatic events and when really sensitive people come along they are able to sense the past events in some way as if they were happening to themselves.

  "That theory, which I must say I am pretty sceptical abo
ut, seems to fit with your experiences. Only that in your case you have the added factor of recent traumatic events in your own past. On the other hand it could be just that you have a fertile imagination and you bring your historical quest to life when you go to sleep."

  "But how can you relate such nutty new age theories that I would have expected to hear from the travellers to your spirituality as a Jesuit or to your professional training as a counsellor?"

  "Perhaps. How about this? Physicists now can do mathematical models in nine dimensions. We only acknowledge with our senses the four of height breadth length and duration. Suppose we add another dimension that of spirit. It could be something that cannot be seen or felt or touched or smelt or heard yet is something that although at present immeasurable is something that we can feel in our guts. It is there in all of us but in some people in a greater amount than others. Now suppose that this dimension of spirit could be measured. It would have two poles one going towards things that were good starting from the mildly pleasurable through degrees of pleasure to extreme ecstasy beyond our imaginings. And the other axes is measuring things unpleasant to us starting with the mildly uncomfortable and going to the extremes of obscene evil that I pray no one in their wildest dreams can ever comprehend. Everything that exists would be somewhere on this axis as measured by what it does to us that we feel in our guts. Most things are neutral, in the middle. so a rock or a shoe for instance evokes neither feelings of disgust nor exhilaration. Yet even in the simplest inanimate objects we begin to react to them. We like certain things more than others. So all the natural world impinges on us in ways we are unaware of in this hidden dimension affecting our emotional lives. Some would say that I am just describing in empirical form human likes and dislikes but I believe that these impulses are an actual scale of real values that we are aware of to a greater or lesser extent. And of course when you move beyond the natural world to the supernatural with all these extra dimensions to play about with its hardly surprising that we don't know what to make of something. Human instinctive likes and dislikes are very deep. They are also things that we know are true for us. I don't think our upbringing or early conditioning can explain them away. I believe in spiritual powers and principalities not in the sense of medieval demons and angels but they are very real forces in our world."

  Mary was silent for a while trying to get her mind round what John had just tried to explain. At last she said,

  "The bit about rocks acting as sort of tape recorders could explain how Andre meditating saw and was able to describe the same image of a monastically dressed man."

  "I can also see the idea of spiritual realities and our perception of things as good or evil through a feeling in our guts. But what is still confusing me is why should all the disturbing dreams go when I dreamed I as the woman of long ago was burned at the stake. After I experienced being burnt as a heretic I experienced a sense of peace like I haven't known for a long time. It was as if the fire had purged away all the unpleasantness that had so scared me in all the previous dreams.

  "I don't know the answer to that one. I suppose the supportive pastoral response would be to say that through dreaming this end of the woman who possessed your nocturnal thoughts you exorcised her from your subconscious. In the Bible though when ever there is an exorcism Jesus warned that you had to ensure the person was filled with the Holy Spirit lest twelve more demons seeing an empty house came and take up residence. It was.."

  John stopped abruptly. He knew what he wanted to say but the implication of saying it was great.

  "Go on" she urged.

  "When I have brought out my personal feelings before into a relationship it had tragic consequences. I am trying to be professional to help you."

  "Drop the professional mask. Be yourself. Say what you want to say."

  "I am hesitant to say what I'm going to say because it’s personal. And I might be wrong. Anyway what I'm thinking is this. At this point when the spirit was exorcised, then I come into your life.. Offering a relationship... affection to replace a hollow empty void."

  "John.. Yes I think you are right. You are special to me. I really like you being around. I woke this morning feeling that I wished every morning I could wake to find you close there beside me."

  "It’s not a one way thing you know. I too felt exactly the same this morning. Of course I have doubts. The prospect of a relationship of love with a woman after all I have been through and me still a priest... so many contradictions. But yes I think we have something special. Something I want to hold onto but the difficult bit now is working out how that will be possible.

  "If we were Andre and Mark we would look for a cottage down near the coast and take up the next part of our lives to follow this present one. But its not so simple for us. And John it is not just friendship though that is important too. When I married I lost most of my friends. We moved into a different world. James didn't like me having friends that weren't his friends too. And after.. well they all seemed to melt away, probably with embarrassment. They just didn't know what to say to me. Trusting people to make new friends when you are no longer a child and you have been hurt badly is very very hard."

  They came to a large gate and entered the enclosure of some long horned mountain goats. The goats were grazing near to the path and they stopped and looked at them.

  After staring at them in a restful silence for quite a while John began, "These animals probably think they are free. they have their territory and their neighbours. Really their enclosure is quite large. But we have come in through a gate and we know they are in a cage. We are in cages too. We think we can break out but its is very hard when you have lived with a particular set of bars for a long time. You too have said you are caged in by the thesis that you have to finish. And I don't have any money. You can't live on nothing and ex-Jesuits don't just walk into flexible high paid jobs."

  Mary interrupted at this point with a beaming face. "Last night I had a dream again. But it was different. It was of me, a new me, a content and happy me living in the hills, somewhere in the countryside, it could have been near here in France, or it might have been in England. I was growing and eating fresh fruit and vegetables and living in a stone hillside farmhouse. There were goats and children. No ruins, no academic job. And I experienced deep contentment. And you were there sitting by the fireside with me. You were slightly hazy in the dream and I could not seem to focus on you but I things were always at their most perfect when you were there. If the other dreams had such a negative affect on my life yet managed to rid me of the ghosts of James who I have been living with for years, then surely the promise of such a dream is worth chasing. It makes me want to stay around with you and find out how it will all turn out.

  It was now John's turn to share dreams. He paused with his mouth open wondering whether to say it or not but then he said "I don't want to return to the life of a priest. I don't know what I want to do yet but in your presence, now don't get me wrong, I've finally decided that the celibate life of a priest is not for me. Now I haven't known you long enough to know how our relationship will develop. Indeed if we have any sort of long term future together but at the moment I feel more alive when I am with you than I have felt anyone else in the past. I haven't lost my faith. But my calling to be a priest was as clear and distinct as the feeling I am getting now that there is something else that I should be doing with my life."

  " You know what we've both said. It amounts to let’s hang around together and see what happens. That sounds a remarkably adolescent, immature and irresponsible thing to say. But it sounds so right. I used to dream of the academic fame of revealing my discoveries to the world. But now, though I may get mention in the press, the French ministries and departments will take over and I'll not be wanted to dig my site. As if something like this could ever be mine. I think I only wanted to be a famous academic to make up for my total lack of recognition by James. I was a history student undergraduate when we met. He was a theology student. We married as
soon as we graduated and when he was a curate I became his assistant, the vicars wife. If we'd had children it might have been different. I was so young..."

  John broke the silence buy asking, "I've said I've still got a faith though perhaps not a vocation. You have never told me if God or religion plays any part in your life now?"

  "God left my life with James. The institution of the church and James completely between them destroyed all the beliefs and ideas I had of God. Where was God when I needed him? Why on earth doesn't God answer those questions? If god had been just a little more reasonable then I would have kept my faith. If God answered peoples problems and questions then probably the whole world would believe. I asked so many times why is this happening to me and there was a stony silence in reply. The days I was in hospital recovering from the attack I prayed fervently and continuously for a miracle - but there was no miracle. After a while I thought why bother continuing with this so I stopped. I felt ashamed even to mention these unanswered prayers to anyone. I was a sort of semi-professional religious person and I had found it didn't work. In fact you are the first person I have told about this. I found that all the disappointments tend to accumulate over time, undermining my faith with a lava flow of doubt. The more anger I directed at God, the more energy I seemed to gain. I realized that for several years I had shrunk inside myself. Now, as I started doubting, and even hating the church and other Christians around me, I felt myself coming back to life. True atheists do not, I presume, feel disappointed in God... But those who commit their lives to God, as I did, instinctively expect something in return. Is it wrong to have such expectations?"