by A. J. Cronin
‘Go outside and wait.’
I removed myself, still carrying the bag, and stood outside for at least ten minutes before the voice again materialised.
‘You may enter.’
I entered, put down the bag, and as a chair seemed to be placed for me in front of the desk, sat down.
‘Get to your feet.’
I obeyed, surveying my future Superior with considerable misgiving as he sat there, studying a folder that, with deeper misgiving, I knew to be my dossier. Have you ever seen the Phiz drawing of David Copperfield’s stepfather? This was it – the same stature and general repulsive appearance, the same dark, brooding, sadistic eyes. I did not at all like him, in fact, he made me feel exactly like little David before they sent him to the factory to wash bottles.
‘You know, dear Desmonde with the final “e”, that you are a full three days late in coming to me.’ The sarcasm in his voice was bitter, not amused.
‘I am sorry, Father, my mother accompanied me, and as she seemed tired, we spent two days in Rome, before coming on to the Ritz in Madrid, where, again, I felt it prudent to stay overnight.’
‘A truly filial devotion. And what did you do in Rome, my child?’
‘We had a private audience with His Holiness, the Pope.’
I thought that would sink him. It did not. He continued to smile and I assure you, Alec, I did not like that smile.
‘And what did His Holiness say to you?’
Misguidedly I spoke the truth.
‘He extolled the virtues of penance and self-sacrifice.’
Immediately, he raised his big fist and suddenly thumped the desk so hard it made everything on it jump. Alas, I jumped too.
‘These are the very words I should have spoken to you. And I speak them to you now, for they are the motto of this college and they are particularly applicable to you, an effete, completely spoiled mother’s boy! If I did not already see it written on your face, it is here, written in your record.’ He glanced at the folder on his desk. ‘Tell me, do you know anything of mortification?’
Again, misguidedly, since, though still fearful, I was becoming rattled, I said:
‘Yes, I do. My greatest friend takes an ice-cold bath every morning and runs two miles before he even has his porridge.’
His eyes glistened hungrily. ‘That’s my man. Could we ever get him here?’
‘He’s already on his way to becoming a doctor.’
‘Pity! What a missionary I would have made of him. We specialise in missionaries here, Desmonde with an “e”. I have in the past twelve years already sent out seven, of whom three have shed their blood in Darkest Africa.’
This blood-thirsty fellow was now arming me, Alec. He was worse than Jack the Ripper.
‘To come to the point. I am obliged to punish you for your flagrant disobedience of my order. You are gated for two weeks. And the room I shall give you will possibly not remind you of the Ritz.’
He banged the bell on his desk. Immediately a servant appeared. The Ripper instructed him. The man looked surprised, but picked up my valise and we departed, moving out of the lovely abbey and across to a remote part of the concrete erection. Here, he led the way down the basement steps to a small dark cellar-like cubicle with a minute window that afforded a horrid vista of some outdoor lavatories. The cell itself, was foully dirty and in frightful disorder.
I gazed at the dirty sagging bed, then turned to the fellow who was still holding my bags.
‘Who occupied this room?’
‘A student expelled only yesterday.’
‘What for?’
‘I believe for smoking the cigarette, señor.’ Then he added in a low confidential voice: ‘This is the punishment cell, señor.’
I brooded for a moment. I would not, simply would not have it.
‘Do not go! Wait here with my baggage. I will return.’
He seemed almost to expect this. He smiled and put down the bag.
I went up the beastly steps, straight back to the Ripper’s office, and went in.
He looked up from his desk. I was convinced he expected me.
‘Yes?’
‘I will not accept that stinking dungeon. I am at least entitled to cleanliness and decency.’
‘And if I don’t obey your demands?’
‘I shall walk straight out of here to Toledo, charter a taxi to Madrid, take a train to Rome and report the matter to the Holy Father.’
‘Very well,’ he said mildly. ‘Good-bye, Desmonde with an “ e”.
I stood there, blazing, while he resumed his work at the desk. Then, I turned, went out, and slowly made my way back to the cell. Now I no longer felt like little David, but like one of the bottles he had half washed out. I could not, of course I could not do it, and the Ripper knew it. How should I look, returning to my mother at the Ritz … No, never, never, I must make the best of it. There was still some spirit left in me. The servant was still standing by me. He knew I’d be back.
‘The little room would look better, much better, señor, if it were cleaned.’
I met and read his eyes. Thanking God for my fluent Spanish, a fact unknown to that sadistic bastard in his study, I said:
‘What’s your name?’
‘Martes, señor.’
I took out from my pocket book a beautiful new, crisp fifty peseta note and held it towards him. I knew it was a fortune to him. He knew it, too.
‘Martes! Bring a friend, with soap and water, everything for cleaning. Get fresh bedlinen, fresh curtains, find a carpet from another room. Make everything lovely, and fresh, and the money is yours.’
He put down the valise and was off like a flash. I waited just long enough to see him return with another of the college servants, who he introduced as José. Between them they were loaded with a variety of brushes, cloths, and buckets of water. As I went up the steps I heard them getting madly down to the job.
For about an hour or so I wandered round the grounds, inspecting some dilapidated tennis courts, into which cows from the neighbouring fields had obviously strayed to leave cards, a yard with several high Pelota walls, an old football field. I looked into the church, old Spanish and, I admitted to myself, most devotional, unspoiled, quite lovely. Classes were apparently in being, I met no one.
Finally, I returned to my quarters. Both servants were awaiting me outside and, indeed, followed me inside. In a word, I was staggered by what they had accomplished. The little room had been scrubbed and polished until it shone. A new linen curtain adorned the clean little window and a natty little Spanish rug lay on the tiled floor. Another gift from some empty room upstairs was a padded wicker arm chair. The chest of drawers, still exuding a healthy aroma of beeswax, was now revealed as a veritable Andalusian antique. And finally, the wreck of a bed had been put together and serviced with well bleached fresh white linen.
I looked gratefully at my two benefactors, both smiling and expectant.
‘Nice room now, señor. Quiet. Lovely cool in summer.’
I took out my pocket book and extracted another brand new fifty, fresh from the cashier at the Ritz. When I handed one fifty to each, their joy was a pleasure to behold.
‘We come often, when everything is quiet, to keep it nice, nice, señor.’
‘Do that, Martes and José, for now you are my friends.’
When they had gone, looking back with more smiles, I unpacked, put my things away in the newly papered drawers. Then stood my two little pictures on the chest, pushed the empty suitcase under the bed, and with a last look round, went out.
And there, in the yard, coming towards me, was my enemy.
‘Been busy, Fitzgerald?’
‘Not more than usual, father.’
‘Let’s have a look.’
He went down the steps. I did not follow. Presently, when he had obviously examined everything, opened my drawers and fingered my underwear, he emerged, smiling. And how I distrusted that smile.
Congratulations, Fitzgerald. You’v
e done a wonderful job. I didn’t know you had it in you.’ And he put a genial hand upon my shoulder.
Retreating from this false embrace, I looked him in the eye.
‘You know I did not do it. So don’t try to make me out a liar. Whatever you think of me I have never been that, and you’ll never trick me into being one.’
He was silent, then in his normal voice, he said:
‘Not bad, Fitzgerald. I may make a missionary of you yet. Now it’s time for our delicious merienda. Come, and I’ll show you the refectory.’
This was a large hall in the far new building with a platform at one end and below perhaps twenty long tables at which my future comrades were getting ready to stuff themselves. Hackett showed me to the end of one of the tables while he took the centre chair at the platform table where, on either side, he was flanked by two priests. Grace was then said and, as a youth began to read at a lectern from what apparently was the Book of Martyrs, the lunch was served, which suggested I might receive some tasty bits.
Alas, the dish was a tasteless olla podrida of rice and peas, semi-liquid, and floating with snippets of tough beef, which must have been severed with a hatchet. I nerved myself to eat my portion, knowing that if I did not learn to get down this fodder, I would undoubtedly starve to death. Some sour goat cheese followed with a hunk of bread, which actually was not bad, this followed by a bowl of black liquid masquerading as coffee. I managed this bitter brew in gulps. At least it was hot.
Meanwhile, I had been surveying the other inmates whom, for the most part, I detested on sight. In particular, a big ugly brute of a youth who sat at the head of the middle table and was addressed as Duff.
In regard to the clergy, one, and only one, seemed aware of my existence, a little waif of a man, red cheeked and grey haired, who kept moping and mowing in my direction. When I inquired of my neighbour as to his identity, he muttered, since silence was imposed:
‘Father Petitt, music master.’
Dear God, I thought, this is the last straw, and when we got up and gave thanks, and he seemed to be making signs to me, I hurriedly rose, mingled with the crowd and made tracks for my little cell. This was the free hour in which I began to compose and write this letter, now completed late, by candle light, on the following day.
As I cannot risk subjecting it to the censoring of bloody Hackett, I shall entrust it to my little Spanish friend, who will mail it in the village. Do forgive this long laboured screed, dear Alec. I wanted you to know exactly how. I am situated and what, if I survive, is in store for me over the next four years.
Do remember me to your dear mother.
Most affectionately yours, Desmonde
P. S. The neat little severed hand is now revealed as the relic of one of the boys, a young priest, killed and mutilated in the Congo, his body recovered by Belgian troops who preserved and sent the hand. This gives Hackett one good mark in my book, that he should preserve and reverence it.
Chapter Two
What was one to make of that long and rambling, so typical letter? I allowed my mother to read it, since she was fond of Desmonde and interested in his priestly progress. She shook her head. ‘Poor boy. He will never do it.’
But a long succession of letters, arriving periodically, seemed to contradict this foreboding. Moody, complaining, lit by occasional humour or bursts of fury against Hackett, they were so repetitious and, indeed, so unworthy of Desmonde, that I have suppressed them. Weighed against the events that were to follow, this was a dull period in Desmonde’s life. In the early stages of his novitiate, his only friend amongst a rough lot was a boy as sensitive and intelligent as himself, nicknamed ‘Looney’, with whom he forgathered at recreation hour to play dreary games of tennis with antique racquets and worn out balls on a court well marked by sun-baked bovine excrement. At other times they would pace the cloister of the old abbey in silence, absorbing the beauty and peace of this much neglected part of the college. On wet days they forgathered in the library to read, although not from the volumes of the martyrs, with which the shelves were loaded, but other and less saintly books. They also got together to compose rude limericks, mostly dedicated to Hacket. These, written in disguised hand, were discreetly dropped in the lavatories and other more public places.
With the one exception of Fr Petitt, Desmonde received little comfort from his priestly instructors, whom he often offended by revealing that he knew more than they were attempting to teach. But Petitt, the elderly, pink-cheeked, rather timid little priest, already described as ‘moping and mowing in an introductory manner’, was from the first extremely well disposed towards Desmonde, whose school report had been of paramount interest to a choir master lost in a musical wilderness. Petitt could not really lay claim to this attribution. He played the church organ, taught the piano or violin on demand, and mustered enough voices decently to control the hymns, litanies and plainsong, which would otherwise have been bawled beyond recognition. How he had come to the seminary was a matter for conjecture since Petitt was not only reticent but so painfully shy that a direct question would make him flush. He had undoubtedly been musical from an early age, and while still in his teens had played with one of the Midlands orchestras, his instrument, appropriately enough, the flute. How, or why, he had suddenly decided to study for the priesthood he would never reveal. So, also, was he silent on the many changes, the shuttling from one parish to another, to which he had been subjected after his ordination. He was not made to be a success, even in the service of the Lord, but his knowledge of music remained, and he felt it a blessing to find himself finally at St Simeon’s. Here he was beloved by all and particularly by Father Superior, who favoured ‘the little fellow’ in many ways.
Soon after Desmonde’s first meeting with Fr Petitt, he was gently lured to the music room, a long, low raftered chamber, high above the cloisters of the old abbey, remote from concrete and from all other distracting sights and sounds.
‘Sit, Desmonde, and permit me to talk to you.’
As they sat together on a frayed old sofa near the upright piano, Desmonde saw that the little fellow was nervous, and breathing quickly, as he began:
‘My dear Desmonde, your report from St Ignatius made special mention, amongst your other attributes, of your exceptional voice. When I read of it, I trembled, with ill suppressed anticipation. Now, do not be alarmed.’ He laid a hand on Desmonde’s arm. ‘I would not for worlds throw you to the wolves by requesting you to sing with that howling mob in church, who yell their way through the hymns and the easy pieces of Bach and Haydn. I have drummed into them. No, my dear Desmonde, I have a long treasured hope.’ His voice trembled. ‘A possibility, a dream, a project that I have nursed through many fruitless years.’ He paused. ‘Before I go on, would you oblige me by singing for me?’
Desmonde had now been captivated by ‘the little fellow.’
‘What would you like me to sing, Father?’
‘Do you know Schubert’s “Ave Maria”?’
‘Of course, Father.’
‘It is difficult.’ He indicated the piano. ‘Shall I accompany you?’
‘It’s not necessary, thank you, Father.’
Desmonde loved this beautiful hymn, and he sang it now with real enjoyment.
When it ended he looked down at Fr Petitt. The little man was sitting with his eyes closed, his lips moving in silent prayer. At last he opened rather watery eyes and, inviting Desmonde again to sit beside him, he said:
‘My dear Desmonde, I was thanking our Blessed Lord for answering a prayer I have made to Him for more than three years. Will you listen while I explain? And by the way, may I continue to call you Desmonde?’
‘I wish you would, Father.’
It was the first time Desmonde had been so addressed since he entered the seminary. And he listened intently while, for almost ten minutes, Fr Petitt poured out his heart to him. A long silence followed this emotional outburst. Then:
‘Will you try, Desmonde?’
‘If you th
ink I should.’
‘I believe it a God-given opportunity you should not throw away.’
‘Then I will.’
They shook hands. The little man smiled.
‘My idea is that you come up here during your free period in the afternoon, twice a week, say Tuesdays and Fridays, from three till five. We’ll chat together and work, yes, work hard. For your relaxation I’ll play you Beethoven, or whatever you prefer. And at the end I’ll arrange for some refreshment to be brought up. I didn’t do so today since I was not sure you would accept.’
Desmonde went down to the stark austerity of seminary life with a new interest, the prospect of relaxation he had always enjoyed, and an objective impossible almost to achieve, but which stirred his blood when, occasionally, he permitted himself to visualise a possible victory, murmuring, savouring the words. ‘The Golden Chalice’.
The Tuesday and Friday sessions began and were regularly continued. In all his singing Desmonde had never had a tutor, he sang naturally and had acquired many technical faults. Little Fr Petitt set him many difficult pieces and did not fail to criticise.
‘Desmonde, don’t dwell on that last note as if you loved it and were afraid to let it go. That’s a vulgar, sentimental trick. Try that passage again, you had just a trace of vibrato there. Avoid vibrato like sin. It’s the damnation of many a good tenor. Don’t blow up your high notes for effect, dying away like an expiring frog.’ Fr Petitt resumed: ‘And now, Desmonde, what will be your “choice” song at the contest? This is important, for much of the judging is based upon it.’
Desmonde reflected for only a moment.
‘I would wish to sing the Prize Song from The Mastersinger.’ He added: ‘Wagner is not a favourite of mine, but this song is magnificent. Not only inspiring, but aspiring, reaching out for success, which makes it suitable for us.’
Petitt nodded.
‘Yes, a superb song. But long, very long, and difficult. Well, soon we will see what you can do with it.’