Ten

So these are the graves, protected from the winds that cut across the valley by this random rubble circle. Not that I wouldn’t be grateful for the breath of a breeze; I find the unrelenting sun a decidedly mixed blessing – who’d ever believe it was October? But at least we can enjoy the serenity of a cloudless sky and the sweeping countryside; apart, that is, from those disfiguring quarries and their deposits of dust. In the seventeenth century the hillside would have been dotted with farms. Whilst on this bank there were two: the Rileys’, which we passed on our way up, and the Hancocks’, which has long since disappeared.

A plaque in the Riley orchard honours the Talbot family, who originally owned it until the line was wiped out by the plague during 1666. It’s thought that the Hancocks, who are commemorated here, contracted the contagion after burying the last of their neighbours: an act of charity for which they paid with their lives. Although the demise of their own farm comes as no surprise considering all seven of these deaths occurred within a single week: the farmer, his four sons and two daughters, with no one but the grieving widow left to lay them to rest, her grim progress witnessed from afar by the flint-hearted villagers of Stoney Middleton.

And we, who’ve read reports of corpses consigned to bin-bags, of families and friends being denied a final glimpse of their loved ones and undertakers refusing to bury them – or only doing so after negotiating special rates the voracity of which would have shamed even Marshall Howe – can surely feel for this mater dolorosa as she dragged her dead husband and children across the deserted landscape, one by one, day after dismal day.

In fact it’s only the father’s tomb – on which Pauline and Douglas are now sitting – which remains in its authentic position. The six headstones were later removed from their respective sites and reassembled symmetrically and symbolically here… I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to drive you off. I consider it no disrespect. On the contrary, as my Na – an old friend used to say, you’re keeping the dead warm… And I do realise from the grunts and grumbles that a number of you are beginning to flag. I forget that I’m an old hand. Two years ago I guided walks through the East End of Jack the Ripper – but that’s a very different story. Halfway through we’d take a break for rest and refreshment. So although I don’t intend to lead you back to the Miner’s Arms, I’ve arranged to call in at the farm on the way down for a jug of their fresh, warm milk. Which is just what we need to replenish our forces before returning to the village proper, where in August 1666 the plague reached new heights, claiming no less than seventy-eight lives.

 

I’ve always scorned to seek out the beauty of God in nature. It seemed too easy an option, like everyone being kind to you on your birthday. But why must I make it hard for myself ? I need the countryside; I was brought up there. And to see the colours of a May weekend in Derbyshire, with the bluebells in the woods and the cowslips in the fields… Last weekend I rediscovered my life.

Maybe I melodramatise. I have no choice. I’m trying to fix the scene in my memory; and the sheer wealth of images is in danger of wearing it down. So much has happened to me. Shall I plunge you headlong into the torrent of my feelings or guide you gently over, stone by stone? Did you recognise me as I walked into the room or did you think that you must have confused your appointments? Despite myself I feel such hope.

So thank you, Jack… thank you. If it were all part of a deeper plan, how appropriate that its agent should have been you; and that my evil genius should have become my guardian angel. You’ve been transformed in far more than name… I went on the retreat; I state the obvious. It’s safer; then we know where we are. It was billed as for anyone who cared for people with HIV and AIDS. I asked on the phone whether that meant care and concern or care and work, as I’d have hated to participate under false pretences; but I was told that the ambiguity was deliberate and the scope was wide. And I’m grateful too that I left my registration till the last minute; for if I’d received a list of participants I’d have found any excuse not to attend. In which case I’d have lost out on everything, not least the chance to meet Jonathan again.

I missed my connection and arrived too late for dinner. I felt that I’d already been assessed and dismissed. How could anyone hope to deal with the gravity of HIV if he couldn’t even manage an elementary change of trains? Nevertheless everyone was most solicitous and I soon had a plateful of food and a head full of names. A young Sister of St James the Great, whom I later discovered to have been a novice with Vange, introduced me to Jonathan… or rather Father Jonathan, who was to lead the weekend; so whatever else, I knew at once that he’d been ordained. We’ve met before, he said, as he stretched out his hand. I was struck dumb by his composure, and clumsily juggled my paper plate and plastic cup. I managed to clasp his fingers, whilst a sliver of coleslaw slipped on to his shoe.

He was enjoying every moment of my discomfort, and with good reason; whilst I vowed never again to commit myself to anything before discovering the names of all involved. He said I was looking well; I smiled inanely. I didn’t dare speak for fear of what might come out. Sister Veronica filled the silence by offering me a cup of coffee. I clutched at the straw… that is, the handle. But when I refused any milk or sugar and he joked that I must be sweet enough already, I lost my grip completely and it spilt right down my leg.

It wasn’t hot, I endeavoured to assure them as I held the cloth away from my skin. I smelt the sweetly sodden scent of the wool and sensed that my groin was steaming. I prayed fervently for rescue. At last Jonathan deputed a portly New York priest with a studded belt and spurred boots to show me to my room, since I was quite exhausted by the various mishaps of the day. And as we walked away down the corridor I was conscious of a huge roar of laughter directed at me.

My misery was only increased by the room, which turned out to be a dormitory. And although the atmosphere was less intimidating than school, conditions were even more spartan. Mauro – the priest – pointed out my bunk; it was the top one nearest the door: not simply the last available, but clearly the least attractive. Just looking at it made me feel giddy; but I flung up my bag and thanked him for his help. He went back to the group while I took a shower. I’d wanted a bath, but the enamel on the tubs was hardly encouraging. The shower gushed and spluttered with appropriate ineffectuality; then just when I’d finally worked up an unluxuriant lather, all hell broke loose and I was caught in a gust of scalding steam.

As I returned to the dormitory I looked out at the hall. I glimpsed the hazy silhouettes behind the convivial condensation on the glass. I felt completely confused. I disdained them and I wanted to be set apart… I desired them and I wanted to be in their midst. I climbed up to my bunk and wondered what I’d do in case of fire; I felt like an unsuccessful experiment in the conservation of space. I sat up and bumped my head on the ceiling. I stretched out and wondered if the mattress were orthopaedic or simply hard. I was desperate to fall asleep before anyone else appeared; but a faulty fluorescent light flickered above me. I attempted to regulate it – only to scorch my hand. I stifled a curse and was afraid I might burst into tears; but I refused to let myself, for fear of finding temporary solace. And the situation was far too serious for that.

Some time later they came in and I realised I was wider awake than ever. They made no attempt to keep down the noise; but I was grateful for their selfishness. It made my bitterness easier to bear. Jonathan moved to the bunk beneath mine. That was the last straw; his proximity was almost unendurable. I could hear him laughing and talking as though I’d been just a holiday acquaintance: a Christmas card friend. He began to undress; I slipped over and surreptitiously opened an eye. I caught a glimpse of the top of his head. I’d forgotten his hair was so ginger, whilst his shoulders were a mass of freckles like the heavily foxed pages of a family Bible: I wanted to decipher every phrase… He didn’t appear to be wearing any pyjamas… I hurriedly turned away. I was horrified by the reflex action of the least reflective part of my anatomy. So I slid on to my stomach and played dead.

He jumped into bed. I could feel his body beneath me. I’d have imagined that in a bunk all the pressure would have come from above, but it was quite the reverse: I was aware of his most minuscule movement… his most bated breath. His large limbs looked cruelly confined within the wooden frame, whilst fingers and toes appeared to protrude from every side. After an endless hour I peeled back a corner of my mattress and peered down at him through the struts. For one ghastly moment I was certain that he winked: until I realised it was the overhead light still flickering in my brain.

I hated him for the stillness of his breathing; I hated them all. To be awake alone in company felt even worse than to be standing alone in a crowd. I tossed and turned until I was convinced that the creaking of the boards was bound to rouse someone, and at least we’d be able to talk. I finally felt ready for all the dark dormitory intimacies I’d rejected at school. But I was ten years too late. Besides, no one responded to my tactics, and short of falling out of bed there seemed little I could do. I was considering that when I became aware of a pressure on my shoulder and a light in my eyes. It was Jonathan reminding me that it was 8.45 and everyone else was tucking into breakfast. He smiled; I was going to be late again.

After breakfast we all sat round in a circle – which has never been my favourite formation – for our first group discussion. I was impressed by the diversity of experience linked to the singleness of mind. I don’t know who or what I’d been expecting: a few misfit priests and liberal laymen, various churchy women with too much time on their hands… I’m ashamed to recall how I patronised them. Whereas in fact there were men and women of every shape and size. And above all there was Jonathan: Jonathan who dominates my recollections like a head carved in the stone of Mount Rushmore; although he stands entirely alone.

His leadership was inspirational and his enthusiasm unflagging. It was only the second retreat he’d guided, though I remembered how at St Dunstan’s he’d been involved in organising several weekends for world peace. He led from the front, the back and the middle. Whether we split into smaller groups or stayed in the one circle, wherever I looked he was there. Indeed I became convinced that at least some of him could only be an optical illusion. But he was blessed with the energy of ten men; and he spread himself thickly around.

He began his own contribution with a text from the gospels. I gulped as I realised that it would be the first time I’d heard him speak formally since… well, you can’t have forgotten. He chose the passage from St Mark about the man sick of the palsy whose friends literally raised the roof in order to bring him to Christ.

Our Lord was in Capernaum and already a victim of his own celebrity. He’d become inaccessible, surrounded by a vast crowd of disciples, Pharisees and assorted hangers-on. But when the sick man’s friends found that they couldn’t push past them, they didn’t stand meekly by, twiddling their thumbs in an ante-room until one of the functionaries condescended to let them in; they took action, lowering his bed through the ceiling. And Jesus healed him right away, in the face of the scribes’ disapproval. He recognised the man’s faith and, more significantly, that of his friends.

Jonathan went on to draw the contemporary parallels which seemed so obvious he felt it necessary to apologise in advance. And yet I don’t suppose any one of us found them a jot less welcome. What those men did then, we and so many others were doing today. We were surmounting all the obstacles and fighting to bring our friends to Christ. But if it’d been hard two thousand years ago, it was infinitely harder now when the hangers-on were not simply obscuring our view but obfuscating his message, and the crowds not merely holding us back but putting us down. And yet we must never give up, but rather cut through the dead wood just as they’d done the ceiling. We must break down every barrier even if it meant breaking the law.

He exhorted us to take heart from Christ’s subversive gospel. It was no coincidence that those self-styled moralists who demanded a return to the letter of the Bible were far more reticent when it came to his words. They were prepared to uphold the myth of God as a landscape gardener while preferring to ignore all the evidence of his son as a social critic: someone who condemned corruption and inveighed against injustice, who was a thorn in the flesh of authority and could only be silenced when a lance was pierced through his.

I was both exhilarated and moved. Although I felt less responsive to other attempts to reinterpret the gospel, such as whether, if Christ were alive today, he’d have had HIV. It wasn’t that I found the idea distasteful – merely unhelpful. It did less than justice to the singularity of people’s sufferings to lump them with one who’d been as immune to desire as to disease. No, I pinned my faith on the fellowship of the circle and the unlikely alliances which were emerging on every arc.

There were some who gave us the benefit of their survival and others of their bereavement, some who shared the pain of their incomprehension and others their triumph over despair. There was the cosy middle-aged tax inspector who’d taken early retirement only to find himself working harder than ever as a volunteer. There were the two car-workers from Cowley, to whom AIDS had just been washroom graffiti but who’d been tirelessly raising funds for hospice care. There was the elderly Austrian nun who expressed, in a heavily accented voice and yet words of crystal clarity, the force of her revelation that she had to leave the cloister and work with those at risk, and her extraordinary rapport with a very camp London caterer whom I’d initially resented, but who a few hours later may well have changed my life.

Yes, Krishnan isn’t the only one to have discovered his faith where he least expected. It may be that my mistake has been to look for the grand gesture: the blinding light or the wrestling with angels; when all it took was a little pebble which he’d brought back from the Garden of Gethsemane and, in a moment of quiet contemplation, handed round.

I’m not usually moved by relics. However much I try, my scholarly scepticism stands in the way. But for once it wouldn’t have mattered if it were disproved by carbon dating or if he’d picked it up from the neighbouring field; it would still have had a beauty all its own. I rolled it in the palm of my hand; its value didn’t depend on its attribution. I could feel its natural sculpture, its perfect form. And I perceived the presence of God in its creation as much as that of Christ in its association and a new-found sense of harmony between the two.

I clung on to it as though for dear life. I tried to make it as much a part of me as Mark when he clasped his crystal; and I also sensed its restorative power. To think that I once derided him for pinning his hopes on a piece of rock… And at that moment I felt a great weight slip off my shoulders, even as the stone had rolled away from the empty tomb.

The next morning it was my turn to speak – I should have said that I felt it my turn, for we were none of us under any compulsion. I began by apologising that my connection was so tenuous. Whereas they were all fighting selflessly in the field, I’d been prompted solely by my love for Mark. But then I paused as I realised that there was nothing tenuous about love; it couldn’t be diminished by definition. And I found myself looking pointedly at Jonathan – which I could scarcely avoid since he was sitting straight opposite – so I averted my eyes.

I told them my story: much of which I’ve already told you, except that I only had twenty minutes and not two years. I spoke a little about Mark and rather more about myself: not, I hope, from self-importance, but because to most of them his experience would have been all too familiar, whereas mine was still somewhat remote. Unless they understood the depth of my despair at the time I met him, they’d never appreciate everything he’d done to pull me out.

So I spared them little and myself less as I portrayed my life in all its darkest colours. I desperately sought their acceptance; although a part of me still courted rejection – but then that was what I knew best. And while I spoke to the group, my appeal was directed at Jonathan. I wanted him to forgive me and yet to cast me out; to respect me and to despise me; to promise that we could start again where we’d left off, even as he insisted that nothing could ever be the same.

I only hope that I wasn’t as confused in my speech as in my recollection. I forget how I concluded, simply that I gradually became aware of Jonathan’s arms around my waist. He was clasping me; I was shaking. He was calming me; I was convulsing. His shirt felt wet; but the tears were mine. He held me so close that I could feel his heart beat. And my own rose up in my breast as, in spite of Krishnan’s strictures, I revelled in the warmth of his hug. There could be no mistake: the embrace was entirely pastoral; and yet that was the most I could expect – or desire. Then he took my hand and we returned to the circle, no longer diametrically opposite but side by side. And all around the unity had been reestablished. It was a charmed circle; a mystical circle; a circle of grace.

Sunday afternoon was free; and he suggested I might like to walk with him to the village. It was quite some way, he warned. The further the better, I thought to myself – I could do with the exercise, I replied. And he led me off on the most wonderful journey… No, what am I saying? He led me on two.

Slow down, he cried, it wasn’t a race – or was I already trying to give him the slip? I laughed hollowly and forced myself to relax into his steadier pace. I inadvertently brushed the shoulder of his battered bomber jacket: the same one that Father Leicester had long ago claimed he’d soon grow out of and which still fitted him like a glove. We chattered about this and that and I was tortured by the triviality. I’d told him so much – too much – about myself; while I knew next to nothing about him. Two years had passed since we met; and for all I knew he might even have married. Though I didn’t like to ask.

He described his life since leaving St Dunstan’s. Strings had been pulled and he’d spent a final term at Salisbury before being ordained a year ago last summer, as originally planned… He’s now attached to a large West London parish, which I’d better not name in case your parents or in-laws or great-aunt Laura happen to worship there; coincidence has made me wary. It’s all very ‘Faith in the City’; but then that’s just what he’s always wanted. And he boasts of its deprivation and social problems the way that other priests might point out the reredos or stained glass.

It’s also an area which contains a high proportion of people with HIV. Their clergy team works hand in hand with the social services; whilst in his spare time – although he considered the notion risible – he’s the local co-ordinator for a support group: Plus IV. When I asked if its members had to be Christians he appeared genuinely affronted, which I found reassuring… he clearly hadn’t changed. As he breezily put it, he wears one collar but two hats.

And he isn’t married. He lives in a Victorian clergy house with two other missionary priests. That is, they belong to an Anglican society designed to promote additional clergy in areas of special need. Nor does he have attachments of any other sort, which relieves me… Oh, not for my own sake – so you can stop looking at me like that – but for his… It confirms his integrity and shows that his fellowship is a matter of conviction, not convenience since, when he joined, he made a promise of celibacy before a chapter of the mission which, whilst it may not have the force of a vow made before a bishop, remains binding nonetheless.

Even as he spoke, I was thinking back to our estrangement – the intimacy which had evaporated in a cloud of spittle. I told him of my sadness that we’d lost touch – but then I’d also lost touch with myself. I knew that my behaviour had been unforgivable and I wasn’t expecting forgiveness… And yet he assured me he’d forgiven me long ago. I may have caused him great pain, but it was past. And the reality was that there we were walking side by side down the road… Although for my own part I’d swear that my feet barely touched the ground.

And though we’d taken a circuitous route, we’d finally reached our destination: Eyam. Have you ever been there or even heard of it? As Jonathan showed me round I seemed to have some dim recollection, but I couldn’t be sure. And since my return any mention of the name has been met with blank incomprehension. Which is just typical. Our history books are littered with the names of kings and their ministers and mistresses. We celebrate the most pyrrhic victory in war. But when there’s a genuinely inspirational event in the heart of the English countryside, it’s barely known.

1665: the Great Plague of London, conveniently close to the Great Fire of 1666: which are two of the dates that every schoolchild learns by heart, inspiring playground rounds and jingles and classroom discussions on primitive sanitation, wooden architecture and the seemingly Heaven-sent opportunity for the genius of Sir Christopher Wren. But up in Derbyshire, the plague left a very different legacy: a tribute not to the vision of one man but the integrity of an entire community. And as I walked through the village streets I was living proof of its abiding power.

I’d walked through the streets of London telling stories; but the stories had seemed almost incidental to the streets. I’d had to tease them out whilst continually making excuses for the inadequacies of the setting… the buildings that had been knocked down and the others that had been put up in their place. But in Eyam the streets told their own story. The history was not so much in the telling as in the very stones. And to respond required an act less of imagination than of faith.

I was very moved, as Jonathan had evidently expected. And I found an image of the unity for which I’d been searching all my life: of priest and people, families and friends. While in their testament to the spirit of selfless solidarity which had determined to contain the infection, the houses of Eyam spoke powerfully of men like Krishnan and Mark… This was a community truly worthy of celebration. This was history as inspiration, history as metaphor, which had infinitely more to recommend it than history as mere fact.

The parallels exhilarated me and I tossed them back and forth to Jonathan, who once again failed to keep up with me as I raced from house to house. And it was uncanny how they seemed to be speaking to me directly; as I discovered how people could triumph over the most terrible adversity, indeed over death itself, and the present work in tandem with the past. Three hundred years on we were still able to draw strength from them even as they had from one another. So their sacrifice had had further reaching consequences than they could ever have dreamed… It was a story that spoke across the ages in a voice that defied despair.

I also knew that my presence on the retreat could have been no mere chance and that the place was as significant as the personnel. And what had impressed me most were the two priests I’d been walking with: Mompesson in 1665 and Jonathan in 1990. If I believed in reincarnation… but I don’t and I don’t need to. This was a tradition of priesthood far more potent than any historical apostolic succession: the priest at the heart of his community, fighting for its survival, whatever the personal cost.

And in these two figures, so different in every material way and such identical twins in spirit, I recognised both my ideal of the priesthood and my ideal man – although I no longer acknowledged any distinction. For I realised that my original emphasis had been misplaced: it was the man who made the office and not the other way round… And that evening when we came together again in the circle, I took the sacraments for the first time in I don’t know how many months, and I’m sure I’ve no need to enlarge on all I felt. The retreat itself then drew to a close. But as we went our separate ways the following morning I knew that one day I’d return to Eyam, as surely as the night before I’d returned to God.