Brother Michael walked into the milking shed. The seven milk-cows that served the needs of the community had been brought in and tethered in their stalls for the morning milking. They were munching contentedly on the pail of oats and dried beet Tom had emptied into the feed trough that ran the length of the wall beneath the iron tethering rings.
The regular hiss and splash of milk squirting into the pail revealed Tom’s presence in the shed.
‘Brother Thomas.’
Tom leaned out from the flank of the fifth cow in the line.
‘Hello,’ he said, surprised. ‘I mustn’t stop now; can you wait while I’ve finished? They’ll be restive if they’ve finished their food too long.’
‘I’ll wait.’
Tom stripped out the milk carefully, then appeared from behind the cow, with the pail in one hand and the low milking stool in the other. He went through into the dairy, and Brother Michael heard him pouring out the milk into a larger vessel. He returned with the pail rattling in his hand.
‘Two more to go. I won’t be long. Beautiful day, isn’t it?’
‘Lovely.’ Brother Michael did not sound particularly communicative.
Tom picked up the pail of water that stood by the wall, and began to wash the sixth cow’s udder with the cloth he fished out of the pail. ‘Holy saints, this is filthy! Ugh! Did I say I wouldn’t be long? I take it all back. You disgusting beast, you’re crusted in it! Just a minute, I’ll have to change this water.’
Brother Michael waited. He stood in silence, while Tom milked the last two cows and disappeared whist ling into the dairy with the last pail of milk.
Tom unhitched the cows from their tethers, and slapped the first cow, the one nearest the door, on her rump.
‘On your way, Petal,’ he said affectionately. The cows lumbered slowly out of the shed, into the foldyard.
‘Now then, I’ve to swill down in here and take them up to the top pasture, but that can wait five minutes. There’s nothing wrong, is there?’
‘I want to talk to you.’
Brother Tom looked at him. ‘Come out into the sunshine. That sounds ominous. It’s not—Father Peregrine’s all right, is he?’
They walked across the foldyard and leaned on the gate, looking down the hillside towards the abbey buildings. ‘That’s what I want to talk to you about.’
‘What is it? Is he—?’
‘Is he what? Dead? Worse? Better? Do you care?’
Brother Michael turned his head to look at Tom. ‘Are you never coming to see him again?’
Tom plucked an ear of wild grass that grew high beside the gate. He twirled it in his fingers.
‘I suppose I ought to. Would it make any difference?’
‘Don’t you want to see him any more?’
Tom stripped the little seeds from the stem, and broke it into tiny pieces with his fingernails.
‘No. I don’t. He… the thing I saw in the infirmary five weeks ago wasn’t him. He’d gone. I wish he’d died. It was hideous.’
‘He’s got a lot better since you saw him. He’s out of bed. He’s still paralysed down his right side, but he’s got a bit of tone back in his face. He’s no longer so incontinent. He can speak, just a little; mainly “yes” and “no”.
‘He likes the kittens. He has a length of string tied to his chair, with a little piece of wood on the end. The kittens come and fight it and play with it. He likes to watch them. It makes him smile, and there’s precious little that does. They climb into his lap and curl up to sleep there. He strokes them, broods over them. You know, I believe he prays for them, fleas and all.’
Tom couldn’t speak. He stared at Brother Michael, appalled. That this man, with his intellect, his fire, the power of his spirit, should be reduced to playing with kittens, and find joy in it too. Brother Michael looked at his face, read his silence. He nodded.
‘I know. But that’s the infirmary work, Tom. To make the best of the circumstances. They bring us their own despair. Our job is to steal them a crumb of hope. Anything. Anything that will rouse a man from the profound grief of his infirmity is worthwhile. There is no healing without hope. Despair is life’s direst enemy. Despair is living death. At the moment, he is entirely gripped by it. You know him. You will see. Humour, hope, interest in the day’s events, the need to be with others—he’s lost it all. The kittens help. They are a ray of sun in his prison. They don’t sit in embarrassment wondering what to say to a man who gets angry because he can’t reply. They don’t remind him of the humiliation of his helplessness. They come to him, and they’re glad of him, and it takes him out of himself a bit.
‘Won’t you come and see him?’
Tom threw the shredded pieces of stalk away, one by one.
‘If you think I should.’
‘Yes, I do think you should. He’s very low in spirits. He’s shattered, obviously he is, by what’s happened to him—as anyone would be. After all, he’s well nigh helpless. But there’s something more than that.’ Brother Michael paused, looking out across the hillside.
‘When we open the door and come into the room—any of us—he looks up; and then… it’s as though he’s disappointed. He looks away again, listlessly. I think, Brother John thinks, he’s looking for someone, waiting for someone. Tom, I think he misses you terribly.’
‘He didn’t even recognise me when I came to see him before.’
‘Didn’t he? Didn’t he? How do you know that?’
‘His eyes. They were so blank and dead….’
‘Oh, for pity’s sake, man! He’s ill! He’s been dreadfully ill. What did you expect him to do? Get up and dance a jig?’
Tom said nothing.
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It must have been upsetting for you. But if you can bring yourself to get over it a bit and consider his feelings as well as your own, will you come and see him?’
‘I’ve said I’ll come. I can’t drop everything and come just right now. We’ve started to reap the corn now, we’re halfway through the oats, I can’t just vanish. Still, maybe if I put in most of the day here—we’ve plenty of help from the brethren and the neighbours, and the school, not that the boys are much use for reaping or stooking—I’ll come this afternoon, after the Office.’
‘Thank you. Thank you, Tom.’
Brother Michael put his hand on Tom’s shoulder with a smile of real warmth. Tom managed a wry smile in return, then shook his head and looked away.
‘You don’t know what you’re asking,’ he said. ‘Maybe. At least I’m not asking any more of you than I’ve asked of myself.’
‘It’s different for you. You do it every day.’
‘Easier then, you think?’
‘Yes. That is what I think.’
‘In some respects, perhaps. There’s nothing easy about watching someone you love eating his heart out because his friend’s abandoned him.’
Tom sighed, impatiently. ‘Don’t start on me again. I’ve said I’ll come. Is that all, then? The cows are standing waiting in the foldyard.’
‘That’s all.’
Brother Michael watched the defensive hunch of Tom’s shoulders as he tramped back up to the milking shed. ‘Help him out a bit, Lord God,’ he prayed as he turned and walked back down the farm track to the infirmary. ‘A bit of grace, and a bit more compassion. Help him find the Christ in himself.’
Brother Tom opened the foldyard gate and watched the cows stroll out to the pasture. Nothing hurried the stately, sensuous, matronly sway of their going; they had their own ponderous grace, from the great, luxurious curve of their bellies to the slender delicacy of their ankles, picking their way out of the foldyard into the open field.
He closed the gate behind them, and set off up the hill to the cornfields. The weather was set fair. The oats they had cut and stooked yesterday would be drying nicely. Three weeks of this and we shall be home and dry, Tom thought, with satisfaction. But not if I have to be spending half my time in the infirmary.
‘You don’t know what you’re asking,’ he had said to Brother Michael, but he could not fully admit, even to himself, the horror he felt at sickness and the decay of infirmity; at the memory of the vacant gazing of those empty, lustreless eyes. It was easier to bury it under resentment—call it a nuisance, an intrusion, a waste of time; anything but look steadily at the frightening, nauseous reality.
Up on the hill, Brother Stephen had already begun. The tenants of the abbey farms were too busy with their own harvest to spare hands to help, but all the monks he could beg or coerce to help him were out on the hill. Brother Francis and Brother Peter; Fidelis, Paulinus, Prudentius, Mark, Walafrid, Germanus. Brother James was there too with some of the older boys from the abbey school. Oh, we shall get this in easy, if only the rain holds off; Brother Tom’s spirits recovered as he put from him the disturbing encroachment of memories and fears, bringing the focus of his attention back onto his chosen course with relief.
He joined the men and boys coming behind the reapers, gathering the fallen corn and bunching it into orderly blond sheaves secured with oatstalks twisted together and bound about the waist of the sheaf. The stalks must all butt in neat conformity at the ends, and achieving this needed the skill of experience. Brother Germanus, his hands blistered from handling the scythe, was trying the sheaf-making, attracting covert smiles of derision from the older monks who worked alongside him, which burned his pride as much as the climbing sun burned the back of his neck and the top of his shaven head. Brother Tom, who was not in the mood for pity, shamed him even more by working twice as fast as his own very best attempts; shaping, fastening and stooking his sheaves with effortless precision and relentless rhythm.
The work was killing, worse than the hay harvest, because the hay, although it must be raked and turned, did not require this endless, back-breaking slog of stopping to gather the corn and standing to form the sheaf; endlessly stooping and standing.
Brother Germanus spat out the little prickles of chaff that had found their way into his mouth, gritted his teeth and narrowed his eyes against the dust and flying chaff. His ankles were scratched sore by the spears of stubble, and sweat poured down his back under the heavy, coarse fabric of his tunic. And I came here to pray, he thought incredulously, as he straightened up, dizzy in the heat, pressing a hand momentarily to his aching back.
The triple-pattern of the choir bell tolling for the mid-morning Office of Terce carried up the hillside, and the brothers laid down their scythes, completed and propped their sheaves. This was the time for the schoolboys to have a break from work, hunting fieldmice nests and satisfying their thirst with the watered ale in stone bottles that was keeping cool in the stream which ran through the copse at the field’s edge. There was bread and fruit for them too, wrapped in linen and hidden in the shade of the hedge.
With nods and smiles of farewell, the monks left them to their hour of play. After Terce and Mass and Chapter, the brothers would work through on the fields until Vespers, bringing food up with them for their midday meal, but there was no dispensation from Mass and Chapter. Brother Germanus marvelled that the day should have come when the Chapter meeting formed a cool oasis, a tranquil respite of grateful sitting.
Brother Tom walked down the hill beside Brother Stephen. ‘I’ve to knock off at None,’ he said, regretfully.
Brother Stephen glanced at him in surprise. ‘Why so? Something amiss?’
‘No. I’ve promised Brother Michael I’ll go down to the infirmary to see Father.’
‘Would not this evening have done?’
Tom was silent a minute. ‘I dare say. I’ve promised him now though. I’m sorry. He wanted me to go this morning.’
Brother Stephen snorted indignantly. ‘And whence comes the oatmeal for the infirmary if all the harvesters are visiting the sick? Do they stop and ask themselves that?’
‘It’s my fault, if I’m honest,’ Tom said quietly. ‘I should have been before. I’ll milk, anyway. Don’t you stop for that. I’ll milk after I’ve been to the infirmary. I’ll not be taking that much time out really.’
They came dusty and sweaty into chapel, some like Brother Germanus who was new to hard physical labour, and Brother Prudentius who was old, grateful for the opportunity to sit down in the coolness of the church. Others, like Brother Tom and Brother Stephen, found the interruption of the work a tedious discipline. Either way, after ten days’ harvesting, it was not easy to keep awake during Chapter.
‘This morning’s Chapter exhorts us, “Do not be overwhelmed with dismay, and run away from the way of salvation,” and promises us that as we persist in the life of faith and monastic observance, our hearts will be made larger, or opened up….’
Do I want my heart ripped open? Tom asked himself, as he listened to the beginning of Father Chad’s homily. I’ve had a taste of that, and I don’t like it. Faith and monastic observance are fine, but I don’t want to have my heart torn open. What’s Father Chad going to make of that, I wonder?
Tom could remember Father Peregrine speaking to the brethren on the same chapter of the Rule a few weeks before they had watched the cut hay ruined in the rain.
The rain had been streaming relentlessly outside the Chapter house that day, and he had begun with a smile, and some ironic quip about the patient suffering that this particular chapter recommended.
But then he had spoken to them about the sufferings of Christ that the chapter urged them to share, talking quietly about the necessary pain of having your heart ripped open that was part of following Jesus.
Tom frowned, remembering. What had he said? Something about the broken heart being the most intimate place of communion with God… and the psalm, the verses from the Miserere he talked about… about the sacrifice of God being a troubled spirit… the humiliated, aching heart a precious offering in his eyes. And it had carried conviction. When he had paused from time to time, the only sound had been the endless wet falling of the rain, not the ceaseless muted whisper of fidgeting that accompanied Father Chad’s homilies.
He had told them that the road of God would of necessity bruise their feet, and sometimes have them on their knees in the mud and the nettles. ‘There are some hellish deep potholes on the road our Lord has set us to walk,’ he had said with a smile, and he had added, ‘That’s why we need each other. Sometimes we fall in.’ Well, he had fallen in now all right, up to his neck. Tom stirred, irritably. Oh do get on with it, Father Chad, he thought, chafing to be out, to get done what he could in what was left of the day.
Then came the business of the day. Brother James would be going to university, at Oxford. Brother Francis had a vocation to the priesthood, and would be going away to the seminary for a while. All the piecemeal news of the community. Is this really necessary? Tom wondered, tetchily.
At last they were through, and climbing the hill again, carrying their packages of bread and cheese for the midday meal.
Brother Tom glanced in amused sympathy at Brother Germanus plodding with stoical weariness along the farm track beside him.
‘Don’t be discouraged,’ he said, on a sudden impulse of kindness. ‘You’ll feel just grand when it’s all in and stacked in the barn, and when you stand in the mill watching sack after sack of grain pouring down the hopper, and the blisters have healed on your hands as you break the bread.’
Brother Germanus looked at Tom in grateful surprise, warmed by his friendliness.
‘I’m sorry my work is so slow,’ he said. Tom shook his head. ‘If we’ve made you feel bad about it, the fault is ours. You’re giving your best. It’s me and Stephen, impatient, making hard work harder.’
Then, suddenly, he regretted opening himself to the young man’s need of friendship and approval. He did not want a lad’s dog-like affection tagging him, and he withdrew into his shell of uncommunicative silence the rest of the way up to the field.
In the grass beside the track, harebells grew, and purple vetch and wild scabious, and at the edge of the copse the blackberries were beginning to ripen, and the cob nuts forming green on the bushes. The smell of summer—the dusty fragrance of grass and the sharp scent of chamomile—lay distilled on the arid air, too familiar to be remarked, but nonetheless part of the beauty of the morning. They worked through the heat of the day, stopping to eat the food they had brought and pass round the stone jar of watered ale at midday when the Office bell rang from the abbey. By the time the bell was ringing again, for None at four o’clock, most of the strip of oats was cut and stooked.
‘You’ll be through this patch by Vespers,’ said Brother Tom as he gave his scythe to Brother Stephen. ‘There, you can take a turn with the scythe again; I must be away.’
Time to face it, then. He walked down the hill alone, and the day with its larksong and nodding poppies, ripened fields and clear blue sky almost lifted his mood of uneasy apprehension; but not quite. He looked down on the abbey buildings as he walked, at the honey-coloured stone, gentle on the eye, and the lazy drifts of woodsmoke from the kitchen chimney. He could not find a way back into the satisfied contentment the scene usually brought him. He had a disturbing sense of having been pushed out of the nest; having left behind easy tranquillity and familiar peace; as though, like Brother Germanus, he was being required to break his back and bloody his blistered hands on a new, demanding task.
He went into chapel looking for courage, seeking peace in the daily round of the chant. Doubtless the founding fathers had never intended the Office to be treasured for the anaesthetic value of its familiarity, but it often was.
The Office of None ended at half-past four when the west end of the chapel was suffused with tawny light pouring through the tall, narrow windows. The choir, at the east end of the church, on the other side of the parish altar, was dim at this time of the day. Now, in early September, it was a warm, golden, dusty dimness, almost languorous in its tranquillity.
The chapel emptied gradually, the novices going to the novitiate Chapter meeting, and the fully professed brothers going about their afternoon work. Only Brother Tom sat in the luminous silence of the choir still; and he was sitting with his forearms resting on his knees, his back hunched and his head bowed, his hands clasped together. He had to admit it now. He was afraid.
‘I don’t want to see him,’ he whispered into the stillness.
The silence of the chapel was never an empty silence. The air had a perpetual sense of hopeful expectancy, of radiant peace. ‘I’m always expecting to catch a glimpse of wings, a shine of gold there,’ Peregrine had said to Tom, smiling, one day in the early summer of the year. ‘It is so pregnant with life and glory.’
‘I don’t want to see him,’ Tom whispered in fear. ‘God help me, I don’t want to see him like he is.’
It was almost five o’clock before he finally gathered his courage and stood up to go. He stood for a moment, looking up at the great wooden crucifix that hung above the rood screen. ‘You should do something about him,’ Tom muttered. ‘He’s a friend of yours.’
Resolutely he tramped through the choir and the Lady chapel, out of the little door in the south wall into the afternoon sunshine, and up to the infirmary.
Outside the infirmary buildings, in the sheltered fragrance of the physic garden, four or five aged monks were tucked up in blankets, sitting in their chairs in the sun. Why do they live so damned long? Tom thought. Why don’t they just die like people everywhere else? Brother John looks after them too well. He should let them die. Look at them. What have they got to live for?
He looked for Peregrine, but Peregrine was not among them. Brother Tom passed through them without speaking, into the cool peace of the infirmary. In the little anteroom, Martin Jonson was strewing fresh herbs on the floor. Their pungent, antiseptic aroma smelt clean and good.
‘I’ve come to see Father Peregrine,’ said Tom.
‘Good, good, good! They like to have a visitor, cheer them up, tell them all the news. Brother Michael said you would be coming. Brother John wants a word with you first. I expect he wants to explain to you about Father—he’s a bit peculiar you know. Temperamental, like. Not quite right in his head, between you and me, though Brother John won’t have it said.’
‘Where is Brother John?’
‘Just along the way, in the linen room, Brother, folding the sheets.’
Tom went along the wide passage to the linen room and stood in the doorway.
‘You wanted to see me,’ he said.
‘Yes.’ Brother John laid the sheet he had folded into a neat square on the pile that lay on the table, and slipped two stems of lavender, from a bunch that lay alongside, between the folds of the sheet.
‘Here I am.’
‘Yes.’ Brother John turned to face him. He folded his arms and stood looking at Tom. ‘About time too, isn’t it? You should be ashamed of yourself.’
Oh, here we go. I could do without this, Tom thought.
‘I’ve already had this ticking-off from Brother Michael,’ he said defensively.
‘Is that so? Well now you’ve got it from me. Whatever have you been thinking of, never coming near the place all this time?’
‘All right! I am ashamed of myself! I know what you’re saying—it’s written on my heart, as it so happens! I’m a coward, I couldn’t face it, I was upset, I stayed away. It was selfish. I know. I know I should have been to see him before this. I know. I couldn’t bear it, that’s all. I don’t want to see him witless and drooling. It twists me up inside. I can’t… anyway, I’m here now. I’m sorry, and I’ve come. All right?’
Brother John regarded him thoughtfully.
‘Who gave you the idea he was witless and drooling? Martin Jonson been talking to you? Yes?’ Brother John snorted derisively. ‘Witless he is not. He gets impatient—but then he always did, as I recall. He can’t make himself understood. Can you not see the frustration of that? It’s resulted in a few scenes, yes. He threw his dinner across the room on Tuesday and he bit Martin’s finger this morning, but—why are you staring at me like that?’
‘I’m sorry. Just for a moment I thought you said Father Peregrine bit Martin Jonson.’
‘That is what I said. He did bite him. Will you give me a hand folding these sheets while you’re here?’
‘He bit him? His mind must be affected, then.’
‘Why? There’s nothing wrong with his mind so far as I can tell. You should never underestimate the frustration of being unable to communicate, Tom.
‘Look what you’re doing—take those two ends. Martin misjudged his man, that’s all. You know what he is, all “there’s a good lad” and “whoops-a-daisy”. He patted Father on the cheek and chucked him under the chin once too often. He had hold of his chin and gave it a playful little shake. He’s always doing it. He said, “How are we today, then?” and Father sank his teeth into his finger. Serves him right. I’m surprised nobody’s bitten him before. I fancy he’ll approach him with a little more respect in future. Well, caution at least.
‘I’m particularly glad you agreed to come today. There’s no one free here but Martin this afternoon to sit with him, and he needs someone, but not Martin. It’s like a red rag to a bull.
‘He can’t read now, and the old men in here are too senile to make the effort to converse with him. I’ve tried sitting him with them in the afternoons, but he doesn’t like it. We ask him if he wants to sit outside with the others. “N-o,” he says, like that, “no.” So we leave him in peace. ‘He needs some company though, he’s that morose and miserable looking. It’ll do him the world of good to see you. Read to him or something. Tell him what’s going on. Thank you, I’ll manage these on my own now. You know where he is?’
‘Yes, I know where he is, but wait a minute: how can I talk with him if he can’t speak?’
‘He can speak. Who told you he couldn’t speak?’
‘You did. I thought you said….’
‘He has very little predictable speech. He can say “yes” and “no” reliably. Other words are usually too difficult if he thinks too hard. But he says quite a lot really.’
‘I misunderstood. I thought he could only say “yes” and “no”, and the rest was all garbled.’
‘Oh no; it’s a struggle, but he can make himself understood if you’ll be patient. Sometimes he comes out with something as clear as can be. In French usually.’
‘In French?’ Tom looked at Brother John in blank bewilderment.
‘His family are French, aren’t they? It will have been the language of his childhood. It’s a strange thing, this kind of illness. I’ve seen it before. Memories, words, thoughts—they all jumble into a rag-bag mixture, and you never know what will come out; sense or nonsense, or a bit of both. Mostly “yes” and “no” are the only things he can say clearly, and he sometimes gets those the wrong way round, but just now and again the odd phrase comes through perfectly. This morning, he had his breakfast—I’d left him to get on with it—and he was muttering to himself as I went past the doorway. I stopped just outside to listen to him. I was intrigued. “Merde… incroyable…” he was saying to himself, and, “… dégueulasse,” Cormac’s porridge. I went in and tasted it. He was quite right, it was appalling. Grey and lumpy, and no salt that I could detect. But if I’d asked him, he couldn’t have told me in English—nor in French either. Just sometimes the odd phrase slips through, that’s all. I do mean odd, too. “Merci, chéri,” he said to me last Saturday after I’d finished shaving him. I think he was as startled as I was. You can see why he doesn’t want to sit with the others. It’s embarrassing for him, and a bit frightening I think.
‘Anyway, you’ll see. Take him as you find him. He’s in the same room as before. Thanks for your help with the sheets. I’m glad you’ve come.’
Brother Tom walked along the passage to the room where he had last seen Father Peregrine. He was still afraid. He stood outside the room with his hand raised to the door. Then he heard footsteps approaching further along the passage, so he pushed open the door and took two steps into the room. Peregrine was seated in the chair, near to the bed.
Tom had never seen him sitting like that; his left hand resting in his lap, idle; no books, no letters, doing nothing. Just himself, alone in the chair, the length of knotted string to amuse the kittens dangling forlornly to the floor.
The warmth and mellow light of the afternoon sun lit the room, but it had the lifeless air of a sickroom. There was no hope in that room. Even the wooden crutch, faithful companion, symbol of independence, was gone. He no longer needed it, of course.
His body sagged dispiritedly. As he raised his head and looked at Tom, his face was blank, shuttered. John’s mistaken, Tom thought, his mind has gone.
They looked at each other in silence. Tom looked at Peregrine’s face, the scarred right side of it still drooping slightly in paralysis. He was sitting askew in the chair, his useless right arm and hand awkwardly tucked into the side of the chair, pushed out of sight among the cushions. By himself, no doubt. Brother John would never have left him sitting like that. He liked his patients to look tidy.
What a mess, Tom thought. What an awful mess. He tried to think of words to say. Some news, Martin had said, to cheer him up. What news was there? Tell him maybe that most of the brethren felt he was finished for good now, and it was time to choose a new superior? No, not that news. ‘Make him smile if you can,’ Brother Michael had said. ‘Try to rekindle some hope.’ Hope. For God’s sake, hope? There was nothing to say; nothing.
A moment later Tom wished he had thought of something, anything to say; because Peregrine spoke to him. It was just a jumble of sounds. Should I go and fetch Brother John? he wondered, nervously. Then Peregrine spoke to him again, urgently this time.
‘I—I can’t understand you….’ Tom faltered. Anxiety clutched him. It was rubbish the man was talking; Tom had no idea how to respond, what to say. Inadequacy felt like fear, tightening his gut, making him want to leave, run away from this predicament. Peregrine was glaring at him, talking heatedly, beads of sweat on his face. He leaned forward, his eyes compelling Tom, willing him to understand; and Tom could not understand at all, stood dumb, uncomfortable, completely baffled. Peregrine raised his hand in desperate agitation, and crashed it down in frustration into his lap. Then, abruptly, he turned his face away. He held his head away from looking at Tom, in rigid misery.
‘What? Whatever is it?’ Stupid question, thought Tom, as soon as the words were out of his mouth. All he can say to me is more of the same. Then suddenly he saw the spreading, splashing puddle of urine under the chair. Maybe if I was Martin, he thought numbly, I could make a joke of this, ease his embarrassment. Then maybe if I was Martin, I’d be able to see something funny in it.
‘I’ll get Brother John,’ he said. ‘We need to clean you up. I’m sorry.’
Once outside the room, Brother Thomas stood, sick with the guilt and shame of his relief to be getting out of that room, finding someone else, not having to be left alone with Father Peregrine.
‘Brother Michael!’ Tom saw him passing the end of the corridor and hastened after him. ‘Brother Michael, can you help!’
‘Is something the matter?’ Other people’s agitation flowed off the infirmary brothers like water off a duck’s back. It was too commonplace. In the infirmary, full of the sick, the infirm, the dying, occurrences that felt like emergencies were too numerous to count, and actual emergencies were almost unheard of.
‘Father Peregrine’s wet himself!’
Brother Michael smiled at Tom’s appalled face.
‘Has he? What do you want? Something to mop up with?’
Tom stared at him, aghast. ‘Me? I… no… no! Please come and see to him. I can’t deal with this. It’s no use, the whole thing gives me the creeps. He doesn’t need me. I’m no good at this sort of thing; I can’t… I… I’m going.’
Brother Michael stood listening to him in mild surprise.
‘There’s no need to get upset. He’s a bit incontinent—that’s quite normal. Help me change his clothes, and then stay for a chat with him.’
‘Oh, you’re joking! Michael, I’m going.’
‘All right, but hang on a minute, don’t run away. When are you coming back? He might want to know.’
‘I’m not. Don’t look at me like that; I’m not like you are. I can’t bear this sort of thing. I’ve simply got no stomach for it. He’ll understand. Just give him my love—tell him I’ll pray for him.’
‘Tell him what? I’m sure he’ll be really delighted to hear that! Don’t be ridiculous, Tom—’ But Tom shook his head, turned on his heel and left.
He strode up the track to the farm, where the cows were already queueing placidly outside the milking shed. He called them in, rattling their cereal in the bucket, overwhelmed with gratitude at the reassurance of their vacuous, undemanding stolidity.
His hands were trembling as he tethered the beasts in their places; but as he went from one to the other, resting his head against the warm, impassive bulk, moving his hands in the rhythmic, sensuous physicality of the milking, the turmoil died away, and he was calm again.
After he had milked the cows and turned them out to pasture once more, Tom walked the half-mile to the mill, and spent an hour meticulously clearing out the millrace, scraping all the accretions of moss and slime from the wheel. He ignored the Vespers bell, and did not return to the milking shed and take the milk down to the kitchen until the sun was setting, having no wish to run into Brother Michael or Brother John.
By that time the kitchen was deserted. Tom rolled the barrels of milk into the dairy, and took out the empty ones from the morning milking in solitary peace. He helped himself to some bread and cheese and plums, then he barrowed the empty barrels all the way back up the hill to the farm again. The stars were coming out and the Compline bell ringing by the time he came down from the farm. After Compline, the abbey would be folded into the Great Silence, and all conversation of any kind forbidden. Even if Brother John managed to get to Compline, there would be nothing he could say.
Brother Tom had laboured too hard that day to lie sleepless in his bed. He lay five minutes in the darkness, wondering if the moon shone into Peregrine’s room, and if he slept or lay wakeful, but he could guess the answer to that; then he turned his back on the whole thing and took refuge in sleep.
In the morning, he slipped out of the choir and up to the farm as soon as first Mass was ended. He breakfasted on oats and barley-meal from the cattlefeed boxes, and warm new milk from the cow.
‘Take the milk down to the kitchen for me, will you? There’s a good lad,’ he hailed Brother Germanus as the men came up the hill to begin the day’s work. ‘I’ll take your scythe.’
Delighted by this unexpected reprieve, Brother Germanus agreed readily, so Tom kept well clear of the cloister buildings until the bell rang for Terce and Chapter Mass. Brother John came into Chapter, but Tom refused to catch his eye, and concentrated on disciplining himself not to fidget through Father Chad’s meandering discourse on Cenobites, Anchorites and Hermits. After the Chapter meeting ended, he slipped out as quickly as he could.
‘Brother Thomas, wait a moment! I’d like to talk to you.’ Brother John put a hand on Tom’s shoulder as he was leaving the Chapter House. Tom scowled at him mutinously. He would gladly have knocked Brother John unconscious if it would have given him a way out of this conversation.
‘I’ve no permission to talk.’
Brother John smiled at him. ‘I’ve never known that to stop you. I’ve asked permission of Father Chad. He says we can talk in the little parlour.’
Tom shrugged his shoulders in ungracious assent, and the two of them walked in silence along the cloister, among the other silent monks who were going about their daily business. Away from the claustral buildings, the brothers were not so particular about silence, a certain amount of conversation being necessary on the farm, and good in the infirmary, though they were not permitted to stand in idle gossip anywhere; but here in the heart of the abbey, talking was kept to a bare minimum, and only in the abbot’s house when a brother had come to seek counsel, or in the little parlour tucked away beside the day stairs, could any conversation of length take place, and that only with permission.
Brother John came into the gloomy little parlour after Brother Tom, and shut the door behind him.
‘Sit down,’ he said.
They both sat on the wooden chairs that were provided there—chairs, not stools, for visitors occasionally used this parlour too.
‘Now then. What’s this Brother Michael tells me, that you don’t intend to come back and see Father Peregrine again?’
‘That’s right.’
Brother John sat in silence, looking at him.
‘Oh, don’t try your unnerving infirmary manner on me! I came, it was awful, and I’m not coming again. That’s all there is to it. Is that all you want to know? Can I go? I’m supposed to be reaping the oats with Brother Stephen.’
‘Tom, stop it! How long have we lived in community together? Can’t you trust me? Tell me about it.’
Tom’s head shot up, and he glared at Brother John furiously. ‘Don’t say that to me! Don’t you ever say that to me!’
‘Ssh now, peace.’ Brother John held up his hands. He was not in the slightest perturbed by Tom’s raised voice and furious face. He was too accustomed to the unpredictable moods of senility and the undermined emotions of sickness for that.
‘What did I say to upset you? I didn’t intend—oh, I see. That’s one of Father Peregrine’s sayings, isn’t it? “Tell me about it.” Yes.
‘Brother Thomas… why are you making such a fuss about all this? It’s like trying to get a nervous horse through a gate! He’s your friend, he’s sick, he needs you. Why isn’t it simple for you, just to spend some time with him? A little while in the evenings would do, if you’re needed on the farm in the day.’
‘Oh….’ Tom sat hunched and miserable, not wanting to talk. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘Explain to me then! Tell me about it!’
Tom stared at him angrily. ‘I told you….’
‘Oh, never mind what you told me! You’re behaving like a spoiled child! Come on. Talk.’
‘He… I couldn’t understand him, John. He tried to tell me, got angry with me; but it was all just rubbish, what he was saying. I didn’t know what to do. What could I say to him? I don’t know what he is now. He’s destroyed, he’s all different. If he’d died, I would have grieved, I would have cherished the memory of him, but… this—this is horrible. Can’t you see?’
‘Well, yes. I can see it from your point of view. Now, maybe you could try to look at it through his eyes?
‘He’s been ill, it’s taken a lot out of him. He desperately needs the comfort of familiarity to find his bearings again. He’s lost his work, his status. He’s helpless. He’s stuck in the infirmary, can’t go anywhere, can’t read, write, talk. Tom, think about it. It’s horrific, isn’t it? And what’s the one link that he could have with the way things used to be?’
Tom looked at him. ‘I… I suppose I am.’
‘Quite so. He would have wanted you anyway—he loves you, Tom. But having lost everything else, he needs you quite desperately. He’s watched for you, waited for you, pinned his hopes on you coming, all this time. And then yesterday you came, and everything went wrong. Brother, have you no pity? Can’t you imagine how he must have felt—the embarrassment, and the distress, and the pain when you walked out and didn’t come back? The sickness hasn’t destroyed him. Far from it, he’s all there. It’s you that’s destroying him.’
‘Ah, that’s not fair!’
Brother John shrugged his shoulders. ‘That depends how you look at it. Speech is not everything. Mobility is not everything. Besides, his speech will return if he will work on it. He has a little, it’s not all gone—he can swear well enough! It’s grief, despair, unhappiness that’s making him an invalid. He won’t even let us take him out of his room. He won’t try. Tom… it’s true, this has changed him. You can’t be this ill and it not change you, but he’s still himself. At the moment, you’re looking at the sickness, not at the man. If you can find enough grace, enough charity, to look past the paralysis and the muddled speech, you’ll find him again.’
Brother Tom sat looking at the floor in a torment of indecision. He rubbed his hand nervously across his face.
‘Oh God, Tom, is it so difficult? Please. I beg you to come. You’ve got to come back.’
‘When?’
Brother John sat back in his chair with a sigh of relief. ‘Today. Now!’
‘Brother Stephen’s waiting for me up at the farm.’
‘Father Abbot’s waited for you five weeks, and I can tell you he needs you more than the farm does. I dare say Stephen can wait an hour or two.’
‘An hour or two? You want me to spend more than an hour with him? Saying what for mercy’s sake?’
‘Oh Tom, half an hour, ten minutes, anything. Just come.’
They walked along the cloister together. ‘I wish Brother Giles wouldn’t hang the washing out in the cloister garth,’ Tom muttered crossly. ‘Makes the place look such a shambles.’
Brother John smiled, but did not reply. He had beseeched God to send Tom to see Peregrine; it seemed unreasonable to expect even the Almighty to send him in a good humour.
Brother John escorted Tom closely into the infirmary, and along the passage to Father Peregrine’s room.
‘Go in alone,’ he said, very quietly. ‘It would hurt him to know I had to fetch you.’
Tom nodded and put his hand to the latch. Brother John walked away, and Tom stood there summoning his courage a short eternity. He felt sick.
He lifted the latch and pushed open the door. For a moment, oddly, he had a sense of being given another chance; a sense that today was yesterday all over again, because in this room nothing had changed, except that the sun had not yet moved round to fill the room with golden light. Peregrine sat, just as yesterday, immobile, slumped uncomfortably awry in his chair, enduring the passing time.
He lifted his head a little at the sight of Brother Tom, something like interest lightening the leaden dullness of his eyes. But he did not speak.
‘Father….’ Tom came fully into the room, and stood; uneasy, tense. He hoped desperately that Peregrine would not say anything to him. Not just yet. He wondered what he would do if yesterday repeated itself. Suppose he needed to relieve himself again? Even if I managed to understand him, what would I do then? How does he do it? What should I do to help him? Why didn’t I ask Brother John?
Why me? Tom asked it of God in silent panic. Why me?
He moistened his lips, became aware of his fingernails digging painfully into the palms of his hands. This is ridiculous, he thought.
Peregrine was saying nothing, watching him. He looks sad, Tom thought. Sad and… wary. Apprehensive. He’s finding this as hard as I am. It’s as though we were strangers. Worse. I’ve got to speak to him. He moistened his lips again.
‘Please bear with me. I don’t know what to say….’
He pulled the low stool over and sat down beside Peregrine, self-conscious under the silent, brooding gaze of his abbot’s eyes. Shyly, he took his hand. He held it in between his own hands, gently rubbing it with his fingertips. Peregrine suffered him to do it.
‘I’m sorry about what happened yesterday.’
Peregrine said nothing. An unreasonable irritation seized Tom. He’s not exactly making this easier for me, he thought resentfully. If he would only—only… what?
What could a man do with one crippled hand? He saw then that Peregrine’s silence was the best thing he could offer, the best he could do to ease the situation. He’s not holding out on me, he’s giving me time, Tom realised; time to come to terms with this… purgatory. There was a certain wonder in that insight for Tom, testing the ground of an unfamiliar form of communication, reaching in to the other man’s wordless presence, groping for an understanding of the language of his silence, like a blind man’s fingers exploring the surfaces of an unseen face.
What would he say if he could speak? Tom cast his mind back, pictured again the times he had come into the abbot’s house, bringing his burdens, his perplexities to this man. Sometimes no doubt Peregrine had troubles and heartaches of his own, but he usually had time to listen. Tom remembered it so vividly; the man sitting at his table, the comfort there had been in his acceptance and affection, the amusement and penetration of his eyes—‘Tell me about it.’ Maybe that’s what he would say now, Tom thought.
It occurred to him that such disability had a terrible honesty. It left no possibility of social niceties, the smooth, conventional exchanges by which men assuaged their loneliness without ever compromising their isolation. In this silence and stark deprivation, a man was pared down to the bedrock of his humanity. There were no pretensions here. If there was to be any communication at all, it would have to begin at that level. It would have to be the truth.
‘They want me to help you to smile again,’ Tom said. His fingers moved lightly on the unresisting hand. ‘But there’s nothing to smile about, is there? This hand, this poor, broken hand is all you’ve got left. It chokes me. God alone knows what it does to you.’
There was a cautious answering pressure from Peregrine’s hand.
‘I’m thinking,’ Tom said very quietly; ‘I’m thinking it’s like it was once before. Maybe you need to allow yourself to weep before you can think about laughing again.’
He looked into Peregrine’s eyes, looking for the answer of his silence. He found his answer. It was like looking into a chasm of misery. No defence met him. He saw right in to the grey, barren hell of despair. It was overwhelming. Tom looked down, away from the intolerable unhappiness of those eyes, at the maimed hand he held in his. Peregrine’s lack of speech meant that conversation was no longer a common ground. Tom also had to come in to the place of silence if they were to meet as equals. He had to find a way in silence to bring his friendship, his love, a crumb of comfort. He let the tentative shyness go from his touch as he held and caressed Peregrine’s hand with uninhibited tenderness, trusting his love to be received, a human reality flowing from hand to hand.
‘Do you?’ he said softly, then. ‘Do you weep?’
Peregrine nodded, slowly. The words came slow and muffled. ‘Oh, y-es.’
Tom looked up into his face. Peregrine looked back at him a moment, then closed his eyes. He was silent. Then, ‘Y-es,’ he said again.
‘Alone? At night?’
‘Y-es.’
‘And… does it ease things a bit?’
Another silence. Tom held his hand, waited.
‘N-n… n-o.’
There was something very final about that. Tom cast about in his mind for something else to say.
‘I’ve missed you,’ he said in the end. He glanced up at Peregrine’s face. The dark grey eyes were open again, watching him very intently. By my faith, Brother John was right, Tom thought. There is nothing wrong with your mind.
‘Have you—have you missed me?’
The twisted hand gripped Tom’s hand. ‘Y-es. Oh, oh y-es.’
Tom looked down at Peregrine’s hand, holding his tightly. ‘That… um—that sounds like real heartache.’
‘Y-es.’
Tom tried to look up at the grey eyes again, but could not. He felt too guilty. There was no backing out of this conversation now, though. That would be another evasion, another stealing away, and it would not do. Tom was in no doubt now that this was by no means a one-sided conversation, even if he had all the words and Peregrine had only ‘yes’ and ‘no’ at his disposal. His abbot was putting him on the spot as unerringly as ever.
‘I—I’ve got no excuses. I was frightened. It was because you couldn’t speak, and I didn’t know what to say to you. I knew you’d be all churned up inside. It was too big for me to face. I felt so helpless—’
Peregrine snatched his hand out of Tom’s, and Tom looked up, startled. Peregrine beat his hand against his chest, his face contorted with emotion. A stream of muddled words poured out, none of them intelligible, then he stopped, glaring indignantly at Tom, who tried not to smile, but couldn’t help it.
‘All right. I understood that. That was anger. And pain. Something like, “You felt helpless! What about me?” Yes?’
The misshapen hand came down onto Tom’s hand again, and the fingers curled round his.
‘Y-es.’ The relief at being able to communicate some of the anger and hurt that tore at him was immense. Peregrine felt the sickening mass of despair that filled him, sometimes till he choked on it, faintly eased. Tom was aware of a slight relaxation of tension, and realised that some of it had been Peregrine’s apprehension and fear, not his own.
‘So! Do you forgive me?’
‘N-o.’
Tom looked at him nonplussed. Peregrine smiled, an extraordinary, lopsided smile with the side of his face that had escaped paralysis. If you could see yourself, Tom thought.
‘Why not?’ he demanded.
Peregrine lifted his hand and beat it three times against his breast in the ritual gesture of the penitential rite from the mass—mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa; my fault, my own fault, my own most grievous fault.
‘Your fault? What’s your fault?’
‘N-o.’
‘Then…’ light dawned. ‘You—are you asking me to apologise?’
A silence. The smile waning, a little bit shamefaced. ‘Y-es,’ very quietly.
‘Oh, my Father—you’ll make a good monk of me yet!’
Tom knelt on the ground beside his abbot, and took his hand again, his head bent.
‘Father, I confess my fault,’ he said. ‘You needed me, and I knew you needed me, and I stayed away. I confess my fault of cowardice, and of hardheartedness, selfishness. I humbly beseech the Lord Jesus to restore the trust between us; and I ask your forgiveness, and God’s.’
Father Peregrine blessed him, a jumbled sentence full of tenderness. ‘Y-es,’ he added, just to make sure.
Brother Tom sat back on his stool again, and looked again into Peregrine’s eyes. ‘So that’s what was wanted,’ he said softly, ‘to rekindle a small flame of hope.’
He drew breath to speak again, then hesitated. Peregrine spoke to him. A question. Again, imperatively.
‘What was I going to say? Yes? I’m not going to get away with much, talking to you, am I? You’re worse than you were before. I was going to say, Brother John thinks—has he told you this?—he thinks you may recover your speech, at least in part. He says that the paralysis will probably be with you always, but you should expect to get quite a bit better. He thinks, by the spring—it’s early to tell yet, but by the spring—you could be able to… well, at any rate to work again. Did he say this to you?’
‘Y-es.’
‘Well? What do you think?’ Foolish question, thought Tom, as soon as he’d said it; as if he could tell me.
‘N-o.’
‘No what? Don’t you believe him?’
‘Y-es.’
‘You don’t think you’ll work again?’
Peregrine held up his hand, broken, twisted, his left hand (and he was such a right-handed man, Tom thought). He shrugged his shoulder. ‘N-o.’
The abbot’s work: working with guests, important church officials, government officials, local dignitaries; entertaining; leading the brethren in pastoral counsel, spiritual direction, homilies; presiding over the Community Chapter, leading the Office; orchestrating the huge network of the community’s business affairs: no, Brother Tom couldn’t see it either. What else, then? Peregrine met his gaze, and nodded.
‘Y-es,’ he said slowly, and made a gesture of wiping clean with his hand. Finished.
Tom took a deep breath. Hope, Brother Michael had said; but this man was no fool. He was not going to be duped by false hopes or jollied along by shallow optimism. This was a time for honesty.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I can’t see it either.’ Tom looked into Peregrine’s eyes. Warmth. Gratitude. Affirmation. That man preferred the truth. He did not want to be patronised with kindness.
‘All right,’ Tom said. ‘Let’s look at the worst. You could be like this for years. Paralysed. No speech. Helpless. Just like now. That’s the worst, yes?’
‘Y-es.’
‘Can you bear it?’
The briefest of pauses. ‘N-o. N-o.’
‘What then? Are you afraid of dying?’
‘N-o.’ No hesitation there.
‘Have you thought about dying?’
‘Y-es.’
‘And is it… have you wished you might die?’
‘Y-es. Y-es.’
‘Do you want to go on living—like this?’
‘N-n-o.’
‘Father… shall I help you out?’
The abbot’s eyes widened. He grew very still, looking at Tom. And I thought nothing would ever shock him, Tom thought.
Peregrine looked down, away from Tom’s gaze. He was silent. When at last he raised his head and met Tom’s eyes again, he looked so vulnerable, so wide open, that it hurt Tom almost physically.
‘N-o,’ he whispered.
‘Because, when it comes to it, you fear death?’ Tom hated himself for the brutality of the questioning, but he persisted.
‘N-o.’
‘What then? Do you really believe, deep down, that there’s a chance you’ll get better?’
‘N-o.’
‘Is it because it is forbidden to take life?’
Peregrine looked at him, unhappily. ‘N-o,’ he whispered.
‘That makes you ashamed? That you would take your life, against the laws of the Church?’
‘Y-es.’
‘What then? You can’t bear this shadow of living, but you don’t want me to get you out of it, because…?’
Peregrine looked at Tom, waiting. Oh God, he wants to tell me, and I’ve run out of guesses. Help me. Help me to see.
‘Maybe… is it just that life is sweet? That there are kittens, and sun, and the scent of rain in the morning. And maybe… having someone to talk to makes it a little bit worthwhile?’
‘Y-es… T-om.’
So that was it. It shook Tom to the core to see the power that had been in his hands.
‘Let me be sure of what you’re saying. Do you mean… my coming to see you has made the difference between wanting to die… and wanting to live?’
A long, long pause. Even now it was terrifying to reveal his need of Tom’s friendship, how he had ached for his company, wept at his absence. Like a man confessing a secret, shameful guilt, hanging his head he whispered, ‘Y-es.’
Brother Tom sat in silence, looking down at the hand he held between his own.
‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘it hurts, loving you. You turn me inside out.’