CHAPTER FIVE

The Moulting Falcon

Therese’s friend Lilian Shepherd came during the afternoon, to ask if Therese wouldn’t mind helping her with her English homework. Lilian was a very popular girl at school, and always had a group of friends around her, so Therese was rather flattered that Lilian especially sought her friendship, even though there was something indefinable she didn’t quite like about Lilian. Mary and Beth thought she was wonderful, because she was tall and slim and stunningly attractive, with great big eyes like a startled faun’s, and a rippling mane of silky blonde hair. Mother and Daddy both disliked Lilian intensely, and Mother said all she was looking for from Therese was a brain transplant. I myself couldn’t help admiring her, although she wasn’t very nice to the little girls; but that might have been because Cecily had bitten her once, for no reason that anyone could tell.

Therese took her into the kitchen and made her some coffee, and as Lilian sipped it, she explained that she hadn’t quite been able to come up with any ideas for her essay on Hopkins’ poetry and wondered if Therese had any thoughts…. She had read a little, she said, and really hadn’t got anywhere with it. Perhaps she would be able to borrow Therese’s essay, just to have a look at it? She thought it might help to inspire her.

Therese, who loved Hopkins, was delighted to lend Lilian her essay, and asked if Lilian would let her know what her own thoughts about the poems were, when she’d got a bit further. Lilian smiled and said she was sure her thoughts would not be half as original as Therese’s, and then she excused herself and slipped off home with Therese’s essay. I was bursting with indignation.

‘Therese, you are a goose! She’s going to copy it!’ I exclaimed. ‘Why did you let her have it?’

Therese looked at me uncertainly. ‘You don’t think she will, do you? She only said she wanted to read it. She couldn’t copy it, Mrs Freeman would know.’

Mother came in with all the dirty tea things, and asked what Lilian had come for.

‘What was it this time? Your Hopkins essay?’

‘Mother! How did you know?’

‘Because I’m not as daft as you. She’s in your English class, isn’t she? Be a bit more sensible, Therese. She’ll get you into trouble one of these days. Don’t have too much to do with her.’

‘Whenever Lilian’s been here,’ I said, ‘she always leaves an uncomfortable feeling behind. It’s funny, because she doesn’t argue or anything.’

‘But she’s my friend!’ said Therese, a bit upset.

Mother began to run washing-up water into the bowl. ‘Be friendly, Therese; there’s nothing wrong with that, but be a bit wary, that’s all. Now then, Daddy is going to run Grandma home in a minute, and take me to Evensong. Cecily can come with Daddy for the ride, but will you see to Mary’s and Beth’s baths for me? Daddy will do their bedtime when he gets in.’

Therese said she would, and I asked if I could come to Evensong with Mother.

‘Of course you can come! Get your shoes on, though, and brush your hair, because we must go in five minutes.’

I loved Evensong. I loved the stillness of the church that enfolded the small evening congregation. The mel low evening sunshine that slanted in low through the windows in summer, the gathering sombre shadows of spring and autumn evenings, and the profounder darkness of the winter months, all wrapped the evening worship in a mystery and a beauty that I never found in the brightness and bustle of family service in the morning.

Our church was just on the edge of the town, set in a pretty little remnant of woodland, a tiny drift of countryside still left in peace by the urban sprawl. Daddy dropped us off at the end of the church path, and we stood to wave goodbye to Cecily as he drove away. It was very important to Cecily to say ‘goodbye’. If she thought she had not made her farewells properly, she would scream deafeningly until Daddy turned the car back. So we waved until they turned the corner, and then strolled up the path to the church and into the stone porch.

The great wooden inner door opened with a click as Mother pushed it. Charlie Page, the blacksmith, was always the sidesman in the evening, and his face, freckled with age, wrinkled in a smile as he gave us our hymnbooks and prayer-books. Mother settled into our pew with a happy sigh. The evening service was a cherished time for her, when she could give herself to the worship without the stress of the little ones’ company, or the anxiety of being late. Whenever we went anywhere as a family, however much time we gave ourselves to get ready, we were always late, and Mother hated it.

In the pew behind ours sat Mrs Crabtree; a tall, well-built, energetic, silver-haired lady in her mid-seventies. She had borne six children in her time, and was still motherly through and through, wise and kind, with a rich, ready laugh. Unfortunately her singing was more out of tune than any I have ever heard before or since, and I set my teeth to endure as the organist struck up for the first hymn:

 

Glory to thee, my God, this night,

For all the blessings of the light.

Keep me, O keep me, King of kings,

Beneath thine own almighty wings.

 

I knew about his almighty wings. They were folding around us here, in the quiet of the evening, kind and everlasting and utterly secure. They were was the same wings that wrapped around me in our home, in the bedtime candlelight. Sanctuary from the busy and complicated daytime, God gathered us under his evening wing, haven for all our weariness.

The evening service felt as familiar as an old friend, comfortable to be with. I knew the prayers and the responses without looking at the book. Actually, I could say them all while thinking about something completely different, which to my shame I frequently did.

‘My soul doth magnify the Lord: and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour,’ we sang.

I thought of Peregrine, singing the same words, but in Latin, all those years ago; wrapped like me in the con tentment of evening calm, blissfully unaware of the turbulence of surprise and grief that lay around the corner… ‘No!’ I told myself sharply, ‘this is not the time! Come out of the walled garden, and shut the door firmly behind you, and turn your back on it. Concentrate.’

‘Glory be to the Father, and to the Son…’ Mrs Crabtree sang vigorously behind me.

Father Carnforth took the evening service. His gentle, wheezy old voice led us through the prayers; the Lord’s prayer, the responses, the collect of the day. I felt reassured by the humble confidence with which he prayed.

‘Give unto thy servants that peace which the world cannot give…’

What a gift! What a thing to ask for! And yet, incredibly, it is given. I knew that peace; I had been brought up with the flavour and the texture of it in our home. Peace, at the very core of things, constant, unobtrusive, like the humming of the fridge and the ticking of the clock. Peace, freely given. Beyond our making, or even our understanding. Thank you, God.

Father Carnforth was climbing slowly into the pulpit for his sermon. He read his sermons out of a book, very fast. He was in unspoken agreement with his congregation that the preaching of sermons was an unavoidable bore; to be endured uncomplainingly, but not prolonged. Tonight’s offering was about the textual background of the Synoptic Gospels, and I strongly suspected from the way he read it that it was as incomprehensible to him as it was to us. He shut the book with a snap and laid it aside with obvious relief, as he announced the final hymn: ‘The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended, The darkness falls at Thy behest. Hymn number 277.’

Mrs Crabtree gave joyful tongue behind me. Did God mind that dreadful singing, he who made the nightingale and the lark? Probably not. Probably it was the soul of Mrs Crabtree he was listening to, the worshipping song of her heart, and that rang true as a bell.

Then it was over, and we went out into the cool of the evening. Father Carnforth smiled kindly at me, and shook my hand in his aged hand, the joints swollen with arthritis and the skin wrinkled and discoloured with the years. His nose was big and red, with dark whiskers growing from it, and he was almost completely bald. He smelt strongly of pipe tobacco, and his cassock was not quite clean, but even Cecily loved him, and she had strong opinions about most people. His friendship with Cecily was helped along by the bag of peppermints he carried in his pocket, but it was not entirely that. He called her his sugar-plum fairy. Mary, who was always very worried about people she loved growing old and dying, focused her anxiety on him, as the most ancient person of her acquaintance.

Father Carnforth looked at me with his watery old eyes. They were brown, and small, and twinkling. Hedgehog’s eyes. Like Mother’s, they looked into the middle of you and could make you feel uncomfortable at times.

‘Ah, Melissa, you do me good, you’re a breath of springtime,’ he wheezed at me. ‘Tell your little Mary that Father Carnforth is still clinging to this world and sends his love.’

He shook Mother’s hand: ‘Goodnight, my dear. Take care.’

Mother and I walked slowly down the pathway, breathing in the scent of the roses that grew in a hedge around the churchyard.

‘I often think how odd it is,’ she mused, ‘that Lilian Shepherd is tall and graceful, with hair like spun gold and a face like a Greek goddess, while Father Carnforth is old and bald and fat and wrinkled; but it is Father Carnforth who is beautiful, not Lilian.’

‘It’s you that’s odd, Mother!’ I replied as I took her arm, ‘and beautiful. Will you tell me that story on the way home? The one you were going to tell me.’

‘Melissa, your appetite for stories is almost as prodigious as Cecily’s appetite for sweets! I will tell you the story on one condition, and that is that you pester me for no more stories today.’

I promised happily. Mother picked a white dead-nettle from the side of the path and pulled off one of its creamy flowers. ‘Did you know,’ she said, ‘that if you suck at the base of the flower, you get a drop of nectar from it—that’s unless the bees have been before you, of course. Try it and see.’ She showed me how to suck out the nectar, and gave me the nettle stem. I tried one of the flowers, and was astonished by the sweet, light, delicious flavour of the nectar.

‘Now you know what bees eat,’ said Mother, and while I worked my way through the rest of the flowers on the stem, we walked slowly out of the churchyard, and started homewards up the hill.

‘It was a time when Father Peregrine was tired, and very sad,’ began Mother. ‘Just a minute. I’ve got a stone in my shoe.’ She held on to my shoulder while she took it off and shook out the stone, then we walked on again.

It was only three days after Melissa had gone back home with Hugh and Edwin, and Father Peregrine had been plunged into a valley of despair: grief, temptation and sorrow. Every night during the week she had stayed with them he had kept watch and prayed for her before the altar in the chapel; and during the days he had put aside everything but the daily round of prayer to look after her, snatching an hour’s sleep here and there, fasting the greater part of each day.

On the day she left, a cloth merchant and his wife who were travelling past came seeking hospitality at the abbey. Peregrine had to entertain them at lunch and supper, disciplining himself to chat about trivial matters and show an interest in the ups and downs of the cloth trade. Also, the rent re-assessment and lease renewal for the farm tenancies belonging to the abbey must be made by Lady Day, so Peregrine had spent two arduous days in conference about the rents with Brother Ambrose, the cellarer, who looked after the finances of the abbey as well as the distribution of clothing, bed linen and other necessities. They had also discussed the provision of hospitality for the pilgrims and visitors who would be guests of the abbey during the Easter Feast.

After all this, he felt weary and numb, drained now of emotion. The old wounds in his leg were aching badly, since to keep himself awake as he prayed through the long nights he had forced the unyielding knee to kneel. So his back also was tense and aching, and he had a persistent, nagging headache just to round everything off. In the end, Brother Edward insisted that he come to the infirmary and submit to having his back and leg rubbed with oils of lavender, bergamot and geranium.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ snapped Peregrine. ‘I’m a monk, not a lady of the court. Save your aromatics for the sick, Edward.’

‘I won’t have to save them long if you carry on like this,’ insisted Brother Edward stoutly. ‘It’s you who will be ill if you don’t heed my advice. This week long you’ve not had those hands of yours attended to. Prayer and fasting are all very well, but you’re not adding common sense to the recipe. You can’t possibly undertake your responsibility to this community when you’re half dead with fatigue and aching from head to foot!’

‘How do you know I ache?’ mumbled Peregrine grudgingly.

‘Because I have eyes in my head and wits to understand what I see. Now, Father, you hear sense, and come to me in the infirmary.’

Peregrine would say no more, so Brother Edward left him, muttering crossly about his stubbornness. By the afternoon, however, Father Peregrine felt ill enough to give in. He made his way slowly down the cobbled path that bordered the kitchen gardens. A few gilly-flowers grew there, perfuming the air with their intoxicating scent, and among the cobbles, little heart sease plants grew, and a few violets still. He leaned heavily on his crutch, and his lame leg felt like a lead weight. In the kitchen garden, the young vegetable plants were in, and Brother Tom was hoeing the immaculate beds. He watched Father Peregrine toiling down the path, look ing as though he could hardly drag himself along.

Peregrine said afterwards that it was his own fault, that he should have been paying attention to what he was doing. A loose cobble turned under the crutch as he leaned on it, and it shot awkwardly to the side, tripping him so that he fell on his face on the ground.

Brother Tom saw him fall, dropped his hoe and ran to help. With his support, Peregrine got slowly to his feet, and Tom restored his crutch to him so he could stand. His nose was bleeding and the left side of his face grazed badly. He said nothing, but stood there, dazed. He blinked, and sighed. He took Tom’s proffered handkerchief (which was none too clean) with stiff difficulty into his hand, and clamped it to his bleeding nose.

‘Come, Father,’ said Tom, ‘I’ll help you. Come into the infirmary and sit down.’ He took Peregrine’s free arm, and half led him, half supported him, to the infirmary. The door stood open and, just within, a doorway to the right led off the passageway into a room where a bench was placed near the door. Peregrine slumped onto it without speaking, his lame leg stretched in front of him, looking blackly out at the world over the grubby handkerchief Tom had given him.

It occurred to Tom that he looked remarkably like a moulting falcon; dishevelled and out of sorts, and with that same fierce, brooding look in his eye. Half sorry for him and half amused in spite of himself, Tom hovered beside him a moment, wondering whether to go in search of Brother Edward.

As he stood hesitating, one of the lay servants, Martin Jonson, a cheerful, good-hearted young man from the village, bustled into the room from the doorway on the other side. His arms were so full of clean linen for the infirmary beds that he could scarcely see over the top of the pile, on which rested his chin. He saw Peregrine, however, and came to a halt in front of him.

‘Dear, dear, dear; what have we here, Father?’ he asked jovially, using the same jolly and encouraging tone with which he was used to addressing the senile and ailing inhabitants of the infirmary. ‘Whatever have you been and gone and done to yourself?’

Father Peregrine regarded him coldly over the top of the gory handkerchief. ‘I fell od the stodes add gave byself a dose-bleed,’ he said with icy dignity.

‘Don’t worry, Father, we’ll put you back together in no time!’ responded Martin cheerfully, and moved purposefully towards the doorway. ‘I’ll go and find Brother Edward for you, Father,’ he said, but he never made it to the door. Peregrine’s face was visible to him, but not his feet, and not noticing the stiff, lame leg that stuck out across his pathway, he tripped over it and fell among an avalanche of bedding.

Peregrine gave an involuntary yell of pain as the man’s weight hit his leg, and then, his teeth gritted and his eyes screwed shut, he swore. Brother Tom’s eyes widened at the string of inventive oaths that streamed from his abbot’s lips. He was astonished (and delighted) to hear the words he himself used in moments of weakness in the mouth of his superior, normally so courteously and quietly spoken.

Great-uncle Edward, who had come hurrying to see what all the fuss was about, was not so delighted, and clicked his tongue disapprovingly. ‘For shame, Father,’ he said. ‘Martin, get off his leg, man, and pick this lot up. Brother Thomas, you might assist him rather than stand there gawping. Really, some of you lads are about as much use as two left feet! On second thoughts, fetch me a basin of water, when you can get through the doorway.’

Tom helped Martin pick up his pile of washing, and went for the bowl of water.

‘I ask your pardon, Father,’ Martin said apologetically. ‘I trust you are not too badly hurt?’

Peregrine looked at him with a sickly attempt at a smile, and shook his head.

‘For myself, I must say I was winded, but this here bed-linen broke my fall,’ continued Martin, slightly peeved that nobody seemed particularly concerned with his own well-being.

‘Thank you, Martin; just take the linen and put it away, there’s a good lad,’ said Edward patiently, and Martin departed, narrowly avoiding a collision with Tom in the corridor, as he returned bearing the basin of water.

‘Let me look at your leg first, Father,’ said Edward. ‘That was a hefty weight to go crashing down on it. How is it?’

‘It hurts,’ Peregrine almost shouted at him, then sighed, ‘Oh, I’b sorry Edward, but what a foolish questiod.’

‘Brother Thomas, take a cloth from the cupboard there and clean his face while I have a look at this leg. Yes, that is a magnificent bruise, my friend. It will be all the colours of the sunset in a day or two, but no real harm done. You’ll do.’

Tom removed the blood-soaked handkerchief, and gently washed Peregrine’s face in the cool water. ‘Keep your head back, Father. Your nose still bleeds slightly. Yes, that goes better.’

‘What are you gridding at?’ asked Peregrine, looking out of ferocious dark eyes at Tom’s face bent over him.

‘You!’ said Tom, laughing, as he carefully washed the grit from the graze on Peregrine’s face. ‘You’ve just the same disagreeable look about you as a moulting falcon—“touch me not for I’d peck you!”’

‘Brother Thomas!’ exclaimed Edward. ‘How can you speak with such disrespect? Recollect whom you’re addressing and be a little less familiar in your speech, please! How did you come to do this, Father?’

‘I fell od—hag od a bidit, let be blow by dose.’ He fished in his pocket for his own handkerchief, and cautiously blew his nose. ‘That’s better. A loose cobble on the path by the vegetable gardens turned under my crutch, and I fell. Thank you, Brother Thomas, I feel more like a human being again. Moulting falcon indeed—I’ll wager you don’t speak with such impudence to Father Matthew… I was on my way, Brother Edward, to beg pardon for my rude refusal of your kindness, and ask if you will after all give my back and leg a rub with your oils. I feel like a wrecked ship.’

They patched him up, put ointment on the graze on his face, and arnica on the wonderful bruises with which he and Martin between them had decorated his legs, and Edward massaged his hands and back and leg for him with his aromatic oils. Under the capable manipulation of Edward’s strong and practiced hands, Peregrine relaxed, and as the tension flowed out of him, he fell asleep. They left him to sleep all afternoon and evening, which is what he really needed.

He was back in his stall in chapel for Compline and the night Office, and by the time Divine Office was concluded and it was time for community chapter, he was more himself again—albeit rather battered-looking—presiding over the meeting of the community with his accustomed attentiveness and authority.

The chapter began as usual, with the confession by the novices of any faults they may have committed. At Father Matthew’s prompting, Brother Thaddeus came, embarrassed and self-conscious, to kneel before the community.

‘Brothers, I humbly confess my fault,’ he said, ‘I… stubbed my toe yesterday…’ he paused.

‘Hell’s teeth!’ muttered Brother Cormac to Brother Francis. ‘Is it an offence even to stub your toe now?’

‘… and I said… I said… I used a most vile oath,’ continued Thaddeus. ‘I ask God’s forgiveness and yours, brothers, for the offence.’

It fell to the abbot, on these occasions, to pronounce God’s forgiveness, and Father Peregrine sat for a long moment, regarding Thaddeus as he knelt before them. Thaddeus began to sweat. Then Peregrine looked across at Father Matthew with a curious expression on his face. He sighed, picked up the crutch that lay on the floor beside him, and got slowly to his feet. He crossed over, before the puzzled eyes of the community (puzzled, that is, except for Brother Tom, who was grinning like an idiot, and Brother Edward), to where Brother Thaddeus knelt, looking up at his abbot apprehensively.

‘Stubbed your toe?’ he said, looking down at him. ‘I trust you are quite recovered.’

‘Yes thank you, Father,’ mumbled Thaddeus, wondering what on earth this was about. Leaning heavily on his shoulder, Peregrine bent with a grimace of pain to kneel beside him.

‘I humbly confess my fault,’ he said. ‘Brothers, I also was guilty of using some of the most depraved language yesterday; in the hearing, furthermore, of one of our lay servants and one of our novices. I ask your forgiveness, and God’s.’

There followed a startled silence, which Father Peregrine broke by saying testily, ‘I believe in the circumstances, Father Chad, it falls to you to pronounce God’s forgiveness.’

‘Oh! Oh, yes. I—I’m sorry!’ stuttered Father Chad. ‘God forgives you, my brothers, and so do we.’

Father Peregrine, leaning again on Thaddeus, rose painfully to his feet, and limped back to his place.

The novices withdrew, as was customary, leaving the fully professed brothers to continue the community chapter.

‘He didn’t have to do that,’ said Brother Francis. ‘He could have waited until we’d gone.’

‘It was more honest, though,’ said Thaddeus, ‘and it was worth it just to see Father Matthew’s face! What did he say, anyway, Tom?’

Tom shook his head and wagged a finger at them in mock reproval. ‘One man’s sin,’ he said, ‘is not an appropriate topic for another man’s conversation: and besides, it would make me blush to repeat it!’

We turned the corner into our road, and the evening sun had transformed the window-panes of all the houses into sheets of gold.

‘That was the last time Father Matthew ever insisted that one of the novices confess to the whole community for swearing,’ finished Mother, with a smile. ‘Run on ahead, Melissa, love, and put the kettle on.’