CHAPTER FOUR

The Poor in Spirit

Cecily had put something up her nose. She came running in to Mother from the garden with an air of great importance, to communicate her news.

‘There is a stone inside my nose,’ she said impressively.

‘Oh, no! Let me look. Come here, into the light by the window. Oh heavens, there is too. Just a minute, let me get my tweezers.’

Mother went for the tweezers that she kept hidden away in her box of private things. She would never let the little ones play with them, because she said some pairs of tweezers were better than others, and having in the past wasted her money on tweezers that wouldn’t work properly, she didn’t want to lose a good pair. She kept them for plucking out the bristly hairs that grew on her chin. In general Mother was in favour of hair, and refused to shave the hair off her legs or under her arms like Therese and I did. But then she wouldn’t go swimming at the sports centre because she was embarrassed to be the only lady with hairy legs and armpits. She didn’t mind the beach, because you can get away from people there. So what she thought about it wasn’t quite straightforward. As she said herself, you can’t always close the gap between what is and what ought to be. Anyway, she drew the line at bristly chins.

She poked about in Cecily’s nose with the tweezers, but the stone, though it was low enough to be seen, was too high up and too well-lodged to be freed with the tweezers.

‘I daren’t push it at all in case it goes even further. Beth, fetch me the pepper. Honestly, Cecily, you really are the end.’

Beth brought the pepper and Mother shook some onto the back of her hand.

‘Here, sniff this,’ she said, holding it up to Cecily’s nose. Cecily obediently sniffed it, and sniffed it some more. Her eyes watered a bit, but nothing else happened.

‘Oh dear. Bother it. I’d better phone your daddy. He’d be coming home in half an hour anyway. We’ll have to take you to the hospital.’

Mother phoned Daddy at the book-binding place where he worked, and he said he would come home straight away and take them in the car up to the hospital.

‘Therese, will you give Mary and Beth their tea if I’m not back in an hour?’ said Mother. ‘You can heat up the stew from yesterday, and there’s an apple pie in the cupboard. Open a tin of evaporated milk. I don’t know when we’ll be home. You know what it’s like waiting in Casualty. You could grow old and die before you ever saw a doctor. Come on, Cecily, don’t start crying. You’ll be all right. Fetch a book to look at and a dolly to play with.’

‘Can I come too?’ I asked.

‘We’ll be a long time, Melissa. Are you sure?’

‘Yes, I can bring my homework.’

I wanted to see what the doctor would do.

Daddy came home, and we bundled Cecily, who was whimpering by now, into the car, and set off for the hospital, leaving Mary and Beth waving in the doorway.

The hospital was a large, dingy building constructed of flat expanses of pale blue stuff and plate-glass windows. There were no spaces left in the car park, so Daddy went in search of somewhere to park while Mother and I took Cecily in.

Cecily and I sat on two of the chairs that lined the corridor while Mother gave our details to the receptionist who sat behind a glass panel in the wall.

A wide doorway led out of our corridor into the next corridor. That was also lined with chairs and people sitting on them, waiting. A notice over the doorway said ‘X-RAY’ with an arrow pointing one way and ‘FRACTURES’ with an arrow pointing the other way. The walls were painted with buff-coloured gloss paint. Under the plate-glass window that looked out onto the car park stood an old-fashioned radiator, and in front of it a low coffee table stacked with back copies of Country Life. Someone had pushed a cardboard box with some rather dirty toys in it half under the table. On the wall opposite me stood a fish tank. There was coloured gravel in the bottom of it, out of which grew two pieces of water weed. I counted the tropical fish swimming among the weed. I could not be sure because they were very small and kept disappearing from view, but I think there were about five.

Mother came and sat down beside us. ‘I do hope we won’t be here too long,’ she said. ‘Come and sit on my knee, Cecily. I’ll read you your book.’

Cecily shook her head. ‘It hurts in my nose,’ she said. ‘I want the stone out now.’

A doctor (I suppose he was a doctor; he was wearing a white coat with the buttons undone) came walking along our corridor, out into the next corridor where the other people were sitting. He stopped beside a rather prissy-looking lady with a little girl, about five years old. The little girl’s arm was encased in a plaster.

The doctor looked down at the little girl. ‘Hello,’ he said, in a jolly sort of way, ‘how are you?’ The little girl stared at him, and didn’t say anything. The doctor had short, frizzy black hair except for a bald bit on top. He was wearing glasses with gold rims. He kept his hands in his pockets, and he had a clipboard tucked under his left arm. He smiled at the little girl, but she didn’t smile back. He took his hand out of his pocket, and took hold of the clipboard and read the papers on the front of it for a minute.

‘Well, Mrs er… Robbins,’ he said in a brisk sort of way, looking up from the clipboard at the lady, ‘this shouldn’t take a moment. We’ll just take her dressing off and have a look at her. All right?’

‘Thank you, doctor,’ murmured the lady, but the silent little girl came to life quite unexpectedly.

‘No!’ she cried out. ‘No! You can’t! No!’ She sounded quite panicky. The lady with her looked embarrassed and cross. ‘Don’t be silly, Sarah,’ she said sharply.

‘Oh, don’t you worry,’ said the doctor. ‘We’ll have that dressing off in no time.’

‘Stop it, Sarah. Don’t be such a naughty girl.’ The lady’s voice was rising in irritation over the top of the little girl’s voice. She was screaming incoherently, ‘No! No! No! You can’t take my dress off,’ and starting to cry.

‘Now come on, Sarah. If you’ll just bring her along here, Mrs er… we’ll have it off in no time,’ said the doctor.

They disappeared down the corridor out of sight, the little girl still crying and protesting, her mother still telling her off.

Why didn’t he listen? Why didn’t he think? What was the matter with him? I looked at Mother, who was shaking her head in disbelief.

‘I’ll bet you that child’s never heard the word “dressing” before,’ she said. ‘Her mother will always have called it a plaster. Somebody needs to tell these young men that unless you listen and observe, and use your imagination to get below the surface of what you see, you’re not fit to be trusted with other people’s lives. Silly fool. That was our name they called there, wasn’t it? Come on, Cecily. Now you must be brave, and very, very good. If you want that stone out you must do exactly as the doctor says. No crying and no fuss.’

Our doctor was a lady doctor. She had a small office in a cubicle at the edge of the ward. It had a big poster on the wall, covered in colour photographs of all the different kinds of injuries it was possible to do to your eye, and underneath each picture the information about appropriate treatment.

Mother sat down with Cecily on her knee, and I stood in the doorway, because there was no room for another person. Mother explained what Cecily had done and the doctor listened quietly.

‘Can I have a look in your nose?’ she asked Cecily. Cecily nodded, solemnly. She tipped back her head, with a tragic look on her face. I think she was enjoying it, really. The doctor had a pencil-shaped torch to peer into Cecily’s nose.

‘Oh yes, I can see it quite easily,’ she said. ‘Stay like that and I’ll see if I can get it out.’

She had a long, fine steel instrument with a circular loop at the end, and she used this as she tried carefully to hook out the stone. All she got was a bit of snot. She sat back thoughtfully.

‘Mmm…’ she said. ‘I’ll have another go, and if that fails we shall have to try something else.’

But Cecily suddenly drew in her breath and sneezed an enormous sneeze. The little stone shot across the table and ricocheted under the doctor’s desk.

‘That thing tickled my nose,’ she said.

When we got out into the corridor again, Daddy was sitting there, flicking through a copy of Country Life.

‘Look, I’ve found the house for us,’ he said. His thumb was marking a page with a picture of an old farmhouse. It had a thatched roof, and its sloping lawn ran down to a duck pond. There were big oak trees dotted about here and there in its garden. Mother smiled. ‘One day,’ she said.

The doctor had given Cecily her stone wrapped up in a tissue, and Cecily showed it to Daddy, and to Mary and Beth and Therese when we got home. They all admired it respectfully.

I told Daddy, in indignation, about the little girl and her plaster. He listened and nodded.

‘When you grow up, Melissa, my dove,’ he said, ‘remember that little girl. You can go to university and train your intellect. You can go to college and learn all sorts of skills. You can be an apprentice and be taught a trade. But, understanding… you yourself must listen to the wisdom of life itself to learn understanding. They can’t teach you that in university, or medical school, or technical college, or anywhere in the world. Now then, I don’t know about you, but I fancy a bit of cheese on toast.’

At bedtime, Cecily’s stone was put in a jam jar on the mantelpiece, and I carried her up to bed while Mother checked Mary’s and Beth’s teeth in the bathroom.

Mother read them a story and they played their bedtime game and had their prayers, then she tucked them into bed.

‘Mother, you said you’d tell me about Brother Francis,’ I said when they were snuggled in.

‘Yes, I know. I haven’t forgotten. Draw the curtains and light the candle. Dear me, it’s been a long day. Ah, that’s better. Settle down now, Cecily. Stop wriggling like that.’

Well then, this is Brother Francis’ story. What do you know about him? Not much, I think, except that he was Brother Tom’s friend and made him laugh. The two of them had grown up together in the same neighbourhood, and they both came from farming families, but Brother Francis’ family were richer, and of considerable social standing. So although they had been acquainted, it was not until the differences between them were ironed out by their shared life of simplicity and poverty in Christ’s service that they discovered each other as friends. Of course, a man in monastic life was not supposed to have any particular friendships, being given as a friend to all men for love of Christ, but set apart from intimate relationships, again for love of Christ. But understanding flourished more readily between some men than others, and in that abbey natural affection was seen as a grace and a gift, provided it did not begin to develop into the kind of friendship that made other people feel shut out or unwanted. And Brother Tom and Brother Francis got on well. Any time you wanted to know how Brother Tom was, you could ask Brother Francis and he could tell you at once, because he loved him and understood him, and also because Brother Thomas was a straightforward kind of man who shouted when he was angry, wept when he was sad, and fell asleep when he was weary—whether that was in bed, or during the long psalms of the night Office, or in the middle of Father Matthew’s Greek lessons.

Any time you had asked Brother Thomas how Brother Francis was, though, he would probably have said, ‘All right—I think. He seems cheerful enough.’ Because Francis always did. He was courteous, he studied hard, he prayed earnestly, he had a smile for everyone, and he kept his own counsel regarding his private thoughts and feelings. He was cheerful at all times, and had an irrepressible sense of humour which, along with a tendency to get into conversation at the wrong times, got him into disgrace now and then. Brother Francis made himself pleasant to everyone and was well-liked. If he had a dark side, it was not obvious. If he had troubles, no one knew; and everyone was well content with this state of affairs, except Father Matthew.

‘He’s like the froth on a wave, that young man,’ he would say to Father Peregrine. ‘There’s something insubstantial about him. All this light-heartedness is pleasant enough, but he seems insincere to me. He’s not a minstrel or a court jester, he’s a man of prayer and he ought to behave like one. He’s too happy. You mark my words, this eternal smile of his covers an emptiness within. He needs sobering up, that lad. We must be more strict with him.’

The abbot considered the matter. Father Matthew, though admittedly not the most sensitive of men in helping the novices in his care through their struggles, did have, one could not deny it, an uncanny ability to spot and expose their weaknesses. If he said Brother Francis was too happy, he probably was too happy. He was certainly getting under Father Matthew’s skin.

‘I’ll talk to him,’ Father Peregrine said finally one Wednesday evening when Father Matthew had buttonholed him on the way out of Vespers. ‘I’ll see him after Chapter tomorrow.’

The abbot thought about Francis as he waited for him the next day. It was a fresh, chill day in early spring, when the snowdrops were out and the jasmine growing on the wall was tentatively blossoming, but not the primroses yet. Father Peregrine liked Francis, though he did not believe Brother Francis had ever really taken him into his confidence. ‘Insincere… an emptiness within….’ The abbot pondered Father Matthew’s words. The judgement seemed a bit unkind and dismissive.

He recognised Brother Francis’ firm, quick knock at the door, which stood ajar. The knock was like the man: confident, but not arrogant.

Father Peregrine pushed back his chair, deciding not to sit behind his great table full of books to talk to this young man. He picked up his crutch from where it lay beside him on the floor, and stood up to cross the room. Again the knock, not growing impatient, rather its assurance diminishing. The abbot hastened to the door. He kept it ajar when he was not in private conversation, partly to be welcoming, and partly because the heavy iron latch on the door was not easy for his broken hands to manipulate.

‘Come in, Brother.’ He smiled at Francis as he pulled the door open. ‘Come and sit down over here. Are you cold? Would you like to light a fire?’

‘A fire?’ Brother Francis hesitated at the prospect of this unfamiliar luxury.

‘Yes? The things are there at the hearth. Your hands are abler than mine; I shall fumble if I try to light it.’

The abbot settled himself into one of the two low wooden chairs that stood near the fireplace, and watched Brother Francis as he set about making the fire. His movements were deft and brisk, economical.

There were some men it was easier to talk to by the fire, who could not easily look into Peregrine’s eyes and tell their troubles, but unwound as they looked into the dancing flames and relaxed in the warmth. Father Peregrine thought it might well be so with Francis.

It was a long time since Brother Francis had occasion to build a fire. Dry sticks and cones over a twist of dried grass. Some rosemary twigs cut in the summer saved for the sweet-smelling winter kindling, that catches well. Then the little apple logs, gnarled and speckled with blue lichen. An old candle stump on top of the pile to encourage it along.

Father Peregrine watched him. I like him, he thought. His bearing is composed but modest. Yes, there’s no swagger to him. Alert, intelligent face and plenty of humour there. Well, he needs that, no doubt. It’s not an easy life. The abbot felt a bit like Pilate, looking for a fault and finding none, saying desperately to the Jews, ‘But I find nothing wrong in this man.’ There was a little nervousness about him maybe, a certain tension around his shoulders and neck, and his fingernails were well bitten. Having got his little fire going, he sat back on the hearthstone and looked up at Father Peregrine. The ready smile that caused Father Matthew such foreboding flashed a bit too quickly maybe, but then… being required to discuss his vocation with his superior was unlikely to set him at his ease.

‘There, you’ve made a better job of it than I would have. Sit for a while and enjoy the warmth now. I’ll not keep you too long. Brother Clement will be missing you in the scriptorium.’

Brother Francis laughed. ‘Yes, like a headache, I should think.’

‘Does he dislike you? He has never complained of you.’

‘It is my illumination work that is his sorest trial. “Will you look at the knowing smirk you’ve done on the face of Our Lady, Brother Francis,” he says to me, and, “What is this monstrous being here? Is it an angel with this lewd wink and cunning leer? For shame, Brother, it is a holy thing you’ve rendered thus like a brutish yokel in a tavern, three parts drunk!”’

Peregrine was laughing in spite of himself at Brother Francis’ exact mimicry of Brother Clement’s refined dismay. Francis grinned at him.

‘No, he bids me stick to flowers now, for flowers have no expressions to disgrace their faces. I doubt if he sighs much over my absence this morning. He must think the good Lord has given him an unexpected holiday.’

Father Peregrine shook his head. ‘I must see these works of art for myself one day. I remember him speaking of a thing of the Last Judgement you had painted that went somehow amiss.’

‘Oh that, yes. He had me erase it and give it to Brother Theodore to finish in the end. I thought it was coming on quite well. I’d meant to paint a scowling devil glaring over the souls of the damned, and I was thinking of Brother Cormac first thing in the morning when Father Matthew berates him for his Latin; and it was shaping quite well I thought, black-browed and a kind of ugly look in his eye, but Brother Clement didn’t like it at all. “It looks like an Irish pedlar with the belly-ache!” he exclaimed, which made me smile, because I’d got it more true than I intended. “And what is this simpering Christ like a silly lass sighing for her sweetheart? Brother, no more! Your lettering is adequate, but these caricatures give me a pain,” he said. Yes, that was my Last Judgement.’

He laughed and looked into the fire, pushed the little logs together and watched the sparks fly. Peregrine could see that his conversation would not be to Father Matthew’s taste. ‘Apart from your disasters in the scriptorium, how are you finding the life, my son?’ he asked him.

Brother Francis smiled. ‘When I’m not too hungry to raise my thoughts above my belly, I get a glimpse of heaven now and then.’

‘You don’t have enough to eat?’

‘Oh, I didn’t mean it really, no, no. The food here is good, and it drives us to prayer, you know—“Of your goodness, dear Lord, have Brother Andrew make the bread today and restrict Cormac to the vegetables.” Left alone in the pantry I should eat more, I confess it; but no, I have enough. I’m just greedy.’

‘Poor Brother Cormac. Is his bread so bad?’

‘You haven’t noticed? Father, you’re a saint! He made the bread yesterday. Did it not sit in your gut like a stone?’

Father Peregrine forbore answering that question, and changed the subject.

‘How are you finding the rule of silence, Brother? Some men find it disturbing and hard to live with at first.’

‘Well…’ Brother Francis glanced up at the abbot with a grin, then looked away into the fire. ‘It wasn’t so bad in the middle of winter, because my lips were too cold to move then anyway, but I… um… you must know I’m always in disgrace over my tongue—it has a life of its own it seems. Not only that, it chatters what’s little worth hearing. “Half-witted and facetious babble” were the words Father Matthew used, and on that particular occasion I own he was not far wrong. I talk too much and jest too much—speak first and think later.’

‘Well, that’s honest,’ said Father Peregrine. ‘But silence—when you are silent—does not oppress you?’

Francis laughed. ‘It is formidable at times, but then I am small-minded. I lie like a child in the night, counting sheep until I fall asleep at last, and then the bell is clanging and I am stumbling down the night stairs to Matins, drunk with sleep and cursing the day I ever heeded God’s call. The silence then is a happy necessity, for if I were permitted to speak it would be only a drivel of self-pity and complaint!’

‘Yes…’ Father Peregrine nodded thoughtfully. ‘It’s not easy to get used to the night prayers and the broken hours of sleep.’

‘Get used to it! By my faith, I had ceased daring to hope there would ever be a time when I’d get used to it! Will I?’

‘Oh yes, you will adjust. Granted, it would be pleasanter to stay in bed, but it is not always as weary a business as at first.’

Brother Francis smiled. ‘Then God be praised,’ he said. ‘I’ll look forward to that.’

‘Your fire is dying,’ said Father Peregrine. ‘Put some more wood on it.’

I must make this lad talk to me seriously, Peregrine thought as he watched Brother Francis placing the little logs on the fire. Things are not all roses. He has a low opinion of himself. He knows he’s a trial to the man he works under… he thinks himself greedy… small-minded… a chatterer. There must be some conflict in a young man who bites his nails to the quick and can’t get to sleep at night.

‘I imagine,’ he said, ‘that the vow of celibacy you have taken is at times a stony path?’

Francis was silent for a moment, fiddling unnecessarily with the fire. He looked up at Peregrine with a wry smile, then he dropped his gaze again.

‘I have learned,’ he said eventually, ‘to sit on my hands and say “no” and then ten Ave Marias and then “no” again.’ He grinned sheepishly at the abbot, hugging his arms round his knees as he sat on the hearthstone. ‘But stony, as you say.’

‘That can be the least of it,’ said Peregrine quietly. ‘The hardest lesson is the learning to bring your capacities for tenderness—the heart of you—into a communion of trust with the other brothers. A celibate monk must learn how to be fruitful in his dealings with others—how to open himself to them in truth, and bear the pain of letting himself be seen, be known. Yes, your heart must truly have an unlocked door, or celibacy will sour you, wither you. It is not only a matter of the physical urge, though God knows that is not to be belittled.’

Francis raised his eyebrows. ‘You’re saying, in effect, “You think it’s bad enough now, my lad, but you wait!”’

Father Peregrine smiled at him. ‘Not exactly that, but no, it is never easy. There are ways, though, to lift this renunciation up out of the realms of mere denial into a beautiful giving of your self; a way of peace.’

The fire spat out a spark, and Francis moved back a little, and flicked it back into the flames. He sat tracing his finger through the ashes on the hearthstone as he took in this thought. Composed and quiet, half-smiling, his face gave nothing away.

I can’t get near this young man. Father Peregrine thought as he watched him. He has made himself a fortress. Amusing, courteous, responsive, but too well-defended for his own good. Father Matthew’s right, there is something about this eternal cheerfulness… a rebuff… no, maybe not. Maybe he is protecting something… a wound somewhere….

‘Brother Francis,’ he said, ‘are you aware that you have turned aside my every enquiry with a jest?’

Francis looked up in consternation. ‘No, I—I’m sorry,’ he stammered. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude, I—’

‘You have not been rude. But I can be of no help to you if you keep me forever at arm’s length with flippant remarks and an armour-plated smile. Now tell me honestly, since you are evidently not too troubled by any of the things I have asked you about, is there anything you are finding difficult?’

‘Not… not really,’ said Francis slowly after a moment’s silence.

Father Peregrine shook his head. ‘Let me put the question another way. I would be ten times a fool if I let you assure me that it is all plain sailing. What is it that you find hardest about your life here?’

Brother Francis stared at the ashes in the hearth, his face fixed into a slight, strained smile. He had hidden the secrets of his heart from others for so long it was not so easy to put his hand on them himself now when he wanted to. He did not speak for a long time.

‘The constant criticism,’ he said at last. He looked up at Father Peregrine, his face still protecting his heart with the habitual pleasantness of his smile. The abbot was observing him quietly and seemed not about to speak. Brother Francis swallowed. ‘I know I have a long way to go. I know I talk too much. I know I am sinful and proud… and foolish. But, oh God I do try!’

His smile was gone suddenly, and the surface of his face was distressed with little twitches of nervous muscles that didn’t know what to do now they were no longer employed in guarding his soul with the shield of a smile. ‘I have studied and practised and done my utmost to please, but it is never enough. I am hemmed in by rebuke and censure until it seems there is nowhere left to stand. There is no place for me. I can never be good enough.’ The words tumbled out and stopped abruptly. Quivering in the unaccustomed exposure, he looked at the abbot, his brown eyes full of distress.

Father Peregrine considered him carefully. ‘Francis, you try too hard,’ he said.

The young man responded with something halfway between a laugh and a gasp of indignation. ‘Let me know when I’ve got it right and I’ll stop,’ he said bitterly.

‘No, that’s not it. It is the effort itself which is your undoing. It makes you unreachable. Father Matthew now, he feels as though you are, somehow… insincere… in some way false, maybe.’

Brother Francis said nothing, his face was quite still. I’ve hurt him, thought Peregrine. He was not ready for it. It went too deep. Help me now, good Lord, or this will close him up even more.

Francis looked away, gazing into the fire. ‘Insincere?’ he said quietly. ‘Am I?’ Slowly and absently he crushed one or two tiny sparks that lay on the stone, then he let his hand lie still. ‘You have met my family, haven’t you.’ It was a statement, not a question. ‘My father’s wife is his second wife. She is not my mother. I was not quite seven years old when my mother died. My father married again not long after, and my stepmother brought me up after that. She did her duty by me, fed me and kept me clean, but… I suppose I was as irritating then as I am now. More so, if that be possible. She said no end of things to me along the lines of, “Why can’t you…? Will you never learn to…?” and “For the hundredth time, child!” It must have been the hundredth time, too. It certainly felt like it.’

He paused and pushed the logs together on the fire, took another from the pile and placed it among them. His thoughts were far away. ‘My mother, my real mother, I will never forget her. She was beautiful. I tried to paint her face when I was painting the picture of the Virgin that Brother Clement took such exception to—she with the offending smirk. She had gentle brown eyes, my mother, and she was always merry and kind. She had the kind of laugh that made you laugh with her. She used to say to me, “Always do your best, my son. Be a good boy,” and she’d rumple my hair and smile at me.’

He was silent, then, and Peregrine waited; waiting for the memories that hurt and haunted the silence to be spoken and released.

‘She got ill a long time before she died. I don’t know what was the matter with her. They didn’t tell me then, and no one ever spoke of her after my father married again. It was as though she’d never been. They took me in to see her, the evening they knew she was dying. She’d grown so thin, her eyes big and her face white. She could scarcely speak. Just a whisper. She smiled at me though, even then. She looked as though the illness was hurting her badly, but she was smiling, for me; looking at me and her eyes were shining and kind still. She was not afraid. My father was standing behind me. I can remember it, because I wanted to go and kiss her—it was the last time—but he had his hands on my shoulders and restrained me. I suppose she was too ill. She stretched out her hand and touched my cheek, and she said, “Be a good lad for Mother now. Do your very best.” They sent me out of the room then. It was late—dark—but I was sent to play in the garden. I stood out in the garden, looking up at her lighted window. I was cold. The next time I saw her she was laid out for burial.’

The sense of his suffering swelled out now that the protective layer he had covered it with was stripped back. The air was tense with his pain. His body was rocking slightly in the rhythm of rekindled grief. Softly, he said, ‘And I have done my best. But somehow it is never good enough.’ He grew still, very still, his face a mask of sadness.

‘It may be,’ he said at last, ‘that my soul is… lightweight… not worth very much perhaps, but I give you my word, Father, I am not insincere. I have done my best.’

How odd it is, Peregrine thought, that men think the soul is invisible. Times like this, a man’s soul sits about him like a mantle for all to see. I wish Father Matthew was here. He’d not now scorn this man as insubstantial froth.

‘Your soul, my brother, is of inestimable worth,’ he said. ‘It is also of great beauty and nobility. It is only that you have kept it hidden from us. You have not understood. Your best is yourself. You are not a dog or a dancing bear that you must do tricks and search out ways to please us. The gift of yourself in trust—that is your best. You need courage to make that gift to us, because we also are weak in our humanity and will sometimes deal with you clumsily, as Father Matthew has, as Brother Clement has, as I have just now, without understanding, bruising you. Brother, please forgive us. Please trust us. There is nothing, nothing, nothing amiss with your conduct or your attitude. There is no rebuke here. But, be at peace. Breathe a little more easily. Allow us to see you, to know you. When you are bewildered and bowed down under discipline and hard words, weep—don’t laugh. Father Matthew is not unkind, but he takes you as he sees you, and he believes he sees light-hearted indifference.’

‘I can’t weep!’ Francis’ voice was sharp with pain. ‘How must I weep? I couldn’t bear to weep. There is no one… it hurts too much… I could never stop… I can’t weep.’ His hand moved in a gesture of hopelessness, and he got up from the hearth and knelt before the abbot.

‘Father, I confess my fault. I ask God’s forgiveness and yours.’ The words were torn wretchedly from the centre of him, little shreds of his soul ripped away in pleading need. He was trembling, his head bent, his hands clasped together.

Peregrine looked at him in perplexity. He’s getting tighter and tighter in this pain, he thought. God help me, I’m not breaking it for him. What is it he fears? What is it he needs me to do?

‘My son, what is it you want me to forgive? Are you asking me to forgive the pain of your heart? God knows—’

‘Me,’ Francis broke out in anguish. ‘I need you to forgive me. I want to be clean. I want to be true… I want to belong to God… I want him to forgive me.’

Father Peregrine looked at the young man, the tightness of his hands, his shaking despair, the rigidity of his bowed shoulders and neck and bent head, and wondered what to do.

‘I don’t want him to leave me alone.’ Peregrine heard the note of shame, of reluctance, and understood that this was the heart of the thing.

‘I am so terrified he will abandon me. I don’t deserve him, I’m not good enough, I’m not clean or pure or holy. I dread his coldness, his turning away… Oh, I’m so afraid of burning in hell. I would do anything, I… I am a desert place, useless and poor. Oh God, forgive me… forgive me… not only my sins, but me. Oh, do not leave me alone, don’t abandon me….’

‘This is what you fear?’ Father Peregrine asked him gently. ‘Francis, look at me. This is the thing you fear? That God will abandon you?’

‘Yes. How should he not? What is there of worth in me?’

Blindly, almost cringing in his need, he reached out his hands to Father Peregrine, and creeping forward he buried his face in the abbot’s lap and allowed the brittle shell to shiver into a thousand pieces.

God of love, help me to drive out this fear, thought Peregrine as he stroked the young man’s head and brooded over his grieving. However can I reassure him? He had seen many men weep in release; seen it bring them comfort and ease their sorrow, but this man’s weeping was bitter agony. There was no peace in it, only pain. He thought of Father Matthew—‘This eternal smile of his covers an emptiness within,’ and resolved to listen to him more often.

‘My child… my poor child,’ he murmured. He did not know what else to say. He knew the futility of smothering this fear with platitudes about God’s mercy and love. It is a thing a man needs to know deep in his heart, an understanding with God himself. That is what faith is. It cannot come second hand.

‘It hurts too much. It’s going to break me!’ Francis gasped in terror. ‘It’s like a great black wave, towering too high. If I let it fall, oh God… I’ll be dashed to pieces! It will destroy me!’

On the quivering shoulders Peregrine rested his hands, frustrated at their crippled immobility, wishing he could spread his fingers, hold the man through his fear.

‘It will destroy you if you try to contain it,’ he said. ‘You must allow it to break. If it destroys you, well, I will be with you. There is no more holding it in, my child.’

There was a moment when the abbot felt the power of that black tide of grief rising in Francis’ soul; when the two of them were arrested in the awe of the moment before it crashed. Then Francis’ whole body convulsed like a man vomiting, his hands gripping desperately in the folds of Peregrine’s tunic. His mouth was forced wide open in a silent cry of agony, his eyes screwed shut as the thing ripped through him. It left him sweating and shuddering, his mouth slack and trembling, his eyes dazed and dully oozing tears. He moaned softly like a labouring woman. Then, in the wake of the first crashing wave, poured out the flood-tide of his grief. The pathetic bravery with which he had fought it so long lay splintered like matchwood, floating dispersed on the dark sea that swept him away. There was no way now to combat the bitter sorrow or master the pain. It was too much for him.

‘Oh…’ Francis groaned in misery as he sat back on his heels, struggling unsuccessfully to compose his face and stop the tears. ‘Forgive me the liberty. I… oh…’ he hid his face in his hands, unable to contain his grief, bent double with the anguish of it. Looking down at him, Peregrine realised then and forever that faith and peace come not from believing in God, but from the secret of God’s love hidden in a man’s heart. Surely, my God, he prayed sadly, you will fill this child’s emptiness, have pity on his torment? Father Peregrine watched as Francis fought with his subsiding grief, finally managing to control it, straightened up with a sigh that was half a sob and spread his hands on his knees.

‘There you are, then. This is me,’ he said, with an attempt at a smile that wrung the abbot’s heart. ‘What now?’

Father Peregrine looked at him. He could think of nothing to say.

Francis turned his head aside and looked into the dying embers of the fire. ‘The brotherhood of this community,’ he said, his voice flat and tired in the sad, bruised finality of defeat, ‘is like a lighted room in a house. There is the warm fire of life and fellowship on the hearth, and the brothers are gathered safely round it, and outside it is night. Out in the night is the lonely place of darkness and danger and fear. Do not bad men prowl in the darkness, and wild beasts? Out in the darkness, where no light is, you can stumble and fall on the stones, and the cruel thorns tear at you. I am here in the light and warmth of the house, but I belong in the darkness. I can’t forget the darkness, it draws me. This light, this warmth, this brotherhood—it’s not for me. I don’t deserve it, it isn’t mine. I’m here on false pretences. I don’t belong.’

He looked desperately at Peregrine. He is tortured by this, the abbot thought. I’ve got to say something to help him.

‘If you cannot put the darkness out of your mind, my son,’ Peregrine said slowly, ‘maybe you should face it. Open the door of the lighted room and go out of the house and look at the darkness. What is there?’

Francis hesitated. ‘The restlessness of night. The silence, and strange sounds in the silence. Then—out there in the night, someone… a long way out into the garden, under those big whispering trees somewhere… there is someone weeping… sobbing… groaning. Father, there is someone in such trouble out there. I want to go and see!’ His eyes widened. He was really seeing it.

‘Go on then.’ It seemed so real that Father Peregrine felt as curious as Francis did.

‘Oh! There are stars. The darkness is not as black as I had thought. I had forgotten the stars. It’s a garden with shrubs and trees, dark shapes. I can smell the perfume of the flowers. And someone is crying in the darkness in bitter distress. I can’t find him. I’m searching for him, looking everywhere. Wait—there, under the trees. A man, crouching, bowed down to the ground. Oh, the loneliness of him. He’s broken. He’s—he’s afraid. I’ve never seen a man in such despair… I must go and… oh, God, it’s Jesus! Out here, all alone. Jesus… he was out here even before I came out. He was out here all the time, in the lonely place where abandonment and fear belong. He has always been here. I think it… it is Gethsemane.’

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Peregrine in fascination. Brother Francis looked at him incredulously. ‘Do? Stay with him, of course. I can’t leave him alone in this distress. I couldn’t just abandon him. Jesus, my heart, my love… his courage is the hearth for the night. As long as he is here, the darkness is home. The outside has become the very centre. Jesus… my Lord, and my God.’

The tension and pain had drained out of him; his face was soft and rapt, lost in the vision. His eyes, no longer haunted, were brimming with wonder and tenderness.

There was something Peregrine wanted to know. He hesitated, reluctant to intrude on Francis’ contemplation. Then he said, ‘The door of that house—did you shut it behind you when you went out?’

‘No. I was scared to go out. I wanted to leave a way back in. You can shut it behind me now. I’ll be all right here.’

He knelt a moment longer, and sighed deeply, amazingly at peace. For a few seconds, time had tipped over into eternity, and they were in the place where angels come and go. Then Brother Francis looked up at his abbot with a grin.

‘There’s the Office bell now. My foot’s gone completely dead, kneeling here. I’m going to have the most wonderful pins and needles when I stand up. I’ll limp along to chapel with you if that’s—oh I’m sorry, Father, that was tactless.’

Brother Francis blushed as the abbot bent to pick up his wooden crutch, stood up and leaned on it. Peregrine laughed at Brother Francis’ mortified face as he scrambled to his feet.

‘We’ll limp together then, my son,’ he said.

As they walked along the cloister, Father Peregrine glanced at Francis’ face, which had the same intelligence and humour, the same firmness—everything the same but for red eyes and a red nose—but resettled now into a new context of peace. The same but all different. The same man but reborn.

‘The Christ you saw,’ said Peregrine quietly, ‘that is the Christ I love. All his life he lived pressed on every side by human need, and he met the weariness and testing of it with a patience and humility that silences me, shames me for what I am. But in Gethsemane, I see Jesus crumple, sobbing in loneliness and fear, crushed to the ground, pleading for a way out. And there was none. I cling to that vision, as you will. That sweating, terrified, abandoned man; that is my King, my God. Such courage as I have comes from the weeping of that broken man.’

Brother Francis reached out one finger and gently touched the abbot’s hand. They went into the chapel in silence, each to his own stall. Father Peregrine pulled his cowl up over his head, and sat gazing as he always did at the great cross that hung above the altar. ‘How did you do it?’ he prayed in silent wonder. ‘How did you do so much without doing anything? How did you lift the man out of that torturing agony of grief and fear just by consenting to bear the same torture, the same lonely agony? Suffering God, your grace mystifies me. You become weak to redeem me in my weakness. Your face, agonised, smeared with dust and sweat and blood and spit, must become the icon of my secret life with you. The tears that scald my eyes run into your mouth. The sweat of my fear glistens on your body. The wounds with which life has maimed me show livid on your back, your hands, your feet. The peace you win me by such a dear and bloody means defeats my reason. Lift me up into the power of your cross, blessed Lord. May the tears that run into your mouth scald my eyes. May the sweat that glistens on your body dignify my fear. May the blood that drips from your hands nourish my life.’

Father Peregrine watched Brother Theodore take his place beside Francis, saw him rest his hand gently a moment on Francis’ shoulder, having seen in his face the signs of recent tears. The abbot watched the shyness of the smile with which Francis acknowledged Theodore’s gentleness. Ah! Yes! He has allowed himself to remain vulnerable, the abbot rejoiced. Then as the cantor lifted his head to begin the chant, Peregrine sped one last private prayer to the Almighty—‘And of your goodness, dear Lord, help me to think of some sensible explanation to offer Father Matthew.’

‘Deus in adjutorium meum intende,’ and the brothers responded ‘Domine ad adjuvandum me festina.’

Mother fell silent then. I looked at her, sitting in her chair in the candlelight, her hands folded quietly in her lap, her eyes still seeing people and places far away as she gazed at the candle flame.

‘What do those Latin words mean?’ I asked.

‘Mmm? What?’

‘Those Latin words you said at the end of the story. What do they mean?’

‘They mean, “Oh God, come to my assistance. Oh Lord, make haste to help me.” It’s the versicle and response from the beginning of the Office.’

She sat a moment longer, thinking, then she said, ‘I have always loved that story. It was that story which first taught me that we can offer no solutions, no easy answers, to other people’s tragedies. We can only be there. It is Jesus they need, not us, and even he offers no answers. He offers himself. It is when people find their way through to him that the pain of their life becomes the pain not of death, but of birth. A thing of hope. Hark at me, rambling. It must be late—look, this candle was a new one and it’s half burned away. Let’s go downstairs. Therese and Daddy will be thinking we’ve fallen asleep up here.’