CHAPTER SEVEN

Holy Poverty

Mother stood in the kitchen, reading through the letter Beth had brought in from school. She looked anxious and harassed as she glanced up and caught my eye. She waved the piece of paper at me.

‘They never let up, do they? Beth’s class is going on an outing to the estuary to see the geese and the other waterfowl, and just look how much money they want for the cost of the trip! Pocket-money recommended, for heaven’s sake! Dear, oh dear, I don’t know. She’d not get more than that for her birthday! What else? Some sensible outdoor shoes and a waterproof coat; a packed lunch and a warm sweater. Well, I can manage the lunch and the sweater, but she hasn’t got a waterproof coat, and she’s only got sandals. She hasn’t grown out of those yet. I was hoping to wait until the weather gets a bit colder before I buy her winter shoes. If I get them now she’ll outgrow them before the spring. Do your Wellingtons still fit you, Beth?’

Beth shook her head glumly.

‘No? Your feet must have grown, then. It doesn’t show so much with sandals. Oh, goodness me, Melissa, she’ll have to borrow your kagoul and roll the sleeves up. That’s waterproof. All that money, though! Why, it’s as much as it costs me to feed her for a week. How many children are there in your class? Thirty-two? They’re going to spend all that money taking you to see some ducks on a puddle of water; and we live by the sea! What’s wrong with seagulls, for heaven’s sake? A whole month’s housekeeping that would be for me.’

She sighed wearily. ‘You’ll have to wear your sandals and they can just lump it. You can take some spare socks in case you get yours wet. I suppose your class has an outing too, Mary, and Cecily’s playschool. All right, never mind. You’ll probably come home with a photocopied outline of a duck to colour and a vivid memory of someone being sick on the bus, but I daresay your teacher has spotted some educational value in it that I can’t see. Out you go into the garden to play for a little while. I’m not quite ready with tea yet.’

There was never any money to spare in our house. We had two meals a day, apart from our breakfast porridge, and bread featured very prominently in one, and potatoes in the other. Mary and Beth came home from school for dinner in the middle of the day, because Mother said she could feed them at home cheaper than either school meals or sandwiches. Daddy said Mother was the only cook he knew who had hit upon the novel idea of using meat as a garnish. Our clothes were almost always second-hand, and so were our books. The little ones had some money for sweets on Saturday, I did a paper-round for pocket-money and Therese worked on Friday evenings at a local supermarket, filling shelves. We didn’t mind not having much money, but I hated Mother having to be anxious about school trips and new shoes, and getting through the last week of the month before Daddy was paid.

‘It’s all right,’ she would say, ‘but choosing between baked beans and toilet rolls defeats me. They go together, don’t they?’

Worst of all were the weeks before Christmas, when she would be nearly in despair trying to get together enough Christmas presents for all our relatives and friends.

‘What a silly way to celebrate Jesus, homeless in a manger,’ she said crossly. ‘Although, I don’t know. We’ll be more or less down to milk and hay ourselves by the time we’ve paid for all this lot.’

Yet somehow, we always managed. ‘There is nothing in my life,’ Mother said, ‘that has taught me so much about the kindness of God and the reality of his love watching over us as not having enough money. He has never let us down. Never. Well, sometimes we have to ring up and say we’ll pay next week, but nothing worse than that. I don’t know what we’d do without him.’

‘Without God?’ Mary asked, puzzled. ‘We couldn’t do anything without God because we wouldn’t be here at all.’

My mother was a resourceful woman, not easily defeated, but worrying about money was one of the few things that would reduce her to tears. More often though, when she was anxious, she would be bad tempered, irritable and sharp with us all. It was at the end of a week like that, that Beth’s letter about the school outing came.

I got out the loaf of bread and the pot of blackberry jam for tea while Mother read through Beth’s letter again.

‘It’s not bad really,’ she said, ‘and it’s a month off yet. Perhaps she’ll be able to have some shoes.’

‘I wish we were a bit richer,’ I said, getting the margarine and cheese out of the fridge, and bringing knives and plates to the table.

‘I don’t,’ said Mother. ‘I know it sounds odd, but I don’t. I couldn’t bear the thought of people who have no homes and are cold and hungry, if I always had enough. I know I get cross and upset about it, but I would be no better off for covering up my weakness with money. It’s good for me to know the places where my soul falls down, and it’s good to have to lean on God and ask for his help. I know it’s not very nice for you when I’m ratty, but maybe it will help you to understand people better than you would have if you’d been too protected from the realities of life. There’s another thing of peanut butter if you look at the back of the cupboard.’ Mother poured tea into mugs for everyone except Mary and Cecily, who had glasses of milk. ‘I know a story about poverty. I’ll tell you it after tea, if you like. Call the girls in now. Where’s Therese? In the living room? Oh, I didn’t hear her come in.’

After tea, the three little girls had their bath, and then I read Cecily the story of the Great Big Enormous Turnip. Beth and Mary had heard that story too many times, so they went upstairs for a chapter of a book with Mother. Cecily made me laugh, her blue eyes getting rounder and rounder as I said, ‘… and they pulled and they pulled and they pulled and they pulled and they PULLED!’ Without her realising it, her mouth was silently mimicking mine as I spoke the words of the story.

‘… and the little mouse came and pulled the cat, and the cat pulled the dog, and the dog pulled the little girl, and the little girl pulled the little boy, and the little boy pulled the old woman, and the old woman pulled the old man, and the old man pulled the turnip and they…’ I looked down at her, and she said the words with me: ‘pulled and they pulled and they pulled and they pulled and they PULLED, and…’ Cecily looked at me, her eyes dancing with delight. ‘Up came the turnip!’ she shouted with me. ‘And they all had turnip for tea, all of them. I hate turnip!’

I hugged her, but she wriggled free and raced upstairs to Mother. In the bedroom, Mother took her on her knee. ‘Prayers, Cecily,’ she said. Cecily put her hands together and shut her eyes so tightly that her face was trembling with the effort of keeping them shut.

‘Gentle…’ Mother prompted.

‘Jesusmeekandmildlookuponalittlechild,’ gabbled Cecily. ‘Pity… pity… pity mice…’

‘Pity my simplicity. Suffer me to come to thee,’ Mother finished off for her. ‘There, into bed.’

She drew the curtains and lit the candle as Cecily nestled into her bed. ‘Go away, Cecily,’ muttered Beth irritably as Cecily snuggled up against her.

‘Lie still now,’ said Mother. ‘Ssh. I’ll sing you a song.’

She sang them some songs, an Irish folk song and two hymns, and they were quiet and drowsy when she had finished.

‘Story?’ I said.

‘Oh yes. About poverty. This is not a story about the sort of poverty where people are in rags or starving. It’s about holy poverty, monastic poverty.’ Mother laughed. ‘I once knew a girl who went to stay with some Poor Clares in their monastery. She came back all big eyes saying, “They live in such poverty! They only have one towel in the bathroom.”

‘“It must get very wet,” I said. “Oh, no,” she said, “they’ve got lots of bathrooms.” Yes, holy poverty is different from the ordinary sort. It’s simplicity, really. Having a humble and frugal way of life for the sake of Jesus because he was poor and like a servant. To live in holy poverty is one of the three monastic vows. The hardship of holy poverty is almost the opposite of ordinary poverty. With the ordinary sort, the worst thing is having no choice, being trapped in it. With holy poverty, the hard thing is being faithful to it, having chosen it.

‘Anyway, this is the story. It’s one that Father Peregrine’s daughter Melissa used to love especially.’

‘I ’ave brought a little cask of wine with me, mon père. Exquisite, beautiful wine. If one of your young men will bring it to your house, we will sample it together. I made the mistake of drinking your wine last time I was here, bon Dieu! Hedgerow vinegars made of every curious root and flower the wilderness spawns. Sacré bleu! Your father would turn in his grave to see what you have descended to! And the foul mixture you drink with your viands—your ale and water—ah, Lord have mercy! There is time enough for purgatory. I have no wish to begin it now.’

Père Guillaume from Burgundy had come to pay Father Peregrine a friendly visit while he was in England. The two of them were walking across the great court of the abbey from the guest house to the refectory, which was the point of entry into the cloister buildings. Brother Martin, the porter, watched them from the gatehouse with a smile as they went slowly across the court, for they made an extraordinary couple; Guillaume strolling in corpulent magnificence (twenty-one and a half stones, Brother Martin decided, would be a very conservative estimate), and Peregrine’s spare, nowadays slightly stooping, frame jerking along with the aid of his wooden crutch. To Brother Richard, the fraterer, who had caught sight of their approach through the window of the refectory and opened the door for them, they presented an equally amazing sight. Père Guillaume’s voice was suave and educated. His eyes took in everything around him with quick intelligence, missing nothing. Great waves of rich laughter rumbled up from his enormous gut, shaking his immaculately shaven chins as he took Peregrine to task for the severity of St Alcuin’s simplicity. His elegant white hands gestured articulately as he spoke.

At first glance, Father Peregrine’s ungainly figure seemed unlikely company for such a man. That Peregrine’s ascetic preferences and the frugality of his house horrified the abbé was the first thing obvious from the words that rolled across the court before him in the deep and fruity accents of his confident voice; the voice of a man used to commanding, used to imposing, used to power. But as they drew closer, Brother Richard saw that there was more to it than that. Père Guillaume bent his head and listened with close attention to Father Peregrine’s quiet replies, and looked sideways at him with a sort of fascinated respect. And well he might, thought Brother Richard, as he held the door open for the two abbots to pass into the refectory, looking at the lean, uncompromising lines of his superior’s face, disfigured by its cruel scar, illumined by the disquieting penetration of the dark, direct grey eyes. Well he might.

Father Peregrine stood aside to allow his guest to precede him through the doorway. ‘Mais non, aprés toi, mon ami I must follow my betters!’ The abbe stepped back, raising his hands in deprecation, then courteously but firmly put his hand to Peregrine’s elbow, steering him ahead of him through the door.

Abbot Peregrine smiled his thanks at Brother Richard standing holding the door for them and Père Guillaume stopped to acknowledge him too: ‘Ah, now; see how your sons love you, mon père! In my house they slam the door in my face. “Let the old pig root for his own truffles,” they say. Yes, mon fils, ’tis true, I swear it!’ He nodded at Brother Richard’s startled face, then put a plump hand on his shoulder, the gold of his ring glinting in the sun that slanted through the doorway. ‘I am jesting, maybe, but I speak the truth when I say that I am not loved as this abbot of yours is loved. The reign of God is in your love here. I love him too.’ He patted Brother Richard’s shoulder, and continued on his way into the room, where Peregrine stood waiting for him, watching Brother Richard’s reaction with amusement. But the abbé stopped short. ‘Mon Dieu!’ he said, the sweeping gesture of his hand inviting them to look at their refectory. ‘Look at the bare wood of this place! Have you no linen for your tables? Have you nothing better than stone for your candlesticks? Ah, but they are beautiful candles. I remember Frère Mark and his bees. Beautiful candles! They tell me, mon père—can it be true?—they tell me that these Englishmen are barbaric. Come, you are a Frenchman, you can tell me if it is true! They tell me it is impossible—but impossible—to stop the English from wiping their knives and blowing their noses on the tablecloths. It is true then, mon père. It must be true, for you have taken their tablecloths away!’

He stood in the middle of the room, his eyes wide in mock horror and amazement, his hands spread and his eyebrows lifted in enquiry. Peregrine laughed at him. ‘For sure it is true, but I didn’t take them away. Our novices stole them to enable them to escape over the wall at night, driven to despair by the insupportable harshness of our regime. Come now and revile me in my own house. Stop offending the silence of our cloister. Alas, I have only bare wooden chairs to offer you there too, but I see you’ve thoughtfully provided your own cushioning as well as your own wine. Brother Richard, if you have a moment to spare, would you be so kind as to bring us from the guest house Père Guillaume’s cask of wine? I have nothing he can bear to drink. Even the water in our well is rank, though it be sweet enough for our degraded palates.’

‘Ouf! Touché!’ the abbé chuckled. ‘Very well, then, let us tiptoe along your cloister. Let me amaze you with the revelation, we too keep silence every now and then. I can bear to cease my chatter till we are within your parlour.’

So saying, he folded his hands reverently within the sleeves of his habit, and proceeded with regal dignity along the cloister, his face composed into a grand abbatial solemnity which went oddly with the gleam of mischief in his eye.

Brother Richard brought the wine, and broached the cask. He poured it out into the simple pottery beakers that were all the abbey could boast for drinking vessels. Father Peregrine saw the expression on Père Guillaume’s face as he looked at the beakers, and forestalled his comment. ‘Guillaume, it suits us to make pots. It keeps our idle hands from mischief. We make them, and then because we are barbaric as you say, and have but the clumsy manners of peasants, we drop them and break them. Then we can make some more and it saves us from mischief again. If we drank from silver vessels, we should have nothing to do but drink all day, and nothing to drink anyway, but ale and water. Thank you, Brother Richard. Your very good health, my brother, my friend. May God unite us in peace.’

‘Amen, mon ami. Bon santé!’

‘Oh, but Guillaume, this is beautiful wine. You have brought me the best. I am not so boorish yet that I cannot appreciate this. It is beautiful wine!’

Abbé Guillaume smiled in satisfaction, and looked affectionately at his friend. ‘I have looked forward with impatience to this visit with you, mon frère. I carry you in my heart, though I see you seldom. It is an honour to be your guest.’

There was a knock at the door, and Brother Tom entered quietly. Brother Richard had sent him: ‘He has a guest, Tom. Someone important, I think. He may need you to wait upon them.’

Père Guillaume looked round to see who had entered the room, and when his eyes lit on Brother Tom, he put down the beaker of wine which looked so incongruous in his elegant hand, and heaved himself to his feet.

‘Frère Thomas! Mon ami! You remember me? You, I shall never forget, never! I see you as if it happens now before my eyes, standing like a prophet of God over that Augustinian snake, storming at him as the gravy dripped from his furious face. Ah, Sancta Maria, that was a moment to remember! Let me embrace you, mon fils!’

He enfolded Tom in a mighty hug, soundly kissed him on both cheeks and stood back with his hands on Tom’s shoulders, beaming at him fondly.

‘“I had rather be”—what was it? A beetle? Mais non, a cockroach! “A cockroach that crawls on the floor in the house where my abbot is master than be the greatest of those who serve under you!” Formidable, eh? I salute you, Frère Thomas. It does my heart good to see you again. May he have some wine, mon père? Is it permitted? Un tout petit peu?’ He turned in enquiry to Father Peregrine, who hesitated.

‘Truly, Guillaume, this is not how we usually spend the afternoon; but yes, why not. Sit down and share some wine with us, Brother.’

‘Let me pour you some, mon fils, into this enchanting little pot. It is not at its best; it should settle, it should breathe, but never mind. Voilà. I have given some to your abbot, to draw the English damp out of his soul. The fog has penetrated him. He has become a little chill, a little grey. This will put the laughter back in his eyes—eh bien, look at him! You see! That frozen pond of austerity is melting at the edges. You will drink some more of my wine, mon père? But a little. Non? Un soupçon?’

‘Guillaume, this will not do. You can afford to roll unsteady into the Office, but I lurch like a ship with the side stove in as it is. Leave me with a rag of dignity to cover my foolish soul. I’ll not go down to choir drunk, breathing fumes of wine with every phrase I sing. Oh, don’t look at me like that. I meant no rebuke. We’ll drink some more wine over supper.’

Abbé Guillaume nodded mournfully. ‘It is as I thought. You have seen through me. “’Ere is a man,” you say to yourself, “with all the virtue of a cracked pot.” Fear not, mon frère, the comparison suggests itself to me quite unbidden. There is nothing amiss with this one. “He has suffocated his spirit, which was, alas, noble, in folds of flesh, and I must be wary of the contamination of his gluttony. What is more, I must shield this young monk from the debauchery of his ways, and in no way seem to condone them.” N’est-ce pas? Eh bien, tu as raison, mon ami. Your abstinence is my reproach.’

He smote his breast and hung his head sadly, then burst into roars of delighted laughter at Peregrine’s discomfited silence.

‘Ça va, mon ami, je comprends. I will leave you to your dreary labours until supper-time, but you must promise me then to put aside your dignity of office and be my companion, my old friend, not my judge. I have a conscience of my own to make me uneasy—yes, still, I swear it—I will not be needing to borrow yours. You have finished, Frère Thomas? How do you find my wine? Ah, it has lit in your eyes a little candle. Pleasant? Yes, I think so too. Perhaps your good abbot will send you to France to visit me one day. I have a whole cellar full. What did you say, mon père? What was that very ungracious muttering? You think not, is that it? Ah, well, Frère Thomas, you would have been welcome. Tant pis, uh?

‘With your permission, mon père, I will feast on the delights of your library until Vespers. I will behave impeccably, as solemn and recollected as your extraordinary novice master. À bientôt. You will be with us later, Frère Thomas? Yes? Bon! You make an excellent cockroach! À bientôt.’

As the abbé left the room, taking his colour and laughter with him, and Brother Tom followed him out, Peregrine was left alone. The abbé reminded him of all the world he had left behind, the wealth and sophistication of his youth. To leave it all had seemed a clear call, to which he had responded with an unhesitating ‘yes’, but… it was true, maybe he was a little chill, a little grey… a bit negative, perhaps.

For the first time in years, his single-hearted conviction wavered. Oh God, if it were all a hollow edifice, this life he had built. If the gamble of faith were a losing bet, and the temple he had made of his life prove only an echoing vault, an empty house of death; all the sacrifice of chastity, poverty, obedience be no more than frustration, denial, loneliness. He shook the doubts away. There was work to be done. He must go to the infirmary to spend an hour with the aged bedridden brothers. There he forgot himself for a while in their company and conversation, but his mood of uncertainty and uneasiness descended again as he made his way slowly to chapel before Vespers.

He sat in his stall in the choir, the abbot’s stall, centrally placed in the position of dominance for the man who carried the weight of status and power. When first he had come here, there had been a certain thrill in occupying that place. Pride… ambition, I suppose, he thought sadly as he sat there now. What a struggle it has been. What a struggle to fight the pride of my spirit on the one hand and the rebellion of my flesh on the other, and still to lead with confidence—to teach and shape the men given into my trust. He sat motionless, unblinking, looking back over the way he had travelled. What am I become now? he asked himself. The sour defender of my own crabbed asceticism? Is all that I have endured in the name of humility only the symptom of my own vain pride?

He thought of the merciless indifference with which he had driven himself in the early days: the hair shirts, the scourgings and fastings, the perverse satisfaction in his body’s miserable craving for softness, for comfort, for pleasure, for tenderness. What was it for? And then, the bleak and barren desert in which he had fought to come to terms with his disablement, the grim tenacity with which he had striven to prove again his competence, his ability to rule, to lead.

He thought back on a day, one among many, when with a certain cruel detachment, he had very deliberately knelt to pray, brutally forcing the shattered knee to bend, letting the sickening waves of pain force his self-pity and distress into the background, so that the dizzy sweat of it hurting won a savage victory over threatening tears. Why? Systematically he had stripped the life of his community of all pretensions, all luxuries, all self-indulgence, seeking the poverty that God had promised to reward with the kingdom of heaven. He saw again the suffering of men he had held to his own standard: Brother Tom, half-frozen, prostrated on the threshold of the abbey in the biting winter dawn; Allen Howick, now Brother James, drowning in his shame, his poverty of being. ‘I thought it was for you, my Lord,’ he prayed uncertainly in an anguish of self-doubt. ‘Was it not so? Was it the conceit of my spirit? If so, the most cowardly sensuality would have been a better choice. Let me not be a sham, my God. I had thought I had shaped a place of peace. I want your poverty.

‘Oh, a pox on it all, I am tired of trying. Cling to me now, my God, for I have lost the will to cling to you.’

He tried to concentrate on the psalms, the prayers of Vespers; tried to ignore the insistent questions—‘Why? Why? Why can I not be as Guillaume is, to laugh and drink and eat and forget? Why can I not forget the poverty of Gethsemane, of the cross? Nails! Nails! Oh my Jesus, my Lord… your love has won me… and how should I forget?’

At supper with Père Guillaume that evening, he toyed absently with his food, and he had little heart for conversation. Brother Tom, seeing his superior out of sorts, made himself as unobtrusive as possible as he waited on them. Père Guillaume observed his old friend shrewdly. He loved him. He had never understood his brooding intensity, but marvelled at his hunger for truth, for simplicity, for holiness. He tried to lift his friend’s mood, to entice him out of his despondency, but without success. In the end he decided to take the bull by the horns.

‘Is it your heart, your liver or your soul that is afflicted, mon frère? Your good brother has made us an excellent repast—these delicious little cheeses, this crisp salad—it is not all suffering under your roof. But you do not taste them. You are looking at your supper as if it has done you wrong, and you are pausing only to decide whether to flog it or excommunicate it. Will you not tell me what troubles your heart? You have the face of a thundercloud. You will give yourself indigestion.’

Peregrine did not reply. He tried to pick up his beaker of wine, but failed, as he often did, to straighten his fingers sufficiently to get them round the vessel. He gave up the attempt, and lifted it to his mouth with both hands. Brother Tom realised that both he and the abbé had stopped breathing as they watched him struggle and fail. Tom hurt for his abbot as he took the thing into his hands. I never knew a man to hate his own weakness so much, he thought.

Peregrine looked at Père Guillaume over the rim of his beaker as he drank. The stormy intensity of his eyes made the abbé stir uneasily. They had been the best of friends from youth, but despite all the years he had known him, the depth of passion he saw in Peregrine’s eyes still made Guillaume feel uncomfortable, almost afraid. Peregrine set down his wine and pushed his plate of food away.

‘Guillaume, am I a posturing fraud?’ he asked abruptly. ‘No, don’t smile at me. You have mocked me this day long for my efforts at holy poverty. What humility I have, I tell you straight, is too frail to bear the weight of many gibes.’

Abbé Guillaume looked at him with dawning comprehension. ‘Ah, so that is what it is! Mon frère, I apologise. Would that I had the quickness of compassion you have, to see another man’s distress. I had never intended that my idiot buffoonery cause you pain.’

‘It’s not your idiot buffoonery that hurts. That just makes me laugh, and heaven knows I can be melancholy enough. You do me good. No, it’s not that. It’s the thought that all I had hoped was humility, might be no more than my own stiff-necked pride. That’s what hurts. Am I a Pharisee, a—a shell of religion, a loveless hollow of vanity?’

‘No,’ said Brother Tom, very quietly. It was not his place to speak, but he couldn’t help it.

‘Ah! Listen to your cockroach!’ said Père Guillaume. ‘Let his wisdom comfort you! Speak, Frère Thomas.’

Peregrine looked up at Brother Tom. ‘Yes, you may speak,’ he said.

‘I cannot presume,’ Tom mumbled, self-conscious, ‘to tell you what you are. All I can say is that I love you very much. Whatever you may be, it is not in me to love a man who is a proud hypocrite. And I think you should eat your supper.’

Father Peregrine smiled. ‘Forgive me. I am behaving like a child. It is indulgent self-preoccupation on my part. Of your goodness, overlook my discourtesy. Your jesting has unsettled me, Guillaume, for you, as well as I, are vowed to holy poverty.’

‘Mais oui, holy poverty. To renounce all ownership; to say the tunic on my back, the sandals on my feet are not mine—that is holy poverty. To own no estate, no gold or silver, to dress in simplicity and say of nothing, “This is mine,”—that is holy poverty. But the warmth of a good fire on a chilly night, the savoury juices of a sucking pig roast in honey, the delight of old, rich, red wine—these are the bounties of God’s immense kindliness! Why should we throw them back in his face? Me, I do not like a leaking roof, or the draughty east wind whistling round my hams, or the lifeless frigidity of water at table. Mon Dieu, there must be some pleasure in life! Our flesh cries out for it!’

Peregrine did not reply at once; then, ‘I thought we were supposed to crucify the flesh,’ he said quietly.

‘Ah, mon père, moderation! You ask too much! Your self-imposed penury is not holy poverty. It is like the poverty of the world. It is…’

‘Too much like the real thing, you mean?’ interjected Peregrine wryly.

‘Non, non, ce n’est pas ça… you wallow in it, mon père. That’s what it is.’

‘Wallow in it?’ Peregrine grimaced thoughtfully, pondering the words, I suppose I do. Jesus wallowed in it, did he not? To choose a stable, not a modest mansion; a cattle trough, not a plain, respectable crib; a cross, not a clean, unexceptional deathbed. How do you judge that? Was it an ostentatious waste of his glory? Does it matter? He said, ‘Follow me’ and that I mean to do. Our life here is not the poverty of the cross. We do not pretend to it. We are not naked, we are not thirsty, we do not bleed, but we try at least to find the poor carpenter of Nazareth in all that we do—whatever the folly. You think it an unreasonable bargain to lay aside earth’s pleasures to win heaven? But he laid aside heaven to win the sons of earth.’

Guillaume leaned back in his chair regarding Peregrine with amusement. ‘You have not changed, mon ami. Your rhetoric is as impressive as ever. But you are wrong in one thing. You are too late to win grace, or heaven, or strike any kind of bargain with God. It is not a prize to be won, or a deal to be negotiated. It is a gift, already given. Tu comprends? A gift. Receive it and be glad. Celebrate a little now and then.’

‘I ought not to have said we win heaven. It is, as you say, a gift. The free grace of God, the treasure of his love, precious beyond words, it is pure gift. We do know celebration here, Guillaume. I have seen men’s faces alight with peace, with joy, content. Good, wholesome food, and enough of it, we have that. All right, it’s a bit chilly, I grant you, and we are frugal, but we do not go without. But the dainties of the rich, platters of silver, and fine linen; in the church, altar frontals of cloth of gold, a chalice studded with jewels—such things would shame our vows.’

‘Your purity condemns my self-indulgence. You make me blush, mon père!’

‘Guillaume, it’s not funny. Why do you mock our simplicity? Am I pretentious to insist on it? No, no it cannot be right to live like kings when we are supposed to be like Jesus. Can it?’

‘Ah, my very dear friend, it is because you are a little crazy that I love you so. Le Seigneur, yes, he laid aside everything, and became poverty for us. But we are not Jesus. You over-reach yourself. Be realistic. We—’

‘Are we not?’ Peregrine leaned forward, his eyes burning, urgent in his intent face. ‘If we who are the body of Christ are not Jesus, who will ever be? The world has need of the presence of Jesus, in the word of the gospels, in the holy bread and wine and in us. Somewhere in all the cynicisms and disappointments that bind and stunt their lives, men need to find a living Jesus, one who can hear their pain and understand their grief and shame; someone to be the love of God with them. It has to be a poor man… doesn’t it? To touch and heal the pain of men’s poverty? I mean all kinds of poverty: the poverty of their need and their brokenheartedness, of their sin…. It would need a man poor in spirit and poor in means to comfort the loneliness of the poor. It is not possible for a rich man’s hand to dry the tears of the poor—is it?’

‘How should I reply? I admire you. In a way, you are right, mon frère… but… who can live like this? It is not sensible. What would you have me do with my altar frontals? Give them to a peasant who is short of a blanket? What shall I do with my chalices? Distribute them to beggars, that they may fill them at the horses’ trough? And what shall I tell my bishop, my patrons, mes frères?’ He leaned forward and spoke with a frown of vehemence, serious enough now: ‘The poor carpenter of Nazareth, he would not stand a chance in the grand machinery of the church, mon ami. We also have a stable on our estate. He would be at home there.’ He looked at Father Peregrine, shaking his head, as he relaxed back into his chair. He speared a small piece of cheese with the point of his knife, and as he put it in his mouth and ate it, he looked thoughtfully at Brother Tom.

‘What do you say to all this, Frère Thomas?’

Brother Tom had been sitting patiently, wondering if this involved discussion would never end and marvelling that his abbot could become so engrossed in thought as to become indifferent to a plateful of good food. He looked up at the mention of his name.

‘What do I say?’ he echoed uncertainly.

‘Mais oui. To follow Jesus, must a man live stripped of everything as your abbot would have me believe, or can he without sin enjoy the good things of life if his heart is thankful?’

‘Jesus…’ Brother Tom struggled for an intelligent answer. ‘Well, who is your Jesus? I can see Father Abbot’s Jesus in the gospels, but who—where is yours?’

There was a silence, broken by Abbé Guillaume’s bellow of laughter and his fist crashing down onto the table.

‘Mater Dei! You two together—you are dangerous for the gospel! You have caught me in my own folly as you caught that filthy Augustinian, you young rogue! Ahhh, you have finished me! Pour me some more wine, mon frère. Let me drink to your answer.

‘Eh bien, enough! Let us turn our talk to other things or you will have me kneeling in tears, promising to distribute the substance of my house to all the vagabonds of France. I know you of old. You will lead me out of prudence into your own wild extremism.

‘There is a book in your library, mon père, a valuable book. Our library is impoverished for lack of it. Will you lend it—see, I do not ask you to give, though you are rich and I am poor, in the matter of this little book—only lend it, that my scribes may copy it?’

‘What book?’

‘Aha! Is this the man upon whom earthly things have no hold? Why do you enquire “What book?”, mon ami? What is that to you, who have left all to follow Jésus, the real Jésus of the gospels, not the vain idol worshipped by worldly men like me!’

‘I didn’t say you worshipped a vain idol, nor yet that I am free of worldliness, though I wish to God I were. What book?’

‘But a little book, though valuable to me. A little text of Aelred de Rievaulx, a book of sermons I have not seen before. You know the book I mean. I see you do by the possessive glint in your eye!’

‘You want to borrow that book of homilies by Abbot Aelred, written and bound by his own hand?’

‘Oui.’

‘For how long?’

‘How long? Since it must be only the spiritual substance of the text you value, and not the book itself, I would have thought you could preach your own homilies the equal of Abbot Aelred’s, mon frère. It is a book, only a book. Maybe you will let me keep the original. I can have a very nice copy made for you. Our Frère Jean has an excellent hand…’

‘Stop it, Guillaume! How long do you want it for?’

‘Three months.’

Peregrine hesitated.

‘Oh! Regards, Frère Thomas! Quelle avarice!’

‘Oh, very well. You can borrow it. I know you will take care of it. Three months only, though. I will hold you to it.’

‘Three months. I will return it myself, guarded in my bosom as though my life depended on it.

‘Is that your Compline bell already? Mon père, I am sure that bell has a little crack in it somewhere. It sounds like a bucket…’

‘Guillaume! No man would find silence a hardship if he had you to live with. ’Twould be sweet refuge from the endless abuse. Come then to prayers.’

The Abbé Guillaume held the door open with all courtesy for Abbot Peregrine to pass through, and winked at Brother Tom as they followed him out into the cloister.

In the autumn of that year, as the evenings were drawing in, and the nights were beginning to tingle with the threat of frost though the afternoons still basked in gold, Brother Tom came one afternoon to Father Peregrine’s house with a package that Brother Martin, the porter, had asked him to deliver.

‘Who has brought this? This is from Père Guillaume. Stay a minute.’ He undid the parcel, which contained the little book of Aelred de Rievaulx’s homilies and a letter. Peregrine read through the letter swiftly, and looked up at Tom.

‘Do you read French? No? Let me tell you what he says, then. He sends you his greetings. He remembers you with affection; says he has no cockroaches in the whole of his house; he has searched it nostalgically. Enclosed, the book—his apologies for keeping it these six months. He is sure I am not surprised. (No, I’m not. I’m surprised to get it back this soon.) He would have brought it himself, but his circumstances have changed. He could not forget our conversation here, and when he went back he proposed the sale of all the treasure of his abbey. All of it! Oh Guillaume, bless you, you never did anything by halves. They laughed him to scorn, he says. He resigned himself to accepting their rejection of his proposal, tried to forget the whole thing, but could not. He’s made an enemy of his prior and upset the bishop. Dear heaven, that was rash. He has left his community, and gone to live with the Carthusians at St Michel. He says their library is second to none, especially now it has a copy of Abbot Aelred’s sermons in it, and he has his own little garden with bees and vegetables. He is rearing a little pig—his mouth waters every time he looks on it. It is good wine country, he says, but not the best, which he laments. He has made some friends among the peasants there, who bring him cheeses and olive oil. How did he manage that, I wonder, in such seclusion? He’s bending a rule somewhere if I know him! He has a peach tree in his garden. He says he also has peace in his heart and loves us for what we said. He bids us share a pot of wine by a good fire to remember him, and guard against chilblains in the abominable English cold. The poor carpenter of Nazareth, he says, is teaching him the tricks of his trade. He ends, Quasi tristes, semper autem gaudentes: sicut egentes, multos autem locupletantes: tamquam nihil habentes et omnia possidentes. In our sorrows, we always have reason to rejoice: poor ourselves, we bring wealth to many: penniless, we own the world.

‘Guillaume de St Michel. Oh Tom, I hope he’s done the right thing.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, he’s given up all he had—status, comfort, wealth. The Carthusian Rule is very austere.’

‘And he has exchanged it for peace in his heart. I thought that was the bargain you urged him to make.’

‘It was. Yes, it was. What looks like sacrifice is the richest treasure of all. I know it, I know. I have chosen Jesus to be my heaven, and him in all his poverty, all his grief. It’s just that sometimes I get cold feet.’

In the quiet bedroom, I listened to my sisters breathing and the wind blowing round the roof of the house outside.

Mother leaned down and picked up the tall candlestick from the floor.

‘They’re asleep,’ she whispered. ‘Shall we go downstairs?’ I nodded. We tiptoed out of the room and went quietly down the stairs. As I opened the door of the living room, and the lamplight shone out into the passage, Mother blew out the candle.