FATHER ANSELM led the Norwegian delegation first to the Bishop of Peckham, who gave them a look of puckish delight. Father Anselm regarded him sourly, and almost immediately went into a huddle with Brother Dominic by one of the arches leading to the main hall. The Norwegian delegation then proceeded round the group, introducing themselves, and finally landed up under the benign bulk of the Bishop of Mitabezi, who seemed quite unembarrassed by their arrival, and perhaps even appreciative. The rest of the delegates took their first relaxed intake of breath since the newcomers had appeared in the doorway and began to think over their position. Brother Dominic had now disappeared, and, responding to an infinitesimal nod from Father Anselm, the Bishop of Peckham glided out into the great hall, where they put themselves in a corner out of sight of the delegates, though not of the assembled brothers, who were looking in their direction with considerable curiosity evident on their faces.
‘You realize,’ said Father Anselm urgently, ‘that the presence of women within the Community’s walls is totally against all the rules of our order — and absolutely unprecedented?’
‘Of course, my dear chap, naturally,’ said the Bishop, rather surprised at having to soothe the awesome head of the Community. ‘But it’s Church House you must quarrel with, you know. I’ve had nothing to do with making up the list of delegates.’
‘I quite understand that,’ said Father Anselm, obviously struggling to regain total equanimity. ‘But Church House said that you were to be regarded as the unofficial leader of the symposium. I look to you to make a decision as to what we should do, now that they are here.’
The Bishop pondered for a moment. The situation appealed greatly to his sense of humour, and to his sense of the dramatic too (he was a governor of the National Theatre, and had always taken the lead in his theological college’s annual play). The situation was pregnant with further piquant possibilities, and really there seemed no good reason why, once there, the newcomers should not be allowed to remain.
‘We should look terrible fools if we just told them to leave,’ he said. ‘Think how the Sunday papers would laugh if they got hold of it. Surely there can be no harm in their staying?’
‘I give no opinion on that,’ said Father Anselm, compressing his thin lips. ‘I merely ask for directions. What are we to do with them, if they are allowed to stay?’
‘You haven’t shown them to their rooms?’ Father Anselm shook his head, a pained expression on his face. ‘I suppose we could always find them rooms in Hickley,’ the Bishop mused.
‘Perhaps,’ said Father Anselm; ‘but the sort of comment that would be aroused might be regrettable.’
‘Of course, of course. Having them coming and going every day for the discussions would be worse than having them here all the time. Well, as far as I can see, the best thing to do would be to treat them like any other delegate, and square it with your flock.’ He gestured in the direction of the little groups of brothers, who quickly turned their heads away, as if oblivious of their presence.
‘Put them in the visitors’ wing, do you mean?’ said Father Anselm. ‘With the rest of the delegates?’
‘Well, after all, why not?’ said the Bishop. ‘Damn it all, we are clergymen.’
• • •
Ernest Clayton had watched the arrival and introduction of the Norwegian delegation with a rich amusement that he did not allow to spread beyond his eyes. The reactions of the other participants in the symposium had been a picture, for an amateur in human nature like himself: the dim, elderly brother had regarded them with a bemused horror, as if they were the culmination of a series of shocks with which the modern world had battered his old head; the other brothers had looked sour and suspicious; the American had not seemed to register that there was anything amiss, while Stewart Phipps and Philip Lambton, who obviously knew the rules of the place, had both seemed rather pleased than otherwise; the Bishop of Mitabezi had beamed an even more unambiguous welcome and had then taken them spontaneously under his wing, especially Bente Frøystad.
For although the Norwegian delegation were both female, one member was undoubtedly more female than the other. Bente Frøystad was a healthy girl with a splendid figure, and a forthright, determined manner. Her open face owed nothing to make-up and everything to a good constitution and plenty of exercise. One could understand the Bishop’s frank, boyish appreciation, though one also got the impression that she was a girl of very decided views, one whom it would not do to cross, either in an argument or a fight.
Randi Paulsen on the other hand . . . The Reverend Clayton considered. She seemed to be a variant of a type he knew in England, a type that had been more frequent in his youth than it was today. Frøken Paulsen was pinched and angular, and carried herself with a stiff correctness about the shoulders, as if she wanted you to forget that she had a body. She wore a cardigan and skirt in the sort of pretty pastel shade much favoured by women’s magazines twenty years ago. Her face was small and forgettable, but she wore the expression of self-satisfaction affected by the unco guid, and her eyes shone with suspicion of the intentions of men.
Both girls affected to be quite unconscious that their presence in the Community was in any way unusual, but Ernest Clayton felt sure that both were perfectly well aware of the fact — and he suspected that they were both enjoying it, in different ways.
‘We in Norway are very conscious of the needs of the developing nations,’ Randi Paulsen was saying virtuously in her correct, lifeless English to the Bishop of Mitabezi, who was looking at Bente Frøystad. ‘We in my own parish have collected several thousand crowns, and we have adopted a mission school and a hospital in Africa. It gives everyone in the parish such a special interest in your continent, and it is so sweet to be able to tell the little ones in my Sunday class . . .’
But she was interrupted in mid-sweetness and light by Father Anselm, who had returned with the Bishop of Peckham, and now sternly proposed to show them to their rooms. Ernest Clayton could see that the Bishop of Peckham was thoroughly delighted by the whole business.
‘Quite a turn-up for the book, eh?’ he boomed at the Bishop of Mitabezi. ‘That dented our friend Anselm’s gravity, what?’
‘A very pleasant surprise,’ said Mitabezi.
‘Especially one of them, eh? But we’ll have to be discreet, you know —’ at this point he broke off, seeing an expression of naïve protest on the Bishop of Mitabezi’s face, as if he had been suspected of contemplating something he hadn’t even begun to contemplate. ‘I don’t mean in conduct, of course,’ said the Bishop of Peckham hurriedly, looking round appealingly to all the other delegates, ‘that goes without saying — no, I mean we’ll have to be discreet when we get outside again. Mum’s the word, you know. The papers would laugh themselves silly if they got hold of it. The fact is, Church House has made a frightful bloomer, perfectly frightful, and I’m going to have to blow them up in no uncertain terms when I get back to London. It’s lucky it’s they who’ve made asses of themselves, but that is all the more reason to be discreet.’
They all nodded sagely, though Clayton was still not sure whether Simeon P. Fleishman had understood. He had just stood there through the speech looking solid, earnest, and — yes, sinister. Then Clayton’s eyes were caught by the elderly brother, standing unnoticed in a corner. His eyes were still dim and bleary, his hearing apparently uncertain, but he seemed about to come forward and make a protest: he had raised his hands in a gesture of distress and had taken a step forward when the middle-aged brother, his face expressing friendly concern, went over to him, drew him away into a corner, and apparently soothed him. The incident went quite unnoticed by the rest of the delegates.
Shortly afterwards the Norwegian contingent returned, and a great bell clanged for dinner.
• • •
The meal was only a moderate success, the Reverend Clayton thought. The guest table was set on a dais at some distance from the rows of tables occupied by the resident brothers, but all the guests were conscious of a wave of — something — disapproval perhaps? wafting in their direction. The brothers, who had been talked to by their spiritual leader, seemed quite ostentatiously unaware of the alien presences at the guest table, though Clayton’s sharp eyes caught one or two surreptitious peeps in that direction. Father Anselm, after asking the Bishop of Peckham to say grace, remained silent for much of the rest of the meal, in dignified disapproval.
Randi Paulsen was seated next to the Bishop of Mitabezi. This was not at all how he had planned things. He had done his best to secure Bente Frøystad, but he had been outmanoeuvred by the Bishop of Peckham. Mitabezi had taken his defeat in a Christian spirit, merely vowing that he wouldn’t be outdone again by that sort of nifty footwork. Meanwhile he smiled benignly on Frøken Paulsen, who was still on the subject of the developing nations, and was giving an all-too-full account of Norwegian missions in various unattractive parts of the globe.
When her sacchrine monotone finally faded into silence, the Reverend Stewart Phipps, who was seated on her left, said in his harsh voice: ‘And how many coloured immigrants have you in Norway?’
‘As many as we can absorb,’ said Randi Paulsen virtuously. ‘At the moment we have a complete ban on immigration, until we can ensure a proper standard of housing and so on for every immigrant. We feel sure this is the most responsible approach.’
‘Charity begins abroad, obviously,’ said Stewart Phipps. ‘A new variant of telescopic philanthropy, that.’
Randi Paulsen looked at him uncomprehendingly.
The Bishop of Peckham was getting on much better with Bente Frøystad — so well as to arouse some resentment in the breast of Philip Lambton, who was on her other side and hardly able to get a word in, other than enthusiastic offers of condiments. The Bishop had already discovered that Frøken Frøiystad was hoping to be ordained next year, and that Frøken Paulsen was already in fact the incumbent of a small parish in Western Norway. The Bishop was a committed supporter of the ordination of women, in so far as he could ever commit his magpie intellect to any one side of a question. He made sprightly fun of his opponents in the Anglican debates on the question.
‘Of course the poor things are all Papists in spirit, without the guts to go the whole hog,’ he ended up. ‘In their heart of hearts they agree with Pope Paul that true women’s liberation takes place over the cradle and the kitchen sink.’
‘Certainly we in Norway have been surprised at how slowly things seem to have gone over here,’ said Bente Frøystad.
‘Never be surprised when things go slowly in Britain,’ said the Bishop. ‘We are the nation of the go-slow. And for every one with-it clergyman —’ he cast a significant, quick glance in the direction of Philip Lambton, and couldn’t help drawing in his breath in a gesture of distaste — ‘there are hundreds of neolithic monstrosities who have sleepless nights if they see a girl in shorts going round their church, and compose fulminations on the subject for their parish magazines. My goodness, the British Army is liberal-minded and up-to-date compared to the outer reaches of the Church of England!’
‘That is very true,’ said Philip Lambton from Frøken Frøystad’s other side; ‘I could tell you some things about the attitudes of my bishops . . .’ And accordingly he did. The Bishop of Peckham, having lost the initiative for the moment, and having little curiosity about the misdeeds of his fellow bishop, concentrated on his food: good plain English fare, cooked by someone with a flair. It was solid and satisfying, as a meal in a country hotel used often to be before the war. If this was standard fare at St Botolph’s, then the Community certainly did themselves well. The meal was served by brothers from the kitchen quarters, quiet and nondescript; the portions were substantial, but there were no second helpings (the Reverend Fleishman established that). At the end of the meal, Father Anselm, at the Bishop of Peckham’s request, said a short grace, and then they all withdrew to the little side room for coffee.
Here everybody began to relax considerably. It was a relief not to be sitting in the shadow of the assembled brothers. It occurred to Ernest Clayton that what was unnerving about them was that ordinary men — not Father Anselm, of course, but middle-of-the-road men — seemed to lose all individuality as soon as they got out of their everyday clothes into the monks’ habit. It was as if our identity amounted to no more than the shade of a sports jacket, the stripe of a tie. For most of the delegates the unpleasant thing about sitting in the company of the brothers was the suspicion that most of them were imagining future orgies of shocking proportions in the guest quarters, thanks to the unprecedented female invasion of the Community. Most of the delegates had little doubt that a monk’s imagination, when it got to work, would paint reality in the most unlikely brilliant colours, due to his long deprivation.
The fact that Father Anselm withdrew along with his flock also seemed to lighten the atmosphere. His air of un-breachable gravity was impressive, but hardly companionable. Coffee was waiting for them in the side room, they served themselves and each other, and this helped to break any remaining ice. Then they settled down into cosy little groups. The Bishop of Mitabezi, wiser in his generation, this time secured Bente Frøystad, on the pretext of wishing to thank her for the sterling support of the Norwegian delegation at the recent World Council meeting (though he hadn’t bothered to give thanks for this to Randi Paulsen) and also for the splendid work of the Norwegian missions throughout Central Africa (though in fact he had just heard about these for the first time from Frøken Paulsen). But the Bishop was not allowed to keep her to himself: he had to share her with Philip Lambton, Brother Dominic and Simeon P. Fleishman. The Bishop of Peckham sighed at the waste of Bente Frøystad on such inferior clerical material, but he submitted with Christian resignation and did his duty by Randi Paulsen, assisted by Ernest Clayton and the aggressive Stewart Phipps.
In the background hovered the other two brothers who had opted to attend the symposium, uneasy figures whom nobody could fit in, sometimes talking in a low voice together, sometimes looking on at the groups and the discussions with expressions of assumed blandness.
Discussions soon became animated, with a degree of friendly consultation between the groups. It soon emerged (as the Bishop of Peckham had already suspected) that each contributor had a quite different notion of what should be discussed in the coming days under the blanket heading of the Social Role of the Church in the Modern World. (Why on earth hadn’t they been more specific at Church House, thought Peckham; another black mark, and won’t I blow them up there.) The group around the Bishop of Mitabezi managed a degree of common ground: Simeon P. Fleishman’s absorbing interest in fund-raising was shared by the Bishop, and the uses to which the latter would put them were of some interest to Bente Frøystad, whose main concerns were the underdeveloped nations and sexual politics. This left Philip Lambton and Brother Dominic out in the cold, but the former could never be there long, and he launched with naïve enthusiasm into an enthusiastic monologue on religious motifs in recent top twenty hits. Brother Dominic, his face a veritable mask, listened or did not listen, glazed and glacial.
The other group was far less happy. Stewart Phipps launched into an inevitable tirade about American colonialism and multi-national corporations; the Bishop, goaded by his itch for paradox, defended both, as he would have defended Attila the Hun or the Marquis de Sade if they had been attacked by Stewart Phipps. Randi Paulsen was frankly bored by the discussion: the differences between the political parties in her native country were so tiny that politics had virtually ceased to exist for her long ago. After a time she turned to Ernest Clayton and with a sweet smile that said, ‘We’ll let the boys play their silly little games, shall we?’ she began to question him about Sunday school attendance in his parish. Here again the discussion was not entirely happy, for Ernest Clayton was honest enough to admit to his belief that within fifty years Christianity would be nothing more than a folk memory in his part of Lincolnshire. Finding his attitude strange and his answers unsatisfactory, Randi Paulsen decided that she would go up and fetch some educational material from her room.
‘Because it is so sad,’ she said, with a sweetly forgiving smile on her face, ‘to see the little ones growing up in such a terrible darkness, just the very ones whom Our Lord specially called to Him.’
There was nothing one could reply to this, but the Bishop, scenting a new challenge, wrenched himself from a defence of the CIA’s role in the assassination of President Allende, and, on her return bearing a pile of brightly coloured literature, turned towards her with a deceptive courtesy and interest.
‘Ah yes,’ he said, ‘this was something we were discussing this afternoon. Now what would be the figures for church attendance in Norway?’
‘We have ninety per cent membership of the National Church among the population as a whole,’ said Randi Paulsen complacently.
‘But that wasn’t quite what I asked, you see,’ said the Bishop. ‘I confess I have heard some such figure before, but it’s a fiddle, is it not? The vicar does all the birth certificates, or some such wheeze, and you don’t get one till the christening? But what I was asking about was the actual proportion who come to church.’
‘It is somewhat lower,’ admitted Randi Paulsen.
‘How much lower?’ said the Bishop, dropping his urbanity entirely.
‘About eight per cent are church-goers,’ said Randi reluctantly.
‘Ah ha,’ said the Bishop. ‘We don’t seem to hear that figure quite so often.’
‘But we are making very big efforts with our young people,’ said Randi, clambering back on to her hobby horse. ‘In a lot of the country districts we have managed to stop the cinema shows and the Saturday dances —’
‘What?’ said Philip Lambton from the next table, unable to believe his ears that such nineteenth-century obscurantism should exist anywhere in the modern world, let alone Scandinavia.
‘Yes, we’re pleased about this,’ said Randi Paulsen, ‘because these were a great temptation, and the young people are now left completely open to us and our efforts. And of course we are not being entirely negative. We’re producing some really excellent books and records on religious subjects, aimed specially at young people of all ages.’
She opened one of her books and beamed her dreadful smile around the room.
‘I wish I could play you some of the records,’ she said. ‘Such pretty songs about Jesus. But this is just one of the books, and you’ll see how lovely the illustrations are!’
She opened a large, colourful volume, which was clearly a version of the gospel story nearly digested out of existence and adapted to limited understanding and minimal vocabulary. As she spread the work out on her lap the first thing that met the Bishop’s eye was a truly dreadful work of art, in manner influenced by the lowest common denominator of Victorian religiosity, in colour outvying the worst the pre-Raphaelite palate could perpetrate: a blond, Nordic Christ, looking like a benevolent young sailor, was gazing out over a Hollywood-green landscape, and was clearly about to launch into the Sermon on the Fjell. The Bishop of Peckham screwed up his mouth.
‘That sort of thing strikes me as nothing more than religious pornography,’ he said.
Randi Paulsen looked at him for a moment in disbelief. Then she snapped the book shut, and clasped her hands over her abdomen. She seemed about to say something very cutting to the Bishop, but her Norwegian respect for rank asserted itself in time, and she merely drew her lips thinly together. After a few moments of this silence the forgiving smile began to battle its way back on to her face. In time it won, but she nevertheless spent much of the rest of the evening in silence.
But she didn’t manage to cast a blight over the rest of the company: the talk soon turned to salaries and stipends, and became general between the two groups as they all swapped poverty stories. Simeon P. Fleishman’s brain became involved in a series of complicated conversions between the dollar and the pound, and when he came up with the answers his aghast looks at the miserable condition of his denominational English brethren were a source of great delight to Ernest Clayton. The discussions rather left Brother Dominic, who presumably had renounced money along with so much else, out in the cold, but the few attempts to draw him in met with such stiff responses that all gave up after a while and launched into further fanciful discussions of means of supplementing their incomes. It was cheering to note that this was a topic which Stewart Phipps joined in as enthusiastically as everyone else, with only the occasional glance at ‘socio-economic structures’ and the like. One touch of salary makes the whole world kin.
It was Father Anselm who broke up the party. The brothers had been in the chapel at their evening service. The Bishop had suggested that the delegates should give the service a miss that first evening, in order to get to know each other better, and the sound of the singing had made a pleasant background to their discussion of ways and means. ‘How immensely spiritual,’ Simeon Fleishman had said, interrupting his exposition of a knotty point of investment policy to listen for a couple of seconds. Shortly after the singing stopped Father Anselm appeared in the archway, surveyed the assembled delegates for a moment, as if to say ‘how of the world, worldly’, and then said: ‘After compline we usually go straight to our cells. Perhaps you would care to do the same, after your hard day of travelling.’
It was a more impressive way of saying, ‘Time, gentlemen, please.’ They all got up, a little shamefaced, they knew not why. Father Anselm led the way through the low dark passages and up the stairs, his brown robe billowing out behind him. When they reached the guest wing, a broad, dim corridor with doors opening out from both sides, he merely said, ‘Good night to you all,’ inclined his head, and turned to go down the stairs again.
‘One moment,’ said the clear voice of Randi Paulsen. The voice, perhaps merely because it was female, seemed to affect Father Anselm unpleasantly. His shoulders stiffened. He turned to face her without speaking. ‘There is no lock on the door to my room,’ continued Randi, unabashed.
‘That is correct. There are no locks on any of the doors,’ Father Anselm answered.
Randi Paulsen, standing in the doorway of her room, gazed out of her window at the moors and the great barn, her lips compressed and her manner saying: ‘There may be marauders waiting for me, inside or out.’ Aloud she said: ‘It is necessary for me to be able to lock my door and my window.’
Father Anselm, with a kind of dour patience, tried to explain: ‘The decision to have no locks on the door was taken by the founder of St Botolph’s. He believed that there was no time of day or night when the devil might not perplex the mind with doubts and difficulties of the spirit. We might put the idea rather differently today, but the argument remains valid and the situation does arise — particularly as we have the occasional visitor who is in retreat to wrestle with spiritual problems. In such cases there is sometimes a need for company, so that the doubts may be met with together and fought, or so that the prayer may be communal rather than solitary.’
He turned to go.
‘That does not solve the problem,’ said Randi Paulsen.
‘It is not my problem,’ said Father Anselm. ‘The rule of the order is quite definite on this point.’
And he proceeded down the narrow stone steps.
‘I’ve no doubt you will be perfectly safe,’ said the Bishop of Peckham briskly. ‘Let’s to our beds.’ But one glance at her pinched lips and militant stance convinced him that the problem was not to be solved by the cold water of common sense. ‘Well, perhaps Miss Frøystad and you could sleep together, then.’
‘That is quite unnecessary,’ said Bente Frøystad in a thoroughly down-to-earth manner. ‘The beds are small and I need a good night’s sleep.’ She made off with a no-nonsense walk in the direction of her room, and then, as a thought struck her, turned and pointed to a heavy wooden wardrobe by the wall of the corridor. ‘Couldn’t somebody push that into her room?’
And she went into her room and shut the door in a manner designed to suggest that anyone intending to take advantage of her in her sleep would do well to think again. The rest looked at each other, while Randi Paulsen waited.
‘That’s a job for you young ones,’ said the Bishop of Peckham. ‘Good night to you all.’
So, puffing and blowing, Stewart Phipps and Philip Lambton, aided by some bulky shoves from Simeon Fleishman, pushed the wardrobe into Randi Paulsen’s room, and left it by the door. They were rewarded by a frosty nod. Randi Paulsen’s room was at the rear end of the corridor, by the stair-head and the lavatory, and those who availed themselves of the latter facility heard heavy shunting sounds as the heavy piece was pushed into position by Frøken Paulsen herself. There were sounds of flushing and running water, and the odd call from the birds on the moor outside. Then night reigned over the Community of St Botolph’s. It was the first time in its existence that women had been inside the walls, but no signs were vouchsafed of the wrath of the heavens. Most of its inhabitants slept quite soundly.