THE SYMPOSIUM got off to a reasonably good start. Early communion was followed by a simple breakfast of brown bread, cheese and milk, and though it wasn’t what they were used to (particularly the Bishop, who was quite Edwardian in his love of a heavy and varied breakfast), it made them all feel healthy and holy — at peace with the world, and even fairly well disposed towards each other.
The setting for the discussions was a moderate-sized room near to Father Anselm’s office, reached down the same dark corridor. But unlike the office, which was dark and windowless, the conference room turned out to be light and airy, and to have a good view of the kitchen gardens around the main buildings and of the Community’s wall, stretching into the distance. The occasional sheep even presented itself for inspection, giving more than one of the participants (particularly the urban-based ones) a feeling that ‘this was what Christianity was all about’, though they would have been hard put to it to explain precisely what they meant by that. Inside the room was a long, heavy table, for use if the discussion was of a large or formal character. But this was rarely the case at St Botolph’s, which liked to keep its gatherings small and intimate, so in the other part of the room there was a collection of comparatively easy chairs. It was at this end that the various delegates settled themselves.
If the principal delegates had loosened up considerably by the time the proceedings began, there was little change to be observed in the three brothers who sat in on the discussions, nor, indeed, in Father Anselm. They, of course, were on home territory, and it was natural that the first impressions they made should need less modification than for those who were among strangers, in a strange place. It was symptomatic that Brother Dominic brought upright chairs over from the table, clearly implying that he had no intention of indulging his spine. The three sat together, a little apart, Brother Dominic occasionally leaning over and talking in a low voice to the elderly, snuffed-out one, presumably interpreting what was being said. Was he deaf, Ernest Clayton wondered? And were there no brothers with unimpaired hearing who might have liked to attend, and might have been able to contribute more?
Father Anselm did take an easy chair, but it took more than comfort to make him unbend. His fearsome gravity hung over him still, like a cloud, and the air of chilling disapproval which had been evident from the arrival of the Norwegian delegation was with him still. The chief nourisher of life’s feast certainly didn’t seem to have knitted up his ravell’d sleave of care.
When the Bishop of Peckham introduced the proceedings with his little speech — cunningly delivered as if it were a complete improvisation — about how paradoxical that a symposium on the role of the Church in the modern world should meet in a community which had withdrawn itself from the world, he threw a friendly, join-the-circle glance in Father Anselm’s direction, and seemed about to address further remarks directly at him. He received in return a momentary widening of the mouth, which showed a few shadowy teeth behind the brown beard, but which could hardly be called the wintriest of smiles. The eyes remained iced over. The Bishop seemed to think again. From then on, Father Anselm took no part in the session, and no one had the temerity to try to draw him in.
In the course of the initial discussion, the various delegates began to reveal more of themselves, to get beyond their own little obsessions and show the disinterested observer what they were made of. Philip Lambton, for example, though his topic was inevitably youth and the gulf between the Church and the rising generation, took a wide view of the subject, and found some things to say that were very superior to his fatuities of the night before. He gave the impression that he might have been a useful minister of the Church if he had not been seduced by the glamour and glitter of clerical show-biz. In reply to his call for the Church to re-examine its message, Ernest Clayton put in a note of mild dissent.
‘Re-examine our message, of course, in the light of the facts of the modern world. But I sometimes think we re-examine our message in the light of every stray breeze of opinion from the popular press, and every fashionable aberration in taste and behaviour. One wonders in the long run whether it would not be better for the Church to stand — as it so often has had to in the past — changeless in the midst of change. People might come back to such a church. I doubt if they ever will to a church that is always puffing along to catch the bus five minutes after the bus has gone.’
Simeon Fleishman had little to say, and that little was embarrassing. Luckily he limited his main contribution that first morning to endorsing a plea for unity and fellowship among Christians of all kinds put out by Randi Paulsen. She seemed to have caught up with the ecumenical movement five minutes after that bus had gone — perhaps because of an invincible distrust of the Roman Catholic Church, which growled along in an undertone during the early part of her speech. She sounded like Margaret Thatcher wooing the Trade Unions. That was, in fact, the most interesting thing about her speech, which was as a whole singularly lacking in intellectual grasp, let alone originality.
‘After all,’ she concluded, ‘we are all united in our belief in the divinity of the Lord Jesus.’
She sprinkled her Christian charity in the form of a tight-lipped smile around the other delegates, but she seemed disconcerted on hearing throat-rumblings of dissent from the Bishop of Peckham.
‘Should we lay too much stress on that, do you think?’ he said with a puckish glance at the rest.
‘At least, then,’ said Randi firmly, ‘we are united in a belief in God.’
‘Ah,’ said the Bishop, leaning back, ‘but what do we mean by the term God?’
Ernest Clayton found himself wondering about the Bishop. Obviously he had a little act all his own, which he was immensely pleased with. Equally obviously, one of the things he enjoyed doing was setting the cat among the pigeons. On the other hand, Clayton sensed somewhere a soft centre, a personal rather than an intellectual flabbiness, as if he were someone it would not do to rely on if things came to the crunch.
At least the Bishop kept control of his sense of humour sufficiently to ensure a considerable degree of harmony until lunch. By then it had suggested itself to Ernest Clayton that there was some method in his tactics, for Randi Paulsen avoided him like the plague as the delegates drifted towards the great hall, and he therefore secured Bente Frøystad as his seating partner, the Bishop of Mitabezi getting landed once more with the unappealing Randi (it was clear, at least to them, that the ladies were the property — or at least were under the protection — of the bishops, and none of the rest had the guts to dispute their assumption of an episcopal droit de seigneur).
After lunch it had been agreed that an hour or so should be set aside for relaxation or for walking off the meal. The Bishop of Peckham went up to his room, whence were shortly heard loud and determined snores. Among the rest, groups and alliances seemed in the process of forming. Randi Paulsen had decided that Philip Lambton was the only member of the group with whom she could feel any sympathy at all — and that not much; accordingly she commandeered him in her limpet way, and they went off for a stroll on to the moorland which lay within the Community wall. As they passed Ernest Clayton in the kitchen garden, he heard Randi say: ‘It seems to me so terribly sad that a bishop of the Church should apparently spend so much of his time spreading doubt about the gospel message.’
‘You should hear my bishop on the subject of Peckham,’ replied Philip Lambton boyishly. ‘Won’t hear a word in his favour. Not that he’s any better himself, of course — completely out of touch . . .’
Their voices faded from Clayton’s hearing as they came to the heather and strode manfully out.
Both bishops, in fact, had graciously surrendered their rights to the ladies and left second nibble to others. Bente Frøystad had been secured by Stewart Phipps, and they made a striking couple walking up and down the lawn near the outer gate — she, firmly-made and well-shaped, a strong, healthy figure; he thin, tall, hardly able to contain his energy which seemed to result in a certain degree of ill-co-ordination. They were giving the woman question a belated thrashing.
‘If only my wife thought like you,’ Clayton heard Phipps say in his nervous, intense, rather unpleasant voice. ‘We’ve gone into the question over and over again, but she’s terribly lukewarm.’
Stewart Phipps had a meek little drudge of a wife in his council house home, who spent her days washing nappies and trying to bring together ends that would not meet. When the woman question could be ignored no longer (he had initially condemned it as a typical diversionary tactic on the part of the ruling cadre to divert attention from the working-class struggle) Stewart Phipps had bullied his wife into attending meetings and forming parties on the subject, and had even offered to take care of the children now and then while she did so, but she had little heart for the struggle, the leadership went to others, and Phipps had (not too regretfully) let the matter lapse.
The Bishop of Mitabezi, meanwhile, had managed to persuade Father Anselm out of his dark corridors and into the fresh air. The two of them — both, in different ways, commanding figures — went on an inspection tour of the Community’s farming activities, examining the great barn and some of the hen runs, Father Anselm pointing out the finer features of various breeds of sheep. Finally they made for the pig sty, which was situated well away from the main building. Throughout the tour the Bishop seemed genuinely rather than nominally absorbed in the subject, looked closely at the hens and sheep, asked detailed questions, and poked and pried into odd corners of the barn and chicken run, his eyes aglow with interest.
That left Simeon P. Fleishman. For some time Ernest Clayton feared he was going to get landed with him, but passing in his wanderings down one side of the Great Hall he came across an unexpected window (when one was inside, the large windows at the far end so dominated that one didn’t notice any others). This one was a musty little affair, hidden in a recess, but through it he saw Simeon P., alone in the hall, picking up and examining the silver goblets and chalices on the heavy oak dresser beside the high table. Ernest Clayton smiled wryly, and continued his wanderings around the gardens. Some time later he glimpsed Fleishman, sitting on one of the rare seats over near the lawn, his jacket off (but folded neatly beside him), his sleeves rolled up, writing away busily at something or other, using one leg crooked over the other as a writing desk. Probably a letter to his congregation, thought Clayton; something for the parish magazine as a return for his travel expenses.
So Clayton wandered, and relaxed, and noticed things, in the hot summer air. The farm buildings, which he visited after the Bishop and Father Anselm had left, were commodious and clean — almost fastidiously so. It was almost as if they were playing at farming. Though perhaps there were so many of them, and they had so much time, that it was not surprising that they could keep things in the sort of state that no ordinary farmer would aspire to.
There were no brothers occupied in agricultural labour at that moment, however. One or two were to be seen out on the moors — Old Testament figures, with the wind blowing their robes. Some were walking around the main building, singly or in pairs, the latter sometimes talking in low voices. None of them spoke to Clayton.
At one point in his walk he caught a sidelong glimpse of a brother, kicking his heels (if the expression is not too secular) by the corner of the big barn. Something in his stance reminded the Reverend Clayton of someone he had seen — someone he had known? One of his parishioners, perhaps? Surely not. He would certainly have heard if one of them had done such an unlikely thing as take himself off to a monastery. And indifference reigned so supreme in Ashfield that it was difficult enough getting anyone to come to church, let alone engage in any more strenuous spiritual exercise. Ernest Clayton frowned. Who could it be — or was it just an optical illusion?
But when he looked again, the brother was gone.
• • •
By dinner time the delegates had divided themselves into two friendly, or fairly friendly groups, easily discernible to any eye skilled in observing the herd instincts of humanity suddenly thrust as strangers together. One group consisted of the vaguely radically-orientated, collecting themselves around the Bishop of Peckham — Bente Frøystad, Stewart Phipps and Ernest Clayton (not because he thought of himself as particularly radical, but because the smiles of peace and goodwill to all men which Randi Paulsen dispensed like nourishing soup all around her group made him want to throw up). Tagging along vaguely with this group was Brother Dominic, though Clayton thought this was for reasons similar to his own: he seemed particularly to avoid Randi Paulsen, especially in company, though he had seen them exchange a few words in one of the dark corridors behind the main hall as Randi came down the stairs for breakfast.
Around the Bishop of Mitabezi, and much occupied with the supply of mealies and missionaries to the underdeveloped countries, were Randi herself, Philip Lambton and Simeon Fleishman (for no reason of interest or affection, but because he classed the Bishop’s circle as radical — ‘dangerously radical’ in fact, for the two words always went together in the mid-Western city where he dispensed non-denominational doctrine — and because he was fed up with Stewart Phipps’s insistence on putting him in the dock and subjecting him to a bully-ragging inquisition). To this group attached themselves the middle-aged and the elderly brothers, and the two of them looked on, silent and uneasy.
Their names, at least, the Bishop of Mitabezi managed to worm out of them. The middle-aged one was Brother Hamish, and the elderly one was Brother Jonathan. The latter still seemed as close to extinction as one could well be without having the fact entered at Somerset House. Yet once or twice he fluttered his hands to his face, and seemed about to make a gesture of protest which never materialized, and may in fact have been something quite different — a bad migraine, for example. Brother Hamish — watery-eyed, even shifty, with unhealthy-looking, sparse hair and a dingy complexion — seemed to be following Brother Dominic’s lead in helping Brother Jonathan to understand the conversation. He was rewarded by an occasional word thrown his way by Randi Paulsen — to which he replied with nervous half-smiles or monosyllables.
Eventually the talk became more general, and less business-like. The Bishop of Peckham, perhaps trying to account in his own mind for the singularly ill-assorted nature of the group, started the chat in the direction of ‘how they had all come to be there’. Simeon Fleishman was very ready with his explanation.
‘Waall,’ he said, tilting himself forward the better to ooze sincerity, ‘I’m on a visit to your wonderful country to study trends in church-design. This is a kind of sabbatical financed by my parishioners in consequence of the fact that we plan to erect an entirely new structure in the foreseeable future, inflation in building costs permitting. So I’ve been around to Coventry, Liverpool — ’ My God, how big is his new structure going to be? thought Ernest Clayton — ‘and I had a very stimulating exchange of perspectives with the Bishop of Barstowe when I visited there a few weeks ago. In fact, he raised the contingency of me coming here, which I truly am grateful to him for, because it sure is proving a truly spiritually stimulating experience.’
Barstowe, thought the Bishop of Peckham. Of course he knew I would be here. Inflicting bores on me in sheer malice. For the Bishop was not loved by his fellow bishops, and he knew it.
Bente Frøystad explained: ‘We have this feeling in Norway that women have been excluded and under-represented for so long on committees, official bodies and so on that it is time to tilt the balance a little in the other direction.’
‘Very commendable,’ said the Bishop.
‘Also,’ continued Bente Frøystad, smiling, ‘educated Norwegians tend to be a little shy about speaking English in front of each other — it is a sort of status symbol — and as we had both been au pair girls here, and were fairly confident, they decided we might be able to play our parts better than any of the men.’
‘Au pairs, eh?’ said the Bishop eagerly. ‘Now how did you find that experience?’
‘Slave labour,’ said Bente Frøystad.
‘Of course one could be lucky,’ said Randi Paulsen. Her hands fluttered nervously to her hair, and her eyes, blinking, went down into her lap. ‘But I have heard of several girls who have had some most unpleasant experiences!’
No one enquired further, and the pursed lips did not encourage them to.
‘It’s a sad thing,’ said Ernest Clayton. ‘The au pair system could be such a good one for all parties, and yet it seems to work out either as a scandal or a joke.’
‘I don’t see anything good in the privileged classes getting cheap labour,’ said Stewart Phipps.
‘Does your wife go out to work?’ enquired Bente Frøystad.
‘No, of course not,’ said Phipps.
‘Then you merely married your au pair,’ said Bente. The alliance seemed to have become more fragile since the afternoon walk. The male sympathizer with women’s lib is in roughly the same position as the white liberal in the American racial conflict, and gets about as much thanks.
Randi Paulsen seemed to want to turn the conversation back to her own experiences. ‘The stories I could tell about things that have happened to Norwegian girls in England are quite appalling,’ she said with a twisted expression on her face. ‘You wouldn’t believe it possible.’
She left the phrase suspended in the air, perhaps hoping that someone would press her. But they all seemed to prefer to stick to the general rather than the particular.
‘Of course we have the idea that Scandinavian girls all know how to look after themselves,’ said the Bishop. ‘But is this always the case? I seem to remember reading statistics that suggest the proportion of girls already pregnant when they marry is very high.’
‘Quite untrue,’ snapped Randi Paulsen.
‘True enough,’ said Bente Frøystad. ‘But we prefer to choose the man we’re pregnant by.’ This remark earned her a furious look from Randi, who looked as if she was treasuring up such remarks to report them back to the Church authorities.
It was unnecessary to ask how the others had got there: they had been recommended by their bishops — because they needed a rest, needed feeding up, or needed to get away from their wives. Those, at any rate, were the usual reasons. The Bishop of Mitabezi had been recommended to come by Church House, to keep him out of their hair, and to ensure that he didn’t make too many fiery statements to the press. Some organs were still pretty unhappy about Christian Socialism, and most certainly drew the line at Christian terrorism.
Ernest Clayton was about to take the conversation a stage further by enquiring anew into the topic he had raised on the first night — why the brothers had decided to take orders, what background they came from, and what were their experiences outside the walls that made them take their decisions — when he looked in the direction of Brother Dominic. His face, usually set, though not serene, was now apparently in the grip of some strong emotion or other. His strong will seemed to be getting the upper hand, but the ugly force of the passion inside him was impossible to hide altogether. At that moment Brother Dominic looked very unpleasant indeed.
Ernest Clayton changed his mind about bringing up that particular subject. ‘I’m for my bed,’ he said. ‘I’m an early bird at home, if only to save electricity.’
His move gave a general signal to break up. The three brothers evaporated quietly, without fuss. With the rest, rather more pother was created and more formality observed, but eventually they made their way tentatively up their dark staircase — Father Anselm had not been seen since the evening meal, and the light switches were difficult to find — and into their rooms. Again, noises of ablution and evacuation were dimly audible through the thick stone walls, as was the determined sound of Randi Paulsen dragging her wardrobe across her door. Then all that was to be heard, and that only if one put one’s ear close to the door, were the snores of My Lord of Peckham.
The snores continued intermittently for some hours. The Bishop liked his sleep. But at half past two in the morning, when — half asleep — he was leaning over to his little shelf to get a drink of water, he thought he heard a sound. Shaking the sleep from his head, he took a gulp of water. Then the noise came again, more insistently.
Someone was knocking at his door.
‘Come in,’ he said, feeling rather ridiculous, and if the truth were known, rather scared.