I must have been dreaming, because a persistent knocking at a door brought me back to the room, the place. I stumbled to open the door, black spots spinning before my eyes and my heart pounding. A monk stood outside. His young face was red and blotched with spots and his head completely shaven. He stood tall and thin and gazed down at me with a straight back.
‘It’s lunch, ‘he said. ‘Lunch is at twelve-thirty.’
‘Oh! What’s the time then?’
‘You’re late. It’s nearly twenty to. Everyone’s waiting.’ He looked down at me crossly, as if waiting for me to say something.
‘Sorry. I didn’t know. Can you show me where to go, please? I don’t know where to go.’
I didn’t want any lunch; I looked at the spots oozing round his neck and felt sick. He probably picked them. Disgusting. I prayed he would not be anywhere near me.
I asked if I had time to wash my hands. I wanted to tidy my hair and put on some make-up. Vanity? I wanted to look as well as possible; it gave me confidence, helped me to be cheerful. Helped me to be ‘frightfully jolly’ as my grandmother would say. Besides, it was a kind of duty. I believe everyone should try to look as good as possible, to hide the world’s ugliness, the world’s brutality. Grey people only contribute to life’s greyness, do nothing to wipe the smile off the face of the satanic tiger. But there was no time, the brother said, for we were already late and so I followed the spotty ‘Buddhist’ monk as he led the way back across the lawn to the house.
Once in the lobby, I followed him through the door, from which the little monk had appeared earlier, and into a gloomy corridor. A little way down a shaft of light, falling across the wooden floor, indicated an open door.
I asked him ‘In here?’ in as interested tone as I could manage, but my voice echoed sharp as a knife. He nodded and I went in behind him.
Everything was silent. The monks were standing behind their chairs, waiting. The young monk pointed to an empty place at one of the long tables.
I said, ‘Thank you,’ before realising I wasn’t supposed to speak. I thought they seemed a bit disturbed and I was embarrassed and relieved to be able to lower my head for grace. ‘For what we are about to receive may we give thanks and praise always. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.’
There were no answering ‘Amens’, simply a scraping of chairs as they all sat. For one moment, I thought the monk to my left, a large, flabby, red-faced man, was courteously waiting for me to sit first, and I smiled warmly, gratefully, but he was only waiting because I had caught the leg of my chair in his habit and he looked at me with impatience as I wrestled with the chair legs.
Once seated, everyone waited in silence as a good-looking monk, dark-haired, of middle age, stepped onto a rostrum in the far corner of the room and began to read, but no one appeared to be listening. Three other monks gathered by a serving hatch and almost at once hands, from the kitchen, passed through bowls and I caught sight of the little monk,who had shown me to my room peering, grinning, from the other side of the hatch. I was sure he was grinning at me so I looked away.
There were three tables forming a rectangle, and at the table opposite I was surprised by a man, not a monk, sitting at the end. He was wearing a blue polo shirt under a tweed jacket. He looked perfectly at home; everything about him told me he was not a visitor. There was something reassuring about him and I wanted to know more, but when he looked across with a half-smile of welcome I turned my head away, suddenly shy, and focused on the top table, assuming that the stately looking monk sitting in the middle must be the abbot, Father Godfrey. He was served first by the young monk who had come to fetch me. The bowls contained a thick brown soup, rather cold, and this was followed by fish, yellow and curled up at the edges, accompanied by mashed potato and pale, watery sprouts. They all ate with fierce concentration, looking neither to left nor right. While they waited for the empty plates to be removed, to be replaced by stewed apples and custard, the monks simply stared into space. It was as if I didn’t exist.
I had fiddled with the fish but left the sprouts and potato and shook my head when the spotty monk offered me the pudding. There were bowls of fruit on the tables, oranges and apples, and I took an apple when the disgruntled monk beside me pushed a bowl in my direction.
When everyone had finished eating and the plates were cleared, the stately monk rose and left the room, then all the others filed out, top table first, just like school. I hesitated, but the monk who had offered me the fruit nodded when I looked questioningly at him and so I followed in line. It was the same important ritual, the same important order, as when I lined up for communion. Everyone must be in his right place or else the whole edifice of doctrine would apparently collapse.
As they exited, the monks hurried towards the entrance-hall door and disappeared, while the man who had smiled at me walked down the corridor past the kitchen in the opposite direction, and so I found myself retracing my steps alone.