The Angelus rang for Matins, but for once Guy didn’t want to go; Rose Gregory would be the excuse. Instead, he decided to walk the avenue, something he hadn’t done for ages.
When he had first come, he thought that he would often be walking this lane between the beech trees, but there never seemed time, what with his role as house doctor and handyman, for he was clever with plumbing and electrical gadgets, and there was always something that needed repairing. And then the fetching and carrying; he was the only one who could drive a car. But the fact was that he always happier when he was busy. Despite all this, he’d had the time he needed to do some serious thinking and had decided that, after all, he must return to general practice. It was ironic – one of the reasons he had wanted to leave his work as a GP, take this sabbatical, was because he too often felt inadequate. Helpless at times. There had been so much pain and suffering he had been incapable of alleviating. He had found the whole business deeply disturbing, thought he was inadequate as a doctor. And he didn’t do failure very well.
‘I’m risk-averse,’ he said out loud. ‘Anything to avoid failure. Coward!’
He had always excelled in everything he did and his seniors and peers alike recognised him as especially gifted. This made him who he was. Perhaps because of this, he couldn’t bear to fail. He remembered his moods and sulks if he failed at anything. He had walked out of that card game once because he was losing! And yet it was nothing to do with having to win, but to do with vulnerability, to do with lack of control, to do with self-esteem. More like pride before a fall, he thought. He had spent many hours questioning why he should be as he was. Now he had more or less accepted himself for who he was, how he was, and realising that he was unlikely to change now, had learned to avoid situations he couldn’t control as far as possible.
But before, as a GP, his frustrations grew and he had convinced himself that medicine was the wrong profession for him. Tom in particular argued that it was the exhaustion that was undermining his confidence, but nevertheless he left the practice and went to Australia to stay with friends, which irritated his father, who thought him weak and foolish. My father! What can I say? he thought with a wry smile to himself.
As a boy, his precociousness had been a source of parental pride, a cleverness for which his father took credit. But as he grew tall and strong, and his voice broke and he was no longer a child but an intelligent young man, his father became increasingly judgemental and his mother’s love for him became, for his father, a constant irritation. He was jealous of me, Guy thought, shrugging, for he understood this now but at the time it had been a mystery and a source of constant friction. Then Guy responded the only way he could: by challenging his father’s intellect, his logic, his wisdom, and he became obsessed with winning every argument, every game, every problem, and learned to avoid all those areas he couldn’t be master over. Risk-averse. ‘Avoid at all costs.’ He spoke out loud again as he thought of Rose Gregory. And this accepting attitude was symbolised by the casual shrug of the shoulders that had become his trademark, along with his unhurried movements and apparently pragmatic approach to life.
However, he was grateful to his father – who had known Godfrey from their student days – for suggesting this place. Godfrey often shared his problems with the old and the sick – and the not so old – with Guy’s father. He received one letter in which Godfrey described the monks’ difficulties in coping with one of the older members of the community, who had had a breakdown and was very unwell. He had written some details about the dog kennels and how they were allowing the ailing monk to breed cocker spaniels. His father wrote to Guy in Australia and suggested he offered Godfrey some help for a time.
It was fortunate that Godfrey welcomed him as he did. To all intents and purposes he was a novice, and there was no doubt that Godfrey had hoped very much that he would go on to take his vows and was disappointed when he told him he’d decided to return to general practice when he left them. Of course, he couldn’t make everything right for his patients; all he could do was his best and that had to be good enough. One had to take some risks in life; he didn’t need to constantly beat himself up about failure.
The irony was that this fear of failure would, of course, cause him to lose much, most particularly in the area of relationships, especially with women. Can’t go through that again, he was thinking. The one time he had risked it, the only time, it didn’t work out, so never again. That was real failure. Deep, cutting, ‘I don’t want you’ failure. So never again. He thought about Rose and decided he must take her painkillers. He would fetch some from the surgery as soon as he got back. She was in a lot of pain; he could see it in her face.
He walked on to the old dog kennels. The area was unkempt. Brambles straggled through the long grass, and the rhododendron and hazel saplings, which surrounded the place, had grown to form thick cover. It was now impossible to find the paths that had once led to the wooded area beyond. He examined the run and noticed the new wire battened to pale, fresh timber. They had made a good job of it. The hinges on the gate had been renewed too. It now stood shut but not locked. There was a homemade wire hook that fixed into a coupling, but now it hung stiff and still on the gatepost. He tested the gate for solidity and yes, although it could only be opened with difficulty because of the thick clumps of grass, it was strong and sound. He pushed the gate shut and placed the wire hook into position; it slotted in well. The place was safe enough, he thought. And the wire high enough to deter foxes. Foxes could be a menace, apparently.
He recalled Rose’s concern. It was true the brothers treated the rabbit as a joke; Joseph was a joke. He had seen and heard them. Rose, even in the short time she had been here, showed sympathy, seemed concerned. Strange, that.
He, personally, had not minded one way or the other – the rabbit in Joseph’s room or in the run – it was all the same to him, but Bertram seemed to have a thing about it. However, he thought Bertram was overreacting when he argued so vociferously that the attention given to the animal undermined Brother Joseph’s devotional life – what a load of rubbish – and that the absurdity of a monk trailing a rabbit around on a lead reflected on them all and on the monastic life as a whole. Pompous ass! Guy had never taken part in these discussions, not considered it to be his business, but now he thought about Rose. She had picked up a situation in a matter of hours, something the rest of them had not realised over months.
He shook his head and smiled to himself. She would be quite a match for Bertram. And in any case, he didn’t think Bertram’s preoccupation was really about the rabbit at all. But he wasn’t going to get involved one way or the other, for surely this issue was of no real consequence. How could it matter, in the great scheme of things, whether Guy avoided the rabbit question or not? There were, after all, far more important things to concern him. He would rather think about the woman. There was something about her. What was she doing here, really?
As he crossed the lawn back to the house, he turned to look in the direction of her room. He couldn’t see it from where he was but he looked anyway, wondering if she was still resting, and remembered that he must organise some lunch for her. He would take it himself with the painkillers and then he could check on her foot again. Why did he rather look forward to that?