Compline: ‘Brothers, be sober and watch, because your adversary the devil, like a roaring lion, goes about seeking whom he may devour… Resist him, strong in faith…’ The young monk who is the acolyte of the choir read the lesson and afterwards lit the Lady candles. He is so young, so handsome. He reminds me of J.M. I try to imagine him then. I left Compline sad, so sad for losing my brother, for his way of dying, not knowing how to retrieve him. I get some of him back.
Back then, there was Benedict. They were all younger then, both of them. I feel that the older men had given him, given them, so little direction, not the right kind at the right time. He shouldn’t have had to lose this life. I feel that so much of him wanted to go on with it. But, in the end, he had to go and seek the meaning of that love, that friendship, that passion, in the city, as Joe calls it.
They were without support, surrounded by treachery, bigotry, like criminals. That’s what it was like then, Joe says. You were arrested. You were imprisoned and fined. You were shamed, insulted, beaten up. Not that it does not take place now. There were some pubs which you knew you could meet at. There were actually one or two clubs, particularly in London, and just opening up in the bigger cities. There were growing liberal attitudes, but essentially you were still a criminal. Odd to think of the ideal they were forging in this cloister.
The ‘Salve Regina’ at the end of Compline was pitched into the darkness, and the candles threw long shadows.
I keep going over what Joe and Miriam have described to me, trying to imagine him going out into that world of public lavatories, back alleys, waste ground, odd pubs and underground clubs, away from this safe cloister; imagine them losing each other. But then, here, they were branded sinners.
Of course, back on Les Deux Isles we knew nothing of this. My parents would turn in their graves.
There is a history, Joe says. It happened for a reason.
And, Miriam adds, now we know that the concentration camps were also for those with pink triangles. There was a systematic elimination of them too. They need memorials too.
I will leave tomorrow for Bristol. But I will come back. I’ve told Benedict that I will. Already, I hear the hum of the traffic on the main road beyond the fields. The city’s sodium amber hum. Joe or Miriam or both will pick me up after lunch.
Making sure not to make any noise, I went out into the night and again circled the enclosure walls. I knew the trail by heart now. Using my former knowledge, I didn’t have to depend upon the yellow arrow trail. My trousers got caught on the gorse bushes. I passed through the little wood of oaks. Again I was on the brink of the escarpment, and opening up in front of me were the sheer, steeply descending layers of the Bath stone quarry, with the pool of water on its deepest floor. I could see the crevices where the wild buddleia grew. The arc lights hummed and floodlit the vast underground, busy with its own industry. There was blinding clarity and shadows and then encircling darkness. I descended the bank into the silver birches.
That night, I read of his heroes.
I admired the sprinting athlete, the diver as the champion swimmer, the jumper through the invisible air, a figure of perfection - perfection in that turn and twist. I saw perfection in the swift cycler, and in the serve of the tennis player, long and stretching and delivering deftness and power. I had come close to some of these arts myself, failing and succeeding in order to touch the essential beauty in myself and in Ted; his perfect beauty.
I admired the dash of the footballer on the wing, the drive of the turning batsman with the ball driven to the covers. I examined the sprinting fast bowler, with that trick of manhood; the feminine dance of the spin bowler, that trick that man could be so like a girl and be a man. This was a richness which I sensed, tasted and knew to be there, but could never fully have.
Ted and I placed questions in the hearts of each other. We placed them in our wrestling young bodies, like athletes in an arena we did not understand the rules of. We placed them in our clinging to each other, swimming off the boat when we were alone in the sea and could not see the land. The salve of life was to lick the sweat from his shoulder, those salty crystals, which then I took with my lips to place eventually, in that audacious way, upon the mouth of my best friend with a kiss like those I was shown in the pictures, like Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood in Splendour in the Grass.