Stolen Time

My beloved thrust his hand
through the hole in the door;
I trembled to the core of my being…
Song of Songs

Aelred stared at the bulbs drying in a green plastic tray below the black heating pipes of Father Justin’s cell. It was his weekly conference with the novice master. ‘There’s just one more thing, brother.’ Father Justin detained Aelred as he was about to get up from where he was sitting next to Father Justin’s desk. The geraniums which had been pricked out earlier in the year were now flourishing: red, white and pink in small terracotta pots on saucers, crowded on the small windowsill. While in March and April the scent of hyacinths thickened the air in the cell, now it was this hot geranium fragrance that took away the mustiness of the novice master’s cell. Father Justin was standing at the window, his hands among the leaves, nipping off a few here and there which had turned yellow. The perfume broke from the plants.

‘Yes, father.’ Aelred stayed sitting with his hands beneath his scapular, his head bowed, continuing to stare at the dry bulbs.

‘I think it would be better, brother, if you returned the writings of Aelred of Rievaulx to the library.’ Father Justin delivered this like the first line of a sermon he had prepared beforehand.

‘Are they overdue? I thought I had a couple of weeks left.’

‘That may be, but, no, what I mean is… I mean, I’ve discussed this with Father Abbot.’

‘With Father Abbot?’

‘Yes.

‘What’s happened? Is there a shortage of these books? There were more than one copy, both of The Mirror of Charity and Spiritual Friendship. When I borrowed them I think that there was only one of The Letters, though. I’ll make sure that gets back soon.’

‘Spiritual Friendship. That’s the one. I must say I’d quite forgotten about that text.’ Father Justin did not sound convincing to Aelred. ‘Then, now I think of it, we did talk once before of you reading the monastic fathers so early in the novitiate. By the way, how is your reading of Francis de Sales and John Boscoe? What about Jean Pierre de Caussade?

‘I’ve been trying de Caussade this morning.’

‘I see. And there are, for lighter reading, one or two excellent lives of St Dominic Savio and Aloyious Gonzaga and, of course, very recommended for young people is the Life of Maria Goretti. All examples for young people, though I think that last one is a little flagrant by implication. You know what happened to her?’ Father Justin crushed the dead geranium leaves through his fingers. The perfume still lingered in them. It brought the hot day into the room and made Aelred feel he wanted to be outside. He felt trapped by Father Justin.

Edward climbed the rock face. His strong legs moved as he climbed in his tight black shorts.

‘She was killed because she resisted sexual advances.’

‘Yes, a martyr for the youth of our time.’

‘I read these at school, father.’

‘Yes, well, I hope they did you some good. Anyway, the Abbot has decided to ban Aelred of Rievaulx from novitiate reading. Maybe ban is too harsh a term. He wants the books returned to the library. I think I agree. I think it could be misleading unless you have it carefully interpreted. Who was it recommended this text? Not me. I don’t remember, Spiritual Friendship, is it? I should’ve acted on this earlier. I blame myself.’ Father Justin knew very well he had not recommended the text.

‘For what, father? It was Benedict.’

‘Yes, that reminds me of another matter.’

‘What reminds you of another matter, father?’

‘Yes, well, you must get those books back at once. Other copies are out as well. Who else is reading these texts? I must say they weren’t of great interest in the novitiate in my time. I’ll bring this up during my next meeting of the whole novitiate.’

‘I don’t know father. You were saying.’

‘What?’

‘Another matter.’

‘Another matter? Yes. I don’t think you should be alone with Benedict in the library during study time.’

‘I was talking to him about John Cassian,’ Aelred said abruptly.

‘John Cassian? Yes, now he’s very relevant. In fact he’s to the point. Cliques are very dangerous in our life, brother. I think I’ve spoken to you about this before. Always in threes, never in twos. That’s our little mnemonic.’ Father Justin bent down to the wastepaper basket and brushed off his hands the crushed geranium leaves which he had shredded into a fine dust all the time he was talking.

Aelred felt his hands in Benedict’s, his mouth on his. Benedict’s neck smelt of the yellow soap which was customarily used. It was a rough ration. His neck was white and soft.

‘We’re not a clique, father.’

‘I know. And Benedict is exemplary. But of course he’s not your guardian angel any more. You must let him devote his time to Edward.’

‘He does. I hardly get to talk to him.’

‘You must think of talking to others at the appropriate time. And I think it would be good for you to see Father Abbot. You haven’t had a good meeting with him since the first visit just after your arrival. Father Abbot likes to keep in touch with the novices.’

‘Yes, I’d like to see him.’

‘I’ll arrange that. Very well then. And get those texts back to the library. I’ll have to see who’s got the other copies. Aelred of Rievaulx! I’ve never understood the interest. What do you think of my geraniums?’

‘They’re fine and smell so strong.’ Aelred closed the door of the Novice Master’s cell.

The geranium pots at Mount Saint Maur were by the goldfish pond near the arbour with Barbados Pride. The pods, like mangetout, were called deadman’s flesh.

As Aelred made his way through the common room to the dormitory, he noticed Edward sitting on the windowseat near the novitiate shrine. There was a fresh bouquet of flowers in the vase. ‘Oh, prickly.’ Aelred quickly pulled back his hand from trying to rearrange Edward’s arrangement.

‘Benedicite, brother. Hawthorn. Is the arrangement not to your liking?’

‘Yes, no. No, yes, I mean the white is like lace, but I love the pink, which seems rarer around here for some reason. From near the quarry?’ Aelred adjusted one of the sprigs of the pink hawthorn.

‘Yes?’ Edward questioned Aelred’s question and what lay within it.

Aelred noticed that Edward was reading Spiritual Friendship. ‘A dangerous text, brother!’ There was a note of irony in the tone of his voice.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Who recommended it?’

‘Benedict.’

‘Benedict?’ Aelred raised his eyes.

‘Yes.’

‘I see.’ Aelred felt a pang of jealousy, because what he thought was a matter of intimacy between him and Benedict alone was shared with Edward. Obviously Benedict’s guardian angel duties, he thought. But it still made Aelred wonder. Did Benedict recommend Aelred of Rievaulx to all the novices in his charge?

‘When did he recommend it?’

‘What’s the point of this inquisition, brother? And, “dangerous text”? What do you mean?’

‘Oh, it’s nothing. Don’t pay attention to what I say.’

‘How can I not, when you burst in with your questions and statements, your raised eyes and smirks.’

‘Smirks? Return to your Lectio Divina, brother.’

As Aelred made off, Edward said, ‘You’ve got really dark. You’re almost black.’ He said this when Aelred was already halfway down the corridor. Aelred heard it. He turned and came back to where Edward sat on the windowseat.

‘Black? Have you ever seen a black person? Black? Does it bother you?’ Then Aelred returned to his cell, leaving Edward flummoxed, and mumbling.

‘I’ve seen coloureds in our town,’ Edward raised his voice. Aelred did not turn back.

Aelred gathered up the texts from his cell and went directly to the library. ‘Coloureds?’ He asked, as he passed Edward still on the windowseat. He did not wait for an answer, but he puzzled with snatches of newspaper pictures he remembered of black people from the islands coming to England for work. There was one of a group of steel band men playing on a wharfside next to a big ship. There was another of a man and a woman knocking on a door under a sign which said ‘No coloureds’. There was a way in which the world had been shut out, and then suddenly he became aware of it. Just beyond the walls Ashton Park was another world and he hardly knew anything about it.

‘Some say Mungo get ship away.’ Aelred heard Toinette’s voice. As he opened the door to the library, he looked back at the portrait of the black boy on the staircase. He looked back at Jordan. ‘Black boy for sale.’ He heard the cry in the streets of Bristol.

He deposited the books he had brought from his cell on to the shelf for returned books. He felt angry. He felt jealous. He felt homesick. He stood at a standing desk built into the bay of the window looking out on to the front lawn. The fresh grass was embroidered with daisies. He heard his mother’s voice in her last letter: ‘Sweet heart, we miss you. And Toinette said, “Tell Master Jeansie I say hello.” We all miss you, darling.’ Aelred wished he was still Jeansie playing at Malgretoute as a boy, playing behind the house near the servants’ rooms under Toinette’s all-seeing eyes.

He heard her voice. ‘Dou-dou child.’

‘Where Mungo get that scar?’ He heard his question.

‘Mungo get hang in Hangman Alley.’

Every Sunday after Mass in Felicity, they passed the avenue of mango trees coming up the hill above the sugar-cane factory. They passed under the trees where they said men had been hanged and men had gone to hang themselves. And the only thing that took away the fear as they passed was the nice warm hops bread from Mr Gomes’s shop by the railway line. And there were also the warm plaited loaves his mother got specially for Sunday breakfast after fasting for so long before Holy Communion.

Stories and memories plaited themselves. Mungo is a spirit flying in at the window. ‘See that scar on his neck,’ Toinette say.

During those first days at Rievaulx, the young Aelred was caught up in the new routines of the men who had first enchanted him. He had come upon them in the small wood near the river, dressed in their rough brown working habits, sawing wood, clearing a space near the River Rye for an extension to their humble dwellings. And though he had not expressed it that clearly to himself, he saw in them the possibility of men living together for love. Rising in the night for Matins and then private prayer, before returning to the church for Lauds, tired him. All his energy was exhausted in keeping up with the rigour of the day, the hours of waking, prayer, manual work and Lectio Divina. He felt that his body was being fashioned in a fire which was also tempering the spirit within him, so that he hardly turned his mind to the life which he had so suddenly and abruptly turned away from with his companion at the court in Scotland. He remembered the morning of his conversion. He remembered the morning of their departure after their brief visit. He looked back from on top of his horse, climbing the ridge above the valley and the river. He saw the monks processing out to work, and decided, or rather, he let his companion decide, that they return, taking the other young man’s zeal as confirmation that he should follow his own passion.

But the other passion had not left his mind, nor had it given up its power to tempt his body.

One week later, he woke to his heart weighed down with sadness, missing the friend whom he loved above any other, in the far distant northern kingdom.

Aelred comforted himself with the story of his patron saint, which he remembered his childhood mentor, Dom Placid, telling him in his mountain school. He retold it to himself now, a young man growing up and experiencing love. He remembered then, at his teacher’s feet, how he had asked Dom Placid whether love was painful, and the older man had nodded agreement. He wondered now what Dom Placid knew. Had he been a man who loved another? Was he like Basil and Sebastian? Had he been telling him this story because he knew, through the boy’s confessions, of his passion for his friend Ted and had wanted to prepare him for a life in which it is not easy to love another man? Had he loved him, himself, and was sublimating his desire for the boy into his celibate love? Was this what he should now do? Aelred strove for sublimation, his chaste and celibate ideal. Benedict called it a dangerous chastity.

They could not take the story from him. They could not. It was a love story. He took the books again from the shelf and read, absorbed, standing at the window till he was interrupted by the bells for Conventual Mass.

‘Flaming June. That’s what we call it.’ Brother Stephen outlined to Aelred his part of the walled garden to work for the collection of the soft fruit. The remainder of the morning timetable had been collapsed to bring in the rest of the harvest … ‘and in the morning we will go to the vineyards’.

The whole novitiate were particularly involved. Everyone went out after the Conventual Mass. They stayed out all morning. They broke to recite Sext, standing in two rows opposite each other. Benedict began the office, ‘Deus in adutorium meum intende.’ They all made the sign of the cross.

‘Domine aduvandum me festina,’ the rest of the group responded. Then all bowed at, ‘Gloria Patri et Filio and Spiritui Sancto,’ rising at, ‘Secut erat in principio et nunc et semper et in saecula saeculorum, Amen.’ The monotone chant droned like the wasps and bees around the strawberries and raspberries.

Festina, quickly. Aelred savoured that word, festina.

Aelred remembered photographs of monks chanting the office like this when he used to pore over books on monastic life at Mount Saint Maur. He was fired by the romanticism of it. Now he was actually doing it. Then they had a picnic lunch under the mulberry tree. After lunch they had a brief recreation. They went and lay in the field outside the walled garden just beyond the stream with the watercress beds for siesta. There would be a second shift to take them into the afternoon, after reciting None. Then if necessary, a third shift, finishing with the fall of darkness, before which they would recite a shortened form of Vespers. Aelred loved this time. It was a respite from the routine of monastic life - though he was still as enthusiastic about it as ever. It gave him an opportunity to be with Benedict with less tension. Not having to worry about Father Justin finding them, as in the library. He knew that they could not hold hands and kiss, but they could just talk. Stolen time. They could talk while sitting in the garden, as the nature of the work allowed for pairs to work closely at one patch for a while. The relaxation this afforded was exhilarating to Aelred.

He was always keener than Benedict to steal moments together when some of the other monks were busy elsewhere in the garden. Benedict wanted to include the other monks and not appear to be exclusive. He spent time with Edward, which made Aelred jealous. But it was also the temptation, the occasion of sin, that these moments could present, that sometimes deterred him from Aelred’s games. To have other monks near by was safe.

In their work smocks, their bodies seemed to be more exposed. The smell of the grass, the heat and the open air conspired to make these moments most difficult for Benedict. He admired more than ever the beauty of Aelred as his skin tanned to dark brown in the summer, reminding him of when he had first arrived. His arms and cheeks were glowing with the blood of his exhilaration in moving quickly around the garden, collecting up the punnets which lay near the strawberry beds and raspberry canes, and carrying them in a wheelbarrow to Brother Stephen’s shed, where they had to be packed to be taken into the nearby market town.

Aelred knew that he was being admired. He turned and smiled.

They had found a sun catch at the top of the field behind a full-flowering hawthorn which was losing its bloom. Aelred wanted to talk. In his spontaneity, he touched Benedict on his arm. He held his hand, impetuous to make his point. Benedict restrained the boy, as he thought of him at these times, still enjoying his at least seeming innocence. He seemed to have no will to change, even though Benedict made it clear that they should be careful.

The summer’s exhilaration, the hot sunshine - these offered their own explanation.

They lay together where they could not easily be seen. ‘This is good. What are you afraid of? We’re just talking. No one else can see what we’re doing.’ Aelred was sliding his hand under the folds of Benedict’s smock and tickling his ribs.

‘But you’re still a novice. Anyway we must always be careful.’

‘Aelred of Rievaulx says it’s fine, to touch, to hold hands, to look at another monk, to admire his beauty, the shape of his body, the look in his eyes. These things are good. I’ve read about this. You gave me this to read.’ Aelred saw a question in Benedict’s eyes. ‘Why did you give it to me to read then? To excite me and then to punish me? This desire is essentially good.’ Aelred broke out into a kind of tirade, but not really angry, just forceful. Gradually his tone became more cynical, when he remembered Father Justin’s voice.

Then Benedict could not help but flirt. ‘You look beautiful when you get angry.’

‘Don’t talk nonsense.’

Benedict smiled, not recognising Aelred’s mounting seriousness, and then lost himself, putting his arms around the boy, pulling him in with an embrace and holding up his head by lifting his chin from where it was buried against Aelred’s chest. He looked into his eyes, and, very slowly, brought his face close to his and kissed him on his mouth. His lips were cracked by the heat, dry with their hard work. They held each other, and then broke off, feeling suddenly exposed in the field the other side of the copse where Aelred had contrived that they could snatch the last half hour, before they would have to meet again in the walled garden to recite None under the mulberry tree.

‘You see, you go further than I would,’ Aelred said.

‘That’s why I must be careful, as I said in the library. You’re not aware of what you do? I notice it even with the other monks. You disturb some of the other monks. Even Edward. You must be careful. Careful with what you do with your hands, with your eyes.’

‘You sound like Brother Marcus. Do you know what he said to me the other day? He said I wore my habit like a girl. Can you imagine? What can you do with a sack? Can you imagine it?’

‘You’re being silly. You’ve got to take responsibility for what you do, your effect on people. For instance, Edward …’

‘They must take responsibility too. What’s going on in Marcus’s mind? And what do you mean, even Edward?’

Benedict did not reply directly. Then he said, ‘We’re meant to avoid the occasion of sin.’

‘If you call it a sin, it becomes a sin. It’s rules and laws that make sins. That’s what St Paul says.’

‘You might find Aelred of Rievaulx sympathetic, but don’t quote Paul on the matter. There are other texts. And you must think of yourself and the preparation for your vows. We’re supposed to be chaste.’

‘We are chaste. I love you. That’s chaste.’ Aelred meant what he said. He knew that there was a difference in him, in the feelings which he had for Benedict, into which no guilt, or sense of sin had entered as it used to with Ted. He would gladly have gone further with Benedict because of his love, if Benedict had not all the time confronted him with his doubts. He could convince himself that this was not unchaste, that the vow of chastity was more to do with freeing oneself from a family to lead the contemplative life. What harm would there be if they went further? What would it feel like to go all the way with one you loved? Not like with Ted - only boys and clumsy.

‘But you must be aware of what you tempt me to do?’

‘I wish you would do it sometimes, like now, when we’re alone here. I wish you would do it. It sounds mad. I know it sounds as if I don’t know what I’m saying, but it doesn’t feel wrong. It doesn’t feel like a sin. It’s not like when I was made to feel it was a sin when I was a boy and a teenager with my friend Ted. It doesn’t feel like that. I don’t feel anything like sin when I’m with you. I feel good about what I want to do with your body. It just seems to me to be an extension of our love - that it is our love - and I can’t see why I can’t do it. I don’t really agree with St Aelred. He talks so violently about hating his body. I feel good about my body. Though even he allows for holding hands.’ Aelred developed his theories as he reached for Benedict’s hand and pulled him closer.

‘But what about chastity? We take a vow of chastity.’

‘But that’s not the reason why you don’t want to. You wouldn’t think this was good if we were not in the monastery and were not taking the vow of chastity. That’s not why you think it’s wrong. You think it’s wrong because we’re men.’

‘I’m not sure. I’m not sure what I think. Part of me thinks it’s wrong, but I know I love you. I love you as a boy, as a man. I must admit that. I gave you Aelred of Rievaulx to read. It’s what I believe too. How can you say that I think it’s wrong because we’re men? Aelred of Rievaulx believed that we could transform the carnal into the spiritual. Yes, we can kiss, not on the lips; we can hold hands, but not the other. What does our chastity mean if we do the other?’

‘Then don’t be afraid. Love; love me. I won’t push you any further than you want to go. I want only to rest my head on your shoulder, to hold your hand, to be embraced when I feel sad, or hug you when I’m happy. It’s bad enough that I can’t do this when I want to. It’s enough to keep that within the rules. But when we can, why not? It’s good. Please, Benedict, kiss me once more before we join the others.’

The older man took the younger man into his embrace and kissed him on the mouth. ‘How do I resist you?’

‘Don’t.’

Benedict withheld his tongue. ‘No more.’ They turned towards the walled garden when they heard the bell announce None.

‘Listen, Father Justin says Father Abbot is banning Aelred of Rievaulx’s writings from the novitiate.’

‘What? Where did you hear that?

‘Father Justin, this morning at my weekly meeting.’

‘Why? What’s happened?’

‘I don’t know. He just says I shouldn’t read it now because it needs careful interpretation. We’ve just been interpreting it.’ Aelred laughed.

‘Don’t joke. What else did he say?’

‘He asked who had recommended Aelred of Rievaulx in the first place.’

‘And?’

‘Well, I said that you had.’

‘And?’

‘Then he said that I shouldn’t’ve been talking to you in the library the other day.’

‘Did he? Oh! I know. He had a kind of word with me about that. I didn’t want to worry you. He was quite cross really. It makes me wonder how long he was in the library before we noticed him. Or whether he entered the library, realised that we were in the alcove and then went back out again, embarrassed to catch us, as it were, and then re-entering when he heard us talking louder by the desk. He didn’t talk directly or fully. It’s Father Justin’s way to be irritable about something, not tell you, and it sounds as if it’s something else. He was complaining how much time I spent studying and reading existentialists and not getting on with the syllabus. I’m now sure it was this matter. You see, he wouldn’t want to talk about it. It’s hard, isn’t it. He’s never questioned me at our weekly meetings about what I recommend to the novices. Have you returned the texts? He did say he wanted to see me specially. But he hasn’t called me.’

‘Yes, immediately, reluctantly. All the books I had are back.’

Aelred and Benedict had arrived at the watercress beds and were crossing the small rustic bridge in order to get back to the walled garden in time for the recitation of None. The rest of the novitiate had already formed themselves into two rows opposite each other beneath the mulberry tree. The hymn had already been intoned. They slipped into their places, taking their small breviaries from their pockets.

After None Brother Stephen detailed Aelred to work with Edward on the early soft fruit in the lower half of the garden. As they worked at their separate bushes, plucking and collecting them at once into the punnets, Aelred wondered what Benedict had meant earlier by saying that he disurbed other monks. Even Edward, he had said. He and Edward worked silently. Their discussion this morning had not been concluded. Aelred was still wondering what he had meant by noticing his darkness, calling him black, and mentioning coloureds in his town. Was he against black people? Did he think that he was and was that the reason he was hostile? He remembered that some of the hostility to Ted at school was because he was coloured, to use Edward’s word. Ted was mixed. This was the second time Edward had commented on the colour of his skin. He was aware of himself now, with his sleeves rolled up and his brown hands among the bushes. There was Edward close to him. Their hands were almost meeting among the bushes. His strong arms moved, with the blue veins running beneath the skin. Where he bent his neck, Aelred could see the smooth white nape beneath his blond hair. When he looked up he saw his blue eyes. They were so different.

He knew Edward’s secret was rock climbing. He had observed him again just yesterday morning. He had arrived earlier. He noticed Edward arrive and undress himself. There was something audacious the way he stood in the open, pulling his smock over his head, getting out of his overalls and standing almost naked in the open, in his tight black shorts and white vest, running his hands through his blond hair and pulling the strands behind his ears. What did rock climbing mean to him? It frightened Aelred. Not only the possibility of falling, but the feeling of naked flesh against the hard rock, the body’s utter vulnerability. It was something daring, like attempting to fly - a kind of hubris. Scaling height Conquering vertigo. Falling, always that possibility. Free-falling! He picked the gooseberries assiduously and lost himself in this reverie among the hum and drone of bees and wasps in the heat. There were some hives just a way off whose bees worked the garden, among the flowers that Brother Stephen had planted with the spring onions, lettuce and celery. There was a wonderful sense of order about the beds and paths, but the random flowers gave a sense of wildness. Full-blown red poppies fell on to the small gravel paths between the beds. Honeysuckle climbed the trellises between the walled plums and apples. The top of the wall was a tangle of Russian vine. It reminded him of coralita back home, falling over the rusty galvanised fences. Aelred felt proud that he was doing so well with the names of flowers.

As he continued to pick the early strawberries, Aelred tried to keep his mind on what he had been reading in Lectio Divina that morning. The writing was encouraging him to abandon himself to God, to mould his body into a place for God to dwell. His body was the temple of God. There seemed to be writings which emphasised a relationship with God which was lonely and another which included others, and included love of others, like Aelred of Rievaulx, who said, ‘To live without friendship was to live like a beast’. Aelred of Rievaulx had faced head-on the risks of this, but nevertheless advocated it. The writings which Father Justin advised sought for the most part to leave out others, or at least to have them not as real friends, more as acquaintances, to love them with detachment, not with passion. Aelred of Rievaulx seemed to want to work through passion.

‘I see what you mean,’ Edward broke into Aelred’s meditation, ‘about the dangerous text.’

‘Oh,’ Aelred stood up and stretched and then arranged the full punnets in the wheelbarrow near by. ‘Sorry, I was somewhere else.’

‘I shouldn’t’ve interrupted your meditation.’

‘No, it’s not frowned on to exchange a few words. You were saying?’

‘About this morning, what you said about a dangerous text.’

‘Don’t bother with what I say.’

‘Well, Father Justin instructed me to take my book back to the library. Why do you think that is?’

‘Did he not tell you?’

‘He said that it was not appropriate for me at this time of my novitiate and that I should be reading the more traditional books that were in the novitiate library. Aelred of Rievaulx needed interpreting.’

‘Yes, that’s what he said to me.’

‘What do you think it is about Aelred of Rievaulx?’

‘Well you must realise, surely?’

‘You mean what he says about sex?’ Edward was blunt.

‘He recognises that attractions exist between monks. That they’re good.’

‘He doesn’t mince his words about the dangers and what shouldn’t take place.’

‘True. But he allows for much more than we are encouraged to explore. Never in twos always in threes. Hasn’t Father Justin said that to you?’

‘No.’

‘Well, maybe you’re different.’

‘Maybe you’re different,’ Edward countered.

‘You think so, don’t you? You think I’m coloured. You think I’m -’

‘Hang on.’

‘I think we’d better get back to the fruit picking. We’ll soon have to be taking these down to the shed.’ Aelred was thinking of what Benedict had mentioned about Edward finding him disturbing.

Edward volunteered to take the wheelbarrow down to the shed after they had loaded all the punnets. Aelred watched Edward and noticed every movement of his arms and legs and hips as he strode off. Then he saw him again in his tight black shorts and white vest pinned to the rock face; then falling away, falling, falling. How did he disturb him? he wondered. What had he actually said to Benedict? The sun had gone behind the hill at the top of the park. Aelred was now on the higher ground of the garden, where you could see over the wall into the fields beyond. There was still a rich light, which was descending into a soft powdery haze at the bottom of the valley. Against it, every trunk and branch, every shadow was distinct. Beyond the spinney was a pond, which held the reflections of the trees that grew at its edge. There the light was khaki. A duck webbed its way across the pond. The ripples in its wake crinkled the reflections of the trees. The novices moved quietly among the bushes. This great settling down of the day was momentarily jangled by the bells for Vespers. The novices made for the mulberry tree. Once the bells had quietened down, they recited the evening office.

Above them swallows and swifts darted and swooped like bats. In the distance two wood pigeons called to each other. ‘Dou-dou, dou-dou.’ Aelred heard Toinette’s voice. He told himself the story of Jordan.

The novices made their supper together in the warm kitchen. There was hot tea and bread and cheese and then some of the fruit they had been picking that afternoon. They stood at the counters and ate quietly. One or two took their plates into the refectory. When they had cleared up they went and said Compline privately before retiring to bed.

In the novitiate, Aelred heard someone at he door of his cell and opened it. It was Benedict. He put out his hand. Aelred took his hand and brought it to rest on his cheek. Their eyes held all their longing. Benedict withdrew; turned and left. Aelred sank to his knees by his bed and prayed for a peaceful night. He heard Edward moving about in his cell. He had a distinct cough.

Tomorrow they would bury Brother Sebastian. Aelred thought of Basil and what his thoughts might be that night. They had joined together, he had said. They had been his age, nineteen. They had had a lifetime together.

The rain dripped on the outside windowsill. A soft rain which did not last long. He heard the drip drip in the cocoa at Malgretoute.

Mungo could fly. ‘He fly back to Africa,’ Toinette say. ‘He climb the hoe in the field and fly.’