Brother Stephen called to me when I was walking up through the farm this afternoon. He asked, Would I help him with a young cow, which was in the throes of calving? I said I would, though I had never witnessed this before. I was scared. The young cow was lying on its side, its stomach distended. All around the vagina area was soft, mushy and opening up. She had been in labour a long time. Brother Stephen was worried. He needed a hand to pull. We had to pull on the hooves and legs that had begun to show. But the head was stuck. Brother Stephen needed to insert his hand, his arm, to make room and coax the head out with the legs. He spoke to the cow reassuringly. He encouraged me in my efforts to pull. Then, all of a sudden, there was a rush of water, blood and transparent membrane, and the calf slipped out on to the straw, and the poor cow, exhausted, immediately turned to its calf and licked and nuzzled. It butted us off. I sat in the straw and watched, bewildered and in awe, the calf against my leg. Then we helped it to suck, Brother Stephen coaxing the milk out to make sure the calf got a good initial drink. Quite soon, it was up on its legs and knowing exactly where to go for a drink; the mother was turning and licking and cleaning it up. Brother Stephen had to get rid of the afterbirth. It was not good for the cow to eat this. The whole thing left me quite stunned. And Brother Stephen such a good midwife.

When we were washing up in the dairy he turned to me and said, I liked your brother. He liked it on the farm here. What we have just done for Marigold, he did with a young cow called Olive, and her first calf.

I smiled. Yes, he talked of you, I said. And then I wondered what he thought. Because what I really should’ve said was that I had read about him in the journals.

There is more to bring to light. More to come out.

Before Vespers the Abbot slipped me an envelope. It contained a letter addressed to me from Benedict. He died before it could be posted. They found it on his desk. It had escaped the lay brother’s clearing up. It had escaped the incinerator.

I could not contain myself. I was unable to go to Vespers. On the way back to the lodge I wept. I stopped at the cemetery. I stood by his grave and read the letter again. I sat and wept.

Afterwards, I wondered what Joe would make of the letter.

Poetry to the end, I’m sure he would say: all that talk of splendour and beauty and being dazzled.

I let it work on me, though, before Joe’s voice enters to challenge me. He openly acknowledges his love. He is sorrowful.

Joe might say, Too little, too late.

I can’t say that. This is my too little, too late. It pleases me that I was able to give him back something, that my questing has had a point to it for him as well. J. M.’s death has meant something. I will have to show Joe the letter. For a while, I’d thought it was Benedict that I needed to see and to speak to, but increasingly I know that it is Joe who was an equally long friend, possibly the most important friend in the end. Not a lover, I startle myself, it seems. Sometimes I wonder.

The birth of the calf and the letter said something to me which made all my efforts seem appropriate. It was right, this bringing forth.

They all stood around jeering, taunting. I couldn’t believe something bad was going to happen again. I saw J. M. back off and tug at Ted’s arm to come with him, but Ted pulled away and went and started climbing on to the highest rock. To my eye now, Ted was, as I remember seeing him emerge at the top, thin, transparent. He could not see me hiding. I could read his ribs. I could read his blue veins. He had been getting thinner and thinner.

One day I came across him in the washroom being sick. He did not hear me. It was after supper one evening and I had wanted to find J. M. to get some pocket money. I was not really allowed up to the senior dormitory, so I was tiptoeing about. What I remember was that he seemed to be sticking his finger down his throat and then being sick, retching. I could smell all his dinner coming up into the basin and the running water gushing over the side of the basin. I don’t think he saw me. He was making himself sick. I backed away. I left him. Ted, my brother’s friend. I understand more of this now.

Miriam says that it is more and more common among boys.

He stood on the highest rock alone. I saw J. M. begin to climb up to him. That is when I think J. M. saw me behind Ted. He was now at the very edge. All the others were taunting, daring him to dive. To jackknife from the highest rock was to receive the greatest accolade, more than any school record at the official sports day. To jackknife into the river pool from the highest rock would prove him to be a boy like the rest of them. Last term, the raid and all that had led up to the scandalous revelations would be forgotten, for him and his friend. He could wipe the slate clean. He could be their hero again; their head boy, their captain. They would cheer for him on the left wing. The applause would ring out again for his century. The juniors would crowd around for his cap at the end of the season. He stood teetering, thin, transparent, naked but for his brief swimsuit. Blue. Marbleu. A blue butterfly on a black rock. His arms stretched out in front of him, then at his side. Poised. Then out in front of him again. The roar went up. High above them, J. M. shouted, Ted, don’t dive! And then his thin body was in mid-air. A kind of angel. A bird. It twisted and bent for the jackknife, then straightened and plunged into its own splash and disappeared. The roar was deafening. The roar of the boys, the high wind, the water that fell from under the highest rock in a cascade. Then there was silence, as we all waited for Ted’s head to bob to the surface. Before anyone had realised, J. M. jumped from the rock, and then, there he was with Ted’s body in his arms in the life-saving position, lying on his chest, Ted’s head all red. Suddenly the pool was deserted as the taunting crowd retreated up the paths to the school. They deserted in fear. I was rooted to the ground. What had I seen? What had they seen? I looked down at J. M. and Ted on the rock to where J. M. had swam with him. He sat with Ted in his arms. His head was crushed, his face a red flower. The water running away was tinged with red. J. M. looked up, saw me, cried for me to get help. I ran and ran and ran. I collapsed. Father Julius arrived with first aid.

He had flown, a shaft of light, the pool like flamboyante.

Playback. It became my dream, repeated. A brown arm reaching from behind a black rock, extended, touching, gently tilted his body to the very edge, into mid-air. Its flight. Jackknifed. Plummet. Splash.

Bless me, Father, for I have seen …sinned.

A strange synchronicity, a macabre pattern, a common impulse: denial, punishment, death. Suicide? Self-killing? Murder? I ran the alternatives and how they would have seemed. His wish to die and my wish to save face with all the others. Was that my arm, my hand? Did I actually touch him, or had he flown? Did I get to push him or had he made the decision? It has stayed with me, because whatever he did, there will always be what I did, even if it was not the cause. Even if I only nudged what he was already about to do. Had he wanted to prove something? Was it a flight he had been preparing himself for, growing thinner and thinner, lighter and lighter? Diminished in body. Light like spirit. His flight to parallel J. M.’s flight, away from him, the island.

I remember him looking over J. M.’s shoulder when he was writing the letter of application to St Aelred’s Abbey. They had had an argument. They sent me off. Skeidaddle. His fingers ruffling my hair. Tender in that moment.

Playback. A brown arm from behind a black rock. Had he tempted my nudge? Had it caught him off balance? Did he change decision mid-air? Ted. I hear J. M.’s cry. Ted, don’t dive.

I had never cried. Now I find my weeping renders me inconsolable, then strangely refreshed, after all these years. Is this where I’ve been leading? I think so. My own betrayals, my own shame.

You cannot blame yourself for the acts of a young boy, Miriam comforts.

It’s not you, Joe says, it’s them: the teachers, the confessors, the spiritual advisers.

I know that in an intellectual way, I think. But emotionally, inside me, is that voice, my inner voice that tells me that I betrayed him. I am an accomplice in that self-killing.

I want my brother back. I want his forgiveness.