Introducing Peter Calvay
I woke up feeling warm and well rested; a sense of deep contentment welled up within me and extended to every part of my being. I yawned like a big, fat, contented cat and aimlessly rolled out of bed to see what the morning had to offer. Pleasant, soothing memories of the previous day had lingered on through the night and still remained with me as I opened the curtains – to be greeted by a dull, doleful day. Heavy dark clouds seemed to cling round everything in sight. The clammy Hebridean mist scarcely disguised a gentle but relentless drizzle that made even the stones look soggy.
Several people appeared out of the mist at about a quarter to eleven, and by the hour the church was full. I slipped in at the back. The priest from Castlebay was saying the Mass to enable his confrere to have a well-deserved rest. I couldn’t see anyone who could possibly be Peter anywhere, so I assumed he had been held up by the terrible weather; after all, he had to come by boat. Then just after the Gospel had been read, I heard the click of the sacristy door opening. Several heads turned to the right, as a silent figure came out to take up a position in the side aisle. I didn’t see the man properly, but I knew who he was. I saw the stick, I noticed the limp – hardly noticeable, but I instinctively knew that I hadn’t made a mistake.
At the end of the Mass one of the parishioners told me I was wanted on the telephone.
‘Oh, by the way, Father,’ said the man, ‘would you please tell Peter I’ve put his things in the boat? And you can tell him from me: I never thought he’d become a gentleman of leisure!’
‘OK!’ I shouted as I rushed into the house. It was Father Callum to ask me to water his tomatoes in the greenhouse every morning and evening. I put the phone down, walked into the dining room, and there was Peter Calvay, sitting next to the table. He got up as I came in, smiling naturally as he took me by the hand. I winced with pain. For a moment I thought he intentionally meant to do me an injury.
‘I’m terribly sorry!’ he said, immediately releasing his frightening grip. He had genuinely hurt me. I sat down nursing my hand, to the accompaniment of his profuse apologies. He had hurt me all right, but I made the most of it. Things couldn’t have turned out better. The moment we’d met, the psychological advantage had gone to me. Instead of me feeling guilty and trying to apologize to him for what I had done, he was the one who was apologizing to me!
‘It’s all right,’ I said, bravely forcing a smile.
‘I just forget about these hands of mine,’ he said, as if he’d only had them for a few weeks. ‘I’ve always been in trouble with them ever since I was a teenager. You see, I have to depend on my hands so much because of my leg. I have to grip things more firmly than anybody else for security. My father was endlessly telling me off at home because I would casually turn the taps off in the bathroom and go out for the evening, and nobody could turn them on again!’ He laughed guiltily, as if he were anticipating another scolding.
The words ‘father’, ‘home’, ‘teenager’ broke the spell I had cast round him. So far, he had been little more than a stereotype stamped out in my mind. All of a sudden he had come alive. He was a person; an individual with a past, a mum and a dad, a home, and a history. He had a face too and a body – a big body! He was a well-made man, about five foot eleven, with strong, powerful shoulders, supporting a heavy, well-shaped head with a mop of black hair, not shoulder length, but long enough to cover both his ears.
The man I was expecting to meet would have been at least fifteen years older. Peter looked in his late thirties, or possibly forty, but even my arithmetic told me he must be at least fortytwo. I would say he had worn well, in spite of the telltale grey hairs, which were by no means abundant. A handsome man, no doubt about that. This was something I’d not expected either. It was a strong face with a touch of stubbornness about the chin, but the face had been softened through suffering, and was mobile with compassion. He wore a large donkey jacket, heavily patched with genuine leather at the elbows. Perhaps it was the thick white Arran sweater underneath that gave him such a heavy, powerful appearance. His trousers were strong black ‘cords’, and his right foot was supported by a large built-up boot, fitted to an iron caliper; oddly enough, he was wearing a massive homemade sandal on the other.
‘Are you all right?’ he insisted, with genuine concern.
‘Yes, yes, I’m fine, thanks, though I wasn’t expecting to meet an “all-in wrestler”,’ I replied, attempting to be funny. ‘Well now,’ I said, trying to take control of the situation and play the host, ‘Would you like a drink before dinner?’
‘If you don’t mind, James,’ he said, breaking out into another guilty smile, ‘I’d prefer to have a bath. Father Callum usually lets me have one each Sunday before dinner, so I’ve just got time if I go now.’
‘By all means,’ I said. ‘We’ll meet in half an hour for dinner, if that gives you enough time?’
‘Plenty, thanks,’ he replied. ‘It won’t take me long.’ He picked up an old sports bag, took his stick, which had been hanging over the back of the chair, and went upstairs.
I sat down with a sigh of relief. The worst was over; the introductions were done. Thanks to his incredible physical strength and to no skill of mine, all had gone well.
A gong sounded at one o’clock. Peter arrived punctually with Mrs MacNeil’s soup, and the meal began. It wasn’t a pose but he didn’t help too much to push the conversation along, at least not to begin with. Silence didn’t seem to embarrass him as it did me, but after all he was hardly accustomed to indulge in trivial table talk. After he’d asked me about my journey, and I’d enthused about the glorious trip I’d had on the plane, it was I who felt under pressure to keep the conversation going.
When the meal was over, we sat down in front of the fire.
‘I notice you’ve got a northern accent,’ I said, wondering how he would react. It wasn’t very broad, but it was quite evident that he’d made no attempt to soften it down or cover it up.
He smiled readily. ‘They’d hardly call Manchester “north” up here,’ he answered pleasantly.
‘Were you brought up in Manchester?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ said Peter, showing no unwillingness to talk about his past. Why should he?
I had made up my mind not to pry, but after all, this wasn’t prying. I was only asking perfectly normal and natural questions about his past. I’d have done the same with anyone else.
‘I expect you went to school there?’ I went on.
‘Yes, that’s right. I went to St Bede’s College.’
‘What did you do when you left school?’ I asked. The tone of voice betrayed me. I realized it too late. It was quite obvious that I was bluntly probing for information. However, without any hesitation, or giving any sign of reluctance, he readily volunteered to continue.
‘I went to teacher training college in London,’ he said. ‘St Mary’s, Strawberry Hill, taking French and geography as my main subjects. When I’d finished there, I went to the Sorbonne in Paris. When I’d finished my studies I taught for two years in London, and then I came out here.’
Though he spoke quite naturally and factually about his past, I was later to find out far more about his school days. He was universally remembered and loved as a boy, head of the school, cricket captain, rugby secretary, star of plays and operettas, and an active member of innumerable school societies. He seemed to be involved in almost everything in some capacity, in spite of his leg (the result of polio which he had caught when he was six). Naturally he couldn’t play rugby, but I was told that his powerful bass voice scored more tries for the school than any wing threequarter. Though deprived of playing rugby he could play cricket, and with the help of a runner he was a formidable batsman. Boys in the playground would moan when he got hold of the bat because nobody could get him out!
In spite of my resolution not to pry, his readily available answers gave me confidence, and I couldn’t help coming back for more.
‘Do you mean you dropped teaching just like that, and came out here?’
‘Well, it wasn’t quite as simple as that,’ he admitted, preparing to tell me more. ‘You see, while I was a student I had a crush on Thomas Merton. I read Seven Storey Mountain, and after that, I couldn’t stop. I read everything of his that I could lay my hands on. I was terribly impressed by all he wrote; his writings touched something deep down in me. I felt compulsively attracted to the life and ideals he stood for. I used to go to Mount St Bernard’s and stay there for weekends. I even stayed at Citeaux while I was studying in Paris.
‘It was while I was still at St Mary’s, Strawberry Hill, that I asked to be admitted as a Cistercian novice at Mount St Bernard’s. The Novice Master was a little wary of prospective novices at that time. “That man Merton will be the death of me,” he said. In the year I applied, they had had two hundred applications to join them, most of which were put down to the severe epidemic of “Mertonitis” that was rampant in the fifties. Out of two hundred, they accepted only six. After an agonizing wait, I was finally accepted, but told to finish my studies and do a year’s teaching before entering. I was overjoyed. I had always wanted to become a priest, but never seriously applied before because of my leg. That didn’t seem to be even considered as a problem at Mount St Bernard’s.
‘It was during my first year’s teaching that I began to have second thoughts about the Cistercian way of life. I remember one Saturday going down to Cowfold to visit the Carthusians, but that didn’t seem to be what I was looking for. I wanted to give myself radically to God, as a contemplative, but gradually I began to realize that neither the Cistercians nor the Carthusians were for me.
‘Then during my first year’s teaching I got friendly with another young teacher, who came from South Uist, and I stayed with him for a month’s holiday in the summer. He lived near Daliburgh, almost opposite the hospital. The local headmaster asked me to teach there for a year. I enjoyed it very much, but when at the end of that year I was offered a teaching post in America, I realized I had to make a decision. I decided to take a year off and do a year’s retreat on the island of Vatersay (the least inhabited island in the Hebrides). I stayed there for four years!
‘After that, I decided I would like to continue, as a layman, giving my life to God against the background of a simple Hebridean life. I was offered a job as a part-time shepherd on Barra, looking after the sheep that were left to graze on the small islands off Bruernish. I couldn’t resist the greater solitude that was offered to me by making my home on the small uninhabited island of Calvay.’
So that’s why he calls himself Calvay, I thought. Sheila was right – it was a pen name.
‘I could barely keep myself as a shepherd,’ he continued, ‘so I did a little painting and a bit of fishing and now I find I can get by.
‘It’s only in the last few years that people have started calling me a “hermit”. I can’t help but be amused by the title, though it can be highly embarrassing on occasions, especially when people like you come all the way out here to see me, as if I were a latterday John the Baptist!’
I colored slightly, but didn’t say anything.
‘I suppose I’ve got Sister Veronica to blame,’ he smiled, goodhumoredly.
‘Sister Veronica – who’s she?’ I asked.
‘Oh, she’s a nun who came from Bruernish originally. We used to have long talks about prayer. She started everything by recommending me to her friends and so the letters began.’
I hadn’t interrupted him while he spoke about the main steps that had led to his setting up home on Calvay, but I’d been absolutely fascinated throughout. It was not so much what he said, though that was interesting enough in itself, but for a variety of reasons I find difficult to express.
First, I had misread him completely. This was my own fault – I was forever building up people’s characters on too little evidence.
I had just assumed that Peter would be so jealous about his privacy, his past, his way of life and his solitude, that he would have placed ‘No Entry’ signs everywhere about his person. ‘Private – Keep Out’ would be printed large upon his forehead. But that wasn’t the case. He certainly wasn’t garrulous – nobody could accuse him of that – but you got the distinct impression that he was completely transparent, had no secrets at all, and was prepared to talk in a simple, unaffected way about himself, or anything else for that matter.
Every time I asked a question, I was looking for the warning signs, watching his eyes, looking for the slight muscular movements of the face that would tell me I was approaching dangerous ground, but I never observed any at all. There was a soft, innocent simplicity about him that made me feel I could ask him questions of the most personal and delicate sort, and he would answer without hesitation and without any trace of irritation whatsoever.
Everybody has a point where they draw the line, when they say ‘Enough is enough’, and the sign ‘Verboten’ bars the way. I knew I hadn’t really pressed him, but I could see quite clearly that he didn’t know the meaning of the word Verboten when it came to encroaching upon his privacy.
Then there was something else about him, which I might not have noticed had I not been unnecessarily worked up into a state of ridiculous hypertension at the prospect of meeting him. There was a hardly definable ‘something’ about him that gently exuded tranquility and peace. When he had finished talking to me I was completely restored to my normal self again. I was relaxed, completely at ease and restored to a state of equilibrium.
Having said all this, however, I think it is only right to point out that this first meeting with Peter was by no means as striking as my encounter with Sheila. The impact of my first meeting with her was hardly less than traumatic, for a variety of reasons that I have never fully been able to understand.
It was different with Peter. You couldn’t help but like his totally unaffected and natural disposition, his transparent honesty and irresistible simplicity, but having said this, I have said all I can to convey my first impressions accurately.
‘Well,’ said Peter, suddenly looking hard at his watch, ‘I must go now, James. I have several things to do before nightfall, so if you’ll excuse me …?’
‘Certainly,’ I replied, as we got up simultaneously and walked out of the dining room into the hall. ‘Oh, by the way,’ I added, ‘one of the parishioners said he had put your gear in the boat.’
‘Oh, I’m pleased,’ he said. ‘That’ll save me a trip to the post office. It’ll be my weekly provisions and the post.’
‘And he said something about …he “never thought you’d become a gentleman of leisure”,’ I interjected, looking somewhat puzzled.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘he was referring to the boat. Father Callum has left me his outboard motor for the week to save me all that extra rowing. That’s why I’m afraid I was late for Mass. I couldn’t get the confounded thing started.’ He jerked his head upwards and pulled a face that indicated he disclaimed all responsibility for the vagaries of a modern mechanical motor – far less dependable than a pair of good strong hands.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow then, James,’ he said. ‘At about two o’clock, if that’s all right?’
‘That’ll be fine,’ I agreed. ‘I’ll look forward to seeing you then.’
He picked up his sports bag and, with the aid of his sturdy stick, made his way down to the path towards the jetty.
I came in, shut the door, and sat down in an easy chair to relax and to ponder quietly over the strange and various happenings of that eventful day.
I began to feel disappointed, even depressed. The scales that had been obscuring my vision for the last six months were gradually beginning to fall from my eyes, and I was able to see more clearly, more accurately. What I began to see, what I began to realize, was that my little dream had come to an end.
Like a child, I’d created a fantasy world in my imagination – of a wizard on a magic island who would make all my dreams come true. But what had happened when I came face to face with the ‘wizard’ who was supposed to wave his wand and turn the beast into a handsome Prince Charming? I had been confronted by a simple, good man who had once had aspirations to become a monk but who was now, as he said himself, merely trying to live a decent Christian life ‘far from the madding crowd’. I had no doubt about his sincerity or his honest-to-God Christian piety and goodness; that was obvious. He hadn’t tried to deceive me – or anyone else for that matter. He had made his position plain before I came to the Isles.
He was of course quite right. How could he possibly understand what I had been through? How could a man who had separated himself so completely from the modern world possibly have any idea of the psychological strain and inner conflicts of faith that the modern world placed on a layman like me? My need was so great, my desire for help so acute, that I had refused to hear the first piece of common-sense advice that he had given me. A piece of advice that would have saved so much trouble and embarrassment for the two of us – if I’d only listened!
Once again, it all seemed to add up to one thing: I’d made a fool of myself. That stupid emotional and impulsive flaw in my personality had let me down again. Why, oh why did God make me such a blind, romantic dreamer?
I began to laugh quietly to myself, shaking my head in a gesture of despair at my own incorrigible stupidity. At least I could laugh at myself – that was something! At least I could laugh at the ridiculous position I had put myself into this time.
I’d ended up, once again, in another ‘cul-de-sac’. This time, in one of the remotest places in Britain! It was another dead end, or so I thought. But thank God, here I was making another mistake, misreading another situation and failing completely to recognize the quality and depth of the man I had just met. I’d met the man who was going to change my life completely, a man who would speak to me of the intimate details of the spiritual life with a precision and profundity that I’d never yet encountered and probably never would again. This man, I was soon to learn, was a mystic, in the literal and fullest sense of the word. His knowledge was the knowledge that only comes from experience. This was why, when he began to speak about the spiritual life, he would speak with a confidence and conviction that would leave me in no doubt at all that here indeed was ‘a man who spoke with authority’.