Aelred's Sin (19 page)

I look out on his world. It falls under his gaze, now my gaze.

Vita Angelica

I charge you,
not to stir my love, nor arouse it,
until it please to awake.
Song of Songs

Wild violets glinted purple, close to the ground, under dry leaves and new fresh moss where Aelred crouched. Each day there were new flowers, new names to ask Brother Theodore about. ‘You bring me a flower, brother, and we can match it with the picture in our book,’ he had said at recreation. He had directed Aelred to a miscellany of English wild flowers. Brother Theodore had a simple faith, combined with his individually acquired knowledge of wild flowers. He had been known to place
The
Little
Flower
-
A
Life
of
Saint
Thér
è
se
Of
Lisieux
in the botany section of the library.

Aelred felt slightly ridiculous here, out at the quarry, hiding behind a boulder and a small tree that had persisted in growing even though all its roots were exposed from a piece of ground that had been quarried some time ago. It flourished; flowers were bursting from a cluster of buds. Elderberry, he thought Brother Theodore had called it. He would check. He would take back a specimen. One cluster was fully open and looked like a lace doily; it had a creamy colour. Last time Theodore had been very pleased with his observation. ‘You’re making splendid progress. I’ve asked the librarian to get us a book on tropical plants, so that you can tell me which ones you have at your home.’ Aelred was touched.

On the ground, a yard away, near some rocks and anchored by a jagged stone at the bottom of a very steep
ascent, were Edward’s clothes. His overalls and top smock were bundled together. Aelred could not see Edward as he had done before, but he knew that he must be near by. He had just come upon the clothes on the ground, suddenly. Then he had retreated to his present hiding place. There was a clatter and thump of falling rock. Aelred looked in the direction of the sound. The rock had fallen from high above him. There, clinging to an even more sheer rock face than last time, was Edward. What was he holding on to? Aelred was about to call out, but stopped himself. Edward seemed suspended there, except that he moved. His strong legs and arms moved, and his buttocks strained in his tight black shorts, lifting his body up into the air and pressed against the rock face. He was almost spreadeagled, or an angel in flight pressed against a hard place. This time he chose each move more carefully, it seemed. Now and then he would glance over his shoulder to judge his height. The wind caught his blond hair. Then he looked up to assess the ascent. He found another grip for his hand, and another one for each foot in turn. He moved according to touch and grip, guided by contour and surface, like the bumps of braille for a blind reader. Aelred was captivated. He might fall. He wanted to say, Don’t climb further. Had Edward told Benedict that this was why he had been late for Prime last time? Was he going to be late again? Would he always be coming here to climb in the early morning before Prime? Had he got special permission? There were no cut flowers immediately visible. But there, as Aelred looked more closely, in the folds of the denim overalls on the ground was a little bunch of wild violets, purple against the denim blue of the overalls.

Aelred was now crouching near Edward’s clothes in order to get a better view. He could still smell a trace of newness. Edward was climbing very fast. Without knowing why, he put his hand on Edward’s smock. He lifted it and took it in his hands. Then he smelt it. He buried his face in it and smelt it. It still had that new smell, but there was also the smell of sweat in the armpits. There was the smell of olive oil where some had spilt from working in the sacristy, filling the lamp for the Blessed Sacrament. Aelred then lifted the overalls, and stroked the legs and played with the buckles on the straps. Then he smelt the crotch and the seat. There was a musty smell of sweat and a distinct odour - Edward’s odour, his secret odour. There was the song of a singing thrush. There was the wind in the nearby oak above the quarry. The intermittent clatter of stones from Edward’s climb continued to startle him. He looked up and still Edward was climbing. He looked around him. He suddenly realised that he could have been seen.

There was an acute sense of this especial scene for Aelred: the rock climber, his clothes, the smell of his clothes, the silence, himself in the silence, and the sound of the wind and of the birds. This was shattered by the tolling of bells.

Aelred realised that it was not the bell for Prime. These bells were being tolled. There was a single loud gong, an interval, then another gong, and so it continued. Brother Sebastian must have died. He could see that Edward had stopped and was listening. He was beginning to descend. It was almost as if his climb was engraved on his memory, prompting the rapidity of his descent. His hands and feet felt for their grips and holds. Aelred left quickly. He did
not want to be noticed. He took the path through the silver birches to hide his walk back to the abbey. The bells eventually stopped tolling. They were soon followed by the usual bell for Prime. Aelred hurried.

Sebastian had died. There was a visible sadness on the face of many monks. Sebastian had been an old and revered member of the community. Aelred noticed Basil with his face in his hands, kneeling in choir before the start of Prime. The news of the death for Aelred was mixed with his meeting with Basil the night before. He still had to meet Benedict. No occasion presented itself. Benedict had kept his eyes downcast during Matins and Prime. At breakfast there was the slightest glance from his worried eyes. There was no reassuring smile. They did not speak. Meeting at the coffee urn Benedict drew back. ‘After you, brother.’ His hand prompted Aelred beneath the elbow. His touch made Aelred burn. The coffee overflowed and he was flustered with wiping up. Benedict knelt to help with the slop pail. Their eyes met, their fingers touched.

After Prime Aelred noticed the bunch of violets in a small vase in front of the statue of Our Lady in the novitiate. Edward had done his duty. He knelt at the prie-dieu and said a decade of the rosary. The sight of the small flowers, where they had lain in the folds of Edward’s smock, brought back what he had done. He remembered Edward’s odour and it surprised him. It made him nervous, what he had done: pressing his face into the new novice’s clothes.

That morning, instead of his usual study, Aelred was detailed to work in the cemetery with Leonard, to dig
Sebastian’s grave. This was the second grave he had helped to dig. Breaking the surface was the hardest. Then it got easier. They were almost halfway, taking it in turns to use the pickaxe, when Basil arrived to help. While one dug, the other shovelled away, and the third rested.

At one point Leonard had to slip away to help at the pottery and the grave digging was left to Basil and Aelred. ‘So, Sebastian has gone.’ Aelred said, wanting to open conversation with Basil, remembering the reference to the brother dying and receiving Extreme Unction the night before.

‘It was a long night.’

‘Did you watch after I left your room?’

‘I was called at twelve, and then every hour on the hour I seemed to be called.’

‘Were there no other monks to watch?’

‘Oh, yes, the vigil was well looked after. But at each hour the new watch came to say that Sebastian wanted me there.’

‘Were you his confessor?’

‘I was his friend, brother.’ Basil looked directly at Aelred when he said this, resting from his shovelling.

‘A best friend?’ Aelred looked up from his digging, his face alert with questions.

‘Yes. You see, I wanted to help with the grave, though I’m not up to the hard part.’

‘I’ll do that,’ Aelred answered eagerly.

‘I wanted to help.’

‘Here, you shovel. I’ll dig. When you’re tired, take a rest.’

‘We joined together, you know. Straight from school. We were your age, just nineteen at the time.’

Aelred looked at Basil and thought he must be in his seventies.

‘He’d always been frail.’ Basil shovelled and spoke. His breathing was laboured. ‘At one point he nearly gave up. But we managed to find a way.’

‘You mean recently? He’s been dying for a long while, yes?’

‘Yes, that, but no, I mean when he was young. He was frail even then. Our life was harsher in those days. There were long fasts. The heating was poor.’

‘I’d never thought of that. I expect things have been changing through the years.’

‘Yes. At times I think we forgot that we were men and thought we were angels.’

‘The
vita
angelica
?’ Aelred was showing off his reading in monastic theology.

‘He was as beautiful as an angel.’ There was a whimsicality about Basil, the same monk who had the donkey on his desk and gave sermons on donkeys carrying their sacred burden on the flight into Egypt. ‘Delicate, soft spoken, sensitive. A talented painter, but very modest. The Stations of the Cross in the abbey church are his.’ Basil had stopped shovelling and was looking up into the soughing trees. He put his shovel down, took a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. Aelred continued digging, embarrassed to watch. When he looked up from his digging, from where his head was down, hidden at the bottom of the grave, nearly finished, he realised that Basil was crying. He had put the shovel down and had walked away towards the medieval chapel in the corner of the cemetery. Aelred could see his shoulders shaking and he could hear his sobs between the blowing of
his nose. Aelred carried on digging and shovelled out the last of the dirt. It seemed to him that the grave was the required depth, but Leonard would have to give the final judgement. He pulled himself out of the hole.

‘Are you OK?’ Aelred joined Basil on a bench under the shady cedar of Lebanon.

‘Yes, brother. He was a brother to all of us. It’s a common loss, but I’ll miss him, and no one will ever know how much. For who can I tell?’

‘You can tell me,’ Aelred said boldly.

‘Yes, I can tell you. It’s worth it, brother. It’s worth carrying on, trying hard. That’s what we did. We came through all the stages.’ Aelred saw the old monk’s eyes fill to brimming. He watched the lines in his face, the wrinkles on his hands. But in his eyes and from his lips he heard the story of youth, of the passion in youth of the sins of youth, of the body of youth. ‘I know your struggles, brother, and these are your struggles. I can guess. This is the grief of an old man. But believe me, if you’ve been given the gift, this kind of love, you must take great care of it. It’s a fire which can consume you. It’s a battle that can destroy you. It’s continually fraught with temptation, but the rewards are sweet, so sweet.’ Basil had cleared his eyes and throat and was speaking with strength in his voice. ‘It’s so sweet, so delicious. It’s the food of heaven. Look at me, with all these feelings and memories as if they were yesterday and I was your age.’

‘Yes,’ Aelred sat and looked at the old man. He was astonished at his openness. He listened.

‘There will be those who take a strict line and will seem as if they don’t understand, but there’ll be those who will understand, the way that I understand. Be attentive to
that kind of sympathy. Look at last night. They let me sit each hour with him, his hands in mine. In the end he lay in my arms and gave his soul to God.’ Then he looked Aelred directly in the eye and said, ‘There was one time, a wonderful hot summer like the summers of the past always seem to have been, that we spent a
dies
non
together, alone, near that village, I forget its name, and lay together in a field talking and reading. We lay in each other’s arms then. We took our chances. We came through.’

‘I’ll remember that, father.’

‘Come and talk any time that you’re worried. There’ll be the temptations and there’ll be the struggles with your superiors. There always are.’

Leonard came back and was inspecting the depth and width of the grave. There was a little more digging to be done and shaving of the sides. ‘You’ve dug him a good grave, brother,’ Basil said to Leonard. ‘I’ll be leaving now.’

‘You can return to your studies,’ Leonard said to Aelred. ‘I’ll finish up.’

Basil and Aelred walked back down to the abbey. ‘Just when you think you’ve got it sorted, there will come a surprise which pulls you up short, and changes everything.’ Basil looked at Aelred.

The poplars at the bottom of the drive rattled their leaves in the wind; turning white and then green, a fresh young green. Aelred remembered the words from ‘Binsey Poplars’:

They lay in each others’ arms, Aelred thought.

Aelred found Benedict in the library after his theology seminar. He was sitting in the alcove below the window that looked out over the fields towards the quarry. Aelred stood at the entrance closing the door quietly behind him. He stood and stared at Benedict’s back, bent over his books. He moved to one of the shelves and pretended to look for a book. In the silence, Aelred heard Benedict’s pen scratching as he wrote his notes. He admired Benedict’s hard study and looked forward to the day when he would be taking philosophy and theology. The library smelt of old books. Musty. A fat tome slipped from his hand and thumped to the floor. Benedict turned. ‘You startled me,’ seeing Aelred standing there with his hood pulled up.