Aelred's Sin (15 page)

The Quarry

… like a gazelle,
like a young stag.
Song of Songs

This had become Aelred’s favourite walk. It led through a gate at the bottom of the apple orchard, frothy still with the last of the white blossom. The late winter had slowed the spring and then there had been a quickening, a feeling of juice and joy in growing things. Then he learnt that the cold could suddenly come and interrupt the season. Once he left the grassy orchard, the path was a mixture of gravel and soft verges with beaten-down leaves and bark chippings. At this time of the morning, between housework and Prime, the grass and flowering cow-parsley were ladened, fresh with dew and early morning drizzle. Banks of white lace tumbled from the hawthorn and the air reeked with the wild perfume of the hawthorn and cows’ parsley and the wetness. Everything was shooting long, seeming lovely and lush. Aelred walked quickly. His heart raced with an enthusiasm which was born of excitement in feeling loved by Benedict, his ardour for his monastic duties and the newness of the season. It was a short interval, stolen in the tight schedule of the monastic day.

Where the path narrowed it was prickly with gorse bushes crowding the edges, catching on the sleeves and legs of his denim work smock. He leapt over the puddles. He liked the fact that when he saw things now, he knew their names. He knew and could feel the difference between the open blue air, the shade in the wood of oaks
and the glade of silver birches, dappled with shadow. It was chilly, he thought.

He was alerted. He looked up. Just there, beyond the hedgerow at the edge of the field, level with a row of poplars, was a hovering hawk. Where and what was its prey? It might be a field mouse, or a rabbit, or, a small bird. Phrases from a new poem he was reading came with his stare. ‘My heart in hiding stirred for a bird - the achieve of, the mastery of the thing.’

Time was running out. His stolen time would be abruptly cut off with the bell for Prime. He could not be late. There was just enough time to reach the quarry. He liked to descend to the bottom, circle the glinting pool, climb out the other side and return along the escarpment down through the silver birches.

In dips, where things had begun to grow again, a purple lilac was in bloom. Buddleia, not yet in flower down here, sprouted from stone crevices as if living on nothing but the air.

He had entered this new world and was learning to name it, but through the poetry he was reading he read the landscape with exhilaration and gleaned the glory of his Lord.

Then Aelred saw him. His first reaction was to call out, he was so startled. But then he checked himself, in case his outburst should surprise the rock climber and he should fall. Aelred walked fast and drew closer to the face which was being climbed. It was Edward. Aelred found his denim work smock, weighed down by a rock, with a bunch of freshly cut lilacs near it. He had come out to cut flowers. But really he had come to climb. What was most startling was that he had on a pair of tight black shorts
and a white jersey. His arms were outstretched and his hands worked at grips in the small crevices on the face. His legs stretched and his feet found a sure footing, slipping and finding it again, stepping up and up. All the time he was moving, and testing the firmness of his grip and the sureness of his hold. Aelred stood below and looked up. He was afraid that the quarried face might not hold the climber. He was not sure whether Edward had seen him. As he looked, he could see the straining of the muscles in his calves and along his arms. Aelred was scared and he was worried that if he stayed any longer he would not hear the bell for Prime. Had Edward thought of that? Had he lost a sense of time? He was so absorbed in his climbing, in the acute concentration in that moment. Aelred stared at the movement of his body: his legs, his calves, his buttocks, his arms. He was an extraordinary cohesion of strength and co-ordination of purpose. Edward’s blond hair was waving in the breeze at that height. Bits of rock fell away from the footholds and clattered, bouncing on jutting rock further down, being pitched to the bottom and shattering into small pieces where Aelred stood, staring, as Edward continued to prise with his fingers and feet and raise himself up. He was almost at the top. That was the hardest. Where would he get a grip at the top, where the tufts of grass clung in loose earth, ready to give way? He might just lose hold and fall back.

Freefall like a hawk.

Aelred began his climb out the other side. He would go and meet Edward where he would reach the summit. Then he thought to go back and gather up Edward’s work smock and the bunch of lilacs. By the time he got to
the top Edward’s hands were clutching for a firm hold. The bell was ringing for Prime.

‘Here, grab hold of my arm.’ Aelred lay down on his stomach and reached over the edge. Their heads were close together.

Edward looked up. He was breathless. Aelred could have touched his face.

‘What’re you doing here?’ Edward spoke between gasps. He had not noticed Aelred at the bottom. ‘I’ll pull you over if you lie like that and we’ll both be gonners.’

‘What should I do? Don’t you need a hand?’

‘If there is a root or a stump just here, I might be able to grab for a hold. What can you see?’ He scrabbled with one hand, holding with another. ‘Or, if you can secure yourself with one hand, you can offer me the other.’

Aelred dug with his fingers where he felt that there was a root, possibly from a young oak a little further off. He dug around it so that he could get his hand through it like a handle. He held fast to the root with his left hand, also digging his feet into the ground to secure himself. Then he stretched out the other arm to Edward, who raised himself a little further to the summit so that his head was over the top. The bell for Prime had stopped.

‘Here, now you can grab hold of my hand. I’m secure.’

Edward let go of his hold on a tuft of grass which was already giving away, gravel spilling from under it and shooting out over the quarry beneath. He grabbed, holding firmly to Aelred’s hand. ‘Pull,’ he gasped as he himself pulled and pressed with his legs from his last foothold.

Aelred pulled. ‘I’ve got you.’

Edward was heaving and sliding himself over the edge on his stomach. Aelred was lying stretched between the
root and Edward, his face close to the ground. Then Edward’s legs and feet showed over the edge. He was up.

‘We’ve done it.’ They both panted and shouted together. Then they lay back. First the bird song and then the wind and the echo of the stillness below reached them.

‘We’re late for Prime.’ Aelred said. ‘Hurry. Put on your smock.’

‘What’ll happen?’

‘We’ll have to explain to Father Justin. We’ll change quickly without washing, and then when we get into choir you have to kneel by the Abbot’s stall till he knocks his hammer indicating that you can rise. He can keep you kneeling longer than you think.’ The two novices hurried back to the abbey along the path, and then, as a short cut, they cut across a field, running, so avoiding having to go through the orchard. Edward had forgotten the bunch of lilacs. Aelred carried them.

‘I can’t admit that I was rock climbing. Can you keep a secret?’ Edward asked, as they reached the door of the choir.

‘I’ll leave it to you to explain yourself. I’ll say I misjudged the time back from the quarry.’

‘It needn’t come up that we were together?’

‘We must go in. I’ll go first. You can see what I do,’ Aelred whispered.

‘Thanks.’ Edward straightened his cassock.

Aelred was distracted during the chanting of Prime. He kept seeing Edward climbing the rock face above him. He saw his strong body in his tight black shorts climbing and stretching up the rock face surrounded by the blue air. He could so easily have fallen. He closed his eyes,
repeating the verses of the psalms by heart He looked across the choir at Benedict. Their eyes met. Benedict had a question for him. Why had he and Edward been late? He thought that that was what he was asking him. It had all happened so quickly. It was odd, what Edward had done. It was not appropriate to strip off out at the quarry alone and climb. He would not say anything about this. Father Justin would find it highly irregular. It was. Would he do it again? It went with the way he spoke. It was a kind of arrogance. He had been exhilarated by helping him. He had been frightened and he had been aware of the Prime bell tolling. What would Edward say to Father Justin and Benedict as his guardian angel?

‘Your lateness at Prime, brother?’ Father Justin was standing in the doorway of his cell as Aelred passed along the corridor to the novitiate, eager to get washed after his tugging and pulling and the sweaty run back from the quarry.

‘I misjudged the time back from the quarry, where I went for a quick walk after housework,’ Aelred said matter-of-factly.

‘And Brother Edward? You came into choir together?’ Father Justin looked under the rim of his glasses, frowning. It reminded Aelred of his headmaster at school, censorious. He did not like it.

‘I’ll leave it to him to explain. I think he was probably absorbed in cutting lilac bushes for the Lady in the novitiate.’ Aelred pointed to the bunch of lilacs lying on the common-room table. He could see through the doorway from where he was standing.

‘I expect Benedict will sort him out.’ Father Justin
smiled. ‘Very well, brother. You better get along to Lectio Divina.’

‘
Benedicite.
’
Aelred pulled on his hood and walked away with his arms under his scapular.

As he passed through the common room, he noticed Benedict with Edward. He wondered what Edward had said. How would Benedict take the news of the rock climbing. He had never presented him with such a difficulty. Then he felt a tinge of jealousy that he couldn’t be talking to Benedict.

Edward joined Aelred in the washroom. Aelred looked up for a moment from his washing, but then kept his silence. He was bending over the sink, his smock off, standing in his overalls, washing behind his neck with a flannel, up and down his arms, under his arms and his chest. Though he was not directly looking at him, he could see Edward: glimpses reflected in the mirror, out of the side of his eyes. They were alone in the washroom. The other novices were at their Lectio Divina, as they should have been, but because of their running back from the quarry they were in the washroom outside the usual routine.

Edward had dropped his smock on the ground and was standing in his overalls, their straps hanging at his sides. He stood bare-chested and bare-backed. He was wiping the nape of his neck with the wet flannel under his long hair. He was soaping and then wiping his arms, his chest and under his arms. Through the slits on the side of his overalls he was wiping the uncovered part of his body, his groin and buttocks.

Aelred felt irritated. There was something indulgent in the way he washed, the way he splashed water and had
thrown his smock on the ground. He did not smell new now as he did in his cassock. There was a smell of sweat and soap. Aelred got his soap, toothbrush and towel together and made to leave the washroom.

‘Thanks for arranging the flowers.’ Edward turned and faced him, wiping his chest and towelling under his arms. His hair was falling over his face. ‘You’d better keep that duty. I’m obviously no good at it. Were the lilacs OK?’

‘I think you should see Benedict. Should I pick this up for you?’ Aelred picked up Edward’s smock and hung it against the wall, where there were pegs for that purpose.

‘You didn’t say anything about the rock climbing to Father Justin?’

‘I accounted for myself.’ Aelred had picked up a rag from the corner of the washroom where the cleaning things were kept and started wiping down the sinks. ‘I think we’d better clean up in here and get back to Lectio Divina.’

‘You disapprove of me?’

‘You must take advice from Benedict. He’s your guardian angel.’

‘I do. I do, brother. My guardian angel! You like all these little ceremonies and titles, don’t you? Arranging flowers, guardian angels. Don’t you? And you are dark, aren’t you. All over, it seems.’ Edward looked Aelred over as he stood there clutching his smock to his chest. Edward tossed back his long wet blond hair. ‘Yes, I think you disapprove of me.’

‘I think we should keep the silence now, brother.
Benedicite.
’

‘Benedicite.
’
Edward pulled strands of wet blond hair off his face.

Aelred was relieved when he settled down at his desk for his Lectio Divina. He sat with his hood up. He was alone but he was not at peace. Novices used the washroom together. But they did not strip off quite in the way Edward had done. They did not enter bare-backed. Aelred forced his concentration on his Lectio Divina.

It was in Lectio Divina that they cultivated their imaginations. It was at this prescribed time, a time set aside from the very beginning of monasticism and developed through the ages, that the monks read the scriptures and the fathers of the church. The reading now included those books recommended by the novice master for the training and uplifting of his charges.