August (5 page)

‘The intention to reform, made with an honest heart, is enough,' Tristan replied, missing the trap that had been set, ‘or else the priest could not have the power of absolution, having himself no clear view of the future.'

It was a rare mistake and the rector seized on it.

‘It is not the priest who offers absolution, Tristan; he is nothing more than the agent of God. And God floats free from the constraints of time and so has little trouble measuring the depth of our resolve. We shall be judged not by our intentions, Tristan, but by our deeds. We reconcile not with our past, but with our future.' The rector's rose voice to grand heights, as if the judgment he was passing was not on the quality of Tristan's argument, but the quality of his soul. ‘Tonight, you shall stay behind and complete your recitals.'

Recital was the punishment reserved for the boy who had performed most poorly during the questioning and this was Tristan's first time. The reciter was made to stand at the lectern and give lonely voice to whichever portion of
The Holy
Works
the rector chose, while the other boys retired for the night. Sometimes the penance lasted no longer than it took the slowest boy to complete his ablutions. On other occasions Tristan had heard the boy stumbling into his bunk deep in the night, left to weave together what little sleep he could from the scraps before dawn.

Tristan was left for nearly two hours and by the time the rector returned his voice was rubbing dry. The rector stood in the aisle, his face as unreadable as ever, and raised his hand, signalling to Tristan that he might stop. From his high vantage point Tristan noticed for the first time the perfect symmetry of the rector's baldness, the scalp stretched tight and shiny across its bony skull.

‘I have been looking at your folders, Tristan. You have a fine hand for illustration.' The rector spoke gently.

‘Thank you,' Tristan mumbled, avoiding the rector's eyes. He knew too well how easily the acknowledgment of a compliment could lapse into self-satisfaction. It was not beyond the rector to snare a boy in this way.

‘I would like you to draw for me.'

The rector turned without further explanation and it was only when he stopped halfway down the aisle and motioned with his hand that Tristan realised he was to follow.

Tristan was thirteen and considered himself to be the better part of a man. He was proud of his learning, which he believed had trained him to dive deep beneath life's surface. But his education had been as selective as it was demanding. Nothing he had heard or thought had prepared him for what he would find in the rector's study.

‘Come in, Tristan.'

The rector beckoned with his oversized fingers. Tristan froze in the doorway, surprised beyond speech or movement.

A girl huddled in the corner as a trapped animal might, her every fibre yearning to become insubstantial amongst the shadows. Tristan could not comprehend it. No female set foot inside the compound. This was the rule, as unflinching as the walls themselves. Even mothers were not permitted to visit. Augustine himself had taught that woman was temptation, the devil's lever.

But she was there, as real as the dark cool stone surrounding her. Tristan stared. For six years he had seen only boys and men. He couldn't not stare. The girl's dark brown eyes darted to the floor, stung by the sin of contact. Tristan remained paralysed, blushing and uncertain.

He waited for the rector to speak again, for order to return, but the rector said nothing, in a way that made it clear that saying nothing was the rule tonight. This was to be an act without commentary, that on completion it might disappear.

The rector pointed to his broad desk of dark mahogany. Laid out upon it was a sheet of the finest sketching paper and a selection of sharpened pencils. Tristan walked unsteadily forward. He breathed in deeply, sat and took a pencil in his shaking hand. He looked down at the paper, willing the girl out of existence, but his disloyal heart knocked a wild reminder of her presence. He could smell her, the scent of an unfamiliar soap.

Tristan felt a drop of sweat form at his hairline and trickle down his temple. The body knew what the mind resisted. From the corner of his vision he could sense the rector sitting in his armchair, knees pointed comfortably outward. An arm swept its instruction and Tristan heard the swoosh of the girl's robe collapsing shapeless on the floor. He dared not look up. In the swirling of his blood he heard the sound of his future arriving.

‘Whenever you are ready, Tristan,' the rector purred. ‘There's no hurry. Take your time.'

Tristan kept his eyes fixed on the paper he would soon despoil. The shaking of his hands grew wilder.

‘That's a shading pencil, Tristan,' the rector said, ‘you'll need a finer instrument to capture her form. Look at her, Tristan. Look at her.'

She was not much older than he was, neither girl nor woman, a thing of shadow—a candle-lit ghost whose eyes, fixed on some point behind Tristan's shoulder, were dark and empty. Her body was hungry-thin. He could see her ribs.

‘Say if you want her to move, Tristan.'

Tristan's mouth was scratchy dry and he could not speak. In his stomach nerves danced to a tune he had no ear for. A lightness passed through him, a wave of welcome from a part of himself he barely knew.

‘Yes, move for us, girl. Your hand, no the other hand, hold that. No, behind you. Now lean into the wall. The leg, the bent leg, bend it more, bring it forward.'

The girl did as she was told, her face painted in shades of fear and concentration. ‘Yes, I like that. Start again, Tristan. There's plenty of paper.'

The rector came forward and ripped the first picture, no more than the nervous lines of an early acquaintance, from under Tristan's nose.

‘And detail. Don't be afraid of detail.'

Tristan knew what he spoke of. The hair, the nipples: those sights that caused the kicking in his throat.

The face required pure invention. Tristan knew he could not record the things he saw: the animal helplessness, the nature-mocking twist of an empty smile. Terror played at the edges of her eyes, and bewilderment. She did not understand them, these men immune to her sadness. Tristan imagined her lips into a new shape and gave the eyes the warmth of one recognising an old friend.

With every line the dilemma deepened. Tristan knew what he was doing was wrong but he couldn't summon the will to look away from her. And it wasn't just that he looked; it was the way he looked. At first he had drawn quickly, willing the task to end, but now he lingered, considering the details not as an artist but as a young man, his blood surging with the pounding of an inadequate heart.

The rector did not hurry him. When the picture was complete he stood at Tristan's shoulder, looking from the frightened girl to the paper and back again.

‘Well done. Well done. Girl, you may go.'

She gathered up her robe and the rector moved to the stack of books opposite the doorway and pushed it to the side, revealing a hidden passageway. The girl kept her head down, avoiding their eyes, and hurried into the darkness. Tristan ached to follow her, to find some way to apologise and atone.

‘You may go to your bed now, Tristan.' The rector nodded once, a small sharp thank you wrapped in a warning.

Tristan's mouth opened but no sound emerged. He lurched from the room.

He couldn't sleep. His mind raced; his thoughts twisted and tangled like the weeds of an unkempt garden. Guilt and lust wrestled one another to exhaustion. Tristan tried in vain to construct noble narratives of rescue and redemption but his virgin imagination foundered on the sharp memory of her body. Every line, every shadow and hollow returned to him, spliced together in a stuttering reel of desire and confusion. He tried to turn his mind to higher things, but it was drawn down by the memory of her. He had never experienced such a powerful sight—one that could take hold of his body, make his heart pound and his skin sweat. His limbs squirmed with the urge to turn themselves inside out. And the blood: the churning, unwelcome blood. He could escape only by returning to her face. Through a mighty act of will he was able to conjure up the terror in her eyes and use her fear to shame his restless body.

‘Did you come?' she asked him.

‘What?'

‘When you thought of her, did you come?'

‘You're coarse.'

‘You hired a prostitute.'

‘It's not like you think,' Tristan said. He was surprised that he'd told her this much. He'd lost hold of the telling. Each word pulled the next with it, as if they were linked together in some great chain and their sheer weight dragged the story from him.

‘So how is it?'

‘I'm trying to tell you but you keep interrupting.'

‘Did you hire me by accident?' she teased.

‘There are no accidents,' he said.

‘What was that?'

‘What?'

‘Listen, I thought I heard a siren.'

Tristan strained to hear. Her breathing, shallow and slow. His own, thick and fuzzy inside his head. The joints of the chassis creaking, and dripping perhaps, muffled and intermittent. The wind, ripping and dipping through the valley, rushes of fury wrapped in silence. A lamb, bleating, cold and for a moment lonely. But no siren.

‘Must have imagined it,' she said. The disappointment settled thickly on them.

‘So, back to the girl,' she insisted.

‘What girl?'

‘The naked girl.'

‘I never saw her again,' Tristan said.

‘No, but you thought of her.'

That much he couldn't deny.

Tristan thought of little else. The next day he worked in the gardens, digging compost into the soil for a new plot of potatoes. The work was hard and repetitive and his head sickened with imaginings of the girl. Her body had faded with the night, but not her frightened eyes. He felt it was a kind of insanity, the way his infected mind brought a stranger so close. Still, he imagined her standing next to him, and in his head explained to her the way the brothers liked their garden. She laughed with him at the institutional fussiness and his ears burned red with gratitude. He heard her approach in the footsteps of other boys, and even composed a poem to her as he worked his spade. But the longer he indulged his weakness the more it made him angry. His head became a battleground and by evening it ached with new wounds.

As the boys filed into the hall for the interrogation Tristan found comfort in the fact that he had been chosen the previous evening. No boy was singled out two nights in a row. It was an unspoken tradition.

The rector prowled before the boys on his small platform. They sat cross-legged on the stone floor, afraid to wriggle or twitch in case they invited his attention.

‘So then—' The rector stopped suddenly, as if the idea on his tongue had only just that moment occurred to him. ‘This business of the soul. What is the soul, would you say… Samuel?'

Samuel stood, his face edged with cautious relief. He was an older boy, nearing graduation, blessed with good looks and confidence.

The rector began with the easy questions, requiring little more than rote-learnt responses, working up to the greater task in his own good time.