The Bell (8 page)

‘Did you tell those nuns all about me?' said Dora.

‘I didn't tell the nuns anything,' said Paul. ‘I had to say something about you to the other members of the community, and if it was unflattering that is hardly my fault.'

‘They'll think their beastly prayers brought me here,' said Dora.

‘I respect this place,' said Paul, ‘and I advise you to do the same.'

Dora wondered if she would ask Paul now whether he believed in God, but decided not to. Evidently he did. She said instead, ‘I can't do anything about the past.'

Paul looked at her hard. ‘You can refrain from being frivolous about it,' he said. ‘In your case I won't speak of repentance, since I don't think you capable of anything so serious.'

The sharp tinkling of a hand bell, rung on the other side across the water, came in through the window. Dora jumped. ‘That bell again,' she said. ‘What is it?'

‘It's the Abbey bell for the various offices,' said Paul. ‘It's ringing now for Matins. If you're awake in the very early morning you'll hear it ringing for Lauds and Prime. They're getting a big bell soon,' he added.

They both began to undress.

‘There's a legend about the Abbey bell,' said Paul. ‘I found it in one of the manuscripts. It should appeal to you.'

‘What is it?' said Dora.

‘This is a very old foundation, you know,' said Paul. ‘There have been Benedictine nuns here on and off since the twelfth century. The present order is Anglican, of course, but still Benedictine. Anyhow, sometime in the fourteenth century, that was before the dissolution, the story runs that one of the nuns had a lover. Not that that was so very unusual I daresay at that time, but this order had evidently had a high standard. It was not known who the nun was. The young man was seen climbing the wall once or twice and ended up by falling and breaking his neck. The wall, which still exists incidentally, is very high.

‘The Abbess called on the guilty nun to confess, but no one came forward. Then the Bishop was called in. The Bishop, who was an especially holy and spiritual man, also demanded that the guilty one should confess. When there was still no response he put a curse on the Abbey, and as the chronicler puts it, the great bell “flew like a bird out of the tower and fell into the lake”.'

‘Good heavens!' said Dora.

‘That wasn't the end,' said Paul. ‘The guilty nun was so overwhelmed by this demonstration that she forthwith ran out of the Abbey gates and drowned herself in the lake.'

‘Oh, poor thing!' said Dora.

‘You, of course, identify yourself with the faithless one,' said Paul.

‘She was probably forced into the order,' said Dora. ‘People were in those days.'

‘She broke her vows,' said Paul.

‘Is that a true story?' said Dora.

‘These legends usually have some truth behind them,' said Paul. ‘There are records of a famous bell here, but no one knows what happened to it. It was cast by a great craftsman at Gloucester, Hugh Belleyetere, or Bellfounder, and it had a considerable reputation because of its fine tone and because it was very good at keeping away plagues and evil spirits. It had some carvings on it too, scenes of the life of Christ, which is a very unusual feature. It would be an object of great interest if it ever did turn up. It's possible that it was in fact thrown into the lake at the time of the dissolution, either by people plundering the Abbey or else, more likely, by the nuns themselves, so as to keep it safe. Bell metal was very valuable. I believe someone once had the lake dragged looking for it, but nothing was found. The bell's name was Gabriel.'

‘It had a name!' said Dora. ‘How beautiful! But I feel so sorry for the nun. Is her ghost ever seen?'

‘That's not recorded,' said Paul, ‘but there is a story about the bell ringing sometimes in the bottom of the lake, and how if you hear it it portends a death.'

Dora shivered. She was undressed now and had pulled Paul's shirt over her head. ‘Have you told the others this story?' she asked.

‘No, I haven't told them,' said Paul. ‘Oh yes, I think I told it to Catherine.' He got into bed.

Dora felt a twinge of displeasure. She went over to the window and looked out. The moon had risen now and the lake was fully visible, silvering in ripples caused perhaps by the breeze, perhaps by some night creatures. An air heavy with perfume drifted into the room. Dora saw more clearly now the expanse before her, the gaunt facade of the Abbey wall, wrinkled with light and dark, the trees beyond with their rounded tops catching the pale illumination, and long strange shadows of trees and bushes cast upon the open space of grass underneath the window. Looking a little to her left she made out what seemed to be a low causeway raised upon a series of arches which ran across the nearer reach of the lake towards the wall. Then, with a shock of alarm, she saw that there was a dark figure standing quite near on the edge of the water, very still.

Dora's heart began to beat violently as she stared down and she checked an exclamation. Then the figure moved, and a moment later she recognized it. It was the boy Toby Gashe who was wandering along on the shore of the lake. He walked there by himself, kicking his feet through the long grass. Dora could just hear the swish of it as he moved. She drew back a little from the window, still keeping him in sight. So that Paul should not think she was watching anything she said, ‘They're getting a new bell?'

‘Yes,' said Paul. ‘A tenor bell is being cast for them, to hang in the tower. It may arrive before we go. My work should take another fortnight.'

Dora saw the boy turning to look back along the lake. Then suddenly he stretched out both his hands and raised them above his head. He looked to Dora at that moment the very image of freedom. She could not bear to look at him any longer and turned away from the window.

Paul was staring at her. He was sitting up in bed with a book in his hand.

Dora looked at him with hostility. ‘That was a horrible story,' she said. ‘You like telling me unpleasant stories. Like that beastly one by De Maupassant about the dogs that you once made me read aloud.'

Paul continued to stare. Dora realized obscurely that in telling her the story he had released in himself the desire for her which had been quiescent before. The violence of the tale was in him now and he wanted her love. She looked at him with a mixture of excitement and disgust.

‘Come, Dora,' said Paul.

‘In a minute,' said Dora. Turning from him she caught sight of herself in the long mirror. She was barefoot and wearing only Paul's shirt, with sleeves rolled up and well open at the neck. The shirt just reached to her thigh, revealing the whole length of her long solid legs. Dora looked with astonishment at the person that confronted her. She admired the vitality of the sunburnt throat and the way the flat tongues of hair licked down on to the neck. She threw her head back and looked into the bold eyes. There was a steady and encouraging rejoinder. She continued to look at the person who was there, unknown to Paul. How very much, after all, she existed; she, Dora, and no one should destroy her.

‘Come, Dora,' said Paul again.

‘Yes,' said Dora. She switched the light out and marched towards his bed.

CHAPTER 4

THE MOON WAS RISING. Toby Gashe stood with his feet almost in the water looking across the lake at the wall of the Abbey. Behind him various lights had gone on in the big house. He was waiting to be conducted to the place where he was to sleep. It was with some disappointment that he discovered that he was not to live in Imber Court itself, but in the Lodge cottage, with another member of the community whom he had not yet met. He would have liked to stay in the beautiful house and be with the others. He felt shy at the thought of another encounter, and a little alarmed at the idea of being cloistered with one person.

Toby, whose parents lived in north London, had been at a day school, which gave him a slight sense of inferiority together with a thoroughly romantic conception of community life. When James Tayper Pace, who was friendly with one of his masters, had come to give an address in the school chapel and had spoken of Imber, Toby had conceived a passionate desire to go there. He had been, ever since his fairly recent confirmation, a keen practising Christian, and filled with an as yet undirected desire to dedicate his life. He was greatly attracted by the idea of living and working, for a while at least, with a group of holy people who had given up the world. The Imber community, which had not existed for very long and was still in an experimental stage, worked on the land, running the small market-garden which supplied the needs of the Abbey and left some produce over for sale. Something clean, simple, and vigorous about the whole conception moved Toby very much. His ecclesiastical experience had been narrow, and he was fired by the dramatic idea, new upon his horizon, of the monastic life. He was also impressed by the personality of James Tayper Pace, with his combination of masculine vitality and Christian candour.

Toby petitioned to be allowed to visit Imber. To his great joy he had been told that he might come and work there for a month during his final summer holiday before Oxford, where he was due to go in October as an engineering student. His imagination had been busy beforehand, conjuring up some exceedingly close-knit complex of human brotherhood into which he would snugly fit, humble and industrious, edified and strengthened for his life ahead by the company and example of unworldly persons. He was therefore a little dashed to find that he was after all to live apart; but quickly resolved to conquer his disappointment with an ardent cheerfulness. It was not difficult. Gaiety and energy and hope filled him, at this moment in his life, to overflowing.

In a minute or two he would go in again. Michael Meade had asked him to wait for a while until someone was free to take him down to the Lodge. He looked about him in the moonlight, getting his bearings. Over there behind the house must be the market-garden. Toby was a town boy, and everything to do with the countryside had for him a profound, almost spiritual significance. Of sun and wind and hard physical work and human companionship he felt he could never have too much. Given a spade and told to dig up an entire field he would think himself in heaven. He stretched out both his arms above his head, extending his body to test its elasticity. He remembered being told that one never sufficiently realizes at the time the wonder of being young. This was not true in his case. He was privileged to be aware of his youth and to enjoy it in a series of present moments crammed full with intense experience.

He looked in the other direction across the lake. His eyes followed the Abbey wall away to the right where it seemed to end or perhaps turned backward into the trees. To his left he could see the old brick-built causeway across the water and the dark hole of the Abbey gateway under its great arch. The moonlight made the high wall look insubstantial and yet somehow alive, with that tense look of deserted human places at night. Toby, as a Londoner, was not used to moonlight, and marvelled at this light which is no light, which calls up sights like ghosts, and whose strength is seen only in the sharpness of cast shadows. He studied the Abbey wall. All was still over there, yet he knew that the Abbey was eternally wakeful. He wondered what the relations were between the Abbey and the Court. He had gathered that the nuns belonged to a strictly enclosed Benedictine order and had very limited dealings with the outside world; but though exceedingly curious, he had not liked to ask more about this for fear of displaying ignorance.

He ought to go in now; and at the thought a shyness overwhelmed him again. He reviewed his day. He had felt rather alarmed at being alone with James Tayper Pace, but thought that he had after all managed all right. James was so simple and gay and easy to talk to. Toby's admiration for him was confirmed. Toby was at an age when he needed to admire, and when admiration was absolute. About Michael Meade, whom he had much looked forward to seeing, he still felt rather uncertain. He had been a little disappointed by Michael's appearance. There was something tired and weedy about him, he lacked the conspicuously manly look of James, and was not so obviously a leader. Toby was rather disappointed too to discover that the community had women members. That, somehow, was not quite right. Still, everyone appeared to be extremely nice, except that that Dr Greenfield man was a trifle rebarbative. (This was a word which Toby had recently learnt at school and could not now conceive of doing without.) It was odd that they should have sat opposite to his wife in the train. His wife was not beautiful, like Catherine Fawley, but she was awfully pretty and rather sort of mischievous. Remembering the train journey Toby felt a slight embarrassment, partly on her behalf and partly on his own. Her husband had not seemed very pleased to see her. But then the behaviour of married people was so unaccountable. Contrary to what Tolstoy seems to maintain in the first sentence of
Anna Karenina
there are a great many different ways in which marriages can succeed. Toby had of late become vaguely aware of this and this new knowledge made him feel sophisticated. He turned back towards the house.

He had come out to the lake by the front way down the steps, and had walked round to the side where the second stretch of water divided the house from the Abbey. He now faced the side of the house and saw that there was a large window illuminated on the ground floor. There was a stone wall which jutted out a little way beyond the window, dividing it from the front of the house, and as Toby approached he saw that there was a rectangle of cobbles and a side door. This must be the old servants' quarters, he decided, and that bright room must be the kitchen. Toby had always been keen on scouting and tracking, and some instinct now made him approach quietly, padding with caution onto the round hard cobble stones and keeping well in the shadow as he came up close to the window. He had been right, it was the kitchen, a huge old kitchen with rough blackened walls and an immense open fireplace, now filled by an Aga cooker. The Aga must be working, since a hot blast of air came out of the open window, perceptible even in the warm night.