The Greening (35 page)

“But Jesus didn’t need to learn, surely?”

“That’s true. He did it for us, to enable us to feel compassion and to understand the nature and necessity of love and forgiveness. Look at what has come from Jesus’ sacrifice. Everything is always in God’s plan. Absolutely everything is in his hand. He will allow nothing to happen to us that cannot be turned to our good. The Bible says, ‘All things work together for the good of those who wait upon the Lord.’ Julian says, ‘All shall be well.’ Suffering is somehow consecrated and transmuted into a balm that can heal. I believe that the East Timorese nation, at soul level, chose to do a great thing for the world. It is their gift to the rest of us. Haven’t you always felt that they were, in some way, a special people?”

“Yes, always. Their determination to be free, their courage and endurance – no matter what cruelty they suffered, it never dampened their spirit. I saw it in so many men and women.”

“The children, too. Does that begin to make sense of things?”

“I’ll have to think about what you’ve said. Perhaps.”

Good has come of Jesus’ sacrifice. That cannot be denied. Am I a beneficiary of that sacrifice? Someone endured cruel execution, for me. The mystery of why may be hard to understand, but the nobility and generosity of the sacrifice cannot be ignored. If I am so loved, why cannot I love myself? Perhaps I simply need to stop and be aware of that love, not to try to deserve it, but simply accept that it is mine.

Christmas passed and we were at the start of a new millennium. As midnight approached I looked out of my window across the garden to the tall trees beyond. I felt a sense of completion, which surprised me, because man-made boundaries of time always seemed to me confected and meaningless. As I stood in darkness, looking out and up towards the stars, it suddenly occurred to me that Julian and I were women of an age. She, who had lived so many hundreds of years before, and I belonged to the same time-frame, the same millennium. It made her seem closer.

As I returned to my lounge and watched television pictures of the celebrations around the globe, the world seemed very small. It reminded me that we were all part of one community. And yet, the sight of millions of pounds going up in smoke in spectacular firework displays seemed to reflect an inherent lack of meaning. Where was the sense of ourselves, of our place in the world’s history, in time and in space?

How much had we really learned since Jesus’ time? I wondered how many of those celebrating shared my feelings of emptiness. I felt restless, but did not know how to make myself feel more at ease. I continued to derive comfort from my copy of
Enfolded in Love
, but it was several years since my visits to St Etheldreda’s. Every now and then I would think of the mysterious Anna Leigh and wonder what had become of her.

Then something happened. By the oddest of quirks, I was reminded of a dream I had had some fifteen years earlier. I was watching an old Hollywood film about the American Wild West, and on the screen was a low stone building, surrounded by trees. I had seen a similar scene somewhere, and for some reason it made me feel anxious. What was the source of the memory? Suddenly I remembered the dream. It all came flooding back.

I had been thoroughly frightened at the time – so much so that I had been afraid to go to sleep for several nights, in case the dream recurred. It had not been the content of the dream that scared me, but the fact that it had seemed absolutely real. I had been there, in some place I did not recognize; but I had known that this was no dream, that this was actually happening.

I recalled the small, low, roughly built structure, set in dense countryside, far away from anywhere. I had gone into the building and met a group of men. They seemed to be soldiers – or fighters, at any rate – dressed in combat fatigues, the sort of camouflage clothes that might be worn in the jungle.

They welcomed me. They asked me to take a message for them. I said I would. They said I must remember it, because it was very important. I asked one of the men to write down the message. He wrote it on a piece of paper, which he gave to me. I began to come out of the dream, but as I did so realized that I could not bring the piece of paper with me, so I went back into the dream. I asked them to tell me in words that I would not forget, and they gave me the words “Pacific Rim”.

Afterwards, whenever I read about investment in the emerging economies of Australasia and came across the words “Pacific Rim” I would shudder. But the memory eventually passed from my consciousness and the words ceased to have the same connotations.

On that Sunday afternoon, when I saw the low stone building, I remembered the dream and connected disparate fragments of my life. East Timor was in the Pacific Rim. The people who had been fighting for freedom had lived in the mountains, in dense jungle. Was it possible that in my dream I had promised those men to bring out
the message about their struggle? It seemed fanciful, vain even, to consider it, and yet it was a compelling explanation. Was the dream, vivid as it had been, nothing more than a coincidence? Could Julian have been right when she said that nothing happened by chance?

My equilibrium had been disturbed. I put Blue, my beautiful blue-black Labrador-collie cross, on his lead, and we went for a walk. The air was cold and crisp. The ground was hard and unyielding and a light dusting of frost sparkled on the leaves. As I walked, I realized that it was time to take stock of my life.

I began to feel that somewhere along the way I had missed something important. Sometimes, in investigating a story, one might overlook a vital clue; then the whole picture would fail to come together. Only when one backtracked and double-checked every step would one find the missing piece of the jigsaw, make that important phone call or read that one particular report and be able to piece together the whole story. I felt that way about my life. Somewhere I had failed to connect and, without noticing, wandered onto the wrong path.

I let Blue off the lead and watched him career away into the distance, relishing his freedom. I walked on through the wood, and Blue soon returned and padded softly alongside me, making sporadic dashes to investigate anything that took his fancy and then running back to my side. As we walked, Julian’s words came into my mind: “He did not say, ‘You shall not be tempest-tossed, you shall not be work-weary, you shall not be discomforted.’ But he said, ‘You shall not be overcome.’”

Suddenly, my neglect of Anna’s journal seemed lazy and selfish. Doing something constructive with it had been too much trouble, too difficult. But, I reflected, what is a journalist, after all, but someone who brings messages from places that are difficult to reach to places that are hard to find?

Could I really trust Julian and believe her message? I certainly had no confidence to engage with theology. It would have been a nonsense. Besides, many far better-qualified people had already produced wonderful books that analysed and communicated Julian’s
message. But the story had come my way and I had promised Ismene and myself to try to do something with it. I wished there were something I could do. Most of all, I wished I could believe Julian’s assertion – whether spoken by her or imagined by Anna – “You are beloved through all eternity and held safe in an embrace that will never let you go.”

As I lifted the latch on my front gate, the overcast sky was turning to rain. Blue and I hurried up the path to the warmth and sanctuary of our home. As I turned the key in the lock, I heard the telephone ringing. I picked up the receiver in the hallway and heard the low, soft tones of Ismene Vale. The line was crackling. I knew she had gone to Peru.

“Hello, Joanna. I’m calling from Lima. This line’s bad. Can you hear me?”

“I can! How are you? It’s wonderful to hear from you.”

“I’m very well. How are you?”

“Very well,” I replied. It was not true. I had been feeling unwell for several months. In recent weeks everything had begun to feel too much of an effort. I felt as though I were carrying a weight of tiredness accumulated over years.

“I have some intriguing news,” said Ismene. “I’ve had a call from Charles Clemence – Frieda Bonhart’s nephew, you remember? Frieda, sadly, died two weeks ago – though perhaps I should not say sadly, because she is now free of her burden, free to be all she really is… The news that will interest you is that Charles has found a note from Frieda about Anna’s journal in a trunk in her attic.

“The note is addressed to Charles. It asks him to return the original journal to Anna, should she ever ask for it, or, in the event of Frieda’s death, to give it to me. But unfortunately Charles can’t find the original journal. Then he remembered that a friend of mine had contacted him several years ago, asking about Anna, and that you’d mentioned that you and I both had copies of the journal.

“Anyway, it seems as though Frieda wrote the note when she was becoming ill. Charles also found a number of old, unopened letters. Now this is where it becomes fascinating. One was from
someone who signed herself ‘Annabel Leigh’, asking for the return of the manuscript.”

“No! How amazing,” I said.

“It had been posted some eighteen months after Frieda was given the journal, which does seem strange. I think that even then Frieda’s Alzheimer’s must have been causing short-term memory loss because the letter went unopened.

“Charles has written back, and is now awaiting a reply. I’m going to be away for several more weeks, so I explained your interest to Charles. I hope you don’t mind. He asked me to give you his number and said he would be very happy to meet you.”

“This is absolutely extraordinary. I’d love to meet him,” I said. “I expect he’ll want both our copies. Shall I collect yours from your house and give it to him?”

“Would you? That would be most kind,” said Ismene.

The following morning I rang Charles Clemence. We talked about my attempts to trace Anna – or should it have been Annabel? He expressed great interest and promised to ring me the moment he had any news.

That evening I took up my copy of
Enfolded in Love
and read part of Jesus’ message to Julian: “I am the ground of your praying. First, it is my will that you should have this; then I make it your will, too; then I make you ask for it, and you do so. How then should you not have what you pray for?”

It was two weeks before I spoke to Charles Clemence again. He called from Gatwick Airport, where he was about to board a plane to Frankfurt. He spoke for only a few moments, to tell me his secretary had just left a message on his mobile phone, saying that a reply to his letter to Annabel Leigh had arrived. He invited me to lunch in two days’ time, when he would be visiting Basingstoke, about an hour’s drive from my home. Then we would read the letter together. I readily accepted.

On a bright February day I sat and waited in the little country restaurant where we had arranged to meet. The door opened and
in walked a tallish man, in his mid-forties, dressed in a well-worn green corduroy jacket, a clashing blue and brown jumper and brown slacks. His appearance was enlivened by a wispy bit of his collar-length, fairish, greying hair that was sticking up from his crown, like a little antenna.

The restaurant was almost empty, and he quickly spotted me and came across. He introduced himself in a warm and friendly manner. His twinkling grey-green eyes seemed to suggest a light-hearted curiosity, and yet he had a quiet containment about him – as though, I thought, he knew a secret. I hoped that he did.

He sat down and took an envelope from his inside breast pocket, saying, “I haven’t read it yet. I thought it only fair to save it up so that we could read it together. Here, you do the honours.” He handed me the envelope, adding, “My secretary opened it when it arrived. I told her not to tell me anything so that we could discover the contents together.”

I took the envelope with great excitement. Inside was a letter, another, sealed envelope and a business card. I unfolded the letter. It was from an address in Bath and signed by a Mrs Irene Bridger. I read the letter aloud: “Dear Mr Clemence, I am returning your letter to Miss Lee, which was forwarded to me by William Grasmere & Co, the local agent that manages Myrtle Cottage, of which I am the owner.

“‘I am very sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I am afraid Miss Lee died some years ago. If your business is of a personal nature, I do hope this does not come as too great a shock. She is buried in the local churchyard, at Cley.

“‘Mr John Grasmere has offered to give you every assistance, should you wish to visit Miss Lee’s grave, and asked me to send you his business card. I am sorry I am unable to be of more help and wish you well, Yours, Irene Bridger (Mrs).”

I stared at the letter. I felt immensely disappointed and cheated.

Charles Clemence said, “I’m sorry. This must be a big disappointment.”

“Well, I think I never seriously expected to track Anna – or Annabel – down. I feel so sad for her. So things never did work out.”

Charles looked at me with curiosity and compassion. He said, “Well, perhaps they did. We can’t really know, can we? Let me cheer you up while I give you lunch.”