The Sixth Lamentation (5 page)

‘Therefore,’
Anselm said to Milby and DI Armstrong, ‘I fear he took words lightly spoken as
an invitation.

Father
Andrew turned to Brother Wilfred and said, ‘Now is a good time to tell us what
happened next.’

Wilf
was the sort of gentle, reflective man who could not talk to the police without
feeling as if he had committed a crime. Nervously, he said, ‘I was talking to
Brother Sylvester at reception about a news item I’d just heard to the effect
that a local man accused of wartime atrocities had vanished from his home. Then
in he walks and says, calmly as you like, he’s claiming sanctuary. I told him
it had been abolished. I asked him to leave and he refused, so off I went to
call the police.’

‘And
then,’ said Father Andrew, musing, ‘the troops of Midian arrived at our gates
with their panoply of cameras.’ He waited for a response, his silver eyebrows
slightly raised.

The
Detective Superintendent said, ‘The Press. They’re always one step ahead.’

‘Indeed,’
said Father Andrew dryly ‘What happens now?’

‘There
will be an investigation, and then we’ll review the evidence,’ informed DI
Armstrong.

‘That
isn’t quite what I meant,’ said Father Andrew gently ‘I meant how do you
propose to remove him?’

DI
Armstrong looked at her superior officer with, to Anselm’s judgment, a
hardening of expression. Milby leaned across the table in a sort of sprawl. In
a confiding way he said, ‘We’ve given that some thought. If at all possible, we
think he should stay here, as a short-term measure at least, if only for his
own protection.’

‘Detective
Superintendent, this is a monastery, not a remand home for the elderly’ The
words were strangely familiar to Anselm.

‘I
appreciate that, but—’

‘And
our first duty is to our common life.’

‘Of
course— ‘And we have the peculiar sensation of having been deliberately
compromised.’

Springing
unforeseen from pliable courtesy, the accusation stung the Detective
Superintendent. From Anselm’s point of view there followed that delicious
silence upon which he had often dined in the past. The embarrassment of the
police is every defence barrister’s illicit pleasure and years of committed
monastic life had done nothing to diminish his appetite. And, curiously, on
this occasion it seemed the delight, ill—suppressed, was shared by DI
Armstrong.

Unconvincingly,
but ready for a tussle, Milby said, ‘I’m not sure I follow you.

Father
Andrew smiled benignly He never engaged in useless arguments. In the absence of
an admission where one was required he abruptly closed a conversation down. It
was a powerful, unnerving tool. Returning to his former gentility, he said, ‘I’ll
let you know our position a week from today’ He turned his attention to DI
Armstrong — ‘I’m very grateful for all you have told us.’

The
meeting over, Anselm walked the police officers to the courtyard in front of
Larkwood. The gravel crunched underfoot as the question came from the
Detective Superintendent:

‘Haven’t
we met before?’

‘Yes. I
used to be at the Bar. I’m sure we had a few courtroom squabbles. I moved on.’

He
laughed and said, ‘Well, you did the right thing. Wish I’d become a monk: He
slumped in the back of an unmarked car and slammed the door.

DI
Armstrong seemed to hesitate. She glanced around as if not wanting to leave and
said, ‘This is a lovely place. Goodnight, Father.’

Anselm returned to the
parlour to join Father Andrew and Brother Wilfred. Brother Sylvester had
shuffled into the room and was laying out a selection of leaflets on the
sideboard. He said:

‘When
Wilf told that chap sanctuary had been abolished, he said he’d done it before.’
He continued arranging neat piles of pink and green paper.

‘What?’
said Father Andrew quietly

‘After
Wilf left to find Anselm, he said he’d done it before, a long time ago.

The
Priory bell rang ponderously, slow, deep chimes echoing around Larkwood,
calling the brothers to prayer. Sylvester turned obediently to get himself
ready — ‘I’m off. Don’t want to be late.’ — and slipped out of the room,
leaving the other monks to digest the implications of his words.

‘I’m
glad he kept that to himself,’ said the Prior judiciously

So was
Anselm. He was thinking ahead, catching sight of a shifting shadow ‘Why here?
Why come to us?’

‘Good
question,’ said the Prior pensively The ringing had come to a close. A busy
shuffling of feet came from the cloister. ‘Come on. Time for quiet.’

Anselm entered the long
dark nave and found his place in the choir. Sylvester’s space behind him was
empty. He would, as usual, be late. Leaning against his stall and leafing
through his Psalter, Anselm smiled to himself about the Prior — his sally about
Clement III and the remand home remark. Father Andrew always listened carefully
to everyone with whom he spoke, and used what he heard at some future point as
if it was fresh to his mind. Like the Lord, he reaped a harvest from fields he
had not sown. He mulled over how it was that the Prior was so sure the police
had informed the Press, and had done so in order to force Larkwood to keep
their guest. Someone, of course, must have told him.

Chapter Four

1

It was the stone in his
shoe, lodged inadvertently when Anselm visited Larkwood Priory on a school
retreat at the age of eighteen. He only signed up to avoid yet another
geography trip, plodding in the rain over that wretched limestone pavement
near Malbam Tarn. But an extravagant claim on a vocations leaflet caught his
eye (laid on a table by a monk who said he’d met Baden-Powell):

‘We can’t
promise happiness, But if God has called you to be here

You
will taste a peace this world cannot give.’

Throughout
the years that followed, the words slunk into his mind and out again — not when
he was restless but when he was content. The contingent pledge became a goad,
an unwanted invitation that reminded him of what he most wanted to forget.

The
loss of peace — for that is what it was — had trodden an unknown path. When
beset by the dogmatic turbulence of adolescence Anselm turned to Proust. Seeing
his life in epic form, he subjected his past to a minute psychological investigation.
He easily identified the events that had sent ripples into the present: the
death of his mother whom he had hardly known; the nineteenth-century formality
of his father; the paradoxical but defining insecurity that arises from being
wedged between two older brothers and two younger sisters; the welcome nuance
of banishment to a French boarding school for part of his secondary education.
Anselm concluded that he, alone among men, was in grave need of internal
repair.

When he
joined the chambers of Roderick Kemble QC, fondly known as Roddy, and had a few
run-ins with some of the more difficult members of the profession, he learned
that he wasn’t in that bad a shape after all. Roddy was a red, round and joyous
man, loved and bled over profusely by all who knew him. While he was one of the
most outstanding advocates of his generation it was compassion that truly set
him apart. His one theme of consolation was habitually volunteered when drunk: ‘None
of us get here without being broken to pieces along the way, old son. None of
us know why So let’s just bear with one another.’ And, lunging for a bottle, he
would say, ‘Now, bring on the fatted calf.’

The
dislocation that beset Anselm in his maturity, however, was of a wholly
different order and could only be assuaged by long periods of solitude and …
prayer: an activity that took him beyond himself, but which collapsed the
moment he thought about what he was doing — like falling off a bicycle. And,
picking himself up again, he remembered those frightful words on the leaflet.
He began to wonder, on a purely theoretical basis, whether for some people
(but not him) monastic life was the only way of finding contentment.

He went
back to Larkwood out of curiosity, attending an occasional Office and having
tea in the village. He visited the Priory more often, dreading the return to
London, but without wanting to stay in Suffolk. On the fateful day he met the
tourist at the Court of Appeal, Anselm recognised that in brushing against this
other life he had sustained a fine wound on the memory, causing a longing, a
homesickness that would not let him settle in any place other than the source
of injury. And so, Anselm began his return to Larkwood. After two years of
visiting, and being politely discouraged (in accordance with The Rule), he
became a postulant. He left behind a baffled family He was thirty-four.

Anselm’s first surprise on
entering religious life was to discover the monastery contained ordinary human
beings alarmingly similar to one or two villains he had represented at the criminal
Bar. He had thought only the prison system could withstand the outrageous
behaviour of its members. But the same was true of Larkwood, where, unlike
enforced incarceration, each individual had promised to live a life of ongoing
conversion. Thankfully, Brother Bruno performed an important act of mercy on
the day of Anselm’s arrival. He briskly punctured whatever reasonable
expectations Anselm might have entertained about a life of wholesome
tranquillity.

Bruno
had been a Tyneside docker for thirty years and brought to monastic life a
playful candour that generated various maxims — most of which were only quoted
to be discounted. ‘I think there’s something you ought to know,’ he confided,
having been introduced to Anselm five minutes earlier. ‘You’ll find out as you
go along, the good guys always leave and only the so and sos remain.’

Time
passed with a peculiar swiftness known only to those who live subject to the
rhythm of monastic life. The chant, the ancient regularity and the silence
mysteriously brought together the fragments of Anselm’s past and gave him a
sense of completeness — but only for the first few months. That turned out to
be a glimpse of who he might become, rather than who he was. Within a year the
pieces shattered again, falling back to where they had been before he’d become
a postulant. He understood what agnostic Roddy had told him when he’d left the
Bar: that being a monk had nothing to do with putting the bits back together.
And he learned the meaning of another Bruno aphorism: ‘Nobody stays for the
reasons they came: The liturgical cycle rolled up the years. Some very pleasant
chaps returned to the world. But Anselm stayed put, abandoning any pretence of
being one of the good guys, or of searching for peace through internal
reconstruction. And sometimes, in that half-sleep savoured last thing at night
and first thing in the morning, Anselm began to wonder how much of it had been
choice, and how much unwitting cooperation.

Larkwood’s
life became Anselm’s. The Priory supported itself through bookbinding, ceramics
and the production of apple juice — along with a now legendary cider of a
particularly vigorous character. Anselm learned the balanced crafts of labour,
rest and prayer. After twelve years of monastic life the elements of living a
fulfilled life were broadly in position. A planetary motion of doubt, certainty,
joy, anguish, loneliness and boredom, each on their own trajectory, encircled
an evolving contentment. And very, very occasionally, when he wasn’t looking,
the Lord of the Dance brushed past.

2

The man from the Home
Office turned up the day after Milby’s visit and before the community meeting.
Fortunate timing that, thought Anselm. He didn’t get the chance to share this
reflection with Authority, however, because Father Andrew, in the days
following the arrival of Schwermann, had withdrawn from corridor and cloister
and only emerged to growl his way through Office and tell the morning Chapter
who was coming.

His
name was Wilson, apparently Peering through a window in the bursar’s office,
Anselm saw the black Jaguar creep across the Priory forecourt. The mandarin
emerged in a chalk pin-stripe of the deepest blue, his hair a laundry white,
each strand obedient to its place in life. He extended a pale hand graciously
to Father Andrew, as if it was a Royal visit, his faint smile conveying
shyness, a remote fragility masked by exquisite courtesy

Precisely
what Mr Wilson said was revealed that evening. Community meetings, like
gatherings in Chambers, were notorious for bringing out everyone’s worst
qualities. For a group of men capable of savage argument over nothing in
particular, the prospects of a sensible discussion on modified asylum for a war
criminal were not promising. But on this occasion there was a surprising
display of common sense.

The
monks silently took their seats in Chapter, side by side around the circling
wall. All eyes fell on Father Andrew’s stern face. A single candle burned
brightly on a plinth beside him. From where Anselm sat, the tiny flickering
danced upon the Prior’s narrow glasses, lighting his eyes with fire.

‘I’ll
be brief. The Home Office has asked us to provide this man with a short-term refuge.
You already know what he was, and what he’s alleged to have done. He must be
accommodated away from the public eye, and be protected. He can’t go home.
Transfer to prison is considered inappropriate.’ Father Andrew had anticipated
most of the questions and answered them mechanically in brief succession. ‘An
expedited investigation has already commenced. No charges were brought after
the war and it’s thought unlikely any could be brought now.