The Hawk and the Dove Page 12

  The season of colds, which ran all the way through to the end of February, started in November, when the magical, golden enchantment of autumn days (the wine of the seasons, when the year held its breath at the approach of frost and fire) turned into the raw damp of the back end of the year, clogging leaves packed underfoot and chilling fog pervading everything. If I had to draw a picture of November, I think I would draw an old man in a grey macintosh, blowing his nose. Even the smoky delights of fireworks and baked potatoes on bonfire night do no more than hold off the depression of those creeping fingers of darkness and cold.

  I turned fifteen at the end of October and had no sooner celebrated my birthday than the first of November found me flushed with fever and thick with catarrh. I moped and sweated under a mound of blankets in our frosty bedroom for a day, and snuffled and dozed through a delirious night, then by the morning the fever had subsided, and I was left feeling weak and fractious with the thick-headed, mouth-breathing, runny-eyed misery of a streaming cold.

  When the others had gone to school, Mother lit a fire for me to sit by and made a nest for me on the sofa. She gave me hot elderberry cordial to drink, and made me inhale steam from a great enamel jug of friar’s balsam dissolved in boiling water. I began to feel more cheerful, enjoying the luxury of being pampered and waited on, and I was looking forward to the afternoon, when Cecily, who had so far escaped my cold, was to go shopping with Grandma and I would have the precious treat of Mother’s company all to myself for a whole afternoon.

  I think Mother was longing as much as I was for an afternoon without Cecily. I had been short-tempered and irritable all week, and Cecily was like a simmering volcano at the best of times. Feeling too unwell to summon the patience and consideration she needed, I had fallen out with her before breakfast. She was ready to pick a fight with anyone by lunchtime.

  Mother’s patience was wearing thin too, but she managed to humour Cecily into eating her lunch, a thick vegetable soup with hot brown rolls and creamy butter that I could not taste. Then Mother swathed Cecily in her brightly-coloured scarf, gloves and hat, and buttoned her duffle coat on over the top, then stood her on a chair in the window to watch for Grandma. She stood very still, looking with great concentration at all the passers-by. ‘That’s not Grandma. That’s not Grandma. That’s not Grandma. Grandma!’

  Grandma swept Cecily up into a big hug as she came in from the cold. ‘There’s my precious! Are you ready? Round the shops, then tea at Betty’s and back in time for bed. All right, Mummy?’

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ said Mother with a smile. ‘’Bye ’bye Cecily. Have a lovely time. Here, you haven’t got your shoes on!’

  ‘And how are you, Melissa?’ asked Grandma, as Mother fastened on Cecily’s shoes. ‘Better for a day in bed I expect. I’ll pick you up some of my herbal linctus from the pharmacy. That’ll frighten any cold! See you later, then, ladies. Enjoy your afternoon.’

  Mother waved goodbye to them from the door, then disappeared into the kitchen and returned five minutes later bearing a tray with two thick slices of fruit cake, a cup of coffee for herself, and some lemon and honey for me. She put another log on the fire and curled up in her armchair with her coffee cupped in her hands, looking into the flames.

  ‘Peace,’ she said happily. ‘Oh, this is nice. It’s nice when you feel peaceful inside, and you can curl up by the fire in a peaceful house. Too much racket in the house and it frays you at the edges a bit; but if you lose the peace on the inside of you, you could be in the quietest place on earth and your nerves would still jangle.’

  I ate my fruit cake slowly. It is so difficult to eat when you have to breathe through your mouth. I felt quite exhausted by the time I’d finished. I drank the lemon and honey, and snuggled under my blanket on the mound of pillows Mother had provided.

  ‘Tell me a story about Father Peregrine, Mother,’ I said. She gazed into the fire, thinking, seeing, far away. Then she smiled.

  ‘I never told you Brother Cormac’s story, did I?’ she asked.

  ‘No!’ I said. ‘Tell me! He was one of the novices, wasn’t he?’

  He entered at about the same time as Brother Theodore, two years after Father Peregrine was attacked and beaten by his father’s enemies. In those days, the novitiate lasted only a year before a monk was solemnly professed (nowadays it’s a matter of years). Brother Tom was a novice longer than most—he entered just over two years before Cormac, but was with him in the novitiate for six months, too. At the time of this story, Brother Tom and Brother Francis had just made their solemn profession, and Brother Theodore, Brother Thaddeus and Brother Cormac were left in the novitiate, along with a young man called Gerard Plumley, who had not yet made his first vows and been given his new name.

  Brother Cormac was an Irishman, a long, thin streak of a lad, with a wild tangle of black hair, and eyes as blue as speedwell. He had been an orphan since he was a tiny child. His mother and father died together in the seas off the coast of England, when the ship in which they were crossing the Irish Sea was hit by stormy weather, and foundered on the rocks. A wreck always drew a crowd: some to loot, some to watch and some to save lives. Under the grim sky and against the squalls of wind and rain, men dared the savage sea and brought to shore as many of the dead and the exhausted survivors as they could find. They found Cormac, only a baby then, about Cecily’s age, clutching tightly to his drowned mother, terrified and half-drowned himself, and they left it to the gathering of women on the shore to separate the two.

  They also saved from the wreck an Irish merchant who had made his home in York, and had been returning from a visit to his family in Ireland. The merchant recognised the scared waif, and was able to identify the child’s father among the dead. The fishermen and the other local folk had mouths enough to feed at home, and nobody knew what to do with the orphaned child. He had fought and scratched and bitten his rescuers as they prised him free from his mother’s body, but he sat quietly enough now, wrapped in a blanket on a bench in the inn which had opened its doors as a refuge.

  The Irish merchant had no little ones of his own, and looking down at the blue eyes great with terror and shock in the child’s blanched face, he took pity on him, and being full of gratitude to God for his own deliverance from the wild sea, he took the orphan home for his wife to care for. This impulsive gesture of generosity they often regretted, for the black-haired, blue-eyed elf of a baby grew to be a wild, wayward, moody boy who brought them more headaches than joy.

  When he was eighteen, the earliest the monks could take him, his jaded foster-parents steered him firmly in the direction of the cloister, feeling that they had done their fair share and more of giving houseroom to this difficult charge. They thought of the monastery, because one of his unreasonable habits was his flat refusal, since he was eight years old, to eat anything of flesh or fowl or fish or even eggs and milk. His distraught foster-mother had thought at first he would be ill without such wholesome food, but he proved healthier than all the rest of the household on his dried beans and vegetables; and besides, it was more trouble than it was worth to try to dissuade him. Early conversations had gone something like this:

  ‘Drink up your milk, my lad.’

  ‘It is not my milk. It is for the calf.’

  ‘Daisy the cow doesn’t mind you drinking a drop, my poppet.’

  ‘It is not true. You have taken her calf away. She cries for her calf.’

  ‘She’s only a beast, my pet. She won’t fret long. Drink up now.’

  ‘It is the calf’s milk. No.’

  As he grew older, he would lecture his bewildered fos ter-parents fiercely about their exploitation of God’s innocent creatures. His foster-father would look down at the hunk of roast meat in his hand feeling a little queasy as the piercing blue eyes fixed him with an accus ing stare, and his adopted son held forth passionately on the freedom and grace of the running deer, the beauty and serenity of the mother bird in her nest. In the end, what with one thing and another, they’d had
enough of him, and knowing that all the monks, except the sick brothers in the infirmary, abstained from eat ing the flesh of all four-footed creatures, they felt it a reasonable compromise to send him there.

  He was willing, though not enthusiastic, and realising that the hospitality extended to his childhood need had now run out, he saw no alternative but to comply with their wishes and offer himself to serve and learn to love God, in return for his bed and board in God’s house. He was fairly horrified to discover that there he would eat what he was given and make no complaint, and he submitted to this repulsive discipline with a bad grace and a churning stomach. He did not make himself popular in his first months with the community. He was more than a little touchy and inclined to take himself seriously and bear a grudge when anyone offended him. In truth, he was more at peace with the animal kingdom than with mankind or with himself.

  The one person he did take to was Father Peregrine— fortunately, since he was entering a life that would involve vowing himself to total obedience to the abbot of the community. When first he was brought to the abbot by his foster-parents, he looked at the lean, hawk’s face with its savage scar, the still, twisted hands, and he felt an unfamiliar stirring of compassion. Equally strange to him was the uneasy feeling of inadequacy that grew in him as the calm, shrewd eyes appraised him. Well used to condemning other men, he was surprised by the grudging but involuntary respect this maimed and gentle monk’s unassuming authority called forth in him. As time went on, the grudging respect developed into a fierce loyalty, and the incidents of the humble pie and Brother Thaddeus’ confession made their mark on him and won his affection. He was grateful, too, that Father Peregrine acknowledged his Irish origins in giving him the name Cormac.

  Thus it was that Brother Cormac began to love, who had never loved; who had taken the tenderness that should have been for brother and sister and mother and father and given it instead to the birds and the beasts, because they could never be his kin, and could never hurt him by being lost to him. So he began, awkwardly, to unfold.

  In his first weeks in the abbey, Brother Cormac had been put to work in the scriptorium, but his restless and discontented spirit was unsuited to the disciplined and painstaking work. After his naming and clothing he was moved to work in the kitchens, which proved equally disastrous.

  He and Brother Andrew took an instant dislike to each other, and the sparks flew at every encounter. Brother Andrew provoked him by making sarcastic comments to him if his work was badly done, and Cormac, though he was not openly insolent, managed to convey his dislike and contempt for the old man in every look and gesture. Brother Andrew further goaded him by insisting on mispronouncing his name and calling him ‘Cormick’, a minor yet infuriating pinprick, but the kind of gibe that was Brother Andrew’s speciality.

  ‘Cormac,’ he would say, ‘my name is Cormac.’ But it didn’t do any good.

  In the end, Father Matthew moved him and sent him to work in the gardens and in the infirmary with Brother Edward, in the hope that the contemplative outdoor work of gardening and the care of the aged and the sick would between them bring to life a little gentleness and peace of mind in him.

  One of his tasks in the infirmary was to help Brother Edward with the daily task of working and massaging Father Peregrine’s stiff, crippled hands. Brother Edward thought those long, sensitive Irish fingers looked as if there could be skill in them if only they could be taught a little kindness. Besides this, Edward well knew the calming and tranquilising power that lay in aromatic oils, and he thought it would do Cormac good to work with them. As for Brother Cormac, he was only too relieved to be sent to work elsewhere than with Brother Andrew, and determined he would never cross the old man’s path or speak to him again if he could help it.

  It was unfortunate for him that one day when it was his turn to serve at table, he knocked against Brother Andrew’s arm, entirely accidentally, while pouring ale for one of the brothers. He caused Brother Andrew to spill the spoonful of vegetable stew he was holding, and splash gravy onto his habit. Andrew growled an irritable comment under his breath at Brother Cormac, who muttered sourly back at him. Father Peregrine’s atten tion was caught by the exchange, and he saw the ill-tempered look that passed between them. He came later to find Brother Edward in the infirmary, and asked him: ‘Would you say Brother Cormac is unhappy?’

  ‘Unhappy?’ echoed Brother Edward. ‘Well I can’t say I’ve ever seen him smile. Mind you, he’s better since he’s been away from Brother Andrew. They came close to blows, those two.’

  Father Peregrine looked at him thoughtfully. ‘And that is why Brother Cormac was moved away from the kitchens?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, yes. Brother Andrew is a contrary old devil at the best of times, but it was as tense as a thunderstorm with the two of them together.’

  ‘I didn’t know. I was under the impression that Father Matthew felt the garden and infirmary work would be beneficial to Brother Cormac.’

  ‘Well, that’s true, but it was a matter of urgency to get him away from Brother Andrew. The atmosphere between them was poisonous.’

  ‘He’ll have to go back to the kitchen, then,’ said Father Peregrine. ‘No, it’s no good, Brother,’ he insisted in response to Edward’s gesture of protest. ‘There’s no place in a monastic community for enmity and quarrelling. Somehow or other this must be resolved.’

  He discussed the matter no further with Brother Edward, but went straight along to find Father Matthew. The day following, the novice master sent Brother Cormac back to the kitchen to work, and Gerard replaced him in the garden and the infirmary.

  Cormac was to continue with only one of his former tasks in connection with the infirmary. As they were so busy at that time of year (it was a raw, damp October) with bronchial coughs and feverish colds, he was told to keep on his daily job of working with Edward on Father Peregrine’s hands, at least until the winter ailments had run their course. That this was mainly for his sake, to give him a restoring space in the midst of a difficult day, did not occur to him. He was merely appalled to find himself back in Brother Andrew’s company.

  A picture of sullen resentment, Brother Cormac presented himself in the kitchen after the morning instruction in the novitiate, to be greeted by the sarcastic old cook’s ‘Good morning, Brother Cormick. Better late than never. Would you prepare that pile of chicken livers yonder for the potted meat?’

  ‘Cormac,’ the young man replied through clenched teeth and turned to his work. His gorge rose in disgust at the sight of a pile of chicken livers sufficient to feed thirty monks, and he seethed with rage and resentment that Brother Andrew should have designated this work to him. Grimly, he set to work, and a long job it was, too.

  It was well on into the morning, as things were getting busy towards lunchtime, that Father Peregrine came into the kitchen. The working area was not very spacious, and the staff were hard put to fit round each other as it was, so it was with a frown of annoyance that Brother Andrew broke off from his work to attend to the interruption.

  ‘I’m sorry to trouble you, Brother Andrew,’ Father Peregrine began courteously.

  ‘I should think you are if you want your lunch on time,’ was the reply he got.

  The abbot looked a little taken aback, but persevered. ‘Brother, I have come to beg a favour of you. You will probably know, it is difficult for me to maintain much movement in my hands, especially as I have no form of work for them in the course of my duties but a little writing. I wondered if I might come in here and work for a while each morning, so as to stretch them a little further?’

  Brother Cormac looked up from the mangled pile of poultry offal. He was mildly surprised and puzzled. He knew—they all knew—that Father Peregrine hated to draw attention to the state of his hands. As he spoke now, his stiff formality sounded awkward and reluctant, as though he was wishing he could escape from Brother Andrew’s irritated glare. There was something odd about it. Cormac looked at Brother Andrew, to see how he would take
the suggestion.

  Brother Andrew was staring at Father Peregrine in exasperation. His kitchen was crowded, and he had enough already to plan and arrange, but a request from the abbot was an order, however politely phrased. He had no choice but to obey. He didn’t, however, have to be cheerful about it.

  ‘Father, this is my busiest time of day. I cannot stop for conversation now. If you think it would be helpful to you, then come, but you’ll have to keep yourself from under my feet. This kitchen is cramped enough already. I have no space for a lame man going to and fro. No doubt I could think of something to occupy you if you’ll keep to a corner out of the way; but come tomorrow early, not now, because I’m run off my feet already.’ And with this gracious speech, Brother Andrew turned back to his work and left Father Peregrine standing.

  Cormac, watching, saw the muscle flex in Peregrine’s cheek, and saw the imperious flash in his eye, saw him draw breath to reply but then he set his lips firmly, bowed his head, turned and limped out of the kitchen without a word. Recognising in that flash of the eye a spirit as fiery as his own, Cormac’s proud heart paid unwilling tribute to a self-control he knew he could not match if he tried.

  It was not that Brother Andrew was really unkind, just extraordinarily thoughtless, and not always able to make the distinction between plain speaking and plain rudeness. He did, at any rate, give careful thought to what tasks Father Peregrine could reasonably do in the kitchen, and took the trouble to discuss with him at some length the next morning just what he could and could not manage, ascertaining that although he could not cut anything very hard, like a turnip, or tough, like raw meat, and could not carry anything heavy unless he could hold it in his arm, he was able and willing to try any other tasks.

  And try he did, humbly and largely unsuccessfully. Brother Andrew grew exasperated with him and did little to disguise the fact, annoyed as he was that this ridiculous whim of the abbot should have been visited on him.