‘You mean,’ said Miss Fielding, ‘that if women are obliged to work alongside men there’s a possibility that they may become as promiscuous as the men they meet – always assuming the men they meet are promiscuous. But the hole in your argument, Mr Braithwaite, is that promiscuity doesn’t automatically follow the opportunity to be promiscuous. If immorality does increase as the result of the war it won’t simply be because women are working alongside men. It’ll be because both sexes are frightened to the point of instability in a time of great danger.’
Miss Tarantino said: ‘Sure!’ emphatically and the Professor grunted his acceptance of this rational contribution to the conversation, but Mrs Braithwaite was rigid with disapproval and Braithwaite himself clearly could not bear to be worsted in an argument with a woman. ‘You talk with a great deal of authority, Miss Fielding,’ he said harshly, ‘but what do you
really know about the ways of the world? Your argument might sound more convincing if it didn’t come from an unmarried lady whose attitude to the opposite sex appears to be characterized by ignorance and dislike!’
I said: ‘Braithwaite –’ at the same moment as the Professor exclaimed in disgust: ‘Great Scott!’ but Miss Fielding needed no one to defend her. She said strongly: ‘The ignorance and dislike are all on your side, it seems! You know nothing about me except for the fact that I’m not married, and your dislike is obviously because unlike most women I have the nerve to argue with you when you start slandering my sex!’
‘There was no slander!’ said Braithwaite, scarlet with rage. ‘And I consider I’m justified in objecting to rude opinionated females who give spinsters a bad name!’
I leapt to my feet but so did Miss Fielding. Flinging down her napkin she said fiercely to Braithwaite: ‘My God, you’re a stupid man!’ and stormed from the table.
All conversation in the dining-room ceased. I had a fleeting impression of the Warden’s appalled face, but I ignored it and the next moment I was saying to Braithwaite in a voice calculated to travel the length of a sizeable church: ‘As a gentleman your conduct was beyond the pale and as a churchwarden your conduct was beyond belief. Reflect on your behaviour. Examine your conscience. And I shall expect an apology to my guest within the hour.’
I made a superb exit, and it was only when I reached the hall that I allowed myself to pause. I could not remember when I had last felt so angry. Heading for the stairs I decided to pursue Miss Fielding all the way to her lair, but then I remembered that I did not know her room number, and as I paused again I was aware of the antenna twitching in my psyche.
I strode to the library and found her sitting on the secluded window-seat where she had interrupted my perusal of
Lux Mundi.
She had removed her glasses but as I sat down beside her she rammed them back on her nose as if they could hide all evidence of her tears.
I said: ‘You were right. He’s a very stupid man, and like so
many stupid men he’s pathetic, trying to bolster his self-esteem by telling himself that his gender makes him superior to fifty percent of the human race. But you’re not stupid – and you’re not pathetic either. You’ve got the brains and the courage to look back on that scene and see that it wasn’t you but he who was so irretrievably diminished by it.’
While I spoke she took off her glasses again but by the time I had finished she had brushed the tears aside. Passing her my handkerchief I said: ‘He’s due to leave tomorrow so you won’t have to endure his presence here much longer. In fact when tomorrow comes, breakfast in your room and then I’ll take you out for the day.’
‘If that’s an offer made out of pity –’
‘It’s made out of admiration for your courage in standing up to that man, and how better could I demonstrate my admiration than by asking you to share my solitude?’
She could not speak, but when I took her hand in a gesture of comfort, her fingers closed trustfully on mine.
We completed our dinner in the privacy of the Warden’s sitting-room after a subdued Braithwaite had proffered the required apology. Then the next morning the Warden drove us into the nearby town of Ashburton where, armed with a picnic-basket, we boarded the motor-bus which climbed up the winding country roads on to the high plateau of Dartmoor. We reached the church at Widecombe in time for matins, and by one o’clock we were sitting on a hillside overlooking the village as we embarked on our luncheon. The sun shone fitfully over the hills which ringed the valley, and below the outcrop of rocks which marked the summit of the nearest ridge a breeze ruffled the manes of the wild ponies.
After a prolonged silence in which we ate our sandwiches, sipped our tea and watched the shifting patterns of light playing on the vast expanse of heather around us I said suddenly: ‘This
reminds me of Ruydale. I lived there for fourteen years. It became home. Being transferred to Grantchester in ’37 was a great wrench.’
‘Is it usual for monks to be transferred?’
‘No, it’s rare – and my transfer was like a bolt from the blue. The wire arrived from the Abbot-General at ten o’clock one morning and by two I was on the train to London.’
She was appalled. ‘But how horrible to be uprooted from your home so suddenly!’
I said nothing as I remembered how nearly my anger and misery had destroyed my will to obey orders without question. There had been no mention of Grantchester in Father Darcy’s wire. I had thought I was being transferred to London so that I could be more accessible to the increasing number of clergymen who sought my spiritual direction.
‘Why was there such a rush?’ Miss Fielding was asking in bewilderment.
‘The Abbot of Grantchester had just died and his death revealed urgent problems which required swift attention.’ I had intended to say no more about the Order’s private affairs but when she said: ‘Was there a scandal?’ I felt obliged to quash any melodramatic suspicions.
‘From a monastic point of view it was scandalous,’ I said, ‘but I don’t think a layman would have found the disorder particularly titillating. The main problem was that Abbot James had become very withdrawn during the last year of his life – it would be unfair, I think, to use the word senile – and all power had passed to the Prior whose previous heavy drinking then flowered into full-blown alcoholism. As a result discipline became disastrously lax and soon everyone, even the good men, spent too much time wallowing in sloth.’
Miss Fielding said with a most disarming sympathy: ‘How on earth did you set everyone back on the rails?’
I was lured into further confidences. ‘First of all I ordered everyone to clean themselves up; men get slovenly without either women to look after them or a discipline to keep them up to the mark. Then we all took part in cleaning the house from
top to bottom; nobody can work well in a filthy environment.’ I paused, remembering the odours of stale sweat, stale urine, stale food and the sight of thick grease, thick dust, thick grime. The details came back to me abruptly: the underclothes in holes at the garment inspection; the stained chamber-pots used as shaving-bowls to enable their owners to avoid ‘the trough’, the long narrow basin in the central wash-room where all monks but the abbot (who had his own basin in his cell) were obliged to shave; the sheet of noughts-and-crosses tucked under the hassock in the chapel to betray how at least two of the brethren had spent the time supposed to be devoted to worship; the dog-eared copy of
The News of the World
which lined the basket of the flea-bitten cat; the three-tiered cream cake brazenly sitting in the larder; the chocolate-box hidden behind the blackboard in the scriptorium, and – worst horror of all – the empty brandy bottles stacked high in the crypt.
‘Then I changed the diet from a gourmet cuisine to predominantly vegetarian meals,’ I heard myself say to Miss Fielding, ‘restricted wine to feast-days and ordered that everyone, even the oldest monk, was to take some exercise every day. I’m afraid that at the start of my rule I was highly unpopular with the lazier members of the community.’
‘I’m sure the good men were relieved to have a firm hand at the helm again.’
‘The relief was mixed with resentment. They didn’t like the Abbot-General’s decision to bring in someone from outside to rule the community,’ I said, and the next moment I was remembering my debilitating sense of isolation, my homesickness for Ruydale, my struggles to avoid any self-centred expression of misery as I wrote the weekly report Father Darcy had demanded for the first six months of my tenure.
However the next moment I was diverted from these difficult memories when Miss Fielding asked with curiosity: ‘What happened to the alcoholic Prior?’
‘He was transferred permanently to London so that the demon drink could be exorcized by the Abbot-General.’
‘A fate worse than death?’ said Miss Fielding with a smile
and I laughed before replying: ‘Father Darcy was certainly formidable.’
‘Darcy!’
‘No relation to the famous Jesuit. Different spelling.’
‘I was thinking of Jane Austen’s hero.’
‘Father Darcy was a hero to many of his monks but heaven only knows what Jane Austen would have thought of him.’
‘Was he a hero to you?’
‘No, he was my mentor. That meant our relationship had to be grounded in reality, not fantasy.’
‘Well, I hope he gave you a pat on the back after you’d transformed the Grantchester house! How long did it take you to put everything right?’
So she had sensed I had no inclination to say more about my complex relationship with Father Darcy. With gratitude I answered readily: ‘The worst difficulties were ironed out quickly enough but it took at least six months to reduce the minor irritations – the endless pettiness, the foolish squabbles, the incessant twittering in corners whenever the slackers thought their superior was out of earshot … The Fordites aren’t Trappists and the rule of silence is never rigidly enforced, but gossiping is forbidden and personally I can’t endure people twittering about nothing.’
Miss Fielding at once said: ‘How difficult you must have found it to adjust to all the twittering at Allington!’ and before I could stop myself I was confessing: ‘To be honest I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve adjusted to Allington at all. I’m supposed to be giving serious consideration to my future, but so far I’ve found my attempts at meditation singularly unproductive.’ However as soon as these words had been uttered I felt driven to exonerate Allington. The fault’s mine, of course,’ I said. ‘I’m failing to make a satisfactory adjustment to normal society and that’s why I persistently feel that I’m in the wrong place.’
‘But maybe you
are
in the wrong place,’ said Miss Fielding unexpectedly. ‘I can see why you came here, but surely in your case a community like Allington can only seem a travesty of the
type of community where you’ve learnt to feel at home? I almost wonder if you’d be better off in some remote rural guest-house where you’d be the only visitor.’
This struck me as a most perceptive observation. ‘You may well be right,’ I began, and then broke off as I suddenly realized which way the conversation was drifting. My heart seemed to beat a shade faster as I said with immense care: ‘Miss Fielding, please don’t take this amiss; I wouldn’t like you to feel that I was engaged in some form of unwanted pursuit of you, but do you by any chance know of a remote spot in the Starbridge area where I might find the peace and quiet I need?’
There was a long silence. Miss Fielding was staring at the wild ponies grazing in the distance and she was still staring at them when she eventually said: ‘I think I do know of a place which would suit you.’
I waited, not hurrying her, and at last she turned to face me. ‘It’s a manor house,’ she said. ‘It’s at Starrington Magna, twelve miles from Starbridge.’ Looking away from me again she began to trace a pattern on the grass with her finger. ‘The owner lives there alone apart from the servants,’ she said. ‘It’s a big house. You could be as secluded there as you wished, and there are twenty acres of walled grounds which are ideal for solitary strolls.’
Five seconds elapsed before I was able to say with a theatrical calmness: ‘Can you tell me … is there a chapel in the grounds?’
Her eyes widened. ‘Yes,’ she said surprised, ‘as a matter of fact there is.’
‘And is there a ruined ivy-clad building behind it?’
I saw the colour fade from her face. ‘The chantry,’ she whispered. ‘Yes.’
‘And is the chapel Victorian but built in the style of Inigo Jones?’
By this time she was beyond speech. She was barely able to nod.
My voice said: ‘Miss Fielding, forgive me for playing what must appear to be yet another psychic parlour-trick, but this place is of the greatest importance to me. Who’s the owner of
this manor house? I’d like to get in touch with him straight away.’
In the silence that followed, the world seemed entirely still; it was as if even the breeze had ceased to blow. But as Miss Fielding took off her glasses at last, like a soldier removing his camouflage after some complex battle, the truth hurled itself against my shattered mind and smashed awake my sleeping psyche.
‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ I could hardly speak. ‘The chapel belongs to you.’ And when, mesmerized by my emotion, she offered no denial I covered my face with my hands and silently thanked God for this great deliverance from the torment of my doubts.
‘Our real self is not the captive of Space and Time.’