The Rebel Angels tct-1 Page 8

  “The only trouble was, I wasn’t with a group of my peers. Who are my peers? Brilliant philosophers, stuffed with everything from Plato to the latest whiz-kids of the philosophical world—Logical Positivists, and such intellectual grandees. And there I was with a dismal coven of repentant soaks—a car salesman who had fallen from the creed of Kiwanis, and a Jewish woman whose family misunderstood her attempts to put them straight on everything, and a couple of schoolteachers who can’t ever have taught anything except Civics, and some business men whose god was Mammon, and a truck-driver who was included, I gather, to keep our eyes on the road and our discussions hitched to reality. Whose reality? Certainly not mine. So the imp of perversity prompted me to make pretty patterns of our discussions together, and screw the poor boozers up worse than they’d been screwed up before. For the first time in years, I was having a really good time.

  “The group protested, and the shrink told me I must show compassion to my fellow-creatures. His idea of compassion was allowing every indefensible statement to pass unchallenged and sugary self-indulgence to pass as insight. He was a boob—a boob with a technique, but still a boob. When I told him so, he was indignant. Let me give you a tip, Maria: never get yourself into the hands of a shrink who is less intelligent than you are, and if that should mean enduring misery without outside help, it will be better for you in the long run. Shrinks aren’t all bright, and they are certainly not priests. I was beginning to think that a priest was what I needed, when finally they told me that the Foundation had done all it could for me, and I must re-enter the world. Threw me out, in fact.

  “Where does one look for a good priest? I tried a few, because we all have streaks of sentimentality in us and I still believed that there must be holy men somewhere whose goodness would help me. Oh, God! As soon as they found out how highly educated I was, how swift in argument, how ready with authority, they began to lean on me, and tell me their troubles, and expect answers. Some of them wanted to defect and get married. What was I to do? Get out! Get out! But where was I to go?

  “I had a little money, now, because my parents had died and although their last, long illnesses had gobbled up a lot of the family substance, I had enough money to go travelling, and where did I go? To Capri! Yes, Capri, that cliche of wickedness, although it is now so overrun with tourists that the wicked can hardly find room to get on with their sin; the great days of Norman Douglas have utterly departed. So, eastward to the Isles of Greece, where burning Sappho loved and sung but has been edged out of the limelight now by the beautiful fisher-boys who will share a seaside place with you for a substantial price, plus gifts, and who may turn ugly and beat you up now and then, just for kicks. One of them put me in the hospital for six weeks, one bad springtime. Am I shocking you, Maria?”

  “Certainly not by telling me you’re one of the Gays.”

  “Ah, but I’m not, you see; I’m one of the Sads, and one of the Uglies. The Gays make me laugh; they’re so middle class and political about the whole thing. They’ll destroy it all with their clamour about Gay Lib and alternative life-styles, and all love is holy, and ‘both partners must be squeaky clean’. That’s putting the old game on a level with No-Cal pop or decaffeinated coffee—appearance without reality. Strip it of its darkness and danger and what is left? An eccentricity, as if I stuck this spaghetti into my ear instead of into my mouth. Now that would be an alternative life-style, and undoubtedly a perversion, but who would care? No: let my sin be Sin or it loses all stature.”

  “If you prefer men to women, what’s it to me?”

  “I don’t, except for one form of satisfaction. No, I want no truck with ‘homo-eroticism’ and the awful, treacherous, gold-digging little queens you get stuck with in that caper: I want no truck with Gay Liberation or hokum about alternative life-styles: I want neither the love that dare not speak its name nor the love that blats its name to every grievance committee. Gnosce teipsum says the Oracle at Delphi; know thyself, and I do. I’m just a gross old bugger and I like it rough—I like the mess and I like the stink. But don’t ask me to like the people. They aren’t my kind.”

  “From what you tell me, Brother John, not many people seem to be your kind.”

  “I’m not impossibly choosy: I just ask for a high level of intelligence and honesty about things that really matter.”

  “That’s choosy enough to exclude most of us. But something must have happened to get you out of Greece and into that robe.”

  “You mistrust the robe?”

  “Not entirely, but it makes me cautious. You know what Rabelais says—“Never trust those who look through the hole of a hood.”“

  “Well, he looked through that hole for much of his life, so he ought to know. You’ve never told me, Maria, what brings you to devote so much of your time to that dirty-minded, anti-feminist old renegade monk. Could he have been one of my persuasion, do you suppose?”

  “No. He didn’t like women much, though he seems to have liked one of them enough to have a couple of children by her, and he certainly loved the son. Maybe he didn’t meet the right kind of women. Peasant women, and women at court, but did he meet any intelligent, educated women? They must have been rarities in his experience. He couldn’t have been like you, Brother John, because he loved greatly, and he rejoiced greatly, and he certainly wasn’t a university hanger-on, which is what you are now. He loved learning, and didn’t use it as a way of beating other people to their knees, which seems to be your game. No, no; don’t put yourself on the same shelf as Master François Rabelais. But the monk—come on, how did you become a monk?”

  “Aha, here’s the zabaglione, which should just see us through. Excuse me for a moment, while I retire to the gentlemen’s room. I wish you could come with me; it is always good sport to see the look on the faces of the other gentlemen when a monk strides up to the urinal and hoists his robe. And how they peep! They want to know what a monk wears underneath. Just a cleanish pair of boxer shorts, I assure you.”

  Off he went, rather unsteadily, and when people at other tables stared at him, he gave them a beaming smile, so unctuous that they turned to their plates as fast as they could.

  “That’s better! Well now—the robe,” said Parlabane, when he returned. “That’s quite a tale in itself. You see, I had somewhat dropped in caste, during my stay in Greece; people who had known me were beginning to avoid me, and my adventures on the beaches—because my days of hiring even a humble cottage had passed by—were what I suppose must be called notorious, even in an easy-going society. A bad reputation without money to sweeten it is a heavy burden. Then one day, when I dropped in at the Consulate to ask if they had any mail for me—which they rarely had, but sometimes I could touch somebody for a little money—there actually was a letter for me. And—I can still feel the ecstasy of that recognition—it was from Henry. It was a long letter; first of all, he thought he had treated me badly, and begged my pardon. Next, he had run through whatever there was to run through in very much the kind of life I had been leading (only in his case it was cushioned with a good deal of money) and he had found something else. That something else was religion, and he was determined to yoke himself to a religious life with a brotherhood that worked among wretched people. God, it was a wonderful letter! And to top off the whole thing he offered to send me my fare, if I needed it, to join him and decide whether or not I wanted to accept that yoke as well.

  “I suppose I gave rather a display in the Consulate, and wept and wasn’t able to speak. But at last things straightened themselves out to the point where I was able to touch the Consul himself for the price of a cablegram to Henry, promising to pay as soon as my money arrived, because Consuls have to be very careful with people like me or they would be continually broke.

  “For a few days I really felt I knew what redemption was and when, at last, the reply cable and the assurance of credit at a bank came I did something I had not done in my life before; I went to a church and vowed to God that whatever happened in the futu
re, I would live a life of gratitude for His great mercy.

  “That vow was a deeply sacred thing, Maria, and God tested me sternly within a few days. I was returning to North America by way of England, where I had to pick up some things I had left—books of my trade, principally—and in London there was another cable: Henry was dead. No explanation, but when I found out what had happened it was plain enough that he had done for himself.

  “This was desolating, but not utterly desolating. Because, you see, I had had that letter, with its assurance of Henry’s change of feeling for me, and his concern for me, and that kept me from going right off my head. And I knew what Henry had intended to do, and I knew what I had vowed in that Greek church. I would become a monk, and I would give up my life to the unlucky and unhappy, and I would make it a sacrifice for my own bad mistakes, and for Henry’s memory.

  “But how do you go about becoming a monk? You shop around, and see who will take you, and that isn’t at all easy, because religious orders are pernickety about people who have a sudden yearning for their kind of life; they don’t regard themselves as alternatives to the Foreign Legion. But at last I was accepted by the Society of the Sacred Mission; I offered myself to Anglican groups, because I wanted to get right down to the monk business, and didn’t want all the fag of becoming a Roman Catholic first. I had some of the right credentials: I had been baptized and was dizzily above the level of education they wanted. I had an interview in London with the Father Provincial, who had positively the biggest eyebrows I have ever seen and who looked from under them with a stare that was humbling, even to me. But I wanted to be humbled. Also, I found his weak spot; he liked jokes and word-play and—very respectfully, mind you—I coaxed a few laughs out of him—or rather shakes of the shoulders, because his laughter made no noise—and after a few days I was on my way to Nottinghamshire, with a tiny suitcase containing what I was permitted to call my own—brush and comb, toothbrush and so forth, and though Father Prior didn’t seem to be any more enchanted with me than Father Provincial, I was put on probation, instructed, confirmed, and in time I was accepted as a novice.

  “The life was just what I had been looking for. The Mother House was a huge old Victorian mansion to which a chapel and a few necessary buildings had been added, and there was an unending round of domestic work to be done, and done well.

  Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws

  Makes that and th’ action fine—

  that was the way we were encouraged to think of it. And not just sweeping rooms, but slogging in the garden to raise vegetables—we ate an awful lot of vegetables because there were a great many fast-days—and real labourers’ jobs. There was a school attached to the place and I was given a little teaching to do, but nothing that touched doctrine or philosophy or whatever was central to the life of the community; Latin and geography were my jobs. I had to attend instruction in theology—not theology as a branch of philosophy but theology for keeps, you might say. And all this was stretched on a framework of the daily monastic routine.

  “Do you know it? You wouldn’t believe people could pray so much. Prime at 6:15 a.m., and Matins at 6:30; Low Mass at 7:15, and after breakfast Terce at 8:55, followed by twenty minutes of Meditation afterwards. Then work like hell till Sext at 12:25, then lunch and work again till tea at 3:30, preceding Nones at 3:50. Then recreation-chess or tennis and a smoke. After dinner came Evensong at 7:30, and after study the day ended with Compline at 9:30.

  “You seem to be a great girl for silence. You would have liked it. On ordinary days there was the Lesser Silence from 9:30 until Sext; the Greater Silence extended from Compline until 9:30 the next morning. In Lent there was silence from Evensong until Compline. We could speak if absolute necessity demanded it—gored by a bull, or something of that kind—but otherwise we made things known by a sign-language which we were on our honour not to abuse. I soon found a loophole in that; there was nothing in the Rule against writing, and I was often in trouble about passing notes during Chapel.

  “Chapel demanded a good deal of mental agility, because you had to learn your way around the Monastic Diurnal and know a Simple from a Double and a Semidouble First Class and all the rest of the monkish craft. Like me to give you the lowdown on the Common of Apostles Out of Paschaltide? Like me to outline the rules governing the use of bicycles? Like me to describe ‘reverent and disciplined posture’—it means not crossing your legs in Chapel and not leaning your head on your hand, when it seems likely to fall off with sleepiness.

  “No sex, of course. The boys in the school were to be kept in their place, and monks and novices were strictly enjoined not to permit any familiarity, roughness, or disrespect from them; no boys in men’s rooms except those of the priest-tutors, and no going for walks together. They knew the wickedness of the human heart, those chaps. No woman was allowed on the premises without the special permission of the Prior, who was top banana, and in the discharge of his official duty he was to be accorded obedience and respect as if to Christ himself. But of course the Prior had a confessor, who was supposed to keep him from getting a swelled head.

  “Sounds like a first-rate system for its purpose, doesn’t it? Yet, you know, Maria, within it there was all kinds of difficulty, where what people now call democracy and the old monastic system didn’t gibe. So, now and then, somebody was not confirmed as a Brother after his noviciate, and went back to the world. I mean, he became part of the world again; our order did lots of work in the world besides teaching, and there were missions for down-and-outs where particular monks worked themselves almost to death—though I never heard of anybody actually dying. But they were not of the world, you see, though they were certainly in it.

  “Now, let me give you a useful tip: always keep your eye on anybody who has been in a monastery and has come out again. He is sure to say that he chose to leave before taking his final vows, but the chances are strong that he was thrown out, and for excellent reasons, even if for nothing more than being a disruptive nuisance. There are more failed monks than you would imagine, and they can all bear watching.”

  “Including you, Brother John?”

  “I wasn’t thrown out; I went over the wall. I’d made it, you know; I’d expressed my intention to stay with the Society all my life, and I’d passed the novice stage and was a Lay Brother, vowed to poverty, chastity, and obedience, and I had hopes of going on to priesthood. I knew the Rule inside and out, and I knew where I was weak—Article Nine, which is Silence, and Article Fifteen, Concerning Obedience. I couldn’t hold my tongue and I hated being disciplined by somebody I regarded as an inferior.”

  “Yes; I thought so.”

  “Yes, and undoubtedly you thought something totally wrong. I wasn’t like some of the sniffy postulants and Brothers who hated being told off by Father Sub-Prior because he had a low-comedy Yorkshire accent. I wasn’t a social snob. But I had won my place in a demanding intellectual world before I ever heard of the Mission, and the Rule said plainly: Everybody is clever enough for what God wants of him, and strong enough for what he is set to do, if not for what he would like to be. Father Prior and my confessor were always unyielding when I asked, humbly and reverently, for work that would use what was best in me, meaning my knowledge and the intelligence with which I could employ it. They could quote the Rules as well as I: You cannot seek God’s will and your own too, unless your own is perfectly confirmed to it. If it be so, there will be no need to consider it, though if it be not, there will be much need to mortify it. So they mortified me, but as they too were fallible beings they made one wrong choice and put me on the job of getting things ready for Mass, and that meant that big jugs of Communion wine were right under my hand, and after some sipping, and swigging, and topping the jugs up with water, there was a morning when I forgot myself and they found me pissed to hell in the vestry. Never drink that cheap wine on an empty stomach, Maria. I suppose I took it too lightly, and did my penances in a froward spirit. Anyhow things went from bad to worse, and I knew I was i
n danger of being thrown out, and the Society made it clear when a postulant was accepted that there would be no argument or explanation if that happened.

  “I could have weathered it through, but I began to be hungry for another kind of life. The Society offered a good life, but that was precisely the trouble—it was so unremittingly good. I had known another world, and I became positively sick for the existentialist gloom, the malicious joy at the misfortunes of others, and the gallows-humour that gave zest to modern intellectual life outside the monastery. I was like a child who is given nothing but the most wholesome food; my soul yearned for unwholesome trash, to keep me somehow in balance.

  “So I sneaked a letter out with a visitor who had come for a retreat, and dear Clem sent me some money, and I went over the wall.

  “Just an expression; there was no wall. But one day at recreation time I walked down the drive in a suit and a red wig out of the box of costumes the school used for Christmas theatricals. Monasteries don’t send out dogs after escapees. I am sure they were glad to be rid of me.

  “Then off with the wig and on with the robe, which I had providentially, if not quite honestly, brought with me. It smooths the path wonderfully. On the plane and back to the embraces of my Bounteous Mother, to dear old Spook.—Brraaaaaph! Excuse me if I appear to belch—Molly, may I just have the teeniest peep at that diamond you whipped out of sight so quickly?”

  “No. It’s just like any other diamond.”

  “Not in the least, my darling. How could it be like any other diamond when it is your diamond? You give it splendour; it is not in the power of any stone to give splendour to you.”