to perceive. God too can be experienced as a climate, and part of the psychic’s ‘gnosis’ lies in being able to read the barometer which reflects not merely the ebb and flow of demonic forces but the unchanging presence of the kingdom of values, the world of ultimate reality which lies beyond the world of appearances.
It was not until I dismounted from the train at Cambridge that I temporarily abandoned all thought of demonic infiltration. I also abandoned The Illustrated London News; I did not want my men to know I had been reading a magazine. It was a rule of the Order that the abbots should read The Times each day so that they might inform their men during the weekly recreation hour of events in the world, but this was regarded as a necessary duty whereas browsing through even the worthiest magazine could only rank as a distraction.
Resisting the slothful urge to take a taxi I travelled by motorbus from Cambridge to Grantchester and finally, to my profound relief, walked up the drive of my home. I realized then how much I hated that luxurious house which flourished like an anachronistic weed in the heart of drab, dirty, debilitating London. My Grantchester house was neither old nor beautiful; it had been erected late in the nineteenth century by an East Anglian merchant who had shortly afterwards been obliged by his bankruptcy to sell the place to the Fordites, but in its secluded setting at one end of the village it stood in unobtrusive harmony with its surroundings. Returning to it after my enforced absence I found it refreshingly quiet, modest and serene.
‘I’ve kept all the copies of The Times for you, Father,’ said my admirable prior, welcoming me warmly in the hall. ‘I thought you might have been too busy in London to read the newspaper.’
I refrained from telling him that Francis had not offered his copy for my perusal. Reading a newspaper would have constituted intolerably frivolous behaviour for a monk who was supposed to be concentrating on his spiritual problems.
My relief that I was home expanded into pleasure. My best men were all so glad to see me and even the sulkiest drone achieved a smile of welcome. After dinner I briefly interviewed my officers, attended to the most urgent correspondence, dealt with a couple of domestic matters and toured my five-acre domain of flowers, vegetables, fruit-trees, herbs and bee-hives. In the herb-garden the cat came to meet me and I picked him up. A black cat with a white spot on his chest he had been called Hippo after St Augustine’s city, and was a dull affectionate animal like the drone who was responsible for his welfare. After stroking the fur behind the ears I set the creature down again but he was captivated; he padded after me as I completed my tour of the garden and even mewed in protest when I eventually shut the back door in his face.
The bell began to toll in the chapel. I displayed myself in choir, but suddenly as I savoured my happiness that I should once more be worshipping God in my familiar place, I remembered my new call and shuddered. How could I bear to leave? My happiness was at once displaced by misery.
However in my own home I found it easier to regain my equilibrium. Reminding myself that my departure was by no means certain I spent some time reading (the accumulated copies of The Times were a great solace) and later made a satisfactory attempt at meditation. When I returned to my cell after matins that night I was tired enough to feel confident that I would fall asleep without difficulty, and indeed as soon as I had closed my eyes I felt my mind drift free of the fetters which I had subconsciously imposed upon it during the difficult week I had spent in London. I began to dream.
XIII
I dreamt of Whitby, proud arrogant Whitby, who had stalked through the backyard at Ruydale with his tail pointed triumphantly at the sky. Prowling prancing Whitby, living in his monastery but padding off to the nearby hamlet whenever the celibate life became too uncomfortable, clever cunning Whitby, a little battered and scarred like all successful tomcats but still as striking as a racy buccaneer, tough tenacious Whitby who worked hard and deserved his pleasures, lean lithe Whitby, wonderful Whitby – what a cat! Whitby was walking through my dream towards me but suddenly he faded into a black cat, not Hippo of Grantchester but Chelsea, my mother’s favourite cat, serene elegant Chelsea who washed her paws so fastidiously on the hearth. My mother was there too, serene and elegant just like Chelsea, and she was talking to me without words, saying everything she was too reserved to say aloud and making me feel so sorry for my father who was excluded from these conversations because he was unable to hear us in our silence. ‘How lonely you must be with him!’ I said to my mother in my dream, but she answered: ‘No, I have you and Chelsea.’
‘My own children can’t hear me when I talk to them,’ I said to her, and in my dream time was abruptly displaced because my mother had never lived to see her grandchildren. ‘The cat can’t hear either.’ And as I spoke I saw the stupid ginger cat, my children’s cat whom my daughter Ruth had named Goldilocks – which was a ridiculous name for a cat although I had never said so – but whom Martin, enrapt by different fairy-tales, had always called Pussy-Boots. In my dream Betty was slopping some milk into a saucer for the cat and as she stooped I could see past the open neck of her nightgown. ‘You look like a cat facing a bowl of cream!’ she said laughing, and as I took her in my arms the ginger cat watched us, a stupid cat, not trained to be clever, but unfortunately I was away too much at sea to ensure his education.
‘You’re going to talk to me about that cat,’ said Father Darcy, walking into the scriptorium at Ruydale, and suddenly there was Whitby, proud arrogant Whitby, leaping through the window with an exuberance which made the novices laugh, and Aidan was saying: ‘I’m not sure I understand; I’m not even sure I want to understand; but whatever’s going on must stop.’
Then in my dream Ruydale dissolved into London and I was searching the Fordite headquarters for Father Darcy. I searched every room, floor after floor, but he had disappeared and finally I had to confess to Aidan: ‘I can’t go on without him. It’s too difficult.’ But before Aidan could reply in walked Lyle Ashworth, small and slender in an open-necked nightgown, and as she lay down on the bed I turned to Aidan to say: ‘I lied to Francis – I did have an erection after all,’ but Aidan had vanished and when I turned back to the bed I found that Lyle had been replaced by Betty. Betty had taken off her nightgown and the next moment I was consummating my marriage, sunk deep in the folds of the most exquisite pleasure, and yet all the time I was so lonely, so isolated, so ravaged by unhappiness and despair –
I woke up sweating.
The room was filled with the dawn light. For some time I prayed for the further revelation which would validate and clarify my vision of the chapel, but no message imprinted itself on my mind and at last, rising reluctantly from my knees, I trudged to the basin to shave.
XIV
I shall not record the mental torment of the next four weeks as I examined each of my interviews with Francis and lurched from confidence to doubt and from despair to hope. Suffice it to say that I meditated on my crisis as conscientiously as I could and somehow, amidst bouts of the most crippling anxiety, contrived to present a semblance of normality to my community as I went about my daily work. Day after day I prayed for a further divine communication, but God, the utterly transcendent God of Karl Barth’s repellent anti-mystical theology, appeared to have withdrawn from that scrap of finite time in which my soul was imprisoned and no matter how hard I prayed for a manifestation of his immanence I was disappointed.
In Europe God also appeared to be absent. The Germans slaughtered thirty thousand people in Rotterdam, bombed the Channel Islands and abolished the famous motto of France, ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’. In their shock and fear the British seemed to find such events almost impossible to digest; they twittered about tea-rationing (my drones were very cross) and talked righteously about the evils of the ‘chatterbugs’ who threatened the national security by their gossiping. But we all listened to Churchill with a new intensity. I fell into
