It’s been more chilly; the air is damp and it’s rained a lot. The days of sitting on the bench under the cherry tree in the infirmary garden are gone for the time being. The evenings are darker. The flowers in the physic garden have lost their colour, all just seedheads now.
Even though the evening is damp and dark, the infirmary door still stands open. So I go in. I’m looking for Father William. I’m not sure who will be here. Somebody always stays overnight, because the old men who live here are frail and can't just be left — but the infirmary brothers take turns to do that. Actually, they’ll have said Compline already, so it may be that no one will even talk to me — they’ll be in silence now, won’t they? But I just go with the connections along the Earthways that bring me here. It is what it is.
Coming in to the infirmary frater, where the big fireplace is, I find who I’m looking for — William, sitting by himself, gazing into the glowing remains of the fire.
I’m walking quietly, and my shoes aren’t noisy (Birkenstock sandals), but he hears me and looks round.
“Can I talk to you?” I say. “I had something I wanted to ask you. It seems a bit big. I thought it would be better not to say it in the middle of things. There’s always so much going on in the infirmary. I thought this could be a good time, but I do know you’re in silence. I can just go away if you’d rather.”
They are lucky here, in this building. They — like the abbot — have actual chairs by the fire, not just stools. It helps, if you’re old and frail, to have something to rest against, and not have to hold yourself up with no support. William just indicates the other chair drawn up near the hearth, for me to sit down.
“What did you want to ask?” he says. I know if the Silence is broken then it absolutely cannot be by small talk, so I refrain from remarking on how peaceful and cosy it feels in here, and just get to the point.
“Somebody wrote to me,” I tell him. “I don’t know who it was, actually. But this is what they said. I’ll read it out to you:
‘I know that Madeleine is no longer with us, and I don’t know how far back Pen can travel, but I would dearly love to know more about her love story with William. They were both well established in their lives when they met. They had both found stability after terrible crises and they were welcome in the community as single people. I wonder what they sensed in each other that made them upend their way of life to become husband and wife? Did William find tenderness in Madeleine? What did she find in him? What good things did they learn from each other?’”
Dead silence. I suppose I’m not surprised. He leans forward and rubs his face in his hands. “Madeleine . . .” he says: “oh, Jesus . . . I . . . This is for . . . I mean, you make this public, don’t you?”
“It’s all right,” I tell him. “You don't have to, if it’s too private. Not if you don’t want to. If it helps to know, I did ask Abbot John, just in case you might need permission to talk about it. He says you can.”
And he chews his lip, and looks into the fire, and then he says, “All right, then.”
So I wait, and watch him blink, watch the thoughts move across his face, and the layers of his soul that I can see, here in the firelight and the light of the candle left out on the table close by. He sighs.
“Can I read that?” he asks. I give it to him, and he reads through it carefully.
“Let’s take this one thing at a time, then,” he says. “So, to start with, that we were both well established in our lives when we met. Were we? What does the person mean? Is this a gentle way of saying we were both getting on a bit?” Amusement flickers in his face. “Old enough to know better, maybe? That would probably be true. Your reader says we had both found stability after terrible crises. Well, look — when I met Madeleine, she was all over the place. She was frantic. Savage, frankly. She had John in bits. It was coming back here with us that brought some measure of peace, of safe haven, I think. And me — well — ah, heaven, my life has been one long nightmare of terrible crises starting at Day One. I . . . it never . . . I can’t find my way to . . . Oh, never mind.
“I think — though you can surely see why this is what I wanted to think, so I could have been wrong — that the healing came because we found each other. Be that as it may, your reader is entirely right to point out that our welcome here was as single people. And yes, that was the source of so much futile struggle and so much anguish. Trying to stop it, trying to renounce it. . . I couldn’t, you know, I just couldn’t. It . . . Neither could she. Like someone asking you to move a volcano off the heat so it doesn’t boil over. Not going to happen.
“Then this that asks what we sensed in one another that made us upend the lives we’d put in place. I’m not sure what to say. Some things are inevitable, irresistible . . . possibly. I just . . . it was . . . I wanted it so much. I loved her so much. What I sensed in her, though? Well, it’s there in John, too. A steadiness, a sanity, a fundamental goodness, a grounded, practical earthy — erm — charism maybe? A gift. For healing. For somehow going straight to the heart of a thing, for walking undeterred past every defence I put in place as if it wasn’t even there. I think . . . well . . . why did Adam and Eve become man and wife? Because they were the only people in the world. And so it was with Madeleine and me.”
He looks down at the paper and reads through it again.
“Did I find tenderness in her? It would be hard to put into words the absolute intimacy, the astonishing sweetness of our love. I can only say it felt like being made whole. That I let her see all the jagged, broken, painful, ugly, misshapen shards and rubble inside me, and let her touch that, and let her hold me and kiss the wounds inside that hurt so bad they drove me almost out of my mind if I didn’t nail them down hard. She found it all. She opened it up. She touched it and made it better. I think that might be tenderness.
“And what did she find in me? Oh, well — a very hard time, part from anything else. I didn’t really speak her language. I didn’t have the skills of a householder, and she found that frustrating, of that I am certain. To tell you the truth, I’m not really sure what she found in me, except maybe pit after pit of ugliness and pain that went down to the torn and cauterised roots of my soul and she got the unenviable task of trying to put it right — and she did, she did. We argued a lot, and damned near wore each other out. It wasn’t an easy marriage; but, oh, there was so much love.
“And it says, what did we learn from each other that was good? ‘Learn’. That sounds like skills, maybe. I can’t imagine she learned a great deal from me. She already had the skills she needed for married life. I think she felt safe with me, and that meant a lot to her, I believe — though she never said so. I guess she learned patience, and restraint. She had to. Some of the things I did and said had her at her wits’ end; she thought I was crazy. Feeding the fox and the crow, and not slaughtering the pigs. Then I broke things and burned things and forgot things she never, ever would have — and it did not come easy to Madeleine to get past or overlook any of that. She had definite ideas about what mattered and how things should be done.
“What I learned from her . . . More than anything, I think, I learned that it’s possible to open yourself up and let someone in and they won’t hurt you — at least not intentionally. I learned . . . no . . . What happened was I found the thing I craved so desperately and ravenously, needed so badly . . . just to be held. To lie with my body against hers, and have her hold me in her arms. There’s been so much fear, you see, so much strategising and scheming and contriving, and just raw physical pain. I cannot tell you what comfort and relief it brought to be held.”
He doesn’t look at me, but he says, quietly, “Is that enough, do you think?
And I tell him that yes, I think that probably answers the question.
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