The Rest Is Silence Read online

  The Journey Gone

  I had already booked my passage in the steerage of a Ten Pound Pom ship returning to England. Income from my parents’ estate—I received royalties on my mother’s stories which had been published in book form for some years along with a small pension—and my warehouseman’s day job and weekend bar work at an RSL club1 in Sydney provided both the requisite income and the exclusion of time to spend it. There was a tribe of us, working two or three jobs, stacking up the money like a bar handy’s2 glass stack, along with hopes to play it out for as long as we could when we got to Europe. We wanted to make every penny stretch as far as it could.

  I had another secret card up my sleeve besides my relative wealth—a British passport because of my father, who had been born in Bermondsey. It was his experience as a lighterman that got him on to boats out on the Thames, war service in the Royal Navy, after which he worked his passage on a merchant ship to Australia, where he met and married my mother, and eventually found him piloting a ferry on the Brisbane Water.

  We drank and played our way across the Pacific Ocean, with little indication as to our place in the world. A camaraderie developed in which our excesses and payment for them were part of the common account. Duty free booze was an enormous temptation to which we yielded too often. Even at the seemingly ridiculous prices, it could bite into savings. Unlike some of my fellow travellers, I was not going to act like a millionaire just because booze was cheap and there was little else to do. Which wasn’t true. There was the pool, deck tennis, board games, even a library, but this seemed to pass by many of the younger passengers. For some the trip was a dual crossing, with liquid beneath the hull and in the person. There was a whole world awaiting us at Southampton and I wanted to be able to look around and live it up a bit when I got there.

  Despite my financial acuity, I was in many ways an innocent. The easy way of men and women together revealed unimagined opportunities. Shipboard romances led to an establishment of codes—a tie over the door handle, a towel in the corridor, a look over the drink being handed to you—to alert us that one of our number was ‘entertaining’ in the four bunk cabins we shared in steerage. Privacy was gained by lottery. The one who fixed an assignation first had the right to the cabin, unless a prior arrangement had been made.

  The journey extended my education and was the unravelling of my moral structure, such as it was. I was never very religious. Church attendance was something that was part of my family’s life—my father somehow found a place to tie up his inboard motor boat in a cove near St Paul’s, carry up his magneto, and still look presentable in a suit inside the oldest church on the coast. For all that, I realise now that I became relatively well versed in the Bible and church life. This was a testament to my parents, the local church and particularly those who came to our public school on Fridays to lead our scripture classes. Yet here was fun, the company of the unleashed and the untroubled, and it seemed churlish not to partake of the low-hanging fruit on offer.

  I sought to make my encounters significant. For the most part I shared my erotic energy with one young woman who had done me the flattery of speaking of a range of aspirations for her future in England, the Continent and, even at the start of the adventure, of what she would do when she was back ‘at home’. The invitation to her cabin was a surprise in itself. What followed was a revelation.

  About a month into the trip I learned, by accident as she and one of my companions emerged from her cabin, that she was casting her net a little wider than me. In a mixture of excitement and pique I approached my friend’s cast-off object of lustful affection in the bar that night. I was stunned and delighted to be welcomed with full privileges, as High Churchmen used to say.

  That eased me into a broader, though hardly extensive, range of dalliance. The next fortnight allowed me to understand variety in sex was wider than I had ever imagined. It was, in many ways, the beginning of a decline which I repent of but, shamefully, on occasion still find some pleasure in recalling. I once saw a play in the West End—I cannot recall its name or author—in which former comrades-in-arms discuss their past. One sighs, slaps his thigh, looks up into the air and says, ‘Ah yes. Great days. And great sins.’3

  All this took place as the ship moved into new and different climes and places. The changing, at times frightening, conditions at sea: sometimes a flat, glossy calm; the wind making its approach apparent in gentle, darkening patterns on the water; the albatross that hung over the stern of the boat, unperturbed by exhaust from the funnels, diving with alacrity on the food waste when it was thrown from the lower decks. And the storms in which even the well seasoned sailors seemed fearful. As well they should.4

  And the ticking off of the ports—Wellington, where more rowdy travellers came on board, Punto Arena, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro. A stunning, threatening, passage through the Straits of Magellan (you felt you could just lean over the rails of the ship and touch the cliffs as we passed).

  Beauty, exotica and excitement were tinged by the reality of oppression. A number of places we embarked at were under military rule and that somehow—properly, I now think—dampened our spirits. It took a day or two before the party atmosphere was restored onboard.

  By then we thought ourselves on the other side of the world, which to a bunch of Australians and New Zealanders, we were—Tenerife, Lisbon, Vigo, then Southampton. From there the train to a dim, foggy London.

  These are, in some ways, my monastic antecedents. My dissolution continued on land. The travels and excursions in geography and flesh were unsustainable.

  Thank God my excesses landed me in a hedge by St Candida’s. Yet, even now, I wonder how I made the transition from accidental hedonist to monk. ‘Love’s redeeming work is done,’ goes the hymn.5 It refers, of course, to Jesus and his saving of the world. If one were presumptuous—as, indeed, anyone who professes faith has to be at some time—there is an extension: Love’s redeeming work is being done. As it says in another hymn, ‘My chains fell off and I was free’.6

  1. Returned and Services League, the equivalent of the (Royal) British Legion.

  2. An Australianism for someone who collects the empties in a pub or club.

  3. Neither have I been able to source this play.

  4. One of the random pieces of paper I found in the envelope left for me at Care Home had a transcription of the Coverdale version of Psalm 107:23-31. It could almost be inserted at this point:

  They that go down to the sea in ships:

  and occupy their business in great waters;

  These men see the works of the Lord:

  and his wonders in the deep.

  For at his word the stormy wind ariseth:

  which lifteth up the waves thereof.

  They are carried up to the heaven, and down again to the deep:

  their soul melteth away because of the trouble.

  They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man:

  and are at their wit’s end.

  So when they cry unto the Lord in their trouble:

  he delivereth them out of their distress.

  For he maketh the storm to cease:

  so that the waves thereof are still.

  Then are they glad, because they are at rest:

  and so he bringeth them unto the haven where they would be.

  O that men would therefore praise the Lord for his goodness:

  and declare the wonders that he doeth for the children of men!

  5. By Charles Wesley.

  6. And Can It Be, also by Charles Wesley.

  Seeds in the Garden

  This all came out wrong. Still, the progression of events is more or less accurate, inasmuch as I could ever remember it with clarity.1

  The day broke like a box of eggs dropped onto the pavement. There was a sound of tearing canvas as I tried to look up. I was in no state to recognise anything. The light was too bright. I closed my eyes in the vain hope that by doing so the crashing ache in my head, in a place just behind my p
upils, would evaporate.

  A sound, far removed from the harshness of the piercing illumination, came to me.

  ‘Oh dear.’ A pause. ‘Oh dear oh dear.’

  I forced open my eyelids. I put my hand over my brow to make an inadequate shield.

  ‘Oh dear oh dear oh dear.’

  The reality of my circumstances began to emerge. I was by a hedgerow. My hair and face were speckled with dry vomit. I had been lucky enough to turn away from my emesis, saving myself from a rock and roll death. A crumpled sleeping and shoulder bag, their contents disgorged as a material echo of my stomach’s, lay on the ground nearby. My wallet, passport and other valuables were in an ironically neat pile by my dishevelment.

  I tried to sit up. Awareness of my physical state was immediate. The headache was life-threatening; my throat was parched; my eyes ached and were filled with what felt like sand.

  ‘Oh dear, no. We can’t have this. Can you stand up?’

  Hands were placed under my armpits. I made a sound. I thought it was an affirmative response to the question. I threw up.

  ‘Oh dear. We need you to get you to the house. You can’t stay here.’

  I closed my eyes. I must have dozed off. When I opened them again, with the same sensations that greeted the first attempt, I could make out two men in black robes. Hands were placed under my armpits again and I was grasped by my feet. I was swinging in the air. I was lowered into a curved shell, my head and feet dangling from different ends. There was an edge of metal behind my knees. A tugging at my feet brought my back on to a slight angle. A pillow was placed behind my head.

  I looked to see my legs dangling between the handles of a large wheelbarrow. It was in this carriage that I made a bumpy and physically challenging—for both driver and passenger!—ride that ended at the Guesthouse of the Community of Saint Candida.

  I was led to a bathroom.

  ‘Can you undress yourself?’ I grunted and shuffled off my clothes. Water was turned on and I stepped into an ocean of abrasive warmth. I gave myself a long, cleansing, guilt-ridden bath. I got out, rubbed myself down, chucked myself into the robe that had been left to me and was led by another black-clad man to a bed, into which I collapsed.

  I am told I slept for twenty-seven hours. The Guestmaster of the monastery would pop in occasionally to check on me. I had a clearing head, one good enough to ask the gentleman who handed me a small towel, soap, toothbrush and toothpaste, while giving me directions to the nearest bathroom, to ask on my return from my ablutions:

  • where was I?

  • what had happened to my Kombi van?

  • who were the occasional men in black I saw?

  • where was Donna?

  ‘Hang on.’ The man who had furnished me with toiletries put his hand up. A bell was tolling not too far away. ‘I will be back in about twenty minutes.’ With that he left.

  I looked around. I was in a small, spartan, but comfortable room. The single bed was solid, with a mattress on the hard side. Not that I had noticed. There was a hanging rail, some open space between a lounge chair (upright, with wings to catch a nodding head) and a small wooden table-desk, with a simple wooden chair in front of it. Above the desk was a bookshelf. Over the bed’s headboard was a crucifix.

  Hang On returned with another man in black.

  ‘Ah, you’re up. Good. You look much better.’ He extended his hand for me to shake. ‘I am Father Martin. And this is Brother Kentigern. I am the one who found you. Do you remember?’

  I made some vague response.

  ‘It is time for lunch,’ Kentigern said. ‘Normally you would join us in the Refectory but our meals are silent. If you follow me to the Guests’ Parlour, I will bring you a tray.’

  ‘First things first,’ said Martin. I realised that this must have been Oh Dear. ‘We’ll fetch you some clothes. Your own were not really in a fit state to keep, I’m afraid. What we have may not be up the mark fashion-wise, but at least they will have the advantage of being’—he paused and coughed—‘clean.’

  1. The opening section contained something of a disclaimer at its end. I have taken the liberty of moving it from where Columba had placed it to make a preface of it. I have placed it in italics. Even so, the style and content is so out of keeping with the rest of his memoirs that I am surprised that he did not just screw it up and bin it (as, indeed, I have been tempted to do on a number of occasions.) Yet the passage has its part to play in the discontinuous narrative that I have inherited.

  A Closer Walk

  The exotic surroundings—for so they seemed to me—of my shipwreck allowed much exploration both of the landscape and, later, self. At first I was puzzled: how soon could I escape the quiet and spartan world I had been dropped in? In the first days, as I puzzled on my future, other questions repeated themselves: could I recover my Kombi? Should I return to London? Where was I to travel next? Would it be possible to reconcile with Donna? Why had I behaved so badly?

  My hosts seemed content to allow me to cruise along. The parts of the buildings to which I was allowed were a conundrum—on the one hand, I was permitted to wander at will, but then it would appear that access was suddenly restricted. Little signs saying ‘Community Only Please’ popped up on doors, gates, even one into the cemetery. There were no locks, no ropes, no substantial evidence of prohibition. It all seemed to hinge on an honesty system—we ask you not to trespass, but it is up to you. (Little did I realise that this was the CSC way: there are rules, but what you decide to do about them—and the consequences of your ignoring them—is up to you.) I was strangely compliant in this setting, despite my curiosity of what lay beyond the designated confines. Each encounter threw up the question: did I have to respect this censorship? In the end, I chose to do so. After all, these blokes had saved me—or so it seemed to me—so it would seem churlish to step over the imaginary lines in the sand they had respectfully drawn.

  So I explored the places I was invited to or allowed access to. One of the first was the Guests’ Parlour. This room—parlour was not a term I had encountered before—was lined with bookshelves on which sat a collection as random as I had ever seen—not that I had spent much time gazing over the spines of books. This compilation Brother Kentigern referred to as the Guests’ Library. It was in the Guests’ Parlour, but somehow it seemed to inhabit an independent space within it.

  The Guests’ Library was a mixture of novels old and new, poetry, biography, birdwatching—quite a lot of birdwatching, as it happened—historic (with a definite emphasis on the ecclesiastical) buildings. Some of which I eventually found to my tastes, though some bore exotic titles—or it seemed to me—which launched or continued to steer readers on their spiritual paths. Years later, when I was Guestmaster, oversight of these shelves was to become a part of my tasks.

  The weather being very good and the countryside dotted with paths—faint tracks with stiles at either end of a field—I sought to escape the defined, but always potentially breachable, confines of the monastery. Outside there were woods, a lake, even a village some miles off into which I stumbled when lost, only to be offered friendly advice on how I might get back to my lodgings.

  I started drawing up ‘maps’—more scribbled instructions to myself in which I noted turns ‘L’ or ‘R’ (left or right) and invented a code somewhat at variance from the official Ordnance Survey. CH meant church; PO accounts for the official Post Office; P was a pub; crosses and doodles designated stiles, gates and other landmarks. I realised that I had to put in some kind of legend. The code had to be understood by others. In time, I sketched out four or five walks, varying from one that took half an hour to the longest which could release someone from the monastery for three hours.

  Later these peculiar hand-drawn guides to the surrounding countryside came to be approved, more or less, as official monastery issue. I would photocopy them and leave these in the Guests’ Parlour. More than once a new copy would be required when a guest was caught in the rain. This, of course, was years
into the future when I was acting as Guestmaster.

  Guests often asked about ‘good’ walks. All of them were refreshing; none was too strenuous; but good exercise was gained from them. It would be pompously pious to say that somehow I found the inner walk more interesting than the outer one…

  …yes, it is pompous…

  The explorations of the area done, I itched for something to do. I mentioned this to Brother Kentigern. He smiled, rubbed his hand excitedly and said, ‘Oh, I am sure we can find something for you. Indoors or outside?’ I opted for the latter, only to be led to a vast vegetable garden.

  ‘On your knees,’ said Kentigern. He laughed when he saw the panic on my face. ‘Not to pray. Weeding. Brother Garden will be here in a moment.’ He left me there and soon enough Father Martin arrived, pushing the wheelbarrow that had transported me to St Candida’s, gave me a hand fork and spade, a sieve to throw the weeds into, pointing out a pile to which they were destined and left me to it. For four days.

  The Cloud-Filled Sky

  One time, toward the end of my novitiate, I was having—as I have had, and do have still, at unregulated intervals, if I am honest—something of a spiritual crisis. Numbers in our ranks had thinned. Matthew had left, pursuing his comic graphic art. Cyril was that bit ahead of me and I thought he would make the perfect monk, as he seemed the perfect novice. But he too had quit the cloister despite his profession. Somehow, I found out much later, as his girlfriend had predicted, that the spiritual gains of foregoing female companionship—‘a waste’ she had said—would not outweigh his love of her and Poplar. The first of the two won out and so he returned to Chrisp Street market. So here I was, the last of a bad lot, feeling not only drained but useless.