Remember Me (11 page)

He was aware of a sense of relief deep in his inner core as he stepped through her door. Here was someone who knew his longing and his sorrow and did not regard it as something to be suppressed or put away—not a cause of scandal but a valid love. He felt himself relaxing as he came in to see her. But it was not like Ellen Cottingham to let a visitor walk in without coming to greet him, and when he saw her, he stopped dead where he was.

“God love you, Mother—you look really unwell! I hadn't realized. I'm so sorry; I should have come before.” William's sense of shock was evident in his face. Her face was flushed and puffy and her eyes fever bright. The labour of her breathing was audible from just within the doorway. Three swift steps took him across the small room to her side, and he bent over her and kissed her brow tenderly, as if he had been her son. This meant the world to Ellen.

“Nay, I'm well enough. Your Madeleine has cared for me night and day. I'm that stuffed with herbs I feel like a fowl ready to go in the oven. I'm better than I was yesterday, and tomorrow I shall be still better again. Anyway, I'm always better for seeing thee.”

He smiled at her, and she saw his real affection and felt it an honour.

“Madeleine tells me you want to talk to me about sin! What have you been up to?”

She looked at him. He found it impossible to read what she was thinking, so he sat down across the table from her and waited to hear whatever she wanted to tell him.

“That's why I didn't go out to sit in the sunshine this afternoon. I wanted to speak to thee in private. 'Tisn't my sin that's on my mind; I was thinking of thee.”

“Lord have mercy on us—is it a sin to even
think
of me now? I must be getting worse.”

She laughed, which made exacerbated her wheezing and started her coughing. She sat for a while getting her breath back and took a sip of water from the small pewter mug that stood on the table at her side.

“That's enough, young man. I haven't much strength even though I'm on the mend. Listen to me now. It came to me in the night—not last night, the night before, when I was really poorly—that I must talk to thee. What was thy mother like?”

William's eyebrows rose. “My mother? What has she to do with anything? In Christian charity I think I should not describe my mother to anyone. And I don't know if it's ‘was' or ‘is'. I last spoke to her about thirty years ago.”

“So you were not close—she and thee? You did not talk—as thou and I are talking now?”

William laughed—-not an especially pleasant laugh. “No,” he said.

“And tha hast no sisters? Tha's not grown up with women?”

William shook his head. “Women have been distant stars to me, Mother. They shine all the brighter for that.”

Ellen smiled but would not let herself laugh. The coughing hurt her chest. “Thee—tha'rt all rogue! Charming and wicked; I know thy kind!”

“It's true, I confess—but in spite of it the company of women has passed me by.”

Ellen regarded him speculatively. “Well, then, art tha ready to hear what I have to say?”

“For sure. I'm listening.”

“One more question first. Before tha came into a house of religion—or since—did tha lie with women? Has tha had lovers before?”

“Before what? Madeleine—or you?”

She chuckled, the net of wrinkles around her eyes closing in laughter, but she said, “Nay, lad, tha must take me seriously. This is important, and tha'rt hedging. Did tha?”

William felt the flush of colour rise in his face, and he so wished this wouldn't happen—he hated the way it betrayed his loss of equilibrium.

“No,” he said.

“Tha'rt a virgin then?”

“Mother Ellen—wherever is this leading? Yes, I—I suppose I'm a virgin. By a bishop's precise definition. I must confess I associate virginity with purity—a clean mind and heart, and I make no claim to that; but no, since you ask, I have never lain with a woman.”

She nodded. “Then that's what I want to talk to thee about. It may be tha will be a monk all thy life. But from what tha's told me, I understand that if the chance ever comes thy way, tha'll make thy life with Madeleine. Am I right?”

William could not remember a time since he had left boyhood behind when anyone's questioning had made him feel so thoroughly uncomfortable and exposed. He could only answer her in the affirmative, but she saw his sense of shame in doing so. She watched him, but he did not raise his eyes to her face.

“Maybe tha should know, lad, that what is true of thy condition is true of Madeleine's too—at least, before she was assaulted by those thugs in the place where she came from. She'd not known a man before that day.”

William sat quite still, taking this information in, his face quiet, betraying nothing now, listening to what she had to say.

“So neither one of the pair of you has learned the arts of love. People think 'tis only like the animals, it'll all come naturally. But I tell thee, lad, there's many a woman disappointed through that philosophy—and in the end a disappointed woman will make a disappointed man. The love between man and woman is only partly instinct. 'Tis also knowledge. If tha has thy chance (and why should tha not? I have prayed for thee), there are things tha will need to get right. All that Madeleine knows for herself, in her own body, of what is between man and woman is violence and fear. Tha'll have thy work cut out for thee to woo her to a place where she is not afraid and can welcome thee. And how can tha do that if no one's ever told thee how to please a woman, what to do?”

She paused and looked at him, but he made no reply, remaining silent and impassive, but not indifferent; waiting, alert to what she was telling him. So she continued, “I'm going to tell thee, then, what tha needs to know. If it's not knowledge tha needs ever, what's the harm? If it comes in handy, well, tha'll thank me when that night is done. Listen well, then—for it's in my mind that no other body is likely to tell thee this.

“Before ever tha takes a woman to bed, tha must court her—not at the beginning only, when friendship grows into love; I mean every time, every evening tha holds out hope will come down with the nightfall to making love when the two of you retire to bed. Tha must make her laugh; tha must remember the endearments, the compliments; make her feel treasured, make her feel adored. Tha must woo her, find her eyes wi' thy eyes; tha must make love in a thousand ways before ever tha thinks of leading the way to the bedroom.

“Take time for conversation with her—women do not like to make love with strangers. The man who works all day, comes home, eats the dinner she's cooked, quaffs his ale, falls asleep and snores all evening, then turns to the woman handy in his bed to grab his rights and satisfy his wants need not be surprised to come home one fine day and discover she's left with the handsome gypsy who came to sell baskets at the door.

“Talk to her, lad; look at her, listen to her. And wash. She'll be hoping to find a man in her bed, not something like a lump of rancid bacon.

“Then, when it comes to the bedroom, here's four words tha should remember: patient and tender, light and slow. Hast tha got that? Patient and tender, light and slow. Love can be ardent and passionate, but not hasty or greedy or rushed.

“A woman wants to feel she has been taken reverently, like the host of God in the holy sanctuary, not torn apart and devoured like a hot roast bird on the kitchen table. Patient and tender, light and slow.”

She went on to tell him with an explicit candour he found quite astonishing—and illuminating—of the techniques of love. She talked of the bodies and responses of women, about timing and finding the rhythm of love. She spoke of how to touch and kiss a woman to please her, as well as of trust and gentleness, of the etiquette of the bedchamber, its courtesies and kindness.

As she talked, her wheezy voice slow and her breathing difficult, he listened intently, never interrupting her or looking at her. Some of what she told him made him blush; he could feel his heart beating as he imagined what she described, and he hoped desperately that when she looked at him she would not see how her words stirred and aroused him. Then finally she had done.

“There. That's all I wanted to tell thee.”

He sat in silence. Across the abbey court, the bell began to ring for None. He didn't move.

“I think tha must go, my lad. And I am tired now. Come again soon to see me; tha'rt a blessing to me.”

But William did not move to go immediately. He remained exactly as he was, thinking over all she had told him, considering it and committing it to memory. Then he smiled at her, and there was something shy in his smile that she liked, not the cynicism that he used to hide behind.

“By my faith, mother! I'm lost for words. I hardly dare stand up. How can I thank you? Keep on praying for us. And if the chance ever comes my way, I'll remember what you told me. Glory! How could I possibly forget?”

He leaned across the table, and he took her hand and kissed it. “God keep you. I hope you feel better tomorrow. I'll come back and check on you as soon as ever I can. Thank you. Really, thank you. Nobody else in all the earth would have done that for me.”

“Aye, well—there are gifts hiding in old age, but a body wants sharp eyesight to see them for what they are. One of the gifts of an old woman is the liberty to talk freely with a man. Take it as the gift of an old 'un—and may it be wisdom tha can put to good use one day.”

“Yes. Amen. Bless you, dearest. See you soon.”

Her eyes were bright with love for him as she watched him go. As he went into the choir for the office of None, Ellen Cottingham also took time to give thanks to God. She thanked him from her heart that as the evening of her life drew down to night and falling darkness, she had been given again the thing she had lost and longed for, the gift of a son.

William had never found the afternoon office especially gripping in either content or form. On this day his body was present in chapel, but his mind was entirely elsewhere. Sitting, standing, kneeling, he said and sang what he should, but his thoughts were filled with old Mother Cottingham's careful, comprehensive, and disquietingly vivid advice: “Patient and tender, light and slow.”

He tried to imagine what he might be thinking about, but he couldn't quite make it come real. The materials for his imagination were not there. Very few people had touched him, held him, in the whole course of his life. Of his mother's touch he had vivid memories of being dragged by the wrist from places where he had hidden among the outbuildings, to be more easily and conveniently thrashed by his father in the house. He must have been quite small then, he supposed. He had known the kiss of peace—sometimes meant, more often not—with his brothers in community in different places over the years. He thought of John's touch, careful and serious, on burns and bruises. He thought of Michael's touch that always had a smile and kind words to go with it. And whenever he recalled it to mind he could feel again, as if it happened now, Tom's embrace of forgiveness steady and strong. But to make love with a woman? Her body would be very different, he thought, from a man's. And her touch would be different too. He tried, but he couldn't imagine it—though he remembered vividly enough what it had felt like to hold Madeleine in his arms and kiss her. So he simply stowed away in his heart the advice he had been given, all of it carefully heeded and memorized and none of it forgotten, in the small but stubborn hope that it would be of use one day. Or night.

As the community, reverent and faithful, observed the rite ordained for the office of None and concluded with the beautiful last prayer—“May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace”—William was thinking, “patient and tender, light and slow.”

“Amen,” he murmured with the others.

When the office had ended, he lingered on for a while in the stillness and peace of the church, resting his head against the wooden panelling at the back of his stall—but only lightly, because it was carved and therefore uncomfortable. He let his being float and his mind drift, hovering over the prospect Mother Cottingham's words had conjured in his imagination… wishing… dreaming… He allowed his memory to wander back to the one precious hour that summer night when he had held Madeleine to him and kissed her… and kissed her again. When he reflected upon their comprehensive inexperience in such things, he thought it had been very far from clumsy, and they had both done almighty well. Every moment of that hour was etched on his heart forever, and he revisited it with the most indescribable longing. He knew he should be doing something more constructive with his time, but he just couldn't bear, not quite yet, couldn't bear to let it go. And then it began to feel more like torture than reverie, and he thought he'd better stop. He couldn't have this, however much he wanted it, and if he tormented himself with it too long he thought he might go out of his mind. Nothing seemed more likely to bring him back to inescapable reality than a visit to the infirmary and Father Oswald.

During the same stretch of time William was sitting in the chapel thinking… remembering… imagining… dreaming… Abbot John was muttering expletives about some of the new accountability practices his new cellarer's assistant had instigated throughout the whole community. John had agreed to these readily, seeing that they would support thrifty habits and good stewardship of their resources—which were, after all, not their own but God's—but he had not thought through, at the time of giving his permission, what the impact of the changes on his own life might actually be.

Today he had to return to the checker a tally of what he had used and when—candles, firewood, wine for his guests, vellum, sealing wax, ink; the list seemed to go on and on and must be produced if he wanted to put in an order for new supplies. It was Brother Thomas's job really, but at this time of year his experienced help with the harvest was needed as well as appreciated. July had been a dry month in the main, but a few spectacular thunderstorms bringing torrential rain had flattened a not insignificant proportion of the grain crops in the fields. What remained now in September was precious, and this dry warm spell might be crucial in gathering it in. Tom had promised to call in after None, as John had guests in the evening, but from Terce to None he was up on the hill, hard at work in the fields.