The Breath of Peace (18 page)

Seeing he had their attention, John continued: ‘I have been immeasurably grateful for William coming to help us keep to the strait and narrow in our accounting during this time after Brother Ambrose's death, God rest him. But we do have to find a new cellarer. I will confess frankly that while I may be called to serve as abbot of this community, in some ways I fill the office very inadequately indeed. That I have been so improvident as to allow us to reach a situation where we have no cellarer and none in training is a profound embarrassment to me, and a clear instance of that inadequacy. But 'tis where we find ourselves, and I must make the best of it. Thank God William was kind enough to come to our aid.'

He paused. Abbot John did not find it easy to admit incompetence or insufficiency. He had to humble himself considerably to make this admission. As he spoke, he kept his gaze fixed steadfastly on the edge of the table. William and Brother Cormac listened to him with sympathy, the confession of personal inadequacy being a feeling all too familiar to them both.

‘Don't be too harsh with yourself,' said William. ‘After all, you thought you
did
have a cellarer to replace Brother Ambrose until your replacement thoughtlessly mucked up that plan. And it's barely two years that you've had to get things in order after a long spell with no abbot here at all. Looking back over those two years, I should say you've had quite a plateful. It certainly felt like it to me. You're doing a grand job.'

John glanced at William with a quick smile, grateful for the comfort of this reassurance.

‘Thank you. You might be surprised to know what an encouragement it is to hear somebody say so. Anyway, never mind that – it's the urgent need for a new cellarer I wanted to talk about. William and I have discussed this, Brother Cormac. He advises me, and I believe he is right, that of all the brothers in this community, the best man to fill this obedience would be you.'

Brother Cormac did not reply immediately, keenly aware of William and his abbot both watching carefully for his reaction. He picked up his knife from where it lay across his plate, and absently cut and poked with the tip of it the small fragments of cheese rind and bread crust that still remained there, as he thought this through.

‘It's a big responsibility,' he observed quietly, after a while. ‘I think I might be too impetuous, and not clever enough. What – if you don't mind my asking – what makes you think it could be entrusted to me?'

William glanced enquiringly at the abbot, who nodded to him that he might make reply to this. ‘You are shrewd. You are perceptive. You are no one's fool. You are impossible to budge on any issue that matters, but you are not dogmatic. You are honest and you are not vain, not susceptible to flattery. You have been the kitchener for years, so you have a good grasp of a very vital area of the provisioning – in the infirmary and the guesthouse and the cottages, as well as in the cloister.'

Cormac nodded slowly, recognizing the truth of this. ‘It feels very daunting,' he said. ‘To be honest with you, I've never thought I'd work anywhere other than the kitchen and, I think you know, I've never wanted to. But… the truth of it is our kitchener is Brother Conradus, in everything but name. He is better fitted to the obedience than I have ever been. Well, Father –' he lifted his eyes to meet John's; ‘– if it's what you're asking of me, what can I say? I will do my best. I don't suppose it was so very easy for you to leave the infirmary work to take up the abbacy. You spoke of yourself just now as inadequate in this seat of authority. I don't see that, but if you want something to make you feel less inadequate as an abbot, me trying to be a cellarer might be just the thing. If… if I can have some guidance and counsel as I learn – especially over Easter and through all the Lady Day administration – I will serve as best I can, if you judge me fit to fulfil what will be required of me.'

‘Brother Cormac?' John could see plainly Cormac's struggle to put a brave face on a sacrifice that cut very deep. His enquiry now searched direct into Cormac's soul, into old memories, allegiance, friendship, that had always been too deep-rooted to let go.

‘Don't ask! Just let it be! I'll do my best. Don't dig about inside me!'

He tossed the knife down with a clatter, then reached forward and began to gather their plates into a stack, brushing the scraps from each plate together onto the top one.

‘I'll take these along to the kitchen, shall I? I mean, you didn't want anything else of me?' He struggled to hold on to an attitude of submissive respect. What had been asked of him felt almost impossible to fulfil; too much responsibility and too deep a renunciation. He needed to be alone for a while to come to terms with the prospect. Understanding this, John released Cormac to go, and William opened the door for him to pass through with his accumulation of crockery all balanced on the bread board and the lantern held hanging from two fingers.

* * *

‘Brother? Are you… has something… what's the matter?'

Brother Conradus stopped in surprise. He held a candle to see his way, and hardly needed more than that for what he had come to do. It was not far off time for Compline. He had not expected to find anybody here.

It was dark in the kitchen. Cormac had set the lantern down along with his pile of plates and mugs and food remains, intending to sort it all out when he'd had a chance to order the muddle of his own head and heart. The austerity of the cold night air felt oddly soothing as he sat down on the scarred old stool by the huge preparation table, its surface nicked and grooved and landscaped into hills and valleys by monks and laymen chopping and scrubbing and scraping over many decades. He ran the flat of his hand slowly over the curving surface, his palm loving the contours worn by the rhythms and routines of faithful, careful, patient, daily work. ‘I want to stay here,' he whispered into the cold and quiet dark. ‘This is where I belong. I want to stay here.'

When they had a hustle on to get the meal ready, this kitchen could be frantic enough: but the work remained basic and simple and manual; it had nothing of the need for sophistication of mind that he imagined the work of the cellarer would involve.

There had been a night in Cormac's very early childhood when he lost everything. The black and crashing waves had flung and whirled and choked him when that ship went down. He had held on tight to his mother's unresponsive body until they succeeded in prising him off it on the shore. He had no clear memory of the event, but he remembered the feeling, and he hated the things that brought it back to the surface. He needed the safety and protection of practical and mundane daily routine. He felt his soul holding on tight to it now, in obdurate determination; and he knew that prising it off to face the turn his life had taken would be a costly business.

Brother Conradus's solemn profession at Epiphany had freed him from the daily routine of novitiate study and given him a greater scope to attend to his
Opus Dei
in the kitchen. It did not in the least surprise Brother Cormac to see him appear even at this late hour, carrying a candle and intent upon some culinary detail left unfinished.

He remembered Brother Conradus surging triumphant into the kitchen last spring, his eyes shining with satisfaction and his hands full of great bundles of ramsons that he had scrambled down the steep banks of the beck's higher reaches to pick. He had given up his siesta time to accomplish that, determined on finding them growing somewhere. Standing there with the aromatic bunches of fresh-picked leaves crammed in his hands he had told Brother Cormac that his mother said ramsons were good for the gut and against wind, good for the blood and against chills and skin breakouts – good for absolutely everything. He had noticed the year before, his first year in community before he was let loose on the kitchen, that the brothers had no ramsons chopped into their salad in the spring; and he thought that was a pity.

This year, released from novitiate obligations, it had been dandelions as well. A few fleeting days of sunshine had encouraged the hedgerow herbs, and everywhere showed an optimistic smattering of new growth. Accordingly Brother Conradus had used his precious afternoon hour every day that week to hunt for baby dandelion leaves and the first of the nettle shoots. If you picked the dandelions when they were tiny,
really
tiny (he had enthused to Brother Cormac), they had a sweetness that equalled their bitterness (‘Here – try one, brother!' It was true), and added a delectable piquancy to any salad. Just two weeks later they would be their usual bitter selves, nutritious and perfectly useable, but not the same.

Brother Cormac worked faithfully and conscientiously. He did his best and experience had brought his efforts to a satisfactory and workmanlike level; but nothing in him came anywhere near Brother Conradus's single-minded devotion to raising the standards of the abbey mealtime fare from the adequate to the sublime – within the budget the cellarer set him and without offending against holy simplicity and humility.

Conradus trod quietly into the kitchen now, carrying his candle, to knead the bread dough he had set ready in the bowl just before suppertime. He had left the yeast growing, feeding on its honey, and the flour all ready with chopped herbs and salt mixed in, a cloth over the bowl; and the cruse of oil standing near the dying fire. It would be ready to mix, and Conradus knew that if he kneaded it now, oiled the lump of dough and left it wrapped in a wet cloth in the cold kitchen overnight, by the morning it would be perfectly risen. He could knock it back and leave it to prove near the bread-oven then while he lit the fire and took it up to heat, and the result would be far superior to loaves made in a hurry from dough with the main rising forced by over-proximity to the fire. But he had not expected to find Brother Cormac sitting by the table, radiating sadness and loneliness as the lantern gave off light.

‘Brother? Are you… has something… what's the matter?'

Cormac looked as though his face had been carved in stone. Brother Conradus judged this could be a long, slow conversation, and he would have no second chance with his yeast once the warmth had gone off the stones of the fireplace. So he carried the things he had set ready to the table where Cormac sat brooding, and began to make his bread sponge, observing a respectful distance in his choice of location, but standing near enough to hear if Brother Cormac spoke low.

Cormac knew he should be scraping off the food remains into the bucket of waste, and at least setting the dirty dishes to soak in some hot water dipped from the big water kettle that stood comfortably on the last red embers. He couldn't be bothered. He watched Brother Conradus, the candlelight making a gentle portrait of his plump, kind face, his capable hands steadily and rhythmically kneading the dough, a focus of human sanity and purpose salvaged from the shadows of the gathering dark. Cormac's own light sat among the dirty, discarded dishes where he had left it.

‘Everything seems so pointless, sometimes,' he said. ‘Like you try and try, but nothing you can build ever comes to anything. Nothing is ever good enough, nothing lasts, nothing is ever your own, nothing succeeds. And after enough empty effort and years have trailed by, your teeth fall out and your eyesight goes, your limbs lose their strength and your hair falls out, you have your food mashed for you and someone steadies your hand on the cup. And then in a sallow bag of wrinkled skin, whatever you had slips out of your fingers and it all runs into the sand. Like the drifting smoke that's left when you blow out a candle. That's all it is.'

Conradus did not reply, but he almost stopped breathing as he kneaded his dough. An aspect of solemn profession that had taken him by surprise and enchanted him entirely was being taken into the confidence of the other fully professed monks. As a novice he had known, he had felt, the sense of only partial trust, the oddly marginal world of the novitiate – a monk but not a monk. And he had looked forward to the day when he took his solemn vows, became fully and properly and for real a Benedictine. But it had never occurred to him how much more vivid his brothers in community would become once they trusted him because he was one of them. As a novice working alongside Brother Cormac, Conradus had found him friendly and relaxed – Cormac's style was informal on every occasion from doling out pottage to taking his place in the sacred eucharistic rituals of Easter morning High Mass. Conradus had never found him aloof or distant. But listening to him now, he felt this moment as the deepest privilege, because he realized that Cormac had never, ever discussed his feelings about anything with him before. Not once. This precious trust came with solemn profession. Brother Conradus thought this discovery so wonderful that he became completely enthralled by the idea; the reality of whatever was happening in Cormac's life receded into the vagueness of the shadows. He kneaded the dough in silence, amazed at the privilege of trust that had come to him, rapt in the treasure of it, saying nothing at all.

Then eventually, glancing up, Conradus said: ‘Did you know, I used to be so scared of you?'

Cormac blinked.

‘Scared of… what? Scared of
me
? Whatever for?'

Conradus smiled; yes, it seemed so silly now. ‘You were in charge,' he admitted softly. ‘And I was only a novice.'

Cormac shrugged, nonplussed. ‘Well… it passes…' he said. ‘Look – d'you mind if I leave the dishes and all that mess until the morning?' Conradus, further surprised by Cormac's asking his permission in this way instead of telling him to wash the dishes or merely commenting that he would be leaving them, felt further overwhelmed by this sense of equality – real brotherhood.

‘Of
course
you can leave them, brother!' he exclaimed, his voice full of warm emotion.

Cormac looked at him, slightly taken aback by the fulsome tone of Conradus's response.