Читать книгу Glamorous Powers - Susan Howatch - Страница 11

Having revealed my most urgent problem in this disgracefully inadequate fashion, I then embarked on the task of confessing my sins. ‘Number one: anger,’ I said briskly. My confessions to Timothy often tended to resemble a list dictated by a businessman to his secretary. ‘I was too severe with Augustine when he fell asleep in choir again, and I was also too severe with Denys for raiding the larder after the night office. I should have been more patient, more forgiving.’

‘It’s very difficult for an abbot when he doesn’t receive the proper support from all members of his community,’ said Timothy. He was such a good, kind old man, not only in sympathizing with me but in refraining to add that our community had more than its fair share of drones like Augustine and Denys. My predecessor Abbot James had suffered from a chronic inability to say no with the result that he had admitted to the Order men who should never have become professed. The majority of these had departed when they discovered that the monastic life was far from being the sinecure of their dreams, but a hard core had lingered on to become increasingly useless, and it was this hard core which was currently, in my disturbed state, driving me to distraction.

Having mentally ticked ‘anger’ off my list I confessed to the sin of sloth. ‘I find my work a great effort at the moment,’ I said, ‘and I’m often tempted to remain in my cell – not to pray but to be idle.’

‘Your life’s very difficult at present,’ said Timothy, gentleness unremitting. ‘You have to deal with the young men who knock on our door in the hope that they can evade military service by becoming monks, and then – worse still – you have to deal with our promising young monks who feel called to return to the world to fight.’

‘I admit I was upset to lose Barnabas, but I must accept the loss, mustn’t I? If a monk wishes to leave the Order,’ I said, ‘and if his superior decides the wish is in response to a genuine call, that superior has no right either to stop him or to feel depressed afterwards.’

‘True, Father, but what a strain the superior has to endure! It’s not surprising that you should be feeling a little dejected and weary at present, particularly in view of Father Cuthbert’s recent death, and in consequence you must now be careful not to drive yourself too hard. You have a religious duty to conserve your energy, Father. Otherwise if you continue to exhaust yourself you may make some unwise decisions.’

I recognized the presence of the Spirit. I was being told my vision needed further meditation and that I was on no account to make a hasty move. Feeling greatly relieved I crossed ‘sloth’ off my list and rattled off a number of minor sins before declaring my confession to be complete, but unfortunately this declaration represented yet another evasion for my two most disturbing errors of the past week had been omitted from my list. The first error consisted of my uncharitable behaviour during a disastrous quarrel with my son Martin, and the second error consisted of my unmentionable response to the unwelcome attentions of a certain Mrs Ashworth.