Читать книгу Glamorous Powers - Susan Howatch - Страница 25

My cell was in fact not a cell at all but one of the distressingly well-appointed bedrooms set aside for visiting abbots. It lay on the same landing as the Abbot-General’s sumptuous bedchamber, and faced west across the immaculately tended grounds which were bordered by a high brick wall. Our founder Mr Ford, an adventurer who had made his fortune from slave-trading before his miraculous conversion to Anglo-Catholicism in the 1840s, had lived in style on his ill-gotten gains, and his Order, supported from the start by the greater part of his massive wealth, had husbanded their resources with skill.

I have no wish to imply that there is anything wrong with a monastic community which skilfully husbands its resources; on the contrary, every abbot has a duty to make ends meet. But I found it unedifying that a religious order should spend such a large part of those skilfully husbanded resources on maintaining such a luxurious headquarters. I was offended not merely by the antiques in the Abbot-General’s office. The atmosphere of debilitating affluence permeated the entire house and even the novices were pampered by having linoleum on the floor of their scriptorium. As I returned to my grossly over-furnished chamber that afternoon I wondered, not for the first time, how I was expected to pray in it, and to counter my disgust I embarked on some alterations.

My first act was to take down the three pictures and put them in the wardrobe. I like paintings but when I am at work I find them distracting. Then I rolled up the carpet, which was woven into a pattern so exquisite that I had already wasted far too much time gazing at it, and tackled the bed, which I knew from past experience during the annual abbots’ conferences was soft enough to give me back-ache. Having stacked the mattress against the wall I replaced the coverings on the base, which was reassuringly hard, and sat down at the table.

I closed my eyes but not to pray; I was sharpening my concentration in order to plan how I might best master Francis, but the next moment, realizing that I was behaving like some buccaneering politician engaged in a seamy struggle for power with his party’s leader, I checked myself in shame. How unedifying! I resolved to order my thoughts along more salubrious lines, but the more I tried to think like a priest the more I despaired of ever being able to concentrate in that distracting house, and at last, abandoning my room, I sought refuge in the garden.

I felt better outside. At first I merely strolled around the lawn and savoured the sunshine but later my feet carried me through the gates of the cemetery until I found myself standing by the cross which marked Father Darcy’s grave.

Desolation overwhelmed me. I felt lost and adrift, unnervingly vulnerable – and the next moment I was experiencing not only a painful grief but a painful rage that I should have been so abruptly abandoned.

The emotion lasted no longer than a second but I was shocked by the glimpse I had received into such a dark desperate corner of my psyche. I even glanced over my shoulder as if I feared Francis might be spying on me in my weakness, but of course there was no one there and finally, pulling myself together, I withdrew to the chapel to pray.