Now I Know (19 page)

‘Can't be many opticians in town,' Tom said, reaching for the yellow pages. ‘Worth asking. If nothing comes up, the specs can still go to forensic today.'

He found the place, ran a finger down the list.

‘Four. One optician—dispensing. Three opticians—ophthalmic, whatever the difference. All in the centre. No sweat.'

He scribbled names and addresses into his notebook, carefully replaced the specs into their protective bag, winked at the sergeant, said, ‘Worth a try,' and made for the door.

†

NIK'S LETTERS
:  

Dear Julie
:

I'm in the monastery Old Vic wanted me to visit. He brought me here today. They think I should have a change after what's happened.

At least you've come out of the coma. That's great.

I know you won't be able to read this yourself. Maybe one of the nurses will read it to you. Anyway, I wanted you to know where I am. They've said I can telephone every day for news of how you are, and I'll smuggle out these messages from a spy in a foreign land every day too.

This place isn't anything like I thought it would be. And as I know you're a fan of monasteries, I'll describe it for you, so you've another—and a male one!—to add to your collection.

The house is largish, a square stone building in a public park on the edge of town. Downstairs there are four big rooms and a big central hall with three tall windows, Regency style, looking out over the park, and a wide stone staircase with an ironwork banister curling up from it. Quite grand really. The house dates from the sixteenth century, but what you see now is early nineteenth, when some rich exploiter thought it would be nice to have as a country cottage. Some cottage! He also landscaped the grounds. Now the whole thing belongs to the local council, who rent the house to the monks because nobody else wants it, apparently. The public use the park for walking their dogs, jogging, etc., and of course for nefarious activities that must be educative for monks!

One of the rooms is a dining room. The monks call it the refectory. One is a sitting room, with squashy second-hand chairs and tatty scatter rugs on a polished wood floor. They call this the visitors' room. It's where they see people who have just dropped in for a short visit. One is the kitchen. Big enough for all the usual mod cons plus a table that will seat eight. And one room, near the front door, is the chapel. Everywhere, except the visitors' room, is sparely furnished. White walls. Bare polished wood floors.

The chapel is panelled in dark oak from the days of the rich gent. A modern altar made of a square slab of light oak supported by a single up-swelling pedestal, so the whole thing is like a fountain of wood. Grandad would like it: good craftsmanship. More like a piece of sculpture in wood than an ordinary altar. It's set in the middle of the room, diagonally, so it's like a diamond in the cube of the room. A lamp made of stainless steel shaped like a crown hangs above it. Round three walls are long prayer benches, also light oak, and standing on stainless steel legs, with bench seats behind for about six people each. Above the three-quarter panelling, the walls and ceiling are painted white. White-globed lights hang down above the prayer benches, three lights to each bench. The windows are casements and look out over the park. Polished floor. No religious images except for a plain wooden cross, light oak again, set on the wall without prayer bench. Under it there's a lectern made of slatted strips of light oak, holding a Bible for readings during the services (which the monks call ‘offices'—but I suppose you know that). It's quite an austere place, but feels very peaceful and smells of incense, which I liked, a kind of sweet, woody smell that reminded me a bit of Grandad's workshop when he's cutting certain kinds of pine.

I like the chapel very much. Not all the usual churchy clutter or fusty atmosphere. It's odd in an interesting way as well. The combination of old and new, dark and light, clean lines and uncluttered space. I feel I want to stay in it you'll be surprised to know!

Upstairs, there are ten or maybe twelve small bedrooms. Some of them have been made by partitioning rooms as big as the ones below. The monks call them cells. Each has a single bed (I guess they'd have to be single, come to think of it!), a chest of drawers, a desk or table, and a sit-up chair. Bare polished floors again. Almost everything white, except for the desk and chair. A wooden cross on one wall.

There are two bathrooms. There's a larger room packed to bursting with bookshelves—they call it the library. And there's another larger room with some easy chairs in it, a table with magazines and newspapers on it, a couple of small desks, a record player, a bookcase in a corner, and a TV set. And a carpet, but an old threadbare thing. The monks call this the common room.

The upstairs is called Enclosure, because only the monks and male guests (ahem!) who are staying in the house are allowed there. Something to do with the monks' vow of celibacy and keeping silence.

Behind the house there's an area that used to be a tennis court. The monks have fenced it off so they can't be seen by people in the park, and have converted it into a vegetable garden, with a small greenhouse and a bit of lawn where they can sit. They hang out their laundry there too. (I don't know why, but I was surprised by the washing. Somehow, I never thought of monks having washing. As if they were permanently clean! But I suppose they get their underpants dirty, like everybody else.)

We arrived about an hour and a half ago, at 3.30. The only person here was a man I thought must be an odd job labourer. He was dressed in mucky old shirt and jeans and a pair of battered trainers. He was scrubbing the kitchen floor. Old Vic didn't bother to ring the door bell or anything. Just walked in, went straight into the chapel, did a quick prayer, then led me into the kitchen, where this bloke was on the floor, scrubbing the boards. As soon as he saw us, he jumped up, all smiles and hello-o-o-s. Brother Kit.

Didn't know what to make of him at first. He's very small. Not stunted or anything grotesque, but nearly a miniature person. His head is quite big, though, with sticking-up brown hair cut short, almost a crew, which makes him look topheavy, and he wears glasses with thick frames. But he is quite different from the leptonic OBD. He and Vic were a sight: Laurel and Hardy. Old Vic loomed and boomed, Bro. K. squeaked and chuckled.

Couldn't believe this funny little bloke in mucky gear was a monk. Not just a monk but a priest as well. He put a kettle on a vast Aga stove, shifted us into the visitors' room, said, I'll be back in a jiff, disappeared for five minutes, then returned carrying a tray with mugs of tea and a plate of cake on it. But now he was dressed in a very light grey, very loose and floppy sort of down-to-the-ground frock with a hood on the back, and a black leather belt buckled round his middle with a plain wooden cross hanging from it at the side. His habit of course.

He said: Thought I'd better look the part, and grinned.

I felt peculiar, the way you feel when you're fully clothed in a sitting room with someone dressed only in their undies. One of you is out of place. And you never know what to do with your eyes because you can't help staring at the other person, especially at the private parts. Only, in Bro. K.'s case, the private parts were his chunky wooden cross and his mucky cuffs sticking out from his habit's big-mouthed sleeves, and his trainers poking from under his skirt.

All a bit comic, like he was an actor dressed for a play who had strayed among the audience instead of waiting back stage. But somehow fascinating as well.

While we were drinking our tea and eating the cake (Old Vic put it away like he hadn't eaten for months) Bro. K. chatted ten to the dozen with Vic about things I could only half understand, and made jokes they laughed at like naughty schoolkids. Very unholy, both of them. Didn't think Old Vic could be so lively. He really enjoyed himself.

All sorts of questions kept coming into my head I could hardly stop myself asking. Like how Bro. K. got to be here, and what he did about sex and not having any money, and where were the other monks? And ridiculous things like did he lift his skirts when he went for a pee or was there a secret opening?

After tea he showed me round, then took me to my cell. I felt like a condemned sinner being locked up. He left me to get settled in while he has a private session with Old Vic. I expect Vic is telling him about you and me.

Soon as I unpacked (not that I brought much, just a change of clothes and toilet stuff and a book), I sat at my desk by the window, which looks out across the park that slopes down to a small lake (a large pond really, with a few ducks on it) and across to some trees that mask the main road. And suddenly I felt very lonely, even a bit panicked, knowing I'm to be left here on my own.

I expect you think this is pretty much a laugh, considering what you're putting up with. But it just occurred to me that I've never ever been anywhere on my own before. I've always been with someone I knew—my mum or dad when I was little, Grandad since the breakup, teachers and friends on trips from school—and you to Cambridge.

Makes me feel scared, would you believe! Like I was when I was still a kid, and even a little like I felt at the worst time during the breakup, not knowing what's going to happen next.

And I'm nervous about whether I'll do the right thing, or make an idiot of myself. I mean, how
should
you behave in a monastery?

Why did I agree to come? What am I doing here? It was a goofy idea. And why should I have a ‘rest' while you . . .

Footsteps along the landing. Bro. K., I expect, coming for the condemned man.

Love,
Nik
.

†

JULIE
:   Dear Nik: I got your tape. Thanks for visiting Mum. I know she likes to see you. She can talk to you about it in a way she can't to anybody else, because you were there, and that helps.

Yesterday, they said they were so pleased with my progress that they're hoping to take the bandages off in about two weeks. Then they'll know whether my sight is okay or not.

Today's Thursday. Thor's day! Every Thursday I spend some time praying about what happened, and for all the times when bombs are set off and hurt people. I heard on the radio there was another today, in Beirut again.

I was thinking this morning about my bomber. He must have known he'd die. Probably thought of his death as a martyrdom. Dying for his cause. But they never found out who he was, or what his cause was. The police told me nobody claimed responsibility. They thought he was probably acting alone. They said there is more and more danger from individuals or very small groups who nobody knows anything about but who are determined to use violence, and use it without warning, unpredictably, and don't mind if they die, in fact they want to die, as if their own death were part of their protest.

Perhaps my bomber was like that. And when I think about him, I wonder if he was trying to say something about the way we live, the sort of society we live in. That's what most terrorists seem to be doing. They want us to change, and live differently—in some way they believe would be better for mostpeople. And I want that too, so why wouldn't I ever let off bombs?

People who set: bombs off must have a very strong belief that they're right and they want to change things as quickly as possible, even if achieving it means they die doing it. I can understand that. I can even understand why they're often admired and made into heroes. Everybody with any goodness in them wants to change our way of life for the better of poor people, and the sick, and the oppressed, and are against those who keep all the power and wealth to themselves. And it seems so hard to make things change that I can understand why some people get frustrated and go to extremes to try and bring about even a small difference. And letting off bombs is dramatic and satisfying, I imagine, like making big banging noises when you're little, and startling the grown-ups so that they pay attention to you.

Perhaps one of the reasons I'm not keen on that sort of protest is that it always does seem to me a bit childish.

But that's not the main reason I don't go along with it.

People who bomb and shoot want change now, this minute. They want the world of our lives—the world they can see and touch—to be different at once. And they believe this is possible. All their belief is concentrated on their lives—their physical, bodily lives—here and now. Even if they believe in God and a life beyond what we can see and touch, they want Heaven on earth, and they want it immediately. And if they can't have it, they prefer to die. So they're ready to suffer and sacrifice themselves, and other people too, in order to bring it about.

Perhaps they're right and it is possible. To make changes quickly, I mean. I suppose in theory it is. I just don't agree with them. I love the world I can see and touch. I long to see and touch it again. Not being able to has taught me just how much I love it. But it's also made me realize something else I was only half aware of before. Which is that, however much I love the life I know, I've never really felt that I belong here. I mean, I've never felt that the world is my home. To me, it's like a waiting room at a railway station or the departure lounge at an airport. I'm on the way from somewhere I can't now remember to a destination I know very little about yet.

This particular waiting room, our world, is quite nice to be in. Most of the people are considerate and thoughtful. But some, it's true, aren't too pleasant, and have bagged the best seats and behave a bit as if they owned the place and push their way to the head of the queue for the food and drink. Quite a lot of people have even forgotten they're on a journey at all, and have started settling in as if they expect to stay here for ever. And they cause quarrels and even fights, because they're afraid of losing their place, or they want more space, or more than their fair share of what's on offer.