The Greening (37 page)

I approached quietly, feeling an empty ache in the pit of my stomach. I stepped closer to read the inscription – “In loving memory of Annabel Lee, died 1986, aged thirty-eight years. Out of the darkness and into the light.” Poor Annabel had been dead fourteen years! She had been dead five years when I first started looking for her. I felt sad, compassionate, angry and cheated, all in one muddled emotion. I felt as though I had been looking all along for a ghost. How was it that she had seemed so real, so flesh-and-blood, so alive? I felt a deep sense of loss, mingled with pity, for this woman, who felt like a friend, whom I had never met.

She had died young, no more than a few years after her meeting with Frieda Bonhart and those sad, last entries in her journal. No name of anyone who would miss her was on her headstone. No flowers were on her grave. She had been forgotten by the world. Here she had come to the end of her journey and here my quest for Anna – Annabel – ended. At the edge of her grave was a patch of snowdrops, their delicate white bells trembling gently in the keen, light wind. I shivered. It had become cold. It was time to leave.

At the appointed time of three o’clock I returned to Sister Eleanor’s studio. Once again, we settled ourselves comfortably in the old wicker chairs by the window. As she poured the tea, the Sister asked, “Did you sleep well?”

“Better than I have in months, thank you, Sister.”

“I’m so glad that you decided to visit us again. I hope this is a place where you find sanctuary.”

“It is. But it’s also a place where I find I ask myself lots of questions…”

“About a personal Calvary?” Sister Eleanor handed me my teacup and offered biscuits. With the kindest expression of loving concern, she said, “We need to come to Calvary so that we may reach a depth of understanding. We become whole through our existence in the body, experiencing the joy and pain of life and learning through our relationships.”

“It sounds as though we’re meant to suffer…”

“No. But we all do. Don’t you agree that most of us only learn the hard way? Julian says we were made to be happy, that we were made for love. We are given a means of living in peace and love, whatever the world may throw at us, through the practice of contemplative prayer.”

“Meditation?”

“Yes, it’s the same process. Through contemplative prayer Christ carries out his redemptive work, which is to reconcile our outward, everyday consciousness – our thoughts, impressions, desires and emotions – with the inward depths, the part that is already at one with God in peace and love.

“Through the power of Christ, we’re saved from the futility of trying to fabricate meaning and a sense of self out of the world of everyday experiential consciousness. And this is salvation: a state where our outward selves live in harmony with the inward depths, in divine union, peace and freedom. The primary meaning of the Greek word for salvation is wholeness.”

“But the world is still a painful place to live…”

“It is. Julian understood that very well. But, once we have found that place of unity, when the time of great suffering comes, our personal Calvary, as it eventually does for all of us, we can accept it and live with it. We are enabled to do so because we know that our acceptance brings healing into our world, our time, our space. Julian
explains that God makes us the great gift of allowing us to share in the re-creation of the world through love.”

“Do you mean that when someone raises his own consciousness, he raises the consciousness of the world?” I repeated Ismene’s assertion.

“Exactly so.”

“I’m still not sure I understand why God allows bad things to happen.”

“This question is at the heart of Julian’s book. She was told by Jesus that she must trust God’s word that, despite everything, all shall be well.”

“From what you’re saying, it seems we have to simply trust that one day it will all make sense…”

“Contemplative prayer gives us the means by which we are able
to trust. We find a place, another consciousness, where we are nourished. We are given grace, and by grace comes faith. It cannot be done by intellectual endeavour. This is the work of the heart,” said Sister Eleanor.

“Then the writer of the journal – you’ve read it?” Sister Eleanor nodded. “She could have found the redemption and release she wanted so desperately?”

“If she had called upon God to bring her safely through, yes.”

“She didn’t, though. I don’t believe it’s likely.” I told Sister Eleanor the whole story: how I had come across the book, become intrigued by Annabel and fascinated by Julian, tried to trace Annabel and finally, by means of the letter, visited her grave.

“I wanted so much to believe that it happened for her, that she found meaning,” I said. “Now I’ll never know the truth.”

“How can we discern the truth of any situation?”

“By knowing the facts – and we don’t.”

Sister Eleanor shook her head gently. “Facts alone are not enough. They have to be interpreted. And only through God’s grace can we interpret them truly, for only God has the whole picture, only God sees into our hearts. That’s why we’re told not to judge one another. The imagination can bring us closer to God, to see through his eyes, to see what is real. The imagination is the
instrument of the soul. So, shall we use our imagination to try to touch upon the truth? Shall we try to make sense of Annabel’s situation? How exactly does she finish?”

She handed me the journal. I turned to the end of the narrative and said, “Well, she says she has reached the conclusion that she’s on the trail of the Holy Grail, and that the Grail is the cup that gives everlasting life, and the search for the cup of Christ is the search for the divine in each of us.”

I read “‘But the wine in the cup has a bitter taste. In Gesthemane, Jesus asked if it might pass from him. He knew, as I am beginning to understand, that those who drink from the cup must undergo a crucifixion. And beyond that, I trust, the other side of vulnerability and exposure, lie redemption and release.’ And there she stops. It’s so frustrating. My feeling is that if she’d got her life back together she would have finished her story. She would have written her play. The abrupt ending seems to suggest that things went badly wrong for her and she went under.”

Sister Eleanor said, “It looks very much that way, doesn’t it? But let me offer you an alternative possibility. Let us suppose that when Annabel left the journal with Miss Bonhart all those years ago she was at a very low ebb, as the evidence seems to suggest. Perhaps she went to the Winchester literary festival in an attempt to hold on to what felt like the remnants of normal life, to assure herself that there was still a world to which she belonged.

“She might, in search of succour and solace, have visited the cathedral, as she did in Norwich. Perhaps she might have heard the choir rehearsing for evensong. They might have been singing a familiar hymn, with words that touched Annabel – such as, perhaps, ‘Oh love that will not let me go’. Do you know the hymn?”

“Yes, I do…”

“Let us imagine that as Annabel sat listening to those wonderful voices, singing with such purity of expression, she may have felt she could not bear to go back to the life she had lived. Her search for something she needed desperately but could not find may have become too much for her. Perhaps she felt she must assuage her
desperate inner hunger and loneliness, either fill that empty space inside or obliterate everything. Perhaps she had come closer to the edge than she realized. That is easy to do.”

“Yes.”

“Let us imagine Anna walking out of the cathedral and finding her way to some peaceful place, perhaps the city’s water meadows. She may have walked along the bank of the stream for several minutes, not really quite sure why she was there. Then, can you imagine that she may have gone right to the water’s edge?

“She may have looked at her reflection in the water, and wondered if there was any point in going on. It was late afternoon, and becoming dark. The water looked cool and inviting. She thought:
It would be so easy to simply stop, to put an end to it all, to quietly slip away
.

“Suddenly she hears again the beautiful singing of the cathedral choir… ‘Oh joy that seekest me through pain, I cannot close my heart to thee, I trace the rainbow through the rain, and feel the promise is not vain that morn shall tearless be…’ She realizes suddenly that in the crucifixion love and grief co-existed, and hope was born out of suffering and apparent failure. It was possible.”

I said, “Sister, how can you be so sure… you’re not imagining this, are you? You know the story… You met Annabel. It’s true, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I knew her. I knew her well.” The Sister leaned forward, put her hand over mine and pressed it gently, saying, “I am Annabel.”

I was stunned. How was it possible? Sister Eleanor was Annabel?

“But you can’t be. You can’t possibly be. I’ve seen her grave!”

“I’m sorry to give you such a shock.”

“But – what happened to you, after Winchester? This isn’t possible. How can you be Annabel?”

“The only answer to that is, by God’s grace! I can’t tell you how much it meant to me to see my journal again. Let me tell you the rest of my story. But first, I think you need another cup of tea!”

While I tried to take in Sister Eleanor’s astonishing revelation and make sense of it, she poured me more tea and handed me the cup.

“I am sorry. This is a dreadful shock for you,” she said.

“But – I saw your grave!”

“The grave is that of a dear friend who borrowed my false identity. Let me start at the beginning. I shall tell you everything. Are you all right? Would you like some air?”

“No. No, please. I want to hear your story.”

“Very well. While I was in Winchester, I saw, in the festival programme, that Freida Bonhart was to give a talk on how to get a book published. I decided to go. I’d been thinking I might do more research on Julian and write a novel, rather than a play. When I arrived back from the water meadows it was almost time for the talk, so I went straight there. I had the journal in my bag.

“After the talk, on an impulse, I asked Miss Bonhart if she would read my manuscript and give her opinion. I hadn’t put my name on it because really, at that point, I hadn’t intended showing it to anyone. As you’ll have observed, it’s more a personal journal than anything else. I’d thought of it as the basis for a piece of work, nothing more. If I’d been thinking straight I would not have had the temerity to foist something so raw and incomplete on poor Freida Bonhart.

“When I walked up to her, I realized that I ought to introduce myself and the name Annabel Lee came into my mind. In the hubbub, she must have heard it as Anna. I seemed to remember that the poem was about obsessive love and a girl who drowned. I was feeling confused and uncertain. I don’t know why I didn’t simply give my real name. I think I felt I had no identity, and so my name had no relevance. It’s Eleanor Thornton, by the way; that’s my old, worldly name, at any rate. There was some thought in my head about finding a new identity. I really wasn’t thinking clearly.

“That night I had a very strange dream. I was in a vast library somewhere, and someone was showing me rows and rows of books. This person was guiding me, it seemed. He or she took me along row after row, and all I can remember the person saying was, ‘Can you find the one you are looking for?’ Then my guide said, ‘Don’t forget, this library is open all the time; you can come here
whenever you wish, night or day.’ I didn’t understand the meaning of the dream, but it left me feeling calm and peaceful.” I was startled, remembering my almost identical dream.

“The following morning I went to the cathedral again. I sat there for quite a long time. When I looked at my watch I saw that it was midday. I hurried to Frieda Bonhart’s hotel, with the intention of retrieving the manuscript, or, if she felt inclined to read something so raw, to at least give her my name and address. But they said she had already checked out and returned to London.

“As I drove back to London, I realized that I would not be able to tackle a new play or anything else. I became aware that I was losing my grip on all the things that were familiar to me. I didn’t feel able to concentrate on anything.

“What was I to do with the rest of my life? Could I continue to try to make a career as a playwright? Should I return to teaching? I had done very little work for several months and was running out of money. I felt I had achieved nothing with my life. There had been times when I had felt I was making a worthwhile contribution: when I was teaching, and when I saw one of my plays performed and watched the audience – it happened once or twice – motionless and silent, engrossed in the action on stage. But all that had gone.

“My change of heart in the water meadows at Winchester had saved my life. I had been given hope. But though I never forgot that there was hope, I had not yet completed my journey to Calvary. In my dream about Julian she had spoken – or I had imagined she had spoken – of hope… ‘Hope always lies through and beyond despair…’”

I said, remembering the words, “‘To discover hope, we must move into the darkness and risk the loss of the few remaining reference points that seem to make some sense of the bewildering landscape.’ I’ve read the passage many times.”

“I really came to understand the meaning of those words,” said Sister Eleanor. “I had lost my reference points – career, success, reputation… what Julian calls ‘these things that are so little, in which there is no rest’. I had let people down and was no longer
considered reliable. I had always taken pride in my work and felt deeply ashamed of my failure.

“But failure is an opportunity for God to come in, to heal and to love. Only when we become vulnerable do we allow him to reach us. When people asked Jesus why he ate with publicans and sinners, he replied, ‘Because I’m here to tell sinners that God loves them.’ Only when we see no way forward and know we’re helpless do we at last allow God to take charge.

“Some part of me knew I was about to disappear from the world and would not want to be found. And that’s still true. I don’t want to return to the old me. I have a new identity, in the real meaning of the words.