rituals and the ancient English words they were used to. The funny thing was that even the most fuddy-duddy members of the congregation, like Mrs Topping, thought Old Vic a bumbling old fuddy-duddy, but though they enjoyed grumbling about him or making fun of him, they liked him all the more for that.
I said, ‘So you became a Christian because Old Vic was a fuddy-duddy.’
She laughed. ‘Let me tell you a story.
‘A long time ago, I mean one thousand five hundred years ago, in the north of England at a place called Jarrow, near the mouth of the Tyne, there was a monastery. Those were the days when monasteries were the universities. Monks could read and write, whereas most people, even powerful people, couldn’t. One day a young boy came to the monastery wanting to be a monk. He was far too young to join, but he was so keen and so clever and so insistent that the monks took him in and allowed him to live with them till he was old enough to start his training.
‘Soon after he arrived a terrible epidemic devastated the population. Perhaps it was cholera or perhaps it was something like the flu we still suffer from and which would kill many of us if we didn’t have modern medicine to protect us. Whatever it was, the disease killed one monk after another. By the time it was over there was only one very old monk and the young boy left alive.
‘Though he’d survived the epidemic, the old monk knew it wouldn’t be long before old age carried him off. Then, all that the monastery stood for – its religious wisdom, its store of knowledge, its traditions, all the many years of prayer and worship and work, which had never been broken since it was founded – would die with him. And he knew that once this special way of life was lost it could never be revived and never be replaced. To him, this was a far worse and more painful prospect than the thought of his own death. He
weeks. And he refused point blank to allow me to go to Mother’s funeral.
Losing Mother when I was so young and without any warning has left me with an ingrained fear of loss – of losing those who matter most to me. But that day when I sat under the kissing tree I hadn’t yet brought together in my mind the loss of my mother and my fear of the loss of my childhood home and at the same time the loss of the first person with whom I’d fallen passionately in love and who had become the focus of my daily life.
Calmed by the river but still confused I went back home and spent the evening trying to read some more of To the Lighthouse (and failing), watching a movie on tv (a blur), consulting Doris and Dad about which restaurant to take Will to next day and, as light relief, depilating my legs, using the strip-on-and-rip-off method, the crisp sharp pain of each rip-off providing a refreshing contrast to the dull roil of my unhappiness.
Next morning I chose and printed out three of my mopes for Ms M. and dressed them up in a little booklet. Around midday I posted the booklet through Ms M.’s letterbox as I cycled by on my way to suss out Mario’s Bistro, which Doris had suggested ‘might do for a classy cheerio tryst’. She’d added, ‘You’ll need something really fetching to wear. Meet me at twelve-thirty at G-Spot.’ G-Spot was a woman’s shop I’d never have dared go into on my own (too expensive). Later, Dad came to me in my room, and handed me a fan of twenty-pound notes, saying, ‘Mario’s will cost a bomb. Here’s something to help. And watch out for Mario. Camp as a row of tents. If he gets half a chance he’ll have your Will quicker than blink.’ ‘He won’t get a blinking chance,’ said I, ‘and anyway, he’d be barking up the wrong tree where Will is concerned. But thanks for the money, Dad, and the tip-off.’
couldn’t bear it, and he puzzled and prayed to know how he could prevent it.
‘He could find only one answer. He must teach everything he knew to the boy in the hope that he could carry on after the old monk’s death till others came to join him. That meant the boy would have to learn almost everything by heart, for much of what the old monk needed to teach him was not written down. It had always been passed on by word of mouth and by example from one monk to another. Usually this took years of study and practice. But the old monk knew in his bones he didn’t have years left to him. The boy would have to learn everything in months, perhaps in weeks, rather than years.
‘It was a daunting task. But they set about it, and hour after hour, day after day without a pause, the old monk taught and the young boy learned a whole world of knowledge and an entire way of life.
‘And they succeeded. When the old monk died, the boy knew enough to keep the work of the monastery going. And eventually some monks were sent from brother monasteries to help him, and young men arrived who wanted to join the community. So the monastery was saved from extinction and the old religion was kept going for many more years. In fact, just as after a severe pruning and a hard winter a plant will grow and blossom better than ever when spring comes, so did the monastery at Jarrow. And it went on flourishing until power-hungry people with different ideas put an end to it.
‘As for the boy, his name was Bede. There’s no question that he was very clever. He grew into a scholar with an international reputation and is still famous for writing the very first history of the English people, which is regarded nowadays not only as an important work of history but as a great work of literature. It’s full of good stories.’
‘Is it true?’ I asked. ‘About Bede. D’you think it really happened?’
I knew he and Doris were being extra kind because they wanted to repair our recent rift and because they knew the hyper state I was in, and I didn’t mind a bit.
Mario’s was stuffed with business people pigging on expense accounts. Pink tablecloths and real flowers on each table. A sleek young man in a white shirt, bum-hugging black trousers and a long dark-green wrap-around apron, and a svelte young woman, white shirt, ultra-short black mini, black tights and short dark-green wrap-around apron were serving. Mario was touring the tables in full-dress chef’s gear mine-hosting the guests. (Doris said he came from Liverpool and was about as Italian as a chip butty but was a really good chef and everyone loved him and thought him a hoot.) Was this what I wanted for Will and me? Too pretty, too petty bourgeois? I’d have turned tail and legged it but Mario was too quick, hallooing me in a stagy Italian accent, and me being me, so easily suborned by a desire to please, I booked a table for two at seven.
Doris was at G-Spot when I arrived and already had half a dozen items lined up on a rail. She knew from past experience I’d be a bag of indecision shopping on my own, be intimidated by the sales women and end up buying something totally wrong not to say disastrous. For Doris a clothes shop was a great big dressing-up box, which you were meant to play with till you found something exactly right. On my own, the sales women would be bored and condescending. With Doris, they were like kids at a party. After an hour, I’d tried on just about everything that was anywhere near suitable for one of my age, shape, size and colour and was so in the swing of the game that I became a catwalk queen performing for Doris and her acolytes.
I ended up with a classic black sheath cut to perfection. I’d never have picked it out myself or thought I’d look so good in it. Strange that just one garment can transform not only your appearance but your whole feeling about yourself.
‘No idea. A legend probably, like most stories about saints. But it’s a good story whether it actually happened or not, because it tells a truth about life, which is what all the best stories do.’
‘So you’re saying that when you sat next to Old Vic and said Evensong, you felt like the boy in the story?’
‘A bit. Not that I thought about it, to be honest. One thing led to another. I followed my nose, if you want to put it that way. I’d rather say that I followed my intuition. I still do, even though I do think things out more now than I did then.’
‘I’m like that too.’
‘I know. We’re both intuitive thinkers, rather than brain thinkers. Our glorious, lovely sixth sense.’
‘Will’s a brain thinker, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Is he? Yes.’
‘Anyway, you l
iked bumbling Old Vic because he didn’t pressure you, and you felt like you were saving the old religion, and you followed your intuition and became a Christian.’
‘There was a bit more to it than that. Remember the colours. It was then I knew, just knew, there was more to us, more to life, than just stuff.’
‘You mean, you knew there was a god?’
‘That there was a spiritual dimension.’
‘And?’
‘No more. Not today. There’s too much to tell all at once.’
We were sitting in her kitchen. She got up and started to clear away the coffee mugs and the uneaten biscuits.
‘Well, tell me the most important things. And why you stopped being a Christian. I have to know about that now or I’ll just expire from waiting.’
‘No you won’t.’
‘Oh, please. Please please please.’
She laughed at Little C’s hammy wheedling and gave me a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek – a first.
And that was not the end of it. Doris decided new shoes were required, and off we went to Well Shod. A semi-boot in midnight-blue suede with heels higher than I’d worn before.
‘Now your hair and a manicure.’ And it was into a chair at Hair Wave before I could say, ‘And a manicure?’
‘God, look at the time!’ Doris said. ‘I’ve a client in ten minutes. Must go. You’ll look great. Really elegant.’
‘You shouldn’t have,’ I said. ‘It’s cost a fortune.’
‘My pleasure. Enjoy. I’m so proud of you, Cord. Really proud.’ And she was gone before I knew what to say, barring a mundane ‘Thanks!’ But what else can you say with your shampooed head bent back in a neck-lock over a basin?
I needn’t tell you it took the rest of the day to get myself ready. Doris came home about six and lent a hand with my makeup and final touches. We decided it was time for me to play the drama queen. Dad was instructed to answer the door when Will arrived and to keep him waiting in the hall at the bottom of the stairs. I would make my entrance like Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love and beauty, daughter of the great god Zeus, descending from heaven to confer her charms on the handsome youth Adonis, the mad passion of her life, who – just to finish the story – was eventually killed by a wild boar, poor boy, which so distressed Aphrodite – also known as Venus by the Romans – that the gods took pity on her and arranged for Adonis to spend half of each year with her and half in the underworld. When the boar killed him, the blood from his wound turned into a flower, an anemone, which Aphrodite wore between her breasts. In remembrance of this beautiful story, told by Shakes in his long poem Venus and Adonis, my favourite of the Greek myths, Doris loaned me a gemstone brooch (mock of course) in the shape of a red rose, which I pinned over my left breast; and a choker, a thin band of white gold, to finish off the effect.
And so I was ready for the performance. Life as a play, the
‘All right! All right!’ She sat down again. ‘Well, let’s see … I’ll tell you about Silence, St Julian and the Big Bang. But that’ll be it for today.’
‘A big bang! Oo, Miss M.! Confession time. I’m all ears.’
She laughed. ‘Not that kind of big bang, thank you, cheeky.’
Silence. After helping Old Vic with Evensong for a few weeks, Ms M. realised one day as she sat in the church after Old Vic and dog had trooped off into the vestry, that what really appealed to her more than anything was the silence. Not the quietness – no one talking, no music playing, no tv or radio, no one bustling about, not even any noise from traffic, which was shut out by the thick walls of the church. Not that. But silence itself. For the first time in her life she knew that silence was a lot more than an absence of sound. And just as she had suddenly seen the colour of colour on the day of her godspell, so this day she felt the silence of silence. And just as colour had amazed her and changed her view – her understanding – of the world, so now silence calmed her and filled her with what at the time she called peace, because she couldn’t think of a better word. She was so affected by this that she thought of it as another godspell.
After that she got so hooked on silence she stayed on after Evensong as often as she could so that she could live in what she now thought of as the Silence (capital S). And this became so important to her that she felt it was a necessity – something she needed to keep her healthy.
At the time, when she told me this I felt – what? – a bit uneasy. A bit afraid perhaps. Ms M.’s face changed as she spoke and I suddenly felt as if nothing was solid in the room, nothing was real. I don’t know quite how to explain this. I was hearing something of a kind I’d never heard anyone say before, as if I was being let into a secret which was too much for me to bear. Now as I write this and after all that has happened to me since then, I can understand much more why I
world as a theatre. I couldn’t help remembering, as I strutted my stuff down the stairs to Will, the day he called when Izumi and I were covered in cracked facials and swathed in towels and I was vexed with him. This time he didn’t mock and laugh but stood as one thunderstruck, wide eyes fixated, mouth agape. I think he even gasped. Dad stood beside him, as much in wonder; he’d never seen me like this either. But then I’d never seen myself like this. I was as much a surprise to myself as I was to them. Doris observed from the landing, gleed, she told me later, by the sight of two men struck dumb by the artifice of women. I made the most of every step not only for the effect but also because I wasn’t used to such high heels and though I’d rehearsed numerously that afternoon, I was still worried I might trip and tumble to the feet of my Adonis, which wouldn’t at all be an entrancing glissando for Aphrodite.
Will had equally made an effort and did indeed appear well cast as Adonis. White T-shirt under an unbuttoned knee-length black coat with an Indian collar, deep deep deep green designer jeans and rust-red Cat boots. I wanted to jump him on the spot. And yet a thought skated across my mind even as I lusted for him: how much a boy, not yet a man, he still looked. His grownup’s clothes, though they fitted with the same lovely ease as the casual things he usually wore, somehow betrayed the still immature boniness of his body and emphasised the innocence of his face – his eyes glowing, untried, unharmed, his lips almost girlish, the skin of his face smooth and puppy-fleshed, no man-stubble or lines or brute roughness banishing its youth. I felt suddenly, with a shock, and for the first time, older than he.
Dad drove us to Mario’s. We were to phone him, if we wanted him to pick us up when we were finished.
I’d kept our destination secret from Will. I wanted it to be a surprise. But as soon as we got out of the car I knew I’d made a mistake.
felt as I did and what Ms Martin was telling me. You have to remember that I was only sixteen and no one had ever talked to me about spiritual matters in this way before. I am so grateful that Ms M. did.
One day she told Old Vic about her discovery. He was so pleased that for the first time he talked about himself and his faith. He too needed the Silence. But what Ms M. called the Silence, he said, was what he called God. Or at least, it was when he was living in the Silence that he felt in touch with God. Whatever or whoever God is, he added.
‘Would you,’ he asked her, head down and patting his dog, ‘like me to tell you more about your Silence and my God?’
And that’s how he began to teach her – about prayer and meditation (his word for living in the Silence), about Christian beliefs and Christian traditions of spirituality. And that’s why Ms M. came to think that the Silence and Christianity must be the same thing, and why she decided to be confirmed and become a full member of the Church of England – because of Old Vic and the Silence.
St Julian. It was while Old Vic was preparing her for confirmation that Ms M. brought up the question of he and him. She was a budding feminist at the time. One thing that really put her off, she told Old Vic, was that Christians always talked about God the Father and God the Son, and how all the disciples were men, and everything was paternalistic and patriarchal and
male-dominated.
‘It seems to me,’ she argued, ‘that if God is everywhere and in everything – you know, omnipresent and ubiquitous – like you say, then he can’t only be male, can he? He can’t just be God the Father. He has to be God the Mother as well, doesn’t he? And it’s all very well Jesus coming to earth so that God could be a human being like us, but why shouldn’t he be a she? Females are half the human race, remember. And if your congregation is anything to go by, most Christians are
When Will wasn’t pleased he went absent. Not just quiet, not just saying nothing, but absent through the whole of his being. It was as if he’d shut down and was functioning on automatic pilot. Before we were even inside Mario’s he’d switched to automatic.
It was too early for most people, so the place was only about a quarter full; everyone turned and stared at us. We were certainly the youngest by at least ten years and mostly twenty or more, and we did look pretty stunning. And though Will didn’t mind being stared at when he was performing with his band, he hated it at other times. It wasn’t that he was shy or embarrassed by his looks, just that he liked being an observer, the one who noticed others, not an object of attention. But it was more than that. He didn’t like Mario’s. It was too smarty-pants, too showy. And knowing I knew that even when I booked, I began to flagellate myself as we were led to our table. The trouble with surprises is that the recipient might not be pleased, and Will wasn’t someone who would pretend to be pleased when he wasn’t. I admired him for this, but it made life difficult sometimes. The confidence my expensive appearance had given me drained into the floor through the spiky heels of my new shoes, and all of a sudden I felt as over-designed, as pretentious as the restaurant. Will, I thought, must have gone off me as much as he was off Mario’s.