Реджинальд Хилл - Matlock's System

“Till later then,” said the Abbot as he closed the door.

Matlock was already asleep.

He awoke from a dream of Lizzie so real that he was physically excited and put out his hand to seek her beside him. Then he sat up and looked around the darkened room, taking a second or two to realize where he was.

His excitement quickly faded and he lay back, staring sightlessly at the changing dapples of light on the ceiling. Outside, the river which threw the light bubbled and hissed over the stones. It must be running low. It had been a hot summer. Mingled with it were other noises, separable only after many minutes’ quiet listening. A fragment of birdsong. The long hoot of an owl (not very merry in spite of Shakespeare). Occasional water noises which were more than just the flow of the stream. Small things plunging.

If there weren’t so many of us, more of us could hope to hear this, he thought. Then he smiled at the old familiar paradox of the words.

What is the answer then? Compulsory birth control? Surely it’s better to control death than love? But we would not control love only the begetting of children. Then you have an old man’s world, a world in which a man cannot hope to achieve anything worthwhile till he’s seventy or eighty.

The Long Adolescence.

One of my phrases that. Good of its kind.

Was I right?

No matter, thought Matlock as he turned on his side and stared at the old-fashioned curtained window. No matter. What I have seen these past years is nothing of my begetting. It is not what I started.

It is not what I intended.

“It is no matter!” cried Matlock, sitting upright on the narrow, hard bed.

The window drank up his words, diluted them with the river, and washed them away as though unspoken.

He realized that a new sound had joined the noises of pure nature which filled the room. Yet in its way it too was river-like, flowing, swelling, ebbing, sinking.

It was the monks chanting at their evening service in the Abbey.

Now he rose from his bed and went to the window. He was facing the river and therefore quite unable to see the Abbey, but the chant came to him quite clearly now. On an impulse he opened the small window wide and stepped through it — with some difficulty — on to the river-bank.

The night was warm but fresh. He knelt by the water and bathed his hands and his face till he felt fully awakened. Then he moved off along the edge of the Strangers’ House till he cleared the corner and was able to see across to the main group of buildings of the Abbey itself.

When he had arrived at the Abbey earlier in the day, this had been his first view of it for over fifty years. The sight which had met him was one he would never forget. He knew that reconstruction had taken place, he knew the Meek had begun to build again. But still in his mind had been that curious mixture of artifice and nature which is called a ruin, mighty pillars growing from grass; great arched windows framing trees and hills and sky; chambers with floors of turf, and paving-stones with roofs of cloud; birds nesting in clerestories and flowers growing out of capitals.

Instead as they levelled off their flight, then began to drop more sedately towards the grass before the West Doorway, he saw beneath him a complete building, arches unbroken, roofs unpierced, windows glazed, gutters leaded. The sight had struck him so powerfully that he paid little notice to the group of welcomers gathered outside the doorway, until the helicopter landed.

The Abbot had come forward smiling and greeted Francis with a chaste embrace and a kiss on the cheek. Matlock had been treated to a mere handshake, but his attention was still more involved with the building behind than the people in front of it.

“You will see it later, Mr. Matlock. All we have shall be shown to you. But first let us attend to your bodily needs.”

And he had been led politely but firmly away from the Abbey itself across the grass to where, by the river, stood the Guesthouse for Strangers. Then had come the tiredness and the Abbot’s insistence that he should sleep before they talked. Now he had slept. It was time to talk.

It was an eerie experience to move through the soft darkness of the night towards the source of that old music. The west window was only dimly lit and he realized that the main activity of the service would be taking place at the east end. When he reached the door he hesitated momentarily; he had been properly brought up and knew that you never interrupted a man at prayer or sex. If entry had meant opening the double outer doors he would probably have waited, but there was a smaller door built into one side of the large one and it swung noiselessly open at the touch of his hand. He stepped into an ill-lit porch and a couple of steps more took him to an inner door under which shone a faint crack of light from the nave beyond. There was no small door for inconspicuous entry this time and he had gripped the great iron ring of the door handle and was about to turn it when a thin but very bright beam of light flickered across his eyes, then went out.

“Allow me, Brother,” said a gentle educated voice with a touch of Norfolk in it.

Out of the darkness came a robed figure. Matlock was still too dazzled to see him as anything but a silhouette, his grey robes just visible against the general blackness. But when the man opened the door for him and the thin light from the church spilled out he saw that he was a slight, grey-haired man with a smile whose benevolence fitted the robes of his Order.

“Brother Phillip,” said the monk by way of self introduction. “We thought you might care to join us, Mr. Matlock. It is my humble duty this evening to sit at the threshold and welcome any wayfarers who may chance this way in search of rest. Pray enter.”

“Thank you,” said Matlock and passed into the Abbey.

“I will see you later I hope, Brother,” said Brother Phillip, and closed the door gently behind him, leaving Matlock pondering what kind of rest chance wayfarers might expect from the Mark 2 Force Rifle he had glimpsed propped up against the wall before Brother Phillip had closed the door.

But the interior of the Abbey swept such profane thoughts out of his mind. The nave stretched before him for a distance he reckoned at about a hundred yards, and the arch of the roof seemed almost a similar height above, though this he recognized as an illusion caused by the mingling of the dim night light filtering through the clerestory windows with the brighter but even more deceptive shiftings of fume and shadow cast by the torches below. For at first glance the only illumination, at this end of the nave at least, seemed to be these comet shaped brands stuck in brackets attached to every third or fourth pillar. But the eye was drawn irresistibly down the nave, across the transept, through the choir (the terms came unbidden to his mind) to where brilliantly illumined against what seemed the sombre background of a great East Window, the High Altar stood.

He also realized he had viewed this scene before. On the television set at his first meeting with the Abbot.

He turned swiftly and peered up at the dark wall behind. There seemed to be some kind of cavity almost at the very top and he strained his eyes to penetrate the mirk when a rustle of noise behind him made him swing round just in time to see the floor of the nave rise up and burst into a thousand tongues of flame. The truth he realized almost simultaneously, but that almost left enough time to step back a pace and taste superstitious fear deep in the throat.

What had happened was that several hundred monks, dark-robed, cowled, lying prostrate on the floor and shielding close in their hands the small flame of a candle, had stood up.

Now the chant which had caught his attention as he made his way over to the Abbey and which had so blended with the background that he had ceased to notice it, was taken up by the entire congregation and the sound rose with the multiple blaze of the candles and filled the arch of the roof. The light brought the ceiling closer but did not make it any the less impressive. Now the only part of the building in darkness was the corridor of the clerestory where the shadows of the massy pillars, whose double column ran before him down the nave, became even blacker in the new light. Again as Matlock looked up he had a sense of movement, of darker shadows in the shadow but he could not be certain.