Реджинальд Хилл - Matlock's System

Suddenly the chant rose to a climax then stopped. The silence was as complete and eerie as if the birds had stopped singing in an orchard on a summer’s day. The light dimmed as the monks cupped their candles in their hands once more, this time to act as a windbreak as they moved slowly forward. At the end of the nave they were turning to the right (into the south transept, Matlock cumbersomely worked out) and thence, he supposed, out of the church into the working and living quarters of the Abbey. He followed them as far as the cross-aisle of the transepts. As the last monk went through the tall double door, it rolled quietly to behind him and Matlock, alone, felt the dimensions of the building, vast enough already, rush dizzily away from him till he was a pinprick of human warmth in a huge cross of space and time and cold darkness.

He turned to follow the monks, eager for human contact.

“Will you not stay a little longer, Mr. Matlock? You may find what you want here.”

He recognized the voice, but could not place its source for a moment.

“Where are you?” he asked in a voice pitched slightly higher than he intended.

The Abbot chuckled.

“Here I am,” he said, emerging from the shadows of the choir. “Where else should I be?”

Right, thought Matlock, if he’s going to play the man of God, I’ll play the man of action.

“I’m glad to meet you like this, Abbot,” he said briskly. “There’s a lot needs straightening out between us. Where can we talk?”

“Why, here,” said the Abbot, unperturbed. “But do not be too keen to rush into practicalities, Mr. Matlock. We must make plans, it is true, but not, I hope, as a means of escape.”

“Escape from what?”

“Why, from this.”

The small gesture of the ruby-ringed finger sent Matlock’s gaze and, against his will, thoughts spinning back round the shaped darkness above him.

“It’s a strange thing, a church, Mr. Matlock. I mean the building, not the organization, though the two are inextricably linked. All buildings express their purpose. Obviously a house is not a shop and vice versa. And a church, whose purpose is far more complex than either of these, must express this purpose in the most complex of ways.

“At its simplest, a church is a cross. A cross on which our Lord is still crucified. In a church you are close to the body and passion of Christ at the same time as you are in his outstretched arms.”

“That’s a little grisly, don’t you think?” said Matlock, but the Abbot went on as though uninterrupted.

“But a church is also an eye. A great eye facing East, always searching for the Light to rise which shall re-illumine the world. A telescope if you like. No wonder Galileo’s claims for his little glazed tube met with the scorn of those other watchers of the sky. And it is an arrow, leaping skywards in a thousand different ways, in pinnacles, arches, steeples, buttresses. Upwards, upwards, always upwards. Lightness, airiness, that’s what they were after, those great builders.”

He laughed and slapped a massive pillar as they passed.

“Are you trying to convert me?” asked Matlock reasonably.

“Oh, no. No. At the moment that is the last thing I should want. Though in fact, I might be going to tempt you. I shall act the Devil for once and take you to a high place and tempt you.”

The switch from religious fervour to urbane badinage did not seem at all out of place in the Abbot. They had stopped now and Matlock looked up, realizing they must be beneath the off-centre tower which dominated the external mass of the church.

“Let us ascend,” said the Abbot, moving purposefully to a small door in the furthest column. “We still have a spiral staircase if you like, but I prefer this.”

He opened the door, motioned Matlock ahead of him, and together they stepped back into the twenty-first century.

It was an elevator.

The Abbot pressed a button and the floor pressed forcibly against Matlock’s feet. The journey only took a couple of seconds, but he noticed that there were according to the buttons another two floors they could have stopped at, though their speed had been too great for him to see anything of them in passing.

“Top floor, Mr. Matlock. Won’t you step out?”

The room they entered was windowless and might have been the control room of a very tiny airport. It was in semidarkness and two monks sat incongruously watching two radar screens while a third flicked idly from one picture to another on the television monitor before him.

“You look for God in curious ways, Abbot,” said Matlock.

“Oh no. God has long been here. It is the Devil in various forms that we try to keep out. Though I am not sure I have not invited him here myself.”

He raised his eyebrows quizzically at Matlock.

“But you are disappointed, I can see. You expected a fine view. Well, of course, you can view any part of the grounds you like from here. Any undue movement on the screens and a picture can be conjured up immediately.”

One of the monks spoke. The brother in charge of the tele leaned forward and altered his picture. Trees, undergrowth, came into sharp focus. Through them something moved. The picture zoomed in on it.

“I doubt if you’ve ever seen that before, Mr. Matlock. A badger.”

Matlock looked curiously at the animal which moved cautiously through tall bracken, unsuspecting that it was so closely observed.

“There are not many left now. Blunt, tough beasts who live their lives in such obscurity that when they do appear, everyone fights for a good look. They would give a great deal for such a creature in London, Mr. Matlock, archaic and superseded though it is.”

Matlock shook his head sadly.

“The trouble with religion is that if you’re not careful you start confusing allegory with reality, the image with the thing itself. Some people even start believing in human immortality in human terms.”

“I see that nothing less than a real sight of real things will please you. It will please me also. Come.”

He went to a corner of the room and pulled a lever. From the roof there swung down a set of aluminium steps. The Abbot ran lightly up them and pushed open a small trap in the ceiling. Through the hole Matlock saw a square of the night sky. The Abbot’s head was black against a haze of stars.

“Come up. Do.”

He climbed out on to the top of the tower and stood quite still for a moment to accustom himself to the new light.

It was a fine clear night though there was no moon. Silhouetted above the castellated parapet was the now familiar cowled head of a monk who moved away at a soft-spoken instruction from the Abbot and swiftly descended the steps, pulling the trap-door shut behind him.

“You see we do keep a more traditional type of watch, Mr. Matlock. I am glad to see these hints of a love of tradition in you. This is part of your appeal to your followers. The English have always been a nostalgic race, but nostalgia has never been a real political force. During our own youth there were always plenty of people willing to talk longingly of the twenties, the thirties, even the forties and fifties. But no one ever really wanted to get back to them, or at least only an insubstantial minority. But things have changed. For the first time ever in our history there is a real desire to go back, to reverse the tide. And you are our Canute.”

“And just as helpless I suppose.”

“Oh no. If Canute had really wanted to impress the people, which he didn’t, he would merely have worked out where the next high tide line would be, and stood there. That’s what you can do. Nothing is really changed by man. It’s just that some men happen to be about when the changes take place. But you are full of questions, Mr. Matlock. Why not ask them?”