I returned to Felkirk for a few days. Again I noticed the difference between the monastery proper and my room in the annexe. In church and at meals there was a formal stillness. Back in my room, it vanished. I lay on the bed, turned on the television, scrolled on my phone and my mind slackened. I thought about masturbating or going down the road for a half before evensong.
As usual, there were a couple of Oxbridge men, guests whose ingratiating manner confused me. Their words dripped with irony — so unlike those of the Brothers. I couldn’t tell if they were mocking or being polite. At lunch a young man in jeans at the table said, when asked, that he came from a non-denominational church in Nottingham. Ah, said one of the men with a sly smile, very different I imagine. Come to see how we do things, are you? Yes, he said, without returning the smile, just wanted to see what it was like.
Later I saw him in the apple orchard. I didn’t see you at mass, I said. I went to the offices, he said, but the mass is… we don’t do it that way. Yeah, it’s different here, I said. I asked about his church. We have a hall, he said. He told me how he came to faith after a bad year in college. His mother was a clairvoyant in a spiritualist church. She died of cancer. He started reading John’s Gospel one night and it all came together.
I told him a little of my own story, but I could hear myself arranging it. When he left we shook hands and wished each other well, knowing we’d never meet again.
When I got back to Norwich, I went straight to the pub to meet up with some old literary friends from uni. We drank under the heaters. They talked differently. I spoke faster to keep up. I found myself slipping into the old cynicism, pretending I’d read things I hadn’t, even making ironic comments about the Brothers, who only hours ago I talked to and took the Eucharist from as if it was the most important thing in the world.
Notes from a Room 