Category Archives: Astray

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 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.

Before the Easter vigil I went to Confession to come clean about hardly keeping Lent. I didn’t say the half of it. The priest advised me to read Psalms 51 and 130. You’ll know them, he said, but try to read them with new eyes, then sit in silence.

Then: solemn mass and Easter joy. Candles in the Cathedral, resurrection light.

The next day, after the service, a walk in the Broads with Stewart. All winter’s hidden things were coming out from the banks, ditches and reeds. Buds were opening one by one. We saw mining bees and brimstones, skylarks and swallows, heard chiffchaffs and blackcaps. The reeds moved in long shivers. Somewhere inside them a bittern boomed. Stewart stopped and raised his hand. We stood still until it came again.

We went on down the muddy path. One thing I’ve found with all this, I said after a while, is that even when you’re just going out of habit and mouthing the words, when you might as well not bother, something can still open. And the more you press on, the richer and deeper it gets. Like there’s no end to it. The more I search, the more I find, and the more I find the more I search for you, he quoted. Yeah, I said. Only sometimes you’re too curved in on yourself to search. Or trying too hard to make it happen, Stewart said. Sometimes you just wait.

Funeral today for Marion, a regular at the Boar’s Head. People had to stand at the back of the church. She’d been known by half the city, it seemed. Her office colleagues and neighbours in formalwear, a couple of rough sleepers, women from the charity shop, teens from a youth group. The relatives did their best not to break down during their eulogies. She lived a better life than most of us, said the priest. Even towards the end, he said, she was more worried about the woman in the next bed than herself.

At the wake in the pub there were sandwiches, crisps, sausage rolls, small cakes, jugs of orange juice. Everyone had a story about her giving something away: money, plants, food, knitwear: she used to sit and knit in the pub. She made rounds to the homeless when she could still walk. She knew who’d disappeared, who’d got housing, who’d died.

I approached Henry, a young low-church priest who insists on being called by his first name. He was drinking Guinness. He was with Tim, an elderly Congregationalist who lives in the countryside. A retired farmer I think. We were joined by Stewart, with whom I sometimes go on country walks. He’s taking the initiation course at the Catholic Cathedral while also going to the little Orthodox church on Oak Street. He’s unsure where he belongs.

Brave thing to say in a sermon, said Tim over the noise.

What was? said Henry.

That she lived better than most of us.

It’s true, said Henry.

Oh yeah, Tim said. But true in what sense?

Stewart smiled at that, not kindly or unkindly. He has a way of listening as if he’s trying to catch some accent.

In the sense that she loved people, said Henry. Fed them, noticed them, stayed with them. I’m sure God is as interested in that as we are.

Sure, said Tim. But God isn’t just a word for being kind.

Henry said nothing for a moment. Someone near the bar laughed too loudly. A woman in black was crying into a napkin while another woman rubbed her back.

I was tempted to ask where they thought she was now. She’d put us to shame, but hadn’t believed or taken the sacraments, as far as anyone knew. I kept quiet of course; it was an indecent thought.

Stewart said that in the Orthodox church they pray for the dead because love doesn’t stop at death and only God knows the state of a soul. They don’t declare, he said, they pray.

We pray for the dead too, said Henry.

Tim took a sip of juice. The trouble is, everyone wants mercy without judgement.

I thought of the bank app, the man outside the cashpoint, the money sitting there with its quiet power. I thought of Marion making her rounds on a crutch.

Henry said, a bit sharply, I’m not in the business of measuring grace at a funeral.

No, said Tim. Nor am I.

When the glasses had multiplied and the room grew warmer, Stewart talked about the Orthodox liturgy, how at home in mystery they seemed to be, whereas we’re always irritably reaching after problems and ways of working them out. Tim said churches lost their way when they started dressing up the Gospel with all kinds of nonsense. Like what? said Henry. All of it, said Tim. Incense, fancy robes, gold cups. Cathedrals. Popes and bishops. Rock bands in churches. Instead of preaching Christ crucified. Well, I’m with you on Christ crucified, said Henry. I’d keep the incense.

I listened and drank and exchanged a few words with people I knew who passed by. I watched the mourners carrying paper plates and swapping stories about her.

On the way home the question returned. Where was she now? It seemed both childish and terribly serious. It stayed with me for a couple of days until I started to forget about it.

When I walked through town to Sunday service there was an ugly feeling I couldn’t place. I couldn’t tell whether it was in me or outside. It was windy, leaves and wrappers skittered about; it was if the city itself was askew, or as if unresolved fights from Saturday night were lingering. A passing man said to his friend, If I hadn’t let them do all that, I wouldn’t be so fucked now. A woman yanked her crying child into a pram. In church a humming child kept kicking the back of my chair. Someone came in smelling of urine and queued up for the Eucharist. As I was leaving, a drunk kicked over the Church is Open sign; as I looked back I saw the church warden come out, and hoped he didn’t think it was me. I was confused the whole day.

I sometimes feel for the priests, especially in Lent. They must have to pretend from time to time like we do; their minds must stray like ours. I wonder if the mood comes over them too. I never know whether other people feel it. But the masses are beautiful and true whatever our moods.

*

I spoke to Giuliano after Friday mass in Julian’s cell. He said he was behind on the rent. I took some cash out of my pocket but he held up his hand, almost annoyed. Maybe he wanted to spare me the self-satisfaction of helping him. Or maybe he was annoyed with himself for his weakness in telling me.

Ash Wednesday. Noon service with the imposition of ashes. ‘Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’ Mingling of dark and light in the old words and the winter light through the windows. Have mercy on us. Make haste to help us. We’re so entangled in sin we can barely think straight.

Some of us gave token money to the homeless man who shrewdly comes and sits outside the church with his dog before mass. I spoke to him. He told me sharper things than some of the folk in church.

I’m calmer these days, happier. The background static of money worry has quieted. That’s a new feeling. But there’s something money can’t fill. Evensong fills it, bar billiards and banter fills it, but the mood still waits for me in my room at night.

Today, when I went to the bank, I was treated differently, ushered into an adviser’s cubicle. I shuffled the money between new accounts on their app while we talked. It almost felt like a game. He ordered a new card for me. Don’t wave it around, he said.

When I came out, a man was sitting on a sleeping bag by the cashpoint holding a cardboard sign. I went to evensong, and as I stood and crossed myself, part of me thought about how much to invest in shares. If I were a good Christian, I thought on the way from the Cathedral to the Boar’s Head, I’d give this poison away at once.

In the pub I meet friends I know are struggling: carers on shit wages, people on disability benefits, divorced men. Let me get this one, I say, but they refuse. Sometimes people with money come in; we can tell. They look around with an easy air, like the people I grew up with. Will I get that easy air?

I’ll keep it to myself for now until I can figure out what it means. But am I not secretly making up my mind? Doesn’t part of me already relish this new hoard?

Realistically, it’s not that much, serious people might say. You have no assets, no career to speak of now, no pension. You’re still renting and your income is approaching nil. You might live thirty more years. What happens when you get old? Care homes are a grand a month. Get some compound interest and live your life.

*

In religious life, you become more of a hypocrite, not less. You become aware you’re play-acting before powers you don’t understand – that you’re in the lowlands of religion. Safer to stay in the middle ground with one foot in this world. I’m chastened again by the Lord’s sayings: ‘Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.’

I feel the need to talk to Giuliano, a priest, someone wise. But I’m not sure I want wise counsel just yet.

Roy at the Boar gave me shifts behind the bar. I sent applications and picked up the odd translation and editing job. The rest of the time went on walks in the countryside, church and worrying about money.

One day my sister rang from Copenhagen to say our mother had had a massive stroke and was in hospital. She can’t speak, she said. After we rang off I booked a flight. When I landed the next evening I took a cab from the airport to the hospital.

It smelled of disinfectant and cooking from the kitchen. Signs pointed the way to the neurology and stroke units. A grey-faced man in a dressing gown shuffled down the corridor pushing an IV pole. My mother was in a two-bed room. One of her eyes was half open, the other shut. Her mouth hung slack and her legs were swollen under the sheet. A nurse was checking the drip and the monitor. The TV on the wall was playing a quiz show on mute. My sister looked up at me from a chair with an expression I’d never seen before.

A gaunt month followed. We got to know the nurses’ shifts. From time to time my mother’s eyes cleared, she smiled, and we made out a few words. The doctors spoke about rehabilitation, the nurses made positive noises. My sister didn’t believe them. She’s not coming back, she said, I know her. I spoke to the hospital chaplain and tried to pray, but the words went thin in the clinical air, as if they belonged back among stone and stained glass, not by this bed. If they couldn’t live here, I thought, what were they for?

I took the bus to the hospital in the mornings and let myself into my mother’s flat in the afternoons. I slept on the sofa bed at night. It was strange to be there alone. The cupboards were full of things that should have been thrown out years ago: a dozen plant pots, bills and letters dating back to the nineties, a jar of buttons she’d had since we were children, keys without locks. I went up to the loft, which was full of furniture and knickknacks from their years abroad. I spoke to the neighbours, called the utility companies, kept her friends updated.

Towards the end the consultant asked us into a little relatives’ room off the ward. He said there was nothing more they could do except give her morphine. They moved her to palliative care in a separate wing. The drip was removed. The room was quieter there. Just the bed, our chairs and her groans carrying down the corridor. We’d never seen pain like it. My sister was with her when she died, in the middle of the night. In the morning there was just the bed and the chairs.

*

We arranged the funeral, spoke to the family lawyer and auctioneers, contacted estate agents and started clearing the flat. When I’d done what I could, I went back to Norwich, where my plants had died and more admin was waiting for me.

The flat sold quickly. After thirty years of rocketing Copenhagen prices it fetched five times what my parents had paid. It took the lawyer several months to sort out the estate. By Christmas, which I spent at my sister’s, it was done.

I was free – in one sense at least.

The last of my steady freelance work fell through on a Tuesday. A short email: changes in the industry, thanks for everything, maybe in future. There wasn’t much to fall through, but the floor still gave way. I got jumpy and filled in an online form for benefits. A week later an appointment letter arrived, summoning me to a back-to-work session at a business hotel near the airport.

A lobby with a scent of air freshener and a coffee machine. Low armchairs, framed pictures of cities at night. I told the receptionist what I was there for. She pointed me to the conference suite.

In the room there were rows of chairs facing a flipchart and a projector screen. A table with jugs of water, cups, plates of biscuits still wrapped in plastic. We sat scattered across the rows. A woman at the front fiddled with the laptop. She wore a lanyard and a card that said Facilitator under her name.

Welcome, she said, when the projector finally worked. Thank you all for coming. Today is about taking ownership of your future. She clicked. A slide appeared: a stock photo of someone in a field, arms spread wide. Underneath: Reframing Redundancy as Opportunity.

We went round and introduced ourselves with our backgrounds. She wrote words on the flipchart. Communications, education, retail, hospitality, care. Then she drew a circle and wrote in the middle: Transferable skills.

Think in terms of your skill set, she said, not job titles. You’re not just a teacher or a carer. You’re adaptable, solution-focused. You have a personal brand.

A wiry man in my row leaned back restlessly in his chair, let out a noise and muttered something. I felt a tug to join in, roll my eyes, but the last thing I wanted was to sneer. I’ve done enough of that for one lifetime.

We were given handouts with boxes to fill in. My key strengths. My unique selling point. My three-month goals. The facilitator walked up and down the rows, bending to look at our papers, nodding. Great, she said. That’s really strong. You’re an asset. The jugs of water sweated on the table. The projector hummed. I watched my hand write phrases from the business texts I’d spent years translating and writing.

At the end she thanked us again and told us to stay positive. This is a journey, she said. You’re here because you have potential. We filtered out into the car park without speaking. Lorries rolled past on the ring road. The Holiday Inn behind us might have been anywhere on earth.

*

I cycled to evensong at the Cathedral, taking my time. A few tourists walked around taking pictures. The priests and choir entered the nave. We stood as they filed into their stalls.

O Lord, open thou our lips.

And our mouth shall show forth thy praise.

The words were as familiar as the hotel slogans, but they did something else. They told me I was dust. The choir sang the psalm. The days of man are but as grass. The lines sat heavy and right in the air.

We knelt for the prayers. They asked mercy for war-torn peoples, for those who labour, for the lonely, the unemployed.

After the grace we went out separately into the cool dusk. The city was the same: crisp packets and cans on the street, migrant Deliveroo drivers on modified electric bikes. In the bookies’ window a screen rolled through odds for the weekend matches. Two economies, I thought: this one and that slower, stranger one, where even days like this are said to be taken up and worked on in a higher order, out of sight. I felt a draught of joy on the way home.