However word of his progress continued to reach me as he rose with lightning speed to the office of Bursar, no mean post in a place like Starwater Abbey where there was a large school to run and complex accounts to be kept. He was still at Starwater when I myself entered the Order in 1923, but as my career was unfolding at Ruydale we never met. Nor did we correspond. He represented a past which I could remember only with shame, and I suspected that I represented a similar burden of guilt to him. But then in 1930 he was transferred to the London headquarters in order to assist its ailing Bursar, and in a flash of foreknowledge I knew that our lives were drawing together again after completing some enigmatic circle in time.
Our reunion came sooner than I had anticipated. I underwent a period of crisis which I have no intention of describing so I shall only record that it concerned the house-cat, Whitby, and nearly terminated my career as a monk; Father Darcy had to be summoned to Yorkshire to set me back on the spiritual rails. I recovered from my crisis, but six months later Father Darcy decided to reassure himself that I had fully surmounted the disaster which was now known as ‘The Whitby Affair’, and I was summoned to London for an inspection.
The summons was most unusual. No one ever visited London from Ruydale except Aidan, who was obliged to travel there once a year for the Abbots’ Conference, and although I was apprehensive at the prospect of being inspected by Father Darcy I was also flattered that I was to receive special attention. However when I arrived in London in a state of wary but not unpleasant anticipation it was a rude shock when I found myself welcomed not by the Guest-Master but by the new Bursar, Francis Ingram.
‘So you’re still as lean as a lamp-post!’ he exclaimed. ‘But what happened to those owlish spectacles?’
‘My sight improved with age. What happened to the greyhound?’
‘He died of a surfeit of champagne.’
We laughed, shaking hands as if we were the oldest of friends, but I was unnerved by his aura of hostility. It lay like a ball of ice beneath the warmth of his welcome; to my psychic eye it was unmistakable, and immediately I heard myself say: ‘Perhaps we should agree to draw a veil over the past.’
‘Should we? Personally I think it’s more honest to face one’s disasters and chalk the whole lot up to experience. After all,’ said Francis, suddenly fusing his middle-aged self with the undergraduate of long ago, ‘Wilde did say that experience was the name men give to their mistakes.’
I said with as much good humour as I could muster: ‘Still quoting Wilde? I’m surprised our superior permits it!’
‘Then perhaps now’s the moment to make it clear to you that I’m the favourite with a licence to be entertaining,’ said Francis at once, and as he smiled, making a joke of the response, I recognized the demon jealousy and knew our old rivalry was about to be revived in a new form.
I said abruptly: ‘You’ve told him about the past?’
‘How could I avoid it? As soon as the rumour reached London that you’d got up to something thoroughly nasty with a cat I said: “That reminds me of my salad-days.” And then before I knew where I was –’
‘He’d prised the whole story out of you.’
‘But didn’t he know most of it anyway?’
‘I admit I told him about the Cambridge catastrophe, but I never mentioned you by name! And now, of course, he’s decided it would be amusing as well as edifying to batter us into brotherly love – he’s summoned me here not just to put my soul under the microscope but to purge us of our ancient antipathy!’
This deduction proved to be all too correct. Every evening after supper Father Darcy would summon us to his room and order a debate on a subject of theological interest. The debates lasted an hour and were thoroughly exhausting as Francis and I struggled to keep our tempers and maintain an acceptable level of fraternal harmony. Afterwards Father Darcy would pronounce the winner, dispatch Francis and embark on a fresh examination of my spiritual health. By the end of the week I was so worn out that I could hardly drag myself back to Yorkshire.
Before my departure I said in private to Francis: ‘I hope the old man doesn’t intend to make a habit of this. All I want is a quiet life at Ruydale.’
‘Dear old chap!’ said Francis. ‘You don’t seriously expect me to believe that, do you? After a few years of living on the Yorkshire moors a man of your ambition would feel like Napoleon marooned on St Helena!’
‘I don’t think that’s funny, Francis.’
‘I’m hardly delirious with amusement myself.’
‘Obviously you see me as a rival, but I assure you –’
‘Don’t bother. I’m not in the mood for hypocrisy.’
‘What’s this – a nursery tantrum? I’ve never seen such an unedifying exhibition of jealousy in all my life!’
‘And I’ve never seen such a plausible performance of a holy man devoid of ambition, but my dear Jonathan, just answer me this: has it never occurred to you that for a holy man devoid of ambition you seem to be carving out a quite remarkably successful career?’
I turned my back on him and walked away.
X
It is a relief to record that this disgraceful scene was not repeated; no doubt Francis was afterwards as ashamed of our hostile exchange as I was, and when we met again he even took the initiative in apologizing for the incident.
I paid six more visits to London before I was transferred to Grantchester, and each time Father Darcy pitted us against each other in debate, dragged our antipathy into the open and, in a metaphorical sense, rubbed our noses in the mess to discourage us from further antagonism. I was reminded of how one house-trains a cat. In the end Francis and I were so chastened by this remorseless spiritual purging that we almost became friends, but I never felt I knew him well. My psychic faculty, blunted by the antipathy which we both learnt to master but not erase, was dead in his presence. I received no insights which would have offered me the key to his character, nor could I perceive the texture of his spiritual life. Our debates had revealed his powerful intellect, but I came to the conclusion that although he was intellectually able he was spiritually limited and that this fact lay at the root of his jealousy. He was quite intelligent enough to know his limitations, more than intelligent enough to conceal them whenever possible and certainly human enough to resent a man who displayed the gifts he secretly coveted but knew he would never attain. He was also, I soon realized, deeply envious of the effortless psychic understanding which existed between Father Darcy and myself, and when I realized how much he depended on our mentor’s approbation I found myself driven to question the propriety of their relationship.
Father-son relationships are as forbidden in the cloister as the notorious ‘particular friendships’ which prurient laymen find so titillating, but I thought that Father Darcy, in characteristic fashion, might be riding roughshod over the rules in order to give Francis some form of psychological security which could prove beneficial to his character. I was not jealous. I had no desire whatsoever that Father Darcy should treat me as a son; I had a tough enough time surviving his attentions as a spiritual director. But I did wonder if Father Darcy were taking an unwise risk, and I wondered too, as time passed, if he were using Francis to gratify some immaculately concealed emotional need.
I knew I was of intense interest to Father Darcy but the interest was essentially detached; I was just the parlourmaid’s son who had presented him with the challenge of a monastic lifetime but who could nonetheless be kept at arm’s length in Yorkshire. But Francis was the man from his own class with whom he could feel at ease, the man who had to be transferred to London not merely to supervise the Order’s financial affairs but to keep the Abbot-General company in his old age. Such a situation was all very comfortable for Father Darcy, but