My habit of calling him Father Darcy is new. Only people outside the Order call us monks by our surnames preceded by the title ‘Father’, if the monk be a priest, or ‘Brother’, if the monk be a layman. For the last thirty years Father Darcy had been addressed by his monks as ‘Father Abbot-General’ but after his death a month ago it had become necessary to adopt another designation in order to distinguish him from his successor, and to me ‘Father Cuthbert’ had merely conjured up a picture of a cosy old confessor unable to say boo to a goose. In accordance with the constitution of the Order which decreed that all monks were equal in death, he had been referred to throughout the burial service as ‘Cuthbert’ but whenever this word had been uttered something akin to a shudder of horror had rippled through the congregation as if Father Darcy were still alive to be enraged by the familiarity.
All the abbots attended the funeral. Cyril came from Starwater Abbey, where the Fordites ran a public school; Aidan, my former superior, came from Ruydale, and I came from Grantchester. Francis Ingram, Father Darcy’s right-hand man, organized the funeral and offered us all a lavish hospitality at the Order’s London headquarters, but he did not conduct the service. That task fell to Aidan as the senior surviving abbot.
‘It’s hard to believe the old boy’s gone,’ said Francis Ingram afterwards as he helped himself to a very large glass of port from the decanter which was normally reserved for visiting bishops. ‘What a wonderful capacity he had for making us all shit bricks! It’s going to be uncommonly dull without him.’
Monks are, of course, supposed to refrain from using coarse language but sometimes the effort of keeping one’s speech free of casual blasphemy is so intense that a lapse into vulgarity is seen as the only alternative to committing a sin. It is a notorious fact of monastic life that without the softening influence of women men tend to sink into coarse speech and even coarser humour; when I returned to Grantchester in 1937 as Abbot I found a community so lax that their conversation during the weekly recreation hour recalled not the cloister but the barracks of the Naval ratings at Starmouth.
My promotion in 1937 was unorthodox, not only because monks who follow the Benedictine Rule are supposed to remain in the same community for life but because the monks themselves normally elect an abbot from among their own number. However Father Darcy had decided I could be of more use to the Order at Grantchester than at Ruydale, and Father Darcy had no hesitation in riding rough-shod over tradition when the welfare of the Order was at stake.
‘Many congratulations!’ said Francis Ingram when I arrived at the London headquarters to be briefed for my new post. ‘I couldn’t be more pleased!’ Of course we both knew he was furious that I was to be an abbot while he remained a mere prior, but we both knew too that we had no choice but to go through the motions of displaying brotherly love. Monks are indeed supposed to regard all men with brotherly love, but since most monks are sinners not saints such exemplary Christian charity tends to resemble Utopia, a dream much admired but perpetually unattainable.
It was not until the April of 1940 when Father Darcy died that Francis and I saw our meticulously manifested brotherly love exposed as the fraud which it was. I have no intention of describing Father Darcy’s unedifying last hours in detail; such a description would be better confined to the pages – preferably the uncut pages – of a garish Victorian novel. Suffice it to say that for two days he knew he was dying and resolved to enjoy what little life remained to him by keeping us all on tenterhooks about the succession.
It is laid down in the constitution of the Order that although abbots are in normal circumstances to be elected, the Abbot-General must choose his own successor. The reasoning which lies behind this most undemocratic rule is that only the Abbot-General is in a position to judge which man might follow most ably in his footsteps, and the correct procedure is that his written choice should be committed to a sealed envelope which is only to be opened after his death. This move has the advantage of circumventing any last-minute dubious oral declarations and also, supposedly, removing from a dying Abbot-General any obligation to deal with worldly matters when his thoughts ought to be directed elsewhere. However Father Darcy could not bear to think he would be unable to witness our expressions when the appointment was announced, and eventually he succumbed to the temptation to embark on an illicit dénouement.
There were four of us present at his bedside, the three abbots and Francis Ingram.
‘Of course you’re all wondering how I’ve chosen my successor,’ said the old tyrant, revelling in his power, ‘so I’ll tell you: I’ve done it by process of elimination. You’re a good man, Aidan, but after so many years in a Yorkshire backwater you’d never survive in London. And you’re a good man too, Cyril – no one could run that school better than you – but the Order’s not a school and besides, like Aidan, you’re too old, too set in your ways.’
He paused to enjoy the emotions of his audience. Aidan was looking relieved; he would indeed have hated to leave Ruydale. Cyril was inscrutable but I was aware of his aura of desolation and I knew Father Darcy would be aware of it too. Meanwhile Francis was so white with tension that his face had assumed a greenish cast. That pleased Father Darcy. Aidan had been a disappointment, Cyril had been a pleasure and Francis had been a delight. That left me. Father Darcy looked at me and I looked at him and our minds locked. I tried to blot out his psychic invasion by silently reciting the Lord’s Prayer but when I broke down halfway through he smiled. He was a terrible old man but he did so enjoy being alive, and in the knowledge that his enjoyment could only be fleeting I resolved to be charitable; I smiled back.
Immediately he was furious. I was supposed to be writhing on the rack with Francis, not radiating charity, and as I sensed his anger I realized that in his extreme physical sickness his psychic control was slipping and his spiritual strength was severely impaired.
He said to me: ‘And now, I suppose, you’ve no doubt whatsoever that you’ll step into my shoes! Proud arrogant Jonathan – too proud to admit his burning curiosity about the succession and too arrogant to believe I could ever seriously consider another candidate for the post! But I did consider it. I considered Francis very seriously indeed.’ He sighed, his rheumy old eyes glittering with ecstasy as he recalled the next step in his process of elimination. ‘How hard it was to choose between the two of you!’ he whispered. ‘Francis has the first-class brain and the skill of the born administrator, but Jonathan has … well, we all know what Jonathan has, don’t we? Jonathan has the Powers – those Glamorous Powers, as poor old James used to call them – and they made Jonathan the most exciting novice I’ever encountered, so gifted yet so undisciplined, yes, you have all those gifts which Francis lacks, Jonathan, but it’s those gifts which make you vulnerable as you continue to wage your lifelong battle against your pride and your arrogance. Francis may be less gifted but that makes him less vulnerable, and besides,’ he added to Cyril and Aidan, ‘Francis has the breeding. Jonathan’s just the product of a schoolmaster’s mésalliance with a parlourmaid. He’d serve cheap port and young claret to all the important visitors, and that wouldn’t do, wouldn’t do at all – we must maintain the right style here, we’re a great Order, the greatest Order in the Church of England, and the Abbot-General must live in the manner of the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth. So all things considered,’ said the old despot, battling on towards the climax of his dénouement, ‘and following the process of elimination to its inevitable conclusion, I really think that the next Abbot-General should be a man who can distinguish vintage claret from a French peasant’s “vin ordinaire”.’
He had lived long enough to see the expressions on our faces. Sinking blissfully into a coma he drifted on towards death until an hour later, to my rage and horror, the Abbot-General of the Fordite monks became none other than my enemy Francis Ingram.
It would have been hard to imagine a superior less capable of dealing with my vision.
III
My antipathy to Francis was undoubtedly the main reason why I did not confide in him as soon as I had received my vision, but possibly I would have been almost as hesitant to confide