Read Aelred's Sin for Free Online

tropics doing?’ Benedict’s armwas around his shoulder. ‘Come on, we must catch up.’
    It had been a walk of physical endurance. Father Justin liked to test the new novices. ‘Coats on - it’s just a bit nippy.’ There was a driving wind, sleet and flurries of snow. ‘It looks like we’ve not got rid of the winter.’ The young novice savoured each new sensation. He heard the word ‘flurry’. He forgot the meaning of heat on the skin. It was wind, not breeze. But he looked forward to the roaring fire in the common room. He thought of jolly Christmas cards. The world looked like a Christmas scene on a Christmas card: holly, laurel, ivy. England was a carol. Earth stood as hard as iron, water like a stone. He learnt the feel of ‘bleak’.
    Spring was in the air, but still the winter had not gone. There was snow among the daffodils.
    Aelred stared out of the misted-up glass window of the chapter house, which had been arranged for the party. He rubbed away the condensation with his hand. He wiped away the wetness by putting his hands into the deep pockets of his woollen habit. In the glass against the darkness, and in the reflection of the orange lights of the chapter house, he had a smudged image of his face reflected back at him. Behind his face, one face on top of another, the face of Benedict merged with his. Benedict was smoking a cigarette.
    ‘The late fall of snow has begun to melt. It’ll be spring again,’ Benedict said.
    ‘It’s spring, and then suddenly snow again. I’m not used to this change of seasons.’
    ‘What do you have?’
    ‘Dry season, wet season. Hot. It’s very hot. I love it.’
    ‘But you’ve left it. Given it up? Yes?’
    ‘Yes,’ the novice said, thinking it again, and saying it to himself and Benedict. ‘I’ve left it all. Yes, I’ve given it up.’
    ‘Look out on to the fields tomorrow and you’ll see that the snow has begun to melt where there’re no trees. The bright sun we’ve been having in the morning melts the snow. Stand in the sun, and you’ll find that it’s warm. Stand in the shade, and it’s chilly. Cold.’
    Aelred listened to the words used in a particular way: warm, chilly. There was always talk of the weather, each subtle change. And in the pantry on blind Brother Angel’s radio he listened to the strange mantra of tides and winds, gale forces and storms out there beyond this island. Finesterre. He remembered hurricanes. He would rub his hands and say, ‘It’s chilly today’, and hear how he sounded.
    The young brother looked out of the window, but there he saw only the darkness; himself and Benedict reflected in the orange light. There was an amber hum where the town glowed on the horizon. Ashton; it was on fire.
    ‘It looks like a fire,’ Aelred said.
    The wine must have gone to his head, because he realised that he was talking a lot and telling Benedict all about growing up in Les Deux Isles. ‘My mother is wonderful. She’s very beautiful. Kind. Loves me. When she comes down in the evening she smells of l’ herbe à Madame Lalie.’
    ‘What’s that? Who’s that? And where does your mother come from, that she comes down?’ Benedict chuckled at the young novice’s enthusiastic gush.
    ‘Oh, it’s no one. Questions! There is no Madame Lalie. It’s a tree. It has a sweet-sweet smelling flower, white, yellow and white. It opens like a lily. We’ve got one in ourgarden. Right in the middle of the lawn. They make perfume from the flower. She dabs it on her neck and on her wrists. She strokes her long neck with her finger. My mother comes down from her bedroom for drinks with my father in the evening. When it is just getting dark. It gets dark so quickly. A green flash, and dark. Very dark. You can’t see anything.’
    ‘You must miss her. But you have wonderful sunsets?’
    ‘Sunsets? Yes, yes, boy, red-red-red, and yellow. Like fire. Cane fire. The whole sky burning up. Yes, I miss her.’
    Benedict smiled.
    Aelred saw him smile.