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‘You laughing at me?’
    ‘No, sounds kind of French, kind of Welsh too, the way you speak, especially when you’re excited.’
    ‘And you, you sound funny too, not like limey people in Les Deux Isles.’ He wanted to hit back at something. ‘Tell me about yourself. I know nothing. You come from London?’
    Benedict laughed. ‘No, not at all - well, I’ve been all over. Up north. I was born in the valleys outside a large city. A valley of mines. My father was a miner. Lots of us. Nine. Poor, really. I escaped south. Seems a long time ago now. Studied. Became a teacher. Ended up here. My parents are dead now. My father, in an accident. In the mine. My mother, pneumonia. That’s my life.’
    ‘God. All of it?’
    ‘Well, not quite; perhaps I’ll tell you more. There’s a beauty in the valleys. Suddenly they open up whole hillsides, not all besmirched. Some other time. When we get a chance. And you must tell me more about your sunsets. What your sunsets say. Another feast day perhaps. We must mix now.’
    Before he turned away to speak to a group of young monks who were fellow philosophy students, Benedict took the novice’s hand in his. He held it in both his palms. He looked straight at him, into him, Aelred thought. ‘We’ll talk again.’ Then he ruffled his fast-growing, cropped hair playfully. ‘Your hair grows quickly. You’ll soon have to be shorn again.’ The novice felt embarrassed. He felt that Benedict shouldn’t do that. But he was also happy. He was nervous and happy at the same time.
    ‘What sunsets say? They don’t say anything,’ he said.
    Besmirched, Aelred listened to how things were described. Benedict was already speaking to one of the other monks.
    Aelred sat with the other novices, listening. Then he talked with Brother Stephen about the farm. He was excited about being put to work on the farm. The farm was like the estate, his father’s work with animals.
    He saw Benedict on his own, which was unusual, because in observing him, he noticed that he was the life and soul of the party; he was popular with the older monks, and the young monks were eager to talk and share opinions on their study.
    Aelred found himself feeling jealous. He didn’t feel he had anything interesting to say to him. He wanted Benedict’s attention. The way he spoke, the way he looked at him: it made him feel special.
    Later, when it was almost time for Compline, Benedict and Aelred found themselves together again. Benedict beckoned him over to where he was sitting. Right away, he was direct, picking up where they had left off, as if not to lose any time. ‘It can’t all be sunsets. What do you miss the most?’
    Without deliberately thinking it out, Aelred answered, ‘Ted.’ Ted was so often in his mind, on the tip of his tongue, like a secret. He had to bite his tongue.
    ‘Ted? Who is Ted?’
    He had not told anyone at Ashton Park about Ted. He looked down at his boots. I’m standing in him, he thought. Always, I have him.
    ‘Ted. He was the best at everything. The way he swung a bat, bowled a ball. Football season, he was the fastest on the left wing. Captain. We played tennis for hours. Sun and sweat like salt. Then we swam. Best, we climbed into the hills and swam in the river pool where the water fell twenty feet sheer. Like falling glass. Frothy like crystal, shattering. He dived, jackknife.’ He said the words, painting the picture of another world, lost, dreamt. ‘We were the best. Two of us.’
    The young novice found himself staring into the murky glass of orange light and darkness and the faces of himself and Benedict superimposed, each upon the other, mixed and distorted. Then he looked at Benedict, staring at him, talking about Ted.
    ‘He meant a lot to you?’ Benedict said, concerned. But his eyes had an astonishment about them, as he heard the young novice in front of him tell of his young friend.
    ‘He meant a lot to all of us. All who knew him. He had a way of making you feel