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I miss my walks though, monk or no monk. I often used to walk round Royds Grange. That was in Mrs Morse's time of course, before the nuns came - they chose it because there used to be some religious foundation there in the Middle Ages. The grounds are walled off now, so the nuns can take the fresh air and still be 'enclosed.' I do miss the grounds, with their winding paths and thickety woods, and wild flowers on the lawns - all a bit unkempt near the end, for Mrs Morse stopped bothering with gardeners when her eyes got too bad for her to see anything. Me and Mam get right on top of each other in our tiny terraced house, and since she’s not able to get out much nowadays, I often have to, and the Grange is where I used to go. It's not exactly town round here, more scrappy suburbs. We live in the angle - the armpit some say - of two main roads out of this West Riding city, and the space between them's only partly built on - you get rows of terraces with one, maybe two, fields between. Some of the terraces are on proper streets; others - like ours - on un-made-up tracks that just stop when the houses do. Our house faces west over fields at the back, so it's not as dark as some, and you get lovely sunsets. I think that when they built them in Edwardian times they meant to develop the whole district, but money ran out, or demand fell; I don't know. Anyway, it's neither proper town nor country. The buses are hopeless; you can't get away unless you've got a car, and I got rotten redundancy from the woollen mill, and there are no jobs round here for a 56-year-old working man, so that wasn't an option. So I used to walk up at the Grange to get away from things. No-one else used to go there, and you never saw anybody. Except the monk, that is. I often wondered what he was doing there. I'd see him in the distance; across a lawn, beside a tree, once at an upstairs window. You only ever saw him sideways or from behind, never face-on, and always just standing, never walking or moving, and every time a little bit closer, but never really close - not close enough for conversation. He always wore one of these brown dressing-gown things with a hood that monks wear - cowls or habits, or whatever they're called. It was Mam who suggested he could be checking the place was suitable for the convent, or maybe even negotiating the sale. Certainly it was shortly after he began appearing that Mrs Morse went totally blind and moved into a home, the sisters took over the Grange, and 'Private - Keep Out' signs went up. Actually, just before the grounds were shut off for good, I did get a closer look at the monk, though only from behind, and I saw him move as well. The house was empty by then, so I went to snoop around a bit - well you can't go peering through windows when an old lady's living there on her own, can you? The Grange is huge, ugly, and damp. Armitages' dyeworks people built it in the 1880s - Mrs Morse was the last Miss Armitage - but it's been neglected for years. The firm went bust in the Depression, Mr Morse was killed in the war, there were no children, and any money left got used up long ago. Anyway, there I was, prowling round the stonework, when I got the sudden feeling of someone behind me watching, and out of the corner of an eye, spotted the monk slipping round a corner. I thought 'strange, why doesn't he talk to me', then remembered he might be under a vow of silence and it might be embarrassing for him if we came face-to-face but he couldn't explain why he wasn't able to speak. I didn't follow him, partly for that reason, but also because I was convinced now that there was something creepy, something not quite right about him. Mind you, it would have been one in the eye for Mam for her one-and-only to be told off for snooping by a Papish (her word) monk, with her such a fervent Proddy! I can just hear the gossip - can't keep her own son on the straight and narrow, for all her holiness, which of course is what some say anyway. Next day I went to the Bat and Stump for a lunchtime pie and pint. You can't afford much in the way of beer on the ‘social' so I have to space my visits, but Mam was in one of her reproachful moods and I just had to get away, and took my time coming back. It's not my fault, after all, that she had to have her bits out after I was born so couldn't have the daughter she'd wished I'd been. After half a century she should give it a rest. At least this time I was spared the line about how vexed she was about having no grandchildren, and how my father, who died in a works accident when I was eight, would spin in his grave if he knew his only son had turned out queer. When I did stroll back, Mam said sharply. 'Your friend the monk was here while you were gallivanting, must have come to tell you off for trespassing. I suppose it makes a change for you from soldiers.' My insides went tight and cold and it must have shown on my face, for she added, 'At least he didn't have the nerve to come to the house, just went past up the lane - I saw his cowl-thing passing the window. Never saw him coming back, he must have gone across the fields.' 'He's not my friend, and he doesn't know where I live, or my name, or anything,' I protested, though it was none of her business, 'I've never even spoken to the man'. 'Well, he found the road all right, must have asked where you lived. Anyone'd have been able to tell him, and they're not slow to talk round here, especially after that soldier business. They even talk about it to my face at the club, and you can imagine how that makes me feel, not that I expect you care - never did.' She was now well into her stride. 'Just don't turn my home into a house of Sodom while I'm out. Wait at least till I'm dead and beyond shame.' I remembered that this was the afternoon when Community Transport came to take Mam to the Pensioner's Club, and wished I'd hung on in the pub a bit longer so she'd have left before I got back. As I helped Mam on with her going-out things, and delivered her to Sonia the driver, I asked myself why I felt so bothered by this monk. Even Mam admitted – grudgingly (very) - that in the days before the Reformation, monks could be good and holy men. Some of them became Protestants like Martin Luther, or wrote spiritually improving books like the 'Imitation of Christ.' Then I stopped myself. Why had I thought 'the days before the Reformation?' This is a monk of today, of the here and now, a man of about my own build and probably own age, though I'd not yet caught a glimpse of his face to confirm this. A human being in odd clothes who ate, slept, and went to the toilet like anyone else. A man in a uniform of sorts, like young squaddie Dean Falshaw that night after the pub when he was home on leave, and somehow we ended up in his father's allotment shed; teenage lust and older man's pent-up desire exploding in a flood of passion that heaven must be like if heaven exists. But we had been noticed, and when Dean was killed in action Mam said it was a judgment. God would not hold me guiltless for my part in sending a young lad to a pervert's hell and Dean's blood was upon me. Not blood, I thought, but another fluid of of Dean's, and it went in me, not on me, and how do you like that, you bitter old sow? But I didn't dare say so out loud. At the bar, Roy the landlord had tipped me a cert for the 2.30, so I set out to Fred Dyson's bookie’s shop. My luck was in, and I won a little, and took some of the lads back to the Stump to celebrate - well it doesn't happen often, not to me anyway, and Mam doesn't approve of gambling, which made winning all the sweeter. Afterwards I went back to the shop to reward Fred with a bottle or two, then set off for home. The fastest way to our place from Dyson's is over some farmland - it's not a public footpath, but farmer Braithwaite doesn't mind so long as dogs are kept in order when there are sheep in the field. Anyway, you go down an alley behind Dyson's shop, and through a little gate; then you cross one field to the gap in a drystone wall where another gate used to be, and then you see the back of our terrace beyond the second field. It was getting on a bit, and I was drunk and cheerful and didn't want Mam to spoil things with a lecture about her coming back to a dark empty house, so I was hurrying, always looking down to check where my feet landed on the rough grass. If you get the sun behind you, like you do late in the afternoon, when you approach our row of houses from the field, the upstairs windows catch the light and, because the glass isn't truly flat, you get lots of lovely sparkly reflections all along the terrace. That's what made me look up at my bedroom window, but the sun wasn't at the right angle yet, and you could still see through the glass into the lit-up room. And there I saw a brown cowl, clear as anything in my bedroom, roughly where the bed was. I stopped, and maybe cried out softly - I'd never been so scared in my life. I blinked and rubbed my eyes. The cowl had gone; had I really seen it? The window glass was now showing all manner of reflections - I peered and stared and cursed. You can't get into our backyard from the field as there isn't a gate, so I raced round the end of the terrace and down the track just as the Community Transport mini-bus was bringing Mam back. Well, I made a lame excuse. I asked Sonia the driver to come and admire the sunset from my bedroom window; no-way would I enter that room alone. And of course, it was empty and the door and window closed, and everything in place and in order, just as I'd left it. When Sonia returned downstairs to sort out Mam, I searched every room and cupboard - even peered into the loft but, of course, there was no monk or anyone else there. Such foolishness, I told myself, I'd seen a reflection, a trick of the light; I'd had too much ale and imagined it. Worse, Mam hadn’t enjoyed herself at the club, and was at her most critical, scowling as if she'd caught me committing sodomy on the parlour sofa. That night was warm and sultry, and I didn't sleep well. I don't expect it helped that the airing cupboard, with the hot tank in it, is just though my bedroom wall. Anyway, I woke next day feeling as if I hadn't been to sleep at all. Mam kept giving me Christian looks all through breakfast, but said nothing; a rare mercy. To get some fresh air and work up a healthy tiredness, I spent all day in Dad's old allotment, digging up the grass and weeds, mixing in cow-manure another holder had left over. After tea, during which Mam pointedly commented how nice it was to see me do something wholesome for a change, I strolled round to the Stump for a few pints and couple of hours' relaxation in friendly company. And I got properly tired, so when I went home and got into bed, I fell into a deep sleep straight away. (Mam, mercifully, retired early.) I don't know if I explained that, although our house is on a lane with fields on both sides, the lane runs off a street - well, a road really – that’s not completely filled with houses, if you get what I mean. There are gaps between them, and the streetlights shine into our house through the gaps. As we're not overlooked, I often don't bother drawing the bedroom curtains, as I like a bit of light, and it's nice to be wakened by the dawn. Also, if I'm honest, it's because Mam thinks it isn't decent not to draw them, so I leave them open to spite her. So when I woke up suddenly a few hours later, I knew it wasn't morning because the only light on the room was street-light yellow. He was there. The monk, I mean. Standing at the foot of my bed, his face lost on the shadow of his brown cowl. I lay there petrified, I admit it. I don't know why, I just was; couldn't move, couldn't speak to ask who he was, or how he got in, or what he wanted. Then he came towards me, and leaned over my head, and I looked into the cowl and saw there was no face there, but what I can only call throbbing darkness. If that doesn't make sense I'm sorry, but I never was that brilliant with words. But that's what it was like. Inside the cowl there was just a pool of darkness so..so intense.. and.. so strong it seemed to .. to throb, like the dinner gong at Maranatha Gospel Guest-House when the maid struck it. I tried and tried, please God knows I tried, not to look into that darkness, but it pulled my eyes like some horrible magnet and, as I stared helplessly, the darkness swelled and grew and poured out of the cowl all over and round me, thicker and darker till the last trace of light vanished. Darker than any night, darker than any photographer's darkroom, darker than the allotment shed that night when 18-year old Dean and I did those dirty, loving, wonderful things with each other, darker than..darker than.. than death? That was nearly a year ago. They tell me I'll always be blind now, for the rest of my life. Just like Mrs Morse, the nurse told Mam. Maybe it's some funny germ hanging round Parkfield Grange, the nurse said, though if that's true, why haven't the nuns caught it? I'd ask Mrs Morse what happened to her, but she's in Harrogate at the nursing home, and I'd need someone to take me there, and I can't afford it anyway. I wonder what her sin was; don't say she was getting nobbed by a teenage boy, though jolly good luck to her if she was! Mam's thrilled. She says God was so displeased with me he withdrew his spiritual protection and abandoned me to the powers of darkness as punishment for my present sins and forewarning of Hell to come. Of course I'm dependent on her now for everything, so she's really in her element, and proudly tells people that I'm 'bearing my cross with humble resignation.' As if! She preaches at me, as does Pastor Phelps when he calls, which is far too often for my liking, but you learn to turn off. 'My boy's resisting grace, Mr Phelps,' she tells him, and it's true. I AM resisting their horrid guilt-ridden religion. They won't make me repent of something I'm not ashamed of. Sometimes, though, it does all get to me. It's as if I've been drip fed over the years with caustic poison that’s finally burned me all away inside, leaving just a sad empty shell. And that, of course, delights Mam and Phelps. 'Conviction of sin', they call it, and they get all excited, and shout 'Hallelujah!' and that grace must be on its way. Bugger them and their God. No, not 'bugger' - that's what Dean Falshaw did to me, the only act of love I've ever experienced in my adult life or ever likely to. So instead I say 'Damn their God'; I won't use a love-word for abuse. Well, there you have my story, for what it's worth. Sometimes I wonder if there's a meaning in all this, but I can't see one. Can't see anything nowadays (laugh)! Some nights Ted Bailey takes me down to the Stump - I can still enjoy a pint or two - and I listen to the football on the radio, and I'll be getting a guide-dog soon, so life does go on, must go on. Sometimes, though, I forget just why.
Copyright © James Scott 2008
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