Have you ever wondered why the things we can’t have are so much more intriguing than the things we can have? Or, more to the point, the people we can or can’t have? Why is your average dark mysterious stranger so much more alluring than your average safe, available, decent Joe Blogs just round the corner from where you live?
Or is it just me who thinks like this? Is the rest of the dating and mating world way more sensible? Somehow, I don’t think so. Surely I can’t be an isolated case of having always been drawn to the unattainable?
In seventh grate, it was my gorgeous English teacher. Next in line was my half-brother, whose existence I had been entirely unaware of until high school. This much older half-sibling turned out to be cool and tall and handsome and trilingual, with a French Foreign Legion history to his name and, more importantly, unattainable with a capital U.
So I moved on. And then, at the tender age of eighteen, it was no less than a black-robed, celibate Benedictine monk who I found myself swooning over. Unattainable to the steepest level I had yet encountered, though at least not genetically dangerous.
But oh, how I fell for him! The tall, broad-shouldered, dark-haired, blue-eyed, out-of-bounds Brother Matthew of Greystones Abbey! There was I, wide-eyed and mesmerized, on a retreat with my Catholic Sixth Form school, staying for the weekend at a castle-like monastery tucked into the wild hills and valleys of North Yorkshire; and there was he … OK. ‘Nuff said. No wonder my juvenile heart was set on fire!
Sorry, did I just say my juvenile heart then? I meant to say Leah Cavanagh’s juvenile heart. Must get my pronouns right.
So here’s a passage from my coming-of-age novel, Infinite Stranger, where Leah and Brother Matthew first meet.
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INFINITE STRANGER – Chapter 3
Me and my two friends were sitting on the back pew of the Abbey church. All the other sixth formers were in front of us, as well as our two supervising nuns. I was perched at the edge of the pew, right next to the central aisle. Not a hint of dawn filtered through the narrow windows carved high into cold monastic stone. Only the red candle flame below the central crucifix provided any source of light. The light of God. Except that I couldn’t quite manage to get my head round His existence, which made my presence on this retreat a bit of a paradox.
A shiver of illumination rippled into the domed room, shedding just enough glow to read the words in our psalm books – or antiphonals, as I soon learned to call them. A hollow knocking sound echoed all around us. As though on cue, a procession of black-robed monks filed down the central aisle. One by one, with hoods lowered over bowed heads, they passed within inches of our pews before veering off to the choir stalls, where we’d been told that the Benedictine community chanted their devotional psalms five times a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Apparently they didn’t get one single day off, ever.
The stately procession came to an end. Two of the monks left the others for a podium which sported a fearsome-looking tome. ‘The Handbook of God’, Jenny sniggered. Clearing his throat, the taller of the two launched into the opening line of the first psalm, soon joined by his companion and then the rest of the community. Lord, open my lips…
I riffled through the pages of my own book, searching in vain for a helpful title. ‘Matins’, for instance, or ‘First Psalm of the Day’, or perhaps ‘Psalms for Idiots’. But there was none.
Jenny was clearly as lost as me. ‘What flipping page are we supposed to be on?’
‘You’re asking me? The only non-Catholic in the school?’
Our muffled giggles were quashed by a swishing sound that came from the aisle behind us, along with the padding of footsteps. One of the monks was approaching our pew.
We held our breath. What was the penalty for smirking during psalms? Would we be marched off to the Abbot’s office, severely reprimanded and whisked off back to Lyneham-on-Sea? Or worse – would they interrupt Matins in order to call us to the lectern and rebuke us in public? The mind boggled at the possibilities.
The anonymous monk at last stopped by our pew. As I was sitting right by the edge, it crossed my mind that I’d be the one to bear the brunt of whatever Benedictine wrath awaited us.
No such fear!
Leaning down towards me, the monk whispered, ‘Here, let me show you.’ There wasn’t a trace of anger in his voice. He went about thumbing through the pages of the antiphonal until he found the desired psalm. I watched as his deft fingers pulled a ribbon out of the spine of the book and tucked it into the newfound page, then another psalm, and another, marking each one with a new, differently coloured ribbon. His hands were smooth, refined, with neatly trimmed nails and just the faintest smattering of hairs. He was leaning so close, I could feel his breath on my cheek. A lingering waft of coffee.
‘There you are,’ he said softly, his vowels oozing with class. ‘That’s all the psalms you’ll be needing for today’s Matins.’
As I looked up to thank him, I got a close-up of the bluest eyes I had ever seen – sparkling, twinkling and every other cliché that ever existed to describe such a perfect sight. I caught my breath, knowing at once that it was him – the monk I’d seen from my bedroom window the previous night. I was so jolted by the thudding of my heart, I didn’t even remember to thank him. Instead, I found myself asking in a manic whisper: ‘Sorry – but what should I call you? Is it Father?’ I felt my cheeks burning.
His shadowed face broke into a smile. ‘I’m not a priest, actually,’ he whispered back. ‘I’m a monk. You can call me Brother Matthew.’
‘Okay.’
He glanced away, his attention diverted by something from the choir stalls. In those few moments I was able to risk a slightly better look at his profile: the chiselled nose, the strong jawline, the dark brown hair with a kink to it. And then he suddenly turned back to me, catching me out. However, I needn’t have felt embarrassed, because his own gaze was filled with a matching appreciation that was unmistakable. But it was also tinged with something else. There was a hint of disquiet in his expression; a fleeting defencelessness that was only partially disguised by his faint laughter lines. Then he straightened up, turned round and strode away, his broad shoulders and tallness emphasised by his long black habit.
My head reverberated in the after-shock of the look we’d just exchanged. I knew then, with a flash of maturity beyond my seventeen years, that although he was a monk, he was a man first and foremost.
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Wendy Skorupski 