Free Aelred's Sin by Lawrence Scott Page B

because the banks of snow were so high. And though it was only two in the afternoon, it was as dark as night.
    It was like night. I think I said, It’s like night, ’ and then I thought that Father Dominic thought that I was stupid. ‘ I’ve never seen snow before.’ I had never felt cold. It was like putting your hand in the ice compartment of the Frigidaire. Before, cold was the drop in temperature in the mountains at school. My mother had given me a bottle-green cardigan.
    When we got to the front door with my trunk, Father Prior said, ‘Ninety-five in the shade is it, where you come from?’ He laughed. I smiled, shyly.
    The house smelt of boiled cabbage. The panelling on the parlour wall was dark oak. Dark oak: I read that in books about England, about the time of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. ‘Is there a priest’s hole in this house ? I learnt that when I was doing English History. Then we changed to West Indian history, no longer kings and queens, Cardinal Wolsey, but slavery and emancipation. Wilberforce. Slave ships, black people packed in rows like bananas, and the islands changed hands many times between the European powers, like pawns in a game between the  French, English, Spanish, Portuguese and the Dutch,’ I babbled.
    ‘Well, you’ll have to have a look,’ Father Dominic said, tapping the panelling, smiling. ‘And maybe there is even a secret tunnel, a runaway’s escape.’ Then we went into see Father Abbot and I had to kneel to kiss his ring.
    ‘Father Justin, this is your new charge, ’ the Abbot said. The heavy door closed behind a broad monk, who smiled without opening his mouth, his lips a thin line. His hand felt like sandpaper. He smelt of pomme aracs. Later I saw the bulbs on the windowsill of his cell. Hyacinths, I learnt. I breathed in the smell of my childhood, the red fruit which looked like pears whose pulp was like cotton wool, smelt strangely like these flowers, blue like Quink ink, which grew from bulbs into fleshy leaves and petals like skin. The scent hung heavy in the room on the windowsill above the black, hot-water pipes. Father Justin took me up to the dormitory of the novitiate wing.
    ‘We’ve put an electric blanket in your bed. It’s not usual, but Father Abbot thought it best for the first night. You may dispense with it when you think you can cope.’ That night I woke thinking I had a raging temperature. I had forgotten to turn the blanket off. I was hot and then cold.
    He tells his life like a story. He wanted it told, even then. I will tell it.
    I see now that there were other things which bothered him, for instance, the special significance he gives to those boys: Redhead, Espinet, Ramnarine and Mackensie. Obviously looking back he felt guilty about the colour business. He didn’t have to go through all that we had to go through with Black Power. It doesn’t seem natural, his preoccupation with race. I mean, they are like anyone else to me. Like Krishna who works for me: he’slike any other guy. He’s a friend really. But it wouldn’t have been like that in his day. Yes, things had to change. I don’t get too wound up about it. Some black people still do. Miriam asked me the other day about it. She asked whether there were any memorials to what happened. I didn’t know what she meant at first.
    I mean, it’s nearly two hundred years ago, I said.
    But the repercussions are still there, she said. Think what it would be like if we had erased the holocaust. Slavery is like that to black people.
    It hadn’t occurred to me that she was Jewish. Things like what Miriam says make me think that these are J. M.’s adult friends; make me wonder about who he became.

Spiritual Friendship

    Feed me with raisin cakes
restore me with apples…
Song of Songs
    Because of the strict rule of silence throughout the day, other than at recreation in the common room and out of necessity at work, Aelred did not have many opportunities to talk with Benedict. They might meet on