Communion, Chapter 11

Here's the next installment of The Communion of the Saint. The book is also available at amazon.com in trade paper and for the Kindle

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Chapter 11

     

      “When did you last eat?”

      Whatever else I had expected from Christina, it wasn’t that. I had to think for a moment.

      “Yesterday—supper.”

      “No breakfast?”

      “Uh-uh.”

      “Then it’s no wonder you’re going about with the faints.” Christina went to the tiny kitchen. Drawers slid open and closed. Cabinet doors clunked. Jars rattled. A knife snicked and clicked as she sliced. Gas puffed to flame in her stove. Butter sizzled. The whole performance was an incantation of hunger, and it worked. Soon the smells joined the sounds—onion, sausage, eggs, all making an olfactory rite that lifted me up out of my blanket and chair and into the kitchen, where I leaned on the doorpost, the entrance to heaven. Amphibalus appeared by my feet, mewing his hunger and profound sense of neglect.

      Christina’s hands moved in a ballet of preparation. She lifted a corner of the omelet to check at the same instant she pushed down the switch on a toaster. Those tasks done, she scooped the remains of her chopping and cutting and slid the debris neatly into a compost bucket by the sink, then rinsed the knife and set it to dry. Her tiny kitchen had become as clean as could be, before the meal was fully cooked.

      I clapped in appreciation.

      “You put my dad to shame, and he’s neat.”

      “I appreciate food—obviously. I hate a mess, though. Sit.”

      Amphibalus mewed. Christina sliced off a bit from her own omelet and tossed it to the cat. The morsel never touched the floor.

      While I sat she slid a spatula under one of the omelets and tipped it onto an old, chipped piece of Delft ware. I was ready to dig in, but waited until she had her own plate ready. The first bite, steaming, redolent of onions and peppers, was on its way to my mouth.

      “Stop.”

      My hand trembled with the frustration of it. She had tempted me so, and now I couldn’t.

      “Put that down, please.” Christina’s voice had grown chilly and stern. “I begin to see why you irritate Father Thomas so. I thought it was only envy. Have you no religion?”

      “I beg your pardon?” I temporized. What had set her off, I didn’t know.

      “Grace, child! Give thanks before eating! It’s rude not to acknowledge your maker.”

      The omelet tormented me with its smells, so close but so impossible to reach. Christina stretched across the tiny table and pushed my hand down.

      “Grace and peace come from you, O Lord,” she said, her eyes upon me. “Blessed are you who brings forth bread from the earth. We give thanks to you, O Lord our God, who watches all our days.”

      I know a cue when I hear it. “Amen.”

      Christina repeated the ancient word.

      “Now, eat.”

      The prayer had dulled my anticipation. Now the delectable egginess was only food for my hunger. I wolfed it down, seasoned with a heavy sprinkling of shame.

      Christina waited until I was finished. I tried to help her clean the meager dishes, but she refused. “I’ve been doing for myself so long that it feels wrong to watch someone else,” she said, but she didn’t trust me to wash to her standards. Maybe if I prayed before washing up, she’d think I was okay. Then again, maybe not.

      I felt like a chastened child watching her work at the sink. I slipped into the living room. The awful velvet portrait of Jesus stared down at me, as accusing as Christina’s self-righteous cleanliness. I sat down with my back to him, trapped in this cottage with a woman who disapproved of me, carried here by a man who envied me, and I hadn’t asked for any of this. I just wanted to do my work and be left alone.

      “What is the purpose of your gift?” Christina stood in the doorway from the kitchen.

      “Is that what you call it?”

      “Why you?” She wasn’t about to be stopped by my rhetorical tricks. “Why were you chosen? There are many others who would welcome such a visitation from heaven, yet you treat it as an irritation.”

      She knelt in front of me and took my hands. Her pale, pudgy fingers wound through my dark and skinny ones, warm to the touch, and moist with a sheen of perspiration. I tried to remove myself from her grip, but she held on with surprising strength.

      “Clio—if you try to do this alone, you will be defeated. You don’t have the training, the context, to handle this. You need a soul friend, or it will break you. You need prayer, both your own and others. Today was just a foretaste of what’s to come.”

      I tugged my hands; she held on.

      “Let me go.”

      She looked up into my eyes. I don’t know what she saw there, but she released her grip.

      “Please—listen.”

      “You listen,” I said. “I didn’t ask for whatever’s happening here. I didn’t do anything to bring it on, but I’m not stupid, and the rest of you don’t know any better than me what I should do, how I should be. All that happened today was that I bumped my head, and everyone panicked.”

      Christina sighed and sat back on her haunches. The movement made her thighs fatten. She looked like a balloon being blown up.

      “If you believe that—”

      “It’s what happened. Then Tom kidnapped me.”

      “You might have ended up in the mental ward. It could still happen. You were confused and disoriented.”

      “I’ve been that way since I got here. You haven’t helped.”

      “But I’m trying to. You must believe me. It’s terribly important.”

      I got out of the chair. “Why?”

      “Something is happening here,” Christina said. “It centers on you. You don’t realize what forces you’re dealing with.”

      “Why don’t you tell me?” I objected. “Everyone talks around things.”

      As the words escaped me, I realized it was true. I had spoken unthinkingly, but there were hints and suggestions—even my voice gave only those—but everyone I’d met was evasive, as if participating in a grand, though unspoken conspiracy.

      “You haven’t been precisely honest yourself.”

      How could I be honest, when the visions might mean that I was coming apart at the seams?

      A chill descended on me. The cat dashed across the living room and disappeared.

      “Did you feel that?” she asked. Her eyes were open, but she was looking within. Outside, through the window, nothing had changed. There was no gust of wind. I was certain that if I looked at a thermometer, the temperature would have been unchanged, but we were both cold.

      It was the first time I’d felt something spooky that another person shared. Perversely, I was jealous. Whatever I was going through, so far it had been exclusively mine.

      “I get so afraid,” I said. The words fluttered out of me. I didn’t want to trust this fat mystic, but I had lost any sense of calculation, of self-protection. “I think I might be going crazy.”

      “I understand that.” Christina enfolded herself in her fat arms. It would have been funny, if we hadn’t been so scared.

      “What’s going on?”

      “I don’t have an answer.” Christina shivered again, as if a chill breeze had touched her. I felt it, too. That did it for me.

      “I want to go now.” I stood and moved toward the door.

      “Please.” Christina pleaded. “Please—stay.”

      I stopped. It was a long walk back, and I’d already scared myself enough for one night. That chill was still with me.

      “When is Tom supposed to come back?”

      “Tomorrow, in the morning. Please, stay. Whatever else is going on, you had a nasty bump, and I promised the doctor I’d watch over you.”

      “On one condition.” I no longer felt cold; I felt strong, for once in control. The feeling came from being willing to strike out on my own; I’d have to remember that. “No advice. No direction. No telling me what to do.”

      I didn’t know why she was willing, but she was.

      “Agreed.” Something fell away from her, some self-image, maybe, of the holy hermit of Markyate. Suddenly, Christina looked like an ordinary person, a pudgy, oversized woman whose best days had long ago passed her by. It made me sad to see it happen.

      “I still wish you’d pray with me, though.”

      “Look what happened the last time I tried that.”

      “You do have a point,” Christina said, “but so do I. You’ll have trouble if you’re so determinedly self-reliant.”

      “Watch it,” I said, but I found myself smiling. She was at least trying.

      We talked the night away. My headache eased into the background as Christina spoke of herself and the town she’d grown up in. It was a delight to listen to her go on and on, to feel weak currents of near boredom, to allow myself to drift with the flow of conversation. For that while, I had a respite, a break from intensity. I let her voice wash over me and drifted with it.

      Christina lived near the site of a locally famous anchoress, once a nun of Saint Albans. The other Christina’s cell had been here. From here she had advised the twelfth-century abbot of the monastery—and conducted a supposedly chaste love affair with him.

      The present Christina had never left Saint Albans, not even as a young woman during the war. Now in her seventies, she’d had a beau then, but he fell at Dunkirk. Her parents died during the early blitz, on a visit to London. Anyone she’d loved had left and died; she stayed, as a matter of survival.

      When the war ended, Christina, even then pudgy and awkward, found herself alone. There was enough inheritance to live frugally. Religion became her refuge, Jesus her companion.

      When, in a fit of postwar rehabilitation, the government started building the new highway through the old city, Christina volunteered for menial work on the archeological excavations and soaked up every bit of knowledge that she could, but she was without formal education. Nevertheless, the dig triggered her interest in the local Christian past. When she came across the story of Christina of Markyate, she took her small inheritance to a land agent and bought the cottage she still lived in. With enough scrimping, she managed.

      She lived as an observer, at the edge of the life of the city, through the years of recovery from the war. People occasionally came to her for advice, because she was alone and uninvolved and had a reputation for piety. She listened and kept her silence about what she heard. She knew everyone, if not in person, then by what others had said about them.

      Saint Albans was divided. Near London, it was a getaway spot and a bedroom community. A train took half an hour from King’s Cross. The abbey drew tourists, as did the picturesque town center and the ruins in Verulamium. Many wanted to capitalize on these attractions. The suburb itself grew suburbs, incorporating the outlying villages.

      Others wondered about the growing commercialization of the past and trivialization of the present. Christina found herself in sympathy with them, but repelled by some of the people on both sides of the divide.

            Her least favorite were Lady Phelps and Mrs. Fern. So of course they showed up, together, but separately, first thing in the morning.