particular sort of self-expression. It’s a small sacrifice, after all, isn’t it?”
“Yes, indeed!” said Dora.
“You’ll soon get used to our little ways,” said Mrs Mark. “I do hope you’ll enjoy it here. Paul has fitted in so well-we all quite love him. Shall we go along? I’m afraid I haven’t a great deal of time.”
She led the way out of the door. “I expect you know the geography of the house roughly by now,” said Mrs Mark. “The members of the community sleep right at the top of the house in this wing, in what used to be servants’ bedrooms. The main rooms on your floor are all kept as guest bedrooms. We act, you know, as a sort of unofficial guest house for the Abbey. We hope to develop that side of our activities very much in the future. At present there are still a lot of rooms which we haven’t even been able to furnish. The other wing is completely empty. Directly below us on the ground floor are the kitchen quarters at the back of the house, and the big ground-floor room on the corner in the front of the house is the general estate office. Then in the middle, as you know, there’s the refectory underneath the balcony, and two little rooms up above, set back behind the portico, which act as offices for James and Michael. And at the back there’s the historic Long Room, a great feature of the house, which is two stories high. We’ve made that into our chapel.”
As she talked Mrs Mark led Dora along a corridor, past the dark well of a back stairway, into a larger corridor and threw open a large door. They entered the chapel, this time from the end opposite the altar. In the bright daylight the room looked, Dora thought, even more derelict, like an aftermath of amateur theatricals. Though scrupulously clean, it appeared dusty and as if the walls were dissolving into powder. The hessian cloth reminded Dora of school.
“It’s not a proper chapel, of course,” said Mrs Mark, not lowering her voice. “That is, it’s not consecrated. But we have our own little regular services here. We go over to the Abbey chapel for Mass, and those who wish to can attend at certain other hours as well. And we have a special Sunday morning service here at which an address is given by a member of the community.”
They went out by the other door and emerged a moment later into the stone-flagged entrance hall. Mrs Mark threw open the door of the common-room. Modern upholstered chairs with arms of light-varnished wood stood in a neat circle, incongruous against the dark panelling.
“This is the only room we’ve really furnished,” said Mrs Mark.”We come here in our recreation time and we like to be comfy. The oak panelling isn’t original, of course. It was put in in the late nineteenth century when this was the smoking-room.
They emerged on to the balcony and began to descend the right-hand stone staircase.
“There’s the general office,” said Mrs Mark, indicating the windows of the large corner room. “You’ll see my husband working inside.”
They approached one of the windows and looked into the light room, which was furnished with trestle tables and unpainted deal cupboards, and seemed to be full of papers, all neatly stacked. Behind one of the tables sat Mark Straf-ford, his head bowed.
“He does the accounts,” said Mrs Mark. She watched him for a moment with a sort of curiosity which struck Dora as being devoid of tenderness. She did not tap on the window, but turned away. “Now we’ll cross to the Abbey”, she said, “and call on Paul.”
Seeing Mrs Mark watching her husband, and seeing her now a little stout and perspiring in her faded girlish summer dress, Dora felt a first flicker of liking and interest, and asked,“What did you and your husband do before you came here?” Dora, when she thought of it, never minded asking questions.
“You’ll think me an awful wet blanket,” said Mrs Mark, “but, do you know, we never discuss our past lives here. That’s another little religious rule that we try to follow. No gossip. And when you come to think of it, when people ask each other questions about their lives, their motives are rarely pure, are they? I’m sure mine never are! Curiosity that is idle soon degenerates into malice. I do hope you understand. Mind the steps here, they’re a bit overgrown.”
They had crossed to the Abbey side of the terrace and were going down some stone steps, much riddled by long dry grasses, which descended to a path leading to the causeway. Dora, exasperated, kept silent.
The lake water was very quiet, achieving a luminous brilliant pale blue in the centre and stained at the edges by motionless reflections. Dora looked across at the great stone wall and the curtain of elm trees behind it. Above the trees rose the Abbey tower, which she saw in daylight to be a square Norman tower. It was an inspiring thing, without pinnacles or crenellations, squarely built of grey and yellowish stone, and decorated on each face by two pairs of round-topped windows, placed one above the other, edged with zigzag carving which at a distance gave a pearly embroidered appearance, and divided by a line of interlacing arches.
“A fine example of Norman work,” said Mrs Mark, following Dora’s gaze.
They went on down to the causeway. This crossed the lake in a series of shallow arches built of old brick which had weathered to a rich blackish red. Each arch with its reflection made a dark ellipse. Dora noticed that the centre of the causeway was missing and had been replaced by a wooden section standing on piles.
“There was trouble here at the time of the dissolution, the dissolution of the monasteries, you know,” said Mrs Mark, “and that piece was destroyed by order of the nuns themselves. It didn’t help them, however. Most of the Abbey was burnt down. After the Reformation it became derelict and when Imber Court was built the Abbey was a deserted ruin, a sort of romantic feature of the grounds. Then in the late nineteenth century, after the Oxford movement, you know, the place was taken over by the Anglican Benedictines – it was formerly a Benedictine Abbey, of course – and was rebuilt about nineteen hundred. They acquired the manuscripts that interest your husband at about the same time. There’s very little of the old building left now except for the refectory and the gateway and of course the tower.”
They stepped onto the causeway. Dora felt a tremor of excitement. “Will we be able to go to the top of the tower?” she asked.
“Well, you know, we’re not going
Dora was stunned by this information. She stopped.“Do you mean”, she said, “that they’re completely imprisoned in there?”
Mrs Mark laughed. “Not imprisoned, my dear,” she said. “They are there of their own free will. This is not a prison. It is on the contrary a place which it is very hard to get into, and only the strongest achieve it. Like Mary in the parable, they have chosen the better part.” They walked on.
“Don’t they
“No,” said Mrs Mark. “Being Benedictines, they take a vow of stability, that is they remain all their lives in the house where they take their first vows. They die and are buried inside in the nuns’ cemetery.”
“How absolutely appalling!” said Dora.
“Quiet now, please,” said Mrs Mark in a lowered voice. They were reaching the end of the causeway.
Dora saw now that the high wall, which had seemed to rise directly out of the lake, was in fact set back more than fifty yards from the edge of the water. From the lake shore there ran two roughly pebbled paths, one up to the great gateway, whose immense wooden door stood firmly shut, and the other away to the left alongside the Abbey wall.
“This door”, said Mrs Mark, pointing to the gateway and still speaking softly, “is never opened except for the admission of a postulant: a rather impressive ceremony that always takes place in the early morning. Well, yes, it will also be opened in a week or two. When the new bell comes it will be taken in this way, as if it were a postulant.”
They turned to the left along the path which ran midway between the wall and the water. Dora saw a long rectangular brick building with a flat roof which seemed to be attached as an excrescence to the outside of the wall.
“Not a thing of beauty, I’m afraid,” said Mrs Mark.“Here are the parlours where the nuns occasionally come to speak to people from outside. And at the end is the visitors’ chapel where we are privileged to participate in the devotional life of the Abbey. The nuns’ chapel is the large building just here on the other side of the wall. You can see a bit of the tiled roof there through the trees.”
They went in through a green door at the end of the brick building. A long corridor stretched ahead with a row of doors leading off it.
“I’ll show you one of the parlours,” said Mrs Mark, almost whispering now. “We won’t disturb your husband just yet. He’s down at the far end.”
