The Grail

When I heard a rumour that one of the knights who undertook the quest for the Holy Grail was still living, I felt I could not rest until I had spoken with him. Many had heard the story, but few had any notion of where he lived, and even his name seemed to be in dispute. It was only after many tedious journeyings I discovered him. His name was Bors, and he lived a solitary hermit in a desolate forest. He was now an extremely old man, and it was immediately clear that for many years he had cared nothing for his appearance or the condition of his clothes. For a long time he met my queries with immovable silence, but at length, either out of pity or wearied by my endless importunities, he began to talk, like one who had almost forgotten the use of his mother-tongue or the sound of his own voice.

He began to tell the long story of how the company of knights set forth to find the Grail, through dark and trackless forests and over perilous mountains, how they battled monsters and giants, how they endured endless traps and temptations laid before them by devils, how the faint-hearted abandoned the quest as one year followed another, though the valiant few pressed onwards, sustained by the vision ……  But all these stories I had already heard, so I cut short his account with impatient questions.

What did your companions propose to do with the Grail when they found it? This question for the first time appeared to animate him.

- You do not DO anything with the Grail. It is not for USE. The Grail IS, and always will be: that is all. It exists, beyond all time and all space. Nothing more is required. He who has seen the Grail has beheld all the secrets of the universe: of life, of death, and of the life to come.

And these secrets are?

- They cannot be expressed in words.

I felt that little was being learnt, so I moved to a new line of questioning.

How did you find it?

- Not through any effort or merit of ours. The Grail is not to be ferreted out or dug for, like some sack of buried gold. It may permit itself to be found. Only one who is wholly without sin can find the Grail. He must not only be pure and undefiled in his actions, but in his words too, and even in his thoughts. As a sinful man, I could not come near it, but as an act of grace far beyond my deserts, I was permitted to glimpse it, from a distance, for an instant. That momentary vision I have held in my mind ever since, and I desire nothing but to continue to meditate upon it.

What did the Grail look like?

- It is beyond any description.

But it must have had a shape: a colour?

- It has all colours, many of which human eyes cannot perceive, and at the same time it has no colour. It is not confined in a single fixed shape, as mortal objects are: it embodies in itself all the shapes that ever are, or were, or could be.

By this time, I was beginning to wonder whether my journey had been wasted. Either he was simply a fraud, or he was a deluded old man lost in a dense fog of impenetrable mysticism, and unable to convey any useful information. In anger I said, I do not believe you found the Grail at all: in fact, I begin to doubt whether the Grail even exists.

- No matter, he said, for I know I saw the Grail. That is sufficient. I am at peace.

My Grandmother's Clock

It sits on my mantelpiece
My grandmother's clock
And I should very much like
To ask the clock what it knows
Of my grandmother and her time.

But we all know that it's a mere
Affectation of literature
To ask a clock what it knows
For the face of the clock is eyeless
The hands of the clock do not feel
It tells the hours unknowing
And it speaks, but says nothing but "tick"
And although it stopped when she died
(At a great age, in her own home)
This fact is wholly without
Any metaphysical cause
(There was no-one to wind it up)

So it sits on my mantelpiece
My grandmother's clock
And a hundred years from now
It will sit on someone else's
And its eyeless face will look on
A world I shall never see
And its unfeeling hands will tell
Hours I can never know

And still it says nothing but "tick".

A Fancy-Dress Party

No, I won’t be coming to your Christmas party. It’s nothing to do with you, of course; and you know I’m not a Scrooge person. I like Christmas. No, it’s just that you specified it was going to be fancy dress; and you see, there’s just no way I could ever go to a fancy dress party. They terrify me; especially at Christmas. If you’ve got a moment, I’ll explain why, and I hope you’ll understand.

Do you remember when I used to teach at the school in Oldbury? And then I left quite suddenly, and I didn’t tell anyone why. I expect you assumed I’d got into some kind of trouble; but I hadn’t; and it’s all connected with why I won’t come to your party this Christmas. I’ve never told anyone about this before.

You see, one of the traditions at Oldbury school was that on the last day of term in December, when we’d broken up and all the boys had gone home, we had a final staff meeting where we all wore fancy dress and the headmaster gave out various silly prizes for how good our costumes were. And of course the boys got to know about it, and so another tradition was that some boys would always try to gatecrash our little do, dressed up of course so we wouldn’t recognise them. And I believe it was a matter of great prestige if any of them got through the meeting without being discovered.

So at this particular occasion we all trickled into the staff room in a variety of costumes, mostly home-made but a few hired for the occasion, and we looked around at each other wondering if there were any of the boys present. What about the person in the gorilla suit? Or the one rather feebly got up as a ghost, with eye-holes cut in an old bed sheet? Or the one dressed for a Venetian carnival, complete with swirling cloak, tricorn hat, rapier, and one of those black and white masks with a huge nose? Then Henry came in.

Now Henry had only joined us in September: just a temporary appointment to cover an unexpected vacancy. He was a strange, secretive sort of fellow, who kept himself very much to himself and none of us really got to know him at all. He lived in cheap lodgings near the school, and never appeared at the pub or at any social events. Heaven knows what the boys made of him; probably had fantasies that he was a wanted criminal in hiding, or something like that; but he had a very unpredictable temper, so they didn’t  dare tease him too much. For all we knew, they could have been right. I didn’t find out the truth till this time I’m talking about, and very disturbing it was too.

So Henry came into our meeting. He’d attempted fancy dress himself, but he hadn’t been very imaginative, and I recognised him straight away. All he’d done was to wear a kind of nightdress and stick a tea towel on his head and a Saddam Hussain moustache on his face. Nobody would really have taken him for an Arab in a million years: he simply looked ridiculous. And when he came in, he spotted the man in the Venetian mask, and I’d swear he went absolutely white, and swayed as if he was going to faint. I heard him mutter “My God!”, and he literally fled from the room. Now at the time I supposed he’d just suddenly felt ill or something, and then the meeting began and I forgot about him. And the headmaster gave out the silly prizes as usual, and I thought the Venetian man might win something, but he didn’t seem to be there any more. I presumed it must have been one of the boys, who’d skedaddled when he thought he might be unmasked.

In fact, the whole thing slipped from my mind, what with the general relief of term ending, but that evening I got a phone call from Henry’s landlady. I don’t know why she called me, or how she got my number. Would I come round quickly, please: Henry had been taken ill and was in a very bad way. So of course I went, and there he was all in a heap on the floor, though there wasn’t any blood. I only knew basic first aid, but I did what I could until the doctor turned up, and he took one look at Henry and summoned an emergency ambulance to cart him off to hospital: he’d had a heart attack, and it was touch and go whether he’d survive. Actually, the doctor told me that if I hadn’t come on the scene so quick, Henry would be dead. But survive he did; and when I thought he might be well enough to receive visitors I went to see him in hospital, since the poor chap didn’t have anyone else to turn to. The nurse wasn’t particularly keen to let me in. “He’s still very weak”, she said, “and very nervous about the lest little thing. Do take great care that you don’t disturb him”. And I could see what she meant when she opened the curtains around his bed and immediately said, “It’s all right Henry! It’s only me, and I’ve brought Bill from the school to see you. Just you lie back and don’t fret!”

He looked terrible. And when the nurse had gone, the first thing he said to me was, “Did you see him? The man in the mask? Did you see him?”
“Yes”
“Really and truly see him? Because other people don’t, you know. I’m the only one who sees him”
“Yes, I saw him all right. He had a hat, and a long black cloak and a sword”
Henry was quiet for a long time, and then he said, “Well, at least that proves I’m not mad, and I suppose that’s something”. And he told me this absolutely weird story, which normally I wouldn’t have believed for an instant.

“It happened when I was in Venice on holiday”, he said, “and one evening I was in that grand piazza outside St. Mark’s. It was pretty crowded; all sorts of people milling about, with one or two even in the traditional carnival costume, hat and cloak and mask; I assumed as some kind of tourist trap. I went up to one of these to have a close look, but there was a great mass of people swirling around, with the result that I got pushed from behind and bumped into him. And I really can’t describe how scary that was, because it was just like coming up against clothes swinging on a washing line. I mean, I bumped into his cloak and there was nothing inside it, just emptiness. I barged right into him, until my face was up against his mask, and there were no eyes looking out from it, just blackness. I can’t describe how horrible it was. But when I backed off, he moved, and he started to draw his rapier, and I knew he intended to kill me. I fled in panic, and left the city that same night.

“I thought that would be the end of it; and maybe it was only some kind of nightmare, but I found out it wasn’t. Ever since then he’s been following me. I’ve had to keep moving. I don’t know how he travels, or how he finds me; and I think he’s quite slow, because sometimes it’s weeks before he catches up with me. Sometimes I can see him, though not many other people can, and at other times I just sense his presence. It’s taken him since September to find me here, and for a while I even imagined I’d escaped him forever. Then I saw him at that party. I rushed back here to grab my stuff and run, but he somehow followed me and cornered me in my room, and then he drew his sword …….. I think it must have been as insubstantial as he is, because they tell me I had no sign of a wound, but I felt the most awful pain in my chest, and then I didn’t know anything till I woke up in hospital here.
   But I can’t stay here. He’ll know I’m not dead, and he’ll come looking for me again. As soon as I can walk, I’ll have to get out or here and find somewhere else to hide - though sometimes I wonder what the point is; he’s bound to get me in the end; I might as well let him do it now”.

Henry’s voice began to rise in despair. “It’s all so unfair! What did I ever do to him? I didn’t bump into him on purpose. And he won’t even let me apologise. What can I do? What can I do?”

At this stage the nurse, overhearing Henry’s sobs, came in and told me I’d better leave. I suppose she gave him some kind of sedative. Anyway, I came home. And that was the last I ever saw of Henry, because the next day my wife and I had to go away somewhere, and by the time we got back Henry had discharged himself from hospital and disappeared. He never contacted any of us again. I often wonder what happened to him. Is he still alive? Did the masked man finally get him? Or was he actually paranoid, with the masked figure just some stupid 6th-former showing off, and the rest of the story just a product of Henry’s diseased imagination? That would be the most rational explanation, of course, and I’d like to believe it.

Now you might say; that’s all very well, but so what? What’s that got to do with refusing to come to a Christmas party? Well, I’d have to admit, I’m still scared. Henry said you’d generally sense the man rather than actually see him; and once or twice I fancy I’ve sensed him. I’m not going to describe it, but it wasn‘t a pleasant feeling at all, I can tell you. You’ll say it’s just my own imagination being too active, but there you are: I thought I could sense his presence. At such times, I wonder if he blames me for saving Henry’s life, so I’m next on his list, or whether he’s lost track of Henry and thinks I can lead him to him. Afterwards I can try to laugh it all off, because I’ve never actually seen him and nothing nasty’s happened so far. But suppose I do actually see him: what then? And if at your party someone comes in Venetian costume, I think it would be my turn for a heart attack. So I hope you’ll understand why I’m staying at home.

Pagan Philosophy

A poem about the Caucasus, with reference to recent events there

The people are like their mountains
beautiful, wild, untameable,
hard, crushing any weakness,
implacable in revenge on outsiders
who show them no respect

Silly people in the cities
may speak of dying for a cause
but a serious man knows
that for your cause to triumph
you must kill

In the end we all die.
What matters is how we die
and what better way to die
than in defence of your home
surrounded by the bodies of your enemies?

The only true immortality
is to live in legend
when your children's children
tell stories of your mighty deeds.

The mountains and their people
once inspired Pushkin and Lermontov and Tolstoy
and now they inspire Vladimir Putin
- a serious man.

pgs

Making Contact

Michael gazed idly through the window of the train as it dawdled its way across the Welsh countryside in the drizzle and deepening gloom of an October afternoon. Until he arrived at his destination there was nothing he could do, but his mind was too preoccupied to settle to read a book. This was his very first mission: to locate his contact and deliver the message he had been given, which was “It’s snowing in Venice”. What might that mean? Nobody had seen fit to tell him, and he suspected he wasn’t supposed to enquire. He didn’t even have a proper address for the contact, or a physical description: only that his name was Jones and that he lived in a certain Welsh village whose name Michael was by no means sure of pronouncing even remotely correctly, since it consisted largely of Ws and double Ls. Nor had he been given any idea of what was supposed to follow once his message had been delivered.
It had occurred to Michael that this might well turn out to be not a real assignment at all, but some kind of trial to test out his reliability and usefulness. Quite likely he was supposed to display initiative in first of all locating the contact and then in following any instructions he might be given in return - perhaps another message? perhaps a package to deliver, or some other task to fulfil? Or perhaps above all he was supposed to use his judgement as to whether the contact was a man to be trusted? Maybe even now assessors were lurking and watching, to report on how he performed? - in which case the mysterious Jones was doubtless one of the assessors.
For as long as he could remember, Michael had known this was the career he wanted. As a small boy he had been fascinated by disguises and codes and invisible writing. His school friends had noticed, and had given him nicknames like “James Blonde” and “006 ½, licensed to hurt”, and he had learnt from this not to reveal his ambition to become a spy - at least, not until he met someone who might be useful in his ambition, and even then only by making cryptic hints rather than stating it openly. To this end he had worked hard to pass his exams and had assiduously sought to make the best contacts. And it had worked: eventually he had been interviewed and presumably secretly vetted. And here he was.
The train finally arrived. It was now quite dark outside. A few lights shone in the village behind the little station. No-one else left the train. The only person about was the man at the ticket window. Michael approached him.
“I wonder if you could help me: I’m looking for Mr Jones”.
“Ooh, there’s plenty of us called Jones here! There’s Jones the milk, and there’s Jones the gas and there’s Jones the bread; and me, I’m Jones the train!”
This, thought Michael, is clearly a test I‘ve been set. I shall need to show persistence and thoroughness, and at the same time be very discreet in my enquiries, so as not to raise suspicion. I’d better start here.
“I’m sorry I can’t be more precise”, he said, “The fact is, I didn’t expect to be here at all. I was supposed to be going to Italy, but it was cancelled at the last minute. The weather’s terrible there. They say it’s snowing in Venice!”
An expression of gradually dawning comprehension crept over the railwayman’s face. “Ooh, it’s Jones the spy you’ll be wanting! D’you know, you’re the third person who’s been asking for him this week?”
Somehow, Michael had not expected intelligence work to be like this.

Conversation

"The most frightening experience I ever had", said Nigel, "was when I was a student, living in lodgings in a scruffy part of town. I woke up in the middle of the night and found a man sitting on the end of my bed. It was too dark to see clearly, but it looked like he had a knife. He asked me, "Where's the drugs then?" I was terrified"
"Did you think he was a burglar or a policeman?" asked Martin. "Because if you thought it was the police, you should have demanded to see his search-warrant".
"I don't know what I thought. I was trembling all over and I couldn't even think straight, let alone talk coherently".
Martin said, "If I was sure it was a burglar, I'd have said the drugs were hidden in the kitchen, and I've have taken him there. Then I'd have grabbed the big kitchen knife, and I've had said, "I'm a trained fencer, so now I've got the advantage over you!", though I suppose that legally I should have told him to clear out rather than just go for him".
"It's all very well for you to talk! You weren't there! I bet you'd have been every bit as scared as I was! In the end he went away, but by that time I was a gibbering wreck! I couldn't sleep the rest of that night, and I couldn't face staying in those lodgings any longer. I went and dossed down with a friend until I found somewhere else to live. I still have nightmares about it".
"So this intruder: he didn't find the drugs, then?" But Martin hardly bothered to listen to Nigel's reply. He was running through in his own mind how he would have seen off the intruder, or, if the man did after all prove to be a policeman, the sensation he would create in court with his brilliant orations in his own defence.

The Abbot

The Abbot walked moodily down the path that led from the west door of his chapel, kicking at the pebbles as he went. Everything was highly unsatisfactory, and he could see no obvious means to bring about improvement. For a start, he was suffering from acute indigestion. He silently pronounced anathema on whatever miscreant might have ruled that barnacle geese were a permitted food during Lent. His stomach could never cope with goose, but, for God’s sake, he had a position to keep up; he had important guests to entertain; what was he supposed to give them: bread and water? At least the pains in his guts had the effect of temporarily taking his mind off the far greater problem.

     The map! Buying it for the monastery had seemed such a good idea at the time! That man who called himself Vladimir, who spoke his Latin with the funny accent, had been so plausible! He described how he had guided the last crusade across the Bulgar lands to Constantinople, and how he had found an map in a church wrecked by Turkish raiders; and then, with the most reverent air possible, had uncovered the amazing parchment. The Abbot could not read the writing on it, which he understood was in Hebrew, but Vladimir had translated it for him. It was a map on which Saint Paul’s journeys were marked by the hand of the Apostle himself, miraculously preserved over the centuries. He had demanded a very high price for the map, but the Abbot’s head was filled with visions of the countless pilgrims who would flock to the abbey, and he had scarcely bothered to bargain. Indeed, since he lacked the available money to meet the price, he had pledged the monastery’s land as security that the balance would be produced by Michaelmas. The fame of the map had quickly spread, and now the King himself was soon to arrive to admire the amazing relic. How jealous the Bishop was! All he had to boast about in his cathedral was a fragment of a knucklebone of Saint Hilarius, patron saint of professional fools and clowns, and even that was of the most dubious provenance!
All had been going so well until that miserable travelling scholar Brother Cedric had paid a visit. He had examined the map and immediately pronounced it a clumsy forgery. “Not so much a Mappa Mundi and Mappa Tuesday!” he had snorted scornfully. “I verily believe it was drawn not much earlier than last Tuesday; and as for the writing; it is not Hebrew, it is gibberish!” How fortunate it was that the aforesaid Brother Cedric had shortly afterwards been caught in a compromising situation with a milkmaid from the village, and been ordered to walk all the way to Santiago di Compostella as a penance! That should keep him out of the way for a couple of years at least; but rumours were bound to spread.
     The more the Abbot reflected on it, the more he was haunted by the uneasy feeling that the wretched Brother Cedric might perhaps have been right. In which case, what in heaven’s name was he going to do now? He had no authority to pledge monastic land as security for a purchase without consulting the head of his Order. Not only that; he had summoned the famous goldsmith Master Thomas from Paris, and commissioned him to make the most gorgeous frame for the map. More money: unimaginably vast sums of money!

     The Abbot kicked moodily at the path. One small stone flew up in the air and landed painfully on his toes. Muttering an anathema under his breath, he bent down to examine in offending object. It was an unusual stone, perfectly round, and of a peculiar colour and texture. Suddenly an idea occurred to him. He had long been irritated by the custom of the local people to pray to a certain local saint when they suffered from internal disorders. According to legend, the saint was a hermit who in the dim and distant past had miraculously cured one Queen Bertha of a longstanding digestive affliction. Personally, the Abbot believed this so-called saint lacked any canonical justification, but was merely a deplorable peasant superstition; and it was a matter of deep regret that the unauthorised cult was even becoming widespread amongst the nobility. But now …..
     For the first time for many days, the Abbot laughed, as new and exciting vistas opened up before him. This little oddment that he held in his hand was none other than the gallstone of Queen Bertha, which a saint - shall we call him Saint Gastric? the nobles would be vaguely aware that they'd heard the name somewhere before, and the peasants could easily transfer their worship once it won official approval - had miraculously extracted from her body by the power of prayer alone, without need of surgery! A holy relic indeed! The Abbot was suddenly feeling much better, and it occurred to him that he could now swear, with perfect truth, that holding the sacred gallstone in his hand had instantly relieved his indigestion! In his mind he saw a procession of pilgrims, clutching their bellies, noisily burping and breaking wind, flocking to his abbey to seek relief from the saint. Why, even the King was said to be a sufferer, which was hardly surprising, given the prevalence of highly-spiced food at his court.
     How to account for the sudden appearance of this new holy relic? Not a problem: he would say he had bought it from Vladimir, alongside that accursed map. Two treasures for the price of one would seem a reasonable bargain to anyone; and he was sure that Vladimir would co-operate in the plan, once it was explained to him that this new development would greatly increase his chances of actually getting his money. Then he could tell Master Thomas the goldsmith that the terms of his employment had been changed, and what was now required was a reliquary for a much smaller object.

Humming a Te Deum, the Abbot turned around and strode towards his chapter-house, rehearsing in his mind the account he would shortly be giving to his amazed brethren.