Aelred's Sin by Lawrence Scott Page A

embarrassed the last time he spoke with him in the library in passing. Then he thought he shouldn’t try to get his attention. That was precisely not Father Justin’s way.
    Was Benedict weaning him? He felt that he could at least smile at him. Had all his attention been solely because he was his guardian angel and Aelred had been his charge? Was that all there was to it? Had it only been a duty? That would be in line with Father Justin’s way. Buthe had felt other things with Benedict. There had been a kind of charm. He had not imagined it, had he?
    Aelred began to feel homesick again. So, the spring had not changed his feelings, nor Benedict. The spring had continued with surprises. The flowers Aelred had learnt the names of - snowdrop, crocus, forsythia, daffodil, tulip - burst and burgeoned into the full shade of trees, as well as a host of flowering plants and shrubs he could not name and pin down. There was magnolia. This world was too different and he did not know enough of it fast enough. Ashton Park was growing too quickly. He leant against the rough stone wall of the cloister which caught the sun. All around was cold despite the sun. But this one spot was hot. He thought of how lizards lay in the sun at home. He warmed himself. The lizards moved among the dry almond leaves.
    The new blossom suggested other colours, other shades, other names: poui, bougainvillea, flamboyante. In his mind the colours were too lurid for this light; smells were too rank for this soft powdery air.
    Words are a world, he thought. Muslin is for dresses, linen for sheets, cotton for shirts and aprons, broderie anglaise for bodices. He heard his mother and Toinette. His father wore a pith hat for the sun, a rim of sweat on his brow. His arms were the colour of pawpaw. His horse was sprinkled with the colour of cinnamon and flour. And she, his mother, before she came down from her room, dipped her comb in a glass of water. It was light like a hummingbird’s flicker, hovering like a halo over her hair. She smelt of l’herbe-à Madame Lalie; yellow-white lily flowers on a green lawn, collected by a black woman in her white cotton apron. She knelt and smelt of gingerand bayrum. It was Toinette. Toinette was black like bark, glossy like coral. Blue butterflies pinned themselves to a hedge of sweet lime. Marbleu. Between jalousies he could see the birdbath on the lawn at Malgretoute. Water is a mirror for a sky of enamel-basin blue. Breeze moves green palms. Palmistes! Breeze moves green hills. And again he heard Toinette’s voice: ‘Mungo have a scar right there on his neck. Like when you sweetheart give you a kiss on the neck and you could see the bite. But is no kiss. Mungo have to run. Mungo have to break his chains and run away.’
    Snatches of the story were coming back to Aelred. They reminded him that he must go back to the library and carry on his reading about Master Walter, who had an estate in Antigua. He had made a fortune in sugar and added on a wing to the house at Ash Wood. But he never stayed there long. Old Sir Dewey, his father, could no longer make the journey, and Master Dewey always had to make yet another voyage to the West Indies. He could not trust those half-breed overseers with the running of the place. There had been a fire last time he was away and the darn niggers had almost ruined the place. There had been expensive repairs to be done to the sugar mill.
    ‘Grandmammy say they always tie Mungo because he always running away and the Master can’t afford to lose a young able-bodied boy.’ Toinette’s story threaded itself in with Aelred’s readings in the library of Master Walter Dewey and his voyages to the West Indies.
    ‘But where he get the scar on his neck, Toinette?’
     
    Maybe if he spoke in secret, in confession, he would get some help with his other preoccupation. Aelred wrestledwith his dilemma. He began in the usual way, kneeling at the prie-dieu at the side of Father Basil’s desk. ‘Bless me,