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mean post in a place like Starwater Abbey where there was a large school to run and complex accounts to be kept. He was still at Starwater when I myself entered the Order in 1923, but as my career was unfolding at Ruydale we never met. Nor did we correspond. He represented a past which I could remember only with shame, and I suspected that I represented a similar burden of guilt to him. But then in 1930 he was transferred to the London headquarters in order to assist its ailing Bursar, and in a flash of foreknowledge I knew that our lives were drawing together again after completing some enigmatic circle in time.
    Our reunion came sooner than I had anticipated. I underwent a period of crisis which I have no intention of describing so I shall only record that it concerned the house-cat, Whitby, and nearly terminated my career as a monk; Father Darcy had to be summoned to Yorkshire to set me back on the spiritual rails. I recovered from my crisis, but six months later Father Darcy decided to reassure himself that I had fully surmounted the disaster which was now known as ‘The Whitby Affair’, and I was summoned to London for an inspection.
    The summons was most unusual. No one ever visited London from Ruydale except Aidan, who was obliged to travel thereonce a year for the Abbots’ Conference, and although I was apprehensive at the prospect of being inspected by Father Darcy I was also flattered that I was to receive special attention. However when I arrived in London in a state of wary but not unpleasant anticipation it was a rude shock when I found myself welcomed not by the Guest-Master but by the new Bursar, Francis Ingram.
    ‘So you’re still as lean as a lamp-post!’ he exclaimed. ‘But what happened to those owlish spectacles?’
    ‘My sight improved with age. What happened to the greyhound?’
    ‘He died of a surfeit of champagne.’
    We laughed, shaking hands as if we were the oldest of friends, but I was unnerved by his aura of hostility. It lay like a ball of ice beneath the warmth of his welcome; to my psychic eye it was unmistakable, and immediately I heard myself say: ‘Perhaps we should agree to draw a veil over the past.’
    ‘Should we? Personally I think it’s more honest to face one’s disasters and chalk the whole lot up to experience. After all,’ said Francis, suddenly fusing his middle-aged self with the undergraduate of long ago, ‘Wilde did say that experience was the name men give to their mistakes.’
    I said with as much good humour as I could muster: ‘Still quoting Wilde? I’m surprised our superior permits it!’
    ‘Then perhaps now’s the moment to make it clear to you that I’m the favourite with a licence to be entertaining,’ said Francis at once, and as he smiled, making a joke of the response, I recognized the demon jealousy and knew our old rivalry was about to be revived in a new form.
    I said abruptly: ‘You’ve told him about the past?’
    ‘How could I avoid it? As soon as the rumour reached London that you’d got up to something thoroughly nasty with a cat I said: “That reminds me of my salad-days.” And then before I knew where I was –’
    ‘He’d prised the whole story out of you.’
    ‘But didn’t he know most of it anyway?’
    ‘I admit I told him about the Cambridge catastrophe, but Inever mentioned you by name! And now, of course, he’s decided it would be amusing as well as edifying to batter us into brotherly love – he’s summoned me here not just to put my soul under the microscope but to purge us of our ancient antipathy!’
    This deduction proved to be all too correct. Every evening after supper Father Darcy would summon us to his room and order a debate on a subject of theological interest. The debates lasted an hour and were thoroughly exhausting as Francis and I struggled to keep our tempers and maintain an acceptable level of fraternal harmony. Afterwards Father Darcy would pronounce the winner, dispatch Francis and embark on a