Summon the Bright Water Read Online Free PDF Page A

commune. The new intake of devout colonists had to be impressed by more than height and competence, and that was why Elsa had invented a uniform for herself, halfway between a parlourmaid and a nun. It seemed so absurd to flaunt colour at them when all they wanted – usually – was a mother figure.
    We agreed that no one must suspect our affair. Uncle Simeon, she thought, might be sympathetic but would not approve of so swift an attachment to a stranger. As for the colonists, whatever image they had of her – abbess, housekeeper or serene, maternal beauty – would be severely dented.
    Enough of Elsa for the moment – though I can never have enough. We returned in time for the hour of meditation, which out of courtesy to my hosts I attended. For me meditation is more peaceful and productive after half a litre of claret and a square meal, but on this occasion I had plenty to meditate about: whether I could save myself from falling desperately in love with Elsa and how much to believe of the story of the win on the pools. It neatly accounted for the comfort of Broom Lodge, which had puzzled me, as well as for the unproductive farming and the impossibility of any large profits on Marrin’s buying and selling of gold; all the same, he was not the sort of character to study football results and to waste time and money on a weekly gamble. Of course he might have done it once only and produced a winning line by following some incredibly effective cabalistic formula, but a pious and profitable burglary for the sake of the commune was far more likely.
    By the time the party broke up with a monotonous chant my thoughts had switched to salmon fishing, Marrin’s early and wildly imaginative scheme to raise some cash. Since I myself am a competent skin-diver, I was eager to talk to him about the risks of the Severn Sea and the possibilities of underwater exploration.
    First I engaged the major in conversation on the founding of the colony, so that there could be no reason to suspect Elsa of giving the story away. He avoided any discussion of the win on the pools, saying that there were many unexpected ways in which the spiritually minded could be rewarded. When I suggested that the acquisition of worldly wealth was usually supposed to distract the Soul from the Way, he did not agree. Poverty was desirable for the monk but not for the monastery. This led quite naturally to the early skin-diving for profit. Later on, the major said, it had become a rite. Marrin’s secret swimming with the fish was symbolic of the unity of life.
    Symbolic, hell! A typically woolly explanation! I had little doubt that Marrin would not shrink from fraud in propagating his gospel, but in his beliefs he was sincere. As I lie here in the discomfort and physical content of any primitive pagan, his doctrines seem as absurd as those of the more fantastic Christian sects. Yet one must remember that, to a pious lama, Broom Lodgism might seem more or less acceptable except for its emphasis on service to mankind rather than the perfecting of the soul. But that is irrelevant. The dynamic energy of a religion derives from belief, not what is believed.
    The subject came up naturally when I was discussing with Marrin the horseshoe bend of the river and the Severn bore which begins there, racing up ahead of the tide like any ocean wave and leaving a full estuary behind it.
    ‘I think I am the only person to have explored the bed,’ he said, ‘and at such a depth that I could let the bore pass over me.’
    I remarked in all innocence that I wished I could dive with him – but at slack water, thank you very much! He replied at once and cordially that I mustn’t hope to catch salmon. I would do better to come down to the Forest next season and learn to use a lave net, spotting my salmon as it drove upstream and racing along a sandbank to intercept it.
    ‘They always swim close to the surface,’ he told me. ‘That was where I went wrong. I had a theory that they