LITMIR.BIZ

       Bread and Chocolate

      The sun streamed through the windows set in the vaulted whitewashed ceiling high above Brother James’s head. The golden light illuminated the cloud of flour drifting upwards from his working hands, danced on the dough and was kneaded into the mix along with a whispered prayer and the live pungent yeast. He divided the great body of bread into eight equal pieces and set them to one side, covered in warm tea towels to rise. The scent of yeast and clean cloth filled the high kitchen.

      An arched door opened and one of the younger brothers stuck his tonsured head into the room. Brother James looked up, irritated at the interruption. ‘Father Pierce says you are to go to him.’ Brother James threw one anxious glance towards his rising bread but obeyed the greater imperative. He rubbed his hands, enjoying the familiar pleasure of dry dough peeling from skin, washed them under the tap, dried them on a towel hung in front of the huge monastery cooker and, still wearing his crisp white apron, strode down the length of the kitchen aisle. At the far end, as distant as possible, the young vegetable cook was slicing an avalanche of courgettes.

      ‘May I see to the bread?’

      ‘No!’ Brother James snapped. ‘Leave it alone.’ He reproved himself for lack of charity as he shut the door on his brother’s crestfallen face. But he cheered up almost immediately. Any man who obeyed the rules of poverty, chastity, and obedience, daily and without fail, might allow himself the occasional human error of grumpiness, especially to some damned carrot peeler.

      ‘It’s about your book,’ Father Pierce said without preamble.

      Brother James stood before the huge carved desk, his head slightly bowed to signify his absolute obedience.

      ‘I have a letter here from the publishers. Turns out it’s doing rather well. They want to reprint it.’

      A flicker of what might have been pride gleamed for a moment in Brother James’s face and was instantly repressed.

      ‘People are keen on cookbooks,’ the abbot remarked. ‘And they say that your bread recipes and the spiritual element are exactly right for…’ He consulted the letter ‘…the gourmet new-hippie market.’ He looked at Brother James over his severe horn-rimmed glasses. ‘Gourmet new-hippie? I thought it was just bread recipes with a few prayers.’

      ‘It is,’ Brother James said modestly.

      ‘They want you to do a programme for the television,’ Father Pierce remarked. ‘Show people how to cook the bread, I suppose. They want to film our daily life here, and then cut to the studio kitchen where you will be making our bread.’

      ‘Cut?’

      ‘Should I say slice?’

      Brother James shook his head. ‘They want me on the television?’

      Father Pierce consulted the letter again, he was enjoying himself. ‘They say that if you are sufficiently televisual they could promise you two programmes, and perhaps a new career as a presenter.’ His solemn demeanour cracked and he laughed aloud. ‘They seem to have no notion that you have a career. They seem to think you are employed as a cook here. They don’t understand that your vocation is to God, and that you bake bread as part of your service to the community.’

      ‘And what will you tell them?’ Brother James asked.

      ‘You have no preferences?’ the abbot questioned acutely.

      The younger man bowed his head. ‘I obey, Father Pierce,’ he said simply.

      The abbot thought for a moment. He did not tell the Brother Breadmaker that the fee offered at the foot of the letter would pay for installing central heating in the chapel, a sum for which he had been praying nightly. ‘I think you should do it,’ he said. ‘God speaks in many tongues. Perhaps He is calling you to teach those who ask for a stone and can be given bread.’

      ‘And who will make the bread for the brothers while I am away?’ Brother James asked.

      ‘Your assistant? Brother Gervase?’

      ‘I will bake extra and freeze it. He can be trusted to defrost,’ Brother James said glacially. ‘Nothing more.’

      ‘You should be training him,’ the abbot reminded him gently.

      ‘I am trying to.’ Brother James bowed and went from the room.

      His abbot watched him go. ‘And perhaps the outside world may teach you, Brother James.’

      The arrival of the film crew at Wentworth Monastery was watched by the noviciates from the high window of their dormitory in a state of explosive excitement. The television set was only unveiled at the monastery on occasions of high national solemnity: a royal wedding, a royal funeral,

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