England:
Something Understood
by April Schmidt

At 4:30 a.m. I'd been awake for an hour tossing the pink bedspread back over the blankets that migrated south every time I moved. Now my right shoulder was cold and my left foot sweaty. I wrestled another round with the bedding and heard Christen turn over in the bed next to me. The room was still dark and I couldn't see if she was awake. It's dark at home too, I thought--10:30 at night--at least we can share that. I rolled over on an earplug and any sense of home vanished. At home I could sleep the whole night through. My stomach groaned. And no self respecting hotel owner would serve rice pudding for dessert.

We were leaving Stratford-upon-Avon that morning and I was eager for the alarm to start the day. We'd come to Stratford from Oxford a week before. In Oxford I'd silently laid tulips on the grave of C. S. Lewis and left the churchyard as the sun set behind ivy-covered crosses. In Oxford I'd stood where Bishop Latimer had turned to his priestly brother and said, "Be of good comfort, brother Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light us a candle by God's grace in England as I trust shall never be put out." The two men were then burned at the stake. But in Stratford, the birthplace of Shakespeare, our hand mixed muesli was the most authentic thing we would touch all day. In Stratford we went to Sunday service to see Shakespeare's grave without having to pay admission.

When the coach bus finally arrived to pick us up, the 28 in our group paraded down the wet sidewalk like turtles, our homes packed on our backs. We staked out seats, and I picked up Charlotte Brontë's Shirley, trying to relieve myself with fictional authenticity as we passed the "Shakespeare Shops" and "Reject China Outlets" for the last time.

We'd been on the road for an hour when a shaft of sunlight interrupted my reading. I looked out the window to see miles of land like a swelling green sea. Farmers border their lands with hedges and trees that seem to float like buoys on the hills. On the horizon the clouds were smeared and stirring, and I couldn't tell if the rain was falling from heaven or leaping to it. Drops started to shimmer on the window.

I forced myself back to my book. If I were at home I'd have the time to watch this. Earlier I'd found relief from an artificial town in fiction, and now my fiction was interfering with an authentic world. I set down the book and stole another glance out the window.

The rain was gone again and the hills had become more shallow. We passed a cluster of sheep standing in the fields. Twin lambs lay resting near the fence. I thought of Moses lifting lambs and carrying them back to the herd. A river followed the road and then slid under a stone footbridge. The bus stopped. A white goose stood at the river's edge lecturing some paddling ducks. She shook her tail and plopped into the river like Beatrix Potter's Jemima Puddleduck. The lambs and the goose made me question if the stories or the scenes themselves were more authentic. If I were at home, my friends and I could discuss this over lattes.

The coach turned toward Little Gidding and Dr. Ritchie's voice came over the speaker, "Little Gidding was an important place for the poets George Herbert and T.S. Eliot. When we get there, go to the chapel and bring your copies of Herbert."

Little Gidding turned out to be two buildings on a hilltop--a brick house and a stone chapel. I got off the bus, and the wind bounding over the hill lashed rain through my fleece. We hurried into the chapel trying to keep our khakis from mud splatters. At home I wouldn't have to wash these in the sink. I ducked into the church and started to wipe the drops from my book and shake out my hair. It was silent. There were no lights in the chapel, just half-burned candles left unlit. It smelled like my grandmother's wardrobe. There was a narrow stone aisle and two rows of dark oak seats along the sides. We filled the building, but no one said a word as we sat down.

Standing by the altar was a squashed English woman wearing black pinstriped pants and a navy cardigan over a mint turtleneck. She told us about the coats of arms in the stained glass and described the wagon ceiling. Even in the dim light I could see that one of her eyes had a heavy cataract. I couldn't look at her without thinking of Gloucester losing his eyes in "King Lear."

When she had finished, I sat looking at the floor. Dr. Ritchie asked Neil to read Herbert's "Prayer." I listened with my eyes closed and my hands folded.

"Heart in pilgrimage...
heaven in the ordinaire...
reversed thunder...
something understood."

The chapel was too small even to echo. We moved on to Eliot.

"Between melting and freezing the soul's sap quivers..."

A sound ripped across the sky like the rending of a mile-long stone. I wanted more than anything for it to be thunder ready to rip my soul and give me something real and true. As the sound faded I realized the noise was an airplane.

"You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
but to kneel where prayer
has been valid..."

The book was closed. We all sat silent. I put my cold hands in my pockets and started to walk out. Just before ducking through the door I noticed words over the threshold painted in gold. "How available are thy tabernacles Thou Lord of Hosts." I stopped, staring at it, and thought about the darkness of my room that morning, the sun shower, the goose and the lambs. And I realized that at home I wouldn't have been looking.