Thunder on the Right

by Mary Stewart

  A gust of wind shook the vine that clothed the window, shaking its drops even more thickly on to the streaming glass. She peered down, and a chord of memory vibrated at the sight of the slight figure, cloaked against the rain, that flitted across the grass below her. Celeste, driven in by the storm from some more-or-less guilty foray, some assignation down by the Petit Gave … It was true, then: Celeste and Luis – it was true. Jennifer’s lips curved involuntarily as she saw that the girl was carrying flowers – more gentians, perhaps, for the poor mound in the graveyard? If the gentians had been nothing but an excuse for going out to meet her lover, then the girl’s hesitation and guilty demeanour were explained. It was to be noticed that she had not minded being questioned when the bursar was not by.

  Other memories flashed – the look of almost fierce possession with which Doña Francisca had seemed to brood over the girl; the flicker of impatient jealousy in her eyes at Celeste’s evident care for the grave; the lovely little scarlet missal, the ‘gift in God’ … Jennifer stood up as Celeste reached the gate below. She had no wish to be caught watching the valley. She walked quickly down the corridor to her room, her own miserable preoccupation shot through with a sharp feeling of pity for the girl, so young, so ignorant, so bound in by ties of training and faith, now cruelly torn – for so she must be – between the sunlit promise of the young Gascon’s passion and the narrow white life which was the only one she knew. No wonder there were tears and agonies in the little chapel. And no wonder, thought Jenny, at a vivid memory of Luis sitting the big golden stallion, no wonder she risks what she does to see him again, and yet again …

  Celeste must have left her tryst once more in time for chapel; there was a certain obvious symbolism about the way the bell began now to ring for a recall to devotion. Three notes again, blown away by the wind. And again three. She looked at her watch, incredulously. The Angelus? Six o’clock? Two hours since Stephen had gone down the valley, and still the track showed no light, no car, no hurrying posse of rescue …

  She bit her lip savagely as she felt the scurry of panic in her brain. He wouldn’t hurt Gillian; about that, surely, they had been right; and if he took her away he would be traced. He wouldn’t hurt her. The only danger was Doña Francisca, and she was safely held till half past ten, when Compline finished.

  Or was she?

  The bell was beating steadily now, calling Vespers. Jennifer cast a quick glance in the mirror, ran a comb through her hair, and set off to find out.

  Her steps tapped hollowly down the dim corridor; the wooden stairs creaked and echoed emptily; the tiles of the empty refectory rapped at her heels. The tunnel was full of whining wind, and the remote cold voice of the bell.

  The chapel, warm and mellow with a blaze of half a hundred candles, was like a different world, a place of floating lights and shadows musky with incense and the smell of burning wax. The chords of the voluntary marched and thickened in steady progression. Over the ranked lights on the high altar saints aspired and angels soared. She knelt down in a shadow corner near the wall, just as the music gathered and swelled to its close, and the bell stopped.

  Doña Francisca sat in her usual stall, a little apart, stiff and still like the carving of the screen behind her. Her face, withdrawn, austere, gleamed stilly in the light of the candles like the face of a statue, empty alike of evil and of good. Jennifer, watching her as it were with new eyes, saw the rigid control that was stamped on mouth, hands, eyelids – the woman’s whole being disciplined to the same patience of waiting … waiting … But on her breast the ruby beat like a pulse.

  It was still raining. The darkness drew in more thickly round the lighted building; outside the windows it was night already, and the black panes glimmered only with the reflection of candle and sanctuary lamp. The rain beat against the walls, fistfuls hurtled against the panes with the rattle of grape-shot, but over the doors the arras hung still, and the ranked flames of the candles were steady. The music swelled and soared in a sober Latin ecstasy. Jennifer, kneeling in her corner, gripping the back of the chair in front of her, was trying not to think, to blot from her mind’s eye the picture of the squat little farm with its shut door and blind windows and Gillian’s face in the swimming darkness. They would be there now. Stephen and the police would be in time. There was nothing she could do. Nothing but wait.

  Somehow, the service came to an end, and they were all filing across in silence to the refectory. She found herself sitting next to the Prioress at the high table, and managing, even, to eat, but, though she should have been hungry, the convent’s excellent stewed mutton tasted like ashes, and the apples that followed it might have been Dead Sea fruit. She was devoutly thankful for the custom that appointed a nun to read aloud during meals from some devotional work, for this meant that she need not talk to the Reverend Mother, to be questioned within Doña Francisca’s hearing about how she had spent her day. She stole a glance at the nearest window – a futile gesture, for the windows were nothing but blind oblongs of roaring blackness against which the lamplight blandly purred. And still the voice of the reading nun went placidly on, and the hooded eyes watched her from the foot of the table, and her heart beat sickeningly in her throat as she gazed down at her plate and waited …

  All at once it was over. Chairs scraped, grace was sung, the Prioress led the black-and-white file of nuns out of the room, Doña Francisca followed without a backward look, and Jennifer was once again free of the novices’ corridor and her heartbreaking sentry-go between the windows. And if the corridor had been blank before, now in the deeper darkness its emptiness rang mockingly hollow. Her heart still jerking unevenly, she paused at the head of the stairs, glancing down the line of shut doors, then flew again to the window that gave on the valley.

  Nothing. Nothing but the dark.

  She turned and ran to her room, pressing her face against the window there, then, in an agony of frustration, flung the casement open. She held it against the kicking wind, leaning out into the rain, her eyes straining towards the pinewood on the southern slope. She was met by the roar of the trees and the rich smell of a thousand herbs pounded and lashed by the rain. Nothing else.

  And it was getting late. She drew back slowly, fighting vainly now to recover her lost calmness. If they had been in time to stop Bussac, they would surely by now have been coming back down the valley, with Gillian safe, and the convent as their objective? Or would they wait up there, all of them, till that cold bell rang again for Compline in three hours’ time? All at once weariness seemed to envelop her. She bit her lips as she pulled the casement shut. Three more mortal, crawling hours …

  Then as the casement closed, a light sprang to life in the darkness beyond it. Her heart jumped painfully, but in the same moment she saw that the light was not out in the night, but behind her, in the room. She turned, to see Celeste standing there, framed in the doorway, holding one hand in front of a streaming candle-flame.

  Jennifer latched the window, and the flame steadied. Across it the girl looked at her with dark inscrutable eyes.

  ‘I want to talk to you,’ she said, and her tone was abrupt almost hostile.

  Jennifer came away from the window. ‘Very well.’ She spoke wearily, and without much interest. All her being was concentrated on that dead darkness beyond the window. ‘What is it?’ She sat down on her bed and waited. As well, she supposed, spend the time this way as any other.

  Celeste shut the door and stood with her back to it, the candle still in her hand. In the golden liquidly flowing light she looked very beautiful, a creature of long shadows and wavering glory. She also looked very dramatic. Jennifer, who was tired and strained to the point of exhaustion, noticed this with misgiving.

  ‘You’d better put the candle down,’ she said.

  The girl obeyed, setting it on her chest-of-drawers, so that the Madonna’s face flickered with an uncertain smile, and the gold tooling of the missal gleamed richly.

  She said in an unnaturally loud, defiant voice:
‘I’ve been out tonight to see my lover.’

  ‘Yes. I saw you.’

  The dark eyes widened. ‘Then – you know?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I saw you go last night, too, though I didn’t then realize where you were going. I think,’ added Jennifer, with a glimmer of a smile touching her strained face, ‘that you’d better see him a little less frequently if you don’t want to be caught out.’ Celeste, looking considerably taken aback, abandoned her heroic pose against the door, and sat down on her bed, looking doubtfully at Jennifer.

  ‘You don’t mean to tell?’

  ‘I? No. It’s none of my business, after all. What would happen, incidentally, if I did – tell the Reverend Mother, I mean?’

  Celeste shrugged, a sulky little gesture. ‘Nothing very much, I suppose. Reverend Mother’s told me many a time that I’ve no vocation. She says I ought to go out and get a job and live an ordinary life and some day marry and – and have children.’

  Jennifer was startled, and showed it. ‘But, good heavens, Celeste, surely you don’t delude yourself that the Reverend Mother would countenance these comings-and-goings of yours? Surely—’

  The girl flashed round at her: ‘There’s nothing wrong in them!’

  Jennifer raised her brows, and said nothing. The dark eyes met hers defiantly, then Celeste flushed and looked away, her fingers plucking at the counterpane. ‘Well, there isn’t. Only because they’re secret!’

  Jennifer was silent, her gaze bent out of the window down the dark and empty valley. It was decidedly none of her business, as she had said, to interfere between Celeste and her conscience. But then as she turned back to the room she met the girl’s eyes, and the bewildered youth in them touched some chord of pity in her that stirred her, perhaps unwisely, to offer some help.

  She said gently: ‘But you’ll have to make your mind up soon, you know, Celeste. You can’t go on like this! It’s not fair to you, or to Luis, or to the Reverend Mother. If you’ve no “vocation” to become a nun yourself, and the Prioress knows it, why don’t you go and tell her—?’

  Celeste’s fingers dug into the counterpane. She sat up with a jerk.

  ‘You’re not to tell her!’

  ‘I’ve said I shan’t.’ Jenny spoke wearily. ‘That’s for you to do. And you must, you know. You must decide. And if you’ve no “vocation” then for goodness’ sake accept the Reverend Mother’s advice and go out and live an ordinary life. It has its – rewards.’

  Celeste said nothing, but her fingers started plucking and pleating again at the cotton counterpane. Then she said, with difficulty: ‘But I have a vocation, really. Doña Francisca says so. She won’t hear of my going out of here, ever.’

  Jennifer said, more sharply than she had intended: ‘You’re the only one who can decide about that. Are you in love with Luis?’

  ‘Yes,’ whispered Celeste, and her eyes filled with tears.

  Jennifer looked at her. Of course she was: how could she help it? And how, if it came to that, could Luis? She remembered the smouldering frustration of the boy’s whole attitude, and his voice as he asked ‘Is it anything to do with me – and mine?’ Well, he would have a hard fight to claim his own, if Celeste refused to take any other advice but that of a powerfully possessive woman whose nature had soured into rank evil. If she hadn’t mis-read the expression she had surprised on Doña Francisca’s face in the chapel, the Spaniard would exert every ounce of her powerful personality and influence on the girl beside her. Meanwhile, there were other dangers …

  She said bluntly: ‘Has Luis said anything about marriage?’

  Celeste’s head went up, and on her lips hung a proud, shy little smile that was exquisite and very touching.

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Could he keep you?’

  ‘Oh, yes! His uncle has a farm down at Argelès, a big farm, Luis says, with a dairy herd and – oh, everything! There are no sons, and it will all belong to Luis! He says that we could—’ The glow faded abruptly, and she added, in a mechanical and slightly priggish tone: ‘But, of course, it’s not possible. Not when one has a vocation for a higher life.’

  ‘Are you so very sure you have?’

  ‘Of course. Doña Francisca says so.’

  Jennifer bit her lip and then said quietly: ‘You make me very sorry for Luis.’

  Celeste looked surprised. ‘For Luis?’

  ‘Certainly.’ She went on gently: ‘Celeste, it’s very natural that you should be – fond of Doña Francisca, as I’m sure she’s fond of you … But consider a moment. You know that Doña Francisca has wanted for many years now to enter the Order here, while – various things – have prevented her from doing so?’

  The girl nodded, looking bewildered.

  Jennifer said carefully: ‘This is hard to explain, Celeste, but I honestly believe it may be true. Couldn’t it be that Doña Francisca somehow sees you as herself? That she’s not considering you and your life, so much as making you a sort of projection of herself, a kind of second chance?’ She paused. ‘The Reverend Mother tells you that you’ve no vocation. As she once told Doña Francisca. Now, Doña Francisca insists that you have, that you should stay here against (be honest, now!) your inclination, that you should, in fact, let her … how can I put it? … realize herself in you …’

  But here she saw the bleak incomprehension in the girl’s eyes, and stopped. She smiled, and added gently: ‘You know, Celeste, the Reverend Mother is surely the best judge in the matter of vocation. Can’t you just let yourself believe in your own heart, my dear? Especially when the Reverend Mother tells you that you may?’

  For a moment the girl seemed to hesitate, then she said stubbornly: ‘Doña Francisca doesn’t agree with the Reverend Mother. I know, because she told me they’ve talked about it, often. Reverend Mother’s old, so very old, but Doña Francisca’s clever as well as good, and she knows me better than anyone!’

  ‘Does she know about Luis?’

  The girl went white as paper, and seemed to shrink. ‘No.’

  ‘Then she doesn’t know you all that well, does she?’ said Jennifer dryly. She was astonished at the wave of revulsion and – yes, hatred, that had swept over her at the soft, almost reverent, reiteration of the bursar’s name. She turned her head quickly away towards the window, clenching her hands tightly in her lap as if by doing so she could get a grip on her emotions, and curb the impulse to hurl a denunciation of the woman into the face of this unhappy child. But she had her own fears to contend with; she was not prepared – nor qualified – to interfere further in a matter which seemed to her a simple affair of warped possessiveness, but which must appear to Celeste as a choice between mortality and God.

  So much, indeed, Celeste was trying to explain, in a hesitating little whisper of which Jennifer caught only a few odd phrases of broken French. ‘So wise,’ she was saying, half to herself, with averted face, ‘Doña Francisca … that sort of life – husband, children …’ And then again, more softly still, Jennifer heard the one word: ‘Sin …’

  She stood up. She yanked open a drawer with a bang, took out her cigarettes, and slammed the drawer shut again. She walked deliberately across the room, thrust the cigarette into the candle-flame, drew on it, then straightened up and exhaled a long and grateful breath. The smoke drifted across the little room, its sharp pungency shocking in that sterile convent atmosphere. But it brought the world – the pleasant ordinary soiled and sinful world – back between her and the raw emotions of a scene which had become unendurable. She said: ‘It wasn’t this that you came to see me about. What was it?’

  Celeste had stopped talking, and was watching her with shocked eyes. Jennifer felt a twinge of wry amusement.

  She drew on her cigarette again and repeated the question: ‘What was it?’

  Celeste looked momentarily taken aback. She hesitated, then, at some remembered indignation, flushed. She sat up straight on her bed and went uncompromisingly back to the beginning of the conversation.

  ‘I saw Luis
this evening!’

  ‘So you said.’

  ‘And he told me’ – the flush deepened, and the lovely eyes met Jennifer’s angrily – ‘he told me that you had been asking more questions about Madame Lamartine’s death, you and your lover!’

  Jennifer’s cigarette was arrested half-way to her lips. ‘I and my what?’

  Celeste looked at her almost with hatred. ‘Your lover. Luis said that’s who he was. Isn’t he your lover?’

  Jennifer sat down slowly on the bed. ‘I – well, yes, I suppose he is. I hadn’t …’ She looked across at the other girl with a kind of surprise. ‘Yes, he is,’ she said, and it was she this time who smiled.

  Celeste, hardly heeding her answer, had swept on: ‘Why are you still asking these question? Why does Luis say that there’s something wrong about Madame Lamartine’s death?’

  ‘Does he say that?’

  ‘Yes! He says that you and the Englishman seem to suspect some sort of mystery – it’s true, isn’t it? That’s why you asked me all those questions! What are you accusing me of?’

  ‘You? Nothing.’

  ‘That is not true!’ Celeste’s breast rose and fell, her face was flushed and her eyes blazing. She looked very lovely. Jennifer saw, with a sinking heart, that she had escaped one emotional storm only to run into another.

  ‘Do you think I poisoned her?’ asked Celeste burningly.

  Jennifer fought to keep the sharp impatience out of her voice. ‘Oh, Celeste, don’t be silly! Of course I don’t! It’s nothing whatever to do with you! I assure you—’

  ‘Then what do you think was wrong? What do you suspect? What could be wrong?’

  ‘Nothing! Nothing that you could have anything to do with! Please believe me, Celeste! No one could possibly imagine for a moment that you did anything but your best for – for Madame Lamartine.’

  ‘But yesterday you asked me questions, you accused me of keeping the news from you when I assured you I did not know—’

  ‘It’s not that. I’m sorry I questioned you like that. I was puzzled, and I had to find out. But I believe you: honestly I do.’