Seeking Sanctuary

by Frances Fyfield

  The chapel looked spare without a coffin and the profusion of flowers, a large enough room to seat fifty with ease and in the current state of emptiness smaller, cooler, sweeter than ever. There was a traditional altar against the back wall, and a long, narrow table in front for the preparation of Communion. Dominating the whole, elegant room, the crucifix hung centre stage across the tall window, which arched to the ceiling, letting in a strong, colourless light that beat against the Cross, so that it cast a shadow from the window to the door and the figure of the crucifix was blurred and featureless. Anna crossed herself with the automatic gesture of one who had learned how at the same time she had learned speech, nodding at the figure.

  ‘OK, Jesus? Is your dad in tonight?’

  The silence was profound. She crossed her arms. Behind the face of the Son, there was always that of the Father. Preferably, a round-faced paterfamilias, like an old Italian restaurateur.

  ‘Oh, stop messing about.You heard me.’

  The birch trees in full leaf flicked against the curved window. The small windows, set high on each side of it, shone like jewels. There was a draught from one of those, opened with a pole to clear the incense and mercifully forgotten. Christ drooped on his cross. Anna nodded, satisfied by the sounds of the trees.

  ‘OK, you’re in tonight. Where the hell were you this morning, Lord?’

  The crucifix did not answer. She sat, cross-legged, in the centre of the aisle. There was a low rail separating her from the area of the altar, not intended as a barrier between officiating priest and congregation, but a simple necessity for those who could only kneel with a little support. Some of the nuns insisted upon kneeling to take Communion; those in tune with modern traditions stood. Easier for the priest if they knelt, especially if the priest was like Father Goodwin, permanently stooped although nimble enough when he raced down the road away from the place. Still, he beat the shit out of that Bishop.

  ‘You definitely weren’t here this morning, Lord. The whole thing was perfectly, bloody godless.’

  The silence was incomplete. She could hear the tall birch trees breathing through the high window behind the altar. It was the window that lent the place distinction, curving the full height of the high wall in the shape of an upturned boat, with the leaded panes in the shape of elongated diamonds, smoky glass, slightly blue with no other colours, giving the place a bright but subdued glow, even when the sun hit hardest. Framed in pale oak, the window seemed as if it was leaning in towards her, as if she was sitting in the shelter of the boat; it embraced. The crucifix was made of the same pale wood as the surround of the window. She could see it more clearly from the aisle as she sat in the shadow of it. The figure lounging uncomfortably upon it, with well-muscled arms, elongated torso and, to Anna’s mind, greasy, outmoded hair in an unbecoming shade of brown, looked as if he might have been in an Armani suit, or at least, if lain flat, slightly contorted on a deckchair. The face had the look of a hangover, a slack mouth, and half-closed eyes. Refined puzzlement was the most prominent impression and for a murdered man in a cumbersome loincloth, he was remarkably clean and free of blood, far more an effete Italian than a chunky carpenter.

  When Anna spoke to God, or as like as not, hectored him, she spoke to the God who had inspired the window, rather than this depiction of his son in extremis, but her eyes still strayed to the vague face of the crucifix.

  ‘You know what?’ she said. ‘You can’t make up your mind if you want them to be sorry for you or fancy you.’

  She was jeering without shouting. Even in the worst throes of anger, contempt and frustration, she could not shout in the chapel. In the street, she could yell, she could raise two fingers and bawl at strangers, but in here she could not shout although she often longed to do so. In here, a shout would become little more than a whisper. There was still the lingering smell of the incense, an after-taste from the earlier service despite the open window.

  ‘I cannot understand,’ Anna said, ‘why, if you really live in this place, with all this light, you let them coop you up without air. Then let them fill the place with smells.You’ve no control, Lord, you really haven’t.’

  She removed herself from the middle of the aisle and sat on one of the chairs. They had rush-covered seats, which tickled the back of her knees. The neglect of human comfort infuriated her. Even God did not demand it.

  ‘I have come, dear Lord, to announce my evil intentions. Do you hear me?’

  The sun was passing over the window. Once, she had believed that the shafts of sunlight that shone from behind clouds signalled the presence of angels and it was the angels who finally blew away the clouds. Sometime later in the history of her imagination, the shafts of sunshine became a kind of heavenly semaphore between saints.

  ‘Dear Lord, I am going out to intoxicate myself and possibly fornicate. In other words, get off my face and maybe find a shag.’

  The wind made a soothing noise in the birches. Again as a child, she had thought that the sound of the wind in the trees was the sound of God, breathing. Because God, she had been told, made everything and she could not imagine a silent Creator. A God who had made the world would surely signal the fact by making as much row as possible. All natural sounds belonged to God; only the sounds of cars and aeroplanes and machinery belonged to man.

  ‘Did you hear me?’

  Get drunk and have a shag? Which commandment did that offend?

  ‘All right, then. I could strangle Agnes on the way. That would make it worse, wouldn’t it?’

  Yes.

  Anna spread her hands in despair.

  ‘Damn you, how can you do this to us? Oh, I don’t mean me in particular, but them. Why are you letting this place go to hell and why have you trapped her in it? You’re the one who seduces virgins like my bloody sister, and you aren’t even good-looking. You bastard! You fucking fraud!’

  This time her voice did reach shouting pitch. Almost. As she regretted it, mumbling an apology, she heard the sound of the door behind her. Anna did not move, sat waiting for the footsteps to come towards her, light steps in soft shoes. Therese always wore soft shoes. A figure, taller than her own, sat beside her. Out of the corner of her downturned eyes, Anna could see that she held an old missal, which she placed quietly on the seat to her right. Therese always carried something.

  ‘Anna, stop it.’

  Anna breathed deeply and let her hands uncurl in her lap. ‘Stop what, little sister? I was only praying.’

  ‘Yes, I heard you. You’re sad and it always makes you cross. You weren’t praying, you were denouncing. Why should Jesus listen to you if you call him a bastard?’

  ‘But that’s what he was. Exactly. A bastard, born on the run.’

  ‘Even less reason to abuse him.’

  Therese was angry, Anna could tell. She was satisfied. Her gentle, soft-voiced sister vibrated with a fury which would be as it always was, short-lived, ready at the faintest hint to turn itself into forgiveness, understanding or supplication, not necessarily in that order, but with an inevitable, infuriating progress. Even angry, she was full of grace, sitting with her back as straight as a pole, knees together, heels raised off the floor, feet arched like a delicate dancer about to practise.

  ‘Grace is a virtue, virtue is a grace . . .’ Anna chanted.

  ‘And Grace is a naughty girl who would not wash her face,’ Therese finished. ‘But then, there is always amazing grace, how sweet the sound.’

  There was an awkward silence for a full minute apart from the murmuring of the trees outside and Therese’s soft breathing. Then she touched Anna’s bare arm. Anna flinched, until Therese’s hand wrapped itself around hers and stayed there.

  ‘Oh, Anna, love, why do you do it? Why do you beat yourself up?’

  ‘And how do you manage to recover so quickly, you cold-hearted niece?’

  ‘Because I had to prepare the food. That was the best I could give. Jude loved food, you know that.’

  ‘God’s drudge, that’s what you
are.’

  ‘So you say, but it’s my choice.’

  ‘It’s a waste of your life. Cooking food for old women. A con trick, a waste of life.’

  ‘And yours, I suppose, is that much better?’

  ‘I’m free.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  There was a contrast in the colour of their skin. Therese’s slender forearm emerged from the same plain blue blouse she always wore indoors, an arm as white as milk while Anna’s was berry brown. Therese’s lack of pigment seemed to her to be a sign of captivity: prisoners looked like that. The anger surfaced again; she struggled to control it.

  ‘I wonder if it was always going to turn out this way. Pre-ordained, if you excuse the expression.’

  ‘God’s will? I really don’t know. All I know is that I am usually perfectly happy and I would dearly wish the same for you.’

  ‘Oh, shuttit. Do you know what you sound like?’

  Therese continued to hold her hand firmly. ‘Listen, lovey, you can question me as much as you want, but you mustn’t worry the others. You can’t suggest to women of their age that their lives, lived in faith, are nothing but a sham. It isn’t fair. It achieves nothing but pain.’

  ‘What did I say? I merely suggested to bloody Barbara that without the shackles of the Sisterhood, Sister Jude might have been something special. A force in the real world.’

  ‘She was a force, you idiot. And without the shackles, she might have been nothing at all. Lost without trace. And so might I.’

  ‘You’d always have me. You always have. I’d hold you up.’

  ‘You aren’t enough. No human being is.’

  There was a wariness in her voice that suggested a conversation often repeated, if not in the same words, at least with similar themes. Therese lifted the missal from the seat beside her and placed it in Anna’s lap.

  ‘The relatives went to her room, to choose whatever they wanted. I got there first.’

  ‘Jude had nothing to leave.’

  ‘She had books and tapes. I took her old missal, for you.’

  Anna touched it. It was very old, bursting with holy pictures and notes, held together with an elastic band. It repelled her, slightly. She did not want it and yet knew it was hers.

  ‘Do you want me to go away?’ she asked humbly. ‘Am I just a nuisance?’

  ‘No, of course not. We would all miss you. You should only go when you’re ready.’

  ‘Not without you.’

  Therese sighed. ‘And you tell me you’re free.’

  She detached her hand, gently but finally, pulled Anna’s hair and brushed past her bare knees in the calf-length skirt which looked, like her blouse, a well-worn piece of second-hand clothing and smelled, faintly, of the kitchen. She genuflected to the altar, made the sign of the cross and left in her soft shoes. There was a slight draught as the door closed quietly. The room was darker without her. Anna felt thwarted, drummed her feet on the floor. Small feet. The noise was swallowed in the space, but still comforting.

  ‘So you see, Lord,’ Anna addressed the trees and the darkening sky of the huge window, ‘you see how she trusts me? She leaves me here, knowing I won’t wreck the place. Well, don’t bank on it. You’ve wrecked more lives than you’ve ever saved. Anyway, they can do that all by themselves. You BASTARD!’

  In the darkening light of the room, the vibrant colours of the Stations of the Cross shone from the walls. The supercilious agony on the face of the crucified Christ remained immobile, along with the pristine white folds of his modest loincloth. She wanted to cut the wire that held the crucifix to the ceiling, watch it fall and break into pieces. She wanted the walls to come tumbling down, like Jericho: she sat still, gripping the seat of the chair and willing it to happen.

  Then there was the pistol shot.

  One of the large panes of glass in the main window shattered. The glass imploded into the air: a shower of glistening hail caught the light as it cascaded to the floor in silvery fragments, tinkling and colliding, rolling away in a lethal dust until the silence resumed. Anna scrambled from the seat, grabbed the missal and ran for the door. There she stood and looked back. Half of the broken pane remained in the frame, with sharp, jagged edges. The sound of the trees was louder. Nigh, nigh, draws the chase, With unperturbed pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy . . .

  She ran down the black and white corridor and out of the building. Agnes’s chair was empty; no one heard. Anna went on running.

  In another garden, the jackdaw fell to earth. Kay McQuaid picked up a housebrick to finish it off. Full of fleas.

  Got you, by God, you bastard.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image

  The magpie had fallen to earth in a shower of debris. It was no longer the jet black of springtime. Edmund saw the matt dullness of the feathers and the curled feet as he picked it up carefully in a cloth, feeling the warmth of it through the flannel, holding it gingerly in case it should horrify him with a sudden movement, the throb of a heartbeat or the opening of a single eye, but it was dead enough; would have been dead as it fell, dead when the branches of the tree through which it descended caught at its wings and delayed the fall, until it landed in a flurry of feathers and pale green leaves. Edmund wept. Carrying the burden respectfully, arms extended so that it should not be close to his own body, he stumbled from the birch trees along the path towards the bottom of the garden, tears blurring his unsteady progress. Tears and shame. The path was uneven crazy paving. At the end, by the statue, he stumbled. The dead bird fell out of his hands as he collapsed in the attitude of a penitent, falling against the knees of Sister Matilda, who sat calmly on the stone bench, which in turn rested against the ankles of the statue of Michael the Archangel, leader of the angels of God, predominant in the fight against Lucifer. She was telling the rosary from the beads hung at her waist – Hail Mary, full of Grace, The Lord is with thee, Blessed art thou among women . . . – beneath the statue of the saintly hero, half-covered in green moss. It had been a damp summer. Edmund’s stumbling fall was cushioned by the folds of Matilda’s habit, bunched round her knees.

  ‘There, there,’ she murmured. ‘He’ll not have tears before bedtime, you know. Sit down, Edmund, dear.’

  Edmund rose, groaning and weeping, sat on the stone bench beside her, muttering the latter half of the prayer he had heard her begin, the sound of it a balm to his spirit. Holy Mary, Mother of God, Pray for us sinners, Now and at the hour of our death. Holy Mary . . . It sounded like mumbled swearing. The dead magpie was at his feet. Averting his eyes, he pushed it further away with his foot and looked towards it briefly as he dropped the white cloth, intending to cover the body. The beak of the bird protruded, sleek and dead. Edmund’s shoulders heaved with sobs.

  ‘What have I done? What have I done?’

  He leaned forward and buried his head in his hands in palms that smelt of death. If he looked, he would see the bird already crawling with maggots, or that was what his eyes would imagine. Matilda placed her ample hand on the broad of his back and rubbed gently. Then she leant forward and hugged him, her arms round his shoulders and her bosom pressed into his spine. He could feel the warmth of her, but it could not yet calm him.

  ‘I heard the blackbird this morning,’ he sobbed. ‘It was singing, singing like it did in April. As if there was a dawn for it. As if it was the end of the world. A blackbird! Singing in September!’

  She waited for him. Ever since she had forsaken the chapel for the garden, hours in his company had informed her of the power of the blackbird’s song, how its voice rose and fell, the fount of all music in the dawn choruses of the year. How the jubilant song of it celebrated broods of babies, nests and warmth, and how the nurturing of their life in this garden, alongside his other friends, had been the crowning glory of all the years of Edmund’s tenure. Some of it she could hear; some of it she could not with her inconsistent deafness. There was an ongoing family of great tits which fed from his hand,
but the blackbirds were the triumph. There were families and visitors, foragers and predators. She withdrew from the hugging of him and resumed a slow, rhythmical rubbing of his back.

  ‘But they don’t sing, this time of year, do they? I mean, they call, but they don’t sing. Do they? They’ve finished singing, you told me.’

  ‘Blackie sang, I tell you. He sang the way he sings with a brood in the nest. He sang. And then the magpie drove him away.’

  Again, she waited, rubbing his back with the one hand, caressing the feet of St Michael with the other. St Michael should have smooth feet, covered in skin-deep gold leaf, warm to the touch. These feet were pock-marked with moss and decay, rough and cold to the touch. Leaning forward, she saw the dead magpie. It was bigger than it looked when it strutted on a branch, smaller than it seemed on the wing. Ugly brute, the noisy bully of the garden, entirely without charm to her mind.

  ‘So, I said . . . I said . . . I said I wished he were dead,’ Edmund sobbed. ‘Because he’s a tyrant. He drives the others away and he eats their young. Most of the year here and I thought he would go. God knows, I’ve tried to make him uncomfortable. But when the blackbird sang and he drove it away, Oh Lord, I hated him. But kill him? God forgive me.’

  ‘St Michael would forgive you,’ she said. ‘He would have throttled the horrid thing at birth.’

  She turned and looked up at the statue. The feet of the Archangel Michael rested comfortably on a fat stone serpent, which he had clearly overpowered with the spear embedded in the form of it, his hands still holding the shaft, his face upturned to the sky. St Michael occupied the right-hand side of God in heaven. He had led the good angels in the battle against the devil and he knew that ultimately, enemies must be killed. Edmund was not like that. To Edmund, the life of a bird was sacrosanct, even a vulture. The sobbing resumed.