Seeking Sanctuary

by Frances Fyfield

  She scrambled down the ladder, paused only for shoes, raced down the stairs, out of the block and round to the convent door. Left, left and left again, bumping into two pedestrians without having enough breath to say sorry. She stabbed at the bell at the side of the door, waited and stabbed at it again. She looked at her watch. Christ, it was scarcely breakfast time in there, they might all be in chapel or asleep. It occurred to her, even in the rising panic, which made her heart race, that she did not know what they did in there in the majority of time when she was absent; she did not even know what her beloved sister did with each of her waking hours, only that she disapproved of it with all the fury of a rabid dog.Where was Agnes? Where was anyone? What was the fucking point of being at fucking prayer when you should be answering the door? Who do you think you are?

  The door was flung open, with none of Agnes’s creeping, smiling reticence, which always gave the impression she had slid three or four bolts and removed a chain to get that far and, however welcoming, would replace all the armoury as soon as you left. To Anna’s discomfiture, it was Barbara, all bossy briskness and twinkling, interrogative eyes behind her glasses, looking as if she had slept well enough to slap down the nonsense of the day with a firm hand. The likes of Anna could be consumed before breakfast. To Anna’s further alarm, she smiled. Perhaps this was her best time of day.

  ‘Ah, Anna, my dear. How nice to know you young things are up and about at a decent hour. Although scarcely dressed, I see. I wanted to have a chat, as it happened. Come in.’

  She followed, meekly. Another time, the tart reference to shorts and T-shirt would have made her furious, but she was suddenly aware of the quandary she was in. She wanted to shout, There is something the matter with Edmund, but yelling any such thing would be too much of a revelation to Sister gimlet eyes, who would be sure to say, How do you know? And then she would have to say, I can see him from my rooftop, and Barbara would say, You what? She was dumbstruck, followed in the draught of Sister Barbara’s voluminous tunic, which hung from her big bosom as if supported on balloons, until they were both in the passage with the black and white tiles.

  ‘Come into the parlour, dear. We’ve things to discuss. I’ve decided I haven’t been entirely fair to you and you had such good ideas at the meeting yesterday, entirely in accord with my own. Of course we have to get rid of the car. The idea of a taxi account is brilliant. Are you sure about the discount? But what I chiefly wanted to explain to you, dear, is what Therese does here, because I’ve got an awful feeling you might not know.

  ‘For a start, this is a liberal, secular order. She does not have to wear a hairshirt, she does not have to sing Matins, Lauds, Prime, Sext or even Vespers, although she is exhorted to pray, in a formal fashion, and we do still have the Angelus, because we like it. A lovely prayer, I think. I just wanted to reassure you, as her nearest and dearest, that she isn’t in for a life of flogging and she can go whenever she wants, but I’m sure dear Sister Jude reassured you of that. Things have changed since your mother was a child. Not always for the better, but there it is. I still prefer the Latin, myself. So much more poetic.’

  It was a virtual torrent of words from someone who was indeed at their best first thing in the morning, after her restless nights had digested facts and advice and spat them out as priorities. Anna found herself thinking, She’s a kind old tart, telling me useful information, and dear Lord why didn’t I realise that before instead of being so frightened of her, while still mightily frightened.

  ‘Father Goodwin told me you were awfully sensible, and I must admit, I was slow to comprehend. But you are, my dear, you are admirable. Full of good initiatives.Was there something you wanted? Breakfast will be in a minute. You’re welcome.’

  Just in time, she remembered the vernacular of their relentless courtesy, which, in the past, made her itch.

  ‘You’re kind, Sister. It was just that . . . just that . . . I heard on the news about a bomb, oh not real, just one of those scares. Wanted to check you knew about it. I don’t know what you know, if you see what I mean. It’s very warm, Sister. Do you think we could go into the garden?’

  ‘Jolly good idea. Don’t use it enough.’

  There were French doors from the parlour out on to the terrace part of the garden. Barbara flung them open with the same potentially destructive aplomb she used on the front door, impatient but efficient with all the clumsy locks that surrounded them.

  ‘Such a nuisance,’ she announced as she struggled with the grille. ‘But we have to keep people out, you know, especially these days. As soon as anyone knows the existence of a convent, they’re outside the doors wanting food and everything. Which we want to give as far as we can, but not if they abuse us. There’s beggars and beggars.’

  The door was open. That was what a convent was like, Anna thought, door upon door, upon door. The garden was like an escape to another planet. Barbara went on talking.

  ‘We’ve got to make use of space. My dear, that’s a buzz word, or do I mean phrase, years old. Now, if you have any ideas of what to do about this, I’d be grateful to hear, in fact I’m all ears.’

  She had big ears, Anna noticed, clamped to the side of her thick, close-cropped grey hair like a pair of horns. They went with her bosom.

  ‘Perhaps we could walk down to the end,’ Anna suggested. ‘Get the measure of it.’

  ‘Good idea. Brave the bugs and walk the estate, such as it is? Yes!’

  They found Edmund on his bench, by his shed, a short walk only impeded by the brushing away of branches.

  Barbara saw him first and called out merrily, ‘Edmund, dear, so soon? What a fine day it is!’

  Anna wanted to catch hold of her sleeve and hold her back, but Barbara ploughed forward, delighted at the thought of lazy old Edmund being so soon for work, not wondering yet about who had let him in. A fly crawled on his forehead; another hovered around his open mouth, from which a line of dried saliva crept down to his chin. It was his tolerance of the flies that signified his death. Barbara waved them away, touched his cold hand without saying a word. She withdrew her own, quickly, as if she had been stung, then, shielding the body from Anna’s gaze, she deftly closed Edmund’s ghastly eyes and made the sign of the Cross. She was perfectly calm; she had closed the eyes of the dead more often than she could count, but never in these circumstances and she did not know quite what to do.

  ‘I’m afraid he’s dead. Must have been a stroke.’ It was an inadequate remark, but that was all she could say, although she wanted to bite back the words as soon as they were spoken. She was expecting screams, but Anna was not to be protected. She had moved behind the bench and looked down at him. This was an obscenity, Barbara thought, suddenly angrier with Edmund than she had ever been. No girl of her age should witness death. Anna surprised her.

  ‘You’ll be needing to phone for the doctor and Father Goodwin. I’ll stay with him, shall I?’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. We can’t just leave him, can we?’

  ‘No. I’ll send Therese.’

  ‘Don’t—’

  ‘She’ll be the only one dressed.’

  She was gone, running up the garden with enough noise to make the birds rise from the trees. Anna registered the sound of their tuneless alarm as she sat on the bench beside Edmund’s body. She could not touch him, confined herself to waving the flies away from his face and standing guard against the nameless enemy, which had already struck. And praying. Kyrie eleison, Lord, have mercy. In the silence that followed the chatter of the birds, she wished she had told Barbara to fetch Matilda, because Matilda was Edmund’s friend, but that, too, would have begged an awkward question, even if it was one delayed until Barbara had time to reflect. The guilt was as acute as pain; she had seen Edmund sitting here yesterday; she could have intervened, knocked on the door. She tried to concentrate on Edmund himself, maybe speed his soul to a painless heaven and deny her own revulsion at this defunct bundle of oddly sweet-smelling flesh. She had not
seen the corpse of her mother, nor had she seen Sister Jude; she had reeled from the impact of death, but of bodies, she knew nothing. The curiosity about it was greater than the shock.

  On the bench, beside Edmund’s clenched fist, was a small, gold crucifix on a broken chain. She picked it up and examined it. Cheap, but durable, easy to mend. She supposed it was his in the same moment she hid it inside her shoe. Thinking that if there was any memento of Edmund, it should go to Matilda, and Barbara could not be trusted to do that.

  There were light footsteps coming back down the garden. Therese appeared, carrying a blanket.

  ‘Go away!’ Anna yelled.

  Therese paused, came forward with the blanket. ‘Don’t be silly.’

  With soothing sounds, she tucked it round Edmund’s form. Anna stood up to make room. They hugged, fiercely.

  ‘Come away, Anna, do.You’re cold. He was a good man, gone to a better life.’

  The pious platitude made her blood boil.

  ‘Oh, for Chrissakes . . . Can’t you do better than that?’

  ‘Be quiet, Anna.’

  They stood with their arms around each other,Therese tugging her hair as if that would keep her warm, making Anna wonder, with the unexpected objectivity that follows shock, which of them was designed to protect the other and wondering all the more, because she had always thought the role was hers.

  Kay felt protective about this house. Nothing else had been disturbed, not Theo’s desk, nothing. Kay was sure she would notice and knew at the same time that maybe she would not. It was vanity on the part of a zealous housekeeper to think she would detect any other fingerprint than her own, when in reality, a burglar could cover his tracks if he was careful and refrained from the obvious such as eating the food. No marks on the clean bottles of the drinks trolley, but then, not even burglars fancied liqueurs before breakfast.

  By late morning, after another bath, she was trying to make herself laugh, as well as tell herself that the burglar, with his minimal interference, was a complete stranger. A big old house with no man in it was bound to be a draw. Envy was what it was. There were several possible culprits, but none with a key. Crap. She knew the neighbours in a polite and cooperative way, which had been forged when Theo had been carried home drunk by the man of the house on the left. There existed between herself and the house on the right an adequate relationship founded by her never refusing to return a football or complaining about children’s noise, even if she did try to clip their tree. They kept her house keys in case of emergencies and she kept theirs. Kids . . . that explained it all. Like the very first time she had an illicit visitor, soon after Theo departed life.

  She was reluctant to change the keys. They had been the same keys ever since she came here. By mid-afternoon, she told herself it was not serious and all would be well. Little, bitty, pathetic attempts at theft were not important, a fact confirmed when she went back to her bedroom and had a sudden vision of little Anna Calvert, caught in the act of stealing. Frozen, she had been, that titchy ten-year-old, about to filch her mother’s earrings as Kay barged in with the Hoover, the little mite so mesmerised by making her selection, trying them on and stuffing the favourite bits in her pockets, that she would not have heard an elephant, let alone the anonymous cleaning lady lugging a machine and wondering how soon she could get this done and have a smoke. Bashing the Hoover against the door and catching Anna, facing the mirror, her small face as pale as a ghost, the mouth a gash of her mother’s lipstick and guilt oozing out of every pore, as if, at that age, she was even capable of sweat. The conscience of a child was so variable and so brave. It had the same capability of an adult in lust, with self-delusion to the fore, suppressing the native knowledge of what was wrong and what was going to be a heap of trouble, until the two came together in a moment of shameful truth. Kay had caught Anna at just such a moment and knew when she did so that the actions of the child would be treated as if they were serious sins. So, aware of Mrs Calvert in the kitchen, she had simply gone into the bathroom and handed Anna a sheet of loo paper to wipe her lips and then, over the sound of the Hoover, mouthed, Put them back. The child had emptied her pockets, stuffed jewellery back where it belonged, cast Kay a beseeching glance and run from the room after interpreting Kay’s and wash your face with a desperate nod. This little vignette of memory cheered Kay no end. If she had found the little shit who had got into Theo’s house this morning, she knew she would have done something along the same lines. Attempted theft was not the worst of crimes. Besides, the sun was out, and she could lie in the sheltered patio for an hour, and that made everything bearable and believable, all by itself. The day passed.

  No, she owed that child nothing.

  The light would be going by half past seven. The carnival parade was due about seven. Funny old town, this, she thought with affection. Everyone else has their sodding parades earlier. She got a drink, turned on every light in the house in case she had to come back indoors into darkness, stuck her amazingly sensible casserole, which had displaced another hour of the day in the making, into the oven, and settled herself on the balcony in Theo’s stargazing chair. It was rusted from the salt, but the cover was as clean as her hair and the air was warm. There was a thumping of drums in the distance. The carnival parade would be unsophisticated, amateur, a bit trashy, a dying but lively tradition, but it would be fine. On the second gin and tonic, sipped to forestall the inevitable delay, Kay reflected to herself that she was easy to please.You could take the girl out of her small town, but you could never take the small town out of the girl.

  And yet, when the parade began, rumbling into view from the distance on its final leg of the loop around the town, where it had begun and got stalled an hour before it reached her, she felt as lonely as all hell. So what, it was simply one of those days when cheerful things were depressing and somebody’s story about having breast cancer would be positively cheering. She lived here, without belonging, without certainty, with a past she chose to ignore, obligations, loyalties and a future that depended on promises. The first float came level with the window and the mood passed.

  Such an effort they made, such things they revealed. The parade was headed by a Scottish band, swinging along as if they meant it. A man with a leopardskin cloak to cushion the strap of the enormous drum strapped over his belly, with legs like tree trunks, socks like a footballer and a hat down over his brow. Another man, equally large, with a wailing bagpipe and a red face, the last of his lament drowned by the stereo sound of the float behind, booming out Yeah,yeah! something to herald the arrival of three carnival queens dressed like bridesmaids with the maquillage of forty-year-olds plastered on teenage faces above corseted, bosom-uplifting frocks with nothing to uplift. Kay frowned in disapproval. They waved in a sketchy fashion to the hangers-on walking alongside; they were tired. Not as fatigued as the boys on the Boy Scouts’ float that followed theirs. Five cub scouts huddled around a large leader, recognisable as Mrs Smith, an enormous woman dressed in feathers who otherwise worked in the fish shop. Another band, girls this time and far more alert, followed by the Kitty’s Tea Room float, featuring jolly women sitting around a huge papier mâché teapot, sipping wine from china teacups and pretending to eat cake. No one could eat cake for an hour. They were nicely merry and Kay raised her glass to them. More carnival queens, poor little ducks in their gooseflesh-revealing evening gowns. There was a loud float for a disco, a small float for Julian’s Kidney Appeal towards which she threw money, a nice float for a dancing school, which included sweet little tots with plenty of energy left to boogie to the music, followed by the rugby club float, with a whole lot of men dressed like apes, benignly drunk, firing water pistols at the accompanying crowd, who fired back, followed by another set of those wretched carnival queens. A crowd of camp followers followed either side of each performance. A tired wee show, with too much booming for her taste. Singing was always better. The last three floats belonged to the churches.

  The town had three at the last coun
t. Episcopalian, Methodist and Catholic, where she had, contrary to every other instinct, made Jack go, with his talisman of a necklace, and it was as if, in their annual advertisement, they competed in a vain attempt to draw followers. The first two had the best hymns, belting out ‘When the Saints Come Marching In’ and promising real joy in the delivery, even though their voices were hoarse. The flatbed lorry on which they travelled had no followers and nobody collecting money in buckets, the way the others did. The third float, for St Augustine’s Holy Romans, singing ‘Abide With Me’ faster than usual, almost in ragtime, also had the figure of the devil dancing like a dervish, whirling and writhing in his lizard-like costume of scales and tail, his headdress of horns already gone with the effort of lying down every few minutes in a mimic of surrender, while one of the hymn singers, dressed as an angel, poked him with a longhandled, obviously plastic fork as he lay down, before springing up and doing the whole business all over again. As they passed her balcony, the devil got up and bowed. And then he spat. A magnificent spitting unnoticed in the split second it took for the spittle to land at the edge of the balcony, on her feet. A posse of three fat policemen followed behind, encouraging the tail end of the parade to turn the corner.

  That was Jack.

  Her bastard, Jack, whatever he called himself now.

  A policeman on a motorbike looked up at her and smiled in admiration.

  She smiled back, frozen with terror.

  Wishing she could pray.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Honour the Sabbath Day

  It was at the next Sunday Mass, six days later, when the convent chapel was open to the public, that Anna first saw the Golden Boy at close quarters. There was something peculiarly striking about him, quite apart from the obvious fact of good looks. What it was did not strike her immediately, but somewhere near the end of the recitation of the Creed, when the rest of the congregation were mumbling in unison . . . we acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins.We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come . . . while she was keeping her own mouth firmly shut, sneaking a glimpse at the crucifix and the trees beyond the windows so that she could keep herself from fidgeting and try not to show how much she was there on sufferance. For the reasons that it would please Therese, make a gesture of respect for Edmund, who would be the subject of prayers, maybe afford an opportunity not available in the last few days to give his crucifix to Matilda and because it was convenient for her meeting Father Goodwin immediately afterwards. An appointment for counselling, no doubt, heavily and clumsily described as an invitation to lunch. He had been hovering ever since the death of Sister Jude.