Seeking Sanctuary

by Frances Fyfield

  ‘Good morning, Compucabs.’

  There was a whole second of hesitation, then a deep voice.

  ‘I asked for you yesterday and you weren’t there. I was so worried, I nearly, oh never mind what I nearly did, dear, dear, dear . . .’

  ‘Account number, sir?’

  ‘I’m not sure, must be about here somewhere . . .’

  She recognised the voice of her caller and knew, for once, she was smiling for real. He was a waste of space, but he made her smile.

  ‘Bit early for worrying about where to go for lunch, sir. No need to book early, it isn’t Christmas yet.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. Are you all right?’

  ‘Never finer, how about you?’

  ‘I was worried about you. Tried you yesterday.’

  ‘I have days off, Sundays, you know how it is.’

  Another sigh. ‘Bloody Sundays. Why are they always awful? They just go on so long . . .’

  ‘You’re so right,’ she said ruefully. They go on long enough for unsmiling people to commit acts of inexplicable folly.

  ‘You know what Sundays are?’ He was shouting into the phone. ‘The dog days of the year. Did you go to church?’

  She thought of the temple, touched the little statue of Ganesh with her spare hand. Ganesh did not mind looking silly; perhaps he was one of her Gods, after all.

  ‘Yes, I did, in a manner of speaking. Now what about that taxi?’

  ‘I wanted to ask you to come to lunch.’

  ‘I’m working today, sir, another time, perhaps.’

  He hesitated again. ‘What church did you go to?’

  ‘Well, I tried the Catholics first and then the Hindus. They’re a lot more fun, but they still have collection boxes.’

  There was a soft chuckle and the line went dead. He did that sometimes, her elderly gentleman caller with the strained voice and the manners of confusion. Anna waited for the phone to ring again. Today of all days, it failed her. The silence of it was reproachful. Half an hour passed. Ravi might have smiled but he did not come close. In the surrounding buzz, it was as if she were contagious. It was warm and she was overpoweringly tired. To pass the time, she began reading the messages scrawled on the backs of the holy pictures in the missal. Then she closed the book, folded her hands over the soft leather of the volume and used them to cushion her head. There was no alternative to thinking, after all.

  Someone was shaking her awake, supervisors standing over her, jiggling her left shoulder, making her yelp. She was in the middle of a dream where she was being touched and kissed. Hugged by Therese, who had grown a whole foot taller.

  ‘Steady on, girl. What do you think you’re doing, coming here to kip? You’ve got your set turned off. What do you think we pay you for?’

  It was more puzzled than censorious: concern for a good worker.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Wouldn’t have noticed, only everyone else is busy. And this parcel came for you. Your birthday or something? Or was that yesterday and you’re sleeping it off? You look bloody rough. Go home, why don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t want—’

  ‘You don’t want to let us down, right?’

  She did not want to go home. She saw Ravi, standing by the supervisor, and loathed the way he looked at her, with all that genuine concern, making her feel like a sick cat.

  ‘Just come back tomorrow, love, when you feel better. Do you need a taxi?’

  The irony of that almost made her laugh, but not quite. Ravi put the missal and the statue of Ganesh inside her knapsack. The supervisor looked at her through glasses which made her eyes seem enormous. They had seen the scratches on the backs of her hands: sleep made her face pink and flushed. They were being kind, but she was profoundly suspicious of any sort of kindness and simply felt a sickening sense of repetition. First they were kind, then they sent you away.

  ‘Sorry,’ she repeated, scrabbling for dignity.

  ‘No worries, love. Get your head down. Don’t forget your parcel.’ Ravi went back to his desk. The supervisor took her to the door. She carried a gift-wrapped package under her arm and felt as if she were running the gauntlet of eyes, although nobody here took any notice of anyone else: that was the whole point of it. Outside, she stood alone, waiting for the taxi, absent-mindedly ripping at the parcel. Two layers of brightly coloured, much-Sellotaped paper encased a polythene envelope, which had a slight, indefinable smell. With nothing to do but wait, she persisted. Inside the polythene, inside two layers of white tissue, was a dead bird with a red bow round the neck. A very small bird, long dead, desiccated rather than putrefying. The note, folded alongside, was on dry paper, cool to the touch.

  Are not sparrows five for tuppence? And yet not one of them is overlooked by God. More than that, even the hairs of your head have all been counted. Have no fear: you are worth more than any number of sparrows. Luke 11.

  She was stuffing it back inside the paper when the taxi arrived. Put the thing in the haversack, wiped her hands on her jeans before opening the door.

  ‘Where to, sweetheart?’

  ‘Westminster.’

  ‘Going up in the world, are you?’

  She was shaking and looking for the wisecrack when Ravi opened the door and jumped in beside her.

  ‘Walk you home?’ he said.

  Barbara did not apologise. Kim went home as soon as the midday meal was cleared away and Therese watched her go with regret, waving from the kitchen door as if she would never see her again. Barbara, the indefatigable chairwoman of three local charities and also due a meeting with the Bishop’s bursar, nodded curtly to Agnes on the door and strode away for the bus with noticeable relief. The convent car, with its respectable pedigree and low mileage, had sold with such ridiculous speed, she wondered if they had asked enough. The light in the kitchen was grey. The sisters dispersed to their various pursuits: a posse of three went into the parlour and knitted for a cause. Matilda came into the kitchen to find Therese setting up the ironing board.

  ‘Has Anna been?’

  ‘No, Sister. Not yet. She has a job. She comes in when she can.’ Her throat felt tight and the words emerged tersely.

  ‘Will she come in today, I wonder?’

  ‘I don’t know, Sister, I never know.’

  ‘But she’ll be in soon? Surely she’ll be allowed . . . we need her . . .’

  ‘Sometime soon, I expect. Oh, Sister, will you wait a minute?’ She fished into the pocket of her tunic and brought out the knife she had rescued from the laundry bag, wrapped in a bag and not immediately obvious for what it was, except to someone who already knew. Matilda’s eyes opened wide: she grabbed the knife furtively and transferred it to the depths of her gown with a mumble of thanks.

  ‘Might I ask why you keep it, Sister?’

  Matilda hesitated, studying Therese’s pale face anxiously and then shaking her head.

  ‘It’s all to do with what I need to discuss with your sister,

  child.’

  ‘Perhaps I could help.’

  Matilda shook her head. ‘No, dear. I need to talk to Anna . . . because she is not one of us.’

  ‘She certainly isn’t one of us,’ Therese said bitterly, continuing in a rush of words she could not control. ‘She broke the chapel window.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Sister Barbara.’

  Matilda felt for her beads, fingered them nervously, struggling with the uncritical, ingrained behaviour of fifty-five years.

  ‘I can assure you, child, Barbara was . . . misinformed. Anna did no such thing.’ She reached out and stroked Therese’s hot cheek with a bent finger. Therese tried not to flinch. She was so often petted and stroked like a furry mascot and today she hated it in particular. Matilda smiled her beatific smile and continued the futile fingering of her rosary. The click, click, click of the beads made Therese twitch.

  ‘And as for the knife, my dear. Let’s say I use it for fruit in my room. Edmund used to sharpen it for me.You know what
a greedy old thing I am.’

  The afternoon yawned. Therese finished the ironing. Sick of the smell of it, she moved to the chapel for a prescribed hour of reading. Scripture of her own choice, so she always went back to favourite passages, or let the New Testament fall open wherever it would. Luke 12,22:

  I bid you put away anxious thoughts about food to keep you alive and clothes to cover your body. Life is worth more than food, the body more than clothes. Think of the ravens: they neither sow nor reap: they have no storehouse or barn; yet God feeds them.You are worth far more than the birds. Is there a man among you who by anxious thought can add a foot to his height? If then, you cannot do even a very little thing, why are you anxious about the rest?

  The last two lines were the perfect tract for her sister, who had always tried to grow, and after that,Therese could read no more. Silly Anna, who practised smiling in front of the mirror and always wanted to be taller. She could think of nothing else but Anna and what Barbara had said. Not only what Barbara had said, but her own, complete silence in the face of that barrage, a silence provoked by shock, but disloyally maintained. It was one thing to be angry with her own sister, but another to have someone else insult her, and when she had first come in here to pray to God and the departed soul of her mother, there had been the ominous silence of disapproval. Therese went up to her room to fetch her coat.

  There was no rule forbidding her to go out: she was not encouraged to hide away from the world beyond the walls; she was not incarcerated. She could walk in the park and gaze into shop windows like any other free agent. She had been told in no uncertain terms that the Order did not want someone who was a refugee from an ordinary, secular life purely because they were afraid of it. At the point when she would be sent out to learn to pay her way, she was not to be frightened of crossing the road, but it had not happened yet and she had become not only indispensable indoors, but increasingly reluctant to go out. It was a progression no one had forced. Her tasks complete, she was unfettered, free as a bird, with nothing to stop her going and finding Anna, or anyone else. She came back down the stairs. Agnes opened the door without comment or enthusiasm and Therese stood in the street for the first time in weeks. Free as a bird with a broken wing. Freedom required practice and equipment. She had no handbag, no money, none of the armoury of the urban foot soldier. It took so short a time to forget what it was like, the noise, the petrol smell, the slight dampness of the pavement and the light. The light, blinding even on a grey day, a whole expanse of it, weighing her down, making her lose direction. Left and left again, hugging the perimeter of the garden wall until she reached the junction, where the noise was greater. She passed the naked door in the back wall, looked at it longingly, went on to the block of flats where Anna lived and rang the bell, buoying herself up with what she would say, trying to control it, plan it, make it a strategy of calm questions. There was a niggling thought in the back of her mind that she also wanted Jude’s missal. Barbara had hinted that Anna must have stolen it, and still, she had not said a word.

  Standing by the panel of names on the door, each with its own buzzer, she felt conspicuous and alien, and then when there was no reply, no crackling voice from the old entryphone system, she felt entirely bereft. Therese leant towards the panel in case she had missed the response. The lack of it was total rejection. Instead of making the logical assumption that Anna was out, all Therese could imagine was Anna upstairs, listening to the sound of her breath through the machine and laughing at her. Anna had never laughed at her, but the image of Anna grinning and jeering remained. Therese turned and walked briskly back. Agnes took a long time to open the door and by the time she did, Therese had begun to chew her nails. The day was greyer than ever: the sound of the door closing behind her was a leaden relief.

  She was tired, that was all. Tired and overwrought and hungry, as her mother used to say. There will be tears before bedtime if we don’t pull ourselves together and realise what’s good for us. She would have liked to have been scolded: she would like to be given a set of rules far more rigid than those that bound her. She wanted order, predictability and work, and as soon as the door was closed, she missed the sky.

  In a little while, the lull of the afternoon would be over. Still with her coat on,Therese slipped past the three dozing sisters in the parlour, asleep over their knitting, and went into the garden to find Francis. Fail in one task, find another. He was nowhere to be seen. Halfway down the path, level with the statue of St Michael, she saw the ginger cat, sitting where Matilda normally sat, washing itself. She reached out a hand to touch it. It sprang away and slunk down the path with an indignant backwards glance. Feeling like Alice in Wonderland, she followed.

  This church was a million miles from the chapel, nearer in spirit and magnificence to the Hindu temple Ravi had shown her with such pride and although he had scarcely spoken a word, apart from agreeing to be taken wherever she went, she was glad he was there. Strange, to feel ever so slightly competitive about the artefacts and decorations displayed by the religion into which she had been born and did not believe, as if it was part of a birthright, to be shown off in all its splendid glory, like the kind of rich and famous celebrity relative who gave a girl status and credibility at school, even if she hardly knew him. Really, she thought, nothing beat the Church of Rome for showing off. This temple glittered with gold. She liked best the smaller chapels to the sides and the soft light of the iron candle stalls, ten pence each, minimum, small night lights, aching to be lit, irresistible whatever the price, as if the small act of lighting one from another was all that illuminated the darkness. It felt as if ten pence would save a soul. The side chapel she liked the most was St Paul’s, with a small, domed ceiling of brilliant blue, lit with golden stars, flanked in front by a ceiling of green mosaic, inset with three stern heads of haloed saints, more symbolic than human, looking for all the world like three gentlemen suffering from dyspepsia. It seemed from all the other evidence that it was impossible to create a smiling face from small pieces of stone. Anna said to Ravi that the cathedral, with its huge collection of recumbent cardinals, laid on top of stone coffins in vast dark corners, was made not to the greater glory of God, whose depiction was rare, but to the greater glory of men, especially those who worked in marble, because there was every shade and variety of this cold stone. He nodded. The pulpit for the high priest of the day was like a huge, white version of one of the coffins, standing on eight pillars beribboned with twists of contrasting colours, the body of it heavily inlaid with mosaic and big enough to hold thirty. A single cardinal, even with a hat, would be dwarfed in there.

  Halfway down the nave, a huge crucifix hung from the ceiling. Far beyond, in the fraction of the vast space used for services, a crowd, three hundred strong, sat facing the newly gathered choristers as they filed into their designated rows flanking the altar. Anna sat, too, Ravi beside her, nearer the door for a quick escape, watching the long black robes and broad red sashes of the clergy, deftly dividing the wandering tourists from the devotional seeking entry to the service. She wondered what kind of feast day this was. The devotional would know; the tourist neither knew nor cared. Anna found it a foreign place, made smaller by memory, and peculiarly unholy by the riotous lack of harmony of the interior. Ravi’s temple did it better, she decided. In a whisper, she told him so and he nodded again.

  She fixed her eyes on the huge crucifix suspended on chains. Perhaps it was freakish to be so consistently drawn to so cruel an image and she wondered when it had started. Ten years old or something like that when Daddy had pointed out how comfortable a particular Jesus had looked on a particular cross. Seeing Jesus as an object was probably the death to faith. Father had always been subversive and she had never missed him more. She pointed out the crucifix to Ravi. He did not like it.

  This was not a comfortable crucifix, but it had the familiar effect of concentrating her mind, and it was, in its own way, as hideous as any she had ever seen. The cadaverous figure, with a long-hair
ed, haloed head and a crown of thorns well off the forehead, was looking to the left, supported on emaciated arms extended at rigid right angles. The long, bloodless torso of a starved man twisted into a knee-length wrap, from which slender legs led down to feet which looked as if they were agonised by shyness. The wood against which he rested was brilliant red, edged with green and gold decoration and finished above his head and at each end of his extended limbs with symbolic pictures she could not discern from her distance, also edged in gold. All the same, this was a Jesus who inspired the reverse version of wonder and the scorn she needed. There were things to ask, scolding to be done. Ravi sensed her preoccupation, moved away to the side chapel of St Paul with a signal that he would be back. She sat, refusing to kneel, began, silently, another version of a conversation.