Convent on Styx (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  There were two staircases which led up to the first floor, and these were at opposite angles of the building, one near the kitchen garden entrance, the other next to the chapel. There was also a combined washroom and lavatory on the ground floor by the door to the kitchen garden.

  Only two of the original dormitories were on the ground floor. The other, an even larger room, had also been sub-divided and was on the first floor immediately above the front hall and passage and the rooms occupied by Miss Lipscombe and Mrs. Wilks. It now formed two large rooms; one of these was kept vacant for such times as the Superior of the Order made a Visitation or needed accommodation when she was journeying from one convent of the Companions of the Poor to another, and the other was usually reserved for visiting nuns, although sometimes it was put at the disposal of any visiting priest who could not be accommodated at the presbytery.

  Along a corridor on the first floor were also the little rooms at one time allotted to the resident secular teaching staff (all women, in those days) when the school had catered for boarders. These rooms, at the moment, were empty, and had been empty for years, although once a year Sister Marcellus resentfully aired the beds in them and gave them a spring cleaning, this to her usual accompaniment of grumbling comment.

  As the convent was built on a hill up which Sister Marcellus had been obliged at one time to hoist the shopping, there were extensive cellars under the ground floor and these could be reached by a door in the cloister under the staircase near the chapel, but the cellars, except for the storage of junk, had been out of use for some considerable time.

  Whatever the private feelings of frustration, guilt, fear, animosity, and sheer spite there might be among the inmates or, on the other hand, what experiences they may have had of fulfilment, comfort, satisfaction, or religious ecstasy, it is certain that there was one person who seldom left the cloister but who was entirely content and happy. Old Sister Ignatius (named not for the founder of the Jesuits, but for that St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, who was martyred under Trajan) had few memories of her native Italy, although she was bilingual.

  In 1896 her father had been killed in Abyssinia when the Italian forces had been defeated there, and she and her mother had been invited to join relatives in England. At the age of twenty she had joined the Companions of the Poor and, at the end of her novitiate, she had been shuttled to and fro between one and another of their convents, sometimes to teach, sometimes to nurse the sick, twice to act as prioress, and once to spend six years as head of the Order.

  Now she was old, tired, but contented. Her faith, unimpaired by difficulties, frustrations, and sorrows, told her exactly where she was going and how to get there. She had neither doubts nor fears. She was fully aware of the wickedness of the world and was equally convinced that, even so, right would conquer wrong and virtue vice.

  Mrs. Polkinghorne expressed equal belief in these things, but she missed the exotic even if somewhat tawdry trappings of religion in her native Spain, and regarded the Catholic parish church, which she attended at such times as Mass was not served in the convent chapel, as little more inspiring than the bare and austerely furnished Protestant churches of her adopted country. Except for the pictorial representations of the Stations of the Cross around its walls and a couple of simpering statues, she found the Catholic Church of SS Peter and Paul (saints whom the English Church recognised, anyway) cold, impersonal, rigidly hygienic, and (not to mince matters) dull.

  As for Miss Lipscombe and Mrs. Wilks, only their unending feud and the necessity for preparing fresh shafts to aim at and, if possible, wound each other, kept them interested in life at all. Both paid the whole of their State pensions into the convent economy and each was given sufficient pocket-money for small personal matters and, twice yearly, an allowance for clothes, but both were convinced that the money the convent took from them more than covered the cost of their keep and both resented what they regarded as the prioress’s rapacity and meanness. Nevertheless, both knew perfectly well that nowhere else could they have lived as cheaply, therefore, so far as Sister St. Elmo was aware, they were fixtures at the convent, so much so that, had she overheard Tom’s remark about Mrs. Wilks’s impending departure, she would have found it quite incredible. She knew, too, that they found a zest for life in their perpetual quarrelling. What they found to say at Confession about their hatred for one another nobody knew and it was nobody’s business except that of the lean, dark, Highland Scot, Father MacNicol, who once confided to Sister St. Elmo that he groaned in spirit when he saw either of them in the offing.

  “I know,” Sister St. Elmo had replied. “I know exactly what you mean, Father. All the same, if it keeps them happy . . .”

  “But how can it?”

  “I really think that in some strange way it does. They can’t do with each other because there is such a rooted antipathy between them; yet they could not do without one another, either.”

  “They sound like the two old men in Lady Gregory’s play,” said the priest, with his melancholy smile. Sister St. Elmo had never heard of Lady Gregory, so she made no comment.

  As for Mrs. Polkinghorne, so far as anybody knew, she was comfortably settled and was the only one of the three old ladies who really “paid her way.” She had a daughter, a nun attached to another house belonging to the Companions of the Poor, and a son who was a priest in South America, so she would have been persona grata at the convent in any case. She never presumed upon her connections, was as devotional as only a woman reared in the Spanish tradition can be and, so far as was known, lived at peace with all people. She had her uses. She provided a safety valve for Miss Lipscombe and Mrs. Wilks, both of whom came to her with their troubles and to let off steam against one another, and, having been brought up in a port-side café where arguments were apt to be settled with knives, Mrs. Polkinghorne was careful never to take sides, but to speak her hearers fair and offer them sympathy but no comment.

  She was useful now and again in other ways, too. When Sister Elphege was absent from school for several weeks because she had broken her leg, Mrs. Polkinghorne had taken over the cookery classes and the school learned the culinary art as it was practised in the restaurants of Valencia and Alicante. Occasionally, too, the school acquired a pupil from Argentina or the convent a visiting priest from Peru or Chile, and it then became Mrs. Polkinghorne’s proud duty to talk with the stranger in Spanish and make him or her feel at home. As she had had pious parents who had sent her to a good school in Madrid, upon the port-side argot of her upbringing had been grafted the pure speech of Castilian Spain. This could be understood by her hearers, no matter what their origins, though it bore about the same relationship to the various local and South American dialects as the classical Roman tongue may have borne to the Church Latin of the Middle Ages. All the same, it was a valuable means of communication with Spanish-speaking foreigners, and was prized as such by Sisters St. Elmo and Hilary.

  But Mrs. Polkinghorne still missed her handsome although sometimes erring husband. The old saying “a wife in every port” contains that half-truth which undermines the fact that most sailors are sufficiently faithful to “the little woman back home” and take their pleasures of necessity rather than of wantonness. She also missed her son. Her daughter came to see her once a year, when the young nun stayed in the convent on her summer holiday, but, all the same, this daughter was also there as a member of the Order. Besides, to most parents, a son means much more than a daughter, if only because families are anxious for the dynasty to be carried on in the direct male line, further proof (if proof be needed) that property means more than persons and that the family, in the round, is more important than the individuals who compose it.

  Mrs. Polkinghorne’s priestly son, however, had absolved himself from the necessity of carrying on the family name. He had embraced celibacy and sacrificed posterity; and, while one side of Mrs. Polkinghorne’s mind accepted this as a special grace, she still yearned for the grandchildren whom she knew she would never
see, and for a visit from a son who might as well have been in heaven already, for all she ever saw of him.

  CHAPTER 5

  Exit Mrs. Wilks

  “What beck’ning ghost, along the moonlight shade

  Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?”

  Alexander Pope

  From exactly which branch of the grape-vine Tom Quince had culled his information remained obscure, but the news turned out to be correct. A week after he had spoken to Sister Romuald, Mrs. Wilks moved out of her convent guest room and betook herself to a destination whose location she disclosed to none of the others, not even to Mrs. Polkinghorne.

  She presented herself one morning at the prioress’s office and said in an important voice that she would be glad of a word about her room. The prioress, sighing inwardly, said,

  “Well, we could put you on the first floor, Mrs. Wilks, if that would do.”

  “Oh, I’m not complaining about the room itself, Sister.”

  “What, then?”

  “Do I have to give notice?”

  “Notice of what?”

  “Notice to vay-cate my present domicile.”

  “You want to leave us?” (“Too good to be true,” thought Sister St. Elmo.)

  “To leave, yes. It would really suit me to go right away now—well, tomorrow, say—but I wouldn’t wish to inconvenience you, so I want to know what notice you would require.”

  “Well, of course you are free to go whenever you wish, Mrs. Wilks, but if it’s some little unfriendly argument which has upset you, wouldn’t it be wise to think things over before you do something you might regret?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing like that, Sister. That there are, and always have been, little rifts within the lute I’ll not deny. I’ve had much to put up with, as you should know, but we’ll say no more about that. The fact is, I’ve had an offer in that letter which came the other day. You remember handing me a letter?”

  “An offer? You don’t mean . . .?”

  “Oh, not that sort of offer, not at my age, Sister! I’ve had an offer of alternative accommodation.”

  “I see.”

  “And I shall be going where I shall be able to keep my pension clear, such as it is, and spend it on myself,” said Mrs. Wilks spitefully, “and that will make a change after seven years!”

  “I see. You are sure the offer is genuine, I suppose?” (“Old ladies,” thought St. Elmo—who was not without knowledge of the outside world—are sometimes easily imposed upon, especially if they happen to have a little nest-egg stashed away somewhere, as she had often suspected was the case with Mrs. Wilks.)

  “Oh, it’s genuine enough, and about time it was made, too and all. Oh, yes, it’s genuine. So I can leave tomorrow, is that it?”

  “Certainly, if you’ve made up your mind. You had better leave me your new address, hadn’t you, so that I can send on any letters?”

  “Oh, if you like, but that’s all arranged for. The post office will do it.” (The grape-vine perhaps was beginning to disclose its roots, or so Sister Romuald would have thought, had she overheard the conversation. Postmistress to garage, garage proprietor to Tom, Tom to Sister Romuald.)

  “I see. Well, Mrs. Wilks, we shall be sorry to lose you, of course. If you need any help with your luggage, I’m sure Tom Quince would be willing to carry anything down to the bus stop for you. I’ll tell him to be prepared. Which bus do you wish to catch?”

  “Oh, I shan’t be travelling by bus,” said Mrs. Wilks grandly.

  “Well!” said Miss Lipscombe to Mrs. Polkinghorne. “To go off like that, with her nose in the air, and no dignified farewells or anything, Really, some persons have no breeding!”

  “She wish to make a nice exit,” explained Mrs. Polkinghorne, “and perhaps also she feel timido.”

  “Timid? That one! Don’t make me laugh!”

  “Not timid. I mean shy. It was a very large car. Perhaps she feel con remordimientos because she leave us so grand and we so poor. Yes, the car was very big, very rich, much space in it.”

  “More like a funeral hearse, if you ask me. And that man who came to the door to get her. Very flash, and a bit Jewish, if you ask me, I say again.”

  “But I do not ask you,” thought Mrs. Polkinghorne, “you miserable old ramera!” Aloud she said, “Perhaps he is a nephew and think it is time he do something for his old aunt. I do not like Jews, but they are often good to their own kind.”

  “This one has taken his time, then. She’s been here longer than I have, and I’ve been here five years. And not to tell a soul where she’s going! Fishy, if you ask me.”

  “But I don’t ask you, you silly old zorra!” again thought Mrs. Polkinghorne. She said aloud, “Some persons do not like to discuss their business with others. If the bienhechor is a Jew, I think maybe it is the religiosas who are not to be told where she goes.”

  “Well, I shouldn’t tell them, if Mrs. Wilks asked me not to,” said Miss Lipscombe virtuously. “But why shouldn’t they know? That’s what I ask myself, because I’m pretty sure Mrs. Wilks has no Jewish connections. That’s why I think there’s something behind it all—something which isn’t very nice. The Jews have a bad reputation where we are concerned, you know. I think this man is a scoundrel.”

  Mrs. Polkinghorne sighed. She foresaw that there was going to be a lot of this sort of thing during the ensuing weeks. At least while the other two had been occupied with their squabbles, their determination each to go one better than the other, and their mutual recriminations, she had managed to get sufficient time to herself to conduct her devotions in peace and to crochet the interminable lengths of coarse lace destined to embellish surplices; but now she envisaged herself caught, as it were, in a trap, for Miss Lipscombe, having nobody else to talk to, would talk to her and, what was worse, having nobody else to quarrel with, might even quarrel with her. These thoughts were insupportable. She went to the prioress.

  “Querida madre,” she said winningly, “I like to change my room to be upstairs. No more can I mount those tall stairs. My legs, they do not go so good no more.”

  “It’s only once a week,” said the prioress, “that you use the bathroom, Mrs. Polkinghorne, isn’t it?”

  “Not bathroom,” protested the señora. “That Miss Lipscombe, always she is in our excusado when I need him most, so I mount the stairs and that is not good for my legs. Three, four, five times a day I am mounting these stairs.”

  “Oh, I see. Well, if you like, you may have one of the rooms on the first floor, but it would have to be one of the little cubicles the school-teachers used to have. I can’t let you have the room we keep ready for the Superior when she comes, and the other good room up there we keep empty for when we have a visiting priest or a Sister on holiday. You know that, don’t you? Your own daughter had it last year.”

  “Then I do not change my room. I mount the stairs when I must, whatever my weak heart and my poor feet may say against it,” observed Mrs. Polkinghorne resignedly.

  “I’m sure you’ll manage,” said the prioress. Her next visitor was Miss Lipscombe.

  “Dear Mother Prioress,” began Miss Lipscombe, ingratiatingly.

  (“I am called Sister St. Elmo, as well you know,” thought the prioress, “and soft soap will get you nowhere.”) “Oh dear!” she said. “Don’t tell me you want to change your room!”

  “Such a tiny request, dear Mother. I just wondered whether I might move into Mrs. Wilks’s old room now that it is vacant. I get rather nervous at nights and I don’t like the idea of sleeping next to an empty room.”

  “Well, even if you did move into Mrs. Wilks’s old room, you would still have the front-door passage between you and Mrs. Polkinghorne. What difference would it make? You would still be next to an empty room, too. I mean the room you occupy now.”

  “It would be better than an empty room and an empty corridor.”

  “Oh, very well, provided you can manage to make the changeover without help, unless Mrs. Polkinghorne is
willing to give you a hand. I can’t ask Sister Marcellus to add to all her other work.”

  “There is nothing to do except take my bits and pieces in there. I know Sister Marcellus has stripped the sheets and pillowcases to go to the wash.”

  “It isn’t such a good room as yours, you know. Because of the position of the windows when the rooms were school dormitories, your present room turned out to be rather more commodious than the next one when we put up the partitions. I don’t know whether you’ve realised that you will be getting, if you move, a smaller room?”

  “My room is so draughty,” said Miss Lipscombe. “I really don’t know why I’ve put up with it so long without complaining.”

  Wisely the prioress declined to discuss this aspect of the matter. That Miss Lipscombe was determined to change over rooms was perfectly clear and she thought she knew why. Sister Marcellus, less tactful, or perhaps less inhibited, put into words what the prioress had decided not to say.

  “I suppose she thinks Mrs. Wilks’s old room will tell her something she wants to know,” she said. “She pokes into everybody’s business, that one. Perhaps she thinks she will find a letter which has fallen between the floorboards, or something of interest stuffed up the chimney. It is a pity she does not find a hidden mousetrap and get her fingers caught in it. I’ve no patience with her nonsense, none at all.”

  “So large la Biblia! La sagrada escritura,” said Mrs. Polkinghorne, as Miss Lipscombe lifted from the bottom of the Dutch wardrobe a massive tome with a brass clasp.

  “It belonged to my grandfather. He was a Protestant,” said Miss Lipscombe, bearing it with difficulty towards the door. So, bit by bit and capably assisted by Mrs. Polkinghorne, who saw no valid excuse for refusing to help her, Miss Lipscombe moved into the room vacated by Mrs. Wilks. There was very little to do. Mrs. Wilks had left her bed-linen neatly folded and it had been removed by Sister Mary Marcellus, so all that Miss Lipscombe needed to do was to make the bed with her own clean sheets and pillowcases and transfer her personal effects from the one room to the other.