Black Narcissus

by Rumer Godden

  ‘Go into the chapel,’ said Sister Clodagh. ‘You can use my private door and no one will see you. Go in there and I’ll come to you presently.’

  When she went in, after she had sat going over and over what she had said, there was no one there.

  A few days after, she sent for Sister Ruth again. The Sister waited with the air of a martyr in front of her desk.

  ‘Sister, I’ve been thinking a great deal about you. I want you to believe that.’

  ‘I believe it, Sister.’

  ‘I want you to write freely to Reverend Mother. I shan’t look at the letter, of course, and her answers will be your own business. For the moment I shan’t write to her myself, because I think the best way for you will be to go on quietly with your life and work here.’

  ‘There could be no worse punishment,’ said Sister Ruth.

  Sister Clodagh looked at her sharply. ‘You’re making things very difficult for both of us,’ she said.

  There was no answer. Then Sister Ruth said: ‘Am I to write two, or three pages to Reverend Mother? Have I to do it now, or may I finish my class-work first?’

  Sister Clodagh picked up her pen. ‘You may go,’ she said and began to write.

  It seemed an age that the pen scratched and she tried to keep her hand steady on the desk. Then Sister Ruth turned and swept out of the room.

  18

  The General Dilip Rai and Joseph Antony worked at tables side by side in the small extension beside the new Lace School. Joseph was a sop to propriety and he could not understand why his school hours had been lengthened, nor what this strange jargon was that went on over his head. He was learning to write English, the General was learning to write French.

  ‘Avez-vous le crayon de mon oncle? Non, mais j’ai la plume de ma tante et le papier de mon cousin,’ wrote Dilip Rai.

  ‘A–at–cat–chat,’ wrote Joseph.

  They worked in an atmosphere of soft whispers and titters from the Lace School on the other side of the partition where Kanchi, Maili, Jokiephul and Samya sat at work. They were not allowed even to peep at the General, but it was because of him that they giggled and spoke in whispers, and because of him that the lace-making, and the arrangement of the head veil and the new blouse print had become suddenly thrilling.

  Every few minutes Joseph was called away to help in the school or in the Lace School itself, though there they had learnt the meaning of ‘nice-good-bad-careless-unpick-and-do-it-again’ and could even say ‘do not hold the thread in your big toes’; Joseph had taught them that himself and it had saved him a great deal of trouble. ‘Dew not haould e’tred e’taus.’ Joseph always wanted to please Sister Honey and he dared not displease Sister Ruth; there was something about her that he did not understand.

  She was as sharp as Sister Honey was sweet, but it was not that; it was the way her eyes seemed to narrow and glint as if she were going to strike you, and her teeth made her look as if she could give a sharp bite, and the frightening still way in which she talked. Sister Honey really loved him; sometimes she had to punish him and that made her miserable.

  ‘Joseph, I – Oh, Joseph dear. I’m afraid I have to punish you.’

  ‘It’s all right, Lemini. I don’t mind. Really I don’t. Don’t you think about it. You just go on and punish me.’

  ‘He’s the dearest little fellow,’ said Sister Honey.

  ‘I think he’s sly,’ said Sister Ruth.

  She thought them all sly and tiresome and grating. ‘He’s sly and the children are rude and I don’t trust Kanchi at all.’

  ‘You’re right there,’ said Ayah. ‘Now some people, they think she’s pretty and don’t trouble to see any more. Well that’s not likely to happen to us,’ she said chuckling. ‘I’m an old woman now and no one could call you pretty with those teeth.’

  That stung. Once people had called Ruth beautiful, but now she thought she had never been so ugly; how could she help it with this strain and misery? Her eyes were stretched with watching, but she had to watch. Every moment of the day, They needed watching if she was to keep herself safe. She dared not relax for an instant and she had to know what Sister Clodagh was up to. She had to find excuses to go past her door, to walk up behind her, to follow her, and she was getting so tired. Even at night she had to get up and listen and softly push the door to see if it were locked, to see if Sister Clodagh were asleep or only pretending; she dared not sleep herself in case Sister Clodagh or They came upon her while she was asleep.

  Sister Briony brought her a glass of milk. ‘Sister Clodagh says you’re to have this every day at ten,’ she said with a sniff.

  Sister Clodagh had asked her: ‘Have you noticed anything peculiar about Sister Ruth lately?’

  ‘She thinks a great deal too much about herself,’ Sister Briony had answered promptly. ‘She’s broody and neurotic.’

  ‘Do you think it’s only that? You don’t think there’s anything – odd about her? Sometimes lately I’ve fancied –’

  ‘I shouldn’t encourage her, Sister, if I may say so. She’s full of her own importance and she likes to make the most of her ailments. Look at the way she fussed about that hill trouble and the headaches when we first came; all the Sisters had them, and we never heard a word from them, did we?’

  ‘Still, she does look terribly thin. I think she needs building up in this cold. Give her a tonic, and extra milk in the morning and evening. And you might keep your eye on her. I’m not quite at ease about her.’

  When Sister Briony had gone, Sister Ruth poured the milk out of the window. Sister Clodagh had sent it especially for her, a harmless-looking glass of hot milk, but quickly and furtively she poured it away.

  There was one thing now that was continually in her mind. In eight months she was due to go to England. After five years abroad, the Sisters of their Order returned to the Mother House for six months.

  She was to go in eight months, but Sister Clodagh might send her before if there were any more of these interviews in which she gave herself away. That was the terror of Sister Clodagh, she was the person that undid all her resolutions, that made her forget; the very one before whom she dreaded to give herself away, the very person who made her do it. ‘Steady. Steady. You’re quite all right if you go steady,’ she told herself, and then Sister Clodagh would smile and say: ‘Well, Sister,’ and it would rise up in her again, and before she had thought she had rapped out an answer. And all the time They were watching. She looked over her shoulder; a dozen times a day she caught herself doing that. One day it would be noticed. ‘What do you keep on looking at?’ Already she had seen Joseph look after her, puzzled as to what she could see.

  All the time she had to be so careful. She could not, would not be sent away from Mopu; even to herself she dared not add ‘and Mr Dean’. At first that was hardly a thought, only a deep stirring in her mind, a warm and happy feeling she had never known before. Then Sister Clodagh had put it into words; that had been as terrifying as if she had shouted it in front of them all; she had trampled all over it but she had not trampled it down. Now that it was spoken it was alive, real; she almost thought it was real and now she did not know what she had imagined and what was real. It was so alive that she was frightened of it and yet it filled her with a tumultuous joy. She did not know what she could do to keep it, she could not even say it, but she hugged it to herself all day and night.

  All that she knew was that when the time came she would not go. When the time came she would have a plan, but meanwhile it was ‘Steady. Steady’, and trying not to look behind her and watching Sister Clodagh and trying not to think of Them.

  ‘Lemini,’ Joseph twitched her sleeve, ‘I have written out this “a-at-cat” until there’s no black place left on my slate to write it on any more, and the General Bahadur has finished his French.’

  ‘Yes, Sister,’ said the General, smiling and showing his teeth. ‘I have written out the whole of the exercise and I have learnt it by rote while I was waiting for you to finish your daydr
eam.’

  ‘Sister, it’s nearly half-past twelve and you haven’t rung the bell,’ cried Sister Briony at the door. ‘Whatever are you thinking of?’

  None of them noticed the game of cat and mouse that was being played on the other side of the partition; Kanchi peeped round it to look at the young General and listened through it to hear his voice and put her face under it to see his feet. She had put on a blouse of purple cotton printed with stars and the colour of her veil was a brown, half pink, half cinnamon.

  19

  Sister Philippa brought the seed lists to the office. In the evenings she had spent hours making them out. Her work in the garden was almost at a standstill now; the January and February days were all alike, they went like a procession of the nuns themselves, unrelieved by any colour; there seemed to be no life or movement in the earth but the wind tearing at the trees and bamboos. Still Sister Philippa was in the garden while it was daylight, planning and marking, turning up pieces of earth and littering the ground behind her with scraps of paper that the wind blew away, so that she had to draw her plans all over again. She called Nima up from his warm quarters at all hours and she would stop in the middle of talking to him, looking to where the snows lay hidden under the clouds; wrinkling up her eyes at the place where Kanchenjunga was wrapped away, while Nima waited with his eyes watering in the wind. She had a collection of pots ready for seed in the shed that Mr Dean had put up for her and she spent a great many hours there; best of all she had the catalogues of spring and summer flowers and her lists of them to make.

  ‘That cow is sick and you haven’t even seen it,’ said Sister Briony. ‘The boy says she has been off her feed for days. There’s nothing you can do in the garden now, so you might attend to your other work.’

  ‘Lemini, you’ve a great hole in your skirt, did you know?’ asked Kanchi pertly.

  It was so difficult to decide what to have. Roses for instance. Mr Dean said she would have enough roses from the trees on the terrace and that no other kind could be better for colour and scent. ‘They start with copper-coloured buds and go into flame and orange and rose and apricot, and when they die they turn cream. There are thousands on a tree, Sister, higher than the house. I can smell them down at the factory. I’ve only seen one other place where roses grow like that, in the Nishat Bagh in Kashmir.’

  ‘Have you seen those gardens then?’ cried Sister Philippa. ‘Do tell me about them. Have you seen the Shalimar?’ But the roses in the catalogue had such tantalizing names and the descriptions were so beautiful that she had to write down a few. ‘I must see what “Lady Hillingdon” is like and this “Golden Dawn” that they say has forty-five petals and this lovely sounding “Shot Silk”.’

  She had visions of the hill behind the house white and gold with daffodils and jonquils, but Mr Dean said that bulbs in this damp climate were extravagant, they rotted and had to be renewed every year, and that the spring was so brief and had so much already packed into it that they were more trouble than they were worth. ‘If you plant hill crocus, it’ll cost you nothing, because the boys can bring the roots wild from the woods, and Pin Fong can get you some Chinese lilies, if they are bringing them over this year in spite of the war. They’re so like jonquils that you can’t tell them apart.’

  ‘I should very much like some lilies, and I’ll arrange about the crocus roots,’ she said, but she wrote down daffodils and jonquils all the same.

  She planned to plant sweet peas with a border of petunias; it said in her book that the scents together were exquisite, and she decided to have red Japanese peonies with gypsophila for contrast; the peonies were rather expensive, but their description was magnificent. Then there were lupins, delphiniums and larkspurs and stocks; all the colours of snapdragons, nigella which was love-in-the-mist; pansies and the portaluca she had grown to love in the plains; mignonette and verbena, candytuft and phlox.

  Sister Briony told Sister Clodagh, in front of all the Sisters, that the laundry was late again. Sister Philippa smiled apologetically and looked out of the window where the azaleas crouched on the bank, swept by the wind, and her expression changed to acute concern. Sister Clodagh followed her anxious eyes.

  ‘And must she allow our washing to be hung out anywhere as it is?’ asked Sister Honey primly. ‘It’s altogether too suggestive.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Sister Clodagh sharply; she was a little worried. ‘There’s no one to see it.’

  ‘Except the mountain,’ said Sister Philippa quite gravely. ‘I never thought of that. I won’t let it happen again.’

  The Sisters laughed, but Sister Philippa said: ‘I was more right than I knew when I called him a household God. He’s everywhere; before and about and in our house.’

  Sister Honey opened her lips in dismay waiting for Sister Clodagh’s quick answer to that, but she went into her office without speaking.

  ‘That sounds irreverent to me,’ said Sister Briony as soon as she had gone, ‘and, talking of irreverence, do you know you’ve been late for chapel every day this week? I don’t know why Sister Clodagh hasn’t noticed it. I think she’s far too patient and kind to you all and you take advantage of it.’

  ‘Seed lists already?’ said Sister Clodagh, when Sister Philippa came in. ‘Surely it’s too early?’

  She seemed reluctant to be disturbed, but the Sister answered firmly: ‘Not for the bulbs and the fibres I need; and I have to get the compost for the rose-beds.’

  ‘What rose-beds?’ asked Sister Clodagh.

  ‘I’m going to make some. They have to be dug down three feet, you see, we shall need extra labour for that, and then all this stuff put in. Then I have to mulch the rhododendrons before they come into flower and I want to see if I can improve the wild ones by putting in some of those red and white Splendours; I’ve told Nima to get me two coolies for that as I can’t spare the regular ones. It’s my idea to turn the present vegetable terraces over to flowers, and make the vegetable garden down below the stables where it can’t be seen. That’s what the extra list is for; and here are the herbs for the herb garden I’ve planned to put round the new chapel; we might as well start it now as the building will go up quickly. Only simple herbs, lavender and sage and mint and rosemary –’

  ‘But, Sister.’ Sister Clodagh looked at her in bewilderment. ‘All this would take months –’

  ‘Not if I have enough labour. I can get any amount of coolies from Mr Dean.’

  ‘But think of the cost!’ Sister Clodagh tapped the lists in amazement. ‘The seeds alone are beyond any allowance we can possibly expect, and you’ve put down bulbs and herbs and roses and creepers.’

  ‘The creepers are not included,’ said Sister Philippa. ‘They’ll have to be extra. I’m putting up frames for the honeysuckle outside the bathroom and cookhouse doors where they’ll get the soapy water; and I want to try morning-glory, though I’m afraid we’re too high for it.’

  ‘Of course we’re too high. Half the things in this list couldn’t grow here.’

  ‘I think they could.’

  ‘It’s very, very unlikely.’

  ‘I should like to try,’ said Sister Philippa obstinately.

  ‘We can’t afford to try. You’ll have to be content with the things that Nima’s had here before. I’m sure that this year Reverend Mother won’t want us to spend very much on the garden. I’m sorry, Sister, but it’s impossible.’

  ‘It’s absolutely necessary if the garden is to look as it ought to,’ said Sister Philippa loudly. ‘It’s the very least I can manage with.’

  Sister Clodagh was puzzled. She looked at the Sister sitting opposite her, at her pleasant wise face with its benevolent forehead and eyes. Reverend Mother had said: ‘If you want advice, ask Sister Philippa, she’s wise.’ She had always been the most sensible and even of them all; she spoke so seldom that she was listened to, and what she did say was worth hearing. Sister Clodagh remembered that several times lately she had had to speak to her two or three times before she a
nswered; and Sister Briony was always complaining now that she neglected the cows and chickens and the laundry work. There was something vague and untidy about her dress, too, there were patches of mud on her skirt round her knees, and the tear in it was not mended. Her cheek had a smudge of dirt on it and her nails were black.

  ‘I don’t know what’s come over you, Sister,’ she began. ‘You bring me these schemes which would cost hundreds of rupees in labour and plants and you know perfectly well that there is no hope at all of any of them being sanctioned. You must have known it.’

  She saw the elderly sensible Sister flush and tremble; her lips trembled and a deep flush crept up her cheeks, she looked as if she were going to cry. In dismay Sister Clodagh stopped short.

  After a little while she said, tapping again with her paper knife on the lists: ‘You know it’s all true. You know it’s impossible.’ There was an obstinate silence.

  ‘And it’s true that you’ve been neglecting some of your work. That won’t do, Sister. It must be done faithfully and conscientiously all round. And your clothes are untidy and lately you’ve been unpunctual. That’s all true, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  ‘Why?’

  Sister Philippa waited before she answered; when she did she seemed startled by what she said. ‘It interrupts,’ she said in surprise.

  Before Sister Clodagh had time to speak she burst out: ‘Then you mean I can have none of this for the garden?’

  Sister Clodagh handed back the lists. ‘Go and consult Nima. You know what you can spend. Go and think it all over.’

  And urgently she repeated: ‘Go and think it all over.’

  20

  It was suddenly, in these months of cold, that the young General Dilip Rai discarded his heavy cloth coat and came for his lesson in an achkan of corded white silk, buttoned with balls of gold; the collar was stiffened with gold in scrolls and the silk stood out; it was as white as milk or seed pearls, and Sister Honey rushed to find a sheet to spread over his chair before she would let him sit down. Then a procession of coats began, each one as lovely as the last; a maize colour patterned with flowers in damask, a white brocade with a gold sprig; a dove grey satin and one with stripes worked entirely in petit point like a grandmother’s footstool. He changed his earrings every day and he smelled strongly of scent.