Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy

by Rumer Godden

‘Chérie,’ said Patrice. ‘I’m going to ask you to move up to the fourth floor.’

  ‘But … that’s where Marcelline sleeps.’

  ‘You like Marcelline and, you see, Vivi wants …’

  ‘Vivi wants?’

  ‘Yes, I know it’s absurd,’ and Patrice, that accustomed libertine, blushed. ‘Old fool that I am! But chérie, do you know, I think I should die if I lost that little girl.’

  ‘“Mordu pour une môme?” – Don’t tell me you are sick with love of a chit,’ Lise mocked but she could understand. No matter how angry or hard she, Lise, felt, Vivi had only to come sidling up to her with that pretty cajoling: ‘Madame Lise, it isn’t me. It’s Monsieur Patrice,’ and slide her arms round Lise’s neck, rubbing her cheek against Lise’s, and she would be reduced to helplessness – so that Vivi won again.

  It’s I, Vivi, who am in the bedroom now. I can sleep all day long if I like in the big bed with the blue satin quilt. Monsieur Patrice says he will buy me a lace cover. I have lace pillows too. Eugenia has to plump them for me. It’s I who have the wardrobe full of clothes. I threw out all Madame Lise’s in a heap on the landing and got the edge of Marcelline’s tongue, but I didn’t care. I don’t care for anything. I laugh at Monsieur Emile’s long face when Monsieur Patrice buys me clothes. He bought me earrings too, and a bracelet. Hell buy me anything, and the funny thing is I can wheedle him in a way she couldn’t. I can tease. ‘No, not tonight,’ I say. ‘I don’t want to, not tonight.’ ‘What, again? All right, if you’ll give me … buy me …’ I can guess she never could do that.

  ‘Vivi will forget to feed Patagon,’ Madame Lise told him.

  ‘Vivi mustn’t feed Patagon. He might damage her,’ and, ‘Pouponne, don’t go near him,’ Monsieur Patrice told me – as if I would – and, ‘You can feed him,’ he told her.

  ‘Then you must banish him too, upstairs.’

  ‘I couldn’t. He would die without me.’

  I, Vivi, think Monsieur Patrice needs that horrible bird. He laughs when it pecks him. He likes to be pecked, though it leaves great marks. I suppose it’s like being whipped …

  Vivi wanted to be whipped. Upstairs was a soundproof room which, to her, was an intriguing mystery – ‘I have seen the whips,’ said Vivi. ‘It would be something new, Madame Lise, I’m so bored. I want it.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to want. Monsieur Patrice would never allow it.’ Indeed, when Patrice knew, he was angry – angrier than Lise had seen him.

  ‘Who the devil told her about it – who?’ he shouted. ‘You?’

  Lise’s only answer was, ‘Idiot!’

  ‘Who then – tell me.’ If Patrice ever came near to being cruel to Vivi it was then. ‘Tell me. Who?’

  Vivi opened her eyes wide in innocence. ‘Zoë’ – Zoë said she would show me.’

  He sent for Zoë. ‘If you put ideas like that into her head, you are out on the street – understand?’

  ‘Ideas into her head!’ With Lise standing beside Patrice, Zoë dared to be impudent. ‘You had better go and learn the alphabet,’ she told Patrice.

  ‘I’ll make him whip me when I want,’ Vivi said when the dust had died down. ‘Or I him. For now, I’ll let Patagon peck him.’

  ‘I’ll feed Patagon myself,’ Patrice announced.

  ‘You’re too lazy.’ Lise had an immediate riposte. ‘He’ll starve.’

  ‘You won’t let him starve.’

  ‘I won’t come into the flat while she’s there.’

  ‘She’ is me, Vivi, but Monsieur Patrice is right. Madame Lise comes into the flat to feed Patagon with his seed and raw meat, his cuttlefish bone and water; she even cleans out his cage …

  Patrice had had the rooms on the fourth floor re-done for Lise. ‘Milo was fearfully cross but it’s beautifully done, isn’t it?’ he cajoled Lise. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘In the servants’ quarters. Thanks.’

  ‘Nonsense. You have an independent little apartment. Wasn’t it nice of me?’ Then Patrice was suddenly grave. ‘No, it wasn’t nice of me. I did it because I must keep you close.’

  ‘No matter what?’ Lise found it difficult to make her voice flippant.

  ‘No matter what. Please,’ begged Patrice, and he drew her to him. ‘Chéri, à jamais,’ he whispered against her hair. ‘Say it. Please say it.’

  It was wrung out of Lise. She had to shut her eyes. ‘… à jamais.’

  In a way the fourth floor was a relief, somewhere that Lise could escape into peace and privacy; there was a window where she could stand with Coco in her arms looking. ‘I suppose that window became my sort of oratory,’ she told Soeur Marie Alcide. ‘There was a spire – the man who thought of a spire must have been a genius – and it was over the spire that I first began to notice my star.’

  The rooms themselves were fresh, emptier than any other rooms in the house – Patrice knew Lise’s taste – but in colours she would not have thought of herself, ‘and done for me with love and care,’ Lise could tell herself, and, ‘Yes, I think,’ she said in the parlour with Lucette, ‘I think I know a little – I’m sure only a little – about what it is to love. The sisters will teach me the rest.’

  ‘Les frangines! What can they know about it?’

  In the guest-house parlour, the chairs, embroidered in petit point on seats and back, the work of the sisters, were ranged stiffly against the walls, their wood, and the bookcase, table and parquet floor so polished that a breath would dirty them; each ornament and vase had its own spotless crochet mat. Lucette looked even scruffier against the cleanliness.

  ‘I never heard talk like this in my life,’ said Lucette.

  ‘I hadn’t either, but Lucette, as I told you, it wasn’t a man, any man, it wasn’t even the nuns, that brought me here.’

  ‘Then what was it?’ Lucette’s forehead was knotted, her hands twisted. She was desperate to know. ‘What is it?’

  ‘What I told you; it’s like a call.’

  ‘That’s fancy.’

  ‘Is it?’ said Lise. ‘It has been calling me for a long time – only I didn’t listen. I may be too late. I can only try – with all my might,’ Lise added under her breath.

  Lucette was surly again. ‘You’ll be put upon.’

  ‘Over and over again.’ Lise said it with satisfaction.

  ‘I don’t understand.’ It was a cry.

  ‘Hush, Lucette. It’s just that … well, you know this as well as I do – you can’t have something for nothing. Here you pay with all you have.’

  ‘Suppose you haven’t any money.’

  ‘You don’t pay with money.’

  ‘Then with what?’

  ‘I suppose – with yourself – and you don’t ask anything in return.’

  ‘That’s a funny business.’

  ‘It can be because “you can be repaid an hundredfold,’” said Lise softly. ‘That may, or may not, happen, but one of the rules seems to be that you don’t keep anything back’ – ‘which is why I am in the parlour talking to you,’ Lise could have added, but refrained – instead she looked at her watch; miraculously it was going, but then it was a watch among watches: Patrice had paid a small fortune for it. ‘I must go; I have a class.’

  ‘A class! Are you going back to school?’

  ‘In a way – yes.’

  ‘You mean, you have things to learn!’

  ‘Of course. It may take years, as the Prioress, Soeur Marie de la Croix, told you. Besides, I expect there will be quite a few little battles to be fought.’

  ‘Battles!’ Lucette bristled. ‘With them?’

  ‘No, with myself.’ Lise rose. ‘The Prioress is coming over to see you.’

  ‘I don’t want to see her.’

  Lise did not answer that but, ‘Lucette, talking of money – how much have you?’ she asked. ‘You took a room for the night and that train fare was expensive.’

  Lucette was silent.

  ‘If I were you,’ Lise said gently, ‘I should see the Prioress.’

>   ‘I don’t need to stay here,’ Lucette boasted to Soeur Marie de la Croix. ‘There’s a house in Marseilles where they would be glad to have me.’

  ‘But would you be glad to go?’

  Lucette’s head came down on the table and sobs shook the shoulders that were so thin and so queerly hunched. ‘I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what to do. I only want …’

  ‘Want?’ The Prioress was patient.

  ‘Want what Madame Lise wants.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know, but whatever it is that makes her – shine when she talks. I want it.’

  ‘If you really want it, wouldn’t the best idea be to find out what it is?’

  ‘You are turning her into one of you – I know that. She’ll be a nun.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ The head lifted with a glare from the eyes. ‘You ought to be down on your knees to have her.’

  ‘We are, but it doesn’t rest with us.’

  ‘Who then?’

  ‘With Lise herself – and God. Listen Lucette.’ Soeur Marie de la Croix had a calmness, a dignity and authority that acted as balm on Lucette. ‘Of the hundreds of girls and women who have come to Saint Etienne down the years – and they are only a few hundred of the thousands who don’t – only a few, perhaps three or four out of each hundred, sometimes five or six if we’re blessed, go all the way and become Sisters of Béthanie. That’s no fault of the rest; it simply means God has other ways for them, and there are many many ways. I think He has sent you here to find yours.’

  ‘Then – I can come straight away?’

  ‘That would be too fast.’

  ‘You took Madame Lise.’

  ‘Lise has been working, studying and praying for the last five years – yes, while she was in prison – and still she is only here on trial. She has a long way to go.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Before she can make her final vows? Probably nine or ten years.’

  ‘Ten years! Then, for me, it should be fifty.’

  The Prioress laughed. ‘Or it could be very quick. You can only learn what you can – and we shall help you all we can – but first you must find out about it. What you have to do now is to go away and think – and learn. There is a foyer in our town …’

  ‘A foyer?’ Lucette was at once suspicious.

  ‘It’s what we call a halfway house where you can rest and get strong – I think you are not very strong, Lucette – so that is the first thing you must do. Meanwhile, they will find you work suited to you that will keep you until you decide if you really want to try and follow Lise – without her – it would have to be on your own – or whether you would like to find permanent work or want to marry.’

  ‘Marry!’ Lucette was scornful. ‘I have seen a skinful of that!’ and she demanded, ‘What if I want to go back to the old life?’

  ‘We can’t stop you; only you can do that but, no matter what you decide,’ said Soeur Marie de la Croix, ‘you can come to our guest-house any time you want.’

  ‘You would let me come?’ Lucette marvelled.

  ‘Of course. We don’t shut our doors.’

  ‘And see Lise?’

  ‘When she is settled herself and if she is still here; even if she is sent to another of our houses you could go and see her, but now you must leave her,’ said the Prioress, ‘to have her chance.’

  5

  ‘Everyone said I would find it hard,’ Lise was to tell Marc. ‘I never did. From the first hour I only felt privileged.’

  The convent day began at six with the caller’s knock; then came half an hour’s silent meditation, for most of the nuns in chapel, but Lise made hers in the garden unless the rain was too hard. ‘It rains so much in the Gironde,’ said Soeur Théodore. ‘That’s why the grapes from our vines are so good.’ Not all the aspirants got up as early; some slept on, even through Lauds, until Mass at half-past seven. They had to get up then. ‘After all, they are here to take things seriously,’ and then the sacristan, having cleared the altar, brought in the monstrance, the priest put in the Host and the Adoration began. No one could open the doors except when the clock chimed the quarters, or at the half-hours on which the watch was relieved, and Lise had never known anything as still and as fulfilling as those half-hours.

  The Lord passed by and a great and strong wind rent the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake and after the earthquake a fire but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice – and it was so …

  Over and over again Lise thought of that passage.

  It was in this quiet that she learned the meaning of forgetting, or transcending, as she could call it now, in which, or what, she could lose herself, surrender.

  Not always; sometimes she would be earthbound, as if held deliberately low, and the minutes would pass slowly – she could hear the clock ticking and would be conscious of faint sounds; a ring at the gate for the porteress: the telephone: footsteps: seldom voices because silence was the rule. She could hear birds, a workman’s hammer, the convent’s car starting out, even a lorry on the road. Then the only hope was in words; almost every nun laid a book on the prie-dieu; and some of them said the rosary which each nun wore at her belt, but the wooden beads were large and slid softly through the fingers without a click. Sometimes they remembered psalms, prayers, poems.

  As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage

  Man’s mounting spirit in his bone-house mean-house, dwells …

  ‘Can I say that in chapel?’ Lise asked Soeur Théodore.

  ‘Why not? Everything beautiful belongs in chapel. It would be a good place for a poet to write his poems in.’

  Another day there would be no need for a word; there was no sound, no sense of time and the nun or aspirant coming to relieve Lise had to tap her on the shoulder so that she could give up her place. For Lise, as an aspirant, her half-hour usually came late in the day, ‘Though, as you know, you can slip into chapel whenever you have time,’ but duties had to be done, times kept.

  After Mass came breakfast and the hot coffee was welcome, as was the bread with, sometimes, a little allowance of butter made from their own cows’ milk and, sometimes, there was jam, homemade cherry jam or gooseberry jelly or any fruit the domaine could grow, but never the marmalade made of expensive imported oranges Lise had introduced at the Rue Duchesne.

  Then there were classes: ‘Going back to school,’ as Lucette had said. In those days there was Latin, and Lise was carried back to Greenhurst and Aunt Millicent. ‘Aunt, do I have to learn Latin?’

  ‘You will do as you’re told,’ said Aunt Millicent, but had added more gently, ‘You’ll never regret it, Elizabeth. Try.’ But who would have thought I should be needing it now, thought Lise and, ‘I’m terribly rusty,’ she told the nun who took the classes.

  ‘At least you have a smattering. Some have never even heard of Latin.’

  The sisters had a difficult task; in the old days, many of the ‘petites soeurs’ were illiterate, ‘and there are still good aspirants who are semi-illiterate now,’ Soeur Théodore told Lise, ‘and yet we have a Doctor of Philosophy. I don’t know which are the hardest to teach.’

  Then there were what the nuns called ‘personalités’ – discussions that helped each aspirant to build up her confidence – ‘to find herself,’ said Soeur Théodore. There were classes on the Bible, too, Old and New Testaments, and on one day a week each aspirant chose her own text in the gospels and talked of it. Every week, too, there were lessons in the liturgy, in singing, the meaning of the feast days, a talk on the work of Père Lataste and, always, on the Sacraments. Every aspirant had to try and write, as best as she could, an essay on a subject set by the Responsable, and these were dissected and discussed, sometimes in private, sometimes in a group. In fact, all morning, every morning, the aspirants wrote, read, listened. �
�I never dreamed there would be all this to learn,’ said Lise.

  Lise had begun studying long ago at Vesoul under Soeur Marie Alcide, helped by the prison aumônier and the éducatrice, but she was years older than Julie or José and most of the other aspirants, and it was a shock to discover how difficult she found it to learn by heart, even to remember. I suppose, thought Lise, for years and years I had not used that part of my brain. There had been few books in the Rue Duchesne; the girls read magazines if they read at all, but Lise still treasured the books she had brought from England: she had asked Marcelline to bring them to Sevenet, ‘and I took them to Vesoul and was allowed to keep them,’ said Lise. Among them was the Oxford Book of French Verse given to that far-away Elizabeth Fanshawe as a prize at school. ‘Elizabeth Fanshawe. First Prize for Senior French’, and Lise thought, as she had thought of the Latin, How surprised they would have been if they had known how I should use my French!

  These were poems she had loved as a schoolgirl and still knew by heart, though some she could not bear to say now.

  Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir à la chandelle

  Assise auprès du feu, devidant et filant,

  Direz chantant mes vers, en vous esmerveillant

  Ronsard me celebroit du temps que j’estois belle.

  Je seray sous la terre, et fantôme sans os

  Par les ombres myrteux je prendray mon repos …

  We, Patrice and I, could have been two people growing old in the candlelight by the fire, thought Lise, then, No, we wouldn’t, she contradicted herself. It could never have been like that.

  ‘If Monsieur Patrice were alive, when you come out of Vesoul would you feel compelled to go to him instead of to us?’ Soeur Marie Alcide had asked with her accustomed directness, and Lise had stared at her in genuine astonishment. ‘But – I couldn’t – with what I know now.’

  ‘What do you know now?’ and Lise could only answer, ‘Le Seigneur, Our Lord,’ but, she added, ‘Poor Patrice.’

  Mordu pour une môme – lovesick for a chit. Poor poor Patrice.

  Vivi was seventeen when she first saw Luigi – and Luigi saw her.