by Rumer Godden
‘That’s not their testimony.’
‘And if I did go with them? Les pauvres gars! Remember what she had taught me,’ Vivi flung a look at Lise. ‘Most of them, too, had no one. Luigi was gone two, three, four days at a time and I was so lonely, so homesick for Monsieur.’
‘Monsieur Patrice?’
‘Monsieur Patrice.’ Vivi bowed her head. ‘He was a gentleman. I wasn’t used to soldiers, or Luigi, no matter what she told you. Everyone was so unkind, and at last I dared to write …’
‘To Monsieur Patrice?’
‘To Monsieur Patrice. He was the only one strong enough to stand against her.’
‘Against Madame Lise?’
‘Yes, and you see she followed him. He must have told Marcelline where he was going. Marcelline was her spy. He was coming to help me but rather than let him, she …’ Vivi covered her eyes with her hands but Lise knew she was peeping through her fingers.
‘She? Courage, ma petite.’
‘She.’ The whisper filled the court. ‘She shot him, Monsieur Patrice, my benefactor, my best friend.’
Again Maître Jouvin tried. ‘You say Monsieur Patrice was your benefactor. Wasn’t it rather Madame Lise? She always did the best for you. Isn’t it true she rescued you, took you from the streets; saved you from being taken up by the police for being drunk?’
‘It was her job, wasn’t it, picking up young girls? And I was put straight to work. I was only fourteen.’
‘But the servants, Madame Marcelline, the barman Jock, Gaston, the doorman, and Mademoiselle Zoë, all say Madame Lise wanted to send you to school.’
‘Yes, when Monsieur Patrice took a shine to me.’
‘And you really expect us to believe, Madame Lise,’ said the Président when it came to Lise’s turn, she being the last for cross-examination in the case, ‘you expect us to believe that you acted as you did towards this young girl, Vivi, entirely for her good?’
‘From the beginning to the end – yes.’
‘You expect us to believe that?’
‘Yes, because it is the truth.’
‘And that she was happy in her marriage with Luigi Branzano?’
‘She said so, over and over again.’
‘In letters you are unable to produce.’
‘Marcelline has read them. She has told you.’
‘An old devoted servant.’
‘And I have told you too that I dared not keep the letters. Patrice – Monsieur Ambard – would have thought nothing of searching my drawers and desk. He was suspicious. Over and over again, he tried to force me to tell …’
‘How force you?’
Lise was silent.
‘How force you? Answer the question, Madame.’
‘I would rather not,’ and she said angrily, ‘He is dead, Monsieur. Isn’t that enough for you?’
‘Lise,’ Jacques Jouvin pleaded after the first session. ‘You must be more explicit, more courteous with the Président and the Court. It’s as if you were deliberately trying to antagonise them. Why?’
‘I suppose because I no longer care. What have I to live for?’
‘Then why are you letting me defend you?’
‘Because, willy-nilly, I shall have to live – in prison,’ said Lise. ‘And perhaps you might make the time shorter, poor Jacquot. It’s not being shut away, it’s being shut in. At Sevenet there was a gypsy woman who was on remand with me. She was in the next cell. Someone had been printing counterfeit hundred-franc notes and when she took her things to market, clothes pegs, twig brooms and baskets, she was paid in some of them. She couldn’t even read so how could she tell they were counterfeit? She was caught passing one – buying food for her family. The police found others on her but she couldn’t tell who had given them to her. How could she with so many customers? But she was arrested and had been seven months at Sevenet waiting for trial – she who had always lived in the open air, never in a house. She used to bang her head against the cell wall. I could have banged mine.’
‘You are banging it against a wall now, partly of your own making. Lise, I don’t want to shock you, but there is not much sympathy nowadays for the “crime passionel,” especially when, as it must be beginning to seem, there is the victimisation of a young girl,’ and for a moment he laid his hand on hers. ‘I’m afraid.’
‘It’s going badly for us?’
‘We shall be defeated,’ said Maître Jouvin. ‘The last part of that little gamine’s evidence was deadly.’
‘Vivi,’ the Avocat Général had said, ‘tell the Court why you think Madame Lise came to Ecommoy that day.’
‘So that I shouldn’t have Monsieur Patrice.’
‘But it was the other way round.’ Lise sank back and gave a little gasp. ‘It was so he shouldn’t have her and break up that happiness,’ but Vivi was saying, ‘I can prove it.’
‘How prove it?’
‘When I heard the shots I flew of course to the door and opened it. He … he was lying in the flower-bed. She was kneeling beside him and he spoke …’ Tears overcame Vivi.
‘Courage. Courage. Tell the Court what he said.’
‘He said, “You!” to Madame Lise and then I heard … heard …’
‘Come, try and tell us.’
‘He said, “So you wouldn’t even let me see her,” then he died. Ask Madame Lise if he didn’t say it. Ask her,’ said Vivi.
‘Madame, did he say that?’ the Président asked Lise. ‘Did he say that?’
‘Yes,’ said Lise.
‘No wonder the Président thought I was furiously jealous,’ said Lise. ‘But Jacquot, that wasn’t all Patrice said.’
At the last moment Patrice had opened his eyes again and smiled at Lise, the slow sweet smile that always smote her. ‘Chérie …’
‘Patrice.’
She had to bend low to catch that last whispered word.
‘Chérie,’ and his hand had groped for hers.
‘A jamais,’ Lise said it close to him, ‘and I think, I hope, he heard.’
‘But why didn’t you tell me?’ almost shouted Jacques. ‘It might have made all the difference.’
‘I didn’t want anyone to know.’
‘Didn’t want … Good God, Lise!’ and he said with conviction, ‘It would have made all the difference.’
‘It was private, a signal between Patrice and me.’
‘Private! When we might – we might have won.’
Three questions had been asked of the jury:
‘Guilty?’ ‘Yes.’
‘Premeditated?’ ‘Yes.’
‘Extenuating circumstances?’ ‘Some.’
That startled Maître Jouvin. ‘One or two of the jury must have had a doubt …’ he told Lise.
‘Why? They had heard it made plain enough,’ she said bitterly.
‘Perhaps it was you yourself, or Marcelline’s honesty. Perhaps someone saw through Vivi,’ and he leaned forward to hear the verdict. ‘I was sure it would be twenty years but, “Quinze ans de réclusion criminelle – fifteen years.’”
‘Fifteen years!’ The scream was not from Lise but Vivi. ‘No! Oh no! No!’ Emile was struggling to hold her. ‘What I said did that! No! No!’ The sound of her sobs filled the court, reducing its pandemonium to sudden silence. Lise stood absolutely still.
‘Have you anything to say?’ the Président asked her.
‘Rien. Nothing.’ The handcuffs were put on and the gendarmes took her away. Lise had a last glimpse of Marcelline, bowed down, broken, of Zoë trying to comfort her. She did not look at Vivi or Emile.
‘She sent you this.’ Maître Jouvin was allowed a few moments with Lise before the police van came to take her back to Sevenet for the night; she would go to Vesoul next day. ‘She asked me to give it you – in the midst of those theatrical tears.’ Jacquot said it in distaste. ‘“For Madame Lise,” she said. “Tell her I want her to have it.”’
Lise opened the small parcel – it was just a twist of paper – and recoiled from the cha
in of pink mother-of-pearl beads; and silver cross.
‘A rosary!’ Jacques was completely mystified. ‘Vivi had a rosary!’
‘Yes.’ The way Lise said it was savage and, to Maître Jouvin’s amazement, she took the little chain of beads and, in her strong hands, broke it into pieces, then put them back into the paper again. ‘Give those back to her,’ said Lise.
‘I wish – I wish I hadn’t done that,’ she was to tell Soeur Marie Alcide, although, ‘I’m delighted you did,’ Jacques Jouvin had said.
‘I wish I hadn’t,’ said Lise and, ‘I shall never see Vivi again. I can’t tell her I am sorry.’
8
Lise’s three months at Saint Xavier’s had extended to two years. ‘It seems you have a way with young girls,’ said Soeur Raymonde.
‘I’m popularly supposed to have victimised them,’ or, ‘It comes of long training,’ but Lise did not say either of those bitter things and, ‘I’m glad now I stayed,’ she was to tell Marc.
‘Béthanie has had to come into the world – our houses can’t all be isolated in faraway villages, though we need that too. Our “spring” – I like to think of it as that – must be at the centre of things; our young be trained in the outside world as well as in our own.’ Thinking of her own novitiate, Lise often wondered at the freedom given now to the young postulants and novices; their easy confidence and capability; how they would perch on the edge of the Responsable’s desk and swing one trousered leg as they talked to her. ‘We used to have to kneel down,’ Lise told Marc. They talked, too, openly, freely, and the Responsable listened. ‘As a novice, it was I who had to do all the listening. There was no exchange.’ These new ones sat on the floor in chapel, cross-legged or against the wall, completely at home, ‘which is what one should be. We just learned Latin and the Bible and singing – now they take courses in Paris. Of course it’s far more tiring for the Responsable. I must say we sometimes longed for the old “instant obedience”.’
‘The ironic part is that I have never liked young girls,’ but Lise could not tell that, nor ‘but I loved …’ She knew she had to try and love all with the same undifferentiating love as Soeurs Théodore or Raymonde, but, One more of those trips on the metro! thought Lise – but, of course, there would be dozens of trips. She must not flag, no matter how tired she was.
‘We are sending you back to Belle. Source,’ Soeur Marie Emmanuel told Lise at the end of those two years.
‘Belle Source!’ Lise knew a light had leapt into her eyes. ‘But, ma Mère …’
‘If you want something badly, that is no reason against your having it.’ Soeur Marie Emmanuel said it with her warm smile. ‘Besides, they need you. They have many old sisters. You are one of the few who can drive a car, and when you are not so tired you are strong, and I think clear-headed.’
Sometimes indeed it seemed to Lise that she was clear, clear of herself, as if the old self had dropped away, and, As if I hadn’t been given enough! thought Lise, she’s sending me to beloved Belle Source.
It was January when she came back, the turn of the year with a powdering of snow over the domaine and bitter cold, so cold that the big moat was frozen and the ducks had had to be taken in. The big vegetable garden was bare except for a few carrots and cabbages and Soeur Thecla’s procession of cows only went out for an hour or two and then were brought in to the warmth of the pig house for the night – it was too big to be called a sty. Soeur Thecla had been ploughing the empty fields, the fruit trees were being cut back; everything was dormant, sap and life low – except in the chapel.
Lise was in time for Epiphany, the feast that celebrated the coming of the Magi – Wise men? Astronomers? Kings? No one knows, but the feast kept the day or night on which the infant child was recognised as Christ.
Arise, shine for thy light is come and the glory of the Lord is risen … and his glory shall be seen …
And the Gentiles shall come to thy light and kings to the brightness of thy rising …
Not just the few familiars in Bethlehem, carpenters, innkeepers, shepherds, but men from far away, paying homage and bringing gifts from a far bigger world, the world of courts and kings, governors, counsellors, all titles that presently would be given to this humble Child; and it was only the first homage paid by men of vision, men who had eyes that could read the stars, tongues that could tell the Word which, as the prophets had foreseen, would spread from land to land, nation to nation.
Lift up thine eyes and see roundabout: the multitude of camels … the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah; all they came from Sheba … They shall bring gold and incense …
… the isles shall wait for thee and the ships … to bring thy sons from afar … thy gates shall not be shut day or night.
How did Isaiah know all these things fifteen centuries before Christ? wondered Lise. The foreseeing of the prophets never ceased to astonish her.
In the refectory after Vespers the galette was brought in, the traditional huge flat round cake of the three kings; somewhere in it was hidden a midget plaster figure of a king, The sister who found it in her slice would be crowned with a gold paper crown and be King for the day. Lise found herself hoping, even praying, it would be Lucette who would get it.
‘You will find Lucette at Belle Source,’ Soeur Marie Emmanuel had warned her. ‘She wasn’t strong enough for Saint Xavier. In fact it alarmed her, so we are allowing her to finish her novitiate at Belle Source.’ The Mother-General gave Lise a penetrating look. ‘Will you mind?’
‘Only … if …’ Lise hesitated.’ … I could upset her.’
‘I don’t think you could. This is a new Lucette.’
‘New and not new.’ Lise had, of course, not contradicted Soeur Marie Emmanuel and indeed she saw little of Lucette who was almost always with her Responsable, Soeur Marguerite, to whom Lise had hoped the trust and love would be transferred; but no; though Lucette scrupulously followed every word Soeur Marguerite said, when she met or saw Lise, there was still the same mute appeal in the brown eyes, the appeal Lise found as touching as it was irritating – and hated herself for being irritated; that ‘old self’ she had thought wiped out had not gone after all. Lucette, too, had the power to make Lise long for Vivi – with all the spite and wounding and cheating – for Vivi’s tough beauty and independence. ‘Why do I like them wicked so much better than good?’ Lise asked herself despairingly. Was it because Patrice and Vivi called out something good in her, Lise, while Lucette brought out what was bad? I must be very vain, thought Lise, vain and selfish, and she prayed: ‘Finding the King is only play, a tiny thing, but it would give Lucette such confidence. Please, please,’ prayed Lise, and Lucette got the King.
Perhaps it was a good omen, thought Lise; that year she took her final vows.
Again it seemed as natural and logical as when she had made her Promise, only this time it was after Mass, and a vow to God in the presence of the priest as well as to the Mother-General.
After the Solemn Mass, Lise prostrated before the altar.
‘What do you ask?’ It was the priest’s deep voice which seemed – and was – the voice of the whole church.
‘God’s mercy and yours.’ Lise had lifted her head.
‘Rise up.’
After he had spoken to her of the life, the loyalty and steadfastness it would need, the faith and trust, Lise knelt as before in front of Soeur Marie Emmanuel who was holding the book of Constitutions; again Lise laid one hand on it, the other in the Mother-General’s hand, and again said the same words: ‘I, Soeur Marie Lise du Rosaire, vow and promise …’ but this time the vow was far deeper, ending with the words: ‘jusqu’ à la mort’ – until death.
The nuns sang the psalm:
Eructavit cor meum verbum bonum …
Dico ego opera mia regi …
Joyful the thoughts that well up from my heart, the king’s
honour for my theme …
the blessings God has granted can never fail
Gird on thy sword.
Lise was blessed; then came the blessings of her veil ‘in the hope,’ Soeur Marie Emmanuel had explained, ‘that when you wear it you may be pure in soul and body.’
‘I!’ thought Lise, and then, ‘Why, perhaps I am now – not pure but purified …’ purged in another sense; every paper or form that showed she had once been convicted and in prison was destroyed … every proof; it was as if a weight of lead had dropped off her.
And what a pilgrimage of strange milestones, or little monuments, if you could call them that, had led to this day; a fountain lit with red, white and blue lights playing on it to the sound of singing and shouting: a silk dressing-gown and a huge blue and yellow macaw: the grey and white of a pseudo-Rockingham teaset: a little French bulldog in a rhinestone-studded collar: a gold lame dress: a ten-franc note given her by Père Silas: the broken end of a bottle: a hand clutching a string of mother-of-pearl beads with a little silver cross – ‘Don’t,’ Lise interrupted herself. ‘Don’t. Don’t.’ But they went on: her clothes thrown out on the landing: a warm cheek rubbed against hers: a wedding dress that must be pink too – ‘Please, please, Madame Lise,’ – a raw steak held by Marcelline to a throbbing black eye: several steaks, several black eyes: letters printed in writing like a child’s on cheap paper: a pair of white kid baby boots: a bed of geraniums and blood oozing into the earth: interviews in the visiting room at Sevenet: and papers, papers, papers: scarlet and ermine robes and the sea of faces. La Balafrée, condamnée, condamnée. The courtyard at the Division d’Accueil where you were put out to walk round and round, up and down … the sound of the judas – the spyhole in the cell door – as it was lifted and an eye looked through: the star through the window pane.
‘Searching is finding.’ Lise knew that now. The pilgrim had come home.
Give me my scallop shell of quiet,
My staff of faith to lean upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
My bottle of salvation.
The words of Walter Raleigh’s poem, forgotten until now, seemed to come of themselves into Lise’s mind over the nuns’ singing.