by Rumer Godden
‘I saw her,’ Marc told them. ‘I was saying my Office in the garden when a woman ran past me. I thought she was one of the visitors, or a penitent perhaps, because she was sobbing. Then she threw something away – this,’ and he showed the knife, an ordinary kitchen knife, but sharpened to a blade like a razor. ‘She used it five or six times on little Soeur Lucie. She could have stabbed you in the back, Soeur Marie Lise. It would have been so easy.’
‘Then why didn’t she?’
‘Because you were where you were,’ said Soeur Marie Emmanuel.
‘But it was meant for me. Why couldn’t I have been the one?’ That was Lise’s agony in the next days, that and the memory of those last unkind words she had said to Lucette: ‘I don’t need a nounou, thank you.’ She had thought of them at the beginning of her ‘watching’, and had vowed that, when it was over, she would go and find Lucette and tell her she was sorry. Now … ‘Too late,’ Lise said in bitter reproach of herself.
‘It wasn’t too late.’ Soeur Raymonde spoke firmly. She, the Mother-General, had come straight from Saint Xavier on the afternoon train to help Soeur Marie Emmanuel. ‘Soeur Lucie died where she had never dreamed she would be – in your arms. Soeur Marie Emmanuel tells me that at the last moment she looked up and, as your tears fell on her face, she put up her hand and touched them and said, “For me?’”
‘Don’t. Don’t,’ said Lise.
‘She – didn’t hurt you?’ Lucette’s words had come painfully.
‘No, because you … ‘Lise had been unable to go on.
‘Good. Good!’ and there had come a smile as, at the last moment, Patrice had smiled, but Lucette’s smiles were rarer. ‘Good.’
Then a terrible convulsion had shaken the little body and Lucette was gone.
They had to let the police take Lucette’s body away. ‘I’m sorry it’s necessary,’ said the Inspector in charge of the case but, ‘An inquest on one of us!’ the nuns were shocked.
‘And she won’t be laid out properly.’ Soeur Anne Colombe’s tears had never ceased to flow. ‘Where are the candles, the flowers, the prayers?’
‘We can say the prayers,’ said Soeur Marie Emmanuel.
‘You shall have her back as soon as possible,’ the Inspector promised.
He and the other gendarmes tried to be as gentle and unobtrusive as they could, dealing courteously with Lise and Marc, treading quietly in the chapel. ‘But with their cameras and big boots,’ moaned Soeur Anne Colombe.
‘Shoes. Policemen don’t wear boots these days.’
‘Boots,’ said Soeur Anne Colombe firmly.
‘And you saw and heard nothing?’ the Inspector asked Lise incredulously, over and over again. ‘True, the doors were shut.’
‘I heard nothing – only felt …’
‘Felt?’
‘I knew there was someone – some … thing rather, because Vivi couldn’t have been in her senses …’
‘I think she was, and so does Mademoiselle Signoret. Ma Soeur, you have had a miraculous escape.’
‘That is the bitter part.’ Lise could not say it to the Inspector but she could to Mademoiselle.
Mademoiselle had come because, ‘I blame myself,’ she said. ‘I was right; there was a leak. I should have been more vigilant. One of our young officers had too soft a heart, was too inexperienced. She carried a message from Zaza to Vivi; it told Vivi where she could find Big Jo – and poor Big Jo did the rest.’
‘I told you I was thick, thick as two planks,’ Big Jo had said in anguish, ‘and to think I begged my Responsable to let me see cette connasse – that cheater – because she had just come out of prison, she, like the weasel she is, after her prey. Oh, she knows how to do things, that scum. She began by abusing Soeur Marie Lise, our angel.’
‘It’s the first time anyone has called me an angel,’ said Lise. ‘Dear Jo.’ ‘… trying to dirty our angel with filth and lies, as I told her roundly.’ How roundly they all could imagine. ‘I told her what Soeur Marie Lise is, what she does, how she works. I told her,’ and Big Jo gulped a great sob, ‘I told her to go to Belle Source and see for herself. Idiot! Idiot! But when I lose my temper, I blab.’
A hiding-place had been found up in the loft above the cowshed. ‘She must have watched me milking,’ said Soeur Marie Jeanne who was now in the community. ‘Watched us! Ough!’
‘And stolen some of the milk; I had been puzzled,’ said Soeur Thecla, ‘and eggs from under the hens.’ The guesthouse had been broken into and bread and butter taken – ‘Butter!’ said Soeur Josephine Magdaleine to whom the butter seemed worst of all. ‘I should have been more suspicious,’ but suspicion was not encouraged at Béthanie.
‘She must have been watching and spying for days, perhaps a week, to find out where I went, what I did. To think she hates me enough to do that.’ Lise trembled and Soeur Raymonde’s hand came over hers. ‘You must pray for her, ma Soeur.’
‘Pray for her!’ Mademoiselle was indignant. ‘Pray that they may catch her.’
‘If they can.’ Soeur Raymonde was calm. ‘So far there is no trace. Justice must be done, of course, but …’
‘If we depended on justice,’ Soeur Marie Emmanuel smiled, ‘we shouldn’t go far – and, dear Mademoiselle, remember we don’t know how that poor soul has been driven.’
‘Soul! That creature!’
‘Creatures have souls.’
‘But think of Soeur Marie Lise!’ and Mademoiselle asked Lise, ‘How can you ever feel safe?’
‘I was safe then – at that extreme moment. I think I’m safe now.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Mademoiselle.
Lucette came back to be buried in Belle Source’s small cemetery where she could still be in the companionship of the house and her sisters.
For two days she lay in the pavilion; as soon as dawn came its doors were opened and all the daily life of the domaine was round her: washing blew in the wind, apple-picking went on, the cider press, mended, perhaps for the last time, creaked and groaned. The muscovy duck came by with her last brood of the season, eight ducklings, yellow and brown: birds flew down to pick at the berries of the cotoneaster and the hips of the roses that grew round the pavilion.
Lucette lay in a clean habit with no sign of the wounds; her hands held her wooden rosary and a nosegay of late flowers Soeur Fiacre had found for her; her eyes with strangely long lashes were shut. Candles burned beside the bier and, always, at least one of the sisters kept vigil. Lise was there a great deal of the time but, ‘No histrionics,’ Soeur Marie Emmanuel, with her good sense, had warned Lise. ‘Remember, no matter if sometimes you were brusque with her and that wasn’t so often, if sometimes she knew you found her tiresome, you still brought her what we can guess was perhaps the only happiness she had known – and what happiness! And isn’t this what she would have chosen?’ asked Soeur Marie Emmanuel.
On the night before the burial the nuns gathered in the pavilion; there was no electricity there, only the warm light of candles. Lise, coming from the porteress’s lodge where she had been on duty, could see white figures flitting between the chapel and the pavilion as everything was made ready. Marc read the prayers; then Lucette was lifted into her coffin which was closed and sealed; it was no bigger than a child’s. It was carried into the chapel and put on a stand before the altar. There was no pall, only a bunch of flowers, only candles and the steady light of the tabernacle.
The next day was brilliant with crisp sparkling frost and sunshine. ‘Lucie, light,’ said Soeur Marie Mercédes who could not walk to the cemetery but had to follow in the convent car, with others even older who had to be helped even the few yards from the path to the grave. When the long Mass of the Dead was over, the procession went back through the domaine.
Usually, at a nun’s funeral, there were many neighbours, but no one outside the house had known Soeur Lucie, And no one inside had ever guessed her strength and her love, thought Lise, except perhaps the old and feeble. They were inconsolable for themse
lves, not for Lucette. ‘If anyone is sure of going straight to heaven, it’s Soeur Lucie,’ said Soeur Anne Colombe. ‘She’s there already, I know she is, and forgiving me for what I said about the floor.’ More tears ran down the withered old face.
If Lucette could have looked down, Lise thought, she would have said what she had said in wonder at Lise’s tears. ‘For me?’ The beauty of the ceremony, the nuns coming one after the other to sprinkle holy water into the deep grave. ‘For me?’
‘Not to be afraid.’ Lise came often to visit Lucette’s grave and sat by her as if they were still talking. ‘Do not be afraid.’ How often had Jesus had to say those words to his disciples as, in this little cemetery, Lise said them to Lucette. It was the old habit of reassuring, though Lucette, Lise was sure, was now far wiser than she. ‘Though earth closes over you or, even, as nowadays, you are burned to ashes and scattered, it is wonderful,’ whispered Lise. ‘Listen. Listen, there are a million tiny voices and movements, rustling, crumbling, disintegrating, disappearing, as you become one with creation. Your body will be earth, water, wind, stars.’ Lise knew that would happen to her too and it did not frighten her – she liked to think of it. Lucette herself was in God’s keeping; Lise was sure of that too. How? When? That did not matter. We are not meant to know. We can only try and live as if we knew. But those who won’t? And the old cry woke again. Patrice? He had smiled at her as Lucette had smiled, so surely Patrice … but Vivi? Vivi?
Where was Vivi? It was amazing that the police had not found her. Had she escaped to some shoddy bar in Algeria? Morocco? Or was she driving her pitiful bargain in one of the polyglot town streets, Marseilles or Toulon, where people like flotsam and jetsam came and went. Had she joined that throng of misery who came shambling out at night, the meths drinkers? Or was she lying dead in a ditch somewhere? Lise did not know, but the cry, Vivi, Vivi, was in her still. Lise could not stay in the cemetery any longer.
Marc came to say goodbye before going to Saint Xavier. ‘We are hoping,’ he said, ‘that perhaps in the New Year we shall have Big Jo.’
‘What a day that will be,’ said Lise.
‘It will indeed! and Wan Tsui is an aspirant now, but …’ his face grew grave. ‘I feel anxious for you, ma Soeur.’
‘Not anxious,’ said Lise. ‘That’s the wrong word,’ and she said, as she had said to Mademoiselle, ‘I have a feeling that it’s not completed. I’m probably wrong. Vivi may be back on the beat in some other city, God help her. She may be in the Seine, but …’
‘But?’
‘Every time I go to make my adoration,’ said Lise, ‘there, where it happened in the chapel, I take her rosary – I have mended it where I broke it – I can’t forgive myself – I put it down on the floor where she left it as a sign to me. Perhaps one day she will come back to fetch her pretty beads.’
A Biography of Rumer Godden
Rumer Godden was the prolific author of over sixty works of fiction and nonfiction for both adults and children, including international bestsellers Black Narcissus and In This House of Brede.
Margaret Rumer Godden, also known as Peggy, was born on December 10, 1907, in Sussex, England. Six months after her birth, her family moved to India, where her father worked for the Brahmaputra Steam Navigation Company. Godden spent most of her childhood in a large house along the river in Narayanganj, a trading town in Bengal with her sisters Rose, Nancy, and Winsome, also known as Jon. She fell in love with India, and went on to use it as a colorful backdrop for many of her successful novels, including The Peacock Spring and The River. In 1966, she and her sister Jon, cowrote a memoir about their childhood, Two Under the Indian Sun.
In 1920, at the age of thirteen, her parents sent her and Jon to boarding school in England. The girls struggled to leave their home in India behind, changing schools five times in two years. Godden eventually parted ways with Jon and attended school in Eastbourne, England, where she studied literature and dance. Due to a chronic spinal injury, she could not pursue a career as a professional ballerina and instead trained in London as a dance teacher. When she was eighteen, she opened a dance studio in Calcutta, the Peggie Godden School of Dance, and there she taught both Indian and Eurasian students, a practice that was considered controversial at the time. At twenty-seven, she married Laurence Sinclair Foster, with whom she had two daughters, Jane and Paula. Upon the birth of her children, she briefly returned to Britain, where she published Black Narcissus, a commercial and critical success.
At the start of World War II, Godden took her daughters to Kashmir and parted from her husband, who left her with many debts. She rented a small house by the Dal Lake with no electricity or running water, wrote endlessly, and cultivated an herb farm. At this home, one of her servant’s tried to poison her and her children by putting ground glass, opium, and marijuana in their food, inspiring a scene in her book Kingfishers Catch Fire. At forty, she returned to England again, and truly emerged on the British and American literary scenes. She remarried and lived in England for the rest of her life with the exception of a few visits to India. Godden felt at home in both Britain and India, and wrote, “When I am in one country I am homesick for the other.”
Godden studied many religions of the world and she struck up a friendship with a scholarly Benedictine nun, Dame Felicitas Corrigan. Her studies inspired one of her best-known novels, In This House of Brede, a story about an Englishwoman who leaves her life in London behind to join an order of Benedictine nuns. Godden lived near Stanbrook Abbey for three years, researching the book. She officially converted to Catholicism in the early 1960s.
Many of her books were made into classic films, including Black Narcissus, The River, The Greengage Summer, and The Battle of the Villa Fiorita. She collaborated with filmmaker Jean Renoir on The River, and they traveled to Calcutta while working on the movie. In addition to her novels written for adult audiences, she also wrote several children’s books—the most famous being The Doll’s House—and nonfiction books, including a biography of Hans Christian Andersen. In 1972, she won the Whitbread Award for children’s literature, and in 1993 she was named an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. At the age of eighty-six, she visited India—for the final time—with her daughter to shoot a BBC documentary.
She published her last book, Cromartie vs. the God Shiva, in 1997, just a year before she passed away.
The Godden family house at Narayanganj in Bengal in the early 1900s.
Godden in Bengal in 1915 with her parents, Norah and Arthur; her sisters, Rose, Nancy, and Jon; and their dogs, Cherub and Chinky.
Godden at her desk in Dove House in Dal Lake, Kashmir, 1943.
Godden in her garden at Dove House in the 1940s.
Godden on the set of Black Narcissus at Pinewood Studios with Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, and Deborah Kerr.
Godden in Buckinghamshire in the 1950s.
Godden with her daughter Jane in the woods in Buckinghamshire in the 1950s.
Godden at a book launch in New York with Jean Primrose in the 1960s.
Godden with her grandchildren Mark and Elizabeth in Rye, 1962.
Godden’s home, Lamb House, in Rye.
Godden and her cat, Simkin, in Scotland in the 1990s.
Godden in India in 1995 while filming BBC’s Bookmark.
Godden while filming Bookmark in 1995.
(All photographs courtesy of the Rumer Godden Literary Trust.)
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1979 by Rumer Godden
; All photos copyright © The Rumer Godden Literary Trust
Cover design by Drew Padrutt
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4039-6
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
180 Maiden Lane
New York, NY 10038
www.openroadmedia.com
EARLY BIRD BOOKS
FRESH EBOOK DEALS, DELIVERED DAILY
LOVE TO READ?
LOVE GREAT SALES?
GET FANTASTIC DEALS ON BESTSELLING EBOOKS
DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX EVERY DAY!
RUMER GODDEN
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
Find a full list of our authors and
titles at www.openroadmedia.com
FOLLOW US
@OpenRoadMedia