She realised to her shame she was the only one still eating. She was holding them all up. They had taken more than she had, talked far more than she had, yet all their plates were cleared, even second helpings – well, all except for Luke’s. He had pushed his plate away, was slumped back in his chair, yawning, half-asleep. His tiredness seemed to creep across the table, infect her limbs, as well. She laid her own fork down, could hardly hold its weight. It was late for little boys to eat, late for nuns to eat. It also felt quite wicked to be talking after nine o’clock at night. The Great Silence started then – or always did at Brignor – lasted till the morning, was totally inviolable; not one word to be spoken, except in real emergencies. No problem in observing it when she was safe at Rosemont Road. Miss Pullen went to bed at nine, and she herself followed not long after – her evening ending as most people’s in the world began. They would scoff if she explained to them that the evening was God’s time, when you kept your mind and thoughts on Him, undistracted by the duties of the day; spent part of every night as preparation for the next morning’s Holy Communion.
She glanced across at Luke again, wondered when he went to bed, who and where his parents were. There was no one he called mother here, no one he seemed close to. They were still the two outsiders, the two awkward, silent, tired ones.
Liz was on her feet now, collecting up the plates. ‘Don’t force yourself to finish, love, just to be polite. I know you’ve been unwell, and there’s nothing worse than …’
‘Love.’ Liz had called her love. She didn’t even know her, and yet she’d called her love. She was a freak in old grey castoffs, with bare legs and stupid shoes, and this woman loved her, in the sense she understood, treating her like Christ, offering help and food. She mustn’t cry. She mustn’t. She clasped her hands together on her lap, gripped them till they hurt, digging in her nails. Pain always ousted tears. She’d learnt that as a postulant.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t catch …’ Someone was addressing her and she hadn’t even heard; was still savouring that ‘love’.
‘That’s okay. I only asked if you’d been to Alexander lessons. You sit so straight, you see.’
‘Er … no.’ What was Alexander? Should she ask, or was she meant to know? The girl who’d spoken was one of Ivan’s pupils, the brunette with the snuffly nose, who seemed to be wearing her pyjamas.
‘She’s been to bloody prison, not to Alexander, that’s what I’m beginning to think.’
‘Della!’
‘You can see her head’s been shaved. And she’s nervous as all hell. It’s her first week out, I bet, after a whole long stretch inside.’
‘For God’s sake, Della. If you can’t be civil, shut up, or go upstairs.’
‘It’s my house, isn’t it? I’m sick of Mum’s lame ducks.’
Hilary stood trembling in the bathroom. Liz had come to fetch her, twice, but she’d said she was all right, would be out in just a moment. Prison! So they thought she was a convict, someone who had stolen or … She checked her face, staring in the mirror, as if her crime were branded right into her skin. She had stolen. She’d returned the twenty pounds, in fact – sent it from her wages the minute she’d received them – but it was still a theft, and she’d still broken every rule and run away. She could see the high stone walls which confined them night and day, rearing up around her once again. A girl like Della might see it as a prison – the shaven heads, the uniform, the lack of privacy and loss of all personal possessions, the bare white cells, the endless rules and punishments. She’d even had a number stitched or stamped on to everything she used. She was a number, an offender, someone people shrank from – normal girls like Della – all of them, most likely, except they weren’t as frank as Della, probably kept their horror to themselves.
She’d have to leave, immediately, without waiting for dessert. They wouldn’t want her back there – not one of Liz’s lame ducks, resented by her daughters. It was getting late, in any case. Miss Baines would be expecting her. She’d slip out, catch a bus, leave a note of thanks for Liz, even leave some money for the meal. Except her bag was in the kitchen, and, more important, Miss Pullen’s surgical belt. How was she to fetch it, face all those jeering eyes, those stares of accusation? She should have stayed inside her prison. At least she fitted there. Even when her hair grew and she’d dared to buy some clothes, she knew she’d still be different, someone who was stigmatised, could never learn the casual ways of relaxed and normal people.
She sank down on the bathroom stool, too tired to move or think. The supper had seemed endless – an ordeal, and one she’d failed. Yet she wanted to belong, wanted Liz to call her ‘love’ again, be offered luxuries like wine and OK sauce.
She froze as someone knocked, not Liz’s gentle tapping, more a thump. She unlocked the door. Luke was standing there, his jeans already half-unzipped. ‘I’m busting for a pee. There’s spiders in the one upstairs.’
He dashed in, started urinating, right there in front of her. She tried not to look, or hear, as she crept towards the door. His high voice called her back. ‘Have you really been in prison?’
She shook her head. He couldn’t see the gesture, was still standing at the toilet, legs apart. ‘I won’t tell if you have.’
‘No, I haven’t. Really.’
‘Cross your heart?’
She smiled, despite herself. She liked this child. They even looked alike – not only the same colour eyes, but the same straight, thick, fairish hair – though his was longer, fell across his forehead. He left the toilet unflushed, went to close the door, stood in front of it, as if he were acting as her jailer, preventing her escape. ‘My Dad’s been in prison.’
She received the news in silence. It felt like a secret, something he was offering her, an overture, a confidence, a bond between the two of them. She owed him something in return. Would it really matter if she told him? She’d have to tell someone, apart from priests and housekeepers, so why not a six-year-old she’d never meet again? If he fetched the bag and belt for her, she need never see the rest of them again, just grab her stuff and run.
She pulled nervously at her hair. It felt long to her, not cropped, certainly much longer than it had been for twenty years. ‘I’ve never been in prison, Luke, but I … I used to be a nun.’
‘What’s a nun?’
She didn’t answer. It seemed extraordinary, incredible, that he didn’t know, had never heard the word. It was as if he had negated her with just that one short question; made her realise, suddenly, how marginal nuns were – not the prayer-powerhouse of the world, as they had seen themselves, but an almost extinct and peripheral species, which the younger generation had never even heard of.
He was still waiting for an answer, eyes huge and fixed on hers. He was expecting something exciting, or even excitingly horrendous; something worse than his father’s spell in jail. Her first words petered out. She didn’t want to let him down, bore him with accounts of prayers and penances; repeat the standard answers about nuns devoting their whole lives and selves to God. How could he understand that? She suddenly craved to give him something – this pale, tired, grubby, crumpled child – even if only a white lie or two, to make nuns sound more enthralling.
‘Well,’ she said, still groping for the words. ‘They’re perhaps a bit like soldiers. But they don’t fight in wars – they fight for God, in secret.’
Chapter Seven
Hilary trudged up to the entrance of the lowering concrete building, its rash of signs daubed with paint, spattered with graffiti. ‘Department of Social Security’, ‘Department of Employment’, ‘Unemployment Office’. She shook the sleet off her shoulders as she stepped into the bleak and dirty hallway, which smelt of disinfectant. She refused to cower any longer in that biting wind outside, too frightened to go in. It was time she made some effort, did something for herself, stopped depending on a priest for food and work. Miss Baines had told her much the same – a sarcastic and irate Miss Baines, still smarting from the nigh
t before, when she’d kept her from her bed. She’d been so upset about running out on Liz, escaping from the supper and from Wandsworth, that she’d caught a bus going the wrong way, landed up in Shepherd’s Bush; finally limped in to Miss Pullen’s as the clock was striking twelve.
‘It’s high time you learnt some sense, Hilary. It’s your own fault, you know. You’ll never find your way about if you always stay indoors and hide away. You’ve got to make some effort, learn to cope with things like shops and buses. Miss O’Connor‘s back in just two days, then what are you going to do?’
‘I … I don’t know.’
‘Well, you could always try the dole. If half the country’s on it, why not you, as well? At least it would let poor Father off the hook. He’s got enough on his plate already, without trying to find employment for nuns who run away.’
She had winced at that remark, resisted the idea of taking money from the State; joining all those desperate souls she’d read about – or prayed for – single parents struggling with sick children; the handicapped, the destitute, people with no help or hope at all. She was able-bodied, healthy, and still officially a nun; had no real right to handouts.
‘I … I’d rather find a job,’ she’d said, as she helped Miss Baines into her coat, saw her to the door.
‘Well, that’s not easy, is it? Father’s tried, for heaven’s sake, done his level best. But if you go up to the dole office, at least they’ll give you some advice. I’m not sure how the system works, but maybe they have jobs as well, or someone there who knows about employment. It’s worth asking, isn’t it?’
Hilary paused in the vast hallway, with its bare and shiny walls, its rows of dull green doors, its shabby people shuffling down the corridors or toiling up the flights of steep stone steps. She was confused by all the signs. The benefits on offer appeared to stretch from birth to death; cover all contingencies from illness to retirement. What had Father Anstey said? That if you haven’t paid your stamps, you couldn’t get unemployment benefit, but went on supplementary. Yes, there it was – ‘Supplementary Benefit, 2nd Floor, Door C.’ It all sounded very complicated, and she’d never heard of paying stamps, but she must show the priest she wasn’t quite the ninny he assumed.
She hurried up the steps, trying to ignore the scum of litter silted on each landing, the obscene remarks scribbled on the walls. Door C was right in front of her. She knocked softly. No reply. She opened the door a nervous inch or two, stood staring at the crush of huddled bodies, packed thigh to thigh on rows of metal benches. Her first instinct was to run. She couldn’t go in there, join those frightening blue-jeaned youths slouched against the wall, those sad old men and women staring into space, that ox of a young man with three days’ stubble grizzling his huge jaw, greasy hair hanging to his shoulders. An aura of sheer hopelessness seemed to be rising from them all, drifting into the air with the grey haze of cigarette smoke, the sour smell of damp clothes. Despite the fact they were jammed so close together, each person seemed imprisoned in his own cocoon of private misery; torpid bodies slumped, faces closed and hostile. The room itself looked desolate – its scuffed grey floor engrained with dirt, its walls tiled in dingy white, like a public lavatory; no curtains at the windows, only bars. Even the sleet was falling very listlessly, as if too tired to make its way from sky to earth.
‘Mind your feet!’
Hilary jumped back, as a woman with a pushchair and three young children clinging to her coat struggled through the door, her long wet hair dripping down her neck. Hilary paused a second, still fighting the desire to run, then tagged behind the woman, like her fifth and youngest child. At least she could hide behind this family, escape notice on her own account as she followed in their wake. The woman seemed to know what she was doing, moved purposefully towards the last bench at the back, finding room for all her children as she parked her pushchair, removed their sodden coats. Hilary squeezed between the smallest and a tall unshaven youth with tattoos of naked women on the backs of both his hands, whose bare flesh seemed to ripple as he lit a cigarette. No one spoke, no one even glanced at her. Only the three children showed any sign of life, crawling on the floor now, picking up cigarette ends, then fighting with each other as to who should ‘smoke’ the longest ones. Their mother took no notice, just sprawled back on the bench, her mouth a shiny purple gash clamped round a cigarette, her gymshoes torn and dirty. Another child was screaming, a baby in the row in front, whose mother looked a child herself – except that she was pregnant – a pale and very nervous girl, obviously embarrassed by her infant’s wail of fury. How long had she been waiting? Since opening time at nine? There seemed no sense of urgency, no efficient busy hum, just a general torpor which had infected the whole room. The three partitioned cubicles at the far end of the room were all occupied by claimants, but the clerks kept disappearing into the labyrinth behind them, returning with more forms – or still more questions – as if totally oblivious of the sullen crowd still waiting.
Hilary jumped, as a sudden yowl of fury drowned the baby’s cries, answered by an angry shouted barrage. A row had broken out between a client and a clerk. She couldn’t hear the details, but could feel the tension screwing tighter, tighter, in the room. All heads were looking up now, all eyes focused on the middle cubicle, where the huge stubbly youth was screaming out expletives – words she’d never heard and shouldn’t know. She tried to block her ears, terrified that threats would turn to blows. Violence must be common here, judging by the notice which threatened imprisonment or heavy fines for anyone attacking staff, and the thick glass barriers which divided clerks from claimants. It was as if the clients were wild beasts who must be caged up in their zoo, or quarantined like lepers. She shuddered as she realised she was one with them; one with the infected and the animals. If her parents were to see her now, they would shrink in disbelief; her mother with her horror of what she called ‘scroungers’; her father with his high ambitions for her.
The door slammed with a final shouted curse. The man had gone, but left his mood behind. People started muttering and fidgeting; the three children on the floor were, no longer squabbling mildly, but grabbing at each others’ eyes and throats. She tried to calm her own unease by reading all the notices jumbled on the board; suddenly realised to her horror that she should have taken a numbered ticket as soon as she arrived. The whole system worked on numbers, which came up, turn by turn, on the indicator-panel set above the cubicles. They didn’t make it easy. The panel was so small, she hadn’t even seen it; the ticket dispenser half-concealed at the far end of the room; the notice itself defaced and vandalised. She’d wasted half an hour now, lost her turn to all those milling people who’d come in after her, experienced folk who knew their way round, didn’t need a guidebook to all the different systems in the world – rules for supermarkets, rules for dinner parties, rules for finding jobs or claiming money.
She slunk up to the front to get her ticket, aware of countless eyes boring into her, noting her bare legs, the high-heeled patent shoes which must look so incongruous with a shabby gardener’s anorak. Her ticket was number sixty and the indicator-panel said only seventeen. She squeezed back to her seat, found she’d lost it to an old woman in an army coat who was talking to herself, patches of pink scalp showing through her scurf of greyish hair. She felt conspicuous, self-conscious, as she went to join the people slumped against the wall – mostly tough young men, whose nervous hands seemed never still, jangling coins in pockets, rolling cigarettes.
She edged towards the radiator, which felt just faintly tepid, as if even the heating system had been affected by the general air of sluggishness. The whole room was dank and chilly; paint peeling off the window frames, one cracked pane stuck with grimy tape. Was it really necessary for this place to be so desolate, with no single softening touch: no plant or picture, no easy chairs – or chairs at all – no magazines to read, not even a calendar to brighten the bare walls? It was as if poverty were a crime and must be punished by the most miserable su
rroundings. At Brignor, things were plain, but beautiful, the place kept always spotless, in and out. If man were God’s creation, then he had dignity and value, and his surroundings should reflect it. How could these people feel any sense of worth, when they were trapped in rooms like this, which no one seemed to clean, or heat, or paint?
She rubbed her eyes which were smarting from the smoke, tried to block out the endless whining questions of the small child just in front of her, a boy of six or seven, who was sucking half a Mars Bar, chocolate dribble leaking down his clothes. How did these mothers cope all day, providing answers, stopping tears and fights? She was exhausted after just an hour, and she only had to watch, not take responsibility, feed and clothe a family, deal with all their problems. She was mother to the world, mother to all souls, but souls didn’t wrestle on a grubby germy floor, or wet their pants in public, or get chocolate in their hair. And was enclosure such a hardship, when it meant you stayed in, warm and dry, instead of battling with the elements in cheap and flimsy clothes?
How sheltered she had been, totally protected from the horrors on the noticeboard – posters about AIDS or heroin addiction, advice for single parents or those with partners in jail. Nuns were spared such crises, and if they got old or sick or feeble, they would be nursed with love for the remainder of their days; food and care provided, no need to queue for handouts, or trail a troupe of children from one bench to another.
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