Devils, for a change

by Wendy Perriam

  Hilary hardly heard him. She knew all the rational arguments: It was the irrational fears which hurt. She turned over, punched the pillow. ‘Robert …?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Liz didn’t tell you, did she? I mean, she seems to have confided in everyone but me. I’d hate to think you knew, as well, and didn’t say a word.’

  ‘No, honestly, I didn’t know. I’ve hardly even seen Liz. I’m just not that surprised. Look, we’ll discuss it in the morning, over coffee and fried eggs. My mind won’t be so soggy then. Okay? Right now it’s time for Berlioz.’

  She leaned back, tried to concentrate, forget her need for sleep. It was not that easy anyway to sleep in Robert’s bed. She’d never shared a bed till this last summer, found it wonderful in one way – the warmth, the closeness, the end to all her night fears – exhausting in another. Robert tossed and threshed a lot, got up in the wee small hours for drinks of water, visits to the bathroom, or to share some vivid dream or wild idea, or simply because his body demanded hers. Shameful to admit that she was sometimes quite relieved when she returned to Liz’s house and enjoyed seven hours’ unbroken sleep in her own tranquil single bed.

  Robert stretched beside her, hand creeping up her nightdress.

  She wished he wouldn’t fondle her to music. It seemed somehow disrespectful to that brilliant young conductor, to Berlioz himself.

  ‘Happy, darling?’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘We were great tonight, weren’t we?’

  She nodded, kissed his neck.

  ‘You inspire me, drive me wild.’ He laughed and grabbed her hand, bit the tip of every finger. ‘You were pretty wild yourself, you know. Hey, where you off to?’

  ‘Just to … you know.’ ‘Pee’ was still a word she hadn’t mastered. It seemed so vulgar, yet Robert hated all her coy alternatives. She slipped out to the bathroom, horns and trumpets following. Thank God they had no neighbours. Robert always played his music late and loud. The recording was fantastic – she was as thrilled with it as he was – but now she longed for silence, not that fierce exalting brass. She closed the door, shut them out, picked up a pile of bathtowels lying on the floor, started cleaning out the basin. Every time he shaved, Robert left his whiskers stubbling the white porcelain, plus a ring of dirty foam. Stupid to complain, or feel secretly resentful when he didn’t clean the bath. They were such footling, petty things. Would Berlioz have worried about lids off Maxwell House jars or tidemarks round the bath? She grinned, left one damp and soggy towel still crumpled on the floor – deliberately, to prove she could – to break her links with fussy Sister Hilary, whom she was determined to kill off.

  Hilary drained her orange juice, followed it with tea; seemed to share the thirst of the parched and languid landscape. She glanced up from the breakfast table. Everything looked dusty outside the lighthouse windows – dusty earth, dusty grass, even dusty air. The midges were already out, hanging in black clouds; other hidden insects throbbing out their ecstasy at another scorching day.

  Robert buttered toast, dug his egg-smeared fork into the marmalade, eyes fixed on the jar. He’d said almost nothing since they’d first sat down to breakfast, seemed preoccupied and tense.

  She filled his cup – and hers – passed him milk and sugar. ‘Are you all right, darling?’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Not suffering any ill effects from those prawns you ate last night?’

  ‘Oh, no, they were superb.’ He rooted in the jar, speared two large snakes of peel, arranged them on his toast. ‘I didn’t sleep too well. I had this really way-out dream – all about Mohammed.’

  ‘Mohammed?’

  He nodded, pushed his plate away, suddenly snapped up from the table, started pacing up and down. ‘He was on my mind last night.’ His voice was nervous, almost brusque, as he spoke in jabs, addressing the slate floor. ‘Mohammed was a great devotee of marriage, unlike Jesus Christ. He must have married nine or even ten times after his first beloved wife died, which makes him quite an authority on the subject.’ He stopped, turned back to face her. ‘And d’you know what he said about it?’

  She shook her head, burnt her mouth on a gulp of scalding tea. His nervousness was catching. He was standing very close to her, eyes intense, both hands tightly clenched, as if were trying to control some deep emotion.

  ‘That marriage is half of religion and when husbands and wives hold hands, their sins disappear through the touch of their fingers.’ He paused, to clear his throat. ‘You were talking about sin last night.’

  ‘I wasn’t, Robert.’

  ‘Yes, you were – in your sleep.’

  She blushed. Would she ever stifle Sister Mary Hilary, kill her off completely?

  ‘You kept telling me you’d sinned, as if I was your priest and could absolve you.’

  ‘Oh, Robert, no! How stupid.’

  ‘Not stupid. Perhaps I can.’ He uncurled his fingers, held all ten up and out to her, as if playing patacake. ‘Will you be my wife?’ he asked, his voice still gruff, uncertain.

  She had never heard such silence. Every brash and boastful bird seemed to have stilled its morning prattle to listen to her answer. The kettle had switched off; both of them stopped breathing. She shifted on her chair, to prove she could still move, wasn’t fully paralysed. A dozen different pictures were swarming in her mind – Captain Robert Harrington rescuing her from drowning, his Easter Sunday lilies smiling on her altar; the sweltering four-poster with its stifling blood-red curtains; his red-flame voice as he lambasted her last Sunday. The pictures gave no answer, were shouting at each other, quarrelling, conflicting, like the voices in her head. Yet Robert’s hands were still held up; must be really aching.

  She tried to form a word, except she didn’t know which word. There were only two available, and both seemed quite impossible. The hands themselves were mesmerising, strong tanned hands, clever hands – imploring her, beseeching.

  Slowly, very slowly, she lifted up her own hands, so that palm grazed palm, fingertip met fingertip. Then, suddenly, his fingers slipped down between her own, gripped, and slowly closed. She shut her eyes, felt her sins evaporate, as Mohammed’s words had promised; her guilts and fears drift away like smoke – all her petty grievances submerge beneath a soaring wave of sudden total joy.

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Gloria could feel every eye upon her, admiring the full skirt and sweeping train of her wild silk wedding dress. A borrowed dress, like her borrowed seed-pearl necklace, her borrowed high-heeled shoes, her borrowed brace of bridesmaids, her borrowed father. Her ‘father’s’ arm felt stiff and almost cold. She herself was burning with excitement and sheer nerves; melting in the lights, melting in the heat of the candles in the church. She only hoped her hair would keep its curl. She had suffered agonies last night trying to sleep in rollers, trying to sleep at all. She had never worn it quite so long; had grown it specially for today, could feel it now, heavy on her shoulders. She shouldn’t be thinking of trivial things like hairstyles, but reflecting on the service, on her future.

  It was hard to concentrate on anything save each wobbling step along the treacherous shiny parquet. The shoes were quite absurdly high, made walking near impossible, and though she’d practised for at least half an hour last night, it was much harder with an audience, a trains The veil, too, felt very strange, floating out behind her, gauzy round her face, anchored by a wreath of heavy flowers. More flowers on the altar, their heady fragrance mingling with the odour of hot wax; the solemn scent of incense choking in her throat. Sun flooded through the windows, made a shifting pattern on the floor. She walked across the golden latticework, watched the sunlight explode against brass vases, rainbow whitewashed walls. The weather was still sultry; a ripe and lush September gilding the brown dregs of shrivelled August.

  She almost missed her footing, was steadied by the burly man who was acting father, giving her away. She wished she knew him better, longed for her own father to be there instead, on this key day in her lif
e. And if only the six bridesmaids were her nieces or her cousins, not someone else’s relations – the whole troupe of them in pale pink tulle and matching floral wreaths. Six was far too many and tulle absurdly fancy. She would have preferred a simpler ceremony, with fewer frills, less pomp, but she’d been completely overruled. Everyone had told her that this was her big day, the most crucial in her life so far, so she had to make the most of it.

  She smiled at the smallest of the bridesmaids, entrusted her bouquet to the taller gap-toothed one. All their names were muddled, all the smiling faces swimming in a haze of jumbled colours. Her own smile seemed far too broad, pulling at her ears, eating up her face; sweat sliding down her body beneath the silky dress, as she walked along the passage towards the heavy enclosure door. Her ‘father’ had to leave her there, let go her arm, withdraw. She felt orphaned, suddenly, as he unlatched his arm from hers; as flimsy as a scrap of tissue paper, which might simply blow away. Her other Father seemed to tower above her, as she knelt before him on the polished wood; he, too, dressed in white, elaborate white brocade; strange contrast with his battered broad black shoes.

  ‘Bless, Reverend Father, my entrance into this holy house.’

  Drops of holy water splattered on her face, a welcome shock of cold against her flaming cheeks. The Latin blessing sounded as if it came from miles away, the well-known words barely making sense to her. She struggled to her feet again, hampered by both train and veil, tried to find her mother’s face in the crowd of friends jostling round the door. Could they be her friends? They seemed so unfamiliar, people from another life; their faces looming, blurring; their garish fussy outfits smudging like wet paint. She turned her back, then slowly, tremblingly, stepped across the threshold; the enclosure door swinging shut behind her, a weighty wooden barrier which would cut her off for ever from the swarming world outside. For a second, she was dazzled, blinking in the blaze of fifty nickering candles; light glinting on steel spectacles, reflected back from shining silver crosses; white teeth bared in smiles, black robes closing in. High and joyous voices were shrilling out a welcome.

  I rejoiced when I heard them say

  Let us go into God’s house.

  Dry lips pecked her cheek, toothpaste breath wafted in her face, as each nun bent to kiss her – no real contact, just stiff coifs poking in her eyes, the brush of musty habits against her own silk dress. Then she took her place in the file of chanting nuns, white against their black; each holding up a candle, as they processed through the enclosure, past the vestment room, the chapter room, the refectory, the kitchen. She glanced in at the kitchen door, hoped to glimpse the wedding cake. Sister Cook had baked it – a grand two-tier affair, with icing sugar doves for peace, icing sugar lilies for purity, virginity. Two separate tiers, two separate teas. The nuns would have theirs in the dim and panelled refectory, shielded from the sun; the family and visitors in the newly painted extern parlour which had bigger windows, slightly softer chairs. Her mother would abhor that, still didn’t understand why they couldn’t eat together, might even weep into her cake, as she had been weeping in the chapel, weeping through the service; her sobs a racking descant to the singing. Mr Reed was absent, had brought his wife and daughter to the convent gates, but refused to come inside, refused to give his child away; couldn’t face the sight of the rich and glittering bride being stripped and plucked and shorn; reappearing as a beggar in black robe and bare feet.

  ‘It’s a day of joy,’ she whispered to him silently. ‘Not mourning, not hostility.’ Doves for peace. If only he would make his peace with her, turn up even now, in time for the second and most crucial part of the ceremony, or at least in time for tea. She reached forward to cut him the first and largest slice of cake, a slice with two white doves on. The doves were works of art, with silver beaks and eyes, even the details of their plumage tooled into the icing. She felt her hand slam against a pane of glass, reeled back in pain and shock. She was standing in the High Street, outside Liz’s favourite bakers, the window full of buns and bread, a two-tier wedding cake resplendent on a silver stand. The same icing sugar lilies, the same icing sugar doves, the same four white fluted pillars holding up the top tier. Just one small difference: this cake had a couple on, an icing sugar bride with an icing sugar bridegroom.

  Her own Bridegroom had been invisible; ineffable, but invisible. The eye of faith could see Him, standing there beside her satin-covered prie-dieu, stretching out His nail-pierced hands, as she made her vows to Him. But the eye of faith was blinded now. Her Groom had died two thousand years ago, died again this April, at the conference. She had been a widow on her wedding day, lacking both her husband and her father.

  Suddenly, she pushed the door, strode up to the counter. ‘Do you sell those icing sugar figures – you know, like the ones on that big cake in the window, the little bride and groom?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Madam, but they’re not sold separately – only with the cake itself, and that cake’s cardboard, actually. But if you’re planning a wedding, we can make you an identical cake, or any design you choose.’

  She shook her head, kept hearing that word ‘cardboard’. A cardboard wedding, cardboard faith.

  ‘Or if you’d like to try the mixture first, we’ve got these miniature cakes. They’re really just for fun – only four inches across, but they’re very good, very rich. We don’t do a wedding one, but we’ve got happy birthday, happy anniversary …’

  She walked out of the shop, her miniature anniversary cake ribboned in its box. Her steps faltered as she ran into the rude slap of the sun again: busy traffic, bustling shoppers, trembling in its glare – the same hot relentless weather as twenty-one years ago, and exactly the same date. September 8, the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the solemn anniversary of her Clothing.

  ‘What’s a Clothing?’ Liz had asked her, just a week or so ago, and she’d felt the same surprise that Liz didn’t know the word, as Liz must have felt herself when trying to explain the meaning of words like gig or Watergate. Despite her explanation, Liz seemed unimpressed; didn’t seem to understand the bridal symbolism – how you had to look your best, like any worldly bride, wear finery and jewels to be worthy of your Bridegroom; how she’d grown her hair specially for her Lover, so there’d be more of it to sacrifice.

  ‘It sounds quite macabre to me, and anyway, the whole affair must have cost a bomb. Who paid for all that junketing and where did you get the dress?’

  ‘Oh, the convent always had a few. Some real brides donated them. I suppose they liked to feel their wedding dress would be worn again by a bride of Christ, rather than moulder in a cupboard gathering moth. Or some girls’ mothers made them.’ Her elaborate borrowed gown had belonged to a Sister Mary Julia, whose mother had sewn it as an act of love, all fifty yards of it, including train and veil; a last tribute to a treasured honoured daughter. It was, indeed, last tribute, as Sister Mary Julia had died within six months of her Clothing; obviously beloved of God, so Mother Mistress said, since He had claimed her back so soon. The seed-pearls and the bridesmaids’ dresses were also Sister Julia’s. She had felt a little uneasy with a corpse’s necklace round her throat, a corpse’s glamour disinterred to grace a second ceremony; had longed, in fact, to have her own much simpler dress, home-sewn with love and pride.

  She had tried to reassure Liz, who’d still seemed disapproving. ‘It’s completely different these days. They’ve done away with all the bridal trappings and replaced them with a very simple ceremony, with no special dress or cake or anything. In fact, my Clothing was the last one in our convent.’ Which made it very special, she’d thought, but hadn’t said. The older nuns looked back to it, remembered it with awe and deep emotion, still got out the photographs to marvel at her dress. The dress itself had been made into a chasuble and was worn by the chaplain at Easter, Christmas, all important feasts. Was that why she had left on Christmas Eve – because she couldn’t face the sight of Father Martin vested once again in that wedding-shroud which coffined all
her girlish hopes, aroused such deep emotions?

  ‘Thank God for that!’ Liz picked up her knife. She had been preparing vegetables, continued chopping carrots with an indignant jabbing relish. ‘I think it’s plain sadistic, dressing nuns as brides.’

  ‘It had its funny side,’ she’d said, trying to take a lighter tone, damp down Liz’s anger. ‘I mean, you should have seen my shoes! They were dug out from the play-clothes trunk and dated from the early 1930s – white satin things with ankle straps and diamanteé buckles, and so high I couldn’t walk. Mother Mistress made me practise parading up and down the refectory. I must have looked a sight. I had to wear the shoes above my thick black woolly stockings and with my postulant’s black dress. And then she pinned these two huge white bathtowels on my neck, so I’d get used to walking with a train.’

  ‘You’re joking!’

  ‘I’m not. In fact, I was terrified I’d laugh. She took it very seriously and we practised in dead silence. It was awful being the one and only postulant. If there’d been a couple more, at least we might have shared a private giggle. But vocations were already falling off. Everything sort of blew up in the sixties. Nuns started leaving, especially in America. The year I entered – 1966 – they were walking out in thousands in the States, even those who’d been in half a lifetime. I heard that as a novice and was deeply shocked.’

  ‘And then you left yourself. How ironical, my love.’

  Yes, how ironical, she thought, as she forced herself to walk down to the jeweller’s, three doors from ‘Mr Bun’. She had come out to the High Street not to buy a cake, but to get her ring sawn off. She’d been trailing up and down for half an hour, not daring to go in. She had phoned several different jewellers to ask if they could do it; only Ratners had the special instrument. ‘It’s called a ring-saw,’ the friendly man had said. ‘But it’s really only like a pair of scissors with a little wheel on top.’