Devils, for a change

by Wendy Perriam

  She picked it up, put it down again, longed for Liz, for Robert – somebody to help her slit the envelope, face those chilling phrases. Already she could feel a wave of loss, regret, a sensation of near panic. Right up to this moment, she had been officially a nun – even with a hangover, even making love to Robert, or driving his red sports car – could still return in theory, take up the life again, re-enter the safe Brignor womb. Now the cord was cut and she was thrust gasping, blinking, into the harsh glare of the world, with no way back, no bolthole or emergency escape. A dispensation was final, absolutely final. If her faith returned, or even her vocation, she would be cut off from the convent, permanently, completely; all legal and religious ties severed by that document for ever. She fiddled with the other mail, tried to read a catalogue from Comfy-Fit Footwear, concentrate on arch supports and slingbacks, but her mind refused to shift from the white official envelope which contained her fate, her future. She reached out for the sheet of pale blue paper, Reverend Mother’s letter. If she couldn’t face the document itself, at least she could read that, take one thing at a time, ease and spread the shock. She unfolded it, hands clammy, glimpsed just the first two lines.

  ‘Dear Sister Mary Hilary,

  I regret to inform you that …’

  She dropped the letter instantly, as if it were scorching hot and had already burnt her hand; pushed it to the far end of the table, trying to ignore the sudden queasy churning in her stomach, far worse than any hangover. It was not her dispensation. She was still Sister Mary Hilary, and Reverend Mother Abbess was writing to inform her that the Sacred Congregation had refused her application, refused to release her from her solemn vows. They had that right and power, though they used it very rarely, and only in cases where the reasons given for requesting dispensation were judged frivolous, unworthy, or when the applicant’s Superior had serious reservations of her own. She had heard of just one case before – a Trappistine who had applied for dispensation in 1959, and had died of cancer twenty-two years later, still under vows and buried in her habit.

  ‘No,’ she mouthed in horror. ‘You can’t refuse. You can’t!’ It was only at this moment that she knew suddenly, indubitably, that she could never be a nun again, that the life was wrong for her, had been always wrong, even from the start. She’d been ambivalent about seeking dispensation, but now she craved it; realised that it spelled relief and freedom, not remorse and shame. It was total folly to imagine that her old faith would return. Robert had shown her a much wider and more complex world, displaced her simple vision of God and Satan, heaven and hell, her one narrow rigid Truth. She had rejected Robert’s ring, but she could still respect his views. It didn’t even matter that they had gone their separate ways. There were other options to being Robert’s wife, different sorts of future. She required her formal freedom so she could search those options out, learn to find and be herself. ‘I won’t go back,’ she whispered. ‘It would be absolutely crazy. I know that now. I’m certain.’

  She must ignore the letter, flout it, tear it into pieces, go her own way anyway, regardless of the Sacred Congregation. If she had no faith, then they were just a group of bureaucrats; Reverend Mother Abbess not reverend at all, but a rigid martinet, clinging to old outmoded standards. Except it didn’t feel like that. Reverend Mother’s sanction, the Congregation’s permission and release, seemed desperately important. Without them, she was tied-legally, symbolically – would always be a misfit in the secular world; someone who was barred from it officially, belonged back in her cloister. She picked up the envelope blazoned with the Congregation’s crest. She’d better read their letter, face their petty cavilling about frivolity, light-mindedness, their relendess admonition that she go back to her convent.

  Still she hesitated, scared of her own anger, of all the difficult decisions she would be forced to make once she’d read their case. Did she appeal against their verdict, or ignore it totally? Should she return to see the Abbess, or cut all links with Brignor? Might it not be easier just to burn the letter, pretend she’d never seen it? She sat staring at the Italian stamp, which showed a crenellated building, with solid foursquare walls, lowering battlements. She envied it its strength, while blenching at the words which ran beneath it: Poste Vaticane. Could she really burn a letter which had come from Rome, the Pope’s own Holy City? Mixed in with her anger was a whole morass of fear, an instinct to surrender – a remnant from the past, when the Pope had towered above her life for nearly forty years, insisting on obedience and submission. The hall clock struck the hour. She dropped the letter on the table, dragged herself upstairs. She’d been lost in her own problems, while ignoring Luke’s completely, forgetting he was waiting. Selfishness again. She washed and dressed in under fifteen minutes, returned to the kitchen, gathered up the mail, to sort out on the bus, grabbed a few stale biscuits from the tin, in case Luke, like her, had found neither time nor appetite for breakfast, then stepped through the front door.

  It was still half-dark outside, a glaze of silver covering the grass, etched across the privet hedge: the first frost of the season. She shut the gate, turned the corner and walked down Atwood Avenue into Marefield Crescent, a tree-lined street, unlike Cranleigh Gardens – stopped in sudden shock. The trees had lost more than half their leaves, which were lying on the pavement ankle-deep; the trees themselves skinny and denuded. Yesterday, the weather had been mild: blue sky, weak shafts of sunlight, a golden glow at dusk. Yesterday, the plane trees still had leaves, brown and sapless leaves maybe, but still bulking out the branches. She knew it happened sometimes – an almost instant leaf-fall, when a sharp and unexpected frost followed on a mild spell, but it still seemed quite traumatic, as if the trees had been bereaved, suffered a sudden jolting shock. Winter had arrived – arrived this morning with the post – come in cold and grey.

  Impulsively, she rummaged in her handbag, took out both the letters, stiff white and flimsy blue. She had to face her own shock, not run away from it, or try to fool herself that things were bright and sunny. She was no longer angry, merely numb, resigned; no longer even scared. If she had to appeal, so be it. She could get advice from someone, maybe consult a lawyer or a priest. She checked her watch. She wasn’t late; had washed and dressed so quickly she’d left earlier than she’d planned, could easily read two letters and still be at the Craddocks’ at the time she had arranged. She shivered suddenly, moved closer to a plane tree, as if seeking shelter from its dark and solid bulk before unfolding the blue paper – Reverend Mother’s letter.

  ‘Dear Sister Mary Hilary,

  I regret to inform you that the Order will not be able to grant you any financial assistance for your return to the secular state, since the circumstances of your leaving were …’

  Incredulous, she checked the words again. ‘Your return to the secular state.’ That must mean … She clutched at the tree trunk, steadied herself a moment before ripping open the stiff white envelope. Two dozen lines of typing on heavy bonded paper, with an insignia above, a long impressive signature below. She tried to read, realised with a shock that the typing was in Latin, and her own knowledge of the language appeared to have completely disappeared. She was gazing at a tide of foreign words – no sense to them, no meaning – just empty mocking hieroglyphs. She shook the paper angrily. Crazy to communicate in a dead and arcane language, which most normal people couldn’t understand. She had loved the Latin once, revered it as precise and universal, but now it seemed a symbol of all that was wrong about the Church – its archaism, its rigid hidebound pedantry.

  She took a deep breath in, tried to exhale her anger; tried to make some sense of the still baffling alien words. This must just be tension, or temporary amnesia. The Latin would come back, if she calmed down, took her time. She forced herself to concentrate, picked out her own name: Soror Maria Hilarius. No, that wasn’t her. Why should she be Latinised and fossilised; men keep forcing names on her – Hilarius and Gloria – names she didn’t want? She struggled with the next line, face scr
ewed up in effort until she spotted a key word – the one word she was looking for: ‘dispensationem’. She repeated it aloud as her eye went racing on, the lines now making sense, instantly, dramatically, as if the word had brought her skills back, restored her to her powers. She could translate now quite effortlessly, the once obdurate Latin slipping, smiling, into English.

  ‘Having given due consideration to the aforesaid documents forwarded to us at …’ She skipped a line, plunged on – on towards that magic word, ‘dispensationem’, repeated further down the page and yoked this time to her name. She translated once again without the slightest hesitation. ‘This Sacred Congregation is willing to grant to Sister Mary Hilary dispensation from her solemn vows.’

  She was still clinging to the tree trunk with one hand, her palm hurting on its rough uneven bark. She rubbed it on her skirt, let the letter drop back in her bag, as she tried to take it in, tried to still the wild emotions welling up inside her – a heady mix of triumph, shock, relief. ‘I’m free,’ she mouthed. ‘I’m free!’ A bird napped up, a lean black cat jumped a fence, streaked across a lawn. Free like them, with no cages and no walls. Free to be a normal human being, free to find a role– not as femme fatale or collector’s acquisition, but a role she’d choose herself. She could be scruffy if she wanted, celibate if she wanted; a tomboy or a tearaway or a pillar of society. It was up to her alone now. She no longer had a Superior, no longer had a fiancé, had cut all ties, finished with all gurus. She’d make her own rules, if she needed rules at all. So the Order couldn’t grant her financial help? No problem. She hadn’t expected any help; didn’t need it anyway. She had a job, a future, could be truly self-supporting for the first time in her life. Her headache had quite gone, even the foul taste in her mouth replaced now by the honied tang of freedom.

  She glanced down at the pavement. Every autumn as a nun, she had fought a childish urge to shuffle through the fallen leaves, as she’d done as a young girl, hear them scrunch and crackle underfoot. Instead, she’d had to sweep them into neat and tidy piles, work in silence, with her mind on God alone. She broke into a run, kicking up a storm of leaves, brittle crackly leaves, like the stiff and crackly paper which had granted her release. She zigzagged up and down, jumping windblown drifts, paddling though the tide of brown and yellow. She’d bring Luke here this afternoon, so they could play leapfrog with the leaves together, then pick out a few perfect ones, brilliant coloured specimens, she would press and keep for ever. She needed a memorial, something to preserve this day, save it from oblivion.

  She stopped a moment, looked up at the sky. It was light now, fully light, the first weak sunlight breaking through; the first frost of the season melting, vanishing. With any luck, it might be quite a good day, even bright and sunny. She’d been wrong about the season. It wasn’t winter yet.

  WINTER

  Chapter Thirty

  Hilary secured a tinsel halo around an angel’s white-blond hair. All the angels were fair, and all were girls; Gabriel with waist-length platinum curls. Technically, angels should be males, but Wandsworth Junior School seemed blithely unaware of that. They had done better with the Magi – all Three Kings swarthy dark: a gangling child from Zambia and two smaller Pakistanis. She darted across to Melchior, adjusted his gold-trimmed velvet cloak. She had made the cloak herself from a pair of old school curtains; made a good half of the costumes. Luke’s teacher, Jean MacDonald, had roped her in to help, as Jean was joint producer of the school nativity play. Today was the first official dress rehearsal and Hilary felt honoured to be there at all, one of just three mothers painting cardboard camels or gluing angels’ wings, amidst the excited, tide of children, the crowd of anxious teachers. She felt something of a fraud, since she wasn’t even a mother, only Rita Craddock’s stand-in, who happened to be skilled at making clothes.

  Rita was still ill, had recovered only poorly from a hysterectomy; been home just one weekend before landing back in hospital again. Luke had reacted very badly, become even more withdrawn; missed his mother, missed his home surroundings. She scanned the room for him, saw him skulking in a corner, jabbing at the wall with his foil-and-cardboard spear. She wished he had a better part, wished he could play Joseph, or even Pontius Pilate. It might have helped him, made him feel important. He had no words to speak at all, had been cast as a centurion with three other playground toughies, all dressed in short black tunics, worn with crested silver helmets and shiny Wellingtons.

  She felt hot just looking at the boots. Despite the chill outside, the school hall was airless, stifling, as if the crudely crayoned backdrops of Judaea and Galilee had brought their own heat with them; a relentless desert heat. The smells were different, though – not sweaty mules or camel dung, but newly painted radiators, children’s feet, pear drops, glue and greasepaint. The hall was really crowded, children laughing, shouting, pounding up and down, while they waited for the rehearsal proper to start. Many were transformed. The Bangladeshi Mary who was something of a tomboy and always had grazed knees, was now dignified and gracious in her long blue robe and veil. The Three Kings seemed bemused by their own grandeur, jangling in their mothers’ beads and baubles, bearing gifts of decorated tea caddies.

  ‘Those cloaks are really smashing.’ Gill Lawley, Herod’s mother, was also looking at the Kings, admiring their three outfits, as she slumped down next to Hilary. ‘I’ve never seen such workmanship. You must be a professional.’

  Hilary shrugged. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Come on, don’t be modest. I was so impressed with Nicky’s purple robe, I almost borrowed it myself for my husband’s office party. I mean, all that marvellous braiding, and the way the inside’s just as perfect as the outside. Most of these school costumes are just thrown together, but yours are works of art.’

  Hilary flushed. Robert’s phrase – the one he’d used in Norfolk, about her Brignor vestments – though it gave her still more pleasure to hear it on Gill’s lips. Gill was something of an artist herself, professionally trained in stage make-up; had been dragooned today into painting fifty small scrubbed faces; was now recovering, exhausted, rubbing blusher off her fingers.

  ‘In fact, I was wondering if you do dressmaking at all – I mean for private clients? I’ve got an elder daughter who’s scoured the whole of London for an unusual wedding dress and still can’t find exactly what she wants. I told her she ought to have it made, but she said dressmakers were as rare as decent dresses. It just struck me that perhaps you could help us out.’

  Hilary shook her head, about to say an apprehensive no, then changed it to a question: what date was the wedding and what style of dress did the daughter have in mind? It might be rather fun to make a wedding dress, and certainly a way of earning money. Liz’s payments were becoming more erratic and Joe paid her very little for Luke’s keep, though the boy had stayed a month now. Sometimes Joe descended with exotic gifts – toys for his son, flowers or scent for her, but you couldn’t eat chrysanthemums or Chanel No 5.

  She and Gill started discussing styles and fabrics, chairs drawn close together, so they wouldn’t have to yell. The noise was getting louder: someone thumping the out-of-tune piano, a teacher taping carols from an old LP, and two angels swapping angry shouted insults. Jean MacDonald had announced what she called a toilet-break, before running through scene one, and a crowd of children were scrambling to their feet, rushing to the door. Gill dodged a punk-haired shepherd, who crashed past her with a woolly lamb in tow.

  ‘Why not come to tea, Hilary, one afternoon this week, bring Luke after school. I live just round the corner. You can meet my daughter then, and fix a price and everything.’

  They exchanged addresses, Hilary excited by her new role, new commission. Luke’s reputation as a bully and a troublemaker had rebounded back on her, so she’d made no friends, so far, amongst the other parents, despite her shy attempts to barter names and smiles. They had all seemed rather wary, kept their distance, wouldn’t lift their guard. It was a welcome change to be accepted
by this woman, with her vivacious lively face, her striking arty clothes; invited out to tea like the normal friendly mother of a normal friendly child. Her labour on the costumes had been certainly worthwhile, had involved her with the school, made her part of a community, a work force. It was ironical, in fact, that her month with Luke had done more for her personally than it had done for the boy: given her a new routine, improved her social skills, even taught her how to cook – the basics, anyway. But Luke himself remained sullen and depressed.

  Perhaps she ought to speak to Gill about him, bring the matter up when she went to tea with her, ask for her advice. Gill had two daughters and three sons, might well be able to help. She was going to need some help from someone, if Luke stayed any longer. She had expected to look after him for just a week or two; had suggested tentatively, after the first fortnight, that Joe might take some time off, so that his son could go back home – not just for her own sake, but for the wretched child’s, as well. He was obviously unhappy in his new surroundings, missing Liz as well as Rita, uneasy in the half-denuded house. She had found him several times just lying on the floor, eyes closed, though not asleep; doing nothing, saying nothing, as if he were trying to stop the world, or block it out. He’d lie on tiles, or lino – anywhere, despite the cold, discomfort. Or he’d shut himself in cupboards, climb in under brooms or cardboard boxes, refuse to be coaxed out.