Devils, for a change

by Wendy Perriam

  Impulsively, she rushed upstairs to fetch her bag and jacket, wheeled her ancient bike out through the gate, cycled full-pelt to the Lawleys, found Gill in an old dressing gown, recovering from a hangover.

  ‘What’s the matter, Hilary? What’s happened? You look as if … It’s not the dresses, is it? Christ Almighty! Nothing’s happened to Emma’s precious dress?’

  ‘No, it’s fine – they’re all fine – finished just this morning.’ She sank down on a chair, mopped her eyes which were watering from the wind. ‘I do feel pretty low, though. I’ve just had Luke’s father on the phone – more trouble, I’m afraid. Look, I’m not intruding, am I? I mean, if you’d rather rest or …’

  ‘No. I’m glad to see you. All the kids are out and Ben’s clearing up the debris in the garden. Hold on just a sec – let me get an Alka-Seltzer. My head’s splitting from last night. It must be lunchtime, isn’t it? I’ve lost all track of meals, but if you’re hungry, there’s some soup.’

  They discussed Luke’s future education over home-made mushroom soup and Alka-Seltzer. Hilary had already mentioned the assessment, when she’d phoned Gill several days ago, asked her opinion on remedial schools, admitted her own prejudice.

  ‘Perhaps I’m wrong, Gill. I’ve no facts at all to go on. I’m just following a hunch.’

  ‘No. My hunch is much the same. I mean, those special schools are often pretty good, with smaller classes and loads of individual help and visiting psychiatrists and things, but the trouble is they’re “special” in the wrong way. The kids who go there must feel singled out, made to feel they’re different, all black sheep, cut off from the norm. And anyway, assessments take for ever. I knew of one case, not unlike Luke’s, in fact, where it dragged on for a year, and all that time the kid was getting worse.’

  Gill drained her fizzing Seltzer, slumped back in her chair. ‘The problem is where d’ you send the lad? I mean, his present school’s no good for him, even if the Head were on his side. That man’s a real traditionalist, who puts the three Rs first, believes kids are there to learn, so he cracks down pretty fiercely on anything or anyone who interferes-with that. It’s fine for Nick – he’s bright, and really thrives there, but different schools suit different sorts of children.’

  ‘That’s what I said to Joe. I mean, I thought a more progressive school might …’

  ‘That could be just as bad. The more anarchy a kid has in his home, the more structure and security he needs at school. Those progressive schools sometimes go too far, throw out timetables and rules and any sense of discipline. I’m sure that’s wrong for Luke. If I were you, Hilary, I’d go for a small church school. They’re often very good, get the balance right between strictness and permissiveness. There’s one just down the road – St Matthew’s and St Mark’s.’

  Hilary tensed at the familiar names, felt an immediate opposition to the school. ‘Is … Is it Catholic?’ she inquired.

  ‘No, C of E.’

  ‘But Luke’s not C of E.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. They take all kinds and creeds. Were you looking for a Catholic school particularly?’

  ‘No.’ Hilary removed a shred of mushroom from her tooth. ‘Definitely not. Luke’s officially a Catholic, but …’

  ‘Mind you, there is the convent in Upper Westmead Gardens. That’s meant to be extremely good, as well, and the only convent state school in the area. They take boys as well as girls, right up to eleven.’

  Hilary wiped her mouth, pushed her soup away: ‘I’m … er … not too keen on convents.’

  ‘Well, they’ve got a lot of lay staff. They had to take them on, because they couldn’t get the nuns. I suppose girls these days are itching to be astronauts or nuclear physicists, rather than give themselves to God.’

  Hilary forced a laugh, tried to change the subject. Gill Lawley knew nothing of her past. ‘I’d prefer a non-denominational school, if possible. What about that one in Lambourne Crescent?’

  ‘Not your catchment area. That’s another problem, Hilary. You’re restricted to the schools within easy walking distance – which usually means a choice of only two or three. And if they’re all full up already, or object to a kid who’s labelled difficult … Good God! Is that the time?’ Gill leapt up from her chair as the hall clock interrupted her, struck two across her words. ‘I promised Fran I’d collect the boys on the dot of two o’ clock, and it’s ten minutes’ drive at least. Look, make some tea or something and we’ll continue the discussion when I’m back. There’s nothing you can do in any case, until term starts on the 7th. All the schools will be dead as dodos now; no one there but caretakers. Why not have a little zizz, or read my new Vogue, or if you fancy a wee tipple, there’s sherry in the sideboard. Help yourself to anything you want – including the phone, if you need to check on Luke. Au revoir.’

  Hilary stood motionless, as Gill scorched out of the house. She had totally forgotten such basic things as holidays, overlooked the obvious fact that all schools would be closed. What an utter fool she was, and with no excuse at all, since her own Claremont College was similarly shut. How could she find Luke a place, when she was leaving on the 3rd, starting work the day the schools reopened? She would have to take the day off, come down on the 7th and try to solve the problem there and then, before racing back to Hertfordshire again. But it would create an extremely bad impression to be absent on her own first day of term, make her seem half-hearted, irresponsible.

  She fidgeted around the room, unable to relax, drifted out into the hall, started fiddling with the ornaments arranged on the hall table. She must do something now, while she was free and had the time. Might not some schools still be open – one or two exceptions, where a keen or busy Head was working in the holidays, catching up with paperwork? She seized the Yellow Pages from the shelf below the phone, rifled through the entries until she came to ‘S’. All the schools seemed jumbled up together – primary and secondary, boarding, comprehensive; even Schools of Slavonic studies, Schools of Meditation. She sleuthed out all the primary schools with addresses in the area. There seemed to be a lot, not the paltry two or three which Gill had mentioned. Perhaps some of them were private, though, or out of the state system, or restricted to certain sorts of children. She knew nothing about schools – which ones were suitable, or how free you were to pick and choose at all; cursed her ignorance as she reached out for the phone. Gill said that she could use it, to check on Luke, rather than on schools, but she could always pay her back for any calls.

  She dialled the Robert Browning School, merely because she liked the name, judged a poet safer than a saint. No reply. She tried the next – Grove End School – no answer. She rang another five schools, almost out of obstinacy, or a quite irrational hope, got nothing but the ringing tone. The eighth one took her by surprise. Someone answered instantly, but he turned out to be the caretaker, and a bad-tempered one at that. So Gill was right – as usual. She rammed the Yellow Pages back, trailed into the sitting room, tried to concentrate on Vogue’s spring fashion forecast, but her mind refused to shift from Luke. She jumped up again, grabbed her bag and jacket. She couldn’t wait for Gill, felt far too tense and edgy to sit around for hours. Gill was often late, lost all track of time, was probably telling Fran the whole grisly Craddock saga. She scribbled a note about an important chore she’d totally forgotten, reflecting with a grimace that her lying skills were improving every day; then waved goodbye to Ben, and cycled off.

  She pedalled down Gill’s tree-lined street, turned into the next road, braked suddenly as she realised she was passing a small school, the school which Gill had mentioned. She stood reading the large sign. ‘St Matthew’s and St Mark’s Church of England Junior School. Headmistress: Miss B. Craig. B.Ed.’ The school looked shut, deserted, with its crate of empty milk bottles, its smeared uncurtained windows, but perhaps by some miracle Miss B. Craig was there. She could have just popped in, to check a record, inspect the building, make sure there’d been no vandals over Christmas.

 
; She locked her bike, ignored the notice ‘No Entrance. Private Property’, slipped in through the gate; glanced around at the straggle of low buildings, their flat roofs stained, discoloured, a row of battered dustbins blocking half the asphalt playground. She tried all the doors, back and front, but every one was locked; peered in through the windows, spied empty classrooms, a draughty-looking hall. She was suddenly reminded of a photograph she’d seen in The Observer, of a village school in Italy which had been abandoned after a local flood disaster – the desks still there, the coat pegs, even the children’s drawings on the wall, but no actual spark of life.

  ‘Miss Craig?’ she said out loud, as if the name alone might summon the headmistress, bring the children back. A lorry thundered past, the first drops of heavy rain began to spatter on her face. She trailed back to her bike, cycled slowly, head down against the rain, turned right, instead of left, at the second set of traffic lights, found herself approaching Upper Westmead Gardens – the convent Gill had mentioned. She was headed there for a purely selfish reason: convents didn’t close. Nuns had no other home, didn’t leave for holidays, so a convent school could actually solve her problem. Yet it might make Luke’s much worse, load him with new guilts, weigh him down with penances, so that he became sin-obsessed and narrowed, began to draw harrowing Crucifixions instead of cars and planes; suffer just as she had from the dark side of religion.

  She dithered, wobbled, almost hit a passing car, mouthed ‘Sorry!’, cycled on. There was no real comparison between medieval Brignor and a modern school. She’d been a cloistered nun in one of the strictest Orders left anywhere in Europe, shut up within four walls, going barefoot, fasting on dry bread. Luke would be a dayboy at a small mixed school, which Gill herself had praised, with free access in and out, lay staff as well as nuns; a school open to inspection to prevent excess or abuse. And yet hadn’t Simon Tovey said how bad some Catholic schools still were, how the stress was on God’s anger, rather than His love? Could she really risk Luke’s happiness, add Hell and Satan to the long list of his fears? She knew the answer; knew she must turn back, phone Andy at the College, try to make him understand why she’d have to have a day off, have to miss the …

  ‘Our Lady, Queen of Peace.’ The sign was blue, Our Lady’s colour, and set outside the garden of a large Victorian house, with a mass of Virginia creeper almost concealing the red brick, and a monkey puzzle tree guarding the front gate. Hilary stood peering through the fence, ignoring the rain, the fact her clothes were soaked, battling with a surge of strange emotion. Even now, convents still attracted her – attracted and repelled – the order and the harmony, the strictness and the rules, the knowledge that inside those walls, women like herself were living out a faith and an ideal.

  Would that really be so bad for Luke, to have some glimpse of the spiritual, some knowledge of the Christian heritage?

  Queen of Peace. Luke needed peace, was crying out for harmony and order. In a convent, he would be regarded as a soul, not just a naughty boy, a soul made in God’s own image and therefore valuable. That alone could help him, to be given worth, importance. The nuns would take real pains with him, see that as their job – to mould and nurture every soul for God. But wasn’t that the problem, the one she kept returning to? The ‘nurturing’ would mean indoctrination; so-called truths and dogmas which were really fairy tales, dinned into his head. ‘Give me a child before he is seven …’

  Yet Luke was nearly eight, had passed the dangerous age. If she countered Catholic doctrines with her own wider, less restrictive views, views culled from Robert and a host of different books, might Luke not get the best of all worlds? Some training in religion could actually be a help to him. He might enjoy the ritual, respond to concepts such as mercy, meekness, goodness, when all he’d seen so far was vice and vengeance. And the other children were bound to be less rough than the toughies in his present school. Whatever else was wrong with convents, they did insist on manners. She remembered from her own school how they’d been taught to treat their classmates with courtesy and kindness, not to snatch off hats, or shout, not to tease or point or snigger, or leave other children out. Luke had told her once how he dreaded the school breaks, how no one talked to him, except maybe to yell taunts.

  She propped her bike up, trudged in through the gate, rang the bell. No one came, no one seemed to hear it. Supposing she were wrong and this school was just as empty as the rest? Nuns did go away – modern nuns, teaching Orders – if only to a sister convent, or to visit parents, siblings. She rang again, heard the bell echo down the hall; felt a sudden rush of panic, as if this were Brignor and she were begging readmittance. Any moment, her Abbess might appear, refuse to let her in, force her to her knees on the cold and rain-splashed doorstep, to beg pardon for her apostasy in leaving. She turned swiftly on her heel, about to sprint back to her bike, when the door suddenly creaked open and an old and wizened nun, dressed in a floor-length full black habit, caught her by the sleeve.

  ‘I’m sorry, dear. Have you been waiting long? I think I must have nodded off. Good gracious! You’re wet through. Come in and dry your clothes. You’re from St Andrew’s, aren’t you?’

  ‘Er – no, I …’

  ‘I thought I’d seen your face before, but I get so muddled nowadays. D’you know, I’m eighty-five next birthday and Father says I don’t look sixty-five.’

  Hilary smiled. A vain nun, obviously, and one still hanging on the words of priests. Wasn’t that a warning? She ought to leave immediately, before she got enmeshed in tyrant Fathers, Reverend Mothers.

  ‘Is … er … Reverend Mother in?’ she asked, still standing on the doorstep, as if to be sure of her escape.

  ‘You mean, Sister Anne, the Head?’

  ‘Well, yes, I …’

  ‘She’s in chapel at the moment, but if you wait in the parlour, I’ll tell her that you’re here.’ She ushered Hilary in to a light and cheerful room, with a high ceiling, generous windows, a bowl of gold chrysanthemums arranged on a low table.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Miss Reed.’

  ‘I may forget it. I’ll switch the fire on, shall I, and you can dry off in the warm? No, have this comfy chair, dear. You look tired.’

  A kind nun, not just vain. The headmistress might be fiercer, even frosty. Hilary shifted on her chair, her apprehension growing, now she was actually inside and had seen that long black habit. It was surely a bad sign that the Order hadn’t modernised, signified rigidity, hostility to change. Though the room itself was modern – in its furnishings at least – vivid colours, comfortable armchairs, even an abstract painting on the wall; so unlike the Brignor parlour, with its framed and frowning Popes, its hard-backed chairs, its gloomy greys and browns. And yet all the nun-like touches were still there: the hand-embroidered cushions, thick with peonies, the highly polished floor, the smell of wax and flowers. Luke’s house smelt of cats, and no one polished anything, or had time to grow and gather flowers, let alone embroider them on cushions. Wouldn’t it be good for him to live amongst such things, to meet gracious soft-voiced women who didn’t swear or scream, and who believed in keeping their surroundings always neat and shining?

  No. Those were only details. He would be actually surrounded by frightening figures in long black robes, who wouldn’t even seem like women; might reappear as demons in his dreams. The habit had decided her. Any Order which still wore a full-length habit, unmodified in any way, with not the slightest concession to the modern age, was clearly wrong for Luke. No point wasting time here, except it was too late now to leave. Sister Anne would be on her way, gliding from the chapel to this parlour. She tried to picture her, could only see the scathing Brignor Abbess, annoyed at being disturbed at her devotions; mouth set, eyes cold and narrowed.

  She jumped as the door swung open, and a dumpy, rather shabby-looking woman, with a thickening waist and thinning hair walked in with an apologetic air, a dirty-white Sealyham ambling at her heels. Her calf-length navy skirt was creased,
her home-knitted chunky cardigan a different shade of blue. This must be the secretary.

  ‘Miss Reeves?’ She held her hand out, a stubby ringless hand.

  ‘Miss Reed.’ Hilary shook the hand, was surprised at its firm grasp, which seemed to contradict the sagging skin, the wrinkles round her eyes.

  ‘I’m so sorry. Sister Mary Philip is a little hard of hearing. I’m Sister Anne. I believe you wanted to speak to me.’

  Hilary tried to hide her shock. Where was the black-robed martinet she’d been picturing in her head, the pale pinched face encased in starch, the cruel eyes blinkered by a coif? Sister Anne had kindly eyes, a high-coloured complexion, roughened by the sun and wind, as if she’d once been a farmer or a gardener. She had little actual beauty, except in her expression. Her face was round and fleshy, as if it had lost its supporting bones, and the faint trace of a moustache streaked her upper lip. Her hair was straggly grey, barely hidden by a headdress, which was little more than a flimsy sort of scarf, and was slipping anyway. So the Order had modernised, and not just in minor details. Sister Anne looked almost like a secular, apart from the unobtrusive cross around her neck, and that, too, could have passed for a piece of modern jewellery. Sister Philip had misled her – though she remembered now that the old nuns in an Order often retained their former dress; feared the newer modern habits would reveal their veiny legs and balding heads.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind dogs, Miss Reed?’