The Dead of Night

by Oliver Onions

  As Jennie turned slowly away her suspicion that she had made a mistake became a certainty, for from somewhere aloft a smaller bell spoke. Its eight or ten notes seemed so routine-like as almost to be perfunctory, and could only mean service. At the same moment the air moved to the tremor of an organ. Somewhere the thin voices of women rose. And just as she was giving it up the door with the grille was opened very quietly and the Sister of that morning stood there, her finger half way to her lips in caution and her eyes turned in the direction of the singing. Jennie had not noticed before how very, very beautiful she must once have been.

  Jennie Fairfax wasted few thoughts on her own looks. She supposed she was pretty on some days, was quite sure she was plain on others. She would be putting on other clothes that evening, but for the moment she was dressed in her short tweed skirt and crisscross golf-stockings, and she didn’t see why the Sister should gaze so attentively at the hair that slipped from under her shapeless little hat like a golden wash from a sluice. Then she thought she guessed. Under the close band of linen above the Sister’s brows there would be no hair. Her hair – from the way she looked it had quite likely been golden too – had been one of her sacrifices. Rigid in her black and white the only speck of gold about her now was the little finger-worn crucifix at her waist. And suddenly one wide sleeve was raised. Her hand was motioning Jennie to stay where she was. She disappeared and returned in a few moments with a rush-bottomed chair. She placed it by the Ali Baba jar and walked to the outer doors. She stood there for a minute looking away past the cactus and prickly-pear; then she closed the doors and walked slowly back. As she passed Jennie her eyes smiled. The organ in the chapel swelled and the voices of the nuns were raised in unison. Jennie drew in a deep breath of the odorous air and began to busy herself with her drawing-materials. The door with ‘Clausura’ on it closed behind the Sister, to watch who was left while the others prayed.

  But Jennie had now little desire to draw. Even drawing seemed too secular an occupation for the peace of this place. She took a step back to look at the beautiful door from another angle and as she did so an almond-leaf floated down, turning as it fell, and lay lightly for a moment on her hand. Over a parterre a couple of butterflies were at play, and though they were of milky blue there seemed no reason why they should remind Jennie of the Sister’s eyes as they had looked into her own in passing. But they did remind her of them. She hardly knew how to put it, but there had been something not quite settled about them, something not quite in one place; indeed as she had lingered at the outer doors looking past the cactus there had been an almost escaping look in them, as if they took a flight back into the world she had left. Then Jennie, her pencil in her idle hand, ceased to hear the drowsy murmur of worship in the chapel. It would never, never have done to have confessed it to these holy women, but – she yawned a little, for she had been up very late the night before – oh, the fun it had been at the Teatro Margherita, just the four of them, herself and her brother and his two friends!

  It was as flimsy as an eggbox, the Teatro Margherita, with its little stuck-on decorations of papier-maché and fibrous plaster and its sprinkling of booths everywhere. They had had one of the upper boxes, and all round that tier, coming into view a little to her left, the same posters had run without a break that one saw everywhere in the town, corsets-stockings-shoes-corsets-stockings-shoes, all the way from one corner of the stage and back again to the other. And down in the stalls little supper-tables had been set out, and bars in the wings with mineral-waters and champagne and confectionery and ices, and as the evening had worn on the whole Teatro had become a maze of paper streamers and puff-balls and confetti, as if a kitten had been turned loose into a workbox of coloured silks. And little stencilled goats and fauns and donkeys had capered in front of the Grand Tier boxes –

  Here Jennie Fairfax felt very much shocked at herself that she should be thinking of such things in a place like this; but it was like a fit of giggles in church, not to be stopped and so best got over, and on her thoughts raced.

  – and every box had been gay with the ladies from the afternoon’s procession of cars, the Sea Horse car with Neptune and the Nymphs, the Almond car all pink branches and pink-frocked girls, the Pompa­dour car pale blue and scattering violets, the harem car, the others, and every girl powdered to her eyes and with a pale wig pulled over the sooty poll nature had given her –

  And of course Jennie, whose fairness was all her own, had been the target for half the confetti and streamers within reach. Young zouaves, young bull-fighters, young brigands had signalled up to her box for dances, and her brother had heaped her lap with more and more streamers and confetti, for in the tier beneath them the Mayor of the town had risen and was making gracious speeches as he bestowed prizes for this coiffure or that.

  ‘Turn the charms on, Jennie,’ her brother had urged her. ‘Make a pass at the Mayor . . . By Jove, you’ve hooked him! Look, he’s bowing to you –’

  And sure enough within five minutes there had arrived at Box Num­ber Six a flat, beribboned parcel, with his Worship’s com­pliments.

  ‘Chocolates,’ her brother had guessed, untying the ribbons.

  But not so. The astute Mayor did not throw away his compliments like that, for he was the town’s barber too, and Jennie, who ought to have been thinking of pious little emblems with ‘Al. S. Cuore di Gesù’ on them, tittered again as she remembered the Mayor’s offer­ing – the trade-cards of his profession, telling how in all Sicily he was without rival for undulations, perms, tinting, shampooing and the other branches of his art.

  But all at once the organ-music had stopped. Shuffling footsteps were heard and the voices of the nuns raised on secular matters once more. And suddenly Jennie’s heart jumped right up into her mouth. Heavens, what was this on her drawing-block? Her sketch of the door already finished, and she with no memory of having set down a single line of it? How long had she been there? An hour? Longer? And how had she come to leave out one little detail that surely should have been put in – the little brass plate with ‘Clausura’ on it? She had omitted it entirely, and she was not sure that in some other ways her sketch was not a little as if her drawing-mistress had taken up the pencil while she was thinking of something else and, bending over her – but all at once she covered the drawing away out of sight. The Sister must have come out by some other door, for all at once she stood by her side again. And when Jennie could think of no better way of covering her confusion than by asking her what the convent was called, she thought the Italian syllables lovely on the Sister’s faded lips.

  ‘Santa Maria di Gesù.’

  ‘Are – are there very many Sisters here?’

  ‘Twenty-two. But only sixteen are choir-Sisters. I am Sister Madda­lena, one of the out-Sisters. I sell the lace and the embroidery in the little kiosk over there. I wonder if you know you have something in your hair. May I take it off for you?’

  Again the wide sleeve fell from the slender hand, and from Jennie’s fair hair she picked a single piece of confetti, a souvenir of the Teatro and the evening before. And when next she spoke, if Jennie had not known she was a Sister she would never have guessed it from her tone.

  ‘One always finds bits of it about, weeks, months afterwards,’ she smiled. ‘Even at the laundry they do not always get it out. Are there many people staying at the San Carmelito?’

  ‘The San Carmelito? How did you know I was staying there?’

  The Sister seemed to speak as much to the bit of confetti in her hand as to Jennie. ‘I thought perhaps – but never mind. It is a very long time since I was there. At one time I had a friend – ’ her voice died away.

  ‘Anyway, there will be plenty of people there tonight. It’s the Gala, you know,’ said Jennie.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Sister with dropped head. ‘Tomorrow is Ash Wed­nesday. For forty days Our Lord fasted.’ Then, lifting her head again and speaking more lig
htly, ‘But on Shrove Tuesday one first confesses and then makes merry too. What is at the San Carmelito tonight?’

  It was to be an Egyptian Revel, and they had Tutenkhamened the walls, and the table-lamps were little silk pyramids, and the chef had made a vast mummy of layers of chocolate and spongecake and ice. As Jennie described it all Sister Maddalena listened; then suddenly she let the scrap of confetti fall from her hand and her fingers folded themselves about the little gold crucifix at her waist. She spoke with downcast lids, and meekly and dutifully enough, but somehow Jennie didn’t feel a bit at her ease.

  ‘We have our little feast tonight, too. We are to have almonds and cakes, we who see one another every day, and the Reverend Mother will play the Pastorale to us on the harmonium.’

  Then suddenly Jennie knew what it was that lurked in the Sister’s eyes. It was truancy. And her heart suddenly flowed over with sym­pathy. The Pastorale played by the Reverend Mother! To this Sister, still beautiful, who had known the revelry of the San Carmelito! And it wasn’t as if she was quite a nun. She was an out-Sister, who sold things to visitors, and no doubt heard lots of gossip of the world outside. Jennie glanced over one shoulder, as if somebody might have been behind them, and then whispered conspiratorially.

  ‘Oh, would it matter? Nobody would know! Couldn’t you, just for once? I don’t mean to dance of course, but just to look on? Couldn’t you tell them somebody was taken ill and you were sent for?’

  But Sister Maddalena shook her head. It was against all rules. ‘I am not allowed to minister. I am only the out-Sister who sells the lace. But do one little thing for me. I will pray for us both afterwards. My hair was once exactly like yours. Take your hat off. I want to see it.

  Jennie’s hands flew to her hat. Out gushed the pent-up gold, with yet more confetti in it. The tumbled locks were close to the cere­clothed brow, and Jennie thought it perfectly dreadful that that other hair had once been golden too.

  ‘Oh, do, do! You say you can pray afterwards –’

  But the hand that had been straying over Jennie’s head, whether in benediction or caress, trembled and paused suddenly. From behind the grille a light sound had come, and Jennie saw the dropping of a corner of the curtain. Sister Maddalena must have heard it, too, for with a noiseless flutter she was half way across the court, making for the office where the lace was sold. The cloister door opened, and there stood there a grim-faced nun with a large iron key in her hand. She gave a quick glance in the direction of Jennie’s drawing-things.

  ‘Since the signorina has finished – ’ she said abruptly, in a tone that made Jennie feel that she had been trespassing after all.

  So it was not the Sister with the straying eyes who locked the outer gates behind Jennie that afternoon. They were locked by the sub-Prioress, and nobody would have accused the sub-Prioress of linger­ing there to look at the world beyond them.

  2

  No sooner was Jennie out of the place than she asked herself whether it had been wicked of her to tempt the poor out-Sister like that. Evidently it had, or the Sister would not have said that about praying for them both afterwards. But she couldn’t help thinking the Sister had begun it, wanting to know what they were doing at the San Carmelito and stroking her hair and telling her her own hair had once been the same. It might help her to collect her thoughts if she took a walk through the town before returning to see what the others were doing.

  It was a clear greenish dusk as she turned into the short principal street. Lights burned in the depths of the lace-shops, turning their white interiors into chapels, and that reminded Jennie that she ought to have dropped something into the convent’s box. But she could do so tomorrow, and if she happened to see Sister Maddalena tomorrow she would be able to tell her all about tonight’s Gala. In the mean­time there were other Eve-of-Lent Balls as well as that at the San Carmelito, and the street was crowded with young men and young women who had got into fancy dress already. Then Jennie began to hasten her steps a little, for they were beginning to throw not new clean confetti, but handfuls they swept up from the ground, and even as she was thinking this – swish – somebody threw a handful of it into her face, so that she spluttered. Now her hair would certainly have to be done again. She was standing exactly opposite the shop of his Worship the barber, but she peeped in and saw that a dozen other girls were waiting already, and passed on. Perhaps they wouldn’t be quite so busy at the hotel, where one usually made one’s appoint­ment. From a side-street she turned into the almond-grown alley that descended the slope.

  The huge rambling place had at one time been a monastery, and already the arriving cars were parking themselves in the cloisters. Young men lounged by Italas and Isottos, bold, over-barbered young men, and it was fairly certain that many of them were not the owners of the cars they drove. In from Catania and Messina they had come, and the multiplicity of their lights flashed and wavered in the plate-glass with which the cloister arches had been filled in. Visitors at the San Carmelito slept in vaulted cubicles of plaster furnished by firms from Naples and London and Paris, and it took one a couple of days to learn one’s way about the interminable arcaded, red-carpeted corridors. Jennie’s own bedroom sometimes seemed half a mile away, in a different set of buildings altogether.

  But before going to her bedroom she wanted to find her brother, and with her sketching-materials still under her arm she sought the cocktail-bar. Alan was not there, but other young men were, and a young woman with a chrysanthemum wig and a powdered back who also happened to be a young man, and she hurried out again. A couple of empty card-rooms led to the supper-room, and in the supper-room they were laying the tables and finishing the decorations. Hawk-headed profiles draped the walls, cotton lotuses swathed the tubs. The white-coated carvers wore the tall head-dresses of Pharaohs, and there on its waggon lay the five-foot mummy, ready for dissection into strata of cream and chocolate and sponge.

  It was as she was passing out of the supper-room that a hurrying waiter bumped into her, knocking her sketching-things from her hand. He was one broken heart of apologies as he picked them up again, dusted them with his napkin and, bowing double, returned them to her. But unaccountable things were happening to Jennie Fairfax that day. She had felt queer and flighty ever since she had set foot in that convent court. The top sheet of paper had come loose from the block, and she was staring at it as if her eyes would drop out. She turned it over, and then looked at the block itself. Already she had forgotten to put on the Saracenic door the little brass plate with ‘Clausura’ on it. Now she had forgotten far, far more than that. Nowhere on the paper was there to be found as much as a single line.

  More than a little frightened now, she hurried up to the corridor at the far end of which her bedroom lay. Half way along it she broke into a run. She slammed her heavy oak door behind her and sat down on the edge of her bed. She was quite, quite sure that she had not lost that sketch on her way back to the hotel. Picking at one corner of the block with her thumb she began to peel off sheet after sheet. Nowhere was there a trace of a drawing. She was positive now that she had not done a drawing. But a drawing, done by somebody, had been there, and now the paper was as spotless as the linen band over Sister Maddalena’s airy, flyaway eyes.

  From the moment she became matter-of-fact about it all the more frightened she grew. Those eyes of the Sister’s? At some time or other she must have escaped, or how should she know so much about the San Carmelito and its doings, ask how many visitors were there, what the Gala was to be? Because she had once had ‘a friend’ there? How old was she? When had she taken her vows? How long ago was it since this place had ceased to be a monastery and had become an hotel? In Jennie’s time? And how long had it stood an empty ruin before then? She looked at the door, at the ceiling. The one was ancient and pointed and Gothic, the other low and groined and centuries old. In this cell, with a plank and a jug of water and a crucifix, Brother after Brother had fasted
and prayed and groaned to be delivered from the torments of the flesh, while a bare half mile away Sister after Sister had done the same. Jennie couldn’t bear it any longer. Who was this Sister who smiled into Jennie’s eyes, so that drawings left bits out of themselves, and did and undid themselves, who had wanted to see Jennie’s hair and had played with a bit of confetti she picked from it? Why was she not admitted a full Sister, but only allowed ‘out’ at given times to sell the lace and the trinkets? And how – Jennie had only just remembered this – had she been noiselessly half way across a courtyard and then nowhere to be seen in the time it takes to drop a corner of curtain before a peephole? Claustrophobia did they call this dread of shut doors and shackles and vows and a cerecloth frontlet where the golden hair had been? Had she rebelled, and sinned, and caused a Brother to sin too? And had Jennie herself sinned in asking her if, just for once, she couldn’t, because nobody would ever know? But at any rate she had shaken her head and said she couldn’t come, and as for Jennie herself, she knew what she was going to do. She was going to forget all about every­thing and dance all night. She was going to dance till she dropped. Alan would dance with her, and Pat and Phil, and if these were not enough there were the young men from Catania and Messina. And now she must get her hair seen to and have her bath. Shutting the Gothic door behind her she hurried back to the main part of the building where the hairdressing rooms were.

  But they were busier in the hotel’s hairdressing-rooms than they were in the shop of his Worship the barber. The assistants, too, had their own plans for the evening, and were getting through their work as fast as they could with their working-jackets over their fancy costumes and the heads of half of them wigged already. One of them, dressed as a shuffle of playing-cards with a spotted dice-cube perched on her head, knew Jennie by sight, and came tripping up to her.