At five a. m., Hilary crept out of Luke’s room. They had played eleven separate games of snakes and ladders. She’d won five, he six. He’d been asleep since half past three, but she’d sat there with him, on the child’s chair by his bed. He had begged her not to leave, asked her for more rhymes, then wanted rhymes in Latin; had finally closed his eyes to the Salve Regina.
It was now time for the Office, and later, Mass. Today was Sunday, so she couldn’t miss it. She had already missed Mass on far too many weekdays, knew Father Anstey noticed. Mass should be the centre of the day. A priest had once described it as the precious jewel shining in the setting of the Divine Office, which reflected and enhanced it. And on the one and only occasion when their Brignor Mass had been cancelled, because the chaplain was unwell and his substitute cut off by ten-foot snowdrifts, Sister Clare had said, poetically, that it was as if the soul had departed from the day and left it with a dead body of mere hours.
Yet she herself felt increasingly distressed at Mass, an alien who didn’t quite belong, who still couldn’t take Communion. Father Anstey had noticed that, as well. It was a relief to be away from him, though she’d have to find another priest, have to go to confession. Every time she went to church, the confessionals obsessed her. She had knelt outside them, many times, but not yet found the courage to go in. She was terrified of questions which perhaps she couldn’t answer. Was she truly sorry for having broken solemn vows? Was she planning to return? Was she doubting God still? Surely no priest could absolve her while she continued in her doubts.
Today she would be kneeling in a new and different church – St Agatha’s – the nearest one to Liz’s, which had a Sunday Mass at seven. At least that was a boon. She could be back by eight, ready to help with breakfast, be some use to Liz.
There were only fifteen people at the Mass, most on their own, and elderly, Hilary knelt, unnoticed, at the back, felt a strange relief in the gabbled hasty service; no sermon and no singing; the air of anonymity as people hurried out, set off home with no greetings or farewells. The priest himself had vanished, after his final ‘Go in peace’. She’d hardly had a chance to see his face, try to judge how stern he was, how strict.
She was back in Cranleigh Gardens before the clock struck eight, found the house still deathly quiet; the kitchen empty, stacked with last night’s dishes, greasy and unwashed. She ran some soapy water, spent half an hour working through the pile, then laid the breakfast, put the kettle on. She was longing for a cup of tea, but there was still no sound from anyone and she didn’t like to make it for herself. Liz had urged her to treat the place as home, help herself to anything she fancied, but that wasn’t very easy after years of never eating outside formal meal times, never making snacks. Even at Miss Pullen’s, it had seemed strange and somehow greedy to eat all on her own. A meal was always shared – with God as well as Sisters – always an occasion, however meagre the fare. And the price of food appalled her. She had never even thought of it before, never had to worry about best buys or value for money. Food was God’s free gift to them, graciously accepted. But in the Kingsleys’ home, it was the fruit of Liz’s labour in the kitchen, Di’s slaving in the shop.
She ran half a glass of water from the tap, sipped it very slowly, then went back to her room, passing all the other rooms with their closed doors, silent occupants. On Sundays, they slept late at Brignor – got up at six instead of half past five – spent Saturday preparing for the Lord’s Day – cleaning the whole convent, baking bread, re-doing altar flowers. ‘This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and exult in it.’
By eleven-thirty, it was harder to rejoice. She felt weak and faint with hunger, yet no one had got up yet. She crept into the kitchen once again. The cereals looked wrong, lined up on the table when it was nearly time for lunch. She shook out a tablespoon of cornflakes, ate them dry, yet still felt guilty, as if she’d stolen them. She almost choked on the scratchy flakes, as the phone shrilled out, alarming her, as usual. She could never quite get used to that imperious ringing sound, kept expecting Reverend Mother, her cold contemptuous tones. She’d have to pick it up herself, since there was no one else around.
‘Hallo,’ she said, uncertainly. The voice was male – a confident and friendly voice, and one she recognised. ‘No, this isn’t Liz. She’s still asleep. Yes, I met you just last week. Yes, Hilary.’
Ridiculous to feel so scared and threatened. It wasn’t Father Anstey, or the Brignor chaplain demanding her return. Just that impetuous man she’d met at Liz’s supper party – the one called Robert, who remembered her, surprisingly; seemed actually quite pleased to hear her voice.
‘I’d love to chat, Hilary, but my damn car’s broken down, so I’m phoning from a call box. Perhaps I’ll see you later? Liz is expecting me for lunch, though I’m not sure if I’ll make it now. I’m still forty miles from London, stuck in some God-forsaken village. Look, could you be an angel and go and shout for Liz, and could you make it speedy, because I’m running out of coins?’
She ran – forbidden – knocked on Liz’s door. No answer. Knocked again.
‘Who the hell is it? I was hoping for a lie-in. Okay, okay, come in.’
Liz was sprawled diagonally across her kingsize bed, half the covers off it, three cups and a wine bottle empty on the floor, clothes piled on two arm-chairs.
‘Oh, it’s you. I’m sorry. I’m so used to being jumped on by stray guests or nomad kids. If you’ve come to get me up for Mass, no thanks! Any religion mad enough to make claims on a woman’s one free day won’t get me as a convert.’
Hilary explained about the call, already fearing that Robert had been cut off. Liz sat up and groaned. ‘Wretched Bob! I’d forgotten he was coming. I asked him weeks ago, and was really hoping he’d forget, as well.’ She reached out for the phone extension. ‘Bob, how rotten for you. Have you phoned for the AA? Yeah, I know they keep you waiting hours, but don’t worry on my account. Make it supper, if you like. It doesn’t matter, honestly. We haven’t had our breakfast yet. Just relax and enjoy the view, until they come and bail you out. See you when you get here. ’Bye.’
She put the phone down, stretched and yawned. Hilary hovered at the door, uneasy at the thought of another rowdy supper, another encounter with a man who made her nervous, yet intrigued by Liz’s room. That mixture of luxury and squalor was completely new to her: the smart white bedside television, the padded velvet chair, the pile of glossy magazines, the plants; yet everything messy and untidy – dirty clothes strewn across the floor, make-up jars without their lids, jumbled on the dressing table.
Liz switched on the television, shouted over it. ‘Are you all right – found yourself some breakfast?’
‘Er … yes.’
‘If there’s a cup of tea left in the pot, could you be an angel and bring it up? I’m useless in the mornings, and my tongue’s just hanging out.’
‘Yes, of course.’
Hilary made the tray as pretty as she could, used coloured paper napkins as a tray-cloth, cut the toast in quarters, chose a pink-flowered egg cup; flushed at Liz’s pleasure as she laid it on her knees.
‘Breakfast in bed? Fantastic! I haven’t had that since Neville left. And you’ve remembered every tiny thing. Poor Neville always got it wrong. No salt for the egg, or a teapot full of water with no tea bags in. No, don’t slink off like that. Have a cup of tea and stay and chat. There’s a spare cup on the floor.’ She scrabbled for it, scoured it with a Kleenex. ‘Shut the door, can you, there’s a draught.’
Hilary shut it, feeling guilty as she did so. As nuns, they’d been forbidden to sit in twosomes with the door closed. Twos were always dangerous. ‘The devil makes a third,’ her old Mother Mistress always said. Walks in twos were equally forbidden, or even sitting next to the same Sister at recreation twice running. Occasionally, she’d seen two nuns get close, despite the prohibitions, but they were always punished, separated.
Liz lounged back on the pillows, smoothed a stretch of counterpane beside her. ‘Come and sit here on the bed. I’ll have to shout if you skulk there by the door.’
Hilary tried to keep her eyes down, as she perched stiffly on the bed. Liz’s ample breasts were spilling from her nightdress; the soft hair beneath her underarms also on display, as she reached back to plump the pillows. The only naked flesh she ever saw at Brignor was hands and feet, and faces – and even faces were always half-concealed. She felt her gaze drawn back. Now she’d seen her own body, she somehow needed to look at someone else’s – compare the two – make sure she hadn‘t lost some vital organ or appendage which other women had. Liz’s body was fuller altogether, the breasts heavy, unsupported, in the skimpy black lace nightie; the bare arms chubbier.
Liz poured tea for both of them, handed her the cleaner cup. ‘You look a bit washed out, love. Did you sleep all right?’
Hilary suppressed a smile, remembering Luke’s great whoop of triumph as he won the final game. ‘Yes, thank you,’ she replied. She had learnt already that social lies were kinder than the truth, even half-expected in the world.
‘Good. I was worried you’d be feeling rather low. It must be bloody painful leaving a convent after twenty years.’
Hilary nodded, tried to edge away. She still found those ‘bloodys’ worrying, and was far too close to Liz; could see the outline of her nipples beneath the flimsy fabric, smell hot body and stale scent. Liz seemed strangely different without her clothes and make-up – more vulnerable, yet larger, as if she’d spread and sagged. Her face looked paler, slacker, a private face, off duty.
Liz rapped her egg, unpeeled the shreds of broken shell. ‘I suppose it’s a bit like a divorce – something breaking up when you thought it was for life, and losing your routine, or even your reason for living. When Neville left, I really went to pieces, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Hilary sipped her tea, longed to sound less distant, longed for Liz’s gift of being instantly warm, immediately sympathetic. She was touched that Liz should talk to her, confide. She had never really thought about divorce, except as a general evil which needed constant prayer. Yet Liz, like her, would have broken solemn vows, vows made for life, sanctioned at a ceremony.
‘When did Neville leave?’ she asked, though the question sounded gossipy, intrusive, when she’d been trained so long not to indulge in personal conversation. But she’d never make a friend if she didn’t open up and take some risks.
‘Six years ago – though it seems more than double that. I kept delaying the divorce – just couldn’t bear the thought of having two bust marriages. It felt like total failure.’
Hilary put her cup down. If Liz was a failure, what did that make her? Liz could drive and cook, ran this whole big household, coped with all the crises and the bills, had brought up two daughters largely on her own. Gloria Swanson had been married and divorced five times. As a prig of seventeen, she had been shocked by that, disgusted. Now she began to see the pain in it.
Liz dipped her toast in egg yolk, sucked it like a child. ‘Once the divorce was final, I went back to my maiden name. I suspect it was a fear thing, really – wanting to be a little girl again. The problem is, Kingsley doesn’t feel like me – not any more. I outgrew my parents long ago, all their petty values, all they stood for. But then I couldn’t be Buchanan, either. That was Neville’s name and Neville had pissed off. I’ve had too many names, I suppose. I was Mrs Carr to start with. Yet Mrs Carr’s been dead and gone for years. Then Mrs Buchanan died, as well. Now I’m Mrs Kingsley, which is crazy – Daddy’s wife, instead of Daddy’s little girl.’
She licked butter off her fingers, took a swill of tea. ‘Perhaps we ought to choose our own names, when we come of age. I had this girlfriend once, called Heather, and she joined some Eastern sect or other – started signing letters with what looked like gibberish, but meant “free and running antelope”.’ Liz made a face, grimaced. ‘She was thirteen stone at least, couldn’t run a step to save her life, but she said the name expressed her new self, her new way of looking at the world. The trouble is when do we come of age? They say it’s twenty-one, but I was still a booby then, and not much better now, at forty-three. We probably only grow up on our deathbeds, and by then it’s far too late. Unless you believe in the afterlife, which I presume you do, Hilary. Nice to choose a name for heaven and keep it for eternity. I’d choose something classy, or maybe something pious, so I’d get good treatment from the saints.’ She laughed, spooned out a last white curl of egg. ‘Della changed her name, you know. We christened her Jane – my choice, actually – but she didn’t like it once she got into her teens. Plain Jane, she thought, and no way was little Madam going to be plain. She was mad about make-up, even then, spent all her pocket money on eyeliner and lip gloss. She chose Della after Della Montefiore – you know, the singer.’
‘Er … no.’
‘She was all the rage two years ago. Then she was killed in an air crash, which was ghastly for poor Della – though she kept the name. The only problem is, she’ll probably loathe it later. It’s a sort of trendy name which is bound to date and won’t fit her when she’s older. I chose Jane specially, because I thought it was a classic.’
Hilary shifted on the bed, felt a sudden bond with Della, a new secret sympathy. Gloria and Jane.
‘Want this piece of toast, Hilary? Before I pig the lot? No? I’ll have to force it down myself then.’ Liz larded it with marmalade, talked through her final mouthful. ‘What was your name as a nun?’
‘Hilary.’
‘Oh, I see, you kept it. Do you still feel like a nun, then?’
I am a nun, she almost said, bit it back in time. What else could she call herself, when she was neither wife nor mother, not a beautician or a dress-shop owner, not an Alexander teacher? ‘Spinster’ was the only word which fitted, and that sounded cold and prudish. Or perhaps an alterations hand, except she hadn’t started yet. Liz was still waiting for an answer. ‘It … It takes a while to throw it off,’ she said.
‘I bet it does.’ Liz wiped her mouth, flicked toast crumbs off the sheet. ‘I think you ought to work out who you are. Oh, I don’t mean your identity, or heavy stuff like that, but just your style, your image – what clothes you want to wear, how you do your hair – all that sort of thing. One advantage of today is that we’re free to choose, as women, far more so than in the past, when fashion was more or less dictated. We can be ourselves nowadays, but first we have to choose which self we want, how we want to look.’
Hilary sat silent. Liz made it sound as if there were a variety of selves, each waiting to be fleshed and clothed, whereas she herself could hardly scrape up one.
Liz hitched up her nightie. ‘I had to do the same myself.’
‘You?’
‘Oh, yeah. I started to go grey when I was only twenty-nine, so I had to decide whether I’d just shrug and let it happen, wind up old and faded, or get busy with the hair-dye. It’s not just a question of how much it costs in time and cash – though that’s a factor, obviously, but of how one sees oneself. Am I still an attractive woman, in the running, so to speak, available to men – all that sort of thing. And even if the answer’s “yes”, you’ve still got to decide what sort of attractive woman – glamorous, or girlish, or maybe just maternal. It’s damn hard work deciding to be glamorous. Look at Di. She has to watch her weight every second of the time, keep her eye on fashion, so she’s always way ahead of it; never be seen without her make-up, or wearing last year’s style. It’s not so bad at her age, but once you’re over forty, it’s a constant running battle against nature. Though even at Di’s age, I had to fight nature. I had that awful frizzy hair, the sort that’s like wire wool, and I wore glasses at thirteen.’
Hilary looked up in surprise. Liz’s hair was only slightly wavy and she’d never seen her in glasses, not even for reading. ‘But …’
‘Hair-straighteners, my love, and contact lenses. The trouble is, it all becomes a sort of trap. No one’s seen me in thick specs or with a mop of frizz on top, so I’ve got to keep up the illusion, so to speak, or they may not like the real me, or even recognise it. I sometimes long to revert to nature – grey wire wool, granny specs, the lot.’
Hilary glanced again at Liz’s hair – semi-straight, glossy brown. That fight against nature was not so very different from the training to become a nun – the same remaking of the self, the same constant battle with one’s faulty raw materials, the same striving for perfection, transformation. Would she have to do the same herself, take a second training to fit her for the world? But what image could she choose? Glamour was beyond her, and ‘maternal’ quite impossible when she’d never mothered anyone.
Liz poured the last dregs from the teapot. ‘Mind you, even really famous people like film stars, or top models, seem to battle just as hard. They say Marilyn Monroe was constructed piece by piece, rather like a car or plastic dummy. Her hair was dyed, her name invented, her jaw rebuilt, her voice desqueaked, and she was pumped with anti-ageing hormones as early as her thirties. By the way, how old are you? You don’t mind me asking, do you, Hilary?’
‘No, of course not. I’m thirty-nine – just.’
‘You can’t be! You look years younger than that. It’s not fair. Nuns seemed to lead charmed lives. I read somewhere that they live longer than the average woman, have less cancer, fewer heart attacks, and far less mental breakdown. It must be all that peace – unless it’s anti-ageing wonder-pills like Marilyn’s!’
Hilary laughed, said nothing. Sister Louis Marie had died of cancer; so had Sister Edwin. Several of the nuns had heart conditions, took pills in handfuls with their meals, not to stop them ageing, but to stop them dropping dead. She herself had felt perilously close to breakdown, as she’d knelt in what might seem like perfect peace to Liz.
Liz was leaning out of bed, trying to glimpse her face in the dressing table mirror, smoothing out the lines which ran from nose to mouth, as if she could erase them. ‘I’d go on hormones myself, if it wasn’t for the side effects. Every treatment seems to have its risks. Hair dyes give you cancer, sun beds ruin the skin … That’s what really bugs me about the beauty business. Half the things they push are either bad for you, or completely bloody useless. A dermatologist told me once that all the fancy claims they make for facials, or cosmetics, or those wonder slimming treatments, are just a load of gobbledegook. And yet my own daughter’s in the business – selling women things which waste their hard-earned money, or actually do harm.’
Hilary glanced up at her own face, still obsessed by mirrors. She knew nothing of the beauty business, yet she had noticed already how hard it was in other fields to tell truth from lies and sham. People in the world seemed to have a special knack of reading things in advertisements or newspapers, and sorting wheat from chaff; shrugging off the mirages and make-believe, the glitter and the guile. She herself found it much more difficult – the obedient nun, who swallowed everything, who’d been trained in faith, not scepticism; taught to accept unquestioningly what people said, be they Pope or priest, abbess or superior – and now politician, advertiser, beautician. She looked down again, aware of Liz’s eyes. Liz was studying her, frowning, trying to appraise her face and figure.
‘You know, if I were you, Hilary, I’d go for Laura Ashley.’
Hilary fiddled with the fringed end of the bedspread. Another name she didn’t know. A friend of Di’s, perhaps?
‘She’d even suit your background – innocent and wholesome, all that sort of stuff. It’s amazing how that shop’s caught on – sham again, I suppose. We’re all crying for that cosy world where Nanny always tucked us into bed, and girls were sweet and virginal, and we still made hay with scythes, instead of combine-harvesters. They had a window display this summer, with yokels in smocks leaning on their pitchforks, and frilly girls picnicking with hampers among the buttercups. All the city secretaries who work in high-rise office blocks, with plastic wipe-clean plants, were snapping up the flower-prints. We’ll go there, if you like, pick out something pretty. Or perhaps you ought to speak to Della first. She’s got a gift for finding people’s styles. She’s already said how she’d love to do your hair, cut it sort of urchin, put some highlights in.’
‘Highlights?’
‘Blonde streaks. She’s right. Your hair’s a lovely colour, but the highlights would make more of it, really bring the fairness out.’
‘But I thought you said hair dyes give you cancer.’
Liz laughed. ‘Streaks are only little bits, so I shouldn’t think they count. Anyway, it’s worth it. Women take worse risks than that, in order to look good. I mean, think of plastic surgery, or even high-heeled shoes, which sound innocent enough compared with surgeons’ knives, but which cause all sorts of ghastly foot deformities. You’re very lucky, actually. You look pretty good already without hair dyes or high heels. Your skin’s fantastic, and you haven’t got a single grey hair, or not one that I can see.’
Hilary turned back to the mirror, as if to check on Liz’s words; realised she was smiling, a happy startled smile. She’d just received a compliment – her first in years and years. And even Della didn’t see her as simply someone with a prison-cut.
‘I envy you, Hilary, being able to start again, and with a sort of clean slate behind you. My life seems such a mess. Fights and rows and one-night stands with guys I hardly knew or …’ She broke off, made a little clatter with her cup and saucer, to cover her embarrassment. ‘I’m sorry, love, forgive me. I’m so used to talking frankly with my mates, I keep forgetting I ought to watch my language. I suppose I’m just not used to nuns.’
Hilary mumbled some inanity, tried to analyse her feelings – a mixture of pleasure and annoyance: pleasure that Liz should speak so freely, trust her with these confidences; annoyance that she’d stopped halfway, obviously regarding nuns as sissies, who must be protected from reality. Yet didn’t nuns bring that on themselves, hiding away in their prim and narrow cloister; referring to ‘the world’, which made it sound like some alien place they had transcended and condemned; praying for ‘sinners’, as if they were plaster saints themselves? If they were one with all the world, then they, too, were responsible for every sin committed, even the grossest, most revolting ones. So why had she shrunk at that coarse term, ‘one-night stands’, guessing what it meant from Liz’s own reaction, feeling just a shudder of revulsion?
Liz shifted on her pillows. ‘It’s strange to think our lives have been so different. I mean, what makes a girl give up everything for God? I simply can’t imagine it – or what it’s like once you’re locked inside with just a gang of women.’
Hilary said nothing. How could she explain that there were no bolted doors, no keys; that a nun entered willingly, with joy, a sense of honour that God had chosen her; that the grilles were only there to protect her from distraction, so that her whole mind and heart and purpose could be fixed on God alone; that you lived with God – and for Him – not with ‘just a gang of women’. Liz wouldn’t understand. Once you talked of God, you sounded preachy, sanctimonious. And there simply weren’t the words. Supernatural concepts slipped through and past the language, like trying to package smoke in brown paper and string.
‘Perhaps you’ll tell me a bit about it sometime. I must admit I’m curious. I’ve always thought of nuns as sort of …’ Liz paused, seemed to be censoring a host of different words.
‘Freaks?’
‘You said it.’ Liz laughed. ‘Or maybe paragons.’ Liz was fidgeting herself now, pulling at her shoulder straps, playing with her teaspoon. ‘I know I shouldn’t ask you, Hilary, but don’t you often think about – you know, men and sex and stuff, wonder what it’s like, what you’re missing?’
Hilary held tight on to the fringe. ‘No,’ she said, almost to herself. Liz would think she was lying. Was she lying? She hardly even knew. The subject was too dangerous, and she had thought so long in nun’s terms, followed the official line, there seemed no personal feelings left, no opinions of her own. She could tell Liz what the books said, the Rule, the Constitutions; that chastity was a glory, not a deprivation; that celibacy was part of poverty, and since nuns didn’t own their bodies, they had no right to any pleasure from them. Their hearts and bodies belonged to God alone, and love of God was far higher than carnal or conjugal love. Yet terms like that would seem as strange to Liz as words like punk or Walkman seemed to her. And wouldn’t it sound priggish and superior to repeat what they’d been taught: that marriage was of brass, virginity of gold?
She glanced down at her tights, still felt a shock of pride and sheer surprise that those blatant sheeny brown-gold legs could actually be hers; legs on show, and worldly. She had read spiritual books on temptations of the flesh, but her own trials at Brignor had centred on the mind: temptations against faith and hope, not stirrings of the body. She had managed to subdue the flesh, disown her body, or view it like a punch-bag; something dead which needed pummelling, attacking. Even now, if she tried to think of sex, her mind went almost blank, as if the years and years of censorship had become strictly automatic. One priest had advised them that if they ever had problems with what he called concupiscence, they were to think of men as merely a mass of bone and muscle, a collection of red and white corpuscles, a sack of coiled intestines. It had always proved effective.
A younger priest had taken a more jokey line, suggested that they view their sexuality as something like a spare tank on a car, which, as sworn non-drivers, they never had to use; simply carry but ignore. She thought back to her convent years. Had people disobeyed that priest, siphoned off their tanks? She doubted it profoundly. Liz probably saw the convent in very different terms from the cool and brisk reality. She had read accounts of nuns in Miss Pullen’s daily papers, realised people viewed them as objects of desire; or suspected secret wild liaisons between nun and nun, or nun and priest; their outward primness masking raging passions. It simply wasn’t like that. Most of the nuns at Brignor were now elderly, dried up; Father Martin seventy next birthday. Yet, even in their younger days, sex was something they’d deliberately and happily renounced, and not just as a penance, but a privilege.
She smoothed her skirt, clasped her hands, unclasped them. The silence seemed uneasy. Liz was waiting for an answer, some confession, revelation, more than just that muttered ‘no’. Yet she couldn’t give it, felt loyal still to her Order, was aware she’d gone far too far already, at least in Reverend Mother’s eyes. Her embarrassment was catching. Liz, too, was looking down, making some pretence of tidying the breakfast things.
‘Well,’ she said, at last. ‘I wouldn’t mind another hour in bed, but I promised Tim and Jenny I’d meet them in the pub. Why don’t you come along?’
‘Oh, no. No thank you.’ More names – Tim and Jenny. More strange faces, questions, more risk of breaking confidences, offending Reverend Mother. It would be bad enough tonight, with that boisterous Robert there – and probably several others – all drinking, laughing, arguing; plunging head-first into deep and turbulent subjects, while she stood shivering on the edge.
‘Why not? You don’t always have to hide away, you know.’
Hilary tensed. Miss Baines’s phrase. She had left Miss Baines, Miss Pullen – two other joyless spinsters who saw Sundays as a day for only prayer and naps, piety and Complan.
‘And have a drink for once, a proper drink with a bit of kick behind it. It’ll help you to relax. Okay?’
‘Okay.’ Hilary nodded, collected up the tray, smiling to herself as Liz still yawned and groaned, unable or unwilling to pluck herself from bed. They’d been told as postulants to spring up in the morning at the first sound of the bell, as if their bedding were on fire and they were leaping from the flames. She had done it ever since. But poor Sister Mary Liz would have charred to a cinder seven hours ago.
‘What? Speak up, Hilary. I can’t hear a single word.’
Hilary tried to shout above the music, the roar of other voices, the sudden brays of laughter, yelled orders from the barman. Her throat felt hoarse already from the smoke. She barked her brief remark again, was relieved when Tim looked satisfied, smiled and nodded at her. She forced a smile herself. Could this be pleasure? It must be. Everyone else was chatting and relaxing, downing drinks, tapping feet or fingers to the rhythm of the band. They were privileged, apparently, to be enjoying what was called a live group – five frightening-looking youths dressed in black leather jackets and blue jeans, who played a type of music she’d never heard before – wild insistent music, which seemed angry and alive, booming and slamming into every niche and corner of the pub, invading even her body, so that frantic drums were pounding in her stomach, hysterical guitars trapped and twanging right inside her skull.
She tried another sip of gin. It was worse than sherry, far worse – had an evil oily taste which lingered in her mouth, even when she’d swallowed it. Reverend Mother should buy some gin for Brignor, as a new and most effective penance. She giggled suddenly, startled by the sound. She must be careful or she’d land up drunk. They had bought her what was called a double; Liz insisting on ‘the hard stuff’, saying she mustn’t be a party-pooper. More words for her collection. She was doing rather well with words. ‘Okay’ was easy now. She’d managed ‘Hi!’ to Tim and Jenny, and even ‘great’. In just a day, she’d learnt the difference between a tee shirt and a sweatshirt, a tracksuit and a catsuit, and discovered Malibu, Cinzano and even Bloody Marys, though that name seemed so blasphemous she couldn’t get it out.
She’d even learnt to look around, forget her usual ‘custody of the eyes’, which meant looking down, looking inward, keeping her attention on God and only God. If she were going to pluck up courage to ask for dispensation from her vows, then she’d better make some effort to learn to break the minor rules, at least. She’d seen an unsteady singing Scotsman spill two beers in turn, a woman feeding steak and kidney pie to her obese bull-terrier, and a passionate young couple kissing very publicly, their arms entwined, joined at mouth and groin. That she knew she shouldn’t watch, yet her eyes kept flicking back to them, noting how his lips crushed into hers.
Sex kept cropping up today, and her strict internal censorship was crumbling. She realised she was wondering what it felt like – to be kissed like that, so roughly and intensely. She didn’t think she’d like it. Men still seemed alien creatures – not Tim perhaps, or Ivan – but all the rest of them; all those raucous guzzling strangers at the bar, with their loud guffaws, their bellowed orders, the way they gulped their beer or shovelled in peanuts, spraying salt and foam, as they ate and drank and talked and laughed at once; used their hands to thump or grab or grope. She was fascinated, frightened, kept fearing they’d turn violent, like those scenes she’d watched on television, where men in bars suddenly smashed glasses – or each other – whipped out loaded guns.
She fumbled for her glass again, tossed back a generous gulp of gin with what she hoped was nonchalance, if not exactly relish. If this was Sunday in the world, well, she wasn’t doing badly – though it did seem a waste of time. At Brignor, they’d have celebrated Mass, said a good half of the Office, spent two hours at Exposition, and another hour, at least, in spiritual reading; eaten dinner, washed it up, and she herself would be preparing the chapel now for Benediction. Tim and Jenny had only just got up, they said, never ate breakfast, and couldn’t face lunch today, after something called a ‘thrash’ last night. They’d been Neville’s friends from long ago, still stayed loyal to Liz – an easygoing, friendly pair, who had laughed quite loudly when she tried to make a joke, a feeble joke, which had sounded forced to her. She wished Sister Luke could see her – sitting in a real live pub, with a glass of gin in front of her and a man on either side. Yes, Ivan had come over, joined them at their table, told the others she had the straightest spine he’d ever seen and she ought to train as an Alexander teacher, set up as a rival.
‘What is Alexander?’ Hilary asked, at last. Gin made questions easier and she didn’t have to shout now. The band were taking a break.
Ivan grinned. ‘If you’ve got three hours to spare, I’ll tell you – well, just an introduction. First of all, it was a who and not a what. Frederick Matthias Alexander, born in Tasmania, 1869, died in London, 1955 – praised by Aldous Huxley, Bernard Shaw, Colin Davis, Sir Adrian Boult, Lord …
Liz groaned. ‘Ivan, no! I’ve got to get back home and think about a meal. It’s all to do with posture, Hilary – how you sit and stand and walk and breathe and everything. They’re obsessed with backs and necks. I tried a few lessons myself and got so confused, I couldn’t do the simplest thing like sitting on a chair, without feeling my head was in the wrong position, or my legs too bent, or straight, or …’
‘You’re telling it all wrong, Liz.’ Ivan turned back to Hilary, drew his chair up closer. ‘It’s really all to do with how we use ourselves – you know, like using tools or instruments. You have to do it skilfully, learn the right techniques. If we rely just on our feelings, we can go completely wrong, because feelings spring from habit, and habits may be bad ones, which cause stress and even pain. Alexander started on himself. He was an actor, actually, a Shakespearian orator who kept losing his voice when he tried to go on stage.’
Liz split a bag of crisps open, passed them round. ‘You can’t explain in theory. It’s far too complicated. It’s a body thing, Hilary. The teacher uses his hands on you, to put your posture right, correct any part that’s stiff or out of line. Hey, Ivan, why not give Hilary a lesson, sometime when you’re free? It’ll make a lot more sense then.’
Ivan shrugged, seemed hurt. Hilary would have liked him to continue. She was intrigued by the thought of learning to use oneself; surprised to hear him say that one mustn’t rely on feelings. At Brignor, too, feelings had been suspect, had always to be discounted. Yet this was ‘a body thing’, not soul.
Jenny brushed crisp crumbs from her skirt. ‘I had a lesson once myself, but the teacher chap was really very formal – all dressed up in pinstripes and a watch chain, as if he’d come from Harley Street, or some swanky City bank. Forgive me being personal, Ivan, but why do your crowd look so weird?’
Ivan grinned, gestured to his own strange combination of loose multicoloured waistcoat over purple tracksuit bottoms. ‘We believe in being comfortable, that’s all. You can’t do body-work in pinstripes – though the old school do, of course, and dear F.M. himself always wore a suit, and even spats.’
‘I wouldn’t say you’re typical, though, would you, Ivan?’ Liz shook out the crisp bag, retrieved a few last broken shreds.
‘What’s typical?’
‘Well, take Keith Thompson. He’s an Alexander teacher, but much less way-out than you.’
‘And what’s way-out? A very relative concept, and often a judgemental one.’
‘Oh, Ivan! You’re impossible.’
‘No, I’m not. And anyway, it’s really very simple. As far as I’m concerned, clothes reflect the spirit, and vice versa, so if you’re imprisoned in tight belts and stiffened collars, you can’t feel free or open. The way most people dress is only sheer convention. They’re mostly far too scared to break the rules or differ from the herd. Yet people just don’t realise how simple it is to dress the way they want, rather than be dictated to by fashion – which is only another name for tyranny and money-making.’
‘Strong talk, Ivan! You should have brought your soapbox.’ Liz drained her glass, stood up. ‘You layabouts can stay here. I’ve got work to do – a meal to cook and about five full loads of washing. I don’t know why I do my daughters’ washing, when one’s left school and the other’s married.’
Tim lolled back in his chair. ‘People wash too much these days. Labour-saving machines actually make more work, Jenny keeps bunging in my shirts to justify the expense of our new Zanussi Super. Then someone has to iron them.’
‘Someone?’ Jenny asked. ‘I wonder who.’
‘That’s not the point. It’s extra work, whoever does it. If I were female – which God forbid – I’d rather have dirty sheets, but more time to sleep on them.’
Hilary was tempted to agree, once she saw the pile of washing – almost spotless sheets and shirts, things worn twice, at most, yet all bundled into the dirty linen basket. She wouldn’t dare confess to Liz that their Brignor habits were washed just once a year, and blankets every three years. (Sheets they didn’t use at all, except in the Infirmary, and even those were rarely laundered, unless a nun had something contagious like mumps or shingles.) They had lived like sixteenth-century peasants who had to wash their clothes in ponds and streams. She was beginning to feel more and more extraordinary, a throwback to medieval times, who had been pitched into the present with all the wrong conditioning and customs.
‘If you bring your washing down, Hilary, I’ll bung it in as well.’
She stood rigid, unresponsive. She hadn’t any washing, had been there just one day, couldn’t bear anyone to see her underclothes; private things like knickers which might be stained or even smell. People were so open in the world – everything offered freely for inspection: feelings, sex-lives, underclothes. She had been private for so long; no one entering her cell, or mind; her whole life and body covered, under wraps.
‘Look, let me help,’ she offered, as Liz sorted clothes into piles of whites and coloureds. This was Sunday, so all work was forbidden, but Liz had called it woman’s one free day, so why should she work, either?
‘No, you sit down. You’ll have enough to do tomorrow, once Di throws all those hems at you. Why not read the papers? We get three or four delivered every Sunday and they’re chucked away unopened half the time.’
Hilary obeyed, although the papers seemed more a chore than washing, especially the fat Sunday ones with all their different sections, which made her feel so ignorant. She had tried to learn from them, but even that was tricky, since they assumed you knew so much already, were aware of the whole background to a story or an issue, and didn’t need a child’s-type introduction. There were such a lot of complicated crises – faction fighting faction for no reason she could grasp, and in esoteric places she’d never even heard of, or countries which had changed their names since she’d learnt them in the sixth form. Names, in general, were an endless shaming problem – so many people she ought to know, and didn’t – not just heads of state and politicians, but chat show hosts, or leading lights in what were called ‘the soaps’, whom other people seemed to know as friends.
Their world at Brignor again had been medieval, restricted to their village and a few scraps of news from the bigger town beyond. She had prayed for places like the Middle East and Ireland, but they always seemed remote, not dragged into the chapel bombed and bruised and bleeding. Did people really need all that information, detail; all those gruesome close-up pictures of casualties or kidnaps? She’d found, even in her own case, that she was already becoming blasé, less shocked by atrocities, less outraged by injustice. When you saw so much of it, it seemed impossible to respond, each time, with quite the same pity and compassion. You could weep for one man’s fate – your neighbour’s, or your relative’s, or your fellow villager’s, but the bleeding millions left you still dry-eyed. And those blandly smiling newsreaders, who reported daily carnage without ever breaking down or displaying any emotion of their own, somehow made disaster more acceptable. A global village, they called it now, but a medieval village was simpler; heaven above, hell below, and a few simple Catholic peasants in between.
She refolded The Observer, picked up its colour supplement. Everyone inside it seemed confident and glossy, loaded down with things she’d never needed – cameras, cars, computers – complicated things again, which she knew she’d never master. Yet Della, at seventeen, could drive; owned a fancy camera, was learning word-processing on her boyfriend’s Apple Macintosh – another strange new word she’d stored away. She flicked on through the pages – a cooking feature by a star she’d never heard of, who drove a hundred miles each week to get goat’s cheese and fresh chervil; a fashion spread which forecast that women would have to change their shapes again, as curves went out and the Belsen Look came in. What had Ivan said? That fashion was tyranny and money-making. And yet Liz had claimed the opposite: that fashion left you free to choose – except then she’d talked in terms of ‘fighting nature’, complained of ‘sham’ and ‘traps’; none of which sounded much like freedom. It was all most bewildering, and easier for Ivan, anyway, since he worked from home, didn’t have to meet the sharp-eyed scrutiny of all those stylish customers, as Liz and Di did – she, too, in just a day or so.
She tried to drown her wave of apprehension by skimming through the bookshelves; soon overwhelmed again by the scores of things she didn’t know – books on psychology and physics, politics and history, antiques and art and sculpture; books on aircraft, war, and stamp collecting; travel books and cookbooks. In their tiny Brignor library, almost every author was a devout and narrow Catholic, if not a priest or monk. Every tome led back to God, blinkered the community from knowledge of the world. Was that a good thing, or a bad – good because they avoided a tidal wave of information, much of which was peripheral, or petty, and which might well swamp them anyway, leave them still ignorant and helpless, distract them from their work of praising God; or bad because they remained too insular and narrow, cut off from the rest of humankind? She hardly knew – knew less and less, in one way, each day she spent outside the convent walls, despite the mass of so-called knowledge cascading into her ears.
She crossed the room, stood by the piano, an old Broadwood upright which no one ever played. She stroked the polished rosewood, saw herself reflected in its shine; not a middle-aged woman who had forgotten how to play, but a young girl in her teens, working through the Mozart sonatas, practising for hours, bringing the same obsession and perfectionism to her music as she’d brought to her religion. The two were linked. Music led to God. She’d assumed as a child that people always sang in heaven, rather than merely spoke; that if you asked for manna or a halo, you must set your request to music, make it soar; that God Himself spoke, not in words, but music, in chords and cadences, a whole orchestra booming through His voice.
Her fingers itched to play again, yet she didn’t even lift the lid. Her skill in music had been rendered back to God at the age of seventeen, and she’d no right to reclaim it. It had been hard, at first, extremely hard, and she’d always hoped secretly that she would be allowed the job of organist. When she’d entered as a postulant, a nun called Sister Dimpna had held that envied post. Wrong to criticise; brazen and conceited to assume she was more skilful on the keyboard than a nun of sixty-five, but all the same she’d longed to make the music breathe and kindle, provide the feeling Sister Dimpna lacked. After seven years or so, her longings faded. Sister Francis Xavier was now the organist – competent, no more – but Sister Mary Hilary had more pressing problems than how to shape a phrase or pace a cadence.
She turned her back on the piano, as if renouncing it again, sat by the window watching the slight movement in the bare branches of the sycamore. Doing nothing was an art, and one she hadn’t mastered. For twenty years and more, every minute of every day had been rigidly accounted for, so no nun would ever idle, doze or daydream. She looped the curtains back, missing the wide sweep of Norfolk skies.
‘Are you all right, my love? You look the picture of misery, perched on that hard chair and staring into space.’ Liz had sauntered in, carrying a tray with a bottle and two glasses. ‘Liquid lunch today. We’ll have the beef this evening, once Bob’s here – or Robert, I should say. He was Bob for years, you know. No wonder I get muddled. Names again.’ She shrugged. ‘I sometimes wonder, if I’d stayed Elizabeth, my whole life would have been different. Or maybe Beth. Beths are always demure, marry the right men, get looked after and protected, then finally expire sweetly and courageously, with a throng of grief-choked mourners round their bed.’ She poured two glasses of something pale and yellowish, set them on the coffee table.
‘Have this chair. It’s really nice and comfortable. That’s it, put your feet up. Relax and drink your wine.’
‘But can’t I help, or …?’
‘No, really. I know I should be cooking, or at least peeling spuds, or something, but the meal can wait a while. It’s so rare to have the house to ourselves, we ought to make the most of it. Della’s out with friends, and Di’s taken Luke and Stephen to some Fun-Day thing at Battersea. Rather her than me. Cheers! Here’s to peace and quiet, good French wine, and Sunday afternoon.’
Liz sprawled back in her chair, cupped her wine glass in both hands. Hilary tried to copy her, though she was highly nervous of drinking any more. She’d moved from a lifetime of non-drinking to a double gin and half a pint of wine in just one day. It was also hard to sprawl. She’d spent months as a novice learning just the opposite, not to run, stretch, wriggle, fidget, slouch. Both the long skirts and the Rule had helped to slow her down, restricting all her movements, limiting her freedom, both physical and mental. She hadn’t sat on a sofa or armchair for at least two decades. There was no single chair at Brignor that wasn’t hard and wooden, and at Miss Pullen’s she’d avoided all upholstered seats, partly out of habit and partly as a penance.
Liz passed her some pistachios, took a handful herself. ‘It’s odd that Robert hasn’t rung again. I suppose he must be stranded in his car still, waiting for the AA. Poor sod! He’ll have all that time to ponder on life’s miseries. He’s usually a very positive sort of chap, but this last month, he just hasn’t been himself. God knows what’s the matter – he’ll never say, just arse about in company and pretend he’s on top form, but I always seem to pick it up when he’s going through a bad patch. It’s like I’ve got antennae.’ She reached out for a cushion, made herself more comfortable. ‘Mind you, I really got annoyed with him last week. He was drinking far too much, and then pinching Sue from under Philip’s nose like that, when he‘s well aware how jealous poor Phil is. It’s stupid, really. He gives quite the wrong impression, when underneath he’s a very serious decent guy who cares passionately about things. I mean, I bet you didn’t like him?’
Hilary flushed, swallowed her pistachios too fast. ‘Oh, yes, I did.’ Another social lie. ‘What does he do?’ she added quickly, to make the conversation more impersonal. ‘For his job, I mean.’
‘Well, he trained as an architect, and was doing bloody well, in fact, once he’d got a partnership, but then after a few years he suddenly jacked the whole thing in, said he hadn’t any scope to follow his ideals, and all the other partners in the firm were just soaking up Arab cash by churning out these monstrous swanky palaces in the Middle East – you know, for diamond-studded oil sheiks. Well, that was true, of course. Lots of firms were doing the same thing – cashing in on the oil boom and making a quick killing in places like Bahrain.’ Liz removed her cushion, pummelled it a moment, then put it back behind her. ‘I must admit, I admire him, in a way. I mean, people called him a total bloody fool, but it must have taken guts to start again from nothing, after all those years of training and when he was earning a good screw. I know this sounds crazy, love, but there’s a part of Bob which reminds me of you. I can’t put it into words, exactly, but it’s something about ideals, I suppose, or maybe … Oh, I don’t know.’
She shrugged, as if embarrassed, seemed to change the subject. ‘Funnily enough, his first big commission, way back in the seventies, was to build a Catholic church. Christ! He sweated blood and tears to get it right, must have worked through a dozen different schemes. He wanted the whole building to be a sort of … meditation – I think that was the word he used. The church was called St Bridget’s and he mugged up her whole life, tried to express her spirit in his structure.’
‘Is he a Catholic then himself?’
Liz laughed. ‘God, no! An atheist, I think, now. He dips into religions like other people try new beers. He’s been through his Buddhist phase, flirted with the Quakers, once, got hooked on T. S. Eliot for a while – you know – why and how he became an Anglican and the effect of the religion on the poetry. Last time we discussed it, he was full of some fantastic book he’d read, on how Hindu harvest rituals affected Coptic art. No, that can’t be right, can it? Never mind, he’ll have changed his mind anyway, by the time I’ve got it straight.’
Hilary forced a smile. The man still sounded frightening, would trap her with more questions, confound her with his learning, and whatever Liz might claim, she couldn’t see the slightest similarity between an unruly six-foot atheist ex-architect, who gobbled art and poetry when he wasn’t chasing girls, and a five-foot-nothing nun, whose intellect and love-life had both been amputated. Could she escape the meal tonight, plead a headache, say she wasn’t hungry?
She was starving, actually; drank her wine too quickly, as if it could fill the hole, relishing its sharpish, almost fruity tang – the first alcohol she’d liked so far. She let her neck and back relax, aware that she’d been holding them too tightly. Liz was right. She needed to let go, allow herself one day off, at least. She glanced around the room, its mixture of untidiness and stylishness, which seemed the hallmark of the Kingsleys. She’d been untidy as a child, but nagged and chivvied out of it, and once a nun, neatness was the rule; a rule applied to everything, be it bed or cell or habit, or each and every convent room. There was something rather appealing about the clutter on the sideboard, the books disordered on the shelves, one of Stephen’s games still set up behind the sofa; yet the furnishings themselves so tasteful and sophisticated: the use of creams and oatmeals with a sudden splash of orange, picked up in the amber of the huge dried flower arrangement which stood in the old fireplace.
Liz was kicking off her shoes, curling one foot underneath her, a plump black-stockinged foot. ‘I haven’t answered your question yet: what does Robert do? To be truthful, love, I’m not exactly sure these days. He’s done so many things, you see – building, teaching, dabbling in antiques, writing articles for journals, and buying and selling everything from wine to railway stations. He even ran a diving school in Crete, once, and took English tourists on trips to Turkestan. He’s been all around the world, even camped in swamps and jungles, or so he always claims. It’s a bit like the religions – nothing fixed or permanent. Though he’s much more settled now, in fact. He’s been living down in Sussex for the last eighteen months or so, running some weird commune; shares this huge old house with a bunch of artists and musicians, and a few oddballs and dropouts, to make the numbers up.’ She grinned. ‘Rather him than me. Though I suppose even that’s quite brave, shows spirit, don’t you think?’
Hilary nodded, tried to think up some reply, or perhaps another question. She had learned already it was important to keep talking. Silence in the world was considered rude, not holy. But the drink had made her sleepy, lulled and numbed her mind. She closed her eyes a moment, savouring the two new tastes – pistachios and wine; relishing that novel sense of dizziness which made everything seem just nicely slightly blurred. The new words on the bottle were jumbling in her head; words they’d never taught her in her French lessons at school: Vouvray, Clos du Bourg, Appellation Contrôlée. She started at a new and deeper voice – Ivan’s voice – Ivan’s head poking round the door.
‘Can I come in? Or is it strictly girls together?’
‘’Course not.’ Liz got up. ‘Want a glass of vino?’
‘No, thanks. I really came to ask if you’d like a lesson, Hilary?’
‘A … lesson?’
‘You know, Alexander.’
‘Oh, no. No, really.’
‘Why not?’ Liz put the bottle down, finished her own wine. ‘I suggested that myself. You’ll learn more in just one lesson than any amount of yakking in the pub. Anyway, it can be quite relaxing – if Ivan doesn’t make you practise sitting down and standing up a mere two hundred times.’
Ivan laughed. ‘I promise. Look, give me half an hour, okay? I just want to pop out. See you down in my flat about ten to four or so.’
‘No, honestly, I …’
No one heard her. Liz was collecting up the glasses, chattering herself. ‘Why not go and have a bath? It’ll prepare you for the lesson, make you more relaxed, warm your muscles. The water’s nice and hot. Use my bathroom, not that tiddly one upstairs. I’ll run it for you, shall I?’
Hilary lay back in the foam. This was the nearest she had ever come to playing Gloria Swanson – lying in a queen-sized bath with Mozart on the radio and her wineglass still in reach. She daren’t drink any more, though; already felt light-headed, yet heavy in her limbs, as if she were sinking down and down. The water was deep blue and smelt of freesias. Baths were few at Brignor, always rationed. The nuns washed every day, but in a small bowl of cold water which they collected in a ewer the night before. In the winter months, when it had stood all night in a damp unheated cell, it felt like melted ice. All toiletries were totally forbidden, save plain carbolic soap which doubled as shampoo. Once, when Sister Gerard was suffering from psoriasis, she’d been allowed a grudging tablespoon of cooking oil, which had been sent up from the kitchen in an empty mustard pot. She appeared in chapel glistening, and with a faint smell of salad-dressing wafting from her choir stall. Hilary smiled as she remembered, reached out for the flower-soap, soaped her breasts. Liz had left her matching talc and scent, shampoo and conditioner, both perfumed and expensive, and something called Body Spray, which came in a black aerosol with a picture of a voluptuous naked woman. She’d use them all in turn. This was Sunday – not the Lord’s Day – but the day of colour supplements, where everyone was worldly, rich and glamorous.
Liz had said, ‘Enjoy your bath.’ She was trained in obedience, so she’d better do her best. She held the soap heavy in her hands, sniffed its musky scent of summer roses. She was so warm, it felt like summer; a kind and caring season which lapped her in its fragrance, contradicted the steel grey sky outside. Summer flowers were blooming on the walls, so real she could have picked them. She enjoyed those, too; the contrast with the shiny paint at Brignor, which seemed to sweat in winter, crack in summer.
The Mozart was so beautiful she shivered in the fug. She had played that piece herself, as a girl of seventeen, played it for the final time the night before she entered as a postulant. She might never play again herself, but she had a new exquisite pleasure – listening. One huge advantage of the world – and especially of this house, where she’d been given her own radio – was that she could hear music when she wanted, just flick a switch to have it pouring out; that vital, powerful music, which had once been so important in her life – Bach and Handel, Beethoven and Mozart. She let herself respond to the impetuous eager scherzo, which sounded almost skittish; used one naked foot to conduct the piece a moment, feel its rhythm pulsing through her body. The foot plopped back in the water. Conducting was too strenuous for this indulgent Day of Rest. She stroked her arms instead, admired her new smooth skin, silky from the foam. She was becoming quite a sensualist, now she’d got the hang of it and kept pushing down the guilt. The wine had helped, of course. She took another gulp, held the glass cool against her chest. Both legs were lost in bubbles now. She’d seen a picture in her father’s book of thirties Hollywood – some sultry star or other, lazing in a bubble bath with nothing but her pout above the water.
She shut her eyes, submerged her body right up to the chin, revelling in the water’s warm embrace. She had progressed light years in a single day, from medieval peasant village to swinging Hollywood.
‘Sister Mary Swanson,’ she said suddenly, out loud, heard her giggle skid across the Mozart.