27

COMINGS AND GOINGS

IN JOHANNESBURG, THE OFFICES OF THE CATHOLIC DIOCESE on Saratoga Avenue were in an uproar. Faxes and emails were flying to and from the Vatican. The bishop was out of contact on a retreat, and nobody could decide who should drive down to Crocodile Flats with Mother Esmé and question the girl claiming to have had a vision. The senior priest in charge was too old. The editor of the Catholic Times was too young, though he did have a suggestion. ‘Sid Barker is in town. He’s conducted investigations all over the world.’

‘Cynical b******, quite inappropriate,’ the senior priest muttered. Sid was the Australian author of Holy Hoaxes, a best-seller about spiritual charlatans.

‘He knows his theology backwards and specialises in exposing fakes. So who better to check out the girl?’

‘I wouldn’t set that profane f ***** on a dog, let alone a schoolgirl.’

‘Sharp, though. Reckons he can spot liars within seconds by their body language,’ the editor persisted.

‘B******.’ The senior priest was adept at conveying foul language without actually using it. ‘Can’t see past his own ego.’

But he was a solution, and available. Four hours after Father Liam’s phone call, the diocesan Lancia set off with Father Alboreto at the wheel and Sid Barker lording it on the back seat. As usual, he was in city gear calculated to intimidate naive rural chancers: designer jeans, wraparound sunnies and a blinding white Lacoste cotton polo neck.

They were on their way to the humble Vrededorp HQ of the Little Sisters of Extreme Destitution to fetch Mother Esmé before heading out to Crocodile Flats, prepared for an overnight stay. Nobody knew exactly where it was, but Father Liam had given directions off the N1.

‘G’day, ma’am,’ Sid growled as Mother Esmé eased herself into the seat next to him.

‘Bonjour, Monsieur Barker.’ Her face was as convoluted as a cinnamon bun under her wimple, her voice coffee liqueur with a French accent.

He snapped, ‘I’m Sid, not a bloody monsewer.’

‘Pardon.’ Her smile had a gold twinkle, gift of a devout dentist.

‘No worries.’ He knew he was being crabby, but the thought of a long journey with an old nun was spoiling his coup at being consulted by the Catholic Church. His book had been banned in some parishes.

Settling into a comfortable position, she went on, ‘I enjoy very much riding in a limousine. Our Nissan ’as seen better days.’

‘Driving’s a dangerous game in this neck of the woods,’ he grumbled. ‘Hijackers and hoons everywhere. Nobody sticks to the road rules.’

‘Our ’abits protect us,’ she said, looking at him sideways under her eyelashes.

‘From hijackers maybe, but the crazy galahs who are driving don’t give a stuff.’ He was thinking, Eighty in the shade and the old bird’s still flirting.

She reinforced his observation by smiling and tapping his arm. ‘Go on with you, Sid.’

He burst out, ‘It’s not a joke! You know that nuns are targets in unstable situations. Think of your sisters in central Africa.’

Her smile died. ‘Poor martyred lambs. I pray for them daily.’

Brooding over a recent murderous attack on a mission station, they fell silent, he relieved at not having to listen to more banter, she feeling unjustly chastised. What was it about some laymen that made them so censorious?

Mother Esmé’s background was the fifth intimation of the miracle. Born in Martinique, before taking the veil she had been a limbo dancer – the cause of the severe osteoarthritis in her ageing knee and hip joints. There are more and more black nuns in southern African religious communities, but an elderly French-speaking black nun who had once danced to drums by the light of blazing paraffin torches was unique. Mother Esmé would be the one to coax the official testimony out of a schoolgirl cowed to silence by a hectoring investigator intent on finding holes in her story. Sid Barker had accumulated ample evidence that visions were invented by hysterical women.

Sweetness was getting bored kicking her heels in the nuns’ common room with its drawn sunfilter curtains and smell of fly spray. She realised that the curtains were there to provide privacy in the office that overlooked the denuded garage forecourt, but with the windows closed they made the room dim and stuffy. There weren’t any pictures on the walls, just a few books and old National Geographics on a shelf dominated by a statue of a sad-looking Jesu with a red glow pulsing in his chest.

When she asked Sister Hilary why it was going on and off, the nun looked surprised. ‘Don’t you know about the Sacred Heart, dear?’

Sweetness shook her head. ‘Is it electric?’

‘I suppose you could call the light electric. It’s plugged in, of course.’ As she genuflected towards the statue, Sister Hilary’s face glowed and faded with its pulse. ‘But I see the blessed son of our Holy Mother radiating his love and compassion, just as she does. You must have felt this yesterday.’

‘Eish, I’m not so sure now, Sister.’

With so much time to think, Sweetness had begun to question whether she’d done the right thing, running to the sisters with her story. Each time she’d told it, the vision of the lady dressed in blue had faded a bit, like the photo of her father in the frame on the corrugated-iron shack wall. Sister Immaculata hadn’t believed her, only Father and the younger nuns. Now she was locked up with nothing to do but wait for the important people they said were coming all the way down from Joburg to talk to her.

‘I’m not sure,’ she repeated, hanging her head.

The brisk reply came straight from Sister Hilary’s trusting heart. ‘Of course you are, dear. Just sit tight and I’ll get you a cup of tea. Mr Barker and Mother Esmé won’t be very long now.’

‘Very long’ was relative, Sweetness soon discovered after she had finished the tea and biscuits sister brought. She soon tired of the National Geographics with their pictures of strange animals and people and places that looked nothing like the real life around her. Were they true, these giant insects and wild, snarling dogs and tribesmen with pierced noses and ice mountains, or had they been painted by clever cameras? It was hard to tell. The colours were so bright and sharp, not blurred by smoke haze and dust.

After a while she put the magazines back on their shelf in a neat pile and lay down on the worn settee.

What seemed like hours later, half asleep, she heard a tap on the window and a hiss. ‘Sweetie!’

She sat up and pulled back one of the curtains. Rejoice was crouching outside. ‘Open?’ her friend mouthed and pointed.

Sweetness shook her head; the nuns had stressed that she wasn’t to speak to anyone before the important people arrived. ‘We need to be one hundred per cent sure of what you saw,’ Sister Hilary had said, but she didn’t feel even fifty per cent sure now.

‘Please. Just a little way.’ Rejoice indicated how little with her forefinger and thumb.

With a shrug, Sweetness bent forward and lifted the window catch to let it slide open. ‘Ehhh, Joice. What are you doing here?’

‘There’s someone asking for you. A white man with big hair. He’s got plenty of bucks. Come.’

Rod Greyling had gone to the police station after being rebuffed by the nuns, and spoken again to Captain Ngobese, who admitted that he had doubts about the vision. ‘My daughter’s friend could have made it up to get attention.’

‘Your daughter?’ Rod probed.

‘Rejoice, our last born. Pig-headed like they all are at that age.’

‘Where could I find her?’

‘Don’t ask me.’ Captain Ngobese felt a stab of pain behind his eyes as he dismissed the journalist. It had been a stressful day apart from the hotel lunch.

Elementary sleuthing tracked the girl down to the café steps where she lounged in a sprawl of friends. Rod favoured them with his winning smile. ‘I’m looking for Rejoice.’

One of the girls looked up and he had her: a long-limbed rebel with her new gymslip hoicked above her knees. She raked him from curls to boots with unhurried impudence. ‘Why?’

Rod had adolescent nieces who worshipped him as a free spirit and he knew what pressed their buttons. He pumped up the smile and said, ‘It’s really important. I’m a photojournalist on the trail of an amazing rumour, and I’ve been told that Rejoice knows all about it.’

She shrugged. ‘That’s me. So?’

‘Rod Greyling’s the name.’ He flexed his shoulders to ease the weight of the cameras. ‘Something happened in Crocodile Flats yesterday which could put it on the world map.’

‘Who said?’

‘Your father, in the police station a few minutes ago.’ Rod took time to distribute his conniving smile round the rest of the group before locking eyes with her again. ‘Your friend Sweetness Moloi claims to have seen a vision. Could you tell me about it? I pay top dollar for information.’

‘How much?’

She was cool, he had to concede. ‘Depends on what you can tell me. Also, I need to get in touch with Sweetness. The nuns won’t let me near her. They’ve locked her up.’ His smile morphed to concern. ‘It’s not right to suppress news of this magnitude. Freedom of speech and all that.’

‘How much, I said.’

This was a poor place. He tried his lowest figure. ‘Fifty bucks.’

‘You must be joking.’

‘A hundred?’

The others stirred and murmured to each other.

‘Try again.’

Damn the little tart. ‘A hundred and fifty?’

She tossed her head back and laughed. ‘You want this story bad, eh?’

‘Could be world news, as I said.’ His lips were stiff with irritation.

‘Okay, Rod,’ she capitulated with a gracious wave. ‘For two hundred and fifty – each – I’ll find her for you.’

Which is why a very bored and easily tempted Sweetness defied the nuns, opened the window wider and slipped out into the hot afternoon to give the first press interview about her encounter with the brown Madonna.