17

When Sister Ruth answered Sister Clodagh’s bell she found her standing in front of the window, throwing crumbs to the birds. These January days were as quiet and sombre as if there were a Lent in the hills and they were fasting of their colours. Even the grass had turned to a grey-green, but the bamboo stems shone as yellow as a blackbird’s bill.

The blackbird had come to Sister Ruth’s mind when she saw Sister Clodagh feeding the birds; now the earth was so stiff and hard, their cries sounded all the short day. They were strange birds, she thought, minahs and Himalayan thrushes and hoopoes, bolder than starlings at home. Sister Clodagh threw the crumbs farther and farther until the hoopoes were on the lawn in the shape of the crest they wore on their own heads, and their voices filled the air as they pounced and jostled and choked and fed.

‘Aren’t they hungry!’ said Sister Clodagh. She had heard the door open, but she spoke out of the window and her breath steamed on the air.

‘I’ve tried them with a coconut,’ she said, ‘but they don’t like it. They love this mutton fat.’

She was only talking for time; over and over in her mind she was thinking of what she must try to say. She did not know in the least how she was going to begin, how she could put it, and she stayed by the window throwing the crumbs and talking; just talking. Sister Ruth stood by her without speaking. ‘What do you want me for? What have you got to say?’

At last, Sister Clodagh shut the window and said: ‘I want to speak to you. Come and sit down.’

Now they were facing each other across the desk and Sister Ruth sat on the edge of her chair, upright, plainly on the defensive. Sister Clodagh looked at her, trying to find some clue that would show her how to begin. If only she could light on something to say that would make the Sister’s body relax and the hands in her lap unclench themselves, and take that stony expression off her face. She was so strung, so rigid, so still and filled with fear that Sister Clodagh said, almost without having to think: ‘I’ve been worried about you for some time. I feel that things are not right with you.’

A wary look slid into Sister Ruth’s eyes. ‘In what way?’ she asked.

‘You look so ill.’ Sister Clodagh seemed almost to be pleading. ‘You’ve got terribly thin. I know you’re trying to keep up for all our sakes, but I think you really must go in with Sister Briony and see the doctor.’

‘I shan’t see the doctor,’ cried Sister Ruth violently. She had sprung to her feet and stood over the desk. ‘I’m perfectly well, I’m stronger than I’ve ever been and you know it. You know it but you’re trying to make out –’ she choked and then stood still. ‘I’m sorry, Sister,’ she said, dropping back into her chair. ‘I didn’t mean – to be rude, but really I’m perfectly well. I – I haven’t been sleeping, that’s all.’

‘If you haven’t been sleeping,’ said Sister Clodagh watching her, ‘there must be some reason for it. Can’t you tell me? Is something worrying you?’

‘Yes. Yes, that’s it.’ Sister Ruth wet her lips. ‘I – I am worried.’

‘Don’t you think you could tell me about it?’ For a moment it seemed to hang on the air; Sister Clodagh waited breathless, not daring to speak; then she leant forward across the desk and said: ‘I’d like you to tell me if you can.’

At once the eyes flickered away from hers. ‘I can’t speak of it – to anyone,’ said Sister Ruth.

It was like trying to catch hold of something slippery, that slipped out of your hand. Sister Clodagh tried to keep her voice kind and even. ‘Won’t you try?’ she said. ‘I’d like to help you. You know you can trust me.’

‘You didn’t want me to come here,’ said Sister Ruth. For the first time she looked directly at Sister Clodagh. ‘You’d use anything I told you to get me away. How can I trust you?’

‘That’s absurd, Sister.’ In spite of herself Sister Clodagh’s voice rose. ‘I only want to feel that you are well and content.’

‘How can I be content? All of you, wherever I’ve been, have been against me. None of you have ever wanted me.’

‘Don’t you think that’s your fault as well as ours? If it’s everywhere you’ve been? It must be in yourself, Sister. Won’t you let us examine it and find out –’

‘At St Helen’s they didn’t want to lose me.’ Sister Ruth said it loudly. ‘It was just that I felt I couldn’t stay. You can write and ask them if you don’t believe me. And Reverend Mother said to me herself before I left, that she was sending me with you because I was so quick to learn the language and because she liked my methods in the school.’

‘Of course she did,’ said Sister Clodagh, groping carefully after her. Then she asked warily: ‘But knowing all this, what makes you say that none of us want you?’

‘You don’t want me,’ cried Sister Ruth. ‘Don’t pretend you do. From the very first minute –’ she pulled herself up sharply.

‘Don’t you think,’ asked Sister Clodagh carefully, ‘that you’re letting things run away with you? I feel that you’re letting yourself give in to this idea. You know, you must know, it isn’t true. I feel the same for you as I do for all my Sisters, that you are more to me than myself –’

Sister Ruth said nothing; she looked at the carpet, but a faint smile crept round her lips. There was a pause and then Sister Clodagh said: ‘I think this is really all to do with somebody else. I think you have let yourself fall into thinking too much of Mr Dean.’

Sister Ruth started and then set her lips. She looked at Sister Clodagh in obstinate silence.

‘Please answer me carefully. Why did you give that holly buttonhole to Mr Dean on Christmas night?

‘Why did you?’

Sister Ruth shivered suddenly. She tried not to, but as she sat on the chair she shook violently. Sister Clodagh pressed her. ‘You must answer me. Why did you give it to him?’

‘I didn’t.’

A look of intense relief made Sister Clodagh’s face almost luminous; then, as she looked at the Sister it faded. ‘I think you did,’ she said.

‘I didn’t. You can’t make me say that I did. I haven’t given him anything.’

‘What can I say to you?’ asked Sister Clodagh. ‘Sister, what is the use of talking to me like this? You gave it to him outside the chapel on Christmas night. Sister, don’t you realize what you’re doing? What you’re running the risk of losing in yourself? Sister, you must, I must, make you see before it’s too late.’

Again that indescribably baffling look came into her face. ‘All the same, I’ve noticed that you’re very pleased to see him yourself!’ she flung at Sister Clodagh.

Sister Clodagh’s face blazed. She half rose in her chair and then she sank back into it again, holding her desk.

‘You’re trying to tell me I’m not fit to be a nun,’ cried Sister Ruth. ‘Well, let me tell you that no more are you. You should never have entered either, and you know it for all your honours and success. Wonderful Sister Clodagh. Clever Sister Clodagh. Admirable Sister Clodagh,’ she mocked, ‘and all the time you’re worse than I am and that’s why you’re trying to bully me.’

She stopped for breath and then, staring at Sister Clodagh, a horrified amazement came into her face. ‘What – what have I been saying?’ she said in a small wondering voice. ‘What have I said? What have I been saying?’

‘If that was in your mind, it’s better said,’ said Sister Clodagh. ‘I think you’re out of your senses.’

Sister Ruth cowered away in her chair. ‘I lost my temper,’ she said. ‘Sister, I lost my temper. Forgive me. Please, please forgive me.’ She began to weep, silently, without a handkerchief, letting the tears pour down her face, not wiping them away. There was something theatrical in those tears, pouring down her thin white face, and her thin body that might have been whipped, curled in the chair; yet Sister Clodagh had a feeling that at any minute it might rise and sting her again, and she had a sudden shudder of repulsion.

‘Listen to me,’ she said at last, when she could trust herself to speak calmly. ‘I don’t know, I can’t decide now, what to make of you. The very fact that you could speak like that, even in temper, shows that there is something very wrong somewhere. It isn’t what you said of me, but the state of your mind that worries me. I shall have to think, and I want you to think too; if there’s any way that you feel you could be helped, will you come and tell me? Try to take more time every day for prayer; try and forget yourself and not to brood.’ There was still no expression on Sister Ruth’s face, only the tears falling helplessly down; Sister Clodagh felt she was not even listening. ‘Would you like to write to Reverend Mother?’ she asked.

She waited but there was no answer. ‘Think it over and come and let me know. At least you must feel, with her, that she has no personal feelings against you. Try and believe the same of me; that you are as much to me as any of the others; in fact I have been thinking far more of you than any of them.’ As she said it the words seemed to have a double meaning. ‘As for Mr Dean, there can be no need and you have no business to speak to him at all; you must see that it’s all-important that you should get over this feeling for him. When you came to us, Sister, you were very young and inexperienced, or you’d see what’s plain to us all. In spite of his charm and his kindliness, Mr Dean isn’t a good man; you must take him for what he is and not try to glorify him into someone he is not. When he speaks to you he has a way of making you think he’s interested in you, but that’s only a manner, he doesn’t really mean it. When he came to chapel on Christmas night he was drunk.’

At that Sister Ruth’s whole face flamed; she put her hand up to her wimple as if she were choking and shut her eyes while the tears ran under her lids. ‘May – may I go?’ she whispered.

‘Go into the chapel,’ said Sister Clodagh. ‘You can use my private door and no one will see you. Go in there and I’ll come to you presently.’

When she went in, after she had sat going over and over what she had said, there was no one there.

A few days after, she sent for Sister Ruth again. The Sister waited with the air of a martyr in front of her desk.

‘Sister, I’ve been thinking a great deal about you. I want you to believe that.’

‘I believe it, Sister.’

‘I want you to write freely to Reverend Mother. I shan’t look at the letter, of course, and her answers will be your own business. For the moment I shan’t write to her myself, because I think the best way for you will be to go on quietly with your life and work here.’

‘There could be no worse punishment,’ said Sister Ruth.

Sister Clodagh looked at her sharply. ‘You’re making things very difficult for both of us,’ she said.

There was no answer. Then Sister Ruth said: ‘Am I to write two, or three pages to Reverend Mother? Have I to do it now, or may I finish my class-work first?’

Sister Clodagh picked up her pen. ‘You may go,’ she said and began to write.

It seemed an age that the pen scratched and she tried to keep her hand steady on the desk. Then Sister Ruth turned and swept out of the room.