18

The General Dilip Rai and Joseph Antony worked at tables side by side in the small extension beside the new Lace School. Joseph was a sop to propriety and he could not understand why his school hours had been lengthened, nor what this strange jargon was that went on over his head. He was learning to write English, the General was learning to write French.

‘Avez-vous le crayon de mon oncle? Non, mais j’ai la plume de ma tante et le papier de mon cousin,’ wrote Dilip Rai.

‘A–at–cat–chat,’ wrote Joseph.

They worked in an atmosphere of soft whispers and titters from the Lace School on the other side of the partition where Kanchi, Maili, Jokiephul and Samya sat at work. They were not allowed even to peep at the General, but it was because of him that they giggled and spoke in whispers, and because of him that the lace-making, and the arrangement of the head veil and the new blouse print had become suddenly thrilling.

Every few minutes Joseph was called away to help in the school or in the Lace School itself, though there they had learnt the meaning of ‘nice-good-bad-careless-unpick-and-do-it-again’ and could even say ‘do not hold the thread in your big toes’; Joseph had taught them that himself and it had saved him a great deal of trouble. ‘Dew not haould e’tred e’taus.’ Joseph always wanted to please Sister Honey and he dared not displease Sister Ruth; there was something about her that he did not understand.

She was as sharp as Sister Honey was sweet, but it was not that; it was the way her eyes seemed to narrow and glint as if she were going to strike you, and her teeth made her look as if she could give a sharp bite, and the frightening still way in which she talked. Sister Honey really loved him; sometimes she had to punish him and that made her miserable.

‘Joseph, I – Oh, Joseph dear. I’m afraid I have to punish you.’

‘It’s all right, Lemini. I don’t mind. Really I don’t. Don’t you think about it. You just go on and punish me.’

‘He’s the dearest little fellow,’ said Sister Honey.

‘I think he’s sly,’ said Sister Ruth.

She thought them all sly and tiresome and grating. ‘He’s sly and the children are rude and I don’t trust Kanchi at all.’

‘You’re right there,’ said Ayah. ‘Now some people, they think she’s pretty and don’t trouble to see any more. Well that’s not likely to happen to us,’ she said chuckling. ‘I’m an old woman now and no one could call you pretty with those teeth.’

That stung. Once people had called Ruth beautiful, but now she thought she had never been so ugly; how could she help it with this strain and misery? Her eyes were stretched with watching, but she had to watch. Every moment of the day, They needed watching if she was to keep herself safe. She dared not relax for an instant and she had to know what Sister Clodagh was up to. She had to find excuses to go past her door, to walk up behind her, to follow her, and she was getting so tired. Even at night she had to get up and listen and softly push the door to see if it were locked, to see if Sister Clodagh were asleep or only pretending; she dared not sleep herself in case Sister Clodagh or They came upon her while she was asleep.

Sister Briony brought her a glass of milk. ‘Sister Clodagh says you’re to have this every day at ten,’ she said with a sniff.

Sister Clodagh had asked her: ‘Have you noticed anything peculiar about Sister Ruth lately?’

‘She thinks a great deal too much about herself,’ Sister Briony had answered promptly. ‘She’s broody and neurotic.’

‘Do you think it’s only that? You don’t think there’s anything – odd about her? Sometimes lately I’ve fancied –’

‘I shouldn’t encourage her, Sister, if I may say so. She’s full of her own importance and she likes to make the most of her ailments. Look at the way she fussed about that hill trouble and the headaches when we first came; all the Sisters had them, and we never heard a word from them, did we?’

‘Still, she does look terribly thin. I think she needs building up in this cold. Give her a tonic, and extra milk in the morning and evening. And you might keep your eye on her. I’m not quite at ease about her.’

When Sister Briony had gone, Sister Ruth poured the milk out of the window. Sister Clodagh had sent it especially for her, a harmless-looking glass of hot milk, but quickly and furtively she poured it away.

There was one thing now that was continually in her mind. In eight months she was due to go to England. After five years abroad, the Sisters of their Order returned to the Mother House for six months.

She was to go in eight months, but Sister Clodagh might send her before if there were any more of these interviews in which she gave herself away. That was the terror of Sister Clodagh, she was the person that undid all her resolutions, that made her forget; the very one before whom she dreaded to give herself away, the very person who made her do it. ‘Steady. Steady. You’re quite all right if you go steady,’ she told herself, and then Sister Clodagh would smile and say: ‘Well, Sister,’ and it would rise up in her again, and before she had thought she had rapped out an answer. And all the time They were watching. She looked over her shoulder; a dozen times a day she caught herself doing that. One day it would be noticed. ‘What do you keep on looking at?’ Already she had seen Joseph look after her, puzzled as to what she could see.

All the time she had to be so careful. She could not, would not be sent away from Mopu; even to herself she dared not add ‘and Mr Dean’. At first that was hardly a thought, only a deep stirring in her mind, a warm and happy feeling she had never known before. Then Sister Clodagh had put it into words; that had been as terrifying as if she had shouted it in front of them all; she had trampled all over it but she had not trampled it down. Now that it was spoken it was alive, real; she almost thought it was real and now she did not know what she had imagined and what was real. It was so alive that she was frightened of it and yet it filled her with a tumultuous joy. She did not know what she could do to keep it, she could not even say it, but she hugged it to herself all day and night.

All that she knew was that when the time came she would not go. When the time came she would have a plan, but meanwhile it was ‘Steady. Steady’, and trying not to look behind her and watching Sister Clodagh and trying not to think of Them.

‘Lemini,’ Joseph twitched her sleeve, ‘I have written out this “a-at-cat” until there’s no black place left on my slate to write it on any more, and the General Bahadur has finished his French.’

‘Yes, Sister,’ said the General, smiling and showing his teeth. ‘I have written out the whole of the exercise and I have learnt it by rote while I was waiting for you to finish your daydream.’

‘Sister, it’s nearly half-past twelve and you haven’t rung the bell,’ cried Sister Briony at the door. ‘Whatever are you thinking of?’

None of them noticed the game of cat and mouse that was being played on the other side of the partition; Kanchi peeped round it to look at the young General and listened through it to hear his voice and put her face under it to see his feet. She had put on a blouse of purple cotton printed with stars and the colour of her veil was a brown, half pink, half cinnamon.