19

Sister Philippa brought the seed lists to the office. In the evenings she had spent hours making them out. Her work in the garden was almost at a standstill now; the January and February days were all alike, they went like a procession of the nuns themselves, unrelieved by any colour; there seemed to be no life or movement in the earth but the wind tearing at the trees and bamboos. Still Sister Philippa was in the garden while it was daylight, planning and marking, turning up pieces of earth and littering the ground behind her with scraps of paper that the wind blew away, so that she had to draw her plans all over again. She called Nima up from his warm quarters at all hours and she would stop in the middle of talking to him, looking to where the snows lay hidden under the clouds; wrinkling up her eyes at the place where Kanchenjunga was wrapped away, while Nima waited with his eyes watering in the wind. She had a collection of pots ready for seed in the shed that Mr Dean had put up for her and she spent a great many hours there; best of all she had the catalogues of spring and summer flowers and her lists of them to make.

‘That cow is sick and you haven’t even seen it,’ said Sister Briony. ‘The boy says she has been off her feed for days. There’s nothing you can do in the garden now, so you might attend to your other work.’

‘Lemini, you’ve a great hole in your skirt, did you know?’ asked Kanchi pertly.

It was so difficult to decide what to have. Roses for instance. Mr Dean said she would have enough roses from the trees on the terrace and that no other kind could be better for colour and scent. ‘They start with copper-coloured buds and go into flame and orange and rose and apricot, and when they die they turn cream. There are thousands on a tree, Sister, higher than the house. I can smell them down at the factory. I’ve only seen one other place where roses grow like that, in the Nishat Bagh in Kashmir.’

‘Have you seen those gardens then?’ cried Sister Philippa. ‘Do tell me about them. Have you seen the Shalimar?’ But the roses in the catalogue had such tantalizing names and the descriptions were so beautiful that she had to write down a few. ‘I must see what “Lady Hillingdon” is like and this “Golden Dawn” that they say has forty-five petals and this lovely sounding “Shot Silk”.’

She had visions of the hill behind the house white and gold with daffodils and jonquils, but Mr Dean said that bulbs in this damp climate were extravagant, they rotted and had to be renewed every year, and that the spring was so brief and had so much already packed into it that they were more trouble than they were worth. ‘If you plant hill crocus, it’ll cost you nothing, because the boys can bring the roots wild from the woods, and Pin Fong can get you some Chinese lilies, if they are bringing them over this year in spite of the war. They’re so like jonquils that you can’t tell them apart.’

‘I should very much like some lilies, and I’ll arrange about the crocus roots,’ she said, but she wrote down daffodils and jonquils all the same.

She planned to plant sweet peas with a border of petunias; it said in her book that the scents together were exquisite, and she decided to have red Japanese peonies with gypsophila for contrast; the peonies were rather expensive, but their description was magnificent. Then there were lupins, delphiniums and larkspurs and stocks; all the colours of snapdragons, nigella which was love-in-the-mist; pansies and the portaluca she had grown to love in the plains; mignonette and verbena, candytuft and phlox.

Sister Briony told Sister Clodagh, in front of all the Sisters, that the laundry was late again. Sister Philippa smiled apologetically and looked out of the window where the azaleas crouched on the bank, swept by the wind, and her expression changed to acute concern. Sister Clodagh followed her anxious eyes.

‘And must she allow our washing to be hung out anywhere as it is?’ asked Sister Honey primly. ‘It’s altogether too suggestive.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Sister Clodagh sharply; she was a little worried. ‘There’s no one to see it.’

‘Except the mountain,’ said Sister Philippa quite gravely. ‘I never thought of that. I won’t let it happen again.’

The Sisters laughed, but Sister Philippa said: ‘I was more right than I knew when I called him a household God. He’s everywhere; before and about and in our house.’

Sister Honey opened her lips in dismay waiting for Sister Clodagh’s quick answer to that, but she went into her office without speaking.

‘That sounds irreverent to me,’ said Sister Briony as soon as she had gone, ‘and, talking of irreverence, do you know you’ve been late for chapel every day this week? I don’t know why Sister Clodagh hasn’t noticed it. I think she’s far too patient and kind to you all and you take advantage of it.’

‘Seed lists already?’ said Sister Clodagh, when Sister Philippa came in. ‘Surely it’s too early?’

She seemed reluctant to be disturbed, but the Sister answered firmly: ‘Not for the bulbs and the fibres I need; and I have to get the compost for the rose-beds.’

‘What rose-beds?’ asked Sister Clodagh.

‘I’m going to make some. They have to be dug down three feet, you see, we shall need extra labour for that, and then all this stuff put in. Then I have to mulch the rhododendrons before they come into flower and I want to see if I can improve the wild ones by putting in some of those red and white Splendours; I’ve told Nima to get me two coolies for that as I can’t spare the regular ones. It’s my idea to turn the present vegetable terraces over to flowers, and make the vegetable garden down below the stables where it can’t be seen. That’s what the extra list is for; and here are the herbs for the herb garden I’ve planned to put round the new chapel; we might as well start it now as the building will go up quickly. Only simple herbs, lavender and sage and mint and rosemary –’

‘But, Sister.’ Sister Clodagh looked at her in bewilderment. ‘All this would take months –’

‘Not if I have enough labour. I can get any amount of coolies from Mr Dean.’

‘But think of the cost!’ Sister Clodagh tapped the lists in amazement. ‘The seeds alone are beyond any allowance we can possibly expect, and you’ve put down bulbs and herbs and roses and creepers.’

‘The creepers are not included,’ said Sister Philippa. ‘They’ll have to be extra. I’m putting up frames for the honeysuckle outside the bathroom and cookhouse doors where they’ll get the soapy water; and I want to try morning-glory, though I’m afraid we’re too high for it.’

‘Of course we’re too high. Half the things in this list couldn’t grow here.’

‘I think they could.’

‘It’s very, very unlikely.’

‘I should like to try,’ said Sister Philippa obstinately.

‘We can’t afford to try. You’ll have to be content with the things that Nima’s had here before. I’m sure that this year Reverend Mother won’t want us to spend very much on the garden. I’m sorry, Sister, but it’s impossible.’

‘It’s absolutely necessary if the garden is to look as it ought to,’ said Sister Philippa loudly. ‘It’s the very least I can manage with.’

Sister Clodagh was puzzled. She looked at the Sister sitting opposite her, at her pleasant wise face with its benevolent forehead and eyes. Reverend Mother had said: ‘If you want advice, ask Sister Philippa, she’s wise.’ She had always been the most sensible and even of them all; she spoke so seldom that she was listened to, and what she did say was worth hearing. Sister Clodagh remembered that several times lately she had had to speak to her two or three times before she answered; and Sister Briony was always complaining now that she neglected the cows and chickens and the laundry work. There was something vague and untidy about her dress, too, there were patches of mud on her skirt round her knees, and the tear in it was not mended. Her cheek had a smudge of dirt on it and her nails were black.

‘I don’t know what’s come over you, Sister,’ she began. ‘You bring me these schemes which would cost hundreds of rupees in labour and plants and you know perfectly well that there is no hope at all of any of them being sanctioned. You must have known it.’

She saw the elderly sensible Sister flush and tremble; her lips trembled and a deep flush crept up her cheeks, she looked as if she were going to cry. In dismay Sister Clodagh stopped short.

After a little while she said, tapping again with her paper knife on the lists: ‘You know it’s all true. You know it’s impossible.’ There was an obstinate silence.

‘And it’s true that you’ve been neglecting some of your work. That won’t do, Sister. It must be done faithfully and conscientiously all round. And your clothes are untidy and lately you’ve been unpunctual. That’s all true, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, Sister.’

‘Why?’

Sister Philippa waited before she answered; when she did she seemed startled by what she said. ‘It interrupts,’ she said in surprise.

Before Sister Clodagh had time to speak she burst out: ‘Then you mean I can have none of this for the garden?’

Sister Clodagh handed back the lists. ‘Go and consult Nima. You know what you can spend. Go and think it all over.’

And urgently she repeated: ‘Go and think it all over.’