6

‘I, Soeur Marie Lise du Rosaire, now vow and promise Poverty, Chastity and Obedience to God, the blessed Virgin Mary, to our holy Father Dominic and to you, Very Reverend Mother, Soeur Marie Emmanuel, Mother-General of the Congregation of Dominican Sisters, called Béthanie, and to those who will succeed you in this same charge, according to the Rule of Saint Augustine and the Constitutions of the Congregation of the Third Order of Saint Dominic for three years.’

Lise knelt before Soeur Marie Emmanuel, Mother-General, one hand in hers, the other laid on the book of the Constitutions, which Soeur Marie Emmanuel held open on her lap. These were what mattered: the hand in hers for loyalty and absolute submission – and the Constitutions; Lise had read them from cover to cover – they held the whole vision and rule of life at Béthanie. These were the bastions on which the Congregation was built. ‘As Christ … is called the corner stone, so also are his members called stones,’ ‘… lively stones.’ And now two new stones – pebbles, thought Lise – she and Bella, were being added in this quiet ceremony in which they took their temporary vows in the chapel before the priest and the community.

‘It seems queer – when you reach your heart’s desire,’ said Lise, ‘that it should seem so simple, steady, almost logical.’

‘I have heard of girls fainting with relief when they were accepted,’ said Bella with fellow feeling.

‘I don’t think there’s need for that,’ said calm Soeur Raymonde. ‘As Soeur Marie Lise said, it is logical. After all, you have been tested for a long time.’

‘Seven years,’ said Lise.

‘It’s hardly likely you would get as far as that, or that we should let you, without it being more than a hope and, in any case, if God has chosen you, he will admit you.’

‘If not?’ Bella was still apprehensive.

‘Not.’ There was no doubt about that. ‘But I don’t believe he would let a handful of nuns, however wise, turn him from his purpose. It might not be just yet,’ Soeur Raymonde had said, ‘but I’m sure it will happen,’ and, mercifully, it had.

‘Of course you may not be ready at the end of three years to take the next step, Profession, your final vows, the vow until death,’ said Soeur Raymonde, ‘though you can renew these simple vows for another three years, and again and again, but you are nuns now. God bless you.’

‘I think he has,’ said Lise.

They had not met the new Mother-General, Soeur Marie Emmanuel, until two months ago when they had been called to the office she kept in the novitiate to be told whether they were admitted to take these vows or no. Lise had expected someone elderly, slightly grand and dignified, though she knew Soeur Marie Emmanuel had only been elected last year. The dignity was there, but here was a slight woman, hardly older than herself, with a soft creamy skin set off by a black veil and brown eyes that could be amused as well as penetrating. They were amused when Bella, getting up, clumsy in her emotion, caught her heel in the hem of her habit and, ‘Merde!’, the Bella word came out, though she clapped her hand over her mouth in consternation.

Not to be with Bella! From now on they would be, in truth, what they had been by courtesy, Soeur Marie Isabelle, Soeur Marie Lise. Not to have Soeur Raymonde! But once it had been, Not to have Soeur Théodore. ‘I’m sure we shall meet again,’ said Soeur Raymonde. ‘It’s remarkable how in Béthanie our paths separate, then suddenly cross or meet again.’

And so Lise came to Belle Source.

This house of Béthanie was in Normandy, standing inland among apple orchards that spread in a basin of low hills. Part of the convent was once a château, the Château de Lanvay; workrooms, two floors of bedrooms and a chapel had been built on, but it still had its gatehouse, now used as a modest hôtellerie, and its spreading domaine, part of it a moat where ducks and geese swam; in the garden was an enchanting small pavilion, where once the Comte de Lanvay had held his notorious midnight suppers. The sisters used it if any of them needed a day retreat and, if one of them died, it became a chapel of rest where she could lie in dignity on a candle-lit bier until her burial. ‘Yes, it’s a holy place now,’ said the Prioress as she showed it to Lise.

‘So it’s places as well as people you convert,’ said Lise.

‘God converts,’ corrected the Prioress.

It seemed to Lise that a blessing lay on the whole of Belle Source. ‘It’s odd,’ she told the Prioress, ‘This is the kind of house I have wanted to live in all my life, and never thought I could.’ Everywhere the eye looked was beauty, something she had not expected. Saint Etienne and the novitiate, though well designed, were functional buildings. Here the stucco walls of the château had faded to a warm cream-yellow while the slates of the mansarded roof were dove grey. The walls of the whole domaine were of old French brick, rosy behind the espaliered fruit trees; not a foot of space was wasted. The once-upon-a-time gardener’s cottage where, now, the garden tools were kept, was inset in the walls and matched them as did another cottage, hidden behind a yew hedge, the aumônier’s house to which, one day, in that Year of the Rabbit, 1976, Marc was to come.

The big vegetable garden was set out in orderly rows. Soeur Fiacre, fittingly named, because Saint Fiacre was patron of gardeners, would not permit a single weed. Separated from the orchards by a pond, there was a paddock for the cows, pens for the pheasants, while rabbits were bred for sale. ‘We make pennies where we can and breeders pay handsome prices for our pheasant eggs and plump rabbits as they do for our Jersey calves,’ Soeur Thecla, who was the farmer, told Lise. The cows were Bienvenue, Bibiche, Blanchette, and Joyeuse, born on the Feast of the Annunciation. ‘We have a better strain even than the famous herd at Solesmes,’ Soeur Thecla said with satisfaction. ‘The monks come to us to buy their calves.’

As in every house of Béthanie, besides the nuns’ individual skills there was always a general employment for the outside commercial world – ‘so as to bring in a modicum of money we can at least count on,’ said the Prioress. One house sent out circulars for an insurance company; another supplied a Paris shop with handworked tapestries and petit-point for upholstering chairs and stools. At Belle Source, First Communion robes were made for boys and girls in fine white linen or muslin.

Belle Source, too, made cider, a specially sought-after cider from a recipe handed down by a certain Soeur Marie Dominique who got it from her father, a Normandy farmer; she had been one of the few sisters of Béthanie whose ancestry was known.

Lise helped in the cider presses, the tending of the trees, the picking of the apples. She helped too in the laundry and in the kitchen. ‘Marcelline’s work,’ Patrice would have answered.

‘Then I like Marcelline’s work,’ and yet, wasn’t it not so long ago, thought Lise, that she too had thought servants’ work degrading?

‘What has happened to those elegant hands?’ Patrice would have asked, shocked.

‘Well, never mind if sometimes they are chapped red with cold from getting up to help with the cows, or covered with mud from planting out potatoes,’ Lise would have retorted, ‘They are happy hands now,’ and, as with all the sisters, ready to turn themselves to anything. There was no sense of rank at Béthanie. ‘Take Soeur Agnès de la Trinité,’ Lise was to tell Marc. ‘It was Soeur Agnès who was sent as Prioress to found our new Béthanie in America, a high position; she also happens to be one of Belle Source’s delegates to the General Council, but it’s she who does the laundry for the whole house – all those white tunics, scapulars, black veils, blue aprons, not to mention sheets and towels and dishcloths.’

Soeur Thecla, who had been at university and was the community’s best scholar, was up at five to milk the cows and, with her sturdy strength, did the work of two men on the farm, ploughing, mowing, carting hay, straw, crops, manure. By evening she was so tired that she could not stay up for Compline but still she had translations to do, Latin to transcribe and, often, letters to write for sisters who could not write or spell. ‘Well, what of it?’ Soeur Thecla would have asked. ‘Any of us do anything – within the bounds of our capability,’ she added severely, which meant no one else could milk her cows.

There were endless needs, few of them ordinary, and, ‘I had thought a convent would be a peaceful place!’ said Lise. Now she knew the reason for those long years of training in self-denial, instant obedience – and adaptability. ‘When we get up in the morning we get through our daily chores as quickly as possible,’ the Prioress told Lise, ‘because we never know what will fall on us or what the day may bring.’ The day or night. It was nothing for the telephone or the gate bell to ring at midnight or two o’clock in the morning. ‘Nor, when the gate is opened,’ said the Prioress, ‘do we know what we shall find.’

Once it was a woman with three small children standing in the road, shivering in their nightclothes. They had escaped through a window from a drunken battering father and fled to the gendarmerie and the gendarmes, uncertain what to do, brought them to Belle Source. The woman was pregnant, beaten and bruised, the children numb with terror. Of course they were taken in and, as they could not stay long in the guest house, the Prioress, with the help of the Mairie, found them a flat, but it was the sisters who furnished it – or compelled people to furnish it, as they clothed mother and children and, eventually, provided a layette. Soeur Elizabeth, the porteress, was a conjurer on the telephone and had factories, shops, rich people on that conjuring line. ‘Yes, I’m a bully,’ she often said laughing. ‘I’m sure they must dread hearing my voice,’ but soon mother and children became another Béthanie family established and protected. ‘The baby, when he arrived, was called Dominic, for us.’

It was not always tragedy. One midnight it was two poachers who had been caught and the gendarmes did not know what to do with their catch of hares, pheasants and trout. ‘They should be eaten fresh,’ they said with all a Frenchman’s respect for food. It was the poachers themselves who suggested the loot should be given to Béthanie. ‘We lived like gourmets for a week.’

The provender, though, was not often as delectable as that or was given in such easy ways. ‘I sometimes think we are the world’s refuse-bins,’ said the Cellarer, and added, ‘fortunately.’

A fruit farm might have a glut of apples. ‘We have some cases of “seconds”, some are going rotten but you could pick them over – if you like to come and get them …’ ‘Twenty kilometres!’ said Lise, ‘and the picking over took us hours.’

A pâtisserie offered éclairs. ‘We can’t sell them; they’re yesterday’s. The cream may have gone off a little, but still …’

A farmer gave a ton of sub-standard potatoes, ‘which had to be sorted,’ groaned the nuns – some for the compost heap, some for the table, some for the pig, ‘but be careful of those,’ Soeur Thecla instructed. ‘He mustn’t have a tummy upset.’

Lise, as one of the two convent car-drivers, soon learnt of Béthanie’s innumerable errands. As well as what she called ‘foraging’, there were the sisters’ normal needs – visits to dentists, doctors, opticians, visits, almost every day, to the hospital. There was marketing, though as little as possible was bought, and there was ‘rescuing’, chiefly by the senior prison visitor, Soeur Marie Mercédes, who, just as Soeur Marie Alcide had gone once a quarter to Vesoul, made, every three months, the long journey to France’s other Maison Centrale for women, the prison of Le Fouest.

Soeur Marie Mercédes’s bones had a defect which made them so brittle they broke if she stumbled or knocked herself; often she had to walk with a caliper or had an arm in a sling, yet still she climbed the prison stairs and managed to sit through the long hours of the week on a hard wooden chair, listening, counselling, encouraging. She had surprising influence; lawyers, even judges came to consult her and she had endless protégées, especially girls to whom she was a mother. ‘I’ll die if she dies,’ said one. They had to be fetched and taken, to the guest house, the station, a foyer, or places where Soeur Marie Mercédes had found them work. She interviewed each employer remorselessly; sometimes Lise drove her to châteaux, sometimes to slums – there seemed no bounds to Soeur Marie Mercédes’ network. ‘You see, Denise has a child and if she works for Madame X, Madame will let her keep it.’ No matter that Madame X happened to live forty kilometres away … Or, ‘No, no. This will not do. They are exploiting Thérèse. We must take her away at once.’

‘The car will wear out,’ said Lise.

‘It does.’

‘How can we replace it?’

‘I don’t know, but it will be replaced,’ said Soeur Marie Mercédes.

Lise remembered an evening when she had been in and out all day with innumerable calls: the Prioress to visit one of her flock in a hospital several towns off; an urgent call to another battered family – ‘The police think the husband has found out where they are and we must act’; finally an interminable thirty kilometres through confusing country lanes to pick up a gift of pullets, ‘two heavy crates of them’. Then, just before Vespers, Soeur Marie Mercédes was called to the telephone.

‘Soeur Marie Lise, we must go. It’s Jacky. She has tried to throw herself in the river.’

‘Well, why not?’ Lise felt like saying. This was at least the tenth time she had taken or fetched Jacky, but the Prioress laid a hand on her shoulder.

‘Jacky is a nuisance, I know, but Sister – I can tell you this because she isn’t one of us – Jacky was raped by sixteen boys one after the other while the others stood by and laughed. Then, to stop her telling, they smashed her teeth in with a brick, which is why she has such difficulty in talking and that adds to her problems.’

‘I’ll go at once,’ said Lise, but the Prioress shook her head and smiled, an indulgent smile which meant that, while liking her spirit, she saw that Lise had not learned to temper herself. ‘After Vespers and supper will do.’ The Prioress could have added, ‘Even Jacky is not extraordinary; remember it’s day in, day out; and, remember too, that important as all this is, it’s still not the most important.’ Lise knew that. The first work of every house of Béthanie, of every nun, was prayer; five times a day the community gathered in choir, ‘and if you have been working outside in an overall or boiler-suit, it’s a real penance to get out of them and heavy wet boots and change back into our white – then back again … five times, dear Mother of God!’ Soeur Fiacre sighed. And if some of those set times had to be missed it was made up in private prayer, in meditation or vigil before the Sacrament. ‘Of course. How else would we get strength?’ asked Soeur Marie Mercédes.

Lise had never known anything like the strength of this fiery little nun; the way she fought for her protégées and, particularly, how she kept the distress and hideousness of all she heard, saw – and endured – entirely to herself being, in the community, friendly, witty and invariably unruffled. ‘I don’t think you’ll find this matter-of-course acceptance anywhere but than in Béthanie,’ Lise was to tell Marc.

What other convent, she wondered, would not have been put in a flutter by, for instance, the episode of the drugs, and how many of their Prioresses would not have condemned? It was not for nothing that the word most used at Béthanie was ‘miséricorde’ – mercy.

The ‘day of the drugs’, as she called it, had happened not long after she had come to Belle Source when as Soeur Doyenne, the oldest of the newly professed – Lise was just three months older than Bella – she was sent to the new novitiate, Saint Xavier, to help Soeur Raymonde who had an unusually large number of postulants and novices. ‘But … I thought I was to stay at Belle Source,’ Lise had not been able to help voicing her dismay.

‘When you are needed at Saint Xavier?’ The Prioress’s rebuke made Lise flush. ‘It won’t be for long, three months or so; a Sous-Maîtresse will soon be appointed and you are too junior for that. Meanwhile you can take charge on occasions, sometimes oversee work. Soeur Raymonde asked for you,’ the Prioress added quietly. ‘That, ma Soeur, is a compliment.’

The novitiate had been moved now from that far-away great house Lise and Bella had known in the French Alps, ‘where we were put through the mill,’ as Lise said, to the new building of Saint Xavier outside Paris – modern, totally different yet still Béthanie, as Lise found. Saint Xavier was beautiful in its new fashion, one that did not please many of the sisters but that the young took to at once and, above all, it was at the centre of things. ‘We must know,’ Soeur Marie Emmanuel had said, ‘not doze and dream in our rut.’

Once again Lise saw a new range of girls and women new to her, not Bella, Julie, José, Pauline, Jeanne; now it was Yolande, Gilberte, Sophie, Stéphanie, Germaine. Again there was every kind of face from young to middle-aged, open or baffling in secretiveness, pretty, even beautiful, or plain to ugliness. At that first time Lise had had to keep custody of her eyes, but now it was her duty to look, be watchful, and she had immediately noticed the girl, Sophie, seen her thinness, the pallor of her skin, the dark grey shadows like stains under her eyes; long sleeves hiding arms that Lise guessed carried telltale prick marks. Sophie would suddenly break into agitated talk, was excitable and couldn’t concentrate for more than ten minutes; Lise was certain she had been on drugs. Had Sophie been in prison too where, unless the doctor and matron were sympathetic, she probably had to go ‘cold turkey’ – endure the withdrawal without help, driven almost to dementia by the pain? – Lise had seen it often; but perhaps Sophie had not been in prison, just one of the girls, of all classes, who left home and … Lise pulled herself back; Sophie was here to forget, ‘And so are you,’ Lise reminded herself and, indeed, watching the girl in chapel, Lise could see how, at times, Sophie could be illumined by happiness; at others, Lise found her sobbing there.

‘What is the matter, Sophie?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Are you sure? Nothing I can help with?’

‘Nothing. Nothing.’

Poor waif, thought Lise. Waif in another way from Lucette.

Lucette had gone to Saint Etienne; she should have been at Saint Xavier by now. Lise had expected and half dreaded, to find her there but, ‘Haven’t you heard?’ asked Soeur Raymonde.

‘I haven’t had a letter, or a note, for almost five years,’ Lise said, ‘not since she went to Saint Etienne. I was pleased about that, thinking she was so content and busy she had no need to write.’

‘I’m afraid no. Lucette has had a blow that most of us wouldn’t have been able to take. It was kept hushed-up for her sake, poor child.’

‘But … where is she?’ Lise was filled with consternation and contrition. ‘Where?’

‘Back at Saint Etienne – miraculously. As I say, we kept it hushed, absolutely secret, but I think Soeur Théodore might tell you.’

Soeur Théodore, now Prioress at Saint Etienne, was at Saint Xavier for a conference. ‘To have you and Soeur Raymonde both here at the same time,’ Lise had said. ‘That’s a bounty I never even hoped for,’ and Lise went to her old Responsable now. ‘Ma Mère’ – she still gave Soeur Théodore that title. ‘Can you tell me about Lucette?’

‘It was terrible. Terrible.’ Soeur Théodore gave a shiver. ‘As you know, she came to us from the foyer and from her work at the hospital and was admitted as aspirant, and I have never seen anyone as happy. She went about her work sensibly and thoroughly, but as if it were in heaven. We found she had a sweet voice and Soeur Philomena was teaching her to play the cithare – just by ear, but her ear was true. Then, one evening, just before Vespers, a police van arrived with two gendarmes who had papers. It appeared that by a clerical error, Lucette had been released from Vesoul too soon. She had ten more months to serve; they had come to take her away.’

‘Away? Not – back to prison?’

‘Yes. Back to Vesoul.’

‘But – when she had been released – after all that time.’

‘She still had to pay in full.’

‘How cruel. How abominably heartlessly cruel.’

‘It was. Even the gendarmes could hardly bring themselves to do it. We managed to get a stay of twenty-four hours – our Prioress even dared to telephone the Minister of Justice – but the gendarmes had to come again next day.’

‘Lucette had, of course, been given her black dress and was so pleased and proud – and she had to take it off. I remember I folded it and said, “It will be waiting for you,” yet, as I did that, I couldn’t believe after a knock like this she would want it again, but I didn’t know Lucette. Ma Soeur, that little thing went without a cry or a tear, just held my hand tightly for a minute and then submitted. They couldn’t let one of us go with her. God knows what it must have been like to drive in through those gates again and hear them shut. Soeur Marie Alcide saw her, of course, every time she went to Vesoul and in all those months there was not a murmur or complaint – only that Lucette was counting the days.’

‘When she came out, I had permission to fetch her, but she wasn’t to put on the black dress for a long time; as soon as that horror was over, Lucette was seriously ill and for six months we thought she might go out of her mind. We kept her at Saint Etienne and one of us was with her day and night; the girls, too, helped, and gradually, slowly …’

‘But – why wasn’t I told?’ asked Lise.

‘She asked for you not to be.’

‘Not to be!’

‘I confess I was surprised,’ Soeur Théodore admitted. ‘I had thought she would have fled to you for help, but not this Lucette. She knows you have your way to make and that you should keep to that. This would have cut across it.’

‘Indeed it would, but it makes me selfish, selfish.’ In her distress Lise was crumpling her handkerchief almost to shredding it. Soeur Théodore took it from her, shook it out and folded it again.

‘Put that in your pocket. It isn’t selfish at all,’ Soeur Théodore went on. ‘You and Lucette are both trying to do the same thing – she knows that. She wouldn’t let even such an ordeal – one of the most searing I have ever known,’ said this downright Sister, ‘wouldn’t let it interrupt her; even when she was ill, not in command of herself, somehow she didn’t swerve. Nor, Soeur, should you. Lucette is not your responsibility, but I know she would treasure a letter. She is back with the others now and she will come here to Saint Xavier, but in her own time, which is God’s time. I think He has a special plan for our little Job.’

There was one thought that comforted Lise; no matter what Lucette had suffered, she was no longer a waif.

Next to Sophie, in date of coming to Béthanie, was Gilberte. Both girls were in Lise’s group and could not have been more different – Sophie a problem, stretched to tension with her scruples and fears which seemed to be growing more rather than less. She had a bad limp – was she born like that or did something happen? – and for all the care at Saint Xavier could not put on weight. ‘Will she ever be strong enough?’ Lise asked Soeur Raymonde.

‘We’ll see. She’s strong in love, which is what matters, isn’t it?’ Gilberte was apple-cheeked, open-looking and merry, surely one of the ‘makeweights’, as Lise secretly called them.

Lise had, wistfully perhaps, invented a family for Gilberte; a solid kind father: a mother of the same rose complexion: plenty of brothers and sisters and a noisy, friendly, hospitable and comfortable home. Lise sometimes tried to imagine what the father and mother, the whole family, thought about the coming of this cherished daughter to Béthanie and the company she kept, but nothing seemed to disturb Gilberte’s calm, her lazy insouciance and, ‘Gilberte’s a delight,’ she said.

‘H’m,’ was Soeur Raymonde’s only reply which surprised Lise but, as the days passed, she had to admit that often Gilberte was lazy, almost to sleepiness. Perhaps she’s a little stupid, Lise had to admit that too, but I like her independence. Gilberte did not cling to her in the way Sophie was already doing. ‘It seems inevitable with me and young girls,’ Lise said hopelessly to Soeur Raymonde.

One day in her third week at Saint Xavier Lise went up to her room to fetch a book; her room was at the end of the long row of cells and as she reached the corridor, she saw the Prioress coming down it with two gendarmes and a dog; the dog, an alsatian, was sniffing.

Lise stepped quickly back out of sight. As they passed, the Prioress’s face gave no hint of agitation; she walked without hurry and her hands were under her scapular as they usually were. The three were making for the rooms at the end of the corridor where the postulants slept.

When they had passed Lise slipped into her room, found the book and would have gone swiftly downstairs when she heard a sound. It was a stifled sob coming from behind the screen in the corner and there, crouched down in terror, was Sophie.

‘Sophie!’

‘Ma Soeur, don’t send me out. Don’t, Soeur Marie Lise, don’t. They won’t look in here. Ma Soeur, please, please.’

‘Look for what?’ Lise tried to unclench the clutching hands and hold them.

‘It’s under the floorboards in her room,’ Sophie was gabbling. ‘They’ll find it. The dog will find it. They always do. I wouldn’t keep it for her.’

‘Keep what?’

‘Stuff – for Gilberte.’

‘Gilberte!’ Lise was truly astonished. What a myth – my happy family! but Sophie was saying:

‘She has only just begun. She hadn’t tried before.’

‘But how?’ asked Lise. ‘How could she – here?’

‘Easily,’ said Sophie. Lise had succeeded in taking her hands, pulling her up to sit on the bed. ‘You don’t know, ma Soeur, I don’t think anybody does … except Soeur Théodore, and she has gone back to Saint Etienne. Oh, if only she hadn’t.’ There was a fresh bout of tears. ‘I’m afraid of Soeur Raymonde.’

‘You needn’t be – but go on, Sophie, tell me.’

‘It creeps in everywhere.’ Sophie gave a terrified look over her shoulder as if the menace were here. ‘There was a girl at Saint Etienne. She knew my Uncle. She didn’t stay more than a month, but that was enough – she told him. If he hadn’t traced me like that, he would have somehow else. They’re so clever. Of course, he isn’t my Uncle, that’s just what we called him. I was never a “pusher”, but that’s what he wanted me for – I soon knew that. I wanted to be clean but I didn’t know how, or how to get away from him or it; I couldn’t go home – my mother and father would never have understood, so I did the only thing I could think of to do …’

‘Go on,’ Lise was holding her.

‘I cut off everything, every label, every tag that could show who I was, and took nothing with me and I burned everything in my bag and all my letters … I couldn’t do this – this – in my lodging so I went to a shop. It was one of those big shops with departments on all floors. It had stairs as well as lifts and on the second floor I jumped down the well of the stairs.’

‘Sophie! Sophie!’

‘I know, but I thought if I hurt myself badly enough they would have to put me in hospital, perhaps for a long long time, and they might help me. If it was more than hurt, well, it didn’t matter, did it? I broke my hip and leg – that’s why I limp – and hurt my head, but then the wonderful thing happened.’ The tears dried and Sophie’s face lifted.

‘The hospital was near Saint Etienne and one of your nuns was there, a sister of Béthanie. I think she was very ill – she had a room to herself and the others came in and out, every day, sometimes twice a day to visit her, sometimes in the night, and they began to visit me. One of them, Soeur Marie Lise, was Soeur Théodore.’ At that name the tears burst out again. ‘Oh ma Mère, ma Mère! if only you were here.’

Lise held her closer. ‘We are here. We’ll help you. But, Sophie – how long ago was this?’

‘Nearly five years.’ Sophie sat up dabbing her eyes. ‘I was almost a year in the hospital, then I went to the clinic and then Soeur Théodore took me to Saint Etienne straight away – she got permission. There I could always stay inside if I needed to. I never went alone into the garden all those years. I thought I was safe, then … then …’

‘Then?’

‘Uncle found me. Though he didn’t come to Saint Etienne he followed me here at Saint Xavier; he found Gilberte too. There’s a place in the domaine where the hedge is broken and you can get through. He spoke to Gilberte first, gave her a message for me and I had to go. She said she would tell if I didn’t.’

‘You should have told,’ but Sophie shrank.

‘No, I couldn’t – I couldn’t. Here it’s not like Saint Etienne; it’s all new, and Gilberte, she was soon hooked. She makes me help her do it – she’s frightened of the “fix”, of using the syringe, so the works are in my room.’ Sophie was again so convulsed with terror that Lise could hardly understand her. ‘The dog will smell them and no one will believe it wasn’t me, but I swear to you I never took even a pinch – I swear – but they won’t believe me. They won’t believe me.’

‘I believe you. Hush! Hush!’ but, ‘Gilberte said she would tell,’ Sophie gabbled again. ‘At first she was just curious, but Uncle has a kind of power’ – like Patrice, thought Lise – ‘Once you have started, Uncle can make you do anything – anything.’ Sophie shivered.

‘No, he can’t,’ said Lise. ‘He couldn’t make you.’

‘Why – no! He couldn’t.’ Sophie lifted her face from Lise’s shoulder in amazement. ‘He couldn’t. Ma Soeur, I never thought of that.’ Then the helplessness came back. ‘They’ll never believe me. Gilberte looks so …’

‘Innocent and open,’ said Lise, ‘Yes.’

‘She took you in.’

‘She did,’ Lise admitted it, ‘but I don’t think she took in the others – certainly not Soeur Raymonde. I see now Soeur Raymonde had her suspicions and I can guess that’s why the police have come; they have probably been watching this Uncle, trying to catch him. Listen to me, Sophie. Go now to Soeur Raymonde and tell her what you have just told me.’

‘But they’ll put me out. I can’t bear it. I can’t. It’s my whole life.’

‘Yes, Sophie – your whole life.’ Soeur Raymonde was standing with the Prioress in the doorway and she put out her hands to the distracted girl. ‘Ma petite, come with me and we’ll explain to the police.’

‘Gilberte? She’ll be found out …’

‘We know about Gilberte, poor child, and so do they. The dog found it.’

‘But what will happen to her? Poor Gilberte. Look! She didn’t sell it.’ Sophie’s voice grew shrill. ‘Just taking it yourself isn’t …’

‘We know that too.’ The Prioress, still calm, made way for Soeur Raymonde who lifted Sophie to her feet and kept a strong arm round her. ‘Now come with us, with Mother and me,’ said Soeur Raymonde.

‘But … you’ll keep Sophie?’ Lise asked Soeur Raymonde in astonishment.

‘Doesn’t it say much for Sophie that, in the midst of such temptation, she never fell? Of course we’ll keep her.’

‘And Gilberte?’

Soeur Raymonde gave a sigh. ‘Gilberte’s very sorry now. We’ll have to see.’

‘I wish I had your imperturbability,’ said Lise.

It was not just a shell; Lise herself could keep her face and voice in control when in reality she was in turmoil; this was deeper – the nuns were not perturbed over things like this. ‘When you have seen as much of God’s providence as I have,’ said Soeur Raymonde, as any of the nuns would have said, ‘seen the unfathomable ways in which he works, if you have any sense at all, you learn not to question or to judge – only to trust. Think of Lucette’s story …’

And Lise thought, ‘Think of my own.’

The oddest things brought it back, turning them to the macabre; on one of her first mornings at Belle Source when, utterly happy, she was peeling parsnips in the kitchen, it suddenly came. There had been all the homely things of a quiet domestic busy-ness around her – one blue-aproned sister working at the stove, another, the baker, kneading dough; a good smell of soup from the outsize pans and of onions and herbs hung from the ceiling – it was much like Marcelline’s kitchen; perhaps it was the thought of Marcelline that brought it – but suddenly the wrinkled yellowish outer skin of the parsnip looked like the skin of someone grown old because he was dead – had been dead for five days.

At first, remembered Lise, in my dazed state, stupefied, I had thought Patrice would be in the Rue Duchesne, laid out on his own bed, candles burning each side of it, flowers perhaps, or else he would be in a chapel, then, slowly, I realised he would be in a drawer in the morgue, a drawer slid out as if from a filing cabinet. I had had to go there once to identify a client, a German who had fallen dead on the pavement outside the house; he had been with us just before and no one else seemed to know who he was. Emile made me go; the man had been dead three days, but Patrice would have been worse – they keep them just as they are until after the inquest. He would have been as I last saw him, as he lay in the geranium bed of that little front garden but, like the German, he would have yellowed, wrinkled, shrunk …

‘Is anything the matter, Soeur Marie Lise?’

‘I … I’m going to be sick.’

‘Madame Lise,’ said Marcelline, ‘Monsieur Patrice has gone out.’

‘Oh?’ It was a stiflingly hot August afternoon but Lise had taken Coco for his usual walk, though a little later than usual, and was bending down to unfasten his lead when Marcelline had come running up to the hall from the kitchen; she was twisting her apron in her fingers, even the coiffure was slightly dishevelled and her blue eyes were distressed.

‘Madame, go – go quickly. I think he has gone after Vivi.’

‘Vivi? But … how?’

‘I don’t know how but he took me by the throat and shook me. “So that was your dirty trick! You and that …” I won’t tell you what he called you, Madame. I thought that he would strangle me.’

‘You told him where they are?’

‘I didn’t have to. He knew.’

‘How could he know?’

‘Perhaps she wrote to one of the girls. Perhaps Madame Chabot …’

‘She wouldn’t.’

‘Someone has, Madame. He has taken the car to Ecommoy. Oh Madame, Luigi and the baby! That little family! Be quick.’

Lise was looking at her watch. ‘I think there’s an express to Le Mans some time about now. He won’t be able to drive very fast, it’s the rush-hour. With luck, I’ll get there first. Fetch a taxi, Marcelline, while I get some money.’

I didn’t only get some money; from the drawer in Patrice’s desk in the office I took his gun. It was a small 6.35 automatic.

Lise made sure it was loaded; a calm efficiency had come on her in which she felt nothing, yet knew she would not make a mistake, not this time, thought Lise. What I have to do I shall do. The gun was small enough to go in her handbag.

She remembered how, in the hall, Coco, his lead still on him, had waited anxious at the foot of the stairs. ‘No, mon trésor, you must stay here.’ I gave him a swift pat. I didn’t know it was the last time I should see him.

Lise had made the taxi-driver go like the wind from Le Mans – only in that stifling August there was no wind; the roads were white with dust, the trees, as they passed, looked tinder-dry: they were as dusty as the roads and Lise felt dust in her nostrils and in her hair. They tore through villages bright with flowers where old women in overalls, flowered too, sat in open doorways knitting; the men were still in the fields, finishing the harvest with the younger women and children. Then the taxi swept into a little town – Lise had the impression of a sunlit square, the centre filled with cars, awnings over the shop fronts, an oversize church with a clock face. They drove to a street beyond and another leading off it, and ‘Stop!’ cried Lise.

Patrice had left his car at the end of the street – probably he did not want to attract attention. Lise left the taxi there too, threw the driver some notes and ran.

Patrice was standing on the doorstep of a small two-storeyed house, one of a row; Lise recognised it by Luigi’s geraniums, brilliant in a bed below the windows where the curtains were tightly drawn though it was so hot, the sun still blazing as it moved towards evening; they were crooked too, which gave the house a slatternly look. Mercifully it seemed that Vivi had not heard Patrice; probably she was asleep in one of her lazy kitten sleeps in which she liked to lie most of the day. Lise could hear a baby crying – Giovanni-Battista Giuliano – and she saw a woman’s head looking out from the window of the house next door, a watchful neighbour.

‘She didn’t have to look long,’ said Lise. ‘It only took two minutes.’

‘Patrice.’

‘You!’ He had stopped, astonished. ‘You.’

‘Yes, me. Don’t knock. Don’t dare to knock.’

He had turned. ‘What are you talking about? What are you doing here?’

‘You know very well what I’m doing here. Come away from that door.’

‘Don’t be silly, chérie, and don’t be so theatrical.’ He was laughing. ‘Just keep out of the way.’

Lise stood on the garden path, her hand was steady. ‘This is something you’re not to interfere with. You can’t have her, Patrice.’

‘No?’

‘No. Come away from that door.’

‘And if I won’t?’

‘I shall shoot you.’

‘Shoot then.’ He turned his back and, ‘I shot.’ Lise’s voice was dulled as she told it, first to Jacques Jouvin, then Soeur Marie Alcide – because she still could not believe it. ‘I shot twice; one shot hit the back of his neck, the other between his shoulders. For a moment he staggered, lurched against the door and fell sideways into the flower-bed.’

‘I turned him face upwards; blood was beginning to come up over his collar but he knew me as I knelt in the flower-bed bending over him.’

‘You!’ As if he could not believe that she, Lise, had done this to him – at last.

‘I heard the door open as he began to choke. “You – wouldn’t even let me see her.”’ His eyes were beginning to glaze, the red welling faster. ‘I bent closer, then …’

‘Then?’

‘Then there was no more breath. It was over.

‘I got to my feet, the automatic still in my hand. The front door was open a crack. Vivi had come down, I thought the shots must have woken her. I pushed open the door to go to her, hold her, tell her she was safe, but she was standing at the foot of the stairs like a furious little girl. “Why? Why? Why?” she screamed. “Why did you come?” and she wailed, “You have spoilt it all.”

‘“Spoilt it?” I must have stammered because she mocked me.

‘“Yes, s-sp-spoilt it. Don’t you see we were going away? He had come to fetch me.”

‘“Fetch you? But who told him? I never gave anything away, nor did Marcelline. How did he know?”

‘“Because I told him.” Vivi stamped her foot.

‘Neither of us heard the lorry that drew up at the gate among the crowd that was gathering; we didn’t hear the voices either and I had forgotten I had the gun still smoking in my hand.’

‘Told him!’ Lise could not believe it. ‘But … you knew what he would do.’

‘That’s what I wanted. Did you think I was going to stay here in this hole of a place all my life?’

‘But Luigi …’

‘That oaf!’

‘And your baby – Giovanni …’

Vivi shuddered. ‘Squalling, messing, driving me mad … and everyone talking, talking, scolding. Monsieur Patrice was going to take me away and I need never have come back, never, never. Now …’ She began to sob. ‘I hate you. I hate Luigi. I hate his brat.’

There was a sound like a whimper, the last whimper that comes after the screams of a tiny animal in mortal hurt, but it came from big Luigi as he stood at the open door. Then he looked at what was lying in his prize geraniums. Luigi moved slowly closer to it and bent down.

‘Is he …?’ The crowd had come into the garden. It was the woman from next door who spoke over the fence.

‘Mort.’ Luigi said it, stood up and ground the heel of his boot into Patrice’s face. The crowd gasped.

Vivi screamed and put her hands over her face. It was only then that Lise saw she was wearing a smart new suit and had a small suitcase.

Luigi had already seen. There was a babel now outside – voices, shouts. Luigi took no notice. He took no notice either of Vivi or of Lise but went straight up the stairs. He came down carrying a bundle, Giovanni-Battista Giuliano, wrapped in a blanket.

Luigi strode through the crowd and, with the bundle, got into his lorry.

The next moment they heard it drive away.