This wasn’t nice. It wasn’t nice at all.
‘Father! It’s you! I’m sent to collect you for the meeting. So you wouldn’t be late. I’m to give you a lift.’
On that evening, Christopher Goodwin would rather have walked through the valley of death. His heart sank as he stood at the door, looking down at the squashed face of Sister Margaret, who wore her veil halfway down her forehead like a helmet, forcing her eyebrows into a frown which was at odds with her smile. Her control of the red Volkswagen made it a death trap. His TV muttered in the background with the soothing noises of a cricket commentary. He was refreshed, if troubled, by his day away and Barbara was perfectly right, he had forgotten the nuns’ meeting and his tedious role of de facto chairman. All he could remember was that he could no more refuse the lift for the mere half mile than he could otherwise have turned off the television when Beckham was about to score a goal, and wasn’t it marvellous, the way that the obligation of manners and the desire not to cause even minor offence could make a man risk his own life without a word of protest. Such was the priesthood.
She winked at him. ‘C’mon, now, Father. It’s your last chance in this vehicle. Barbara says we have to sell the car and that’s a topic for this evening as well. What a shame.’
He got into the passenger seat and fumbled for the belt with a fixed smile on his face. Sister Margaret never bothered with hers, or with locking the car doors when she left it parked, so that it was a doubtful act of mercy that the beast had never been stolen. She made the sign of the Cross, sang out a prayer as she gunned the engine and the car lurched off the kerb with a screaming clutch. At the first junction, he closed his eyes, waiting for her to slow down and indicate, listening to her loud humming, which was the only sound above the protests of the wrong gears. She consigned each journey to Jesus and relied entirely on His protection, a faith so far rewarded, apart from the time she had taken Edmund to hospital with his stroke scare and he had fainted in the back. Sister Margaret knew that Jesus and Mary would see her through traffic lights of any colour and five-point turns on any highway, as long as she began with a prayer and did not stop. They arrived within five terrible minutes. He opened his eyes as the car hit the kerb and he was hauling himself out like an animal escaping captivity before he remembered the seat belt. So much for dignity. He could have murdered them both. The relentless good nature and blithe optimism worn on the sleeves of the likes of Margaret this afternoon was so intensely irritating that he wanted to scream, or bark, while on another day it might infect him with a broad smile and an awful tendency towards platitudes, such as, Have a nice day, It’ll be all right on the night, Don’t worry about anything, phrases that were no use to any troubled mind. He hardly noticed the black and white tiles of the passageway as Margaret spirited him through, only hoped that someone would come along and crush the damn car before there was any chance that he would be prevailed upon to get in it again, especially after dark. And it was that time of the year when darkness began to make itself felt earlier and earlier and the idle, polite talk would be of an Indian summer to compensate for the disappointments of the real summer passing and the sky broody with rain.
He could imagine who would be at the meeting, and hoped it included Anna, to add some substance and enliven the usual dull proceedings. They were pseudo democratic, these ill-attended meetings, invented by Barbara and frequented only by those who either were too humble to make suggestions or might otherwise be asleep. He did not know why Barbara convened them or why he, as Chaplain, should have to attend with the usual smattering of volunteers not clever enough to find alternative duties. Damn, damn, damn.
When he entered the parlour, he was late and cross, and found, dear God and all the saints, it was full to bursting. Anna sat at a table in the corner, looking suspiciously demure and tiny, facing a laptop, ready to take official minutes. She really did look useful like that and he was touched that Barbara had found her something to do.
‘Ah, here you are, Father,’ Barbara said, beaming. ‘And here we all are,’ she added irrelevantly. ‘Including Anna, who insists upon being helpful. She can work that machine that Monica’s niece gave us, which is more than I can. Now we’re hoping to keep this brief and be finished in time for supper. I’ve two motions to put before the meeting. The first is that we sell the car—’
‘But we need the car, Sister.’ The voice of Agnes rose, quavering. ‘Shopping and emergencies and—’
‘It costs about three thousand a year to keep the car,’ Barbara said firmly. ‘More, if you take into account all the repairs.’ She looked at Margaret, kindly. Divine protection had saved lives inside that car, but had not preserved the bodywork from her driving or the wing mirrors and windows from the attention of vandals. ‘Margaret is our only driver until Therese has a chance to learn, and even that’ll cost money.’
‘If I could make a suggestion,’ Anna said, raising her hand. They looked at her in alarm, ready to tolerate until she opened her mouth. Today, the laptop gave her a role and the proceedings a more official status. For once, Barbara was pleased with her, although she never liked to admit they needed help.
‘Yes?’
‘You could do the bulk shopping on-line,’ she tapped the screen of the computer, ‘and have it delivered, all the heavy goods anyway. That would save leg-work. And you could get a taxi account, so that whenever you needed one, you just phone. You’d have to go mad on taxis to spend anything like three thousand a year, even if you all use them.’
‘Excellent idea,’ Father Goodwin said. ‘A money saver and you’d have the money from the car itself to play with.’
‘That’s not the way it works,’ Barbara said. ‘There’s no money to play with.’
He rebuked himself.
‘And who would do the ordering of the stuff off the computer, which I suppose is what you mean by on-line,’ Barbara went on. ‘It was good to be given that thing, but nobody knows how to use it.’
‘I do,’ Anna said mildly. ‘Therese does and somebody else could learn.’
‘I bet you Francis knows how,’ said a voice from the side. Father Goodwin turned to look at poor Sister Joseph. She was always ‘poor’ Sister Joseph in his mind because, of all them, she was the only one who struck him as profoundly unhappy, on a different scale to the others with their various moods disciplined into an even state, while her misery was permanent and unconsolable, although he had tried more than once to define it and been turned away. In Joseph, he sensed a person who was not a natural celibate or even a believer; like himself, someone who had to fight for her state of grace.
‘Francis could do it,’ she repeated. ‘Francis can do everything.’
He realised, with a shock of surprise, that she was drunk. Badly inebriated rather than falling-off-the-chair drunk, her voice slurred and her face mottled. No one else appeared to notice and, as he watched, Joseph clamped her mouth shut, crossed her arms and sat straighter, aware of the danger of saying anything more. The hubbub that followed her contribution deflected attention and brought them round nicely to what they were all desperately anxious to discuss. Francis. Father Goodwin was puzzled, a frequent state and not always alarming. Francis, ah yes, the garden boy.
‘Can we sell the car and everything else, but keep Francis?’ Agnes asked, breathlessly. ‘That boy is a marvel. He’s mended my curtain rail and the hinge on the door . . .’
‘He mended the chapel window . . . no time at all . . .’
‘He changed the washer and stopped the tap leaking . . .’
‘He changed the sash cord . . .’
‘He put those shelves straight . . .’
‘And he sings, Father, he sings. Like an angel.’
‘What does he sing?’ Father Goodwin asked, still seeking clues, bewildered by the chorus. It seemed that he and Anna were the only ones in the room who needed them. The others were vying in the giving of praise.
‘He sings hymns, Father. Beautifully. “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of all nations” and “I know this my Redeemer lives” . . .’
‘And how he works. Like a wee slave.’
He scanned the faces, alive with enthusiasm, and succumbed to the slow realisation that in the course of a day, this boy Francis had been elevated to the level of a saint, into that dizzy realm of sanctified indispensability, which he himself had never occupied. A talented lad with a screwdriver and a bag of nails. It annoyed him. Only Matilda sat silent, counting the beads of her rosary, slower to believe in miracles.
‘Sisters,’ Barbara said, ‘Francis is a temporary worker, brought in by Edmund. We cannot possibly afford to keep them both. And we cannot let Edmund go.’
She looked at the priest for confirmation. He nodded.
‘Besides,’ she added, ‘he’s a young man and he wouldn’t stay for long. They never do.’
‘He said he would stay as long as we needed,’ Agnes said.
There was a silence, in which the priest detected disappointment rather than mutiny and wished that excitement came to them more naturally than resignation. He glanced at Joseph and wondered how the hell she had got hold of the drink or who had given it to her. Matilda gazed sadly in the same direction. Joseph kept her eyes on the ground.
‘But he’ll be here for a few days?’ someone asked, hopefully.
‘Yes. Not tomorrow. He’s away to see his mother. A good boy.’
Again, that chorus of approval.
‘You should get about five thousand for the car,’ Anna said, flatly. ‘I looked up the prices and Father Goodwin could announce it in church. It’ll go by the end of the day, for cash.’
Something had been accomplished. The buzz was satisfying.
Over the heads, Anna looked at Father Goodwin and smiled. A real smile, not the usual perfunctory thing, warm enough to have a temporary effect on the acute feeling of unease that had suddenly engulfed him even as he tried to fathom the source of it in the bustle of departures. It was his own, self-taught custom, which owed less to religious discipline than to necessity, that he should control the uncertainties of his temper by asking himself why, at any given time, should he feel as he did. Am I hurt to have another man praised to the skies and my presence ignored? Am I upset by that dreadful car journey? Is my blood sugar low? Am I an old man who hates change, even for the better, or am I worried by the fact that I must soon have this serious conversation with Anna and I dread it? Or has it occurred to me that the only person who could have fed poor Joseph with her own poison would be this gardening boy, because Barbara scarcely lets her out?
The meeting broke, as inconclusively as always. There was a drift towards supper. He was invited and refused; they had no time for him really. He walked through and into the garden, looking for Anna, hoping she had gone. Or maybe to find some trace of the miracle worker, Francis. The garden soothed him. It was exactly as a garden should be, with a small area of scarcely tamed ground leading on to a labyrinth, a total contrast to Kay’s garden. It was, he thought, a garden to the greater glory of God, because, like the Garden of Eden, it might well contain a serpent or two and of itself it revealed to man his own inadequacy in the face of nature. At least it did if the man in control was Edmund.
The kiss of the sun for pardon
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God’s heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.
Surely there was a tune to go with that? He began to hum. Halfway between the beginning and the end of this garden, from the point when he met that hideous statue of St Michael, only dignified in his own eyes by the amount of lichen obscuring the details of the figure, he realised that a person in search of hygienised nature in the middle of a city might be better off in the park. Indeed, that was where most of the Sisters tended to go, and with the park so near, perhaps the garden really was a waste. There was always the suspicion that Edmund let it run riot in order to deter intruders, to make life uncomfortable, since he was an awkward bugger, who might also be a breeder of rare spiders for all he knew. There was a sort of nurture going on here, which was difficult to detect. The path was swept, the bindweed under control and the shrubs were healthy. There was an interesting variety of plants of what Father Goodwin would have called the jungle variety, based only on his reading of the style sections of magazines where he so often looked and admired, the better to be able to hold informed conversations with the increasingly rich end of his parish when he visited their houses. He sighed as he pushed aside the fronds of a fern, disliking the feel of it while acknowledging that it was handsome in a savage kind of way. Whatever had happened to lawns and roses? The sigh was on account of his inability to stop his thoughts hopping about like so many baby frogs – or more like errant toads, he told himself, because down near the bottom of this garden, he was remembering that it had shocked him to realise he preferred to visit the houses and apartments of the rich, not only for the many pleasures of looking at their arrangements, but because it was usually easier on the spirit. If the rich were in spiritual need, he was rarely the only source to which they looked. They looked also towards doctors and psychiatrists and new age gurus, or they cured themselves, while the poor of the parish sometimes reached towards him like drowning men and he the only one to save them from hell. The only one who could fill in a form, contact a relative, claim housing benefit and tell them how to get legal aid and avoid deportation, or evict a violent husband, while he, so often, would have to shake his head and say, I cannot do all that. I cannot keep you alive. It is the lot of a priest in a secular society to have responsibility without the power to influence events, let alone pull strings down at the Department of Social Security. Or the Inland Revenue or the Police or the Bailiff. He paused and fished in his pockets.
Difficult to explain to a mother that he could not get her child off the street and into school and that all he could do was invite her to pray, be optimistic and resign herself to fate, because fate was the will of God, and belief would help, it would, honestly. He could only put her in touch with others in the same boat and mitigate the isolation. Nor could he tell the man that he was not going to die in hospital without his children around him although he had been called purely for the purpose of denial. He did not want the communicants who believed his every platitude, and on balance, was it so bad to prefer the rich? He had been a priest for a long time, become afraid of being considered indispensable, nervous of his inabilities in the face of raw need. It was simply that it was refreshing to be asked his advice by those who had other options, rather than being the one who was asked to throw the rope to the drowning man, while knowing that not only was the rope frayed, but it would not reach. Fewer and fewer of them called for a priest and he was ashamed of himself for being grateful.
He stopped by the fern, beyond what he called the St Michael Bend, and lit a cigarette. Five a day only, usually reserved for that blissful time when he sat in front of the television and listened to the roar of a crowd. If football had replaced religion as the opiate of the masses, he could not criticise since it certainly worked with him. God forgave everything, surely, even a priest who liked looking at the decor of handsome houses and gossiping about them more than he liked the insides of impoverished flats, and enjoyed spectator sports better than anything. At least he had no envy in him. He just liked the looking, was all, just as he enjoyed the sight of a beautiful woman. He was, he supposed, running out of emotional steam, wanted to be useful, but no longer wanted to be furious with pity. Compassion ate you alive. Someone was calling his name.
‘Is that you, Father?’
Even being called Father irritated him. He had a name, for God’s sake. He was nobody’s father, more was the pity, and he particularly disliked being called Father by men older than himself. Like Edmund, who had the same shape and reminded him of his own wrong turnings. But it wasn’t so bad to be hailed by Edmund, who had never, so far, demanded spiritual solace, thank God, and seemed devoid of day-to-day problems, apart from his health. Edmund would want one of his cigarettes and was welcome, even though he should not, since the man had had one stroke at least. Not a big one, but a warning and not bad enough to prevent him from racing back to his garden, Christopher remembered, although, looking at it now, it was difficult to see quite what it was that made him feel so necessary. Edmund was wonderfully slow moving. Whatever had provoked the stroke was not his excitable temperament, but probably an unfortunate genetic disposition together with an acquired addiction for booze and fags and a tendency towards tears, as well as all those wrong choices a single life makes.
He was crying now. A big, sad, clumsy man, sitting on the dirty bench, which would always be in the shade on the brightest day, and after a summer of plentiful, if inconsistent good weather, he was still pale, with the sagging abdomen Father Goodwin somehow associated with the celibate and hated to see in himself. Approaching, he disposed himself towards sympathy and fumbled again in his trouser pocket for the cigarettes. He should carry more than his own ration: they were far more effective consolation for those so inclined than anything else, and he could hardly refuse to offer one when he had one lit himself. Without the cigarette, Edmund might not have known he was there. Oh, dear, how tiresome it was to have to manufacture sympathy instead of having it available in an endless, free supply. And to have those hopping thoughts interfere to remind him that while Edmund was a good soul, he was also a very plain man for whom washing was not a priority. It was easier to help clean, healthy people. A true saint would not notice the difference, but Christopher was not a saint, and he did.
‘What ails you, Edmund?’ he asked, heartily, sitting beside him and patting his thigh with his left hand, determined not to relinquish the cigarette.Then he looked down at Edmund’s big feet, preparing himself to meet his eyes, and he could see exactly what was making the man cry. Within a yard were four bird corpses, blackbirds, he guessed without knowing one from another, although a closer glance showed them to be different sizes, and, it followed, different breeds. The cigarette dropped from his fingers and he brushed it away.
‘Will you bless them, Father?’ Edmund asked, calmly. ‘Before I bury them?’
‘They can have the full rites.’
He improvised. ‘In your mercy, Lord, dispel the darkness of their night. Let their household so sleep in peace, that at the dawn of a new day, they may, with joy, awaken in your name. Through Christ our Lord, Amen.’ This did not seem adequate. The priest moved to the corpses, made the sign of the Cross over each in turn, intoning softly, ‘Upon you no evil shall fall, no plague approach where you dwell. For you He has commanded his angels, to keep you in all His ways. Amen.’
Edmund blew his nose. ‘Thank you, Father.’
Christopher Goodwin sat down again and produced the cigarettes. Maybe it was disrespectful to smoke in the presence of death but Edmund would be the judge of that. He took a cigarette from the miserable packet of ten and Father Goodwin had an irrelevant memory of a grieving son who, when it came to the time to toss the clod of earth on to the coffin, had absent-mindedly thrown in a fag end instead. It was still grief.
‘Were they killed by a cat?’ he asked. Edmund began to shake. It looked as if he might weep again. He looked at the cigarette burning in his fingers and took a shuddering draw on it instead.
‘They were . . . they were . . . murdered.’
‘Surely not.’
‘She was right,’ he murmured. ‘Matilda was right . . . She told me this morning he was a wicked boy and he shot the magpie and he poisoned these. What am I to think, Father? I loved him.’
‘Loved who, Edmund?’
The cigarette was finished during this halting speech, which contained more pauses than words. They were as many words as Edmund could manage. He seemed, finally, to sense Father’s inadequacy and pity him for it.
‘Never mind, Father. The wicked get punished, don’t they?’
‘Not always in this life, Edmund, but often enough. Are you all right now? Shall I help you with the burial?’
‘He’s careful. He killed the females so the big boys won’t come back to nest,’ Edmund said.
‘Who did?’
‘Never mind,’ Edmund repeated. ‘I’d better get on. And so’d you, I expect.’
‘Can I send someone to you?’
‘No, thank you. Matilda will be out after supper. She says her prayers out here, you know.’ ‘Does she?’
‘Thanks for the cigarette, Father. I owe you.’
The sense of unease had come back in full force, along with that familiar sense of being redundant. Feeling insensitive and unkind, Christopher Goodwin left.
It was half past six, the ridiculously early hour at which the Sisters sat down to a meal which he would have called tea and they, in their wisdom, called supper. Cold meats and salads at this time of year, augmented by soups and things on toast when the weather grew brisk. Some ate like troopers, others like sparrows, and the virtually bed-ridden group, which had included Sister Jude, ate nursery food in solitude. These he was supposed to visit on a weekly basis at least, depending on their state of health, which meant that up until now, he had stayed five minutes with Pauline and Dympna (who, as befitted one with the name of the patron saint of mental illness, was away with the fairies), and as many hours as he could spare with Sister Jude, who was never asleep and always lucid. He missed her and it reminded him that he was too frail for further effort this evening, too much on his mind even before Edmund and his dead birds. He detoured to the chapel. Snatched items from the meeting had lodged in his memory, something about the window being broken and mended in a miraculous way, leaving a residue of curiosity which, when he was as tired as he felt today, remained the only emotion he could sustain.
It looked the same as ever, the same as it had been when he said Mass here the Sunday before and less adorned than it had been when he had seen it with Jude’s body lying in state amid the floral tributes she would have enjoyed better if she had received them when she was alive. There was no sign that any window had been broken: the room remained quiet and serene, mercifully free from the excessive and lurid statuary that marred so many a Holy Roman Church. Really, he was becoming so intolerant, reaching a state in life when mere opinion became so callused it turned into a prejudice. Maybe that joyful anarchist Kay was right and it was time to look for another religion. One without recrimination, prospects of hell and promises of heaven; one entirely without decorative gold leaf. One actually shared by the majority of the population. A life without duty and the burden of secrets.
Ahead of him, nearest the altar, was Anna, sitting, not kneeling mind, but still in an attitude of thought. The sight of her was obscurely disappointing. It should have gladdened his heart but had the reverse effect. He slunk down the black and white corridor, feeling like a criminal for the second time in ten minutes, past the refectory and the sound of talking, out of the front door, which was for once unguarded by Agnes. He felt like Judas.
Christopher: named for a famous saint and yet there was no benevolence about him today, no blessing from that saint as he strode down the road, so relieved not to be in the car that he walked like an athlete in training, thinking of the legend of his name and how he would tell it. That saint was a big man, a giant who wished to serve only the strongest and most magnificent of kings. Now, one great king and the promises of the devil had tempted him into service, but their demands were so puerile they disappointed him, and he defected into the life of a hermit, settled by the side of a dangerous river, where his self-appointed task was to carry travellers across, in a humble but useful employment for his physique, until one dark and stormy night, while he was carrying a mere baby across the torrent, the child became heavier and heavier, until he stumbled and sweated and almost fell, in despair of his own strength. Ah, said the child, I am Jesus, the king you have always been seeking, you are carrying the weight of the whole world.
My dear Anna, Father Goodwin, née Christopher, told her in mental communication, which lasted him until he turned into the park, that is what it is to have this belief. It is a tyranny as well as a blessing. Please do not succumb, or at least, not yet. Let the hound of heaven bite at your heels for a long time before you turn and feed it.
It was a park of peculiar beauty, his frequent solace. As an added incentive for him to walk further, it surrounded a football ground for children to practise and he loved to watch them. Tiny schoolboys, kicking the shit out of the thing, sometimes indistinguishable in mud, playing in all weathers with no audience, no cries from a crowd, only exhortations from coaches and parents, and a burning desire to win in an orchestrated riot of energy. He never watched for long, in case anyone should assume that a dog-collared, cheap-suited man must be either a halfwit or a paedophile, although no one had ever thought so, as far as he knew. Paedophiles didn’t chat to parents and yell themselves hoarse as he was inclined to do, but still, he left before the end. There was always a point in a game where he knew who would win, but it was a shame to miss the individual act of courage, the verve of the one who could play in the team and play without it.
He could write her a letter, rehearsed it in his head. Dear Anna, Please continue being a pagan. Do not assume the mantle of a creed. Make your own rules.You have had the most appalling examples to follow, although you don’t know it yet. Your mother, the saint … Ah well. Leave us, make a life without rules. Just make one. Do not kneel to anyone or anything. Never, ever kneel.
And then he thought, what about all the other letters Anna must have received and Sister Jude alluded to? Letters regarding deaths, her mother’s and her father’s. What would she want with an old fool adding his own?
Inside the chapel, she did not kneel. She never knelt, she simply conversed, in the manner Sister Jude had suggested, without the suggestion ever becoming an order. The window was mended without a trace of the destruction she had seen, as if it had never happened, truly a miracle.
‘He walked me home, Lord, but I left him on the corner for the last bit. I don’t want him to know where I live, although he might know already. Christ almighty, is he serious or is he serious? Anyway, I might have been late for the meeting if I hadn’t run. I’m sure you approve.’
She eased her shoes off her feet. They were all still at supper and much more animated than usual, so that would last longer and leave her in peace. Her feet smelled slightly from a long day in trainers, but the Lord would have to put up with that. This wasn’t the climate for going about barefoot, or wearing a long cotton robe like a disciple.
‘Trust me to find another God freak,’ she continued, twiddling her toes. ‘With a hole in the brain, but maybe that’s what you intended. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll be delighted to know I’ve signed all these silly billies up for a taxi account. Told bloody Barbara I could get her a discount, and as you know that’s always a draw. ’S’what Catholics have in common, always after a discount. Poor cow. I can’t get her a discount, of course, but that isn’t the point. How do you feel about lies?’
Black and white tiles in the corridor. Black lies are bad, white lies are fair.
‘You know the trouble with you?’ Anna said. ‘You’re looking such a pillock. Time to change the garments and upgrade. Get yourself an image. Make them speak Latin or something, get back a bit of that old mystique that everyone can sing along with. Credo in Unum Deum, get it chanted on a single note by absolute wallies in pink cassocks, that’ll get them in. Evening classes. You’ll get all the anoraks who can’t otherwise string a tune. Plenty of those.’
She rested her bare feet on the chairback in front, tilting it towards her, the better to examine her toes. Fine little feet, which did not, at the moment, seem admirable. Too small for further use and uselessly perfect, apart from the grime between the toes.
‘I tell you what, Lord. You were my best fucking mate when I was a kid, and then you buggered off and left me. And I could quite see why, because you were never there at all. Big-time illusion. Why didn’t you make us well? Why have I got that priest on my back trying to tell me why we were cooped up for so long and my father left? Does he think I don’t know? Well, I do know. Simple. He was too bad and she was too good.’
She put her feet back into shoes. It was getting cold and she did not want to lose her sense of jubilation. She leant towards the window, stared at the mended pane, willing it to do it again, wanting the sound of the smash, sitting back with her feet warm, wanting to be home and knowing it was near.
‘You know what he said, Lordy? He said, aren’t you small, and why are you so small? I said, you aren’t so tall, either, you’re half the size of my father and what’s it got to do with you if I never grew? He’s called Ravi. He’s a Hindu. And do you know what he said to me? He said that all Gods are good Gods and all religions teach harmony. Why didn’t anyone tell me that when I was ten? Anyway, I kidded him about it. Aren’t we a sad pair? I told him. Two people of our age, walking down roads on a nice afternoon, talking about God. I mean, how sad can you get?’
She considered her feet and turned her face to the window.
‘Anyway, I thought I’d let you know that for all the bad stuff Allah’s supposed to have inspired, I think I like the sound of him better than you. And if I took up with Mohammed, I could still have Jesus and the Archangel Michael. But it looks like I’d better look at the Hindu first.’
She bent down and retied her shoelaces.
‘Speaking of which,’ she addressed the window behind the crucifix, ‘I don’t know what you did with that guardian angel of mine. Aren’t we all supposed to have one? Muslims have two, you know. I’d be no good as a Hindu. No point thinking about it, I’m too impure. And I haven’t got the option of honouring my father and my mother, have I? He left us and she’s dead. That shocked Ravi. He said Hindus wouldn’t do that. Do what, I said, die? Completely fucking pathetic, he is, when he should have been saying your place or mine if he knew what he was dealing with, just so I could say I never fuck in my place.’
Silence.
She yawned and rose.
‘Night-night, Lord. Take care of Therese, even if you do a lousy job.’ Then she sat down again. ‘Look, OK. I’m beginning to see something about my sister. If this is where she thinks she belongs, she’d better stay. If this is where she gets happiness, she’s got to have it. And that means I do anything, I mean anything, to keep this place afloat. Understood?’
She went slowly down the black and white corridor. Agnes was by the door. Agnes loved to be touched and hugged, so on an impulse, remembering with gratitude her voice, singing so unaffectedly by Sister Jude’s grave, Anna patted her on her plump shoulder and found her own hand gripped and squeezed hard.
‘Night, Aggie.You should do some more singing.’
‘Goodnight, dear. I’m a very happy woman today. Do you know why?’ She pulled Anna down to whisper in her ear. ‘My son came to find me.’
Ah well, they all talked in code, sometimes. God made everyone batty, not necessarily bad.
Back inside her own flat, Anna went up to the roof. The sky was clear in one of those perfect evenings that made her feel cheated of the day until she remembered the rain, and Ravi. The trees by the chapel window shimmered as the shadows deepened. At the rear of the garden, she could make out the figure of Edmund, sitting. Too cold for an old man to sit out as if he had no home; it was late for him to be there, but that was his choice and Matilda would be somewhere around until darkness fell completely. How well she knew their routines in the garden, although not what any one of them really thought, believed, needed, and she was suddenly humbled. If Ravi the Hindu paid respect to other, alien creeds, then so should she.
Down below, among the silent shrubs, she thought she saw a flash of gold. A moving head, standing by Edmund’s side and just as suddenly obscured. There would be a full moon tonight and Anna was too tired to watch for it; she would wait for the new moon and wish on that. Her whole small body vibrated with a massive, satisfying yawn. It was so peaceful out there and she had made her mark today, spoken out and someone had listened. She knew, for once, what it was like not to be angry. Maybe God lived on the moon and that was his face.
‘Matilda? Are you there? Help me, please . . .’
‘It isn’t Matilda.’
‘In the name of God, help me. Oh, you bastard boy. You killed them.’
‘And I shall kill all the others. The thrush and the sparrow. Destroy all the nests.You can die as soon as you like, old man.’
‘Help me . . .’
Darkness fell early.
Autumn began with a scowl on the face of the moon.