Therese was wide awake.
She had sensed the disturbances of the early part of the night, rather than heard. She kept to her room in obedience to the general rule made for the good and the peace of them all.
Hers was on the first floor, at an angle of the building facing the roof of the opposite house, with a limited view of the road. The other Sisters on this floor included the habit-wearing seniors of the sorority, which long ago she and Anna described as penguins. Most had a TV or radio, and although the rule of respecting personal privacy was not written in stone, it was followed out of preference. Each room was sparse without being spartan, equipped with a washbasin; there was an amicable sharing of one bathroom and two lavatories and an unspoken agreement of silence at night. None of the rooms had a mirror.
Therese had heard the swish of Matilda’s robes down the linoleum corridor as she began to contemplate sleep, guessed who it was by the footsteps, which she knew by heart. Matilda stayed awake late and when Agnes sometimes wept at night, it was Matilda who went to her. There would be brief, soft murmurings, followed by silence, occasions when Therese realised that she could never quite share their thoughts or their preoccupations, because she did not know what they were. They might share a set of circumstances and a code of behaviour, but they were old and she was young.
Sister Joseph’s room was immediately above Therese’s on the next floor, with an empty room on either side, an unplanned isolation occurring by accident after one Sister had moved to another convent and Sister Jude had died, leaving Joseph almost exclusive use of the bathroom on that floor, which suited such an assiduous washer who insisted upon doing her own laundry instead of putting it in a laundry bag for Sunday night collection like all the others. The old partition walls were solid enough to deaden most sound, except cries, the loudest of snores and the most persistent of coughs, which Therese could hear now as a long night moved towards dawn.
The sound of it vexed her beyond endurance and she blamed it for her inability to pray. By the weak light of her reading lamp, she had read again the advice of St Therese of Lisieux on how to turn an irritating noise into a sacrifice. I set myself to listen attentively as though it were delightful music, and my meditation was passed in offering this music to Our Lord.
Therese found this exercise impossible and so she tried the comforting, formulaic prayer of the rosary, skipping the beginning, going on to the Lord’s Prayer, followed by ten, whispered Hail Marys, while she tried to keep her mind fixed on the Joyful Mysteries of the Annunciation of the Conception of Jesus and His Nativity, her mind slipping constantly into the present. There were spells of blissful silence between the distant coughing; in each pause, she would hold her breath and pray it had finished. Then it started again.
Therese gritted her teeth and thought about faces instead, which put the origin of the cough into perspective. Poor Joseph. Surely, when you were as old as Joseph, you had got life sorted. She lay back in her bed and stared at the ceiling, seeing, in colour, Joseph’s mottled face in the stark white of the paint, finding that her contemplation of that face lessened her irritation with the owner of it, realising, not for the first time, that she was merely a practical person without the makings of a mystic. She was better at doing than thinking: she would never be able to make her mind transcend the interruption of sound, or the memory of a face.
It had never really occurred to her before seeing Joseph in the chapel that a person with their profound and all-encompassing belief in God could be lonely. They could be unhappy, from time to time, yes; troubled by events, and personal inadequacies, beset by challenges, often ashamed, but never lonely. It was impossible to comprehend, because it was the very essence of her belief that God and his saints never slept, that they never failed to listen and always forgave. God was a father, tied by an umbilical cord to all his children. Forgiveness was natural; His face was never turned away from an apology. Saints did not sulk and take umbrage like parents even if you disappointed them; they were constant companions, friends and family for life and beyond. So how could anyone be lonely, even if they were sad? Repentance for failures always equalled forgiveness.
And yet that was what Joseph had been; gut-churningly, utterly lonely, beyond the reach of any intercession, beyond asking. The thought of that frightened Therese because she could not see how it could happen. The coughing resumed. This time it was more pitiful than irritating. If Joseph did not seek help, it was not for her to interfere, other than to tell her superiors and let them, in their wisdom, find solutions. To act otherwise was to compound yesterday’s disobedience.
And then, other favourite words swam into mind. Love is patient; love is kind and envies no one. Love is never boastful or conceited, nor rude, never selfish, not quick to take offence. Love keeps no score of wrongs . . . I may speak in tongues of men or angels, but if I am without love, I am a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal . . .
Therese buttoned her heavy nightgown up to the neck, slipped out of her room, down the corridor towards the stairs. Light framed Matilda’s door, but if she was awake, she would not hear. Therese had not needed to learn the art of quiet movement; she had seemed to know it in advance of living here, could not remember ever making a noise. The door of Joseph’s room was also framed in light. She was relieved about that; at least she was not saving electricity by sharing her misery with the dark. Therese knocked softly and entered without invitation. There was a fusty smell to the room, although the small window was open wide, and Joseph was hunched over the washbasin. She turned a baleful glare on her visitor and began to splash water on her face. The front of her white nightgown was splattered with blood.
Therese swallowed. The splatters of blood were brilliantly red against the white of the old gown, which Joseph would have cleaned herself. She finished washing her face. The vomiting spasm had passed and her skin was as pale as plaster. Therese stood awkwardly, staring at her as she wiped her face dry. Joseph smiled. There was always something sardonic about Joseph’s smile, as if she had to force it into operation.
‘Hello, little Therese. Come to help again? Could you reach me my other nightgown – from the cupboard, there. If I don’t soak this one, it’ll stain.’
Therese did as she was told. There was a folded nightgown, identical to the one Joseph wore, on the top shelf of the tiny wardrobe, which was otherwise occupied by nothing but a coat, a blouse and a pair of shoes. She reached down the gown and stood holding it until Joseph snatched it from her hands.
‘Turn round, child.’
Therese turned her face to the door, heard the rustle of cotton as Joseph pulled the soiled dress over her head, and replaced it with the clean one. Only in the event of illness were the Sisters ever on such intimate terms as this. Therese knew she could cope with a dead body, but she had a horror of seeing Joseph naked.
‘There, that’s better.You can turn round now.’
Therese turned. Joseph bent to collect the nightdress crumpled at her feet, groaning as she did so.
‘Here, let me—’
‘No!’
She watched as Joseph began to rinse the bodice of the gown in the washbasin, which was too small to accommodate it. Everything in the room was small. Therese felt she fitted into her own, identical space as neatly as if it had been made for her, but could imagine that Joseph, tall, gaunt, clumsy and twice her weight, would bruise herself in the restricted space as she prepared for bed. She watched, mesmerised by the pink water, as Joseph rinsed. Cleanliness is next to godliness, but it seemed strange in someone who was content to poison her own body, to say nothing of her own mind. Perhaps the washing was a secret penance; maybe it had a purpose. Joseph began to shiver.
‘Get into bed, Sister. I’ll finish that.’
Joseph lurched the two steps to the bed, which also seemed too small for her. The window was alongside, curtains drawn back, showing a shiny new catch, which kept it propped open. For Therese, obedience from someone so much older was a disturbing novelty. She wrung moisture from the nightgown and spread it over the basin. Then she took the cushion from the single chair and placed it behind Joseph’s head to supplement the single pillow.
‘Thank you, child. You’re very kind. May your reward be on earth, rather than in heaven.’
Therese sat on the edge of the bed, gingerly. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she asked bluntly. She had been considering the wisdom of asking, Do you want me to call Barbara, the doctor, anyone? but she knew the answer would be no.
‘Cirrhosis, dear. Acquired in the service of Jesus, in foreign parts.’
Therese understood. The medical dictionary had once been a Bible for herself and Anna as they looked up their own symptoms without ever finding any real answers. They began with A and went on to Z. Mother had encouraged it.
‘So drink could kill you.’
‘Will kill me, with a bit of luck.’
‘Is that why you want it?’
Joseph fiddled with the neck of the gown. The brown liver spots on her hands were like extra large, misshapen freckles.
‘Possibly. Mostly I want it because I want it, and life is completely meaningless, dull and futile without it. Not worth having. Don’t worry your head, child. You couldn’t possibly understand.’
‘No, Sister, I don’t understand. I can’t—’
‘Sister Jude understood,’Joseph went on. ‘But then Jude understood everything, that old fraud.’
‘Fraud?’
‘Such a liar, that woman. I never knew one half as good at keeping opinions to herself, which is the same as lying. No one’s interested in my opinions, she would say. I write them on the back of holy pictures to keep them short and stuff them in my missal, she said.’
‘And what do you do with yours, Sister?’Therese asked, trying to lighten the tone.
‘Swallow them whole and cough them up.’ She laughed drily. She was beginning to become sleepy; it softened the lines of her face.
‘You seem to have forgotten to ask God to help you.’
Joseph’s eyes shot wide open. She was terrifyingly amused. ‘Oh, Him? My dear, we parted company a long time ago. No more transmissions. Over and out. Neither giving or receiving. The radio bust. Knock, knock, nobody home. I told him, God, you’re so boring. He left.’
If Joseph had spat or peed,Therese could not have been more shocked. She struggled with the very idea of believing that God the Father would simply go away, like her own parent had done, leaving behind a great big space. She knew such a prospect would make sense to Anna, or someone like Kim, who had never crossed that barrier or felt that presence, like a pair of enfolding arms, but for an old woman who was a lifetime servant of the Lord, it seemed an obscene admission of negligence. One who knew God could never send Him away; He would not allow it. It was impossible to lose something that was essentially yours and as much a part of you as the blood in your veins. The martyrs had preferred to die rather than take that risk; so, she thought, would she.
‘Inconceivable, you think? Faith might be a gift, Therese, but don’t bank on it being permanent. It can leave you just like that, or you leave it. And once it’s gone, you can’t nurture it back into life, whatever St bloody Therese says. Once you start to realise the possibility that man made God for his own convenience, rather than the other way round, you’ve got Him on the run. Let in the light of logic and He goes to ground. As unreliable as anything else synthetic and man-made.’
She laughed again, humourlessly. Therese kept her gaze fixed on the bedspread, to avoid scrutiny and the pounding of her own heart.
‘How many of us have real belief,Therese? How many of us here? We, the quintessential believers? What do you imagine we think about? Agnes dreams of the bastard son who was taken from her. She sees him in every young man she encounters, although he’d be old himself, now. Barbara thinks of the Lord as an occupational hazard. Poor Father Goodwin continues with what tattered remnants of faith he has left. My dear Matilda, to whom I dare not speak in case I spread corruption . . . Matilda spends all day chatting to St Michael, who probably resembles someone she once saw in a film. He is, after all, the patron saint of policemen and other fascists. It isn’t worship, it’s idolatrous hero worship. Everyone has their own God. We make the one that suits us.’
Therese wanted to scream at her to stop. It wasn’t true, any of it. It was the drink talking, even if Joseph was sickly sober. Drink made people mad: it made Anna nasty, her father pathetic, it was the stuff of devilment. Tomorrow, she was going to get Francis, tell him what he had done . . . For the moment, she was angrily calm.
‘If you don’t believe, Sister, and you feel God has deserted you, why do you stay?’
‘Don’t be naive, child. Where would I go? With what would I go? No, the Church has had the best of me, it can have the worst.’
She pulled the blankets up over her chin, so that all Anna could see was her haunting, blazing eyes.
‘I’m sorry, child. I’m being grotesquely unkind. Loneliness should not be contagious. You’d better go for your beauty sleep. I’d rather you didn’t tell Barbara about the coughing. She has enough to do. It wouldn’t be charitable to either of us.’
Therese nodded, aware that it was a promise. Joseph closed her eyes. On the other side of the door, with the first hint of daylight beginning to creep along the floor from the long window at the end, Therese paused. Instead of going straight back to her room, she went to the one next to Joseph’s which Sister Jude had occupied. It was clean, but not entirely cleared. Each of the Order and Jude’s relatives had taken from her shelves whatever they had wished, either to remember her by, or because they liked it. The selection had been small. Poetry, prose, a minimum of religion, the maximum of music for her Walkman, which had gone, the radio, which was gone, leaving a few literary souvenirs. Therese found herself searching for the spot where the missal had been, remembered how she had taken it for Anna, because it was Anna Jude loved. Anna who did what Jude liked best, argued, raised the devil, asked questions and demanded answers, making Jude test herself, age against youth, so that they lost their tempers with one another. Therese would never have dared to do that, any more than she would have wanted to do it. She hated confrontation. She had thought obedience was natural. Jude had never respected her for that. Her sainted aunt had a preference for sinners, did not believe what her own mother had taught her by example, Be good, sweet maid. And let who will be clever.
It was Jude who advised her against following her vocation; Jude who said no child should ever do a thing because her mother wished it. But that was not why she had done it. Nor had she entered the Order because she thought it would be easy. She had done it because it felt entirely natural and she had been confident it would always feel like that. On her way back to her own room, grateful for the dawn, she found herself feeling envious of Anna. Wanted a touch of that anger, as well as a touch of the street wisdom, which would teach her what to do with Francis, who by the simple act of supplying Joseph with her own poison had made her imagine that she had lost her faith. Faith could be spat upon and scorned, but never lost. What rubbish. She would find Francis and tell him not to do this and then everything would be all right. She would appeal to the better nature every soul had. Stripping off her own nightgown, pulling on her day clothes and washing her own face before she clipped back her hair, she encountered the sneaky, unknown thought that she would prefer a better, less scratchy nightdress than this, and if she were ever to die, which seemed a remote possibility, she would also prefer to have more than a single pair of shoes.
Kim came in early. ‘Only thing that bastard ever does,’ she grumbled, ‘is give the little sods breakfast and take them to school. Bastard. I’d rather be here than round our place. It’s a madhouse. Hey, Treesa, are you awake? How long have you been sitting there? You gonna talk to me or what? Otherwise, I might as well stay home.’
The kitchen was beautifully empty; a place waiting to spring into life. Being in it cheered Therese immeasurably. It was her favourite place; there was nothing wrong with being Mary rather than Martha and she desperately needed to laugh. So, sighing dramatically, she launched into the familiar Monday morning routine she and Kim had perfected.
‘I’m a bit weary, to be honest. Shagged out, as a matter of fact, Kim. Weekends in here get so wild. Clubbing Saturday night. Vodka and ketchup, ever tried it? Lethal. Sunday morning, ended up God knows where with the Sisters, sobering up and hanging out with the priests. Back up here for a line of coke and bacon sandwiches.You know how it is. Tiring.’
‘That’s better! Thought you were dead. So who got luvverly Francis, then? No luck?’
‘No, we took a vote. We decided he preferred blokes.’
‘You don’t say! Makes sense, though, doesn’t it? Such a pretty boy.’
‘What makes sense? Nuns on coke, or what?’
‘Francis, being gay. Name like that, hair like that, you know. Shame, innit? What a bloody waste. Oh, forget it. He’s still shaggable.’
Overwhelmed by a sudden sense of her own ignorance, Therese sat down. She could never play this game for very long.
‘How do you know if a man’s gay?’
Kim was decanting milk into a jug. The kettle was coming to the boil. Everything was cheerful and soon there would be food on the table. Therese was ravenously hungry.
‘Gay men? You don’t know. Only they’re often too good-looking for their own good and they sometimes wear their willies on the outside. They like perfume, wash more than ordinary. That’s one sign, anyway. Oh, and they know how to be nice to women. Come to think of it, that would suit Francis down to a T. Gay chaps know how to get on with girls. I mean they talk to us, which is more than the other buggers do.’
‘Ah.’
‘Shame none of you scored. Do you want coffee for your hangover?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘I think you ought to stay indoors more,Treesa. Have an early night for a change. Get Francis to tuck you in. If he’s gay, he’ll be safe as houses, even if you throw your knickers at him. Which reminds me. We’ve got to do the laundry today. Get it started before breakfast.’
The laundry bags, collected from the Sisters’ rooms each week, stood in the scullery off the kitchen, which housed the boiler, a hanging rail and a large, noisy washing machine.
‘I think we ought to get Francis in to look at that washer, Treesa. Give you a chance to get to know him, like everyone else.You just smile at him and scuttle away.You haven’t talked to him yet, have you?’
‘No, but I want to.’
‘Get you, you cheeky sod! Why’s that then?’
‘I want to ask him not to run errands for Sister Joseph.’
‘Oh, he does, does he? Well, I can hardly blame him for that. She’s very persuasive. She was always asking me and it was hard to say no. Sweet youth like Francis hasn’t got a chance. She’ll tell him he was doing her a kindness.’
Therese sat, rooted to the chair. How very, very little she knew. As little about their bodies as their souls. How much they conspired to protect her.
‘I don’t understand where she gets the money.’
‘She’s got some of her own. And I can tell it isn’t you polishes the collection box by the chapel. Someone gets the bottom off and robs a bit every week before anyone counts. Easy. Are you all right, Treesa?’
She was not all right; she was reeling with shock all over again. Poor Joseph really was a soul damned to eternity, or at least in the eyes of Sister Barbara. She sipped the coffee and wished it had more taste.
‘Laundry,’ she said.
Dealing with the personal laundry of a dozen women bore no resemblance to the tasks described by St Therese of Lisieux in her cold convent cellar, battling with dirty water and filthy suds. It was merely a simple job of sorting the contents of the laundry bags into two piles with the rough division of delicate and hardy. Most of it was hardy, but the process of sorting always felt like prying to Therese. Each Sister placed her underwear into the bag in which she would receive it back. There were a vast number of handkerchiefs, which seemed to be essential. Therese hated the handkerchiefs, while Kim always either laughed or tut tutted over the rest. There were Agnes’s flannelette bloomers, worn winter and summer, Barbara’s monstrous, indestructible bras, the sometimes more holey than godly vests preferred by the others, the schoolgirl sensible stuff used by the youngest, including Therese, and not a trace of lace anywhere. Except on the handkerchiefs, those items most often given to the Sisters by relatives for lack of anything else appropriate. Embroidered hankies, colourful hankies, linen and silk hankies. Matilda went through a dozen a week. They formed the bulk of her laundry. Nestled down among them at the bottom of her bag was a knife.
Not a particularly sinister-looking knife, but lethal all the same. A fruit knife with a rope-strapped handle and a short blade which looked as if it had been honed to dangerous, surgical sharpness on a stone. If Therese had not been so timid in extracting the handkerchiefs, the pointed blade would have nicked her fingers. She put it on top of the washing machine and both of them looked at it. A laundry bag was a good hiding place, but why was she keeping a knife? Such a sharp knife.
Barbara’s voice rang out from the kitchen. ‘Bendicamus Domino!’
‘Deo Gratias,’Therese murmured, slipping the knife into the pocket of her tunic while Kim carried on as if nothing had happened. Secrecy was becoming second nature.
Kim grabbed the last garment, which she had been waving round her head like a flag, stuffed it inside and slammed the door of the washing machine. Barbara hove into view, filling the door of the utility room with her feet, as if she was about to flow inside and all around them, like lava. Her normal demeanour was one of relentless cheerfulness, overseen by those scrutinising eyes, which seemed to take in every detail, while smiling throughout. The smile was missing today. She looked indefatigable, but tired. It was Kim’s daily complaint that she hated the woman, which Therese had long since translated as a benign kind of fear and a hearty dislike of being bossed about. For Therese, Barbara was in another sphere. She was the first adult human being she could remember as having taken her seriously and she was afraid of her in an awesome way. Barbara was the embodiment of all higher authority, the representative of the Order she obeyed and the person who knew the answers to everything. But in that one moment, with Barbara’s feet and Barbara’s bosom swelling into the small space, she could only think of the bosom and the monstrous brassiere Kim had just stuffed into the circular mouth of the washing machine.
The item, lying within sight in the machine, resembled part of a comical suit of armour. Therese looked at it as if she had never seen it before. Barbara’s posture was part of her authority. She wore her bosom high, so that it preceded her, like a woman carrying a box, and only the two of them here knew the superstructure that lay behind.
‘Good, good.You’re at work.’
She was a trifle agitated, but the solid bosom trembled not a bit. Two white bras she had, wire and cotton, grey straps and six hooks and eyes. When she was agitated, she forgot to keep her voice down and she had not remembered to brush her hair.
‘Always, Sister,’ Kim said demurely.
‘Terrific,’ Barbara said. ‘Keep it up. Keep your pecker up! Therese, a word with you after breakfast, please.’
She swept away, and as soon as her squeaky shoes were out of hearing they both began to giggle, nervously.
‘What does she know about peckers?’ Kim said.
‘Probably more than me,’ Therese said, unsure of what she meant. In Kim’s laughter, somehow the knife was forgotten. Being late with the breakfast had all the makings of a sin. Despite her hunger she would not eat the breakfast, in reparation for the laughter, which felt, if not sinful, something close to it.
There was a hierarchy of sins. There were the sins committed on a daily basis – evasions, dishonesties, the failures to remember holy things. Therese had learned her catechism the way other children learned to count, but the definitions of what made a sin mortal and what made it venial were more difficult. There was no straight line between the two. The venial was the daily sin, easily expunged; the mortal was the sin that divorced the soul from God. If a person died with such an unrepented sin scarring their soul, they would never be reunited in the next life with the God who had made them. The thought was enough to strike terror: it was the threat of permanent expulsion from everything that could provide happiness or safety, but all the same, she was never sure what kind of a sin it could be. A sin that slaps God in the face, Jude had defined it. A really serious sin.Your conscience will tell you when it is yours, even if the reactions of others do not make it clear, because you will despise yourself and know that your Father waits for you to acknowledge what you have done and make amends.You will feel it in your bones. But what kind of sin is it? she had asked. Is there a list? No, no list, apart from the ten commandments and the catechism.
All that Therese knew as she moved round the dining room table, delivering milk and juice, finally standing with her head bowed during the prayer, was that she felt in a state of sin, unable to join in with the words, For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful. The hunger had gone and she formed her bread into small pellets to avoid eating it, knowing that here, wasting food was regarded as far worse than eating too much of it. She should have sat next to Matilda, who would have eaten it for her. But what is my sin? she was asking herself, furiously, as the pellets of bread stuck in her throat. I have listened to Joseph’s heresy and slander, and I have helped her to hide her own sins. I have laughed at Barbara and disobeyed her, in spirit at least. Is that enough to make me feel so bad that my sin is mortal? Forgive me, Lord. She looked at the face of Matilda watching her anxiously from halfway down the table and found herself suspicious of the glance. Matilda’s knife was in her pocket; Matilda wanted to see Anna; they were keeping secrets. Agnes, supposedly the mother of a child, sat staring towards the door, as if expecting a vision. Joseph was serene. She waited until the last as Therese was stacking plates and the others had filed away, came up behind her and touched her on the shoulder.
‘Therese, my dear, I must apologise for troubling you. It was selfish of me.’ She hesitated, but it was not the hesitation of conscience. She looked surprisingly decisive and fresh, a woman capable of self-reinvention, looking at Therese closely but kindly, as if trying to ascertain if Therese could remember a fraction of what she had said. That was how Therese’s newly suspicious mind interpreted it.
‘It was no trouble, Sister. The less said, the soonest mended.’
She was becoming like the rest of them, resorting to well-worn clichés.
Joseph nodded. ‘But there is one thing I wanted to say, child. I mentioned Sister Jude’s missal. Don’t look at it. She put her opinions of your mother in there.’
She departed as Matilda sidled back, smiling, dipping her head in greeting to Joseph’s departing back and resting her hand on Therese’s shoulder. In her heightened state of nervous awareness, Therese had the unbidden impression that the two women wanted to behave differently.
‘Therese, lovey, you won’t forget to tell Anna to come and see me, will you? As soon as Barbara has the sense to let her back.’
Therese was confused. ‘Of course, Sister, but I never know when she’s going to appear.’
‘No, but if she ever does . . . She will, soon, won’t she? It’s very important that I see her.’
It could not be soon enough. Therese was swept away by a longing to see her flesh-and-blood sister. Hear her voice, even if it mocked. Confess her miseries to someone who did not rely on God for an answer, and for once, be touched by the flesh of someone who was not old. Old flesh, old smells, old, old . . . old sins.
Barbara’s office, with her bedroom behind it, was next to the parlour, off the black and white corridor. Agnes had already taken up residence by the front door. The day and the week was beginning like every other week for the last year, but without the same optimism that buoyed her being and without the comforting sense of it being right. The three younger Sisters, who never spoke to her, like new postgraduates to a student in her first term, had departed in their usual quiet flurry of activity to their teaching jobs. Without quite realising it, Therese had formed a settled dislike of them, because they were so importantly useful. They were allowed to be exhausted in the evening and they had more to say to their elders, who had followed similar careers, than they ever would have to say to her. It was Martha and Mary all over again. As she stood back, dutifully, to let them pass, she saw Agnes open the door to the outside world, chirruping farewells like a squirrel. The door was halfway closed, Agnes being as efficient at closing as she was at opening, leaving Therese with the sour thought that she should have been a lift attendant, oh, what was the matter with her today? when Agnes leapt forward to open it wide. Seen in profile, her smile was one of sheer adoration, the sort reserved for spiritual ecstasy, as she opened her arms. Francis stepped into the hall, picked her up in a hug and swung her round as if she were weightless. Agnes had lost the knack of screaming, but she made, instead, small squealing noises of protesting pleasure. He was so strong, he could measure the swing he made with her bulky body held at her belted waist, so that her feet only left the ground by a couple of inches and she had no cause for alarm before she found herself back with both shoes on the floor, guided towards her accustomed seat with a deft kiss planted on her left cheek.
‘How’s my boy?’ she crooned.
‘Never better, Mother. Gotta go, work to do.’
‘Of course, son, of course.’
The light was bad in the vicinity of the front door once it was closed, and Agnes’s eyesight was even worse. She was content with her embrace, patted him on the arm and shooed him on, not noticing the details of his face. The black and white corridor was the route to the garden as well as everything else. He turned into it and collided with Therese, lightly, she moving and he moving faster, a glancing contact between her shoulder and his elbow, enough to stop him and make him recoil.
‘I’m so sorry, I beg your pardon,’ both of them speaking in chorus, before she stood back, yet again, to let him pass. She was sick of standing back; soon she would fall over herself. She knew who he was and that she disapproved of him, and kept her eyes to the black and white floor. Strange, that in so small a place, she had been able to avoid the conversation with him that everyone else had so enthusiastically enjoyed in the last ten days, to find she needed it now. Everyone else had come to know and love him. There was no mistaking Francis. He was a foot taller than anyone else and smelled of man.
‘Francis? I’m Therese. We haven’t met. Can I talk to you later?’
It came out in a stutter. She had no social graces appropriate to men: she could only be silly, or silent, or gruff. She did not quite know what to do when he offered his hand, except take it, shake it and feel the fact that it was twice the size of her own and like dry sandpaper encircling her own, callused palm. He shook her hand vigorously, holding her arm by the elbow with his other hand as he did so, steadying her.
‘Very pleased to meet you, Therese. Sure, I’m in the garden today. Or somewhere. Wherever Barbara lets me go.’
Which was everywhere, she thought, remembering the new window catch in Joseph’s room as he relinquished the hand and the arm. She had the sensation of the grin and the eyes without really seeing either, rubbed her hand down the side of her tunic and heard him stride away, as softly as the rest of them, in indefinable shoes, which made no sound. She touched her right palm with her left and relived the feeling of his handshake. It had been so spontaneous and undemanding, not like the grasp of the old. There was no time for thinking about it. Their dual motion, the moving handshake, had brought her to Barbara’s door. She would tell Barbara everything. She would confess.
You are even prettier than your sister. Anna clambered up to the roof and gazed down into the convent garden, seeking him out. It was a cold morning: summer had ceased the rearguard action against autumn and it seemed as if, overnight, the last of the leaves had gone from the deciduous trees, leaving them stripped bare. If she knew how, she could shoot him dead from here and she wished she did know how. She tried to imagine what it was like not to feel in disgrace. It felt like a state of sin, and she wished she could not recall the stupid act of putting out her tongue. She tried to be nonchalant about being dismissed from the Garden of Eden and told herself there were others.
Facile. The garden was empty and her mouth was dry with a sense of dread, the half-formed knowledge of something she had to do. So much confusing rubbish floating round in her sore head, the prospect of going to work and immersing herself in that other world beckoned attractively. She wanted to forget the place she watched, and everyone in it, as well as her own wretched stupidity. What was the worst thing she had done? Put out her tongue? Scratched his face? Encountered evil and run away? Torn herself from its grasp.
The breeze was strong, gusting in the night and tearing at the leaves. She settled herself down in the gully behind the parapet out of the wind. If she could not berate Therese’s God in the chapel ever again, she would have to do it here. She took the little statue of Ganesh out of her pocket and put it down beside her, trying to find defiance, but it was difficult.
‘Well, a fat lot of good you were,’ she said, clutching her knees to her chest. ‘I know you didn’t have the power, but I still say you should have stopped me climbing over the wall, but there you go. If I hadn’t climbed over the wall, I wouldn’t know what was going on.’
She could feel the grazes on her knees through the stiff fabric of her jeans. Punishment.
‘I’m sorry, Elephant God, but I really can’t talk to you. Nothing personal.You’re just far too nice. I want an ugly, vengeful sort of God. A brute. I want someone to shout at.’
She adjusted herself for comfort, looked at her feet. Boot weather today, all the better for kicking shit. Shit, shit, shit. She stood up stiffly, and with folded arms regarded the sky. There were scudding clouds, grey and greyer, no inspiration. Down in the garden, she could see the stripped trees and the figure of Matilda, aimlessly waving. Without Edmund, it seemed as if she was calling down the birds to eat. Anna ducked back behind the wall.
‘Look here, Lord, I don’t know what it is, but you seem hell bent on destruction.’
She closed her eyes and imagined the chapel crucifix, with its weary face and artistic blood. The image was fuzzy and pale. Anna rubbed her eyes, furiously. All she could feel was the repellent sensation of Golden Boy’s kiss, the confirmation of utter humiliation. Tried to remember when she had ever felt so claustrophobically powerless inside the embrace of someone who wished her harm. Without any prompting, she remembered struggling in the arms of her mother.
There were two hours before the start of her shift. Just enough time to find Father Goodwin, if she ran on her jelly legs. She wanted to ask him something in particular – did Edmund wear a little crucifix, I can’t remember – but when she arrived at his door, there was no reply. God and his officials were always out.
Therese came back to the kitchen about eleven. She had detoured via the chapel, stayed there a long time. Kim had unloaded the laundry into the dryer and was bagging rubbish for the Tuesday collection. Somewhere in her sorting, she had found six cans of Diamond White and an empty vodka bottle.
‘Bugger me, Treesa. No wonder you’re so pale. You weren’t fucking joking, were you?’