Quiet as a Nun Page 14

The incline grew more pronounced, the ground was cut into steps. Then there were formal steps of stone, and those in their turn led to a winding staircase. Finally I found myself in front of a door. It was exactly similar to the door at the other end of the passage. The door was shut.

  She who hesitates is lost. Come on, Jemima. I twisted the iron ring which held it, extinguished my torch, and pushed the door open. I stepped forward.

  Immediately something very hard indeed struck me sharply on the top of my head. I ducked. Instinctively I put up my hand. It felt like stone. A broad smooth stone surface with a sharp edge. Then I heard a noise which sounded like a cat or perhaps a kitten mewing.

  There was no other sound at all.

  I felt upwards again. I had hit my head on a piece of stone. It was in fact the mantel of a stone fireplace. I recognised where I was: standing bent inside the fireplace of the first floor chamber of the tower. The fireplace where I had originally spotted those tell-tale Gauloises stubs. The winding stair must have come up inside the thick walls of the tower. Boldly, I switched on my torch.

  The rocking-chair was still. And empty. There was no sign of a black habit there. Or a black nun.

  Tessa Justin was lying on the floor in the corner. In the small light, she looked as if she were asleep or perhaps drugged. But it was she who was responsible for those sounds, the mewings of a kitten. The trapdoor to the ground floor was closed.

  I walked across to her. She was not asleep. Her eyes were open. I didn't think she was drugged. She was in fact sobbing, but so tiredly that only these tiny sounds emerged.

  'Tessa,' I said softly, 'Tessa, don't cry.'

  She didn't look up. Her body - still in its school uniform but the maroon heavily marked with dust - froze.

  'It's me, Jemima Shore.' No move still. She didn't look at me. I touched her shoulder. It was quite rigid. Maybe after all she had been drugged.

  'I've come to rescue you.' No move. I had an inspiration. 'I've come to hear the story you've got to tell me. Look, look at me, Tessa.'

  Slowly Tessa Justin lifted her head off the floor. Her thick plaits were dusty too, whitened. Her eyes looked enormous. I shone the torch onto my own face.

  'See, I'm not a nun.'

  She gave a loud cry, said something like: 'Oh, oh, take me home.' And scrambling off the floor, flung herself at me.

  At least Tessa Justin, the missing Tessa Justin, was neither drugged nor damaged. And for the time being at least she was safe. I didn't know how long that happy state of affairs would last. How soon before the powers of darkness who had kidnapped her and dumped her here, planned to return? As once they must have come to find the imprisoned Rosa in her Tower of Ivory. And seen that she never escaped from it ... It didn't do to think of such things.

  We had to get back. But first I had to soothe the incoherent Tessa. I doubted whether I could carry a ten-year-old girl all that way down the passage. By myself.

  'Tell me later,' I kept saying, patting her and trying to disentangle myself. But she wouldn't let me go. I longed for the calm strength of a nun, any nun. The gentle authority of Sister Agnes, the businesslike ways of Sister Lucy.

  Tessa Justin would not be stopped from pouring it all out, as we sat there on the wooden floor in the dark tower. And we each held one torch. Eventually I pulled her onto my lap in the rocking-chair. And cuddled her there as best I could. The feeling of closeness grew on me. I couldn't remember when I had last held a child of any age in my arms.

  'There, there,' I kept saying, and other things, endearments and tender words, until the choking finally stopped.

  Like her sister Mandy, Tessa poured out a story in which there was the now familiar feature of a strange nun, a nun she had never seen. Except that Tessa, being in the Lower Fourth knew all about the Black Nun; and readily identified her as the persecutor. Mandy had spoken of a horrid great nun who whispered. Tessa described the Black Nun herself, speaking in a low hoarse voice, the Black Nun who for some time, for ages, forever, had been out to get Tessa Justin.

  How the Black Nun had come to her at night and whispered to her -and nobody had believed her. And how on another night the Black Nun had threatened to put a pillow over her face and nobody had believed that either. How Sister Lucy had just given her medicine and Sister Boniface had threatened to give her a good smack. And even lovely Sister Agnes had not believed her. That's why she had tried to talk to me about it. And Sister Boniface had stopped her.

  But it was true, all true. The Black Nun was out to get her. And then, the worst thing of all, just before the bazaar, as she was getting tidy, she received a message to say that her parents were waiting for her in the sacristy. She thought it was a bit odd—

  'But everything about nuns is a bit odd, Miss Shore, isn't it?' she said rather pathetically. So along went Tessa to the sacristy. And the next thing she knew, the strange nun, the Black Nun, pulled her down some stairs and into a dark place and through a long smelly tunnel. And then—

  'And then?'

  'Well, these questions,' she cried. 'All the time these questions. And if I didn't answer I would never see my parents again, or Mandy, or Jasper, or Charlie or anyone.' More sobs. I cuddled her again.

  'Questions? The will, then, Sister Miriam's will—'

  'Oh yes, the will, the beastly will. Oh if you know where it is, can't you tell them, Miss Shore? I told her, I told her what I knew. But she just wouldn't believe that was all.' The head buried in my coat. I smoothed the plaits, all I could see of her.

  It transpired that what Tessa Justin knew about the will was this: it was not much, I had to admit. Except that she did know more than anyone else about it. There had been this odd conversation with Sister Miriam, on what turned out to be the very day Sister Miriam disappeared. Tessa had just come back from seeing off her parents at the front door when she found herself grabbed by Sister Miriam who looked, as she put it, 'awfully odd, even for a nun'. In Tessa Justin I detected already the beginnings of an anti-nun prejudice to rival Tom's.

  There was nobody much about. Sister Damian, the portress, was not at her post, and there were no other nuns visible. Sister Miriam had much surprised Tessa by suddenly putting her thin face very close and whispering to her:

  'I've made a new will, you know.' Or something to that effect.

  'Of course she was a little batty,' confided Tessa - oh Rosa! - 'We juniors knew that. Batty but rather sweet. We all liked her. So we never teased her on anything horrid. And then she said something about it being quite safe and I must remember and tell nobody. Then I think her bell rang - a bell rang, hers or someone else's, and another nun came round the corner. I don't remember who. And she started and let me go and ran off. You don't often see a nun haring along, do you?' she ended.

  But Tessa hadn't really understood what Sister Miriam was talking about. Even when she was found dead. Till that day in St Joseph's sitting room where she had hidden for a dare and had been discovered. And after that Margaret Plantaganet and Dodo Sheehy had suspected something. Because she had foolishly boasted to her best friend, who was Cordelia Smith, Imogen's sister, that she knew where the missing will was. Then Cordelia told Imogen. And the big girls had questioned her. And she didn't tell them anything of course. Horrible bullies. But she had told everything to the Black Nun, and now to me. And please would everyone leave her alone?

  'But where, where was it safe?'

  But that alas was exactly where Tessa's childish memory became vague. All she could tell me was what she had told the Black Nun so many times, and not been believed for her pains.

  'It was something to do with brides,' she said. 'Brides and nuns, or the other way round, nuns and brides.'

  'Nuns and brides - nuns, the brides of Christ? That's what they're sometimes called.'

  Yes, that was it. The brides. The brides of Christ. Being safe among the brides of Christ.

  Safe among the brides of Christ, I thought. Safe indeed. But that might be anywhere in the entire convent ... No wonder the Blac
k Nun had shaken Tessa till her teeth rattled and still got nothing more out of her. And gone away and threatened to come back soon. And how Tessa must then tell her more or else ... Yes, it was time for us to be going.

  There was no point in dusting the child down. We should get dirty enough on our return journey, if not worse. I urged her to cling onto her torch at all costs—

  'Tie your plaits round it if necessary.' A wan smile. 'It belongs to Sister Boniface. She's waiting for us in the chapel' That did cheer Tessa: obviously Sister Boniface was to her, as to me, a symbol of security.

  We made our way back through the fireplace. I made no attempt to close the door behind me. That was for others to clear up. Down the winding stair, stone giving way to earth, then back the way we had both come through the tunnel. The return journey seemed to take aeons of time. It was not that Tessa dragged behind. On the contrary, she was incredibly staunch considering her ordeal. The Justins had spirit, one had to hand it to them. Show-off she might be, Tessa was also full of proper courage as well.

  But I was waiting and listening all the time for some noise ahead of us. The signal of the return. Even now was the Black Nun abandoning her nightly search for the will? And going back for a fresh examination of her victim? Who could tell? Perhaps she had at last found it, and would return in triumph . . .

  A whole age of nervous footsteps had passed before we saw the crypt door ahead of us. God be praised, it was still open. And praise all the saints too. And St Teresa - both St Teresas. I was in a mood to be generous. I had not admitted to myself how much I had been dreading to find our exit barred.

  'Come on, Tessa, not much further,' I said in a low voice.

  She went through the door first with her torch. I followed, stooping. We were once more beside the coffins, in the charnel-house in fact. The grille too was still open. Swung back as it had been before. The dim light still burned in the crypt. I could see that the outer door to the

  sacristy was still ajar. Everything was just as it had been. We were safe. Safe indeed. Once more under the roof of the brides of Christ.

  It was a piercing scream from Tessa which told me, violently, that I was wrong. Not everything was just as it had been before.

  There, there behind the marble statue of the Blessed Eleanor, lay the difference. A black shape, a long shadow, now stretched out from behind the statue. Tessa's screams rang in my ears as the black shape, now growing in size, stepped out from the protection of the alcove and began slowly, purposefully, to move in our direction.

  15

  A crypt is for coffins

  'Run, Tessa, run,' I shouted. 'Find Sister Boniface'. The little girl, still obediently clutching her torch, did not hesitate, and bolted in the direction of the open door.

  She reached it. The last I saw of Tessa Justin was her thin legs scampering up the stairs to the sacristy. Then the crypt door clanged to. She must have banged it behind her.

  I was alone with the Black Nun.

  Black not only from head to foot in her habit but also black and faceless. In the electric light of the crypt I could see clearly that the so-called Black Nun was wearing a black mask. That made me feel no better. At that moment I would have preferred to face a ghost than this silent figure, hands folded under her cape. The characteristic gesture of nuns by which they hid their hands. I knew all about these particular hands. I had already glimpsed their long bony fingers in the candlelight of the tower.

  I touched the knife in my pocket.

  The Black Nun now stood quite close. Between me and the door. The odd thing was that I could smell her: a strong human smell of someone who is excited. It gave me quite a different kind of jolt: I don't think I had ever consciously smelt a nun before. Whatever the austere nature of the cleansing materials allowed to them, every nun I had known had been as immaculately clean as if no body whatsoever existed inside the habit. And there was another smell, too, a different smell. ..

  I was taken quite unawares by the next action of the Black Nun. Suddenly she extended one long arm from beneath her cape and with those same strong fingers, swung down the iron grille in my face. Iron

  bars now separated us; on the one side of them, the Black Nun, hands once more folded under the cape. I was imprisoned with the coffins.

  The Black Nun continued to face me. Then with another rapid movement, she whipped up her hand and removed the thick mask.

  'Jemima Shore. We've met before,' said the Black Nun. 'That rhymes. How charming.'

  It was the roll of the 'R' on the word rhyme which reminded me that Alexander Skarbek had a faint foreign accent.

  When I last saw him on my television programme, I had noticed it. I thought it part of his attraction. Now it only confirmed my worst fears, and still more fearful anticipations.

  He removed his other hand from under the cape. I saw that he was smoking. A Gauloise. The second familiar smell I had noted. The first smell had, of course, been that of a man. Looking down I saw that the floor was littered with cigarette stubs. He must have been waiting here for me for some time. Knowing where I had gone. Knowing that the tower was locked and that I had to come back this way. Into the crypt.

  The crypt with its coffins, amongst which it seemed likely that I would stay.

  'A bad habit,' said Skarbek. He flung down the cigarette and stubbed it out impatiently with his foot. I noticed that he was wearing black boots, ordinary Kings Road type of boots as I would normally have termed them. With chunky heels. His feet - for a nun - looked enormous. Yet he was hardly much taller than I was. That explained the absence of shoes and stockings when Sister Liz and I first discovered the empty habit. For one idiotic moment I recalled all those wartime stories about German paratroopers dressed as nuns and how you could tell them by their boots.

  'You look quite charming surrounded by coffins,' said Skarbek. 'Are you fond of coffins, Jemima?'

  'Not particularly, Mr Skarbek.' My frigidly formal tone was the best I could do under the circumstances. I suddenly had to hang on to the grille. I was shaking.

  'But a crypt is for coffins, Jemima.' Another roll of the 'R'. I wondered how I could ever have found his accent attractive. Or him.

  Yes, in a way he made a plausible woman, or nun at least, because of the regularity of his features: yet his light eyes and sharp straight nose, his wide mouth, had not struck me as particularly feminine when we met. More wolfish. But he seemed slight to me then. Physically it was odd how a slender man became a towering woman - or a horrid great nun, in the words of Mandy Justin. A nun who whispered, who spoke in a hoarse tone: that was to conceal the man's voice. The wimple to conceal not the signs of age, but the man's throat, the prominent Adam's apple. Then the black mask to hide the man's face to anyone who might recognise it, such as myself. But there would be no need to disguise his face to children. Especially to little girls, late at night. So Skarbek the Black Nun had been able to roam as he wished through the convent, looking for the will which eluded him. The will leaving the lands to the Powers Project.

  His relief at hearing the news that this will did exist after all must have been profound. Otherwise why not let Rosabelle hand over the lands herself and endure the long battles with the lawyers?

  It only remained to find it. The missing will. And then the property for which one woman had already died would belong to the poor. Or rather to the Powers Project.

  'Do you think I make a good nun, Jemima?' Skarbek interrupted my frightened searching thoughts. His voice was still light, almost caressing, through the grille.

  'I don't think you make a nun at all, Mr Skarbek,' I said with all the spirit I could muster. 'Nuns are dedicated to the service of God. If I believed in His existence I would say that you on the contrary were dedicated to the service of the devil.'

  'Harsh words, Jemima. But like you, I don't believe in the devil. All the same, the devil and all his pomps is a good phrase. Certain pomps are quite devilish, aren't they? Places like this. Wasting money, parasites on society.'


  He was playing with me. There was no point in joining in the sport. I rattled the grille.

  'Mr Skarbek, are you going to let me out of here?'

  'But of course, Jemima. If only because I want to come much closer to you.' With a courtly gesture towards the grille. 'Perhaps you will like me better if we are closer to each other. Or is it the habit which troubles you? That can easily be arranged. At least part of it.' Rapidly, as if born of long practice - which I suppose it was - Skarbek removed the black veil, fixed by its tiny black pins, then the stiff white wimple and white cap beneath. He placed them on the prie-dieu. Beneath it all his hair was unexpectedly long. Instead of a nun he looked now like a young priest, standing there in black soutane. Then he swung back the grille.

  I stepped out. It was a relief to be free, free at least from the coffins.

  'I'll have your torch if you don't mind.' He took it. I made no resistance. I did not want him to know about the knife. Till I was ready. Then he offered me one of his cigarettes from the blue packet. I had not smoked since I was fifteen, when I puffed out of bravado with Rosa. But I took one and lit it clumsily and drew on it as I had watched others do, as I had watched Tom do, so many times. It was an odd feeling having Skarbek's face so close to mine, now free of its habit, as he held the match. Odd. Intimate. Distasteful. 'Mr Skarbek—'

  'Alex, please. You don't mind if I call you Jemima. After all I was on your programme. We're friends.' A roll of the 'R'. I wondered if he was putting the accent on. What new friendships television brought me to be sure - Pia recalling me with delight, who had hardly known me at school, Tessa and Mandy Justin who both thought of me as their ally for no better reason than because they had seen me on the box, and now Alexander Skarbek. ‘I know you especially well because I saw you again last night on the programme, our programme. I thought how pretty you were all over again.'

  It was sickening to think of this kind of compliment actually winning the hearts of Rosa and Beatrice O'Dowd. For myself, I had always lived in the world, and was scarcely susceptible.