Quiet as a Nun Page 17

  In spite of the extraordinary circumstances of our conversation, I felt that I was listening to some kind of manifesto for the future. I remembered the occasion when Sister Agnes had sought gently to dissuade me from entering the infirmary. Sister Agnes might not be a senior member of the community, but she too had never been quite persuaded of the strength of Sister Lucy's vocation.

  'But you're not going to let them go?' I groaned. 'Forgiveness of your enemies is all very well, but the man is dangerous, and a murderer. While Sister Lucy is insane and probably a murderess as well. She certainly intended to kill Sister Edward even if in the end her death was an accident.'

  'There is no question of forgiveness, Miss Shore,' said Sister Agnes, opening her dark eyes wide. 'Forgiveness is for Almighty God, who sees into every heart, not for us. I simply did the best I could at the time. Getting them both out of the convent precincts. Finding Mr Skarbek in the sacristy, I recognised him without difficulty - we watched the repeat of your programme last night with the Juniors - very instructive by the way, although I'm not sure I agree with all your conclusions. He had no idea of what I knew. I merely suggested that he should leave the convent instantly. As an unlawful intruder. Otherwise I threatened to summon the police. Finally I told him I would send our infirmarian down to him, Sister Lucy, as he was obviously sick, breaking in like that to a convent. And he'd better wait for her in the community car parked under the trees. And she would drive him back to the village. And get him some attention.'

  'But Sister Agnes, he was dressed up as a nun,' I cried.

  'Exactly. That helped to convince him. I said: "You must be sick in your mind to do such a thing." I suggested it, and he didn't disagree. Besides only his - er - body was dressed in the habit. His head was clearly visible. I simply pointed to his own garments and said, "Those are your clothes I believe. Please resume them" and I left the sacristy.'

  It was difficult to believe that Sister Agnes had been all that bad an actress.

  'All the same we'll have to summon the police in the morning.'

  'As to that, we must trust in God, Miss Shore,' said Sister Agnes, sounding weary for the first time. 'He will dispose of it all. We must trust Him.'

  Another appalling thought struck me.

  'But the will, Sister Agnes. Do you realise that Sister Miriam's second will leaves all the property to the Powers Project? Even if Skarbek is nailed, the property will still go to the Project. There is nothing wrong with the Project itself: the rest of them are perfectly honest people, if somewhat extreme in their views about society. It will all be quite legal. You will be turned out, dispossessed. The workers' commune up to your front door. Your work here will end just the same.'

  'The second will of Sister Miriam isn't yet found, is it, Miss Shore? Until it is discovered, her original will leaving everything to the community still stands.'

  'But it will be found. Believe me, it will be found.'

  I hadn't the heart to tell her that I now knew exactly where to find it.

  'Then it will be found. We must still put our faith in Almighty God, Miss Shore,' said Sister Agnes. 'What else can we do?'

  18

  Into the future

  But in the event it was not necessary to summon the police. Very early the next day the police came of their own accord to the Convent of the Blessed Eleanor. They roused a sleepy Sister Damian, and asked to see the Reverend Mother. Since that was not possible, she being far too weak, it was finally to Sister Boniface, supported by Sister Elizabeth and myself, that they broke the news of the fatal car crash on Church Hill in the early hours of the morning.

  A dark night, a sharp bend on a steep hill taken too fast: it was what Alexander Skarbek would have called, for once with proper accuracy, a natural - if unfortunate - accident.

  There were two passengers, both killed instantly. The police were sorry to disturb the Sisters of Blessed Eleanor's so early in the day, but the car was registered in the name of the convent. Furthermore they had to break it to Sister Boniface that one of the two dead people was a nun. Had been a nun.

  ‘It seems that the nun was actually driving,' said the senior policeman with a sympathetic clearing of the throat.

  'People always say that nuns are such bad drivers,' commented Sister Elizabeth sadly. 'Trusting in God to protect them, instead of looking at the road. And it isn't true at all. But Sister Lucy really was a bad driver. Then of course she hadn't been a nun very long.'

  There were tears in Sister Elizabeth's eyes. After a moment she began to quote Wordsworth to herself.

  'There is a comfort in the strength of love;

  '‘I will make a thing endurable, which else Would overset the brain, or break the heart...'

  It wasn't clear to me to which love she was alluding, the love of God, or the love of Sister Lucy for Alexander Skarbek.

  When Sister Elizabeth had finished, Sister Boniface said robustly: 'Sister Lucy didn't trust in God enough.'

  The policeman said: 'The driver certainly didn't look at the road.'

  I thought of Sister Agnes. No doubt she would always believe that it was Almighty God who had thus conveniently disposed of Sister Lucy and Alexander Skarbek. But I did not want to think like that. To me, it was a natural accident - natural, and on reflection, fortunate. Fortunate, for everyone. Even the dead.

  We were sitting in the Nuns' Parlour by the front door, the police and myself having been fortified by the coffee, delicious and hot, which even at this early hour Sister Clare had managed to produce.

  I waited till the police had withdrawn and the nuns too had gone away to begin the endless sad process of untangling and sorting out all the mischiefs which had recently taken place in their unquiet convent.

  Alone in the Nuns' Parlour, I too had a sad task to perform. Putting the brides of Christ out of my mind, I went over to the polished table on which lay the portfolio of wedding photographs of successfully paired-off old girls. The art of Lenare and Yevonde, Bassano and Vandyk, and the few more recent examples, had spilled out onto the table. I put my hand inside the portfolio and felt another thinner piece of paper amongst the pasteboard. I drew it out: it was an envelope.

  On the envelope was written' 'This is the very last will and testament of Sister Miriam.' I recognised the hand-writing - Rosa's own. Even in her anguish, it had really not changed much since we were at school together. Here among the brides, the brides not of Christ but of wealthy stock-brokers and poor Irish doctors and foreign princes and struggling Catholic lawyers and all other types of happy Catholic grooms, the will of Rosabelle Powerstock had lain safely hidden.

  It was instinct which made me now seek out the chapel. Above all I had to be at peace. There at least would be repose and silence. There would be no more prying ghosts to disturb its ornate tranquillity.

  Once in the chapel I sat down in the pew nearest to the statue of the Sacred Heart. The heart, my symbol. That pew in which I had first encountered Sister Agnes keeping her watch, and saying her novena at the same time. The candles, a little forest of them this morning, flickered. It was in their light, close by the shrine, that I read the last message from my friend:

  ‘I, Rosabelle Powerstock, known as Sister Miriam of the Order of the Tower of Ivory, being in sound mind in spite of everything that has happened to me, do hereby revoke all other wills. In the confusion in which I find myself, I have prayed to God and His saints and to our Blessed Lady to guide me.

  'I wished to place my property in the hands of the poor, in accordance with the message of Our Saviour Lord Jesus Christ. Yet recently I have been aware that I have not yet found the right hands in which to place it. There are pressures all round me, within myself and without. I no longer know what is the right decision to make. It must therefore be for others, who have always been so much stronger than I, to decide.

  'I therefore leave the lands surrounding the Convent of the Blessed Eleanor, in their entirety, to Jemima Shore. She will know what to do with them. Everything else I leave, as
before, to the community of the Tower of Ivory, of which I die, as I have tried to live, a faithful member.'

  It was signed: Rosabelle Powerstock, and in brackets: Miriam. A.M.D.G. The will was witnessed at the bottom of the paper by Blanche Nelligan and Imogen Smith.

  I sat for a long time holding this piece of paper between my fingers. I thought of many things. Of the past: Rosa. A friendship from which I had taken so much, yet had abandoned. And forgotten. For Rosa a friendship which had marked her whole life; even seeing me on television in some shallow programme, calling for social reform from the security of my own detached position, had been enough to make her try and sell all that she had, and give it to the poor. A friendship which had in the end unwittingly brought about her death. A friendship founded on trust which had not failed even in her last hours when she was confident that her old friend would perform the labours which she no longer had the strength to carry out.

  Of the future: the future of this convent robbed of its lands. But maybe the women within it would be released from their incarceration, find themselves playing a more valuable role in society ... Of my own future: establishing a great settlement for the poor perhaps, helped by Tom, supported by the W.N.G. AS Rosa had wanted. As Tom would want.

  I thought of the present: of Mother Ancilla, dying in her bare cell upstairs.

  After a bit I stretched out my piece of paper towards the shrine of the Sacred Heart and lit the corner of the will from a candle. It flared up. I felt a momentary scorch on my lingers, and then I dropped it. I felt nothing else at all.

  I rose up from my pew to find Sister Agnes standing at the side door watching me. She had made one of her noiseless entrances.

  'You were right to put your trust in God, Sister Agnes,' I said. 'There will be no further changes at the convent of the Blessed Eleanor.'

  'Oh we shall have changes, Miss Shore,' replied Sister Agnes. 'But we shall decide on them together. I should tell you that Reverend Mother has just given me her dying voice as the new superior. My first action will be to have the choice confirmed by an election within the community. Even the lay nuns will be given votes. It will be an open contest.'

  I believed her. But somehow I felt Sister Agnes would be elected all the same.

  There was nothing more for me to do here now. I asked if I could see Mother Ancilla before I went back to London. She was very weak and cruelly white, but perfectly composed. Sister Boniface was looking after her, under the doctor's orders: even at her age Sister Boniface did not seem displeased to have come out of her retirement as infirmarian.

  I clasped the hand which had so often taken mine in its warm grasp: it felt very cold. A crucifix above the bed was the sole decoration in the cell. The air here was chilly, not warm as the children's wing always was.

  'Mother Ancilla,' I said. 'You knew, didn't you? You knew about the will.'

  'Oh no, my child, I knew nothing. I only suspected. She loved you so much. She had such confidence in you. Your judgement. Jemima's so brilliant, she used to say. And she used to ask special permission to watch television on the nights you appeared. She admired you so much. As did we all, of course, dear Jemima. When no will was found, and she seemed so unhappy, so confused, I thought she might have done something like that.'

  Mother Ancilla took a sip of water. I helped her.

  'But of course I couldn't be sure. And I didn't know where the will was. If I had known, I should certainly have produced it. We nuns are a very law-abiding lot, you know.'

  I let that pass. 'But that's why you sent for me? Tell me now.'

  'Perhaps. If she had left you the property, then it was in my mind that you might get to know us all over again. And you would understand about our work. And see that it is worth preserving. And you did, my child, didn't you?' Sister Agnes had told her.

  I shook my head.

  'It wasn't for that. It's because you were good. And he was evil.' Mother Ancilla smiled.

  'How simple, Jemima. Good and bad. Good and evil. How do we know ? Our Blessed Lord knows but we don't. We just have to be sure that we are doing the work that God wants us to do on this earth.'

  There was a long silence. She raised herself a little on her pillows.

  'Now it is my turn to ask you a question, Jemima. One day, do you think that you might ever—'

  'No, Mother, never.' Very firmly. 'I'm sorry. Faith is a gift, they say. If so, I haven't been given it.'

  'But you want to believe, I know it, I feel it.'

  'No' - gently. After all she was a dying woman. Even so I had to speak the truth. Another silence. Then—

  'My child, do you wish you believed?'

  And then some ugly honesty took over, the honesty I could never defeat, part of me. Against my will, hating myself, for a moment even hating her, I said with absolute truth:

  'Yes, Mother, I do wish I believed.'

  Mother Ancilla smiled. A seraphic child's smile.

  'Well then, it's simple, isn't it? Our Blessed Lord will see to it, won't He?'

  I shook my head. It wasn't as simple as that. It was nothing. I just couldn't help telling the truth. It was nothing to do with anything.

  'He'll see to it that you receive the gift of faith. Or I'll get after Him.' Mother Ancilla's voice was fading away.

  After a bit a nun, Sister Damian I think, came and tapped me on the shoulder and said: 'You must go now, Miss Shore.'

  I got up quietly and took a last look at Mother Ancilla before I left her - forever, as I knew it would be. She was still smiling, faintly, victoriously. She would sort it out with Our Blessed Lord. She had promised to get me the gift of faith. I felt quite sorry for Him - if He existed.

  I drove back to London and repossessed myself of my empty flat. I flipped through my mail, which Cherry had left in neat piles as befitted the perfect secretary. Included among it was an official letter from Megalith Television congratulating me on the success of my repeats, especially the Powers Estate programme ('Into the top ten ratings'). It was signed by Cy Fredericks. At the bottom he had scrawled: 'Well done. The Gem of my collection.' It was an old reference. The letter also suggested a whole new series under the general title Into the Future. I tossed it aside: unlike the past, the future did not strike me as being particularly urgent.

  I left a message for Tom at the House of Commons to say that I was back in London and would he ring me? My lucky dress with its motif of hearts was hanging ready in the cupboard. I picked up the Evening Standard and began to read it. Sometimes when I'm low and waiting for a call I read the Evening Standard cover to cover as though for an examination. But on this occasion I threw the paper on the floor, after the Megalith letter. I decided to go for a walk.

  It was a beautiful evening. And I wanted to be calm and free. It didn't worry me at all that I should be out when Tom called.