At once a powerful smell of mothballs rose up. “I’m not sure why we bother to preserve them whole,” Perpetua said. “It’s not as if anyone is going anywhere in them.”
Fludd reached into the chest and lifted up the topmost garment, letting it fall out of its folds. It was a little white muslin frock with a sailor collar, its wide skirt meant, he thought, just to clear the ankle. “Whose would this be?”
“I dare say Sister Polycarp’s. She always claimed a fondness for the Senior Service.”
The nun plunged her hand into the chest and brought out a pair of navy-blue shoes, with two-bar straps and waisted heels. Next came a navy-blue serge suit, of similar vintage, with a fitted waist and a bell-shaped skirt. “Who’s to know which is whose? Three came in together, more or less. They’re of an age. Now then—what about this hat?”
Father Fludd took it from her and stroked the felt, and pricked his fingers on the bunch of stubby, fierce-looking grey feathers.
“I can picture Sister Cyril in that. Or Sister Ignatius Loyola, either one. Oh, dear God.” Purpit gave a whoop of laughter. “Here’s their underthings all wrapped up. Here’s their corsets.”
There were three pairs of corsets rolled together: one Twilfit, two Excelsior. Fludd held them up, like a map of the world, and let them unroll with a clatter. Purpit giggled. “Oh, Father,” she said. “This is not for your eyes, I’m sure.”
She plunged her arm into the chest, ferreting around at the bottom. “Dear God,” she said, “a hobble skirt. Well, that takes care of the three of them.”
Father Fludd picked out a straw boater and turned it in his hands. It had a dark-blue ribbon.
“That must belong to Sister Anthony. She’s the oldest of all. This will be her tweed suit. Her summer tweed.” Purpit held it up against herself. “Well now, will you look at the size she was? Almost what she is now.”
He imagined Sister Anthony, a healthy creature with flushed cheeks, jumping down from a pony and trap, on the carriage-drive; the year, 1900. Mother Perpetua shook out a pair of silk combinations, with lace-trimmed legs and buttons down the front. “She must have fancied herself in these.”
“What happens,” Fludd asked, “if you are sent to another convent of the Order? Do your effects follow you about? Do you pack a case?”
“Oh, we wouldn’t carry them ourselves. Suppose we were run over and taken to hospital? And they opened up the case? They wouldn’t believe we were nuns at all. They would think we belonged to a concert-party”
“They are sent after you, then.”
“They come by the carrier. Though I see,” she said, sifting through what remained in the chest, “that we don’t have anything here for Philomena. Not that it’s a loss, the kind of jumble-sale tat that I imagine a girl like her would have been wearing when she turned up as a postulant. But now isn’t that typical Ireland for you? Send the nun, and no clothes, just forget about it—” Mother Purpit let her jaw hang vacantly, and assumed a glassy-eyed expression—“just let the world go by. You should have seen the state of her when she presented herself here. An old Gladstone bag in her hand, tied up with string, and that nearly empty. I’ve heard of holy poverty, but in my opinion you can go too far. One pair of stockings, and those in holes, her clodhopper’s toe poking through. When her handkerchiefs last saw starch, I wouldn’t care to speculate.”
“She sounds more than anything like a displaced person,” Fludd said.
“I’d displace her back again, if I had my way, Father. But I don’t, more’s the pity. It’s Mother Provincial who gives the marching orders.” Indignation had taken over Mother Perpetua; she forgot that he did not know what she was talking about. “But I told her, Mother Provincial, I told her straight. I said if the girl wants to go in for that sort of thing, she should have taken herself off to some contemplatives; we Sisters of the Holy Innocents have to keep our heads screwed on, we have good solid practical work to do. I said to Mother Provincial, don’t think I’m going to allow my convent to become some repository for the Order’s embarrassments, because I won’t have it. I’ll speak to the bishop.”
“Heavens,” Fludd said. “What had Sister Philomena done?”
“She’d made claims for herself.”
“What variety of claims?”
“She said she had the stigmata. She said her palms bled every Friday.”
“And did other people see this?”
Perpetua sniffed. “Irish people saw it,” she said. “Some senile old donkey of a parish priest—forgive me, Father, but I always speak my mind—who was foolish enough to fall for her nonsense. It caused a stir, you see, had a whole parish in a state of excitement. I’m pleased to say that when he took it further the pair of them were pretty soon stamped on. At diocesan level, you know. In my experience you can count on a bishop.”
“So they sent her to England?”
“Yes, to get her out of that over-excited, unhealthy atmosphere. Well, I put it to you, Father, have you ever heard anything like it? Stigmata, indeed, in this day and age? Did you ever hear of anything in such poor taste?”
“Was she seen by a doctor?”
“Oh yes, but an Irish doctor could make nothing of it. I tell you, her feet had scarcely touched the ground before I arranged a good sensible man to take a proper look at her.” She sniffed again. “Do you know what he said it was? He said it was dermatitis.”
“And how is she now?”
“Oh, she’s over it now. I’ve seen to that.” She broke off. “But why are we wasting time over this fool of a girl? You’ll want your tea.”
Perpetua rustled out. What a noise her habit seemed to make, crackling and rasping; how her heels thumped on the linoleum. The air around her was loud with contention; he could think of nothing less conducive to a life of prayer.
Fludd resumed his seat by the fire. Presently, he heard the nun returning—he could hear her right along the corridor, now that he was alert for her. Behind her toddled an elderly sister, rotund and beaming, bearing a tea-tray. “Sister Anthony,” Purpit said.
“How do you do, Sister Anthony?”
“Well, in Jesus Christ, and I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Father; won’t you with your youth and all be a great help to poor auld Angwin?”
“Sister, don’t be quaint,” Purpit said. “Not in my hearing.”
Anthony sighed, and put down the tea-tray on the gate-legged table. “You could have had a sandwich,” she said. “You could have had fish-paste. But they said it was bad. Said it was off. Polycarp said it might have been in the desert for forty days and forty nights. I don’t know. I couldn’t taste anything off with it. I ate mine.”
“Sister has an excellent digestion,” said Mother Perpetua.
“Young things,” Sister Anthony said. “Nuns today. Want coddling. Finicky.”
“Do you want coddling, Father Fludd?” Purpit asked: gaily, without malice.
He glanced at her. Her gaiety was a terrible thing to see. “Not to worry, Sister Anthony,” he said. “Miss Dempsey will have something for me when I get in. The tea alone will be most welcome.”
“And try one of the biscuits. I baked them myself just this last fortnight.”
Sister Anthony went out, moving airily despite her bulk. As Mother Perpetua busied herself with the teapot, Fludd became conscious of a noise outside the door, a low rustle, a type of dull snuffling.
“Who is there?” he inquired.
“Oh, it is Sister Polycarp, Sister Cyril, and Sister Ignatius Loyola. They want to be introduced to you.”
Fludd half-rose. “Should we not let them in?”
Perpetua smiled, and poured the milk in a thin high stream. “In good time,” she said. She handed him his cup, with what was almost a simper: “Is that how you like it, Father?”
Father Fludd looked down. “I hardly know. I just drink it as it comes.”
“Ah, I might have known. You young priests. So ascetic. So unworldly.” Perpetua sighed, and supplied herself generou
sly with sugar. “I suppose the bishop is very proud of you.”
Fludd tested his tea, hedgingly. “Do you think so?”
“Else why would he send you here to sort out this mess, if he didn’t put his absolute faith in you? Oh, you’re young, of course, to take on a wily old fox like Father Angwin—and by the way, he drinks, you know, and he has been seen in Netherhoughton, hanging about the tobacconist’s—but no one who took a look at you could doubt your capabilities.”
Go on then, Fludd silently challenged: look at me. He let his own eyes dwell on the coarse skin of the nun’s cheeks, her fleshy nose; she raised her head briefly, but then dropped it again, as if its black wrappings had suddenly become too heavy. She reached out for the teapot and topped up her cup.
“What mess?” Fludd said. “What are you talking about?”
Perpetua was startled. She put down the pot. “Well, don’t tell me His Grace hasn’t put you in the picture? Angwin’s to be modernized, he’s to be made to change his ways, I thought you knew all that. Perhaps—I don’t know—perhaps the bishop thought it would be better if you formed your own opinions. A very fair man, His Grace, a very just man, I always have said that about him. Though in my opinion the benefit of the doubt can be extended once too often.” She thought for a moment, and suddenly sat up straighter, preening herself. “Of course, he knew that you had a reliable source here. He knew that he could rely on me to set you straight.”
Father Fludd picked up one of Sister Anthony’s biscuits. He bit into it, gave a cry of pain, and dropped it to his knee, whence it bounced to the floor and skittered under the table. “Holy Virgin,” he said. “I have nearly broke my teeth.”
“Lord, I should have warned you, Father. We are all used to them. We have a little toffee hammer that we pass about to deal with them.”
Fludd held his hand across his mouth.
“Would you like me to look in your mouth?” Perpetua said tenderly. “I could see if there was any damage.”
“No thank you, Mother Perpetua. Do go on with what you were saying.”
“The man’s in a world of his own,” the nun continued. “More tea? Oh, he’s sound enough on doctrine, we all know that, too sound, the bishop says, an obstinate sort of man always on about the Church Fathers and talking over people’s heads. But his sermons can be mere gibberish. In the pulpit the other week he said the Pope was a Nazi. He said he was the head of the Mafia.”
“And the congregation?” Fludd took out his handkerchief and dabbed at his lip. “How did they take it?”
“Quietly,” said the nun, with a careless air. “They always do. They’ve a great want of education.”
And whose fault is that? Fludd muttered, behind the muffling folds of linen.
“And if his wild sermons were not offence enough, he sets his judgement up against His Grace’s! Of course, you’ve heard of this ridiculous business about the statues.”
“Oh, of course,” said Fludd. He was beginning to sense which way the wind was blowing. “I think I will have that other cup of tea.”
By now the scuffling outside the door had much increased, and a sort of impatient rhythmic breathing was evident, the concerted effort of six lungs.
“Oh, come in,” Purpit cried, her patience snapping. “Don’t hang about out there snuffling like a tribe of old dogs, come in and meet Father Fludd, the great hope of our parish.”
The three nuns who entered the room in single file were of an age, as Purpit had told him, and of a height, which was little more than five foot; looking from one lined, dim, paper-white face to the other, Fludd knew that he would never be able to tell them apart. They kept their eyes cast down, behind their wire-framed spectacles, and shuffled their feet. Their habits smelt musty, as if they never went out of doors. Of course, they did go out of doors, walking up and down the carriage-drive; but what they experienced, between the black banks and the dripping trees, did not count as fresh air. They took no exercise, apart from beating small children with canes—which they did fiercely, in a spirit of rivalry. Malice marked their countenances, and a kind of greed.
“Are we not going to have tea?” one of them said. “The pot is big enough.”
“We could fetch cups,” said another.
“You have had your tea,” said Purpit, crushingly.
The three nuns peered at Fludd, from beneath the starched parapets of their headdresses. “They are working on a tapestry,” Mother Perpetua said. “Aren’t you, Sister Polycarp?”
“It is a big one,” said Polycarp.
“We do it ad majorem Dei gloriam,” said Cyril.
“It is like the Bayeux Tapestry.”
“But on a religious theme.”
Fludd set down his teacup. He felt uneasy; one of the Sisters wheezed a little, and he felt that his own breathing had become difficult, a pain across his breastbone.
“You don’t sound well, Sister,” he said; and he saw the lips of the other two nuns tighten with wrath.
“She is very well,” one said.
The other said, “She gets linctus.”
The first added, “She has no cause for complaint.”
“Your tapestry … ,” Fludd said, “what is the theme?”
“The plagues of Egypt,” said Sister Cyril. “It is novel.”
“But edifying,” said Polycarp.
“It is an undertaking,” said Fludd, respectfully.
“We have done the plague of frogs,” Polycarp said. “And the murrain, and the grievous swarm of flies.”
Sister Ignatius Loyola coughed a long hacking cough, then spoke for the first time: “Now we are up to boils.”
Perpetua took him to the convent door. It was quite dark now, and he knew that Father Angwin would be anxious. Perpetua touched his sleeve. “Remember, Father,” she said, in a hoarse whisper, “any help I can give you, you’ve only to ask. Any information … you understand? I want His Grace to know I’m loyal.”
“I understand,” Fludd said. He wondered what exactly was the origin of the bad blood between the nun and Father Angwin; but he had already realized, from what he had seen earlier that day, that the quarrels of this community were ancient and impenetrable. He wanted to get away, out of her presence; a powerful aversion welled up in him, and he pulled his sleeve away. Purpit did not notice. She stood framed in the lighted doorway as he trudged up the hill towards the church.
The bishop’s a fair man, he thought; as he put one muddy foot in front of the other. The bishop’s a just man, is he? Well, perhaps so. Perhaps he may be. Perhaps fairness abounds. When people complain of their lot, their sneering enemies gloat and tell them, to make them afraid, “Life’s not fair.” But then again, taking the long view, and barring flood, fire, brain damage, the usual run of bad luck, people do get what they want in life. There is a hidden principle of equity in operation. The frightening thing is that life is fair; but what we need, as someone has already observed, is not justice but mercy.
FIVE
The arrival of Father Fludd in the parish was marked by a general increase in holiness. If he thought his parish tour had gone unremarked, he was mistaken; on the next Sunday, and in subsequent weeks, the lukewarm, the reclusive, and the apostate trod in each other’s footsteps on the carriage-drive. He preached a good vigorous sermon, stuffed with well-chosen texts; Father Angwin had thought it on the whole dangerous to disabuse his flock of the notion that the Bible was a Protestant book, and had tended to leave his quotes unattributed.
That first Sunday, Fludd noted the Men’s Fellowship, occupying the north aisle; a dapper man in plaid trews was the first of them to step up and take Holy Communion, and the rest followed. Their jaws were held stiff as they turned from the altar rail, God’s living body cloven to their hard palates. Bestowing the host, Fludd saw the features of the communicants reflected in the polished plate the altar boy held beneath each chin; he saw the shiver of the distorted metal faces.
Only the nuns preceded the Men’s Fellowship, Purpiture marchin
g stoutly from her front pew, the rest rising to follow, peeling off from the kneeler like black adhesive strips: Cyril, Ignatius, Polycarp, in alphabetical order to save dispute. The round-faced girl-nun brought up the rear; one or two sisters were absent, he noticed, probably down with some digestive ailment.
A hymn then, “O Bread of Heaven”: off-key, a low rumbling hymn, like bad weather coming up. Ita, Missa est: Go, the Mass is ended. Deo gratias. Another hymn: “Soul of My Saviour,” a parish favourite. High-pitched, this time, a keening wail, the sopranos of Fetherhoughton having their way with it; only the shrillest can hit the top notes, and the wisest do not try. Soul of my Saviour, Sanctify my breast … And midway through that first torturing verse, he saw from the corner of his eye how Mother Perpetua leant forward, across the embonpoint of Sister Anthony, and dug the young nun in the ribs.
If she had been carrying an umbrella, she would have used that, but the point of her finger was hardly less efficacious. A startled moan broke from Sister Philomena, and presently it was evident that she was singing. Deep in thy wounds, Lord, Hide and shelter me … “Poor Sister Philomena,” Agnes Dempsey muttered. “It’s like a dog being taken poorly.” The young woman blushed as she sang, and cast down her eyes.
When the hymn was over, the congregation rose as one man, and seemed to shake themselves, and passed weightily down the aisles and out into the weak autumn sun, en route to their fast-breaking Sunday dinners; the camphor smell of their Sunday clothes mingled with the incense, and Fludd found himself sneezing uncontrollably, wiping his streaming eyes. There was mud on the carriage-drive, and winter in the air.
Soon the children had new games, of imitating priests. In their back-yards they went knocking from door to door, slow-footed and doleful, pretending that they carried the viaticum. The householders, informed that they were near death, made their displeasure felt; but the children, having recovered from the blows, re-formed their lines, and began to visit the coalhouses, tapping on each door to solicit last confessions, and to offer the grace of God to the Nutty Slack within.