But there was no one to tell. The other girls said that if she told the teachers at school, they would just go straight to Mother Superior, and all she’d get for her trouble would be a punishment for telling lies. She had to be careful which girls she spoke about it to, for some of them would repeat what she’d said to the Sisters just to get in their good books. If she hadn’t been going to school every day, Dulcie felt she might just shrivel up and die with misery.
Yet school was good. Some of the children there teased the ones from the convent, but they weren’t really spiteful. She liked Miss Heywood, her teacher, and she could forget about the Sacred Heart while she was doing sums, reading books and writing essays. The only trouble was the hours at school went so fast, and the ones spent at the convent seemed interminable.
‘Hello, my darlings,’ Susan exclaimed, jumping up from her seat in the small visitors’ sitting-room as Dulcie and May were brought in by Sister Grace. She held out her arms to them and they both ran headlong into them.
It was the first Sunday in April and Susan’s third visit. She was excited, not only at seeing them, but because she’d just got a new job at a school in Eltham and would be starting there after the Easter holidays. She’d also met someone rather special a couple of weeks ago, and she was hoping it was going to grow into a romance.
‘Do you think I could take them out for a walk?’ Susan asked the Sister, who was just standing there smiling. ‘It’s such a nice spring day and I’m sure you are taking all the others out this afternoon.’
Sister Grace frowned. ‘Mother Superior doesn’t like the girls leaving the grounds,’ she said. ‘We had an occasion once where a child didn’t come back and the police had to be called to find her.’
‘Surely you know I’m not going to run off with them?’ Susan said with laughter in her voice. ‘I’ve often wanted to, but as a teacher I couldn’t do anything so irresponsible.’
‘I’m sure you wouldn’t, Miss Sims,’ Sister said. ‘But you know how it is. We have to have the same rule for everyone.’
‘Well, may we go out in the garden then?’ Susan asked. ‘It really is too nice to stay indoors.’
It was agreed they could go into the front garden, so Susan led them out to the bench there. ‘Doesn’t it look a picture?’ she exclaimed. ‘Just look at those daffodils!’
She was impressed for it had looked so bleak on her last visit. The lawn was a deep lush green, and hundreds of daffodils had come up through it in one section. The trees around the garden were all just coming into leaf, and a large almond tree was in full blossom.
‘Did you know we aren’t allowed to go into the garden at the back?’ Dulcie said suddenly. ‘We have to stay in the old tennis court bit, and if we go out we get caned.’
Susan was surprised at this but said maybe that was just a winter-time rule so the children didn’t bring mud indoors.
‘No, it’s all the year round,’ Dulcie insisted. ‘It’s just another one of their mean rules because they want us to be unhappy. When it was really cold at half-term in February we still had to stay out there all day. It was horrible because there’s nothing to play with. Not even a ball.’
Susan thought that Dulcie was just playing for sympathy. ‘That does sound a bit grim,’ she said lightly. ‘But the weather’s getting nicer now, feel how warm it is today.’
Dulcie went into a sulk, and May climbed on to Susan’s lap, cuddled into her and began talking about her teacher in a baby’s lisping voice.
‘Did you know we aren’t allowed to have letters from Daddy?’ Dulcie said, cutting across what her sister was saying. ‘And I can’t write to him either.’
Susan was shocked by this news, but even more by Dulcie’s belligerent tone. There was a challenging look in her eye and a tightness to her mouth that had never been there before. She also felt uncomfortable with May playing at being a baby, it was a bit sickening and quite out of character. Why were they being so strange?
‘Did Mother Superior give you a reason?’ she asked, her mind switching to Reg and imagining how upsetting it would be for him to get no letters.
‘Not a sensible reason,’ Dulcie said. ‘Just that it wasn’t nice for little girls to be having anything to do with a prison.’
Susan could well understand why Mother Superior felt that a prison visit might be harmful, but she could see absolutely nothing wrong with them receiving letters from their father. She thought she would have a word with Miss Denning about it and told Dulcie so.
‘I don’t want to get letters from him,’ May said suddenly, sitting bolt upright on Susan’s lap and dropping the baby’s lisp. ‘It’s his fault we were sent here, and he isn’t my father.’
‘Of course he’s your father,’ Susan said. ‘He couldn’t help being put in prison either, he didn’t do what they said he did.’
May shot off her lap and turned to face Susan, glowering at her. ‘He isn’t my father, I heard Mummy say so. Then he threw her down the stairs. He killed Mummy just like Sister killed Belinda.’
‘May!’ Susan exclaimed, reaching out for the child. ‘This isn’t like you!’
But May stepped away from her, big tears welling up in her eyes. ‘I don’t like you. You made that lady take us away from Granny.’
She turned and ran away, disappearing round the side of the convent.
‘What on earth was all that about?’ Susan asked Dulcie. She was astonished rather than hurt by the outburst. ‘Who’s Belinda?’
‘Her doll. Will you just wait while I see where she’s gone?’ Dulcie said, jumping up. ‘She might get into trouble if she’s found indoors while all the other girls are out for a walk.’
Dulcie rushed off and Susan sat there feeling completely perplexed.
Miss Denning had warned her that she might find changes in the children in the first few months. She said Susan could expect them to be clingy, demanding, and perhaps a little aggressive at times. She had also said they might exaggerate about the kind of treatment they got from the Sisters. She said it was a normal reaction for children who’d just been taken into care. A kind of test to see if their visitor really cared about them.
But claiming Reg wasn’t her father was such a peculiar thing for May to say. If she really had heard her mother say it, why hadn’t she said something before?
Dulcie came running back. ‘She’s up in the playroom with a couple of the Senior girls,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Sister Anne knows she’s up there, so it’s all right.’
‘Can you explain what she meant?’ Susan asked, patting the seat beside her so Dulcie would sit down.
She listened carefully while Dulcie told her May had been different ever since she got punished on her first night here. ‘I don’t know what really happened,’ Dulcie said, looking nervously about her as if imagining someone was eavesdropping. ‘She won’t talk about it. All she said was that Sister Teresa killed her doll. The other girls think Sister broke it purposely. May’s been really funny ever since.’
‘Is it bad here, Dulcie?’ Susan asked. She felt close to tears, confused, hurt and so very disappointed. Yet she didn’t know whether she was disappointed with herself for not winkling this out before, or with Maud, the children, the convent or even Reg.
‘I’m getting used to it now,’ Dulcie replied and gave a kind of sniffling sigh.
Susan sensed that Dulcie had intended earlier to spill out all kinds of hurts and injustices, but perhaps because May had been rude to Susan, she had decided that speaking out now would only bring further distress to everyone she cared about.
Was that the reason too why Reg never revealed what Anne had said to him that night?
Susan thought about it for a moment. Telling the court that May wasn’t his child would have made little difference to the outcome of the trial, but if it was discussed in court, it would have been reported in the newspapers.
Suddenly Susan understood. Reg’s love for May wasn’t affected by discovering she wasn’t his child. He wanted to prot
ect her from slurs which might follow her into adulthood, and he also couldn’t bear for the child to know how treacherous her mother really was. But how cruel fate could be – unknown to Reg the child had heard it straight from her mother’s lips, and the very poison which Anne had sought to wound her husband with had found its way into her innocent child’s heart.
‘I’ll speak to Miss Denning about the letters from your father,’ Susan said, struggling to regain her composure. ‘Is there anything else you want to tell me that she might be able to sort out for you?’
She saw something flicker across Dulcie’s face. A hesitancy, and fear.
‘You can trust me,’ Susan said. ‘I know how to deal with problems tactfully.’
But Dulcie’s face closed up. ‘No, there’s nothing else,’ she said. ‘Just about Daddy’s letters. I’d better go now and see what May’s doing.’
Susan kissed her and gave her a bag that contained some sweets and a couple of books. ‘Eat the sweets before the others get back,’ she said with a smile. ‘That’s what I used to do when I was little so I didn’t have to share them. Say goodbye to May for me. I’ll be back next month, maybe she’ll have decided she does like me again by then.’
Dulcie ran off then and Susan went down to the gate. As she turned to close it behind her, she saw the child was standing at the side of the house, just watching her.
Dulcie didn’t return her wave and Susan felt a cold chill run through her. A sixth sense told her that Dulcie’s comprehension of the adult world had expanded since she’d been at the convent. She had lost her trust, knew that at just nine years old she was now on her own.
Susan’s eyes swept over the convent, took in the stone cross above the front door, the beautiful front garden, the creeper just coming into bud which would soon cover the red brick with glossy leaves. It looked so serene and safe, yet was it just a facade? Were there dark, cruel things going on inside? Little minds being twisted by women who had no business to be caring for children?
‘You can trust me, Dulcie,’ she murmured to herself. ‘I won’t abandon you.’
Chapter Six
‘Dulcie and May Taylor!’ Sister Teresa barked out as all the girls were ready to file out of the dining-room after breakfast to get ready for school. ‘You are to go straight up to see Mother Superior.’
The two girls looked at each other in alarm.
‘Go now, don’t just stand there,’ Sister snapped at them. ‘And pull your socks up, May.’
It was June, and the girls had been at the convent for six months. By obeying the rules implicitly they had managed to avoid punishment and even disapproval. But when any girl was ordered to go to Mother Superior it almost always meant trouble for her.
‘I haven’t done anything naughty,’ May whispered to Dulcie as they left the dining-room to go up the stairs. ‘Have you?’
Dulcie shook her head, yet she knew only too well that almost anything, from not getting out of bed quickly enough to giving one of the Sisters a surly glance or straying off the path going through the orchard on the way to and from school, was enough to be punished.
Both girls had come to accept that the convent was where they were to stay, and they’d learnt to make the best of it. Once the spring had come it was no longer an ordeal to be out in the playground, they’d grown used to the dull food, the strict discipline, they had their friends. But the distance between the girls which began after May’s punishment on their first night had grown wider as the months passed. In different dormitories, each having their own group of friends, and with the age difference, there was little opportunity to regain their former closeness. Dulcie still plaited May’s hair for her every morning, she always kissed her goodnight at bedtime, and wrote letters to Granny for both of them, but they rarely spent any time together. Yet this summons was a sharp reminder that they were still sisters, and they instinctively clasped each other’s hand for comfort.
Surprisingly, Mother Superior opened the door to them at their knock. They had heard that the reason she hardly ever came down for meals in the dining-room any more was because she was too frail to manage the stairs. But she looked sprightly enough to them, she wasn’t even walking with a stick.
‘Come in, my dears,’ she said. Her tone was gentle and she took both their hands to draw them in, which suggested maybe they weren’t in trouble after all.
She let go of them long enough to close the door behind them, then, putting one hand on each of their shoulders, looked from one anxious upturned face to the other. ‘I’m afraid I have bad news for you,’ she said. ‘Your grandmother died late last night.’
Dulcie let out an involuntary wail of anguish. Susan had told them on her last visit that Granny was growing very frail, and the district nurse looked in on her every day, so they had been prepared. But it was still a shock.
Mother Superior slipped her arms around both their shoulders and drew them tightly to her. ‘I am so very sorry, my dears. I know how much she meant to you both. But she was a very old lady and she’d been sick for some time. Now she’s with Jesus in heaven, and all her troubles are over.’
It was the embrace more than anything else which made Dulcie sob, for in their entire time here no adult had ever held her, and as she saw Mother Superior as a similar age to her granny, it made her loss feel even sharper.
‘I received this news from your grandmother’s doctor this morning, by telephone,’ the old lady went on, squeezing them tightly against her. ‘He said to tell you she slipped away peacefully in her sleep while her friend Nora was sitting with her. I believe this friend will contact all the family to tell them and arrange the funeral.’
Dulcie sniffed back her tears and nodded. Mrs Nora Walsh had lived next door to Granny for years, she and May had always called her Auntie Nora. She supposed Nora knew where all Granny’s other children lived, her real aunts and uncles.
‘Will she tell Daddy?’ Dulcie asked.
‘I’m sure she will,’ Mother Superior said.
May began to cry then, and Dulcie extracted herself from the old lady’s arm and went to comfort her sister. May had lost interest in Granny almost as soon as they got here, and when her funny little badly spelled letters came she could hardly be bothered to listen to them. But Dulcie supposed May was now remembering all the nice times they had had with her, and that skipping-rope she’d sent to her on her sixth birthday last month.
‘We’ll go up to the chapel together now,’ Mother Superior said. ‘We’ll say some prayers, and you can each light a candle for her.’
As the girls followed the old lady across the hall and up the stairs, it was as if they were with Granny again, for Mother Superior clung to the banister, each step up as laboured as Maud’s had been. The only difference was the long black habit which concealed her legs, the rustle of her starched wimple and the jingle of her crucifix at her waist.
Her wheezing breath sounded loud in the silence of the upper corridor – all the other Sisters were still down in the basement. The girls could hear the other children in the distance as they made their way through the orchard to the gate at the far end on their way to school. Dulcie wondered fleetingly if they would be expected to go on to school alone later.
Mother Superior was shaky from the climb up the stairs, but she still led the girls right up to the altar of the chapel, genuflected, then sank on to her knees on a hassock before it, indicating that they were to kneel beside her.
Her prayer was a simple one of her own making, asking God to take Maud Taylor straight to His bosom and thanking Him for giving her a long and fruitful life. She asked that he would comfort all Maud’s children and grandchildren, and especially Dulcie and May.
After the girls had said the Lord’s Prayer with her, Mother Superior moved back on to a pew and whispered to the girls that they must now light a candle each and say their own private prayers. Dulcie’s hands were trembling so much she had difficulty in lighting a new one from the ones that were already burning, and the smell
of the hot wax evoked many poignant memories of going with Granny to her church in Deptford and lighting candles for the grandfather who had died long before they were even born.
Out on the landing a little later, Mother Superior put both her hands on their shoulders again, looking down at them with concerned eyes. ‘You will stay home today out of respect for your grandmother,’ she said. ‘As this is a special day of remembrance you may go anywhere in the garden and the orchard, but I ask that you behave with dignity. One of the Sisters will bring you sandwiches at dinnertime.’
Dulcie sensed that being allowed the freedom of the garden was offered out of sympathy for their loss, so she managed a watery smile, thanked Mother for her kindness, and taking May’s hand led her back down the stairs.
From habit the two girls didn’t speak until they were right out in the back garden. Although it was only nine in the morning, it was already very warm and sunny, with the promise of a hot day ahead. They stood for a moment by the fenced-in playground just looking at it, unsure of what to do with this unexpected freedom.
‘It’s nice that she let us miss school today,’ Dulcie said eventually, just to break the silence. There had hardly been a day since they first came here that they hadn’t looked longingly at the bushes beyond the playground, wishing so much that they could take one of the little winding paths they could see between them. In winter when the foliage was sparse they had tantalizing glimpses of steps to sunken terraces, and in spring they could guess at the beauty of this forbidden place by the trugs of flowers the Sisters filled to decorate the hall and chapel. Yet now, even though they’d been given permission to explore, in their sadness they were hesitant and unsure of themselves.