Vow of Silence Page 4

  ‘You are quite right,’ said Sister Joan placidly.

  ‘Are we then to extend the boundaries of heaven every time a good person dies?’ the Prioress asked. Her tone was playful.

  ‘Only if one is a Fundamentalist,’ Sister Joan said.

  If this was some kind of theological word-game designed to show up her ignorance she didn’t feel like playing.

  ‘Sister Mary Concepta has a little stomach-ache today,’ Sister Perpetua said, with an air of pouring oil on troubled waters.

  ‘Nothing serious, I hope, Sister?’ Sister Lucy looked concerned.

  ‘Too many chocolates. Her nephew will insist on sending them and she is not always as scrupulous about sharing them as she might be‚’ said Sister Perpetua.

  ‘The old must be allowed their little selfishnesses‚’ the Prioress said tolerantly.

  ‘I understand that I am actually a replacement for two sisters.’ Sister Joan glanced round.

  ‘I hope you do not regard yourself as a substitute, Sister Joan‚’ Mother Emmanuel boomed suddenly. ‘We each have our unique contribution to make.’

  ‘I was referring to Sister Sophia‚’ said Sister Joan. ‘She also died, did she not?’

  Mother Emmanuel dropped a stitch and clicked her tongue in annoyance.

  ‘You will have your work cut out to maintain her standards‚’ the Prioress said. ‘You will all have seen the new novice, Veronica. Did you gain any strong impression?’ She looked brightly round the semicircle as she asked the question.

  ‘Most promising, I would say‚’ said Mother Emmanuel. ‘Polite and modest. Very different from some of today’s young girls.’

  ‘I too gained a favourable impression‚’ the Prioress nodded. ‘Chastity has its own perfume.’ Sister Joan wondered if it was lavender and was shocked at the trend of her own thoughts.

  ‘If I may be excused –?’ She began to rise.

  ‘Certainly, Sister Joan.’ The Prioress nodded pleasantly. ‘Do you need a guide or do you enjoy exploring by yourself?’

  ‘I was going to the chapel‚’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘Down the stairs and turn left. The plan of the building is very simple. We will see you at Benediction. Father Malone will be coming over.’

  It was then a conventual benediction without any members of the laity there. Giving the customary bow, receiving the customary ‘Dominus tecum’ she left the recreation-room and walked back through the dining-room. The tables had been cleared, the long white napkins neatly folded. There was no sign of the two lay sisters who, she surmised, would be now enjoying their own supper or perhaps tending to the three old dears in the infirmary.

  On the landing she stood for a moment, looking down into the shadowed hall. The familiar convent smell of incense and beeswax permeated the air. The old wood of the balustrade slid like silk under her hand as she descended. On the left an archway led into an antechamber similar to the one where she had waited earlier. This one had a heavy grille along the inner wall. The visitors’ parlour would be beyond the grille reached by an outside door.

  That had been the most final moment, that clashing down of the grille as she passed from lay life to religious life. Two years before. It seemed longer. She had walked through without looking back knowing that Jacob wouldn’t be there. It was a measure of how much she had matured in the two years since that were she to take her final vows and pass beneath the grille again she would not besitate to glance back with love.

  The chapel would be behind the visitors’ parlour. A low doorway led her into a narrow many-windowed passage running between the right-hand walls of the two parlours and the right front of the main wing. This part of the house felt older than the rest. She passed a side door through which visitors evidently stepped and saw the glow of the Perpetual Lamp gleaming redly through a half-open door.

  The chapel was pre-Elizabethan, she calculated, standing for a few moments by the holy water stoup, feeling as she always felt that mixture of awe and heartshaking love when she stood in the place where the core of her life was held.

  No attempt had been made to modernise the interior. Stone walls and floor, a heavily carved wooden ceiling of a later date than the chapel itself, polished pews and pulpit, black and white kneeling-mats.

  Sister Joan slipped into the nearest pew and knelt, back straight, hands echoing the candle flames that streamed upward from the altar. The altar was set in the traditional place against the wall with a large crucifix flanked by candlesticks beneath the veiled Host. Within the altar rail was a low table covered with a white cloth. The scent of spring flowers mingled with the incense. Her beads slid, cool black tears, through her fingers as she began a decade of the rosary.

  Crossing herself, letting the chain on which her prayers were strung fall freely from her belt again, she rose, her eyes becoming accustomed to the flickering light.

  The chapel was larger than she had thought. No doubt in the old times tenants and servants had worshipped here with the Tarquins. The imagined echoes of their devotions were almost audible.

  To the right of the altar was a rood screen, hiding the door into the sacristy where the priest robed and disrobed, where missals and hymnbooks and boxes of candles were kept. To the left was the smaller Lady altar with its statue of the Holy Virgin, crowned head high, blue painted robe falling in frozen curves of plaster to rose-decorated feet. There were candles lit there too and a bowl of flowers on the step.

  ‘Nothing is wrong in this chapel,’ thought Sister Joan and she was immediately puzzled as to what might have led her to believe there might be something wrong.

  Tiredness played tricks sometimes with the mind. She recalled suddenly how, as a child, waking from a bad dream she had gone into the sitting-room and seen strangers there, people with whom she had nothing to do. She had stood, terrified, on the threshold of the room and then the strange woman by the fire had turned her head and smiled and resolved herself into Mum.

  But the Holy Virgin was the Holy Virgin. She wasn’t about to turn into someone else while Sister Joan stood there staring at Her.

  A slight cough by the door made her jump so violently that she was ashamed when Sister Perpetua said,

  ‘Do forgive me, Sister, I didn’t mean to startle you, but I just came from tucking in my old ladies. I promised them that you would see them tomorrow and they look forward to it very much. New faces always stimulate them splendidly.’

  ‘I hope I don’t stimulate them too much,’ said Sister Joan.

  ‘Heavens, what a thing to say.’ In the candlelight Sister Perpetua’s reddish eyebrows wriggled furiously up and down on her white forehead. ‘Would you like to take a short stroll before Benediction starts?’

  Sister Joan would have preferred to take it alone but the thought of company was not unpleasant. And this was the infirmarian who had known Mother Frances and might clear up the mystery of that last letter.

  They went out through the side door into the rain-sparkled dimness of the May evening. At this end of the land the light stayed longer than in the north. It was not a black but a grey cloak that spread itself over the landscape. From a nearby oak a rook cawed into the air, intent on prey.

  ‘This is the enclosure,’ Sister Perpetua said, unlatching a high wicker gate and passing through it.

  The Order of the Daughters of Compassion was not entirely cloistered as were Orders such as the Carmelites. Any sister who wished to immure herself completely must first receive the unanimous consent of all the Prioresses. In the fifty years since the Order had been founded only two sisters had sealed themselves into a hermit existence.

  The dim twilight revealed the kitchen garden with its staked vegetables and borders of herb. A cobbled yard with the outlines of stable and garage diminished the space intended as the exercise area. There were rose bushes and spiky lavender to scent the air and against the farthest wall pear and cherry and walnut spread branches heavy with blossom.

  ‘I love the enclosure,’ Sister Perpetua said. �
��Now that summer’s on the way my old ladies will be able to come out here and sit.’

  ‘Are they very sick?’ Sister Joan asked as they passed the winding path.

  ‘Sister Andrew has had breast cancer, but thank God she’s in remission at present,’ Sister Perpetua said. ‘Sister Mary Concepta suffers from rheumatism. Sister Gabrielle is just old. They’re all three old but quite bright still. At least they’re finishing their lives with some dignity.’

  It was one of the benefits of a religious vocation, Sister Joan thought, that no nun ended her days in loneliness living on Welfare. To the last breath the old sister remained an integral part of the Community to which she had dedicated her life.

  ‘You must have been sad to lose Mother Frances,’ she said aloud. ‘Reverend Mother Agnes told me that she used to be her Novice Mistress.’

  ‘Oh, Mother Frances spoke of her often,’ Sister Perpetua volunteered. ‘She remembered all the novices who had passed through her hands, but Reverend Mother Agnes was always special to her. I think she hoped for a visit from her before the end came.’

  ‘But she did write, did she not?’

  ‘A few days before her death,’ Sister Perpetua answered promptly. ‘She wanted her to visit, you see, but one realises that a Prioress cannot uproot herself at a moment’s notice and come dashing down to Cornwall to see an old friend. I think Mother Frances also realised it. Very soon afterwards she lapsed into a coma and died. It was a holy death.’

  Sister Joan nodded. The holy death was one to be anticipated by any sister who had spent her religious life in the tranquil carrying out of her vows and duties. In such a death soul and body separated gently with little anguish, the soul helped on its homeward flight by the prayers and invocations of the assembled nuns.

  ‘Reverend Mother Agnes would have liked to come,’ she said.

  ‘She telephoned,’ Sister Perpetua said. ‘By then Mother Frances wouldn’t have recognised her, I’m afraid. Did you know that originally she was a Sister of Charity?’

  ‘Mother Frances? No, I didn’t.’

  ‘She entered the religious life when she was twenty-one. When our Order was founded she obtained permission to transfer. She knew our Foundress personally. Think of that.’

  ‘I fancy that Marie Van Lowen was quite a woman,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘A great sinner who may yet become a saint if Rome agrees. The problem is that in Rome everybody moves at a snail’s pace.’

  Sister Perpetua had unfastened a gate set in the wall and was stepping through. Sister Joan, following, was momentarily stilled by the glinting white crosses that marked the close-cut turf.

  ‘Our convent cemetery,’ Sister Perpetua said. ‘We will all lie here one day.’ There were no more than a dozen crosses, in two neat rows, like children at assembly. Each cross bore name and dates of birth and death. Underneath the mounds the sisters slept, clad in their shrouds, uncoffined according to custom.

  Two of the graves were marked not by crosses but by small plaques.

  ‘Mother Frances,’ Sister Perpetua indicated one. ‘The cross will be set in a year’s time when the earth has settled.’

  That too was according to custom.

  ‘And the other is Sister Sophia?’

  ‘I have a torch,’ Sister Perpetua said unexpectedly and switched it on, directly at the engraved plaque.

  ‘Sister Sophia Weldon. 1963–1987’

  The engraved letters, white against the black, were square and neat.

  ‘She was very young,’ Sister Joan said, shocked.

  ‘She had taken her vows three months before,’ Sister Perpetua said, switching off the torch again.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘She hanged herself,’ Sister Perpetua said.

  ‘Hanged herself?’ The words made no sense. ‘But surely – the announcement of her death – I cannot recall –’

  ‘Reverend Mother Ann did not make the manner of her death public to our other Houses,’ said Sister Perpetua, beginning to walk back to the gate. ‘We do not discuss the incident, but I felt it only fair to let you know so that you don’t inadvertently say the wrong thing. It was and is a most painful subject.’

  Across the enclosure the bell for Benediction began to ring.

  FOUR

  The clanging of the rising-bell woke Sister Joan at five. One of the lay sisters, Sister Felicity she realised as the sleep mists cleared from her brain, was striding past the cells, her voice raised above the ringing.

  ‘Christ is risen.’

  ‘Thanks be to God,’ came in a ragged chorus of voices. A series of soft bumps indicated knees hitting the linoleum.

  Sister Joan’s knees hit the linoleum with the rest. She had not slept well. The train journey, the unfamiliar surroundings, the questions buzzing in her brain had all conspired to keep her wakeful until the clock had chimed one.

  The water in the ewer was cold. She splashed her face and hands, blinked the grittiness out of her eyes, reached for a towel. Five years of practice had made her expert at cleaning her teeth while on her knees. Rising, she stripped off nightgown and mobcap and donned the sensible cotton underwear deemed suitable for a professed sister. Her grey habit was one of two that she possessed, to be worn month and month about so that one could be regularly cleaned.

  ‘I fear that in the old days the odour of sanctity was less than savoury in hot weather,’ Reverend Mother Agnes had said.

  This Prioress smelled of lavender, not the faint perfume that might result from her laying her clothes with bags of the flowers in the folds, but the stronger essence that comes from a bottle of cologne.

  Sister Joan fastened her belt and pinned her veil, her hands moving competently in the absence of mirrors.

  ‘You look awfully well‚’ her parents always said on their twice yearly visits, as if they had expected otherwise.

  ‘You get more like your mum every day‚’ her father always commented.

  She saw herself therefore not in mirrors but in memories of the photographs of her mother she had seen down through the years, the slim figure, the rosy cheeks and vivid blue eyes, the upturned nose and the mouth that quirked upwards in amusement at everything strange and spare.

  The nuns were emerging from their cells, walking with folded hands and lowered eyelids along the corridor and down the main stairs to the lower passage that led to the chapel lamps burned at intervals to remind them that dawn was not yet come. There would be private devotions and meditation until six thirty when the priest would arrive to offer Mass. On the previous evening she had been too shaken by Sister Perpetua’s revelation to notice more than that Father Malone was small and elderly with the expected accents of County Cork in his voice.

  In the chapel she conscientiously ploughed through five decades of the rosary and then, her Missal open at the Office of the day, composed in her mind the letter she would later write to Reverend Mother Agnes and slip into a postbox without first submitting it for inspection.

  ‘In the Name of Our Blessed Lord.

  ‘Dear Reverend Mother Agnes,

  ‘Knowing your anxiety in this matter I am writing at once, first to inform you of our comfortable journey and safe arrival at the Cornwall House. We were met at the station by Sister Felicity, one of the lay sisters, and warmly welcomed. This is a mansion house, built in varying styles and at varying periods added to though not always happily from an aesthetic viewpoint.

  ‘The only information of any consequence that I have yet discovered is that Sister Sophia who taught in the school here until her death six months ago took her own life, a circumstance not advertised to the other Houses of our Order. She was twenty-four years old and had been professed for only three months. This tragedy is not discussed among the sisters but the infirmarian, Sister Perpetua, confided it to me.

  ‘I am also told by Sister Perpetua that Mother Frances was deeply respected here and was in command of her faculties almost to the end.

  ‘Reverend Mother Ann is a charming
and cultured woman who is obviously well liked by the sisters. The atmosphere here is congenial. I begin my teaching duties tomorrow and hope that I can carry them out to the satisfaction of all.

  ‘Please convey my love to the other sisters and to yourself,

  ‘Your loving daughter in Christ,

  ‘Sister Joan.’

  To mention the pink nail polish and the scented habit smacked of pettiness. Even the most religious of nuns occasionally flouted small rules and the Prioress of each House had, within her sphere, considerable latitude.

  The letter written in her mind she turned her attention back to her devotions. To be perfectly recollected during these daily devotions was a goal to be aimed at, but she feared it would take years before she could so lose herself in prayer as to be unconscious of the small sounds and shufflings of her companions.

  Sister Lucy had risen and gone into the sacristy, presumably to greet Father Malone. Through her linked fingers Sister Joan marked her progress, a trifle self-important in its bustling. The sacristan was responsible for the upkeep of the chapel. This one clearly took pride in her position. Too much pride? And what business was it of hers? Sister Joan closed her eyes firmly and began on a silent Salve Regina.

  The bell tinkled and she rose with the rest as Sister Lucy slipped back into her place and Father Malone trotted up to the altar.

  When Sister Joan went into the dining-room for the breakfast of coffee, cereal and a piece of fruit to be eaten standing according to custom she saw the priest there, drinking a cup of coffee. The Prioress beckoned her.

  ‘Father Malone, this is our new sister, Joan.’ She smiled at them both.

  ‘Welcome to Cornwall, Sister.’ He shook hands, peering at her comically over the tops of his half-moon glasses. ‘Would this be your first visit to this part of the country then?’

  ‘Yes, Father. I was born in Yorkshire and made my profession at the London House.’

  ‘Ah, Yorkshire is a fine county too,’ he said tolerantly.