Vow of Chastity Read online

  ‘Sister Hilaria has lost a filling out of her tooth which is causing her considerable discomfort and may lead to more problems with her other teeth. I rang up the dentist in Bodmin and he very obligingly agreed to fit her in at 2.30 this afternoon. I intended to ask Sister Margaret to drive her in but Sister Margaret already went over to the presbytery this morning to get more holy water from Father Malone, so I hesitate to send her off again. You drive, don’t you, Sister Joan?’

  ‘Mother Dorothy, I haven’t driven for years – not since I entered the religious life,’ Sister Joan said in alarm.

  ‘Did you keep your licence up to date?’

  ‘Yes, Mother, but only because Mother Agnes was of the opinion that I’d be foolish to let it lapse when in the future I might need to drive somewhere.’

  ‘That was most far-sighted of Mother Agnes,’ Mother Dorothy approved. ‘You see, the necessity has arisen. You may take Sister Hilaria to the dentist and, at the same time, buy yourself a pair of neat trousers to wear under your habit when you ride the horse. It appears that shop-bought trousers are superior to anything that can be run up here. I understand that the cost will be in the region of thirty pounds which does seem very high, so if you can manage to bring me some change I’ll be very grateful. However don’t get inferior workmanship; that’s a false economy.’

  ‘No, Mother. Thank you, Mother.’ Accepting the money Sister Joan felt bound to add, ‘But as to driving – I am dreadfully out of practice.’

  ‘I imagine it is rather like swimming or bike riding,’ her superior said briskly. ‘Once learnt the accomplishment is never forgotten. You understand that this is a privilege, Sister? Sister Margaret will continue to drive on all ordinary occasions.’

  ‘Yes, Mother.’ Sister Joan genuflected respectfully and somehow or other got herself out of the parlour.

  Sister Hilaria whose expression as she ate the midday meal proved that she was trying to conceal the fact that she was in considerable pain, waited for her afterwards, looking with her vaguely distracted air rather like a large, absent-minded child about to be taken out for a treat. She had the slightly prominent eyes of the mystic and big clumsy hands at variance with a delicate Modigliani face. Her voice, breathless and husky, had a singsong quality. It was as if she were so unsuited to everyday living that her mystic experiences, of which she seldom spoke, had been given to her as a special grace to compensate for her inadequacies in every other direction. Sister Joan, having thought that, immediately reminded herself that Mother Dorothy had retained Sister Hilaria as novice mistress and that the other must have capabilities not visible to general view.

  ‘It is very good of you to relieve Sister Margaret and take me into town,’ she said as they went round to the back. ‘I would not have complained but Mother Dorothy noticed the swelling in my cheek, so under obedience I was constrained to tell.’

  ‘You should have told anyway, Sister. There’s no merit in hiding pain,’ Sister Joan said, adopting the faintly scolding tone that everybody unconsciously picked up when talking to Sister Hilaria.

  ‘It seemed so unimportant’, Sister Hilaria said vaguely, ‘but it will be a relief to have it fixed. Isn’t it sad to think how dependent we are on our bodies?’

  ‘Since we’re in them we might as well treat them properly,’ Sister Joan argued. ‘Oh, Sister Margaret, may I please have the car keys? Did Mother Dorothy tell you –?’

  ‘Just before dinner, Sister. I gave the seats a bit of a polish,’ Sister Margaret said cheerfully, handing over the keys. ‘Now don’t worry about your driving. Just trust in Our Dear Lord and you’ll come safe home. Sister Hilaria, if you get a draught in that tooth you’ll know about it. Put your scarf around your mouth.’

  ‘You don’t think the effect might be a little – gangsterish?’ Sister Hilaria asked anxiously as she complied.

  ‘Don’t worry, Sister,’ Sister Joan advised as they climbed into the car. ‘When people see the standard of my driving I’m the one who’ll be mistaken for a gangster. Fasten your seatbelt.’

  She turned the ignition and let in the clutch gingerly, wishing as she eased the vehicle out of the yard that Sister Margaret hadn’t crossed herself and said, ‘God and the blessed saints bring you safely back,’ with quite so much fervour.

  Yet within a few minutes she had settled comfortably enough into the rhythm of driving again, skirting the gateposts without mishap and taking the moor road that led across the greenway towards the huddled roofs of Bodmin. Neither could she stop herself from glancing around as she drove, hoping to see a dishevelled young boy waving at her. Nothing human met her roving gaze. Only sheep, their lambs close to their sides, cropped the turf. It was always possible that Petroc was already safely back at the camp, but her instincts doubted it.

  They had reached the greenway with the chimneys of the old Druid place crowding the skyline. Slowing down she found herself wondering why the Olives had chosen to settle in such a remote house. Perhaps Clive Olive intended to farm the land but there was no sign of any activity that would have suggested planting or sowing; perhaps they were very rich and wanted to live a quiet rural life, but they had done very little to renovate or furnish the little she had seen of the interior. Neither had there been any evidence of domestic staff apart from the beautiful young man.

  As if thought had conjured him he emerged from the front gate, causing her to brake sharply.

  ‘Sister Joan! Sister Joan!’ Samantha ran out behind the young man, waving her arm. Sister Joan stopped and wound down her window.

  ‘Good afternoon, Samantha. You got home safely then?’

  ‘Mr Lee took everybody,’ Samantha said. ‘He’s a very agreeable man for a gypsy.’

  ‘Indeed he is.’ Sister Joan nodded, reminding herself that a lesson on the evils of racial discrimination might not come amiss in the near future. ‘Is this the new au pair?’

  She nodded towards the young man who had paused and was regarding them gravely.

  ‘Jan Heinz,’ Samantha said. ‘Just like the baked beans. He’s part Dutch and part German and altogether rather backward. He speaks hardly any English at all.’

  ‘That certainly doesn’t mean he’s backward,’ Sister Joan reproved. ‘You will have to help him learn the language. You helped Kiki – what was her name?’

  ‘Kiki Svenson. She spoke English in a funny kind of way. She was nice,’ Samantha said wistfully.

  ‘You said she left suddenly.’ Sister Joan tried to sound casual.

  ‘In the middle of the night,’ Samantha said.

  ‘But how could you know that? You’d have been asleep and in bed,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘I was,’ Samantha said, ‘but when I got up in the morning Kiki wasn’t around. My mum said she’d upped and gone in the middle of the night. She’d taken all her things and just vanished. I daresay she didn’t much like having to do housework.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘About three weeks ago. Why?’

  ‘This is such a beautiful part of the country,’ Sister Joan said vaguely. ‘Well, I have to get Sister Hilaria to the dentist. Try and talk to Jan. He will soon pick up English, I’m sure.’

  She sent a brisk encouraging smile towards the young man who smiled back uncertainly.

  ‘Are we coming to school tomorrow, Sister?’ Samantha asked. ‘We don’t have to stay away because Petroc’s missing?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he’ll be back tomorrow,’ Sister Joan said encouragingly. ‘Certainly there’ll be school for everybody.’

  ‘I hope he comes back,’ Samantha said as Sister Joan started up the car again. ‘He is a nice person, I think. Handsome.’

  ‘Very handsome.’ Sister Joan felt a twinge of amused sympathy as she drove off. Samantha was growing up, beginning to notice the opposite sex, to fix her affections on first one and then another, rehearsing for the real love that would doubtless grip her one day. That it was highly unlikely Petroc would ever regard the plain little Olive girl in any romantic light
gave a poignancy to her childish feelings.

  ‘I’m sorry for the delay, Sister.’ She flashed an apologetic glance at her silent companion. ‘Samantha Olive is one of my pupils and as we are all worried about Petroc I felt obliged to stop for a moment.’

  ‘I was looking at the young man,’ Sister Hilaria said, lowering her scarf slightly to reveal a swollen cheek. ‘I was recalling that Lucifer was the most beautiful of the angels.’

  ‘Hardly Lucifer, Sister, merely a young foreigner hoping to learn the language. It is quite fashionable these days to employ a male au pair or nanny, I believe.’

  ‘Modern life is very bewildering,’ Sister Hilaria said. ‘You would be astonished at some of the things my two postulants tell me. Ah, we are coming into Bodmin now, aren’t we? The last time I was here was six years ago when I had my tooth filled, so it is quite a treat to see it again.’

  ‘If I leave you at the dentist’s and go to buy the trousers‚’ Sister Joan said, ‘you won’t mind waiting?’

  ‘Not at all, Sister. I recall I had an injection last time that froze my face and made the subsequent treatment completely painless,’ Sister Hilaria assured her.

  Sister Joan slowed to a crawl and negotiated herself and her passenger through the Thursday afternoon traffic with a trepidation that was scarcely justified. It was astonishing how quickly one became used to being behind the wheel again.

  The dentist’s was easily located. Sister Hilaria, assured that she would be called for in half an hour, alighted from the car and went in. Sister Joan drove on into the car park and congratulated herself on getting into a free space with the minimum of difficulty.

  There was a new supermarket at the end of the street, wire baskets fitted together at the entrance with a notice informing intending customers that a deposit of a pound was required. The deposit would be returned, but Sister Joan, looking in some bewilderment at the large slot machine with its pulleys, decided she could buy a pair of pants without a basket, and bravely marched into the air-conditioned, neon-lit interior.

  In every direction stretched long aisles lined with shelves containing every possible variety of merchandise. It was an Arabian Nights’ cave of temptation and wonder, she thought, and felt a sense of unreality. It was six years since she’d entered a shop of any kind and, for a moment, she felt completely disorientated. Then she saw the ranks of skirts and jeans and slacks and headed for them like a Bedouin making for his local oasis.

  ‘Need any help, Sister?’ A salesgirl with a pert, pretty face was hovering.

  ‘I am supposed to buy a pair of hard wearing trousers for riding,’ Sister Joan said, ‘but I’m spoilt for choice.’

  ‘We don’t do jodhpurs, Sister,’ the girl began.

  ‘A decent pair of jeans will do very well, in my size. I ride a horse to the school where I teach,’ Sister Joan said, feeling that some explanation was required.

  ‘You’ll be from the convent up on the moors. I didn’t think they ever let any of you out,’ the girl said artlessly.

  ‘Oh, I got remission for good behaviour,’ Sister Joan said mischievously. ‘I’m waist twenty-five inches, hips thirty-six.’

  ‘It’s all centimetres now,’ the girl said. ‘Look, these seem about right. Take this pair along to the changing-room and see if they’ll do. If they’re OK then you just take them to the check-out and the assistant there removes the magnetic tag. Easy.’

  ‘Thank you very much. You’ve been very helpful.’ With the jeans over her arm she turned in the direction of the changing-rooms, and went into one of the cubicles.

  There was a full-length mirror against one wall. For an instant she felt an actual, physical shock at the sight of her own full-length reflection. During the past six years she had lived without looking glasses in a world where neatness and cleanliness were all that was necessary. Personal vanity had – was supposed to have no place. Part glimpses of her reflection in the darkened glass of a door, the surface of a copper dish, a fragment of her features in the little mirror in Petroc’s wagon, hardly registered at the time, were the total of her knowledge of her contemporary being.

  The woman in the long mirror looked younger than her mid-thirties as if time had stood still since she had entered the religious life. Her figure had remained trim, fortunately since she was below the average height; her skin was tight and rosy with a scattering of freckles across the snub nose; long lashed blue eyes looked out at the world from the frame of white wimple and veil. When she smiled at herself her nose crinkled slightly. Jacob had often teased her about that.

  You’re a nice looking woman, she told her reflection silently. The religious life suits you.

  There was no vanity in the realization, merely the acknowledgement of a fact. She bent in the cramped space to remove her shoes and pull on the jeans, relieved to find that they fitted well. Taking them off again, refastening her shoes, she left the cubicle and was paying for her purchase at the check-out before it dawned on her that she hadn’t even bothered to look in the mirror again.

  The rain had ceased and the sun was gilding the street when she emerged from the supermarket. Around her shoppers eddied and swirled. There was still plenty of time before she had to meet Sister Hilaria. She contemplated a spot of window shopping and rejected it. Window shopping was definitely time wasting. Much more sensible to put her parcel in the back of the car and then go and wait for her companion.

  She was relocking the boot of the car, straightening up when a gleam of sunlight dazzled her momentarily. Putting up her hand to shield her eyes, turning slightly from the glare, she read clearly across the road at the other side of the parking space, FOREIGN HELP, the au pair agency from where the Olives had hired Kiki Svenson and now Jan Heinz. That she should notice it now seemed like a clear signal. Putting the car keys into her purse along with the five pounds change for Mother Dorothy she walked briskly across to the agency with its pleasant reception area, brightened with pot plants and with easy chairs contrasting with businesslike filing cabinets and a desk at which a grey-haired woman sat.

  ‘Good afternoon, Sister. May I help you?’ The voice was amiable as was the smile. If the woman wondered what a nun was doing in an agency that specialized in the hiring of foreign domestic help she didn’t allow it to show.

  ‘Good afternoon. I’m Sister Joan from the Daughters of Compassion – oh, no, I’m not collecting for anything.’ She flushed as the woman reached for her handbag with a resigned air. ‘I came to make enquiries about a girl – an au pair.’

  ‘For the convent?’ The other allowed her surprise to peep out.

  ‘No, not exactly. A girl called Kiki Svenson – she worked for the Olives –?’

  ‘She came very highly recommended,’ the other said.

  ‘I was surprised to hear from Mrs Olive that she’d left. If she had been dissatisfied she could have come to us and we would have tried to relocate her.’

  ‘She didn’t come to you?’

  ‘She stayed barely a month and then took off. Mrs Olive was most put out about it. However we were able to fix her up with a young man just on our books who wishes to spend a year learning to speak English. I do hope –?’

  ‘Jan Heinz is proving most satisfactory, I understand,’ Sister Joan said. ‘I did wonder if you had Kiki Svenson’s home address. I’d like to get in touch with her – it’s a private matter, you understand. I hardly like to ask Mrs Olive.’

  ‘Miss Svenson didn’t mention she was a Catholic.’ The woman turned to extract a file from one of the cabinets. ‘Ah, she gave two addresses. Her home address which Mrs Olive will also have and a London address. I believe she mentioned having done some hotel work in London before deciding she would like to sample rural living. I can give you both, Sister.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you,’ Sister Joan said, watching the other copy the two addresses. ‘You didn’t contact her yourself after she left?’

  ‘We had no reason to do so. The girl was of full age and quite competent. Sister,
there isn’t anything wrong, is there?’

  ‘I hope not,’ Sister Joan said as she put the slip of paper in her purse. ‘I do hope not. Thank you.’

  Hurrying out, she was aware of the woman’s concerned gaze following her.

  Seven

  Sister Hilaria, looking somewhat paler than even her usual delicate colour, was in the waiting-room, scarf to her face, when Sister Joan arrived.

  ‘The tooth‚’ she said indistinctly, ‘had to come out. Fortunately it’s a side one and won’t affect my chewing. The dentist said I ought to have a warm drink, so I wonder if we might have one in a local cafe before we drive back?’

  ‘And a couple of aspirins,’ Sister Joan said, her own jaw beginning to ache in sympathy. ‘There’s a nice cafe just down the street, Sister, and a chemist’s right next door.’

  ‘I have some pocket money.’ Sister Hilaria looked around as if she expected it to drop out of the sky.

  ‘My treat. I have some pocket money too.’

  The change for Mother Dorothy would go back untouched. Of the five pounds a month given to every sister out of which she could buy small necessities, postage stamps and the like, Sister Joan still had four pounds and sixty pence. Wondering vaguely what she had squandered forty pence on she shepherded Sister Hilaria to the cafe, seated her at a corner table, ordered two coffees, nipped into the chemist to purchase aspirin, and returned, slightly breathless, with the pleasant conviction that living in a convent hadn’t impaired her ability to function in the ordinary world.

  ‘This is quite a little indulgence,’ Sister Hilaria said happily, fanning her coffee cup with a paper napkin. ‘Really, I feel quite dissipated, Sister. In the nicest possible way, of course. It is almost worth having a tooth out.’

  Between her and Sister Margaret there was a great similarity, Sister Joan thought as she sipped her own coffee. Both had the gift of serenity. Nothing marred their private space. She wondered if she would ever achieve the same untroubled purity of spirit.

  ‘Isn’t that the gentleman who brings fish to the convent?’ Sister Hilaria asked, glancing through the window.