Brilliance (17 page)

It was not Sister Delphine who moved Lisette out of the sewing room, but another nun, Sister Lucienne. She was a gaunt, sour-faced woman with a sharp tongue and no patience.

‘You’re too young to be sitting with sewing,’ she said crisply. ‘It will do you good to be more active. Exercise is needed to bring a baby on time. You can start by scrubbing the passage floors.’

Lisette went to find a bucket and scrubbing brush. One of the middle-aged inmates told her where they were kept.

‘You shouldn’t be on your hands and knees just now,’ the woman said. ‘You’re big as a house and your belly will get in the way. Who set you on to floors?’

‘Sister Lucienne.’

The woman snorted. ‘That explains it! She is a hard taskmaster and don’t like nobody sitting about. She would have the old women off their haunches if it were possible.’

Scrubbing the passage floors daily was a hard task. Lisette’s back ached painfully and her knuckles grew raw. Sister Delphine saw her at her work, but did not intervene. Lisette guessed it was for the sake of keeping the peace, because she had heard from others that Sister Lucienne had a terrible temper and could reduce some of the nuns to tears.

Lisette’s pains began early one April afternoon just after she had emptied a bucket of dirty water into a courtyard drain. She gave a gasp at the sharpness of the contraction, dropping the bucket with a clatter and reaching out to clutch at the door jamb. For several moments she could not move. Then she staggered back into the kitchen. Two nuns were baking bread and, seeing Lisette bent double and ashen-faced, they rushed with floury hands to assist her.

What followed was only pain. Sometimes Lisette heard someone screaming and realized it was herself. There was no respite. Outside the window of the birthing room the sky grew dark and then light again by day before the stars came once more. Finally at the following dawn Lisette gave birth to a daughter. She glimpsed her lovely baby as she was lifted from the bloodstained sheets, giving the la-la-la cry of the newborn, her hair as dark as Daniel’s.

‘Marie-Louise!’ she whispered joyfully. Then she slipped away into unconsciousness while the nuns worked frantically. She was haemorrhaging and they feared for her life, but gradually they succeeded in stopping the flow and hope returned. They smiled at each other in relief across the bed.

‘She’ll be all right now,’ Sister Delphine said thankfully. ‘Praise be to God.’

But Sister Delphine had misjudged the situation. Lisette, already weak and exhausted, developed a high fever and was soon delirious. Again the nuns feared they would lose her, one of them always at her bedside, but somehow she kept the will to live. Finally, against all odds, there came a morning when she recognized her surroundings and saw the sunbeams coming through a high window. Sister Martine, who sat reading, sprang up from her chair.

‘You’re going to be well again, Lisette!’ she exclaimed joyfully. ‘How glad everybody will be!’

‘My baby!’ Lisette appealed eagerly, struggling to rise from her pillows.

‘Be calm now. You’ve been very ill and we almost lost you twice.’

Lisette was looking about her. ‘Where is she?’ she pleaded frantically.

‘Not in this sickroom. We had to get you well.’

‘Please fetch her! My darling Marie-Louise! I want to hold her in my arms!’ Lisette fell back weakly against the pillows. ‘I know she’s beautiful, because I saw her.’

‘You saw her?’ Momentarily Sister Martine looked dismayed, but recovered her smile almost immediately. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

With a swish of her black robe she went from the room at a run. Lisette lay eagerly watching the door. She had felt her heart fill with love in that short, sweet glimpse of her baby. Her arms ached to hold her. All the pain and torment was forgotten as if it had never been.

The door was opening. Lisette gave a joyful cry, but it was Mother Abbess, solemn-faced, who entered and she was empty-handed. Terror gripped Lisette.

‘What’s happened? Where’s my baby? Is she ill? Don’t tell me she didn’t—’ she could not voice the words.

‘Your baby is healthy and strong and is in good care. She has been baptized with the name of Marie-Louise, which was your wish. Someone was very careless in letting you catch sight of the child and that will be investigated, although I suppose concern for your life was uppermost in everybody’s mind. Naturally it is much harder for a mother to part with a child whom she has seen and normally that never takes place.’

Lisette had been listening with growing horror. ‘What are you saying to me? Why shouldn’t I have seen her? She’s my child! What is this talk of parting? I want my baby now!’

‘The morning after you came here you agreed that at this convent we should do whatever was considered best for you and your child. You put your trust in us completely and signed a form to that effect. So we have done the same for you as we have done for other single young women wanting to start life anew, which can prove impossible with the burden of an illegitimate child. You have been set free of the past as you told me you were once before. Marie-Louise has been adopted.’

‘No!’ Lisette’s anguished scream rang out. ‘No, no, no! You must get her back! She’s my child! Mine!’

In the entrance hall Sister Delphine had just admitted Josephine. As the echo of Lisette’s cry reached them she looked startled and concerned. ‘Whatever is happening?’

‘Lisette showed signs of a full recovery today, madame. Unfortunately, unbeknown to us, she saw her baby after the birth, which is why she immediately started asking for her. Normally, as you know, we remove the child unseen before any bond can be formed, which makes it easier for the mother. I fear from that cry that Mother Abbess has just told Lisette that her daughter had been adopted.’

‘The poor, unfortunate girl.’ Josephine looked stricken. ‘Didn’t she understand that whenever possible the fatherless babies are adopted?’

‘Apparently not.’

Josephine continued to be deeply distressed, her hands agitated. ‘I wonder if it would help in any way if I talked to her. She will be in great need of comfort.’

‘I’m sure Mother Abbess would be glad if you did. Lisette is in the room next to the birthing room. We moved her there when another girl began labour pains.’

‘I know the way.’

Halfway up the wide staircase Josephine met the abbess coming down and explained her intention.

‘That’s very good of you,’ the abbess replied. ‘At the moment, as you can guess, Lisette is inconsolable, crying for her child to be retrieved and given back to her. I’m most anxious that she shouldn’t make herself ill again through her distress. She is in a very weak state.’

‘If only I had known—!’

The abbess silenced her with a touch on her hand. ‘It is all for the best. You and I know how cruel the world can be to a single woman with a child, making her a social outcast wherever she goes. Lisette, educated and intelligent, will be unhampered when she goes forth from here and will be able to gain respectable employment that would otherwise have been barred to her. So encourage her to view the future optimistically when the opportunity arises.’

‘I will, Mother Abbess,’ Josephine replied quietly. Yet as she continued up the flight she felt she had made the greatest mistake of her life in not doing what she could to prevent the adoption instead of accepting the abbess’s decision to let the baby go to others.

Upstairs she knocked on the door and entered. Lisette had thrown herself across the bed in wild sobbing that seemed to be tearing her apart. Hurrying to her, Josephine sat down on the bed and gathered her close, rocking her like a child. ‘Hush, hush,’ she said soothingly.

Gradually Lisette realized who was holding her and jerked up her head, tears streaming down her face, and she clutched at the lapels of Josephine’s coat. ‘I never said I wanted my baby adopted! Never! I agreed that the convent should do its best for my baby, but I never supposed that she would be taken away from me! She’s mine and nobody else has any right to her! You have influence! You could get her back for me! For mercy’s sake, do this for me!’

Josephine could hardly speak in her own distress and smoothed Lisette’s tumbled hair back from her tear-stained face. ‘That is not possible, however much I wish it were. Marie-Louise has been legally adopted by a good, kind couple unable to have children of their own.’

‘You know who they are?’ Lisette was stark-eyed with grief, but hope flickered into her face. ‘You could explain! Say it’s all a mistake that should never have happened!’

‘No, that’s not possible. I’m only telling you what I know.’ Josephine paused. ‘The couple sailed with your daughter to the United States yesterday.’

Lisette crumpled up and did not stir.

After that day Josephine came daily to see her. Lisette, physically weak from the fever and loss of blood as well as grieving for her baby, was slow to recover. Seated in a chair with the old women, a blanket over her knees, she sat staring into space, numbed through by shock and anguish. After a while she became thankful for Josephine’s visits and learned there had been sadness in her life too, not only in the loss of a beloved husband but brothers and sisters too. Her aunt was her only living relative and the old lady’s weakening state was a cause of great anxiety to her.

In turn Josephine was a compassionate listener, encouraging Lisette to talk openly to her whenever they were out of the earshot of others. It enabled Lisette to talk at last of finding Philippe and Isabelle in the summerhouse and how she had fled the château afterwards. She told how she had worked for a lanternist, had served in a department store and then been employed as a housekeeper by a judge before circumstances had brought her to the convent. Only Daniel as the father of her child remained her secret and Josephine did not pry into his identity.

Most of all Lisette liked talking about the happy years she had had with her grandmother in Lyon and Josephine encouraged her, seeing how it drew her mind away from sad thoughts for a little while.

‘I can tell that your heart is there,’ Josephine said one day with a smile.

‘I suppose it is,’ Lisette agreed. ‘But as I told you, I have to go on waiting for my inheritance. In the meantime, just as soon as I’m well again, I must find employment.’

‘I should like to help you,’ Josephine answered. ‘An acquaintance of mine in Dieppe needs a governess for her young daughter, and I would recommend you most highly if you are interested. I know you would have a good home there.’

‘You’re very kind.’

‘Would you consider it?’

‘Yes, of course. I want to get right away from here and if your friend will have me I’ll do my best for her child.’

It was the end of May before Lisette was well enough to leave the convent. Although she was much thinner than before her pregnancy she had regained strength. She felt that in losing possession of her child she had been through one of the worst experiences that fate could inflict and nothing else could ever compare, no matter what happened.

None of her possessions had been recovered by the police, but the nuns had given her a change of underwear and stockings as well as a plain blue dress and a paisley-patterned shawl from the charity wardrobe. She also had two silk gowns that Josephine had given her from her own wardrobe.

‘I’m not a letter writer,’ Josephine said when she and Lisette said goodbye, ‘and so I’ll not promise to keep in touch. But I do wish you well in the future and I’m sure happiness awaits you somewhere.’

‘Thank you for all you have done for me,’ Lisette replied. ‘I don’t know how I would have endured these past weeks without your support and friendship.’

They embraced and then Josephine left, hurrying away. Lisette, watching her go, thought she would turn and wave, but that did not happen. The woman appeared to be in tears.

When Lisette had said farewell to the nuns and those among the inmates whom she had come to know quite well she was ready to depart. Everything had been arranged for her employment in Dieppe. On the morning of her departure Lisette knocked on the abbess’s door.

‘Here is your jewellery, Lisette.’ The abbess had taken it from the safe in readiness and it lay on her desk.

Lisette picked up the softly gleaming pearls and put them around her neck, fastening the diamond clasp. For a moment she rested the spread of her hand against them, feeling their familiar touch. The earrings, the bracelet and the brooch she put into her drawstring purse, which she had made herself from a remnant given to her during her convalescence.

The abbess took up a leather wallet, unclasped it and opened it up to reveal that it was packed full of notes. ‘The couple who adopted your baby left this considerable amount of money to help you on your way.’

Lisette recoiled, looking quickly away and shaking her head. ‘No! Did they think my baby had a price? Take it! Put it to the convent funds!’

‘That was not their meaning, but I will do as you say.’ The abbess put the wallet to one side. Then she pushed forward a small purse. ‘As I once told you, nobody leaves this convent empty-handed. This purse contains enough to keep you fed for the next forty-eight hours.’ She held up a warning finger. ‘Don’t let your pride stop you accepting it, because it is given in Our Lady’s name.’

‘Then I accept it gratefully,’ Lisette replied and picked it up.

‘However, there is something else for you, which I’m sure you will be glad to accept.’ She opened a drawer and took out an envelope, which she held out to Lisette. ‘Today you were expecting to receive a train ticket to Dieppe from a new employer, but that lady has engaged someone else.’ Then, seeing Lisette’s expression turn to dismay she held up a hand in reassurance. ‘Do not fear. All is well. Madame de Vincent has amended the situation out of her own pocket. You are still getting a train ticket in that envelope, but it will take you to Lyon instead of Dieppe. It comes with her best wishes for the future. She has also included an excellent character reference and a bank draft that will tide you over until you gain employment.’

‘To Lyon!’ Lisette felt dazed by such good fortune. ‘How kind of her! I will take the money as a loan until I can repay her.’