Dancing in the Dark (25 page)

‘What years was she a student here?'

I tell her, and she doesn't even have to think about it. ‘You want Sister Mary Immaculata. She's the only one who was around back then.'

It is more than I've hoped for. ‘Could I speak to her?'

‘I'm afraid not. She's on vacation.'

‘Oh.' For some reason I've imagined that any nun who'd taught my mother would by now be incapable of much more than lying in bed in a black robe and white wimple, bathed in the odour of sanctity, weakly raising a frail finger in blessing as other nuns crowded round her, sobbing at the prospect of her imminent demise. But of course she wouldn't have to be more than a few years older than Luna.

The girl grins, as though she's read my thoughts. ‘Not all nuns are elderly, you know. And we don't experience anything like the physical wear and tear that our lay sisters do. How old do you think I am?'

‘Twenty-four, twenty-six,' I say, though she is probably younger.
We?
It hasn't occurred to me that she is a nun.

‘I was thirty-four last April.'

I'll have whatever she's having. Her face is as smooth and unlined as a teenager's. ‘I'm sorry to have missed her,' I say. ‘Anyone else I could talk to?'

‘Not really.' An idea strikes her. ‘You could always try St Joe's. I know we were sharing facilities with them by the time your mother must have been here. They had much better-equipped labs than we did, plus a very sophisticated theatre. And they had a terrific sports facility.'

‘Anybody in particular I should speak to?'

‘I suppose Dom Francis is your best bet.' Terry had mentioned him, too. My mother's confessor. ‘He's the abbot now, been there for donkey's years. But he's a very busy man and I don't suppose you have an appointment, do you?'

‘No.'

‘He's a bit of a . . .' She wrinkles her nose while she tries to think of the right word. ‘He can be a bit . . . uh . . . difficult.'

‘So can I,' I say.

The campus of St Joseph's is similar to that of St Margaret's, but older and richer. The landscaping is more lavish, the chapel bigger, the lawns greener, the dormitories larger, but the same stream runs through the grounds, straddled by an identical stone bridge, leading to a similar lake. The buildings, too, though in some indefinable way more masculine, are pretty much the same: early nineteenth-century Gothic, augmented by fifties Expansionist Modern dorm blocks, featuring layers of uncompromisingly bare rectangles of glass accented by plastic panels in unattractive shades of yellow and blue.

The reception area here is not a modern office but housed in a graceful Colonial building which has been restored to such a peak of pristine perfection that it might have been completed that very morning. Inside, what look like priceless oriental rugs lie over an expanse of polished oak planks. Through an archway, a staircase rises gracefully to upper floors.

A young man in a clerical collar and black shirt, tucked into pale chinos, identifies himself as Father Patrick. He's a dead ringer for Tony Perkins in
Psycho
, so much so that I nearly ask how the motel business is doing. Instead, I tell him I'm hoping to speak to Dom Francis, and explain why. After listening to my spiel, he pulls forward a pad of paper and a pen. ‘And your mother's name?' he asks.

‘Lucia Cairns.'

He lifts the receiver of the phone on his desk and speaks to the abbot. ‘Ms Theodora Cairns,' he says, twinkling a complicit smile at me to show that we are all feminists now. ‘That's right, her mother was at St Mag's.'

He listens some more. ‘Yes, Cairns.' Another listen. ‘C-A-I-R-N-S, I imagine.' He raises his eyebrows, checking to see if he's spelled the name right, then replaces the receiver. He shakes his head. ‘Sorry, but he's busy.'

‘Ask him again. My mother wasn't called Cairns, back then,' I say belatedly. ‘She was Lucia Caxton.'

‘But if he's busy—'

‘Try again,' I say. ‘Please.'

Something in my voice persuades him. He rings the abbot again, gives my mother's maiden name, raises his eyebrows, replaces the receiver. ‘You're in luck,' he says. ‘Dom Francis is having a coffee break.'

We walk past a statue of a benevolent St Joseph and climb the elegant stairs. I follow him down a polished-oak passage, past windows which look out on to a hedged garden very like the one in my painting of Thomas Bellamy. I stop.
Very
like. Hedges, pebbles, a white seat. Stone urns in the corners, obelisks, a fountain in the middle. In fact, it is identical. I stare down at it – there has to be a connection here, there just has to be.

Tony Perkins stops outside a door of highly polished wood, on which he taps respectfully with the knuckle of his forefinger. He lays an ear against the panels. Obviously someone tells him to come in because he turns the big brass knob and stands politely to one side to let me in.

It is an impressive room. Painted a deep Prussian blue where it isn't panelled in mahogany, it has tall windows with foldaway shutters, overlooking the campus. The floor-length curtains are of heavy red damask tied back with thick tasselled braids of crimson silk, matching the reds in the huge Persian rug on the floor. If Dom Francis has taken vows of poverty, he must have forgotten them some while back, though to be fair, the man himself is considerably less sumptuous than his surroundings. He sits at a large partner's desk, beneath a heavy wooden crucifix, and my first guess is he's anorexic, my second that he is starving. All the spare flesh has gone from his face, leaving only beautiful bones under olive skin stretched so tight that it shines, as though it is buffed up each morning with chamois leather. It is the face of an ascetic, or a saint. I have no trouble imagining him in a cave somewhere, living off wild honey and locusts and getting friendly with the local lion.

And my heart rate quickens until I feel I might begin to hyperventilate as, with absolute conviction, I recognize him. He's the sinister-looking man in the photograph of a long-ago summer in France. The same man who waited so patiently by the railings of a London public garden. A man I have seen before, many times, in another existence. A man who haunts my dreams, and stalks my mother across the globe.

I say nothing but I am gripped by something primitive and evil.

The sight of me jolts him. He is far too smooth and secretive to show any change of expression, but I see the flicker far back in his eyes. He indicates an antique carver chair in front of his desk and I sit.

‘How can I help you?' His voice is suave, a little weary as though, in the years that he's been supervising generations of Catholic youth, he has seen it all and there is nothing that can surprise him. He is wearing a long black robe with a black skullcap over a fluff of white hair, a heavy gold cross on a chain. The college might be contemporary, but he seems determined to cling to the Middle Ages. In front of him is a tray with a white coffee jug, a pitcher of milk and a white porcelain coffee cup, all of them decorated with a single silver cross.

His eyes are flat and black, the pupil almost filling the eyeball, like a lizard's. Something radiates from him which I am fairly sure is hostility. Not generalized hostility, but very me-specific. Is it because I am female, in this bastion of maleness? Can he sense that I'd started my period the day before and am therefore, in some primitive way, unclean? Or is it my likeness to my mother?

‘This is a male college,' he says, the words dropping from him like flakes of ice. Fergus would hate him. ‘What makes you think I can help you?'

‘My mother was at St Margaret's, thirty or so years ago. They told me that you might possibly remember . . .'

‘Lucia Caxton, I think Father Anthony said.' He pretends to mull it over, though it's obvious he has no difficulty at all in recognizing the name. He picks up the coffee cup and sips from it as delicately as a cat. ‘I know the girl you mean. From England, wasn't she? I believe her mother had been here before her.'

‘That's right.' What did Luna do, to imprint herself so strongly on his memory? ‘I'm amazed you remember, after more than thirty years?'

‘It's part of my job to remember those who were once in my pastoral care. I was, after all, her confessor at the time, though my place within the college then was very much junior to my present position.' He closes his eyes. ‘Is it really thirty years ago that she was here? One begins to feel so old.'

‘Do you remember all the girls who came here to confess?'

‘Of course not. But Miss Caxton was an . . . an exceptional young woman. The sort who would go on to become an exceptional wife and mother.' He opens his eyes again and smiles thinly. ‘Which I'm sure she is.'

‘Mmm.' I nod.

‘And is she well?'

‘Yes.'

‘And . . . I never heard what she went on to do . . . a promising artist, was she not?'

‘She may have been, but she's a dancer now.'

I can't swear to it, but I think his bloodless face goes even paler. Two small dots of white stand out on either side of his nose. ‘A dancer? But I always understood . . .' He draws in a hissing kind of breath. He's let out some information though I can't imagine what it is. Unless he thinks dancing is less respectable than painting. ‘But I imagine she didn't continue that after her marriage.'

‘She's not actually married,' I say.

‘Your mother, not married?' he echoes.

‘That's right.'

‘Then you are . . .' Again the jolt, his collarbones shifting momentarily under his gown. Do I see fear in his face? Or merely contempt for a woman who could so far forget her privileged upbringing, waste the care spent on showing her the paths of rectitude, as to produce a child out of wedlock – and then further compound her sin by not setting things straight and making it legitimate? ‘I thought . . . didn't you tell Father Patrick that you were researching your
parents
' background?'

‘Yes, well, I was a little economical with the truth.' I smile at him but he doesn't smile back. ‘Basically, my mother left St Margaret's because she found she was pregnant.'

‘
What?
' He leans towards me, and this time there is no mistaking it. For some reason, he is frightened. His teeth clench together. Maybe he thinks I'm going to sue. ‘She was pregnant? Are you sure?'

‘And unmarried,' I repeat, rubbing it in. ‘There was nobody she could turn to: her parents died about that time, and I don't suppose she expected the nuns to be sympathetic.'

I sound confident but the truth is I don't know a great deal about my mother's early life; much of what I've learnt has come from Terry Cartwright.

He leans back against his chair and presses his lips together so tightly that it looks as though he has no mouth at all. Although his face remains impassive, he can't do much about the tiny flicker which has started up under his left eye. ‘If they'd known of her plight,' he says, ‘I'm sure they would have done everything in their power to help her.'

I can't imagine that the average nun would have been much help but I'm not going to get into a discussion about the different ways you can handle desperate adolescents. ‘As far as I can make out, she didn't tell anyone at all,' I say.

‘Except, presumably, the father?'

I shrug. ‘Perhaps not even him.'

‘You mean he might not know you exist?'

‘That's very possible. Just as I know nothing about him. Which is part of why I've come here, in the hope of tracking down someone who could help me find him.'

‘Why would you think it was someone from St Joseph's?'

‘I don't think anything, Dom Francis. My mother has consistently refused to tell me anything at all about him. In fact, she invented a completely spurious father for me – it was only by accident that I discovered the man she claimed was my father had nothing whatsoever to do with me.'

‘Interesting.'

‘As far as I can work out, she must have discovered she was pregnant with me sometime during the summer semester that year – her second year at St Margaret's. She dropped out of school then, and –' I spread my hands – ‘temporarily vanished. According to her friends, when she resurfaced, she had me in tow. She always refused to tell anyone about the father.'

The narrow face relaxes imperceptibly. ‘How do you think I can help?'

‘It's at least possible that it was one of your students.'

‘It could have been someone from Maybury. Or Butterfield. Someone she knew from another college in the area – there are dozens of them round here. A friend from England. Or even someone met after she had left here.'

‘Unlikely, although I have no preconceptions,' I say. ‘Why else would she drop out of school?'

He makes a stiff little gesture. ‘And obviously your mother didn't put you up for adoption?'

‘Yes, she kept me. She brought me up, provided for me, all on her own,' I say, and if his voice is chilly, then mine is positively arctic.

Somewhere outside the window, a bell begins to toll.

The abbot looks at the clock on the mantelpiece and then checks his wristwatch. He takes another cat-sip of his coffee and closes his eyes again, this time for so long that I start to wonder if he has fallen asleep. He looks at me eventually. ‘Does your father's identity matter that much?' Something about me disturbs him profoundly. Is it the likeness to my mother? Am I stirring up old guilts he'd rather forget?

‘Yes, it does.'

‘Can you not accept our Lord God as your father?'

‘Not really.'

‘Your mother hasn't spoken of the man to you?'

‘She refuses to. Says there are compelling reasons why I shouldn't know.'

Another flash of something I can't identify shines at the back of his non-reflecting eyes. For a wild – and I admit, horrifying – moment, I wonder if he himself is the man I'm looking for. He bows his head. ‘Perhaps you should respect that.'