First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (19 page)

Sister Rose explained all of this to me in a brief chat as she checked me in before taking me to my room.

“The inspiration for the architecture came two hundred years ago, to our foundress, Sister Justitia. You’ve heard of her?”

Sister Rose didn’t seem surprised that I hadn’t.

“She was a saint,” she said. “No lay person can compete with a saint in this kind of thing. She felt privacy leads to vice. So every aspect of our Houses must be public.” She touched her hood. “This cylindrical cowl we wear is her invention too. It keeps us from being distracted. We concentrate only on the task ahead of us.”

As we were leaving the reception area, she pointed to the insignia on her breast. “The House of Mercy’s like this. The sun sees everything, but can’t be looked at.”

Then she took me to my room. The Boys’ Circle was very quiet, the other rooms all being empty: at this time of day the orphans were ouside doing their work. She left me in my room to settle in. It was small but comfortable, with a strong smell of disinfectant. A pair of blue overalls and a blue shirt, the orphans’ uniform, lay on the bed for me. As I put them on, I felt a bit exposed because of the glass wall facing the hub. I kept glancing at the dark tower, wondering if one of the sisters was watching me right now.

I settled in quickly at the House of Mercy. The absolute predictability of each day suited me. We ate in silence at
exactly the same times in communal dining-rooms. Each morning at nine we went to our segregated classes on grammar and mathematics. In the afternoons, we worked in the gardens for two hours. After that, one hour was allocated for walking, or running round a field enclosed by barbed wire. Then dinner, then study, then bed.

We were constantly monitored to make sure we didn’t become too friendly with any of the other orphans. The reason was that Sister Justitia, the founder, believed close friendships were a bad thing; among immature people they inevitably resulted in evil. “You must love everyone,” she had said. “It’s too easy to restrict yourself to loving just one, or a chosen few.”

I often wondered about the girls in their Circle. On very still nights, their giggles or screams would penetrate the corridors that connected their Circle to ours. In the privacy of my room, I milked the memories of those hours on the beach with Maria, and that brief kiss on the
Nellie
.

But that was after lights out. Otherwise, when we were in our rooms, we were as visible as actors on four hundred little stages, with an audience of two. They saw, but were not seen. We were anonymous in our blue overalls, yet for all we knew, any one of us might be the target of our overseers’ eyes at any or all times.

I came to not mind being watched. I soon began enjoying life at the House of Mercy, except for an occasional moment when I was overwhelmed with that sense of foreboding that sometimes took all the joy out of my life. Nor did I sleep well after my first week there.

What happened was this: one night, I was having my usual nightmare. I was running desperately away from the edge of a great black chasm, and the ground was crumbling away under me. But this time, I could feel a hand grasp my
back foot—someone was pulling me back into the blackness. I was terrified and shouted out. Suddenly, there was a dim light hovering over me, and I thought I’d escaped into another less frightening dream. Then a voice behind the light said: “What’s wrong?”

I smelt lilac. Sister Rose was standing by my bed, holding a night light. I couldn’t see her face in the shadows of the cowl.

“You were calling out in your sleep,” she said. “You were waking up the Boys’ Circle with your noise.” She spoke quietly, but even at that I was afraid everyone in the Circle would hear her.

“I had a bad dream,” I said, as softly as I could.

“A bad dream?” She considered for a moment. “It’s the responsibility of rational human beings to control their dreams,” she said. “That was one of the primary teachings of Sister Justitia.” Her tube was pointed directly at me and I could hear her breathing.

“Was it an evil dream?” she asked quite abruptly.

I didn’t know what she meant by that.

“It frightened me,” I said.

When she spoke, she sounded a little more sympathetic. “The Ministry of Social Services sent us a dossier on you, Andrew. You’ve been through a lot. But that’s no excuse for relaxing your self-control: especially when you’re asleep. Do you understand? Sister Justitia was so insistent on that point. All it takes is a little will-power.”

I nodded, though I’d no idea how I was supposed to control my dreams. Sister Rose put out her lilac-smelling hand and touched my cheek. I was surprised, but I didn’t flinch, though her fingers were very cold. She leaned over and whispered: “I know you’ve suffered.” And she sighed. “But no more than the rest of us. When it comes to suffering, we all compete with each other.” Then she left my room.

From that night on, whenever I found myself in a nightmare, I’d try to force myself awake. My fear of disturbing the Boys’ Circle—and of having Sister Rose reproach me in the middle of the night—was stronger than the power the nightmare had over me. Generally, I managed to wake myself when I was in its grip. For the longest time, I felt a great sadness that I couldn’t relax even when I was dreaming. But all in all, I preferred that to being the focus of attention.

J
UST BEFORE BREAKFAST
one spring morning, I was ordered to the Sister’s Residence. Sister Rose had something for me.

The Residence was a one-storey structure, fifty yards away from the House, along a stone pathway lined with rocks. The door of the Residence was open and I went into the hall. The inside of the building was unusual. All the inner walls were made of glass, so that I could see from one end to the other—even into the washrooms. In some of the bedrooms, I saw nuns lying asleep. In others, nuns were sitting at desks writing, or reading their holy books. Sister Rose was in the kitchen, washing dishes. When I jangled the handbell, she saw me, dried her hands and came to the hall. She lifted an envelope from the table.

“For you,” she said. “Read it after breakfast.” She said nothing more, but went back towards the kitchen.

This was most unusual: I’d never heard of anyone in the
House receiving mail. As I walked back, I examined the envelope. In the top right-hand corner was a large green triangular stamp with Oriental-looking words on it. The address was written in a tiny cramped hand: quite unlike the big, regular handwriting the Sisters made us use.

I could hardly wait for breakfast to be over. When I got back in my room, I opened the envelope. The letter was from Harry Greene. After all these years, a letter from Harry—a single rice-paper page and very brief.

That the letter was so short was disappointing. But that Harry hadn’t forgotten me, that he’d be coming to see me, and—most of all—that he wanted to be my guardian: these things made me feel elated. I read the letter over and over and over again. I kept it under my pillow and read it every day for the next couple of months. I waited in hope. And in due course, one afternoon when I was at work in the garden, Sister Rose appeared.

“A visitor for you,” she said.

I went back to the House, and headed for the reception room as fast as I could, without running—that was absolutely forbidden inside the House.

“Are you well, Andrew?”

The voice that greeted me as I entered was familiar all right, but it wasn’t Harry Greene’s. It was the discreet voice of Doctor Giffen. He was as nattily dressed as ever, though his hair and his beard were a little grey. The pupils of his eyes were like the tips of pins.

I couldn’t hide my disappointment from such sharp eyes.

“You were expecting someone else?” he said.

I told him no, but surely he didn’t believe me. Not that he seemed upset. I think he was a man who was accustomed to being greeted without enthusiasm; perhaps he even preferred it that way. He looked around the reception room and chose one of the green plastic-covered chairs. He wiped it with his handkerchief, pulled up his neatly creased pants an inch and sat down.

He cleared his throat.

“When I heard you’d come home, I half-expected you might wish to come and live with me,” he said.

I was about to say that I did mention his name to the Captain of the
Nellie
. But I kept quiet. I decided I wanted him to believe he wasn’t someone I’d especially choose to live with.

Instead I asked him what had happened to Stroven.

In his arid way, he told me the bare facts. There had been a massive cave-in at the mine in the middle of the night and rescue operations couldn’t begin till daylight. They found no survivors. One hundred and twenty men and boys were killed. Families lost fathers, sons, cousins. Government inspectors were afraid the whole area around Stroven had become unsafe because of all the mining over the centuries.

“An immediate exodus was advised,” Doctor Giffen said. He himself didn’t really mind. He’d long been thinking of moving back to the City anyway. And so he did.

He cleared his throat and we sat there, uncomfortable with each other as ever. Eventually, he looked around for his hat: a narrow-brimmed hat with a feather in the band, lying on a nearby chair. He picked up the hat and fingered it. He cleared his throat again.

“I knew your Aunt Lizzie. She lived with your mother for a while around the time you were born. She was a very pleasant woman.” He cleared his throat again. “I heard about what happened to her. It was in the newspapers. I’m so sorry about that.” He stood up and looked as though he was about to go. Then he spoke again.

“I was very fond of your mother. Very fond. I promised her I’d keep an eye on you if the arrangement with your aunt didn’t work out. I’ve made a decision to go abroad and set up practice. Canada, I’m thinking of. I’ll keep in touch with you. When your time is up here, or whenever you wish, if you’d like to come and join me, don’t hesitate.”

Before he left, he said one last thing.

“By the way, someone wrote to me about you some time ago. A sailor named Harry Greene. He said you met on the voyage to St Jude and he wanted your present address. Of course, I sent it to him.”

Then he shook my hand quickly and left without another word.

I stayed in the reception room alone for a moment. I knew Doctor Giffen loved my mother and had my best interests at heart, but I didn’t think I’d ever take him up on his offer. In fact, I’d sooner have stayed forever in the House of Mercy, where I had no need to rack my brain for things to say to anyone; where, apart from occasionally
being smitten with that awful sense of foreboding, day followed stressless day.

The promised visit from Harry Greene never happened. The weeks passed. The months passed. And it never happened.

At the age of sixteen, my time at the House of Mercy expired. My departure was without any fuss—just as the founder, Sister Justitia, recommended it should be. After breakfast, I packed a cloth bag supplied by the House. It would have been self-indulgent of Sister Rose to see me off, so she sent one of the other sisters to walk me, silently, to the end of the driveway. When the bus arrived, she shook my hand and said, “Good luck!” And that was that. As the bus moved away, I thought of Captain Stillar’s remark about how faint was the mark of a sailor on land. My stay at the House seemed like that to me now. I’d lived in it for two years. I suspected that, within two days, the fact I’d ever been there would be completely forgotten.

T
HE
M
INISTRY OF
S
OCIAL
Services had arranged a job for me as a ticket clerk in Southaven Central Railway Station, and that was where I worked for the next three years. The clerks were isolated from each other in their individual booths, so I didn’t have to associate much with my co-workers. I dealt each day with hundreds of passengers; but my only communication with them was on the subject of fares and timetables. They looked at me as
though I were simply part of a ticket-selling machine.

I lived in a cheap room in a boarding-house with many rooms. Mine looked much the same as the others: an old, springy bed; a high-backed chair with broken wicker-work that had an attraction to my wool sweater; a high, blotched ceiling; and walls covered in yellow, blotched wallpaper. The floor was bare except for a small rug, so the room was chilly, even that summer I moved in. All the rooms of the boarding-house were occupied and the house was very noisy, at night, and throughout the night. I ate my meals at a small café not far away and I tried to live a quiet, normal life. My most enjoyable hours were spent in the local library, a small, rarely used place. I loved reading. I read almost everything.

It was in the library, near the end of my third year in Southaven, that I met Catherine Cleaves.

I’d seen her there several times: a tall woman, heavily built, with short black hair. She wore no make-up, but had dark eyes with darker shadows under them. She looked at least ten years older than I. We sometimes sat at opposite ends of the reading-table.

One night we left at just about the same time. With her long legs, she was a quick walker and stayed ahead of me. So I saw where she lived: an old house not far from the café.

After that, I’d nod to her when I saw her in the library, or if we passed on the street. And after a while, she’d nod back. And soon we were exchanging greetings: “Good afternoon” or “Nice day.” Though, more often than not, the days were not nice in Southaven, where it rained a lot because of the coastal weather. Nor could the town be called nice, what with its dingy shipyards and polluted sea front.