Silver Wedding (8 page)

'Yes, you know that, I know that, Helen doesn't. Anyway we'll see. Come on, Nessa, if us old ones are to be any use to this Community we'd better get a few hours of sleep a night.' She was laughing, Sister Brigid had a lovely warm laugh that included you and wrapped you up.

'Thank you, Brigid.'

'I did nothing, said nothing.'

'It's the way you do it, say it.' Nessa was obviously feeling better now.

Helen slipped back into her room and stood for a long time with her back to>the door.

So they thought she wouldn't finish things? She'd show them, by heavens would she show them.

She'd dig that garden single-handed, she'd build a magic garden where they could all sit and think and be at peace and they would realize that Sister Helen more than any of them knew that anything done for the Community was as important as any other thing. Then they would have to let her take her vows. And she would be completely part of their world. And safe. Safe from everything else.

Like everything Helen had touched, the building of the garden had its highs and lows. Helen found three boys who said they were anxious to help the Sisters in their great work building a refuge and they'd be happy to join in with a bit of the heavy work. They brought spades and shovels and Sister Joan said it was beyond the mind's understanding how much tea they wanted, how they couldn't have this butter on their bread, or marge, it had to be a particular spread. And they wondered was there a little something going at lunch time. Sister Joan said nervously that the nuns all had their meal in the evening, but fearing that the volunteer workforce would abandon everything, she ran out and bought provisions.

After three days Sister Brigid thanked them and said that there could be no further imposition on their kindness.

The lads had begun to enjoy the good food and over-powering gratitude of the nuns and didn't really want to leave at all.

They left the place in a possibly greater mess; earth had been turned over certainly, but no pattern or plan had emerged.

But Helen soldiered on, she dug until she had blisters, she spent her scant off-time in bookshops reading the sections of gardening books that concentrated on 'Starting Out'.

She learned the differences between one kind of soil and another.

She told the Sisters amazing things each evening about the sexuality of growing things.

'They never told us a word about this at school,' she said indignantly. 'It's the kind of thing you should know, about everything being male and female even in the garden, for heaven's sake, and going mad to propagate.'

'Let's hope it all does propagate after your hard work,' Brigid said. 'You really are great, Helen, I don't know where you find the energy.'

Helen flushed with pleasure. And she was able to remember those words of praise too a little later when the problem of the bedding plants came up. The nice woman who said she really admired the Sisters even though she wasn't a Roman Catholic herself and disagreed with the Pope about everything, brought them some lovely plants as a gift. Red-faced with exertion from planting them, Helen assured the others that evening they were very very lucky. It would have cost a fortune if they had to buy all these, nobody knew how expensive things were in garden centres.

She had barely finished talking when the news came that the plants had all been dug up from a park and a nearby hotel. The repercussions were endless. The explanations from every side seemed unsatisfactory. Helen said she had to protect her sources and wouldn't give them the name of the benefactor. But in mid conversation she mentioned to the young policewoman that Mrs Harris couldn't possibly have taken them deliberately, she wasn't that kind of person, and that was enough for the two constables to identify exactly who she was talking about. Mrs Harris had been in trouble before. A latter-day Robin Hood was how she was known down at the station, taking clothes from one washing-line, ironing them and presenting them as gifts to another home.

Only Helen could have got herself involved with Mrs Harris, the other nuns sighed. Only Helen could have got them all involved, was Brigid's view, but she didn't say anything at the time.

Helen realized that the garden couldn't be considered her full-time work. And even when she had reassured the Community that she was taking on no further assistance from gargantuan eaters of meals or compulsive plant thieves she felt she should take on more than just a horticultural role. She was determined to play her part as fully as possible. She said she would do half the skivvy work, leaving Sister Joan or Sister Maureen free for a half day to do something else.

It worked. Or it sort of worked.

They all got used to the fact that Helen might not have scrubbed the table or taken in their washing when it started to rain. They knew that she would never know when they were running out of soap or cornflakes. That she wouldn't really rinse out and hang the dishcloths up to dry. But she was there, eager and willing to help.

And she did answer the phone and more or less coped when people came to call.

Which is why she was there when Renata Quigley came to see the Sister in charge.

Renata. Tall and dark, somewhere in her mid-thirties. Married for fifteen years to Frank Quigley.

What on earth could she want, and how had she tracked Helen down to St Martin's? Helen felt her heart race and she could almost hear it thumping in her ears. At the same time there was a sense of ice-cold water in the base of her stomach.

She hadn't seen Renata since the wedding, but she had seen pictures of her of course, in magazines and in the trade papers Daddy had brought home. Mrs Frank Quigley, the former Miss Renata Palazzo, exchanging a joke or enjoying herself at the races or presenting a prize to the apprentice of the year or walking among the high and mighty at some charity function.

She was very much more beautiful than Helen had thought, she had skin that Mother would have called sallow but looked olive-like and beautiful with her huge dark eyes and her dark shiny hair with its expensive cut. She wore her scarf very artistically caught in a brooch and draped as if it were part of her green and gold dress. She carried a small leather handbag in green and gold squares.

Her face was troubled and her long thin hands with their dark red nails were twisting round the little patchwork bag.

'Can I please speak to the Sister in charge?' she asked Helen.

Helen looked at her, open-mouthed. Renata Quigley didn't recognize her. Suddenly the memory of an old movie came back to her, and some beautiful actress looking straight at the camera and saying, 'Nobody looks at the face of a nun.' It was the kind of thing that would drive Sister Brigid mad. Helen had never forgotten it. Until this moment she had never realized how true it was. There was Renata Quigley on her doorstep looking straight into her eyes and she didn't recognize Helen, the daughter of Deirdre and Desmond Doyle, her husband's friends.

Helen who had caused so much trouble that time.

But perhaps she had never known. With another shock Helen realized that Renata might have been told nothing at the time.

While all this was going through her mind, Helen stood at the door, a girl in a grey jumper and skirt, with a cross around her neck, her hair tied back with a black ribbon, her face perhaps covered in grime from the garden where she had been when she heard the doorbell.

Perhaps she didn't even look like a nun.

It was obvious that Renata didn't connect her with the child she had known in Rosemary Drive, Pinner, when she had come to call.

|k 'I'm sorry, there's nobody here but me,' Helen said, recovering slightly.

'Are you one of the Community?' Renata looked doubtful.

'Yes, well yes. I'm here in St Martin's, part of the house, one of the Sisters.' It was straining the truth but Helen was not going to let Renata Quigley go until she knew why she had come here in the first place.

'It's a little complicated, Sister,' Renata said nervously.

Helen's smile nearly split her face in half.

'Well, come on in and sit down and tell me, that's what we're here for,' she said.

And she stood back and held the door open while Frank Quigley's wife walked into St Martin's. Into Helen's home.

That face, that dark lean face with the high cheekbones. Helen Doyle knew it so well. She remembered well her mother saying with some satisfaction that it would run to fat all the same in the end, mark her words, all the middle-aged Italian women you saw with several chins, they too had been lean girls with long, perfectly formed faces. It was in their diets, in their lifestyles, in the amount of olive oil they managed to put away.

When she was a child Helen had been irritated with her mother for all this kind of niggling. What did it matter? Why was Mother so anxious to criticize, to find fault?

But later, later Helen was to look at pictures of the face and wish that her own were like it, that she had hollows and soft golden skin instead of round cheeks and freckles. She would have killed to get that dark heavy hair she saw in the photographs, and weaf those loop earrings, which made Helen look like a tinker running away from an encampment, but made Renata Palazzo Quigley look glamorous as an exotic princess from a far land.

'I came here because I heard that there is a Sister Brigid . . . I thought perhaps.. .' She faltered.

'I suppose you could say I'm Sister Brigid's deputy,' Helen said. In ways it could be true. She was in charge of the house when they were all out, that could be considered being a deputy.

'I'll be glad to do what I can.'

Helen fought back the other thoughts in her mind. She simply closed a door on Renata's picture in a silver frame on a small table with a long white cloth reaching to the floor. She closed another door on Frank Quigley, her father's friend, with tears in his eyes. She tried to think only of this moment. A woman had come to St Martin's for help in some way, and Sister Brigid was out. Helen was in charge.

'It's just that you're very young. ..' Renata was doubtful.

Helen was reassuring. She had her hand on the kettle and paused to look at Renata.

'No, no, I'm much more experienced than you think.'

She felt a little light-headed. Could she really be saying these words to Frank Quigley's wife?

It had been impossible in Rosemary Drive that time when Father had lost his job. Helen thought back on it and it flashed in front of her as if she were watching a video on that machine that she had got for St Martin's once because the company had assured her it was free for a month and there would be no obligation. It had all been very difficult, the business about the video, like everything.

But nothing was as frightening as the time her father had left Palazzo. There was a council of war every night and Mother had warned them that they must tell nobody.

'But why?' Helen had begged. She couldn't bear her sister and brother to accept that this was the way things should be from now on. 'Why does it have to be a secret? It's not Daddy's fault that they changed the place. He can get another job. Daddy can get any job.'

She remembered still how Mother had snapped at her.

'Your father doesn't want any job, he wants his job at Palazzo back. And he will have it back soon, so in the meantime nothing is to be said. Do you hear me, Helen? Outside this house not one word is to be said. Everyone is to think that your father is going to work as usual in Palazzo.'

'But how will he earn money?' Helen had asked.

It was a reasonable question. To this day she didn't regret it, like she sometimes regretted the things she had said, the offers she had made, the questions she had asked.

Anna had said nothing, for an easy life she had explained.

Brendan had said nothing because nothing was what Brendan always said.

But Helen couldn't say nothing.

She was sixteen years old, grown up, in her last year at school. She would not stay on and do A levels like Anna. Even though she felt she was twice as bright as Anna in many ways. No, Helen was going to see the world, try her hand at this and that, get on-the-job experience.

She was so full of life, at sixteen some people thought she was years younger, a big schoolgirl. Other people thought she was years older, a lively student going on twenty.

Frank Quigley had no idea how old she was the afternoon she went to see him in his office.

The dragon woman Miss Clarke had protected him as she always had. Helen wondered could she possibly be there still? It was years ago. Surely she had given up hoping that Mr Quigley was going to look into her eyes and say that she was beautiful without her glasses?

Helen had left her school blazer downstairs with the doorman, and had opened the top buttons of her school shirt in order to look more grown up. The dragon woman had eventually let her in. There were very few who could withstand Helen when she was in full flow. Explanation came hard upon explanation, and all the time she was moving towards his office. Before the dragon realized it, Helen was in.

She was flushed and excited.

Frank Quigley had looked up, surprised.

'Well, well, Helen Doyle. You're not meant to be here, I'm sure.'

'I know.' She laughed easily.

'You should'be at school, not bursting into people's offices.'

'I do a lot of things I shouldn't do.'

She had sat on the corner of his desk swinging her legs, shoulders hunched up. He looked at her with interest. Helen knew she had been right to come here, the silence of Rosemary Drive was no way to handle things. There had to be confrontation.

'What can I do for you?' He had a mock gallantry. He was quite handsome in a way, dark with curly hair. Old of course, as old as her father, even. But different.

'I suppose you could take me to lunch,' she said. It was the kind of thing people said in films and in plays on telly. It worked for them, perhaps it would for her too. She gave him a smile much braver and more confident than she felt inside.

'Lunch?' He laughed in a short bark. 'Lord, Helen, I don't know what kind of lifestyles you think we live down here . . .' He broke off, looking at her disappointed face.