The Abbess of Crewe (10 page)

Gertrude’s voice goes faint as she replies, ‘No, they’re only for home
consumption. Give them to the nuns. I’m afraid there’s a snowstorm blowing
up. Too much interference on the line …’

The Abbess skips happily, all by herself in the control room, when she has put down the
green receiver. Then she folds her white habit about her and goes into her parlour which
has been decorated to her own style. Mildred and Walburga stand up as she enters, and
she looks neither at one nor the other, but stands without moving, and they with her,
like Stonehenge. In a while the Abbess takes her chair, with her buckled shoes set
lightly on the new green carpet. Mildred and Walburga take their places.

‘Gertrude,’ says the Abbess, ‘is on her way to the hinterland, far into
the sparse wastes of Iceland where she hopes to introduce daily devotions and central
heating into the igloos. We had better get tenders from the central-heating firms and
arrange a contract quickly, for I fear that something about the scheme may go wrong,
such as the breakdown of Eskimo family life. What is all that yelping
outside?’

‘Police dogs,’ says Mildred. ‘The reporters are still at the gate.’

‘Keep the nuns well removed from the gates,’ says the Abbess. ‘Do you
know, if things become really bad I shall myself make a statement on television. Have
you received any further intelligence?’

‘Felicity has made up a list of Abbey crimes,’ says Walburga. ‘She
complains they are crimes under English law, not ecclesiastical crimes, and she has
complained on the television that the legal authorities are doing nothing about
them.’

‘The courts would of course prefer the affair to be settled by Rome,’ says
the Abbess. ‘Have you got the list?’ She holds out her hand and flutters her
fingers impatiently while Walburga brings out of her deep pocket a thick folded list
which eventually reaches the Abbess’s fingers.

Mildred says, ‘She compiled it with the aid of Thomas and Roget’s
Thesaurus
, according to her landlady’s daughter, who keeps Winifrede
informed.’

‘We shall be ruined with all this pay-money that we have to pay,’ the Abbess
says, unfolding the list. She begins to read aloud, in her clearest modulations:

‘“
Wrongdoing committed by the Abbess of Crewe
”.’ She
then looks up from the paper and says, ‘I do love that word
“wrongdoing”. It sounds so like the gong of doom, not at all evocative of
that fanfare of Wagnerian trumpets we are led to expect, but something that accompanies
the smell of boiled beef and cabbage in the back premises of a Mechanics’
Institute in Sheffield in the mid-nineteenth century … Wrongdoing is moreover
something that commercial travellers used to do in the thirties and forties of this
century, although now I believe they do the same thing under another name …
Wrongdoing, wrongdoing … In any sense which Felicity could attach to it, the word
does not apply to me, dear ladies. Felicity is a lascivious puritan.’

‘We could sue for libel,’ Walburga says.

‘No more does libel apply to me,’ says the Abbess, and continues reading
aloud: ‘“Concealing, hiding, secreting, covering, screening, cloaking,
veiling, shrouding, shading, muffling, masking, disguising, ensconcing, eclipsing,
keeping in ignorance, blinding, hoodwinking, mystifying, posing, puzzling, perplexing,
embarrassing, bewildering, reserving, suppressing, bamboozling, etcetera.”

‘I pine so much to know,’ says the Abbess, looking up from the list at the
attentive handsome faces of Mildred and Walburga, ‘what the “etcetera”
stands for. Surely Felicity had something in mind?’

‘Would it be something to do with fraud?’ says Mildred.

‘Fraud is implied in the next paragraph,’ says the Abbess, ‘for it goes
on: “Defrauding, cheating, imposing upon, practising upon, outreaching, jockeying,
doing, cozening, diddling, circumventing, putting upon, decoying, tricking, hoaxing,
juggling, trespassing, beguiling, inveigling, luring, liming, swindling, tripping up,
bilking, plucking, outwitting, making believe the moon is made of green cheese and
deceiving”.

‘A dazzling indictment,’ says the Abbess, looking up once more, ‘and,
do you know, she has thought not only of the wrongdoings I have committed but also those
I have not yet done but am about to perform.’

The bell rings for Vespers and the Abbess lays aside the dazzling pages.

‘I think,’ says Walburga, as she follows the Abbess from the private parlour,
‘we should dismantle the bugs right away.’

‘And destroy our tapes?’ says Mildred, rather tremorously. Mildred is very
attached to the tapes, playing them back frequently with a rare force of
concentration.

‘Certainly not,’ says the Abbess as they pause at the top of the staircase.
‘We cannot destroy evidence the existence of which is vital to our story and which
can be orchestrated to meet the demands of the Roman inquisitors who are trying to
liquidate the convent. We need the tapes to trick, lure, lime, outwit, bamboozle,
etcetera. There is one particular tape in which I prove my innocence of the bugging
itself. I am walking with Winifrede under the poplars discussing the disguising and
ensconcing as early as last summer. It is the tape that begins with the question,
“What is wrong, Sister Winifrede, with the tradional keyhole method
…?” I replayed and rearranged it the other day, making believe the moon is
green cheese with Winifrede’s stupid reply which I rightly forget. It is very
suitable evidence to present to Rome, if necessary. Sister Winifrede is in it up to the
neck. Send her to my parlour after Vespers.’

They descend the stairs with such poise and habitual style that the nuns below, amongst
whom already stir like a wind in the rushes the early suspicion and dread of what is to
come, are sobered and made vigilant, are collected and composed as they file across the
dark lawn, each in her place to Vespers.

High and low come the canticles and the Abbess rises from her tall chair to join the
responses. How lyrically move her lips in the tidal sway of the music! …

Taking, obtaining, benefiting, procuring, deriving, securing,
collecting, reaping, coming in for, stepping into, inheriting, coming by, scraping
together, getting hold of, bringing grist to the mill, feathering one’s nest
…

Sisters, be sober, be vigilant, for the devil goeth about as
a raging lion seeking whom he may devour.

Gloating, being pleased, deriving pleasure, etcetera, taking
delight in, rejoicing in, relishing, liking, enjoying, indulging in, treating
oneself, solacing oneself, revelling, luxuriating, being on velvet, being in clover,
slaking the appetite,
faisant ses choux gras,
basking in the sunshine,
treading on enchanted ground.

‘The point is, Winifrede, that you took a very great risk
passing the money to a young Jesuit seminarian who was dressed up as a woman in
Selfridge’s ladies’ lavatory. He could have been arrested as a transvestite.
This time you’d better think up something better.’

The Abbess is busy with a pair of little scissors unpicking the tiny threads that attach
the frail setting of an emerald to the robes of the Infant of Prague.

‘It pains me,’ says the Abbess, ‘to expend, waste, squander, lavish,
dissipate, exhaust and throw down the drain the Sisters’ dowries in this fashion.
I am hard used by the Jesuits. However, here you are. Take it to the pawn shop and make
some arrangement with Fathers Baudouin and Maximilian how the money is to be picked up.
But no more ladies’ lavatories.’

‘Yes, Lady Abbess,’ says Winifrede; then she says in a low wail, ‘If
only Sister Mildred could come with me or Sister Walburga …’

‘Oh, they know nothing of this affair,’ says the Abbess.

‘Oh, they know everything!’ says Winifrede, the absolute clot.

‘As far as I’m concerned I know nothing, either,’ says the Abbess. ‘That
is the scenario. And do you know what I am thinking, Winifrede?’

‘What is that, Lady Abbess?’

‘I‘m thinking,’ the Abbess says:

‘Yes, Lady Abbess,’ says Winifrede. She curtsies low
and is about to depart when the Abbess, in a swirl of white, lays a hand on her arm to
retain her.

‘Winifrede,’ she says, ‘before you go, just in case anything should
happen which might tend to embarrass the Abbey, I would like you to sign the
confession.’

‘Which confession?’ says Winifrede, her stout frame heaving with alarm.

‘Oh, the usual form of confession.’ The Abbess beckons her to the small desk
whereon is laid a typed sheet of the Abbey’s fine crested paper. The Abbess holds
out a pen. ‘Sign,’ she says.

‘May I read it?’ Winifrede whines, taking up the papers in her strong
hands.

‘It’s the usual form of confession. But read on, read on, if you have any
misgivings.’

Winifrede reads what is typed:

I confess to Almighty God, to blessed Mary ever Virgin, to
blessed Michael the archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the holy apostles
Peter and Paul, and to all the saints, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought,
word and deed, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous
fault.

‘Sign,’ says the Abbess. ‘Just put your name and
your designation.’

‘I don’t really like to commit myself so far,’ Winifrede says.

‘Well, you know,’ says the Abbess, ‘since you repeat these words at
Mass every morning of your life, I would be quite horrified to think you had been a
hypocrite all these years and hadn’t meant them. The laity in their hundreds of
millions lodge this solemn deposition before the altar every week.’ She puts the
pen into Winifrede’s frightened hand. ‘Even the Pope,’ says the
Abbess, ‘offers the very same damaging testimony every morning of his life; he
admits quite frankly that he has committed sins exceedingly all through his own grievous
fault. Whereupon the altar boy says: “May almighty God have mercy on you.”
And all I am saying, Winifrede, is that what’s good enough for the Supreme Pontiff
is good enough for you. Do you imagine he doesn’t mean precisely what he says
every morning of his life?’

Winifrede takes the pen and writes under the confession, ‘Winifrede, Dame of the
Order of the Abbey of Crewe,’ in a high and slanting copperplate hand. She pats
her habit to see if the emerald is safe in the deep folds of her pocket, and before
leaving the parlour she stops at the door to look back warily. The Abbess stands,
holding the confession, white in her robes under the lamp and judicious, like blessed
Michael the Archangel.

‘W
E
have entered the realm of
mythology,’ says the Abbess of Crewe, ‘and of course I won’t part with
the tapes. I claim the ancient Benefit of Clerks. The confidentiality between the nuns
and the Abbess cannot be disrupted. These tapes are as good as under the secret of the
confessional, and even Rome cannot demand them.’

The television crew has gone home, full of satisfaction, but news reporters loiter in a
large group outside the gates. The police patrol the grounds with the dogs that growl at
every dry leaf that stirs on the ground.

It is a month since Sister Winifrede, mindful of the Abbess’s warning not to choose
a ladies’ lavatory for a rendezvous, decided it would show initiative and
imagination if she arranged to meet her blackmailer in the gentlemen’s lavatory at
the British Museum. It was down there in that blind alley that Winifrede was arrested by
the Museum guard and the attendants. ‘Here’s one of them poofs,’ said
the attendant, and Winifrede, dressed in a dark blue business suit, a white shirt with a
faint brown stripe and a blue and red striped tie, emblematic of some university
unidentified even by the Sunday press, was taken off to the police station still hugging
her plastic bag packed tight with all those thousands.

Winifrede began blurting out her story on the way to the police station and continued it
while the policewomen were stripping her of her manly clothes, and went on further with
her deposition, dressed in a police-station overall. The evening paper headlines
announced, ‘Crewe Abbey Scandal: New Revelations’, ‘Crewe Nun
Transvestite Caught in Gent’s’ and ‘Crewe Thimble Case — Nun
Questioned’.

Winifrede, having told her story, was released without charge on the assurances of the
Abbess that it was an internal and ecclesiastical matter, and was being intensively
investigated as such. This touchy situation, which the law-enforcement authorities were
of a mind to avoid, did not prevent several bishops from paying as many calls to the
Abbess Alexandra, whitely robed in her parlour at Crewe, as she would receive, nor did
it keep the stories out of the newspapers of the big wide world.

‘My Lords,’ she told those three of the bishops whom she admitted, ‘be
vigilant for your own places before you demolish my Abbey. You know of the mower
described by Andrew Marvell: