Vow of Penance (4 page)

The figure paused, took a few steps towards her, said in a high complaining tone, ‘Wasn’t me did it, Sister! Wasn’t me. Honest! Wasn’t me!’

Sister Joan lowered her voice slightly, using the soothing accents that one needed to employ with the overgrown man whose mind sometimes worked perfectly well but at other times either flew off at a tangent or fixed itself obsessively upon some object beyond his reach. Luther had spent time in psychiatric care but now lived with his Romany relatives who had the sense to accept him as harmless if a trifle eccentric.

‘I’m sure you haven’t done anything, Luther,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.’

‘They’ll say it was me done it,’ Luther persisted.

‘Nobody says you’ve done anything wrong, Luther. You go on back home now,’ Sister Joan said.

‘You don’t come no more to the camp,’ he complained.

‘It’s Lent. Remember I told you that in Lent we don’t go visiting unless it’s absolutely necessary. I’ll come at Easter. I promise.’

‘That’s a while away,’ he said plaintively.

‘It will come the way it always comes. Go home, Luther.’

Leaving him to lope off, the recent anxiety already half erased from his mind by the prospect of the coloured eggs that signified Easter for him, she drove on. Luther was fine as long as he was kept occupied with small jobs around the convent grounds or was
permitted to accompany his cousins when they went to sell scrap iron but when time hung heavy on his hands he was apt to start imagining things. She would ask Sister Martha if there were any tasks he could undertake before the spring sowing proper began.

‘You’re late,’ Sister Perpetua observed when she had garaged the car and made her way to the kitchen.

‘I showed Father Timothy the way to the presbytery and Mrs Fairly asked me to stay for a cup of tea. Did you want me for anything, Sister?’

‘A bit of cheerful conversation if it wasn’t Lent.’ Sister Perpetua tugged her veil into place over the two-inch span of reddish hair allowed by the rule to be revealed, and gave a rueful grin. ‘I don’t know why but I’ve been at sixes and sevens this morning. Sister Gabrielle’s knee is troubling her again. It must be pretty bad because she actually admitted as much and I hadn’t enough of the linament left so I asked Sister Jerome to boil up some comfrey and she said she was lay sister and not infirmarian and had some penance to do anyway – left over from her last confession I suppose, since she hasn’t made any confession since she got here, and Sister Teresa went off to help Sister Martha and Sister Katherine, and then Luther came bothering round – it has been a morning and a half, Sister!’

‘What did Luther want?’

‘Went on and on about not having done something or other. I’m afraid I was a little short with the poor creature. Temper always was my problem.’

‘I’m sure you had cause,’ Sister Joan said. ‘Now that I am here what do you need doing?’

‘All done; I boiled up the linament myself, but it was a relief to have a bit of a grumble,’ Sister Perpetua said. ‘Did you see Father Malone off all right?’

‘Me and three-quarters of his congregation,’ Sister Joan said.

‘He’s bound to have a wonderful time. What’s the new
priest like? Rosy-cheeked and hearty, I daresay. Priests keep getting younger.’

‘Early forties, I’d say. Serious; very conscious of being a religious.’

‘He’ll get over that,’ Sister Perpetua said. ‘Don’t take your cloak off. I want you to run over to the postulancy for me. Sister Hilaria was supposed to take over a tin of coffee but she left it on the table and if someone doesn’t take it they won’t have a decent breakfast tomorrow.’

‘I’ll take it at once.’ Sister Joan picked up the tin, not bothering to comment on Sister Hilaria’s
absentmindedness
. To do that would be like remarking that the sun rose in the east.

The novice mistress and her charges had their breakfast over in the postulancy where a small kitchen enabled them to make toast and hot drinks and helped to keep them as separate from the professed nuns as possible. Sister Jerome could easily have taken it across or boiled up the comfrey leaves. Her having to do penance sounded like a feeble excuse.

‘Judge not that ye be not judged,’ she muttered, going out into the cold yard again.

A fine one she was to think ill of others when her own list of faults was growing longer by the minute!

Alice came bounding up from the shrubbery where she had been investigating an abandoned nest, circling Sister Joan’s ankles with shrill little barks of triumph to point out she didn’t have her lead on.

‘Heel! Good girl,’ Sister Joan said hopefully, and Alice promptly bounded off again.

She’d be needing firmer handling soon if she were to earn her place as guard dog, Sister Joan thought, clutching the heavy tin and walking faster.

That was when she saw the branches half lopped through and hanging limply in the still grey air. The great oak tree which had stood for more than a century at the side of the steps leading down into the tennis
court was deeply scarred, white bark showing where the outer husk of wood had been slashed and cut. Nearby a holly bush with all its branches mangled stood forlorn, its berries trembling like droplets of blood on its desecrated stems.

‘I suppose we can take it that Luther wasn’t responsible?’ Mother Dorothy said.

‘I’m sure he wouldn’t do such a thing,’ Sister Joan said earnestly. ‘He loves being out on the moor or among the trees. And he’s no history of violence.’

‘And there’s no way of telling when it was done. After the grand silence last night and before Sister Hilaria brought the postulants across for lunch this morning.’

Mother Dorothy rested her chin on her hand and frowned at the surface of her desk. Seated on the stool before her Sister Joan waited.

‘Vandalism is becoming a national disease,’ the prioress said after a moment. ‘Even here there must be those who take pleasure in slashing and destroying. Such a senseless thing to do!’

‘Sister Hilaria says that she heard nothing unusual last night or this morning and neither did the postulants,’ Sister Perpetua said. ‘Of course with the weather being so chilly the windows were closed. I agree that it couldn’t have been Luther. He’d never hurt anyone or anything.’

‘But someone did.’ Mother Dorothy frowned again. ‘Of course the gates are open and anyone can climb over the wall at the back. I think that we must all of us keep a sharp eye out during the next few weeks in case there is a recurrence.’

‘Are we going to inform the police?’ Sister Perpetua
enquired.

‘One ought to report it of course,’ Mother Dorothy said, ‘but quite honestly I fail to see what action the police could take. They are already overstretched and under-manned as it is. No, for the moment we shall merely record it and keep our eyes open. Mindless violence is always so puzzling. If a hungry person steals food one can understand the motive without, of course, condoning the action.’

She raised her hand in a brief blessing. Filing out with the others Sister Joan’s mind flew to the newspaper cutting up in the storeroom. She had hesitated to draw a parallel between events twenty years apart but when she had a few minutes to spare she would go up and read the item again. For the moment, however, there was the soup to be served and drunk.

In the kitchen Sister Jerome was stirring the heavy tureen, her face set in the grim lines that seemed to be habitual to it. She glanced up briefly but asked no question. Sister Joan, on impulse, said, ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here to help you, Sister, but someone has vandalized one of the big oaks near the old tennis courts and Mother Dorothy wished to discuss the matter with Sister Perpetua and myself. You didn’t hear anything unusual late last night or this morning I suppose?’

‘Nothing, Sister.’ Sister Jerome answered curtly, gave the soup a final stir, and waited.

‘Then we’d better take lunch upstairs,’ Sister Joan said, a trifle put out by the other’s complete lack of curiosity. ‘Shall I help you with the tureen?’

‘I can manage.’ Sister Jerome grasped the handles of the large earthenware tureen, lifted it as easily as if it had been filled with feathers, and went out of the kitchen.

‘Sister Samson,’ Sister Joan said, and surprised Sister Teresa, who was just coming in from the yard, into a giggle.

‘I’m sorry, Sister. It’s just that you’re so amusing,’ Sister Teresa said hastily composing her face.

‘I hope not,’ Sister Joan said wryly. ‘What a thing to be remembered for! “She was always amusing” is hardly the kind of obituary one wishes to see read out round the other convents after one’s demise.’

‘By then one probably wouldn’t care,’ Sister Teresa said. ‘I went out to check up on Lilith.’

‘Oh?’ Counting soup bowls Sister Joan raised a questioning eyebrow.

‘Sister Gabrielle says that one of the trees has been damaged, slashed, so I went out to make sure that Lilith hadn’t been injured. Some people go round slashing horses, you know.’

‘But that’s dreadful! How do you know?’

‘Sister Gabrielle mentioned it,’ Sister Teresa said demurely and carried the bowls out into the passage.

Despite the lack of newspapers or television Sister Gabrielle gleaned information of events in the outer world as a bee gathers pollen. She was, thought Sister Joan, following with the napkins, a grapevine unto herself.

Standing at her place in the dining-room Sister Joan murmured her ‘Amen’ to the Grace and drank the soup in her bowl. Drank – spluttered slightly – and saw that the other Sisters were having equal difficulty in getting it down. Mother Dorothy was sipping hers in brief experimental bursts, Sister Perpetua openly grimacing. Only Sister Hilaria who never noticed what she ate and Sister Jerome were consuming it without any change of expression.

‘Sister, Lenten fare is bleak enough already,’ Mother Dorothy said at last, ‘without your mistaking the sugar shaker for the salt cellar.’

‘But I—’ Sister Joan bit her lip.

‘I put sugar in, Mother Prioress,’ Sister Jerome said. ‘In our London house I was accustomed to flavour food
with salt instead of sugar, sugar instead of salt, as a penance during Lent. I assumed it would be the same here.’

‘It is not,’ Mother Dorothy said frigidly, adding fairly, ‘Sister Joan, I was over-quick to accuse you of carelessness. My apologies. Perhaps you would take the time to explain to Sister Jerome that we don’t add to Lenten austerities here by spoiling nourishing food whatever they may do in London.’

They were filing out, returning to their duties. Sister Jerome, looking as calm as if she had just been praised instead of mildly reprimanded, was gathering up the empty bowls. Sister Jerome had also lied, Sister Joan reflected, as she hurried down to the infirmary to relieve the two old ladies of their unpalatable drink. Not in a thousand years would Mother Agnes have inflicted such a grotesque penance on her community at Lent or at any other time. Mother Agnes had been novice mistress during her own postulancy and novitiate and been elected as prioress for the customary five years just after her final profession. Tall, slim, with a Gothic profile and a voice which still bore traces of the concert singer she had once been, Mother Agnes had been a wise and shrewd prioress who disliked excess in any form.

Outside the infirmary door she paused, struck by a sudden thought. It was nearly two years since she had first come to the Cornwall house. When she had been embarking on her twelve months of seclusion Sister Jerome would have been beginning her training as a prospective lay sister. Yet she had never seen her before nor heard the name.

‘Are you going to stand there all day, child?’ Mother Gabrielle demanded from within, ‘or are you bringing some more poisonous stuff to upset our digestions?’

‘I’m sorry, Sister.’ Sister Joan hurried into the pleasant whitewashed room where a fire burned and
crocuses were spiking the bowls on the window sill. ‘There was a misunderstanding.’

‘Sugar instead of salt!’ Sister Gabrielle’s
eagle-featured
face expressed outrage.

‘I’m very sorry, Sisters. Shall I make you some fresh soup?’

‘Nothing at all,’ Sister Gabrielle said firmly. ‘I can’t speak for Sister Mary Concepta though.’

‘Sister?’ Sister Joan glanced over at the sweet-faced old nun who sat, delicate as an ageing flower, in her wheelchair.

‘Nothing, Sister. We’d not wish to be singular,’ Sister Mary Concepta said.

‘A dictum that the new lay sister might do well to observe,’ Sister Gabrielle said tartly. ‘What is the matter with that woman? I’d call her a long-faced saint if she hasn’t made it abundantly clear that she’s very far from being a normally polite human being!’

‘She has an unfortunate manner,’ Sister Mary Concepta said excusingly.

‘She comes from the London house. Did you know her?’ Sister Gabrielle asked.

‘No, not at all. It is one of the larger convents.’

‘Never more than fifteen sisters in one convent,’ Sister Gabrielle said. ‘Quality is better than quantity, I suppose. What’s all this about vandals getting in?’

‘Some damage was done to a tree,’ Sister Joan said reluctantly. ‘It really isn’t anything to worry about, Sister.’

‘In my mid-eighties I reserve the right to choose what to worry about,’ Sister Gabrielle said. ‘Lads from the town I daresay. No discipline these days. What’s the new priest like?’

‘You can ask Father Stephens about him,’ Sister Joan said, catching sight of the tall, fair-haired figure through the window, ‘for he’s on his way now. Excuse me.’

She made her escape followed by Sister Gabrielle’s mocking, ‘Lost your taste for gossip, girl? I’m astonished!’

She loved Sister Gabrielle dearly, but there were times when the latter traded on her age, and the little privileges that brought her, to be a thorn in the flesh, Sister Joan thought, hurrying through to the main hall to greet Father Stephens.

‘I came round from the postulancy,’ he said, entering with a nod. ‘Mother Dorothy telephoned me to inform me of the vandalism. Very disturbing indeed, Sister.’

‘Yes, Father. Yes, it is.’ Sister Joan, relieving him of his hat, found herself suddenly liking him a little better. Disturbing, she thought, was the right word to use, and there was something very human and fallible about the pained look on his handsome young face. Usually Father Stephens knew all the answers but this event had clearly puzzled and upset him.

She led him to the antechamber, tapped on the door to signal his arrival, and then tactfully withdrew, knowing that Mother Dorothy would have informed him of the vandalism more as an act of courtesy than because she thought he might be able to help.

At least she had a few minutes to herself again. She turned towards the chapel wing, padded down the short passage that led past the two parlours with their grilled division and went into the chapel. It was tempting to stay, to kneel for a few minutes and try to regain her peace of mind but she genuflected briefly and went up the narrow stairs by the Lady Altar to the library and storerooms above.

The newspaper cutting was where she had clipped it on to the requisite pile. She drew up the hard-backed chair and sat down to study it again. The item told her no more than when she had first glanced through it however. Twenty years before when the Tarquin family still lived in the great house and no Daughters of
Compassion had yet come into Cornwall a number of trees in the grounds had been badly slashed and hacked about. There was no indication in the clipping as to whether or not anyone had been found guilty of the crime. Was it a crime? She bit her lip, considering. A misdemeanour, certainly, as was damage to any property, but there was something peculiarly
unpleasant
about the picture rising in her mind of a shadowy figure raising an axe to strike again and again in a frenzy of destruction at a living part of nature.

Certainly there seemed nothing tangible to connect one act with the more recent vandalism. Sister Joan pushed back her chair and went down into the chapel again. It was no longer empty. Sister Jerome, arms in the cruciform position, knelt bolt upright before the altar, head flung back so that it looked almost as if she was arguing with the Divine instead of joining herself with the Sacrifice.

As she hesitated the other crossed herself and rose in one fluid movement, turning to scour the space behind her with her deep-set eyes.

‘Were you looking for me, Sister?’ Her voice was dry and passionless.

‘No, Sister Jerome.’ Sister Joan hesitated again, then said warmly, ‘Please don’t feel badly about the sugar in the soup. You were not to know.’

‘I am only sorry that a little extra penance during Lent is frowned upon here,’ Sister Jerome said coldly.

‘But Mother Agnes in the London house never encouraged excessive mortification either,’ Sister Joan was stung into replying, ‘unless, she has altered a great deal since I was there.’

‘I said I was accustomed to render my own food unpalatable,’ Sister Jerome said. ‘I never intimated it was general practice. However when I came here I thought the other sisters would like to share in what you are pleased to call excessive mortification.’

‘Only if we choose it ourselves, Sister. You were not in the London house when I was there? I don’t recall—’

‘There is no reason why you should,’ Sister Jerome said. ‘I try not to make myself conspicuous. However I may as well satisfy your curiosity by telling you that I did my initial training elsewhere and spent only eighteen months under Mother Agnes’s rule. Excuse me, please.’

She genuflected towards the altar and went past without any further word. Sister Joan let out her breath in a silent ‘whoo’. So Sister Jerome had come from another order. Such a procedure was unusual but not entirely unknown where lay sisters were concerned. There had always been a shortage of vocations for the Marys of the enclosed and semi-enclosed orders but lay sisters, who shared few of the perquisites of the fully professed but had to exist uneasily between the cloister and the world, were like gold dust, to be cherished when they arrived. It was going to be hard to cherish Sister Jerome, she reflected, as she went back to the kitchen where a pile of potatoes waited to be peeled.

From the infirmary she could hear Father Stephens talking to Sister Gabrielle and Sister Mary Concepta. Though he lacked Father Malone’s cosily confiding manner he did his best with the old ladies though he was rather too apt to go on about the twilight of one’s days. As Sister Gabrielle had once tartly observed she was at the age when she didn’t need reminding of it.

‘Sister Joan.’ He was tapping on the kitchen door.

‘I’m sorry, Father. I was just getting started on the vegetables. Please come in.’ Rinsing her hands hastily she opened the door wider.

It was so unusual for Father Stephens to honour the kitchen with a visit that she stared at him for a moment before remembering to offer him another cup of tea.

‘Thank you but no, Sister. The one I had with Mother Prioress was very refreshing. You are still working as lay sister then?’

‘I’ve been told to make myself useful wherever I can,’ Sister Joan said.

‘No doubt until Sister Jerome settles in properly. I looked in to thank you for showing Father Timothy to the presbytery this morning. I ought to have been there myself but there was the hospital visit and we weren’t sure of the exact time of his arrival,’ Father Stephens said.