Vow of Sanctity (20 page)

She heard the police car at the other side of the bridge start up and drive off. The inspector had left the last of the story in her hands to unravel or not as she chose. Her choice was important. It might alter many lives. The next morning she would kneel at mass. The next morning she would decide.

Beginning to toil up the pine-needled slope she wished violently that the responsibility lay on other shoulders.

The sun had decided to stay for the time being at least. After the rain and mist of the previous week the world was bright and clear with only the cold snap of the breeze to hint at winter’s coming. Kneeling at mass, Sister Joan wished that her spirits were as untroubled as the weather. She had spent much of the night wrestling with herself, trying to reach some conclusion that would help her to act. If she did nothing she would spend the rest of her life wondering if she ought to have spoken; if she did speak she ran the risk of landing with two left feet in someone else’s life. The temptation to find a telephone and ring her prioress was very strong. Mother Dorothy would certainly advise her but telephoning during a retreat was only permissible when there was an emergency. And there were times when one must come to a decision independently and not lean like a child on the opinion of others.

Several of the parishioners had smiled at her as they walked up the track towards the church that morning. What she had taken for indifference was, after all, only shyness. Even the hostility of the other villagers might be overcome, since her having rowed herself across the loch at the height of the storm had apparently been taken as a sign that, Catholic or not, she had guts and kept a cool head in moments of danger.

‘The mass is ended. Go in peace.’

The abbot, having dismissed the Angel of the Presence, turned to enfold the small congregation in a sweeping sign of the cross. Watching the tall, aristocratic figure, she felt a ripple of guilty amusement. How could she ever have imagined for one moment that such a man would break his vow of celibacy? But then neither would it have entered her
head that this man was engaged in raising funds for his community and for charity by writing the highly-coloured but intrinsically harmless love stories devoured by romantically inclined females all over the land.

He was striding down the aisle now, his acolyte scurrying ahead while a second remained to snuff the extra candles on the altar. The rest of the congregation were filing out. Through the open door the sunlight streamed, making patterns on the floor. She remained where she was and waited until the rapid beating of her heart had steadied somewhat. Then she rose and passed within the altar rail, entering the sacristy where the acolyte was tidying up, his eyes shyly averted as he saw her.

‘I have leave to go down into the crypt,’ she said, carefully pitching her voice high enough to be audible beyond the screen that hid the community stalls from view.

The monk nodded and went on tidying.

She opened the door to the crypt and switched on the light. Going down the stone steps into the rocky tunnel she breathed in the cool, dry air. Here no shaft of sunlight entered; no worm burrowed into decaying flesh. She reached the bottom, lit the stump of candle there, and walked on into the wider chamber with its alcoves and seated figures. There was, she thought, nothing after all to fear from the dead. Whether there was anything to fear from the living she would be able to say in a few minutes. She set her candle on a ledge as the electric light went out and knelt, facing the empty alcove where the body in modern clothes had made one too many in that silent company. No words came into her mind. She simply waited.

The door that led into the enclosure proper was opening. She felt the small draught of air at her right side and a shadow joined hers across the wall.

‘I’ve been wanting to talk to somebody,’ the voice said, very low.

‘Why to me?’ She kept her own voice low, nails digging into the palms of her hands.

‘Strangers are safe, especially nuns. They don’t babble like other women.’

‘You watched me,’ she said.

‘Trying to decide whether talking to you would be a good thing. I even came after you into the scriptorium and stood there for a moment or two – you were in the little bathroom. I stood, plucking up courage, and then I left.’

‘You turned over the pages of the illuminated manuscript there.’

‘Did I? Yes, I believe I did. Something to occupy my hands. I wasn’t fully aware of it at the time. Down here, when you first came, then I got scared. You’d poke around, find out something – I wanted to frighten you off then. I reached out and grasped your hand in the darkness – in six years nobody had counted the bodies here or noticed there was one extra. Nobody came down here save on the rarest occasions. Father Abbot discourages visits because the air ought not to be too much disturbed.’

‘Nor the dead,’ she murmured.

‘Do you think I enjoyed moving him?’ The whisper was suddenly savage. ‘I had put on a spare habit I found to make him look like the others. He had the cowl over his head. Nobody could have seen his face and the more time elapsed the more he resembled the others, but you saw the shoes. You saw those. I couldn’t bring myself to remove his shoes, you see. I couldn’t bring myself to do that.’

‘How did he die?’ she asked.

‘A heart attack. No violence. A simple heart attack. I could have passed by, done nothing, left her to face it alone, but I couldn’t do that. Catherine was a nice woman, a good friend. She helped me when I finally made up my mind to leave Dolly.’

‘You didn’t talk to Dolly?’

‘It wouldn’t have done any good. Dolly wouldn’t have understood how I felt. I couldn’t have explained it even to myself. All my life I was seeking something that lay just out of reach. I denied my own faith, married Dolly when she told me she was pregnant – having an affair with her, trying to prove to myself that I too could desire a woman – that wasn’t fair on either of us. She was never a loving wife but then I was never a loving husband. Working away from home was a kind of compromise but it wasn’t enough. I wanted to leave the world. I had what I suppose you could call a late vocation, or
perhaps I’d simply denied my vocation all along. I met Catherine Sinclair by chance. My car had broken down and she gave me a lift to the nearest garage. We talked. Sitting in a shoddy little café with rain making tracks on the dirty windows. She had a lover – an English tourist she’d met briefly. He visited the area once or twice a year. That was the only time they managed to meet. His name was Adam – the surname doesn’t matter since he had no relatives, nobody to report him missing – not even a job to leave. He’d a heart condition and he lived on a small legacy he’d inherited from his grandmother. She told me he was gentle, artistic, caring.’

‘And you confided in her.’

‘I’d tried to talk to a couple of priests, to tell them how I felt. They both said the same thing; the consent of both parties is required if the husband wishes to enter the religious life. I could just imagine Dolly’s reaction if I told her that was what I’d wanted to do without realizing it for years. As far as she was concerned I didn’t even practise my faith any longer, and I’d distanced myself from my son. She was the one who got him confirmed and all the rest of it. She was conscientious about that.’

‘Was Catherine Sinclair going away with her lover?’ Sister Joan asked.

‘No. She was meeting him down by the loch. She’d rowed across and they were on the shore at the side where the retreat is. I’d come down there for a bit to walk on the shingle, try to think things over; everything was coming to a head inside me. I knew that I’d have to tell Dolly soon how I felt, how little I cared about her – and then I heard Catherine crying. He’d collapsed on her and died. I never met him when he was alive, but in death he was slight and small. It was providence took me down on to the shore at the very moment that Catherine Sinclair’s lover died. God had opened a doorway which I could vanish through.’

‘How? Why did it need a death?’

‘Someone had to conceal the body. There might have been someone somewhere who came asking questions. In the community I would be safe, anonymous. She helped me get the body into her boat and then we rowed to the island. It was a wild, stormy night – the brothers slept peacefully in their
cells. I knew about the crypt. I’d been to mass once years before, just after Rory was born, and got into conversation with the old abbot – not the present one. He told me about the bodies there.’

‘You brought it down into the crypt?’ She imagined the darkness, the burden carried.

‘There were some habits in the sacristy – neatly folded after the laundry was finished, I daresay. I took one and put it on him. But you are right to say “it”; the body of a dead man, even a recently dead man, has lost something essential to humankind. The next morning when the community arose I was seated on the wharf with a tale of having hired a fisherman to row me across. I had a bag with necessities in it and sufficient cash to pay the dower. I gave a false name. Nobody knew me; the old abbot was long dead; it has always been the policy of this particular community to accept novices without question. I have been safe here ever since, until you came. When you arrived something told me that you’d bring trouble in your wake. I decided to talk to you, to rely on your discretion but I couldn’t bring myself to do it, and I couldn’t frighten you away.’

‘You moved the body and rowed out into the loch and sank it beneath the water,’ she whispered.

‘I took the habit from it and wrapped it in a sheet of heavy plastic that someone had left over the wall of the enclosure and waited until I could slip away and row out a little way. It was a risk but a small one. The others were at their prayers and unlikely to emerge. One of the great benefits of the religious life is that one knows what everybody else is doing at any hour of the day. There were plenty of pieces of metal in the workshop at the back of the church. I weighted them down the trouser pockets. In the socks. I didn’t want it – him to be found.’

‘But the freak tide came,’ Sister Joan said. ‘You can’t hide things for ever.’

‘Yes you can!’ The voice had roughened. ‘Catherine Sinclair died – an accidental overdose – I didn’t hear about it for a long time. Then Father Abbot, who occasionally reads a newspaper, mentioned it. I was very shocked though I hope that I concealed my feelings. She was a good friend. And now
the man in the loch has been identified as me by my own wife. Dolly seized her chance. She must have known that it wasn’t me even if the face was damaged in the storm. She wants me dead. My coming to life again wouldn’t solve a thing.’

‘But she’s still your wife, and she has the right to know that.’

‘She doesn’t want to know. If she were here this moment she’d tell you to leave well alone. Alasdair McKensie is dead and buried. Let him be.’

‘Doesn’t the other man – the man called Adam – doesn’t he have the right to have his own name on his grave?’ she asked soberly.

‘So you’re going to talk to the authorities? Yes, you’re the type of woman who’d think it her duty to do that. What about my vow here? A life of celibacy, poverty and obedience would all go for nothing.’

‘A life based on a lie,’ she said, low and vehement. ‘You vowed first to your wife. She would probably divorce you for in civil law you must have given her grounds; you might be charged for concealing a death though perhaps they’d not press the matter; the abbot might still allow you to return here. I’ll say nothing.’

‘But you guessed who I was. When?’

‘I didn’t guess,’ she said. ‘Not until you painted out the figure of the monk I’d put in my painting of the church in spring. I painted it without thinking. Afterwards I recalled that almost unconsciously I’d reproduced your face and you obliterated it. You drew my attention to it then. And your wife lent me some oilskins – she said they belonged to you, but your son mentioned later that you’d been tall and powerfully built. I think Dolly wanted to establish firmly in my mind that the man I’d seen in the loch was you – slight and small, but I think the oilskins were her own. They almost fitted me. Anything of yours would have been three times too large.’

‘Dolly wants me to stay dead. Nobody will derive any benefit from my coming forward and revealing my continued existence – nobody.’

‘That has to be your decision. We are all the keepers of our own consciences,’ she said softly, and waited, hearing the
long-drawn-out sigh that she had heard before from the monks’ stall when she had been kneeling at the altar – the sigh of a man who longs and fears to lift the burden from his soul by sharing it.

The great shadow wavered and shrank against the wall, the door closed silently, and the tiny draught died into stillness again.

After a few moments she rose, took up the candle and went back up into the sacristy. She snuffed the candle, left it on the table where it could be replaced, and went out through the church to where the tall abbot was giving instructions about something or other to one of the monks. He turned as she emerged from the door and gave her his wintry little bow.

‘Your devotions were fruitful, Sister?’

‘I don’t know, Father Abbot. I may never know.’

‘Do you wish to go on working on the pictures today? You would be most welcome.’

The second painting, of the church on a winter’s night, needed a few more touches before it was completed. Both ought to be varnished. Hesitating, she said, ‘Can one of the brothers undertake to varnish them?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Then I’d prefer them to be completed by a member of the community. The second one isn’t finished – the darkness isn’t entire.’

‘My dear child,’ said the abbot. ‘It never is.’

She bowed briefly and formally, wondering how much he had guessed, knowing that he would never say. Just as she would never mention that she was aware of his earning money for his community by the writing of harmless and silly romantic tales. The vow of sanctity included a delicate and mutual discretion.

‘You don’t wish to sign them?’ He gave her an enquiring look.

‘They’re a gift to the community from a nun,’ she said, and bowed her head briefly beneath his blessing before she went to meet Brother Cuthbert.

‘Have you finished the paintings, Sister?’ he enquired as they climbed into the boat.

‘I’ve done everything necessary. Someone else can varnish
them. I’ll still be coming over for mass on Sundays, if it’s no inconvenience to pick me up.’

‘No inconvenience at all,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You’ll be sketching other views of the loch?’