The White Garden (18 page)

And a rain of blood and shit.

My Saviour is the Eagle who will one day swoop down on me
and carry me off to the furnace of His love, plunge me into its
burning depths that I may be an ecstatic victim forever and
forever for all eternity.

LAST DAYS ON EARTH AND

EARLY DAYS IN HEAVEN

Therese Martin was attacked by tuberculosis of the lungs and she spent her days alone in her cell or out in the sunshine, propped up in the bath chair that had belonged to her father.

She coughed, a dry and rasping cough, and suffered from violent haemorrhages. She was given leeches, and cauterisation which meant she had to be stabbed with hot irons. When asked if she feared death she said she was as gay as a chaffinch. She said she was in great pain, as portions of her diseased lungs spilled out on her lips. She said she longed for this pain as it would take her to Jesus.

Her worst deprivation was that in her extreme pain and weakness she was unable to receive the Sacrament. Many of the sisters thought she was a saint, and they collected mementos which would become holy relics. Others thought she was a most ordinary, dull little nun with some delusions about herself. The last earthly pleasure she knew was seeing a dove fly in and perch on the sill of the open window, on the eve of her death.

She was unable to breathe, and suddenly, she sat straight up in bed and cried out in a clear voice: ‘My cup is full to the brim!’

She looked at her crucifix and said her final words which were:

‘I love Him. My God, I love You.’

Mysterious scents of flowers wafted through the convent in places where there were no flowers to be seen.

According to the custom, an obituary notice was to be sent out to all the Carmelite convents, and with Therese’s notice was sent a copy of her last journal, her
Story of a Soul
. This book was read in the convents and then was lent to friends outside and before long the convent at Lisieux was flooded with orders for copies of Therese’s autobiography from all over the world.

A seminarian who was dying from the same disease as Therese prayed to the dead sister, pressing a relic of her to his
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heart. He was cured, the medical report saying: ‘The destroyed and ravaged lungs had been replaced by new lungs’.

A miracle had taken place as the result of intercession to the Little Flower. Therese became known and loved and prayed to throughout the world, answering the prayers of her supplicants with more and more miracles, until the time came for her case for beatification to be investigated by the Vatican. She appeared to the faithful in visions, and was known to strew rose petals of all different colours round the beds of people about to be cured.

Soldiers of all faiths carried pictures of Therese to protect them from the dangers of the First World War.

On May 17, 1925, Therese was canonised before a crowd of two hundred thousand people. As the ceremony ended, three white roses floated down from somewhere high above the people, and landed at the Pope’s right hand.

THERESE AT MANDALA

Therese Gillis lay in her bed in the Sunroom, her eyes wide and staring, a strange smile on her mouth. She was not asleep, and yet she was not awake. Food and drink were brought to her, but she took nothing. For days she drifted in and out of this state, sometimes speaking in a high, clear voice, telling her novices of their faults, telling Jesus of her love for him, describing her Little Way, singing simple, childish hymns, speaking of Violetta, a beautiful Italian angel, laughing with her sisters at the beach, describing scenes of rape and seduction and murder. Sometimes she refused to speak for days at a time.

Shirley Temple watched over her, and would tell the others to leave Therese alone. ‘She’s better off if you leave her alone, you know,’ Shirley said. ‘She’ll come out of it in her own good time.’

Therese said, in a sweet, dreamy, fluting voice: ‘If the angels were to sweep heaven, the dust would be made of diamonds.

Diamond dust.’

Shirley nodded and patted Therese on the arm, and said she wholeheartedly agreed with that.

Dorothy Gillis came to the Sunroom with roses fresh from the garden. ‘Look, duck,’ she said to Therese, ‘your favourite pink roses from out the front.’ In silence Therese took the flowers and pressed them to her face, smiling absently, her eyes distant, glazed, alight with some far-off flame. She lifted the gold cross on the chain around her throat, placed it on the coverlet, and one by one she plucked the petals from the roses, kissed them, and let them fall onto the cross. Her mother stared helplessly at her. ‘Why don’t you let me put them in a vase for you, Therese?’

But Therese didn’t answer her, continuing to scatter the petals on the cross, letting them slide onto the floor beside the bed.

Therese closed her eyes, seemed scarcely to be breathing.

Shirley Temple in her polka dots kept passing the open door, skipping, humming to herself. The other women in the Sunroom
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were curled up or stretched out stiffly in the beds, moaning softly, grunting, snoring, staring, sleeping.

The room was bright. Dorothy thought it could be a lovely room which long ago would have been filled with cane furniture and palms in brass pots. Dorothy put her hand on Therese’s shoulder, at a loss for what to do or say. The roses she cut from the garden lay in pieces on the bed and on the floor. She began to talk quietly to her daughter, saying the first things that came into her head.

‘We had a room with potted palms, at home, when I was little.

It had a dark carpet, red, with Chinese patterns on it. And my grandmother would call out to me: “Dorothy, Dorothy, close the curtains now. The sun is coming in.” So I would pull the curtains shut — they were heavy — and the light of day was shut out suddenly. It was gloomy in there, in the drawing room, and I felt a draught, a chill. I thought of people dying, and I listened to the ticking of the clock. It was that old Dutch wall-clock with mermaids painted on the side. There were photos of our ancestors on all the walls. I used to imagine ladies in the drawing room, ladies in pale silk dresses having tea, playing cards, painting with watercolours, drawing with pastels, putting photographs in their albums, playing violins and harps. We had a harp.

‘And I used to play the violin, you know, a long time ago. On winter mornings I would cross the cloister garden carrying my wooden violin-case, wearing red woollen gloves. Granny knitted gloves for us all the time. She would say that the red wool was for the circulation. Beauty and goodness, she said, came from a healthy circulation. My violin teacher was Sister Marie-Catherine. She was French — young and pretty. In those days I dreamt of becoming a concert violinist. But they were only dreams, and I never told a living soul about the visions I had of myself in velvet and taffeta on the stage somewhere in Europe, playing a concerto, fingers flying. The bow was a magic wand, and the audience held its breath in rapturous suspense until

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I played the final note. I loved the word “played”. And then I thought of the applause, all hot and exciting and people throwing flowers and calling out. I practised scales and exercises and pieces and I passed my exams. Then Sister Marie-Catherine started to fade away. She went all transparent and her skin dissolved and she was a ghostly blue. Her eyes were huge and beautiful, but she had cancer of the brain, and one day she just disappeared completely and turned up as a tiny little corpse in the chapel. I sang in the choir at the funeral, and after that I put my violin away. I couldn’t bear to play it.

‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this now, duck. I want to talk to you but I just don’t know what to say.’

Shirley Temple came into the room and stood next to Dorothy. ‘She can hear everything you say. And I’m listening too, if that’s all right. Go on, it’s good.’

Dorothy blinked at her and faltered. Then she continued the story, telling it now to Shirley who smiled and nodded and murmured.

‘Well then a new teacher came. She was a fat nun, very jolly.

So it was never the same. One day another sister came to me in the garden and she said that Sister Marie-Catherine had left a gift for me — she wanted me to have her painting album of flower studies. And the nun gave it to me then. I remember I started to cry and ran up to the dormitory and threw myself down on the bed. I felt so confused — I thought I had been given a sort of relic. There were ten coloured pictures of flowers, things like Neapolitan violets, a study of carnations and nuts.

Then there were colourless outlines on the opposite pages — to be painted. Most of these were half finished, half painted in by Sister Marie-Catherine. She had actually completed the picture of a gentian — and it was alive and sad and beautiful.’

‘It’s a lovely story. Very sad,’ Shirley said. Her blue eyes and broad innocent smile were off-putting.

Dorothy looked around, and looked down at Therese who hadn’t moved, showed no sign of listening.

‘Go on, don’t stop there,’ Shirley said. ‘It was just getting really good. What about the gentian?’

‘Well that was all, really, except that on the backs of the
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pictures, on the blank pages of the book, I found pencil sketches that Sister Marie-Catherine had done. I was surprised, even shocked by the poor quality of the drawing. I had such an idea of Sister Marie-Catherine as an artistic soul, you see. But these sketches were stiff and empty and weak. Unconvincing really

— drawings of dreary things like boxes and paintbrushes and easels. I should tell you I have always been very interested in drawing, myself. It was hard to understand how a woman who could play her fiddle with such skill and emotion, and could colour the gentians so they kind of shifted on the page in the sunlight, how she could bring herself to draw these dull and meaningless things. And leave them in the same book as the pictures of pink roses and cloudy blue forget-me-nots. I turned over every page slowly. I think I was hoping to find something better. Then at the end of the book I found something I have never forgotten.’

‘Go on, go on then,’ Shirley said.

‘It’s not very interesting, really. But I found this pencil sketch that was done with real confidence. It filled up the whole page, for one thing. The outline resembled a naked woman — she was sitting with her back to you. So the bottom of the drawing was the shape of the woman’s backside. Then the body was filled in with all these powerful drawings of flowers — cyclamens with buds that looked really rude, and there were twisting, twining vines. And some of the flowers had drops of dew dripping off them. Even though it was only a pencil drawing, it seemed to glisten, and to glow with colours in your mind. The vines actually looked like blood vessels, and some of the leaves and flowers looked like internal organs, not to mention private parts.

It made me feel sick when I first saw it, and yet it fascinated me too.

‘I don’t know why I am saying all this just now.

‘I realised years later that I was looking into Sister Marie-Catherine’s heart and soul, somehow. And I knew at the time that it was wicked, obscene. I put it away in my trunk in the box room at school. Sometimes I wanted to go and get it out and look at it, but even the thought of doing that made me sick with

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a kind of longing, and I would impose a discipline on myself

— I’d stop myself from going to the trunk.’

‘It must be hard for nuns, I suppose, that kind of thing.’

‘Yes, I suppose it must.’

‘What have you done with it?’

‘It’s on the top shelf of the linen press — with my old violin.

And other things out of sight out of mind in the dark at the top of the cupboard. Old music books.’

‘I sing,’ Shirley said. ‘Land sakes, I’m due to sing to the men in Three A any tick of the clock. Tick tock tick of the clock.’

And she dashed out the door.

‘Good riddance,’ said a voice from the bed next to Therese.

Then Therese said in a loud voice: ‘Where are my stones. You said you were bringing my white stones. Over and over again, day in, day out I ask you and you never bring them.’

‘I’m sorry, duck. I forgot to give them to you. Here they are then, in my bag.’

Dorothy took out a black velvet pouch containing Therese’s collection of milky stones. A smile crossed Therese’s face as she reached out and took them. Rose petals slid from the bed to the floor. Therese pulled open the drawstring and let the stones clatter into her hand. They were like small eggs, large teardrops, beads of a moon goddess. Dorothy tried to tell herself the stones were as harmless as a stamp collection, but she also sensed in them something mysterious and sinister. She couldn’t fathom why Therese had been collecting these things since she was little. Nobody could remember where or when the thing had started. Dorothy thought of telling the doctor about the stones, but then it seemed too trivial. What
did
the white pebbles mean to Therese? What did it matter, anyhow?

Therese had always been an unusual little girl, but now that she had had this breakdown, all her funny ways were taking on a dark and bewildering meaning. Her mother had not in fact forgotten to give Therese the stones, but she had been hoping Therese would forget about them.

With her hands cradling the white stones, Therese closed her eyes and fell back into her strange sleeping state. Her breathing became slower, and she spoke in a high clear voice that seemed
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to come from somewhere above her head. She said: ‘These white pebbles are good deeds. They will be weighed in the balance.’

Dorothy’s face tightened in anguish. All the sadnesses, worries and frustrations of her life met for a moment in her lips and eyes, and settled there. Then she shook her shoulders and cupped her hands over Therese’s hands which still held the cold stones. Therese slept. The other women in the Sunroom lay still, the faded pink coverlets heaped over the mounds of their bodies. The room resembled a container full of huge cocoons. Giant silkworms had gorged themselves on the leaves of the mulberry tree and had spun these cocoons back, long ago, back in time.

The misty pink of the silky cocoons is the pink of the mingled blood of Pyramus and Thisbe, the pink of misfortune in love. The worms spin out their own sad message in the bloody pink of misfortune.

They die a dreamless death within the silk sarcophagus. Some will freeze to death there, will never emerge, will wither away and remain forever as husks.

With the helpless shrug of resignation, Dorothy stood up, straightened the cloth that covered Therese, picked up the petals that had fallen on the floor and put them on the bedside cupboard. She threw the stems of the spoiled roses in the rubbish tin. She kissed her daughter on the forehead, glanced sadly round the Sunroom, and left. She headed for the reception desk and asked to see the doctor.

‘I need to see Doctor Goddard. I must see him now.’

‘I’m sorry, but the doctor is busy.’

‘Then I must see him as soon as possible. It’s very urgent. I’m worried about my daughter.’

‘What seems to be the trouble?’

‘She is in a kind of trance — or even a coma. I don’t know.’

‘That’s to be expected, Mrs Gillis. It’s certainly not at all unusual. I’ll consult her records. She’s had Amytal. And we’ve got her down for shock treatment and then next week she’s in for Deep Sleep.’

‘The sleep?’

‘Yes, that’s right. And so you see there’s absolutely nothing to worry about.’

‘But she seems to be so— so odd.’

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‘Well, most of our patients would seem odd to you or me.’

‘I must see the doctor.’

‘Well there’s no appointment until — let me see — the week after next. Doctor can see you, Mrs Gillis, on Thursday afternoon, week after next.’

‘I wish it was sooner. That’s after the Shock and the Deep Sleep, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, and that is really all to the good. You will be able to discuss your daughter’s progress.’

‘Where is Doctor Goddard now?’

‘Mrs Gillis, the doctor is out making house calls.’

‘I didn’t know he would make a house call.’

‘There are times, circumstances. I really can’t help you any further.’

With a feeling of deep chill and a sense of doom and powerlessness, Dorothy accepted what the nurse had said and went home. There was a lot to be done, getting Bridget ready to go to Queensland. But always at the back of Dorothy’s mind was the nagging feeling that Therese was in some terrible kind of danger that she did not understand, could not put into words.

THE NATURAL LAW OF LAUNDRY

The house call that Ambrose made was to Vickie’s flat. Vickie’s Toyota was parked outside and Ambrose’s Rover was parked behind it. And Vickie herself was lying on a purple velvet chaise longue, a piece of scenery from some old play. She was naked, posing on the purple velvet, her hands behind her head, her blue eyes filled with mischief. With a small razor Ambrose shaved her underarm and pubic hair. Vickie smiled serenely.

‘There was a girl at school,’ she said, ‘and we used to call her Hazel Underarm.’

‘Why?’

‘She was obsessed with shaving and plucking. She used to spend whole days just plucking the hairs from her legs. Imagine.

And she was gradually pulling out her eyelashes and eyebrows, and the last I heard of her she had started to pull out the hairs on her head.’

The razor scraped gently on the soft skin under Vickie’s arm.

‘Was she pretty?’

‘Oh no. Ugly.’

‘My girls in the clinic — some of them are covered in down, you know. Furry they are. It happens when they starve themselves. Funny, isn’t it? There, you’re done. Now I’ll fuck you.

Smooth, hairless, white marble woman. With eyelashes intact.’

Ambrose kissed her all over.

‘Nice tits, you know, Victoria. Queen Victoria naked on the couch.’

‘Analyse me, doctor.’

‘OK, here we go. How’s this?’

They teased and laughed like lovers on a beach in the sunshine — although the room was dark and dusty, and there was soiled clothing heaped about the floor and draped over the bits of broken furniture. The windows looked out onto a busy road and were smudged with grime, spider webs across the corners.

Flowers, perfume, chocolates, and wine were heaped in stages of decay and disarray on a big table in the middle of the room.

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A dressmaker’s dummy stood crookedly on its single wooden leg in one corner of the room, a wooden peg for a head. Its naked body was carelessly draped with crumpled silk scarves, bright, caressing.

‘Will you talk about me in your lecture tonight?’ Vickie asked.

‘I always talk about you, one way or another, Victoria darling.

And I’m telling them about the virtues of our occupational therapy — the beekeeping and gardening and so on — and I’ll draw the comparison with the useless busywork mad women used to have to do. Of course they still do those things in some places. And I talk about how they used to get women to sort seeds and grains — and then for fun I throw in a reference to Venus (that’s you) and how she made Psyche (I think that’s you too) sort out the beans from the barley and from the vetches and the poppy seeds. They like a bit of classical learning at these lectures you see.’

‘Are you lecturing me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Go on then.’

‘I tell them about how women in the madhouses in England used to be chained up and how they had everything that matters cut out of their cunts.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, supposedly to stop them going mad all the time with sexual pleasure or whatever.
Then
the enlightened doctors had the brilliant idea of getting them to sort out beans and poppy seeds instead of being cut about. And
then
some genius invented laundry. You do realise, don’t you, that doing laundry keeps women sane? We still have the laundry as a part of therapy, even at Mandala. All hand-done —
real
laundry. We wash and iron the shirts of all the barristers and judges and whatnot of Melbourne. The collars and cuffs you see at the Melbourne Club were all passed through the hands of the crazed laundresses of Mandala. Makes you think, doesn’t it? You ought to do some laundry, Victoria. Look at all these dirty knickers. You’ll go mad, you know, if you’re not very careful. Awful lot of knickers here for a woman who never seems to wear any, don’t you think?’

‘Lingerie lunacy.’

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Ambrose laughed. The sound was loud, confident, sexy.

‘And you should straighten up and clean up the old dummy in the corner, Victoria. She’s your guardian angel. I used to have one of those, you know. Well, I mean, there was one of those at home when I was a boy. Actually, I was sort of in love with her.’

Here he laughed again. ‘I mistook her for my ma-ma-mother, the old da-da-dummy. I’m a bit of a case-book example of something or other. See the wooden peg for the head? That looks exactly like my ma-ma-mother. Peg head.’