Vow of Obedience (11 page)

There was absolutely no reason why she shouldn’t. Sister
Hilaria wasn’t a young girl still living with her parents, at the mercy of her own youth and inexperience. She was past forty, so attuned to cloistered life that she was incapable of taking a step into the outside world unaccompanied. She had suffered a toothache during the summer and Sister Joan had driven her into town, bought her a hot drink in a café. Despite her pain Sister Hilaria had made quite a little holiday of it.

The clanging of the luncheon bell woke her from a reverie that was oddly disturbing. The trouble was, she thought, hastening to help Sister Teresa with the heavy tureen, was that she was not yet assimilated back into the life of the community. She had travelled back from the retreat in Scotland and was suddenly dealing with an unfamiliar job as lay sister and wrestling with the questions surging into her mind about the deaths of Valerie Pendon and Tina Davies.

The others were filing in, hands clasped, eyes lowered. If nostrils were aquiver with anticipation they concealed it well. Nobody, looking at the two lines of figures, ranged down both sides of the table, would have divined that Sister Martha had probably just come in from a strenuous spell of digging or that old Sister Mary Concepta, leaning on her sticks, was in the most intense pain from her knotted and swollen joints.

‘Sister Mary Concepta, how nice that you are well enough to join us.’ Mother Dorothy, entering, spoke with pleasure.

‘I do feel much better today,’ Sister Mary Concepta said brightly.

‘As long as you don’t overdo it, Sister.’ The Prioress let her sharp glance note the fact that two places that should have been filled were empty and bowed her head to intone the brief grace.

At lunch, as at breakfast, short remarks were permissible, a welcome respite from a morning generally spent in solitary work. Today, however, nobody seemed inclined to talk. Even Sister Gabrielle was unusually silent, her old face brooding above her soup. It was as if what had happened beyond the enclosure sent forth cold tentacles that chilled the fellowship.

‘Soup and salad sandwiches,’ Mother Dorothy commented. ‘Sister?’

Did one have to ask leave for every blasted departure from custom? Sister Joan quelled a spurt of irritation and answered meekly, ‘Since it was rather cold today, Mother, I thought that
for once it might be a good idea to have both?’

‘It’s liable to become a great deal colder before the winter sets in. However, for once, both are very welcome. We will forego the dessert.’

The apples were as red and plump as the apples of Eden. Sister Joan’s mouth watered with a completely irrational desire to snatch one up and bite into it, to cry aloud, ‘Two young girls are dead and Sister Hilaria is missing, and all you can do is chatter on about the meal. Why don’t we all wake up and start talking about the things that really matter?’

‘Mother Prioress, Sisters in Christ, I beg pardon for being late.’ Sister Perpetua spoke hurriedly, sliding to her knees.

‘Have you found Sister Hilaria?’ Mother Dorothy asked, waving the other to her place.

‘There’s no sign of her anywhere, Mother Dorothy. I’ve looked high and low.’

‘Eat your lunch, Sister. We will excuse your lateness. Afterwards we will have another look. Sister Joan, you will escort the novices to the postulancy and stay with them until Sister Hilaria is located.’

Her eyes, shrewd behind their spectacles, said clearly, It will do your inflated ego a world of good to have to remain tamely indoors while others rush round on quests.

‘Yes, Mother Prioress.’ She swallowed her sandwich, waited for the blessing that would release her and led the two novices out.

Sister Elizabeth and Sister Marie walked ahead of her when they had descended the stairs, bonneted heads bowed, hands hidden in the short black cloaks that hung from their shoulders. Their ankle-length pink smocks made them look like overgrown models for a Mabel Lucie Atwell painting; the Flemish-styled bonnets reduced their features to doll size. She knew nothing about either of them.

They made their way across the tennis court with its rusted posts and through the gate into that small yard where the first and second year novices took their exercise. Memories of her own postulancy rose up. Had she really worn that hideous outfit without a smile? Walked round and round to exercise the ‘limbs’, with her head bent and her eyes fixed on the ground? How, in Detective Sergeant Mill’s words, had she contrived to emerge sane?

‘As I’m taking Sister Hilaria’s place for the moment,’ she said alone, ‘it will be permitted for you to talk to me.’

Sister Elizabeth and Sister Marie looked at each other. Then the latter said, ‘Please, Sister, is it true there’s a maniac about?’

‘Two young women have been murdered locally, yes. Surely Mother Prioress told you?’

They entered the narrow hallway of what had once been the dowerhouse on the Tarquin estate and turned into the bare room with a table and a few stools beneath a three-dimensional crucifix where the novices had their own recreation.

‘She told us that the news was very sad but that we mustn’t allow ourselves to dwell upon it,’ Sister Elizabeth said.

‘Mother Prioress was right. These events are sad and tragic, but there is nothing you can do about them except pray for their souls – and for the soul of their killer also. Words like “maniac” don’t help.’

‘Yes, Sister.’ Sister Marie answered meekly but Sister Joan caught the flash in the eyes before she lowered her gaze again.

That one had spirit, she thought. She might well prove a good nun. Too soon yet to tell, of course, but something indefinable about her betokened character.

‘Ought we not to pray for Sister Hilaria’s safe return, Sister?’ Sister Elizabeth asked.

‘Yes, of course, but the matter is scarcely desperate yet,’ she answered with a faint smile. ‘Sister Hilaria is, as you must both know, a most spiritual soul, and occasionally such souls get a trifle lost in the mundane world.’

‘She is awfully absent-minded,’ Sister Marie said, the twinkle in her eyes muted but not banished. ‘She starts praying on one subject and then veers off to another and then stops talking altogether and takes off into a dream.’

‘A most spiritual soul,’ Sister Joan said firmly, resisting the temptation to grin. ‘Apart from “going off into a dream” does she – she is always here, I take it?’

‘With us, or in her cell, Sister,’ Sister Elizabeth said.

‘But she must occasionally take a walk by herself? When you are in bed?’

‘No, Sister. I don’t think so.’ Sister Elizabeth looked bewildered.

For no reason the image of a nun flitting across the tennis court had come into Sister Joan’s mind. Where had she …?
Yes, of course, she had been given leave to take a brief stroll after the last blessing on the night of her return. She had seen someone else, had assumed they also had permission to take a walk. Without consciously thinking it out in words she had assumed that it was Sister Hilaria.

‘What are we to do, Sister?’ It was Sister Marie speaking, a faint dimple in her cheek hinting at private mirth. She must think that all professed nuns go off into trances, Sister Joan thought.

‘I think that you had better get on with your sewing,’ she said aloud.

‘Yes, Sister.’ They turned as one and went to the cupboard to bring out their workboxes.

There would be no delicate embroidery to engage their interest. Instead there were sheets to be turned and hemmed, stockings to be darned, nightcaps to make – black, white and grey were the prevailing colours. The pink smocks struck a note of gaiety amid the prevailing sombreness of shade.

‘You may talk if you wish.’ She addressed the two silent girls in a voice full, in her own ears at least, of patronage.

‘What about, Sister?’ Sister Marie replied respectfully, but the twinkle was back in her eye.

She knew as well as her professed companion that denied the opportunity to gossip, to reminisce about one’s past life, there remained little else to discuss if she were not to appropriate the function of the novice mistress.

‘I will find a book and read something,’ she said, rising.

There were books on the shelves in the other room. Lives of the saints, half a dozen Victorian novels, some essays by Cardinal Newman – no Teilhard de Chardin to upset the dutiful progression of their religious vocations. She pulled out a copy of
The
Wide,
Wide
World
and looked at its battered cover with an indulgent smile. There had been a freshness, an innocence about the books she had read first in her grandmother’s house where she had spent holidays and met again during her own novitiate. In the world of Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, on the island where Anne Shirley dreamed her teenage dreams, there was no room for a killer who strangled young girls with a loop of wire and left them, dressed like parodies of brides.

She took the book back into the other room and began to
read it aloud.

The afternoon passed slowly. The novices sewed, Sister Joan read. Outside a harsh wind rustled the few trees and whipped up gravel from the paths.

‘Sister, we usually have a cup of tea at this time,’ Sister Marie inserted neatly at the end of a paragraph.

‘Sister.’ Sister Elizabeth gave her fellow novice a chiding look.

‘I’m so glad you reminded me,’ Sister Joan said, closing the book. ‘We will have our cup of tea and perhaps, before it is drunk, we shall hear good news of Sister Hilaria.’

‘Sister Hilaria makes the tea on the primus stove,’ Sister Marie volunteered.

‘Fine. You two finish off your seams and I’ll make the tea.’

It was a relief to be doing something practical. She went into the tiny kitchen where Sister Hilaria and her charges could make themselves a hot drink, their meals being taken in the main house. Lighting the stove, finding mugs, getting the milk out of the tiny refrigerator, she felt the elusive shadow of Sister Hilaria at her side. The novice mistress spent most of her time in this bleak little building, often absent from recreation, bound to her novices as if a cord tied them all together. Perhaps Sister Hilaria’s flights of mysticism were her escape from the confines of the postulancy.

‘Do you need any help, Sister Joan? I put away my sewing.’ Sister Marie stood on the threshold.

‘I’m just waiting for the kettle. The tea ought to steep for a minute or two.’

‘Stewed,’ Sister Marie said. ‘Up north we brew it for five minutes. Oh, sorry.’

‘It’s hard not to chatter about one’s previous life, isn’t it?’ Sister Joan said with sympathy. ‘I come from up north myself originally. If you listen closely you can still catch the tailend of a flat vowel.’

‘I like it here though,’ Sister Marie confided. ‘I can’t say that I go along with all the pettifogging rules but they’re there to teach us obedience, like recruits drilling in the army, so one puts up with it. And the countryside is beautiful here. I wish …’ She hesitated.

‘Pass me the jug. What do you wish?’

‘That this awful thing hadn’t happened – I mean those two
poor girls getting murdered,’ Sister Marie burst out. ‘I always promised myself that when I’m fully professed I’d get the chance to walk out on the moors. They seem so sheltering, so safe – and now it’s spoilt. Just like at home when

‘Please, Sister, Sister Perpetua wants a word.’ Sister Elizabeth had fluttered to the door.

‘I’ll be there at once. Finish making the tea.’ Sister Joan hurried out.

Sister Perpetua, every freckle prominent on her square white face, was outside, her large capable hands clasping and unclasping the rosary at her belt with a little clanking sound.

‘What has happened?’ Sister Joan asked and thought within herself, don’t tell me.

‘Sister Hilaria has had an accident,’ Sister Perpetua said breathlessly. ‘She must have been hit by a car. Sister Katherine found her in a pile of bracken just off the track. We’ve sent for an ambulance but Mother Dorothy wants you back at the main house, and I’m to stay with the novices.’

‘Go along in, Sister. They’re just making tea.’ Sister Joan set off at a run, across the tennis court where the wind played kites with her veil, through the gate into the enclosure, and hence to the stableyard.

In the kitchen Sister Teresa’s hands rattled the crockery as she brewed tea.

‘Mother Prioress told me that we would all need a cup.’ Her voice also shook slightly; in her face was the question, why?

‘Will you make an extra one for me, Sister? I must speak to Mother Dorothy.’ She went on through to the parlour.

‘Please come in and sit down, Sister Joan.’ Mother Dorothy, betraying her agitation, added the customary, ‘
Dominus vobiscum
.’

‘
Et
cum
spiritu
sancto
,’ Sister Joan said. ‘Mother, what happened? Is Sister Hilaria badly hurt?’

‘She’s unconscious,’ Mother Dorothy said. ‘Sister Katherine found her and ran back to tell me. I summoned help over the telephone and went to see for myself. She was only a few yards from the front gates, Sister, but the ground dips down into a shallow ditch and the wind had blown the bracken – I stayed with her until the ambulance came and Sister Katherine and Sister David went with her to the hospital. I came back here and told Sister Perpetua to relieve you at the
postulancy. Normally she is the one I would have sent with the ambulance, but she was badly shaken by what had occurred.’

‘She said that Sister Hilaria must have been hit by a car.’

‘She could not have sustained such an injury by falling over. There’s nothing to fall over near where she lay. It looked as if she had received a heavy knock and been flung through the air into the decline. You didn’t …?’

‘Reverend Mother, how could you possibly think that I’d run over poor Sister Hilaria and say nothing about it?’

‘No, of course you did not, but you might have seen something? Another car behind you on the track? Something?’

‘I didn’t notice anything, but then I wasn’t paying particular attention,’ Sister Joan said, knitting her brows. ‘Drivers have started using the moor road more frequently, haven’t they? It saves going through the town. No, I didn’t see anything.’