Seeking Sanctuary Read online

  ‘Who got it for you, Sister?’

  ‘Francis.’

  She thought of obedience and the way Sister Barbara would be angry. The anger of that woman was excoriating. Barbara would make Joseph squirm, but the rule of obedience demanded Barbara be told everything. Therese glanced around, expecting her any minute, then tugged Joseph to her feet. Humiliation was best not shared.

  ‘Better get to bed, then, hadn’t we? C’mon, c’mon, quick as you can. It’s all right, it’s all right, come on, this way.’

  Joseph was thin, but heavy. Her arm laid across Therese’s shoulders was the weight of lead and the route to her room was long. The smell of her, particularly in her tiny, enclosed room, was nauseating. She lay on her bed with her arms crossed again while Therese made sure the water was in reach. With gritted teeth, she removed her shoes, brushed her hair and forced the window open. Joseph gripped her wrist so hard, she was sure it would leave a bruise. Patience: slowly the bony hand released its hold and Joseph fell asleep. Therese turned her head on one side. It all seemed to take a long time.

  There were three empty cans of Diamond White in a polythene bag. She padded them out with a newspaper she found under the bed and took them away. The Angelus bell went at six o’clock. Halfway down the black and white corridor, Therese met Sister Barbara, cannoning in the other direction. They both paused, briefly.

  ‘Bendicamus Domino,’ Barbara said, distractedly.

  ‘Deo Gratias.’

  ‘You look pale, child. Go and rest.’

  ‘I’m fine, Sister.’

  ‘Have you seen Joseph? I couldn’t find her anywhere.’

  ‘She was praying in the chapel, Sister, just now, and then she went to rest. You must have missed her.’

  ‘Now why didn’t I think of that?’

  She sped on, humming. Therese watched her go, half tempted to go after her. Whatever she had just done, it was not obedience. The walls of the black and white corridor seemed to close in on her. Disobedient. Could actions that were entirely instinctive also be disobedient? She fled through the parlour and out into the garden, relieved to find the door unbarred. It was a purposeless flight. The still warm air of early evening cured nothing. She wanted to find Francis and throttle him. How dare he? He could come and go as he pleased, he could work through the heart of the place, whistling and everyone smiling on him, but what he had done was treachery. Restlessly, she moved down the path, reluctantly and only because there was nowhere else to go. The garden was not a place she had ever enjoyed, not even as an aid to meditation, and after seeing Edmund dead in it, she liked it less. She only liked Edmund’s shed at the very end, because it reminded her of one they had in the garden at home. His bench had become identified with a corpse, and Francis would not be here on a Sunday. Sunday was the day of rest. Rounding the bend in the path, she almost stumbled across Matilda, sitting at the feet of the statue of St Michael, arms resting on her knees, staring at the ground. Sitting in the middle of the pathway, enjoying a patch of sun and busy in the act of washing, was a large ginger cat. It was a handsome beast, with an undomesticated air, apparently immune from the desire for human contact, indifferent to Matilda and unmoved by the sound of Therese’s soft footsteps. There was a chorus of alarm from the birds in the trees, strident and unmusical. There were no animals in this institution. For a moment, the cat distracted her and Therese regarded it with delight. It was such a pretty, powerful and graceful thing, she wanted to pick it up and hold it, stroke that fine fur. The cat finished its self-ministration, stretched and walked away without a backward glance. Oh, for such confidence. It made her want to laugh in admiration. Look at the thing, a trespasser and bold as brass. Then Matilda was by her side, clutching at her arm, in the same spot, with the same insistence as Joseph.

  ‘Therese, oh Therese . . . a cat! How could he?’

  ‘It’s a lovely cat, Sister. What’s wrong with it?’

  Her arm was sore. She did not want to be touched and pulled and could not resist the urge to shake Matilda off, pull herself free of another old hand of surprising strength. She did not want the breath of another old body, standing too close and looking crestfallen and beseeching, staring at her, wanting something she could not give or understand. St Therese of Lisieux would have embraced her. Matilda stepped back and felt for her rosary.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it’s a pretty cat. Edmund would have hated it, but I can’t expect you to understand, you’re too young. Therese, my dear, when your sister comes next, will you ask her to come and see me? It’s very important.’

  ‘Yes, of course, Sister. Does it matter what time?’ She was trying to overcome the effects of her own rudeness by putting warmth into her voice.

  ‘Thank you and no, it doesn’t matter what time.’ She shivered. ‘And now I think we had better go in.’

  She spoke it like an order. This time, Therese was obedient.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s goods

  Sunday: the day of rest, without there ever being any rest for the wicked. Kay had so few yearnings of the flesh she should have been a nun, provided she could have been an unusually pampered kind, with access to long immersions in water, facials, sunbathing, pedicures and the general stroking of self, none of which was any substitute for her present, intense desire to be hugged. Embraced into oblivion. Kidnapped, taken away into a deep warm forest and hidden in a cave. She had been sitting in Theo’s study during the day and wishing he was there. There had been something of the grizzly bear about Theo. He could snarl, he could prowl, he could hug and he could fight. Sitting at the back of the church and hating herself for being there, Kay wished he was alongside, threatening to bomb the priest and whispering heretical remarks in her ear. Theo would have observed the congregation and told her how that woman over there needed a hairdresser more than she needed God. If he were here, where he would not be seen dead, he would mock her for this blatant backsliding, this superstitious slinking into church in the silly hope it might do something for her.

  Kay argued with Theo in her mind, telling him she was here for a purpose and the reason behind the purpose was all his fault. She was not here for forgiveness or enlightenment, and it had taken her five days to find the strength. A little Dutch courage helped, as well as the pall of boredom that hung over Sundays. She entered a bland church, brick-built Edwardian in a side street, surrounded by suburban houses in a similar style, east facing on the dark side of the road, so that it was never light or warm. It had been stripped of idolatrous ornamentation in the happy clappy days of the seventies, when a few tambourines and guitars had been the essential ingredients of feelgood services. The original personality of the place had never recovered. The wooden pews had made way for a shrinking number of seats, drawn close to the altar in an attempt at cosiness. The priest did his best, but he was a dualpurpose priest, who also taught at the school on the edge of town and campaigned for converts to his community with a zeal not quite marked by results, but characterised by hope and a distant memory of the Ireland of his birth. He still thought that a club serving lemonade and playing music until the ungodly hour of nine at night would keep the youth of the town from drugs, and believed that a float in the carnival parade would have them flocking to the doors.

  In that sense, he was right. Kay was here because of the parade after all, although she was clearly in advance of a flock. She sat dumbly through an amorphous service she did not recognise; an amalgam of a Church of England evensong without singing and the Catholic service of benediction without pomp. Things had changed since she had last attended, apart from the predictable sprinkling of old devotees, chatting in the backlog of departure, waiting to say hello and goodbye to the priest who would be wanting to lock the door and go home.

  Kay did not want to speak to the wretched priest; well, yes, she did and no, she didn’t, because it was information from the likes of him she both needed and dreaded. He was youngish, prematurely old, held together with a thin, v
ibrating enthusiasm, a stud in one ear and fashionable glasses on the end of his nose. A little oik from Connemara. Someone pulled at the sleeve of her coat.

  It was her second-best mackintosh with a silvery sheen and she resented it being touched by any sticky fingers not her own. Facing her was Mrs Boyle, teacher from the school where Kay had forced Jack to go and where, against all the odds, he had done surprisingly well.

  Probably, this was because of the likes of Mrs Boyle, a slab of no-nonsense woman who looked like a dour Presbyterian, but taught English and drama and knew that negotiating with teenagers was a waste of time. She ruled by terror, slaps on the legs and threats of exclusion from the school play. Kay remembered Jack coming home, surprisingly upset about such severities, and her own response, which was to say, It must have been your fault. You’re a bad boy, always were.

  ‘Ah, Mrs McQuaid.’

  She was one of those women who never, ever forgot how to put a name to a face, and when she did, you would know the world was about to end. A classroom voice, which, even reduced to the respectful levels of church, still resonated like a stage whisper. ‘I’m so pleased to see you. And wasn’t it nice to see young Jack in the week?’

  Kay thought she might faint. She felt her face was suffused with the single gin consumed before she set out. Nodded.

  ‘Such a happy chance. Called in to see us, sweet boy, just as we were getting the carnival thing ready, and one of our stars went down with the flu. Wasn’t it good of your boy, stepping into the breach like a good ’un? Played the devil to perfection! You must have been so pleased to see him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She was not about to confess to Mrs Boyle that her son could travel the distance to what had once been his home town from the age of fifteen to eighteen, without coming to see her at all. And a complete stranger for the four years since, to her own, enormous relief.

  ‘Doing so well, isn’t he, but fancy changing his name. Says he never liked being called Jack. Too much like Jack the Lad, ha ha! He said he’d gone for being called Francis, on account of the fact that there wasn’t a St Jack, and Francis suited a gardener. Bless.’

  ‘Francis,’ Kay echoed. A gardener? Him? She rallied and put on her chattering face.

  ‘Well, Francis was always his second name. I think he sort of grew into it. I expect kids do that all the time, now. I mean, change their names if they don’t like what they’ve been given.’

  ‘They do what they want.’ The queue for departure shuffled forward, impeded by an earnest man who was bending the ear of the priest in urgent tones. ‘And he’s far from a child now. That hair! I ask you! How old will he be?’

  A note of cunning, in that bossy, Scottish voice, sensing her hesitation, waiting to pounce and exploit her ignorance of her own son.

  Kay knew the game, tapped Mrs Boyle’s handbag, confidentially. ‘You should have seen the colour it was before. Terrible.’

  ‘Well, I thought it suited him. Whoever would have thought he’d knuckle down to be training for a gardener, with a job in a convent, of all places, with looks like that? But he is in London, I suppose. That makes it different.’

  ‘A convent?’

  She recovered herself quickly, before her voice rose to a squeak. The thin priest had got rid of the fat man and the desultory queue shuffled forward. Kay pretended to search her pockets for coins, acknowledging the presence of the inevitable collection box. Things did not change that much. You had to pay to come in from the cold, even if it was colder within. She made herself smile widely at Mrs Boyle.

  ‘He must always have liked you, Mrs Boyle, to tell you that. A secret, I thought. A boy like that, working in a convent, it’s hardly cool, is it?’

  ‘Well, I suppose it’s all comparative. Better than staying in this backwater. Half his old girlfriends have babies already.’

  Mrs Boyle smiled, knowingly. She was so sharp, she could cut herself. Kay was remembering everything she hated about church services, which included all those bitches, lurking with their poisonous information network. She was the next in line for that runt of a priest, knew his handshake would be as wet as fresh cod, took it, dropped it and ran. Mrs Boyle was one of those who could distinguish gin on the breath from the night before, let alone the hour, and she herself was in desperate need of sea air. She had got exactly the confirmation she had been dreading. It seemed a long way home, and although she was wearing the right shoes for the short taxi drive it had taken her to get there, they were wrong for the way back. Silly shoes, with kitten heels, under her bright red trousers. No wonder Mrs Boyle had stared at her feet. Kay tottered through the back streets, into the main street and on to the front. At the very end of a humid day, with darkness threatening, a mist had formed, blurring the horizon. It gave her the privacy to scream. Standing there, like a lunatic, making animal sounds. Aaarrgh, beating her chest with her fists, like some mad penitent, the aaarrgh turning to shiit, bugger, dammmn, without providing either satisfaction or relief. A man walking a dog stopped to stare at her. She found to her horror that she crossed herself automatically before she hurried on. Francis? A gardener in a convent? There was more than one convent in London, there were probably dozens, but she only knew of the one and was willing to bet that he did too. Big, bold Jack, who thought everything should be his for the taking, still never departed far from the places he knew best. He would stick to where he knew, that parish of his wretched, screaming babyhood where she had no idea what to do with him. A place of terrible loneliness for her, until things had improved, and there were moments, if only moments, when she stopped wishing he had never been born. Jack would have gone back to home territories when he was cast out of Theo’s house, and that is where he would have remained. She had written to him, at a Post Office address, the last letter telling him of Theo’s demise, but there had never been replies. Jack always had friends and places to stay. Strange, older friends, shifty men with whom he took refuge when he was still a child, acquaintances from whom she had dragged him away when they moved with Theo. He had seemed to blossom in this new, smaller school, his city streetwise aura making him king of the class. And what had her illogical insistence on a Catholic school done for him? Only given him enough religious knowledge to be able to fool anyone naive that he was a Roman Catholic Christian, if that would help him get a job. He liked the hymns. A gardener? A quick learner, with enough knowledge of pruning and such in this back yard to pass muster, but a proper gardener? Maybe a leopard can change spots, and Jack, she must remember to call him Francis, had found a vocation. A helluva strange one for a boy who only seemed to like nasty films, power tools and sex. The sky grew darker; she looked at her watch and could scarcely see the dial. It always seemed to get darker sooner on Sundays and probably that was her fault, too. She had hated the Church and all it stood for, added her voice to Theo’s chorus of derision, but she used it whenever she needed it for herself or her son and that might be why a Sunday would always seem like a day without joy.

  She determined not to break into a run along the quiet seashore. It would ruin her shoes and add to the fear, so she walked smartly until the road bent away from the sea and turned into her own with the good houses and the street lights responding to the premature darkness by casting little pools of light every fifteen yards. There were cars in driveways, life conducted indoors, a child’s tricycle of the kind she could never have afforded for Jack lying abandoned on a doorstep. In his youth Jack, no, Francis, would have pinched that and sold it. Theo’s house stood solid and comfortable.

  She always had to remind herself that it was Theo’s house, not hers. Ignoring the fine front door as usual, she went round the back. If Francis had found his way in again, she would have to face him, but Francis was a long way away, being a gardener. In the same convent as that little Calvert girl. Before she put the key in the lock, Kay screamed again, Shiit! and then entered, calmly.

  The golden Buddha glowed in the living room, providing no more comfort than church, but the donkey dr
inks cart was reassuringly full. She patted the Buddha, which was really there because it felt so nice to touch and she liked to talk to it sometimes and ask it what it would like to drink. The habit of talking to statues was probably ingrained from infancy. Gin in hand, feeling mightily better after the second scream, she went to Theo’s study.

  All his assorted, unsent letters and the several drafts of that wretched will. Letters to his daughters, returned to sender, unopened, until he had stopped writing to them, preserving the returned letters and their envelopes in date order. A few letters to Francis (she was learning to think of him as that) also returned, but not unread. She wondered if it was more insulting to have a letter read, spat upon and returned than it was to have it sent back without even the effort of opening it, decided the former was worse. My dear boy, Theo had written to Jack, I wish you all the luck in the world, but it’s better you don’t come back. I don’t want what you have to offer . . . Cheque enclosed, which I hope you will find useful. Please write to your mother. The cheques were kept, only the letters themselves derisorily returned. Talk about biting the hand that fed.

  She sat back in Theo’s chair, the gin refusing to remove the gnarled knot of worry, which settled in her gut like an ulcer and made everything taste foul. Admitting to herself that darling Francis could have got into this house with his old keys any time he wanted, time after time, months ago even, and she would not have noticed, or at least not after the drink or two she invariably needed before she could bring herself to look at this stuff. She was trying to concentrate. If Francis was gardening in the convent of the old parish, he wouldn’t be let near the nuns, and dear old Father Goodwin, who said he was there more often than he liked, would have rumbled him by now. Relief coursed through her veins, and the gin tasted better, until she thought, would he, though? How long since Christopher had seen her boy in the flesh? Years, and my, how they grew and disguised themselves. The blond hair on the devil in the parade had even fooled her, for a second. She choked on the drink, sat back in the chair, with watering eyes. Francis, a gardener? What a joke. Why, everyone knew what Francis was going to be. A tart. ‘A tart,’ she yelled at the wall. ‘A tart.’