Seeking Sanctuary Read online

  ‘Don’t be naive, child. Where would I go? With what would I go? No, the Church has had the best of me, it can have the worst.’

  She pulled the blankets up over her chin, so that all Anna could see was her haunting, blazing eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry, child. I’m being grotesquely unkind. Loneliness should not be contagious. You’d better go for your beauty sleep. I’d rather you didn’t tell Barbara about the coughing. She has enough to do. It wouldn’t be charitable to either of us.’

  Therese nodded, aware that it was a promise. Joseph closed her eyes. On the other side of the door, with the first hint of daylight beginning to creep along the floor from the long window at the end, Therese paused. Instead of going straight back to her room, she went to the one next to Joseph’s which Sister Jude had occupied. It was clean, but not entirely cleared. Each of the Order and Jude’s relatives had taken from her shelves whatever they had wished, either to remember her by, or because they liked it. The selection had been small. Poetry, prose, a minimum of religion, the maximum of music for her Walkman, which had gone, the radio, which was gone, leaving a few literary souvenirs. Therese found herself searching for the spot where the missal had been, remembered how she had taken it for Anna, because it was Anna Jude loved. Anna who did what Jude liked best, argued, raised the devil, asked questions and demanded answers, making Jude test herself, age against youth, so that they lost their tempers with one another. Therese would never have dared to do that, any more than she would have wanted to do it. She hated confrontation. She had thought obedience was natural. Jude had never respected her for that. Her sainted aunt had a preference for sinners, did not believe what her own mother had taught her by example, Be good, sweet maid. And let who will be clever.

  It was Jude who advised her against following her vocation; Jude who said no child should ever do a thing because her mother wished it. But that was not why she had done it. Nor had she entered the Order because she thought it would be easy. She had done it because it felt entirely natural and she had been confident it would always feel like that. On her way back to her own room, grateful for the dawn, she found herself feeling envious of Anna. Wanted a touch of that anger, as well as a touch of the street wisdom, which would teach her what to do with Francis, who by the simple act of supplying Joseph with her own poison had made her imagine that she had lost her faith. Faith could be spat upon and scorned, but never lost. What rubbish. She would find Francis and tell him not to do this and then everything would be all right. She would appeal to the better nature every soul had. Stripping off her own nightgown, pulling on her day clothes and washing her own face before she clipped back her hair, she encountered the sneaky, unknown thought that she would prefer a better, less scratchy nightdress than this, and if she were ever to die, which seemed a remote possibility, she would also prefer to have more than a single pair of shoes.

  Kim came in early. ‘Only thing that bastard ever does,’ she grumbled, ‘is give the little sods breakfast and take them to school. Bastard. I’d rather be here than round our place. It’s a madhouse. Hey, Treesa, are you awake? How long have you been sitting there? You gonna talk to me or what? Otherwise, I might as well stay home.’

  The kitchen was beautifully empty; a place waiting to spring into life. Being in it cheered Therese immeasurably. It was her favourite place; there was nothing wrong with being Mary rather than Martha and she desperately needed to laugh. So, sighing dramatically, she launched into the familiar Monday morning routine she and Kim had perfected.

  ‘I’m a bit weary, to be honest. Shagged out, as a matter of fact, Kim. Weekends in here get so wild. Clubbing Saturday night. Vodka and ketchup, ever tried it? Lethal. Sunday morning, ended up God knows where with the Sisters, sobering up and hanging out with the priests. Back up here for a line of coke and bacon sandwiches.You know how it is. Tiring.’

  ‘That’s better! Thought you were dead. So who got luvverly Francis, then? No luck?’

  ‘No, we took a vote. We decided he preferred blokes.’

  ‘You don’t say! Makes sense, though, doesn’t it? Such a pretty boy.’

  ‘What makes sense? Nuns on coke, or what?’

  ‘Francis, being gay. Name like that, hair like that, you know. Shame, innit? What a bloody waste. Oh, forget it. He’s still shaggable.’

  Overwhelmed by a sudden sense of her own ignorance, Therese sat down. She could never play this game for very long.

  ‘How do you know if a man’s gay?’

  Kim was decanting milk into a jug. The kettle was coming to the boil. Everything was cheerful and soon there would be food on the table. Therese was ravenously hungry.

  ‘Gay men? You don’t know. Only they’re often too good-looking for their own good and they sometimes wear their willies on the outside. They like perfume, wash more than ordinary. That’s one sign, anyway. Oh, and they know how to be nice to women. Come to think of it, that would suit Francis down to a T. Gay chaps know how to get on with girls. I mean they talk to us, which is more than the other buggers do.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Shame none of you scored. Do you want coffee for your hangover?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘I think you ought to stay indoors more,Treesa. Have an early night for a change. Get Francis to tuck you in. If he’s gay, he’ll be safe as houses, even if you throw your knickers at him. Which reminds me. We’ve got to do the laundry today. Get it started before breakfast.’

  The laundry bags, collected from the Sisters’ rooms each week, stood in the scullery off the kitchen, which housed the boiler, a hanging rail and a large, noisy washing machine.

  ‘I think we ought to get Francis in to look at that washer, Treesa. Give you a chance to get to know him, like everyone else.You just smile at him and scuttle away.You haven’t talked to him yet, have you?’

  ‘No, but I want to.’

  ‘Get you, you cheeky sod! Why’s that then?’

  ‘I want to ask him not to run errands for Sister Joseph.’

  ‘Oh, he does, does he? Well, I can hardly blame him for that. She’s very persuasive. She was always asking me and it was hard to say no. Sweet youth like Francis hasn’t got a chance. She’ll tell him he was doing her a kindness.’

  Therese sat, rooted to the chair. How very, very little she knew. As little about their bodies as their souls. How much they conspired to protect her.

  ‘I don’t understand where she gets the money.’

  ‘She’s got some of her own. And I can tell it isn’t you polishes the collection box by the chapel. Someone gets the bottom off and robs a bit every week before anyone counts. Easy. Are you all right, Treesa?’

  She was not all right; she was reeling with shock all over again. Poor Joseph really was a soul damned to eternity, or at least in the eyes of Sister Barbara. She sipped the coffee and wished it had more taste.

  ‘Laundry,’ she said.

  Dealing with the personal laundry of a dozen women bore no resemblance to the tasks described by St Therese of Lisieux in her cold convent cellar, battling with dirty water and filthy suds. It was merely a simple job of sorting the contents of the laundry bags into two piles with the rough division of delicate and hardy. Most of it was hardy, but the process of sorting always felt like prying to Therese. Each Sister placed her underwear into the bag in which she would receive it back. There were a vast number of handkerchiefs, which seemed to be essential. Therese hated the handkerchiefs, while Kim always either laughed or tut tutted over the rest. There were Agnes’s flannelette bloomers, worn winter and summer, Barbara’s monstrous, indestructible bras, the sometimes more holey than godly vests preferred by the others, the schoolgirl sensible stuff used by the youngest, including Therese, and not a trace of lace anywhere. Except on the handkerchiefs, those items most often given to the Sisters by relatives for lack of anything else appropriate. Embroidered hankies, colourful hankies, linen and silk hankies. Matilda went through a dozen a week. They formed the bulk of her laundry. Nestled dow
n among them at the bottom of her bag was a knife.

  Not a particularly sinister-looking knife, but lethal all the same. A fruit knife with a rope-strapped handle and a short blade which looked as if it had been honed to dangerous, surgical sharpness on a stone. If Therese had not been so timid in extracting the handkerchiefs, the pointed blade would have nicked her fingers. She put it on top of the washing machine and both of them looked at it. A laundry bag was a good hiding place, but why was she keeping a knife? Such a sharp knife.

  Barbara’s voice rang out from the kitchen. ‘Bendicamus Domino!’

  ‘Deo Gratias,’Therese murmured, slipping the knife into the pocket of her tunic while Kim carried on as if nothing had happened. Secrecy was becoming second nature.

  Kim grabbed the last garment, which she had been waving round her head like a flag, stuffed it inside and slammed the door of the washing machine. Barbara hove into view, filling the door of the utility room with her feet, as if she was about to flow inside and all around them, like lava. Her normal demeanour was one of relentless cheerfulness, overseen by those scrutinising eyes, which seemed to take in every detail, while smiling throughout. The smile was missing today. She looked indefatigable, but tired. It was Kim’s daily complaint that she hated the woman, which Therese had long since translated as a benign kind of fear and a hearty dislike of being bossed about. For Therese, Barbara was in another sphere. She was the first adult human being she could remember as having taken her seriously and she was afraid of her in an awesome way. Barbara was the embodiment of all higher authority, the representative of the Order she obeyed and the person who knew the answers to everything. But in that one moment, with Barbara’s feet and Barbara’s bosom swelling into the small space, she could only think of the bosom and the monstrous brassiere Kim had just stuffed into the circular mouth of the washing machine.

  The item, lying within sight in the machine, resembled part of a comical suit of armour. Therese looked at it as if she had never seen it before. Barbara’s posture was part of her authority. She wore her bosom high, so that it preceded her, like a woman carrying a box, and only the two of them here knew the superstructure that lay behind.

  ‘Good, good.You’re at work.’

  She was a trifle agitated, but the solid bosom trembled not a bit. Two white bras she had, wire and cotton, grey straps and six hooks and eyes. When she was agitated, she forgot to keep her voice down and she had not remembered to brush her hair.

  ‘Always, Sister,’ Kim said demurely.

  ‘Terrific,’ Barbara said. ‘Keep it up. Keep your pecker up! Therese, a word with you after breakfast, please.’

  She swept away, and as soon as her squeaky shoes were out of hearing they both began to giggle, nervously.

  ‘What does she know about peckers?’ Kim said.

  ‘Probably more than me,’ Therese said, unsure of what she meant. In Kim’s laughter, somehow the knife was forgotten. Being late with the breakfast had all the makings of a sin. Despite her hunger she would not eat the breakfast, in reparation for the laughter, which felt, if not sinful, something close to it.

  There was a hierarchy of sins. There were the sins committed on a daily basis – evasions, dishonesties, the failures to remember holy things. Therese had learned her catechism the way other children learned to count, but the definitions of what made a sin mortal and what made it venial were more difficult. There was no straight line between the two. The venial was the daily sin, easily expunged; the mortal was the sin that divorced the soul from God. If a person died with such an unrepented sin scarring their soul, they would never be reunited in the next life with the God who had made them. The thought was enough to strike terror: it was the threat of permanent expulsion from everything that could provide happiness or safety, but all the same, she was never sure what kind of a sin it could be. A sin that slaps God in the face, Jude had defined it. A really serious sin.Your conscience will tell you when it is yours, even if the reactions of others do not make it clear, because you will despise yourself and know that your Father waits for you to acknowledge what you have done and make amends.You will feel it in your bones. But what kind of sin is it? she had asked. Is there a list? No, no list, apart from the ten commandments and the catechism.

  All that Therese knew as she moved round the dining room table, delivering milk and juice, finally standing with her head bowed during the prayer, was that she felt in a state of sin, unable to join in with the words, For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful. The hunger had gone and she formed her bread into small pellets to avoid eating it, knowing that here, wasting food was regarded as far worse than eating too much of it. She should have sat next to Matilda, who would have eaten it for her. But what is my sin? she was asking herself, furiously, as the pellets of bread stuck in her throat. I have listened to Joseph’s heresy and slander, and I have helped her to hide her own sins. I have laughed at Barbara and disobeyed her, in spirit at least. Is that enough to make me feel so bad that my sin is mortal? Forgive me, Lord. She looked at the face of Matilda watching her anxiously from halfway down the table and found herself suspicious of the glance. Matilda’s knife was in her pocket; Matilda wanted to see Anna; they were keeping secrets. Agnes, supposedly the mother of a child, sat staring towards the door, as if expecting a vision. Joseph was serene. She waited until the last as Therese was stacking plates and the others had filed away, came up behind her and touched her on the shoulder.

  ‘Therese, my dear, I must apologise for troubling you. It was selfish of me.’ She hesitated, but it was not the hesitation of conscience. She looked surprisingly decisive and fresh, a woman capable of self-reinvention, looking at Therese closely but kindly, as if trying to ascertain if Therese could remember a fraction of what she had said. That was how Therese’s newly suspicious mind interpreted it.

  ‘It was no trouble, Sister. The less said, the soonest mended.’

  She was becoming like the rest of them, resorting to well-worn clichés.

  Joseph nodded. ‘But there is one thing I wanted to say, child. I mentioned Sister Jude’s missal. Don’t look at it. She put her opinions of your mother in there.’

  She departed as Matilda sidled back, smiling, dipping her head in greeting to Joseph’s departing back and resting her hand on Therese’s shoulder. In her heightened state of nervous awareness, Therese had the unbidden impression that the two women wanted to behave differently.

  ‘Therese, lovey, you won’t forget to tell Anna to come and see me, will you? As soon as Barbara has the sense to let her back.’

  Therese was confused. ‘Of course, Sister, but I never know when she’s going to appear.’

  ‘No, but if she ever does . . . She will, soon, won’t she? It’s very important that I see her.’

  It could not be soon enough. Therese was swept away by a longing to see her flesh-and-blood sister. Hear her voice, even if it mocked. Confess her miseries to someone who did not rely on God for an answer, and for once, be touched by the flesh of someone who was not old. Old flesh, old smells, old, old . . . old sins.

  Barbara’s office, with her bedroom behind it, was next to the parlour, off the black and white corridor. Agnes had already taken up residence by the front door. The day and the week was beginning like every other week for the last year, but without the same optimism that buoyed her being and without the comforting sense of it being right. The three younger Sisters, who never spoke to her, like new postgraduates to a student in her first term, had departed in their usual quiet flurry of activity to their teaching jobs. Without quite realising it, Therese had formed a settled dislike of them, because they were so importantly useful. They were allowed to be exhausted in the evening and they had more to say to their elders, who had followed similar careers, than they ever would have to say to her. It was Martha and Mary all over again. As she stood back, dutifully, to let them pass, she saw Agnes open the door to the outside world, chirruping farewells like a squirrel. The door was halfway closed, A
gnes being as efficient at closing as she was at opening, leaving Therese with the sour thought that she should have been a lift attendant, oh, what was the matter with her today? when Agnes leapt forward to open it wide. Seen in profile, her smile was one of sheer adoration, the sort reserved for spiritual ecstasy, as she opened her arms. Francis stepped into the hall, picked her up in a hug and swung her round as if she were weightless. Agnes had lost the knack of screaming, but she made, instead, small squealing noises of protesting pleasure. He was so strong, he could measure the swing he made with her bulky body held at her belted waist, so that her feet only left the ground by a couple of inches and she had no cause for alarm before she found herself back with both shoes on the floor, guided towards her accustomed seat with a deft kiss planted on her left cheek.

  ‘How’s my boy?’ she crooned.

  ‘Never better, Mother. Gotta go, work to do.’

  ‘Of course, son, of course.’

  The light was bad in the vicinity of the front door once it was closed, and Agnes’s eyesight was even worse. She was content with her embrace, patted him on the arm and shooed him on, not noticing the details of his face. The black and white corridor was the route to the garden as well as everything else. He turned into it and collided with Therese, lightly, she moving and he moving faster, a glancing contact between her shoulder and his elbow, enough to stop him and make him recoil.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I beg your pardon,’ both of them speaking in chorus, before she stood back, yet again, to let him pass. She was sick of standing back; soon she would fall over herself. She knew who he was and that she disapproved of him, and kept her eyes to the black and white floor. Strange, that in so small a place, she had been able to avoid the conversation with him that everyone else had so enthusiastically enjoyed in the last ten days, to find she needed it now. Everyone else had come to know and love him. There was no mistaking Francis. He was a foot taller than anyone else and smelled of man.