Anna (52 page)

It was Sister Veronica who rescued her from the black depression into which she was falling. Conversation time had come round again, and she called Anna over to her.

“Come,” she said. “I'll show you something.”

She led the way out of the courtyard and in the direction of the
garden. It was a poor affair, the garden; four rectangular flowerbeds bordered an hexagonal one—and that was all. In between, ran a narrow path of crushed sea shell so finely ground that it clung to the shoes like sand. It was up and down this powdery sea-shell path that the Reverend Mother used to walk with her most important visitors.

Sister Veronica, however, walked straight on with Anna beside her until she came to the gate of the kitchen garden. She closed the gate carefully again behind her. In front of them now stretched only the brownness of turned earth, the never-ending rows of beans, the horse-peas, the red globes of the onions. The ground was flat and orderly like the fields at Rhinehausen. A broad path, a road almost, ran ahead of them, and Sister Veronica followed it. They met no one; the only figures in sight were two old nuns, bent almost double, weeding; but they did not even trouble to look up as the intruders passed.

At the far end of the garden was a little hillock; a rubbish mound, scarcely more. The whole thing stood some eight or ten feet high. A melon plant dangled down one side of it.

Sister Veronica proceeded to climb the mound, raising her skirts above her ankles to save herself from stumbling. Anna followed, and stood there on the tiny eminence beside her. She noticed that Sister Veronica was smiling. There was an air of peculiar triumph on her face.

“Look,” she said.

And she pointed over the tilled earth, over the stone wall that enclosed it, into the inner courtyard beyond.

It was the courtyard of the school. And in this courtyard a long crocodile of children was moving. There must have been fifty or sixty of them, big girls in front, the seven and eight year olds in the middle and the little ones behind. A nun walked in between each pair of infants at the back, holding one with either hand.

The crocodile wound and re-wound upon itself. It zigzagged. It performed loops. It marched through itself. And, all the time, a nun in the centre of the square kept clapping her hands so that the small feet should keep in step. It may have been because of the dresses—awkward, shapeless envelopes of striped cotton that the children were wearing—that they did not seem like real children at all. They were simply so many marching midgets, so many dolls.
Clap, clip; clap, clip
the nun's hands went on unceasingly as though she, too, were something made of clockwork that had been wound up and then set going.

“Can you see her?” Sister Veronica asked.

“No,” Anna cried involuntarily. “Annette isn't
there
. She can't be. My Annette can't be one of those.”

The Reverend Mother was regarding her with a steady, faintly incredulous gaze. Her hands, after her custom, were clasped together beneath her chin almost as if she were praying.

“But my daughter,” she was saying. “You are worrying yourself unnecessarily. I have already explained to you that you shall see your child as soon as it is good for her. I was speaking of it to the Sister-in-charge only yesterday.”

Anna met those pale, unwavering eyes.

“But how
can
it be bad,” she asked, “for a child to see her mother? Isn't it natural? Isn't it just as it should be?”

The Reverend Mother did not reply immediately.

“Do you not think?” she asked at last, “that perhaps other people are better judges of what is good for her? Can you be so sure that you are not allowing your feelings to run away with you?”

“But how can I help having feelings?” Anna answered.

Again there was the long pause, the same reproving fixity in the eyes before the Mother Superior answered. Her voice when she spoke was flat, emotionless.

“It is our duty,” she said, “to help you to control those feelings. If we cannot show you that it is wrong to follow every instinct no matter where it may lead you, then we shall have failed. But before we can succeed we must have your help. It is impossible to save someone who does not even want to be rescued.”

She paused again and seemed to be looking through Anna, and beyond. It was almost as though she had forgotten that she was there. But finally she spoke.

“You have so much to be thankful for,” she said, “that you should go away and pray. You may spend the morning in the chapel; I will see that you are excused the sewing-class. Then after you have prayed, you may come back to me. We will talk of these matters again when you have cleared your mind by praying. I shall be here all the time. You may come back to me as soon as you are ready.”

“But Reverend Mother,” Anna began, “please, I beg you. Just once let me see …”

The Reverend Mother raised her hand.

“This afternoon will be time enough,” she said. “I have so many here to consider. There are nearly three hundred of us. I cannot spend the whole morning discussing the affairs of only one.…”

Three whole weeks were up now, and they had not allowed her to see Annette. She had asked—how many times she could not remember—and always it had been the same. The Reverend Mother had been very gentle in her refusals, the language which she had used had been calm and reasonable. But she had been adamant.

Then Anna remembered Father Ignatius. He had said that he would help her, had offered to be of service to her if she needed him. They had been his last words before he had gone away again. She resolved to write to him immediately. And with him to intercede, there seemed nothing that could prevent it. The whole future brightened and her heart grew lighter. She saw herself and Annette reunited.

When she sat down to write her hand trembled so much at first that she had to pause and steady it. She covered the first sheet, the second. And into them she poured everything that was in her heart. She begged, she implored, him to help her. She declared that she was being driven out of her mind. She offered to perform any penances that he might impose if only he would let her see Annette. She swore that the behaviour of the Reverend Mother, of the Sister-in-Charge, was inhuman, that it was un-Christian. She invoked the names of the Blessed Virgin and St. Christopher.

When she had finished the letter she sealed it down carefully and thrust it into the bodice of the rough garment that she was wearing. To write it was one thing: to get it delivered was another, and she saw that she would have to watch her chance. In the end she had carried the letter about with her for two whole days, a burning guilty secret, before the opportunity came. But when it came, she was ready.

The convent van was waiting in the broad gravel drive, the old bent horse sleeping between the shafts. The lay sister—the same old peasant woman who had brought her—was sitting in the driving seat, her vacant face staring towards the gate through which she soon would be passing. Anna went up to her and thrust the letter into her hands. The old woman looked at it suspiciously; then, seeing that it was addressed to Father Ignatius, her face cleared.

“I want you to deliver this,” Anna told her. “It is important. The Father must get it to-day. To-morrow will be too late. It is very important.”

The nun creased up her face and nodded obediently.

“I understand,” she said. “I won't fail you.”

The gates in front of her were opening and she picked up the tattered whip that hung behind her. Slowly the cart began to move. Anna stood watching it until it was out of sight.

Three days after the letter had been sent, the Reverend Mother sent for Anna. She was in the sewing-room at the time and Sister Ursula excused her grudgingly. Anna put down the garment that she was unpicking and left without even glancing in her direction. She did not doubt the reason for the summons. Her heart was beating very rapidly and a curious weakness had come over her.

The Reverend Mother was seated at her desk when Anna entered. Her hands were clasped and her clear eyes met Anna's.

“Sit down, my daughter,” she said quietly. “I have something I wish to speak of to you.”

Anna leant forward eagerly.

“Then it's all right?” she asked. “I can see her?”

The Reverend Mother did not answer. It was as though she had not heard her. And as she began to speak Anna saw that in front of her a letter was lying. It was her letter to Father Ignatius.

“You have been very foolish,” she heard the Reverend Mother saying. “And you have also been disloyal. You have made charges against the Sisters of this Convent—bitter charges. The things that you wrote were not worthy of you: you should have fought against them when they came into your mind. Fortunately it was Father Ignatius who received this letter. He returned it to me.”

Anna passed her hand across her forehead.

“But he told me that he would help me,” she said faintly.

“He
has
helped you,” the Reverened Mother replied, her voice still as inflexible as ever. “And he has helped me too. He has enabled me to see into your mind. He has shown me how right the Sister-in-Charge has been in not wishing you to see your child. He has shown me, just when I was beginning to doubt it myself.”

She paused and Anna noticed that she was not even looking at her any longer. Her eyes were fixed somewhere in space beyond.

“I do not intend to punish you for writing this letter,” she continued. “I have forgiven you already. The Sisters need never know what you have said about them. But I will ask them to pray for you: you need all our prayers now.”

She paused again and still without looking at Anna she resumed.

“I shall, of course, have to punish the nun who delivered the letter. I shall have to curtail her liberties. She has been with us long enough to know that no letters are permitted to leave this convent unless I have been shown them first. That has always been the rule here, and it must continue.” For a moment her eyes met Anna's and she dropped her head slightly.

“You may go now, my daughter,” she said. “I am sure that you will not offend again.”

There was a purple covered book of devotions on the table in front of her and, picking up a large magnifying lens, she began to read as though oblivious that Anna was still with her.

“How long have I been here now?” Anna asked herself; and she realised suddenly that she could not remember. It was either six weeks or seven—there was no way of telling. Sundays made the only break in the everlasting succession of the week; but Sundays too had nothing to distinguish them from each other. They simply came with their hours of Chapel—everyone in the convent attended Communion, High Mass and Benediction—and then they, too, merged into the long background.

But for Sister Veronica, Anna would have given up all hope. It was Sister Veronica who supported her constantly, going out of her way to be beside her during the hour of afternoon recreation in the garden; contriving for a moment to see her before and after the long sewing sessions; planning that they should meet in the porch of the chapel as they went their separate ways after service.

The Reverend Mother had observed the friendship; and deplored it. She knew how distracting such relationships could be. It was of Anna's own good that she was thinking.

“She thinks even now only of her feelings,” she reflected, “and not of what lies upon her soul. It is our task to reawaken that conscience that she has allowed to fall asleep inside her. And it is impossible for us to do that if she is chattering when she should be contemplating. I must ask Sister Veronica to leave her alone for a little. I will show her how unhelpful she is being.”

On the following day, therefore, she sent for her. She told her calmly and dispassionately that her present conduct only served to make it more difficult for Anna to adapt herself to her new life. She reasoned with her.

At first Sister Veronica resisted: she pleaded. But the Reverend Mother was not moved. She asked Sister Veronica to be more thoughtful, less impulsive. Then, finding that Sister Veronica was still unpersuaded, she told her, in the same quiet voice that she had used throughout, that this devoted friendship was to cease.

But the very eagerness with which Sister Veronica had pursued this acquaintanceship made it the more difficult for it to be put right, she said. And she decided, therefore, that the friendship should not be broken off immediately. She would still permit, she said, one recreation hour spent together weekly. She suggested
further that Sister Veronica might care to choose to-day for the first of these hours so that she could explain the Reverend Mother's decision, and the reasons for it.

“I am really alone now,” Anna told herself. “There is no one even to speak to me.”

And she went on down the path that stretched empty in front of her, her head held high, not inclined forward as the nuns held theirs, their eyes scanning the ground in front of them. The path led towards the kitchen garden where she had walked with Sister Veronica. She followed it and came to the mound where she had watched the children playing.

“I will climb it,” she thought. “I will stand there and watch. At least they cannot take my sight away from me.”

But, at the last moment, she turned away from the mound and walked in the direction of the wall that divided the school from the rest of the convent. There was a door set in the middle of the wall and she went towards it.

“There may be a keyhole in it that I can look through,” she began saying. “I shall be nearer then.”

But when she reached the door, she found that it was open; it hung ajar on its hinges. Between the door and the gatepost she caught a glimpse of the bare courtyard, saw the flicker of the striped uniforms somewhere in the distance as a file of children marched obediently past. It was playtime again.

Her heart was hammering; it was beating so fast that she had to place her hand over it. Very slowly she pushed the gate open wider. She could see everything now.