There was a footstep behind him. He straightened up, smiling easily. Mother Perpetua cleared her throat—too late to give a friendly warning, but just in time to make a point—then crossed to the tall, narrow windows and drew the curtains. “Night’s drawing in,” she observed.
“Mm,” Fludd said.
“Our clothes,” Purpit said. She indicated the chest. “It is our clothes that we brought with us when we left the world. I keep the key.”
“About your person?”
Purpit declined to answer. “It is a responsibility,” she said, “overseeing the welfare of so many souls.”
“So you are both headmistress and superior of the convent, are you?”
Purpit tossed her veil, as if to say, who else could do it? Father Fludd studied the chest. “Could I look into it, do you think?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
“Is there some rule to forbid it?”
“I should think there is.”
“Is it your nature to assume so?”
“I must. Suppose the bishop were to find out?” Mother Perpetua came up behind him and stooped over the chest, proprietorially. Then she cast an eye up at him, sideways, from behind the jutting
edge of her headdress. It was as if a blinkered horse had winked. “Still, Father, I suppose I might make an exception. I suppose I might be prevailed upon.”
“After all,” Fludd said, “there cannot be any harm in looking at empty clothes. And there must be some curious modes in that box.”
Perpetua patted the lid of the chest; she had a large hand, with prominent knuckles. “I could gratify you,” she said. “Your curiosity. After all …” She eased herself to the vertical, and let her eyes wander over him. “I suppose the bishop’s not likely to hear of it. If you don’t tell him, and I don’t.” She slid a hand into the folds of her robes, below the waist, and fumbled there, and presently drew out a large, old-fashioned iron key.
“It must be a weight for you to carry about,” Fludd observed.
“I can assure you, Father, it is the least of my burdens.” Mother Perpetua fitted the key into the lock. “Allow me,” Fludd said.
He wrestled with the lock. At first, no success. “It is not often opened,” Perpetua said. “Once a decade is as much. There are not many vocations these days.” Fludd knelt, and applied force; there was a grind, scrape, click, and it gave at last. He raised the lid of the chest with a slow reverence, as if he might find human remains within; which indeed, he thought, you might say that I do, for in this chest are the remains of all worldly vanities. Did not Ignatius himself compare those in religion to the dead, when he enjoined on them obedience, each to their very own Mother Perpetua? “Each one,” said the saint, “should give himself up into the hands of his superiors, just as a dead body allows itself to be treated in any way whatever.”
At once a powerful smell of mothballs rose up. “I’m not sure why we bother to preserve them whole,” Perpetua said. “It’s not as if anyone is going anywhere in them.”
Fludd reached into the chest and lifted up the topmost garment, letting it fall out of its folds. It was a little white muslin frock with a sailor collar, its wide skirt meant, he thought, just to clear the ankle. “Whose would this be?”
“I dare say Sister Polycarp’s. She always claimed a fondness for the Senior Service.”
The nun plunged her hand into the chest and brought out a pair of navy-blue shoes, with two-bar straps and waisted heels. Next came a navy-blue serge suit, of similar vintage, with a fitted waist and a bell-shaped skirt. “Who’s to know which is whose? Three came in together, more or less. They’re of an age. Now then—what about this hat?”
Father Fludd took it from her and stroked the felt, and pricked his fingers on the bunch of stubby, fierce-looking grey feathers.
“I can picture Sister Cyril in that. Or Sister Ignatius Loyola, either one. Oh, dear God.” Purpit gave a whoop of laughter. “Here’s their underthings all wrapped up. Here’s their corsets.”
There were three pairs of corsets rolled together: one Twilfit, two Excelsior. Fludd held them up, like a map of the world, and let them unroll with a clatter. Purpit giggled. “Oh, Father,” she said. “This is not for your eyes, I’m sure.”
She plunged her arm into the chest, ferreting around at the bottom. “Dear God,” she said, “a hobble skirt. Well, that takes care of the three of them.”
Father Fludd picked out a straw boater and turned it in his hands. It had a dark-blue ribbon.
“That must belong to Sister Anthony. She’s the oldest of all. This will be her tweed suit. Her summer tweed.” Purpit held it up against herself. “Well now, will you look at the size she was? Almost what she is now.”
He imagined Sister Anthony, a healthy creature with flushed cheeks, jumping down from a pony and trap, on the carriage-drive; the year, 1900. Mother Perpetua shook out a pair of silk combinations, with lace-trimmed legs and buttons down the front. “She must have fancied herself in these.”
“What happens,” Fludd asked, “if you are sent to another convent of the Order? Do your effects follow you about? Do you pack a case?”
“Oh, we wouldn’t carry them ourselves. Suppose we were run over and taken to hospital? And they opened up the case? They wouldn’t believe we were nuns at all. They would think we belonged to a concert-party”
“They are sent after you, then.”
“They come by the carrier. Though I see,” she said, sifting through what remained in the chest, “that we don’t have anything here for Philomena. Not that it’s a loss, the kind of jumble-sale tat that I imagine a girl like her would have been wearing when she turned up as a postulant. But now isn’t that typical Ireland for you? Send the nun, and no clothes, just forget about it—” Mother Purpit let her jaw hang vacantly, and assumed a glassy-eyed expression—“just let the world go by. You should have seen the state of her when she presented herself here. An old Gladstone bag in her hand, tied up with string, and that nearly empty. I’ve heard of holy poverty, but in my opinion you can go too far. One pair of stockings, and those in holes, her clodhopper’s toe poking through. When her handkerchiefs last saw starch, I wouldn’t care to speculate.”
“She sounds more than anything like a displaced person,” Fludd said.
“I’d displace her back again, if I had my way, Father. But I don’t, more’s the pity. It’s Mother Provincial who gives the marching orders.” Indignation had taken over Mother Perpetua; she forgot that he did not know what she was talking about. “But I told her, Mother Provincial, I told her straight. I said if the girl wants to go in for that sort of thing, she should have taken herself off to some contemplatives; we Sisters of the Holy Innocents have to keep our heads screwed on, we have good solid practical work to do. I said to Mother Provincial, don’t think I’m going to allow my convent to become some repository for the Order’s embarrassments, because I won’t have it. I’ll speak to the bishop.”
“Heavens,” Fludd said. “What had Sister Philomena done?”
“She’d made claims for herself.”
“What variety of claims?”
“She said she had the stigmata. She said her palms bled every Friday.”
“And did other people see this?”
Perpetua sniffed. “
Irish
people saw it,” she said. “Some senile old donkey of a parish priest—forgive me, Father, but I always speak my mind—who was foolish enough to fall for her nonsense. It caused a stir, you see, had a whole parish in a state of excitement. I’m pleased to say that when he took it further the pair of them were pretty soon stamped on. At diocesan level, you know. In my experience you can count on a bishop.”
“So they sent her to England?”
“Yes, to get her out of that over-excited, unhealthy atmosphere. Well, I put it to you, Father, have you ever heard anything like it? Stigmata, indeed, in this day and age? Did you ever hear of anything in such poor taste?”
“Was she seen by a doctor?”
“Oh yes, but an
Irish
doctor could make nothing of it. I tell you, her feet had scarcely touched the ground before I arranged a good sensible man to take a proper look at her.” She sniffed again. “Do you know what he said it was? He said it was dermatitis.”
“And how is she now?”
“Oh, she’s over it now. I’ve seen to that.” She broke off. “But why are we wasting time over this fool of a girl? You’ll want your tea.”
Perpetua rustled out. What a noise her habit seemed to make, crackling and rasping; how her heels thumped on the linoleum. The air around her was loud with contention; he could think of nothing less conducive to a life of prayer.
Fludd resumed his seat by the fire. Presently, he heard the nun returning—he could hear her right along the corridor, now that he was alert for her. Behind her toddled an elderly sister, rotund and beaming, bearing a tea-tray. “Sister Anthony,” Purpit said.
“How do you do, Sister Anthony?”
“Well, in Jesus Christ, and I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Father; won’t you with your youth and all be a great help to poor auld Angwin?”
“Sister, don’t be quaint,” Purpit said. “Not in my hearing.”
Anthony sighed, and put down the tea-tray on the gate-legged table. “You could have had a sandwich,” she said. “You could have had fish-paste. But they said it was bad. Said it was off. Polycarp said it might have been in the desert for forty days and forty nights. I don’t know. I couldn’t taste anything off with it. I ate mine.”
“Sister has an excellent digestion,” said Mother Perpetua.
“Young things,” Sister Anthony said. “Nuns today. Want coddling. Finicky.”
“Do you want coddling, Father Fludd?” Purpit asked: gaily, without malice.
He glanced at her. Her gaiety was a terrible thing to see. “Not to worry, Sister Anthony,” he said. “Miss Dempsey will have something for me when I get in. The tea alone will be most welcome.”
“And try one of the biscuits. I baked them myself just this last fortnight.”
Sister Anthony went out, moving airily despite her bulk. As Mother Perpetua busied herself with the teapot, Fludd became conscious of a noise outside the door, a low rustle, a type of dull snuffling.
“Who is there?” he inquired.
“Oh, it is Sister Polycarp, Sister Cyril, and Sister Ignatius Loyola. They want to be introduced to you.”
Fludd half-rose. “Should we not let them in?”
Perpetua smiled, and poured the milk in a thin high stream. “In good time,” she said. She handed him his cup, with what was almost a simper: “Is that how you like it, Father?”
Father Fludd looked down. “I hardly know. I just drink it as it comes.”
“Ah, I might have known. You young priests. So ascetic. So unworldly.” Perpetua sighed, and supplied herself generously with sugar. “I suppose the bishop is very proud of you.”
Fludd tested his tea, hedgingly. “Do you think so?”
“Else why would he send you here to sort out this mess, if he didn’t put his absolute faith in you? Oh, you’re young, of course, to take on a wily old fox like Father Angwin—and by the way, he drinks, you know, and he has been seen in Netherhoughton, hanging about the tobacconist’s—but no one who took a look at you could doubt your capabilities.”
Go on then, Fludd silently challenged: look at me. He let his own eyes dwell on the coarse skin of the nun’s cheeks, her fleshy nose; she raised her head briefly, but then dropped it again, as if its black wrappings had suddenly become too heavy. She reached out for the teapot and topped up her cup.
“What mess?” Fludd said. “What are you talking about?”
Perpetua was startled. She put down the pot. “Well, don’t tell me His Grace hasn’t put you in the picture? Angwin’s to be modernized, he’s to be made to change his ways, I thought you knew all that. Perhaps—I don’t know—perhaps the bishop thought it would be better if you formed your own opinions. A very fair man, His Grace, a very just man, I always have said that about him. Though in my opinion the benefit of the doubt can be extended once too often.” She thought for a moment, and suddenly sat up straighter, preening herself. “Of course, he knew that you had a reliable source here. He knew that he could rely on me to set you straight.”
Father Fludd picked up one of Sister Anthony’s biscuits. He bit into it, gave a cry of pain, and dropped it to his knee, whence it bounced to the floor and skittered under the table. “Holy Virgin,” he said. “I have nearly broke my teeth.”
“Lord, I should have warned you, Father. We are all used to them. We have a little toffee hammer that we pass about to deal with them.”
Fludd held his hand across his mouth.
“Would you like me to look in your mouth?” Perpetua said tenderly. “I could see if there was any damage.”
“No thank you, Mother Perpetua. Do go on with what you were saying.”
“The man’s in a world of his own,” the nun continued. “More tea? Oh, he’s sound enough on doctrine, we all know that, too sound, the bishop says, an obstinate sort of man always on about the Church Fathers and talking over people’s heads. But his sermons can be mere gibberish. In the pulpit the other week he said the Pope was a Nazi. He said he was the head of the Mafia.”