The Keys of the Kingdom (33 page)

He shook his head, smiling; then an odd thought struck him. ‘ If you have nothing better to do one day … look up a dear old aunt of mine in Tynecastle. Miss Polly Bannon is the name. Wait, I’ll write down her address.’

He scribbled the address with a stub of pencil on a scrap of paper torn from a package in her shopping bag. She tucked it into her glove.

‘Shall I give her any message?’

‘Tell her how well and happy I am … and what a grand place this is. Tell her I’m – next to your husband – the most important man in China.’

Her eyes were bright and warm towards him. ‘ Perhaps I shall tell her more than you think. Women have a way of talking when they get together. Good-bye. See that you look in on Wilbur occasionally. And do take care of yourself.’

She shook hands and went off, a poor weak woman with a will of iron.

He promised himself he would call on Dr Fiske. But as the weeks slipped past he seemed never to have an hour of leisure. There was the matter of Joseph’s house to be arranged, and, when the little lodge was nicely built, the marriage ceremony itself, a full nuptial mass with six of the youngest children as train-bearers. Once Joseph and his bride were suitably installed, he returned to the Liu village with Joseph’s father and brothers. He had long cherished the dream of an outpost, a small secondary mission at Liu. There was talk of a great trade route being constructed through the Kwangs. At some future date he might well have a younger priest to help him, one who might operate from this new centre in the hills. He had a strange impulse to set his plans in motion by increasing the area of the village grain-fields, arranging with his friends in Liu to clear, plough and sow an additional sixty mu of arable upland.

These affairs offered a genuine excuse, yet he experienced a sharp twinge of self-reproach as, some five months later, he unexpectedly encountered Fiske. The doctor, however, was in good spirits, lit by a guarded, oddly jocose animation, which permitted only one deduction.

‘Yes.’ He chuckled then corrected himself to a fitting gravity. ‘You’re quite right. Mrs Fiske rejoins me at the beginning of next month.’

‘I’m glad. It has been a long journey for her to take alone.’

‘She was fortunate in finding a most congenial fellow-passenger.’

‘Your wife is a very friendly person.’

‘And with a great talent,’ Dr Fiske seemed to suppress a preposterous tendency to giggle, ‘for not minding her own business. You must come and dine with us when she arrives.’

Father Chisholm rarely went out, his mode of life did not permit it, but now compunction drove him to accept. ‘Thank you, I will.’

Three weeks later he was reminded of his commitment, not altogether willingly, by a copper-plate note from the Street of the Lanterns: ‘Tonight, without fail, seven-thirty.’

It was inconvenient, when he had arranged for vespers at seven o’clock. But he advanced the service by half an hour, sent Joseph to procure a chair, and that evening set out in formal style.

The Methodist Mission was brightly illuminated, exuding an unusual air of festivity. As he stepped out into the courtyard he hoped it would not be a large or lengthy affair. He was not anti-social, but his life had grown increasingly interior in these last years and that strain of Scots reserve, inherited from his father, had deepened into an odd guardedness towards strangers.

He was relieved, on entering the upper room, now gay with flowers and festoons of coloured paper, to find only his host and hostess, standing togeher on the hearth-rug, rather flushed from the warm room, like children before a party. While the doctor’s thick lenses scintillated rays of welcome, Mrs Fiske came quickly forward and took his hand.

‘I am so glad to see you again, my poor neglected and misguided creature.’

There was no mistaking the warmth of her greeting. She seemed quite taken out of herself. ‘You’re happy to be back anyway. But I’m sure you’ve had a wonderful trip.’

‘Yes, yes, a wonderful trip. Our dear son is doing splendidly. How I wish he were with us tonight.’ She rattled on, ingenuous as a girl, her eyes bright with excitement. ‘Such things I have to tell you. But you’ll hear … indeed, you’ll hear … when our other guest comes in.’

He could not prevent a questioning elevation of his brows.

‘Yes, we are four tonight. A lady … in spite of our different viewpoints … now a most particular friend of mine. She is here on a visit.’ She stumbled, aware of his amazement, then faltered nervously. ‘My dear good Father, you are not to be cross with me.’ She faced the door and clapped her hands, in prearranged signal.

The door opened and Aunt Polly came into the room.

In the convent kitchen on that September day of 1914 neither Polly nor Sister Martha gave the slightest heed to the faint familiar sound of rifle-fire in the hills. While Martha cooked the dinner, using her spotless battery of copper pans, Polly stood by the window ironing a pile of linen wimples. In three months the two had become as inseparable as two brown hens in a strange farmyard. They respected each other’s qualities. Martha had acclaimed Polly’s crochet as the finest she had ever seen while Polly, after fingering Martha’s cross-stitch, admitted her own inferior for the first time in her life. And they had, of course, a topic which never failed them.

Now, as Polly damped the linen and raised the iron expertly to her cheek to test its heat, she complained: ‘He is looking very poorly again.’ With one hand Martha put some more wood into the stove while she stirred the soup reflectively with the other. ‘What would one expect? He eats nothing.’

‘When he was a young man he had a good appetite.’

The Belgian Sister shrugged her shoulders in exasperation. ‘He is the worst feeder of all the priests I have known. Ah! I have known some great feeders. There was our abbé at Metiers – six courses of fish in Lent. Of course I have a theory. When one eats little the stomach contracts. Therefore it becomes impossible.’

Polly shook her head in mild disagreement. ‘Yesterday when I took him some new baked scones he looked at them and said, “How can one eat when thousands are hungry, within sight of this room?”’

‘Bah! They are always hungry. In this country it is customary to eat grass.’

‘But now he says it will be worse because of all this fighting that is going on.’

Sister Martha tasted the soup, her famous
pot-au-feu
, and her face registered critical approval. But as she turned to Polly she made a grimace. ‘ There is always fighting. Just as there is always starving. We have bandits with our coffee in Pai-tan. They pop a few guns – like you hear now. Then the city buys them off and they go home. Tell me, did he eat my scones?’

‘He ate one. Yes, and said it was excellent. Then he told me to give the rest to Reverend Mother for our poor.’

‘That good Father will drive me to distraction.’ Though Sister Martha was, outside her kitchen, as mild as mother’s milk, she scowled as if she were a creature of splendid rages. ‘ Give give, give! Until one’s skin cracks with the strain. Shall I tell you what occurred last winter? One day in the town when it was snowing he took his coat off, his fine new coat that we sisters had made for him of best imported wool cloth, and gave it to some already half-frozen good-for-nothing. I would have let him have a tonguing, I assure you. But Mother Superior chose to correct him. He looked at her with those surprised eyes which hurt you deep inside. “But why not? What’s the use of preaching Christianity if we don’t live as Christians? The great Christ would have given that beggar his coat. Why shouldn’t I?” When Reverend Mother answered very crossly that the coat was a gift from us he smiled, standing there, shivering with cold. “Then you are the good Christians – not I.” Was not that incredible? You wouldn’t believe it, if like me you were brought up in a country where thrift is inculcated. Enough! Let us sit and drink our soup. If we wait until these greedy children have done we may faint for weakness.’

Walking past the uncurtained window on his way back from the town Father Chisholm caught a glimpse of the two seated at their early lunch. The deep shadow of anxiety lifted momentarily from his face, his lips faintly smiled.

Despite his first premonitions, the accident of Polly’s visit was an immense success; she fitted miraculously into the frame of the mission, and was enjoying herself with the same placidity that she would have displayed during a short week-end at Blackpool. Undismayed by clime or season, she would stalk silently to her seat in the kitchen garden and knit for hours among the cabbages with shoulders squared, elbows angled, and needles flashing, her mouth slightly pursed, her eyes remotely complacent, the yellow mission cat purring like mad, crouched half beneath her skirts. She was the closest crony of old Fu and became a hub round which the gloomy gardener revolved, exhibiting prodigious vegetables for her approval and prognosticating the weather with signs and baleful portents.

In her contact with the Sisters she never interfered, never assumed a privilege. Her tact was instinctive and beautiful, springing from her gift of silence, from the prosaic simplicity of her life. She had never been happier. She was realizing her cherished longing to see Francis at his missionary work, a priest of God, helped, perhaps, to the worthy end – though she would never have dreamed of voicing such a thought – by her own humble effort. The length of her stay, set primarily at two months, had been extended until January.

Her one regret, naïvely expressed, was that she had been unable to take this trip earlier in her life. Though she had served Ned hand and foot so long, his death had not freed her from responsibility. Judy remained, a constant anxiety, with her whims and giddiness, her capricious inconstancy of purpose. From her first employment with the Tynecastle Council she had passed through half a dozen secretarial positions, each acclaimed as perfect in the beginning, then presently thrown up in disgust. From a business career she had turned to pupil-teaching, but her course at the Normal College soon bored her, and she vaguely entertained the idea of entering a convent. At this stage, when twenty-seven years of age, she had suddenly discovered that her true vocation was to become a nurse and had joined the staff of the Northumberland General Hospital as a probationer. This was the circumstance which had provided Polly with her present opportunity – a freedom which, alas, seemed only momentary. Already, after four short months, the hardships of the probationer’s life were discouraging Judy, and letters kept coming, full of petulance and grievance, hinting that Aunt Polly must return soon to look after her poor neglected niece.

As Francis pieced together the pattern of Polly’s life at home – gradually, for she was never garrulous – he came to see her as a saint. Yet her fixity was not that of a plaster image. She had her foibles, and her genius for the malapropos still remained. For instance, with remarkable initiative, and a loyal desire to aid Francis in his work, she had practically reconverted two errant souls, who on one of her staid excursions through Pai-tan obsequiously attached themselves to her person and her purse. It had cost Francis some trouble to rid her of Hosannah and Philomena Wang.

If only for the consolation of their daily conversations, he had reason to value this amazing woman. Now, in the trials which had suddenly confronted him, he clung to her common sense.

As he reached his house, there, awaiting him on the porch verandah, stood Sister Clotilde and Anna. He sighed. Was he never to have peace to consider the disquieting news he had received?

Clotilde’s sallow face wore a nervous flush. She stood close to the girl, almost like a gaoler, restraining her with a freshly bandaged hand. Anna’s eyes were dark with defiance. She also smelled of perfume.

Under his interrogating gaze Clotilde took a quick breath. ‘I had to ask Reverend Mother to let me bring Anna over. After all, in the basket workroom, she’s under my special charge.’

‘Yes, Sister?’ Father Chisholm forced himself to speak patiently. Sister Clotilde was quivering with hysterical indignation.

‘I’ve put up with so much from her. Insolence and disobedience and laziness. Watching her upset the other girls. Yes, and steal! Why, even now she’s reeking of Miss Bannon’s Eau-de-Cologne. But this last –’

‘Yes, Sister?’

Sister Clotilde reddened more deeply. It was a greater ordeal for her than for the graceless Anna.

‘She’s taken to going out at night. You know the place is infested with soldiers just now. She was out all last night with one of Wai-Chu’s men, her bed not even slept in. And when I reasoned with her this morning, she struggled with me and bit me.’

Father Chisholm turned his eyes on Anna. It seemed incredible that the little child he had held in his arms that winter night, who had come to him like a gift from heaven, should now confront him as a sulky and unruly young woman. In her teens, she was quite mature, with a full bosom, heavy eyes, and a plummy ripeness on her lips. She had always been different from the other children: uncaring, bold, never submissive. He thought: For once the copy-books are wrong – Anna has turned out no angel.

The heavy burden upon his mind made his voice mild. ‘Have you anything to say, Anna?’

‘No.’

‘No, Father,’ Sister Clotilde hissed. Anna gave her a sullen glance of hatred.

‘It seems a pity, after all we’ve tried to do for you, Anna, that you should repay us like this. Aren’t you happy here?’

‘No, I am not.’

‘Why?’

‘I didn’t ask you come to the Convent. You didn’t even buy me. I came for nothing. And I am tired of praying.’

‘But you don’t pray all the time. You’ve got your work.’

‘I don’t want to make baskets.’

‘Then we’ll find something else for you to do.’

‘What else? Sewing? Am I to go on sewing all my life?’

Father Chisholm forced a smile. ‘Of course not. When you’ve learned all those useful things, one of our young men will want to marry you.’

She gave him a sullen sneer, which said plainly: ‘I want something more exciting than your nice young men.’

He was silent; then he said, somewhat bitterly, for her lack of gratitude hurt him: ‘No one wishes to keep you against your will. But until the district is more settled you must remain. Great trouble may be coming to the town. Indeed, great trouble may be coming to the world. While you are here you are safe. But you must keep the rule. Now go with Sister and obey her. If I find that you do not I shall be very angry.’