Obedience (21 page)

Veronique did not turn. She looked far in front of her, at something on the building opposite or beyond, across the sloping roofs dotted with pigeons.

‘I can't come to the burial, Sister. We must head back – to work.' She spoke wearily, as though she was continuing a conversation they had already exhausted. ‘It's busy today – we've got a new arrival.'

‘Yes,' said Bernard. And then, some moments later. ‘It was good of you to come.'

‘We always come to these things. It's part of the job.'

Veronique sniffed. The tip of her nose was red with cold.

‘I thought of sending someone else, though. This time.' Her desire to avoid the nuns had been almost irresistible. ‘I wasn't sure what to do, when I heard Sister Marie had died. I didn't want… I thought about it a lot. Even this morning, I wasn't sure.' She huffed a melancholy laugh. ‘I was up and down in my office, trying to decide, pacing around. I knew you'd be here. And – well, I did my duty in the end, didn't I?'

Bernard did not think to reply. Thérèse was not sure of what was being said. She moved away, towards the smoking man. There was hardly a pause.

‘The photo in the paper, of Philippe Pourcel. Of my father. The cutting I saw at the convent.' Veronique took short sharp breaths between the abrupt sentences. ‘You had it… you'd kept it, because he was your son.'

It was not a question. Veronique drew the toe of her shoe along the bright yellow line painted on the top of the steps.

‘I know all about it. It wasn't a secret. My father told us everything he knew. Not a lot really, but I knew he was the son of a nun.' It seemed nothing, when it was said out loud like that. ‘And when I saw the cutting and saw you – well, I knew.'

She did not mention the bitter onion taste in her mouth the afternoon she had driven away from the convent. Nor that she still thought of the squat nun with disgust. Instead, finally, she glanced at Bernard, seeing nothing except the thick folds of habit and the round face and the glitter of something behind in the dark interior of the church.

Bernard was puzzled by the tone of what her granddaughter had said. She could not work out what was expected of her.

The hearse started its engine and for a moment its exhaust fumes were strong in the air. The diocesan man stubbed out the remains of his cigarette beneath his shiny shoes. Thérèse looked back to where Bernard was standing and swept an arm towards her, beckoning at her for something. Veronique shuffled.

‘Well,' she said. ‘I should go. I'm sorry if I've… you know, said something I shouldn't. I just thought it was best to be open about it. I mean, don't worry – I won't go telling anyone. I don't want people to know. I just wanted to tell you that I'd found you out. That I knew. That's all.'

Bernard thought there was something soft about Veronique's last words. It might have been an invitation.

‘Is that why you came… to the funeral?' she asked. ‘To see me?'

Veronique looked away. The hearse moved smoothly off and waited by the church gate for a break in the traffic.

‘I don't want a fuss. Really. I wanted a clean break. I just thought I'd tell you, that I knew – that I'd worked it out.'

‘Did you want to see me?' Bernard asked again simply.

Veronique frowned. ‘I told you – it's my job. I needn't have come at all. I could have sent someone else. I was going to send someone else. I just thought…'

‘No,' said Bernard.

Thérèse came and took Bernard by the arm to help her down the steps.

‘He offered you a lift, the man from the diocese. He was going to take you back home, Sister. But Corinne's coming to take me to the burial and I thought you could come with us. That's all right, isn't it?'

Veronique stepped back.

‘Wait,' said Bernard. ‘Please. Just a moment.'

She tugged on Thérèse's arm and managed to move a few steps closer to her granddaughter.

‘I'd like to speak to you again,' she said, her voice so low that, even bending towards them, Thérèse could make out nothing.

This was not how Bernard had thought it would be. She had known, already, the feel of the girl, the warmth, and she had thought, of course, of the soldier, the only person she had ever held. She had thought she would recognize everything about it, his musk a memory on Veronique's new skin.

Veronique looked hard at Bernard. Thérèse pulled on Bernard's arm.

‘I don't know. I'll think about it,' said Veronique at last. ‘You're at Les Cèdres, aren't you?'

Bernard nodded. Veronique smiled before turning away down the steps. Bernard was sure then that she would come.

Corinne joined them at the cemetery for the burial. Her pink trousers distracted Bernard's attention from the damp thud of the soil being piled back into Marie's grave and her bouquet of flowers seemed unnecessarily gaudy.

‘I'm sorry I was late. I had an appointment, at the doctor's. I couldn't make the Mass.' She was bright. ‘It's good to see you again, Sister Bernard. Poor Sister Marie.'

Thérèse was ahead of them, making her way through the long rows of clean stones. ‘She had a long life. And happy – blessed,' she said, turning.

‘She was a saintly one, they say,' said Corinne.

Bernard closed her eyes momentarily so that it might all pass.

‘And you, too. You helped her with great patience, I know, Sister Bernard,' said Corinne. ‘It's not easy looking after someone like that. It's a great strain.'

Nothing like this had ever been said before. Bernard stopped walking. The crisp light slanted shadows from the gravestones, cutting geometrics into the short grass. Corinne stepped across one of the sharp squares and laid her hand lightly on Bernard's arm.

She smiled. ‘Have you got time to come back with us for a meal, Sister?' she asked. ‘I could drop you back at Les Cèdres later.'

Bernard remembered the block of apartments she had seen from the minibus window, the drapes at the windows, neat and fresh, and the revelation of another way of living,
the unexpected craving. She shook her head.

‘I have to go back,' she said. ‘They wouldn't like me to stay out. They're quite strict.'

‘But surely this once, Sister Bernard…'

It was Thérèse this time who shook her head.

‘We shouldn't upset things,' she said briskly. And then, more gently, smiling. ‘We wouldn't want to land her in trouble.'

Corinne took Bernard's hand. The offence of such sudden intimacy flushed Bernard's cheeks red; she went to pull away. But Corinne's skin next to her own was warm, a solace, and tentatively, Bernard pressed against it, the slightest of movements, as though everything might shatter.

Corinne felt the pressure and squeezed back. Then she let Bernard's hand fall.

‘Well, I'm sorry, Sister,' she said, smiling. ‘It would have been nice. We'll have to do it another time, that's all.'

‘We'll drop you back,' said Thérèse. ‘On the way.'

Bernard looked out across the graveyard. The studs of tall monuments drew her gaze away to where plastic bouquets of flowers were piled by the far wall, their anxious colours fading. Corinne and Thérèse started towards the car, but Bernard did not move; she was afraid to. Everything ahead of her was hateful, the sameness, the stupefying loneliness, the terror of waiting for Veronique and yearning for her.

Corinne turned. ‘Are you all right, Sister? Can I help?'

Bernard pushed at her veil. ‘You said… could I come… you invited…' she began, wanting to change things, but her voice was faint and Corinne, searching for her keys in
her pocket and waving an arm towards Thérèse to direct her to the right parking place, heard nothing but breathy discomfort.

‘You'll be fine,' she said brightly. ‘You've been out in the cold too long, that's all. And it's upsetting, a funeral. It's always upsetting.'

She took a step or two back towards Bernard and stretched out a hand.

‘Come on. We'll have you home very soon.'

Bernard did not take Corinne's hand this time. ‘Yes,' she said.

Thérèse's fury was unstoppable.

‘Why? Why did you invite her? She might have come.'

‘Of course she might have come. That's what I wanted. That's why I asked her.'

Corinne laughed slightly. The soles of their shoes, squeaking on the soft plastic floor of the apartment block's underground car park, echoed the sound of her laugh, making it seem more than it was.

Thérèse stiffened. ‘I don't see why,' she said. ‘I still don't.'

‘She looked sad. And cold. And lonely. I thought it might be nice.'

Corinne pulled open the heavy green door that led into the building, and they climbed up to the apartment without speaking. Thérèse had never felt so miserable. The unholiness of it shocked her.

‘We can't abandon her,' said Corinne finally, unlocking the apartment door and holding it open for her friend to pass ahead.

They hung their coats neatly in the hallway. Walking through to the bright sitting room they brushed against Claude's pot plant and the pink flower heads danced.

‘You wouldn't want that, would you?'

Corinne eased into a wide armchair with a puff and slipped her feet from her shoes. Thérèse did not sit down. She walked to the window, tugging back the curtain to look down onto the street.

‘Really,' she said, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘I don't understand. You suggest I come here, to live with you, because Sister Bernard is – I don't know – unworthy. Unworthy of my sacrifice, if that's what it is. I'd be better off here, with you, than making my life a misery for someone who, well, has sinned. So much; who has sinned so much. That's what you said, as good as. And now, now you—'

Corinne sighed. ‘Sinned, Sister Thérèse. Exactly. Aren't we meant to forgive a sinner?'

‘Forgive the sinner, of course, yes. Forgive the sinner.' It came out flat, without meaning. ‘But this I don't understand.' Thérèse let the curtain fall. There was a pause. ‘Oh, I don't know – what you say. That's right. I know that's right.' She fiddled with the chain round her neck, running it through her fingers. ‘I don't understand why I feel that I can't… that I can't forgive her. That I hate her.'

She had never spoken such a word. It displaced her, threw her back many years to an indistinct past, with Mother Catherine prowling and the convent locked after dark and the intensity of their shared lives shut in with the dimming light.

‘I shouldn't hate her,' she said, bewildered. ‘I never
hated her before. I never hated anyone before – I'm sure I didn't. I don't understand.'

Corinne smiled. ‘You don't hate her. It's just a hard day, a funeral. You've lost another of your sisters and now, well, there's not many of you left. Just the two of you. You must feel that.'

‘I suppose so.'

‘It's all been a lot, a big change. You'll be weary.'

Thérèse nodded. But the weariness had always been there, threatening. It was not that.

‘I'll make us something to eat,' said Corinne. ‘And we'll have an early night. That's all it needs – you'll see.'

Thérèse watched her go through to the small kitchen and a few minutes later she smelt the rich smokiness of slightly burnt butter. She followed through and stood for a while on the threshold, her hands twisted tightly together, watching, imagining the clinks and spits and shuffles of cooking in the small, closed space. She saw the bend of Corinne's back as she leant over the gas flame and the anger was inexplicably strong in her again, prickling and stinging, alive.

‘You were pleased, though, weren't you, when I found out what Sister Bernard had done?' she asked sharply.

Corinne was concentrating on turning slices of fish in a pan and could not, for a moment, understand. She turned and flapped her spatula lightly in the air.

‘What?'

‘When I found out – at the Armistice memorial. When they told me about how she betrayed the Resistance, getting those people killed. Because – you know… because she was with the soldier.'

Corinne was busy with the pan. She did not look up. Only when she had slid the fillets onto plates and turned off the heat did she let herself speak.

‘It was good that you knew. I thought that was important,' she said. She was puzzled at something in Thérèse's face. ‘I don't know. I thought it was time for everything to come out, in the open. For everyone's sake.'

‘Yes, I thought so,' said Thérèse.

Just before dark one of the staff knocked gently at Bernard's room. There was no answer. The nurse pushed the door open just enough to see inside. Bernard was kneeling by the side of her bed, her head dropped forwards to rest on the counterpane. Thinking that the old nun might have fallen asleep, and accustomed to the contorted positions of the elderly at prayer, the nurse left her quietly.

Bernard, listening hard, heard her come and go but did not move. She heard the door close. She heard the scrape of chairs being pulled towards the television in the room below and the sudden burst of sound as someone switched on the set. She heard shuffling zimmer-framed footsteps in the corridor and the heating system buzzing. She heard a metallic clank somewhere, and she thought she heard the brush of the breeze against her closed window and the fall of the night, like the breathy beat of moth wings. But no matter how hard she listened, she did not hear God. And she would have given her life then to catch a word, a whisper, a grunt; anything to suggest that she was not alone.

In her small, pink room, Thérèse was studying a guide to the Mediterranean coast. The apartment was quiet;
Corinne had gone to bed nearly an hour earlier. All the lights were out except the bedside light by which Thérèse was reading. She had not yet said her night prayers.