Obedience (23 page)

When she held it up against her, it had swirled and danced and people had smiled at her. Her father was smiling at her, too, as she twirled with it under the canvas shelter of the stall; she had assumed it was hers. So it had been a shock when he had said she could not have it. Sitting now in the cool silence of the church, she remembered exactly the way she had looked up at him in surprise, thinking he might be joking. But more than this, she remembered how, barely ten minutes later, they had jostled through the bottleneck of shoppers passing from one square to another under the huge stone canopy at the entrance to the parish church, and they had seen a cluster of nuns behind a small white-clothed table covered in unlabelled pots of jam and lopsided tarts, laid out for sale. And her father, without a moment's thought, had reached across for two swollen tomatoes and, in return, had given the nuns a donation almost three times the cost of Veronique's beautiful summer dress. The nuns had been only moderately thankful. She remembered the
gentle dip of their heads as they took the money, and her father's heavy hands around the ripe tomatoes.

Veronique sighed out loud, and surprised herself. She felt the sudden grip of grief for her father and in a moment it came on her so suddenly that she could hardly breathe. She remembered everything about him, as though he were alongside her, the smell of tobacco in his hair and clothes, the freckles dark on one side of his nose, the way his hands would tremble sometimes when he tried to be still, the astonishing softness of his breathing, and she wanted to cry out, to cry for him, to make him turn to her, bright and smiling and alive. She wanted to make him buy the dress for her, so that she could twirl for him, as she would have done then, on that holiday morning that had been spoilt by the nuns.

For the first time, Veronique mourned her father. Everything was confused, her anger with him, her disappointment, her contempt for his clumsiness and foolishness, her absolute faith in him, unshaken, her longing. She shivered, feeling the coldness of the pew through her skirt. She leant forwards, resting her head on her arms, trying to make sense of things, but it was all barbed and tangled, and the more she struggled, the more the pain pulled at her.

‘Please, God,' she whispered into the fold of her arms.

But nothing happened, despite her prayer, and she sat for a long time, bent over in the soft quiet of the church. Only when someone else came in, letting the door fall shut with a gentle bump, did Veronique move. She looked behind towards the noise. Seeing a man genuflecting a few yards behind her, his head bowed low and his hat held to
his side, she blushed, suddenly embarrassed. She felt she was intruding. By the time he had straightened again, she was already past him, pushing the door open onto the street and breathing the cold air with relief.

Bernard's knees were so sore from a night bent on the floor that they buckled when she tried to stand and she had to edge herself around the room in a kind of ungainly squat using the furniture to support herself. In the course of the previous fourteen hours, she had thumbed her way through six rosaries, recited three full litanies of saints, and intoned the Lord's Prayer many times. She had, around four in the morning, cried out so forlornly for some kind of divine attention that the man in the room next door thought that her soul must at last have been freed by the Holy Spirit and he had offered a curt prayer for her peaceful repose.

But neither the pain nor the praying had done any good. Nor had the intercession of her neighbour. There was still no sign of God.

Bernard had been taught that everything testified to the presence of God, every flower that budded, every child's smile, every stranger's outstretched hand. Each of life's trials was a sign of His infinite desire to help her grow; each of life's triumphs a sign of His glorious benevolence. But this morning there were only her sore knees, the gathering clouds on the horizon and a dense ache in her stomach, and these seemed to belong to her alone, to mean nothing. She stretched, easing the pain through her body. She wondered how long she could go on like this, waiting, abandoned. The day gaped ahead of
her, unremitting, and she wished she knew how to make herself sleep.

The refectory was already busy. Small fresh flowers were dotted about in vases on the tables and the window facing the elegant cedars was open. The birdsong was faint, depressed by the shuffling within. The peculiar smell of breakfast, of harsh coffee and death retreating with the daylight, drifted out into the corridors, greeting Bernard. She sniffed at it, unsurprised, and took her usual place at table. She ate diligently, hardly looking up from her plate except to take more bread. She could not be sure whether she was hungry.

Bernard waited, dozing, for something to happen. She waited for Veronique to arrive, expecting any moment to hear a car draw up outside on the gravel. She waited for someone to come and tell her that there was a telephone call. She waited for the post to be sorted and slipped into the pigeonholes near the front desk. She waited for the rain to begin. But none of these things happened and in time she was the only person left sitting in the refectory. Someone asked her if she was all right.

‘I am,' she said.

She sat for many hours at the abandoned dining table with the sound of the first heavy drops of rain audible, at last, as they slapped onto the dry ground beneath the trees outside the window, waiting for her granddaughter to arrive to visit her, listening out for the whisper of God. She tried to remember how things had ended up like this. Something hung faintly for a moment at the back of her mind, as though it might be an answer, but it came to nothing. It was hard to be clear which memories were
really hers, untrammelled, and which she had prayed and dreamt. When Veronique arrived, things would become clearer.

Veronique was sitting in her small, windowless office at the back of the nursing home. She could not concentrate on the pleasure of the neat new rota, hand drawn in five colours, ready to be pinned to the staff noticeboard. She was worrying about the nun. Going over and over in her head what had been said at Sister Marie's funeral, she understood that some kind of contract had been made. But she could not think about Bernard without horror. And she didn't know what to do.

She lit up and smoked determinedly. She answered a call from someone trying to sell her a new laundry contract. She swivelled in her chair and took a file to a rough edge of nail on the index finger of her right hand. She checked her emails. But none of this was satisfying. The day was ragged already, uncontained. Its rhythm was spoilt. Bernard was still there, nagging.

She knew it could not go on. She did not want the nun distracting and upsetting her. When she went to add up the monthly groceries bill, she stumbled over simple sums and had to recalculate the total several times before it tallied. When she closed her eyes, even for the slightest of moments, her father was imprinted on the darkness, tiny and distant, nothing more than a brittle stick figure, but somehow unhappy and accusatory. It was too much. Veronique wanted the matter properly finished, so that there could be no doubt. She had to settle her life again, confirming how it should be.

In the end, she chose to write a letter. Somehow she could not do this on her computer, as she normally would, so she took several minutes choosing a pen from her desk drawer and neatly folding a piece of blank paper in half, diminishing its emptiness.

I'm not sure what to write to you about
, she began.
I don't want us to carry on with this. I'm not going to come and see you at Les Cèdres
.

Veronique thought about the little old nun opening the letter, reading these first few lines.

That doesn't mean I'm not pleased to have found you. I have a grandmother, of course, though she's dead now, but still it's nice to know a little more about my family
.

She lit another cigarette without looking, reading back over what she had written in her looping hand. Could she stop there? Would the nun think it rude, worse perhaps than nothing at all? She fiddled with her pen, clicking the nib in and out.

My father was sorry, I think, that you never replied to his letter, all that time ago. He really meant you to get in touch. But if you don't reply to this, I'll understand. I don't suppose there's much to say
.

She sat back and it was a long time before she began again.

I heard him mention his letter a few times when I was small, though not so much after that. I suppose he forgot about you
. She crossed this out immediately and changed it.
I suppose he forgot about it
.

She began to wish she had used the computer so that she could make corrections. She would have to rely on the old nun's eyesight being too poor to trace the letters
of the words she had crossed out. Just to make sure she added a few more lines, zigzagging them into dense patterns.

He even went once to the convent. He had been waiting for the reply. I don't know exactly how long, but a long time I would think. He was a patient man usually. Anyway, he told us how he went to the convent to try to see you. Did you know this? Did anyone ever tell you? They were quite helpful, I think. They even took him to the Mother Superior, so that he could tell her all about it. But after that, when he'd spoken to her, he didn't go through with it – in the end it was too much, I suppose. He got too nervous, perhaps. Anyway, he left without talking to you. I don't know whether he saw you or not, he never said, just that, right at the last moment, he thought it might not have been such a good idea, after all. I don't think he bothered much about it after that
.

Veronique tried to imagine her father at the convent, waiting as she had done on the wide porch as the clatter of the doorbell ebbed away. She thought of the tap of his shoes on the marble floor of the hallway, and the corridor closing around him. She understood that he might have been suddenly uncertain, intimidated even. But, try as she might, she could not imagine how it had ended. She pictured him there, poised, expectant, being led through the sticky brown shadows to tell his story, but she could not see him after that. Nothing would come. She could not think how he might have felt; he had never seemed to her a disappointed man.

She read back through the letter and wondered if this was the sort of thing the nun wanted. She had finished the second cigarette.

If there's anything you want to know, you could write, I suppose, but as I said before, there's not much to say. I don't have much to tell. I don't mind you writing
.

She tried not to think of the need to smoke.

But I don't want to go on writing for ever. If you put all your questions into one letter then I'll do my best to reply. I'll be as honest as I can. Then that'll be it. No more after that. Would you like a photo? Perhaps I'll send you a photo of us all, when Dad was still alive. I'll ask my mother if she has one. I'll send it when I reply to your questions, if you have any
.

She thought about tearing up the letter and starting again but she did not quite have the energy for this.

I used to think about you sometimes when I was little
.

This was harder. She did not want to have to write about herself. And the nun she had thought of as a child was a distraction, a beautiful young girl with golden hair and soft doe eyes, with the voice of angels and the ear of God, her lost grandmother.

I used to see nuns in church and it would remind me. I wondered what it would be like to be a nun. Once, at school, I told my teacher I had three grandmothers (they were all alive then, of course, the real two and you) and I got told off. It was the first time I'd ever really been told off. That's why I remember it. It felt unfair. I tried to tell them about you. I said one of my grandmothers was a nun who had had a baby and given it away. But they were furious. They sent me home. My mother said it was best not to mention it again. And after that, as I got older, I suppose, I understood that it wasn't the best thing to go around saying
.

The bohemian charm of the third grandmother had simply eroded; it had not been enough to keep her interest. It was merely an odd family fact, an unimportant quirk of
history, something she had grown out of. She had never been told Bernard's name nor what Bernard looked like. She had no idea what kind of age Bernard might be and chose not to work it out. She knew nothing at all about the old nun. This seemed right.

I'm sure if we'd had the chance to know each other, it would have been nice. But now I think it's best left. Anyway, that's all I have to say. I hope you enjoy reading my letter. I hope you are settled in well now at Les Cèdres. I hear it is a good place. If you are going to write, with your questions, please do it soon. I don't want this to drag on
.

Veronique took a deep breath and read back slowly through the whole of her letter. In the end, she was pleased with it. It was exactly what she wanted, firm and reasonably friendly, opaque. She offered her best wishes, signed the final sheet, folded the letter neatly and put it in an envelope. She knew the address of Les Cèdres by heart, but, oddly, was not sure of the nun's name. She could not quite remember now how she had been introduced. At the time, she hadn't been paying attention. She put the letter to one side until she could check the name somehow.

At half past eleven, the postman called. He had a package. She saw him through the pocked glass of her office window and came to the threshold to meet him, holding back the open door with one foot.

‘You have to sign,' he said. He held the slim parcel out to her with both hands, an offering, and smiled at a point somewhere near her knees.

‘I'll find a pen.'

Veronique stood for a moment without moving, then she turned back into her office. The door swung closed
softly. The postman waited on the other side and when she came back out to him, he put the parcel gently and neatly on the seat of the chair that was pulled up by the door to her office, standing back when the short ceremony was finished and pushing his hands hard into his pockets. They both looked at the parcel for a while.