Obedience (25 page)

At one end the church was built straight into the cliff, like some kind of cave. Squat white candles were banked up against the rough-hewn wall, hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, Bernard could not be sure. This was all she saw at first, the immense glow of them, like a winter moon, and each individual blink of flame a promise of something.

She started as Corinne took her arm.

‘It's better further in. Come further in, Sister,' said Corinne, tugging gently. She didn't like this part of the church, too much like the ancient dolmens and menhirs that intruded everywhere in the countryside, inexplicable and godless. ‘The guide's gone up towards the altar.'

Bernard followed tentatively up the wide nave, the church opening around her, no longer a cave but something crafted, sculpted, the stones in clean neat lines and the vaulted roof glistening with colour. The soaring arches, the delicate chiselled decoration, the faces of the saints peering, grinning and glowering from above and behind, the purity of light filtering through the high windows, all this struck her with a dense physicality which made it impossible to stand. Her knees shook as she began to understand how the God who presided over this gloriously elegant temple, its massive heavenly spaces and its sheltered nooks of intense
prayer, could be so impatient and demanding with her poor efforts. She began to understand why He had cajoled and pushed and punished her so fiercely; how He was, finally, so disgusted and disillusioned with her weakness that He could not find it in Himself to talk to her.

She stumbled. ‘I can't…' she whispered.

They came and helped her, Corinne and the guide, Thérèse just behind them and one of the men doubling back from a side chapel. She was not sure if she had fallen. It felt like falling. But they had her held up in the end, and the guide unlocked a side door so that they could take her straight through to the cloisters. They put a coat on the stone benches that ran under the arches and helped her to sit. It was gently done.

‘I think you'll be fine in a minute or two, Sister,' said the guide. Visitors had been overcome with the greatness of God before. He was not surprised. ‘We'll carry on through the church, the rest of us, and come back to you here. It'll give you a minute to yourself, to get your breath back.'

And they must have gone away again, back through the little door, because it was unflinchingly silent.

Bernard sat still. She felt the intense cold of the old stone even through the coat and her thick habit but she did not move. She could not be sure if time was passing. It seemed to her as if this might be eternity, in this motionless silence.

But Corinne came back to fetch her. She linked an arm through Bernard's, trying to raise her; Bernard was rooted to the seat.

‘You'll be cold, Sister.'

Bernard's voice was tiny. ‘Why was the convent never like this?'

Corinne thought the convent had been like this in many ways.

‘So quiet,' Bernard said.

Corinne looked around. ‘Perhaps it's something to do with the valley. You know, the dip of it… or, or the weather.'

‘It seems so holy. The quiet here is so beautiful,' Bernard said. ‘A thing from God.'

A figure in a habit moved rapidly across the far corner of the cloisters, like the dart of a shadow.

‘We'll have to go soon, Sister,' said Corinne. ‘They don't let you stay on, after the tour. It's only for the monks, most of the time.'

‘God stopped talking to me,' said Bernard. ‘It made things seem very quiet. I liked it, at first. Just at first. Then I… this is quite different.'

Corinne placed an arm on Bernard's shoulder.

‘At first,' repeated Bernard, ‘the quiet was a relief. Everything seemed better for it. Calmer.'

‘Perhaps it was God's way of bringing you peace.'

Bernard shook her head.

‘He just went away,' she said. ‘It's not peace. This here – this is God's peace. This is Him not having to say anything, like He's smiling, you know – smiling so widely that He can't talk.' She looked at Corinne, and smiled too, but biting her lip until the smile faded. ‘What I have is… not holy. It's like having nothing.'

Corinne rubbed her cold hands together. She did not know where to begin.

‘God spoke to you, Sister? You mean when you prayed you felt something, His presence? You mean He offered you signs?'

‘No,' said Bernard sadly. ‘He spoke to me all the time. He told me everything.'

‘But that can't be true.'

‘Not any more,' said Bernard.

Corinne crouched, facing Bernard, seeing the nun's head and veil as if cut out against the dark stone behind. Bernard did not move. She let Corinne stare at her.

‘Tell me again, Sister, about God, about hearing God,' pressed Corinne, her eyes fixed on Bernard's flat face. ‘It could be a mistake, in the way we talk about it. I don't think God is the same for everyone.' She was alarmed by the fleeting sense that this was radical theology. ‘I mean, hearing Him is probably not the same for everyone. He speaks differently to all of us, I'm sure. It could just be that.'

She wanted this to be right.

‘It seems so long ago,' said Bernard.

‘But what was it like?'

‘Like you talking to me now, I suppose.'

‘Clear, like that – and close, and personal?'

‘Oh yes, very clear,' said Bernard. ‘Very close.' She looked back at the crouching woman in front of her for the first time. ‘Do you think it was something particular I did that made Him stop?' she asked. ‘One thing? Or everything? Just Him getting tired of me?'

Corinne groaned. She slid onto one knee, balancing herself, letting her head drop.

‘Oh, Sister Bernard,' she said quietly.

Bernard did not answer. She watched a robin flit along the edge of the cloister wall, tripping through the pillared stripes of light and dark. It came up close to them before flying off.

‘I'm sorry, Sister – about the fuss at Armistice.' Corinne looked up as she spoke, but her eyes would not settle on Bernard's face. ‘About making you go to the service like that. I really am. I'm sorry. About Les Cèdres, too… about everything.'

She shook her head, trying to clear the confusion. Everything she had thought about Bernard was muddled. She looked finally at the foolish face of the old nun, its wrinkles expressionless, and she wondered whether she had made a mistake, after all.

‘Perhaps it's just age,' she said, doubting.

Bernard was not listening. She was seeing again the splendour of the abbey church. Over and over, all her life, she had been surrounded by the God of harvests, of fields meshed with hedges, of the birth and sickness and fear and death of small people, the God of everyday deeds. What she saw now was the huge, silent, unhuman proof of His towering, timeless divinity.

‘The quiet here is not like my quiet,' she said, making it final.

‘No, Sister.' Corinne felt she had no choice but to agree. She stood up stiffly and pulled away, looking out across the cloisters. She realized that they did not know each other.

‘We have to go out through the garden,' said Corinne. ‘And double back to the car.'

Bernard knew that if she had come here sooner, her life would have been different. It was too late now and she pulled herself from the cold stone, defeated.

‘It's such a beautiful church,' she said.

*

On the third day after the trip, Bernard still had not taken her place at any meal except breakfast where she had steadfastly refused everything except one portion of bread, taken with a small cup of coffee. The staff felt obliged to intervene.

‘I'm on a diet,' Bernard explained to the duty matron. Sitting in the bright office, she was confused for a moment. It could have been the Mother Superior's study. It could have been a warmer, brighter day with the sun edging round the ill-fitting shutters and the scrape of crickets in the grass outside.

‘At your age,' explained the duty matron patiently, ‘it is generally thought that dieting is not necessary. In fact, not healthy. Did you know that, Sister Bernard?'

Bernard did not reply.

‘Is there any particular reason why you wanted to diet?' She tried to skim read the small folder of Bernard's notes which was open on her desk. There was nothing much there, a few matter-of-fact lines reporting Bernard's arrival and blood pressure levels, and a note about her tendency to wander, especially at night. There was no medical history.

‘I don't want to eat too much.'

‘You're hardly eating anything at all, Sister.'

‘The Lord ate nothing for forty days and forty nights,' pointed out Bernard.

‘He was not ninety-three.'

Bernard ignored this. ‘It clears the mind,' she explained. ‘Jesus went into the desert to find God. To be alone with God. And he fasted.' Bernard knew this for sure because she had checked it a few days previously in her Bible.

‘I hope you're not comparing Les Cèdres to the desert!'
said the duty matron without smiling, only her tone scrubbed bright.

Bernard said nothing.

The duty matron sighed.

‘Well then, how about we make a deal?' she said. ‘How about we work out a diet sheet for you, so that you can diet and we can be reassured that you're getting all the nutritional values you need?'

Bernard wanted to try living on bread and coffee. When she had mastered this she would fast entirely. That way God would come back to her. She shrugged.

‘OK then,' said the duty matron, undeterred. ‘I'll speak to someone and get back to you. In the meantime, I think you should come to every meal. Just eat what you can. The food's very good, you know.'

Later that evening, Bernard was hungry. She offered her hunger up to God, who accepted it without comment. At supper she sat at her usual place, silently, and prayed while those around her ate. When the fruit tray was served, she was tempted by a ripe, red pear. She even took it off the tray and held it for a moment, warm, in her hand. A tiny drop of juice, thick with sugar, glinted in the dip where the stem sank into the fruit.

‘A beauty, that,' said the man next to her.

‘A temptation from the devil,' said Bernard, putting the pear on the floor and crushing it as best she could beneath her shoe. The man blinked and looked away, beginning to peel his apple slowly.

The next day, Bernard felt weak. Things about her were hazy and unbalanced, they would not stay still. But it felt as though sin was draining from her, leaching away, and
she was glad. It was also Saturday, the day she had marked down for Veronique's visit. Now her granddaughter would come. As the early light sank through Bernard's window and the cars started outside, taking the night staff home, Bernard tidied her room, wiping round with wet tissue; she brushed every crease of her old habit with care. She wanted to be ready.

But Veronique was lying in bed with her left arm trapped uncomfortably beneath the stomach of the postman, thinking of their walk together the evening before under the chilled unerring stars, the grip of their gloved hands and their kiss by the freezing river.

Her tears came undemonstratively, because she could not explain them to the postman, and she concentrated on tracing the twining patterns in her curtains, seeing, for the first time, how the print was lined up incorrectly at one edge. When the postman stirred, she looked across at him, wiping her arm against her eyes to smudge the signs of her weeping. The squashed particularity of his face seemed a comfort to her, and she leant across to stroke his cheek. Sleepily he took hold of her and rolled her towards him, pulling her close, and they lay together for a long time, waking to each other, before he let the temptation of her overwhelm him. They giggled during sex, unsure of how else to be together. Veronique never dreamt it was the kind of loving that would leave her pregnant.

Bernard sat on the edge of her bed, trying not to crease the cover. She prayed for Veronique. She tried every prayer she knew several times. She spent a long time in conversation with her own Saint Bernard who beamed at her a toothless smile. She called on the intervention of
the Virgin. She even, for good measure, recited in a quiet steady monotone the words of the Mass, as far as she could remember them. She took a pin from a fold in the hem of her handkerchief and pushed it hard many times into the scarred pad at the tip of her thumb, sucking the blood when it came so that it would not smudge on any of her clothes. By the time she had finished her devotions, the morning was well advanced and someone was knocking hard on her door, trying to rouse her.

After several fruitless knocks the young staff nurse entered. Bernard had never seen him before.

‘Are you all right, Sister? We thought it might be time for you to be up and about,' he said gently.

Bernard turned to look at him. The room swayed unsteadily. She jammed her hands hard on the bed and peered. He was slender, but less drawn than most of the young people who scuttled about the corridors.

‘Are you all right?' he asked again.

‘I'm praying.'

‘I see. Would you like to come downstairs and pray? You could use the chapel.'

He did not wait for an answer, but stepped forwards and took Bernard by the arm. She thought he was going to lift her right up. She yelped.

‘Don't worry.' He was laughing. ‘I'm just giving you a hand. I won't hurt you.' He stepped back. The old nun was dishevelled and slightly bloody, her habit skewed and her veil grubby. He smiled at her. ‘Look, how about I run some water for you, and you can have a wash and sort yourself out and I'll come back in a few minutes to check you're OK?'

‘I can do it all myself,' said Bernard.

‘Of course you can. Think of it as a Saturday treat.'

Less than ten minutes later, the knocking was repeated. The young man came in as Bernard began to invite him. She had washed her face and hands and straightened her clothes. She was sitting again on the edge of the bed.