Obedience (27 page)

Before Thérèse had time to say anything or to reach across the aisle to Bernard, even before the reverberations of the first cry had quite died away into the soft carpet and long curtains, there came another, and then, quickly, another and another. They poured out of Bernard as though out of a much larger and younger woman. They had nothing of the frailty of age about them. They echoed around the altar, not now as single cries, not involuntary yelps of pain or triumph, but as a conversation held at full volume, a slanging match, a full-blown row. Bernard was shouting at God.

She was gripping hard at the pew in front of her, and her face was knotted by each cry, but otherwise she hardly moved. All her energy was in her voice. Thérèse found it difficult to make out what was being said. The volume and tone wavered. Her damaged hearing caught sometimes single words, sometimes parts of phrases slung at the altar, sometimes only the shell of sounds. In between there were short silences, stuffed full of Bernard's anger. It was these which shocked Thérèse most.

The noise seemed everywhere. Thérèse could not believe that all the staff had not been brought running, that the lavender glass in the windows had not shattered, the roof come tumbling down to bury them all. Bernard got louder, shrieking her fury and despair, stony-faced and dry-eyed, her gaze fixed on the crucifix above the
altar. Thérèse held back; she did not know how she could begin to interrupt. She was no part of this. All she could do was watch as Bernard yelled, hearing in her head the reassurance she would give when she had the chance, the beautiful texts that bore the timeless comfort of God, how He had formed Bernard in the warmth of her mother's womb, chosen her as a child, called her with joy to be His servant.

Thérèse felt the slide of tears. Her grip, too, was tight on the pew now, and she dipped her head away from Bernard. The flurry of verses had faltered to an end; she could not think of any more. And they were not enough. As Bernard's rage began to subside, her voice growling, the words coming wearily, Thérèse knew that she could find nothing to say to the old nun. The passion she had seen there in the chapel, hurled at the altar with such rage, was unassailable. It was something sublime; something she could not understand and could barely imagine. Thérèse remembered, as she always would, the intimidating grandeur of it, and knew that anything she said to Bernard was too slight and equivocal. She had never known God as Bernard must know Him; she had never felt Him so real. She pushed herself up from the pew and turned to leave.

Bernard's head swayed and her chin dropped. Thérèse's sudden movement finally distracted her and she looked across, unsurprised and unquestioning. Thérèse, not quite out of her pew, begrudged Bernard the exhaustion she saw on her face and could only go on as if nothing unusual had happened.

‘We're off on our holiday, Corinne and I,' she said. ‘We just wanted to call by on our way.'

Bernard nodded.

‘Are you well, Sister?'

‘They say I'm not,' said Bernard. ‘But I feel well enough.'

‘But they're worried?'

‘They sent the doctor.'

‘What did he say?'

‘Nothing,' said Bernard.

Thérèse was supposed to ask about symptoms and report back, she knew that. But it seemed unimportant now. The old nun had prevailed. Thérèse had seen from her how to call out to God, how to battle with Him, flaunting the rawness of need. She could hardly breathe at the thought of it. What she had was frail beside it, a life of whispered prayer, inconspicuous and peaceable, a compromise.

‘How do you feel, though, in yourself, Sister?' she said, the words tight and flat.

‘You mean am I miserable? They say I am. They say I'm depressed.' Bernard pulled herself from her knees and sat on the pew.

Thérèse breathed long and low, trying to still the way her thoughts rushed.

‘Yes, Sister,' was all she said at first.

Bernard dropped her head. ‘He has forsaken me,' she said, matter-of-factly.

It was all confusion, a clamour of disappointment and longing. Thérèse wanted to hug Bernard, and to shake her, to cling to her in some way, letting the tremors of those echoed cries vibrate through her, too. But she stood back.

‘You're very close to God, Sister, I'm sure,' she said.

Bernard looked hard at her deaf friend. She noticed that Thérèse's lipstick was slightly smudged above her top lip, that she was wearing an elegantly buttoned blue coat and that she was smiling too benignly, as if they were strangers. But she could not tell whether or not she was lying.

‘How can you be sure?'

Thérèse drew her hands together, as if to begin a prayer. ‘It's just something you have…' There was no way of explaining it. ‘You have the look of it, I suppose,' she said. ‘Of someone blessed.'

To both of them, this was ridiculous. Bernard got up unsteadily, moving out into the aisle where she genuflected uncomfortably, with the pop of cracking bones. Slowly they walked together back towards the glass door; Thérèse felt so much that she had failed.

‘Did you know you have a granddaughter, a woman who lives here in town, the young woman who came that one afternoon when we were moving and took Sister Marie's bag away to the nursing home?'

It came out in a rush, breathless, a solution to something, but Bernard did not pause, nor turn to look at Thérèse.

‘Yes, I know,' she said.

Thérèse had not expected this. She didn't believe it.

‘I thought it might be a comfort to you to have some family, to know of someone. I thought if you were unwell, perhaps you would like us to let her know. Perhaps she could come here and visit you. No one need know who she is. She could be a friend. She could come with me – as a friend.'

‘I'm not unwell,' said Bernard. ‘I'm seeing the doctor again tonight they say, and I shall tell him not to come again after that.'

She pulled open the glass door and they passed out into the corridor.

‘And anyway,' she said, ‘she's due to visit in a day or two. I'd expected her before now. I've been waiting.'

Thérèse sighed. ‘Well, you should think about, you know, having someone close to you. Since I didn't come with you; since I'm not here.'

Bernard was too dazed to hear the apology. ‘She's coming – I'm expecting her soon.'

Thérèse bent and kissed Bernard lightly. ‘God bless you, Sister,' she said quietly, not hearing her own words.

As she walked away towards the entrance hall, she saw Corinne sitting idly swinging her feet by the door and it came back to her, their journey together and the idea of the hotel, the promise of the sea. But her excitement was dented. She felt a craving to stay, to sit with Bernard in the lavendered chapel and learn how to pray with her, to rest there. She felt that the past might be retrievable somehow, unspoilt. She stopped for a moment, almost turned. But Corinne looked up. She waved, hardly smiling. Thérèse lifted one hand to signal back and went on.

Bernard left the chapel the other way to return to her room. Her throat was strained and chafed, prickling sore. She put her hand to it, surprised. She could not think how it could have happened. She thought it might be some kind of punishment, but without God to tell her, she did not know.

*

They reached the coast about an hour after dark. They had kept the heater on in the car all the way and were startled by the cold when they stepped out into the quiet street behind the park. Thérèse was immediately disappointed.

‘I can't smell it,' she said.

Corinne, who was trying to take their bags out of the boot with one hand while rewinding her scarf closer to her neck with the other, was momentarily puzzled.

‘You can't smell what?'

‘The sea, of course. I can't smell the sea.'

All Thérèse could smell was greasy drains and her own sweat, the hot metal of the car exhaling into the dark. Somewhere, perhaps, a hint of pine but she could not be sure if this was natural.

‘Perhaps the tide's out,' suggested Corinne reasonably. ‘And there's no wind. That might make a difference.'

She was tired with driving and wanted to go inside.

‘Perhaps there's no smell, after all,' said Thérèse.

Corinne ignored this. She finished with the bags and they made the short walk along back streets to the hotel. It was neat and clean and the proprietor friendly as he showed them up the narrow stairs to their room. The curtains were still open and Thérèse threw her bag on the bed and went to look out. Mostly she could see streetlights, house roofs and parked cars. Here and there were the darker masses of trees or the bright lights of unshuttered windows. There was a deep blackness beyond that could have been the sea.

‘What can you see?' asked Corinne.

‘Nothing much.'

Corinne came alongside her and they both stood for several minutes looking out at the strange-familiar view.

‘Dinner?' asked Corinne.

‘I think so. Just let me freshen up.'

They both had a glass of wine before their meal, to celebrate the start of their holiday, and another when the main course was served. The hotel dining room had been divided in half for the quieter winter season and one part of it closed off with heavy curtains. Thérèse and Corinne were given a table between the curtains and a large palm. The waitress came and lit a small candle in a jar. A sprinkling of Christmas lights sparkled across the doorway to the adjacent bar and a single foil snowflake hung orange from the lampshade over the homemade desserts. There was something fragile and exotic about it.

They were both hungry. They ate energetically and quietly. The food was good.

‘I bet,' said Corinne, as they were coming to the end of their main course, ‘I bet that a year ago, even half a year ago, you would never have thought you would be here, doing this, with me. You see, getting thrown out of the convent was a good thing.'

‘It's certainly changed things.'

‘God knows best,' said Corinne.

There was a pause.

‘The trouble is,' said Thérèse, as she mopped up the last of her sauce with bread, ‘I don't feel quite like a nun any more.'

Corinne smiled. She looked at the almost glamorous woman across the table from her. Thérèse's cardigan, though discreet, was not any shade of grey.

‘You don't look like a nun, either. Does that matter?'

Thérèse was beginning to think it might. It might all be part of the same thing.

‘I think so,' she said.

‘It's only nerves,' said Corinne, ‘your first holiday. You'll be fine. Tomorrow we'll walk along the seafront before breakfast and you'll be fine. You're just on holiday. It doesn't change who you are. Not for long, anyway.'

She pushed her empty plate away from the edge of the table and sat back.

‘My first holiday without my parents was a weekend's fishing with a boyfriend I had when I was nineteen. He was rich. Nobody had holidays then. Certainly not in hotels. I thought it was the most thrilling thing. I thought I was in love. Then after half a day I thought I'd die of boredom. Sitting there with him in the cold while he fished, the worms and the maggots, everything damp. I hated the way he skewed the hook out of the fishes' mouths, and the way they lay there, gasping, as though they wanted to say something.' She shivered. ‘He lost his glamour.'

Thérèse could not respond as she was supposed to.

‘It's not only the holiday,' she said. ‘I don't feel like a nun now anywhere, not at home with you, not here, not in church even. It doesn't matter whether I wear my veil or not. I say my prayers, I follow the offices, I make the penance I've always made. But I feel different.'

She took a sip of wine, and another quickly after it, almost draining her glass.

‘You're not unhappy?' asked Corinne as quietly as she could. She was aware that Thérèse's deafness was making their discussion louder than either of them might have liked. She thought the other diners might be listening.

‘It's funny,' said Thérèse. ‘I was so excited at the thought of moving. I've enjoyed so much being with you. It's been such a relief to spend my own money after all these years.'

To both of them this sounded like an apology.

The waitress came and took their plates. They turned down the offer of cheese and chose dessert. Thérèse's chocolate mousse was dark and rich, worth a week of prayer.

‘I miss my God,' she said suddenly when she had cleaned the bowl.

‘He didn't come with you from the convent?'

‘I don't think He did. Not really.'

‘That's not what you'd expect,' said Corinne.

‘No.'

Thérèse struggled to fold her napkin precisely. They ordered coffee.

‘Perhaps you should give Him time. It's only been a few weeks,' said Corinne.

‘There is no time with God,' said Thérèse, not smiling.

‘But give yourself time. Breathing space. To find Him again.' Corinne leant forwards. ‘Can't you feel Him at all?'

The waitress brought their coffee hesitantly. She knew she had interrupted.

‘I don't know. I'm not sure any more. I always used to be sure.'

They both concentrated on stirring sugar slowly into their coffee.

‘Would you go back? If you could? If they hadn't closed it?' asked Corinne.

There was the slightest of pauses.

‘I think I would.'

Corinne had been rejected many times for many reasons. She recognized the lump stuck in her chest as something other than the crisp heat of the coffee. Thérèse realized for the first time that she would not die as happily as she had always supposed. There was nothing either of them could say.

‘We'll take a walk in the morning, before breakfast, and find the smell of the sea,' said Corinne.

‘I'd like that. If there is one. Perhaps we've come all this way for nothing.'