Obedience (28 page)

They both laughed. The waitress smiled at them broadly as they left the dining room.

Corinne yawned as they made their way up the stairs to the first floor. Unused to sharing a bedroom, they were unexpectedly embarrassed when they came to undress. In the end, Thérèse took her nightclothes with her into the bathroom and changed there. When she came back into the room Corinne was already in bed.

‘I think I'm going to start collecting again,' she said, folding her clothes onto a chair. ‘If you don't mind – it'll only be in my own room. I'm going to… I don't know – make it religious somehow, this time. Little statues and things – the stuff that they sell at the back of cathedrals. I can make it a project.'

Corinne pulled the bed clothes closer.

‘I'll never have it like it was before,' Thérèse went on. ‘I don't have time. But… but it'll be something, won't it?'

‘It'll be a dust trap,' said Corinne.

‘I can make it something – an act of praise.'

They prayed together, out loud, so that Thérèse could hear clearly, reciting at first the familiar lines of old prayers
and then each focussing on their special intentions. They both thanked God for His wonderful kindness in granting them this special holiday together. They both praised Him for the beauties of the natural world they had seen on their journey. They both offered prayers for those less fortunate than themselves. Thérèse asked God to look kindly on Sister Bernard in her time of need and sorrow. Corinne remembered more generally those who consecrated their lives to the service of the Church. They did not pray for themselves because they did not know how to.

They agreed that they were weary enough to turn the light out immediately. Despite the strangeness of the room and the occasional thud of doors along the corridor, Corinne went to sleep almost straight away. Thérèse did not sleep. She turned to the window where she could see the light from the street clearly through the thin curtains. She thought about seeing and smelling the sea the next day. It didn't quite excite her. If it was an expression of God, after all, it was a God she did not recognize, too immense and unrestrained, too foreign. There was no reason to have come this far.

She could taste the chocolate mousse in the back of her throat as it repeated in her digestion, its bitterness metallic now and cloying. She listened to the dull buzz in her head, the distinctive hum of her deafness, familiar and comforting, sacred. She closed her eyes to stop the tears.

S
everal hours after the commandant had raped her, Bernard was found by the henhouse, weeping, her hands thrust through the sharp wire. Her habit was ripped and her veil missing and there were great gashes of blood in profane places. Her violent shaking and blank expression alarmed the nuns; Mother Catherine ordered them to wash her from the butt that they kept outside for the animals, but neither the shock of the cold water nor the chafe of their stiff brushes succeeded in bringing her round.

They found her a new habit, unshapely and worn, and she was sent to the town surgery with a sealed envelope. The doctor was thoroughly disgusted by what he read there, and carried out his examination through a series of questions rather than touch the defiled body of the damned. He quickly concluded that although the rape had certainly occurred, no major injury had resulted. Bernard relayed his diagnosis faithfully to the convent and was sent immediately back to work. For some time afterwards, she was spoken to only during prayer.

As soon as she could, she went in search of the soldier. She left chores undone; all around her there were things unwashed, undug, unpeeled, unclean. There were prayers unsaid. It did not seem to matter. Instead, Bernard walked to the church and back. She went slowly, ignoring her pains, the summer morning stretched over the cut fields and the dry stubble like short flames in the early light. She took as long as she dared to cross the square, keeping away from the shadows, making herself visible. She did not flinch when the villagers looked at her. She loitered by the well, standing aside from the line of buckets, and she paused on the flattened ground in front of each of the small shops. At one point she saw a group of soldiers emerging from one of the houses and she set off towards them quickly; they glanced at her and stopped, stiffening themselves into a line, a barricade. But she saw that he was not there, among them, and she turned away.

When she had finished the route, and there was still no sign of him, she went back again, retracing her steps. She did this many times, the day passing too quickly, as if it barely existed. As dusk approached, she stood by the open convent gates, where anyone could see her, looking down the hill to the road. The ache of her injuries was insistent and sharp, but she barely noticed it. She thought only about the soldier. Twice she pulled her sack from under the hedge, pressed at it and put it back, ready. But mostly she was still, waiting.

He did not come. God explained that she was repellent to the soldier now, soiled and damaged and foul. He laughed at her. He told her that she would be abandoned
as she deserved. But she could not believe this. It did not seem right.

After almost a week, Mother Catherine sent for her. It was late; evening prayer was already finished and the nuns were preparing for bed, queuing quietly at the row of stone basins in the bathroom. There were no mirrors, and Bernard, staring at the wall above the dipped head of the nun in front, did not notice anyone behind her until she was touched briefly on the shoulder. When she turned it was Sister Assumpta, beckoning. Bernard did not move. Sister Assumpta screwed her face into some kind of sign that Bernard did not recognize, and beckoned again. Just as the basin became free, Bernard followed.

‘Mother Catherine wants to speak to you, Sister, in her study,' said Sister Assumpta, so much under her breath that Bernard was not sure for a moment what she had heard. For a few steps Sister Assumpta hurried ahead, but then she turned abruptly into her cell and by the time Bernard had reached the top of the stairs, she was alone.

The study was bright with strip lights, the heat of the day trapped inside it. Mother Catherine was seated carefully behind her desk, the Sacred Heart impressive to one side of her. Uneasy reflections pulsed across the raised heart, making it glow, alive and fleshy. Bernard paused at the threshold, thinking she could hear its solemn beat in the convent's curdled quiet, and even when Mother Catherine looked up, she did not enter.

‘Come in, Sister, quickly. And close the door,' said Mother Catherine impatiently. ‘Quickly.'

Her tone made Bernard look behind her, but there was only the empty corridor. She went into the study. Her thick misery did not allow for anything else. She stood in the middle of the floor and looked at her Mother Superior with tired eyes. God pointed out that she still had her wash flannel in one hand, and she held this out limply as though it might explain something.

Mother Catherine shook her head.

‘No, Sister,' she said. ‘Put it away.'

Bernard could not think what to do with it, and let her arm drop loosely by her side. Mother Catherine shook her head again but her voice was flat and steady, without irritation.

‘We want you to help us, Sister,' she said, leaning forwards across the desk. ‘We have something we want you to do. A small thing.'

She waited, but Bernard just looked at her, not moving. The pulse of the Sacred Heart had faded with a change in the light; it was no longer a distraction.

‘Yes, Sister. Well. Well, you see…' Mother Catherine stopped herself and began again, more firmly and clearly, placing her palms flat on the desk. ‘I have been watching you, Sister. I have been watching many of my sisters. It is a time for vigilance. We cannot be sure of those around us. Even our neighbours, our friends – even those here, in this holy community – we cannot be sure. It is our duty, in these troubled times, to do what we can to maintain order and authority, to keep things under control, to watch.' Mother Catherine paused and leant back. ‘You agree, don't you, Sister?'

Bernard nodded, guessing this was expected of her.

‘Yes. Good. So I thought. So I thought.'

Mother Catherine sat back now and looked hard at Bernard. Bernard looked back, undisturbed. God chattered, unremarkably. And for a moment Mother Catherine frowned, confused, as though something she saw in her young nun was unexpected. Then she smiled, and began again.

‘There has been some… discontent,' she said. ‘So I hear. Some discontent about events that happened recently in the village. There are rumours.' Her voice was suddenly sharp. ‘That cannot be. That will not do, Sister. You understand?'

Bernard caught her tone, and assumed she was in trouble. She dropped her head.

‘I need our situation here to be correct. Unimpeachable. It's most important that for us to be here – to do God's work here – we are… respected – righteous. I need you to help, Sister.'

Mother Catherine paused for a moment. Then she pushed back her heavy chair and came around the desk to where Bernard was standing. Bernard raised her head, and the Mother Superior put one arm gently across her shoulder.

‘You will go to confession tomorrow, Sister,' she said. ‘In the village.'

‘Father comes here, to the convent, to hear confession,' said Bernard simply, knowing how it had always been.

‘This time you will go to the village, Sister. You will join the people in the church and Father Raymond will hear your confession there. That will be better. You know where the confessionals are, Sister?'

Bernard nodded.

‘Good. Then you will be fine. The important thing is that you confess what you have done, Sister.'

‘With the soldier?'

Mother Catherine took her arm from Bernard's shoulder and stepped back slightly.

‘Well yes, Sister, with the soldier. Of course. Everything. Everything about that. But particularly how you betrayed Sister Jean with the soldier. Particularly how you gave away secrets to the soldier.'

Bernard was hardly listening. ‘What's happened to him, Mother?' she said. ‘I can't find him.'

She felt Mother Catherine start, and she watched her walk away towards the bookshelves that lined the far wall.

‘You can't find him.' Mother Catherine repeated the words as though they might be amusing.

‘No.'

‘But of course you can't find him, Sister. Do you not know…' She was about to explain, but all of a sudden she drew her hands across her body and stopped. ‘No,' she said then, more tightly. ‘You can't find him.'

‘No,' said Bernard again.

‘But if you could help us with this – if you could make a full confession, might that not bring the soldier back, Sister? Might it not help you regain your place in his affections? Might he not come then and find you?'

Bernard held onto the questions as though they were promises. She screwed the wash cloth tightly in both hands and ignored the God that was beginning to rail at her. She felt she could do anything.

‘I will see him again,' she said.

Mother Catherine nodded. ‘When you have confessed, Sister.'

‘But won't you—?'

‘Let's see what happens, shall we?'

Bernard took it as another promise. She smiled. Mother Catherine smiled back, and made her way slowly behind the desk.

‘Good. Then you'll help us clear up this little affair, Sister? You'll go to Father tomorrow in the church and confess yourself fully to God?'

Bernard was still smiling. ‘Yes, Mother,' she said. And she remembered suddenly what it was that she wanted to say; her smile faded. ‘I didn't think… when I told him about Sister Jean, I didn't think – I didn't want people to die. I didn't want Severine to die, Mother.'

Mother Catherine sighed. ‘It would have happened anyway, Sister. You can be sure of that. There are many of us who are tempted by sin.'

Bernard did not understand. ‘But when I told him—'

‘You will simply do what we're asking, Sister? That will be enough.'

‘Yes, Mother,' said Bernard, disappointed.

‘Good. Then you may go.'

The following evening, the church was busy, as it always was when the confessional boxes were open. Candles were lit everywhere, making the dark dance, and the nave was filled with the soft silence of shared purpose. Kneeling on the floor in front of the Lady chapel, in the front row of pews by the altar and here and there down the side of the aisle, those who had already spoken to the priest
were reciting their penances, their heads bowed and their hands clasped tight. At the back of the church, where the confessionals were tucked into a corner, four or five rows of pews were filled with those waiting their turn, praying quietly, unhurried. When Sister Bernard came to take her place at the end of this queue there was hardly a ripple of movement. No one spoke. No one seemed to notice.

The penitents were admitted at brisk intervals of two or three minutes, each leaving the door of the confessional ajar as they left to signal to the next that the priest was ready. One or two exchanged a nod as they passed, or even a word; mostly it was choreographed as though from ancient memory, without need of prompts or signs. Bernard moved up the pews steadily towards the front of the queue, her mind on the soldier and how he would look after their time apart, his blue eyes shining on her finally, everything forgiven. She did not notice those coming and going around her; she hardly knew where she was. God's grumble seemed distant to her, nothing more than noise. Everything was suspended in the promise of love. When her turn finally came to confess – when she knelt on the soft cushion and leant towards the pricked grille to begin her prayer – she did not notice that Father Raymond had stepped outside of his confessional for the briefest of moments, looked around him blankly at the cold church and then left his door open so that the stories of Bernard's sins would seep out to the faithful gathered close to listen.