Obedience (3 page)

The soldier was sitting in the pew furthest from the altar. His head was bowed; he might have been praying. Even with the thud of the door as it swung back, he did not move. Bernard stood at the far end of the aisle and waited. The church was unlit and the evening was darker there than it was outside, the smell of winter still trapped within. The arches of the roof stretched away into shadow; the side chapels were nothing but dark. Bernard shivered. She had never learnt to be comfortable here.

When he finally turned to her, his face was white in the gloom. Without speaking he left the pew and walked along the back of the church to where some old benches were pushed in against the pillars, creating an extra block of seating out of sight of the altar. It was hardly used; the benches were untidy. He pushed the back two or three more neatly into rows, the scrape of them sharp on the flagged floor, then he spread his pocket handkerchief across the wooden seating and looked at Bernard, for the first time.

The wager was safely settled. Bernard had her hips jammed uncomfortably against the bench and kept up an animal whimpering that echoed in the cavern of the side chapel, but the German soldier was efficient and intense; he let nothing distract him, not even the unremitting flap of his uniform jacket. For a moment afterwards he held
his head in his hands, but as Bernard sat up, dazed, he straightened himself. He folded the handkerchief evenly. When he left, his footsteps loud, he did not look back at the immensity of the church behind him.

God returned to scold as soon as she was alone. His wrath was tangled; He pointed out the scuffs on her shoes and the slight filmy drip on the floor where she stood, but He had no words for what she had done. Stretching out the soreness in her joints, Bernard went through to the sacristy in the confusion of His disapproval. Trying to open the cupboard she dropped the key and had to kneel in the almost-dark to search for it among the books and boxes piled on the floor. She could not move quickly. It was a long time before her thick fingers found what they were looking for, and even then she stood for a long while looking at the cupboard door before she tried to open it again. The state of the sacred silverware within threw God into a paroxysm of rage.

T
he old war was there in the stones of the village, in the unnecessarily neat walls built by the prisoners and in the hidden corners where the blood of murdered soldiers had once flowed. But it was more or less invisible in a new century. Music drifted up from the old
charcuterie
, transformed now into a bar, with bright lights and a pool table and a succession of boys on noisy scooters; there was nothing left of the hung hams and the wooden counter piled high with flecked
saucisson
and
boudin
. Even the wide window had been pulled out and altered; the old flagged floor concreted over. In the years after the war, when the shop had been empty, there had still been a smell there, the rich odour of drying meat. But that, too, had finally gone and now there was only the tinny repetition of songs in strange languages. Bernard stretched through the open window and pulled the convent shutters tight. The sound of the music faded; she had it almost shut out.

She continued purposefully, closing each set of shutters, not pausing in any of the empty cells, her progress steady and unhurried, the fall of the heavy dusk already a defeat.
The processional squeal of the hinges filled the long corridor. She paused for a moment, while her breathing settled, and she offered something, the hint of a prayer, in return for a brief balm for some of her pains. She had never thought it would be like this, to be old. She had never imagined the inescapable monotony of her decrepitude. She raised her eyes to the convent ceiling, where long trails of damp cobwebs darkened the pocked plaster, and she sighed.

At seven she rang the gong, as she always did, its tones weaker now than they once were. Then she went to fetch Sister Marie and Sister Thérèse who would not have heard it. They were sitting where she had left them, in the little snug fashioned from a corner of the groundfloor passage. When the convent had been busy, this had been something of a bottleneck, an awkward crick in the smooth running of things, where the nuns were apt to bump into each other with their bundles of firewood or bed linen, and where the sound seemed to gather, drawing in the grumble of things all around. Now, with just the three of them remaining, it was the only space small enough to seem habitable, a retreat from the cold wide rooms in the rest of the building, a corner of comfortable armchairs and a heavy television. It was where they spent most of their time. It was possible to imagine here that they were filling things, keeping the emptiness of the convent at bay.

A faded blue and white Virgin gazed out placidly over their heads from her niche and the faint perfume of chrysanthemums drifted up from the burnt-orange bouquet at her feet. Sister Marie smiled at Bernard, too
lavish a greeting, and Sister Thérèse put down her sewing with a sigh.

‘Supper?' said Thérèse.

Bernard nodded. She leant forwards and rearranged the sloping wimple on Marie's head. Stepping back, she noticed a fallen chrysanthemum petal and she bent to pick it up, the gathered age in her bones breathing a slight moan. She could not think of anything to say; there was a response to everything that was happening, she guessed that, but it would not come to her. Nor, she knew, could it be shouted into the depths of Thérèse's deafness, histrionic. So she put the petal in her pocket and pulled herself straight, her face unchanging.

‘Supper,' she said quietly.

Thérèse saw the familiar flap of the word. ‘It's been a fine day, Sister Bernard,' she said, nudging herself out of her chair. She took Marie's right arm.

‘It's going to rain,' said Bernard, taking Marie's left arm.

They pulled. Marie swayed gracefully upright until, her knees still half-bent, she was balanced against the strain exerted by Bernard and Thérèse, a masterful demonstration of a physical law none of them would ever know. They hung there for a moment, the three of them, old women playing ring-a-ring o' roses, and then, with a final tug, they brought Marie to a stand. She swayed precariously.

‘That'll kill me one day,' said Thérèse. She did not mean it. She felt strong. She still had the straight limbs of youth that made her seem tall, a firm face drawn tight around her sharp nose, and smooth hair that could not quite be called grey.

‘God sees our pain, Sister,' said Bernard, beginning to edge Marie along the corridor.

The refectory exuded the damp chill of breathing stone. The light through the long windows was flaccid, and the stained plaster browning the ceiling and the tops of the walls was somehow an accusation. At the far end of the heavy table two high-backed chairs were set close to each other, draped across with the peeled skins of wet stockings.

‘Is it pasta, Sister?' asked Thérèse, without curiosity, as they manipulated Marie past the draped chairs.

‘It is, Sister. With butter,' said Bernard.

But the sound of shuffling slippers on the stone floor, of water boiling on the hob, of the bench being scraped aside to make room for the three of them, meant that Thérèse was unable to hear. It did not matter.

‘I thought so,' she said, knowing.

Marie burped.

They ate without speaking, and when they had finished Thérèse pushed her empty plate towards Bernard and opened a puzzle book in front of her, tracing with ease the word connections on the page. Bernard watched the sure swing of the pen. She took a paper handkerchief from her pocket, spat on it lightly, and leant across to wipe around Marie's mouth. She collected the plates and took them through to the sink. When she came back, she could smell the familiar stench of urine and saw the dark leak of it from where Marie was sitting.

‘We should begin to pack our things,' she shouted at Thérèse across the table. ‘We must be ready. And we'll have to make sure Sister Marie is ready, too, since they're
coming for her first. They're sending the minibus, very soon; she'll have to be ready.'

‘I'm not taking any things,' said Thérèse, looking up briefly from her puzzle and frowning because she had lost her place. In her quick movements and exaggerated expressions, there was still the authority of her teaching days, and Bernard was cowed for a moment.

‘You're not taking anything?' she said, too quietly.

‘What?'

‘YOU ARE NOT TAKING ANYTHING?'

‘I'm preparing my soul to meet God,' said Thérèse solemnly.

‘God is good,' chimed in Marie, grinning. ‘He makes good wine.'

‘Then what are you going to do with your things?'

This time Thérèse did not look up from her puzzle. ‘Burn them,' she said. ‘Or give them away. I don't know – I'll not need them where I'm going.'

‘No – I meant your special things. Your collection.'

‘So did I.' Thérèse circled another set of letters. ‘I don't need all that now.' Then, as though a decision had been made, she closed her puzzle book and leant back.

Bernard went through to the sink and washed the dishes, drying them carefully and stacking them in their place on the shelves. She wiped round meticulously, even though the surfaces were permanently soiled and grubby, clouded with the unshiftable deposits of ancient grease. She ran another cloth under the tap until the water ran hot enough to scald the thin skin on her old hands, and she went back to the refectory, kneeling behind Marie to wipe the pool of urine from the tiles. In the dense quiet of
the vast convent, the noise of her movements was essential. Even Thérèse watched for signs of it.

‘Do you think it will be better, like that, to start again? Without anything from before?' asked Bernard at last, when there was no more work to be done and the shuffle of her activity was fading.

‘I need to scour my soul. I need to show God… to prove to God… I need to…' Thérèse still could not quite think how her future should be. ‘I can't just go on, can I, the same? This is a chance, if I get rid of my stuff. They won't let me have anything at the home anyway.'

There was one small orange left in the otherwise empty fruit bowl. Bernard picked it out. She offered it to Thérèse who declined with a shake of the head. Bernard began to strip off the already baggy peel.

‘So you're not going to take your things, then?' she asked again, still not believing.

‘No.'

‘Like the camel through the eye of the needle?'

‘Yes. I suppose so.'

Bernard put the peel, a single piece, on the table.

‘That's good.'

‘It's a start,' said Thérèse, pushing at the orange peel.

After prayers, Bernard helped Sister Marie to her cell where she wiped her face with a flannel, took off her veil and brushed her limp hair, dressed her in her stained nightgown and handed her the rosary beads from the small table. The sickening smells, the feel of Marie's damp loose flesh, her infantile helplessness, pricked Bernard with a sting of sudden nostalgia. When the jobs were done, she
perched on the end of the bed. She had never done this before. But it seemed an occasion that should be marked somehow, the last evening they would spend together. She doubted she would ever see Marie again.

‘You remember the day you came here?' She pulled the blankets up to Marie's wet chin.

Marie nodded, but perhaps not in response to the question.

‘We were so nervous – about you. You'd given up so much to be with us. We put flowers by your window. We'd never done that before. They were pink roses, from the bush at the entrance to the cemetery. Someone had said you'd be used to that sort of thing. It would help you settle in. So I picked them. Every rose I could find. I took one of the vases from the Lady chapel and rubbed it down and put the roses on your table. They were pretty.' Bernard took Marie's hand, much softer than her own. ‘But I don't think you noticed them, did you?'

She looked at the slumped face of the woman she had instantly disliked all those years ago, seeing the memory there of the fluttering socialite who had arrived forty years earlier, fresh from having her photograph taken with a minor film star at Monte Carlo, her eyes radiant with fervour, her accent cultured.

‘You threw them away before they died,' she added, recalling the sight of the unwithered blooms caught in the garden hedge, still lovely. ‘It wasn't really what you wanted. You wanted—'

‘God,' said Marie.

‘Penance,' said Bernard, letting the hand drop. She stood up, tired suddenly by the effort of trying to reminisce
with someone without memory. ‘You were always very disciplined, Sister,' she said. ‘Very devoted.'

It was the most they had ever spoken together. Marie nodded. She looked sleepy.

‘Well then,' said Bernard. ‘Goodnight.'

‘God bless,' whispered Marie as Bernard turned out the light.

On the way to church for the feast of All Saints, the rain came sudden and heavy, chill with the intimation of winter. Bernard was hardly at the end of the drive, the clank of the bells trying to hurry her. In a moment her veil was heavy and wet, her face burning. Her feet slipped on the soft ground. She bent low and pushed on, turning past the old wash house, silted now. She tried to shelter under the low eaves of the buildings, but the water streamed into her eyes and she could not see. The bells stopped. Bernard edged into a doorway and stood for a while, panting. It was all familiar, from too long ago. She wrung out her veil and pulled the hem of her habit higher over her wet boots.

When she wiped her face she could see the end of the church steps and the wide porch, the doors already closed. She only had to cross the square. She looked around for something she could use to protect herself from the whipping rain, a carrier bag or some piece of cloth someone had left, even a piece of board. But there was nothing. And when she looked again, there were figures now at the top of the steps, pressed up against the wall of the church, one of them in a habit. Bernard stared through the haze of rain, sure for a moment that it was herself there under the
porch, the young woman she had once been, but it was only Sister Thérèse and another woman, elongated in their wet clothes.