The Abbess of Crewe (8 page)

Walburga’s pretty hands are folded on the table before her and she looks down at
them as Alexandra’s voice comes sounding its articulate sweet numbers.
Walburga’s long face is dark grey against the white frame of her coif; she brought
that great property to the convent from her devout Brazilian mother; her father, now
dead, was of a military family.

Mildred’s blue eyes move to survey the novices, how they are comporting themselves,
but the heart-shape of her face is a motionless outline as if painted on to her
coif.

Alexandra stands like the masthead of an ancient ship. Felicity’s violent fingers
attack the piece of stuff with her accurate and ever-piercing needle; she had sometimes
amused the late Abbess Hildegarde with her timid venom for although her descent was
actually as noble as Alexandra’s she demonstrated no trace at all of it.
‘Some interesting sort of genetic mutation,’ Hildegarde had said,
‘seeing that with so fine a lineage she is, you know, a common little thing. But
Felicity, after all, is something for us to practise benevolence upon.’ The rain
pelts harder, pattering at the window against Alexandra’s clear voice as Felicity
stabs and stabs again, as it might be to draw blood. Alexandra is saying:

‘You must consider, Sisters, that very soon we shall have an election to appoint
our new Abbess of Crewe, each one of us who is sufficiently senior and qualified to vote
will do so according to her own conscience, nor may she conspire or exchange opinions
upon the subject. Sisters, be vigilant, be sober. You will recall your good fortune,
daughters as the majority of you are of dentists, doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers,
businessmen and all the Toms, Dicks and Harrys of the realm; you will recognize your
good fortune that with the advance of the century this Congregation no longer requires
you to present as postulants the
épreuves,
that is to say, the proofs of
your nobility for four generations of armigerious forebears on both sides, or else of
ten generations of arms-bearers in the male line only. Today the bourgeois mix
indifferently with the noble. No longer do we have in our Abbey the separate entrances,
the separate dormitories, the separate refectories and staircases for the
sæurs nobles
and the
saeurs bourgeoises’,
no longer is
the chapel divided by the screens which separated the ladies from the bourgeoisie, the
bourgeoisie from the baser orders. We are left now only with our higher instincts to
guide us in the matter of how our Order and our Abbey proceeds. Are we to decline into a
community of the total bourgeois or are we to retain the characteristics of a society of
ladies? Let me recall at this point that in 1873 the Sisters of the Sacred Heart made a
pilgrimage to Paray le Monial to the shrine of my ancestral aunt, headed by the Duke of
Norfolk in his socks. Sisters, be vigilant. In the message conveyed to me by our
celebrated Sister Gertrude, and under obedience to our Prioress Walburga, I am exhorted
to appeal to your higher instincts, so that I put before you the following distinctions
upon which to ponder well:

‘In this Abbey a Lady places her love-letters in the casket
provided for them in the main hall, to provide light entertainment for the community
during the hour of recreation; but a Bourgeoise keeps her love-letters in a
sewing-box.

A Lady has style; but a Bourgeoise does things under the poplars and in the orchard.

A Lady is cheerful and accommodating when dealing with the perpetrators of a third-rate
burglary; but a Bourgeoise calls the police.

A Lady recognizes in the scientific methods of surveillance, such as electronics, a
valuable and discreet auxiliary to her natural capacity for inquisitiveness; but a
Bourgeoise regards such innovations in the light of demonology and considers it more
refined to sit and sew.

A Lady may or may not commit the Cardinal Sins; but a Bourgeoise dabbles in low crimes
and safe demeanours.

A Lady bears with fortitude that
Agenbite of Inwit,
celebrated in the treatise
of that name in Anglo-Saxon by my ancestor Michel of Northgate in the year 1340; but a
Bourgeoise suffers from the miserable common guilty conscience.

A Lady may secretly believe in nothing; but a Bourgeoise invariably proclaims her belief,
and believes in the wrong things.

A Lady does not recognize the existence of a scandal which touches upon her own House;
but a Bourgeoise broadcasts it
urbi et orbi,
which is to say, all over the
place.

A Lady is free; but a Bourgeoise is never free from the desire for freedom.’

Alexandra pauses to smile like an angel of some unearthly
intelligent substance upon the community. Felicity has put down her sewing and is
looking out of the window as if angry that the rain has stopped. The other Sisters on
the dais are looking at Alexandra who now says, ‘Sisters, be sober, be vigilant. I
don’t speak of morals, but of ethics. Our topics are not those of sanctity and
holiness, which rest with God; it is a question of whether you are ladies or not, and
that is something
we
decide. It was well said in my youth that the question
“Is she a lady?” needs no answer, since, with a lady, the question need not
arise. Indeed, it is a sad thought that necessity should force us to speak the word in
the Abbey of Crewe.’

Felicity leaves the table and walks firmly to the door where, as the nuns file out, she
stands in apprehensive fury looking out specially for her supporters. Anxious to be
ladies, even the sewing nuns keep their embarrassed eyes fixed on the ground as they
tread forward to their supper of rice and meat-balls, these being made up out of a
tinned food for dogs which contains some very wholesome ingredients, quite good enough
for them.

When they are gone, and Felicity with them, Mildred says, ‘You struck the right
note, Alexandra. Novices and nuns alike, they’re snobs to the core.’

‘Alexandra, you did well,’ says Walburga. ‘I think Felicity’s
hold on the defecting nuns will be finished after that.’

‘More defective than defecting,’ says Alexandra. ‘Winifrede, my dear,
since you are a lady of higher instincts you may go and put some white wine on
ice.’ Winifrede, puzzled but very pleased, departs.

Whereupon they join hands, the three black-draped nuns, Walburga, Alexandra and Mildred.
They dance in a ring, light-footed; they skip round one way then turn the other way.

Walburga then says, ‘Listen!’ She turns her ear to the window.
‘Someone’s whistled,’ she says. A second faint whistle comes across
the lawn from the distant trees. The three go to the window to watch in the last light
of evening small Felicity running along the pathways, keeping well in to the
rhododendrons until she disappears into the trees.

‘The ground is sopping wet,’ says Alexandra.

‘They’ll arrange something standing up,’ Mildred says.

‘Or upside down,’ says Walburga. ‘Not Felicity,’ says Alexandra.
‘In the words of Alexander Pope:

T
HE
deaf and elderly Abbot of Ynce, who
is driven over to the Abbey once a week to hear nuns’ confessions, assisted by the
good Jesuit fathers Maximilian and Baudouin, has been brought to the Abbey; in company
with the two Jesuits he has witnessed the voting ceremony, he has proclaimed Alexandra
Abbess of Crewe before the assembled community. The old Abbot has presented the new
Abbess with her crozier, has celebrated a solemn Mass, and, helped back into the car,
has departed deeply asleep in the recesses of the back seat. Throughout the solemn
election Felicity was in bed with influenza. She received from her friend Bathildis the
news of Alexandra’s landslide victory; her reaction was immediately to stick the
thermometer in her mouth; this performance was watched with interest on the
closed-circuit television by Alexandra, Mildred and Walburga.

But that is all over now, it is over and past. The leaves are falling and the swallows
depart. Felicity has long since risen from her sick bed, has packed her suitcases, has
tenderly swathed her sewing-box in sacking, and with these effects has left the convent.
She has settled with her Jesuit, Thomas, in London, in a small flat in Earl’s
Court, and already she has made some extraordinary disclosures.

‘If only,’ says Walburga, ‘the police had brought a charge against
those stupid little seminarians who broke into the convent, then she couldn’t make
public statements while it was under investigation.’

‘The law doesn’t enter into it,’ says the Abbess, now dressed in her
splendid white. ‘The bothersome people are the press and the bishops. Plainly, the
police don’t want to interfere in a matter concerning a Catholic establishment; it
would be an embarrassment.’

Mildred says, ‘It was like this. The two young Jesuits, who have now been expelled
from the Order, hearing that there was a nun who —’

‘That was Felicity,’ says the Abbess.

‘It was Felicity,’ Walburga says.

‘Yes. A nun who was practising sexual rites, or let us even say obsequies, in the
convent grounds and preaching her joyless practices within the convent … Well,
they hear of this nun, and they break into the convent on the chance that Felicity, and
maybe one of her friends —’

‘Let’s say Bathildis,’ Walburga says, considering well, with her mind
all ears.

‘Yes, of course, Felicity and Bathildis, that they might have a romp with those
boys.’

‘In fact,’ says the Abbess, ‘they do have a romp.’

‘And the students take away the thimble —’

‘As a keepsake?’ says the Abbess.

‘Could it be a sexual symbol?’ ventures Mildred.

‘I don’t see that scenario,’ says the Abbess. ‘Why would Felicity
then make a fuss about the missing thimble the next morning?’

‘Well,’ says Walburga, ‘she would want to draw attention to her sordid
little adventure. They like to boast about these things.’

‘And why, if I may think aloud,’ says the Lady Abbess, ‘would she call
the police the next night when they come again?’

‘They could be blackmailing her,’ Walburga says.

‘I don’t think that will catch on,’ says the Abbess. ‘I really
don’t Those boys — what are their dreadful names?’

‘Gregory and Ambrose,’ says Mildred.

‘I might have known it,’ says the Abbess for no apparent reason. They sit in
the Abbess’s parlour and she touches the Infant of Prague, so besmeared with rich
glamour as are its robes.

‘According to this week’s story in
The Sunday People
they have now
named Maximilian, but not yet Baudouin, as having given them the order to move,’
Walburga says.

‘“According to
The Sunday People
” is of no account. What is
to be the story according to us?’ says the Abbess.

‘Try this one for size,’ says Mildred. ‘The boys, Gregory and Ambrose
—’

‘Those names,’ says the Abbess, ‘they’ve put me off this scenario
already.’

‘All right, the two Jesuit novices — they break into the convent the first
night to find a couple of nuns, any nuns —’

‘Not in my Abbey,’ says the Abbess. ‘My nuns are above suspicion. All
but Felicity and Bathildis who have been expelled. Felicity, indeed, is excommunicated.
I won’t have it said that my nuns are so notoriously available that a couple of
Jesuit youths could conceivably enter these gates with profane intent.’

‘They got in by the orchard gate,’ says Mildred thoughtlessly, ‘that
Walburga left open for Father Baudouin.’

‘That is a joke,’ says the Abbess, pointing to the Infant of Prague wherein
resides the parlour’s main transmitter.

‘Don’t worry,’ says Walburga, smiling towards the Infant of Prague with
her wide smile in her long, tight-skinned face. ‘Nobody knows we are bugged except
ourselves and Winifrede never quite takes in the whole picture. Don’t
worry.’

‘I worry about Felicity,’ says Mildred. ‘She might guess.’

Walburga says, ‘All she knows is that our electronics laboratory and the labourers
therein serve the purpose of setting up contacts with the new missions founded
throughout the world by Gertrude. Beyond the green lines to Gertrude, she knows nothing.
Don’t worry.’

‘It is useless to tell me not to worry,’ the Abbess says, ‘since I
never do. Anxiety is for the bourgeoisie and for great artists in those hours when they
are neither asleep nor practising their art. An aristocratic soul feels no anxiety nor,
I think, do the famine-stricken of the world as they endure the impotent extremities of
starvation. I don’t know why it is, but I ponder on starvation and the starving.
Sisters, let me tell you a secret. I would rather sink flesh less to my death into the
dry soil of some African or Indian plain, dead of hunger with the rest of the dying
skeletons than go, as I hear Felicity is now doing, to a psychiatrist for an
anxiety-cure.’

‘She’s seeing a psychiatrist?’ says Walburga.

‘Poor soul, she lost her little silver thimble,’ says the Abbess.
‘However, she herself announced on the television that she is undergoing
psychiatric treatment for a state of anxiety arising from her excommunication for living
with Thomas in sin.’

‘What can a psychiatrist do?’ says Mildred. ‘She cannot be more
excommunicated than excommunicated, or less.’

‘She has to become resigned to the idea,’ the Abbess says. ‘According
to Felicity, that is her justification for employing a psychiatrist. There was more
clap-trap, but I switched it off.’

The bell rings for Vespers. Smiling, the Abbess rises and leads the way.

‘It’s difficult,’ says Mildred as she passes through the door after
Walburga, ‘not to feel anxious with these stories about us circulating in the
world.’

The Abbess stops a moment. ‘Courage!’ she says. ‘To the practitioner of
courage there is no anxiety that will not melt away under the effect of grace, however
that may be obtained. You recite the Psalms of the Hours, and so do I, frequently giving
over, also, to English poetry, my passion. Sisters, be still; to each her own source of
grace.’