Fludd: A Novel (17 page)

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Authors: Hilary Mantel

BOOK: Fludd: A Novel
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Swiftly, in her usual way, she twisted her paper into a ring. She took it reverently in her right hand, holding it between finger and thumb.
Ready our blood to shed
Rather than sin to wed …
She slid it on to her wedding finger. It looked admirable, she thought. One of the best rings she had achieved. It seemed a pity to waste it. She took it off and slipped it into the pocket of her pinny.
Ready our blood to shed
Rather than sin to wed.
And forth as martyrs led
To die like thee.
“I’ve got the key,” Sister Anthony whispered. “She never normally lets it out of her possession. She was in a state this morning though. She’s got a wart.” The nun tapped her face. “Here. Here, on her lip. Ugly thing. Come up in the night like a mushroom. Cyril said to her, ‘Mother Purpiture, you want to get that looked at, I think it’s cancer.’”
“Oh, Sister Anthony,” Philly said, “whatever shall I do?”
“Just follow me into the parlour.” Sister Anthony, her veil flapping, her elbows out, made sheepdog movements behind her back. “Quick now, get a move on. I thought I’d never get her out of the place. How can I go on parish visits, she said, with this excrescence? In the end I told her there was a piece of gossip on Back Lane, some woman run away with her lodger. She can’t resist a piece of gossip. She’ll be out for the afternoon, going from house to house.”
“It goes dark by half past four,” Philly said.
“We’ll have you out of here by then. By half past four you’ll be on the train.”
Sister Anthony ushered her into the parlour, shut the door, and shoved a chair against it. Philomena regarded her, eyes wide.
“I can’t put those clothes on. They’re years old. They’re older than me. There are clothes in there were put in before I was born.”
“Well, I can’t credit this,” Sister Anthony said. “I’d have thought you’d worry about being excommunicated, but all you care about is whether you’re up with the modes.”
“That’s not it at all. But everybody will notice me.”
“Nonsense. I’ll transform you out of all recognition.”
“I’m not afraid will they recognize me. I’m afraid children will shout things and run after me down the street.”
“Well, what course do you favour?” the old nun demanded. “I can’t take you to the Co-op drapers to get outfitted. If you could beg borrow or steal from Agnes Dempsey, her skirts would be up round your thighs, you a great tall thing and she such a squat little woman.”
Sister Anthony bent over the chest and put the key in the lock. “Come on, you filthy thing,” she said. “Come on, you ingrate mechanism.” She gritted her teeth; cursed further. The lock gave. She turned back the lid.
“Well now,” she said, speculatively.
“You shouldn’t be doing this for me,” Philly said.
“Nonsense.” Sister Anthony sniffed. “I’m old. What can they do to me? They could put me on general post, I suppose. But I’d be glad to get away from here. I wouldn’t mind if they shipped me out to the African missions. I’d rather live in a leper colony than spend another year with Purpit.”
Sister Anthony bent over and rummaged in the chest. “Oh, by the way, speaking of Agnes Dempsey, she delivered this envelope for you.” She produced it from her pocket. “I can’t think what’s in it. I hope it’s a ten-shilling note. I can’t spare you more than half a crown from the housekeeping without Purpit on my back saying I’ve lost it on a horse.”
Philly felt like a child, going on holiday. Or being togged up for a visit to relations. Leaving home for the first time.
But I can never come back, she thought. I know nothing except
farms, convents, my mother’s house. No convent in the world will take me in, after this afternoon. Even a farmer would show me the door; a Catholic farmer, that is. My mother would spit out at me across the street. Even my sister Kathleen wouldn’t give me the time of day.
She took the envelope from Sister Anthony. Rattled it. It didn’t really rattle. She opened it, carefully; nuns waste nothing. Even an envelope can sometimes be reused.
Miss Dempsey’s ring rolled out on to her palm.
“Oh yes,” Sister Anthony said. “What a mercy. You’ll need a ring.”
“She must be barmy,” Sister Philomena said.
Her habit lay on one of the parlour chairs—folded, because she did not feel she could just drop it there. In disrobing before Sister Anthony, she had committed, she felt sure, ten or a dozen sins against holy modesty. Even to take off your clothes when you were by yourself could be a sin against holy modesty, if you didn’t do it the right way. When she had joined the Order, she had learnt how to undress in a religious manner; to drop over her head the linen marquee of her nightgown, and wriggle out of her day clothes beneath it. Similarly, she had learnt to take a bath in her shift.
“What will you do with it? My habit?”
“I’ll dispose of it in my own way.”
Now Sister Anthony felt for her more than ever. Out of her black drapings and her rolls of petticoats, standing shivering in the fireless parlour in her long linen drawers, she looked a pitiful beanpole, not at all the rough rural lass they were used to. She stood with her arms crossed over her breasts in a pose at once picturesque and gauche: going to God knows what.
“Twilfit or Excelsior?” Sister Anthony asked.
“Oh, I couldn’t. I couldn’t put on corsets. I’ve never worn corsets in my life.”
Sister Anthony was taken aback. “Don’t you have them in Ireland these days?”
“I shouldn’t know how to manage. What if I wanted to go to the lavatory?”
“You’ll have to have something, you know.” Sister Anthony felt around in the chest. “Try this bust bodice. Come on now. Look lively.”
She couldn’t get any sense of urgency into the girl. It was as if she were dressing up for charades. “Either you may have my silk combinations,” she said, “or you’ll have to go in your drawers, please yourself.” She straightened up. “Look, it’s not too late, you know.” She pointed to the habit folded on the chair. “You can climb back into that now, go straight up to Father Angwin, ask for absolution, say your penance, and forget about the whole thing.”
Philly turned a glance on her: large mild eyes. Then bent of her own accord over the chest: a swooning movement. She stood up, her white arms full of clothes. “Anything,” she whispered. “Anything will do. I can’t stay here now. Purpit would know. She’d see it in my face. I’d rather be like St. Felicity, eaten by the beasts in the circus.”
Finally Sister Anthony got her dressed. The blue serge suit seemed best, because warmest; it seemed no one had ever entered the convent in a top coat. The skirt dropped almost to her ankles, and its large waist swivelled round her small waist, washing about on her narrow frame. The jacket hung on her.
“I wish it were not such bad weather, you could take my straw hat,” Sister Anthony said. “Such a lovely blue ribbon. I remember buying it, the summer before I came in.” She held it for a moment and smoothed the ribbon with her pudgy flour-coloured fingers; then with sudden energy, sent it spinning back into the chest. She had produced from some other source a scratchy woollen headscarf of a kind of ersatz tartan, lime green and maroon. “This will
cover a multitude of sins,” she said. It was the kind of thing the Fetherhoughton women wore; perhaps a Child of Mary had mislaid it after a meeting, and Sister had snapped it up.
Shoes were a problem. Philly could just squeeze her feet into the smart little navy pair with the waisted heels; but to walk was another matter. She teetered about the parlour, wincing and crying out, “Oh God,” she said. “I’ve never had high heels. Oh, they do pinch.” She stopped. “I suppose I could offer it up.”
“Not really,” Sister Anthony said. “Not any more. There’s no point in your offering anything up, is there?”
Philomena clung to the back of a chair. “Will I be damned, Sister Anthony?”
“I should think so,” the nun said easily. “Come on now, let me see you walk across the room.”
Philomena bit her underlip. She began; holding out her arms to aid her balance, like a performer on the high wire.
“I have to laugh,” Sister Anthony said, without doing so. “If you wear those you’ll end up in a casualty ward. I’ll run down to school and fetch you a pair of the children’s pumps.”
Philomena nodded. She saw the sense of this. “Get different feet. Not two lefts.”
“And then if you wait another minute, I’ll go into the kitchen and make you up a parcel of provisions for the journey.”
“Oh no, Sister Anthony. Oh no, please don’t trouble. I’m only going to Manchester.”
Sister Anthony’s face said, you do not know where you will be going; and what can it matter to you if the bread gets a little stale? Think of the Pharaohs, their eternal picnics sealed in their tombs.
“Sit down, Sister. Rest your ankles.”
Obediently, Philly sat, then burst into tears. She had done well until now. But it was what the old woman had called her: “Sister.” Soon she would never again hear that form of address.
Anthony regarded her thoughtfully. Then she took a clean, folded handkerchief out of her pocket and passed it over. “Keep it,”
she said. “I know you never have one of your own.” Strictly speaking, she knew, it was not hers to give. It was common property, which the Order had prescribed for her personal, temporary use. “By the way,” she said. “What was your name? Before you came into religion?”
Sister Philomena sniffed. “Roisin.” She wiped her eyes. “Roisin O’Halloran.”
Sister Anthony had said: wait until dusk. Now Roisin O’Halloran fled like an animal over the dark ground. In that moment, in that heart-stopping moment before Anthony let her out of the back door—when she stood with her Gladstone bag in her hand, like a runner on his mark—she had heard in the passage, approaching, a little clicking noise. It was Polycarp, Cyril, and Ignatius Loyola; and as they bustled along, their rosary beads clinked together, and made a noise like the gnashing of teeth.
She ran; but when she had gained the path to the allotments, she stopped and looked back, conserving her breath. Four o’clock struck by the church clock. She saw them clustered, all three, at an upper, open window. She wanted to shrink into the scrubby bushes, the standing pools. Then she saw that they were waving their handkerchiefs; dipping them up and down, with a curiously sedate, formal motion.
She turned around fully, her bag clasped before her in two hands, a skinny, dowdy figure in her strange clothes. She looked up at the convent, its many small windows, its smoke-blackened stone; beyond it were the slates of the church roof, slick with the air’s moisture, and above the church the glowering terraces, leaf-mulched, slippery, the jungle of the north. The mill-windows of Fetherhoughton were lit up; the smoke from the tall chimneys had faded into the darkening sky, but factory furnaces burnt, dull slow jewels of the year’s end. She raised her arm, waved. The handkerchiefs bobbed up and down. A voice carried to her.
“Send us an epistle,” said Polycarp.
“Send us a food parcel,” said Cyril.
“Send us—,” said Ignatius Loyola; but she never found out what it was because she had turned again, and loped onwards, towards the first stile. When she looked back again, they were still there, but well out of earshot now; handkerchiefs and faces were indistinguishable in the gloom.
Roisin O’Halloran fled like an animal over the dark ground, observed—from a vantage point on Back Lane—by Mother Purpiture.
In the presbytery, the telephone rang. “I have the bishop for you,” whispered the sycophant, across the wires.
“One moment,” said Agnes Dempsey. She placed the telephone receiver on the hall table, went down the hall, and tapped on the sitting-room door. “It’s him,” she said. “Will I get Father Fludd to talk to him?”
Father Angwin raised his hands, poised them like a pianist over the keys; he let them fall on to the arms of his chair, and bounced to his feet. “No,” he said, “I am responsible.” He opened the door and glanced swiftly up and down the hall, as if the bishop might be lurking in the shadows. “Where is Father Fludd?”
“In his room. I think I heard him go up.”
“I thought I heard him come down. Still, both are possible.” Both at once, he thought.
Agnes stood by his elbow when he took up the receiver. Formerly, she would have crept back to the kitchen. She had grown bolder; a smile played continually about the corners of her mouth, as if she had seen something gratifying, or learnt something that pleased her.
Father Angwin held the receiver at a good distance from his ear. For a while he listened to the bishop prosing on. She caught a phrase here and there:
something in the way of a social for the younger end …
the altar boys …
a record hop, as I believe our American friends call it.
“He doesn’t know,” Father mouthed at Agnes. “Doesn’t know yet.”
“That Purpiture,” Agnes mouthed back, “has gone Upstreet. She might go in the Post Office and telephone him. Sister Polycarp said she took coins with her. She doesn’t shop, so what else could it be for?”
“She’s my mortal enemy,” Father Angwin whispered. “I wouldn’t put it past her.” He turned back to the bishop. “I was wondering, Aidan, could you help me out with a question put to me by a parishioner?”
There was a frigid pause on the line; Miss Dempsey wondered why Father had used the bishop’s Christian name, for he had never done so before. Father’s tone, she thought had a meaningful mysterious jocularity. “It’s about a friend of his, a doctor,” he continued. “This doctor has human bones in his possession, and got them when he was a student in a Protestant country. It may have been Germany, because my parishioner has another friend, some Hun, who is anxious to go to confession but speaks no English, and I hardly know whether we should have an interpreter or some other arrangement?”

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