Nuns and Soldiers (9 page)

The telephone rang.

She had muted the telephone so that it produced a faint buzz. She had asked her friends not to ring up in the late evening. Who could this be telephoning at ten o’clock? She lifted the receiver and uttered the number in the business-like way upon which Guy insisted.

‘Hello. Gertrude?’

‘Yes.’

‘This is Anne.’

‘What?’ said Gertrude, not understanding.

‘This is Anne. You know, Anne Cavidge.’

Gertrude tried to adjust her mind to this amazing information. She felt utterly confused, baffled. ‘Anne?’

‘Yes!’

‘But - but surely you aren’t allowed to use the telephone -’

There was a laugh at the other end. ‘As a matter of fact I’m in a telephone box near Victoria Station.’

‘Anne - you can’t be - what’s happened - ?’

‘I’m out.’

‘You mean
out
- out for good - ?’

‘Yes.’

Anne, a member of an enclosed religious order, had been inside a convent for fifteen years.

‘You mean you’ve left the Church, left the order, come back into the world?’

‘Roughly yes.’

‘What does roughly yes mean?’

‘Look, Gertrude, I’m very sorry to ring you -’

‘Anne, what am I saying, come round here
at once.
Have you money, can you get a taxi?’

‘Yes, yes, but I must explain, I booked in a hotel, but they say they’re full up, and I tried several others and -’

‘Just
come round here
-’

‘Yes. OK. Thanks. But I can’t remember your number in the street.’

Gertrude gave the number and put the telephone down and held her head. She had not reckoned with a surprise of this sort and she was not sure if she was pleased or not. Clever Anne Cavidge, her best friend at Cambridge, had shocked them all by becoming a Roman Catholic, after a series of wild love affairs, converted at Newnham before Gertrude’s horrified eyes. And then, as if that was not enough, she had promptly become a nun. Gertrude fought her, mourned her. Anne was gone, her Anne existed no more. One cannot communicate with a nun. In the strange rare atmosphere which now divided them, friendship could not live. Anne had become Mother something or other, Gertrude wrote to her occasionally, increasingly rarely, firmly addressing her communications to Miss Anne Cavidge. She received in reply brief hygienic communications written in Anne’s familiar writing, but devoid of any sharpness of personality. Out of an awful curiosity she went to see her twice and talked to her through a wooden grille: beautiful clever Anne Cavidge dressed up as a nun. Anne was cheerful, talkative, glad to see her. Gertrude was touched, appalled. When she emerged she sat in a pub and shuddered and thought, thank God I’m not in that prison! She joked about it afterwards with Guy, who had never met Anne.

Gertrude now thought, oh if only things were different, if only they were, how glad I should be to see Anne, to
get Anne back
, to introduce her to Guy, how happy I should be, it would be a sort of triumph, a sort of renewal, the return of Anne from the dead.

She thought, I must open the downstairs door, she may not find the right bell and Guy mustn’t be disturbed. She left the flat and went down to open the front door of the house, usually locked at this hour. Ebury Street, quiet now, glittered in the lamplight. The recent snow had covered the foot-prints on the pavement. The cold air bit Gertrude’s face and hands and she gasped.

The taxi drew up and a woman got out and paid the driver. Two suitcases were dumped on the pavement. Gertrude came down the steps, the snow engulfing her light slippers. ‘Here, let me take this case.’

Anne followed her into the house. In the hall Gertrude said, ‘Don’t make any noise, Guy’s asleep.’ They went up the stairs and into the flat. Anne saw the Night Nurse who had emerged from her room and was watching curiously. Anne and the Night Nurse nodded. Anne followed Gertrude into the drawing-room. The door closed. The two women looked at each other.

‘Oh - Anne -’

Anne slipped off her coat revealing a blue and white check woollen dress. She was thin, pale, taller than Gertrude. She now also looked older. Her hair, golden when she was a student, had faded, was still blonde rather than grey, and clung, closely clipped, to her head. She held her coat a moment, then dropped it on the floor.

‘I always meant to ask,’ said Gertrude, ‘whether you shaved your head under that ghastly head gear.’

‘No, no, only cut the hair close. My dear, I’m awfully sorry to turn up like this, so late -’

‘Oh shut up,’ said Gertrude. She took Anne in her arms and they embraced silently, closing their eyes, and standing still, gripping each other in the middle of the room.

‘You see,’ said Anne, moving back, ‘I didn’t mean to -’

‘Your feet are wet.’

‘So are yours. I didn’t mean to bother you - and you carried the case with the books in -’

‘You mean you had
escaped
and you weren’t going to tell me?’

‘Well, “escaped” isn’t quite the word, and I was of course going to tell you, but I didn’t want to impose myself, you see I arrived by train and this hotel -’

‘Yes, yes, yes -’

‘I couldn’t find anywhere to go and as you were so close I just thought -’

‘Oh darling,’ said Gertrude, ‘darling, darling Anne, welcome back.’

Anne laughed a little strangled laugh and touched Gertrude’s cheek. Then she sat down.

‘Anne, you must be tired. Have a drink? Do you drink now? What about eating something, have you eaten? Oh I’m so glad to see you!’

‘I won’t have a drink. You have one. I won’t eat I think, I can’t -’

‘But have you only just emerged, I mean sort of yesterday?’

‘No, I’m doing it gradually. I spent a couple of weeks in the convent guest house. Oh it was so odd. I walked about in the country. Then I spent some weeks in the village, I worked in the post office - and now I’ve just come to London -’

‘Oh, but do relieve my mind. You are really out of that awful labour camp, you aren’t going back? And you’re really through with it all, with the whole thing?’

‘I’ve left the order, yes.’

‘But God, do tell me you’ve finished with God?’

‘Well, it’s a long story -’

‘You must be so tired, I’ll fix your room -’

‘Who was that, the woman outside?’

‘Oh that - that’s the Night Nurse -’

‘Nurse?’

‘Guy’s ill - he’s very ill -’

‘I’m so sorry -’

‘Anne, he’s dying, he’s dying of cancer, he’ll be dead before Christmas -’

Gertrude sat down and let the sudden violent tears spurt from her eyes and drench the front of her dress. Anne got up and sat on the floor beside her, seizing her hands and kissing them.

 

 

It was the next morning. The Night Nurse had gone. The Day Nurse reigned in her stead. The Day Nurse was an elderly body, unmarried, wrinkled, wizened, but amiable, always with a little professional smile. She was a good nurse, one of the devoted people to whom it is hard to attribute a private life, personal aims, amazing dreams. She was quiet, untalkative, with a deft animal quickness in her movements. Guy had been got up, had breakfasted, was sitting in the chair beside his bed in his dressing gown. The Day Nurse shaved him. He kept saying that it really wasn’t worth being shaved any more at this stage, but he could not make the decision to stop it, and Gertrude could not make it for him. Gertrude had told him of Anne’s arrival, in which he had taken some interest. He even displayed an emotion which had apparently passed out of his life, surprise.

Now Anne and Gertrude were sitting in the drawing-room. Outside the sun was shining on the melting snow, smoothing it over, yellowing it and making it glow and sparkle upon unmarked roofs and untrodden square gardens. A strange mystical light pervaded London.

‘What a nice flat.’

‘It’s odd you haven’t been here -’

‘What a lot of things you’ve got.’

‘Are you chiding me?’

‘Of course not! I’m just sort of not used to things, you know, ornaments and -’

‘Wasn’t your chapel full of beastly madonnas?’

‘That was not - Gertrude, I’m sorry to have turned up so suddenly -’

‘You’ve said that sixteen times. Where else should you come, but to this house? But why didn’t you write to me before and tell me you were coming out?’

‘I couldn’t have explained it, I couldn’t have written it down. It was all so strange and I was sort of frozen -’

‘Well, you’ll have to explain it now, won’t you? We hardly talked at all last night.’

‘I must go out soon and find a hotel -’

‘A
what
? You’re staying here!’

‘But Gertrude, I can’t, I mustn’t -’

‘Because of Guy? That’s just why you must stay. I mean, I’d want you to stay anyway - oh God - Anne, you’ve
come
, you can’t
go,
it’s important - you understand -’

‘OK. But - yes, I’ll stay - if I can be useful -’

‘Useful!’

‘I have plans - I’m going to America - but, oh, everything can wait.’

‘You are
not
going to America - but there’s so much for you to tell me - and just looking at you is - oh marvellous, a sort of miracle. ’

‘I know, I feel it too. I’m so glad I had the sense to ring you up.’

‘How lovely you look. But that dress isn’t right.’

‘I bought it in the village.’

‘It looks like it! I’ll help you dress, you’ve forgotten how, you never were much good at it.’

‘I’ve got money, you know.’

‘Oh never mind -’

‘But I do mind. The order is going to support me for two years while I find a job, get some training perhaps.’

‘What sort of job do you want?’

‘What can I get? I don’t know.’

‘What did you do in
there
, I mean in the way of intellectual pursuits, or was it all prayer and fasting?’

‘I taught some theology and Thomist philosophy, but it was so specialized and sort of simplified-I couldn’t sell it outside. It wasn’t a very intellectual order.’

‘So you said at the start, and amazed me! You sacrificed your intellect to those charlatans!’

‘I could teach Latin, French, Greek maybe -’

‘You wasted all those years - You must start thinking again.’

Anne was silent.

‘Why not train to be a doctor? I’d help with money. Your father wanted you to be a doctor.’

‘It’s too late, and anyway I don’t want to.’

‘What were you intending to do in America before we decided you weren’t going there?’

‘Did we? There are courses run by Catholics for people like me, sort of retraining, for going into teaching or social work, and -’

‘Aren’t there courses like that in England? Or, is it that you want to run away? Some “fresh start” idea? I won’t let you - we’ll find you a job. I mean - I’ll - find you a job.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Anne. She looked at her friend with tired remote eyes and smoothed down her short fur of blonde hair.

‘Anyway why do you want to go to a Catholic place, haven’t you finished with them? You didn’t answer my question last night.’

‘I’ve left the order -’

‘You said that!’

‘Whether I’ve left Christianity, the Church, doesn’t matter, I mean I don’t know and it doesn’t matter.’

‘I should have thought it mattered. Your prying predatory clergy seem to think it matters!’

‘It doesn’t matter to me. Time will show - or it won’t.’

‘What’s that you’re wearing round your neck on a chain, I can see a chain.’

Anne pulled it out. A little golden cross.

‘There you are! But, Anne, you must
know
, you must be
clear
-’

‘All right, I’ve left, if that will please you!’

‘You don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Not yet. Forgive me.’

‘Forgive me. You know, you’re
tired
, it has tired you, getting out of that cage. Do you still have those migraines?’

‘Occasionally.’

‘Well, you know what I think about the Roman Church, how much I hated your going in - you must allow me a little satisfaction when you come out.’

‘Oh, any amount of it.’

‘Funny, I thought you would have been a Lady Abbess by this time.’

‘So did I!’

Suddenly they laughed together, an old familiar slightly crazy laugh, a special mutual intimate private laugh, signifying understanding, signifying superiority, signifying love.

‘Would you have liked to be a priest?’

‘Yes,’ said Anne.

‘I think there ought to be women priests.’

‘If you disapprove of priests so much why do you want women to be priests?’

‘Well, if there’s anything going I think women should have it too if they want it.’

‘Even if it’s bad?’

‘Yes.’

They laughed again. Gertrude thought, I shall cry in a minute. Perhaps Anne will cry. We mustn’t. There will be time to cry later. She said, ‘Do you remember how, at Newnham, we used to say: we will astound everybody?’

‘I remember -’

‘My God, those days - all the men were after you.’

‘They were after
you
-’

‘And then we said we would divide the world between us, you were to have God and I was to have Mammon?’

‘I haven’t done very well with my half.’

Gertrude thought, poor Anne, she has wasted her years, she has given away her youth for nothing. She is not a Saint, she is not even an Abbess! She has nothing to teach which anybody wants to learn. But I, what have I done? My husband is dying, and I have no children and no work. I am defeated by life. We are both defeated.

They looked at each other wide-eyed. The resumption of friendship had been so easy, they were both almost breathless, surprised at it, surprised at the existence of such a perfect understanding. They had been prize students together, clever Anne Cavidge, clever Gertrude McCluskie. They were two strong women who might have been rivals for the world. They had divided it between them. It occurred to Gertrude now, so strangely, that she had somehow rested in her resignation to Anne’s withdrawal from life. She had not wanted it, she had vehemently opposed it, but once it had happened it seemed fated. It kept Anne safe somehow, and now her escape had changed the order of the world. Had she then wanted Anne to live behind bars and pray for her? Inconceivable. She had wanted Anne settled in some way, the problem of Anne settled. Now Anne was ambiguous, at large, and who knew what she would do with herself or what would become of her. The world would have to be divided between them once again.