Obedience (9 page)

But when it came to it, it was not easy to work out the practicalities of such an intimate visit. Bernard could see, even now, that there were difficulties.

‘I could give you a key. Or I could come down and let you in,' she said, as they picked their way slowly back through the trees.

Both of these ideas frightened her. They walked further. She wanted to take his arm.

‘Or you could hide somewhere, inside, until everyone has gone to bed. I could show you where,' she said. She did not know how she could have come up with such a plan. ‘And you could creep up to me, to my cell. And stay all night.' She stopped and turned to him, grinning. ‘You'd like that.'

He had no way of picturing a cell at the convent. Instead he thought, inevitably, of his own home, the bed jammed in under the eaves and his brothers sitting close on the floor, playing dice.

‘Yes,' he said.

They both meant it. It was something like a prayer, or perhaps more of a wish. The boundaries were blurred: Bernard thought of the moment as sacred. She put her hand gently on his arm. He did not pull away. And she knew then how he could belong to her purely, to the different self she would become if he spent just one night holding her.

‘There's something I want to tell you,' she said.

They were almost at the edge of the woods. The growth of trees was thinner here, though each of the trunks was sturdier. Bernard paused in the dappled shadows, the vault of branches framing her.

‘It's about Sister Jean.'

There wasn't a great deal to tell. Bernard did not know much. Whisperings merely, half-heard conversations, references she did not understand. Not many of the nuns spoke to her, and when they did they reached her through the litany of God's complaints. But she had gleaned enough, and with the soldier impatient beside her, picking at the bark of one of the trunks, hidden by the fall of her veil, she found ways to embellish. She made things up.

‘It's Sister Jean who runs the Resistance,' she assured him. ‘She has meetings all the time – secret meetings. And they come to her, at the convent. She's in charge of it all. And they've got plans to do something… something terrible – to the German soldiers. To you.'

‘You are sure?' he said at the end, wondering.

‘Oh yes. Everyone knows.' She made it sound certain. ‘You should tell someone, before it's too late. They'll be pleased with you then, won't they? They might reward you.'

‘If it is true…' He sucked air through his teeth, whistling softly. ‘I'll see, if it's true. Thank you,' he said, ‘my little nun.' And he put a hand on her shoulder, like a blessing.

A few days later, before the sun sank completely, they skirted a field where the hay was high and followed a track until they came to a junction marked by a worked metal cross on a stone plinth, seasoned and fragile, the hanging Christ worn and misshapen. Where the metal pierced the stone there was bindweed and tall shoots with brilliant blue flowers. Bernard paused for a moment, picked several stems and laid them at the foot of the cross. Then they took a path that dipped away into the shade of the oaks, finally rounding the corner by a broken barn.

They had not planned anything. But they walked further than they had meant to, and first the rain came. It was not heavy but the drops were hard and hot, as though God was spitting at them. They kept closer to the edge of the path, to gain as much protection as they could from the trees. But the grass was long there, and the low mess of brambles made walking difficult, and when the wind came, it was so fierce and loud, and so many leaves and twigs were thrown to the ground, that there was no shelter at all.

‘There must be a hut somewhere. Something,' he cried, but the wind was pitiless now and the rain pelting like
stones and his voice was whipped away. Bernard heard nothing. He was several yards ahead of her, being blown along with the wind at his back, walking so fast that she could not keep up.

The storm howled. It was not normal. All around them trees dipped wildly, stretched and contorted. The sky was upon them, too close. Acorns spat at them from the trees, wrenched too soon from their cups, and the rain stung Bernard where it struck her on the head and shoulders. Her veil pulled at her hair, heavy and soaked.

‘Here!' He seemed to disappear into the wet hedge. Catching up, Bernard could see nothing beyond the dense bushes and the dark wet stone of a wall. She stood on the path. The storm was like the rage of God; there was so much noise she couldn't work out what to do. She heard the crack of a tree splitting.

The soldier reached out a hand to grab her arm and for a second she saw his blond hair between the tangle of brambles. As he pulled her in, she realized he had found a
cazelle
, a small domed shepherd's shelter, carefully layered out of stone, the open entrance protected by the thick growth. It swelled from the length of wall, almost circular, a large, thick slab propped upright to make a doorway.

Inside, the earth floor was completely dry. Bernard could stand upright in the middle of the hut, but the soldier had to bend; he soon sat down on the ledge built into the circumference of the shelter. He wiped his face with a damp handkerchief. Outside, the tempest seemed to be getting stronger and louder. More trees and branches cracked and fell. The unrelenting howl of the wind scared
them. Bernard was trembling so much that she did not see his hand shake as he wiped his face.

‘It is good here,' he said. ‘Safe.'

Bernard thought of a great oak branch tearing from its trunk and falling on the hut to crush them, but she nodded.

He puffed and closed his eyes. ‘Is it always like this?'

Bernard was used to storms. Thunder and lightning never bothered her. But this absolute fury was new.

‘Never.'

For a while they listened to the roar outside. It would have been natural for them to hold each other, but they didn't, although neither of them would have liked to be alone.

‘We will stay. We cannot walk. It is dangerous,' the soldier said.

For a moment he pushed his head and shoulders out of the entrance to see what was going on. When he turned to Bernard his hair was wild, his face wet again and his eyes wide.

It did not last long. The storm blew itself out in little more than half an hour. But when the wind had died down and the rain was easing, it was dark and Bernard and the soldier were both breathless. The hut seemed safe and snug and hidden.

‘We could stay,' Bernard said, not daring to look at him.

‘Until the rain stops?'

‘Just stay.' She kicked over some old ashes piled against a curve of the wall. ‘I could make a fire.'

She did not think about how wet the sticks would be outside, and how difficult it would be to set anything alight.
She thought about the impossible romance of a private fire.

The soldier went to the entrance and looked out again.

‘Is it raining?' asked Bernard.

‘A little.' He turned to her as he spoke and caught the way she looked at him in the gathering gloom, her eyes blank and dull still, but her faith somehow in the folds of her skin and the way her mouth fell and in the uneasiness of her breath. There would be something special about staying there together, he knew that. It was that sort of place.

‘You'll be missed,' he said. And then, though she said nothing. ‘I can't.'

He did not move. Outside it was becoming quiet.

‘I can't,' he said again, as if it were a sudden realization. He went to step outside. Bernard pulled him back. It was not much of a pull, a slight tug on the sleeve of his uniform, but it stopped him.

‘What?' He was almost fierce.

Her face was too dark in the close shadows of the hut. It was now only the tremble of her voice that he could judge by.

‘You must stay here,' she said. ‘We could stay all night. It would be better than being at the convent; it would be better than anything.'

He could not bear it. ‘
Nein
. I will go.'

It was too much; he felt threatened by her, by what might happen. And so he moved quickly, before she could stop him again, pushing back the wet brambles from the entrance, not feeling them claw at him, setting off at a trot down the sodden path, not looking back, hardly breathing.

Bernard was alone again. She touched the stone ledge on which he had perched and let her fingers lie there. God began drumming in her head. She knew that something had been lost.

She was afraid of the noises left by the storm, the creaks that punctured the night and the unfamiliar rushing of water. In the utter dark she stumbled, and once or twice mistook her way. Her habit caught in the wet hedges and she heard the tear of it as she pulled it free. But when she got back to the convent, she had not been missed. Roof tiles lay shattered in the drive and one chimney had fallen completely, splintering stone. The dislocated branch of an old tree had crashed through a first-floor window. The corrugated iron roof of the henhouse had been ripped off by the wind and thrown halfway across the lane; dismayed hens were scurrying round in the dark, their panic noisy. The nuns were all busy. Bernard shooed a loose chicken up the path in front of her and was thanked for her efforts. Because of the light rain that had begun to fall, gentle now and silent, no one could see her tears.

Bernard was digging over where the early salads had already been pulled. The soil was not quite loose, stiffening around the mattock, making her strain. There was a pain lodged across her shoulders. When she saw someone approaching, she was pleased to rest, leaning hard on the trunk of the cherry tree at the edge of the garden, her head in the shade.

‘Sister Bernard.'

The Mother Superior's face was intently serene. God cried out. Bernard felt the sweat gather under her habit.
She knew she had done something wrong.

‘I was finishing,' she said. ‘The soil is dry; I was slow.'

‘I will send Sister Benedict with the seeds.'

Mother Catherine looked slowly around, gauging things. Bernard wiped her face with her sleeve, smelling the earth there. She pressed closer to the shade.

‘You might like to come inside, Sister,' said Mother Catherine slowly, not yet settling her eyes on her nun. ‘Your father has died this morning. He was very ill, I understand. We are praying right now for the repose of his soul.'

Bernard blinked. The tricks of sunlight and shade disorientated her. She was silent.

‘You might like to come and pray with us, Sister.'

Mother Catherine spoke carefully, as if to a child, looking hard at Sister Bernard in an attempt to thrust the words home.

‘I haven't finished,' said Bernard.

Mother Catherine sighed. ‘You have permission to leave your work, Sister. This once. It can be finished later.'

Bernard glanced up at the clear sky through the threaded cherry branches.

‘It'll be hot,' she said. ‘The soil will dry even more. I won't get it dug.'

‘Sister—' Mother Catherine looked across at the neat patch of turned earth. Her lips were tight now. ‘Very well,' she said at last. ‘As you like. I will leave you to finish.'

Bernard did not watch her go. She turned immediately from the fruit trees and picked up her mattock to dig again. With relief, she felt the crunch of it in the soil and she worked her way through the unbroken earth, bending
to pick out weeds, the sun hot through her veil. Her hands stung, the skin already blistered, but God was languid in her head, hardly a bother, only pressing her sometimes to break up the larger clods.

When the angelus rang at midday, Bernard was still working. She did not stop for the bell, and no one came to fetch her in to pray. But the digging was nearly done now; only the slightest ridge of hard soil remained, and in the hot sun she paused, pushing her veil from her face.

Severine was standing a little beyond the convent wall, a wide hat shading her face and shoulders and two of her children sprawled on the grass alongside. Bernard did not know how long her friend had been there; her bovine gaze was unhurried and incurious as though she might have been watching for many hours. But when Bernard finally stopped, peeling her scorched hands from the wooden handle of the mattock and straightening in the sun, Severine cocked her head, a greeting. The bell finally came to an end, the last toll fading; everything was sudden silence.

Bernard pulled her habit flat at the belt and brushed her hands against each other, spreading the stains of dirt. She went slowly towards the wall, picking her way through the strawberry plants that were low to the ground there.

‘I was with him,' said Severine. ‘All night. I was there. We prayed together.'

Something about this annoyed Bernard.

‘Right,' she said.

Severine did not seem to mind the sharpness of Bernard's tone.

‘And we talked about you. He asked for you,' she went on steadily.

Bernard looked at the uneven stones on top of the wall and pressed her hands against the warmth of them. But her voice was hard still and her words curt. ‘Everyone was there.'

It was not a question, but Severine nodded.

‘It was a good death. We called the priest – and the other women were all looking after him – doing everything he needed. He just drifted away.'

Severine paused and looked down at the children, letting her arm fall towards one of them before she continued. She smiled at Bernard, some kind of apology.

‘They're all still there now.'

Bernard wanted to imagine what this would be like, but she could not even see how the house would look with them crowded into the dark front room, her father flat on the table and the candles lit, making the old shadows shiver against the beams. She looked up at her friend, blank.

‘Really – he asked for you,' said Severine again. ‘He thought about you.'

Bernard did not move, and her gaze seemed fixed. Severine flicked her head so that her hat fell backwards and her face was plain.