Put on the Armour of Light (21 page)

T
here
was a crispness to the air when he awoke that chilled his legs where they had kicked free of the covers. When he looked out the window, Mrs. Gough's back yard looked as green and mellow in the long shadows of early morning as it had yesterday. But he knew that no matter how quickly the heavy dew burned off under the August sun, no matter how fast the return to the overripe smell of midday heat, fall had given its notice. When he walked into the dining room for breakfast, Mrs. Gough's children were full of talk about their return to school the following week. Bertie peppered Mr. Krause with questions and he, in his methodical way, was answering each in turn and ignoring interruptions. Hilda and Dottie were arguing about who had the nicest pinafore. Charles wolfed down a bowl of porridge and a mug of tea, and braving Mrs. Gough's disapproving look, wrapped a piece of toast in a napkin and put it into his pocket. As he walked down Edmonton toward Portage Avenue he tried to somehow hold on to it all: a fat bee nuzzling into the last of the roses; the pungent spice of the marigolds bruised by his heel; Chickadees pecking at seeds among the cosmos.

He no longer needed to brace himself and walk slowly to protect the cracked ribs. They had knitted and his bruises had faded. Not so the dreams. Days would pass and sometimes a week and he would think he was over it. But then he was in that room again. The din of Martland's returning steps horribly loud and himself in a swirl of sawdust fumbling as if underwater at the rope around Trevor's leg. Or they were running through a field of longish grass, the two of them in racing singlets, and cackling like crows having left Martland far behind. Then he would wake up and it was not so.

This morning he had an appointment that he had been putting off for some time and he lingered on the sidewalk, conning the shop windows in the shade of striped awnings while the clerks in long aprons put out boxes of their wares and swept their allotted expanse of pavement. He unwrapped and ate his toast, then consulted his watch before crossing to the median to wait for the St. Boniface tram. It rumbled to a stop, took up its human cargo and rolled off down the wide, dusty avenue and then across the Red River onto the main street of the French town. He had never had much cause to come over to this side of the river and had sketched a map, which he now pulled from his pocket, in order to find which stop to ring for. His map told him that he had already gone one stop too far. He descended and walked down the busy avenue. The shop fronts bore mostly French names — Senez et Fils, Marcoux & Cie — but there was also the occasional interloper — Wong Siu Laundry. He passed two nuns in grey, pleated habits with black shoulder capes, their eyes veiled behind the jutting edges of black bonnets. A priest at the next corner with a large crucifix stuck into his sash, like a sword, hung onto his shapeless hat when a sudden gust whipped at the skirts of his cassock. The workers installing new curb stones called out to each other in French that was almost impenetrable to Charles. Then he recognized a word and smiled to himself. They knew he must be a priest of some sort — but how strange to see his legs.

Up ahead the new hospital building loomed, its solid mass balancing off against the green expanse of park and convent grounds on the opposite side of the street. Then at the end of a cul-de-sac he came to a large brick house with a mansard roof screened from the street by a tall lilac hedge and a grove of elm trees. It could have housed a large family but something about it betrayed an institutional quality. He checked the address on his map, and then made his way up the driveway to the front door. He turned the knob of a mechanical door bell under a small crucifix and heard a shrill ring echoing far back into the house.

Presently the door opened and a diminutive nun in the same brownish grey habit, black shoulder cape and black bonnet as he had seen on the street ushered him in with a murmured,
“Entrez, s'il-vous-plait. Entrez.”

“Thank you. Very kind. Do you speak English?”

The little nun looked flustered and motioned him over to a cage-like wooden screen set into the high wainscoting of the entry hall. Charles looked through the screen to see another nun of more generous proportions sitting at a desk in front of an enormous typewriting machine. She looked up from her work and squinted at him.

“Oui, monsieur? Puis-je vous aider?”

“Oui. Um.
Je veux
— ach, sorry. My French is not good.”

She pushed herself up from the desk and approached the screen. “I was born in Ottawa, Father. But my English, it's not much better.” She had thawed slightly but he was still an object of suspicion.

“I'm sure you're too modest, sister. And I'm not a priest.” He introduced himself and stated his business. She knitted her brows for a while and then went over to a board behind her desk where several rope pulls with silk tassels were installed. She pulled one twice in rapid succession. Then she returned to the grill and spoke a few words in French to the diminutive nun.

“Sister St-Placide will take you to the parlour, Reverend. Please attend there.”

When the door of the parlour closed behind Sister St-Placide, he found himself in a large, cool room where, it was soon apparent, few of the sisters were allowed to tarry. The floor had been aggressively waxed. Heavy, dark chairs of an older vintage were set opposite straight-backed settees arranged more with an appreciation for geometry than sociability. The doilies covering the chair backs were impossibly clean. There was a fireplace surrounded with green tile and above that a mahogany mantle. In the place of honour above the mantle there was an etching of Christ looking down on the room with large, liquid eyes. The figure was devoid of colour except for a red object in the middle of the chest that Charles initially took for a misshapen apple but on closer inspection turned out to be Christ's heart disconcertingly on display. Charles perched on the edge of a petit-point covered settee.

He had been there for quite a while and his mind had gone off somewhere else when the door opened and suddenly she was there.

“Mr. Lauchlan, I'm so sorry to have kept you waiting. There were the breakfast dishes to finish and then Sister Bernier needed help gathering the bed linens for the laundry.”

“Mrs. Martland, good to see you.” He jumped up to greet her, knocking his hat to the floor.

“It's kind of you to come all this way.” She extended her hand, which almost clipped his nose as he retrieved his hat.

“Not so far, really. Just over the river.” He was surprised at how red and chapped her hand was.

“I suppose it only seems far,” she said, trying to decide which of the uninviting chairs to sit on.

The obligation to see her had weighed so heavily on him that he had taken any pretext to avoid it. Yet now that she was here, he didn't know quite what to say to her. He hadn't seen her since Trevor's funeral, and was surprised at her appearance: the long linen apron with fresh stains covering her simple cotton print dress, sleeves hiked and fastened above the elbow; the flat, serviceable shoes.

“Did you say you were helping out?”

“I asked Reverend Mother for some work to do. She was reluctant at first but I was quite determined. Now I work in the kitchen and help out on the wards upstairs when there are patients. Anything, really, that needs doing.”

“But surely you don't need —”

“I had to, you see. I had to.”

“I see. Stupid of me. Yes, under the circumstance I might do the same thing.”

She seemed only just contained, running the thumb of one hand over the reddened knuckles of the other hand. “It's good that you've come,” she said, looking down at the carpet. “There's something else, something you deserve to know. After all you've done for us, it would be cowardly to send a note …”

“Yes?”

“I have returned to the Church. To my faith, I mean.”

Of course; it made perfect sense. And given the surroundings it wasn't surprise he felt but recognition — that and a slight dent to his vanity. Surely if he had been a better pastor he could have held onto her. And this was followed immediately by another thought.
Idiot. Don't exaggerate your own importance in this.

“Please don't try to persuade me otherwise, Mr. Lauchlan. Now that Frank is … gone, I think, perhaps —” She lifted her chin and met his eyes. “That is, I mean to go my own way.”

“Mrs. Martland — Agnes — I hope you don't think I'm here to save you from error. I'm here as a friend. And if your heart is in this, I'm happy for you.” It wasn't quite true but he hoped to get there in the end.

“Oh, that's a relief.” She almost laughed. “It's been on my mind. But I want you to know that I won't forget everything you've done for me.”

It was the second time she had said it and again he felt the stab. “But I didn't do the one thing that mattered most, did I?”

She just looked at him, surprised. “What? —”

“I keep going over it in my mind. If I'd gotten to Trevor sooner. If I'd kept Martland on the floor longer. If I'd just managed to get the gun —” He bent toward her. “If I'd insisted that Trevor go to the police immediately, that night, when he first told me, then maybe —”

“Or if I had taken the children and left Frank ten years ago, or if I'd insisted that Trevor stay on in the east after university, or if I'd paid more attention six months ago when I knew something was troubling him.” Now tears began to roll down her cheeks and off her chin onto the bib of her apron. She rustled through the pockets of her skirt.

He took out his handkerchief and handed it to her. He hadn't told her how afraid he was that in some truly black corner of his soul, some hidden place of which he was only dimly aware, he had wanted Trevor out of the way
. The heart is deceitful above all things
. How could he tell her that? Was he offering her a little guilt on account, a small amount down against that darker matter?

“I shouldn't have added to your burdens. It was selfishness, pure and simple. I suppose it's just that you're probably the only person I can talk to about this.”

“Yes. It's a great relief,” she said, dabbing at her eyes. “After everything that's happened, I don't have to pretend anything to you.” She handed him back his handkerchief. “But I would like to do something for you. If you'll allow me, I will say a novena for you, starting tonight.”

There was a sudden pricking in his throat that made him swallow. “That means a great deal to me, Agnes.”

“Now tell me about Miss Skene. She was so kind to me that night. And then she was there for that horror. How is she?”

“Oh, well, she's going away to study — to Germany. Her father thought it best. A complete change of scene. New interests to draw her mind away from that.” He flicked a non-existent piece of dust off his trouser leg. “I suppose it's what she needs.”

She tried to see his eyes but he was still looking down. “You know, part of the penance in the case of sins of omission is to resolve to act in the future, when opportunities present themselves.”

Somehow he knew that there was no use denying it. “It's too soon. It would only confuse her.”

She smiled and the sun caught a line in her face that had once been a dimple. For just a moment he saw the unshadowed gaiety she must have felt when she was a girl.

“I don't think you know much about young ladies, Charles.”

He arrived back at the church in time to meet Peter and take him to lunch. They were off to the Clarendon Hotel to raise a glass of Mrs. Rotheney's finest rhubarb punch to the completion of the chancel. Since the charges had been dropped, Peter had been working like a demon in order to finish by the end of August. Charles stopped just inside the narthex doors to get the long view down the aisle toward the new chancel. There was a lustre to the choir pews and casings that seemed to come from deep within the wood and owe nothing to the sun streaming through the pointed windows. The aroma of fresh shavings, varnish and pine resin, entirely pleasant, still hung in the air.

Charles and Peter had done most of the staining and varnishing themselves, though Peter had insisted they get a professional painter in to teach them how to apply the stains properly. Charles had loved the process of removing the stain, leaning his body into the wide swipes of the staining rag, watching the grain come up.

The pulpit was set on a slight projection of the platform so that the preacher would be wrapped around by the congregation. The new brass reading lamp had come all the way from Chicago, a rare extravagance insisted upon by Mr. Arbuthnot and paid for by him.

They had not talked much about what Peter would do next but Charles had a plan. There was a congregation in the west end ready to build a new church. And after that he was sure that between his other brethren and the Methodists they could keep Peter busy for several years. He looked at his watch. Where was Pete? He went out the side door and walked down the hall to the janitor's room. At first he thought he must have taken a wrong turn. In place of the general mayhem of shirts and towels and newspapers and plates with toast crusts and stained mugs full of half-drunk tea, there was order and cleanliness. The cleanliness of absence. Peter's iron bedstead now sat with its disreputable mattress rolled up to match the one that Charles had left two months earlier. He checked the drawers of the chipped dresser. Empty. Strange how easily a room can be stripped of the personality that has inhabited it.

There was a package wrapped neatly in brown paper and tied with string beside the basin and ewer on the wooden china barrel. He picked it up and found a white card stuck to the paper. It read,
CHARLES, OPEN ME.

He cut the string with his penknife and pulled the brown paper off. In his hand was a small carved wooden statue, a curious figure with a large head and smaller body, rather comical. It was a man in a monk's gown with a clerical tonsure and large feet enclosed in sandals peeking out from underneath the gown. All the details were beautifully carved and the whole stained with the same colour Charles had so lovingly applied to the choir pews. The little monk was clutching something — yes, a square like the one that Peter had kept on his drawing desk, a carpenter's square. There was another white card attached to the statue by a piece of red string. Charles opened it.