The Abbess of Crewe (9 page)

Felicity’s stall is empty and so is Winifrede’s. It is the Vespers of the
last autumn Sunday of peace within the Abbey walk. By Wednesday of next week, the police
will be protecting the place, patrolling by day and prowling by night with their dogs,
seeing that the press, the photographers and the television crews have started to go
about like a raging lion seeking whom they may devour.

‘Sisters, be sober, be vigilant.’

‘Amen.’

Outside in the grounds there is nothing but whispering trees on this last Sunday of
October and of peace.

The pure cold air of the chapel ebbs, it flows and ebbs, with the
Gregorian music, the true voices of the community, trained in daily practice by the
Choir Mistress for these moments in their profession. All the community is present
except Felicity and Winifrede. The Abbess in her freshly changed robe stands before her
high seat while the antiphon rises and falls.

Blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are the clean of
heart:

for they shall see God.

Still as an obelisk before them stands Alexandra, to survey what
she has made, and the Abbess Hildegarde before her, to find it good and bravely to
prophesy. Her lips move as in a film dubbed into a strange language:

When will you ever, Peace,
wild wooddove, sky wings

shut,

Your round me roaming end, and under be my
boughs?

When, when, Peace, will you, Peace?
— I’ll not play

hypocrite

To my own heart: I yield
you do come sometimes; but

That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What
pure peace allows

Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the
death of it?

In the hall, at the foot of the staircase,
Mildred says, ‘Where is Winifrede?’

The Abbess does not reply until they have reached her parlour and are seated.

‘Winifrede has been to the ladies’ lavatory on the ground floor at
Selfridge’s and she has not yet returned.’

Walburga says, ‘Where will it all end?’

‘How on earth,’ says Mildred, ‘can those two young men pick up their
money in the ladies’ room?’

‘I expect they will send some girl in to pick it up. Anyway, those were
Winifrede’s instructions,’ says Alexandra.

‘The more people who know about it the less I like it,’ Walburga says.

‘The more money they demand the less I like it,’ says the Abbess.
‘Actually, I heard about these demands for the first time this morning. It makes
me wonder what on earth Baudouin and Maximilian were thinking of to send those boys into
the Abbey in the first place.’

‘We wanted Felicity’s love-letters,’ Mildred says.

‘We needed her love-letters,’ says Walburga.

‘If I had known that was all you needed I could have arranged the job
internally,’ says the Abbess. ‘We have the photo-copy machines after
all.’

‘Felicity was very watchful at that time,’ Mildred says. ‘We had to
have you elected Abbess, Alexandra.’

‘I would have been elected anyway,’ says the Abbess. ‘But, Sisters, I
am with you.’

‘If they hadn’t taken her thimble the first time they broke in, Felicity
would never have suspected a thing,’ Walburga says.

Mildred says, ‘They were out of their minds, touching that damned thimble. They
only took it to show Maximilian how easy it was to break in.’

‘Such a fuss,’ says the Abbess, as she has said before and will say again,
with her lyrical and indifferent air, ‘over a little silver thimble.’

‘Oh, well, we know very little about it,’ says Mildred. ‘I personally
know nothing about it.’

‘I haven’t the slightest idea what it’s all about,’ says
Walburga. ‘I only know that if Baudouin and Maximilian can’t continue to
find money, then they are in it up to the neck.’

‘Winifrede, too, is in it up to the neck,’ says the Abbess, as she has said
before and will say again.

The telephone rings from the central switchboard. Frowning and tight-skinned, Walburga
goes to answer it while Mildred watches with her fair, unseasonably summer-blue eyes.
Walburga places her hand over the mouthpiece and says, ‘The
Daily
Express
wants to know if you can make a statement, Lady Abbess, concerning
Felicity’s psychiatric treatment.’

‘Tell them,’ says the Abbess, ‘that we have no knowledge of
Felicity’s activities since she left the convent. Her stall in the chapel is empty
and it awaits her return.’

Walburga repeats this slowly to the nun who operates the switchboard, and whose voice
quivers as she replies, ‘I will give them that message, Sister
Walburga.’

‘Would you really take her back?’ Mildred says. But the telephone rings
again. Peace is over.

Walburga answers impatiently and again transmits the message. ‘They are very
persistent. The reporter wants to know your views on Felicity’s
defection.’

‘Pass me the telephone,’ says the Abbess. Then she speaks to the operator.
‘Sister, be vigilant, be sober. Get your pencil and pad ready, so that I may
dictate a message. It goes as follows:

‘The Abbess of Crewe cannot say more than that she would welcome the return of
Sister Felicity to the Abbey. As for Sister Felicity’s recent escapade, the Abbess
is entirely comprehending, and indeed would apply the fine words of John Milton to
Sister Felicity’s high-spirited action. These words are: “I cannot praise a
fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and un-breathed, that never sallies out and
sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race …” — Repeat that to
the reporter, if you please, and if there are any more telephone calls from outside
please say we’ve retired for the night.’

‘What will they make of that?’ Mildred says. ‘It sounds awfully
charming.’

‘They’ll make some sort of a garble,’ says the Abbess. ‘Garble is
what we need, now, Sisters. We are leaving the sphere of history and are about to enter
that of mythology. Mythology is nothing more than history garbled; likewise history is
mythology garbled and it is nothing more in all the history of man. Who are we to alter
the nature of things? So far as we are concerned, my dear Sisters, to look for the truth
of the matter will be like looking for the lost limbs, toes and fingernails of a body
blown to pieces in an air crash.’

‘The English Catholic bishops will be furious at your citing Milton,’ says
Walburga.

‘It’s the Roman Cardinals who matter,’ says the Abbess, ‘and I
doubt they have ever heard of him.’

The door opens and Winifrede, tired from her journey, unbending in her carriage, enters
and makes a deep curtsey.

‘Winifrede, my dear,’ says the Abbess.

‘I have just changed back into my habit, Lady Abbess,’ Winifrede says.

‘How did it go?’

‘It went well,’ says Winifrede. ‘I saw the woman
immediately.’

‘You left the shopping-bag on the wash-basin and went into the lavatory?’

‘Yes. It went just like that. I knelt and watched from the space under the door. It
was a woman wearing a red coat and blue trousers and she carried a copy of
The
Tablet.
She started washing her hands at the basin. Then she picked up the bag
and went away. I came out of the lavatory immediately, washed my hands and dried them.
Nobody noticed a thing.’

‘How many women were in the ladies’ room?’

‘There were five and one attendant. But our transaction was accomplished very
quickly.’

‘What was the woman in the red coat like? Describe her.’

‘Well,’ says Winifrede, ‘she looked rather masculine. Heavy-faced. I
think she was wearing a black wig.’

‘Masculine?’

‘Her face. Also, rather bony hands. Big wrists. I didn’t see her for
long.’

‘Do you know what I think?’ says the Abbess.

‘You think it wasn’t a woman at all,’ Walburga says.

‘One of those student Jesuits dressed as a woman,’ Mildred says.

‘Winifrede, is that possible?’ the Abbess says.

‘You know,’ says Winifrede, ‘it’s quite possible. Very
possible.’

‘If so, then I think Baudouin and Maximilian are dangerously stupid,’ says
the Abbess. ‘It is typical of the Jesuit mentality to complicate a simple process.
Why choose a ladies’ lavatory?’

‘It’s an easy place for a shopping-bag to change hands,’ Walburga says.
‘Baudouin is no fool.’

‘You should get Baudouin out of your system, Walburga,’ says the Abbess.

Winifrede begins to finger her rosary beads very nervously. ‘What is the matter,
Winifrede,’ says the Abbess.

‘The ladies’ toilet at Selfridge’s was my idea,’ she laments.
‘I thought it was a good idea. It’s an easy place to make a
meeting.’

‘I don’t deny,’ says the Abbess, ‘that by some chance your idea
has been successful. The throw of the dice is bound to turn sometimes in your favour.
But you are wrong to imagine that any idea of yours is good in itself.’

‘Anyway,’ says Walburga, ‘the young brutes have got the money and that
will keep them quiet.’

‘For a while,’ says the Abbess of Crewe.

‘Oh, have I got to do it again?’ Winifrede says in her little wailing
voice.

‘Possibly,’ says the Abbess. ‘Meantime go and rest before Compline.
After Compline we shall all meet here for refreshments and some entertaining scenarios.
Think up your best scenarios, Sisters.’

‘What are scenarios?’ says Winifrede.

‘They are an art-form,’ says the Abbess of Crewe, ‘based on facts. A
good scenario is a garble. A bad one is a bungle. They need not be plausible, only
hypnotic, like all good art.’

‘G
ERTRUDE,
’ says the Abbess
into the green telephone, ‘have you seen the papers?’

‘Yes,’ says Gertrude.

‘You mean that the news has reached Reykjavik?’

‘Czechoslovakia has won the World Title.’

‘I mean the news about us, Gertrude, dear.’

‘Yes, I saw a bit about you. What was the point of your bugging the
convent?’

‘How should I know?’ says the Abbess. ‘I know nothing about anything. I
am occupied with the administration of the Abbey, our music, our rites and traditions,
and our electronics projects for contacts with our mission fields. Apart from these
affairs I only know what I am told appears in the newspapers which I don’t read
myself. My dear Gertrude, why don’t you come home, or at least be nearer to hand,
in France, in Belgium, in Holland, somewhere on the Continent, if not in Britain?
I’m seriously thinking of dismantling the green line, Gertrude.’

‘Not a bad idea,’ Gertrude says. ‘There’s very little you can do
about controlling the missions from Crewe, anyway.’

‘If you were nearer to hand, Gertrude, say Austria or Italy even —’

‘Too near the Vatican,’ says Gertrude.

‘We need a European mission,’ says the Abbess.

‘But I don’t like Europe,’ says Gertrude. ‘It’s too near to
Rome.’

‘Ah yes,’ says the Abbess. ‘Our own dear Rome. But, Gertrude, I’m
having trouble from Rome, and I think you might help us. They will be sending a
commission sooner or later to look into things here at Crewe, don’t you think? So
much publicity. How can I cope if you keep away?’

‘Eavesdropping,’ says Gertrude, ‘is immoral.’

‘Have you got a cold in the chest, Gertrude?’

‘You ought not to have listened in to the nuns’ conversations. You
shouldn’t have opened their letters and you ought not to have read them. You
should have invested their dowries in the convent and you ought to have stopped your
Jesuit friends from breaking into the Abbey.’

‘Gertrude,’ says the Abbess, ‘I know that Felicity had a pile of
love-letters.’

‘You should have told her to destroy them. You ought to have warned her. You should
have let the nuns who wanted to vote for her do so. You ought to have —’

‘Gertrude, my devout logician, it is a question upon which I ponder greatly within
the umbrageous garden of my thoughts, where you get your “should nots” and
your “ought tos” from. They don’t arise from the moral systems of the
cannibal tribes of the Andes, nor the factions of the deep Congo, nor from the hills of
Asia, do they? It seems to me, Gertrude, my love, that your shoulds and your
shouldn’ts have been established rather nearer home, let us say the continent of
Europe, if you will forgive the expression.’

‘The Pope,’ says Gertrude, ‘should broaden his ecumenical views and he
ought to stand by the Second Vatican Council. He should throw the dogmas out of the
window there at the Holy See and he ought to let the other religions in by the door and
unite.’

The Abbess, at her end of the green line, relaxes in the control room, glancing at the
white cold light which plays on the masses of green ferns she has recently placed about
the room, beautifying it and concealing the apparatus.

‘Gertrude,’ she says. ‘I have concluded that there’s some gap in
your logic. And at the same time I am wondering what to do about Walburga, Mildred and
Winifrede.’

‘Why, what have they done?’

‘My dear, it seems it is they who have bugged the Abbey and arranged a
burglary.’

‘Then send them away.’

‘But Mildred and Walburga are two of the finest nuns I have ever had the privilege
to know.’

‘This is Reykjavik,’ Gertrude says. ‘Not Fleet Street. Why don’t
you go on television? You would have a wonderful presence, Lady Abbess.’

‘Do you think so, Gertrude? Do you know, I feel very confident in that respect. But
I don’t care for publicity. I’m in love with English poetry, and even my
devotions take that form, as is perfectly valid in my view. Gertrude, I will give an
interview on the television if need be, and I will quote some poetry. Which poet do you
think most suitable? Gertrude, are you listening? Shall I express your views about the
Holy See on the television?’