Seeking Sanctuary

by Frances Fyfield

  Such strong currents on this stretch of coast. If Theodore Calvert had gone swimming on the piece of shore nearest his home and drowned, he would never in a million years have come floating back to the same place. And if Theodore Calvert had left a bogus decoy of a will, where was the real one?

  The green barrel passed out of sight. He watched it until it disappeared, the light blinding his eyes. He hesitated, blinking furiously. Then he turned round and went back towards the house. He would wake her and shake her until she rattled. He would not be welcome. He slunk past the kitchen window, angry and uncertain, ready to hammer on the door, saw her inside in another dressing gown, talking on the phone.

  Dawn yelled like a curse and she was naked in her own bed, light and floating on a tide of sleeplessness. My name is Anna Calvert, she had written in the notebook, I am an orphan and I must go to work. The eight in the morning through until two in the afternoon shift, and that was all that counted. Cling to certainties. I need this job. She crawled down to the bottom of the bed and held on to her own feet, hoping that the light of dawn would make sense. The scribbling in the notebook, learned from her father, to make the words clear. Do you hate that boy at school? her father would say. If you do, write down, I hate him, and see what happens. You might not hate him quite so much. You write to clarify your emotions.

  The room was tidy and cold. A chair was jammed beneath the door knob, a futile precaution against trespass. A breeze rattled the window left open wide to dispel the smell. The other chair on which he had sat was pushed into a corner out of sight with the cushion from the seat removed, cut in half and stuffed into the kitchen bin along with the torn pyjamas. There was damp on the carpet where she had scrubbed the area he had trodden. She looked at the room, sanitised by her own mysterious hyper-activity in the middle of the night, and was struck by the awful thought that when he came back, Francis would think she had done all this for him. He was going to come back and she was going to let him in. Probably. Almost certainly. She had gone over in her mind everything he had said and revisited the scenes in which he had so completely and effortlessly overwhelmed her, not once, but twice. Made her stand in her shower after the first time, scrubbing away the touch of him, cutting her long nails in case they should hide traces of his skin. And then, this second time, when she had been disarmed by him equally effectively and then gone on to such frantic lengths in a haze of exhaustion to fumigate the room as if he carried an infectious disease.

  Francis, the Golden Boy, knew everything that went on in the convent. He was the only acceptable outsider, now the only link between herself and Therese, which gave him power. He was the key to the garden, and in some strange way, he wanted her, because that was the message in his eyes. Well, if he was the link, so be it. And if it was her useless, undersized body he wanted, well, he could have that, too. Listen to yourself, she told herself, someone offers you friendship and all you can do is suspect. But most of all, she wanted to stop fighting. She was sick of it. But she did not want to stop fighting when she felt so powerless, as if there was no single other card in her hand, at a time when her brain felt as if it had turned to sludge.

  At six-thirty in the morning, she pulled out the ladder and went up. If she were to look up from the convent garden, all that she or anyone else would see of her apartment block was the blank back wall of it, punctuated with the small, opaque bathroom windows, which were oblongs of light after dark. The most one could ever see from below was a silhouette through frosted glass. Francis did not know what she could see from here and the thought gave her a kind of comfort. It balanced out the power a little, this extra, useless eye. The uneven parapet was her own chest height at this vantage point. Francis would not need to lean forward in order to admire the view. Like Father Goodwin, the parapet, which guarded her completely, would provide less protection for a man of his height. She could see him toppling over, turning in mid-air without a sound, before he disappeared. What was wrong with her? He wanted to be friends, and she was continuing in the same old way, looking for enemies.

  Still looking down, she remembered Matilda, and the way she no longer sat outside since Edmund’s death. Matilda with her finger on her lips, the other watcher. She scrambled back down the ladder, put it away, turned on the music for one long blast before she ran downstairs and slammed the door. She would have one more try at the convent door, borrowing his phrase, I’ve come to apologise. A bright, rational smile, a request to come back later and make her peace, that should work fine. The sunshine really did make all the difference. Monsters were fostered by the dark: they only grew in the culture of night-time dreams. Early in the morning, they shrank. Until she banged on the convent door, checking the time, almost breakfast, make this quick, can’t be late for work, compose the smile, checking the clothes while she waited, jeans and clean training shoes, polo neck because it was not warm, hair fresh with shampoo, who could resist her? Agnes, standing behind the door like a concrete post, opened it partially and then, immediately, tried to close it until Anna pitched her whole weight against it, only succeeding in delaying the momentum and keeping the heavy thing open only by a big enough crack for Agnes to shout through, ‘Go away.’

  ‘Could I come in, Sister? I want to see Matilda . . .’

  ‘Oh, in God’s name, go away.’ And the door pushed shut.

  She stood away from it, imagining all the other doors inside, the black and white corridor, the chapel, the smell of food, and as she stood, the ambulance arrived.

  Anna moved further down the quiet street and watched from the recessed door of the next house.They were quick; someone inside was ready. She saw the wheelchair, which went in folded and came out, rapidly, fully burdened. There were sounds of argument, a discussion on the appropriateness of a stretcher, Barbara’s voice saying, fine, fine, fine, yes, yes, no, no, no, and a man pushing Matilda in the chair up the ramp, making soothing sounds into her ear. She was recognisably Matilda, with large, red-raw hands twitching in her lap, her eyes closed, her face as slack as her body, dressed in her habit, but without the veil, which was, instead of its natural decorum, wrapped round her head like a towel over wet hair. The sounds of argument increased. Barbara was on the step. The chair went into the ambulance. Sister Joseph, fully dressed, knocked everyone aside and followed, her face purple with rage and wet with tears.

  Matilda, kind Matilda. The only other one who watched over the garden. Anna’s feet were rooted to the spot. Until she uprooted them and ran to work. Mind still like sludge, optimism fading and the sunlight with it. Inside Compucabs, there was the same buzz of noise, which stabilised her again, but once she was in the safest of places, it was as if the delayed intellect started to kick against her skull, making the inside of her head thump. Matilda with her blistered hands dominated her vision, and Ravi, over there, with a face like the moon and a smile as wide as the sea, fading slowly when she made a grimace and put on the headphones, ignoring him.

  ‘Compucabs, how can I help you? Account number? Thanks.Your job number is . . .’

  ‘Feeling better, are we?’ The supervisor, standing by the desk.

  ‘Great. Thanks, I’m fine.’

  ‘Great.’

  The phones did not stop for three whole hours. There was always a busiest day of the week and on balance, she would rather tap out the keys and repeat the same words again and again than do anything else. It was as calming in its own fashion as the telling of rosary beads to others. Ravi hovered by the desk, raising his eyebrows in an invitation to adjourn somewhere else, either outside for the air or for tea or water and the desultory chat of the back room. She followed him outside. Somewhere in the course of the last three hours, looking at his serene face from time to time between the screens and headphones, she had come to realise that she could not tell him anything about Golden Boy. It would somehow wreck whatever it was they had; some precious little thing, like a fragile gemstone, easily lost. They sat on the step and she sipped at the tea he had made for her in the kitchen, the w
ay he imagined she would like it, laced with sugar, which she did not like, but drank gratefully, keeping her distance.

  ‘Walk you home?’ he asked.

  ‘Not today, Ravi, I’ve got to go somewhere else. Can I ask you something?’ ‘Of course.’

  ‘Something I asked you before, only I can’t remember what you said. I know. Praying. What exactly do you do it for?’

  ‘And I told you I don’t pray to get things.’

  ‘Why ever not? What’s wrong with asking?’

  ‘Nothing is wrong, but you can’t demand. You can’t make bargains.You can’t say, look, if you do this for me, I’ll do that for you. What have you got to offer that the Gods don’t already have? Nothing.’ He hesitated. ‘You pray to give honour and praise. You pray for guidance. You don’t say, give me that thing, God. You say, please give me the wisdom to see if this is the thing I should find for myself. You pray for the wisdom and strength to do it.You pray to give praise and all you can ask is the ability to see, for yourself.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘that’s where I’m going wrong.’

  ‘What are you staring at me for?’

  ‘Because I like to. I like looking at you.’

  He smiled and cuffed her arm, and that was the point when a whole number of impressions began to slip into place, and all because of Ravi’s peculiar, lopsided, spontaneous smile, which felt like a benediction, a ray of sunshine through the chapel window, and made her think how she was in the presence of someone who was, for want of a better description, good. Which did not mean flawless, but possessed of a kind of purity, which was not the same as innocence. She looked at him and, without intending to, made a comparison between him and Golden Boy, which went far deeper than their colouring and disparate size. If Ravi were put into a fighting ring with Francis, Ravi would not stand a chance. He would have all the inhibitions of decency while Francis would have none. In Ravi’s kind, inquisitive face there was a spirit entirely absent from that of Francis.

  The contrast shocked her. She smiled at him.

  ‘I like looking at you,’ she repeated. ‘So just let me, OK?’

  There, she was being stupid again, seeing phantoms. They returned to work.

  Back at her desk, the phone rang.

  ‘Good afternoon, Compucabs.’

  ‘Ah, there you are. Thank goodness.’

  ‘Hello, sir. How are you? Are you going out to lunch?’

  Despite herself, she was grinning. That old, familiar voice, talking over hers.

  ‘. . . very worried. I keep getting someone else when I wanted to speak to you. Are you all right?’

  There was something about that old, tired voice that made it impossible to lie.

  ‘No. Not firing on all cylinders today. Confused and worried.’

  ‘You can come to me. Drop everything and come here. At once.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘I wish you would. Here’s the address. Write it down.’

  She wrote it down in a meaningless scrawl.

  ‘But you won’t, will you? I know you won’t. Listen, I phoned to warn you. I had a premonition. Don’t believe anything that boy says. You can’t trade with the wicked. When did the devil ever honour a bargain? Evil has no inhibitions and always the advantage of surprise because the good don’t know what it is and don’t see it coming. The uncunning cannot see the cunning.You know where I am.’

  The phone went dead. She dialled 1471. She looked at her writing on the scribble pad and found she could not read it. The phone rang again. The screen blinked the time, three in the afternoon.

  ‘Compusoddingcabs.’

  ‘No need to swear, love. It’s cab number 110. Got a call from one of you lot to pick up a Sister Joseph from Paddington Community Hospital, only I can’t find her.’

  ‘Sorry, you’re on the wrong line for queries. I just do bookings, try 291.’

  Shaking slightly, wanting to scream. The phone rang again. Somebody wanted to go to an airport. It seemed like the most desirable place on earth.

  A jet plane sped through the sky, way above her gaze, crossing the blue and passing into the clouds like a distant exotic bird leaving a trail of plumage. Therese rose from the pristine white feet of St Michael and stood idly, watching the sky in the middle of the afternoon. What a terrible day, beginning with the evening before, when Barbara had been so peculiarly watchful. Watchful and guilty, dismissively kind in her approach and her words – you’re tired, child, and we all need an early night, off to bed with you, plenty to do tomorrow – almost as if it were an apology and a promise of more, or was it just wanting everyone out of the way and the place secure. Therese did not know, only aware she was watched as she passed the phone by the door, in case she should try to use it; watched until she was up the stairs and probably checked for the sound of her washing. Watched, not trusted, as if her unintentional eavesdropping had been noticed; as if she was like her sister. Which she wanted to be, but the proof she was not must lie in her own actions of quiet obedience. Agnes cried in her sleep, the way she did, and Matilda did not respond, until there were anxious sounds along the corridor and Agnes left her room. Therese waited to be called, but no one did. And then, in the morning, when she went downstairs, earlier than ever, yearning for something to do and long past the point of even attempting to pray, there was a secretive bustle around the parlour, as if everyone but herself was there.

  She could not work it out. Someone had knocked at the door in the night and said Matilda was in the garden. Someone had brought her in and made her comfortable in the night down there, because that was what she wanted and it was important not to disturb anyone else, and even that Therese only knew later from the conversation at breakfast, which was not directed at her, and where someone had suggested that, knowing Matilda, it was because of something she ate and surely she would be fine. But she had not been fine when Therese had seen her being wheeled down the black and white corridor. Whatever it was that had blistered and purpled her hands seemed to have also been smeared on her face. Her eyes stared wide, seeing nothing, not even Joseph battling for possession of the chair; she was not hearing the tide of argument that followed her. It was an awful, suffering face, etched on her memory now, so that she preferred to look at the sky whilst trying to make her makeshift prayers in what had been Matilda’s favourite place in the hope that the very action of sitting here would bring her back, with the hopeless conviction that it would not, wanting to apologise to her for her own resentment of that patting and clutching. There seemed little purpose in prayer; it was achieving nothing.

  No one knew what had happened, and if Barbara knew, she was not about to explain. Looking at the smooth feet of St Michael, completely free of lichens so that the stone was unnaturally white, she touched them gingerly. However infrequently she passed anywhere, she always noticed change. What would it take to remove moss? Some form of caustic, like oven cleaner, and that was perhaps what Matilda was doing. An act of devotion to her saint, like Mary Magdalene washing the feet of Christ with her tears and drying them with her hair. Clumsy, undomesticated Matilda who dropped things and hid them, expressing her devotion. Suddenly all such acts of piety seemed revolting.

  It had been a day of fitful weather, bursts of sunshine drying out the lethal slipperiness of the ground, temporary dark clouds, which threatened rain and then desisted, mirroring the fractious mood indoors. Even Kim was surly, pleading a sick child to leave early, allowed by Barbara with her strange watchfulness, looking at them all, Therese in particular, as if to see which of them was the interloper who had brought them misfortune, and daring anyone to criticise. Even Kim had been hurtfully shrill, when Therese had tried to sympathise about the child. Oh, shuttit, you wouldn’t understand, she said. You don’t know what it’s like.

  A dull luncheon, with stilted conversation, punctuated by Joan and Agnes discussing among themselves how Joseph and Matilda had been inseparable once and whatever had happened. Was it the fact that Matilda had gone so deaf
and Joseph so lacking in patience and wasn’t it grand they were together now? The empty places left by them both looked like the spaces of missing teeth in a mouth. They talked about Matilda as if she had already died, and it was all the will of God, no less, a mere rite of passage. It made Therese sick and took away any hint of appetite. It made her sick with the knowledge that she did not want the kind of faith that made them accept the unacceptable.

  The aeroplane passed out of sight, and the prospect of going back indoors to the uneasy somnolence of a typical late afternoon inside was . . . bad. How long was it since she had eaten anything of substance? Not today, nor yesterday either. Bread pellets, an apple. She was queasy with the lack of food and repelled by the thought of it. She could have stepped outside and run to Anna, but she knew she was afraid to do that after the last time and equally afraid that if she did, there would be another rejection. She had, after all, taken sides by silence. She patted the clean white foot of St Michael and asked him if men in brotherhood were different. Do brothers have this problem? Because sisterhood, whether of blood or affinity of purpose, like Joseph and Matilda, or the sisterhood of Anna and herself, posed huge problems. It was as if she and Anna had a hypodermic syringe permanently parked in the vein of the other, ready to trigger into the opposite bloodstream a fine cocktail of uncomfortable mutual knowledge, love, anxiety, DNA and need, with a percentage of irritation. There was no antidote, no pill to take to offset the effect of that sometimes destructive bond. Absence, in times of distress, did not make the heart grow fonder; it broke it into little bits, sharp crystals of loneliness. Everybody said that she and Anna had been too close. At breakfast and lunch, the same thing had been said about Joseph and Matilda.

  Sunlight again, the traitor, while perversely, she wanted the flavour of the dark and the aspect of her own, prayerless room, rather than the dread of Joseph’s return from a long vigil at hospital with news she could foretell even now. Anything rather than her own conclusion that Sister Barbara should have called the ambulance far, far sooner, instead of trying to keep what was laughingly known as ‘the peace’. Oh, Lord, who was there to trust?