Seeking Sanctuary

by Frances Fyfield

  It was chilly in the shade. Therese hesitated – forward or back? – and then went further down the garden, pretending to herself she was only looking for the lonely cat and knowing it was a pretence, because she was really looking for sanctuary, and there it was.

  The clean oak bench, utterly devoid of Edmund’s ghost, the area around it wonderfully silent and colourful. A riot of busy lizzies in pink and white framed the semi-circle, which widened inside the compass to the new table in front of the bench, so scrubbed it was fit to eat food straight from the surface, standing on ground swept to reveal the contours of the paving stones. Off to the side was the shed, which now looked like a tiny house, fit for a small, not very useful person, with no other purpose in life, to look inside. There was a small bed against the back wall, covered with chintz. Warmth seemed to waft from the doorway. A gingerbread house, with a kettle on a camping stove, a smell. A person could pray in here. She had been looking for a place to pray.

  In the background, Francis was singing.

  He came round from behind the structure, still humming, the most cheerful sound of the day, stopped and smiled, the only smile of the day. He was so wholesome, so very far away from death. Even the scratches on his face had faded to nothing and there was a smudge of dirt on his nose.

  ‘Hello, I was just making tea. Do you want some?’

  Tea, the palliative for all ills. Good tea, she remembered, outdoor tea, but she shook her head.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Are you all right? You look tired. Not much fun indoors today, I suppose. Any news of Sister Matilda?’

  There was a colossal lump in her throat, announcing the imminence of tears. It was always thus. She could hold them back, repress any display of emotion, until something insignificant triggered it, such as a kind enquiry, or the sight of something that appealed to her, like the cat, slinking away into the undergrowth, or the sight of the chintz on the little bed. The cat was probably on some murderous mission, but that did not matter, it was a beautiful creature governed entirely by its own rules.

  ‘No news,’ she said.

  ‘I’m keeping out of the way, too,’ he said, softly. ‘It was me made Barbara call the ambulance, you know. She should have done it sooner. She hasn’t needed me since.’

  ‘Nor me. They don’t need me, either. I wonder if anyone does.’

  And then she was inside the circle of his arms and he was hugging her gently. Her head was pressed into his chest and his body shielded hers. She stood, unable to move, arms at her sides, unresisting, unshocked, but warmed by the feeling of him and provoked into intense curiosity by the smell of him, which was earthy and sweet, and she only knew that when he withdrew, with a brief, friendly pat on her shoulder, she did not want him to leave her and it was a touching she could not resent. The embrace had brought them closer to the door of the gingerbread shed. They had moved a couple of paces and she had not noticed. The desire to weep had gone; she felt oddly relieved and shakily tired.

  ‘You must always remember you have a brother in me,’ Francis said. ‘And do you like what I’ve done with this rotten old shed?’

  She peered inside. The warmth of the interior seemed to spill outside and surround her. Therese wrinkled her nose at the smell of burning joss sticks.

  ‘For the bugs,’ he said.

  It was a smell reminiscent of the room she had shared with Anna in the days when they were ill, scented sometimes with joss sticks to mask medicinal smells, a heavy scent, which had come to be associated in her mind with safety, lassitude and a pleasant sleepiness.

  ‘I had a little room like this once,’ she said. ‘I used to want to live in a cupboard under the stairs.’

  He laughed, standing away from her, just when she preferred his closeness.

  ‘Your size rather than mine. Why don’t you stay here and rest? Get away from it all?’ He looked at his watch. ‘No one’ll know and I’m going home in a minute.You can have some peace, away from the kitchen.’

  Therese stepped inside, drawn to it, and sat on the chintz-covered bed, which looked and felt like a hard bed for a child. There was little else in the interior, apart from the large paint can, which formed the table for the camping stove, and a set of shelves on the wall to the left, containing smaller, jaunty paint cans, matches and a box of candles. Francis plucked his coat from the back of the door.

  ‘All right?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll leave you to it, then.’

  She heard his footsteps go away. It began to patter with rain, an almost comic, whispering sound at first, becoming soporific as the drops hit the roof of the shed with a quiet, musical tempo. Therese closed her eyes. The wooden wall of the shed seemed to hold the warmth of summer and refused to let it go. The rain grew louder. So peaceful, sitting still in a small space of warmth with an open door, and the dizzying smell of man, and joss sticks stuck in a paint can, adding to the heat.

  Then she opened her eyes to a different sound. The door, swinging shut, quietly.

  Francis met Barbara standing in front of the parlour door, looking for him, scanning the garden anxiously.

  ‘Are you away home, dear?’

  ‘Yes, unless there’s anything I can do?’

  ‘Do? There’s nothing anyone can do.’ The voice was tinged with hysteria, muffled by sadness. ‘Matilda was getting better, chatting away, and then she had a heart attack this afternoon at the hospital, so there’s another one gone, and we seem to have lost Joseph. No, there’s nothing anyone can do. Have you seen Therese?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Sister. I’ll pray for Matilda. Therese? The little one? I thought I heard Agnes say that she’d gone out to help Kim with a sick child or something. An errand of mercy.’

  ‘Well, mercy be damned. We’ll need her here. She’s no right to run off.’

  She was tapping her foot in agitation, then braced herself.

  ‘Off you go, Francis, dear. There’ll be plenty to do tomorrow when they bring back the body. I don’t suppose there’s anyone lingering out there in the rain?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Bless you, what would we do without you?’

  The phone rang and she shot back into her office. Francis proceeded over the tiles to the front door, where Agnes sat, red-eyed and waiting for him. He embraced her and detached her with an audible kiss and the whispered words, Goodnight, Mother, and closed the door behind him.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Thou shalt not kill

  There was no doubt about the door being jammed shut and about it being darker inside here. The small window in the door was the only source of light, a square of grey on which Therese kept her eyes fixed when she returned to the chintz couch after feeling for the presence of a handle in the rough wood of the door and finding there was none. Therese could visualise the shiny new latch on the outside of the door. If that was all keeping her inside, she was quite sure she could press it open with her own strength, and one thing she had learned after more than a year in the convent was how to deal with doors and windows warped and stuck by damp. She would be strong enough to get out, but there seemed little point in trying, right this minute, when she was more puzzled than anxious and still suffused with that pleasant laziness. What did it matter if she stayed for a while? Feeling around on the wood of the door had only resulted in a sharp splinter in her palm.

  She sat on the bed and looked up at the square of light which was the window in the door, realising as she looked that the relative absence of light changed the contours of her abode. She could see all she needed to see, the outlines of the paint cans on the shelves with their colours more vivid in the half-light, and found herself wondering about the contents. Then she dozed a little. She was simply fulfilling the purpose of a garden, even a small, locked-in corner of a garden like the one she inhabited, and turning it into a place of peace. The long-lasting joss sticks still burned; she stared at the stems of them, sticking out of a paint can on the shelf, rose and to
ok two steps to the door. The window was high and only by standing on tiptoe could she see outside, where the busy lizzies glowed in the grey light and the rain fell.

  She went back and sat with her back to the wall, grasping her knees. The wall was warm and seemed to become warmer as the square of light began to fade and the rain made its music on the roof.

  There was a nun she had read about who lived in a caravan in the grounds of her own convent, along with volumes of books illustrating the medieval painting which was her passion and her aid to prayer. This sister had featured in a television programme years before and evoked a whole way of life. Therese realised that she had never really had any passions at all, other than the desire not to be touched, prodded, pulled at, and the thought of going on living just like this, on the fringes of sisterhood rather than within it, seemed the best of all options, if she could deal with hunger, thirst and hygiene. Small spaces, spartan surroundings, had their own appeal. They encouraged a degree of acceptance. They were consistent with small ambitions.

  A clever person, with different ambitions, like Anna, would have made a greater effort and worked out how to get out by now, Therese thought, but for herself, she would simply wait for whoever had made the mistake of locking her in to rectify it and come along to let her out, and in the meantime, consider the fate of poor Matilda. The Sisters could get their own supper. There was a satisfaction in that.

  No need to bother about hygiene, yet. Her bladder seemed to have shrivelled over the last days, and while hunger had begun to gnaw, it did so with small, soft teeth. It was not unpleasant to be timeless and beyond the call of regime, almost weightless and beyond responsibility, lulled into sleep by the warmth and the smells she could now detect. The lingering fumes of paint and creosote, masked by the joss sticks, a hint of cat and, in her nostrils from that brief contact, the smell of Francis himself, making her wonder briefly what it was that made a man smell like that, what her own smell was like, what material covered the roof to make the rain echo the way it did, and then she noticed the small mirror propped on the shelves next to the paint pots, and rose to look at herself. The light was too dim to see anything more than a very pale face, which seemed to consist mainly of eyes, and she was disturbed to see her own reflection, which seemed to have so little to do with herself. The only mirror in the convent was by the front door, where few of them ever looked and only then to check their own dignities before making an exit into the outside world. Otherwise, if the appearance of one of the Sisters was ever defective, a habit hitched up in a belt, a veil not quite straight, another Sister simply adjusted it, discreetly, to murmured thanks. They could all of them dress themselves in the dark and mutely relied on one another to correct the missed details of rudimentary grooming. It reminded her of primates considerately ridding one another of fleas. The mirror reminded her that the light, such as it was, was fading, and she should use it to find the candles she had noticed earlier. Cheap candles, not like the beeswax candles of the chapel, stickier to touch, and when she found one, struck a match and melted the base before sticking it on the shelf, a fresh smell entered the chorus of the others. There, now she could pray. The candle flame, slow and steady without any draught to give it flickering life, was the best aid of all to prayer.

  Oh, dear Lord, why are you doing this to me?

  Lord, have I sinned, and if so, how? How can I know if I’ve sinned, unless it’s perfectly obvious, or you tell me? Be reasonable, I’m only human.

  I don’t know if this is punishment . . . And then, thumping the bed impatiently, Why the hell don’t you talk to me? I’m your child.

  She tried the rosary, without benefit of rosary beads, because the rosary was such a useful prayer. The one that allowed daydreaming and prayer at the same time, one Our Father, ten Hail Marys, one Glory Be to the Father, and then begin again. She tried not to daydream, but think of the mysteries, which were the prescribed accompaniment to the stanzas, but found she could only think of the sorrowful ones – Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, the scourging, Calvary, with the niggling background thought, Oh why, sweet Jesus, why did you let yourself in for that? Why did you think we were worth it and why didn’t you escape? What difference did it make? She gave up. The rain stopped.

  It was only in the following silence, which seemed to mushroom around her, creating a sensation of stuffy fog, that Therese began to feel the rising of panic. There was no air in here. What little there was was subsumed by the still-glowing joss sticks and the candle flame. She was afraid of staying still, got up and pushed at the door, then banged at it with her fists, but it did not yield, only vibrated with sound. She wanted to tear at her own hair and scream, but was controlled enough to realise that that would make everything worse. This was not a sanctuary, it was a prison cell. She tried to think of a saint in captivity, any saint, and what he or she might do if they were her. Contemplate, offer the indignities to God for the benefit of another soul in purgatory, wait in faith to be released, be patient and still? No. No.

  Moving lengthways, rather than towards the door, there was a maximum of four small steps between one side of the cell and the other. Therese tried to imagine she was either in the kitchen with Kim, or back inside her bedroom at home, with Anna, long ago, whiling away the hours of illness on a relatively good day. Both of them playing around and teaching themselves the model walk, copying one another in the exaggerated gyration of hips and the silly, one hip forward, head flung back, stroll they had learned from pictures in magazines and a TV programme of ballroom dancing, which they had watched with the sound turned down until they laughed themselves sick and Mother had to take control. The tango-influenced catwalk-model walk looked effortless, but was full of effort. It had exhausted them, and she did it again and again, now. Two steps forward, two back, flung herself on the bed, posed, got up, did it again. In the tenth circuit, dizzy and overheated, she stripped off her clothes. She would do this until she was beyond doing anything. Something had bitten her: something scratched. Her skin scorched.

  It was late afternoon when Christopher Goodwin arrived back in the city. He breathed the air in the underpass which linked the station to the Underground, noting the various flavours of humanity and dirt, artificial light, organised chaos, noticed a couple of homeless boys who had already given up on the day, and wondered if Francis McQuaid had ever been one of those. An unwashed head stuck out of a dirty sleeping bag and he was ashamed of having no money to give, but on balance, he thought he preferred this inhuman, human bustle to the relentless pull of the tide and all that heartless sky. Kay McQuaid should come back: this was home. Although he knew it was irresponsible and he would pay later in conscience for the further neglect of his parish, he detoured via the park. On this Wednesday afternoon, the feast day of St Matthew, apostle, evangelist, symbolised as a man with wings, but once a tax collector, the boys’ football team was finishing a game. He stood and watched the sheer energy and grace of their movements, listening with delight to the innocent savagery of their yelling, until he sensed he was watched himself as he stood apart, wondering again if Francis, born simple Jack bastard McQuaid, had ever been one of these, playing football in the drizzle with the express purpose of learning how to break the rules.

  On the last regretful circuit of this end of the park, Christopher saw a nun, sitting on a bench, and had a distinct temptation to change route and avoid her. He resisted and, as he drew level, watched to see if she was familiar, hoping she was a complete stranger until he saw with a shock that she was one of what he had sourly come to consider as Barbara’s bunch. He could recognise them individually, but never quite remember all of their names, except for the one or two of whom he was fond and the ones who had taken the masculine names, and he remembered Sister Joseph all the more as the one who was frequently mentioned in Sister Barbara’s catalogues of trouble, as well as being the one who was drunk, but admirably controlled, at the last meeting. A similar condition seemed to apply to her now. She was not drunk, but under the infl
uence; on the way to being drunk and weeping copiously to add to the dampness of her habit, which was muddy at the hem. Pedestrians crossed the path to avoid her and as he sat down beside her, with the old, familiar irritation that accompanied so many a Christian act, especially one that interrupted progress to more important things when he was hungry and tired, he could see why she was being shunned. Even without the frightening accoutrements of a nun’s soiled habit, Sister Joseph was eminently resistible.

  ‘It’s Joseph, isn’t it?’ he asked, with his practised gentleness, which so often emerged as more bracing than sensitive and did so now. ‘What ails you, Sister? Can I help? Can I walk you home?’

  ‘Piss off.’

  This startled him, to the point of laughter. He was used to the deferential smile, the oh no, Father, it’s nothing at all response, which typified their stoic reactions to their own distress, even on a deathbed. It was a deference that had often annoyed him, but he found he did not want the opposite either.

  ‘What’s the matter, Sister?’

  An inane question, but he had to persist.

  ‘What’s the matter, you fool of a man? What’s the matter?’ Her voice was only slightly slurred and rising, so that he could not gauge the level of her inebriation, although experience of others made him guess it had some way to go before violence or oblivion, whichever took hold first. She was a strong old woman. He had often thought that the residual physical strength of the old must be as frustrating as their weaknesses, a formless, useless energy, and he did not look forward to it. She looked up at him with bleary eyes, identifying him for the first time.

  ‘Christ, it’s the bloody priest. Where are you when you’re needed? No one could rouse you this morning. Just think, you could have sat with me and Matilda. Sat and listened to her telling me how the devil himself had murdered Edmund and the birds and put poison on her hands. She was in such pain. The devil himself, she told me. And then . . . she died, Father. She died without you.’ The voice moved from a hiss to a mumble.