by Rumer Godden
The chapel was empty, for which Lise was grateful, unlit except for the Sanctuary lamp burning with an amber glow by the tabernacle. She came in with Soeur Théodore and knelt for a few moments before the altar.
The Prioress and Lucette were there sitting quietly side by side, in the benches for guests at the back.
There was nothing for Lucette to see, only a nun kneeling with Madame Lise. Lucette had expected a ceremony, a priest, but there were only themselves, no music, no words until she heard what she thought was Lise speaking to herself:
Mon âme exalte le Seigneur
exulte mon esprit en Dieu, mon Sauveur …
My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God, my Saviour. He has regarded the lowliness of His handmaid and He, who is mighty, hath done great things in me.
‘Who are those nuns?’ Five years had gone since Lise had suddenly stopped and asked the wardress that – suddenly, because she must have passed them, ‘dozens of times’ said Lise. There had been nuns at Sevenet, her Maison d’Arrêt, as there were at Vesoul, where they worked as infirmarians and as éducatrices, but they were of a different Order, Soeurs de Marie Joseph, dedicated to prison work; Lise saw them every day but now she was staring as if she had never seen a nun before. ‘Who are they?’ It had been when she and her ‘division’, some twenty prisoners, were on their way to the workrooms and, in the darkness of the January afternoon on that steep prison staircase, Lise saw the two white habits.
‘Our angels have come,’ sneered one of the women. Angels! When Lise came to see them close, she learned that the white tunics were patched and darned, the pinafore-like scapulars worn thin with much washing, and the black veils framed faces that were only too human, often tired and distressed, more distressed than the prisoners, but, ‘One mustn’t be emotional, that is the first thing,’ Soeur Marie Alcide told Lise. She, the elder, was short and plump, but the plumpness was like a rock; she had ‘gooseberry eyes’, as Lise thought when she first saw them, but no matter how plain and circled with tiredness, they were steady, while Soeur Marthe, so much younger, often had difficulty in holding back her tears. ‘Well, one feels the weight of evil and despair at Vesoul as in all prisons,’ said Soeur Marie Alcide, ‘and, still more, the ugly sordidness of some of the stories when at last they are told – or not told, which is perhaps worse,’ – but the first sight of the whiteness of those habits seemed to Lise symbolic – ‘I was blind before. It did seem like light; perhaps that’s why Saint Dominic chose it.’
‘Who are those nuns?’
‘The Dominicaines of Béthanie.’ It was the first time Lise had heard the word Béthanie.
‘They come four times a year,’ said the wardress. ‘I’m sure you can see them if you like. I will put you on the list,’ but still Lise had hesitated, ‘Hesitated for another six months; I missed two visits! I suppose I didn’t want to tell …’
‘You don’t have to tell them anything,’ one of the other prisoners said. ‘You can just – chat. It’s such a relief to be able to talk to them alone.’
‘Alone? You mean without a wardress?’
‘No wardress. One can be left in peace. That’s something – and they don’t ask questions.’
‘They bring peace.’ Soeur Justine of the Order of Marie Joseph who worked in the infirmary was reverent.
The Sisters of Béthanie brought something else too – not the usual help that came from outside; not just a smile, the comfort of words and encouragement, the sympathy to listen, or a refuge or protection or help in finding work, though they gave those freely; what they really came to offer, for the few who would or could take it, was a whole new life, a place in their own family – one could say ‘at their own hearth,’ into their lives and hearts.
At first Lise could not take that in. ‘You mean someone … a criminal, a murderess, a whore like me … could become a religieuse, a nun? It seems impossible.’
‘Why?’ asked Soeur Marie Alcide. ‘Think, Lise. Think of Calvary.’
‘Calvary? Where our Lord died on the Cross?’
‘Yes. Who did he choose to have close to him then, to share it with him, he who could have commanded the whole world? His Mother, Mary Immaculate: another Mary, the Magdalen from whom he had driven seven devils: Saint John, most loved of all his disciples, and two thieves. With him it was more than possible – it happened – and that is the core of Béthanie.’
‘For more than a year I saw those sisters every three months,’ Lise was to tell Marc; ‘they were always two together. We talked of trivial things – I can see now how difficult it was for them. Unlike the others, I had no family they could ask about, no friends, no home; the Rue Duchesne was best forgotten, and yet even there I had had this feeling of groping, searching. Then, one day, when I was with them, the barrier suddenly broke, and I poured it all out at last.’
‘With the sisters it often happens like that,’ the other prisoners told Lise. ‘You see, if you tell anything to the psychiatrist or the doctor, they have to make a report. Those nuns don’t. It’s as secret as when you go to confession – if you do.’
With Lise it was even more secret than usual; against all custom, Soeur Marthe got up and left the room, leaving her alone with Soeur Marie Alcide.
‘I see now there was a path that began that night when I ran away from the Rue Duchesne to that unknown church and its presbytery. I wish I could write to Père Silas and tell him,’ said Lise, ‘but of course he won’t remember me.’
‘He does remember you,’ said Soeur Marie Alcide on her next visit, ‘because of something you didn’t tell me. It seems you slipped an envelope into the presbytery letter-box and in it was the ten francs he had given you for the taxi fare.’
‘But of course I had to return them,’ Lise had said in astonishment, ‘especially as I used them for what they weren’t given.’
‘I think I wasn’t mistaken in you, Lise,’ said Soeur Marie Alcide.
‘For He that is mighty hath done great things in me,’ ‘and me … and me … and me …’ How many others had knelt, as Lise was kneeling in the chapel now, and felt those words rise up in them – words that the Dominicaines of Béthanie said every night at Vespers?
Lise did not know she had said them aloud but, ‘What is she talking about?’ Lucette whispered to the Prioress – her whisper was awed.
‘She is using the words Our Lady used when she went to see her cousin, after the angel had spoken to her.’
‘But an angel hasn’t spoken to Madame Lise.’
‘I think in a way …’
‘There aren’t any angels nowadays.’
‘No? Well, see what is happening.’
Soeur Théodore had waited until Lise was ready, then took her away through a small side door that closed. Lucette started up in panic but the Prioress stopped her.
‘Lucette, you love Madame Lise.’
‘Yes.’ The eyes that searched everyone for a possible hurt searched the Prioress’s face.
‘She has gone into the enclosure. Do you love her enough to leave her alone tonight? To let her have her little feast of welcome?’
‘If you say so.’ It was wrung out of Lucette.
‘Bien,’ and it was Soeur Marie de la Croix herself who took Lucette over to the guest-house and called Soeur Joséphine Magdaleine.
‘Lucette?’ Soeur Joséphine Magdaleine smiled. ‘Of course. Come, I’ll take you to your room.’
‘You mean – you have a room ready?’
‘There is always a room. At times someone has to share but we manage. Here is yours. Simple, I’m afraid, but now, if you like to wash and make yourself comfortable, supper will be in twenty minutes; the dining-room is downstairs.’
It wasn’t until after Compline, the last Office of the day, that the peace Lise had hoped for, had expected even, came.
She had been shown to her place in choir, the place she would keep as long as she was at Saint Etienne; in front of the double row of white-habited nuns she was only
one among several girls and women dressed in skirts and jerseys, even trousers. She had been introduced to them; Julie: Pauline: José: Jeanne – white-haired, perhaps sixty: Micheline and a coloured woman, Bella, much Lise’s own age. These might be her companions for the next months, perhaps years, every kind of face from the unafraid and candid to the firmly reserved: from the gentle to the ravaged – but not as ravaged as her own with her scar. There, in choir, it had begun to throb.
‘Lucette?’ she had asked Soeur Théodore after the delectable supper.
‘She is in good hands and there is no more you can do for her tonight,’ said sensible Soeur Théodore, ‘so thank God and be happy.’
The Sister had marked Lise’s book for her and slowly the words, the quiet singing of Compline, began to calm her.
Entre tes mains, Seigneur
Je remets mon esprit.
Into your hands, O Lord
I commend my spirit.
Then,
Let your servant depart in peace
according to thy word
for mine eyes have seen thy salvation …
The Prioress came into the centre of the choir and sprinkled holy water; the candles were put out and, one by one, nuns, women and girls left to go to their rooms – they were not called ‘cells’ in Béthanie because of the hurtful connotation.
Outside Lise’s window, owls were calling as the moon sank lower in the sky – a new moon, a good omen. Her room was high, on the third floor of the wing built on to the château; the room was as small and simple as her cell at Vesoul, but utterly different: a bed with a clean white cover, a small work-table, a chest, a chair and, behind a screen, a fixed basin with water, cold, and a small portable bidet. That was all, as at Vesoul, but Lise was free to open the window, throw back the shutters; there was no lock on the door and, ‘If you don’t want to be disturbed for any reason, put a handkerchief on the handle,’ Soeur Théodore had said, and added, ‘You can put your books here on the shelf, as well as an ornament or statue, and hang your pictures up. Don’t be afraid of leaving your letters on the table. I won’t come rummaging.’
‘I have only a few books, no pictures,’ said Lise, ‘no anything, and I don’t think there will be any letters. I have come to you bare.’
‘That’s good. Most of us have too much.’
Lise smiled. She had already seen Soeur Théodore’s room, bare of almost everything but papers.
Nine o’clock sounded from the turret, late by prison hours. At Vesoul, every night, Lise used to try and pace her cell for an hour to make herself sleep; now she could kneel in peace and look out of the window. It was too late to see her star. It would have dropped to the horizon by now, but it was a night of stars.
When I look at the heavens,
Lise murmured the psalm,
the work of Thy fingers,
at the moon and the stars which Thou hast made.
What then is man that Thou art mindful of him …
and mindful of me, thought Lise, in this extraordinary way.
At this time in the Rue Duchesne the night would not have begun. ‘As you know, they don’t have houses now,’ Lise was to say to Marc. ‘It’s all call-girls, or girls in cars, pick-ups at clubs and bars. Pity. Ours were looked after; they didn’t have to bargain or bother about the fric: a third went to them, two thirds to us – they kept their tips – they were healthy and clean.’ ‘You will wash, before and after, each time, every time,’ she would emphasise. The little squares of towelling, ‘flannels’ Lise’s nanny used to call them, were boiled by Eugenia each morning and pegged out to dry. ‘Marguerite, you should have used eight and there are only seven. Slut!’ Eugenia could give a hard slap. ‘No girl will lend, or allow another girl to use, her soap,’ Lise had ruled. ‘Infection can spread.’ ‘We never had any,’ she told Marc. ‘The doctor came every week, but now it’s rampant. As far as possible I saw no girl was abused, though now and again Patrice would be in as vicious a mood as Patagon, his macaw, but only now and again. Our girls were well dressed, ate well; Marcelline was a good cook, bless her. All that, at least, was good,’ but more and more Lise shrank from the remembrance.
At this time the girls would be having their dinner except those who were going out. Patrice had arranged endless discreet little dinners or suppers in private rooms. Private! thought Lise, when every waiter and chef and door-man in Paris knew about them. It was Lise’s task to supply the girls.
‘Can’t I go?’ Vivi had begged.
‘You’re not old enough.’
‘If I’m old enough for …’
‘Also you have to know what a handkerchief is for, and not use your thumb as a fork,’ Lise said cruelly, and it was true that Patrice had always insisted, ‘Send only those who know. None of your trussed little pullets, quivering with nerves.’
Vivi certainly would not have been a trussed little pullet but I sent some, ‘by special request’, God forgive me, thought Lise and, as she had so often thought, He may, but I can never forgive myself.
‘The past is past,’ Soeur Marie Alcide had told Lise firmly. ‘Remember, God does not look at what you were but what you are and, above all, what you want to be,’ said Soeur Marie Alcide, and, ‘It has been a long day,’ Lise told herself. ‘You can start again tomorrow. Now go to sleep.’
Lise had meant that first night to keep vigil, a vigil of thankfulness, as, perhaps, an echo of that long ago Adoration when those poor women of Cadillac kept their watch half the night – but almost at once she was overcome by sleep. ‘Naturally,’ said Soeur Théodore. ‘You had had a long and emotional day,’ yet Lise had woken almost before dawn.
Soeur Théodore had said nothing about not leaving her room and so Lise dressed, made her bed, set her room in order and, finding a cloak hung on the door – Soeur Théodore must have seen she had no coat – put it on and went silently downstairs. The sound of the key turning in the lock was so loud that she stopped, her heart beating, but nothing stirred. Quietly she opened the door, as quietly closed it and was out. Out! Alone. Free to walk.
It was chilly in the dawn twilight; there were no colours yet; the trees were black shapes, the paths faint glimmers, but everywhere was freshness; freshness in the breeze and the spring dew on hedges and lawns and leaves. As Lise passed, a sense of another freedom came to her, wider than this convent domaine or the forests and vineyards around it; wider than her own release, wide as the paling sky, infinite. More and more during her years at Béthanie did Lise come to love this sense of space in the empty purity of early morning before anyone or anything were awake to spoil it. Summer and winter, wet or fine, sun or snow, she would be up before the caller’s knock and out, pacing the domaine. Marc liked it too; in the days after he came to Belle Source, each would see the other, pacing the empty garden, the kitchen garden and orchard; usually, they turned aside into another path, each wanting to be alone, but once Marc asked her, ‘Do you always do this?’
‘I have, for more years than I like to remember … except, there were some years when – I couldn’t,’ and Lise left him abruptly.
That first morning, at Saint Etienne, she stayed out until, in the trees, the birds had finished their first singing; a sister came down to let the hens out and a cow lowed, probably for its calf as it was being milked. Then a bell rang, not a clang but a gentle bell; it was time for Lauds, the first prayer of the day.
The caller must have gone along the corridor, giving the knock from room to room. Perhaps when no answer came from Lise, the sister might have looked in and seen the neatly made bed, the tidy room – perhaps the caller thought she had run away – but there was no comment when Lise joined Soeur Théodore and her flock as they went into chapel. I expect I had ‘a morning face’ thought Lise, and Soeur Théodore knew she had no cause to worry; all the same she quietly told Lise, ‘Be up and dressed if you like, but don’t go out until the knock. Soeur Johanne Magdaleine, our porteress, would be uneasy if the door was opened before the community was up.’
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br /> ‘Nowadays,’ Lise was to tell Marc, ‘they trust me, but then I had to do as I was told.’
She was not ‘told’ to go to the guest-house and see Lucette but, ‘I think you should,’ said Soeur Théodore, ‘if only to say au revoir,’ but when Lise found Lucette in the little parlour Lucette was surly.
‘Didn’t they take care of you?’ asked Lise. ‘Wasn’t the food good? Ours was, especially after Vesoul. Weren’t they kind?’
‘Just trying to get hold of me,’ Lucette mumbled. ‘Everyone knows nuns do that.’
‘On the contrary, it’s difficult to make them take you but, Lucette,’ Lise put her hand over the girl’s. ‘They will always help. If you want somewhere to stay, to find work …’
‘You want to get rid of me.’
‘Lucette! I’m only trying to explain.’
‘Why can’t I be what you’ll be?’
‘You could, but …’
‘But?’
‘This is not something you choose; in a way you are chosen and often when it seems least likely, almost impossible, as with me. It’s as if God put out a finger and said, “You.”’
Lucette was suddenly angry. ‘God hasn’t got a finger. He can’t have because there isn’t a God. If there were he wouldn’t have let what happened, happen to me – or you.’
‘That’s what I used to think, but that wasn’t God; it was us.’
‘Us?’ The brown eyes, not angry now but puzzled, searched Lise’s face. ‘Not us, it was them.’ Then light dawned. ‘I see, you are going to escape here where there are no men. I don’t blame you. Je déteste tous ces mecs. I hate men, all of them. Saligauds. Cons!’ The eyes came back to Lise. ‘Isn’t it that?’
‘No, never, never. For me, when you have loved a man, really loved through everything,’ Lise spoke painfully, ‘no matter what he does to you, you can’t hate.’
‘Did you love a man? Like that?’
‘Yes. Like that,’ said Lise.
