Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy

by Rumer Godden

  The food too was good. Nowadays for breakfast there was good bread, often from the prison’s own kitchen. ‘There is a school of cookery now’ – Le Fouest had come a long way from the stinking soup trolleys of Cadillac – Lise was astonished at the menus. Roast beef or beefsteak, fresh fish, omelettes, all appetisingly dressed with herbs. She could not believe it. ‘They are taught in the cookery school to do things properly and they can buy extras in the canteen; they earn more money now,’ Soeur Marie Mercédes explained.

  If they had had these workshops in my day, what couldn’t I have brought to Béthanie, thought Lise. The prisoners no longer toiled at heavy and boring tasks, but at what they chose to learn, tie-making and dressmaking, cooking, to professional standards for city shops. I could have learned to be a secretary, even taken a university course, thought Lise. There were sports and yoga – where else would most of these women and girls have ever heard of yoga? When the bell rang for meals, each went back to her own division, not herded by the hundred, but only twelve to twenty women, each division with its own refectory or sitting-room; they could take their trays into their cells if they liked and Lise thought of the old great room filled with the sound of crockery and rough utensils where not a word was allowed to be spoken. ‘Who is behind all this?’ she asked Soeur Marie Mercédes.

  ‘The Administration Pénitentiaire are, I suppose, but here I think you will find it’s mostly the imagination and force of Mademoiselle Signoret, the Directrice, and her staff, helped by the Sisters of Marie Joseph. As a new visitor, you must come and meet Mademoiselle. She will be in her private office now.’

  The Directrice! There was not a prisoner in Lise’s time whose heart did not beat so that it seemed to choke her, whose knees did not feel weak, when summoned to see the Directrice; even the defiant ones who tried to brazen it out, who called her behind her back ‘gouine’ or ‘enculée’, felt the same. Perhaps it was for punishment, the cachot – not a dungeon any more but a bare room without any comforts, not even a bed – in which case not only the Directrice, but her ‘second’, the Sous-Directrice, and Madame Chef, the chief officer, would be there. It might be what was even worse, bad news from the family, in which case Mademoiselle Signoret would see the prisoner alone. Now and again it was good news, a remission, two or three months of grace, but it had been always intimidating, standing facing the desk. ‘I suppose there has to be distance,’ said Lise, but nowadays, she was told, Directrice or not, Mademoiselle Signoret would often go and talk alone with a prisoner in her cell.

  No one had told Lise the history of this Directrice, her name either, but when the sisters were ushered in by a young secretary and a tall, slim, dark-haired woman stood up to greet them, for a moment Lise stayed still. She knew that intelligent face, the dark eyes under shaped brows, the clear cut nose and mouth, clear but sensitive, and Lise remembered the new young wardress of, was it 1948 or 1949, at Vesoul, whom she had heard protesting, ‘To give them that disgraceful bedding!’ and Lise remembered the heavy coarse blankets, dark grey as almost everything was; they pricked as did the straw palliasses. ‘Straw, and thin – and some of these women are old!’ said the indignant voice. Evidently Mademoiselle had got her way; now there were real mattresses, white sheets and pillowcases and the blankets were green.

  But if I remember her, will she remember me, thought Lise? but, if Mademoiselle did remember, she was too controlled, too well-bred, thought Lise, to show it. There was only an even ‘Bonjour, mes Soeurs. Please sit down,’ and, when Soeur Marie Mercédes said, ‘This is our new visitor, Soeur Marie Lise,’ Mademoiselle simply said, ‘Welcome, Soeur Marie Lise.’

  ‘Though they have asked to see us, to begin is always difficult,’ Soeur Marie Mercédes told Lise. ‘You must remember they are all, or almost all, unhappy and prison is emotional.’ Lise almost smiled. So, Soeur Marie Mercédes, in the true Béthanie way, knew nothing of her junior’s experiences.

  And, for all the alleviations, Le Fouest is still prison, thought Lise. There were still the bleak iron-netted courts where newcomers walk round and round in those first days of solitary confinement or, more usually, sit hopelessly on benches; still the punishment wing; still the women in identical blue work-smocks washing down the staircases while a wardress, her white uniform covered by a blue cloak, gold-starred, kept a strict eye on them. There were still locks and keys. It was when all the women came out of their workshops to go to their divisions that the full force of prison was seen; they were like ants, numbers, not people.

  ‘That’s what we have to fight,’ Mademoiselle Signoret told Lise, ‘to keep them people.’

  ‘Yes, they must be somebody, not nobody! Somebody – each one,’ said Soeur Marie Mercédes.

  ‘Soeur Marie Lise, this is Marie Dupont,’ said Soeur Marie Mercédes. ‘She is one of our regulars …’ but Marie Dupont could not wait for politeness. ‘Ma Soeur, did you see them? Oh, did you?’

  ‘Indeed I did. As your mother wrote, they are well and happy. Look, I brought these snapshots. One of our sisters borrowed a camera and took them.’ At the sight of the photographs, two schoolboys, one with a football, the other with a racquet, smiling, eating peanuts in some snapshots, or grimacing in others, the mother broke down and, ‘For her it’s terrible,’ Soeur Marie Mercédes told Lise. ‘She got twenty years and has done twelve; in a year or two she might be released, but her parents don’t want her at home; there is no husband. They took the boys and brought them up on condition she didn’t ask to see them again. They don’t want their grandsons to be shamed by their mother, the boys think she is dead. She agreed – what else could she do? But now …’

  ‘What can happen to her?’

  ‘She wants to come to Béthanie but she hasn’t a vocation and a convent is no refuge for a broken heart.’

  ‘Contrary to what most people think,’ said Lise.

  ‘Contrary to what most people think.’ Soeur Marie Mercédes smiled. ‘We shall try and get her work on one of the farms until she finds a way.’

  Soon Lise began to see how she, particularly, could help – after all, she knew the sore places – but she had to be careful not to betray herself. ‘Don’t you hate the noises … the sound of the keys in locks … the banging of trays … the smell of the slops trolley?’ would have been too close, but she was learning; there was so much to learn and she soon came to admire and reverence Soeur Marie Mercédes as she had revered Soeur Marie Alcide – Only there should be a thousand of them, sighed Lise, and even then they wouldn’t be enough.

  Soeur Marie Mercédes was as adroit and astute as she was sympathetic. ‘Ma Soeur, it’s my birthday on Friday and you’ll be coming then, won’t you?’ It was a prisoner called Yvonne. ‘I know you stay the week and my mother wants to send me a box of little cakes she has made herself. If they come through the gate I shall have to share them with the whole division and there wouldn’t be enough, but if you could bring them, ma Soeur, five or six of us could have a private fete … ma Soeur – it’s my birthday.’

  ‘Yvonne, you know perfectly well I can’t.’

  ‘But little cakes. What harm could there be in that? She’ll leave them at your hostel …’

  ‘Yvonne!’

  There was no ill-feeling. ‘It was just a try,’ said Soeur Marie Mercédes. ‘They know we can’t even bring in gifts of our own. All parcels are forbidden.’

  ‘It seems inhuman.’

  ‘Is it? I once brought in a bomb.’

  ‘You!’

  ‘Yes, it seemed so innocent. The girl asked me to bring in some knitting wool. She had started the tricot before she came and couldn’t match the colour in the prison. I had to go to a particular shop she told me of to get it. Fortunately the parcel seemed rather heavy – bombs were not as small then as they are now – so I took the box to Mademoiselle.’

  ‘We can give cards,’ said Soeur Marie Mercédes. ‘Often when talking you can find out their birth-date and without their seeing write it down, then, on their birthday, they ge
t a card. It seems nothing but when you are a surname or a number, a birthday card …’

  It was strange, Lise often thought, to be on two sides at the same time; she was one with the nuns – thank God, thought Lise – yet still one with the prisoners. There was so much I didn’t understand then. ‘The moment a prisoner realises it is justice that she should be here,’ a Sister of Marie Joseph, those experienced prison workers, told Lise, ‘is a wonderful one. When she sees she is making amends in a way, paying for what she did, she gets a new dignity.’ Many had it and Lise was often astonished, as she had been after her baptism when she had found a fraternity, women who had a deep devotion, ‘far far deeper than mine,’ she told Soeur Marie Alcide, ‘yet it was to me that the vocation was given. How … funny,’ said Lise.

  ‘Perhaps they were meant to stay in the world,’ said Soeur Marie Alcide, ‘Even this world,’ and it was true that from each of those women spread, not a combat – because they were not fighting – but warmth and sanity in that hotbed of resentment, hate and despair. ‘We could do with more of those,’ Mademoiselle Signoret sighed.

  In Mademoiselle’s office Lise seemed suddenly to find herself on the other side of the desk with a woman who had what must be one of the most difficult tasks in civilisation and such responsibility. ‘To be second,’ Soeur Marie Emmanuel had once said, ‘yes, that I could do, but to be the first!’ Yet Soeur Marie Emmanuel had been Mother-General of the Order for twelve years, re-elected twice, and Mademoiselle Signoret, Directrice of Le Fouest for fifteen years; and no more than with Soeur Marie Emmanuel was there ambition. Lise was sure of that, nor a desire for power.

  How much Mademoiselle knew of Soeur Marie Lise, Lise could not guess, but a friendship grew up between them. ‘The first friend I have ever had outside convents,’ said Lise, marvelling, ‘at least, if one doesn’t count Henri, but that was such a short time: or Maître Jouvin or Marcelline – but she was like family.’ Soon Mademoiselle was coming to Belle Source for a long weekend. ‘Pagan as I am, you still have me and I love it,’ and she said, ‘I wish I could make a domaine like this at Le Fouest. Do away with those dreadful courtyards, let those who wanted to make gardens, but it’s always money, money, money. We are accused of spending too much as it is …’ She broke off, brooding.

  ‘I believe you think about those women day and night,’ said Lise.

  ‘No, I don’t.’ Mademoiselle was too honest to say that. ‘If I did, I couldn’t go on. I have to have my books, music, friends to keep my mind sane … but you, you have none of those.’

  ‘Indeed we do. Don’t we have our community, our chapel, prayers,’ yet, though the nuns only went to Le Fouest four times a year, the visits haunted Lise, a constant shadow of evil and despair, Yet I ought to be accustomed to it, thought Lise. For all of us at Béthanie, it’s never far away.

  Jacky, for instance, had finally and irrevocably ‘thrown herself in the river’, only this time it was from the top window of a house where Soeur Marie Mercédes had again found work for her. Jacky had fallen on to railings below. When the news came, Soeur Marie Mercédes had merely tightened her lips and gone to the chapel to pray. Lise had taken her to the funeral, a pathetically lonely one, they two the only mourners, with only one wreath, homemade from Belle Source. ‘But why? Why?’ asked Lise, as, long ago, the disciples had asked Jesus why they could not cure the possessed boy, and he answered, ‘That kind can come forth by nothing but fasting and prayer.’ ‘We did not fast or pray enough,’ said Soeur Marie Mercédes, ‘but there are so many, too many!’ and, for the first time Lise saw the intrepid little sister crumble. It was only for a moment. Soeur Marie Mercédes stiffened herself upright. ‘Still, we must do what we can,’ and it still went on: the telephone or gate-bell ringing with a message or a need, a traveller; it might even be a gendarme bringing in a woman or girl drunk or lost, but for anyone wretched there was a room ready.

  ‘That must often be abused,’ Mademoiselle had said.

  ‘Not as often as you would think. Perhaps it pays to be defenceless; there is nothing here to fight,’ said Lise.

  ‘That’s a key I can’t have.’ Mademoiselle got up and stood with her back to Lise. ‘The Governor of a prison can do no right; either we are soft, too lenient – people say our prisoners have more chance than many in the world which unfortunately is true – or else we are tyrants, oppressors, avid for power. I can put up with all that,’ said Mademoiselle, ‘because I know neither is true – we strike the best balance we can; what I can’t bear are the failures, the irrecuperables, the ones we can’t reach or help.’

  ‘Are they really irrecuperables – irredeemable?’ Lise asked and said slowly, ‘We’re supposed to be made in God’s image so, in every one, there must be some spark.’

  ‘Of the divine? Unfortunately the devil is divine too,’ Mademoiselle said. ‘I don’t know if I believe in God, but I know I believe in the devil. I have met him,’ said Mademoiselle.

  It happened when Lise had been a prison visitor for six years, ‘and had grown in confidence – I thought,’ said Lise, taking more and more responsibility; Soeur Marie Mercédes had grown even more frail – she had broken her hip again and this time it would not set properly, ‘because my bones are old,’ she said, but she still managed to struggle along on her caliper. Lise had said Soeur Marie Alcide was a saint but Soeur Marie Mercédes was like a flame, though it was burning her out; only this little carcase of brittle bone and sallowed skin was left – and those eyes! When they looked at a prisoner they burnt away all pretence and saw to the heart of the unhappiness and sin, and yet Soeur Marie Mercédes was gentle and endlessly patiently charitable, and, ‘Was I glad to have her with me that day?’ Lise told the Mother-General. ‘Though it was for her I really feared.’

  They had been coming down the staircase at noon to the officers’ dining-room when they met a party of prisoners coming up with a wardress on the way from their workshops to their division for lunch. There were fifteen or sixteen women and girls, all dressed alike in the prison uniform, well cut grey skirts, grey cardigans, blouses of different colours. Most passed with a smile or a word of greeting to the Sisters but one, in a scarlet blouse, stopped. She and Lise were on the same step and face to face.

  There was no mistaking; Lise saw the bronzed hair, no longer silky, the regular perfect features though the flesh was sagging, the grey eyes that Lise guessed had been dimmed but were bright now with surprise – and the old spite. Vivi had grown plump, her figure had gone, some of the pretty teeth were broken and black, but there was still the independent neck, the proud carriage, and I, thought Lise; in spite of what Soeur Raymonde had said, she was sure no habit or veil could disguise her height, the way I walk and I expect my eyes and, to her chagrin, the scar had begun its immediate expected throbbing.

  There was not as much as a breathed ‘Toi!’ but Lise saw hatred blaze. ‘Allez. Faites vite!’ called the wardress and Vivi went on up the stairs as Lise went down.

  ‘That new prisoner, Vivi – does she call herself Branzano or Ambard – when did she come?’

  ‘Vivi?’ Though Lise knew Mademoiselle could have told her at once, she typically reached for the file, ‘because one can always make mistakes.’ ‘Yes, Vivi Ambard. She came five months ago; we had to keep her in the Division d’Accueil for the full three months. I’m afraid she’s going to be one of the difficult ones; though she has only been in her new division a few weeks she has already ganged up with two of the least desirable, Josephine – they call her Big Jo, a boxer’s name – and Zaza. I shall have to separate them. For another thing, when she came she was still only convalescent. She was taken to the Maison d’Arrét, half-starved and riddled with syphilis.’

  ‘Half-starved.’ Lise was startled. ‘Vivi!’ Mademoiselle asked no questions but presently Lise herself asked, ‘And her sentence?’

  ‘Five years. She was in the Rue Saint Denis – you know what that means. She robbed one of her clients while he slept; he was a salesman travelling in
tools and she used one of those, a small hatchet, to attack him. No one, not he or others or even she, seems to know why.’

  But Vivi! That spoiled darling. What happened? What could have happened?

  ‘Get up and get out.’

  I was in bed when Emile came in, still half asleep, not ready to get up. Gaby had not brought my coffee; the blinds were not up, nor the curtains drawn back, but a slant of sun shone on the carpet and showed how dirty it was. We had not enough staff – I had told Milo that but he only shrugged. I stretched and yawned. ‘Where’s Gaby?’ Emile did not answer. He looked pale, his tie was wrinkled and he hadn’t shaved – fastidious Milo. ‘What time is it?’ but I had no need to ask; the church clock was striking twelve. ‘Where’s Gaby? She isn’t doing her work properly.’

  ‘She can’t. She’s gone,’ and Emile said – he hadn’t lost his sneering calm – ‘We have escaped so far but now they are closing us down. There are to be no more “houses”.’

  ‘No more … what do you mean?’

  ‘What I say. You will have to look out for yourself now.’ He patted my leg. ‘You have been a little blind, poupoule. You had better wake up and get up. The vans will be here soon for the furniture. If I were you I should pack a little suitcase quickly – not too big or I might see it – and go.’

  ‘Go? Go where?’ Emile shrugged.

  I still could not believe it; he was teasing me. ‘But – I haven’t had my coffee.’

  ‘Without your coffee … in any case, it wasn’t your coffee, it was mine and there’s not going to be any more. Without anything, poupoule.’