Death of a Novice Page 5

  The immense length of that prayer, with its repetition of same prayers, fifty times the ‘Hail Mary’ and then numerous ‘Our Father’ and the ‘Glory Be …’ all of these prayers, recited over and over again, would, she hoped, lull Sister Catherine into a comatose state, but to her alarm, the girl gave a slight shriek and shook her head violently, repudiating both chair and prayer.

  ‘I can’t pray, Reverend Mother. I’m not worthy. Sister Gertrude prayed, but it did her no good. She dwelt too much on worldly matters. And now she has been punished.’

  Oh, bother! The Reverend Mother closed her lips firmly so that the words could not escape. Wearily she sat down again on the rejected chair. Why waste Sister Bernadette’s kindness? The chair was a support and she was feeling her age. She stared ahead and with difficulty suppressed a sigh. Why on earth did I give into the bishop and accept this unfortunate child into the convent? How many times had she said those words to herself? Sister Catherine had been a niece of one of the bishop’s chaplains and both he and the bishop had been determined that Reverend Mother Aquinas was to have the honour of receiving this saintly soul into her community. The bishop enquired about Sister Catherine every time he saw the Reverend Mother and on every occasion, the Reverend Mother voiced apprehensions about excessive piety and an unhealthy addiction to confession. And, every time, the bishop expressed hearty reassurance and rapidly changed the subject. ‘Nice little girl’ had been his summing up of her reports. The Reverend Mother looked wryly at the innocent, child-like and tear-stained face that gazed at her confidingly and decided that the life of a hermit would have its compensations.

  ‘May I tell you something, Reverend Mother?’

  ‘I am always ready to listen,’ said the Reverend Mother cautiously. ‘Would you set the door ajar, sister, please?’ The air in the little shed was pungent with the smell of hen droppings. In any case, she wished to listen for the sound of the ambulance driving down the little laneway and her hearing was not as acute as it had been.

  The request took the girl aback. She swallowed another sob, went to the door and opened it, gazing out at the fog-misted gardens. The river smell now seeped into the little shed, but it was a smell that all Cork inhabitants, from cradle to grave, were accustomed to and it seemed to calm Sister Catherine somewhat for a moment. In any event she stood very still for a few moments. Perhaps the worst was over. But then she gave another hysterical sob and turned back to the Reverend Mother.

  ‘Sister Gertrude was a blackmailer,’ she announced dramatically.

  The Reverend Mother frowned. She said nothing, just passed her beads through her fingers. There was, she thought, something very soothing about the motion and she allowed a certain amount of time to elapse. Time, perhaps, for Sister Catherine to bite back her words, or to offer an explanation for them. The girl’s figure, outlined by the grey light through the door, was tense and her breath was audible; gasps and a slight hiccup.

  Oh, Sister Catherine, please go away. The words had no sooner gone through her mind than she felt ashamed of herself. If the girl had come to her from Sister Mary Immaculate, then she would have been thoroughly scolded already. Sister Mary Immaculate, surprisingly unsympathetic to one who shared her temperament, had already reduced Sister Catherine to tears, according to little Sister Imelda. Patience and understanding, the Reverend Mother told herself.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ she said aloud and endeavoured to make her voice as calm and as soothing as she could.

  Sister Catherine gave another couple of sobs, looked over her shoulder anxiously and even then lowered her voice to a whisper.

  ‘She was blackmailing Sister Brigid and Sister Joan,’ she said.

  ‘Really.’ The Reverend Mother allowed that one word of doubt to stand unaccompanied and she waited for a response. Sister Catherine, she thought wearily, would now burst into tears and sob that no one ever believed her.

  It didn’t happen that way, though. For once Sister Catherine held her tongue and stayed there at the door, standing very upright and staring out towards the river. The tears had stopped and there was almost an ugly look on the child-like face. Could it be triumph? The Reverend Mother sighed, pushed up her glasses and rubbed her eyes. I’m getting too old for all of this, was her thought and then, with shame, she banished that piece of selfishness and turned her attention back to Sister Catherine.

  ‘I don’t think that you mean blackmail, sister,’ she said gently.

  ‘Yes, I do.’ This was an unexpected answer from Sister Catherine, but at least she had stopped wailing.

  ‘Did she get them to pay her money?’ asked the Reverend Mother wearily. That, of course, was an absurdity. None of the novices had any money at all. Parents and relatives could bring small gifts of cakes or sweets, but traditionally these were shared with all. Money was definitely not allowed. The Reverend Mother waited with interest to see what would be said.

  ‘She got power over them,’ hissed Sister Catherine and then hastily, with a scared look at the corpse on the floor, she crossed herself hurriedly.

  ‘And you,’ enquired the Reverend Mother. ‘Did she have power over you?’ She had not missed a note of venomous dislike in the girl’s voice.

  But there was no answer to her question. She could not even be certain that it had been heard. Sister Catherine was now looking up towards the boarded roof of the shed. Was that a rat hole up there, wondered the Reverend Mother, following the direction of the eyes that looked heavenwards. A rat hole, or was it just that the roof had been made from cheap, thinly cut pine and a knot had fallen out? For a moment she pondered a letter of complaint and then remembered that she, personally, had not purchased the shed.

  ‘May I tell you something, Reverend Mother?’ Sister Catherine’s voice was full of suppressed excitement as she gazed at the roof. Funny, thought the Reverend Mother, how we always think of heaven as above the sky, not deep down in the earth. And yet the earth is the producer of all that man needs to maintain life. Why shouldn’t heaven be down there? Why do we look down at the earth when we speak of hell and up to the sky when we speak of heaven?

  ‘Yes, sister,’ she said wearily.

  Sister Catherine seemed to have gathered courage and inspiration from her study of the small hole in the roof, because now the sobs had ceased and her words came fluently.

  ‘I have felt for some time,’ announced the novice, ‘that the Holy Ghost has put a shield around me, that a mantle has descended from heaven and that it wraps around me; something that keeps me isolated from all evil and wrong-doing. No matter what was going on among sinful souls, I was kept protected from it.’

  ‘But you thought that something was going on?’

  Sister Catherine bowed her head and assumed a saintly expression. All traces of tears had vanished from her eyes and her cheeks were now slightly pink. The Reverend Mother tried to subdue feelings of dislike and breathed a prayer for Christian charity.

  ‘You overheard something?’ She would have to get rid of this girl. The bishop considered that Sister Catherine would prove to be a marvellous teacher and a wonderful influence on the older girls of the school. The Reverend Mother, not for the first time, felt herself in total disagreement with the bishop.

  ‘She had a very loud voice,’ said Sister Catherine with a glance at the silent figure on the floor. ‘May God have mercy on her soul,’ she added piously.

  ‘And what did you overhear, Sister Catherine?’

  ‘I heard her threaten to inform you unless they gave her what she wanted.’

  A fate worse than death. The Reverend Mother managed to suppress the words. It was no time for joking.

  ‘And what was that?’ she enquired.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Sister Catherine, reluctantly. ‘She lowered her voice just then. But I heard Sister Joan shout at her. She said, “We can’t possibly do that. You’re just an officious busybody. You have no patriotism, no love for your own country.” That was what Sister Joan said.’

  This so
unded a little odd. What had been going on? The Reverend Mother frowned.

  ‘And Sister Brigid?’ she enquired. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Something that I would not like to repeat,’ said Sister Catherine primly.

  The Reverend Mother waited. What on earth was this business of patriotism to do with her novices? Sister Catherine bit her lip but still said nothing. She fidgeted uneasily, moving her feet, turning each shoe edge in turn to the ground and then back again. Her fingers began to pluck at her sleeve cuffs, an almost invariable precursor of a fit of tears. She would have to be distracted, and quickly or else a full blown fit of hysteria would ensue. And then, to her relief, the Reverend Mother heard the sound of an engine, the banging of vehicle doors and the crash of iron gates pushed open to their fullest extent. The puzzle about Sister Joan’s and Sister Brigid’s relationship with the dead girl would have to wait.

  ‘That sounds like the ambulance,’ said the Reverend Mother, rising to her feet. ‘You’d better get back to your duties, Sister. Tell Sister Mary Immaculate that I kept you.’ She walked to the door and held it open for the girl, not looking at her, but peering through gaps in the bushes for a glimpse of the white roof of the ambulance, giving, she hoped, an appearance of one who is no longer interested or waiting for an answer.

  It worked. Sister Catherine was not much more than a child, after all, and, like all children, she could resist entreaties and commands to reveal a secret, but immediately yielded to bored indifference. As she passed her superior, she stopped at the doorway and hissed dramatically.

  ‘Sister Joan said that she would kill Sister Gertrude. And Sister Brigid said that she would help her!’ With a hunted glance of horror at the silent corpse on the floor behind her and another at the ambulance which was now visible, Sister Catherine moved quickly away, exchanging her usual small demure footsteps for something which was almost a run.

  The doctor from Northern Ireland had not accompanied the ambulance. There were three men and a driver and between them they lifted the body onto the stretcher and carried the remains of Sister Gertrude to the ambulance.

  The Reverend Mother walked beside the stretcher, passing her beads through her fingers and praying aloud in Latin. The ambulance men were respectful, and slightly over-awed and she waited until the body had been placed within the vehicle before she spoke.

  ‘Dr Scher will be back tonight,’ she said, as much to comfort herself as to gain information.

  ‘Don’t worry, Reverend Mother,’ said one reassuringly. ‘He’ll be back. No one was to touch anything while he was away. “Don’t let no one lay a finger.” Them were his words to me.’ He paused, but when she said nothing, he visibly summoned up courage. ‘I’m Pat, Reverend Mother,’ he said looking at her expectantly.

  ‘Goodness,’ said the Reverend Mother, rising to the occasion nobly and smiling at the tall figure that addressed her. It was not the first time that some fully grown man or woman had said something similar. Her past pupils generally assumed that as she looked the same to them, then they must be recognizable to her and that, of course, she would remember their names. ‘I would never have known you, Pat,’ she said. ‘How you have grown!’

  That was enough for Pat who looked confused and embarrassed while his friends looked from her to him respectfully.

  ‘Well, I’ll wish you all a good day,’ said the Reverend Mother, realizing that it was up to her to take charge since Dr Scher was not here to give orders. Pat, she thought – and she did wish that she remembered him – had got himself a good job as an ambulance attendant. There was a very high death rate in Cork city. What between victims of shooting, suicides, fatal fights and starvation, there must be bodies to be taken to the hospital on a daily basis. The young man looked cheerful and competent and she hoped that his early education in her school had proved to be of benefit to him in this useful life of his.

  Meditatively, she returned to the convent and went into her study. The fire was burning brightly and there was a pot of tea in the hearth and a plate of scones on the table. She welcomed Sister Bernadette’s care of her and forced herself to taste a scone. The cup of tea she swallowed thankfully and then unlocked her desk and took a file from the middle drawer. It was marked ‘Novices’ and she skimmed through it until she came to the present day. Yes, the address of Sister Gertrude’s next of kin was there. The father’s name and address had been struck out after his unexpected death a few weeks previously and the sister’s had been substituted. The full married name and address. A terrace of houses in Turners Cross. No telephone, though, and that was a shame. She would have to go out there and take a chance on finding Sister Gertrude’s nearest relative at home. It would be unforgiveable if rumour, always rampant in the city of talkers, would have notified her of the fatality before she had been informed of it officially.

  She took a bite from the scone and concealed the rest behind a pen stand on her desk. Some bird would welcome it later on when she disposed of it on the windowsill. The tea, however, she drank with appreciation. And then she rang the bell for Sister Bernadette.

  ‘How very kind of you to leave me something to eat and to drink,’ she said when the lay sister appeared. ‘I did so enjoy your delicious homemade scone.’ She had long decided that white lies which ironed the paths of daily intercourse with her fellow men, were no sin to be confessed in the convent chapel. In her mind, they were wholly justified and they smoothed and made pleasant relationships.

  ‘I have to go and see her sister,’ she said. ‘I understand that she lives in Turners Cross.’ She held out the book to Sister Bernadette, an authority on the streets of Cork city, who nodded sagely.

  ‘I’d go now if I were you, Reverend Mother. Not too far, and you should find her in at this time of the morning. A bit early for shopping. She’s quite pleasant. Wouldn’t think that she’d blame you in any way. Not too much love lost between them, anyway. So I’ve heard tell,’ added Sister Bernadette in tones that absolved her from such an uncharitable verdict on the relationship between the two sisters. ‘I’d take a taxi, Reverend Mother. It’s very wet on the streets and the trams will be full of people coughing. Not healthy. Where would we be if you were to get ill?’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ admitted the Reverend Mother. Modesty should have elicited a denial, but common sense told her that Sister Bernadette had spoken the truth. If anything happened to her, then the convoluted financial affairs of the convent would be exposed to the unfriendly gaze of the bishop’s secretary. Really, she needed an efficient deputy who understood how the whole show worked and who could carry on the various schemes and projects once her superior had shuffled off her mortal coil. Sister Mary Immaculate would not be equal to the task.

  There had been times, when during the last few months she had played with the thought of bringing Sister Gertrude into her own office as a secretary and gradually confiding in her how to run the whole concern so far as the money aspects went. The girl was fitted to be a business woman.

  But was she interested in the children?

  The Reverend Mother had thought not. Perhaps it would come, but there appeared to be little sign of it so far. Figures were not everything. The whole organisation had to be run for the children and because of the children.

  In any case, the girl was dead.

  She was roused from her melancholy thoughts by a knock on the door. She knew the knock and knew that she needed to deal with this matter before she left the convent to see the sister of the dead nun.

  ‘Ah, Sister Mary Immaculate,’ she said.

  ‘I just popped in, Reverend Mother, not wanting to delay you in any way, or to take up your valuable time, but just to say that I’ve seen all the novices and have told them about the terrible death of Sister Gertrude. I’ve sent them all to pray in the chapel now, all that is except Sister Catherine who has gone to bed with a sick headache. Don’t you worry at all, Reverend Mother. I shall see to everything in your absence. They are all being very sensible.’
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br />   ‘You are very good,’ said the Reverend Mother. She ran her mind through the day. No teacher was ill, thank goodness. The classroom lessons would go on like clockwork. Sister Bernadette could be relied upon to see to the hot lunches, eggs and potatoes from the convent garden for those children who stayed in school during the midday break. And she herself had no class to take in the afternoon. And then she remembered why her timetable had been cleared. Of course. It was accounts day.

  ‘One thing, Sister Mary Immaculate, would you see the bishop’s secretary for me? He will be coming for those accounts. They’re all here, ready for him. I’ll put them into an envelope for him. It shouldn’t take long.’ But it would, of course. He and Sister Mary Immaculate would have a long confidential chat and consume lots of tea and of Sister Bernadette’s fruit cake. The Reverend Mother was conscious of a feeling of benevolence as she thought of how much pleasure she would be giving to these two people.

  ‘I would be most grateful,’ she said aloud.

  From a drawer she lifted out some neatly filled in sheets of squared paper. Last handled by Sister Gertrude and left in perfect order. Everything balanced beautifully. Everything that should be hidden from the bishop’s secretary, like the sweets which she bought for the children, was expertly concealed among the necessary expenses. A wave of intense sadness swept over her. The young novice had been gifted in a way that had not come to her experience before – gifted in the necessary, though prosaic, skills of organization and administration. She had seen the convent as a business – a business whose end result for the Reverend Mother was the education and the happiness of slum children and her comments on the efficiency needed to deliver the aim had been novel and thought-provoking.

  The Reverend Mother placed the documents in a large envelope, thought about sealing it and then decided not to bother. She handed them over to Sister Mary Immaculate, heaved a sigh, dusted some stray crumbs of sawdust from her warm cloak and made her way heavily to the front door. Sister Bernadette had gone to the gate and was exchanging a few lively comments with the taxi driver, but little Sister Imelda was standing politely holding the door open for the Reverend Mother. She did not look her usual cheerful self and the Reverend Mother stopped and looked at her with concern. There were traces of tears on the lay sister’s cheeks and her mouth trembled slightly. The Reverend Mother knew a moment of compunction. After all, the girl was very young, barely fourteen, she thought and perhaps she should have been shielded from the dead body of the novice, lying on the soiled floor of the hen house.