“What if I’m doing the fast,” one said, “and my tooth comes out, and I swallow it?”
“That would just be a little accident,” Philomena said. “You could still take the sacrament.”
“But Sister, you said we wasn’t to touch the host with us teeth. When it was in your stomach—”
From the next classroom, she heard Perpetua’s voice raised. She knew the signs and symptoms; soon she would have her cane out.
“What if I’m doing the fast, and a fly flies down us throat?”
“That’ll do now,” she said. “There’s plenty of time for the answers to these questions. Now we’re going to get up very quietly”—from us desks, she nearly said—“from our desks, and form a line to put on our wellingtons, and then we’re going to form up two by two and walk up to church and have a Holy Communion practice.”
Up to church. Oh God, oh God, she thought, feeling her heart beat faster. What her heart chose to do was nothing she could control; let it thump away and batter and lurch at her ribs, like a puppy locked in a barn. There was no door she could open to let it free.
The mournful crocodile, up the hill and into the church; whispers stilled in the porch, an epidemic of shushing. “They are so slow,” Purpit had said. “We must rehearse them all winter for communion in spring. Otherwise they will be blundering into each other and goodness knows what all.” She had offered Philomena the use of her most formidable cane, but the young nun had declined. She knew, perfectly well, that Purpit would like to use it on her.
If only there were a bit of light in the place, she thought. The children’s skinny shapes passed into the benches like a file of ghosts, like the ghosts from some children’s hospital, an empty fever ward. She picked up a fistful of candles from the Little Flower’s box, lit them from those that were burning, and juggled them into their holders. “Now,” she said. “Begin.”
At once, and all together, the children leapt up from their kneelers, tripping over each other’s legs, scrabbling for the centre aisle. “Stop, stop, stop,” Philomena yelled. “Back, back, back. As you were. Kneel down. Close your eyes. Join your hands. When I give the word, first child stand up, walk, second child stand up, walk. Follow on in a line. First child turn left, second child follow, all children follow. Get to the altar rail and kneel down reverently. Join your hands, close your eyes, wait your turn for the Holy Eucharist. When the altar rail is all filled up, children behind stop, there, just there, d’you see, at the top of the aisle. You people that are waiting, don’t crowd up behind the people at the rail. Keep a distance. Or however will they get back when they’re finished?”
At first they tended to close their eyes at the wrong time and bump into each other, but after a half hour you could see that they were beginning to get the idea. They knelt at the altar rail with their mouths open, and at the word of command they closed them and paused for a reverent moment, and then rose to stamp back to their places. The signs of strain were evident on their faces. She was not so old that she had forgotten what troubled them. Will you find your place again in the crowded church at eleven o’clock Mass? Will you struggle into the wrong bench, so that people will laugh and point? Will you (worse) attempt to get back down the wrong aisle and lose your bearings completely? How will you inch and scramble out of your place at the start, without bruising the shins of non-communicants? Will you fit smoothly into the shuffling stream, or somehow hold up the proceedings?
“You must keep your eyes open,” she advised them. “No, what I mean is, you must keep your wits about you, keep a look-out. The woman on the end of your row, now suppose she’s wearing a funny hat. Take a good look at that hat as you go up. Then when you turn from the altar, use it to navigate by.”
She stood at the back of the church, looking up the centre aisle, to judge if the traffic flow was smooth. Her back was to St. Thomas Aquinas, the cold saint with his plaster star, and from that direction (as if behind the statue, as if beneath it) she heard a whisper, a rustle, like the feet of a family of mice. Beneath her veil, the hairs pricked at the back of her neck. Then she felt eyes resting on her. She knew it was Fludd. His scrutiny seemed to pass through her black veil, through her starched white under-veil, through her drawstring cap, and revel in what hair she had left these days, and play along her scalp. “Once more,” she called. “Eyes closed now. Heads down. Say a little prayer. When I give the word, begin … Now.”
She waited only long enough to see the first child, the second child, on their feet and embarked on their march. Then she turned urgently. “Father? Father?”
Fludd lurked behind the statue. He would not advance. She heard the children, in their wellington boots, clumping towards the altar. She took a step or two, almost running, to the back of the church and the deep shadows under the gallery. “Are you there?” she whispered. “Mother Perpetua has taken me off being sacristan. She saw us, the other day, when we were mending the nose. She’s in a rage with me for monopolizing your time. I want to talk to you. There are some things I must ask you.”
“Yes,” Fludd said. It was as if the Angelic Doctor had spoken; Fludd’s black form could hardly be discerned.
“At the allotments,” she said. “There’s a shed …” She could hear the first batch of children now, shuffling back into their places. Too quick, she thought. They should have spent more time at the altar, their knees have barely touched the ground. And feeling these moments of her life begin to slip away, she launched herself forward and clung to the statue’s base, to the unyielding plaster hem of the robes, reached out her blue-veined hand and knotted her fingers between the point of the star. Fludd saw her clinging, like a drowning woman to jetsam. He wanted to step forward, but held himself back. His eyes rested upon her. In destrier moments, he thought. In death’s drear moments. Make me only thine.
SIX
Outside the purlieus of the convent Philomena had a different kind of walk. She strode ahead of him, swinging her arms carelessly, hopping over the tussocks of grass.
“I came up here one day last year.” The wind scattered her voice. “Quite early … it would be April. There were daffodils. Small ones, wild. Not those big yellow brutes you get in the shops.”
Tramping after her, Fludd imagined these blooms. He saw them flinching from the spring winds: frail and whitish yellow, like Chinese hands in sleeves. “Last year, or this year? I thought last year you weren’t here?”
She stopped, catching her breath. “This year is what I meant. Dear Lord, the months have dragged past. The days seem so long, Father Fludd. They seem to be stretching themselves out. I don’t know when that started. I think it was since we buried the statues.”
“I do not find it so,” Fludd said. He felt old, and breathless from the uphill climb, and weary from thankless
