“They changed the personnel but failed to grapple with the principle.”
“Now it was Sister Mary Bernard that was at the wrong end of things. Our Kathleen escorted her back. By this time after all the travelling she was fit to drop. The soles of her shoes were worn thin. When she had handed Sister Mary Bernard over she was hanging about in the parlour, waiting to see who was going to bring her back home this time, and her nerves just snapped. She ran out of the front door.”
“What? She just bolted, did she?”
“She couldn’t take it one more time, she said. She knew if they saw her they’d call her back and send somebody with her. So she got over a gate and legged it across the fields. When she came out on to the road she walked along a bit, then she saw a lorry coming. The driver stopped and asked her was she lost or what. He said, hop up here beside me, Sister, and I’ll take you where you want to go, so she did. He was a good sort, she said, a real gentleman. He gave her half this cheese sandwich that he’d got for his dinner—she was starving, you see, because she’d always arrived in places at the wrong time for a collation, and in a convent you can only eat at the set times. This man, this lorry driver, he went out of his way for her, took her back to her own convent, right to the door. But when she rolled up, I’m afraid they were anything but pleased to see her.”
“It was innocent,” Fludd said. “I’m sure it was. The girl was desperate.”
“The lorry driver turned out to be a Protestant, that was what made it worse.”
“The whole thing could have been avoided,” Fludd said, “if the original sister had only set out with two escorts, instead of one.”
“That would have been reasonable.” Sister Philomena looked gloomy. “But then, the whole process was very far from reason.”
“So what happened to Kathleen? Did they throw her out?”
“Oh, she got her marching orders all right. They had her out of there before the evening collation—booted out on an empty stomach again, she said, that’s what made her bitter. She didn’t even get to say goodbye to me. To me, her own sister.”
“What did she do then?”
“She had to go home. My mother couldn’t hold her head up in the parish. Soon after that Kathleen went to the bad. Like Aunt Dymphna. Drinking and going to dances. She talked about having her hair bleached, my mother said.” She looked up at him, her face puzzled. “It’s something in our family, I think. Hot blood.”
“Would you mind if I smoked a cigarette, Sister?” Fludd reached for his silver case. He must have something to do. “I can imagine the effect all this must have had on you.”
“Soon afterwards my hands broke out. I believed it myself, not that I would have shown anybody if it had been left up to me. Is a stigmatic a good person, that’s what I wondered. A stigmatic could be the greatest crook.” She looked up. “Yes, smoke away, I don’t mind. Well, it was a nine-days’ wonder, my stigmata. The bishop took a dim view of it, they won’t hear of miracles nowadays. That’s how I came to be here. Tossed out of believing Ireland to this Godforsaken place.”
“You were harshly dealt with. When one considers, say, how much of the mystic vision may be put down to temporal-lobe epilepsy.”
“To what, Father?”
“When St. Teresa of Avila had her three day vision of Hell, she was merely working up to a fit … the flames and the stench were a part of her aura. And the Blessed Hildegard, seeing God’s fortress—she was having a migraine attack.”
She looked dubious. “I don’t have fits. I have thin skin. That’s all.”
“You don’t have as much between you and the world as other people do. Let me see your hand, please.”
She raised one, shaking back her sleeve, and stared fixedly at the palm: as if here, a year on, the delicate embroidery of blood might seep through the skin. Father Fludd leaned forward and reached for her hand with his, as tentative as a cat. He placed the tip of his index finger on to the tip of her second finger. Her outstretched hand, palm upturned, dipped towards him. “Why are you doing that?” she asked. She too gazed down at her palm. “You look as if you were going to tell my fortune. But it’s forbidden.”
“I could tell your fortune,” Fludd said.
“I tell you,” she said quietly, “the Church forbids it.”
Fludd touched her forefinger. “This is the finger of Jupiter,” he said. “The Ram governs the tip; the middle phalange is governed by Taurus the Bull, and the base by Gemini. This, now,” he took her middle finger, “is the finger of Saturn. The Goat governs its tip. Here in the middle comes the Water Carrier, then the Fishes. Your third finger is the finger of Apollo, God of the Sun. The Crab governs here, then the Lion, then the Virgin. Venus rules the thumb; the little finger is ruled by Mercury. Libra the Scales governs its tip, Scorpio its middle phalange, the Archer its base.”
“What does it all mean, Father?”
“God knows,” Fludd said. Her lifeline was long and unbroken, curling out of sight into her snug inner sleeve; the Mount of Venus was large and fleshy. He saw a nature active, mutable, fiery; a rationalist’s finger-tips. There were no shipwrecks in her palm, no danger from four-legged beasts, or iron instruments; but danger from the malice of women, and from self-doubt, and faintness of heart. “The line of Saturn is doubled,” he said. “You will wander from place to place.”
“But I never go anywhere.”
“I am not known to be wrong.”
“It’s only an old gypsy thing, anyway.”
“I must differ. This science was practised before gypsies were thought of.”
“Well, if you know so much … aren’t you going to tell me what’s there?”
