Fludd: A Novel

hopeless people. It’s a place full of devils, it needs a mission sending to it. It wrestles not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world. St. Paul would have sorted it out.

“Make my convent a laughing stock,” Perpetua said. Thud, thud with her bony knuckles.

Philomena reached out and grabbed Perpetua’s arm, just above the wrist. She held it in her farm-girl’s grip. She said nothing, but in her eyes those yellow lights flashed, like chips of gold.

That night, tossing on her hard bed, she couldn’t sleep or lie awake; wakefulness seemed the lesser evil. She tried to rouse herself, but marauding nightmares circled her brain like the outriders of a guerrilla band. Nigredo, a huge blackamoor, offered her a cigarette from a silver case. Albedo, an angel, lit it for her. They wrestled on the allotments, rolling over and over on the rough ground. Later they linked arms and sang “Danny Boy.”

At five o’clock she heard the rising bell and turned over, ramming her face into the pillow. She thought it was a special penitential pillow that Mother Perpetua had decreed for her; it seemed filled with small stones. Sister Anthony was the caller for the week, and she could hear her progress along the corridor, rapping at each door and calling Dominus vobiscum.

Philomena yawned and pushed herself upright in the bed. She fumbled at her throat. The strings of her nightcap were thin and waxy from her sweat. She dug her fingernails into the knot, trying to loosen them. But she hardly had any fingernails. Dominus vobiscum fluted outside her door, and Sister Anthony tapped and tapped again. “Dominus vobiscum. What are you doing in there, Sister?”

She felt she could not trust her voice. She tilted up her chin, still picking at the knots. If I had scissors, she thought. Scissors of my own. That would be against my vow of holy poverty. If I had a looking-glass. That would be against my vow of holy chastity.

“Goodness gracious me, girl,” Sister Anthony sounded cantankerous now. “Dominus vobiscum. Are you deaf?”

The knots unravelled. The cap came off. She dropped it on the coarse blanket. Put her bare feet on the linoleum floor, stretched. Under her shift her upper arms, shoulders, were covered in small blue bruises.

“Dominus vobiscum. Are you ill?”

Sick at heart, she thought. “Et cum spiritu tuo,” she intoned. Her voice sounded normal; traitor voice. But her throat ached with tears, and her chest felt clogged with unholy expectation.

“I should think so too,” Sister Anthony said, and passed on.

Later, after an hour on her knees in the chapel, she went into the kitchen and helped Sister Anthony fill the jugs with weak tea, for breakfast.

“I think Father Fludd has the gift of prophecy,” she remarked.

“Is that the case now?” the old nun inquired civilly. “I wonder will he prophesy something for Aintree races.”

“Prophecy doesn’t mean telling the future. It means speaking out about the true nature of things.”

Sister Anthony could see that little Philomena had been crying. Dimly she remembered her own early days in the convent, the ritual humiliation and the lonely nights. Since it was she who was in charge of ladling out the breakfast she had it within her means to be kind to the girl; she gave her extra porridge.

Morning: Judd McEvoy, smiling to himself and whistling between his teeth, dusted his shelves and opened up his shop, drawing the bolts on the front door and turning round the cardboard sign that hung in the window. Agnes Dempsey washed up the breakfast dishes. Father Fludd put on his vestments for Mass, praying for each one the correct prayer. Philly could see him, in her mind’s eye: amice, alb, cincture, maniple, stole, chasuble. “Make me white, O Lord, and cleanse my heart …”

That morning she had to take a class for a PE lesson. Not her communion class; these children were older. The gloss had gone off them.

First there was dressing them, in the fug of the classroom; outside it was sharp and cold, and until ten o’clock sparse crystals of frost shone on the ruts of the carriage-drive. The girls, between their desks, had to squirm into thick navy-blue knickers, and out of their frocks and their layers of cardigans; the boys had to take their exercise as best they might in their knee-length grey flannel shorts. There were black pumps to be given out, from the metal cage in the corner of the classroom where they were kept between use: common to the whole class, assorted sizes, in different conditions but mostly poor. Most of the children did not know their shoe size, and if they did, they had no way of securing it; there was no method of distribution, merely a free-for-all, and this was the way it had always been. They were enjoined to keep silence during the proceeding; Philomena stood over them, hefty-seeming this morning, her eyes blazing, making sure not a mutter or groan escaped. But the silence of the exercise rendered it no less violent; arms flailed, pinches were delivered, until in some fashion everyone was shod.

Then the procession. Some walked wincingly, their toes mashed together; others, who had made the contrary error, flapped like water birds. In addition—it was mysterious—there were more left pumps than there were right, and Sister Philomena noticed that it was the poorest, the meekest, the most stupid, who were further disadvantaged by this, and had to edge along with their two feet swerving the same way.

The Nissen hut served as a dining room besides a gymnasium, and smelt of dumplings and fat. The trestle- tables and wooden benches were stacked around the room, and on the floor the children set up their equipment. This was what Mother Perpetua called it: the Equipment. “The Education Committee is sending us Equipment.” Until this year there had only been small oval mats, one per child. They would set them out and roll about on them; once they began they were no trouble. Then they would stand by the mats and practise jumping on the spot. It was an exercise suitable for all age groups. Most of them could manage it. And it did not strain their taut nerves.

But the Equipment had added a new terror to their lives. It was shiny and hard, with sharp edges. Just setting it up and fitting it together was a problem for an engineer; the half-clad children sweated beneath its weight, as if they were building bridges for the Japanese. There were steps, and slides. There was a great ladder on supports that they were meant to swing on and, she supposed, hoist themselves up and pop their heads between the rungs. And most awful of all, there was a thick round wooden pole; it rested on metal stands, parallel to the ground and at the height of her chest.

“Form teams,” she said, despairingly. “You, you, you.” None of them wanted to go on the pole. They did not know what to do with it, what to make of it at all. Some, when it came to their turn, crouched beneath and threw their arms around it and kicked off with their feet, trying to raise themselves and wrap their ankles over its top. It became the vogue, she noticed; each child would attempt it, some with more feebleness than others, few with any lasting success. In the face of the Equipment their timidity became clear, and the extent of their clumsiness, weakness, poor eyesight. They were embarrassed—for it was an emotion that they could feel. They knew that the Equipment had hidden uses, which they could not discern; they knew that other children, somewhere else, in