happier circumstances, might unlock its secrets. The Equipment was a message that the Education Committee had sent them, to prepare them for the humiliations of their future.
Mass would be long over now, Sister Philomena thought. She stood in a shadow at the side of the hut, letting the children do as they pleased, for she knew that none of the other nuns would come by. Presently they grew tired of their efforts and fell timidly out of line, eyeing her out of the corners of their eyes, and got out their familiar oval mats; they bent over, put their skinny grey arms on the floor, and began to do a thing they called bunny-jumps. The two children from Netherhoughton withdrew into a darker corner and began to hypnotize each other.
He could come and find me, she thought. If he were to inquire at the school they would tell him I was there. But no, he would not do that. He would not inquire.
But he could make some excuse. Something that he wanted me to do for him. What could that be? Now that I am not sacristan, he cannot say, I need polishing doing, Sister, I need extra polishing, I need a very special shine putting on the candlesticks. What could he want then?
But he hardly needs a priest’s reasons for what he wants to do, because he is not a priest. Did I know it all along, or just suspect it; did he make a slip, or did I just feel it in my bones? He is just an ordinary man.
But no, she thought, correcting herself. Not that. Not in any sense an ordinary man. What had struck her forcibly, on waking that morning, now occurred to her again; that she had no clear picture of his features in her mind. At Mass, it was true, she had been forced to study him mostly from the back; but had she not been alone with him at the allotments for an hour or more?
Perhaps, she thought, I have looked so intensely that I have been unable to see. I have looked at him as he seems to look at me, with eyes that see beyond the skin. She had heard it said that you could “devour” someone with your eyes. It was an expression that people used. Yes, that was what she had done. Her eyes had eaten him all up, and rendered his features pulp. Now, like a greedy, heedless child, she had left nothing over for the hour of hunger, the hour of dearth.
When the end of the lesson came, Philomena lined the children up and trailed them along the carriage-drive. The sun had struggled out, and filtered thinly between the bare branches. “Look, Robin Redbreast.” She pointed to the ditch, where the bird with its mouse-brown back darted in crisp leaves. “Yes, Sister,” they said dutifully. They looked where she pointed but they did not see. They did not know what they were looking for. Sparrows, they knew; pigeons.
In procession, they rounded the curve of the carriage-drive, and there was Father Fludd: stepping towards them in animated conversation with Agnes Dempsey. Sister Philomena made the children stop, stand aside respectfully while the priest passed. They began, more or less as he drew level, a drawling, yodelling chant. “Good mo-or-orning Father. Good mo-or-or-ning Miss Dempsey.”
It was the way the children always spoke, when they spoke together. They learnt it at five years old, in the nursery class; learnt it in their first hour at school. Sometimes Philomena thought that if she ever heard it again she would give way to screaming; she would sit on the floor and rend her garments and put ashes on her head, in reparation for the foolishness of the world. Christ died to free us from the burden of our sin, but he never, so far as she could see, lifted a finger to free us from our stupidity.
And as her thoughts ran on, her heart beat faster. She thought it was climbing into her throat, battering there and twisting inside out, contorting in that small space; nobody would see it underneath her habit, but suppose she were some ordinary woman, in a costume and blouse? People would nudge each other;
Fludd’s eyes flickered over her. He inclined his head, sombre; walked on, his conversation with Miss Dempsey proceeding in lower tones, a more subdued manner. Agnes Dempsey walked more slowly. She took a long look over her shoulder at the young nun, who had turned aside now, and dropped her face, and whose right hand had gone to the wooden crucifix hanging at her chest.
She had not turned aside fast enough to hide her expression from Miss Dempsey—that compound of fear, yearning, and excitement, that had yet to be broken down into its elements and recombined by another’s will. Agnes, in agitation and sadness, touched her wart. I have missed all my chances in life, she thought. Even a nun has not missed more chances than me. Virgins may see unicorns. Spinsters never do.
This time, when Philomena approached the confessional, she knew it would be Angwin.
She knelt, in the fragrance of polish and tobacco; began at once, rattling her words off. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It is no time at all since my last confession. I have a question for you. A German friend of mine, who knows only a few words of English …”
“Oh, hallo there, my dear,” the priest said.
“ … was anxious to go to confession, but unfortunately none of the priests in the neighbourhood knew any German. Was my friend obliged to make his confession through an interpreter?”
“Hm,” Father Angwin said. He thought. It was not a problem he had encountered directly, though he had often found the Fetherhoughtonian speech thick and incomprehensible when he had first arrived in the parish. “Well now,” he said at last, “do you know what I think he should do? I think he should get one of those dictionaries, a German- English dictionary, and discover what are the names of his sins in English. And as for the number of times he has done each sin, well, he may very quickly learn to count in English, I suppose. Then he might pass a note to the priest in the confessional. Though,” he added, “it might be as well if the priest were warned as to what were to occur. I should not like to come to hear confessions one day, and find a foreigner poking a paper at me through the grille.”
“So that would be better than an interpreter, would it, Father?”
“I am not ruling out an interpreter, mind. If the need were desperate. Communication is difficult at the best of times, don’t you find?” He paused. “No one should walk around in a state of sin for a moment more than necessary. Perhaps especially not if the person is in a place strange to them. If a person is travelling, you know, there is always a danger of accidents.”
“And if you did use an interpreter, he would be bound by the seal of the confessional, of course.”
“Naturally.” There was another short pause. Angwin said, “Have you anything to tell me today? Anything about yourself, I mean?”
