‘Such a loss to the religious life‚’ Sister Hilaria had lamented gently. Privately Sister Joan had applauded the decision. Veronica and Johnny Russell made a handsome couple. They had sent a photograph of the wedding and small slabs of cake in fancy boxes. They were happy together, Sister Joan thought, and was glad for them both.
The horror of nightmare was fading. She could have turned round and quietly gone back into her cell, but her mouth was dry and her hands still shook a little. She moved out of the corridor on to the main landing that overlooked the wide front hall.
Cornwall House had been a private mansion belonging to the Tarquin family until its last owner had sold it cheaply to the Daughters of Compassion. Though it had the mingled scents of beeswax, soap and burnt-out candles that all convents seemed to acquire, Sister Joan could imagine it as it had once been, with the hall filled with well-dressed, chattering people, with curtains of scarlet and gold looped back at the long windows, with great bowls of gardenias spilling over the mirrored surfaces of the tables. She had no way of knowing if her fancies were accurate since she had been transferred here the previous year, ostensibly to help teach in the local school, in actual fact to help probe a disturbing situation that had turned out to be dynamite.
Going down the wide stairs her hand touched the satiny wood of the balustrade with a gesture that was almost sensuous. Surfaces had always fascinated her; the soft prickly surface of fur; the round whorls of blue glinting stone; the roughness of plaster — sculpture had never been her main talent but it had excited her. To convey the texture of surface in paint had been an ever constant ambition. Her talent had not matched it, a fact that had made it easier for her to choose the religious life. She had not been sacrificing a brilliant career when she entered the convent.
‘Only me,’ Jacob had said, with his bitter, tender smile. ‘Only our life together.’
It was the dream that had brought him back into her mind. Consciously she almost never thought of him, save now and then when Easter came round and she recalled the Passover dinner he had once cooked for her — the bitter herbs, hard boiled eggs, the shankbone of lamb, and little matzo dumplings floating in golden chicken soup.
This was nonsense and she had better get a hold on her truant thoughts. She could have taken a cup of water from the bathroom upstairs. Nice, cold water. At that moment she felt a neat slug of good whisky wouldn’t have come amiss, and hastily poured it back into the bottle and substituted a mug of hot milk. It wasn’t easy to crave hot milk but it was probably better for the nerves.
To her right as she stood at the foot of the stairs, double doors led into an antechamber beyond which lay the Prioress’ parlour; to her left another pair of doors gave on to visitors’ parlour and chapel. At the foot of the main staircase a narrower door separated kitchen and infirmary from the hall. The lay sisters slept at the back of the kitchen where two ground floor cells had been made out of pantry and buttery. At present only plump Sister Margaret who cooked for the community and did most of the shopping occupied the lay section, near where the two old nuns who occupied the infirmary, more by reason of age than sickness, spent most of their time.
Sister Joan opened the door and padded into the short corridor lit by the customary low burning bulb. The infirmary door was ajar and the sound of a gentle snoring floated out like a litany. The next door opened into a small room where the official infirmarian, Sister Perpetua, held what she was pleased to call her surgery. Here she dispensed aspirin and liniment and strong cups of tea; here were the bottles of herbal remedies with which she tried, often very successfully, to stave off the necessity to call in the local doctor. A small refrigerator held milk and various lotions that needed to be kept cool. Sister Perpetua slept upstairs in the main wing, one ear supposedly cocked for the tap on the door from Sister Margaret to inform her she was required.
There was no need to break rules by switching on the light. Sister Joan opened the refrigerator, took out the milk and poured some neatly into a beaker. It wasn’t whisky and she couldn’t be bothered to heat it up but it was cold and sweet and her trembling had ceased. The dream was assuming the normal place that dreams assumed, comfortably in the back of her mind.
‘Oh, it’s you.’
Almost dropping the beaker in fright she swung about as a footstep and a soft voice sounded behind her.
‘Sister Gabrielle, what are you doing out of bed?’ Her voice had sharpened with alarm.
‘Finding out who’s out of bed,’ the other returned, not without humour. ‘Did you think I’d taken to getting up and trotting out to buy bread at three in the morning like a senile old fool?’
‘No, of course not.’
At eighty-four Sister Gabrielle might be the biggest gossip in the community but she was very far from senile. Now her eyes bored through the darkness as she said, ‘Are you a secret milkaholic, Sister Joan?’
‘I had a nightmare and came down to get some milk.’
‘Without permission, I daresay. Well, never mind you may confess it at general confession tomorrow — later today rather. It must have been a bad nightmare.’
‘It was.’ Sister Joan drained the beaker and conscientiously rinsed it under the tap.
‘Not about last year’s business?’
