Five heads hesitated and then were shaken.
‘Has he been stolen away?’ Madelyn asked, her blue eyes round.
‘No, of course not. He’s simply run off for a piece of mischief, just to be naughty,’ Sister Joan said. ‘He’ll turn up later, I’m sure.’
‘Who’d want to steal Petroc away anyhow?’ Billy asked scornfully. ‘He’s just a gyppo.’
‘A Romany boy,’ Sister Joan corrected, ‘and one who pays more attention to his lessons than you do, Billy Wesley. Look, if you have seen him then it would be much better if you said.’
‘But we haven’t,’ David said stolidly. ‘Dad and Mum won’t let Madelyn and me go near the Romany camp, and you were in our house yourself last evening, Sister Joan. We were both there.’
‘I was out at the pictures,’ Billy said, adding hastily as Sister Joan’s eye fell on him, ‘and I didn’t see him. You can ask my mum.’
‘Thank you, children.’ Sister Joan turned and went out again to where Padraic Lee waited, shifting from one leg to the other and scowling at the sky as if he dared it to rain on him.
‘No luck?’ He gave her an anxious look.
‘The children haven’t seen anything of him, and I was in most of their homes last evening,’ she answered, ‘so it’s pretty certain they don’t know. Mr Lee, I know you have to collect scrap from Bodmin but in view of what’s happened I think I’ll close school for today. The trouble is that I don’t have a telephone and I can’t put them all on Lilith’s back and take them to their respective homes.’
‘I’ll drop them off for you, Sister, and then drive into Bodmin and make a few inquiries same time as I’m picking up the scrap,’ Padraic said obligingly.
‘That would be very kind of you, Mr Lee. I am truly grateful. Children! Children, get your boots and coats on quickly. I’ve decided to give you a holiday.’
Raising her voice cheerfully she went back to her pupils, aware that she was suddenly in the grip of one of those impulses to action that occasionally gripped her.
‘It’s because Petroc isn’t here, isn’t it, Sister?’ Madelyn’s rosy face was troubled.
‘That and the rain. Your parents will be in?’
There were murmurs of assent.
Drawing on her neat white plastic mackintosh and tying her hair back under its hood, Samantha said thoughtfully, as if she were testing a new idea in her mind, ‘He went away just like Kiki did. Vanished, just like her. Isn’t it funny, Sister?’
Six
The temptation to rush off in several directions at once was strong. Sister Joan resisted it, helped Padraic to cram the children into the front of his small lorry, and went back into the school to damp down the fire in the stove and put the chairs back into place. These practical actions kept at bay a fear that had started in the pit of her stomach and was threatening to spread. Normally the absence of one of the Romany children would have occasioned in her nothing worse than irritation since it meant someone would have fallen behind the others when they returned to the class. But this was different. The feeling that it might be the culmination of all the small puzzling incidents that had recently occurred gripped her mind and refused to be silenced.
At least she had most of the day left before she was due to return to the convent. That, having dismissed her pupils, she might be expected to return immediately was a consideration she did succeed in putting aside. There was nothing in the rule that stated she must return at once if, for any reason, school closed early.
‘Remember always,’ Mother Agnes had cautioned, ‘that to obey the letter of the rule while ignoring the inner spirit that gives it coherence is as bad as downright disobedience. Poverty does not mean only relinquishing material possessions. It means an emptying of the self that the Divine may enter and make us richer than any millionaire who has only material possessions to shield him against the dark. Obedience is never a slavish following of the rule. It is making the rule part of oneself so that if all writings were lost they could be rewritten simply by watching your behaviour.’
And what does one do, Sister Joan enquired in her mind of her former prioress, when obeying the spirit of the rule might lead to an injustice, to a lack of charity?
Charity must come before everything, Mother Agnes replied — or perhaps it was only her own mind malting noises.
She locked the door and brought Lilith out of the shed. The rain was still a fine mist on the morning air, but there were flashes of sunlight that coloured the drops of water hanging on the grasses, and the wind had the fugitive sweetness of spring.
And please God, let Petroc Lee be sitting contrite in his wagon when I get to the Romany camp, she prayed silently, mounting up.
With the ceasing of the rain the camp had come to life, windows being opened, the inevitable smell of cooking already drifting over the trampled ground. There was no sign of Tabitha or Edith but Conrad walked to meet her, his broad face sullen.
‘I was going to come to school but Padraic was looking for Petroc and there wasn’t no transport,’ he began defensively.
‘School’s closed for the day anyway. Has Mr Lee been back here?’ She slid to the ground, wishing the promised jeans had materialized.
‘He took Tabby and Edie off with him. Me and Hagar are supposed to stay here in case Petroc comes back.’
‘When did you see Petroc last?’ Looping the reins over her arm she began to stroll towards the Lee wagon, keeping her tone casual.
‘After school yesterday. He went off
