‘My husband has a fancy to write a book or something of that nature.’ Mrs Olive had possessed a languid, die-away voice. Her eyes, green between mascara’d lashes, had held a tolerant amusement at the idea of her husband writing a book. Or that was how Sister Joan had interpreted it at the time, feeling a sudden sympathy for the absent Mr Olive. Now she wondered if Mrs Olive hadn’t been laughing at her, a woman the same age as herself but so differently clad in an ankle-length grey habit with short white veil and white wimple, her legs encased in black tights and sensible laced shoes, the narrow gold band on her left hand a symbol of her spiritual marriage. In contrast Mrs Olive wore a suit that was probably a Chanel with a green scarf that echoed her eyes, her long ash blonde hair coiled and folded like wings at the back of her sleek head. Only her skin detracted from her looks, pitted with the tiny marks of severe teenage acne. Sister Joan had instinctively put up her hand to her own smooth, glowing complexion and then felt ashamed. Personal vanity had no place in the life of a Sister of the Order of the Daughters of Compassion.
‘It would be possible for me to take Samantha to the school in Bodmin but I like the idea of a little rural school,’ Mrs Olive had continued. ‘It will ease her more gradually into country life.’
‘She is eleven, isn’t she?’ Sister Joan had frowned slightly. ‘You know, she has to go to the state school when she’s twelve at the latest. We simply don’t have the staff or the facilities here to provide a complete senior education.’
‘A couple of terms will suffice.’ Mrs Olive had sounded more bored than ever. ‘Our au pair will be dropping her off every morning and picking her up in the afternoon.’
Now, glancing at the child’s remote little profile, Sister Joan said, ‘Is everything all right at home, Samantha? Your parents are well?’
‘Yes, thank you, Sister.’
‘And you like it here? With the other children?’ Getting information was like wading through deep mud with heavy boots on.
‘I like it very much, Sister.’
For the first time there was a lilt in the cool, dry voice, a quick flash of a smile.
‘You don’t have any brothers and sisters, do you?’ Sister Joan said.
Samantha shook her head briefly.
‘Then it must be pleasant for you to have companions,’ Sister Joan said, wondering where to go from there. Was there, indeed, anywhere to go? There was no accounting for the direction a young imagination might take. She recalled that as a schoolgirl herself she had spent one whole summer copying the epitaphs from gravestones and lulling herself to sleep with pleasant fantasies of herself, suitably pale and beautiful, dying of a broken heart or sliding into a decline like Beth in Little Women.
‘Oh yes, Sister,’ said Samantha.
‘Then perhaps we ought to start a game or something,’ Sister Joan said, conceding victory to her — ridiculous to think of an eleven-year-old kid as an opponent. She reached out, took a small, limp, unresponsive hand and started back towards the others, saying in the loudly hearty tones of a particular games mistress she recalled from her own schooldays.
‘We’ll be indoors again soon enough, so let’s play rounders for a while. Conrad, go into the cupboard and bring out the stumps. Billy, you help him. We can mark out the ground with a bit of chalk.’
To her relief something like childish enthusiasm returned to the children. For the next half hour they ran, hit out at the ball, argued scores like normal youngsters. Which, she reminded herself firmly, was exactly what they were. This unusual meekness was a phase and instead of worrying about it she ought to be thanking her stars that she had managed to instil the rudiments of good conduct into so diverse a group.
‘You were out that time, Samantha.’ She pulled her thoughts back to the present, waving towards the girl.
‘She was in,’ David said. ‘She was in, Sister.’
‘No, dear. She was definitely run out,’ Sister Joan said.
‘Was I?’ Samantha asked not her own side but the opposing side. There was the earnest desire to know on her small, plain face.
The Romanies shifted their feet, hesitating. Then Hagar called, ‘In. Samantha was in.’
‘Out,’ said Sister Joan and was instantly engulfed in protest from both sides.
‘All right, all right. In, if you insist,’ she said at last in exasperation, ‘but if this is a ploy to spin out break time it won’t work because I’d already decided to make this a games period anyway.’
And don’t forget to make a note of that for your next general confession, she advised herself silently.
Samantha’s team won which was hardly surprising since Samantha herself was never run out even by the long-legged Petroc, and her wildest swipes at the ball were all acclaimed as hits. Perhaps it was the children’s way of making a newcomer feel welcome, but Samantha had already been at the school for several weeks, and in any case Sister Joan had never before noticed any signs of excessive kindness to new pupils in any of the others. For the moment the riddle would have to remain.
The dinner-hour and the rest of the afternoon passed. The children ate their sandwiches and drank the cups of tea that she brewed up on the table at the back of the classroom — it ought to have been milk, she supposed,
