Quiet As A Nun Part 6

On my principle of being forewarned, I decided to pad softly round to the other side of the tower and see if some glimmer showed there out of the solitary window. Glimmer. The west still glimmering with some trace of day. Banquo's murderers, another nasty late night rendezvous. No, that was not the parallel I sought. I would stick to Childe Roland and his Tower. Around the back of the tower there was no glimmering whatsoever, only the darkness was more eerie, with the moonlight stronger and more diffused, reflected against the thick walls.

I returned with slightly more haste to the tower entrance. I hesitated, and felt for the sharp little key. Then I groped my way for the padlock, and switched on the torch. I had my first surprise. The padlock was still firmly shut. That seemed to suggest that no-one else had yet entered the tower. Even with a duplicate key, it was difficult to see how they could have relocked the padlock from the inside. Unless they were possessed of superhuman powers. Only a ghost would pa.s.s successfully through a padlocked door and leave it locked ... That was another nasty thought like the stupid recollection of Banquo's murderers. My impregnable spirits wavered a bit.

For the first time, I had the impression of being watched, watched by something or someone other than the owls and the foxes. This impression was extremely strong and growing since my visit to the far side of the tower; and yet I had absolutely no rational grounds to support it. Instinct. My journalistic instinct, that famous instinct, at work? Sheer suggestibility, more likely, the culminative effect of the journey and the moonlight on even the toughest spirits. I had overestimated my own hardihood. I jumped sharply at the crackle of a twig near me, and nearly dropped my little torch.

Prayer would have been nice in a situation like this, I reflected wistfully. A quick crossing of oneself as Sister Liz would have done, or Mother Ancilla. My guardian angel would come in handy at a moment like this, supposing I believed in such a thing. That prayer Rosa taught me, which little Catholic girls muttered at night time, something invoking their guardian angel to sleep not while they slept. My guardian angel, or perhaps some stout saint. Was there a Saint Jemima? Hebrew for dove, one of the daughters of Job, it all seemed a little far back and Old Testament for the saints. Perhaps Job would protect me, a most suitable patron, a man who knew a thing or two about life's rough edges...

Hesitating still, occupying myself with foolish thoughts, I finally resolved to put an end to my fears and enter the building. Unquestionably, my trip round to the other side of the tower had filled me with a morbid reluctance to go further. As though I was gradually being surrounded by unnamed terrors, a tide of terror lapping round me, rising. Here be monsters ... as they used to write on unknown seas on the edges of antique maps. Here be the Tower of G.o.d's Church. That reminded me: secret witnesses. Blessed Eleanor, protect me. Were there indeed secret witnesses all round me, in the darkness? Secret witnesses, friends to the owls and foxes, lurking there beside them?

Come on, Jemima, I addressed myself aloud, come on, daughter of Job. I had not talked to myself like that since I was a child when I used to rally myself for an unpleasant task by talking aloud. Once again the ground crackled near me. But it was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I opened the padlock quickly and competently. I pushed open the thick door into the chasm beyond, remembering the geography carefully from my visit with Sister Elizabeth. I pushed the door hard, and took care to leave it wide open.

I stepped firmly over the threshold of the tower, and clutching my torch firmly in one hand, picked out in its small precise light the wooden rail of the ladder. The rail supported me.

'Is there anyone there?' I called, looking upwards, in the most calm and masterful tone I could muster. Complete silence followed my words. The dampness which surrounded me was marked and most unpleasant. We did not seem to have aired the tower at all by our afternoon's foray. 'Is there anyone there?' Why, that was De La Mare's Traveller. 'Tell them I came and no-one answereda"'

Nothing moved.

I put my hand more firmly on the rail. The next moment there was the most appalling feeling of physical a.s.sault. With a hideous noise, all the more ghastly for the contrast of the silence only seconds before, I was being attacked on all sides, beaten, murdered. Screaming, screaming unashamedly I dropped the torch and tried to beat it off, beat them off. In vain. The hideous noise, the whirr and whoosh continued.

Finally I turned and fled back outside.

Panting, dishevelled, my hair mussed, half crying, it took me some time to realise that I had been attacked, if that was the right word, by bats.

I recovered my breath slowly; on the one hand I felt idiotic at my panic, on the other hand the waves of terror had been slightly diminished by the upset.

Come on, Jemima, indeed. A few bats were not going to put me off, having come so far. The existence of the bats, my temporary breakdown, only confirmed my resolve. No doubt it was the bats, poor blind benighted creatures, who were responsible for my fears of a new hidden presence.

I stepped over the threshold once more and scrabbled on the ground for my torch. The odd thing was that I could not find it. It must have rolled away. It could hardly have rolled very far on the solid pressed earth floor. It was also odd that it had gone out when I dropped it: perhaps the bulb was broken. In which case, I decided after a moment, there was no point in bothering with it further; leave it to the bats.

The only problem was: how was I to illumine my ascent of the ladder? As a non-smoker, matches were out of the question. Now if Tom had been with me, forever slapping the pocket of his worn jacket for cigarettes and/or matches and never seeming to have them both together - matches. I dug into my own pocket. But there were matches here, matches and a candle. In my panic I had forgotten. The percipient words of Sister Perpetua came back to me: 'Ah, candles give comfort where torches never do.'

I found the candle, strangely soft and thin in my fingers. It had broken and bent, but when the first match flared, it was still indubitably a candle. Sister - or Saint - Perpetua, many thanks. I lit the candle, despite its droop, and began rather gingerly to climb up the ladder.

Then I heard a distinct sound above my head. This was no creature of the night. And it was no familiar sound heard during my evening's travail. Not exactly a human sound either. A sc.r.a.pe on the floor, an irregular jarring on the floor above my head, like something rocking above my head ...

Rocking.

Christ, the rocking-chair.

My cry was every bit as irreligious as Margaret's had been. It was no wonder. Someone, something, was gently rocking to and fro in the rocking-chair above my head. I still plunged on up the ladder, holding my unsteady candle: at the time, it was sheer instinct not courage; there seemed no other choice but to go on upwards. Unlike my terror of the bats, my urgent instinct was to confront the danger, not to flee it. As I reached the last rung of the ladder, I think I was aware of another different sound behind me. Not the door shutting. Some new movement in the darkness of the tower's windowless ground-floor chamber. But there was no time to a.n.a.lyse it.

Pus.h.i.+ng open the trap-door above my head with one hand, I prepared to make the last of the ascent. My candle flickered and almost died so that I entered the first floor chamber into what seemed like darkness, except for a square grey light - the far window. The chair was still softly, remorselessly, rocking in its corner. The candle flame righted itself. Heart thudding, I held it upwards.

I saw, unquestionably I saw, a nun sitting there in the chair. A nun waiting for me. Gently rocking to and fro.

But that was not why my heart stopped in my breast. Equally unquestionably the nun in the rocking-chair had no face. The faceless one. That old nightmare of my childhood, the faceless one who waited for you, whose face you could never recognise, because it had no face. Everything in my world had to have a face, because then it was human and ordinary and you could understand it and control it. But this black shape had no face. Even in the candlelight I could not be mistaken. There were white hands, long bony hands rocking on the edge of the chair. And a black habit stretching to the ground. And a veil and a wimple and a rosary. Even the faint rustle of a nun's skirts joined to the rocking of the chair.

But beneath the white band of the wimple there was nothing, blackness, the void.

I know that I screamed loudly, starkly. Quite different from the brief frenzied panic of the bats' attack.

And then I must have fainted. I hope I fainted. Or perhaps not immediately. Just before I fainted there were jumbled strange impressions. A blow, a sharp blow from somewhere behind me. Or perhaps I merely fell and hit my head on the ladder. At any rate the light seemed to explode and vanish, and the Black Nun whirled round in the spectrum of my eyes, white hands still clenched on the chair. Then she seemed to rise up. A voice in my gathering dream said 'Now,' very clearly. As the voice of an anaesthetist before an operation. I felt the nun's habit enveloping me, her black skirts m.u.f.fling my eyes, my head, my senses sinking. After that, everything was totally black and there was no light at all and no sound.

Much, much later, I felt the habit being gently pulled back from my eyes like a bandage. The total blackness had gone, there was a little subdued light, and something white near to me.

'Miss Sh.o.r.e,' I heard a gentle urgent voice saying as if from a great distance. 'Miss Sh.o.r.e, Miss Sh.o.r.e.' My name sounded beautiful, like the sound of the sea heard inside a sh.e.l.l.

Bending over me, her wimple so close to my face that it const.i.tuted the bar of white in my darkness, was Sister Agnes.

'Miss Sh.o.r.e, Miss Sh.o.r.e.' The sibilants receded and stopped. What she was saying was: 'Miss Sh.o.r.e, are you all right?'

'Of course I'm all right,' I said. 'What the h.e.l.l are you doing in the tower, Sister Agnes?' I added, struggling unsuccessfully to sit up.

'In the tower, Miss Sh.o.r.e?' replied Sister Agnes, leaning forward again, and soothing my forehead with the ubiquitous nun's white handkerchief.

'But this isn't the tower. This is the chapel, Miss Sh.o.r.e.'

10.

Particular friends.h.i.+ps 'Poor Miss Sh.o.r.e,' said Sister Agnes softly, pausing in her minstrations. 'You have quite a nasty lump here on the back of your head.' Her fingers explored my skull gently. Then she took my hand and guided it to the back of my head. There was indeed a vast lump there. Sister Agnes's fingers had not hurt me, but my own clumsier touch caused me to wince violently. And that in its turn made me realise that my whole head was in the power of a huge headache, dormant, except that, as I lay on one of the chapel's pews, the faintest movement brought it to ferocious life.

'How in G.o.d's name did I get here?'

'1 think you must have fallen and hit your head. Here on the edge of the pew. See how sharp the wood is.' Once more Sister Agnes guided my fingers to the bevelled end of the pew. Her guidance was rather a pleasant sensation. But I really had to sit up. Reluctantly I did so. The effort certainly aroused all the devils of the headache inside my forehead. And I felt rather sick into the bargain. Sister Agnes also appeared to be dusting off my coat and boots - what an abnormal amount of dust for the spotless chapel to contain - they were really filthy.

Neverthelessa"

'I mean, how did I get here? Into the chapel?'

Sister Agnes did not answer immediately, but performed a few more little soft efficient dabs.

'You're not quite yourself yet, Miss Sh.o.r.e,' she said, her face turned away. 'You've probably forgotten just how you came to be here. A blow-on the head can do that, you know.'

As a matter of fact, she was right. Or had been right. Up till a moment ago, the precise circ.u.mstances preceding my unconsciousness had eluded me. But now they came back, flooding back, along with the headache. And now I felt the shape of my torch - once more back in my pocket.

What was I doing in the chapel indeed? Yes, but what was Sister Agnes doing in the chapel for that matter? I had no idea of the time. It was still dark outside. No hint of grey showed through the stained gla.s.s windows which surrounded the altar.

Under the circ.u.mstances I decided that Sister Agnes had as much explaining to do as I did. I was not disposed to make her my confidante.

'You're right. I must have fallen and hit my head,' I replied vaguely. 'I can't remember anything else.'

'That's right, Miss Sh.o.r.e,' replied Sister Agnes sweetly. 'Relax. Don't you try to remember. Don't strain yourself.'

She helped me to my feet. I staggered and nearly fell on her. But Sister Agnes was unexpectedly strong and wiry to the touch, for all her professional gentleness and grace of movement. She managed to support me. Then, in a pa.s.sable imitation of a frog-march, Sister Agnes helped me up the visitors' stairs.

At the outer door to the chapel we paused for breath. It was bolted. Once more bolted.

'At first I thought there was an intruder,' said Sister Agnes. 'Then I heard a noise - it must have been your fall - I'm sleeping in the cubicle at the end of the big dormitory, with the door open. I came down here. That door was open. Perhaps you opened it, Miss Sh.o.r.e? Then I heard a groan in the chapel. And I found you.'

It was quite a long explanation from the enigmatic Sister Agnes. Particularly in view of the fact that I had not asked for one.

'Perhaps you had opened that door, Miss Sh.o.r.e?' she repeated, as we mounted the stairs.

'I'm afraid I can't remember anything just before the accident,' I said firmly. 'The last thing I remember is watching some rotten play on television in St Joseph's Sitting Room.'

I got the distinct impression that Sister Agnes relaxed. I added: 'I really think I should go to the infirmary.'

'You wait here and I'll go and wake up Sister Lucy,' was all Sister Agnes said by way of reply.

Sister Agnes deposited me on my own bed and departed, almost noiselessly. While she was away, I wondered rather groggily why she hadn't called Sister Lucy in the first place.

Time pa.s.sed, or perhaps I dozed.

But it did seem an age before Sister Agnes returned. There was a frown, or something as near a frown as I had yet seen on that marble face.

'Sister Lucy wasn't there,' was all she said. 'I'll take you to the infirmary myself.' She lifted me up by my elbow, cus.h.i.+oning it, setting me on my feet again.

'You're surprisingly strong, Sister,' I said, 'I'm sure I'm no light weight.'

'It's not a question of strength, Miss Sh.o.r.e. Just how you use your body. I learnt that of course in my profession in the world.'

She made it sound extremely mysterious. We were whispering as we pa.s.sed down the pa.s.sage to the infirmary.

'What was your profession, Sister?' I asked her jokingly as she tucked me into a clean bed in the end cubicle of the vast - and apparently empty - lay section of the infirmary. 'Weight lifter?'

'I was trained as a dancer, Miss Sh.o.r.e,' replied Sister Agnes, pursing her lips slightly. 'And later I became an actress.'

'A dancer? I cried.

'Shhh. I'm sorry, Miss Sh.o.r.e. But I don't think you should excite yourself. Before Sister Lucy takes charge, that is.'

It explained many things, her grace, her strength. Even her looks, the huge doe eyes seemed to owe something to the style of the ballet. At that moment, Sister Lucy bustled in, out of breath.

'Ah, Sister, I found your note.'

The two nuns conferred together outside the cubicle in low voices. I couldn't hear what they said. Besides, I was beginning to feel sleepy. I wasn't even able to appreciate fully Sister Lucy's night costume, the neat little muslin cap over her head, just as Rosa reported. But she did seem to have quite a lot of hair under it, no shaven head here. Pleasant auburn hair. In fact she looked a great deal more like the nurse she had been, than the nun she was.

The strain of the evening was beginning to tell, and my head ached. I felt secure and safe in Sister Lucy's care. Sister Agnes must have left because when I opened my eyes again Sister Lucy was sitting composedly by my bed, reading her little black prayer book. It was her office, I supposed, the prayers every nun had to say daily. Composed no doubt by the Blessed Eleanor herself. I continued to feel safe in her care.

The next day I was officially cleared of concussion, although commanded to spend the day in bed. Everything seemed to be back to normal - including strangely enough my clothes. I had a distinct, if groggy memory, of Sister Agnes brus.h.i.+ng off quant.i.ties of dust from them in the chapel. Yet Sister Lucy denied finding any dust at all; it would be fair to say that she positively bristled at the idea of any contact with the chapel, however unplanned, resulting in the contamination of dust. I had another glimpse of the nurse Sister Lucy had once been, in her own way fairly formidable. I composed myself by concocting an official explanation of my fall for any interested enquirer.

The need to keep my own counsel for the time being was underlined by a discovery I had made in the pocket of the brown overcoat I had worn to the tower. Inside the pocket I found a typed note, exactly similar in appearance to the note which had summoned me to the Dark Tower. 'If you really want to avoid any further nasty b.u.mps on the head,' it read, 'why don't you go back to London and television where you belong? You have been warned.'

An interested enquirer was not slow to manifest herself. Quite early in the morning, Mother Ancilla swept in at her familiar fast pace. Whatever her problems of health, they were not visible in her walk or her bearing.

'Jemima, my child, what's this I hear?' She clutched my hand fervently. 'When I asked you to help us, I certainly did not ask you to get hit over the head, did I? We must take better care of youa"'

'I'm afraid I was very silly, Mother.' It was impossible not to feel twelve years old again. I was almost hanging my head.

'We prayed for you at ma.s.s of course. No, don't look cross. Naughty girl. We feel G.o.d should take you under His special protection since you are doing His work here.'

I was not, strictly speaking, displeased to hear I had been prayed for in the chapel.

I had not rejected Sister Lucy's urgently proffered tranquillizer either. In my philosophy, such activities came under the heading of 'Will probably do no good, will certainly do no harm.' Tom would have had a much stronger reaction to both suggested remedies; he had a personal horror of tranquillizers - having seen their effects on Carrie - and would have felt positively contaminated by the mention of his name in a Roman Catholic chapel. 1 was made of sorter stuff. But it did not do to give Mother Ancilla an incha"

Sure enough: 'Maybe a little visit of thanksgiving?' she enquired hopefully. 'For your safe deliverance?'

'I'm sorry, Mother Ancilla,' I said very firmly. 'As far as I am concerned, I owe my deliverance to Sister Agnes.' I gave her my official story: a sudden noise in the night, an investigation in the chapel, stumbling in the darkness, hitting my head hard on the back of the pew. It was all so ridiculous, I exclaimed. My story gained unexpected plausibility from the fact that there had been a sudden noise in the night. It transpired that Sister Lucy had rushed through the nuns' corridor to the aid of Tessa Justin.

As Sister Boniface observed gruffly: 'That Tessa Justin causes nothing but trouble. Nightmares about the Black Nun indeed! Screaming her head off and saying a nun had tried to put a pillow over her head. And there's Sister Lucy trying to make out she's emotionally disturbed and needs talking to! Showing off I call it. Calling attention to herself. Her mother was just the same. Always showing off. When we were children here, anyone who even mentioned the subject of the Black Nun had to say all three mysteries of the Holy Rosary as a penance. Trying to get out of going to early ma.s.s. Or not done her homework ... Showing off, I call it.' And so Sister Boniface rumbled on.

It occurred to me that Sister Lucy's position as infirmarian was not totally enviable with this old religious war-horse breathing down her neck. How different the healing of the sick must seem to her in the convent, compared to a great London hospital. Was she quite satisfied with ministering to the needs of 'upper cla.s.s brats' - to quote Dodo Sheehy's evocative if possibly second-hand phrase? At least Dodo's aunt, the late Sister Theodora of the Angels, had died nursing black babies . . . How did nuns decide on the exact expression their vocations should take anyway? I supposed I should really have to ask them: it would make a fascinating part of the television programme I was still valiantly contemplating.

Not so much 'Why the Cross?' - and hadn't that been done before anyway? - as 'Which Cross?'. . .

'My recent experiences simply prove to me that I should keep to my self-imposed rule and not pay stray visits to the chapela"' I told Mother Ancilla cheerfully.

'You're incorrigible!' Mother Ancilla, throwing up her hands, almost roguish, at her best. She looked better than on the day of our first interview. Her cheeks were still white. But I had the impression that the deep lines at the edges of her mouth had softened somewhat. The frightened look had gone. I wondered what had happened to make Mother Ancilla look more cheerful.

One bell sounded. One bell for Reverend Mother. It sounded curiously loud. But then in the infirmary we were bordering on the nuns' wing. The infirmary was a kind of limbo. I had never liked the definition of that term during Religious Instruction at school - ('But Jem, you must go to Divinity Lessons, whatever they call them,' my mother had insisted. 'You don't want to be different from the other girls.' She meant: more different than you are already.) Limbo: a place for unbaptised babies. It had a punitive sound to it, like an orphanage for outcasts. I much preferred the easy modern usage of my own world. I used it all too often in my investigative interviews: 'So, Mrs Poorwoman, the social security services have left you in a kind of limbo, have they not?' There being a strong suggestion that something could and would be done about the matter.

Perhaps I could make some use of my own stay in this limbo. There was one untapped source of information about life in the convent close at hand ... if I could lure Sister Boniface from discussing her personal grudge against Sister Lucy and her methods. An on-going limbo, to combine two jargons.

'My bell,' Mother Ancilla sighed. 'Just when we were having a lovely talk, dear Jemima.' She sounded almost happy. Was that possible? Her serenity was particularly surprising in view of her next remark: 'It's the day of Sister Edward's funeral. Had you forgotten? Quite natural in view of last night's events,' she went on. 'That bell is probably to tell me of the arrival of the family. Mrs O'Dowd is such a dear woman and Sister Edward was her youngest. I ought to go and greet them.'