Le Temps des Cerises (21 page)

Brother Michael heaved a sigh of relief when he saw the two of them at the end of the corridor. Bernadine on the other hand nearly swore under her breath when she caught sight of him lurking about in the doorway to her room. Really, it was too much the way he paid her visits at any old godforsaken hour of the day or night, bemoaning this, confessing to that. Since Agnes' death he had practically confessed to everything under the sun including stealing peaches from the hothouse of the Tuileries as well as lacing the steward's porridge with pepper. She wondered what trifling misdemeanour had given him a case of insomnia this evening. She noticed he looked more perturbed than ever if that were possible – his eyes wild, his nose red and bruised as if someone had given it a good pinching. And while she groaned inwardly with utter weariness, she forced herself to smile outwardly with polite kindness.

‘There you are!' Brother Michael let out another gigantic sigh. ‘There you are!' He stuck his head up close to the infant and gave what he thought was a comforting grimace which luckily the child didn't see being fast asleep. ‘I feared you had come to some harm.'

‘As you can see,' Bernadine replied firmly, ‘we haven't. What can I do for you, Brother Michael, at this hour?'

Brother Michael flushed at the vague reproach and bowed his head. ‘A word if you please, Sister Bernadine, for a beleaguered soul. It takes one moment to confess a sin, a lifetime to redeem it.'

‘Quite,' said Bernadine, beginning to feel a little annoyed for she was almost dead on her feet. She didn't want another discussion about sin and forgiveness at the crack of dawn; and she didn't want to hear about the Mother Superior's slow descent into madness, the steward's so-called miraculous wines or the fat, ripe peaches that grew at the Tuileries. None of it seemed to matter to her now. All she cared about was Aggie – keeping her alive, keeping her safe, keeping her well.

‘Ignatius said what serves it to a man to conquer the world if he should lose his soul,' Brother Michael began hesitatingly.

‘Quite so.' Bernadine slid the baby gently from the sling and swaddled her up tightly in another blanket like a little butterfly in a cocoon.

Brother Michael was pacing the floor now. ‘Ever since Agnes died I have been thinking about the Virgin Mary. That Portal of Grace through which our Saviour entered the world. It was a ray of fecundation shooting from heaven to earth. Like a little sunbeam. It was one emission only,' he almost yelped. ‘Ten seconds only! Like a little sunbeam! Even the Virgin Mary can lead you astray!'

‘Quite so.' Bernadine laid the baby lovingly in the bottom drawer of the tallboy, marvelling at how much like her mother she looked with her rosy cheeks and her long dark eyelashes.

The old monk took a deep breath. ‘I… I… am the father of little Aggie,' he whispered so softly that the words hardly left his lips, so softly that Bernadine didn't hear him at all as the infant hiccuped merrily in her sleep. ‘Yes, dear,' she replied, believing he was confessing to some trifling misdemeanour and thinking (with an almost psychic flash) that he was not unlike dear old Agnes in that respect and what a good pair they would have made.

Brother Michael stared at her incredulously. ‘You are not appalled?'

‘Of course not,' she turned, smiling as the tears poured down his face. ‘We are the sinners He lops and prunes. It is not the worst thing in the world. Here, blow your nose,' she added, handing him over a hand­kerchief, ‘and don't upset yourself so. Sleep is a great restorer of body and spirit,' she reminded, a little slyly for her.

‘But I must tell the Mother Superior.' He blew his red and swollen nose. ‘Mustn't I?'

‘If you must,' Bernadine half laughed. ‘Though as you say, she is already tied up with all her confiscated property.'

‘That's true.' He blew his nose again loudly but the tears still swam into his eyes. He was still in shock from what had just occurred. He had expected a dressing down at the very least, not this sublime goodness. This was goodness unparalleled. The goodness they talked about in the book of books; and he stared at Bernadine with undisguised admiration. She was a miracle of virtue, piety, love and compassion. She had set the standard of goodness so high that he could only stare up at it humbled and in awe. What a woman! What a nun! Giving off glows and hints galore so that the poor man felt that if he wasn't very careful he might go astray once more in the velvet of the night. He checked himself hard. He was littler than an ant compared to such greatness. Littler than a grain of sand. But he would come to deserve her in the end – little ant by little sand he would move the mountain of guilt and sin until he could raise his own bar of goodness one step higher.

He was filled suddenly with a sense of resolve, purpose, determination and he straightened himself up to his full height, mustering up all the spiritual strength that he could.

‘I shall join the army,' he announced sombrely, much to Bernadine's astonishment.

‘Yes dear,' she replied placatingly. ‘I'm sure you will one day. But you had better go to bed first. Everything always seems so much better after a good night's sleep.'

Brother Michael held up his hand. ‘Do not dissuade me, Sister Bernadine, out of your immense wealth of goodness and mercy. Do not try and dissuade me. I have made up my mind. I shall die for you and Bluebird if I have to.'

Bernadine had a horrible thought that he'd been sipping the miracul­ous wines again but she could smell no alcohol about him and in his own peculiar way he was in command of himself. She watched him kneel down beside the bottom drawer of the antique tallboy and with violently trembling hands make the sign of the cross above the infant's head.

‘Your mother was a grand lady,' he whispered, smiling through tears. ‘The Prettiest Perfectest Peach… and the only one who would ever hold her breath for me.'

His great head wobbled from side to side like a very old man's as he delicately caressed little Aggie's face. ‘I give you leave not to live as a Silent Reproach. I give you leave never to let yourself feel belittled. Be somebody. Be anybody. But never live your life as a Silent Reproach.'

And then he got up and turned to Sister Bernadine who sat bemused and amazed at the edge of her bed; and he bowed deep and low to her like a man paying the warmest homage.

‘
In nomine Patris, Filii et Spiritus Sancti
!' he recited with perfect inflection before backing slowly and with great dignity out of the room and (once he'd packed his few belongings) out of the convent and into the deep dark velvet of the night like a shade, a ghost, a will o' the wisp. And just as he wanted he left no trace but a pair of black stockings and a worn-out cassock; though a few days later a rumour reached the convent that a balding monk had feigned death by holding his breath and thereby escaped over enemy lines.

Chapter eighteen

‘This is a disgrace!' shouted an irate-looking gentleman from the pulpit, matching each word, syllable for syllable, with a punching cut in the air. ‘This is not an armistice, this is capitulation. We have capitulated to the Prussians even though General Trochu and that specious member of our Elected Imbecility, Jules Favre
17
, have been telling us for months that we will never give in, never give up an inch of our territories, stone of our fortresses. Ha Ha! What they say and what they mean are evidently two very different things indeed. They have led us up the garden path,' he added, mixing his metaphors, ‘like lambs to the slaughter.'

A woman with piled-up hair put her hand out to interrupt. ‘General Trochu says he is the Jesus Christ of the situation. All I'd like to say is that if he's the Jesus Christ of the situation,' her eyes gave a dramatic sweep of the room, ‘then who is the Judas, who is the Lucifer?'

‘Well put,' the man from the pulpit applauded. ‘I couldn't have put it better myself. If he's the Jesus Christ of the situation then I must be his mother!'

One or two titters met this as well as a few hear hears though a little old lady jabbed her son in the arm and enquired in a perplexed voice: ‘What on earth is he talking about? Why is he saying he's his mother?'

‘In 1792,' the irate-looking man bawled on, ‘our forefathers fought all Europe without bread, without clothes, without shoes… and yet in 1871…'

‘How do you know this, sir?' cried a dissident voice from the back of the room and everyone craned their necks to get a look at the upstart.

The man in the pulpit looked a little dumbfounded.

‘Because the history books tell us? Because you see funny little pictures in history books? Were you alive in 1792, sir?'

The man in the pulpit looked deeply affronted.

‘If you were, by my reckoning that makes you ninety-five at the very least, and in that case you are remarkably well preserved and I would suggest
– loud cheers –
I would suggest that you give your age-defying remedies to the old Emperor who is living out his days in England in semi senility.'

‘No more Boney-parts on the throne,' a little man jeered, quite obviously tiddly. ‘Let the Emperor enjoy the beautiful climate of England for a while. Maybe he could become an umbrella manufacturer.'

Hear Hear!

The irate gentleman stepped down, dusting his lapels and looking slightly abashed at the strange attacks and surprise interruptions when he'd only been speaking for the majority. The meeting had started off with a bang and it looked like it might explode by the end of the night. The church was packed to the rafters and everyone was making a din, airing their opinions, venting their spleen about a siege they had suffered, so it seemed, in vain. Lips breathed the words ‘an armistice with Prussia' in dismay and disbelief even though the tatttered remnants of regiments were pouring back into the city, roaring drunk and causing mayhem.

‘Our country, our families, our trades are ruined,' a beery-faced man spoke up then, a butcher by trade with great meat-hook arms. ‘We've given up everything to fight the Prussians. We've been kept in suspense for four months and now this? To just give up?' His voice almost failed him. ‘It makes me ashamed to be French.'

The house was divided on this. Some people wept in agreement; some caterwauled or booed unrestrainedly, unwilling to take the blame for the imbeciles up above. They were proud to be French and nobody better tell them otherwise. A glass was hurled in the direction of the butcher's head but it missed him totally and crashed into a wine bottle standing on the pulpit, much to everyone's amusement.

‘No definite peace treaty has been decided yet,' put in a sensible-looking man in a tweed coat and hat. ‘Remember that no peace treaty has been decided yet. Parliamentary elections must be held for the return of an Assembly charged with pronouncing on a definite peace treaty. Until then it is all speculation.'

‘Rubbish!' declared a National Guardsman, fixing the tweedy gentleman with his eye and trying to stare him out of countenance. ‘If you don't mind my saying so you're talking utter rubbish. Everyone here knows that this is capitulation pure and simple and the peace terms are more than shameful. We are to give up Alsace and Lorraine, pay an enormous war indemnity and hand over our arms and colours. Even the cannon that were paid for by public subscription. It's all over the papers.'

There were furious boos and hisses at this. The amount of hot air expended on the subject would have filled an entire balloon. No one was willing to give up the guns that the city had worked so hard to pay for and manufacture. They had sweated blood over them and blood would be shed if they were forced to give them up.

‘Over my dead body,' somebody swore obscenely and his oaths were met with a stampede of delight.

Miss Grist, who was Tessier's replacement, pursed her lips and signalled for an intermission. While everyone else made a dash for the trestle table she duly wrote down in her little green leather-bound notebook:
This is Miss Grist signing off for an intermission at eight fifteen precisely
. She never partook of the ‘entertainments' as she put it. She took her job far too seriously for that. She would sit through the whole of every break, straight backed and straight laced, poised and waiting for the moment she could write again in her little green leather-bound notebook:
This is Miss Grist signing in again at eight forty five precisely
. Occasionally a kindly soul would try and tempt her with a dry biscuit and glass of wine but she would always shake her head grimly and indicate the glass of water standing on the table next to the little green leather-bound notebook, though nobody had ever seen her even wet her lips with it. Everyone agreed she didn't have the heart of Tessier and they mourned his loss deeply, waxing nostalgic over his crazy doodles, symbols and flashes of inspiration, conveniently forgetting what a botch job he'd made of all the meetings. Even the ones who'd called him a limp leg and a dull wit now praised him up to the heavens. ‘A very hard act to follow,' they would say, shaking their heads in regret at Miss Grist. ‘A very hard act to follow!' Nobody gave her any credit for running the show with a firm hand and reworking the little green leather-bound notebook. But she didn't seem to mind. She obviously took pride in a job well done and sat alone on her stool beside the sacristy, a handkerchief tied under her chin, surveying the goings on in St Nicolas with eagle eyes and pursed lips.