The White Garden (22 page)

She gestured towards the corridor where all the green doors stood open, the small rooms empty.

‘I must have forgotten to tell you,’ Ambrose said, ‘when you were over in the hospital for a while, one of the very old sisters passed away. Her cell is empty. The one next to yours.’

Rosamund was silent as she chewed her thumbnail and stared at the sky from her narrow window.

‘Who is it then?’

‘A woman called Therese Martin.’

‘The Little Flower.’

‘That’s the one. I know you’ll get on well. You have a lot in common.’

‘I’ll have to think about it.’

‘There’s plenty of time.’

Rosamund wrote a letter to Mother Perpetua in the convent in Wales. This new Foundation, she wrote, is blossoming. We are soon to welcome a French sister, a very special addition to our small convent here. She is Sister Therese whom you will remember. I recall you often used to quote the wisdom of her words to us, saying how she planned to spend her heaven doing good on earth. I hope she can fit in here; the idea is somewhat troubling to me. Please pray for us all at this time.

Mother Perpetua answered the letter and sent a gift. It was a copy of
The Eagle and the Dove
by Vita Sackville-West. ‘Here is the story of both Teresas for you,’ Mother Perpetua wrote. ‘May their lives inspire you and comfort you. All your friends here send you their good wishes and we all remember you in our prayers.’

THE GIRL IN THE CELL NEXT-DOOR

THERESE

So here’s a pretty pass, a nice kettle of fish. I am delivered to the convent overnight, by dark, by moonlight, torchlight, candle-flame, and put in a cell beside the so-called Teresa of Avila. I will pretend, for the time being, that I believe it is she.

Impossible, that woman never crossed the Spanish border — or first I heard of it, anyhow. They don’t realise she’s an Imposter.

I’ll play along, and in the end I’ll expose her, and then they
will
be pleased and I might get a reward.

I wonder what sort of reward that would be? I do not want food — so often treats take the form of icecreams and cream cakes. Spew! I wish, I wish I could get a letter from Violetta, a Violetta-letta on violet-scented paper. I would certainly eat
that
!

Yes, now I come to think of it, if they want me to eat (and they do, I can see it in their eyes, read it in the hairs of their armpits) they should serve up dishes of Violetta-lettas. But no mail has come. The girl in the cell next-door has stolen my mail, that’s the problem. She thinks she has a right to take Violetta from me, but I will outwit and outfox her, you can be sure of that. She has no character of her own whatsoever, and has slipped willy-nilly into the habit of Teresa of Avila. I will try her out with Spanish.

Well I tried her out, and I am bamboozled to report that she speaks the language straight out of the sixteenth century. That was a turn-up for my books. What a shocking thought — she could be Teresa after all. But I don’t care. I will not kowtow or toady or froggy or ratty to the likes of her. I am such a nice white lily. She is trying to make friends, actually. Some hope! She is often accompanied by a strange woman I have seen somewhere in the hospital, a Shirley Temple of a woman with a lovely singing voice. A kind, good girl who has often stood me in good stead and stood me up when I was falling down. I do get so very tired, and I have responsibilities to my lover, the doctor. I ride

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him through the jungle, my great grey elephant doctor. Others will hunt him for his ivory, but I kiss him and hug him and soothe him with my body. He is a creature of legendary strength and wisdom and benevolence. But why did he let them put me next to the girl in the cell next-door? He must have had a reason, but part of the game we play is that I cannot ask him this. One of the rules is never ask. I can consult my stones if I really want the answer.

I believe if I watch and wait Violetta will eventually join this order. She always had a vocation, we knew that. But it depends what house they send her to. We could relive the playtimes of our schooldays on the swings and monkey-bars. She would kiss away my headaches. Oh, how my head aches. And often I am visited by the thought that Violetta has died. That could be the explanation for her long silence. Death. Would she not speak to me from the grave? We always said we would get in touch across the crossover between this and that. If I look up I may catch a glimpse of her with the wings of a deep purple angel, my Violetta. She stopped the clock, once upon a time, and we are stopped back there, stopped with the mermaid clock. Don’t talk to me, I say, about rock-around-the-clock, because I’m not listening. Come back little violet, save me from this terrible headachy thing.

In the meantime I pass the time of day with Teresa in the cell alongside, that is all. It wouldn’t pay to get too friendly with a snooty tart like that.

TERESA

The Little Flower has come to the cell next-door and she is very, very strange indeed. I think she must be ill, she is so pale and thin and silent and solitary. I expected her to be joyful, but she is like a ghost, a sliver of shadow in the twilight. There is something about her that frightens me, some darkness, a terrible blankness in the pupils of her eyes. I believe there is a violence in her, coiled up, ready to spring, to unleash an unknown malice in a storm of hatred or love. Love and hate, they are so similar. We pass the time of day.

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I would much prefer to speak with finer minds, or with men and women of more vitality and wit. I once received the grace of discovering the telephone, and there have been times when I have had this discovery freely available to me so that I have spoken to my mother and father over great distances, and to such boon companions as dear John of the Cross. In this convent there is no telephone. I have complained but I fear my complaints have gone unheard, ignored. I remember when I flew from Wales to Melbourne, the first thing I did when I arrived, I placed a call to Llandovery and said (I remember this so distinctly), I said: ‘This is Teresa,’ and for some reason they misunderstood, and my mother and father also misunderstood. It was as if nobody could hear me, as if my voice, which I could hear plainly in my head and in the air around me, and even in a strangely magnified way in the instrument itself, as if my voice was inaudible, inaccessible to other people.

‘Rosamund! Rosamund!’ they wept, like characters in an opera. ‘Oh woe is Rosamund!’ And they proceeded to gnash their teeth and tear their hair and call for help. I telephoned old friends and some close relatives and their response was very solemn, and they said — it was like a litany — ‘Rosamund?

Rosamund?’ And I said, ‘Teresa.’ I began to shout and then to scream, ‘Teresa! Teresa! From Avila, Avila, Avila!’ And in my frustration I began to dance and tear the curtains from their rods. I rushed into the street trailing a long green bundle of dusty drapes which scattered metal rings and fish-hooks as I ran. A crowd gathered by the side of the road. I ran until the curtains caught around a tree and I fell down into the gutter from where I was rescued by a number of policemen who showed me great respect and addressed me by my proper name, Teresa, and acompanied me to a place which was, if I recall, beside the sea.

I have travelled far and wide since then, and now I have this place to myself, well almost, and I can spend my days in meditation and comtemplation, with a certain amount of exercise and human intercourse. There are of course times when I am visited by the devil who straps me to the bed and attacks my

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poor brain with bolts of lightning. Then there are the times of the visions — since coming here I have on several occasions seen Paradise.

THE EAGLE AND THE DOVE

LAURA

I was only sixteen when Vickie died in 1967. I find it hard now, nearly thirty years later, to remember or even imagine the shock her death was to me. I idolised her all her life, longed with a loving desperation to participate in the magic of her. I had always wanted to be Vickie; then when she died I realised I had really wanted to be near her, to watch her and listen to her. I wanted to be outside Vickie, looking on. She was such a drama; everything was an act, a play, a terrific bit of fun. She was the oldest and I was the youngest. In the middle there were Eleanor and Peter. They stuck together, and I was isolated at the bottom; Vickie was isolated at the top. She used to make felt mice for me, and peg dolls. She taught me how to plait my hair and how to play the piano and sing. She would let me experiment with her powder and lipstick. Then when she went into acting she used to practise make-up on me. She taught me dancing.

There was a step she called ‘plucking the stars’ where I stepped slowly along the edge of the carpet square, reaching up into the heavens, gathering the stars, collecting them in my arms. People said I resembled Vickie in looks. I believed them, passionately.

Perhaps I did look like her then, but after she died, the look of Vickie seemed to fade from my face. I don’t look like her now.

Then, that day in February 1967, I was at school, in the lab.

It was Biology and we were going to cut up frogs. I remember how hot it was and how all the talk was about Ronald Ryan.

He had been hanged at eight o’clock the day before. Ronald Ryan died in the morning, Vickie died in the afternoon, and by the next morning Ryan’s body would have been under the earth. Vickie’s body was lying in the hospital garden. I know now that because of the hot weather there were already maggots in Vickie’s body. The teacher in her white coat came into the school lab and said I was wanted at the office. I don’t even remember what the Head said to me. The next thing I remember is

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being at home and the terrible silence and then somebody ringing up. My father answered the phone and said no, Vickie wasn’t there. Then they must have asked him to take a message for Vickie. He went white and his voice was quiet and husky and he said there had been an accident and Vickie was hurt and that was all he could say. But we all knew that Vickie had died the day before in the garden of the hospital. Straight after that there were two calls from a woman with a wrong number. My father said hello and this woman just kept repeating in a croaky voice Scott? Scott?

Nobody at our place was called Scott. The phone seemed to be going mad in a world already mad and spinning into darkness.

I think everybody more or less forgot about me; they were so busy with the details of Vickie’s death. The last time I saw Vickie was the night before she died. She came over for tea and borrowed a green jacket that belonged to my mother. She sat by the window in my bedroom and said she was modelling for something or other the next day and she had to dress up in the green jacket and a big red hat. She also had to carry a small red book. ‘This book,’ she said, and she took it out of her bag. ‘
The
Eagle and the Dove
. Doesn’t that sound nice, Laura,’ she said.

‘You could be the little dove, and I would be the eagle.’

There was an autopsy, a funeral, a coroner’s inquiry, nothing suspicious. I was only the younger sister, and was left on the edge of things. Peter and Eleanor stuck together and I spun around in limbo somewhere. I stayed in my room a lot, but I can’t remember what I did. I suppose I cried. Yes, I cried. And I think I stared for hours at a row of black elephants Vickie gave me once. I held one of the felt mice in my hand and days later I realised it had turned into a soggy lump of matted green stuff. I had to throw it away. My mother always used to get our names mixed up, mine and Vickie’s, so that she often said Vickie-Laurie or Laurie-Vickie. She was never able to stop doing that, and yet after Vickie was dead she would gulp every time she said it. I would just blink and go blank and wait for her to get it right.

When Eleanor brought home all Vickie’s things from her flat,
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Mum said I could have the moonstone necklace and Vickie’s watch. And I got the midnight blue velvet evening dress. At that time I didn’t want these things; I only wanted Vickie. I think it took me years, actually, before I really believed she was gone. I went through the funeral in a trance, although I remember seeing Dr Goddard there, and I thought then that somehow he was to blame for everything. It was his hospital, and the bees were bred by his lunatics. He looked sad and composed and I thought he was acting a part. People said wasn’t it wonderful that he came to the funeral of a patient. He sent a modest wreath of pale pink rosebuds and the card said it was from him and his family.

It made me sick then, but I didn’t quite know why. It makes me sicker now. I thought at the funeral that he was staring at me, but perhaps I just had an adolescent sense of my own central importance. The coffin was the real centre, and yet it was such a hollow and tragic centre that it seemed not to exist. It was blanketed with flowers and the church was full of actors and there was so much happening around me. I fainted.

When I came to I was in the choir vestry with Dr Goddard beside me. I became completely conscious and I looked into his eyes and I knew I hated him. I sensed in that moment that I was in the presence of evil. He reminded me of a huge malicious elephant, grey and wrinkled and infested with hateful vermin.

Afterwards I tried to put this feeling aside, telling myself that it was melodramatic and only a reaction to all I was going through.

That was the last time I saw him, although he tried to suggest to my father that I would benefit from some of his therapy.

Twenty years later I read in the paper that Mandala was being exposed as a sort of death camp where patients were used for experiments with Deep Sleep treatment and with hallucinogenic drugs, and where many deaths had occurred and many lives had been ruined. Before the doctor was brought before the public to answer for his actions, he shot himself.