The Abbess of Crewe: A Modern Morality Tale Page 7

  The pure cold air of the chapel ebbs, it flows and ebbs, with the Gregorian music, the true voices of the community, trained in daily practice by the Choir Mistress for these moments in their profession. All the community is present except Felicity and Winifrede. The Abbess in her freshly changed robe stands before her high seat while the antiphon rises and falls.

  Blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are the clean of heart:

  for they shall see God.

  Still as an obelisk before them stands Alexandra, to survey what she has made, and the Abbess Hildegarde before her, to find it good and bravely to prophesy. Her lips move as in a film dubbed into a strange language:

  When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, sky wings

  shut,

  Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?

  When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? — I’ll not play

  hypocrite

  To my own heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but

  That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows

  Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?

  In the hall, at the foot of the staircase, Mildred says, ‘Where is Winifrede?’

  The Abbess does not reply until they have reached her parlour and are seated.

  ‘Winifrede has been to the ladies’ lavatory on the ground floor at Selfridge’s and she has not yet returned.’

  Walburga says, ‘Where will it all end?’

  ‘How on earth,’ says Mildred, ‘can those two young men pick up their money in the ladies’ room?’

  ‘I expect they will send some girl in to pick it up. Anyway, those were Winifrede’s instructions,’ says Alexandra.

  ‘The more people who know about it the less I like it,’ Walburga says.

  ‘The more money they demand the less I like it,’ says the Abbess. ‘Actually, I heard about these demands for the first time this morning. It makes me wonder what on earth Baudouin and Maximilian were thinking of to send those boys into the Abbey in the first place.’

  ‘We wanted Felicity’s love-letters,’ Mildred says.

  ‘We needed her love-letters,’ says Walburga.

  ‘If I had known that was all you needed I could have arranged the job internally,’ says the Abbess. ‘We have the photo-copy machines after all.’

  ‘Felicity was very watchful at that time,’ Mildred says. ‘We had to have you elected Abbess, Alexandra.’

  ‘I would have been elected anyway,’ says the Abbess. ‘But, Sisters, I am with you.’

  ‘If they hadn’t taken her thimble the first time they broke in, Felicity would never have suspected a thing,’ Walburga says.

  Mildred says, ‘They were out of their minds, touching that damned thimble. They only took it to show Maximilian how easy it was to break in.’

  ‘Such a fuss,’ says the Abbess, as she has said before and will say again, with her lyrical and indifferent air, ‘over a little silver thimble.’

  ‘Oh, well, we know very little about it,’ says Mildred. ‘I personally know nothing about it.’

  ‘I haven’t the slightest idea what it’s all about,’ says Walburga. ‘I only know that if Baudouin and Maximilian can’t continue to find money, then they are in it up to the neck.’

  ‘Winifrede, too, is in it up to the neck,’ says the Abbess, as she has said before and will say again.

  The telephone rings from the central switchboard. Frowning and tight-skinned, Walburga goes to answer it while Mildred watches with her fair, unseasonably summer-blue eyes. Walburga places her hand over the mouthpiece and says, ‘The Daily Express wants to know if you can make a statement, Lady Abbess, concerning Felicity’s psychiatric treatment.’

  ‘Tell them,’ says the Abbess, ‘that we have no knowledge of Felicity’s activities since she left the convent. Her stall in the chapel is empty and it awaits her return.’

  Walburga repeats this slowly to the nun who operates the switchboard, and whose voice quivers as she replies, ‘I will give them that message, Sister Walburga.’

  ‘Would you really take her back?’ Mildred says. But the telephone rings again. Peace is over.

  Walburga answers impatiently and again transmits the message. ‘They are very persistent. The reporter wants to know your views on Felicity’s defection.’

  ‘Pass me the telephone,’ says the Abbess. Then she speaks to the operator. ‘Sister, be vigilant, be sober. Get your pencil and pad ready, so that I may dictate a message. It goes as follows:

  ‘The Abbess of Crewe cannot say more than that she would welcome the return of Sister Felicity to the Abbey. As for Sister Felicity’s recent escapade, the Abbess is entirely comprehending, and indeed would apply the fine words of John Milton to Sister Felicity’s high-spirited action. These words are: “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and un-breathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race …” — Repeat that to the reporter, if you please, and if there are any more telephone calls from outside please say we’ve retired for the night.’

  ‘What will they make of that?’ Mildred says. ‘It sounds awfully charming.’

  ‘They’ll make some sort of a garble,’ says the Abbess. ‘Garble is what we need, now, Sisters. We are leaving the sphere of history and are about to enter that of mythology. Mythology is nothing more than history garbled; likewise history is mythology garbled and it is nothing more in all the history of man. Who are we to alter the nature of things? So far as we are concerned, my dear Sisters, to look for the truth of the matter will be like looking for the lost limbs, toes and fingernails of a body blown to pieces in an air crash.’

  ‘The English Catholic bishops will be furious at your citing Milton,’ says Walburga.

  ‘It’s the Roman Cardinals who matter,’ says the Abbess, ‘and I doubt they have ever heard of him.’

  The door opens and Winifrede, tired from her journey, unbending in her carriage, enters and makes a deep curtsey.

  ‘Winifrede, my dear,’ says the Abbess.

  ‘I have just changed back into my habit, Lady Abbess,’ Winifrede says.

  ‘How did it go?’

  ‘It went well,’ says Winifrede. ‘I saw the woman immediately.’

  ‘You left the shopping-bag on the wash-basin and went into the lavatory?’

  ‘Yes. It went just like that. I knelt and watched from the space under the door. It was a woman wearing a red coat and blue trousers and she carried a copy of The Tablet. She started washing her hands at the basin. Then she picked up the bag and went away. I came out of the lavatory immediately, washed my hands and dried them. Nobody noticed a thing.’

  ‘How many women were in the ladies’ room?’

  ‘There were five and one attendant. But our transaction was accomplished very quickly.’

  ‘What was the woman in the red coat like? Describe her.’

  ‘Well,’ says Winifrede, ‘she looked rather masculine. Heavy-faced. I think she was wearing a black wig.’

  ‘Masculine?’

  ‘Her face. Also, rather bony hands. Big wrists. I didn’t see her for long.’

  ‘Do you know what I think?’ says the Abbess.

  ‘You think it wasn’t a woman at all,’ Walburga says.

  ‘One of those student Jesuits dressed as a woman,’ Mildred says.

  ‘Winifrede, is that possible?’ the Abbess says.

  ‘You know,’ says Winifrede, ‘it’s quite possible. Very possible.’

  ‘If so, then I think Baudouin and Maximilian are dangerously stupid,’ says the Abbess. ‘It is typical of the Jesuit mentality to complicate a simple process. Why choose a ladies’ lavatory?’

  ‘It’s an easy place for a shopping-bag to change hands,’ Walburga says. ‘Baudouin is no fool.’

  ‘You should get Baudouin out of your system, Walburga,’ says the Abbess.

  Winifrede begins to finger her rosary beads very nervously. ‘What is the matter, Winifrede,’ says the Abbess.
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  ‘The ladies’ toilet at Selfridge’s was my idea,’ she laments. ‘I thought it was a good idea. It’s an easy place to make a meeting.’

  ‘I don’t deny,’ says the Abbess, ‘that by some chance your idea has been successful. The throw of the dice is bound to turn sometimes in your favour. But you are wrong to imagine that any idea of yours is good in itself.’

  ‘Anyway,’ says Walburga, ‘the young brutes have got the money and that will keep them quiet.’

  ‘For a while,’ says the Abbess of Crewe.

  ‘Oh, have I got to do it again?’ Winifrede says in her little wailing voice.

  ‘Possibly,’ says the Abbess. ‘Meantime go and rest before Compline. After Compline we shall all meet here for refreshments and some entertaining scenarios. Think up your best scenarios, Sisters.’

  ‘What are scenarios?’ says Winifrede.

  ‘They are an art-form,’ says the Abbess of Crewe, ‘based on facts. A good scenario is a garble. A bad one is a bungle. They need not be plausible, only hypnotic, like all good art.’

  Chapter 5

  ‘GERTRUDE,’ says the Abbess into the green telephone, ‘have you seen the papers?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Gertrude.

  ‘You mean that the news has reached Reykjavik?’

  ‘Czechoslovakia has won the World Title.’

  ‘I mean the news about us, Gertrude, dear.’

  ‘Yes, I saw a bit about you. What was the point of your bugging the convent?’

  ‘How should I know?’ says the Abbess. ‘I know nothing about anything. I am occupied with the administration of the Abbey, our music, our rites and traditions, and our electronics projects for contacts with our mission fields. Apart from these affairs I only know what I am told appears in the newspapers which I don’t read myself. My dear Gertrude, why don’t you come home, or at least be nearer to hand, in France, in Belgium, in Holland, somewhere on the Continent, if not in Britain? I’m seriously thinking of dismantling the green line, Gertrude.’

  ‘Not a bad idea,’ Gertrude says. ‘There’s very little you can do about controlling the missions from Crewe, anyway.’

  ‘If you were nearer to hand, Gertrude, say Austria or Italy even —’

  ‘Too near the Vatican,’ says Gertrude.

  ‘We need a European mission,’ says the Abbess.

  ‘But I don’t like Europe,’ says Gertrude. ‘It’s too near to Rome.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ says the Abbess. ‘Our own dear Rome. But, Gertrude, I’m having trouble from Rome, and I think you might help us. They will be sending a commission sooner or later to look into things here at Crewe, don’t you think? So much publicity. How can I cope if you keep away?’

  ‘Eavesdropping,’ says Gertrude, ‘is immoral.’

  ‘Have you got a cold in the chest, Gertrude?’

  ‘You ought not to have listened in to the nuns’ conversations. You shouldn’t have opened their letters and you ought not to have read them. You should have invested their dowries in the convent and you ought to have stopped your Jesuit friends from breaking into the Abbey.’

  ‘Gertrude,’ says the Abbess, ‘I know that Felicity had a pile of love-letters.’

  ‘You should have told her to destroy them. You ought to have warned her. You should have let the nuns who wanted to vote for her do so. You ought to have —’

  ‘Gertrude, my devout logician, it is a question upon which I ponder greatly within the umbrageous garden of my thoughts, where you get your “should nots” and your “ought tos” from. They don’t arise from the moral systems of the cannibal tribes of the Andes, nor the factions of the deep Congo, nor from the hills of Asia, do they? It seems to me, Gertrude, my love, that your shoulds and your shouldn’ts have been established rather nearer home, let us say the continent of Europe, if you will forgive the expression.’

  ‘The Pope,’ says Gertrude, ‘should broaden his ecumenical views and he ought to stand by the Second Vatican Council. He should throw the dogmas out of the window there at the Holy See and he ought to let the other religions in by the door and unite.’

  The Abbess, at her end of the green line, relaxes in the control room, glancing at the white cold light which plays on the masses of green ferns she has recently placed about the room, beautifying it and concealing the apparatus.

  ‘Gertrude,’ she says. ‘I have concluded that there’s some gap in your logic. And at the same time I am wondering what to do about Walburga, Mildred and Winifrede.’

  ‘Why, what have they done?’

  ‘My dear, it seems it is they who have bugged the Abbey and arranged a burglary.’

  ‘Then send them away.’

  ‘But Mildred and Walburga are two of the finest nuns I have ever had the privilege to know.’

  ‘This is Reykjavik,’ Gertrude says. ‘Not Fleet Street. Why don’t you go on television? You would have a wonderful presence, Lady Abbess.’

  ‘Do you think so, Gertrude? Do you know, I feel very confident in that respect. But I don’t care for publicity. I’m in love with English poetry, and even my devotions take that form, as is perfectly valid in my view. Gertrude, I will give an interview on the television if need be, and I will quote some poetry. Which poet do you think most suitable? Gertrude, are you listening? Shall I express your views about the Holy See on the television?’

  Gertrude’s voice goes faint as she replies, ‘No, they’re only for home consumption. Give them to the nuns. I’m afraid there’s a snowstorm blowing up. Too much interference on the line …’

  The Abbess skips happily, all by herself in the control room, when she has put down the green receiver. Then she folds her white habit about her and goes into her parlour which has been decorated to her own style. Mildred and Walburga stand up as she enters, and she looks neither at one nor the other, but stands without moving, and they with her, like Stonehenge. In a while the Abbess takes her chair, with her buckled shoes set lightly on the new green carpet. Mildred and Walburga take their places.

  ‘Gertrude,’ says the Abbess, ‘is on her way to the hinterland, far into the sparse wastes of Iceland where she hopes to introduce daily devotions and central heating into the igloos. We had better get tenders from the central-heating firms and arrange a contract quickly, for I fear that something about the scheme may go wrong, such as the breakdown of Eskimo family life. What is all that yelping outside?’

  ‘Police dogs,’ says Mildred. ‘The reporters are still at the gate.’

  ‘Keep the nuns well removed from the gates,’ says the Abbess. ‘Do you know, if things become really bad I shall myself make a statement on television. Have you received any further intelligence?’

  ‘Felicity has made up a list of Abbey crimes,’ says Walburga. ‘She complains they are crimes under English law, not ecclesiastical crimes, and she has complained on the television that the legal authorities are doing nothing about them.’

  ‘The courts would of course prefer the affair to be settled by Rome,’ says the Abbess. ‘Have you got the list?’ She holds out her hand and flutters her fingers impatiently while Walburga brings out of her deep pocket a thick folded list which eventually reaches the Abbess’s fingers.

  Mildred says, ‘She compiled it with the aid of Thomas and Roget’s Thesaurus, according to her landlady’s daughter, who keeps Winifrede informed.’

  ‘We shall be ruined with all this pay-money that we have to pay,’ the Abbess says, unfolding the list. She begins to read aloud, in her clearest modulations:

  ‘“Wrongdoing committed by the Abbess of Crewe”.’ She then looks up from the paper and says, ‘I do love that word “wrongdoing”. It sounds so like the gong of doom, not at all evocative of that fanfare of Wagnerian trumpets we are led to expect, but something that accompanies the smell of boiled beef and cabbage in the back premises of a Mechanics’ Institute in Sheffield in the mid-nineteenth century … Wrongdoing is moreover something that commercial travellers used to do in the thirties and forties of this century, althoug
h now I believe they do the same thing under another name … Wrongdoing, wrongdoing … In any sense which Felicity could attach to it, the word does not apply to me, dear ladies. Felicity is a lascivious puritan.’

  ‘We could sue for libel,’ Walburga says.

  ‘No more does libel apply to me,’ says the Abbess, and continues reading aloud: ‘“Concealing, hiding, secreting, covering, screening, cloaking, veiling, shrouding, shading, muffling, masking, disguising, ensconcing, eclipsing, keeping in ignorance, blinding, hoodwinking, mystifying, posing, puzzling, perplexing, embarrassing, bewildering, reserving, suppressing, bamboozling, etcetera.”

  ‘I pine so much to know,’ says the Abbess, looking up from the list at the attentive handsome faces of Mildred and Walburga, ‘what the “etcetera” stands for. Surely Felicity had something in mind?’

  ‘Would it be something to do with fraud?’ says Mildred.

  ‘Fraud is implied in the next paragraph,’ says the Abbess, ‘for it goes on: “Defrauding, cheating, imposing upon, practising upon, outreaching, jockeying, doing, cozening, diddling, circumventing, putting upon, decoying, tricking, hoaxing, juggling, trespassing, beguiling, inveigling, luring, liming, swindling, tripping up, bilking, plucking, outwitting, making believe the moon is made of green cheese and deceiving”.

  ‘A dazzling indictment,’ says the Abbess, looking up once more, ‘and, do you know, she has thought not only of the wrongdoings I have committed but also those I have not yet done but am about to perform.’

  The bell rings for Vespers and the Abbess lays aside the dazzling pages.

  ‘I think,’ says Walburga, as she follows the Abbess from the private parlour, ‘we should dismantle the bugs right away.’

  ‘And destroy our tapes?’ says Mildred, rather tremorously. Mildred is very attached to the tapes, playing them back frequently with a rare force of concentration.

  ‘Certainly not,’ says the Abbess as they pause at the top of the staircase. ‘We cannot destroy evidence the existence of which is vital to our story and which can be orchestrated to meet the demands of the Roman inquisitors who are trying to liquidate the convent. We need the tapes to trick, lure, lime, outwit, bamboozle, etcetera. There is one particular tape in which I prove my innocence of the bugging itself. I am walking with Winifrede under the poplars discussing the disguising and ensconcing as early as last summer. It is the tape that begins with the question, “What is wrong, Sister Winifrede, with the tradional keyhole method …?” I replayed and rearranged it the other day, making believe the moon is green cheese with Winifrede’s stupid reply which I rightly forget. It is very suitable evidence to present to Rome, if necessary. Sister Winifrede is in it up to the neck. Send her to my parlour after Vespers.’