Nursery Crimes Part 6

Dolly declined the invitation.

"Dear child," Sister Philomena soothed, "you mustn't be afraid."

"It ain't that I particlry mind 'em," Dolly said, "it's just that I don't want 'em gettin' close. Me Grandma didn't mind 'em at all."

"Good, brave Grandma," said Sister Philomena, who had heard the news about Grandma - missing believed dead. "The good Lord blessed her with a courageous heart."

Brave enough, Dolly thought, to pick them up and stamp on them. That her courage to kill spiders was G.o.d-given surprised her. "I threw a brick at one once," she said, "and nearly got 'im."

A vision of a defiant child hurling a brick - probably in imagination -- at an enemy bomber, filled Sister Philomena with warm affection. Here was a little outcast - an orphan - a child that the other children ignored - or laughed at. Here was a Cause - a Good Work -- a Soul to be trimmed up and polished and made desirable and lovely. Here was a reason for being in this convent in Wales - for being in a convent at all. Satan, of late, had been digging around for reasons. Here was a possible gem. Rough, no doubt, but what a challenge. Oh, what a challenge!

It dawned on the nuns slowly that once they got rid of their first impression of Dolly and began looking at her they were looking at someone rather exceptional. The infants teacher in the village school had known it, but she hadn't been asked to make a report on the child. Dolly's mind, like virgin soil, was rich in potential. Whatever was put in it flourished. True, her acceptance and rejection of certain seeds was highly selective. She could read most books with ease. That she should prefer a copy of Dracula which someone had smuggled into the library to any of the milder books on the shelves was characteristic. She read it in a couple of nights, under the bed-clothes, by the aid of a torch, and then repeated it as a serial to anyone who wanted to listen. In time, quite a lot wanted to listen. The outcast, who hadn't cared about being an outcast, had found her own way in.

The story sessions took place surrept.i.tiously in one of the music cubicles. There were ten of these with a piano in each. They were sound-proofed. In the open s.p.a.ce in the centre of the room a naive young novice sat at a desk and looked at all the pianos being thumped away behind gla.s.s, and at the little group in the last cubicle who were sitting on the floor having a theory quiz. When she occasionally opened the door to see how they were getting on with it she was greeted with a chorus about crotchets and quavers and demi-semi-quavers. One or two, she noticed, seemed to be pale with terror, but perhaps her gla.s.ses needed changing. Not an easy subject, music theory; you needed a mathematical mind for it.

Zanny never attended these sessions. In Dolly's parlance, she considered them daft. That Dolly should have acolytes annoyed her a little, but within safe emotional boundaries. This was, indeed, neutral ground and she had friends of her own. Plenty of them. But she hadn't a nun. Dolly had Sister Philomena. She might have felt rather better about this had she known about Dolly's feelings on the matter. Dolly would, with great pleasure, have presented Zanny with Sister Philomena, who decidedly wasn't Monkey or a pink pram. Sister Philomena was a naming nuisance. That she was a flaming nuisance -- with the "g" carefully sounded - and not a bleedin' pain in the a.r.s.e, was due to Sister Philomena's elocution lessons. They went on for an hour every Wednesday evening between six and seven, which was after prep time and before supper time and was officially play time. Dolly grudged the period very bitterly.

The lessons took place in the parlour which was used for receiving guests. The chairs were of red plush with white antimaca.s.sars on them. There was an oval table in the centre, highly polished, with a circular white embroidered cloth in the middle of it. In the middle of the cloth was a bra.s.s flower pot filled with maidenhair fern. On Dolly's first visit a rose lay beside the pot. Sister Philomena told Dolly to pick it up.

Dolly, scrutinising it suspiciously for thorns, did so.

"That," said Sister Philomena, her eyes s.h.i.+ning with the self-deluding euphoria of those who think they are being truly good, "is you, Dolly."

Dolly had rubbed shoulders in the past with the drunk and the insane (sozzled, funny in the 'ead) but she hadn't met this kind of aberration before and didn't know how to place it, so she said nothing.

"Has it ever occurred to you," Sister Philomena went on, "that you are beautiful -- as that rose is beautiful -- a creature of G.o.d -- delicately fas.h.i.+oned - created with love?"

"I know what me mum and dad did, if that's what you mean," -Dolly said. When you lived in one room you couldn't help but know. The end product in every case was a screaming baby - not a red rose with a greenfly on it. She picked the greenfly off and nipped it onto the carpet. Didn't these nuns know anything! Was that why they were here?

"Don't you know nothink?" she asked.

Sister Philomena felt herself blush. The task was going to be more formidable than she had expected. She rushed on quickly before Dolly could start lecturing her on copulation.

"Out there," she said, waving her hand in the direction of the convent gardens, "you can hear the birds sing. They sing very beautifully. G.o.d has given them a voice box and they know how to use it. You, too, have a voice box. You, too, can produce beautiful sounds."

"Ain't got no ear for it," Dolly said. During the school play at the village school she had been told to mime the words of "While Shepherds Watched" and not to dare let a squeak out. Miss Williams had been down to earth, very sensible. She had earned Dolly's respect.

"Those that have ears," Sister Philomena said, "let them hear. You have ears, Dolly, two pretty little pink ones like sh.e.l.ls on a beach. They are wonderful ears -- as good as anyone else's ears. They will listen to sounds and then you will reproduce them. Take the sound ing, for instance. Ting-a-ling--a-ling. Can you say that after me? Ting-a-ling - a-ling. Emphasis on the ing." "Oh, Gawd!" said Dolly quietly.

What couldn't be escaped had to be endured; she had learnt this from her grandmother. Sister Philomena's zeal was as strong as any of the impositions she had been forced to put up with in the past. The hour, she found out eventually, became an hour-and-a-half if you failed to comply. You escaped quicker if you sounded your h's and your g's. When you saw a double negative coming up you skirted it carefully or you were stuck with the ruddy thing for another ten minutes. If you were told to look like a rose - speak like a nightingale -- and walk like a princess - you were careful not to fart in exasperation, (the penalty for that had been an extra hour slotted in on the following evening). One learned to compromise.

Towards the end of the term Dolly had lowered the flag of rebellion sufficiently, on the surface at least, to become socially acceptable. She was beginning to sound right. She was on the first rung of the cla.s.s ladder. She now picked her nose in private. Her finger-nails were clean because there was a daily nail inspection and you had to go back and clean them if they weren't. There wasn't an ear inspection, but she had become obsessional about ears, which wasn't surprising. They were the only part of her anatomy that she cleaned of her own free will.

Zanny, not interested in the metamorphosis of Dolly from a grub into a rather sticky creature with embryo wings, was busy finding her own level. Academically it was a couple of cla.s.ses below Dolly. In the past she had been able to correct Dolly's p.r.o.nunciation and been pleased to do so. Now, Dolly was mistress of the hard words. To lose one's feeling of superiority was like losing one's vest - somewhat chilly. For the most part Clare's plan of separation was working out, the two children saw little of each other - mainly from choice. Preparation for their first communion altered matters.

Mother Benedicta wrote to Clare reminding her that as it was soon to be Zanny's seventh birthday arrangements were about to be made for her first communion preceded by her first confession. Dolly, too, was going to be accepted into the Church. Perhaps Mrs. Moncrief would like to send white dresses for both of them? The convent would provide the white veils. As regards a cake, ingredients these days were rather difficult to come by. Perhaps Mrs. Moncrief had foreseen this and put a quant.i.ty of sugar aside?

Clare, a little lulled that so far the population of the convent hadn't diminished, had been living in a fairly cosy present. Graham, as expected, had been posted to North Africa and wrote as often as he could. He sent kisses to Zanny which Clare pa.s.sed on. On the surface they were still very loving parents of a dear little daughter. That the dear daughter was soon to be embraced by Mother Church after confessing all her sins was a bit of a jolt. Clare didn't know what to do. Writing to Graham wouldn't alter events. A worry shared wasn't, in this case, a worry halved. She didn't dare tell Peter. He still made her back better, as Zanny put it. They were both accomplished lovers and neither thought beyond the act. The complication of love - of family commitment, of the future - had no part in the relations.h.i.+p.

Zanny's future in the shape of a confessional loomed on Clare's horizon like a cross of doom. How sealed would the priest's lips be? If not sealed, would she be thrown out? After several sleepless nights Clare decided to await events and not antic.i.p.ate them. There was nothing she could do, short of visiting Zanny and telling her to keep her mouth shut and as, no doubt, she was being trained right now to do the opposite there didn't seem any point in wasting her breath. She wasn't any good at sewing, but she had kept her white wedding dress and decided to let the local dressmaker make a couple of communion dresses out of it. The cake she made herself. The marzipan was fake, but the rest of the ingredients weren't too difficult to come by. One of the farmers' wives even managed to rustle up some dried fruit. Good strong Welsh non-conformists, they might be, with an inborn distrust of Papist practices, but when it came to providing a cake for two little girls, one of whom had lost her dear little brother so tragically, they were prepared to help all they could.

Meanwhile neither Zanny nor Dolly could understand what all the fuss was about. Dolly absorbed the catechism like a sponge. The quicker you learnt things, the quicker you were let off the hook. Zanny, whose memory wasn't nearly as good, found that by smiling sweetly at Father Donovan she achieved similar results. The old priest was delighted with them. Dear little daughters of G.o.d. One so clever and quick. One so pretty and good.

Two little queens, the nuns cooed over them as they stood in their white dresses, clutching their white missals, with their white veils draped over their hair.

Clare, in the congregation for the Big Event, saw them entering the church and felt a hard thump of apprehension followed by an unexpected desire to weep. Zanny looked so pretty. She looked angelic. Why couldn't she be as she looked? Dolly, in contrast, looked bizarre. Funny little monkey face. Huge dark eyes. The dress was half an inch too long and she kept tripping over it. Someone had given her a large handkerchief edged with lace and it was sticking out of her left sleeve.

Dolly was the first to go into the confessional. Who she was pleasing by going through all this ritual she wasn't sure. If Grandma hadn't escaped the bomb and was flying around up there her eyes would be popping out of her head.

The quicker it was said, the quicker it was finished.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."

Father Donovan, on the other side of the part.i.tion, rolled out his response. "May the Lord be in thy heart and on thy lips that thou mayest truly and humbly confess thy sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost."

"Amen," said Dolly.

The priest prompted her gently, "And what do you wish to confess?"

Dolly thought about it. She had thought about it a great deal. She had watched the nuns kneeling before going into confession. They undid their veils so that they drooped over their faces. What, she wondered, did they confess? What crime could be committed in a place like this? They must be daft.

"Nothing," she said.

"Nothing? Think - child - think."

"I ain't done nothing." In times of stress - and this was becoming a time of stress -- Dolly reverted to her natural tongue.

Father Donovan, remembering how bright she had been at the catechism cla.s.ses, was a little taken aback. He had never heard her speak like that before. "If you haven't done anything," he said, "you might have committed a sin of omission. By not doing anything in a particular situation you might have sinned."

Dolly had a vague memory of a similar, though simpler, conversation held with him - something about it being right to help a blind person across a road, and being a sin if you didn't. Here, there weren't any blind people, and you didn't get out all that often to cross roads.

She waited for some more suggestions.

He came out with several - including spiritual pride -and Dolly hotly denied all of them. She didn't even know what spiritual pride meant.

They were both beginning to sweat.

She wanted to get out. She'd had enough. She couldn't see his face, but his voice sounded cross. If she couldn't come up with a sin soon he'd come out from his side and thump her.

And then she remembered and began to grin with relief. Of course she'd sinned. She'd told him a whopping big lie as soon a she'd entered the box. "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," she'd said. She'd told him she'd sinned when she hadn't.

"Father, I sinned by telling a lie."

"Well, thank G.o.d for that," Father Donovan said acidly. "And thank the Blessed Virgin for helping you to remember."

He decided not to ask what the lie was, she had already been with him ten minutes and it was time to get on to the other little la.s.s, who might prove more fruitful. He curtly told her to say three Hail Marys.

Zanny, waiting for Dolly to come out, was getting more and more nervous. What was she telling him that took all this time to tell?