Fludd: A Novel

FIVE

The arrival of Father Fludd in the parish was marked by a general increase in holiness. If he thought his parish tour had gone unremarked, he was mistaken; on the next Sunday, and in subsequent weeks, the lukewarm, the reclusive, and the apostate trod in each other’s footsteps on the carriage-drive. He preached a good vigorous sermon, stuffed with well-chosen texts; Father Angwin had thought it on the whole dangerous to disabuse his flock of the notion that the Bible was a Protestant book, and had tended to leave his quotes unattributed.

That first Sunday, Fludd noted the Men’s Fellowship, occupying the north aisle; a dapper man in plaid trews was the first of them to step up and take Holy Communion, and the rest followed. Their jaws were held stiff as they turned from the altar rail, God’s living body cloven to their hard palates. Bestowing the host, Fludd saw the features of the communicants reflected in the polished plate the altar boy held beneath each chin; he saw the shiver of the distorted metal faces.

Only the nuns preceded the Men’s Fellowship, Purpiture marching stoutly from her front pew, the rest rising to follow, peeling off from the kneeler like black adhesive strips: Cyril, Ignatius, Polycarp, in alphabetical order to save dispute. The round-faced girl-nun brought up the rear; one or two sisters were absent, he noticed, probably down with some digestive ailment.

A hymn then, “O Bread of Heaven”: off-key, a low rumbling hymn, like bad weather coming up. Ita, Missa est: Go, the Mass is ended. Deo gratias. Another hymn: “Soul of My Saviour,” a parish favourite. High-pitched, this time, a keening wail, the sopranos of Fetherhoughton having their way with it; only the shrillest can hit the top notes, and the wisest do not try. Soul of my Saviour, Sanctify my breast … And midway through that first torturing verse, he saw from the corner of his eye how Mother Perpetua leant forward, across the embonpoint of Sister Anthony, and dug the young nun in the ribs.

If she had been carrying an umbrella, she would have used that, but the point of her finger was hardly less efficacious. A startled moan broke from Sister Philomena, and presently it was evident that she was singing. Deep in thy wounds, Lord, Hide and shelter me … “Poor Sister Philomena,” Agnes Dempsey muttered. “It’s like a dog being taken poorly.” The young woman blushed as she sang, and cast down her eyes.

When the hymn was over, the congregation rose as one man, and seemed to shake themselves, and passed weightily down the aisles and out into the weak autumn sun, en route to their fast-breaking Sunday dinners; the camphor smell of their Sunday clothes mingled with the incense, and Fludd found himself sneezing uncontrollably, wiping his streaming eyes. There was mud on the carriage-drive, and winter in the air.

Soon the children had new games, of imitating priests. In their back-yards they went knocking from door to door, slow-footed and doleful, pretending that they carried the viaticum. The householders, informed that they were near death, made their displeasure felt; but the children, having recovered from the blows, re-formed their lines, and began to visit the coalhouses, tapping on each door to solicit last confessions, and to offer the grace of God to the Nutty Slack within.

Even the people of Netherhoughton came to church, and sat glowering at the back; their little heathen children played in the aisles with their ouija boards.

On the Monday, in the afternoon, Fludd was kneeling in church, praying for Father Angwin. He might have been on the altar, for that was his privilege; but he would rather kneel in the first bench, where the nuns had been on Sunday, and watch from that short distance the sanctuary lamp, winking redly at him like an alcoholic uncle.

He wanted peace of mind for Father Angwin; he thought of the hymn “Soul of My Saviour,” of how the ignorant parish mangled the words and sense. He thought of the women of Fetherhoughton, slack chins quivering above their buttoned-up coat fronts: Guard and defend me/From the formaligh … Oh, foe malign, he had breathed, his back to them, his thin hands passing over the sacred vessels; from the foe malign. He had glanced down, sideways, and noticed the altar boys’ big black lace-up shoes sticking from beneath their cassocks, and their wrinkly grey wool socks. In destrier moments, make me only thine … What are they talking about? What do they think they are singing? He pictured the formaligh, a small greasy type of devil with sharp teeth, which lurked on dark nights in the church porch. Of all the small devils, Fludd thought, ignorance is chief of the horde; their misapprehension had embodied it, given it flesh.

Now—Monday, kneeling here alone—he could hear the rain coming down, as hard as on the night he arrived; drumming unseen behind the stained glass, splashing and gurgling from the downspouts, falling alike on the just and the unjust. He closed his eyes, would have closed his ears to shut out the sound, to sink himself into that trance-like state where he would hear, if God were willing, some small recommendation; some recommendation as to how he should proceed, as to what, having found this place, he ought to do next:

Images flitted through his mind: the nine-runged ladder, the railwayman’s kerchief that snapped on its fence pole in the moorland wind, the black arm of Mother Perpetua uplifted in the twilight; and Agnes Dempsey, standing inside the front door mute like a dog, waiting for his return. One by one the pictures chased each other, and he held open his mind’s door, and let them pass through, until the house was empty; his pulse slowed, his breathing deepened, the rain stilled itself to a whisper and faded into a profound silence.

Am I alive? the small voice asked itself. What is, you know by what is not; for as Augustine says, “We have some knowledge of the darkness and silence, of the former only by the eyes, by the latter only through the ears; nevertheless we have no sensation, only the privation of sensation.” In the realm of Taut, the underworld of the Egyptians, there were twelve divisions; one of the twelve was guarded by a serpent with four legs and a human face. Here the darkness was so thick that it might be felt; but this is almost the only instance we have. When we say the night has a velvet darkness, we romance. When we say the soul is black, we are turning a phrase.

Now, coming to himself a little, Fludd thought he heard behind him a ragged breathing; something had come in at the far door, and stood watching him while he prayed. He did not turn his head. I am breaking down, he thought, dissolving into destruction and despair; this is my nigredo, this is the darkest night of my soul. Just as the statues lie in their shallow graves, taking on the hue of the soil and the smell of mortification, so my spirit is buried, walled in with corrupting agents. Agnes had said to him (busy with the kettle, her face averted, her voice cracking with the strength of her sentiments), “When I walk over them, Father, I shudder. We all shudder.” He had said, “They are symbols, Miss Dempsey. Symbols are powerful things.” Miss Dempsey had said, “It’s like walking on the dead.”

But everything that is going to be purified must first be corrupted; that is a principle of science and art. Everything that is to be put together must first be taken apart, everything that is to be made whole must first be broken into its constituent parts, its heat, its coldness, its dryness, its moisture. Base matter imprisons spirit, the gross fetters the subtle; every passion must be anatomized, every whim submit to mortar and pestle, every desire be ground and ground until its essence appears. After separation, drying out, moistening, dissolving, coagulating, fermenting, comes purification, recombination: the creation of substances that the world has until now never beheld. This is the opus contra naturem, this is the spagyric art; this is the Alchymical Wedding.

The creature, behind him, was advancing with a heavy tread, coming up the centre aisle. His hands still clasped before him, he turned and looked over his right shoulder.

It was Sister Philomena, a sack over her head to keep off the rain; her habit was girded up to her knees with an arrangement of string that caught it into sculptural folds.

Father Fludd stared at the nun’s feet. She said, “I’ve got a dispensation for wellingtons. A special permission, from Mother Provincial. It’s always me they send out in the wet, not that I’m complaining, I like to get out. I’m getting a dispensation for a rainmate.”

“What are those?” Fludd said.

“They’re plastic hoods that you can put over your head. Seethrough, they are. When you fold them up you can concertina them as small as that—” she put out her damp fingers, and showed him—“and put them in your pocket.”

“I hate plastic,” Father Fludd said.

“You would. You’re a man.” She corrected herself: “You’re a priest. You never have to clean. Plastic’s easy-clean. You just wipe it. I wish the whole world was made of plastic.”

Philomena emerged into the light, the pool of light cast by the candles that burnt before St. Theresa, the Little Flower. “I see Mother has been up lighting candles,” she said.

“Has she a particular devotion to St. Theresa?”

“Well, Theresa was a nun, of course, and she was a very humble sort. Humility was what she specialized in, she was more good at it than anybody in her convent, she was famous for it. Mother reckons we all ought to be that humble. St. Theresa went into the convent when she was very young. They weren’t going to let her, but she put her foot down about it. They tried to stop her, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer. There was no holding her. She complained to the Pope.”

“You must have been studying her life.”

“We have a book in the convent library.”

“Is your library extensive?”

“Well, there’s some lives of the saints. Oh, and a Turf Guide, that’s Sister Anthony’s.” Philomena put out her hand and leant heavily on the back of one of the treacle-stained benches. She seemed a little out of breath. “St. Theresa eventually pegged out from her chest, like my Aunt Dymphna. In St. Theresa’s case it was the penances she used to do that brought it on, but I don’t think that was the case with my aunt. Humble to the last, and wanting to offer her mortal agony up as a sacrifice for sinners, the saint refused those medicines that could have relieved her final distress. So the book says. I don’t know whether Dymphna was offered any morphine. I expect she took some whisky.”

Fludd leant backwards, sliding imperceptibly from the kneeler to the bench. He sat looking at the nun. She had taken off her sack and shaken from it a few dead leaves that had fallen on her as she ploughed her way up the carriage-drive. “I’ll pick them up,” she said. “I’ll sweep.” She took out something from her pocket. “I’ve come to have another go at the nose,” she said.

Fludd followed her gaze, up to the statue of the Virgin. It seemed a hammer-blow had taken the tip of her nose clean off. “I did that,” Philomena said. “It didn’t seem reverent altogether, but I needed a flat bit to start with, so I borrowed a chisel from the Men’s Fellowship, from Mr. McEvoy. The first nose I put on was with modelling clay, and then I thought I could paint it, but of course it would have to be fired first, so that wasn’t a success. So now I’ve been trying with plasticine—”she held it out on the palm of her hand—“kneading different bits together to try to get the shade.”

“I think she should be darker,” Fludd said. “Realistically. She came from an eastern land.”

“I can’t think the bishop would take to that idea.”

“I have seen black virgins,” Fludd said. “In France they call them Our Lady sous-terre. In their processions, only green candles are burnt.”

“It sounds pagan,” she said doubtfully. “Will you excuse me, Father? I have to get up there. On that bench.”

“Of course.” He stood up quickly and moved away. Philomena made a deep genuflection to the altar, then sat down on the bench opposite and began to pull off her wellingtons.

“I would help you, Sister,” Fludd said. “But. You know.”

“I’ll have them off in a minute,” she said, kicking and wrestling. He turned his eyes away. She laughed, grunted, and tussled. “There.” The boots fell over onto the stone flags. Spry and nimble now, she stepped up on to the bench where he had been sitting, and stretched out to reach the Virgin. “What would you think?” she asked. “Make the nose first, then slap it on, or try to work it while I’m up here?”

“I think you should model it in situ. May I try? I am taller.”

“Hop up then, Father. You will certainly have a longer reach.”

He stepped up on the bench beside her, and she took a sideways step to accommodate him, then gave him the plasticine from her fingertips. It was the colour of bloodless skin, and cold to the touch; he worked it in the palm of his hand. He faced the Virgin at point-blank range, and stared into her painted blue eyes.

Sister Philomena watched intently as he reached forward and planted his model on the statue’s face. He could feel her attention, fastening on his hand; he could smell the wet serge of her habit, and, when he looked sideways, in an unspoken request for her opinion, he could see the white-blonde down on her cheek. As if to steady herself, she put out a hand to the Virgin’s slippery narrow shoulder, and it lay there cold and blue-veined against the blue of the painted cloak.

For a moment, Fludd supported the girl, a hand under her elbow; then he leapt backwards to the floor. He stood off, to consider. “Not a success,” he said. “On the whole. Will you come and look?”

“No.” She dropped her eyes, despondent. “I shall never get it remodelled, not even with your help, Father. We have perfectly good statues, mouldering under the ground.”

He looked up. “Do you think they are mouldering? You too?”

“Oh, you frighten me.” She touched the black cross that hung on a cord around her neck. “It was just an expression I used.”

“But something is rotten here.”

“Yes. Have you come to help it?”

“I don’t know. I think it is beyond me. I think I can only help myself. And make, perhaps, one or two little adjustments in the parish.”

“Can you do anything for me?”

“Come down from there.” He held out his hand. She took it and stepped down, with one neat, stately movement. “Once,” he said, “when people made statues, they carved their garments in neat folds, as if there were no body underneath. Then came a time when ideas changed. Even the saints have limbs, even the Virgin. They began to round out the folds.”

“Our statues looked various. Some lifelike, some dead.”

“I’m afraid none of them were so old that they go back to the time of which I speak. If they did not seem lifelike, it was from lack of skill. Or distaste for flesh.”

“Oh, well.” She looked down, then blushed. She began to fumble and tug at her skirts. “I didn’t think anybody would be in here,” she said. “I usually kilt up my habit when it rains, only don’t tell on me. It gets so miserable when you’re muddy round the hem for the rest of the day, it’s enough to bring on rheumatics. I don’t suppose,” she said, “that St. Theresa would have minded a bit of rain. She’d have offered it up. She’d probably have gone and stood out in it on purpose.”

But when they left the church, they found that the rain had stopped. A weak sunlight, which itself seemed flooded with water, washed the tree trunks of the carriage-drive. Light glazed the puddles and made them opaque; it seemed that the ground had been set for a banquet, with shallow white china bowls.

That night after dinner, Father Angwin said, “I have had a call from the bishop.”

“Oh yes?” Fludd said. “What did he want?”

“He wanted to know if I was relevant.” Father Angwin raised his face to Fludd, expectantly; but it was a barbed expectation. “You are clever and modern, Father Fludd, can you make anything of that?”

Fludd did not reply; indicating by his silence that he did not mean to be drawn out, about his modernity.

“He said, ‘Are you relevant, Father? Are you real?’ I said, ‘Well, that’s one for Plato.’ But the bishop continued without a pause. ‘Are your sermons relevant?’ he said. ‘Are you attuned to the modern ear?’”

“I’ve never heard anything of this before,” Fludd said. “Relevant? No, I’ve not heard of it. What did you say?”

“I said I was supremely bloody irrelevant, if he pleased, and I would, by his leave, remain so—for the welfare of my parishioners, and the salvation of their souls. ‘Indeed, how so, my dear chap?’” Father Angwin fell to ferocious mimicry, thrusting his legs forward and patting at an imaginary paunch. “‘Because,’ I said, ‘isn’t irrelevance what people come to church for? Do you want me to greet them with the language of the tramshed? Do you want me to take such spirituality as they possess and grind it up in the Co-op butcher’s mincing-machine?’” Father Angwin looked up, his eyes alight. “To that, he made no answer.”

“I hope you seized your advantage,” said Father Fludd.

“Well, while I had him on the hop, I raised the matter of my statues again. ‘If saints,’ I said, ‘will not come to Fetherhoughton, may I not have their mute representatives? Are they not the spurs to faith, and is not faith my business, and are the statues not then the tools of my trade?’ I said to him, ‘Why do you take away the tools of my trade? Would you deprive the physician of his black bag? May a barber not have his pole?’”

“Where does the bishop think the statues are?” Fludd asked carefully.

“Oh, he thinks I have them in my garage.”

“And would he concede anything at all?”

“Nothing.”

“And so how did you leave it?”

“I said, ‘I hope I live to bury you.’” Father Angwin brooded for a moment. “He didn’t mention you.”

“Oh well,” said Fludd. “Did he not? Never mind.”

Father Angwin still half-believed, when he thought about it, that Fludd was the bishop’s spy. But he conceived that even the bishop must have a better nature, which made him tactfully gloss over the fact of the spy’s existence, as if he could not quite admit to what he had done. Either that, or his left hand knows not what his right hand is doing.

Father Angwin, of course, was the worse for drink. Father Fludd gently pointed this out to him, and went into the kitchen to get Agnes to make him some coffee. Coffee was an innovation, one that he was working on. “You grind, Miss Dempsey. You measure. You moisten. You heat. You filter.”

“Well,” Miss Dempsey would say, “I don’t know what the result will be; it will be a substance I have never beheld before.”

Father Angwin, left alone, looked into the fire in a dream. Earlier that evening, he had listened to a most peculiar confession: or rather, to a question put to him in the confessional, by a strange, strained voice, that he believed he had heard somewhere, but could not quite place. It had been Netherhoughton night; a special evening was reserved for the people from up the hill. It had been in his mind to send Fludd, but the curate wasn’t up in their ways yet; either none of them would come at all, or there would be three or four of them trying to get into the box together, all of them fighting to get their version in first. More than once it had degenerated into brawls; the boy was able for that sort of thing, no doubt, he was a strong-looking lad, but discretion is the better part of valour, and he might not have the wit to forestall trouble.

The penitent, first of the evening, had come shuffling into the box, and had knelt, and kept silence, as if waiting for him to speak first. After a while, it had occurred to him that this was some Netherhoughtonian who had come back to church after twenty or thirty years, hoping that the new priest was a soft touch, and who did not know where to begin on his or her sins, and who might anyway have forgotten the usual form of words. Encouragingly, he prompted: “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned … ?”

At the sound of his voice there was a small sigh, and a further silence. He waited. It was clear to him that the Netherhoughtonian had hoped for Fludd. “Well, now you’re here,” he said, “you may as well get on. Don’t worry, I’ll help you out. Why not take it a decade at a time? But first, tell me, how long is it since your last confession?”

“Not long,” the penitent said flatly. It was a woman; her age he could not guess. And what she said might be true, in the Netherhoughtonian perception. Up there, they were still gossiping about the Abdication; not that of Edward VIII, but that of James II. Their quarrels stretched back to time immemorial; they had grievances that pre-dated the Conquest.

“Well,” the voice said; and there was a further pause. “Well, I’ve nothing to tell, really. I could ask you a question.”

“All right. Your question then.”

“Would it be a sin for a man to set fire to his house?”

Now this was the kind of rough, wild stuff you got from the folk of Netherhoughton. “His own house?” the priest asked. “You don’t mean someone else’s?”

“His own,” said the voice impatiently. “If he is poor, and the insurance money would put him in better circumstances.”

“Oh, I see. Well, of course it would be a sin.” Father Angwin thought, I did not know that in Netherhoughton they had insurance, if I were a company I would refuse them. “It’s a crime besides. Arson, and fraud. Oblige me by putting the notion out of your head.”

“All right,” the penitent said, taking his point with surprising alacrity. “I could put another question. May dripping be used for pastry, or is it allowed only for frying fish?”

God help them, Father Angwin thought; accustomed as they are to living on gruel, shall I live to see the day when their tastes are broadened, their puny physiques improved? “I can’t tell you, right off. But,” he said helpfully, “I could ask my housekeeper. Why don’t I do that, and you could come back next week and hear the answer? I’m sure that if you’re struggling she’d be willing to give you many hints and tips in the culinary line.”

A pause. “No,” the voice said. “Fasting and abstinence. That’s what I’m talking about. Lenten regulations. And on a Friday through the year. Does dripping count as meat? Or does it count as butter?”

“That’s a tough one,” the priest said. “Let me think about it, will you?”

“Can you have jam on a fast day?”

“I always do, if I want. I don’t believe there’s an ordinance about it. You must be governed by the general principles, though. You mustn’t be a glutton for jam.”

“If it is a fast day, and you are taking your morning collation, eight ounces of bread that is, can the bread be toasted?”

“Oh yes, it may.”

“But then it would shrink up, Father. Perhaps it might weigh less. So you could have an extra slice.”

“I don’t think there’s anything in Canon Law about that.” He was concerned, and puzzled too, by the scruple and lack of scruple this penitent combined. “Do you get very hungry on fast days? There are some people who do. I believe that all but the most rigid authorities will allow a little more in cases of hardship.”

“I should not want to put myself forward as such a case.”

“Your efforts do you credit.”

“But now tell me, Father, how long has it been permitted to eat meat on Christmas Day, when Christmas Day falls on a Friday?”

“Since 1918, I think you will find,” Father Angwin said readily. “Since the new code of Canon Law came in, at Pentecost that year.”

“And what date did Pentecost fall?”

“I believe it was 19 May.”

“Thank you. And on a Friday, or other day of abstinence … is turtle soup permitted?”

“I rather think so,” Father Angwin said. “Are you accustomed to turtle soup?”

“No,” said the penitent, with more than a tinge of regret. “Well, thank you, Father, you’ve cleared up a couple of points that have been bothering me. Any further thoughts on the dripping?”

“If I had to give an answer—off the top of my head, mind—I’d say dripping may be used for both purposes. But I will certainly look into it. And if you care to come back, you shall have chapter and verse on it.”

He wanted to say, Who are you? There seemed something forced about the penitent’s husky voice; its rough-and-ready tone, that way of shuttling on from one question to the next, bespoke a certain familiarity, although the people of Netherhoughton were no respecters of persons. He couldn’t place it. Yet it was as if the penitent knew his foibles, and divined his motto: fidelity in small things.

“You will come again, won’t you?” he said wistfully; he had enjoyed the questions about dietary laws.

“Mm,” the penitent said.

“Is there anything else? Something you have to tell me?”

“No.”

“You know, I can’t give you absolution. You haven’t confessed.”

“I can’t confess,” the voice said. “I hardly know nowadays if things are sins or not. And if I did, and they were, perhaps I shouldn’t be sorry.”

“You don’t need Perfect Contrition,” Father Angwin said. (He must instruct his penitent; Father Fludd had opined that it was the spell-book, not the catechism, that they used in Netherhoughton.) “Imperfect Contrition will do. That is the kind of contrition,” he explained, “that arises out of fear of Hell, rather than love of God. Don’t you fear Hell?”

A pause. A whisper. “Very much.”

“And then you must have a Firm Purpose of Amendment. That means, you know, that you must really sincerely make your mind up you’re not going to do it again. And then I can absolve you.”

“But I haven’t done it,” the voice said. “I haven’t done anything. Not even once. Not yet.”

“But you are contemplating a particular sin?”

“Well, I don’t know whether it’s in me. I haven’t had the chance to find out.”

“You mustn’t test yourself,” Father Angwin said. “You mustn’t test yourself against the delights of evil. It’s a test you will always pass.”

There was a longer pause. “Who knows,” said the impenitent penitent, “what any of us may come to, in the space of a month or two?”

No one else had been at confession tonight. And now, staring into the fire, with the whisky between himself and the occasion, Father Angwin knew perfectly well who his penitent had been. Netherhoughton had been a red herring; this was closer to home. He wondered if she had found any comfort in talking to him, although it was not who she expected. Perhaps she will come again, he thought. We can joust on any topic. Circumlocution has its uses. We shall get to what matters in the end.

He heard Father Fludd’s footsteps in the passage. The aroma of fresh coffee wafted through the half-open door.

“You must fast,” Sister Philomena said. Her voice was very clear; carrying to the naughty, scuffling children, those who sat in the back row. “Before you take communion, you must fast. You mustn’t have your breakfast that day. But then when you get home you can have your Sunday dinner.”

It was ten o’clock in the morning. The lights were on. The rain came down outside. The children near the radiators had a baked smell coming from them. Their wellington boots stood tenantless along the far wall; they swung their feet, woollen sausages of sock extending six inches beyond their toes.

The children were almost seven years old. She was preparing them. Next spring they would go to confession for the first time—she would lead them up to the church on a Friday morning—and on the Sunday following they would make their first communion. She wondered if there was anything they could do, between Friday and Sunday, to make a mess of her efforts. How can you tell if they are in mortal sin? You can’t keep them in your pockets. Philomena was no sentimentalist; she knew what they were capable of. Great sins, of violence and uncharity, were open to them now; as adults, they would find their range smaller.

A child put up his hand. “If we only have to fast for three hours, Sister, couldn’t we have us breakfasts if we got up very early?”

“You could. It might not be good for your digestion, eating at such an hour.”

“What if I did get up though, Sister, and had us breakfast, and then I found out that us clock was wrong? Mustn’t I go to communion that day?”

“Well, if it was a genuine mistake …” The children flustered her. “I don’t know,” she said. “I will ask Father Angwin.” Or I might look it up in my question-and-answer book, she thought. What is time, anyway? The book went on about real times and mean times; it made reference to meridians. It talked about deductions for summer time, and indicated the good practice for people who went by sundials. “It’s to do with Greenwich,” she said. “All would be well if you were right by Greenwich.”

“Is Greenwich like Lourdes?” they said, putting up their hands. “Is there cures? Is there miracles there?”

Philomena found the children difficult: more difficult week by week. Perpetua said that the sacrament worked of itself. They didn’t have to understand; she, Philomena, was only required to see that they could go through the motions.

“What if I’m doing the fast,” one said, “and my tooth comes out, and I swallow it?”

“That would just be a little accident,” Philomena said. “You could still take the sacrament.”

“But Sister, you said we wasn’t to touch the host with us teeth. When it was in your stomach—”

From the next classroom, she heard Perpetua’s voice raised. She knew the signs and symptoms; soon she would have her cane out.

“What if I’m doing the fast, and a fly flies down us throat?”

“That’ll do now,” she said. “There’s plenty of time for the answers to these questions. Now we’re going to get up very quietly”—from us desks, she nearly said—“from our desks, and form a line to put on our wellingtons, and then we’re going to form up two by two and walk up to church and have a Holy Communion practice.”

Up to church. Oh God, oh God, she thought, feeling her heart beat faster. What her heart chose to do was nothing she could control; let it thump away and batter and lurch at her ribs, like a puppy locked in a barn. There was no door she could open to let it free.

The mournful crocodile, up the hill and into the church; whispers stilled in the porch, an epidemic of shushing. “They are so slow,” Purpit had said. “We must rehearse them all winter for communion in spring. Otherwise they will be blundering into each other and goodness knows what all.” She had offered Philomena the use of her most formidable cane, but the young nun had declined. She knew, perfectly well, that Purpit would like to use it on her.

If only there were a bit of light in the place, she thought. The children’s skinny shapes passed into the benches like a file of ghosts, like the ghosts from some children’s hospital, an empty fever ward. She picked up a fistful of candles from the Little Flower’s box, lit them from those that were burning, and juggled them into their holders. “Now,” she said. “Begin.”

At once, and all together, the children leapt up from their kneelers, tripping over each other’s legs, scrabbling for the centre aisle. “Stop, stop, stop,” Philomena yelled. “Back, back, back. As you were. Kneel down. Close your eyes. Join your hands. When I give the word, first child stand up, walk, second child stand up, walk. Follow on in a line. First child turn left, second child follow, all children follow. Get to the altar rail and kneel down reverently. Join your hands, close your eyes, wait your turn for the Holy Eucharist. When the altar rail is all filled up, children behind stop, there, just there, d’you see, at the top of the aisle. You people that are waiting, don’t crowd up behind the people at the rail. Keep a distance. Or however will they get back when they’re finished?”

At first they tended to close their eyes at the wrong time and bump into each other, but after a half hour you could see that they were beginning to get the idea. They knelt at the altar rail with their mouths open, and at the word of command they closed them and paused for a reverent moment, and then rose to stamp back to their places. The signs of strain were evident on their faces. She was not so old that she had forgotten what troubled them. Will you find your place again in the crowded church at eleven o’clock Mass? Will you struggle into the wrong bench, so that people will laugh and point? Will you (worse) attempt to get back down the wrong aisle and lose your bearings completely? How will you inch and scramble out of your place at the start, without bruising the shins of non-communicants? Will you fit smoothly into the shuffling stream, or somehow hold up the proceedings?

“You must keep your eyes open,” she advised them. “No, what I mean is, you must keep your wits about you, keep a look-out. The woman on the end of your row, now suppose she’s wearing a funny hat. Take a good look at that hat as you go up. Then when you turn from the altar, use it to navigate by.”

She stood at the back of the church, looking up the centre aisle, to judge if the traffic flow was smooth. Her back was to St. Thomas Aquinas, the cold saint with his plaster star, and from that direction (as if behind the statue, as if beneath it) she heard a whisper, a rustle, like the feet of a family of mice. Beneath her veil, the hairs pricked at the back of her neck. Then she felt eyes resting on her. She knew it was Fludd. His scrutiny seemed to pass through her black veil, through her starched white under-veil, through her drawstring cap, and revel in what hair she had left these days, and play along her scalp. “Once more,” she called. “Eyes closed now. Heads down. Say a little prayer. When I give the word, begin … Now.”

She waited only long enough to see the first child, the second child, on their feet and embarked on their march. Then she turned urgently. “Father? Father?”

Fludd lurked behind the statue. He would not advance. She heard the children, in their wellington boots, clumping towards the altar. She took a step or two, almost running, to the back of the church and the deep shadows under the gallery. “Are you there?” she whispered. “Mother Perpetua has taken me off being sacristan. She saw us, the other day, when we were mending the nose. She’s in a rage with me for monopolizing your time. I want to talk to you. There are some things I must ask you.”

“Yes,” Fludd said. It was as if the Angelic Doctor had spoken; Fludd’s black form could hardly be discerned.

“At the allotments,” she said. “There’s a shed …” She could hear the first batch of children now, shuffling back into their places. Too quick, she thought. They should have spent more time at the altar, their knees have barely touched the ground. And feeling these moments of her life begin to slip away, she launched herself forward and clung to the statue’s base, to the unyielding plaster hem of the robes, reached out her blue-veined hand and knotted her fingers between the point of the star. Fludd saw her clinging, like a drowning woman to jetsam. He wanted to step forward, but held himself back. His eyes rested upon her. In destrier moments, he thought. In death’s drear moments. Make me only thine.