Dear Deceiver(32)

What was she trying to do? Haidee wondered uneasily. Set up a facsimile  of the visits she'd only heard about-Suzanne in short skirts and blind  rages ducking under the wire and going hot-foot for comfort?

She accepted the car. 'It is different. I'm fifteen years older,  actually,' she said stoutly. 'So you'll just have to put up with me.'

Why was Rory looking at her like that? He should have been at his work.  His eyes travelling from the touch of blue shadow on her lids to her  very slender ankles were reminiscent of that first morning when he had  walked into her bedroom to hurry her up. Now, as then, her pulse  quickened. When he spoke, however, it was impersonally. 'Make sure you  see the chapel. It's new.'

She was very thankful he'd said it. It was a stepping stone. She might so easily have pretended to remember.

'The Sisters are praying for Mummy,' Jennie announced as they drove.

It insinuated disquiet. Jennie couldn't think, couldn't hope ... or  could she? Haidee risked a quick glance from the road. If only Jennie  did not look so vulnerable, her cheeks and bone structure so 'little  girl', her lips so soft and full. She had shown suspicion, even enmity,  yet Haidee could feel for her nothing but compassion. 'Jennie dear, you  do realize...' she began. And got nowhere.

'I think there's a car wants to pass,' Jennie said in a stone wall tone.

Haidee had wondered a little about the convent and both Suzanne's and  Jennie's attachment to it. It was, as it happened, the first time she  herself had visited one.

It was cool, highly polished and sweet-smelling. A statue of the Virgin,  with a posy of fresh flowers before it, stood at the end of the long  corridor. The nun conducting than to Mother Mary genuflected as she  passed.

It brought everything to a concert pitch of emotion. All along Haidee  had been aware of the material consequences of her deception; at best,  Rory would fling her out, at worst, he might institute proceedings. The  moral consequences had not seemed to exist until this moment. She was  doing it in a good cause and that was that. In church she'd felt a  soldier 'marching as to war'. Here, she felt very small, very  presumptuous, very wrong.

Mother Mary was old-in religion as well as in years. She was important,  she was revered. To deceive her and to have thought only of getting away  with it was suddenly as obnoxious as anything the real Suzanne had  done.

As the room door opened, the black-robed Mother Superior, her back to a  window of ripened sunshine, might have been straight out of the Book of  Revelations. She remained motionless for a second and Haidee thought it  again, not this time so much of the book with its pictures of glory and  judgement as of the author, St. John, whose symbol was the eagle. The  high cheekbones and frail-lidded, intensely blue eyes before her now  made a face as astute as it was saintly. A gaze, for instance, second  thoughts confirmed the first ones, that would never ever have missed  Suzanne, not even in a Sunday afternoon crowd.                       
       
           



       

Well, at least I haven't pretended too much, Haidee thought. I do look  like myself. She knew too that at this crisis point she could only act  like herself. Suzanne might have been on familiar terms here. She was  not and she simply could not presume.

'It's extremely good of you to see me, Reverend Mother,' she said without equivocation. 'I have wanted to come.'

The eyes, naked as a clear sky, seemed to move, a wing flutter, no more, and then they were still again.

But she knows, Haidee thought, she knows.

She felt herself strangely calm as the tall figure came forward. As  before, and no less astonishingly now, both hands had gone out. It was  hardly possible that such a gesture of welcome could be made in the  circumstances. And yet it was.

'My child, I hoped you would. I have been waiting for you.'

The wrinkled hands closed warmly on Haidee's slim black gloves.

At first they talked pleasantries, the effects of the drought, Saturday's fire and Haidee's encounter with the owl.

'Dear child!' the old nun exclaimed in horror. 'What an experience!'

'My own silly fault,' Haidee owned. 'I'll know better next time.'

'I'm surprised no one ever told you before,' Jennie observed in that  mildly puzzled tone. 'When I was a child I knew. Father was always  telling me.'

Into the sharp silence came Mother Mary's voice, gentle but authoritative, like a parent closing a forbidden door.

'I often think what treasure trove lies in word of mouth. And I don't  mean sermons.' She smiled. 'We forget those. We remember all our lives  the little warnings, the little guidances, the little sayings of those  we love; and so we keep them with us and grow more like them. Jennie has  great treasure.' She took the younger girl's hand and held it gently.  'There's sorrow with it at the present time, I know, but that will pass.  The treasure is there to keep.'

There was no doubt the message had been received. Jennie's Madonna-like gaze had drunk in every word.

Jack Whittaker, Haidee thought, must have been a fine man, a man who,  given the chance, might have pulled Glenglass together. His daughter did  right to cherish his memory. When Jennie spoke, however, it was not  about her father. 'Mummy's just the same. Usually people only live like  that for a day or two, but it's six weeks now and she hasn't got any  worse.'

Mother Mary's eyes met Haidee's.

'Jennie must soon start thinking about herself,' Haidee said carefully.  'She has a lot before her this year. Rory is anxious she shouldn't miss  much more of it.'

The Mother Superior's wimple inclined in agreement. 'I have said that myself to Sister Gabriel.'

'But I can't!' Jennie's plummy tones rose protestingly. 'I can't, Mother. I can't leave Glenglass. Not now. Specially not now.'



Had she, Haidee wondered, hoped that the visit would end in a showdown  and denunciation? If so, could she be blamed? She had an obvious sense  of responsibility and the thought of harbouring an impostor must be  torturous.

There were so many things to think of. Haidee had thought of pitiably  few. It had seemed that she and she alone was assuming the burden. The  measure of her error was only now beginning to appear. On the spur of  contrition, she might just have spoken-then and there. For good or ill.  But instead, it was Mother Mary who broke the strained silence.

'Sister Gabriel would be pleased to see you, Jennie. I think you know the way.'

Sister Gabriel, now bedfast, she explained when Jennie had left them,  was in her ninety-fifth year and the oldest member of the community. She  had been in Glenglass for sixty years.

Haidee said: 'How wonderful!' before she realized that if a trap had  been set she had walked straight into it. Cover it up, however, she  would not even if she could. Not in this place of prayer. It reminded  her of the chapel Rory had mentioned. 'May I see your new chapel?' she  asked.

'Gladly.' Mother Mary rose at once. 'We love showing it to people. It has been the fulfilment of a long dream.'

They went out into the now thinning sunlight and crossed the grey  precincts to a purply brown building with an almost pencil slim spire.  It stood in the shelter of some young firs, the layered branches of  which seemed to match the angles of its steep roof. The trees, Mother  Mary volunteered, had been given them by Mr. Hart and planted by his  men. The chapel, she continued, had been consecrated only last  Whitsuntide and dedicated to the Holy Spirit. So saying, she opened the  door and Haidee found herself looking up a nave of cream stone to a  sanctuary blazing in Pentecostal flame. At least that was how it seemed.  Later, she saw how skilfully the lights of gold and amber in the tall  windows had been used to channel the natural light. For that first  moment she was breathless and tonguetied.                       
       
           



       

'Will you talk to me, child?' her companion invited simply.

It was a long tale, made longer by the twists and turns of recent  pondering, and Haidee, keeping back only the fact of Suzanne's marriage,  did not spare herself. She doubted if she could have done so had she  wished. In this house which bore His name, the Spirit of Truth was in  complete command.

Once indeed Mother Mary inserted a gentle: 'I said talk, not confess, my child. I am your friend, not your judge.'

It was almost anti-climax. Looking ahead to this moment, Haidee had  always seen it as an open and shut case. Verdict guilty. Leave to appeal  denied. Reality was different.

'We don't have all the answers,' Mother Mary told her. 'The longer I  live the fewer I seem to retain. I cannot tell you what you should do at  this stage.'

'But aren't you going to censure me?' Haidee stammered. 'You can't approve of deceit.'

'No more than I can disapprove of giving.' A smile softened the straight  lips. 'Some discerning person has said that when you give possessions  you give but little, it is when you give of yourself that you truly  give.'