Letter to Sister Benedicta by Rose Tremain Read Free Book Online Page A

children of our own, do we Louise, when we have Ruby and we have all my students?’ And Louise laughed and looked happy and in the Bible barren people never seem happy or full of laughter, but walk around with shawls over their heads, getting older and older and more and more barren and you know there’s no hope for them unless God does a miracle. And I know that Louise wasn’t barren and could have conceived hundreds of children in hotel rooms alone, but that all she wanted in her life was to be with Max and this was enough.”
    I stopped at this point, crept to the bed and looked very closely at Leon. He seemed to be asleep, breathing quite easily and I thought of leaving. I wondered if the effort of writing “How long” on the slate had exhausted him. Then it occurred to me that if he was resting as peacefully as he seemed to be, perhaps my talking soothed him and stopped him feeling afraid. For I have a suspicion – from the way his right eye looks when it’s open – that he is afraid. Perhaps his own silence terrifies him. Once or twice one side of his mouth has moved a little, as if he was trying to speak.
    I sat down again and whispered my little reminiscences to Leon and to the flowers, thinking neither Leon nor the flowers hears them. Twice a nurse came in to look at Leon and on the second occasion stood at his bedside and took a pulse reading. I didn’t stop talking. I reminded Leon that he had been a very shy person when I met him that evening at Max Reiter’s house, “not like the person you became, Leon,” I said, “so full of fight and proud of your big office and all your telephones. You had all the words and fight inside you, I expect, but you just weren’t using them very much then, not that evening anyway, but you chose to talk rather quietly to me. You told me you were working so hard to pass your law exams that you never had time to go to dinners and meet people and that you were only there because your friend Philip had insisted and because you had once heard a snatch of Max Reiter’s music on the Third Programme.
    â€œI told you that Louise was my godmother, that I came to the house often when Max and Louise weren’t abroad, and I believe, Leon, that you only decided to like me because of this, because you had discovered that you enjoyed being away from your law books in the house of a composer and wanted the Reiters to ask you there again. I say this, you see, because what else was there in me to like? I wasn’t fat then at twenty-two, but still plump. I couldn’t talk about law or music – the things that interested you. All I knew was India. Louise and Max pitied me for being a child of the Empire and wanted to teach me how to forget it. ‘India!’ Louise used to say, ‘I marvel that anyone ever thought that could last!’ So I wonder what we talked about sitting there at the dinner table at the first of all our meetings. I can’t remember.”
    I left the nursing home soon after that, not wanting to go on because of the nurses coming in and out and listening to everything I said. On my way out, I stood at the door for a moment, remembering my Black Power salute, but I didn’t do it. There didn’t seem any point when Leon’s eyes were closed and he couldn’t see it.
    I asked the taxi that picked me up in Harley Street to take me to the Oratory. After the glare of Leon’s little room I thought I would try to find you, Sister Benedicta, in that vaulted darkness and ask you to help me pray. I knelt down and tried to think of a prayer but not a word would come to me today, not a word, no God, not even the ghost of a nun, five foot two with her arms folded. I got up and went to light my candle, stood and watched it flicker and tried to calculate how long it would burn.

D ECEMBER 11

    One confusion is at last resolved. I know now who “the aforementioned Richard Mayhew