Obedience by Jacqueline Yallop

Author:Jacqueline Yallop
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books Ltd
Published: 2011-08-16T04:00:00+00:00

It was not until several years later that Bernard was finally called into the Mother Superior’s study.

‘A letter has arrived for you, Sister. It is marked personal,’ said Mother Catherine, so curled with age that she could hardly be seen behind the desk. The letter lay in front of her, unopened, the envelope crisp.

‘Take a seat, Sister Bernard, if you would like.’

Bernard hesitated. The convent was smaller now than when she had arrived. The order was aging and in decline; many of the old routines had changed or even been forgotten. Discipline had slackened. Mother Catherine, wheezing noisy breaths, seemed no longer to care about what her nuns might be doing. She spent the entire day and most of the night in intense contemplation of bitter mysteries; the nuns spoke of her now in whispers, knowing she would soon be called to her rightful reward. But still her study reeked of the power of the Church. Its calm, warm silence disturbed Bernard, the watchful gaze of the Sacred Heart testing her in ways she did not understand.

‘Could I take my letter to my cell, Mother?’ she asked, not sitting down.

‘I think it better that you read it here.’

So Bernard read the letter standing in silence and slowly, because the writing was confused in places and because the thump of her heart was making her vision swim.

Philippe introduced himself without flourish as her son. He had tracked her down, he said, with difficulty. Although his adoptive mother – his ‘real’ mother, he had called her – had been happy to tell him all she knew about his personal history, this had amounted to very little. As no formal adoption had taken place, with no agency involvement and no paperwork, she had only been able to tell him the story of a baby made available by the diocese and a kindly parish priest suggesting that it might prove a consolation to young parishioners lately bereaved of their second child and without natural hope of another. Philippe’s ‘real’ mother had not asked too much at the time, for fear of finding out something that might put the promise of the baby at risk, and in the intervening years the priest had died, and the diocese had become determinedly silent.

He explained how he had found her, visiting every parish in and around the town, talking after Mass to the priests and the older parishioners, making himself amiable, slightly forlorn. He had kept notes, recording in a small black notebook all the possible clues that might help him track down his mother. He had been thorough. And eventually he had found rumours he could cling to, half-memories, stunted stories. He had found her out, his mother but not his ‘real’ mother, the nun who had given birth one bloody morning in spring, on the floor of the village wash house. He had hesitated, he said, before writing to her, on account of her vocation. She might not, he appreciated, want to rekindle her shame. She might want to forget him.

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