A Traitor to Memory

“You need to have a care with that sort of thing,” Barbara said to Sister Cecilia as she joined her. “One wrong move and all of Kensington'll go up in smoke. I don't expect you want that.”


“With no Wren to build its replacement,” Sister Cecilia noted. “Yes. We're being quite careful, Constable. George doesn't leave the fire unattended. And I'm thinking it's George who's got the better bargain. We do the gathering and he makes the offering that God receives with pleasure.”

“Pardon?”

The nun drew her rake along the lawn, its tines snaring a cluster of leaves. “Biblical allusion, if you'll pardon me. Cain and Abel. Abel's fire produced smoke that went heavenward.”

“Oh. Right.”

“You don't know the Old Testament?”

“Just the lying, knowing, and begetting parts. And I've got most of those memorised.”

Sister Cecilia laughed and took her rake to lean it against a bench that encircled the sycamore at the garden's centre. She returned to Barbara, saying, “Sure there was a great deal of lying and begetting going on in those days, wasn't there, Constable? But then, they had to set about it, didn't they, since they'd been told to populate the world.”

Barbara smiled. “Could I have a word?”

“Of course. You'll be preferring to have it inside the convent, I expect.” Sister Cecilia didn't wait for a reply. She merely said to her companion, “Sister Rose, if I can leave you to this for a quarter of an hour …?” and when the other nun nodded, she led the way to a short flight of concrete stairs which took them to the back door of the dun brick building.

They walked down a lino-floored corridor to a door marked visitors' room. Here, Sister Cecilia knocked, and when there was no reply, she swung the door open, saying, “Would you like a cup of tea, Constable? A coffee? I think we've a biscuit or two.”

Barbara demurred. Just conversation, she told the nun.

“You don't mind if I …?” Sister Cecilia indicated an electric kettle, which stood on a chipped plastic tray along with a tin of Earl Grey tea and several mismatched cups and saucers. She plugged the kettle in and fetched from the top of a small chest of drawers a box of sugar cubes, three of which she plopped into a cup, saying serenely to Barbara, “Sweet tooth. But God forgives small vices in us all. I would feel less guilty, though, if you'd be taking a biscuit at least. They're Weight Watchers. Oh but sure, I don't mean to imply that you're needing to—”

“No offence taken,” Barbara interrupted. “I'll have one.”

Sister Cecilia looked mischievous. “They do come in packets of two, Constable.”

“Hand them over, then. I'll cope.”

With her tea made and her biscuits in their little packet on a separate saucer, Sister Cecilia was prepared to join Barbara. They sat on two vinyl-covered chairs next to a window that overlooked the garden where Sister Rose was still raking leaves. A low veneer table separated them, its surface holding a variety of religious magazines and one copy of Elle, heavily thumbed.

Barbara told the nun that she'd met Lynn Davies and asked if Sister Cecilia knew about this earlier marriage and this additional child of Richard Davies.

Sister Cecilia confirmed that she had long known, that she'd learned about Lynn and that “poor dear mite of hers” from Eugenie shortly after Gideon's birth. “It came as quite a shock to Eugenie, to be sure, Constable. She'd not known Richard was even divorced, and she spent some time reflecting on what it meant that he hadn't told her prior to their marriage.”

“I expect she felt betrayed.”

“Oh, it wasn't the personal side of the omission that concerned her. At least, if it was, she didn't discuss that part of it with me. It was the spiritual and religious implications that Eugenie wrestled with during those first years after Gideon's birth.”

“What sort of implications?”

“Well, the holy Church recognises marriage as a permanent covenant between a man and a woman.”

“Was Mrs. Davies concerned that if the Church saw her husband's first marriage as his legitimate one, her own marriage would be considered bigamous? And the kids from that marriage illegitimate?”

Sister Cecilia took a sip of tea. “Yes and no,” she replied. “The situation was complicated by the fact that Richard himself wasn't Catholic. He wasn't actually anything, poor man. He hadn't been married in any church in the first place, so Eugenie's real question was whether he'd lived in sin with Lynn and if the child from that union—who would thus be conceived in sin—bore the mark of God's judgement upon her. And if that were the case, did Eugenie herself run the risk of calling down God's judgement upon herself as well?”

“For having married a man who'd ‘lived in sin,’ d'you mean?”

“Ah no. For not herself having married him in the Church.”

“The Church wouldn't allow it?”