Free The Beating of His Wings by Paul Hoffman Page B

simple and the answers grim, though Sister Wray didn’t dwell on any of them, and soon they were discussing the events of the night Gromek was killed and Kevin Meatyard escaped. When he’d finished she wrote for some time on the several small sheets of paper resting on her left knee as Poll leant over them and tried to read, and was pushed back repeatedly out of the way like a naughty but much loved dog.
    ‘Why,’ asked Cale, as Sister Wray took a couple of silentminutes to finish writing and Poll took to staring at him malevolently, although he also knew this could not be so, ‘why don’t you treat the nutters in the ward? Not enough money?’
    Sister Wray’s head moved upright away from her work. ‘The people in that ward are there because their madness is of a particular kind. People are sick in the head in as many ways as they’re sick in the body. You wouldn’t try to talk a broken leg into healing and some breaks in the mind are almost the same. I can’t do anything for them.’
    ‘But you can do something for me?’
    ‘I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to find out.’
    ‘If you’d let her, you naughty boy.’
    ‘Be quiet, Poll.’
    ‘But it’s right.’ An unattractive little smirk from Cale. ‘I
am
a naughty boy.’
    ‘So I understand.’
    ‘I’ve done terrible things.’
    ‘Yes.’
    There was a silence.
    ‘What happens if the people paying for me stop?’
    ‘Then your treatment will stop as well.’
    ‘That’s not very nice.’
    ‘I don’t understand.’
    ‘Just stopping – when I’m still sick.’
    ‘Like everyone else I must eat, and have somewhere to live. I’m not part of the order that runs the Priory. They’ll keep you in a charity ward but if I stop paying my way they’ll turf me out.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Poll. ‘We haven’t had Redeemers to look after us all our lives.’
    This time Poll went uncorrected.
    ‘What if I don’t like you?’ said Cale. He had wanted tocome up with a stinging reply to Poll but couldn’t think of one.
    ‘What,’ said Sister Wray, ‘if I don’t like
you
?’
    ‘Can you do that?’
    ‘Not like you? You seem very determined that I shouldn’t.’
    ‘I mean decide not to treat me if you don’t like me.’
    ‘Does that worry you?’
    ‘I’ve got a lot of things to worry about in my life – not being liked by you isn’t one of them.’
    Sister Wray laughed at this – a pleasant, bell-like sound.
    ‘You like answering back,’ she said. ‘And I’m afraid it’s a weakness of mine as well.’
    ‘You have weaknesses?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘Then how can you help me?’
    ‘You’ve met a lot of people without weaknesses?’
    ‘Not so many. But I’m unlucky that way. Vague Henri told me I shouldn’t judge people by the fact that I’ve been unlucky enough to come across so many shit-bags.’
    ‘Perhaps it’s not just luck.’ Her tone was cooler now.
    ‘What’s your drift?’
    ‘Perhaps it’s not just a matter of chance, the dreadful people and the dreadful things that have happened to you.’
    ‘You still haven’t said what you mean.’
    ‘Because I don’t know what I mean.’
    ‘She means you’re a horrible little boy who stirs up trouble wherever he goes.’ Yet again Poll went uncorrected and she changed the subject.
    ‘Is Vague Henri a friend of yours?’
    ‘You don’t have friends in the Sanctuary, just people who share the same fate.’ This was not true but for some reason he wanted to appal her.
    There was a knock at the door.
    ‘Come in,’ said Sister Wray. The Priory servant stood at the door silently. Cale, uncertain and angry, got to his feet and walked across the room and onto the landing. Then he turned, about to say something, and saw Sister Wray opening a bedroom door and quickly closing it behind her. All the way back to his own room he considered what he’d seen, or what he thought he’d seen: a plain black-painted coffin.
    ‘Tell me about IdrisPukke.’ It was four days later and