Free Le Temps des Cerises by Zillah Bethel Page A

adventure.
    Brother Michael snorted. ‘The steward talks very finely about carpe diem but he won’t share his spice rack for love nor money.’ He took an egg and popped it whole into his mouth so that it stuck out of his cheek like a sugar plum. ‘One for each of us,’ he indicated.
    Bernadine smiled at his naivety and told him gently that it might be a while before the baby had any teeth to sink into a boiled egg. She didn’t voice her concerns about milk or lack of it and the fact that there were no milch cows left in the Bois de Boulogne which meant that if Aggie died…
    â€˜Oh well,’ Brother Michael joked. ‘More for me!’
    Bernadine helped herself, biting a small chunk from the top and chewing slowly then finishing the rest gratefully and greedily. ‘That was delicious,’ she smiled, wiping her mouth.
    Brother Michael licked his fingers and stared at her seriously. ‘You know the Mother Superior is on the warpath.’
    â€˜It had occurred to me that she might be.’
    â€˜She feels that the baby is, well, not best placed here.’
    â€˜That is for Aggie to decide… when she is well.’
    Brother Michael stared at her in surprise. She looked frail as a May butterfly at her workbench but her voice was hard, almost defiant. He wanted to say more but one look at the Shady Lady’s face told her he had better not. He decided to entertain her instead with stories and gossip from inside the convent. One young novice had been upbraided for wearing her hair curled up à la mode because she thought it looked very saintish.
    â€˜Saintish? Saintish?’ the Reverend Mother had apparently whispered, white as a sheet. ‘Devilish!’
    And another poor girl who’d hung a black apron behind a pane of glass to cast a dark reflection was to be punished by begging for soup for a week in the refectory.
    â€˜I have missed a lot,’ murmured Bernadine, going back to her bunch of violets.
    â€˜What is that you are making? Brother Michael asked curiously.
    â€˜Oh, something for the baby.’
    Brother Michael turned a little red and he said suddenly in a loud, almost nervous voice: ‘Our physical lives are ours to expend, indeed we are expendable but our spiritual lives are not ours to do what we want with. I shall eat the rest of the eggs, Sister Bernadine, if you do not put your face in at Lauds.’ And he made as if to swoop on the handkerchief.
    â€˜I shall attend Lauds,’ she promised, half-smiling, half-sighing. ‘I shall attend Lauds.’

    The bell for Lauds had spoken and the nuns flitted one by one from their honeycombed cells, flat as shadows or worn-out crows. Bernadine felt as if she were sleepwalking as she crept down the nave past the fourteen stations of the cross, and the yellow, red and blue of the Passion burst upon her like a dream. She thought she could hear birds chirupping from beyond the stained-glass panes and the sunlight straggled through in flames and rays, illuminating motes of dust like messages from heaven. Messages from heaven. She knelt behind a row of ancient backs, some crippled with arthritis and rheumatism yet still proud and straight for as long they needed to be; and she felt a wave of shame wash over her. The altar cloths were white and gold for Christmas and heart necklets decorated the altar of the Virgin. She avoided looking at the one where masses for the dead were held and fought to gain an interior silence. Beside her a nun threw coarse salt on the ground to torture her knees even further and Bernadine recognised her as the old abbess who’d been brought to the convent for shelter. They’d found her in the library, cutting up rare and illuminated manuscripts because the glowing gold of the parchment had seemed to her like a sin against poverty. Now she had the air of a small child, laughing and singing with her coarse salt and calloused knees. She might have been building