Free Staring At The Light by Frances Fyfield

clothes, ribs cracked from a kicking,
     the lacerated arm dragged across concrete, not an inch of her unbruised. She had mended quickly with tender, loving care;
     the eyes had lost the emptiness of terror, but if ever this child were to be tortured in any such fashion again Pauline doubted
     that she would survive it. It had crossed her mind to wonder why the torturers had not used a more subtle approach, if it
     was mere information they had wanted. Tricked her, persuaded her, fooled her, perhaps. Julie was disposed to see goodness
     even where it did not exist, Pauline thought, wryly, but she was not cunning. She might prove harder to conquer than subvert;
     persuasion or deceit might have been more effective. The sight of that skinny body, like a plucked chicken, covered with bruises,
     haunted her still. There was no other rhyme or reason for taking the child in, except that appalling need and the persuasive
     powers, as wellas the purse, of a niece. And a very tall story about a psychopathic brother-in-law and a husband still in prison. An insistence
     on a ludicrous degree of secrecy.
    Sister Pauline raised her eyes to the dim outlines of the crucifix on the wall to her right. Forgive me, Lord. If she asked
     them both to get down on their knees and beg for the same thing, they would do it only to please her and because, for that
     minute, they were in her power. Such power was corrupting: she doubted the Lord would approve, so she contented herself with
     a question. ‘Why, Mr Cannon, did your brother go after her and not after
you
? Why are
you
free to roam the world at dead of night and Julie isn’t? Why does he hurt her if it’s you he hates?
Why
?’
    Put like that, he wasn’t sure, or at least not sure of an entirely correct answer, which he knew the question demanded, and
     he struggled with some approximation, unable to explain:
He doesn’t think he hates me, he loves me
.
    Intelligent he certainly was, Pauline surmised, but that was not the same thing as good with words. She stared ahead, composed,
     her hands in the long sleeves of her robe.
    ‘Because my brother doesn’t want to hurt me, on account of him being blood, and all,’ he said. ‘Inhibits him, see? Besides,
     he’d tried that before, tried it for years, and he knows what it does. He’s beaten me more times than either of us could count.
     Makes me so dumb, like I’ve lost any command of my tongue first and my bowels next, and he’s squeamish, see?He’s not as squeamish with a woman, provided he doesn’t have to look at her. He thinks women are the very devil … Easier to
     hurt me by hurting her, believe me. That’s why we’re both hiding, but not for much longer, and—’
    ‘
Shhhhh
!’ Pauline whispered. ‘Shuttit,’ she hissed, for emphasis. ‘
Lord help us
.’ They sat in wordless silence, hearing nothing. But she had heard with those antennae that decoded convent sounds, nodded
     to herself in confirmation. ‘Quick, in here,’ the command reinforced with gestures that steered them back into the sacristy
     with a speed neither thought possible. Not a mutter from the beads.
    Cannon thanked his trainers for the lack of sound over the wood floor, Julie her slippers.
    Pauline drew the door closed behind them with a soft click. No doors were ever slammed. She glided back to the place where
     they had all sat, spread her habit around her, knelt with her bony thumbs pressing into the side of her nose, wishing to God
     there was no lingering smell. Gradually, the sound became clearer.
Shuffle, shuffle, rattle, shuffle, shuffle, rattle
, rhythmic but slow, so slow, in fact, she was tired of waiting for the sound to take form,
Oh, hurry up and get it over with, for God’s sake
, forming at her lips as she waited. Imelda moved like a snail, slowed by a sense of duty. Imelda woke in the night as a result
     of grinding her teeth; she wandered and she gossiped. Pauline saw her now as an elderly pig, hunting truffles. The thought