Free Staring At The Light by Frances Fyfield Page A

was not charitable.
    Why should a man want to destroy his brother
?Pauline sighed, manufacturing out of it a massive yawn.
Or his brother’s wife
? The corridor entrance to the chapel was by means of a swing door, supposed to be soundless in the interests of latecomers
     but it still made a wholesome creak.
    Sister Imelda saw the empire and the sanctuary of
her
chapel arranged before her, with Pauline, sunk in an attitude of abject prayer, in the
wrong
bench, taking up plenty of space. Not that there wasn’t space to spare, especially at midnight and beyond. Imelda hesitated
     for a moment, sniffed the air and moved forward, with her usual infuriating hesitations. Pauline was forbidding: although
     one could never fault her perfect manners, she was difficult to touch, even in the best interests of friendship. Pauline detested
     those she managed to intimidate; she had said so, and Imelda remembered that. She did not pause to consider her identification
     of the robed nun in the wrong pew. She knew who it was, and if ever interrogated about identification would be mystified by
     the questions. There were only three in the order who still wore the full robes, with the rosary; but, with or without them,
     they all knew one another by instinct.
    ‘Sister? Are you all right?’ Imelda sniffed again as she asked. Strange smell: foreign. Her sniff was loud.
    I shall never understand, Pauline said to herself, why someone with such dreadful halitosis and a teeth-grinding habit can
     be so sensitive to smells. She sat upright with dramatic flurry, moaning and gripping the front of the pew with two surprisingly
     largefists, which glowed an unearthly yellow, like bleached bone. ‘Is that you, Imelda?’ she asked faintly.
    ‘Yes, of course.’ Imelda sniffed yet again.
    ‘How nice. I came down to pray. Only I don’t feel so well. Could you help me back to my room?’
    ‘Oh, my dear, of course. Do you know, I thought I heard noise?’
    Pauline accepted an arm, leant on it heavily and awkwardly, propelling Imelda towards the door.
    ‘It is a sin, dear Lord, to take advantage of kindness,’ she murmured. ‘Really, it is.
I am so sick of kindness
.’
    Back inside the sacristy, Cannon wanted to weep. ‘She humbles me,’ he said. ‘She protects you, exactly as she’s been asked
     to do. She accepts. She doesn’t insist on knowing why. How can she be like that?’
    ‘Faith,’ Julie said. ‘It’s called faith. Don’t question it. But d-d-d-don’t ask it to do the impossible. And please don’t
     leave me with her much longer. I’m chch-ch-ch-changing, Cannon, and I d-d-don’t want to change. I love you.’
    Making love through all these clothes was a fine art, almost perfected and still imperfect, full of longing for nakedness
     and warmth and row, instead of mouths clamped shut against noise. ‘I adore you,’ he whispered. ‘I adore you.’ And then, as
     they rearranged themselves, he said, ‘I’m not a bad man, am I, Julie? Am I? Not any more. Would their God forgive me?’
    She whispered, ‘You are not your brother, Cannon; you owe him nothing.’
    He kissed his wife’s hand, passionately formal in his leavetaking. The skin was rough with housework.
    Oh, yes, I do owe him
.
    Perhaps, he prayed, they had made a baby.

3
    Nobody knew John Smith. Andrew Mitchum made a guess that no-one could. Smith was a man of brief appearances, strong aversions
     and no loyalties.
    Seven in the morning: bleak and cold outside, overheated indoors, and they seemed to be discussing the brotherhood of man.
    ‘I am not my brother’s keeper, sir.’
    It was disconcerting to be called ‘sir’ by someone older. Andrew, a twenty-five-year-old solicitor flirting with dishonesty
     in this extra-curricular work, had never been called ‘sir’ in his life and recognized this as more of a conversational tic
     than anything to do with respect for his opinion, but it was uncomfortable all the same, especially with someone not even
     a