The Prior frequently reminded the community in chapter that, as the Rule made clear, there are times when good words are to be left unsaid out of esteem for silence.
With this counsel in mind, Anselm guided George to the Vault, saying very little. Before withdrawing, Debbie Lynwood led them to a simply furnished bedroom away from the bustle of the day centre. On a sideboard was a selection of games and puzzles in battered boxes. George studied the lids meditatively ‘Riley knew I was there,’ he said. ‘He was speaking to me.’
Anselm nodded at the rounded back of this lean, honourable man in his honourable blazer and tie. Adam’s sin, said Genesis, was that he wanted to be like God, to direct the great arrangement of things into which he had been wonderfully born; to know why good was good, and why evil was evil; maybe to make a few discreet changes. There are occasions, thought Anselm, when I would like to be God: long enough to understand this man’s fall, and to do something about it.
George chose a jigsaw – a medieval map of the known world. Anselm left George and took a bus to Camberwell. Once more he was directed to the garden and the corridor of chestnut trees. Sister Dorothy was in the same place, at the far end. Tartan blankets kept her warm; the brown pakol had been pulled down to protect her ears. She glanced at Anselm as he sat down beside her on a stone bench, and said, ‘She was a very clever girl, but naughty. Didn’t take to the rules at first. She spent her first months in detention every Sunday afternoon. I used to visit her with parcels from the tuck shop.’
‘I take it you mean Elizabeth Steadman, and not Elizabeth Glendinning,’ said Anselm.
‘What a very silly mistake,’ she replied, closing her eyes. The fracture in her nose caught the low, slanting light, and it appeared dark and grotesque.
‘I was completely fooled,’ said Anselm.
Sister Dorothy might have admitted defeat, but she was shrewd enough to wait and see just how much territory had been lost. Anselm smuggled an arm into each wide sleeve, taking hold of his elbows. It was cold. Three ravens watched him from the branches of an oak beyond the convent wall.
‘I imagine that it was in the evening,’ said Anselm, ‘and that it had grown dark outside. Elizabeth was alone in the Green Room at St John’s Wood. She opened The Following of Christ – a book that went back, perhaps, to her last meeting with you -and she cut a hole in the pages deep enough to hold a key Much later she came to Larkwood with a duplicate and asked me to use it if, by chance, she were to die. Her last words to me were, “You can’t always explain things to your children. If need be, will you help Nicholas understand?” At first, I thought she meant help him come to terms with grief. Then I thought she wanted me to explain that you couldn’t be a lawyer without a sort of innocent compromise. But now I fear she meant something very different -’
Sister Dorothy made a low groan of surrender. ‘Mr Kemble said you might come.’
The ravens hopped onto higher branches, and then flew off in different directions.
‘You know Roddy?’ Anselm had the sort of sensation that might occur if you turned a corner in a familiar street, only to find you were in a different country.
‘Oh yes, we’re old friends,’ said Sister Dorothy ‘I met him during a prison visit. My veil charmed him. In those days it was like a marquee. He wanted to know how it was fixed, whether it was comfortable. I rather thought he was jealous.’
‘He’s never mentioned you.’
‘I should hope not.’
‘Why?’
‘Because that is what we agreed.’
Anselm tried to stop his intuition racing ahead of his questions. ‘Sister, did you introduce Elizabeth to Mr Kemble?’
‘Not quite.’ Sister Dorothy seemed proud of her own machinations. ‘I told Roddy all about Elizabeth when she began her studies for the Bar. He wangled several accidental meetings and eventually urged her to apply to his chambers. Elizabeth never found out.’
Anselm’s inkling was like a rush of blood. He said, ‘You didn’t meet Elizabeth in Carlisle, did you? You met here in Camberwell… This is the hostel where you were based… before the architects put in those corridors…’
Sister Dorothy gazed high above the convent wall, as if she could see ridges, peaks and snow ‘Wheel me inside, please, and tell me about the key’ she said.
As happens in November, darkness had come like a thief, and quickly.