‘When the university term was about to begin,’ said Sister Dorothy ‘I drove Elizabeth to Durham. We strolled down a cobbled lane near the cathedral and she stepped into a charity shop and bought a picture. I thought it was the frame, but I was wrong.
As in many religious houses, the living room seemed to have been furnished exclusively from the type of place where Elizabeth had bought her picture. A mismatch of chairs were grouped around a fifties glass-top table. At its centre, having a status somewhere between that of a relic and an ornament (said Sister Dorothy), was an ashtray that had once been used by a pope. The carpet was hard, without a pile, creating the durable look of a car showroom.
‘We found a bench on Palace Green,’ said Sister Dorothy pushing stray silver hair beneath her pakol. ‘There was a market with people milling all around, but Elizabeth didn’t seem to notice. She couldn’t keep her eyes off the three people in the picture. Rather sadly she began to imagine who they were, and what their stories might have been. I joined in. Elizabeth came up with the mad inventor dreaming of a smoke detector, and I added the wife, with her one joke about a fire extinguisher. We both laughed… among all these real people, with real lives.’ She sipped a glass of milk, resting it on her lap and the tartan blanket around her legs. ‘And what of the little madam in the middle? I said. Elizabeth touched the girl’s hair… as if she might reach through the glass to the ribbons… and she said, “She’s got the whole of her life ahead of her.” Even then, I didn’t see what she was planning. It was only when we reached the gates of her college that she told me her decision… that we could never meet again.’ Sister Dorothy sighed. ‘She wanted a fresh start. The story we’d made up would become hers, because she could live with its tragedy She would take the girl’s life and make something wonderful of it… Those were Elizabeth’s words… something wonderful.’
With permission, Anselm rolled himself a cigarette. Licking the paper, he said, ‘And what of the girl whose tragedy was too painful to bear?’
Sister Dorothy nodded knowingly She recognised the unlimited scope of the question, Father Anselm’s plea to be told everything.
‘I met her shortly after I came to Camberwell.’ She paused while Anselm’s match flared. ‘In those days this place was a hostel for girls, an open door with no questions asked. But it was one step removed from the street, and I wanted to reach the kids who would never look in our direction, who might not know we were here. I wanted to change the world with… acts of mercy’ -she sang the phrase with a raised fist – ‘so we tried something different. I’d jump in a taxi – driven by Mr Entwistle, a friend of the community – and he’d drop me off at Euston, so I could keep my eye out when the trains pulled in… You see, there were lots of kids coming down to London from up north, to the pavements of gold, to a better life… and we hoped to get them off the street as fast as possible.’ She dropped her little fist and sipped her milk. ‘So, Mr Entwistle would come back after half am hour and take me to King’s Cross, and then Liverpool Street, and so it would go on, to all the mainline stations. I’d mooch around, plucking up the courage to approach anyone I thought might have nowhere to go. I confess in those days, we had our eye out mostly for girls. And yet
… Elizabeth’s story begins with a boy I met at Paddington.’ She glanced sideways and said confidentially ‘Would you roll me one?’
‘Of course.’ While Anselm made the cigarette, Sister Dorothy finished her milk. Then she lit up with the panache of Lauren Bacall.
‘I saw this boy in a man’s trousers stealing fruit from a barrow,’ said Sister Dorothy sternly ‘I called to him, and, strangely I suppose, he came. We got talking and he explained that he’d just left a burnt-out bank round the corner, a squat run by a lad, a hard lad. When Mr Entwistle turned up, I took the fruit thief to an hotelier I knew who kept a bed free, and then I went back to Paddington, to a lane that ran by the tracks.’ With determination, but control, she slowly blew out the smoke. ‘I stood beneath a street lamp watching these garden statues at intervals along the pavement. That’s what I thought at the time. They were like ornaments that could no longer spout water in the grounds of… a terrible place. One by one, they drifted down the road, but none of the cars that came ever stopped. So I remained there, too scared to step forward and too angry to move back. A lifetime later, Mr Entwistle took me home. I went to the police. They told me that so long as I frightened off the business, the kids wouldn’t work, and without any evidence, there was nothing they could do. It was a terrible irony All the same, I put myself beneath that light every evening, from eight until ten, and that was how I met her.’
Sister Dorothy reached for the ashtray on the coffee table and placed it between them, on the arm of Anselm’s chair. ‘That’s how I met Elizabeth’, she repeated. At night, a fifteen-year-old with white legs, long black hair and no socks… bare feet in black, boardroom shoes. She was the only one who came anywhere near me – about as far away as that chair. Close enough to deter any business, and far enough to catch my voice. Every night I came to that lamp, and every night she hovered within talking distance. That’s how I learned her name. She taught me to smoke. Can you picture it, the two of us, by the kerb, sharing a cigarette? We talked of the weather -anything, except why she was there and where she’d come from. When Mr Entwistle arrived, I’d open the door, and she’d just look at me and shake her head. And then, one night, she came.’
Anselm felt his mind crowding with images of Elizabeth, none of them remotely similar to the description he’d just heard. He saw himself as a pupil in chambers, sharing a box of Jaffa Cakes with the best silk in her field. She’d picked him out, in a way and started their conversations…
‘She was standing closer to me than usual,’ said Sister Dorothy leaning towards Anselm. At her feet was a small red suitcase, like you’d take on a weekend break. And over her shoulder I saw someone edging along the pavement. He was neither boy nor man, a wiry thing with his hands in his pockets. At that moment the taxi pulled up… Elizabeth turned around, as if she’d known all along that this creeping thing was there. “I’ve paid you in full,” she said, very deliberately “and now I owe you nothing.” I opened the door, and she picked up her little suitcase and climbed in. That hollow, haunted thing on the pavement was Riley When I came back the next night, the street was empty and the squat had been abandoned.’
Anselm rolled fresh cigarettes for them both, fumbling with the paper. He could hardly keep up with Sister Dorothy’s rolling narrative. She’d gathered speed, speaking towards the empty chairs in the common room. Elizabeth had stayed at the hostel for months. Refused to go home. Wouldn’t eat. Wouldn’t talk. Finally she was prepared to let Sister Dorothy act as a messenger. But she was very clear that if steps were taken to send her home, she’d disappear once and for all.
‘So I knocked on the door,’ said Sister Dorothy slowing as if she’d just tramped across London. ‘I told Mrs Steadman that her daughter had run away but was safe’ – she glanced at Anselm, her eyes narrowed and moist – ‘I did this kind of work for years, and I always had to manage hysteria and anguish… the lot… But this time, and neither before nor since, I met with instant and complete resignation.’
She motioned for a light, because the cigarette had gone out. Anselm struck a match. ‘What of Mr Steadman?’ he asked, after a short silence.
Accidental death,’ she replied, through a breath of smoke. ‘Mrs Steadman wouldn’t speak of it, but the coroner’s certificate was required when the authorities were convened to plan Elizabeth’s future – that’s how I found out. In all the years to come, Elizabeth never referred to him. Not once.’
With court approval, it was agreed that Elizabeth would attend the Carlisle school, and Sister Dorothy would act as a go-between to Mrs Steadman. The court order was kept in an office upstairs because, technically speaking, Camberwell became Elizabeth’s home address.
‘After she went to Durham, I never saw her again,’ said Sister Dorothy ‘but I received a postcard when she decided to become a barrister.’ With the cigarette between her teeth, she wheeled herself across the room to a sideboard. She returned with a breviary on her lap. Wincing at the smoke, she leafed through the pages until she found her bookmark.
The picture showed Gray’s Inn Chapel on a summer’s day beneath whose tower Anselm had waited for Nicholas. Written on the other side were these brief words:
Tuesday week I shall be called to the Bar. Thanks to you alone, I am happy The girl we found in ribbons shall spend her days on the heels of the wrongdoer.
With my love,
Elizabeth
‘That same day I gave Roddy a cold call,’ said Sister Dorothy taking back the card. ‘I hoped he’d remember me from my veil.’
‘Did he?’
‘Oh yes.’
They both smiled, quiet for a moment at the recollection of Mr Roderick Kemble QC, who’d wheedled his way into Elizabeth’s aspirations, and fulfilled them.
Darkness had fallen completely outside. The rush of traffic on Coldharbour Lane sounded like the tide, sure but fitful. When George had accused Riley thought Anselm, Riley had turned to Elizabeth. The three of them met in court. The symmetry was appalling. And I stood among them, unseeing.
Sister Dorothy stubbed out her cigarette and said regretfully ‘I’ll tell you now about the boy who sent me towards that street light.’ (Anselm had wondered about him. A sympathetic hotelier had given him a bed for the night.) ‘He was named after his grandfather – a revered man in the household.’
‘To use the language of the day’ said Sister Dorothy wearily ‘the lad discovered that his namesake had interfered with a neighbour’s child. It was the word he used when he told his mother, who didn’t believe him… and when he told his father, who couldn’t… so the lad went to the police. The victim denied it, so the lad was ostracised. Then, one morning, Granddad took a train to Scarborough and walked into the sea, leaving his medals on the beach.
‘That’s why he left home,’ mumbled the old nun, ‘why he had to.’ She was heavy with remorse, not wanting Anselm to see the place into which he’d stumbled (the place where, unknown to her, Anselm had found the lawyer’s grail: a win against the odds). ‘He wouldn’t tell anyone who he was,’ she admitted, quietly ‘It’s Elizabeth’s tale all over again. Start afresh, I said. Use your other name. I’ve often wondered what became of young George.’