The Trouble with Nuns

She was several minutes late for her appointment with Bram Dallaglio, and the reason for it was stupid. It was raining, or at least mizzling. The climate rarely produced a satisfying downpour, but preferred to wet the little people with light and persistent moisture, like being smothered by a wet towel. Her hair, straightened that morning, was prone to frizz, and she was vain enough to know that Mr Dallaglio was quite uniquely handsome.

She saw him immediately, sitting in a booth with a pint of Guinness, sporting a suit and tie. If he appeared incongruous amid the lunchtime gurners and yarn-spinners, he didn’t show it, and neither did they. She, on the other hand, attracted glances; not lascivious but simply curious.

‘I forgot my umbrella’, she said, by way of limp introduction. (I carried a water melon ..)

‘There’ll be plenty behind the bar,’ he said, rising to greet her, to ask her what she wanted to drink. ‘People bring them out and forget them when the rain stops. I don’t think I’ve ever bought one in my life.’

She watched him walk to the bar, aware that her pulse was racing. How ridiculous. She was at least a decade older than him and every one of those years showed at least once. Her friend Miriam had warned her of the Dallaglio Effect, made all the more devastating because he seemed so oblivious to it.

Nursing her G&T, (it’s too early, too early,) they settled into a businesslike talk about the nature of her problem.

‘It’s not a problem,’ she began. ‘Not really. In fact, now I’m here it feels so trivial. It isn’t much of a story, I’m afraid.’

Noticing that Dallaglio wasn’t one for conversational fillers, she ploughed on under the gaze of his striking eyes.

‘My grandmother lives with me and my children. And my husband (an afterthought). She’s 97 now and still as bright as a button. We have to speak more loudly than we used to, but beyond that she’s in fairly good shape. She doesn’t even have arthritis … ’

‘But something troubles her,’ Dallaglio said, licking the creamy Guinness from his lips, an action which she found shamefully provocative.

‘Yes.'

She settled her back against the banquette, this woman of rational mind reduced, as she saw it, to expose the vulnerability of fantasy.

'You see, all her life she’s been completely dismissive of the supernatural, the spiritual, or anything else you can name along those lines. She is fearless and often quite rude about it.’

‘Me too,’ said Bram, taking her by surprise.

‘Really? You’re not a time traveller then?’ She said this with irony, but still, there was talk that he could.

‘Time travel is theoretically impossible,’ he said. ‘Certainly when it comes to going backwards. There is talk of forward travel, but it involves a lot of spinning objects in space and countless and unknowable variations of gravitational pull from which you would never return, least of all recover. Besides, no one needs to know their future.'

‘I suppose not,’ she said, aware of a flush creeping towards her cheeks. ‘But you have a talent for solving past mysteries. Surely there is more to that than a Holmesian instinct?’

‘I am simply connected to it,’ he said modestly. ‘A gift I was born with. But I still have to focus, like everyone else … ’

That, she realised, was a subtle prompt to get on with it.

*****

Her grandmother, Heather Rose, had been evacuated in the first months of the war. She had just passed her exams and was heading for Grammar School when the War Office decided that children should be sent away from the industrial cities and the port areas, especially those along the south coast.

So she, with a cohort of other children from her former primary school, were sent to a country house in Worcestershire called The Elms. Like a lot of these places, its foundations were much older than the building that replaced it over time. By the time Heather Rose went there, the main body of it was Georgian. The owners were a Baron and his wife, Sir Richard and Lady Marion Brooke, who were polite but otherwise disengaged, just doing their duty. The children shared a spacious attic room in the main wing, where they were regularly but sparingly fed, and otherwise left to amuse themselves. It was a stud at the time, which the year before had produced a Derby winner, so there was a lot to do and see. Horses, open countryside, an intriguing clock tower, a stuffy old Boy’s School and lanes as far as the legs could walk and the eyes could see.

*****

As she continued, she wondered at his concentration. He never once let his attention roam, as though this rather workaday story was the most fascinating thing in the world to him.

‘You mentioned in your email that something happened one night,’ he prompted. ‘Can you explain to me what it was and why it bothers her so much?’

She cleared her throat, noted her empty glass. ‘Another?’ he asked.

‘Please,’ she said.

*****

‘She’s not sure of the exact date, but it was sometime in the late November of 1940. Her friends, those she shared the attic with, dared my grandmother to sneak down to the kitchens to see if there was any food in the pantry. They were growing children and rationing made things tight.’

‘That was brave of her,’ said Bram.

‘Like I say, the woman was born fearless. So she slipped down the servants’ stairs in the middle of the night and exited through a door that led out to the main part of the house; where the sweeping staircase was and the main reception hall down below. It was pitch black, but she daren’t use a candle, so she felt her way down the grand stairs, holding on to the bannister and measuring every step before she took it. And as she was about halfway down, a light suddenly appeared.’

‘From where?’ he urged.

‘She doesn't know,’ she replied. ‘All she remembers is that two horrible faces lit up in the dark. They were nuns.’

Dallaglio sat back. She felt a girlish pleasure that she had somehow managed to shock him.

‘She said they seemed to loom out at her, sometimes flickering and other times just glaring. She swears she heard some sort of thud, too, a noise which didn’t seem to come from anywhere. She was so frightened she fled back the way she'd come, and the children just had to go hungry until breakfast.’

‘And that’s it?’ he asked.

‘I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have wasted your time with this—’

He leaned forward and took her hand. His palm was cool and dry. ‘I mean, is that the one and only time she saw them? The nuns?’

She nodded. ‘And here’s the more human part of things. My grandmother doesn’t believe in ghosts, but she believes she saw them on that night. She can’t rationalise it, and it’s making her last years increasingly difficult. You see, she doesn’t believe in the afterlife either, and that’s the problem.’

‘Because if she believes in ghosts then she has to accept the afterlife?’ he said.

She nodded. ‘Something like that. Some people look forward to it, I suppose, but it fills her with horror, the thought of existing in perpetuity - or to be reborn and have to go through life all over again. She just wants to be dead and done with it, when the time comes.’

‘Have you tried lying to her? Making up an explanation?’

‘I’ve thought about it, but I can’t think of anything,’ she said haplessly.

The rest of their time was involved with business arrangements. Very shortly after the war ended, The Elms was turned into a Hotel and Spa, and she had booked Bram in for one night. He assured her that would be enough, and at the prices they were charging she was glad of it.

He glanced at his watch and stood up, shaking her hand. ‘I’ll get back to you as soon as I know,’ he said.

‘I can’t imagine you’ll discover anything,’ she said, ‘but I’m hoping you can at least come out with a convincing lie I can pass on ..’

He frowned at her. ‘Oh, I think I already know,’ he said. ‘I just need to go there to confirm things.’

He didn’t wait for an answer. Just seconds after he left, she looked for him all along the main street, but he was nowhere to be seen.

*****

The hotel had undergone various extensions and renovations since the '40s, but the main body of the house remained the same. He had asked for the attic room, once the servant’s domain, and then later the evacuees’. It had become, by dint of the space and view, the most expensive room in the hotel. Although much had changed, in the distance he could see the grammar school and the clock tower. Beyond the necessities of modern life, the new roads and the electricity pylons, it was the same view that eleven-year-old Heather Rose would have seen. He sat on the bed, briefly, but felt nothing. He placed his palms on the walls and waited until he heard it; the faint chatter of pre-pubescent girls. He was connected. He was in.

He spent some time on his laptop, and then walked the grounds, but nothing of what he felt was pertinent to Heather Rose. Later again, he went to the village pub, which for centuries has been the only place to discover the truth of anything in this country.

*****

She received a text message from Dallaglio the next morning. She was to meet him in the same bar at 1pm. Clearly he hadn’t taken advantage of the spa facilities.

*****

He was in a different place this time. She thought there might be a message in that, a clue as to his nature. She doubted he was ever in the same place at the same time.

They ordered the same drinks. He wore the same suit but a different tie. He was impeccable in all respects. She took a deep breath and looked at him with her head cocked, as if to say Well, Romeo, I’m waiting ….

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Here’s the story.’ He raised a finger. ‘Don’t interrupt unless you have to.’

‘Guides’ Honour,’ she said.

‘Apart from one thing. Were the children ever allowed into the main body of the house?’

‘No. They used the servant’s stairs to get to the attic. They could enter the kitchens through the outside door, but it was locked at night. I thought I told you that …’

‘You didn’t,’ he said, ‘but I guessed it. Of course, running around the grounds, they must have looked through the ground floor windows on occasion; see how the other half live.’

‘Yes, I suppose they did.’

‘So they could see the staircase, but not what was in front of the staircase. That’s why your grandmother knew the layout, but only up to a point.’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

He took a deep draft of his drink and fixed her again with those abiding eyes.

‘The exact day she saw the apparition was the 29th November 1940. It was a new moon on that night, the perfect time for the Junkers 88 bombers to fly. No natural light at all. They must have flown over the village and The Elms before that night, because it was on the direct flight path to Coventry, where all the vehicle plants were.’

‘She never mentioned it.’

‘They would usually have been asleep by then. But that night was a Friday, so no school in the morning. They’d already flown by when she decided to take that dare, on their way to bomb Coventry again. That’s why she didn’t hear them when she walked down that staircase. But she did hear a thud. And that thud was Theodor Schinkel.’

‘Who?’

‘A bad Nazi and a very good German.’

‘I don’t understand,’ she said. He looked at her as though he thought she should.

‘Let’s change direction,’ he said. ‘The house was built in 1745 on the foundations of a Tudor building, some parts of which remain. That is not uncommon at all. But less common is the fate of the original owner, who was hung, drawn and quartered for his part in the Gunpowder Plot in 1605.’

‘So a Catholic?’ She said, realising again that her drink was empty.

‘Another?’

‘Yes please.’

‘In amongst the various priest holes, now used for cleaning supplies, were two terrible portraits of unknown nuns, no doubt commissioned at the time of the first owner. These portraits are situated on either side of the main entrance to the house. They’re still there. Your grandmother would not have seen them when peering through the windows in childish curiosity.’

‘Why are they still there?’

‘No idea, really. The hotel has allowed a rumour to circulate that they are cursed and must not be removed. Customers like that sort of thing.’

‘Do they?’

‘Apparently, yes.’

‘God. Nuns. Really? Who paints nuns?’

‘Especially those nuns,’ he said. ‘They’re enough to put the fear in God in anyone.’

‘Or enough to make you stop believing in Him at all,’ she said.

‘So who was Theodor Schinkel?’

‘A German gunner in the Luftwaffe. On that night he was positioned in the underbelly of the plane, a bubble-type structure, preparing to aim his sites on Coventry. But he bailed out, because he didn’t want to do it.’

‘And he landed on the roof of Elm House?’

‘Yes. It’s got all the usual turrets and pediments, but where he landed, the roof was flat, and it’s directly above the main staircase, which, if you look up, has a large skylight - again, something your grandmother would not have noticed peering through the window. Had there been a moon, she might have done, but remember that on that night, there was none. It was his mag-light, shining through it, that accidentally picked up the faces of the nuns at the bottom of the stairs. That’s what your grandmother saw.’

‘Good grief,’ she exhaled. ‘So that’s it?’

‘Yes. That’s it.’

‘And what happened to Schinkel?

‘He was interned at Camp 287, Perdiswell, and spent an idyllic war farming the English countryside. He also furnished the Home Office with all they needed to know about the Junkers’ satellite systems. After the war, he married an English girl and died, a happy old man, twenty years ago.’

‘How did you find out?’

He looked at her, and in his eyes she could see a flicker of mild and yet not unkind contempt.

‘The main failing of the human race is that most of them lack curiosity.’

It was a rebuke.

‘Well, Grandmother will be pleased to hear it.’

He passed her a sheath of papers in a slim file. ‘It’s all in there,’ he said. ‘Just in case she doesn’t believe you.’

‘Oh, she’ll believe me. It’s too simple an explanation to be untrue.’

‘Almost all explanations are simple,’ he said, rising and offering her his hand, just like before.

‘What do I owe you?’

‘Nothing at all. I only charge when I find lost treasure.’ At this he winked. ‘But you must tell her immediately.’

‘I’m thinking of leaving it until next week. It’s her 98th and I was going to tell her then.’

‘Tell her tonight,’ he said with finality.

*****

In the early morning, she realised why. And all through the grief of it, she was so glad that she had done as instructed. There were no ghosts and there would be no afterlife for Heather Rose. The knowledge of it had tugged a smile to her thin blue lips and induced an unearthly erasure of wrinkles. She had died in her own grace.

She heard no more from Bram Dallaglio, and although she knew that he was entirely corporeal, she couldn’t help but question that reality. It was a small story but a huge final act. It was a play of kindness from someone who surely had better things to do. It was strange and it was beautiful, (he was beautiful), and however much she tried to explain him, she never really could.

And there were many times when she wondered where he might be right now, not in terms of location, but in terms of century. Because for all his denials, she was not at all convinced that he was entirely anchored to his timeline: that in the swell and the vagaries of the wind, he could so easily find himself elsewhere.