i f6c06dd9cf3fe221 by Unknown (100 books to read in a lifetime .txt) 📗

the tea." "Bye, grandma." Annie kissed the blue lips.

"I'll tell you all about it when I get back ... about all I see in the shops."

Sarah smiled and watched them go out. She lay thinking, her eyes fixed on the bedrail. This dying took a long time. But she didn't went to go just yet . if only she could outlast Tim, so Kate wouldn't be left alone with him, even for a day. She knew the impossibility of her wish. Apart from his leg, which troubled him at times, he was as strong as a horse. She began to pray, but dropped off into a doze, which filled most of her days.

Standing at the front door, Kate said, "We'll wait a few minutes for the postman."

"There he is," cried Annie, 'coming round the corner. "

"It's getting colder," said the postman.

"Shouldn't wonder if we don't see more snow.... There's nothing for you, they're piling up for tomorrow, I expect." He laughed and passed on.

Something must have happened . but what? What? To know the worst that possibly could happen would be better than the sickening weight of this anxiety.

She walked into Tyne Dock, with only a small part of her mind listening to Annie's gay chatter. "Would you Kate?" Annie was asking.

"Would I what, dear?" Kate brought her attention back to her child.

"Would you come into the Borough Road church and see the crib ? Rosie says it's lovely."

"You want to see it?" asked Kate.

"Oh yes," Annie said.

"Rosie says they've got real straw and a real cave and two new shepherds this year."

"All right. We'll go before we get the tram for Shields."

They took a short cut to the Borough Road church, and knelt on the stone steps of the Lady Altar and gazed at the crib, with its infant child and kneeling Mary and Joseph. The flickering candles seemed to endow the group with life.

Annie's lips moved as she said her rosary, and her face was wrapped with the wonder of it all. But Kate knelt stiffly, uttering no prayer.

It was nearly a year since she had said a prayer of any kind, and she asked herself, would her prayers for him be answered? If she believed all she had been taught then the answer was no. For God gave you only the things which were good for your soul; such as poverty and pain!

And, unless you made friends with these, life was impossible for her and her kind. Rodney would be considered anything but good for her.

But in spite of her reasoning her heart suddenly cried, "Oh! Mary, Mother of God, don't let anything happen to him. Please, please keep him safe. Do what you like to me, for I know I deserve it, I know I am proud and vain of my knowledge, thinking I am above my own people, and I criticise my religion ... but only keep him safe, and I will try to be better. I will do anything, anything...."

She suddenly stopped her wild plea, the bargaining side of prayer, which her reason had come to abhor, made her ashamed . never praying unless one wanted something. She stood up and turned to the main altar. "Thy will be done," she said, and felt better.

She sat in a pew opposite the statue she had described to Rodney on that faraway night, sitting in the car on the top of the Felling hills, and, when Annie, face radiant with mystical happiness, came to her, she drew her close and, pointing to the statue, whispered, "Tell me, dear.

Do

you like that statue, or does it frighten you? "

Surprised, Annie looked at her.

"The statue of Our Lord frighten me?"

she whispered back.

"No, Kate. But it nearly always makes me want to cry. Then I think.

He was only like that for three days; 'cos He came Himself again on Easter Sunday, didn't He?"

Kate nodded, and realised that Annie would never be afraid of the things that had frightened her . except Tim. Christ had certainly risen for Annie.

"Which school do you like the better, the Borough Road or the one you are at now?" Kate asked, as they walked to the tram.

"Oh, the one I'm at now! It's a lovely school. But I don't like their church; I went in with one of the girls when there was a service on. I didn't like it a bit; God didn't seem to be there.... Oh, I love our church; don't you, Kate?"

Kate was not obliged to answer, for they boarded a tram. But she thought, some temperaments make good Catholics, others bad. Mine is in the latter category. But Annie will be a Catholic all her life, and I must never say or do anything which might spoil her faith. It is so beautiful and clean now, and, unlike mine was, without fear. If I have other children, will I bring them up as Catholics? The question, involving so much not- touching on religion, was unanswerable.

Her thoughts returned to Annie and her shining faith, and she knew that it would have hurt and puzzled her had she been told she had committed a sin through attending a service in a non-Catholic church.

But it would not have really touched her faith, for she was one of those lucky people, born to believe without questioning. Kate wished she had been born that way too.

Her neck would carry a mark for life as a result of her stand in sending Annie to a protestant school, but her conscience, which had troubled her at times, was suddenly easy. She felt she had deprived Annie of nothing;

the Catholic religion, she thought, would always be Annie's choice, and she had given her the best education possible under the circumstances.

It was