Faces of Fear Read online

  “Gillie!” her mother protested.

  “I don’t care! I hate him and I’m not feeding him! He can die of starvation for all I care! I don’t know why you ever wanted him!”

  “Gillie, don’t you dare say such a thing!”

  “I dare and I don’t care!”

  Mum unbuckled Toby from his highchair, picked him up and shushed him. “If you don’t care you’d better get to your room and stay there for the rest of the day with no tea. Let’s see how you like a bit of starvation!” It started to snow again. Thick, tumbling flakes from the Firth of Forth.

  “They really believe that I don’t know what they did to you, Alice.”

  You must forgive them, for they know not what they do.

  “I don’t want to forgive them. I hate them. Most of all I hate them for what they did to you.”

  But you’re a nun now. You’ve taken holy vows. You must forgive them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen.

  Gillie spent the afternoon lying on her bed reading Little Faith which was a novel about a nun who started a mission in the South Seas and fell in love with a gun-runner. She had read it twice already, but she still loved the scene where the nun, who has fasted for five days and five nights as a penance for her passionate feelings, is witness to a miraculous vision of St Theresa, “incandescent as the sun”, who forgives her for feeling like a woman.

  At five o’clock she heard her mother carrying Toby upstairs for his bath. At half-past five she heard mummy singing to him in his bedroom, across the corridor. She sang him the same lullaby that she always used to sing for Gillie, when she was small, and the sound of it made Gillie feel even more depressed and left out. She turned her face to the wall and stared miserably at the wallpaper. It was supposed to be roses, but it seemed to have a sly hooded face in it, medieval-looking and misshapen, like a leper.

  “Dance to your daddy, my little babby. Dance to your daddy, my little lamb. You shall have a fishy, in a little dishy. You shall have a fishy when the boat comes in …”

  Not long after her father opened her door. “Are you ready to say that you’re sorry?” he asked her.

  Gillie didn’t answer. Her father waited at the door for a while, and then came in and sat on the side of the bed. He laid his hand gently on her arm, and said, “This is not like you, Gillie. You’re not jealous of Toby, are you? You don’t have to be. We love you just as much as ever. I know that mummy’s busy with Toby a lot of the time, but she still cares for you, and so do I.”

  But what about me? said Alice.

  “How about saying you’re sorry, and coming down for some tea? There’s fish fingers tonight.”

  You never cared about me.

  “Come on, Gillie, what do you say?”

  “You never cared about me! You wanted me dead!”

  Her father stared at her in disbelief. “Wanted you dead? What put such a thought into your head? We love you; we wouldn’t have had you otherwise; and if you want to know the truth you would have stayed our only child, and we would have been glad of it, if only Toby hadn’t been conceived by accident. We didn’t mean to have him, but we did, and now he’s here, and we love him. Just the same way that we love you.”

  Gillie sat up in bed with reddened eyes. “Accident?” she said. “Accident? Try telling Alice that Toby was an accident!”

  “Alice? Who’s Alice?”

  “You killed her!” Gillie screamed. “You murdered her! You murdered her and she never lived!”

  Alarmed, angry, her father stood up. “Now, come on, Gillie. I want you to calm down. Let me call mummy and we’ll have a wee chat.”

  “I don’t want to talk to either of you! You’re horrible! I hate you! Go away!”

  Her father hesitated for a moment. Then he said, “The best thing for you to do, my girl, is to have your bath and get yourself to bed. We’ll talk some more in the morning.”

  “I don’t want your stupid bath.”

  “Then go to sleep dirty. It makes no difference to me.”

  She lay on her bed listening to the noises in the house. She could hear her mother and father talking; and then the bath running. The cistern roared and whistled just above her room. She heard doors opening and closing, and the burbling of the television in her parents’ bedroom. Then the door was closed and all the lights were switched off.

  Outside the window, the city was so thickly-felted in snow that it was totally silent, from Davidson’s Mains to Morningside, and Gillie could almost have believed that everyone was dead, except for her.

  She was woken by a bright light dancing on the wallpaper. She opened her eyes and frowned at it for a while, not quite sure where she was, or whether she was sleeping or waking. The light quivered and trembled and danced from side to side. Sometimes it was like a wide squiggly line and then it would suddenly tie a knot in itself, so that it formed the shape of a butterfly.

  Gillie sat up. She was still fully dressed and her leg had gone dead because she had been sleeping in a funny position. The light was coming from under her door. First of all it was dazzling and then it was dim. It danced and skipped and changed direction. Then it retreated for a while, so that all she could see was a faint reflected glow.

  Oh, no! she thought. The house is on fire!

  She climbed off her bed and limped dead-legged to the door. She felt the doorknob to see if it was hot. The Fire Brigade had come to the school to give them all a lecture on do’s and don’ts, and she knew that she wasn’t to open the door if it was hot. Fire feeds on oxygen like a babby feeds on milk.

  But the doorknob was cold, and the door-panels were cold. Cautiously, Gillie turned the knob, and opened the door, and eased herself into the corridor. Toby’s room was directly opposite; and the light was shining from all around Toby’s door. At times it was so intense that she could scarcely look at it, and it shone through every crevice, and even through the keyhole.

  She sniffed. The odd thing was that she couldn’t smell smoke. And there was none of that crackling sound that you normally get with a fire.

  She approached Toby’s door and dabbed the doorknob with her fingertip. That, too, was quite cold. There was no fire burning in Toby’s room. For a moment, she became dreadfully frightened. She had a cold, sliding feeling in her stomach as if she had swallowed something really disgusting and knew that she was going to sick it up again. If it wasn’t a fire in Toby’s room, what was it?

  She was just about to run to her parents’ room when she heard an extraordinary noise. A thick, soft, rustling noise; and then the sound of Toby gurgling and giggling.

  He’s laughing, said Alice. He must be all right.

  “I wish it had been a fire. I wish he was dead.”

  No you don’t; and neither do I. You’re a nun now; you’re in holy orders. Nuns forgive everything. Nuns understand everything. Nuns are the brides of Christ.

  She opened Toby’s door.

  And Holy Mary! cried Alice.

  The sight that met her eyes was so dramatic and so dazzling that she fell to her knees on the carpet, her mouth wide open in disbelief.

  In the centre of Toby’s nursery stood a tall white figure. It was so blindingly bright that Gillie had to shield her eyes with the back of her hand. It was so tall that it almost touched the ceiling, and it was dressed in swathes of brilliant white linen, and it seemed to have huge folded wings on its back. It was impossible for Gillie to tell if it were a man or a woman. It was so bright that she couldn’t clearly see its face, but she could vaguely distinguish two eyes, floating in the brilliance like chicken embryos floating in egg-white; and the curve of a smile.

  But what made Gillie tremble more than anything else was the fact that Toby was out of his crib, and standing on his cribside rug, standing, with this tall, dazzling creature holding his little hands for him.

  “Toby,” she whispered. “Oh God, Toby.”

  But all Toby did was turn toward her and smile his cheekiest smile, and take two unste
ady steps across the rug, while the dazzling creature helped him to balance.

  Gillie slowly rose to her feet. The creature looked at her. Although it was so bright, she could see that it wasn’t staring at her aggressively. In fact there was something in its eyes that seemed to be appealing for understanding; or at least for calm. But then it lifted Toby up in its arms, right up in the air in its brilliant, flaring arms, and Gillie’s composure fell apart like a jigsaw falling out of its box.

  “Mum!” she screamed, running up the corridor and beating on her parents’ bedroom door. “Mummy there’s an angel in Toby’s room! Mum, mum, mum, come quick! There’s an angel in Toby’s room!’

  Her father and mother came bursting out of the bedroom ruffled and bleary and hardly knowing where they were going. They ran to Toby’s nursery and Gillie ran after them.

  And there he was, tucked up in his blue-and-yellow blanket, sucking his thumb. Content, curly, and right on the edge of falling to sleep.

  Dad turned and looked at Gillie with a serious face.

  “I saw an angel,” she said. “I’m not making it up, I promise you. It was teaching Toby to walk.”

  Dr Vaudrey laced his fingers together and swung himself from side to side in his black leather armchair. Outside his window there was a view of a grey brick wall, streaked with snow. He had a dry pot plant on his desk and a photograph of three plain-looking children in sweaters that were too small for them. He was half-Indian, and he wore very thick black-framed glasses and his black hair was brushed back straight from his forehead. Gillie thought that his nose looked like an aubergine. Same colour. Same shape.

  “You know something, Gillie, at your age religious delusions are very common. To find a faith and to believe in its manifestations is a very strong desire for adolescent young women.”

  “I saw an angel,” said Gillie. “It was teaching Toby to walk.”

  “How did you know it was an angel, what you saw? Did it say to you, ‘Hallo, excuse me, I am an angel and I have just popped in to make sure that your baby brother doesn’t have to scurry about on his hands and knees for the rest of his life?’”

  “It didn’t say anything. But I knew what it was.”

  “You say you knew – but how? This is the point that I am trying to make to you.”

  Gillie lowered her eyes. Her hands were resting in her lap and somehow they didn’t even look like hers. “The fact is I’m a nun.”

  Dr Vaudrey swung around to face her. “Did I hear what you said correctly? You are a nun?”

  “In secret, yes.”

  “An undercover nun, is that what you’re saying?”

  Gillie nodded.

  “May I ask to which order you belong?”

  “It doesn’t have a name. It’s my own order. But I’ve given my life to God and the Blessed Virgin and to suffering humanity even if they’re drunk in doorways.”

  Dr Vaudrey slowly took off his spectacles and looked across his desk at her with infinite sympathy, even though her head was lowered and she couldn’t see him. “My dear young lady,” he said, “you have the most laudable aims in life; and it is not for me to say what you saw or what you didn’t see.”

  “I saw an angel.”

  Dr Vaudrey swung himself around in the opposite direction. “Yes, my dear. I believe that you probably did.”

  The young minister was waiting for her in the library. He was stocky, with thinning hair and fleshy ears, but she thought he was really quite good-looking for a minister. He wore a horrible sweater with reindeer leaping all round it and brown corduroy trousers.

  “Sit down,” he said, indicating a dilapidated sofa covered with cracked red leather. “Would you care for some coffee? Or maybe some Irn Bru? Mind you I’m fairly sure the Irn Bru’s flat. They bought it in two Christmasses ago, and it’s been sitting in the sideboard ever since.”

  Gillie sat pale and demure at the very far end of the sofa and gave the minister nothing more than a quick negative shake of her head.

  He sat astride a wheelback chair and propped his arms across the top of it. “I can’t say that I blame you. The coffee’s no good, either.”

  There was a long silence between them. The library clock ticked so wearily that Gillie kept expecting it to stop, although it didn’t.

  “I suppose I ought to introduce myself,” said the young minister. “I’m Duncan Callander, but you can call me Duncan if you want. Most of my friends called me Doughnuts. You know – Duncan Doughnuts?”

  Another long silence. Then Duncan said, “You’ve seen an angel, then? In the flesh so to speak?” Gillie nodded.

  “This Doctor Vaudrey … this psychiatrist … he thinks that you’ve been suffering some stress. It’s partly due to your age, you see. Your mind and your body are going through some tremendous changes. It’s only natural to look for something more to believe in than your parents and your schoolteachers. With some girls it’s a pop group; with other girls it’s God. But Doctor Vaudrey thought your case was very interesting. He’s had girls with religious visions before. But none like yours. He said he could almost believe that you really saw what you said you saw.”

  He took out his handkerchief and made an elaborate ritual out of wiping his nose. “That’s why he passed you onto your own minister, and why your own minister passed you onto me. I’m a bit of specialist when it comes to visions.”

  “I saw an angel,” Gillie repeated. She felt that she had to keep on saying it until they believed her. She would go on saying it for the rest of her life, if necessary. “It was helping Toby to walk.”

  Duncan said, “It was six-and-a-half to seven feet tall, dazzling white, and you could just about make out its eyes and its mouth. It may have had wings but you’re not at all sure about that.”

  Gillie turned around and stared at him. “How did you know that? I haven’t told that to anybody.”

  “You didn’t have to. Yours is the twenty-eighth sighting since 1973, and every single one sounds exactly like yours.”

  Gillie could hardly believe what she was hearing. “You mean – other people have seen them – as well as me?”

  Duncan reached out and took hold of her hand and squeezed it. “Many other people, apart from you. It’s not at all uncommon. The only uncommon thing about your seeing an angel is that you’re just an ordinary girl, if you can forgive me for saying so. Most of the other manifestations have come to deeply religious people, ministers and missionaries and such, people who have devoted all of their life to their church.”

  “I have, too,” Gillie whispered.

  Duncan gave her an encouraging smile. “You have, too?”

  “I took holy orders.”

  “Where did you do this? At St Agnes?”

  Gillie shook her head. “In my bedroom.”

  Duncan laid his hand on her shoulder. “Then you’re a very exceptional novice indeed. And you must be pure of heart, and filled with love, or else you couldn’t have seen what you saw.”

  “Are angels dangerous?” asked Gillie. “Toby won’t get hurt, will he?”

  “Quite the opposite, as far as I know. In all of the sightings of angels that I’ve read about, they’ve been protecting people, particularly children. We don’t really know for sure whether they come from heaven, or whether they’re some kind of visible energy that comes out of the human mind. All kinds of people have been trying to prove their existence for years. Physicists, bishops, spiritualists … you name them. Just think what a spectacular boost it would be if the church could prove that they were real, and that they had been sent by God!”

  He reached across his desk and picked up a book with several marked pages in it. “You see these pictures? This is the closest that anybody has ever come to proving that angels exist. For forty years, pediatric studies of babies taking their first steps have proved beyond a shadow of doubt that they are technically in defiance of all the laws of physics when they begin to toddle. They don’t have the physical strength, they don’t have the balance. And y
et – miraculously – they do it.

  “In 1973 a team of doctors set up an experiment at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, in America, using children who were just on the verge of walking. They took ultra-violet and infra-red photographs … and here, you can see the results. In at least five of these pictures, there’s a tall shadowy shape which appears to be holding the toddler’s hands.”

  Gillie studied them closely, with a prickling feeling down her back, as if centipedes were crawling inside her jumper. The shapes were very dim, and their eyes were barely visible. But they were just the same as the dazzling figure who had visited Toby’s bedroom.

  “Why hasn’t anybody said anything about this before?” she asked. “If there have been twenty-seven other sightings, apart from mine, why hasn’t anybody said so?”

  Duncan closed the book. “Church politics. The Roman Catholics didn’t want the sightings mentioned in case they prove not to be angels, after all, but simply some sort of human aura. And the Church of Scotland didn’t want them mentioned because they frown on miracles and superstition and hocus-pocus. Nobody said anything because they were all monks or nuns or ordained clergy, and they were under strict instructions from their superiors to keep their visions to themselves.”

  “But I’m not a real nun! I could say something about it, and nobody could stop me!”

  Duncan said, “First of all I have to speak to the kirk elders, to see what they think about it. After all, if a statement is made to the effect that one of our parishioners has witnessed an angel, then the church is going to be closely involved in all of the publicity that’s bound to follow.”

  “You do believe me, though, don’t you?” said Gillie. “I’m not mad or anything. I really saw it and it was really there.”

  “I believe you,” smiled Duncan. “I’ll talk to the elders tomorrow, and then I’ll come around to your house and tell you what they’ve decided to do.”

  That evening, while they were having supper at the kitchen table, lamb chops and mashed neeps, little Toby came wobble-staggering across the floor and clung to the edge of Gillie’s chair. He looked up at her and cooed.