There was a silence. Clio went on to fill it. "The truth is, Kit that I was jealous. I'd love to have a mother who looks like a film star.2
Kit reached out and took one of the Club Milk biscuits.
"Now you're here, we can take out the boat." she said.
The row that had never been was over.
During the holidays Brother Healy came uo to the convent for his annual discussion with Mother Bernard. They had many hings to discuss, and they got on well together when discussing them. There was the school curriculum for the year, the difficulty of getting lay teachers who would have the same sense of dedication; the terrible problem they shared about children being wild and undisciplined, preferring the goings-on on the cinema screen to real life as it should be lived in Ireland.
They co-ordinated their timetables so that the girls should be released from school at one time and the boys at another, leaving less chance for the two sexes to meet each other and get involved in unnecessary familiarity.
Brother Healy and Mother Bernard were such old friends now that they could even indulge in the odd little grumble, about the length of Father Baily's sermions for example. The man was inclined to be hypnotised by the sound of his own voice, they thought. Or the excessive love the children had for that difficult Sister Madeleine. It was somehow highly irritating that this odd woman, who came from a deeply confused and ill-explained background, should have taken such an unexpeted place in the hearts and minds of Lough Glass's children, who would to anything for her.
They were eager to save stamps, collect silver paper, and father sticks for her fire. The boys had been outraged when Brother Healy had stamped on a spider. There had been a near mutiny in the classroom. And these were the same lads who would have pulled the wings off flies for sport a few years ago.
Mother Bernard said that Sister Madeleine was altogether too tolerant for this world; she seemed to have a good word to say for everyone, including the enemes of the Church.