“They were a bit wary at first,” I replied. “I don’t think they liked the idea of me being your cousin. I had to remember my training.”
“Training?”
“The rule of the convent—that a nun must always act with grace and politeness. Smile, whatever you’re feeling inside.” I didn’t tell him about the interrogation I’d received. Something must have happened up at the house to make him look the way he did when he’d come onto the beach. I didn’t want to darken his mood by telling him how the Land Girls had been gossiping about him.
Is it true that he’s got a secret wife? Janet’s words rang in my head. How could it be true? Why would a man like Jack have to hide the fact that he was married? But if it were true . . . would that explain the dark cloud that sometimes seemed to hover over him? I used to think I was good at reading people, after so many years of nursing. But Jack was a mystery.
“Merle’s been very friendly,” I said, trying to steer the conversation in a different direction. “She showed me around the village this afternoon.”
“Oh?” He snapped a stick of wood over his knee and threw the pieces into the glowing belly of the stove.
“She’s very easy to talk to,” I went on. “It’s years since I’ve chatted like that. I didn’t realize how much I’ve missed it.”
“Didn’t you have any friends in Africa?” He looked up, incredulous.
“Not among the other nuns, no. It wasn’t permitted.”
He shook his head. “That’s barbaric. You were thousands of miles from home, working in primitive conditions—there must have been times when you needed someone to talk to.”
“Oh, there were.” I nodded. “But the only person I ever really confided in was a Belgian priest. His name was Father Armand. He came to the hospital twice a year to be checked for leprosy.”
“Leprosy?” Jack grimaced.
“He’d set up a leper colony on an island in the river. I used to take medical supplies there while I was on my rounds of the villages in the bush.” I saw my old friend in my mind’s eye. A Santa Claus face, with white hair and a bushy beard. “He was the kindest person I ever met. And he had a knack of picking up on what troubled a person. I think he knew, long before I did, that I wasn’t really cut out for the religious life.”
“Do people really do that?” Jack was shaking his head. “Choose to live among lepers? Did he have a death wish? Or was he some sort of saint?”
“I used to think he was saintly,” I said. “But one day I heard his story—not from him but from the local barber, who used to come to the hospital to give the patients haircuts. He said that as a young priest, Father Armand was stationed in a remote part of the Congo. He was very lonely, and one day he just disappeared into the bush. His mission gave him up for dead, but years later a touring priest discovered him living in a hut in the jungle with a native wife and three children.”
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “What did they do to him?”
“This other priest persuaded him to hand the children over to nuns and to leave his wife. He was sent back to Europe in disgrace. But the following year he came back to Africa. He’d asked the church for permission to devote the rest of his life to lepers as a penance for what he’d done.”
Jack blew out a breath. “Had he really done anything so terribly wrong? How cruel of the church to separate a man from his family! He’d only done what’s considered natural for most people.”
“I know. Being a priest is a life against nature—just like being a nun. They drummed that into us from the beginning. It’s what I struggled with more than anything—but in Father Armand’s case, at least, something good came out of it.”
“Well, yes, I can see that. But it came at a terrible price.” He raked his hair with his fingers. “Did he ever tell you what became of his children and their mother?”
I shook my head. “He never knew that I knew any of it. I think he told himself that it was God’s will—something that he had to accept. He had a saying, which he often came out with when I told him about my own troubles: ‘The Lord allows what must happen for our own good.’”
Jack turned back to the stove, muttering something I couldn’t make out. I realized, too late, that in relating the story, I’d probably turned his nagging doubts about organized religion into outright condemnation.