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Blessed Eleanor as a latter-day triumph for the Counter-Reformation.
I did not go to the chapel.
    I did receive coffee from Sister Clare in the Nuns' Parlour. Sister Clare was extremely plump, and the sight of her swelling front beneath her black habit tempted me to wonder anew whether nuns wore bras (another perennial topic of discussion, and one which as far as I was concerned had never reached a satisfactory conclusion). If we had been on television I would have asked her, 'Sister, there is one question I know our female viewers are dying to ask...' Everyone would have expected something about sexual frustration; instead of which I would have continued: 'In an age when many women are boasting of burning their bras ...' and so forth. We were not on television. I put temptation from me. It was unlikely that Vatican II had left the topic untouched in any case, whatever the mode when I was at school.
    To distract myself, I reapplied my attention to the pasteboard brides in and out of their portfolio. At least I could picture Lady Margaret Plantaganet featuring here in a few years' time, stern in white, on the arm of some suitably aristocratic bridegroom. And the convent would send them a wedding present of table napkins embroidered by the nuns in which the Plantaganet arms mingled with those of the Blessed Eleanor ... This agreeable fantasy lasted until I had finished my coffee.
    Shortly after that I made it clear to Mother Ancilla, kindly but firmly, that Jemima Shore, Investigator, was a character who existed more or less for the benefit of television. I could not undertake a special secret mission to iron out the problems of Blessed Eleanor's. My encounter with Sister Edward had nevertheless given me an inkling as to the nature of these problems. Clearly a host of celibate women cooped up together could ferment from time to time like yeast. In the middle ages Sister Edward would have seen visions. Nowadays she merely accused her superior of murder. She probably watched too many thrillers on television. The gift of an old girl. In St Joseph's Sitting Room.
    As I drove back to London, I felt that the long fingers of the past had stretched out to grasp me. And I had eluded them. I was sorry for Mother Ancilla. But I could not help her.
Besides, I was shortly off to Yugoslavia with Tom.
    Two days later, he took me for dinner in our favourite restaurant, a trattoria behind Victoria station, discreet, convenient for the House of Commons. I wore my treasured Hanae Mori dress. A motif of scattered hearts. The heart: my lucky symbol. I tended to scribble a heart on my notes to Tom. Not so lucky tonight, it seemed. For I was not in fact off to Yugoslavia. Or at any rate, not with him. The Welfare Now Group, on which Tom had lavished so much of his prodigious idealism, was calling for urgent meetings with the Minister before the autumn session of Parliament. In the expectation that these meetings would be unsatisfactory - and they always were - there was to be a rally in Trafalgar Square. Tom of course would be one of the principal speakers. His tall thin figure, bowing slightly in the gale of his own words, was an inseparable part of the W.N.G . platform.
    'It's not that I can't get out of it,' Tom said unhappily. 'It's just that I don't want to. We've got to make them see that our demands are reasonable. You understand what I mean, darling.'
    As a matter of fact I did not understand. It occurred to me that the Archangel Gabriel with the resources of Maecenas would not be able to satisfy the demands of the W.N.G . But this was not a time for saying so.
    'Tell me we shall go to Yugoslavia one day.' My voice had a mournful spaniel's note which I disliked.
    'I promise.' Tom was a totally truthful person, even sometimes when I wished he wouldn't be. I believed him. Perhaps it was Tom's honesty that now compelled him to let drop the news that Carrie's mother was also unexpectedly altering her plans and coming over from the States. To me at