The Abbess of Crewe by Muriel Spark Page B

‘I thought it was a good idea. It’s an easy place to make a
     meeting.’
    ‘I don’t deny,’ says the Abbess, ‘that by some chance your idea
     has been successful. The throw of the dice is bound to turn sometimes in your favour.
     But you are wrong to imagine that any idea of yours is good in itself.’
    ‘Anyway,’ says Walburga, ‘the young brutes have got the money and that
     will keep them quiet.’
    ‘For a while,’ says the Abbess of Crewe.
    ‘Oh, have I got to do it again?’ Winifrede says in her little wailing
     voice.
    ‘Possibly,’ says the Abbess. ‘Meantime go and rest before Compline.
     After Compline we shall all meet here for refreshments and some entertaining scenarios.
     Think up your best scenarios, Sisters.’
    ‘What are scenarios?’ says Winifrede.
    ‘They are an art-form,’ says the Abbess of Crewe, ‘based on facts. A
     good scenario is a garble. A bad one is a bungle. They need not be plausible, only
     hypnotic, like all good art.’
     
Chapter 5
     
    ‘G ERTRUDE, ’ says the Abbess
     into the green telephone, ‘have you seen the papers?’
    ‘Yes,’ says Gertrude.
    ‘You mean that the news has reached Reykjavik?’
    ‘Czechoslovakia has won the World Title.’
    ‘I mean the news about us, Gertrude, dear.’
    ‘Yes, I saw a bit about you. What was the point of your bugging the
     convent?’
    ‘How should I know?’ says the Abbess. ‘I know nothing about anything. I
     am occupied with the administration of the Abbey, our music, our rites and traditions,
     and our electronics projects for contacts with our mission fields. Apart from these
     affairs I only know what I am told appears in the newspapers which I don’t read
     myself. My dear Gertrude, why don’t you come home, or at least be nearer to hand,
     in France, in Belgium, in Holland, somewhere on the Continent, if not in Britain?
     I’m seriously thinking of dismantling the green line, Gertrude.’
    ‘Not a bad idea,’ Gertrude says. ‘There’s very little you can do
     about controlling the missions from Crewe, anyway.’
    ‘If you were nearer to hand, Gertrude, say Austria or Italy even —’
    ‘Too near the Vatican,’ says Gertrude.
    ‘We need a European mission,’ says the Abbess.
    ‘But I don’t like Europe,’ says Gertrude. ‘It’s too near to
     Rome.’
    ‘Ah yes,’ says the Abbess. ‘Our own dear Rome. But, Gertrude, I’m
     having trouble from Rome, and I think you might help us. They will be sending a
     commission sooner or later to look into things here at Crewe, don’t you think? So
     much publicity. How can I cope if you keep away?’
    ‘Eavesdropping,’ says Gertrude, ‘is immoral.’
    ‘Have you got a cold in the chest, Gertrude?’
    ‘You ought not to have listened in to the nuns’ conversations. You
     shouldn’t have opened their letters and you ought not to have read them. You
     should have invested their dowries in the convent and you ought to have stopped your
     Jesuit friends from breaking into the Abbey.’
    ‘Gertrude,’ says the Abbess, ‘I know that Felicity had a pile of
     love-letters.’
    ‘You should have told her to destroy them. You ought to have warned her. You should
     have let the nuns who wanted to vote for her do so. You ought to have —’
    ‘Gertrude, my devout logician, it is a question upon which I ponder greatly within
     the umbrageous garden of my thoughts, where you get your “should nots” and
     your “ought tos” from. They don’t arise from the moral systems of the
     cannibal tribes of the Andes, nor the factions of the deep Congo, nor from the hills of
     Asia, do they? It seems to me, Gertrude, my love, that your shoulds and your
     shouldn’ts have been established rather nearer home, let us say the continent of
     Europe, if you will forgive the expression.’
    ‘The Pope,’ says Gertrude, ‘should broaden his ecumenical views and he
     ought to stand by the Second Vatican Council. He should throw the dogmas out of the