Quiet as a Nun (10 page)

As we skirted the fields, trying to avoid the squelching mire left by the rain, a late afternoon sun emerged from the barred clouds, illuminating the November landscape. Sister Elizabeth began to recite Wordsworth in her special faraway poetic voice, which like her walk, had not changed. Her eyes rolled in wonder as she spoke. It was as though she was receiving a direct message from the poet, line by line:

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free

The holy time is quiet as a Nun,

Breathless with adoration .. .

By this time we were in sight of the tower, black, square, shorter than I remembered - oh, the shrinkings brought about by time - the sun was beginning to sink behind it. I was reminded of a card in the tarot pack: the Tower of Destruction, depicted by a tower very similar in design, out of which spilled unhappy falling people in mediaeval dress. Yes, Tower of Destruction indeed and Rosa's destruction above all. It seemed quite inappropriate under the circumstances to contemplate a late night rendezvous with some prankish schoolgirls pretending to be ghosts. I would lay my own ghost and then depart.

Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here, If thou appear untouched by solemn thought, Thy nature is not therefore less divine;

Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year...

Sister Elizabeth's sonorous declamation was drawing to its close.

'Somehow those last lines rather remind me of you, Jemima,' she said afterwards. There was a charming note of hope in her voice. I realised that this literary reference was the nearest Sister Liz would ever get to probing my religious beliefs. I ignored the implied question. Besides, I had an irreverent desire to laugh at the idea of television in the guise of Abraham's bosom - Megalithic House. In any case, I was not untouched by solemn thought, rather the contrary. The sight of the Tower of Destruction was more upsetting than I had anticipated.

After a silence, Sister Elizabeth said simply: ‘I love that poem. I first learnt it as a girl. I am not sure it did not influence me towards the Church, and later my vocation. The idea of a nun, breathless in adoration. So calm. So free. I'm a convert you know. I was received into the Church when I was twenty-one.'

'Quiet as a nun,' I repeated. To me they sounded ironic words. Where was the quiet in this seething community of neurotic women, many of them frustrated in one way or the other, quite out of touch with all that was good in the modern world? Many of them would do better to return to the world and find their own peace, than reside in this false quiet. As Beatrice O'Dowd had done. Only someone like Sister Elizabeth with her untouchable love of literature probably escaped a measure of frustration.

We unlocked the padlock - new, like the key - and entered the tower. The air was dank. Since the ground floor was windowless it was also dark. By the light of the open door we began to climb up the wooden ladder to the first floor. We went in single file. I let Sister Elizabeth lead the way. On the first floor there would be one window high up in the far wall, overlooking the farm lands beyond. You could neither see the convent from the tower nor be seen from it. A further window in the first floor, on the convent side, had been blocked up in the nineteenth century.

Although the tower was officially out of bounds, in my day at school it had been a fashionable dare to purloin the conspicuously large key from the portress, and pay an illicit visit to Nelly's Nest. I recalled some furniture, a wooden table, a large chair, a rocking-chair, I thought, an empty fireplace. Even in summer the thick stone walls gave off an unpleasant atmosphere of damp and chill.

'The community came and tended to the tower. After it happened,' Sister Liz observed over her shoulder as we climbed. She meant: you won't find anything distressing here, as in the graveyard. She said aloud: 'And no-one has been here since.'

I believed her. Once again my feelings had frozen. I gazed up at Sister Elizabeth's retreating black back, her neat black feet with their goloshes over black strap shoes, black stockings, black skirts looped up at the sides for walking the muddy fields. Sister Elizabeth panted slightly. The door banged to downstairs, removing our light. But at the same moment Sister Elizabeth reached the trap door and pushed it open. She poked her head through the trap door.

There was an audible gasp and Sister Elizabeth stopped quite still on the last rung of the ladder.

Then there was silence. She did not move.

'Sister Liz—' I said after a minute, anxiously.

'It's all right, my child,' she replied, rather heavily. 'Just that I had rather a shock.'

'What
is
it?' I could see nothing from behind her.

'Nothing really. It must be the children. A silly practical joke.'

I was going frantic. Much more slowly, Sister Elizabeth lumbered up the last rung and vanished into the room. I clambered up after her at speed. When I entered the room, Sister Elizabeth was leaning one hand on the table and panting.

The only other piece of furniture in the room was a large wooden rocking-chair. Just as I remembered, in fact. Draped in the chair and over it was a nun's black habit. Including a veil and rosary and all the other accoutrements you would need if you were to dress yourself up as a nun. Or to dress yourself if you were a nun.

At first glance there was certainly the impression of a black nun sitting there in the chair. A faceless nun. But the impression did not outlast the first second. We were looking at a set of empty and thus lifeless black clothes. Except—

'No shoes or stockings,' 1 thought suddenly, remembering my glimpse of Sister Elizabeth's stocking and goloshes.

'The children. It must be the children. They have an innocent sense of humour. They don't realise how distressing these things can be,' Sister Elizabeth muttered. She made no move to touch the clothes, I noticed. 'I'll tell Mother Ancilla and someone will fetch the habit in the morning.'

I thought: Yes. The children. The children - with their innocent sense of humour - had prepared some kind of reception tor me tonight. A sort of religious scarecrow. And I, by my early visit, had sprung their trap.

I wrinkled my nose. In the damp air, another smell disturbed me. A smell which should not have been there. For a moment I could not quite place it, although it was one of the most familiar smells of my urban life. I gazed around and my eye fell on the empty fireplace. Not quite empty. At the back of the fireplace, carelessly thrown down, were a host of cigarette stubs. No attempt had been made to conceal them.

I wondered if the nun's habit which was to greet me tonight had after all been intended to be empty. Maybe I should have to pay a return visit to the tower. It was an unlikely ghost who smoked Gauloises. And in such quantity. My spirits rose. Forewarned was, traditionally, forearmed. The Black Nun, habit and all, could expect a somewhat cynical reception from me in the late hours of the evening.

8

Secret witnesses

Supper that night in the refectory was a subdued meal. I was getting used to the tactiturn ways of Margaret Plantaganet. But Dodo's normally busy chatter was also absent. Alcohol did not play an enormous part in my life: I never drank spirits if I could help it, and I was not one of those who needed a drink or two to go on the television. In fact I avoided the pre-programme drinking as far as possible, leaving the traditional hospitality to my nubile aide, Cherry: 'Jemima's just on her way. And now won't you have another drink?' Consequently up till now I had not really noticed the total absence of alcohol from my life in the days at the convent.

Tonight I really felt the need for a drink at dinner. A carafe of wine, I reflected, would have loosened all our tongues. I remembered reading somewhere of American nuns in a newly emancipated Order who wore make-up and smoked and drank. How Americans exaggerated! Makeup did seem quite unnecessary in the brides of Christ, or perhaps that was just my Puritan streak. As for smoking - well, I had no particular feelings either way. As a non-smoker working in a profession of professional smokers, I felt more sorry for them and their addiction than anything else. But alcohol, now ... No doubt conversation in the American refectory (if they still had a refectory, that is, not a smart French restaurant) improved as a result.

Dodo and I exchanged polite news on the subject of my contemporary of the same surname, Dora Sheehy. Dodo turned out to have been named for her: 'Both of us Theodora,' she said, with a return to her old cheerfulness. 'But who could stick a name like that? She was Dora and I'm Dodo. Aunt Dora held me at my baptism, you know, she was my godmother. And why she didn't protest against another innocent child being lumbered with a name like Theodora I shall never know.'

'And Dora is now—?' I enquired delicately. On the familiar form I expected to hear: married to a doctor, probably Irish like herself, and mother of five children. '1 haven't heard from her in years,' I added untruthfully.

I had never heard from Dora Sheehy. There had been a brief competition between us - in school terms - for the friendship of Rosabelle. When I arrived at Blessed Eleanor's, Dora Sheehy was allegedly Rosabelle's best friend. And when I left, Rosabelle was unquestionably mine. But Dora, as I remembered her, had been a dull and rather sycophantic girl, whose good quality from Rosa's point of view, had been her subservience.

I much preferred Dodo, blonde curls, giggles and all. She had confided to me that she had ambitions to get into television once she had left the convent. I was not a bit surprised. One of the odd things about Blessed Eleanor's was how few of the girls had that ambition. At visits to ordinary schools for lectures or brains trusts, to say nothing of encounters with my friends' growing children, I was quite used to the sidling approaches of pretty teenagers: 'Is there an exam or something I can take?' Dodo at least was conforming to that norm.

'But she was
Sister
Theodora,' said Dodo. 'We talked of her the other night.'

'Sister Theodora of the Angels,' put in Margaret. It was her first remark of the evening. 'Murdered in Africa.' I felt curiously put down.

The plates were mainly empty. It would soon be the time for the traditional scraping back of our chairs and grace. Blanche Nelligan said, with a sudden very sweet smile, which lit up her heavy face:

'Would you come and have coffee with us for a change? In St Joseph's Sitting Room. We're allowed to entertain if we provide the coffee.'

'And we shall keep the odious Fourth Formers
out,'
added Dodo with a grimace. 'By fair means or foul.'

I realised that the restraint at dinner had been due to a genuine uncertainty as to whether I would accept the invitation. I was touched.

'Our coffee is much
much
better than Sister Clare's,' contributed Imogen Smith, blushing. I knew little about her so far except that she was Blanche's best friend, and always sat next to her.

'Immo brought it back from London on Sunday. Swiped from her mother's store cupboard.'

'But we'll pay her back of course—'

'Unless we decide that property is theft' - Margaret, with a rare grin.

'Oh, please let me—' I began feebly, feeling for my hand-bag. It was not there. Like the carafe of wine, that other accompaniment of life in a London restaurant, it seemed to have no place in the refectory.

'Actually the nuns don't exactly economise on things like coffee,' remarked Blanche later, pouring me an enormous mug right up to the brim with great care. It was made of thick grey china. There was no milk, and a plastic cup of white sugar had one plastic spoon sticking up out of it.

The coffee in point of fact was a great deal less nice than that provided by Sister Clare. I also thought rather wistfully of the delicate matching china in which her coffee appeared, white traced with green in a Chinese pattern. A beaker of hot milk, a jug of cold; coloured sugar crystals, tiny silver spoons - they were actually Apostle spoons, I was enchanted to notice. The tray was lined with a cloth embroidered, as only nuns could embroider, in an exact silk replica of the china's pattern. It was all no doubt arranged to the greater glory of God. But at the same time it was most delightful for mere mortals to behold.

'Yes, this is a pretty plush convent,' remarked Imogen. 'Basins in our rooms and carpets.'

'Those are your rooms,' I felt bound to point out. 'I doubt if the nuns have basins and carpets in their cells.'

'But we pay for them, don't we?' Blanche sounded plaintive. 'Out of our school fees.'

'Or rather our parents pay for them,' Dodo as usual put more energy into her complaints. 'And don't they let us know about it .. . The last time Mummy came here she told me my room was more luxurious than the room in the hotel Daddy took her to in France for a holiday. And that was a hotel
tres confortable
in Michelin. I said, if that was the case I would go to France, save the school fees, much nicer and she could come here for a holiday with Daddy.'

'We are
assez confortable
here, Miss Shore, you must admit,' Margaret interrupted. 'But that's not the point. The point is, how comfortable are the nuns? How comfortable should they be?'

Her voice, the intensity of her gaze, gave the remark considerable authority. The slightly frivolous conversation ceased. We all began to talk about Holy Poverty, at once and in different ways. Holy Poverty, and what that meant. Vocations, and what they meant. There was one insistent theme: surely nuns were better off nursing in Africa, refusing to abandon the sick, nursing to their last gasp (witness Sister Theodora of the Angels) than teaching a lot of upper-class brats in an over-plushy convent. The last vivid words were contributed by Dodo. I got the impression that she was repeating something once said by someone else. Before I could pursue the matter, Margaret stopped the conversation again.

'Your friend Sister Miriam didn't agree with all this luxury, Miss Shore. She wanted to leave the convent lands to the poor.'