Quiet as a Nun (7 page)

'Sister Miriam. They were first cousins - although of course Sister Agnes is considerably younger. She was born a Campion, Agnes Campion when she was at school here. She did not change her name in religion, which is of course rare in our Order. In fact,' Mother Ancilla added rather crossly, 'it used not to be allowed. Our Blessed Foundress ...' She rolled her eyes to heaven, but so automatically that I felt her mind was distinctly on earth. 'Our Blessed Foundress commanded us to throw away all earthly things in her rule, including the names our parents had given us.'

'While keeping her own?'

'Royalty. That's different.' Mother Ancilla swept on without embarrassment. 'A symbol for leaving our own houses for the house of God. There was a technical relaxation of the rule last year' - Mother Ancilla managed to cram an extraordinary distaste into the word 'technical' -'but I must say I was surprised when Sister Agnes took advantage of it.' After that Mother Ancilla's roving mind abandoned the subject of Sister Agnes's unexpected independence and returned to that of Rosabelle: 'The resemblance is of course much more marked in the religious habit. The eyes are so similar, don't you think? Sister Agnes had much darker hair, really jet black. Such a pretty child, her Spanish blood—'

I felt the subject of the ancestry of the Campions looming once more and said hastily:

'I did sense something familiar.' And so I had. 'But of course I never saw Rosabelle after she became a nun. I only heard indirectly that she had joined the community.' And that, in its own way, was true too.

Hadn't there been a letter? A long, long letter, all very earnest. In which Rosabelle examined herself and her problems in her small neat handwriting for page after page. She was in effect consulting me as to whether she should enter the convent. I knew it. Her father had recently died, she wrote, and she felt herself to be alone. Alone that is, except for the love of God. And - me. My friendship. An outsider. Not even a Catholic. I would be able to bring a fresh eye to it all: I had such a clear mind. And I would remember all our discussions on the subject in time gone by.

Yes, there had been a letter. And I had not answered it. Time gone by. It had arrived some time during my second year at Cambridge, when I was in the throes of enjoying that coveted place. Won with such grim concentration, it was now to be savoured. I had put the letter aside: Rosa and her problems seemed as remote as the time of the Blessed Eleanor.

Later I heard by chance from a cousin of hers at Cambridge, Celia Campion, a cheerful type, product of another convent school and rather improbably reading Maths: Rosabelle Powerstock had entered Blessed Eleanor's. Or as Celia put it, 'Cousin Rosa has taken the jolly old veil.'

'Mother Ancilla,' I said, 'I imagine that I am free to wander as I please while I'm here, to talk to whom I please, to ask what questions I like.'

'But of course, dear Jemima.' Mother Ancilla threw up her hands. 'That's what you are here for. An outsider's eye to see clearly what perhaps we, so close to it all, have missed.'

'In that case I think I should try to talk to several of the nuns singly, on the excuse of my television programme of course, try and feel my way round a bit.' That seemed to Mother Ancilla an excellent plan. Why not start tonight? Nothing wrong with that either. It was, she pointed out, the Feast of All Saints and thus a whole holiday. This evening there would be Solemn Benediction in the chapel which I might like to attend? Yes, I would like to attend it, the music at Blessed Eleanor's being a speciality not to be missed. Afterwards the children would be watching a film -
The Sound of Music,
as a matter of fact. Such a lovely uplifting film. Had I ever interviewed Julie Andrews? No, what a pity - but any member of the community would be free for a chat.

In this way I had intended to ask to see Sister Edward. I thought I might just as well grasp the nettle of her hysteria at the beginning of my investigations, rather than let an unpleasant and fundamentally rather pointless interview hang over me. I shall never understand what impulse led me to substitute the name of Sister Agnes for that of Sister Edward. I certainly did not believe in such split second decisions being manifestations of some divine plan. More likely it was something in Mother Ancilla's manner, a conviction that she was unwilling to discuss Sister Agnes, which prompted me.

Besides I was already falling half in love with my own cover story of a programme about women in orders. Why not, after all? Once I had cleared up Mother Ancilla's little problem for her. From the point of view of television, Sister Edward would be quite hopeless. But Sister Agnes now, so calm in a confused situation as I had already discovered. In her appearance, come to think of it, there was more than a hint of Audrey Hepburn in
A Nun's Story.
I should have remembered that I was supposed to be on holiday from my programme and not listened to the whisperings of the television devil.

Under the auspices of Solemn Benediction, the chapel seemed to be involved in some vast royal wedding service. The priests wore heavy white robes traced with gold and silver. Great golden tassels hung down from their copes. Candles filled the chapel, a series of bright tiers, which it must have taken the sacristan nun a laborious age to light. How different the chapel seemed from the menacing darkness of the night before! As the censors were swung gravely to and fro, first to the altar, then to the congregation, the heavy fruity smell of incense began to permeate the air. It would linger, I knew, in the still air of the chapel, long after those bridal candles were extinguished, and Sister Agnes knelt alone in the darkness before the sanctuary lamp, saying her novena.

Sweet Sacrament divine

All praise and all thanksgiving

Be every moment thine

Sweet Sa-a-a-crament divine ...

People talk of the purity of boys' voices in a choir. But to me that evening there was a purity and an anguish about the female voices singing, which lingered in my mind long after the voices were still, as the incense lingered in the chapel. All that was missing was the bride: no doubt each lonely heart imagined that she was the bride in the centre of this superb ritual: the bride of Christ.

The nuns knelt or stood on one side of the chapel, the girls on the other. Visitors occupied seats at the back of the school benches. I glanced across at the nuns. It was no longer true that one nun looked much like another. I was beginning to be able to distinguish them again quite easily. Sister Damian the hedgehog, Sister Clare the plump coffee-bringer, and one or two nuns who had certainly been there in my day. That was Sister Elizabeth for sure, hardly changed, Sister Liz, the famed teacher of English, for whom Wordsworth and the lyric poets occupied roles in her pantheon not much below the saints. And Sister Hippolytus, the Hippo, who stood towards history as Sister Elizabeth stood towards English. Here the long history of the convent was the thing to conjure with, preferably in terms of the many documents and records perused by Sister Hippolytus in the convent library, to which no-one else paid any attention - foolishly, in the opinion of Sister Hippolytus. Many a history lesson had been hopelessly misrouted by a casual enquiry from Rosa or myself:

'Sister, is it true that the
O.T.I
. isn't really an English foundation at all? But Belgian.'

'Our Belgian sister house is a post-Reformation foundation' - Sister Hippo would begin fiercely, unable to resist the bait. Nevertheless, once concentrated on such matters as the Age of the Enlightened Despots, a strict teacher in contrast to the effusive Sister Liz. I owed a lot to them both, I had come to realise ... How could the younger nuns hope to compete with these established figures, who had enjoyed all the certainty of the old-style Church? Nuns in the modern world indeed. No wonder Rosabelle had collapsed under the strain. And Sister Edward looked like following her ... I really would have to talk to Sister Edward tomorrow. It was only fair.

My chat with Sister Agnes took place in the empty guest room next to mine, by permission of Reverend Mother. She told me that I could use it as a sitting room. The decor included the Assumption by Murillo and various other scenes in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Sister Agnes did indeed have a Murillo-like air as she faced me across the mock fire-place with its single electric bar. She looked both demure and collected. She did not in truth greatly resemble Rosabelle, except around the eyes, but then, as Mother Ancilla pointed out, I had never seen Rosa in her habit.

And Sister Agnes, in response to my questions, remained demure and collected throughout. She gave the impression of a cricketer who has been instructed by his captain neither to score runs nor to let a ball pass by. Yes, these were difficult times for women in religion with so many new opportunities open to their contemporaries. No, she did not feel they were
specially
difficult times: for when had the life of women in religion been easy? You did not give yourself to God expecting an easy time. And so on and so on. Nothing I could not have written down in advance for myself.

So I was surprised that when our anodyne interview was concluded, Sister Agnes did not immediately leave the room. She stood, her hands clutching the top of the ugly guest room chair, much as I had supported myself on the pew the previous night.

'Miss Shore, there is one further thing I should tell you,' said Sister Agnes in her well-modulated voice. 'You will discover nothing to your advantage here. Nothing. Do you understand me? Nothing.' Her voice was not raised a half-tone from our previous conversation and the words in themselves hardly sounded dramatic. But it was her eyes. She could not control her eyes. They were dilated, either in fear or anger, I did not know her well enough to say.

'Why don't you go home while you can?'

With this, Sister Agnes passed swiftly from the room. According to the noise of the swing doors she had gone directly to the nuns' wing. Not to the chapel this evening for her novena, unless she had taken the long way round by the nuns' staircase.

It was not until the next morning, the feast of All Souls, that I learnt of the death of Sister Edward, suddenly in her cell, during the night.

6

The Black Nun

The feast of All Souls, following All Saints, proved as doleful a day as I could remember. It even rained. The leaves in the drive ceased to scutter in the wind but congregated in sodden heaps. More leaves were driven off the dripping trees. Altogether it was a day of lamentation in the fullest tradition of the ancient faith. Now the black vestments of the priests matched with the black habits of the nuns. The girls wore short black veils over their hair in chapel in contrast to the flowing white veils of the previous feast day. The multitudinous flowers of the night before, great pyramids and obelisks of white chrysanthemums, had vanished. Whatever happened to them? A hospital, I wondered vaguely. But the nearest hospital was miles away and Churne Cottage Hospital had been shut down.

At least that question was answered a day later. I found it macabre that the same flowers, still in their festive pinnacles, were used to flank the plain wooden coffin of Sister Edward as it lay in the chapel in the days before burial.

The Commemoration of the Dead, I reflected bitterly, was a gloomy enough subject without the additional demise of a young nun from a heart attack following an asthmatic fit.

Dies Irae, Dies Illae,
day of mourning, day of weeping. As the magnificent sombre words of the requiem rang out in the chapel, I thought of Mother Ancilla in savage terms. She, with the rest of the community, would probably consider it a happy coincidence that Sister Edward's poor weak heart had chosen November the second to give up the struggle for life. While her lungs still struggled for breath. Look how her coffin benefited from the flowers of the previous day's feast: Holy economy! I was in that kind of mood.

'Her medicines were all within reach,' Sister Lucy told me desperately. There were tears in her eyes. 'If only she had had the strength to take them.' Sister Lucy was the young nun who had recently succeeded old Sister Boniface as infirmarian. I was glad to see those tears in her eyes. She was human enough for that. Sister Boniface, on the other hand, sitting like an aged tortoise at the end of the dispensary, showed no emotion. I was unfair, I was being unfair, and I knew it. But I got the impression that Sister Boniface regarded the death of Sister Edward as a kind of defeat for modern stimulants.

She had apparently expressed considerable doubts as to the wisdom of dosing Sister Edward so consistently. But Dr Mayhew, who attended the convent, had been a great believer in the therapeutic power of such things.

'He said: with all these aids, there was no reason why she shouldn't lead a normal life,' Sister Lucy repeated. 'In so far as a nun's life is normal. I mean, that's what he said.' Sister Lucy was clearly in a state of great distress. Sister Boniface snorted and twitched her rosary. Her fingers were incredibly gnarled, like the roots of trees in an Arthur Rackham drawing. Arthritis: the endemic disease of ageing women living in damp conditions. Probably the nuns' quarters were not even heated - or only for one month of the year or something mediaeval like that. I shivered. Pain did not however stop Sister Boniface being as garrulous as ever.

My new mood of bitterness towards the convent and all its works had its origin in guilt. I could not rid myself of regret that I had not chosen to interview Sister Edward, as I had intended. It was not that I felt she had now taken her secrets with her to the grave or anything ridiculous like that. Just that something so chancy as a heart attack must depend on so many elements. My interview, the relief of talking to an outsider, might have even saved her from the fatal bout of asthma.

The dispensary lay just outside the infirmary which, like the convent itself, was divided into a nuns' and a children's section. Dr Mayhew had just left, after signing the death certificate. There was no doubt about it. Sister Edward had died from natural causes - if you could call anything about a nun natural, to echo the doctor's own words.