Vow of Chastity (2 page)

Sister Joan went to her own place and knelt, fixing her eyes on the carved altar with its star-shaped monstrance, the twin candlesticks, and
Communion-cup
. The Tarquin family had been wealthy once, able to maintain their own chaplain. Now the chapel had come into its own again, lovingly polished by Sister David, with flowers arranged by Sister Martha whose delicate hands could not only work wonders with leaf and stem but also regularly wielded shovel and hoe and carted compost.

Balance, thought Sister Joan, is the essence of normality: yin and yang; silver and gold; night and day; man and woman. The religious life, by its very nature, was not balanced. She lived in a female atmosphere with only old Father Malone to supply a dash of masculinity when he chatted briefly with the Sisters over a cup of tea after Mass or Benediction. And father Malone was no Rhett Butler. She bit back an irreverent grin and bowed her head, giving herself up to the silent companionship of the unseen that flowed through the quiet chapel. At least – at most there was always that to redress the balance, that sense of utter and undemanding love that transcended sexual needs.

It was past four. Though her watch was in her cell she knew the time by the faint lightening of the sky through the stained-glass windows. In an hour the rising bell would clang as Sister Margaret clumped upstairs on her flat sensible feet. There was nothing other-worldly about Sister Margaret, unlike Sister Hilaria, the novice mistress, who floated through her days on a cloud of ecstasy. There had been grave doubts expressed about allowing her to remain as novice mistress.

‘A saintly soul,’ Sister Gabrielle had opined, ‘but not the type to knock all the romantic nonsense out of the heads of the postulants.’

Reverend Mother Dorothy had, however, continued as before and Mother Dorothy was a sharply intelligent woman who presumably knew what she was doing. At any rate it was none of her business, she decided, and realized that the companionship had faded as her thoughts had wandered. Not abruptly or angrily but softly like a lover who is content to wait until the beloved recollects again.

A faint sound at the door made her turn her head. A plump figure, coifed and veiled, had entered and, genuflecting, seated herself in her own place, hands comfortably folded, broad face upturned as her lips moved silently.

What in the world was Sister Margaret doing in the chapel before rising bell time? Did she too, beneath her
placid exterior, suffer the devils of sleeplessness? Sister Joan finished her own prayers in a somewhat distracted manner and rose, glancing towards the other, who seemed unaware of her presence.

It would be charity to wait, to find out if any human sympathy were needed. She moved to the Lady Altar and stood there uncertainly, noticing with some surprise that the vase at the feet of the Madonna statue was empty. Sister Martha was always very punctilious about keeping the vases filled even in winter, searching far afield for berried sprays and some hardy blooms, and this was spring.

Sister Margaret was getting up, genuflecting, turning towards the door, giving a slight start as she noticed the other.

‘Sister, is anything wrong?’ She hesitated before she spoke, mindful of the grand silence, but obviously regarding the presence of Sister Joan as sufficient excuse for the occasion to constitute an emergency.

‘I thought something might be wrong for you,’ Sister Joan said.

‘Me? Oh no, Sister, I’m fine.’ Sister Margaret smiled with evident relief. ‘No, I like to pop in here before the day starts – just for a little chat with Our Dear Lord, you know. I don’t get much time for a heart to heart with all the cooking to be done – not that cooking isn’t a joy. But sometimes it can get a mite lonely with no other lay sister, so a bit of a chat works wonders.’

She nodded towards the altar, her eyes serene in the plain, practical face.

Odd, Sister Joan thought, feeling suddenly much smaller, but the idea of Sister Margaret having intimate chats with the Divinity had never entered her head. Sister Margaret was the convent mainstay, managing to produce two meals a day on a limited budget, constantly on the go, her large feet clumping along the corridors.

‘Do you mean He –?’ She paused, unsure how to proceed.

‘Visions and stuff?’ Sister Margaret looked amused. ‘Never a one. Why, I’d be scared out of my wits, I think.
Not spiritual enough yet, I suppose. But we get along, He and I. Are you all right, dear?’

‘Yes, thank you, Sister.’

And that’s not true either. I’m so puffed up with my own concerns that I feel an insulting astonishment that a lay sister should enjoy such intimacy with the unseen that she needs no ecstasy.

‘Then I’ll get on.’ Sister Margaret paused, looking at the empty vase. ‘Oh dear, what happened to the flowers – ever such nice daffodils they were. I remember thinking at Benediction how Our Dear Lady must be enjoying them. I’ll pop out later and put some more in. Sister Martha will be upset if she sees they’ve gone.’

‘Gone where?’

‘One of the postulants likely spilled the water and disposed of the flowers,’ Sister Margaret said, looking slightly uncertain. ‘While I’m about it I’d better jot down a note to buy more candles. Sometimes I think we must eat candles – they vanish so fast.’

‘Do they?’ Sister Joan cast a frowning look towards the box where the candles were kept and followed the lay sister into the corridor.

‘I do beg your pardon, Sister,’ the other said, pausing suddenly, ‘but I caused you to break the grand silence by talking to you. Happily there’s general confession this evening so I won’t have it on my conscience for too long. Just one other thing. I’d take it very kindly if you didn’t mention the little chats – I’d not want anyone to think that I was setting myself up to be singular or anything like that. So, now for the new day.’

She clumped ahead, lifting the large bell from its hook by the door, beginning to ring it as she mounted the main staircase, her cheerful voice booming, ‘Christ is risen.’

‘Thanks be to God,’ Sister Joan responded
automatically
, following, closing the door of her cell behind her just as the scattered voices began to chorus their sleepy replies.

She felt sleepy herself now but two hours’ prayer lay ahead before the night’s fast was broken with a cup of
coffee, a slice of bread and a piece of fruit, eaten standing according to the rule. She sloshed cold water over her face, dried it on the small towel, cleaned her teeth, wriggled out of nightgown and dressing-gown and into the ankle length grey habit and exchanged the cotton nightcap for coif and short veil, marvelling as she always did that she could achieve perfect neatness without the aid of a mirror. During her postulence the art of doing that as efficiently as the professed nuns had seemed as impossible an ambition as learning how to levitate.

When she re-entered the chapel she glanced at the Lady Altar and saw that the vase already held daffodils again, their golden heads drooping forlornly as if they knew that Sister Margaret’s chapped and unskilful hands had pushed them in.

Saturday meant no school, no ride across the moor on Lilith’s broad back. Saturday meant helping Sister David to catalogue the library which was extensive and would take several more years to get into perfect order. It meant preparing her lessons for the following week, making lists of school supplies to be obtained. It meant the general confession at the end of the day – an ordeal at the best of times but doubly to be dreaded when she had so much on her conscience.

The day went too quickly. Time always sped past when she was in the library under any circumstances and the sorting and cataloguing of the volumes bequeathed by the Tarquin family was an absorbing task.

‘Anything of an equivocal nature is to be set aside for my consideration,’ the prioress had said.

‘Out with Jackie Collins and in with Barbara Cartland,’ Sister Joan had murmured to Sister Teresa who had looked suitably shocked and then giggled, earning
herself
an icy look from Mother Dorothy.

At 12.30 was the first real meal of the day – soup in winter, salad with cheese or fish in summer, two thick slices of bread and nice cold water with a spoonful of honey since Sister Perpetua believed in its youth giving qualities.

In the afternoon she took herself back to the library
armed with a pile of exercise books and a red pencil. The little local school where she taught had been endowed originally for the Tarquin family’s tenants whose children found it difficult in the era before buses to get to the school in Bodmin. It still remained, attended by the younger children of local farmers and intermittently by the Romany children when they weren’t off playing truant and poaching. Sister Joan enjoyed the work though she often wondered if anything she tried to drum into the heads of her pupils would ever be of the slightest use to them in after years.

For homework during the week she had set them a short composition on their favourite flowers. The task had been completed and handed in by six out of her ten pupils, which wasn’t too bad when she remembered the groan the boys had sent skywards. Two of the entries could scarcely be classified as homework, however. One was smudged with so much ink that it was impossible to read; the other contained a statement of rebellion.

I
cant
make
up
stuff
about
flewers
becaus
I
am
NOT
QUEER
,

Yurs
respectful
,

Conrad
Smith.

Conrad was thirteen and should have been sent regularly to school years before. He came from the less law-abiding branch of the large Romany family camped out on the moor, and only sat in her classroom now because of the threats of his mother who was sick of being chased by the school inspector. Conrad, thought Sister Joan, showed a pleasing spirit of independence, and turned with less enjoyment to Madelyn Penglow’s book in which she had carefully copied the over familiar lines by Wordsworth, apparently under the serene misapprehension that her teacher would regard them as her own invention.

Two of the others had drawn pictures of rather stylized-looking birds – or perhaps they were meant to be flowers? The remaining piece of work was also about daffodils, which at this season was hardly surprising. What was surprising was its content.

Neatly written, properly spelt, and not from any poetry collection that Sister Joan had ever seen. Samantha Olive’s book. She was new to the district, her parents having just moved here. A slim child of eleven or twelve with bright green eyes in an otherwise ordinary little face. Sister Joan hadn’t paid much heed to her, deeming it better to let the child settle in before she started assessing her. The doggerel rhyme was not what she would have expected.

She put the books aside, drew the copy of the timetable towards her and began to jot down ideas for the coming week – a nature ramble, a spelling bee, a talk about Philip Sidney to get across the idea that not all poets were effeminate – the bell for private study rang. Time to get out the journal that every Sister kept and note down her sins, her meditation thoughts, her private heart – all useful evidence in the unlikely event of the cause for canonisation being introduced for any of them in the future.

I
accuse
myself
,
Sister Joan wrote neatly in the thick, black-covered notebook,
of
having
dreamed
erotically
–
was a dream a sin? Had it ever been erotic? More frightening and embarrassing, she considered. Not erotically then. She inked out the work, apple-pied the offending letters as the prioress was sometimes constrained to do, writing the words ‘apple pie’ over parts of letters and books that might prove disturbing or unsuitable for more susceptible nuns to read.

I
accuse
myself
of
not
taking
sufficient
time
to
consider
my
sins
and
thus
of
being
forced
to
cross
out
words,
wasting
space
and
defacing
the
book.
I
accuse
myself
of
dwelling
overmuch
on
a
nightmare
concerned
with
things
quite
irrelevant
to
my
present
situation
–

‘I never thought I’d end up as an irrelevancy,’ Jacob said inside her head, his eyes tenderly mocking.

She rubbed him out of her head and wrote on.

I
accuse
myself
of
having
left
my
sleeping
quarters,
gone 
down
to
the
kitchen,
and
drunk
a
mug
of
milk
without
permission
and
of
having
broken
the
grand
silence
and
of
having
incited
two
of
my
Sisters
in
Christ
to
have
followed
my
example –
not strictly true since Sister Gabrielle had broken silence first, but she was old and might be excused on the grounds of forgetfulness.

I
accuse
myself
of
spiritual
pride
and
aridity,
and
pray
God
and
you
,
my
dear
Sisters
,
to
forgive
and
understand
these
my
faults.