Quiet as a Nun Read online

  I felt too drowsy to investigate. Besides, I needed my sleep. For I was always awake early in the convent, what with the chapel bells and the shuffle of the children going to early mass. In London I considered myself, and allowed the world to consider me, an early riser. I prided myself on my ability to take testing telephone calls at full strength from eight o'clock onwards. But I had to admit that the need to appear fresh and purposeful for a refectory breakfast at 7.45 was another matter altogether. As I drifted into sleep, I made a mental note to explore the convent grounds the next day. Such an expedition might be combined with a talk to one of the nuns. The tower above all presented an emotional problem. It might be better not to visit it for the first time after Rosa's death, at night - and alone.

  In the morning I went into Churne. I had decided to buy a torch. Sister Lucy, on her way to have a prescription made up, offered me a lift. I accepted, wondering privately whether she wanted an escort to run the gauntlet of Churne. In the event, I had no time to worry about the local inhabitants. For Sister Lucy drove with a terrifying recklessness, amounting almost to innocence, which robbed me of all other considerations except for a desire for the safety of my own beloved Volvo. Down Churne Hill, a notorious winding black-spot, the battered Mini Traveller driven by Sister Lucy was definitely the faster vehicle of the two.

  One of my winces must have attracted her attention. I was recalling the old saying, repeated by my mother, that nuns made rotten drivers because they paid too much attention to St Christopher, too little to the Highway Code. In the car driven by Sister Lucy there was not even a St Christopher to aid us - hadn't he been demoted by the Vatican? Come back, St Christopher—

  'Don't worry, Miss Shore,' Sister Lucy spoke quite calmly. 'I know this car like the back of my hand.' She did not mention the hill. Then she added rather shyly: 'As a matter of fact, though I really should not mention it, this car belonged to me once. In the world, I mean. Now of course it belongs to the community. It was my dowry to the convent. All I was able to bring them.'

  'That, and your skill, Sister,' I said earnestly, trying not to look out of the window.

  She blushed and looked genuinely pleased. On the way back Sister Lucy confided to me that Sister Elizabeth could hardly be trusted at the wheel of the Mini, having learnt to drive late in life. It was only then I realised she had taken my compliment as referring to her skill as a driver, rather than as a nurse.

  The funereal rain had blown itself out by lunch-time. Only piles of sodden leaves and pools of water on the gravel drive served to remind us of the night's storm. But clearer sharper weather was on the way. My diary reminded me to expect a full moon that night. Surely the weather often changed around the time of the full moon.

  After the previous day's Times had been properly perused, Tom received a quick note in my familiar style: 'Darling, your speech was good. I'm having a holiday away from everything, your world of the (political) poor and my world of the (television) rich, and that's good too. All my love J.' I drew a heart at the end.

  Yes, his speech had been good, full of honest compassion for the poor and honest indignation against the government. The poor, if they read The Times, would undoubtedly be pleased. The government, who undoubtedly did read The Times, would not. Tom could be proud of his intervention. I gave no address and allowed the letter to be posted with the rest of the children's mail. I doubted if the postmark Churne would mean anything to Tom.

  The children's letters were put on a chest outside the refectory, as they had been in my day. It was amusing to note that the letters were now sealed, while the destinations could still be read by any inspector. In my day the boarders had their letters read by Mother Ancilla. According to Rosa it was a task she performed with lip-smacking thoroughness. According to Rosa, too, Mother Ancilla was not above making pointed allusions to the contents of a letter, if it suited her purpose. Rosa proceeded to organise my services as a postman; girls who wanted to write uncensored letters were urged to place them in my trustworthy hands.

  'Is this quite all right, do you think darling?' asked my mother anxiously one day. She was enormously impressed by the whole convent set-up: and secretly adored the idea of the glamorous highborn girls with whom her own much lower-born daughter was mixing. Mother Ancilla's references to lineage found a ready audience in my mother. We had a couple of Italian princesses in the school, whose English mother had taken refuge here in the war. They were listed merely as Pia and Vittoria. And received scant shrift from us girls, as unpopular Wops, particularly when the Italian campaign was in full swing. But Mother Ancilla always gave the whole family, mother and daughters, the full rolling due of their titles. She also liked to practise the Italian learnt so many years ago in a visit to Rome as a novice. 'Principessa' was quite one of her favourite words, I decided.

  'Fancy Princess Pia being descended from the Pope!' said my mother admiringly one day.

  It was probably true, given the nature of early papacies. But I was already feeling a nasty instinct to put my mother in her place whenever she got a particular starry-eyed look.

  'Popes don't have children,' I replied coldly. 'I should have thought even you knew that.' Fatally my mother gave way and tried to ingratiate herself with me.

  'I do envy your opportunities here, Jem. You're learning such interesting things. Daddy and I sometimes wonder if you might even, well,- think of becoming a Roman. I mean a Catholic,' she added nervously.

  Either way she made it sound like a form of career like a teacher or a gym instructor. I did not deign to answer. I quelled my mother's objections to my clandestine postal service with equal use of intimidation by coldness.

  Only Rosa never made use of my services. Did she have no boy friends, I wondered? I never enquired. Jealously, I preferred to cherish the fantasy that Rosa did not trust me to post her love notes. She told me other things about her holidays, casually, without emphasis. But the boys, with names like Marcus and Peregrine, all turned out to be cousins. On her mother's side. The Campion family, for all its ancient blood, turned out to be infinitely more prolific and thus capable of survival than the more plebeian Powerstocks.

  I did ask once: 'Do you like him, Marcus?' I tried to keep the note of caring out of my voice.

  'He's my cousin,' said Rosa in that blank voice she reserved for matters which she clearly felt were too obvious to need discussing. And that was that.

  Looking at these letters now, laid out for inspection, I was pleased to see that some of them were boldly addressed to males. Robin Nelligan Esq., Ampleforth College, York. Jasper Justin Esq., Eton College, Windsor, Berks ... So perhaps freedom was on the march after all. It then occurred to me that Robin and Justin were probably the brothers of Blanche and Tessa. So perhaps things had not changed so much after all. There was also an established safe ring about most of the addresses. Tom would have been full of scorn for them.

  But of course it was ridiculous to suppose then as now that any really subversive letter would be left out on the chest. Rosa's letter to Alexander Skarbek for example. The nuns' letters could be distinguished by the quality of their paper - small and thin - often by the precise handwriting also, and always by the letters A.M.D.G. in the corner. That letter to Skarbek certainly did not lie out on this chest, open to curious eyes. The extent of Alex Skarbek's participation in Rosa's tragedy was still unknown to me. How had he taken the news of Rosa's death, for example, and the consequent collapse of her property hand-over scheme? The coroner's remarks had not dealt with that side of her life and death, mercifully: there had been no need to air in public the proposed handover, which had caused such pain in private. But Alex Skarbek had the reputation, at least in Tom's circles,, for rigid determination. It always amused me to see how Tom and his friends of the W.N.G. derided in their opponents exactly those qualities which led to their own triumphs.

  'An extremist ... quite ruthless in manipulating people ... thinks anything is justified so long as it advances the Project...' So Tom muttered indignantly
, with Emily Crispin, indicating agreement by her silence, close beside him. Yet Tom's brilliance in outmanoeuvring the government on the subject of housing subsidies for one parent families was generally acknowledged to be his greatest coup on behalf of the W.N.G. I knew all about that coup: it was the over-friendly young minister on my programme who had let slip the details of what the

  government was going to propose. I thought Tom's action - and my own - morally justified in view of the use we made of the information. But all the same, not too scrupulous.

  Alexander Skarbek: had he simply accepted the loss of his new commune, on the verge of establishment, as one of the losses of war? In this case, the war being against society?

  That was an area where Mother Ancilla might be gently probed further. After that it was tempting to contact the man himself in London. One advantage of having my own programme was that no-one with an axe of his own to grind resented my approach. He always hoped to turn my platform to his own advantage.

  I walked round the hockey fields in the afternoon with my old friend and teacher Sister Elizabeth. She was not aware that I also had the key to the tower in my pocket - I had requested it from Mother Ancilla. The Reverend Mother had asked for no explanation, merely handed it to me.

  'The only other key is on my belt,' she said, patting a bunch of keys. 'We don't want any more - mistakes, do we?'

  Sister Liz and I paraded round the hockey fields. I watched an extremely energetic black figure hurtling towards the goal with a hockey stick wielded to deadly effect: Sister Immaculata. Surely she could not still be playing hockey after all these years. I remembered what a shock it gave me to find that nuns, at the sight of a hockey field, merely looped up their black skirts, and tackled the game with their usual brisk efficiency, veils and all. The maroon coloured figures of the girls were considerably more lackadaisical in their attitude to the game.

  The only other participant showing any energy at all was wearing a short black skirt, black stockings, a black jersey with a white collar and a short black veil which revealed most of her hair - luxuriant hair. A postulant. I had to look up the word in the dictionary while I was at school. Postulant: Candidate, especially for admission into religious order. Tom I suppose was a parliamentary postulant at the general election. At least I was firmly on the side of his election. I wasn't sure what I felt about this girl's candidature. From the convent's point of view, however, it was a good thing that there were still some new vocations around: now that the Order of the Tower of Ivory was not after all to be dispossessed by the Projectors.

  'She's Irish,' said Sister Elizabeth, following the direction of my gaze. 'Of course.'

  Sister Elizabeth was a woman for whom I had a genuine affection, nun or no nun. Her generosity of spirit, her mad enthusiasm for literature in all its forms, endeared her to me. There was a Margaret Rutherford touch about her zest. With her flailing arms, springy walk (signally untouched by the passage of twenty-five years), and her earnestness, she really was not unlike my idea of Margaret Rutherford, supposing she had ever played the part of a nun.

  Sister Liz was the only woman in the world capable of exclaiming: 'I thanked Our Blessed Lord on my knees this morning for making Wordsworth write the Prelude at such length.'

  Of course as a schoolgirl I was attracted to her, just because her values did not seem totally permeated by those of the Catholic religion. We had corresponded in a desultory way after I left. 'I shall pray for you,' Sister Liz dutifully ended her letters. But I knew she prayed for sensible things like a proper understanding of Paradise Lost or a real appreciation of The Waste Land, not lost causes like my conversion.

  Now we chatted easily on literary matters. The Christianity of King Lear was one topic; Sister Liz's determination to discuss James Joyce came as more of a surprise to me. Then I realised that she must have few opportunities to discuss Joyce's work. Of the two of us, it was I, not Sister Elizabeth, who shrank from discussing fully some aspects of Joyce's nature. I was uncertain where I should draw the line in order not to shock her. Sister Liz on the other hand had a kind of sublime frankness about her remarks which left nothing to the imagination. It sprang, I realised, from innocence. My own reticence was rooted in guilt.

  Only the fact that our returning steps had led us to the entrance to the nuns' little cemetery made Sister Liz draw breath. We paused and, by unspoken agreement, entered through the low gate. It was an out of the way place. The girls did not come here. The seclusion was ensured by the high dark hedge surrounding the grass. Rows of plain stone crosses marked the last resting places of the community. The inscription on each was identical in form, and minimal. Sister John Brodsky O.T.I. 1900-1935. Below the name and dates: R.I.P. And that was all.

  The last cross in the sequence was the one I feared. But it could not be avoided. Yes, here it was. Sister Miriam Powerstock O.T.I. 1932-1973 R.I.P.

  At my side I noted that Sister Liz crossed herself. Then she held her rosary and her lips moved silently. I felt nothing, nothing at all. Then feelings did rush in, overwhelmingly, into the vacuum. I felt fiercely that there was no connection, none at all between this plain stone cross and the young girl who had once been my friend. My compassion, such as it was, was reserved for the memory of Sister Edward who would soon lie in the neighbouring earth.

  'I can't accept that this is anything to do with Rosa. I don't believe Rosa is here, you know.' My aggressive voice rang out in the quiet graveyard.

  'Mother Church would agree with you about that,' replied Sister Elizabeth mildly. 'She's not here. Only her poor tormented earthly body lies here. May God have mercy on her soul.' And she crossed herself again.

  Abruptly I asked Sister Liz if she would accompany me across the fields to the tower. I pulled the key out of my pocket. It was a bright new Yale key. The key to the padlock which now secured the tower, as Mother Ancilla had instructed me. Not the ancient rusty key which had broken off during Rosa's frantic struggles to escape her self-imposed fate. By now I needed to exorcise that tower for myself, and Sister Liz with her warmth and compassion, her understanding of people beyond the narrow prescription of the convent, was the right person to accompany me. The evening's possible adventure had quite vanished from my mind.

  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.