Quiet As A Nun Part 1

Quiet as a Nun.

Antonia Fraser.

For Rebecca Who read it first.

The holy time is quiet as a Nun, Breathless with adoration.

Wordsworth.

1.

Out of the past.

Sometimes when I feel low, I study the Evening Standard an though for an examination. It was in that way I found the small item on the Home News page: NUN FOUND DEAD. It was not a very promising headline. Nevertheless I conscientiously read the few lines of print below. It staved off the moment when I would look round the empty flat resolving to cook myself a proper meal for once, and knowing that I would not do so.

'Sister Rosabelle Mary Powerstock,' the story continued, 'of Blessed Eleanor's Convent, Churne, Suss.e.x, was found dead today in a locked building on the outskirts of the convent grounds. It is believed that the forty-one-year-old nun, known as Sister Miriam at the convent where she had lived for eighteen years, had been taken ill and was unable to raise the alarm. Reverend Mother Ancilla Curtis said today that Sister Miriam would be a great loss to the community of the Order of the Tower of Ivory, and would be sadly missed by her many pupils, past and present.

'Sister Miriam was the daughter of a former Lord Mayor of London.'

Before I had finished reading the short item, I had been transported back a whole generation. I knew that ruined building. It was in fact a tower. Blessed Eleanor's Retreat, as the nuns called it, in memory of the foundress of the Order of the Tower of Ivory. Sometimes irreverently referred to by the girls as Nelly's Nest.

For that matter I knew Sister Miriam. Or I had known Rosabelle Powerstock? Rosa. Had I known Sister Miriam? On consideration, no. But for a short while, long ago, I had known Rosabelle Powerstock very well indeed. For a few moments the cold elegant surroundings of affluent London in the seventies dissolved. It was wartime. A little Protestant day-girl sent by the vagaries of her father's career to a smart Catholic boarding convent conveniently next door. Bewildered and rather excited by the mysterious world in which she found herself. The resolute kindness of the nuns - was there any kindness like it for the undaunted firmness of its warmth whatever the reaction of its recipient? Reaching its final expression in Reverend Mother Ancilla.

*I learnt that the nuns in their religious life adopted a name, Latin or otherwise, for some virtue or religious att.i.tude they particularly admired; failing that, the name of some especially inspiring saint. Ancilla meant Handmaid of the Lord - echoing the great submissive answer of the Virgin Mary to the angel's unexpected announcement of her coming motherhood, 'Behold the Handmaid of the Lord.' No doubt the Lord had been happy with his handmaid, Ancilla Curtis: but it was difficult even now to envisage any relationship in which Mother Ancilla was not the dominant partner.

And Rosa - the late Sister Miriam. So she had taken that name in religion. She had always declared her intention of doing so - if she became a nun. It had been a fashionable topic of conversation at Blessed Eleanor's.

'If I become a nun, and of course I wouldn't dream of doing such a thing, I'm going to marry and have six children, then I'll be Sister Hugh. After little St Hugh of Lincoln.'

'I'll be Sister Elizabeth. After St Elizabeth of Hungary who gave bread to the poor and it turned to roses when her husband tried to stop her.'

'Did the poor eat the roses?' I enquired. I was not trying to mock. I was fascinated by the whole concept. To cover up, I said quickly: 'If I become a nun, that is to say if I become a Catholic first, and then become a nun, I'll be Sister Francis.'

How lovely. The birds. The dear little animals. That met with general approval.

'No, not St Francis of a.s.sisi.' Honesty - or cussedness - compelled me to add, 'St Francis Xavier.' I had just been reading about the origins of the Society of Jesus, and the heroic struggles of that St Francis to convert the j.a.panese, dying in the attempt. Like many non-Catholics I was morbidly intrigued by the Jesuits. Secretly, the one I would really like to have chosen was St Ignatius.

'Jemima should be Sister Thomas,' said Rosa sweetly. 'Doubting Thomas.'

'Isn't Miriam rather an Old Testament sort of name?' I countered. I meant rather Jewish.

'It's one of the t.i.tles of Our Lady. Our Lady Star of the Sea.' Rosa loved to snub and enlighten me at the same time about the intricacies of her religion. Humbly, I loved to listen to her. I thought of the other t.i.tles in that great litany. Star of the Sea, pray for us. Mystical Rose pray for us. Tower of Ivory, pray for us.

Like most Protestants, I knew the Bible much better than my Catholic friends. Besides, my terrifying nonconformist grandfather had been fond of reading it aloud. He was particularly fond of the Song of Solomon. 'Thy neck is as a tower of ivory,' sang Solomon - and thus my grandfather in his booming voice, Thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon by the gate of Bath-rabbim ...' Fish pools. Not very pretty to modern ears. But thinking about fish pools, dark, with swirling depths, the phrase was not inapt to Rosa's eyes in certain moods.

Mysterious Rosa, once my Star of the Sea, was now dead - in her ruined Tower of Ivory.

I shook myself, to remove the touch of memories long buried. Wartime had brought strange schooling to many, and quick changes. After the war my parents had decided to go back to their original Lincolnshire and make their home there.

'Goodbye, Jemima,' Reverend Mother Ancilla in our final interview. She combined the roles of Reverend Mother of the convent and headmistress of the school, an awesome conglomerate of power. This time it was very much the headmistress who was to the fore.

'What a clever girl you have been. Top of your form. The nuns all say they will really miss teaching you. A very nice impression to leave behind. Don't forget us.'

'Oh Mother, I couldn't,' I gushed. That was one thing the convent taught you - how to return a soft answer. Mother Ancilla paused. I knew quite enough about nuns by this time to know that they never left you with the last word.

'This cleverness, Jemima. A wonderful gift from Our Lord. You must develop it of course. Go to university perhaps?'

A mutter. 'I hope to, Mother.'

'But there is the spirit too as well as the intelligence. The spirit which bows itself and in doing so finds its true happiness. Self-abnegation, Jemima.' She paused again. At no point had the nuns ever tried to convert me from the thin Protestantism spread upon me by my parents. It would have been quite outside their philosophy to attempt by words what example could not do. I felt her pause was a delicate acknowledgement of that restraint.

'St John of the Cross, one of our great mystics, once wrote that unless I find the way of total self-abnegation, I shall not find myself.'

'Yes, Mother.' I bobbed a curtsey.

At the time her parting words had seemed singularly inappropriate.

And later even more so to a successful career, carved, sometimes clawed out, by methods which always contained a great remembrance of self. Ironically enough, it now occurred to me that in my relationship with Tom I had probably realised self-abnegation at last.

The thought of Tom brought me back sharply to the empty flat, as it always did. He had said that he might telephone about ten.

*If I can get to my study and she has a bath so that she doesn't hear the click of the telephone as I pick it up.'

It was a proviso which had been made before.

I once said: 'Tom, why don't you get a telephone which doesn't click?' He said nothing, but kissed me gently. So it was the way of total self-abnegation. It was now eight o'clock. There were two hours to wait. I turned on the television and turned it off irritably, deciding that the critic who said in this week's Listener that my own programme was really the only thing worth watching these days had after all a great deal to be said for him. I picked up the autobiography of the children's doctor from Nigeria I would interview on Friday. I forgot Mother Ancilla. I had long forgotten Rosa. Sister Miriam I did not know. I even forgot Tom for an hour and a half, and the last half-hour pa.s.sed not too slowly, considering it was actually an hour, and nearly half-past ten before he managed to ring.

The letter from Mother Ancilla arrived about a fortnight later. The small convent writing paper, covered clearly and carefully in a still familiar handwriting, unlocked its own memories. Nuns did not waste writing paper: waste was not only extravagant, but also displeasing to G.o.d. I was curiously unsurprised by the arrival of the letter. It was as though I had been expecting it. The previous memories had warned me: we are after you, out of the past.

Mother Ancilla's letter was complimentary on its first page, sad on its second page and astonishing on its third. The compliments referred to my own career, 'which although we did not play, I fear, the whole part in your education, we have nevertheless followed with interest. And of course like all our old girls, you have always had the prayers of the community. Our girls nowadays regularly watch your programme on television - yes, we have colour television in St Joseph's Sitting Room, the gift of an old girl. Your programme is one of the few we can safely trust to be both entertaining and instructive. Sister Hippolytus often tells the girls about your earlier triumphs in the debating society, and how she predicted a public career for you.'

It was a surprise to me that Sister Hippolytus had predicted anything so favourable in my future as a public career. Famous for her sharp tongue, Sister Hippo was one of the few - no, the only nun who had made me conscious of my alien status. Then I remembered that 'a public career' on the lips of certain Catholics was not necessarily the golden prospect it would seem to the rest of the world. Motherhood, sanct.i.ty, those were the true ideals. Neither of them had I satisfied.

The sadness referred to the death of Rosa. 'You will perhaps have read in the papers of the death of Sister Miriam, whom you knew as Rosabelle Powerstock. Perhaps like us, you felt that the coroner's remarks were a little unfortunate.' In fact I had not actually seen a report of the inquest. My newspaper-combing phase had pa.s.sed. I had been busy, and besides, Tom's wife had gone to stay with her mother. Later in the month, there was the prospect of a really long trip to Yugoslavia for the two of us.

'But even in these enlightened days,' Mother Ancilla's measured letter continued, 'I suppose we must remember that the Catholic faith was once persecuted in this country. There is still a great deal of prejudice about. Poor Sister Miriam, she did not have a very happy life latterly, she had been ill, and although the manner of her death was tragic - Sister Edward blames herself dreadfully and of course unnecessarily - one cannot altogether regret the pa.s.sing of her life on this earth, R.I.P.'

The third page astonished me by containing a remarkably pressing invitation to visit the convent as soon as possible. It was couched in language which, even disguised by Mother Ancilla's precise calligraphy, sounded remarkably like a plea.

'In fact, in general, these have not been very happy times -for the community as a whole. I want to ask your help, dear Jemima, in a certain very delicate matter, which I cannot explain in a letter. Will you make time in a busy life to come down and see us? After all these years. As soon as possible ...'

*My help,' I thought lightly. 'Mother Ancilla must be desperate to want my help.' But as it turned out, that was quite a sensible reaction to her letter.

2.

I want to find myself I arranged to drive down to the convent the following Sat.u.r.day. My work would be over for the week - my programme was recorded - and by Friday I was generally filled by a post-programme adrenalin in which all things were possible, whether the programme had gone well or badly. In this case it had gone well, and on Friday night I was going to have dinner with Tom. He also said that he would be able to spend the whole night with me, in my flat.

'What if - she - telephones you at home?' I did not particularly like saying Carrie's name, or introducing her into the conversation. But the question had to be asked. In the past we had both endured some unsuccessful stolen nights, when Tom lay sleepless in my bed, wretchedly imagining the unanswered telephone and Carrie's subsequent anguish.

'She won't,' said Tom cheerfully. 'Mother-in-law's telephone has broken. She chatted the wire through. Thank G.o.d. Long may it stay that way.'

I thanked G.o.d too. The Almighty suddenly seemed to be taking a more friendly interest in my affairs. Perhaps it was the influence of Mother Ancilla and the prayers of the community? That reminded me to tell Tom that I had to be off early the next morning. For a moment I was almost tempted to postpone - no. It would do Tom no harm to find that I too had some personal commitments beyond the vicarious ones imposed on me at second hand by Carrie. Though Tom might frown.

Later, Tom did frown. After all he loved me. We were in love. He pushed back his hair off his forehead. It was a gesture almost as familiar to me as his kiss. Tom's hair, straight, floppy, unmanageable, was another of the persistent problems in his life. Still frowning, he said: 'Blessed Eleanor's Convent. Wasn't that the awful place where the nun starved herself to death? Quite mediaeval, the whole business. n.o.body knows what goes on beyond convent bars, you know. It was pure chance this case got out in the open because the nun actually died. I think the coroner was quite right.'

'Oh Tom,' I burst out. 'Don't be so ridiculous. 'There aren't bars. It's a school. I was there in the war and afterwards. I must have told you. As for the coroner, I thought it was disgraceful what he said. No Popery rides again.' (I had since looked up the clippings.) 'It was accidental death, no-one denied that, and he had no business blaming that poor young nun who gave evidence. Nuns have feelings just like anybody else.'

'Well they don't look like anybody else,' said Tom.

'Reallya"' Mother Ancilla's letter had made me feel curiously protective, even in the face of Tom.

'Or rather they all look just like each other. I saw a couple on the tube today. Couldn't possibly have told one from the other, even if one had been my sister. Two identical black crows.'

'What extraordinary prejudice from Tom Amyas, MP, that well-known hero of liberal causes.'

Tom grinned. 'Sorry. Some rooted anti-Papist prejudice in me somewhere. Relic of my childhood I think. The Inquisition and all that. I remember reading Westward Ho - connections with my name - and being full of British indignation about it all. It still horrifies me: the idea of the imposition of belief upon others . . . you should know that.'

'I hardly think that an obscure convent in Suss.e.x full of harmless middle-aged women can be blamed for the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition four centuries ago,' I said coldly. I was oddly narked by Tom's remarks. I tried to tell myself that at the first hint of Catholic persecution returning to this country - perish the unlikely thought - Tom would be the first to throw himself into the cause of quelling it. Save The Nuns: I could see him marching now with his banner. It was one of the things for which I loved him. But we had never discussed Catholicism before - why should we - and I hated to find even this corner of prejudice in my kind and gallant Tom, the champion of all those in trouble.

I thought of telling him that Mother Ancilla too was in trouble, or thought she was. I decided not to. We dropped the subject.

But I remembered Tom's remarks the next day as I drove up the long gravel drive to the convent. It was autumn. In the sunshine the convent grounds were immaculate. It was the season in which I had first arrived at Blessed Eleanor's as a day-girl. I walked with my mother from my parents' leaf-strewn autumnal garden, which had a kind of rich self-made compost under-foot throughout at this season, through to gardens where evidently no leaf was permitted to rest for very long before being tidied away.

'The nuns must catch the leaves before they fall,' said my mother jokingly, to leaven the slightly tense atmosphere of a new school. She paused and gulped.

'My G.o.d, look at that.' We both stopped and observed a nun - young? old? who could tell? - carefully catching a leaf long before it fluttered to the ground. She put it carefully away in a pocket, or anyway somewhere in the recesses of her black habit.

'Catching leaves is lucky.' My mother was quick to seize on an occasion for optimism. 'We'll find out who the lucky nun is, and you can make friends with her.' I a.s.sented rather dubiously. But we never did find out who the lucky nun was. As Tom observed thirty years later, from a distance they really did all look exactly the same.

At that moment two nuns pulled a crocodile of small girls into the side of the drive as I pa.s.sed. Identical. Two black crows. The children's uniform, a blur of maroon blazers and pink shirts, seemed singularly unchanged from my own day. I smiled. The children smiled amiably back. Both nuns smiled. The autumnal sun continued to shine, mellowing the rather fierce red brick of the convent facade. That too seemed much as I remembered it. Peaceful. Tidy. Even the creeper on the walls did not romp but climbed up in an orderly fashion. It was difficult to imagine what possible troubles could lie behind that calm exterior - troubles, that is to say, that could not be solved without recourse to the prying outside world. That was after all the world that I represented: Jemima Sh.o.r.e, Investigator, was how I was billed on television. It was a deliberate parody of the idea of the American detective, a piece of levity considering the serious nature of my programme. I was nevertheless an alien to the convent world. But Mother Ancilla had deliberately sent for Jemima Sh.o.r.e.

I stopped feeling an alien when a nun answered the door. She was very small. Ageless, as all nuns tended to be, with their foreheads and throats covered, so that the tell-tale signs of age were hidden. The short black cape covering the upper part of her body, whatever it was called, part of the nuns' uniform, also partially hid her waist. It had the effect of making her figure into a sort of bundle. She looked a bit like Mrs Tiggy-Winkle - hadn't there been one nun we named Tiggy? Perhaps all small nuns looked like Mrs Tiggy-Winkle. I gave my Christian name just in case.

'It's Jemima Sh.o.r.e to see Reverend Mother Ancilla.'

'Ah Miss Sh.o.r.e,' she beamed. So I didn't know her. 'We've been expecting you.' Into the reception room, a large room just by the front door, known for some reason as the Nuns' Parlour - although it was very much not part of the nuns' accommodation, being used exclusively for confrontations between secular and religious worlds. Here parents bringing quivering offspring to the convent for the first time were welcomed, smoothed down by Mother Ancilla, and made to feel - so my mother had told me - that they themselves were about to enter a disciplined but friendly inst.i.tution.

The Nuns' Parlour really was exactly the same. The reproduction holy pictures in their dark frames, with their dully gold backgrounds. Fra Angelico seemed the prime favourite. On the table lay the familiar pile of wedding photographs, still surely dating from the forties. At any rate they were still mainly by Lenare and not by Lichfield. Perhaps the old girls of Blessed Eleanor's had abandoned their propensity for lavish white weddings, like the rest of the world? These wedding photographs, when I was at school, had exercised the same secret fascination over me as the Jesuits. I used to gaze at them covertly when my father was discussing my need for better science instruction with Mother Ancilla.

'But Mother Curtis,' he would say at the beginning of every term, finding the name Ancilla evidently too much to stomach: 'Science instruction by post is really not enough to equip your girls for the modern world.'

'Oh Captain Sh.o.r.e,' Mother Ancilla would regularly reply with a tinkling laugh. 'I keep asking Our Blessed Lord to send a vocation to a good young science mistress to help us out, but so far, He, in His infinite wisdom, has not seen fit to do so.'

'I seem to remember a saying about G.o.d helping those who help themselves,' began my father. No doubt he intended to refer to such unsupernatural expedients as advertis.e.m.e.nts and educational agencies. But no-one bandied words with Mother Ancilla and stood much chance of emerging the victor. Especially about Almighty G.o.d, someone whose intentions, mysterious as they were to the whole world, were somehow less mysterious to Mother Ancilla than to the rest of us. In the language of today, one would have referred to Mother Ancilla as having a hot line to G.o.d: or perhaps an open line was the correct term.

'Exactly, Captain Sh.o.r.e. Helping ourselves. That's exactly what we're doing with our postal science lessons. Just as Our dear Lord wants us to do.'

My father gave up: till the beginning of the next term. I stopped gazing at the brides. Even then I suspected that I should never make that honorific folder. G.o.d might help those who helped themselves, but he did have a habit of not marrying them off. At least not in white.

As I turned over one photograph - the face was vaguely familiar - I heard a single sonorous bell ring somewhere in the convent. I recognised the signal. All the nuns had their own calling signal, like a kind of cacophonous morse code. One ring, then another for the Infirmary Sister, two then one for the Refectory Sister and so forth. One bell on its own called for the Reverend Mother.

Silence.

A pattering of feet on the heavily polished floor. The swish of robes outside the door, the slight jangle of a rosary that always presaged the arrival of a nun, and thena"

'Jemima, my dear child.' Reverend Mother Ancilla kissed me warmly on both cheeks. I reflected ruefully that probably to no-one else in the world these days was I, at nearly forty, still a child. My parents were both dead. Tom? I could not remember him using the term even in our most intimate moments. Besides Tom, as a crusader, liked to see in me a fellow crusader. He had his own rather demanding child in Carrie and, for Tom, to be childlike or childish was not necessarily a term of endearment.

I studied Mother Ancilla's face as we talked, and I answered her preliminary polite enquiries. Nuns' faces might not show age but they did show strain. On close inspection, I was faintly horrified by the signs of tension in her mouth. Her eyes beneath the white wimple were no longer the eyes of a fierce but benevolent hawk as they had been in my youth. They reminded me of some softer and more palpitating bird, the look of a bird caught in the hand, frightened, wondering.