Quiet As A Nun Part 5

8.

Secret witnesses Supper that night in the refectory was a subdued meal. I was getting used to the tact.i.turn 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 emanc.i.p.ated 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 G.o.dmother. And why she didn't protest against another innocent child being lumbered with a name like Theodora I shall never know.'

'And Dora is nowa"?' 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 compet.i.tion between us - in school terms - for the friends.h.i.+p 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 sc.r.a.ping 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, blus.h.i.+ng. 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 coursea"'

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

'Oh, please let mea"' 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 G.o.d. 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 a.s.sez confortable here, Miss Sh.o.r.e, 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-cla.s.s 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 Sh.o.r.e. She wanted to leave the convent lands to the poor.'

I was quite astonished by her words.

To begin with, I was amazed that these girls knew of Rosa's crazy plan. Admittedly they seemed to have been her intimates, what Miss Jean Brodie would have called her creme de la creme. How many other people at the convent had known? It opened up a whole new field of enquiry. How many of the nuns had known? Wretched Sister Edward must have known something, hence her wild accusation of Mother Ancilla. The enigmatic Sister Agnes, she of the soulful Murillo eyes, had she known? A Campion cousin, too, according to Mother Ancilla. Although the property was inherited from the Powerstock side of the family, there could have been cousinly confidences on the subject.

But there was a second point. For all their intimacy with Sister Miriam, the girls had got hold of a slightly garbled story. Rosa, according to Mother Ancilla, was determined to give away the convent lands. As soon as possible. No question of waiting for her own death. As for the question of a will, it had been the existence of Sister Miriam's unaltered will, made at the time she entered the convent, which had ensured the receipt of the property by the community.

Was Margaret testing me in some way? My instinct was at work again. I felt myself on the brink of a piece of valuable knowledge. If I trod carefully enough, I might arrive at it.

'But she didn't. She didn't leave the convent lands to the poor,' I said.

'How do you know she didn't?' Margaret, smooth, definitely up to something.

'Here we all are. Her will, I gather, for what it's worth, carried out her father's intentions, and automatically entrusted the land to the community.'

'That was her original will,' said Margaret. She let the words sink into the air of St Joseph's Sitting Room, with just enough emphasis on the word 'original' for her meaning, also, to sink very slowly but surely into my mind. I bent to my coffee, fastening my lips reluctantly to the thick edge of the china. It was by now cold and rather disgusting. But I wanted time to think. I therefore treated the rite of drinking Blanche's coffee with all the respect that would have been due to Sister Clare's superior brew.

I looked round. The furniture of St Joseph's Sitting Room did not offer much for inspection. A battered record player was the chief sign that it was a room for girlish recreation. There was a large sofa, equally battered, pushed to the back of the room, as though no-one ever sat on it. Otherwise with its pictures - Leonardo's Virgin of the Rocks, Botticelli, Fra Angelico? - I was beginning not to distinguish them in their heavy gold frames - it might have been a nuns' sitting room. The girls' notion of the unfair luxury in which they lived suddenly seemed a little pathetic to me. Once again, I got the impression that someone outside had been at work influencing their notions concerning poverty and distribution of wealth. It could have been Rosabelle herself, of course. Then Rosa had changed. I could imagine Rosa as a secret fanatic - mysterious Rosa as I used to call her - but not as a proselytiser.

At least copies of the Daily Telegraph and one copy of the Daily Express - banned in my day - were to be seen, indicating progress. The fact that they were several days old was less encouraging. Just as letters to males on the chest had seemed encouraging, until I discovered they were mainly to brothers. The Tablet was still the most prominent magazine displayed. Did they read the liberal press? It would have been good to have found a copy of the Guardian or even the New Statesman.

'Sister Miriam told us she was going to make another will,' confided Dodo in a rush. My long silence had had the desired effect.

'And then she died. And it was too late.'

I caught Blanche looking at Imogen. There was a nervous intensity about Blanche's normally rather impa.s.sive gaze. I thought I saw Imogen give her a very slight shake of the head. I was not quite sure. Margaret said nothing. Like me, she was contemplating her coffee cup.

'I don't think you should exaggerate all this,' I said carefully. 'If Sister Miriam wanted to give the lands to the poor, there was really nothing to stop her.' As Mother Ancilla had found - or very nearly found - to her cost.

'But if she was going to, well, put an end to it all, then she might want to leave the lands straightaway to the poor. In her will. No time for handing it over' - Dodo again.

I was in a quandary. On the one hand the girls had the whole matter ridiculously upside down. Rosabelle had unquestionably intended to hand over the lands. Rosabelle had not intended to die. It was the latter tragedy which had frustrated the former plan. The will, so convenient from the point of view of Mother Ancilla, was a rogue element coming out of the past. On the other hand, there was clearly more information to be gleaned from the girls about Rosa's state of mind shortly before her death.

Margaret's remark had been calculated, I was sure of it. I was beginning to think a great deal more about Margaret Plantaganet was calculated than met the eye.

'The sick, the mad if you like, don't always act very consistently,' I went on. 'I shouldn't worry about Sister Miriam's will if I were you. She probably told another lot of girls that she was going to leave the land to a lot of cats and dogsa"'

'Sister Miriam was fond neither of cats nor of dogs, Miss Sh.o.r.e.' If Margaret had not sounded bland, she would have sounded rude. I was reminded a little of the stone-walling technique of Sister Agnes in my interview with her. 'And she did not talk to another lot of girls. We were her girlsa"' Ah, the Miss Brodie touch. 'Because she knew that we shared her concern about the way wealth is shared out. For the real poor.'

All the girls started talking at once:

'The third worlda"'

'As much food in a daya"'

'No running watera"'

'The convent grounds alone would house a whole estate of workers' families, hundreds of them.' It was Dodo's voice which won out. 'Instead of which upper-cla.s.s drones like ourselves play hockey on them.'

I had a ghastly feeling during this cacophony that the girls were indeed great fans of my programme. Just as Mother Ancilla had said. And not only the Powers Estate investigation, the so-called Powers Mad programme. What on earth was the t.i.tle of the programme on starvation at home and abroad? Food for Thought - And Nothing Else. I had interviewed Tom in the course of it to give the work of the W.N.G. in that area a deserved little puff. Now this conversation Tom would enjoy. No established complacency here.

The evening bell put an end to these thoughts. I suddenly realised that Sister Agnes was standing at the door of the sitting room. I had no idea how long she had been there. Unlike most of the nuns, her progress did not seem to be marked by either a rustle or a jangle. No doubt it was the graceful nature of her movements which enabled her to pa.s.s from corridor to cla.s.sroom so quietly. Time for night prayers in the chapel. With the exception of Margaret who was on prefect duty and could say her prayers in private as a result. Later she would join Sister Agnes in patrolling St Aloysius' dormitory. St Aloysius, the patron of youth. Not a saint for whom I had ever had much affection when at school: I suppose even then I had had not much sympathy for youth as such. The sort of young I admired were those like Margaret and Dodo, who showed some signs of thinking for themselves.

For me, it was time to make ready for the night's expedition. Through the high windows of St Joseph's Sitting Room, curtainless, I was glad to see the moon s.h.i.+ning full and rea.s.suring over the chapel, as promised in my diary.

'Who's got my veil?' cried Imogen in anguish, 'I know I brought it down here.'

'Sister Agnes, do let her off her veil. It's only night prayers,' said Blanche. 'Two minutes flat in the chapel; as if G.o.d cared about a veila"'

'Mother Ancilla is most particular about your veils in the chapel. You know that.' Sister Agnes's tone was strictly neutral. It was impossible to tell whether she felt that Mother Ancilla and G.o.d were on the same side as regards veils or not.

'Come on, Immo, here's a veil for you,' said Margaret kindly. 'One of the Fourth Formers must have left it behind.' She pulled a rather dusty looking black veil from behind the sofa. It was caught. There was a sharp tug, the veil came away, then the noise of a scuffle and a loud cry.

'Christ!' exclaimed Margaret. It was a strictly unreligious monosyllable. 'Tessa Justin, what the h.e.l.l are you doing herea"'

A smallish girl, with abnormally long and thick plaits was being hauled out from the sofa. Sister Agnes made one of her rapid darts across the room and pulled the child to her feet, away from the furious grasp of Margaret. She proceeded to dust her down with her handkerchief, with little clicks of disapproval, though the convent floor was so spotless that one could not imagine even a sojourn behind a sofa resulting in much contamination.

'Tessa Justin! You were supposed to be in bed half an hour ago. I'm afraid Mother Ancilla will have to hear of this in the morning. Come along now.' Sister Agnes swept the child, by now managing a few anguished sobs, out of the sitting room.

'Those b.l.o.o.d.y Fourth Formers!' Dodo's language too was degenerating. 'They dare each other to do that sort of thing. She must have heard every word we said.' Margaret said nothing. It was the first time I had seen her look really nonplussed.

After they had gone, I tried to watch television in the sitting room. Some modern drama or other, in which adultery, offices, and adultery in offices, all featured prominently. It was no good. It failed to grip me. My mind was too closely involved with the dramas here in the convent. And the prospective drama, tonight, outside. Finally I went to my own room, both excited and jangled.

The Treasury of the Blessed Eleanor was just the thing to set me right, I decided, catching sight of it lying on my desk. I opened it at the marker: 'Within the Tower of the Church dwell many witnesses to the Word of G.o.d,' I read. 'Some of these witnesses lean out from their Tower and cry out: Here be the Tower of G.o.d's Church, to all who have ears to listen. Others of these witnesses dwell secretly within the Tower and their words are never heard in the outside world. Nevertheless the prayers of these secret witnesses are their words. These secret witnesses are most acceptable to G.o.d.'

As I finished the pa.s.sage, I realised that the marker was not of my own making at all, but a typed slip of paper. Exactly similar to the first slip which had suggested the rendezvous with the Black Nun. Even the wording of the message was reminiscent.

'If you don't believe Sister Miriam made a new will,' it ran, 'why don't you look for the will yourself? And you might ask Blanche Nelligan and Imogen Smith about a certain piece of paper they signed.' And the words 'secret witnesses' at the bottom of the pa.s.sage were underlined in pencil, in case I had missed the point. But I had not missed the point.

Secret witnesses ... most acceptable to G.o.d in the view of the Blessed Eleanor. Not so acceptable perhaps to Mother Ancilla and the more conservative section of the community. Grimly I wondered who else in the quiet convent might be looking for the will.

9.

To the Dark Tower As I made the preparations for my nocturnal adventure, I wasn't so much full of courage as lacking in fear. I did not believe in ghosts. As a child I had been unaffected by ghost stories. When Rosa loved to entertain me with her ghoulish tales, it was her face I watched, rapt with her own horror: I hardly listened to her words.

Night-time. I wondered what the Black Nun's interpretation of night-time might be. Eleven o'clock? Ten o'clock?

Nor was I worried by the prospect of the solitary journey. Darkness of itself had never frightened me: my terrors were all within my own breast, regrets and guilts long buried, potentially more powerful than predatory creatures of the night. Besides, I had lived on my own to all intents and purposes since I was eighteen years old. Solitariness, even loneliness, had become a condition of my life.

Boots, a thick coat and my new torch were the necessary preparations for my expedition. And the bright little key which I had 'forgotten' to return to Mother Ancilla. Whoever else had acquired the spare key to that padlock, it seemed wise to bring my own. Beside my bed lay a candle and some matches.

'For emergencies, isn't that now?' said Sister Perpetua on the first day, in her soft Irish voice, arranging the candle and matches with care on the table as though they were sacred objects on the altar.

'You like candles?'

'Ah sure candles give comfort where torches never do.' So it was more as a tribute to Sister Perpetua than with any practical intention of using them that I also slipped the candle and matches into my pocket.

My self-confidence, or perhaps in retrospect arrogance would be the right word, was complete. Like Childe Roland, I would come to the Dark Tower, and sort out at least one of the mysteries which enmeshed the convent. Where Sister Liz had attempted to win converts to Saint William Wordsworth, I had always preferred plain Robert Browning. I could make Browning's melancholy my own, and also his sense of drama. As a poem, 'My last d.u.c.h.ess' was far more to my taste than what I privately considered Wordsworth's holy ramblings. Just as I rated the romantic marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Browning way above the pious Wordsworth family life - as described by Sister Liz. It was years before I discovered that the relations.h.i.+p with Dorothy was not necessarily all it seemed: and then it was too late, the pattern was set. So now, with Browning's Roland, I murmured to myself: 'Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set and blew...' I might have no slug-horn but there was a strong possibility I would be able to make some sort of report to Mother Ancilla in the morning . . .

It was therefore in a mood of positive optimism that I padded down the visitors' stairs, ignored the left turn to the chapel and found myself facing the small side door to the gardens. It was a door sometimes used by outsiders to enter the chapel. There were certain neighbours who treated the convent as their parish church and came to ma.s.s there regularly on Sundays and feast days. Blessed Eleanor's chapel was not strictly speaking a parish church. The bishop disapproved of the practice, which was also much disliked by the parish priest proper of the diocese. Outsiders at the chapel services were supposed to be confined to parents visiting their daughters.

Mother Ancilla however turned a resolutely blind eye to both episcopal and parochial disapproval. Blandly, she a.s.sumed that it was the most natural thing in the world that everyone round Churne should wish to wors.h.i.+p in the chapel of the Blessed Eleanor. Paris.h.i.+oners had been known to receive coffee and convent-baked biscuits at feast days after ma.s.s. No such hospitality was available in the chilly parish church of St Gregory.

Mother Ancilla fended off the attempts of the parish priest, condemned to serve the convent ma.s.ses as well as his own, to spot errant paris.h.i.+oners among bona fide parents. She was once overheard a.s.suring the caustic Father Aylmer that an old lady of at least seventy, mobled in chiffon over spa.r.s.e white hair, was 'one of our dear parents'.

In my day there had been two or three priests attached to St Gregory's. Nowadays, with the universal decline in vocations, the strain of providing a regular ma.s.s at the convent must have risen considerably. No doubt the parish priest at St Gregory's, whoever he might be, loved Mother Ancilla's empire-building no better than old Father Aylmer had done. It was understandable under the circ.u.mstances that some of these errant wors.h.i.+ppers preferred to slip in through a side door.

I had noted that at night this side door was fastened merely by an inner bolt. Now I drew the bolt back and slipped out into the convent grounds.

My moon was still s.h.i.+ning brightly, no longer quite so high over the chapel. I hoped that its light would see me at least as far as the Dark Tower. Preferably there and back again.

Apart from the moon, casting its own eerie light, the journey across the fields was remarkable chiefly for the variety of life I saw. In theory I was alone. But I never once felt myself truly alone throughout my journey. In practice every hedgerow, the furrows of the newly ploughed fields, seemed alive with life. Small animals scuttered hither and thither. An owl hooted somewhere. And the occasional bird - were they not supposed to be asleep? - stirred in the hedges. I came to the conclusion that the so-called silence of the night was a poetic misnomer.

I was quite happy to plod on across the furrows, in my stout boots. The only person I would have been happy to have at my side at that moment was Sister Liz. Her great voice, ringing out over the dark fields, would have provided the correct musical accompaniment. I could almost hear her now: Great G.o.d, I'd rather be A pagan suckled in a creed outworn,...

And hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn . ..

Another of her favourite poems. Not one, however, which could have pointed the path to Rome. Was there something pagan abroad? Ancient G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses stirring under the sod. If so, I did not feel it. As a rationalist, I was if anything closer to the G.o.d of Mother Ancilla, the authoritarian religious system of the Church of Rome with its own precarious logic, than to whatever earthly creatures were shaking the old soil. I had no beliefs, I told myself, and thus no fears.

And that sharp, hoa.r.s.e sound was, I guessed, a fox barking. Somewhere in the distance. Not even the unexpected nature of the noise caused me apprehension. There was the exhilaration in my independence, to which at that moment I was convinced that nothing, not the loneliness of the night, not nature's marauders, not even the human powers of mischief, could shake.

The owl hooted again and I stumbled over something heavy in the darkness. A log or heavy fallen branch. My boots prevented me from suffering too much damage. I declined to regard the incident as a hubristic reminder of my own mortality.

By the time I reached the tower, I was confident that nothing and no-one could check me, cause me true affright. The tower loomed up above me, quite dark. The moon was now quite far down behind it.