And Then There Were Nuns (21 page)

“We don't have any novices at the moment, so you have the floor to yourself. I hope you won't be too lonely. The rest of us sleep on the other side of the attic, though one or two sisters are in cells just below you. You'll find your way around eventually.”

( 5:ii )

I'LL ADMIT
it: I was scared of Sister Marjorie at first. She was five-foot-nothing and no more than eighty pounds, but man, she was intimidating.

The job of showing me around the priory and providing my orientation had initially fallen to the guest sister, Sister Gillian. As she guided me along the main corridor, we ran into Sister Marjorie, attired in oversized wellies and a rain jacket, and about to head outdoors for, as she put it, “a bit of air.”

I had glanced through the glass doors: a tornado was gathering steam and tearing off tree branches.

“It's a bit rough out there.”

Sister Marjorie had shot me a withering glare, looking me up and down as if I were some alien hot-house creature.

Sister Gillian was gently explaining that I would be staying for an extended period and that she was giving me a tour when Sister Marjorie interrupted her and fixing me with flinty blue eyes said, “A tour, huh? I'll give you a tour, a
real
tour. Ten o'clock. Here. Tomorrow.” Then she was out the door, swallowed up by the storm.

“She's indomitable,” Sister Gillian had whispered nervously as we walked away. “Just turned ninety. Went sky-diving and abseiling last year.”

Ninety? Sky-diving?
I mentally calculated how far I was from ninety.

“When you meet with her, be prepared. Her tours are not for the faint-hearted.”

And so, the next day I found myself walking briskly toward where Sister Marjorie stood at the end of a long corridor by the back door where we had first met.

From thirty paces, I could spot a perturbed look on her face. She regarded my approach and alternately ran her hands impatiently through her shag-style crop of white hair and checked her watch: I was a minute and fifteen seconds late.

In spite of Sister Marjorie's blunt and feisty exterior and the reports of her dare-devil escapades, I figured this would be a short tour: she was old and small; she'd run out of energy in no time.

Boy, was I wrong. She was like a terrier in a habit.

We went up back stairs, down front stairs, through connecting tunnels, up more stairs, then down again, past tapestries and paintings, each with a story quickly told and forgotten. We barreled down carpeted passageways, past offices, rooms set aside for prayer, a conference room, a bar (
A bar? Sweet!
), and a few reception rooms.

“This one is for your use, I believe,” said Sister Marjorie, flinging open a door to one of them. “In case you want to watch
TV
. Or relax.” I detected a guffaw when she said the word “relax.”

It was an elegant room of pale yellow walls and white trim, a high ceiling, and floor-length windows framed by drapes of a more gracious vintage. There was a
TV
in the corner, some plump chairs arranged in a semicircle, and a fireplace. It would take me the better part of a month to find the room again.

We then sprinted across the courtyard to the warren of dormitories and classrooms that had been used for the order's former boarding school. Each bend in a corridor left me further disoriented, and had Sister Marjorie abandoned me right there and then, I might still be trying to thread my way back. All the while, she maintained a running commentary about the castle and its features.

Sneaton Castle had not always been a priory or a castle. It was built in 1813 as a lodge to house a seminary for young men, though the idea never got off the ground. A few years later, the stone building was sold to Colonel James Wilson, a Scottish-born surgeon and politician. Wilson plied his skills on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent and was rewarded for his services with a sugar plantation and the slaves to work it (it is a point that still makes the sisters wince). When he strutted back to England with his pockets bulging with money, Wilson decided to establish an ancestral seat. He bought the lodge and hired an architect to convert it into a castle. Two square crenellated towers were constructed to bookend the original building, and the façade was rebuilt with a castellated roofline and parapet. A stone crest was added above the front door, an enclosed garden was landscaped, twenty cannons were lined up across the front lawn and, voila!, instant castle.

Wilson became a British member of parliament and gave generously to the Whitby community, but no one shared his interest in the castle, not even his family. When he died in 1830, the place sat virtually empty for almost a century.

In 1914, along came Margaret Cope, a clever and headstrong twenty-eight-year-old geography teacher who wanted to rent it for her fledgling religious order and its boarding school.

The Archbishop of York at the time, Cosmo Lang, had patronizingly attempted to dissuade Cope from starting her order on the grounds that she was too young. No shrinking violet, she retorted that people felt he was too young (he was about fifty) to be an archbishop.

Not only did Miss Cope, soon to be Mother Margaret of the Order of the Holy Paraclete, follow through with her intention, but within a few years she had bought the castle outright.

Sister Marjorie and I stood below a large oil painting of Mother Margaret staring down her aquiline nose at us with an uncompromising and penetrating gaze.

“When did she die?” I asked.

“Nineteen sixty. Fell down the steps at one of the branch houses. Never regained consciousness.”

Sister Marjorie excused herself for a moment, so I sauntered over to a rack filled with the day's editions of the major newspapers and picked one up. It was a perk I hadn't expected at a convent: national newspapers delivered daily.

When Sister Marjorie reappeared, I folded up the newspaper and tucked it under my arm.

“Put that back,” she snapped.

“I haven't finished with it.” There was still the Lifestyle section to read, the sudoku to do, the crossword to puzzle over.

“Doesn't matter. Someone else might like to read it.”

“But there are other newspapers.”

She stared me down.

I put it back. Obviously I was not as free of attachments as I thought.

We took a back staircase to the next floor, and then wended our way up a spiral staircase in one of the castle's turrets to the roof.

Sister Marjorie pushed open a door and suddenly I was facing a glorious panorama of pastures, the great North Yorkshire Moors, the town of Whitby, and the shimmer of the North Sea. A thrilling sight, the kind that made me want to spread my arms and yell “I'm Queen of the World!” Except that I didn't because although it was sunny, the wind was buffeting us like boxers in a ring.

It felt as if we were going to be blown through the crenellations, so I grabbed hold of a chimney and began to emit girly exclamations of alarm. But petite Sister Marjorie was unfazed. She did not hold on to anything, and stood stalk-straight, impervious to the wind.
Bring it on,
she seemed to say.

Her fondness for the castle was evident, and no wonder: she had lived here almost her entire life, starting as a student at the boarding school. She had been among those evacuated in 1940 to Toronto to wait out the war.

“When I returned to Whitby from Canada,” she said, “I got a job as Mother Margaret's secretary, and eventually I decided to join the novitiate. I've been a sister here for, well, it will be sixty years in August.”

There had been long, exhilarating stretches serving in the order's various branch houses in Africa, the memory of which sent her into a dreamy reverie and brought a smile to her face.

“No regrets, then?” I asked, now clinging to a
TV
antenna and bracing for the next gust.

“Well, of course I have,” she said abruptly, returning from her reverie. “It's like a marriage. You're not always happy, but you carry on; you work through the rougher bits.”

When I returned to my cell later that day, the question of my vocation was waiting for me, hands on hips and foot tapping with impatience.

Well? Do you like this life or not?

I just got here, for crying out loud. Give me time.

But as I unpacked and arranged my books, I could not help thinking how perfect it all seemed.
Yes, I could see myself in this place for a very long time.

( 5:iii )

THE FOLLOWING
afternoon I attended the sisters' weekly house meeting in the community room, a large reception room that was off-limits to all but the sisters themselves. The only reason I had been invited was so that I could be formally introduced. Sister Dorothy Stella motioned me to a chair next to her.

House meetings were held to coordinate schedules, inform each other of medical appointments and days off, and share news about events outside the convent. It was exactly like a family sitting around with a calendar and jotting down who had to be where and at what time. About twenty-five sisters, ranging in age from early twenties to ninety-plus, sat in armchairs arranged in a large circle. They all wore their habits, some with black shoes, others with running shoes. One or two wore the traditional black veil, but that appeared to be optional.

They acknowledged me guardedly; I smiled back nervously.

Sister Dorothy Stella brought up some housekeeping matters and correspondence that had arrived. There was a reminder about the rule of silence in the cloister corridors. I was ruminating about the pitfalls of being the “new girl” in a convent when I noticed that all eyes had swiveled toward me. Sister Dorothy Stella was asking me to explain to the group why I was there.

I told them about the persistent call to religious life I had felt since my teens, about leaving a full-time job to explore the call in earnest, about being at the Toronto convent and about receiving instructions from the talking tea towel with the picture of Sneaton Castle on it.

Their faces remained impassive through all this, which I believe is the correct posture to assume when confronted by a psycho. That, and don't make any sudden moves. What was that adage? If you talk to God, you're religious; if God talks to you, you're psychotic?

I told them that I was divorced, had grown children, and was engaged to be married a third time when this call to religious life began ringing.

A few glances were exchanged—some with raised eyebrows.

“I know it isn't the tidiest of lives, but surely not everyone is blessed with a clean passage through this world.” I was getting sick of apologizing for the way my life had turned out.

One or two shifted in their seats.

“If it doesn't work out, then I'll accept that,” I continued. “But I need to settle that yearning within me one way or another.”

A couple of perfunctory questions followed: What did my children think of this? How did my fiancé feel about it? I said that my children were happy for me and that my fiancé was “understanding.”

I also told them I had been a journalist and an author, and that I hoped to write about my convent experience.

After an uncomfortable silence, Sister Dorothy Stella spoke up.

“Since you're obviously proficient with a computer, perhaps you could assist us while you're here.”

I nodded, and moved to the edge of my seat to show I was eager to be helpful.

“There is a binder containing the twice-yearly charges that our foundress, Mother Margaret, delivered to the chapter meetings in the nineteen-forties and -fifties. We need them transcribed.

“We also wondered whether you could help us update our history from the last ten years,” Sister Dorothy Stella continued. “We already have a book that was published, but we're looking at republishing it with newer information. We'll give you an office in which to do your work.”

This was perfect. Just before the meeting I had been thinking about small vocations. Throughout my career I had always gone after the big-bang assignments as much for the praise as for the challenge of proving myself. But lately I had begun to consider the satisfaction that could be gained from less visible work, the type of work that has a direct and positive impact on someone's life, often someone you might never meet.

“Yes,” I told the group, pleading in my needy way. “I'll help in any way I can.”

That opened the floodgates to more “small vocations.”

( 5:iv )

THE NEXT
day, after a silent breakfast, I cleared my place, took my dishes into the kitchen, and placed them on a rack destined for the dishwasher. I ambled back into the refectory to see if I could be of use. It never seems right to accept food from people without offering to help clean up.

A sister—quiet, intense, about my age, with thick brown wavy hair kept in place with a bobby pin—seemed to be in charge of the post-meal cleanup. She moved very quickly around the refectory, directing the work of a couple of the other sisters and switching chairs among the different tables.

She saw me standing alone and snapped impatiently, “Well, grab a penny.” No introduction; no “Please grab a penny.”

“A penny?
OK
.” I began to look on the floor for a penny, though I was not entirely sure why she needed one.

“What
are
you doing?” she said, narrowing her eyes as she drew closer. “A
pinny.
”

Pause.

“Apron,” she said. She tugged at the one she was wearing in case I was too dim to comprehend the word “apron.” “They're hanging on the back of the kitchen door.”

Aprons. I thought those things had been retired to the Smithsonian.

I scurried into the kitchen letting the term “pinny” roll around my brain—
Was it in the dictionary?
—before plucking an apron from about a dozen hanging from a hook on the kitchen door.

“Oh, I wouldn't use that one,” murmured one portly sister who was putting away the breakfast condiments. “That belongs to Sister X, and she might get upset.”