Rock Me Gently (28 page)

Chapter
16

Bloomfield Terrace,

London,

SW1

The Mother Superior,

Nazareth House,

Hammersmith Road,

London,

W6

19th August 1977

Dear Reverend Mother,

I am trying to trace two friends of mine who were residents with me at the convent and should be most grateful if you could assist me. Their names are as follows:

Betty O’Dowd

Ruth Norton

Also any information you could provide me as to the whereabouts of Sister Cuthbert and Sister Mary would be most welcome.

Many thanks,

Judith Kelly.

A reply from the convent arrived about a fortnight later. I was curiously unsurprised by the arrival of the letter with its familiar heading ‘JMC’. It was as though I had been expecting it. The previous memories had warned me: we are after you, out of the past.

Nazareth House,

Hammersmith Road,

London,

W6

Judith Kelly,

Bloomfield Terrace,

London,

SW1

2nd September 1977

Dear Judith,

Thank you so much for your letter to the Mother Superior, who passed it on to me.

You will be pleased to hear that Sister Mary is well and living here at Nazareth House in Hammersmith. If you wish to visit her, then you will be very welcome to come along at any time and I’m sure she will provide you with the contact addresses of your old friends.

God bless you.

It had taken me years to follow Miriam’s advice, but at last I was here.

The receptionist was a large, chubby nun whose full-moon face looked as if it had been rubbed raw with a Brillo pad. She moved nimbly despite her bulk. The room she sat in was overlaid with crucifixes and reproduction holy pictures in dark frames. On the window sill opposite her were two black-and-white closed-circuit television monitors.

She glanced at me and then, barely stopping for breath, began a lengthy tirade in an Irish burr: ‘Sure I haven’t had me a moment to drink my tea - look, it’s cold now and the bug in my stomach is playing up something rotten. It must have been the fish I ate last night. Sister Catherine protested that it smelt so noxious that she wouldn’t even feed it to a hungry cat. It seemed all right to me, but I’m not picky about what I eat.’

She took a key from her pocket and unlocked a desk drawer.

‘I’ve a bottle of water here from the Well at Lourdes.’

She took a stoppered flask in the form of a cross from the drawer.

‘I have to keep it under lock and key. I can’t trust the charwoman. The water’s reputed to have miraculous powers. I have a nip whenever I have an upset stomach.’

‘I’m sorry?’ I stood uncertainly, wondering if she had mistaken me for someone else.

‘See these two screens? I have to watch them constantly for visitors. Had them both mended recently, well, I say mended, that is, a bearded hippy in filthy jeans strutted around as if he owned the place fiddling with the aerials, but that’s the
Yellow Pages
for you. There’s the blessed doorbell again! Who’s that? I can’t make them out, the screen’s all blurred. If it’s not the doorbell, it’s bang, bang, bang, as someone assaults the knocker.’

‘I’m here to ‘

‘Why are you standing? Sit down, sit down! Well, I can’t stop here chatting, much as I’d like to, how might I help you? Keep it brief, I’ve the phones to answer.’

‘I have an appointment with Sister Mary.’ She nodded and bleeped her on the switchboard. Time went by and no reply came. She asked a young man who came in to go and find Sister Mary, and meanwhile continued her diatribe about her job, workmen, the stream of visitors, occasionally taking a swig from her flask. I shifted in my seat, not commenting.

Finally the phone rang; she popped a segment of orange into her mouth as she answered. ‘Sister Mary’s on her way to meet you,’ she informed me, picking up some leaflets from her desk. ‘Take these devotional reflections with you. Should you wish to contribute to our leprosy mission, you’ll find a box in the hallway.’

My mouth became dry with dread. I could feel my throat tightening, and an ache along my jaw line. Stay calm. But a nauseating sensation of fear and shame came over me. It was a familiar feeling. I used to get it every time I had to face Sister Mary. I’m an adult, I thought, why am I still scared of her?

After what seemed like an age, an elderly nun with a clenched-fist face came into the room. She gave me a dubious eagle-eyed glance.

I rose. ‘Sister Mary.’ As she stood in front of me I felt a desperate nervous flush on my cheeks. Gone was the austere black wimple of old and in its place the milder Mother Teresa tablecloth style.

‘I don’t recognise you,’ she said curtly.

‘Of course not,’ I laughed. ‘I was all skin and grief when you saw me last, hardly a description that fits me now.’

I handed her a small bunch of violets I’d brought to prove that I bore no animosity about the past. I almost shrank back at her reaction. She looked astonished and inexplicably annoyed, and didn’t thank me. I immediately felt diminished in her presence, as if I were a child again - the same ashamed awkwardness, the same fear, the same childish compunction to please. I tried to straighten my spine and remind myself: you are no longer small, vulnerable, a rag that can be torn apart with both hands. Yet now I was a word or two away, the oddness of the situation pressed in on me. Eleven. That’s how old I was the last time I saw her. Yes, that long ago, and after all this time it might seem to her now that I was some menacing thing, a figure from an anxious dream come walking and talking across the wilderness of years to find her.

The receptionist held up a phone message. ‘Sister, could I have a word?’ Sister Mary turned away from me for a moment, and I was given the opportunity to study the nun who had haunted my thoughts for so many years.

So here was the unforgettable Sister Mary. The same sharp expression resided in her steely pale eyes, dimmer now in their burnt-out sockets. She was wiry and lithe, her jowls lined and paper-white. The most striking thing about her was the feeling of suppressed fire. It was very impressive in one so elderly, yet I could sense that any intimacy with her would be difficult.

Finally she led me through a corridor into an oak-panelled parlour with velvet chairs, glossy teak furniture and framed prints with their dull-gold backgrounds.

‘In, in,’ she said, with a fussy little gesture of her hand.

On the mantelpiece a great marble clock ticked loudly. An overwhelming smell of beeswax polish filled the air. She beckoned for me to sit next to her on a settee. She seemed uneasy, her body language suggesting a double barrier with both arms clutched tightly around her waist and her legs firmly crossed. She looked at me without seeing me, as if considering what to say.

Her first words stunned me.

‘Why do you refer to me as Sister Mary, when I have always been known as Sister Magdalene Ita?’ Peevishly she added, ‘You must have me confused with Sister Mary of Nazareth.’

I stared at her familiar features. ‘No, not at all- I recall Sister Mary of Nazareth went to South Africa as a missionary shortly after my arrival in Bexhill.’ My nervous laugh felt foolish, echoing through the room. How strange that she spoke to me in just the same tone of voice, as if nothing had intervened or changed in all those years.

She drew back, her eyes glittering in surprise, and for a moment she was speechless. However, she soldiered on and said I must therefore be confusing her with a Sister Mary Therese, who had died two years previously. I couldn’t recall knowing a nun of this name. Yet she was relentless in her denial that she had ever been known as Sister Mary, and her conviction that Sister Mary Therese must be the nun I had known.

We were at cross-purposes. I was here to discover the whereabouts of my old friends, and she was here to defend herself against some imagined attack. If she didn’t want to see me, then why had I been invited?

As I sat facing her, trying to understand, she drew herself up on the settee, her pale eyes wide and threatening. I stiffened. I thought she was about to burst into one of the screaming rages that had terrorised that part of my childhood. At that moment a hundred memories were freeze-framed and thrust forward, blown through a narrow tunnel to the present.

Always out of control of her anger in those days, today she was very much in charge. So how was I to obtain an admission as to her true identity? All the nuns I had made contact with recently had alluded to her as Sister Mary, including the receptionist. A burdensome silence weighed awkwardly between us.

‘About my old friends who I’m trying to find -’ I started.

She shook her head tightly. ‘I have no contact with any of the former children from the convent.’

‘But I was given to understand ‘

‘You must have misunderstood. I have no contact with them.’

A door slammed shut within me and the key was about to turn in its lock when she asked me something that made me stop breathing for a second.

‘Do you remember Frances McCarthy?’ She asked the question without expression.

The light was fading, and I could not distinguish her features. From the sunset through the window, bright glints caught her hooded eyes, and the eyes looked straight at me, sharp and mocking.

‘Yes, of course I do. She was my best friend.’ My voice was tense.

She shifted in her seat, watching me. ‘Does it bother you that I ask that question?’

‘It doesn’t,’ I said curtly. ‘I no longer feel any guilt about what happened.’

‘What about Janet Dover, do you remember her?’

I forced myself to sit without trembling, to stare straight back into her eyes. ‘Of course. They were both friends of mine.’

Between us at that moment their names were suddenly like a flash, like a physical manifestation. Our former selves appeared for a moment like ghosts, and Frances and Janet’s ghosts were with them.

There was a moment of silence in which only the seconds could be heard as the marble clock marked them in its circular trance. The room with its yellow aftertaste of polish almost hummed with tension. Suddenly I wanted to rip apart the fabric of our shared experience.

I held my voice tightly, not letting it shake. ‘Why did you and the other nuns punish us so severely?’

Her eyes burned as if the last drop of moisture had been scorched out of her body. She snorted. ‘We did what was necessary. You must understand that some of those children were very rough and headstrong and would take advantage of any weakness in us. Some of the nuns, especially Sister Mary Therese, believed in the old school of thought regarding discipline. A rap over the knuckles or a box on the ear wasn’t sufficient to break an obstinate child’s will and remould it in God’s way.’

Her mind, as if magnetised by her speech, seemed to circle slowly round and round the subject of disciplining children. As she spoke I involuntarily glanced at her face. As I did so I met the gaze of her metallic eyes and something in the tilt of her head or the angle of her profile gave me a sharp impression of the younger nun I remembered. I turned my eyes away again.

‘But there are kinder ways of teaching children to behave.’ I forced my voice out with immense effort, as one tries to scream in a nightmare.

The icy voice continued. ‘We were only God’s implements. We had to act before your whole natures became warped. A life of vows is a difficult one, particularly then, when we had no control over any of the decisions that were made. We had no choices and times were tough, yet those were the glory days for the Catholic Church. Nowadays, churches are closing. Saints are superfluous. Priests face their congregations like television presenters on a cookery programme, abandoning the Latin liturgy in favour of pop-song Masses. Humiliation and discipline are a thing of the past. I miss the old traditions. Those dear dead days beyond recall: St Christopher medallions on car dashboards. We had everything then. Now we have nothing,’ she sighed.

I found myself almost sad for her, almost believing her.

‘I think the nuns were very capable in taking care of the children. We acted as your nurses, your teachers, your social workers. We had to be with you constantly, we never had a moment to ourselves except during prayer time and at night. But it was the Lord’s will and we did our best.’

I could find no words. When I did not reply immediately, I could see that she took my silence for acceptance. She sat pale and composed, lit with a singular, quiet exhilaration. Her words sounded rehearsed, precise. Unrepentant. She must have prepared them for my visit.

‘We were devoted to the children, you know. We were just following our order’s rule, which is based upon strict lines of self-denial, poverty and obedience. We tried to combine a life of work and prayer for you in imitation of the Holy Family.’

I managed to swallow. ‘So you’re saying you were merely obeying rules, is that it?’

She shrugged her shoulders and nodded.

I wanted to fling at her example after example of vicious cruelty, demand answers and extract penitence and contrition even if I had to shake them out of her. Yet I could hardly think, could hardly take in what she was saying.

‘But that kind of obedience ... it must have been destructive to the nuns, and - and so unjust on the children.’

So unjust. The words echoed weakly.

‘Unjust, unjust? My dear, you were all charity cases. Charity is not entirely about mercy, and little to do with justice. We were carrying out that work for the sake of our own salvation. It was a way of detaching ourselves from acquisitiveness and greed.’

My voice raised. ‘In other words, you were doing it for your own benefit, not ours. I accept that life must have been difficult for the nuns as well. Yet didn’t you ever question whether such punishments were wrong?’

Her pale eyes snapped at me. ‘We had to do what we were told. We did try to find other solutions, such as the punishments of silence, but the minute our backs were turned you’d all be playing up. As you know, many of the children were orphans and lacked parental authority. Many of them were wayward. It was up to us to teach them the rule of obedience. We
had
to use harsh tactics.’