Authors: Carla Van Raay
The voyage took us through a variety of weathers, conjuring up many memories for me. Colombo’s steamy weather was followed by an almighty thunderstorm as we pushed out to sea. Great flashes of lightning lit up the dark clouds covering the whole sky, followed immediately by
crashing claps of thunder. We watched as one particular flash turned into a fireball, which immediately came flying towards us. It fell in the water at close range, hissing and steaming as if angry for failing to hit the ship. ‘A narrow miss!’ said the awed passengers.
Night-time brought another electric storm that knocked out the ship’s aerial. The explosive sound, followed by a strange sweeping wind, made us believe that the ship had caught fire. We just about wept for joy to find out it hadn’t at all, and then slept so soundly that we almost missed breakfast.
Once again I came to the place where the young Egyptian of my teenage dreams had refuelled the migrant ship nine years ago. This time, as we briefly left our ocean liner to wander along the quayside, I noticed the poverty of the people. It struck me, however, that they were happy and quick to respond to kindness. Back on board we were surprised by a dark face peering into our cabin, and decided to close the porthole curtains.
We glided majestically through the Suez Canal. It was such a delight to see through adult eyes the utterly strange and amazing world that had unfolded before me when I was a child. Our convoy of eight ships rounded a bend, and looking back we could see all the others following the
Oriana
, stately and precisely placed as if they belonged to Nelson’s fleet.
Then, out to sea, we hit the doldrums. The only doldrums I knew were those feelings of dull listlessness and indecisiveness, a kind of depression, but when there was talk of ‘hitting the doldrums’, I knew it must be a nautical term as well. After lunch I displayed a typical example of that naive ignorance that my superior so hated in me. We were all staring at the water, looking, I presumed, for the
doldrums. After a while I confessed that I couldn’t see them. ‘Please, would somebody show them to me?’
Mother Winifred was affronted, probably thinking I was taking the mickey out of her. She couldn’t imagine that I was sincerely ignorant. ‘The doldrums is a belt of becalmed waters, where sailors of old were often stranded with no wind to push their sails,’ one of the others explained. I shall always remember that piece of information!
Every day we went for a one-mile walk—seven times around the deck. Not once did I feel seasick.
It was Easter when we reached France, and very cold. The crane operators were in no festive mood, their faces frozen against our attempts to cheer them up with smiling sympathetic faces.
We reached Southampton at five-thirty on the morning of 27 March 1960, on a typically rainy day that blotted out all colours. The way through the harbour was littered with grey industrial buildings and dismal machinery. We were met at the quayside by a streetwise sister whose job it was to chaperone the ‘provincials’ through the bustle of city life to safety inside the convent walls in London. After our gear had gone through customs it was loaded onto a train. Our chaperone did the lugging that the porter refused to do—she had the physique of two porters, and there was a lot of heavy luggage. There was also more than a fifty per cent chance that some of it might get mislaid.
‘Say a little prayer that our luggage is safe,’ said our Reverend Mother, in a moment of inspired intuition. Only a moment later, our ears caught the name ‘Sister Raay’ coming from the luggage department. We were about to investigate, when an observant and sympathetic porter stuck his head through a nearby window and announced: ‘Sister Raay, your luggage was found on the floor of the ship’s
cabin, but has now been put on the train.’ Had I really left a case in the cabin? Thank God it had been found by this kindly porter, and was now safe. It must have been an answer to our timely prayers. The porter did not expect a tip, and quickly retracted his head.
The train was fairly packed. A woman kept up a very noisy stream of chatter just behind our backs. I tried the prayer trick again—I was on a little roll—and miraculously she said, ‘I think I’ll keep quiet now.’ Mercifully she did.
Our intrepid Cockney sister hailed a taxi for the last part of our journey, and we passed some of the famous landmarks we’d heard about: Pall Mall, Westminster Cathedral, bridges over the Thames, the infamous Tower, the Guards changing at the Palace. We caught many glimpses, in spite of the eyes-down rule. Surely
not
to look would be more of a distraction to the spirit than to catch glimpses from a taxi? Tulips were ablaze everywhere, as if this were Holland.
We arrived. The very first thing everyone needed was to find a toilet. This London convent doubled as a large school for senior girls. With any luck, we could use the nearest toilets before the girls descended on them at break time. But we weren’t lucky; four of us were caught in the loos.
This was a dilemma! We didn’t know what to do at all. None of us spoke or made a sound; we all wanted to disappear into thin air. When that didn’t happen after half a minute or so, we used our combined weight against the door of the toilet block to keep it closed. The girls on the other side pushed and shoved, and we pushed and shoved against them! They thought it was some kind of joke, not realising who was in there.
Eventually there was nothing for it: we’d have to face the music, come out, and not only confess to being human and needing to relieve our bladders, but to being ashamed of
showing it. We emerged with eyes down, without saying a word. The girls gasped, ‘Sorry, Sisters!’ They had the enormous good grace to apologise instead of bursting into laughter. The apologies should have been ours! I often wonder what those girls surmised from our strange behaviour: perhaps that being human was shameful? That nuns shouldn’t have to urinate and defecate?
After lunch, we travelled by bus to the Mother Convent at Broadstairs in Kent—Stella Maris, the home of our venerated Reverend Mother General. She was away at the time, but the place could not have been more impressive with its spring beauty and the sprawl of its several gardens and buildings. Tulips seemed to grow like weeds. Fruit trees stood in blossom, poplars showed their first green, and hundreds of daffodils lined the narrow paths through the gardens. One of the buildings was an old novitiate. We would have afternoon tea there, and sleep in a little round bedroom in The Knoll.
The Knoll’s distinctive red-brick walls went four storeys high, narrowing to the top room, which had become a dorm for three. We were allowed to sleep in the next morning, and I awoke to the unusual pleasure of breakfast in bed, at eight-thirty! The kindness was overwhelming. I was even presented with a new block of soap by a sister who had spotted my tiny remnant from the sea voyage, but when I showed her my collection of similar remnants, squeezed into one bigger piece, she promptly withdrew her offer!
Our studies at Sedgley Park were not due to commence till June, so we spent our time at Stella Maris making ourselves useful in the garden, laundry and kitchen, and now and again studying Latin and French. During that time I felt attracted to young Sister Dehlia, still a novice, whose delightful English humour had a way of sparking my own
wit. Walking outside in the fresh air of early morning, I showed her my hands, blue with the cold. ‘I’m a blue-blood, plain to see,’ I said, naughtily. She looked at my hands, looked at me, and caught something in my eyes that shocked her. Eyes down, she moved away, and for the rest of my stay there we never spoke again. I swiftly tried to bury the thought that I had tried to seduce her—into what? Into a conversation, when the rule of silence forbade it? Or maybe into a ‘particular friendship’, which was explicitly forbidden by one of the rules? I was so sorry to have upset her.
In early May, we travelled north-west to Manchester, to our new home. There, with summer approaching, we were able to relax for a few weeks, and get more acquainted with jolly England and the thirty or so nuns with whom we were to spend the next three years.
WHERE SEDGES ONCE
grew in abundance, home to countless species of birds, now stands the manor and college of Sedgley Park. Most of the birds have gone, but here and there the sedges are trying to re-establish ownership of their land.
The original manor house was built by a Greek shipping magnate in the nineteenth century, and while not ostentatious on the outside was more lavish inside. In 1906 the Society of Faithful Companions of Jesus bought the place, eventually adding several tasteful extensions, including a chapel. They took care to match the architecture of the house, even extending the mosaic patterns of the hallway into the wide corridors of what was to be a college. The college entrance was given a rather humble set of steps leading up to oak doors, ensuring the adjacent manor remained without competition.
The Mother Superior claimed the manor’s grand upper storey, while the gilded downstairs rooms flanking the hallway were turned into music and history rooms. The tall bay windows with their dark green velvet curtains and enormous pelmets were reflected in mirrors that sometimes spanned half a wall, illuminated by bracketed chandeliers on either side of their magnificent frames.
In 1960, when we Australians arrived, the FCJs had embarked on an innovative three-year teacher-training program. Affiliated with Manchester University, it was the first of its kind. Sedgley was a college for girls who hadn’t made the grade to university, or didn’t want to go there, and matriculation was not an entrance requirement. Sedgley’s clever association with the university added some fudged glamour. Funded largely by the British government, it was administered by the FCJs who hired their own staff. The nuns thought nothing of tampering with the curriculum—they felt perfectly justified in banning the works of Oscar Wilde, as well as DH Lawrence’s
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
, from the reading list for English literature. Consequently English lit became suspect in my mind; a pity, for I loved to read.
I felt that it was important to choose wisely what to study, but I didn’t know
how
to choose. Then, suddenly and urgently, all available nuns were pulled into an impromptu meeting in the main corridor, where we heard that our Reverend Mother General, Margaret Winchester wanted us to take geography. It was something to do with the importance of understanding the world. This solved a problem for me: my first choice just had to be geography.
I was surprised that not all of the nuns obliged. Now I understand what
they
saw immediately and I didn’t: this message was a ruse. The geography tutor was a nun of doubtful qualities (old, odd and ugly) and a decent enrolment was needed to ensure that she remained on paid staff. Mother Gertrude was not only large, pasty-faced, bushy-browed and short of breath; worse was the impression that she was terribly conscious of her wealth of knowledge, which she imparted with an annoying degree of self-importance.
I was drawn to science, though I didn’t have the necessary background for it (science for girls? I must have gone to the wrong school!). Unenrolled, I sat in on many lectures voluntarily, until news of this reached the ears of Mother Gertrude and she went through my superior to ban me from attending. I eventually received full marks for geography. It puffed up the chest of my oversized tutor, whose whiskery face shone with self-pride at the news.
I chose French because I loved the language and had a good ear for it. Now to choose the main subject! I wanted to major in art because I yearned to use my creativity. Someone should have warned me that Miss Nagel, a hardened middle-aged tutor, simply hated nuns.
‘I’m considering taking art,’ I told her innocently. ‘Would you tell me something about the curriculum?’
She glowered at me. ‘Most nuns don’t make the grade, in my experience,’ she said darkly. ‘They don’t have the imagination and…’ She didn’t say it, but I heard her all the same:
and they are boring to deal with.
‘Go and paint a shell,’ she said. ‘It’ll give me an idea of your talent.’
I didn’t have a high opinion of myself, but I thought that my delicate little effort wasn’t bad when I showed it to her an hour or so later. Miss Nagel was surprised to see me again, but she was merciless. ‘This won’t do,’ she blustered. ‘If you want to be artistic, it’d be better for you to go for craft,’ and she turned away from me.
Well, craft was creative too, but it was in no way a challenge for my mind. It was only at exhibition time, when students displayed their first and last works in order to gauge their improvement over the three years, that I realised what had happened. ‘My painting of the shell was much better than any of these!’ The words came out spontaneously, I was
so aghast. Miss Nagel happened to be standing right beside me at the time. She said nothing and moved away.
I was either a slow learner or I had my head in the sand. How did other people see through these things, I wondered. Did they break the rule of silence and talk to each other? I guessed they were smart enough to do exactly that. They probably spoke to the girls too, who knew much more than we nuns because they got around in the outside world. I was too good, too naive and too preoccupied with an inner self that seemed to be in constant turmoil.
SEDGLEY PARK IS
ingrained in my memory for two very different reasons; neither had anything to do with the curriculum. I was impressed by the magnificent rhododendrons, which grew to a glorious towering height along a great stretch of the building and its grounds’ cool shady paths. In summer they took my breath away, and I saw them bloom three times over, long enough to start feeling that they were mine somehow.
The second reason was much more personal, and more deeply etched. I fell in love there, totally, uncontrollably, illicitly. I loved green-eyed Sister Alice, a rebellious Irish beauty with a bold sense of humour and an intelligence that outshone her loyalty to the order in the end. She was eleven years older than I and left in the early 1970s.