by Edna O'Brien
“You’ll just have to talk when you get there. There won’t be anyone else to talk to,” she said. She was right. In the convent we would only have each other.
“We will never speak again, never,” I kept repeating under my breath. Baba had broken my heart, destroyed my life. This was how she had done it.
The night I came home from Limerick, I was gay and happy, thinking of my day with Mr. Gentleman, smiling to myself as I sat on the bed with my feet curled in under the red satin eiderdown.
“You’re very happy in yourself,” Baba said, as she undressed and laid her clothes on the back of the wicker chair. “Hurry up and get into bed, this candle is nearly burnt out.”
She was jealous of my happiness.
“I want to sit here all night and dream.” I spoke slowly and, I thought, dramatically.
“Jesus, you’re nuts. What’s happened to you anyhow?”
“Love,” I said, throwing out my arms in a hopeless, lost gesture.
“Who’s the fool?”
“You wouldn’t know.”
“Declan?”
“Nonsense,” I replied, as if Declan were some little nonentity whom I couldn’t even tolerate.
“Hickey?”
“No,” I said. I was enjoying myself.
“Tell me.”
“I can’t.”
“Tell me,” she said, tucking the top of her pajamas into the trousers. “Tell me, or I’ll tickle it out of you,” and she began to tickle me under the arms.
“I will. I will. I will.” I’d do anything not to be tickled. So when I got back my breath I told her.
“No sir, not on your bloody life. It’s a lie.”
“It’s not a lie. He gave me chocolates, and took me to the pictures. He told me that I was the sweetest thing that ever happened to him. He said the color of my hair was wonderful, and my eyes were like real pearls and my skin like a peach in the sunlight.” He had said none of these things of course, but once I started telling lies, I couldn’t stop.
“Go on, tell me more,” she said. Her mouth was half open with wonder and astonishment and envy.
“You won’t tell anyone,” I said, because I was going to tell her the bit about holding my hand. And then all of a sudden I could see that look coming into her eyes. It was a green look, the eyes narrowed like a cat’s. I’ve seen it since a thousand times, in trains, in wedding photographs, and I always say to myself, “Some poor fool is going to be put through it,” so once again I said, “You won’t tell anyone, Baba?”
“No”—pause—”only—Mrs. Gentleman.”
“Don’t tell a single solitary person,” I pleaded.
“No—only Mrs. Gentleman and Mammy and Daddy and your aul fella.”
“I was only joking,” I lied. “I never met him. I was only pulling your leg. He just gave me a seat from Limerick. That’s all.”
“Really!” she said, trying to raise one eyebrow. “Well,” she added, blowing out the candle, “Mammy, Daddy, and I are having dinner with the Gentlemans tomorrow night and I’ll mention it to him.”
I undressed in the dark, and when I got into bed she had all the blankets pulled over to her side.
“No, don’t, don’t tell,” I begged, but she was asleep while I was still pleading with her.
Next evening they did have dinner with the Gentlemans, and drove home just before midnight. I was behind the hall door, waiting.
“Not in bed yet, Caithleen?” Mr. Brennan said to me as he looked in the address book beside the telephone, to see if there were any night calls. Martha came in with a big bunch of gladioli in her arms, and her eyes were large and smiling.
“No, Mr. Brennan,” I said. I curled my finger and beckoned Baba to follow me into the study.
“Baba, I have a present for you, one of Mama’s rings … the one you like best. The black one.” I gave it to her and she put it on in the dark. There was a diamond in the center of it, and you could see it sparkle in the faint light that wandered in from the hall lamp.
“You didn’t tell,” I said.
“Oh, tell? Oh no, I didn’t tell. Old Mrs. Gentleman would be over here with a hatchet if I told. But J.W.” (that was Mr. Gentleman, she meant) “and I were having a stroll in the garden and I mentioned you and he said, ‘Oh, that little one, she suffers greatly from her imagination.’ “
“Impossible,” I said aloud.
“Oh yes. He was linking me around, showing me the various flowers, offering me a bunch of grapes, asking me what I thought of this and that, imploring me to play chess with him, and I mentioned your name and he said, ‘Oh, let’s not discuss her,’ so I dropped the subject. We were out there a hell of a long time; old Ma Gentleman stuck her head out the window finally and said, ‘You two,’ so we had to come in.”
That finished it. I would never be able to look him in the face again. And to think that I had given her Mama’s best ring.
Next morning Baba went to confession, and at eleven o’clock the phone rang.
Molly came upstairs for me. I was filling in my diary—doleful pieces about Mr. Gentleman.
“Mr. Gentleman wants you on the phone,” she said, and my heart started to race.
To go down and talk to him was all I desired. But now he was ringing to tell me how vulgar and disgusting I had been, how falsely I had redescribed our day together, and I could not endure it.
“Tell him I’m out and that I’ll ring him,” I said to Molly. I had some idea that I would write him a beautiful letter, a magnificent letter, most of which I’d copy out of Wuthering Heights. I’d wait around, and dart out from behind a tree to hand it to him as he got out to open the gate.
Molly went down and said I was gone to confession and that she’d tell me soon as I got in. They talked for another minute. I was demented, wondering what he’d have to say to Molly, and then she put down the phone.
“Well?” I was hanging over the banister, deathly white, with ink shadows under my eyes. I hadn’t slept for two nights.
“He’s terrible sorry but he’s gone to Paris on a trip,” she said, rolling up her sleeves and showing her fat, pink, strong arms to the daylight.
“To Paris?” I thought of girls and sin at once. How dare he?
“Yeah, he had to go sudden, some relative of his is dying,” she said, and she began to attack the hall floor with a scrubbing brush.
I saw no more of Mr. Gentleman, because we left for the convent three days later.
It took me only a second to recall all of this in the motorcar, and then I returned to my wet handkerchief and to Baba offering me a conversation lozenge.
It had Let us he friends written on it, but I was too bitter to smile.
We got into the convent town at dusk; just outside it there was a lake, a dark sheet of water, and when we drove past it, a bleak wind blew in through the half-open window. Then we drove through a narrow street that had electric lights every fifty yards or so along the pavement and there were poplar trees in between the green metal lamp posts. The dark sheet of water and the sad poplar trees and the strange dogs outside the strange shops made me indescribably sad.
“Nice place,” my father said, and snuffled. Nice place! A lot he knew about it. How could he think it was a nice place by just looking out the window?
“What about a drink, Bob?” he asked; and Martha, who had been dozing in the back seat, brightened up and said, “Yes, let’s give the children some lemonade.”
We stopped on the main street and went into a hotel. My knees were stiff. There was faded red Turkish carpet in the front hall and on the stairs that rose out of the hall. To the right was a dining room with lots of little tables laid with white cloths. There were two bottles of ketchup on each table. A red bottle and a brown bottle. We went into a room marked LOUNGE.
“Well, Bob, what will it be?” my father asked. I was trembling in case he should take anything strong himself.
“Whiskey,” said Mr. Brennan, taking off his glasses. They were mizzled with rain
, and he wiped them with a clean white handkerchief.
“And you, mam?” my father asked Martha. She hated being called “mam.” It was aging.
“Gin,” she said in an ungracious whisper. She hoped her husband was not listening, but I saw him grind his teeth as he went over to look at a faded hunting picture on the wall.
“I’ll have a lemonade, I suppose,” my father said, sighing. He was looking at me. He wanted me to acknowledge him, to give him a glance that told him he was brave and strong and good. But I looked the other way, preoccupied with my own miseries. In my mind I could see Mr. Gentleman’s hand on the steering wheel, and his gaze as he turned from the windshield to look at me when the car slowed down for the cows in the gateway.
Baba had grapefruit. To be different, I thought resentfully. We didn’t sit down, because we were in a hurry. We had to report at the convent before seven. There was a nice turf fire in the big red-brick fireplace and I hated leaving the hotel. My father paid for the drinks and we left.
The convent was a gray stone building with hundreds of small square curtainless windows, like so many eyes spying out on the wet sinful town. There were green railings around it and high green gates that led to a dark cypress avenue. My father got out of the car to open the gates, and gave the door a godawful bang. Mr. Brennan winced, and I was ashamed that my father didn’t know better.
We parked the car under a tree and got out. We went down a flight of stone steps and crossed a concrete yard toward an open door. In the hallway a nun came forward to meet us. She wore a black, loose-fitting habit and a black veil over her head. Framing her face, and covering her forehead, her ears, and her chest, was a stiff white thing which they call a wimple. It almost covered her eyebrows, but you could just barely see the tips of them. They were black and they met in the middle over the bridge of her red nose. Her face was shiny.
My father took off his hat and told her who we were. Mr. Brennan followed with the cases.
“You’re welcome,” she said to Baba and me. Her hand was cold.
“Well, Baba, try to behave yourself,” Mr. Brennan said doubtfully to Baba. Martha kissed me and put two coins into my hand. I said “Oh no,” but as I was saying it, my fingers closed over them gratefully. Reluctantly I kissed my father, and I clung for a second to Mr. Brennan and tried to thank him, but I was too embarrassed.
The nun smiled all through her farewells. She had been watching others since early morning.
“They will settle down,” she said. Her voice was determined though not harsh; but when she said, “They will settle down,” she seemed to be saying, “They must settle down.”
Our parents left. I thought of them going off to have tea and mixed grill in the warm hotel, and I could taste the hot pepper tang of Yorkshire relish.
“Well now,” said the nun, taking a man’s silver watch out of her pocket. “First your tea. Follow me,” and we followed her down a long hallway. It had red tiles on the floor and there were shiny white tiles halfway up the walls. On each tiled window ledge there was a castor-oil plant, and at the bottom of the hall there was a row of oak presses. It was like a hospital, but it smelled of wax polish instead of anesthetics. It was scrupulously and frighteningly clean. Dirt can be consoling and friendly in a strange place, I thought.
We hung our coats in the cloakroom, and she helped us find a compartment in the press where our names were already written and where we were to store caps, gloves, shoes, boot polish, prayer books, and small things like that. The press was like a honeycomb, and not all the compartments were filled yet.
We followed her across another concrete yard to the refectory. She walked busily, and the thick black rosary beads hanging from her waist swung outward as she walked. We went into a big room with a high ceiling and long wooden tables stretching lengthwise. There were benches at either side of the tables.
The big girls, or the “senior” girls, sat at one table and they were talking furiously. Talking about the holidays and the times they had. I suppose a lot of them were inventing things that never happened, just to make themselves important. Most of them had their hair freshly washed, and one or two were very pretty. I picked out the pretty ones at once. At the junior table the new girls were strangers to one another. They looked lost and mopey, and cried quietly to themselves.
We were put sitting opposite one another, and Baba smiled across at me, but we still hadn’t spoken. A little nun poured us two cups of tea from a big white enamel teapot. She was so small I thought she’d drop the teapot. She wore a white muslin apron over her black habit. The apron meant that she was a lay nun. The lay nuns did the cooking and cleaning and scrubbing, and they were lay nuns because they had no money or no education when they entered the convent. The other nuns were called choir nuns. I didn’t know that then, but one of the senior girls explained it to me. Her name was Cynthia and she taught me a lot of things.
The bread was already buttered and a dopey girl next to me kept passing me a plate of dull gray bread.
“It looks awful,” I said, and shook my head. I had cake in my case and knew that I would eat some later on. She passed me the plate twice more and Baba sniggered. After tea we trooped up to the convent chapel to say the Rosary aloud.
It was a pretty chapel and there were pale pink roses on the altar. The nuns sang during Benediction. One nun sang like a lark. Her voice was different from all the others, singing, “Mother, Mother, I am coming,” and I cried for my own mother. I thought of the day when we sat in the kitchen and saw the lark take the specks of sheep’s wool off the barbed wire and carry it off to build her nest.
“Will you be a nun when you’re big?” Mama asked me. She would have liked me to be a nun, it was better than marrying. Anything was, she thought.
That first evening in the chapel was strange and emotional. The incense floated down the nave, followed by the articulate voice of the priest, who knelt before the altar in a gold-crusted cloak.
We knelt in the back of the chapel on wooden benches, and there were wooden rails separating us from where the nuns knelt. The nuns were one in front of the other in little oak compartments that were fixed to the walls on either side. They all looked alike from the back except the postulants, who wore lace bonnets and whose hair showed through the lace.
We all filed out of the chapel, making as much noise as twenty horses galloping over a stony road. Some girls had studs in their shoes and you could hear the studs scratching the tile floor of the chapel porch. We went down to the recreation hall, where Sister Margaret was sitting on a rostrum, waiting to speak to us. She welcomed the new girls, rewelcomed the old ones, and gave a quick summary of the convent rules:
Silence in the dormitory, and at breakfast.
Shoes to he taken off before going into the dormitory.
No food to be kept in presses in the dormitory.
To bed within twenty minutes after you go upstairs.
“Now,” she said, “will the girls who wish to have milk at night please put up their hands?” I had a bad chest, so I put up my hand and committed myself to a lukewarm cup of dusty milk every night; and committed my father to a bill for two pounds a year. Scholarships did not cater to bad chests.
We went to bed early.
Our dormitory was on the first floor. There was a lavatory on the landing outside it, and twenty or thirty girls were queueing there, hopping from one foot to another as if they couldn’t wait. I took off my shoes and carried them into the dormitory. It was a long room with windows on either side, and a door at the far end. Over the door was a large crucifix, and there were holy pictures along the yellow distempered walls. There were two rows of iron beds down the length of the room. They were covered with white cotton counterpanes, and the iron was painted white as well. The beds were numbered and I found mine easily enough. Baba was six beds away from me. At least it was nice to know that she was near, in case we should ever speak. There were three radiators along the wall, but they were cold.
I sat d
own on the chair beside my bed, took off my garters, and peeled my stockings off slowly. The garters were too tight and they had made marks on my legs. I was looking at the red marks, worrying in case I’d have varicose veins before morning, and I didn’t know that Sister Margaret was standing right behind me. She wore rubber-soled shoes and she had a way of stealing up on one. I jumped off the chair when she said, “Now, girls.” I turned around to face her. Her eyes were cross and I could see a small cyst on one of her irises. She was that near to me.
“The new girls won’t know this, but our convent has always been proud of its modesty. Our girls, above anything else, are good and wholesome and modest. One expression of modesty is the way a girl dresses and undresses. She should do so with decorum and modesty. In an open dormitory like this …” She paused, because someone had come in the bottom door and had bashed a ewer against the woodwork. Even my earlobes were blushing. She went on: “Upstairs the senior girls have separate cubicles; but, as I say, in an open dormitory like this, girls are requested to dress and undress under the shelter of their dressing gowns. Girls should face the foot of the bed doing this, as they might surprise each other if they face the side of the bed.” She coughed and went off twiddling a bunch of keys in the air. She unlocked the oak door at the end of the room and went out.
The girl allotted to the bed next to mine raised her eyes to heaven. She had squint eyes and I didn’t like her. Not because of the squint, but because she looked like someone who would have bad taste about everything. She was wearing a pretty, expensive dressing gown and rich fluffy slippers; but you felt that she bought them to show off, and not because they were pretty. I saw her put two bars of chocolate under her pillow.
Trying to undress under a dressing gown is a talent you must develop. Mine fell off six or seven times, but finally I managed to keep it on by stooping very low.
I was rooting in my travel bag when the lights went out. Small figures in nightgowns hurried up the carpeted passage and disappeared into the cold white beds.
I wanted to get the cake that was in the bottom of my bag. The tea service was on top, so I took it out piece by piece. Baba crept up to the foot of my bed, and for the first time we talked, or, rather, we whispered.