by Edna O'Brien
“Can I write to you?” I asked. He had kissed me behind the ear, in a place that made me shudder.
“No,” he said firmly.
“And will I ever see you?” I asked. My voice was more tragic than I meant it to be.
“Of course,” he said impatiently. It was the first time he had looked irritated and I winced. He was sorry at once.
“Of course, of course, my little darling; later, when you go to Dublin.” He was stroking my hair, and his eyes looked far ahead and longingly toward the future.
Then he pushed up my sleeve and put the watch on my wrist, and we went in and sat at the fire until we heard the car coming. I sat on his lap and he opened his overcoat and let the sides of it drop onto the floor.
“Where will I say I got the watch?” I asked as I jumped up. The car was coming in the front drive.
“You won’t say. You’ll put it away,” he said.
“But I can’t, that’s cruel.”
“Caithleen, go up and put it somewhere,” he told me. He lit a cigar and tried to look casual as he heard the front door being opened. Baba rushed in with her arms full of parcels.
“Hello, Baba, I came to wish you happy Christmas,” he said, lying, as he took some of the parcels out of her arms and laid them on the hall table.
I put the watch into a china soap dish. It curled up very nicely in the bottom of the soap dish, and it looked as if it were going to sleep. It was a pale gold, the color of moth dust.
When I came down to the room, Mr. Gentleman was talking to Mr. Brennan, and for the rest of the night he ignored me. Baba held a sprig of mistletoe over his head and he kissed her, and then Martha put the gramophone on and played “Silent Night,” and I thought of the evening when the snow fell on the windshield and when he parked the car under the hawthorn tree. I tried to catch his eye, but he did not look at me until he was leaving, and then it was a sad look.
And so, of course, the time came for us to go back, and once more we got out our gym frocks and our black cotton stockings.
“I should have cleaned my gym frock,” I said to Baba. “It’s all stained.”
She was looking out at the vegetable garden and she was crying. It was that time of year when the garden was lifeless. The sad, upturned damp clay looked desolate, and there was nothing to suggest that things would grow there ever again. Over in the corner there was a hydrangea bush, and the withered flowers looked like old floor mops. Near it was the rubbish heap, where Molly had just thrown empty bottles and the Christmas tree. It was raining and blowing outside and the sky was dark.
“We’ll run away,” she said.
“When? Now?”
“Now! No. From the damn convent.”
“They’ll kill us.”
“They won’t find us. We’ll go with a traveling show company and be actors. I can sing and act, and you can take the tickets.”
“I want to act, too,” I said defensively.
“All right. We’ll put in an advertisement. ‘Two female amateurs, one can sing; both have secondary education.’ “
“But we’re not females, we’re girls.”
“We could pass as females.”
“I doubt it.”
“Oh, Christ, don’t damp my spirits. I’ll kill myself if I have to stay five years in that jail.”
“It’s not so bad.” I was trying to cheer her.
“It’s not so bad for you, winning statues and playing up to nuns. You give me the sick anyhow, jumping up to open and close the damn door for nuns as if they had cerebral palsy and couldn’t do it themselves.” It was true, I did play up to the nuns, and I hated her for noticing it.
“All right, then, you run away,” I said.
“Oh no,” she said desperately, catching my wrist, “we’ll go together.” I nodded. It was nice to know that she needed me.
She remembered then that she had to get something downstairs and she bolted off.
“Where are you going?”
“To feck a few samples from the surgery.”
I got into my gym frock. It was creased all over and the box pleats had come out at the edges. She came back with a new roll of cotton and several little sample tubes of ointments. I picked one tube up off the bed, where she threw them. Its name was printed on a white label and a note underneath which read FOR UDDER INFUSION.
“What’s this for?” I asked. I was thinking of Hickey milking the fawn cow and holding the teat so that the milk zigzagged all over the cobbled floor. He did this to be funny, whenever I went up to the cow house to call him to his tea.
“What’s this for?” I asked again.
“Make us look females,” she said. “We’ll rub it into our bubs and they’ll swell out; it says it’s for udders.”
“We might get all hairy or something,” I said. I meant it. I distrusted ointments with big names on the label, and anyhow it was for cows.
“You’re a right-looking eejit,” she said. She yelled with laughter.
“Supposing we told your father?” I suggested. I didn’t really want to run away.
“Tell my father! He has no bloody feelings. He’d tell us to exercise control. Martha told him the other day that she had an ulcer on her foot and he told her to will it away with the power of the mind. He’s a lunatic,” she said. Her eyes were flashing with anger.
“There’s no other way then,” I said flatly.
“We can always get expelled,” she said, carefully measuring each word. And she began to consider the various ways we could achieve that.
12
On and off, for three years, she thought about it. But I discouraged her by reminding her that we were too young to go to the city. During those three years nothing special happened to us, so I can pass quickly over them.
We did examinations and Baba failed hers. Cynthia left the convent; we cried saying goodbye, and swore lifelong friendship. But after a few months we stopped writing letters. I forget who stopped first.
The holidays were always enjoyable. In the summer Mr. Gentleman took me out in his boat. We rowed to an island far out from the shore, and boiled a kettle on his primus stove to make tea. It was a happy time, and he often kissed my hand and said I was his freckle-faced daughter.
“Are you my father?” I asked wistfully, because it was nice playing make-believe with Mr. Gentleman.
“Yes, I’m your father,” he said as he kissed the length of my arm, and he promised that when I went to Dublin later on he would be a very attentive father. Martha and Baba and everyone thought he was bringing me to see my Aunt Molly. One day, we actually did call. Aunt Molly got very excited at having Mr. Gentleman as a guest, and she fussed about and brought down the good cups from the parlor. The cups were dusty and she insisted on putting cream in Mr. Gentleman’s tea, though he told her that he used no milk. The cream was a great luxury and she thought she was doing us a favor.
But, all the time, Baba was thinking of how we might escape from the convent. She read film magazines in bed and said we could get into pictures, if we knew anyone in America.
The chance came in March. I mean the chance to escape. We had a retreat in the convent and the priest, who came from Dublin to lecture us, enjoined us to keep silent in order to think of God and of our souls.
On the second morning of the retreat he told us that the afternoon lecture would be devoted to the Sixth Commandment. This was the most important lecture of all and it was also very private. Sister Margaret did not want the nuns to come into the chapel while it was going on, as the priest spoke very frankly about boys and sex and things. It was not likely that the nuns would come into the chapel by the main door, but some nun might go into the choir gallery upstairs. To prevent this, Sister Margaret wrote out a warning notice which read DO NOT ENTER—LECTURE ON HERE, and she asked me to pin it on the door upstairs. She chose me because I had rubber-soled shoes and was not likely to go pounding up the convent stairs. I felt nervous and excited as I climbed the oak stairs. It was my first time to go i
n there, to the nuns’ quarters, and I had no idea which door I was to pin the notice on. The stairs were highly polished and the white wall on one side was covered with large paintings. Paintings of the Resurrection, and the Last Supper, and a circular, colored painting of the Madonna and Child. I hoped that at least I’d see a nuns cell, so that I could tell Baba and the others. We were dying to know what the cells were like, because some senior girl said that the nuns slept on planks, and another girl said that they slept in coffins. On the first landing I paused for breath and dipped my hand in the white marble Holy Water font that curved out from under the windowsill. There was a maidenhair fern trailing out of a Chinese vase and the strands were so long that they dipped onto the pale Indian rug that covered the landing floor.
Slowly I climbed the next flight of steps and saw a wooden door on my right. I decided that this must be it. With four new drawing pins I secured the notice to the center panel of the door, and then stood back from it to read it. It was written very clearly and all the letters were even. To the left there was a long, narrow corridor with doors on either side, and though I guessed that these were the cells, I did not dare go down and peep through a keyhole. I hurried back to the chapel and was just in time for the beginning of the lecture.
When it was almost over, I nipped out and hurried up the convent stairs to remove the notice. I found Sister Margaret waiting for me. She was fuming with temper.
“Is this your idea of a joke?” she asked. She opened the door and pointed inward. It was a lavatory. I had to smile.
“I’m sorry, Sister,” I said.
“You’re an evil girl,” she said. Her eyes were piercing me, and she was so angry that when she spoke little spits flew out of her mouth and spattered my face.
“I’m sorry, Sister,” I said again. I wondered to myself if the nuns were deprived of the lavatory for the whole evening, and the more I thought of it, the funnier it seemed. But I was afraid, too, and shaking like a leaf.
“You have insulted my sisters in religion and you have vulgarized the name of your school,” she said.
“It was an accident,” I said meekly.
“You will remain standing in front of the Blessed Sacrament for three hours, and you will then apologize to the Reverend Mother.”
After I had stood for three hours and had apologized to the Reverend Mother, I was coming down the convent steps, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand, when Baba accosted me. She held up a sheet of paper and written on it was this: I have a plan at last that will expel us.
We were supposed to be on silence so we had to go somewhere to talk. I followed her down to the school and up the back stairs to one of the lavatories.
She began at once—knowing that we couldn’t stay in there very long—”We’ll leave a dirty note in the chapel as if it fell out of our prayer books.” She was shaking all over.
“Oh, God, we can’t,” I said. I was shaking, too—after the Reverend Mother. The scene was in my mind vividly. How I knocked on the door and went into the big, cold parlor. She was sitting on a rostrum, reading her office. She pushed her spectacles farther down her nose, and fixed me with a pair of cold, blue, penetrating eyes.
“So you are the rotten apple,” she said. Her voice was quiet but enormously accusing.
“I’m sorry, Sister,” I said. I should have called her “Mother,” but I was so frightened that I got mixed up.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” I repeated.
“Are you?” she asked. The question echoed through the length of the cold room, so that the high, ornamented ceiling seemed to ask “Are you?” and the gilt clock on the mantelpiece ticked “Are you?” and everything in that room accused me until I was petrified. It was a comfortless room and I doubted that anyone had ever drunk tea at the great oval table with its thick, strong legs. I was waiting for her to really begin, but she said nothing more, and then I realized that the interview was over. I withdrew shamefully, closing the door as quietly as possible behind me, and saw that she was looking after me.
“We can’t,” I said to Baba. “Think of all the trouble.” All I wanted was peace.
“What is it anyhow?” I asked.
“It’s this.” She whispered in my ear. Even she was a little shy about saying it aloud.
“Oh, God.” I put my hand across my mouth, in case I should repeat it.
“There’s no ‘Oh, God.’ There will be hell for three or four days and then we’re off. Free.”
“We’ll get killed.”
“We won’t. Martha won’t mind and your aul fella will probably be on a batter, and my aul fella can have a run-an’-jump for himself.”
She took her pen out of her pocket and a lovely sky-blue holy picture. It was a picture of the Blessed Virgin coming out of the clouds with a blue cloak opening out behind her.
“You write it,” I said.
“Our two names are going on it,” she said as she knelt down. There on the lavatory seat she wrote it in block capitals. I was ashamed of it then, and I am ashamed of it now. I think it’s something you’d rather not hear. Anyhow, we both signed our names to it.
Though I closed my eyes and tried not to repeat it, the wicked sentence kept saying itself in my ears, and I was ashamed for Sister Mary, my favorite nun. Because what we wrote concerned her and Father Tom.
Father Thomas was the chaplain and Sister Mary was the nun who dressed the altar and served Mass. She was a pretty, pink-cheeked nun, and she was always smiling as if she had some secret in life that no one else had. Not a smug smile but ecstatic. As Baba wrote it, the doorknob was turned from the outside. Two or three times, impatiently each time.
“Suppose it’s her,” I said in a gasping whisper. Baba unlocked the door and went out blushing. Standing there was one of the junior girls. She blessed herself when she saw us and went in hurriedly. God knows what she thought, but the following day when we were disgraced she told everyone that we came out of the lavatory together.
For the remainder of the evening, whenever I saw Sister Margaret come into the study, my legs and knees began to tremble, and I could feel her cruel eyes on me.
So, to avoid her, I went to bed early, because during the retreat we were free to go to bed at any hour before ten o’clock. There was no one in the dormitory when I went up, and it was deathly quiet. I was folding the counterpane when I heard footsteps rushing up the stairs.
“Jesus, Cait, where are you?” Baba called.
“Ssh, ssh,” I said, as Sister Margaret was likely to be snooping about.
“She’s gone off to the nuthouse,” said Baba. Baba’s eyes were flashing and she was so excited she could hardly talk.
“Is it found?” I asked.
“Found! The whole school knows about it. That mope Peggy Darcy handed it to Sister Margaret below in the recreation hall, and didn’t old Margaret think ‘twas a prayer and she began to read it, out loud.” I could feel the color travel up my neck, and my hands were perspiring.
“Imagine,” said Baba, “she read out, ‘Father Tom stuck his long thing,’ and when she realized what it was, she went purple at the mouth and began to fume around the recreation hall. She beat several girls with her strap, and she was yelling, ‘Where are they, where are they, those children of Satan!’ “ Baba was enjoying every moment of this.
“Go on,” I begged her.
“She had the holy picture in her hand, and she was beating all before her, so Christ, I made a beeline for the cloakroom and hid in one of the presses. All the girls were yelling by then, though half the young ones didn’t know what the thing meant; so in the end she got so delirious that the prefect had to call another nun, and they carried her off.”
“And what’ll we do?” I asked. If only we could run quickly, get out of the place.
“They’re looking for us. So for Chrissake, don’t tremble or break down or anything. Say ‘twas a joke we heard somewhere,” Baba warned me, and just then the prefect came into the dormitory and called us out.
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p; As we walked past her she withdrew close to the wall, because now we were filthy and loathsome and no one could speak to us. In the hallway girls looked at us as if we had some terrible disease, and even girls who had stolen watches and things gave us a hateful, superior look.
The Reverend Mother was waiting for us in the reception room. She had a shawl over her shoulders, and her face was deathly pale.
“I wish to say that you must leave at once,” she said. I tried to apologize, and she addressed me individually.
“Your mind is so despicable that I cannot conceive how you have gone unnoticed all these years. Poor Sister Margaret, she has suffered the greatest shock of her religious life. This afternoon you did a disgusting thing, and now you have done something outrageous,” she said. Her voice was trembling and her poise was gone. She was really upset. I began to cry and Baba gave me a dig in the ribs to shut up.
“We can explain,” I said to the Reverend Mother.
“I have already informed your parents; you shall leave tomorrow,” she told us.
That night we were put in the infirmary, in two separate wards. It was the longest night I have ever lived, and the thought of going home the next day was terrifying. All night, a mouse scraped the wainscoting, and I lay awake with my feet curled up under me, thinking of some way that I could put an end to my life.
We left next afternoon and no one said goodbye to us.
“Say the Rosary,” Baba said to me, in the back of the hired car. The driver was a stranger but he must have had a great old ride, listening to us, as we prayed and alternated our prayers with surmisal. He was from the convent town and Reverend Mother had hired him. News of our disgrace had gone home ahead of us.
There was a man mowing the Brennans’ front lawn when we got out of the car. His name was Charlie and he nodded to us, but he didn’t stop the mower. It looked as if it was running away from him. It was a cold, sunny day and under the rhododendron shrub there were crocuses in bloom. Yellow ocher crocuses. The wind had got inside some of them and the petals had fallen down on the grass. They looked like pieces of crepe paper, just thrown there. There were primroses, too. A cluster of them around the roots of the sycamore tree. They had cut down the tree because they were afraid it would fall on the house in a big wind. Mr. Brennan had grown ivy around the roots and had trailed it across the ugly brown stump, and now there were primroses, merry little primroses, shooting up through the ivy. I had been looking at primrose leaves for seventeen years, and I had never noticed before that their leaves were hairy and old and wrinkled. I kept looking at them. Always on the brink of trouble I look at something, like a tree or a flower or an old shoe, to keep me from palpitating.