The frown deepened. ‘We can hardly call you Joachim. How about Anne—Joachim’s wife and the mother of Our Blessed Lady? That’s simple, pretty and far more suitable than a pagan name like Morna.’
‘But we’ve got three Annes in our class already, Reverend Mother.’
‘Doesn’t matter. There are five Marys in the fourth form and no one muddles them.’
It was she herself who had been muddled. She was often slow in answering to Anne. It seemed disloyal to her father who had chosen Morna himself and who was like another sort of God in that she had never seen him because he lived in heaven. She wore his photo in a locket round her neck, though only in the holidays. Jewellery was forbidden in the convent, save for the small gold crucifix she had received at her First Communion. She felt uneasy when she took it off at the end of term, replaced the lean and naked Christ with a braided medalled squadron-leader. She tried to compromise and wear them both at once—two cold dead father-gods swinging round her neck.
‘I’ve put you on the ground floor, Mrs Conyers. I know you haven’t been well. You’re further up, Mrs Gordon. Number sixty-three. Sister Ruth will show you to your rooms.’
Sister Ruth was older, wore the full old-fashioned habit. Morna turned to follow her, was suddenly a child again, dwarfed by the wide winged wimple, the yards of flowing robe. She could almost feel the blue school hat, bought big as an economy, sitting on her eyebrows, blinkering her view as she trotted to keep up. ‘Give me a child before he is seven,’ the Jesuits always said. The nuns had got hold of her at seven and three-quarters, swiftly made up for lost time. She had swapped her mother for Reverend Mother, said goodbye to Bea in a vast and echoing London terminus, trains rattling through her tears, farewells cut short as cold fingers grabbed her wrist, steered her towards the train.
‘Only babies cry, Morna.’ A stiff white handkerchief which smelt of church was jabbed into her eyes. ‘Pull yourself together.’
Mother Mary Michael was the first nun she had seen. She had sat beside her in the carriage, folds of musty black flapping against her bare and shaking knees. Mother Michael didn’t have knees herself, nor lap nor breasts nor arms. Even her eyes were dead and tombed in spectacles. She had cried again in bed that night, stifled her tears in the pillow. Crying was forbidden. She hardly slept that week at all, heard strange frightening noises from the grounds, flutterings and rustlings, a screech of a bird in pain. Her mother had gone forever, swallowed up at Charing Cross—a blur through the steamed-up window of the train, a tiny speck dwindling into nothing.
It was pitch dark when the bell rang in the morning. A different nun was standing at the foot of the bed, black on black, chanting something she couldn’t understand. She discovered later it was a prayer in Latin—a prayer for rising in a dead language. She soon learnt to make the right response in matching Latin, rise instantly and modestly from sleep, holding her nightie down with one hand so that it wouldn’t show her legs and crossing herself with the other, to scare the Devil in case he had been lingering by her bed.
‘Right, Mrs Conyers, this is your room. I’m afraid I can’t put you near your mother, Mrs Gordon. These ground-floor rooms are reserved for nuns and invalids. But if you’d like to follow me …’
‘No!’ Morna almost shouted. She must cling on to her mother, refuse to let go her hand at Charing Cross. She took a step inside the room. ‘Shall I … er … help you with your unpacking, Mummy, before I …?’
‘No, dear. You go up. I can manage.’
Never contradict a nun, was what her mother meant, never keep one waiting. Morna slowly backed away, tagged after Sister Ruth. A younger version of the nun was standing over her desk, blocking out the light while she struggled with her first letter home, tears splashing on the paper.
‘Darling Mummy, it is very nice here …’
The lie didn’t matter, because her mother would never read it. She hadn’t got a mother any more. God was mother and father now, Mother Michael had told her. But God was like the nuns—didn’t have a lap and wasn’t allowed to laugh and could see you through the ceiling. She was ten before she stopped resenting Him.
Morna walked faster, caught up with Sister Ruth. ‘It’s … er … a lovely day,’ she said. She had to break the silence, prove she wasn’t seven still.
‘Yes, beautiful.’ The nun sounded as if she begrudged the weather, would have regarded hail and thunder as more suited to man’s sinfulness. Nothing else was said until they reached the top floor.
‘That’s it,’ said Sister Ruth, stopping at the end room. ‘The bathroom’s down those stairs there. No smoking in your room, please, and make sure you switch all lights off at night.’ She glided off back along the passage.
Morna stared at the strip of room, almost like a cell—bare white walls, low confining ceiling. The bed was two-foot-six, the mattress thin. Everything was thin—walls, blankets, curtains, skinny scrap of rug stranded on the khaki squiggled lino. The nineteen-thirties wardrobe didn’t match the fifties chest of drawers, except that both were battered. The only ornament was a living-colour crucifix positioned above the bed. Neil had always abhorred what he called the mascot of the Catholic Church—a naked convicted criminal hanging on a gibbet. She turned her back to it, came face to face with Our Lady’s disapproving eye staring directly into hers. She was caught between the Madonna and her Son—one expiring, one rebuking.
She removed her jacket, stared down at her scarlet-poppied skirt. There was no mirrror in the room, but she knew already she was wrongly dressed. Her make-up was too obvious, her hair a slightly deeper shade of auburn from the one she had been born with. The three or four retreatants she had glimpsed so far were all females of uncertain age in Crimplene frocks and home-knit cardigans, pious souls who accepted the face and hair which God had handed out to them without presuming to make improvements. Morna kicked off her high-heeled shoes, opened her case—Neil’s case—which looked too fancy with its elaborate zips and straps. Thank God she had packed sandals and a fairly basic navy skirt. Blue to match the Virgin on the wall. She changed into the skirt, tugged it well below her knees. Even their games shorts (which the nuns had called divided skirts) had been worn below the knee at school.
Dearest Mummy,
Today we had to kneel in rows on the floor and Sister Emelda went up and down the rows measuring our shorts with a metal ruler. If the hems didn’t touch the floor, she rapped our knees with the ruler and we had to miss tea and let them down. I missed tea. It’s swiss roll on Saturdays. I hope you are well.
Love, Morna.
She remembered that swiss roll—the only cake they had all week and cut so thin it was probably also measured out with Sister Mary Emelda’s metal ruler. Morna grinned. This wasn’t school, for heaven’s sake. She had left all that behind more than twenty years ago. It was a holiday, a rest for Bea, a breath of country air. She walked to the window to admire the view, looked out on a stretch of slated roof, a length of rusty guttering. Why had they stuck her right up here, three floors from her mother? Had Father Clarke leaked her loss of faith, her lack of lawful wedded husband, so that they feared her as a contaminant?
Ridiculous. She was getting paranoid. Even simple harmless things like her bag of salted peanuts, her Woman’s Journal, now seemed to scream aloud. Magazines and snacks would have been confiscated at school as evidence of worldliness and greed. Sister Ruth had probably tiptoed back again and was hovering just outside, hand outstretched waiting for the nuts. Morna flung open the door, came face to face with a jolly red-faced woman in her sixties.
‘Hi, there! I was just about to come and say hallo. We’re the only two who’ve arrived yet on this floor. The name’s Joan.’
‘H … Hallo. I’m Morna.’ She didn’t add ‘Come in.’ The woman had a cross around her neck.
‘Nice rooms, aren’t they? The last retreat I went to we had to sleep in dormitories. I’ve even got a wash-basin.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘Are you coming do
wn to supper?’
Morna frowned. ‘Supper? Now? It can’t be much past five.’
‘It’s ten to six. Six o’clock sharp they said we eat, so we’ve time for the first talk afterwards and Holy Mass.’
Holy Mass was a giveaway, a nun’s phrase, definitely. Morna followed Joan down the stairs, winced as a gong vibrated through the hall.
‘That’s the supper bell. Shall we sit together?’
‘I’ll just go and fetch my mother. Her room’s a little further on.’
‘Oh, you’re with your mother, are you? Nice.’
Morna didn’t answer. She could think of better ways of spending the last week of July. She and Neil had always flown to the sun and then avoided it in their air-conditioned hotel rooms. Neil had seemed to weigh more in the summer—heaving on top of her in strange foreign beds in Antibes or Marbella or Capri, their bodies stuck together with sweat. Mustn’t think of sex, not here. Anyway, why did she keep harping back to Neil? She made sure to boot him out before she entered Bea’s room, which was much larger than her own and looked out to lawn and flowers. Reward not just for Bea’s nine days in hospital, but for her seventy years of faith.
‘It seems a really friendly place, dear. I’ve just been having a chat with Reverend Mother and she says I can have tea in bed most mornings.’
‘Lucky you! We’d better hurry or we’ll miss our other tea. I refuse to call it dinner when it’s only five fifty-nine.’
It wasn’t dinner either, or not by Morna’s standards. There was one sausage roll apiece (cold), served with a brown bog of baked beans, once hot but now congealing. The bread was thin-sliced and barely buttered. The tea was strong and came in a huge metal teapot with twin handles, which was passed from table to table, scalding into the thick white china cups.
Morna glanced around the rows of faces, all female save for three token men, one with a CND badge and open sandals, one a monk complete with rope and tonsure, and one near octogenarian.
Joan had saved her a place. She was a nun—Sister Emmanuel—but she had changed over to her ordinary Christian name in the progressive 1970s. Morna watched with fascination as she shovelled in baked beans, mopped ketchup from her chin. She had never seen a nun eat. The nuns at school had had their living quarters in the basement, out of sight for meals and sleep. She had assumed as a child that their only daily sustenance was the tiny wafer of bread they received from the priest each morning. Later, when she was older and what the nuns described as impudent, one of the younger sisters confided that she had become a vegetarian.
‘You can’t be,’ Morna retorted. ‘Not if you go to Communion. That’s Christ’s flesh and blood.’
Six months later, she was doubting it. The so-called Real Presence became increasingly unreal for her, unleashed a flood of doubts which she was unwise enough to confide to Mother Michael.
‘Life is nothing without your faith, and you’re throwing it away, Anne.’
‘I’m not, Mother. I want to believe. It’s just that …’
‘The sin of pride. Thinking we know best. Before God we are fools. Fools and worms. And yet you dare to question Him.’
‘I only want to know if …’
‘You shouldn’t want. You must aim to crush your wants, bend your will to His.’
‘Yes, but …’
‘No buts.‘But’ is the Devil’s word. I’m sorry to say it, Anne, but you are getting far too friendly with the Devil. Once you give him the smallest crack to put a claw in, he’s got you hard and fast, fouling up your mind and then your body.’
She had seen a programme once about bacteria—microbes swarming on cheese, or crawling into every pore. Devils were as prolific and as dangerous—festering in your body, making dirty footmarks on your soul. She stopped writing home. She was infected and contagious. Bea might open the envelope and find demons pouring out. Her mother had never doubted. God was as real for her as her kitchen stove or bed.
Morna smiled across at her now. Bea looked tired but cheerful, was talking to the only under-twenty in the room—a shy doe-like girl who stared down at her plate, mumbled yes and no. At least the silence hadn’t started yet. Modern retreats broke you in more gently. The first evening was for relaxing, introductions. They had all swapped the briefest of biographies—name and job, address. Most of the jobs were worthy ones—school teachers and social workers, even a JP; spinsters looking after mothers, a scattering of nuns; people with a goal in life, a God. Was that why she felt so alien, the only one without a real purpose? Nonsense. She had work herself, a daughter, a lovely home. She picked up her spoon, scraped off the tobacco shreds of nutmeg grated too large atop her pink blancmange. It looked like a pink and fleshy breast, a large one, C-cup, wobbling in her dish. The Devil was especially fond of breasts, not that the nuns had ever used the word. Chest was safer.
‘Are you a charismatic?’ the woman opposite was asking—a housewife with six children who still found time to help with the handicapped.
‘Er … no,’ Morna said. Charismatic sounded like a disease. She stuffed her mouth with blancmange to fend off any further questions, especially religious ones. When did you make your last confession, how many times did …?
‘More pudding?’ Joan was asking. That was safer. She nodded, held out her dish while Joan dolloped in a second breast. She ate it fast, could see the demons swarming on her spoon. She was still hungry. There were no extras, no cheese and biscuits, no crusty rolls, nothing to drink save lukewarm water in the sort of dwarf-sized plastic tumblers which came free with Mobiloil. At translators’ conferences you downed four-course meals with sherry first and brandy afterwards and decent intervals between the Camembert and Cognac and the first serious talk. Here, you were harried from refectory to lecture room, swapped one hard chair for another with barely time to wash your hands. At least the priest looked reasonable, a Father Colin Fenton—a tall rugged man, his face softened by wisps of silver hair. He stepped up to the podium, waited for silence, which was near-instant and respectful.
‘‘‘I will remove the heart of stone within you’’,’ he recited. ‘‘‘And give you a heart of flesh instead.’’’
Ezekiel. Morna recognised the verse, felt a sudden soaring of her spirits. Perhaps she had been right to come. She could forget the pettiness, the bad food, stodgy company, if she were offered something else. Her heart had been stone too long. She had hardened it since Neil left, tried to block out all emotion, not to feel at all. She fixed her whole attention on the priest.
‘We have seen enormous material progress in our lives. Now we need to catch up on the spiritual side, go on a voyage of spiritual discovery …’
She liked the phrase. It suggested new horizons, a new start. Neil had ensured the material progress; it was up to her to initiate the spiritual. It needn’t be a voyage to God—and certainly not the nuns’ God. There must be other routes which bypassed Him.
‘We have been living in the dark,’ the priest continued. ‘The light is there, a light which can illuminate the world for us, if we will only crawl out of our gloom and hibernation.’
Morna closed her eyes to concentrate, felt the first few watts of weak new light surprising on her lids.
Chapter Four
Three days later, they were back to demons. Morna fidgeted in her seat as a short fierce swarthy Irish priest warned about the ‘Evil One’ who still roamed the modern world. They no longer called him ‘Devil’, but the end product was the same—shame and guilt.
‘Beware of a diet of dessert,’ Canon O’ Connor urged. ‘A bland, hollow, pretty-pretty religion which pretends there is no sin, allows us to indulge ourselves, makes us spiritually flabby.’
Morna pressed her hands against her stomach. The double helping of orange jelly was still squelching there, blob of synthetic cream quivering on the top, reward for the first course of greasy mutton stew. She could still taste the mutton, felt clogged with it as if the fat had hardened and formed a white shiny scum across her body. She glanced at
her watch. Only ten to three. The afternoons always seemed to slouch. It wasn’t just the silence. That was oppressive, yes, but by no means total—broken up with lectures and discussion groups and with the services themselves. It was the fact that the silence was for God, every talk and prayer and sentiment for God, which made her feel so alien, like being tone-deaf at a concert, or paraplegic at the Olympic Games. Religion was like sex in that respect. If you were orgasmic, a believer, then the time flashed by because you were totally involved. If not, you found yourself staring at the ceiling or the altar, making Christmas lists or playing mental chess, whilst the ecstatic rest had eyes and ears only for the Beloved.
The evening Masses were the worst, interminable because everyone but her joined in, swelling out the standard service with personal petitions, individual confessions of sin. The sins were all venial, bathetically so, in fact. She found herself almost hoping for a real offence, a full-blooded theft or murder, or at least something graver than the endless petty recital of white lies, lost tempers, unkind thoughts. She even doubted those. Everyone was so unwaveringly good-natured, it grated on her nerves. Even in the silence, they managed to pour out the full-cream milk of human kindness, swapping smiles, squeezing hands, offering seats or hymn-books, exuding so much earnest feeling it made her squirm. They were all one happy cosy family—God’s family—sisters and brothers in Christ with no hint of anything as crude or rude as sibling rivalry or incest.
She crossed her legs, uncrossed them, fiddled with her hair. Even trivial things were beginning to annoy her—the shapeless woman in front who wore two clashing shades of mauve and kept nodding her head at everything the priest said, Sister Joan’s stupid tickly cough. She could accuse herself of sins enough—total lack of charity and, if not murder, murderous thoughts. She tried to concentrate. The Canon was quoting statistics now, to prove the decline in Christianity.
The Stillness the Dancing Page 3