In their free time, the girls would sometimes argue about this. Although the school was completely Catholic, there were still sharp divisions of political opinion within it. Girls like Brian’s and Lucy’s daughter Una liked Sister Philomena. Because she had grown up in Derry, they said, she understood how Catholics were discriminated against in Northern Ireland; unlike Sister Benedict, who was from the Republic. If you told Sister Philomena your father or brother had been pulled out of their car and beaten up at an army checkpoint in the middle of the night, she’d be angry and sympathise with you; she wouldn’t automatically assume that they must have done something to bring it upon themselves. Girls such as the policeman’s younger daughter, who was in Helen’s class, or another pupil who had an uncle an Alliance MP, resented the pep talks Sister Philomena used to give them: ‘This is your society, and don’t you forget it. You have as much right to be in it as anyone else, and I want you all to get out there and claim the place that’s waiting for you, the place you deserve.’ ‘Does she really think we need to be told all that?’ they would say with disdain. They complained that Sister Philomena was always bringing politics into education; Sister Philomena’s supporters maintained that education was already a political issue in Northern Ireland, and that it was Sister Benedict who was at fault, for trying to deny or ignore this.
Helen’s position was unusual, in that she thought Sister Philomena was right, but she liked Sister Benedict best. It made her sad to see how Sister Benedict would unwittingly annoy or alienate some of the girls, and it had happened again that very morning at assembly, when she led them in a prayer for a soldier who had been shot during the night. ‘Bloody bitch,’ a girl near Helen hissed, folding her arms sullenly. When Sister Philomena took assembly, she would pray ‘for peace in Northern Ireland, and for all the victims of the Troubles’, to which no one ever seemed to object.
Helen was surprised at how fond she was of Sister Benedict. If she’d been her contemporary, she thought, she’d probably have been her best friend. She wasn’t like the other nuns. For one thing, she was incredibly untidy, as Helen herself was, and she knew how Sister Benedict struggled for that perfect order which came so naturally to the others: most of the time, she didn’t achieve it. She started to rummage now on a desk piled high with books and papers. ‘I know your forms are here, Helen, I saw them a moment ago.’ While she searched, Helen looked around the office, at the magnolia walls hung with a photograph of the Pope, a reproduction of Fra Angelico’s Annunciation, and a slender crucifix. She looked, too, at the nun whose life was a mystery to Helen.
The girls in Helen’s class had once calculated that if Sister Benedict had been to university in Dublin for four years, in Africa for twenty years and in Northern Ireland for ten, then she must have been at least in her early fifties, although you’d never have guessed it from looking at her. They knew that she had grown up on a farm in Tipperary, and that she had been the eldest of six children.
When Helen was in fifth form, there had been a one-day retreat organised for the senior girls on the theme of the Missions. Two priests, home from Tanzania, had come to talk to them about the work they did, showed them slides; and Sister Benedict had been obliged to give a testimony of her own vocation. She had told them how happy she’d been the day she made her final vows, and described saying goodbye to her parents before she left for Kenya, knowing in her heart that she would probably never see them again ‘in this world’, was how she’d put it. It almost turned Helen against her, to hear her calmly describe how she’d received a telegram, telling of her father’s death. ‘I knew it was God’s will’ seemed an inadequate response to Helen; there must have been an underlying coldness there.
They were given an hour that afternoon to pray or to read their Bibles, and Helen had been sitting on a stone bench in the convent garden, her shut Bible on her knees, when Sister Benedict came up and sat beside her.
‘Are you enjoying hearing the priests talk about the Missions?’ she asked.
‘It’s interesting,’ Helen said, with polite diplomacy.
‘I’ll be so glad when it’s over,’ the nun said frankly, stirring the gravel on the path with the toe of her shoe. ‘I hate it, it makes me feel … homesick, looking at the slides, or even just hearing about it. It’s strange, I feel the way so many of the Irish sisters used to feel when they were out there, a terrible sense of yearning to be somewhere else. And anyway, I don’t like the way the idea of the Missions is presented here. There’s still this “pennies for the black babies” mentality; this idea that we do something for them. The people I knew in Kenya gave me more in twenty years than I could have given them in twenty lifetimes. But I was deceiving myself at some level. I liked to think I was doing God’s will, but it happened to coincide exactly with what I wanted to do, so it made it easy for me to see it in such noble terms. My vows were never a problem to me. Poverty: we’d had so little in material terms when I was a child, and there’d been no want of happiness in the house for it. It never grieved me not to get married and have a family of my own. When God gave me my vocation, he also gave me the gift of a celibate heart.’
Helen felt uncomfortable when she heard Sister Benedict talk in this way. It made her seem distant, and jarred with the image she had previously formed of her. It wasn’t that she thought the nun was insincere, but she spoke of a reality which Helen had not experienced, and with which she could not empathise.
‘My problem, I now see, was obedience. The day I was told I was being sent to Northern Ireland was the hardest day of my life. Harder, even, I think, than when my father died.’ Her words were more broken now, there were long pauses between the sentences. ‘I remember leaving the mission station. I remember saying goodbye to my friends. We flew from Nairobi to London. I had my rosary beads in my pocket, and throughout the flight I kept putting them through my fingers saying on each bead, “Thy will, not mine, Ο Lord, Thy will, not mine.” I kept saying it, when we changed planes at Heathrow. We landed in Northern Ireland; it was a day in winter. I remember the physical shock of the cold when I walked across the tarmac, I remember the rain beating into me and I thought “How am I going to live here?”’ She laughed. ‘When we got to the convent, there was a bowl of fruit in the parlour: small, faded-looking fruit; and it somehow got fixed in my mind, this is what you’ve come to. I’ve never been able to forget the fruit. I … I even thought about leaving the Order and going away again, as a development worker, but I knew that that was just the Devil trying to undermine my vocation. Because I never stopped believing in that, whatever else, and no matter how hard it became. Every morning, when I was in Kenya, I used to thank God for my vocation. Here, I pray that I’ll be able to fulfil it.’
Helen tried to focus her attention on what Sister Benedict was saying to her. ‘These are your forms, aren’t they? You’re doing French, English and History, I see.’ Helen nodded. ‘I see you’ve applied to read Law at Queen’s for your first choice. Law! That’s impressive.’
‘My parents aren’t very happy about it,’ Helen blurted out, in spite of herself. She hadn’t wanted to say this.
‘Aren’t they? Why not? Do they think you won’t get the grades? Your teachers have nothing but praise. I see here that you did exceptionally well in your mock A levels last year. Why aren’t your parents happy?’
‘I … I think it’s a bit hard for them to believe, the idea of their daughter doing Law. It seems over-ambitious. I’m the first person in my family to go to university, and I think they find it hard to get used to that, no matter what I’m planning to study.’
‘What would they like you to do?’
‘They’d like me to go to St Mary’s and be a primary school teacher.’ Sister Benedict raised her eyebrows. ‘My mother was a teacher,’ Helen added, but still the nun didn’t respond, which made Helen anxious. ‘I mean, she trained to be a teacher, but she only worked at it for a year or so, then she got married and stopped.’ Sister Benedict was looking at her very hard now, but Hel
en had nothing left to say. She looked helplessly towards the window, which was still streaming with rain.
‘Have you ever heard that there is nothing more important to children than what their parents have not been?’
‘No, Sister.’ She didn’t know what further comment she could make about this.
‘And why Law?’
‘We need our Catholic lawyers in this society,’ Helen said, and Sister Benedict looked up sharply at her. She thought Helen was being sarcastic, repeating the words Sister Philomena was constantly repeating to them: ‘Our educated Catholics have a role to play in this society. We need our Catholic teachers and doctors and nurses and lawyers.’ Helen felt confused now.
Sister Benedict stared at her for a few moments. ‘Well,’ she said eventually, ‘if the educated Catholic middle class in Northern Ireland was bigger, it probably would make a difference, but I dare say not the difference you or indeed others have in mind.’
‘I’ve thought a lot about this, and I know what I’m doing. I don’t want to do Law just for the status or the money, really I don’t.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Sister Benedict said drily. ‘But you still haven’t answered my question. Why Law?’
‘Because I want to do something worthwhile with my education; I want to help people. The way things operate here is deeply unfair, and I want to make a difference.’
‘But you won’t.’ The nun pounced so quickly with her reply that Helen felt she had been set up, manipulated into saying just the thing that would allow Sister Benedict to contradict her. ‘Believe me, Helen, you can throw your life away if you want, but it won’t make any difference to anyone except yourself.’ Helen tried to speak, but Sister Benedict wouldn’t permit her to do so, raising her hand and continuing to talk.
‘You want to defend people who’ve been unjustly accused. Fine. But tell me this, how will you feel defending people who really have done terrible things, who’ve planted bombs or shot men in front of their families? What even makes you so sure that you’ll get into the line of work that appeals to you; that you won’t end up specialising in tax law or conveyancing? Anyone else would be consoled by their salary, but you won’t, you’re too austere. Money’ll only make it worse. Sometimes I think idealism is one of the most dangerous forces there is. I saw it myself when I was in Africa, time and time again. Girls like you, they were good-hearted, unselfish girls, but their minds were shut; it was a disaster. They went out there thinking they were going to help people,’ her voice heavy with sarcastic emphasis now, ‘they were going to change things. And instead what happened was they hurt others, and they hurt themselves. Look at me,’ she said. ‘I wanted to be a missionary, and look how I ended up, sitting here in mid Ulster, arguing with you.’ The nun gestured to the window, where the rain was still pouring down.
‘I don’t want to go to Africa,’ Helen said. ‘I just want to go to university in Belfast.’
‘But that’s the point, you could go anywhere, do anything you wanted.’ The nun was almost pleading with her now. ‘I don’t want to see you throwing your life away, staying in this – this horrible place.’
Helen flinched at this last phrase, as if she’d been struck in the face. ‘I like it here.’ she said. ‘This is where I’m from. This is my home.’
Again Sister Benedict sat looking at her for a moment without speaking, then picked up a silver fountain pen, uncapped it, signed Helen’s form, blotted the ink, and slid the application into a blue card folder. Speaking quietly, as though she were making a great effort to do so, she said, ‘I know you’re going to do very well in your exams. Tell your parents I said that if you get accepted for Law at Queen’s, and I’ve no doubt but that you will, I’m sure you’ll have no trouble with your studies there.’ She picked up another form. ‘When you go back to the library, will you send Nora Bradley down to me?’
She didn’t look up again as Helen left the office, and it was all Helen could do not to slam the door hard behind her in anger. It hadn’t even been a proper row, she thought, as she went back through the school. When she’d argued with her mother about the same thing a few days earlier, she’d actually found it satisfying, because for the first time ever they’d argued as equals, as two women. She had understood that her mother had been judging Helen’s future in terms of the failures and shortcomings of her own life, and Helen had forced her to admit that she really didn’t regret the choices she’d made. ‘Let me make my own mistakes,’ Helen had pleaded in the end, while her mother kept saying, ‘I’m afraid for you. I don’t know how to explain it, but I’m afraid for you.’ Remembering Granny Kelly, Helen had felt a pity for her mother far removed from the resentment she now nursed towards Sister Benedict. She remembered how at assembly a few days earlier the nun had read out the part from the Bible about how when you were young you walked where you wished, but when you were old you would stretch out your arms and another would bind you and take you where you would not want to be. She’d noticed how Sister Benedict’s voice had caught as she said these words. Well, that was her problem, Helen thought. She’d had her life, and if she regretted what she’d done with it, that was her affair; it was no reason for her to meddle in Helen’s plans, and spoil her life too.
When she went back to the library, she nodded to Nora Bradley, who left the room as Helen sat down and tried to settle to her work again. But her concentration had been broken, and she sat looking out of the window with all her books spread open and disregarded, until Sister Philomena came over and sat down beside her.
‘How’s Helen?’ she said.
‘All right,’ Helen said.
‘How did you get on downstairs?’
‘I got my forms signed.’
‘That’s good. Put it out of your mind now.’ Helen nodded. ‘How are things at home?’
‘All right.’
‘You had an uncle died a while ago, didn’t you?’ Helen nodded again.
Late one evening some six weeks earlier, the phone had rung at home. Helen answered: it was Brian. He told her he was calling from the local hospital. He’d been out for a drink with Peter earlier that evening, and Peter had collapsed in the pub. He was in intensive care; the doctors said he had had a heart attack, and had a fifty-fifty chance of recovery. But from the moment Brian told her that, Helen insisted to her family that there was no hope. ‘He never looked after himself, never ate properly. He has no resources; nothing to fall back on,’ she said. Within three days, the doctors were saying the same thing; within five, Peter was dead.
The last time she saw him, he’d been asleep. She had sat for over an hour by his bed just watching him, and would have stayed longer, had she not been asked to leave. ‘There’s not much point, anyway, is there?’ the nurse had said, and Helen hadn’t even bothered to contradict her. If this woman couldn’t see that the past hour could have been precious to Helen, that it might have been one of the most important hours in her life, there was no point in trying to explain to her, for she wouldn’t understand. It was good that he had been sleeping, because they had nothing more to say to each other. Words would have been a burden. It was enough to be with him, and to watch him. She had remembered how, when they were children and they were out in the car with their father, often he would point to a group of men working at the side of the road, trimming hedges or cleaning drains; and he’d say, ‘Look, there’s Uncle Peter!’ And then he’d pump the car horn as he drove past, and Peter would look up and see them all waving frantically out of the car windows at him. His face would light up and he’d raise his arm; he’d stand like that with his hand held high in the air until they could no longer see him.
She remembered going into the back scullery at Brian’s house and seeing Peter standing by a sink full of soapy water, whistling to himself as he stacked the clean, thick plates in the rack on the drainingboard. She remembered how he used to take them out in his boat, remembered the day he’d rowed them to the island and they’d seen the sun flash on the water, seen him leani
ng against a tree smoking a cigarette, while the damp chicks struggled to be born.
At his wake, she’d outraged her mother by saying, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t be giving him a Catholic funeral.’
‘What do you mean: that we should give him a Protestant one instead?’
‘Maybe we shouldn’t have anything. I mean, nothing religious. We should just bury him.’ Her mother actually laughed at this, which annoyed Helen, so that she went on, ‘He didn’t believe in any of it, he thought it was all nonsense.’ She said it loud enough so that the priest, who was sitting near by, would be bound to hear her. Her father gently hushed her. ‘You can’t have a proper funeral without prayers,’ he said, stroking her hand to comfort her.
A week after the funeral, Helen went over to Brian’s house one afternoon. There was no one there but Granny Kate, who was sitting in the dim kitchen, two black plastic bags tied closed with orange twine on the floor beside her.
‘What’s in the bin liners, Granny?’
‘Them’s Peter’s clothes,’ she replied. ‘I have to get Brian to get rid of them for me. I went through them all; there wasn’t a stitch that was fit to give to a charity, so there wasn’t. I told Brian to keep his watch; and there’s a lighter I’m going to give your daddy. Brian’s children bought it for him for Christmas and I told Peter not to use it out of the house, for he’d be sure to lose it. I’d forgotten it was there until I saw it in the back of the drawer. It’s all there is to give your daddy as a souvenir. There was never a man had as little.’ Helen stared at the black plastic bags. As though she could read her thoughts, Granny Kate said, ‘As far as the world was concerned, he had nothing and he was nothing, but he was a good man. I loved him.’
‘Do you know what I think?’ Helen turned to Sister Philomena, whose presence she had almost forgotten. ‘I think you’re working too hard. Maybe I’ll have a word with your teachers and see about them letting you off homework for a while. Perhaps you need to take a few days off school completely.’ This alarmed Helen.
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