by Judith Kelly
A young man wearing purple braces was bringing out chairs and tables under the awning of a shabby cafe-bar across the road from me. Propped up in a chair, an old man slept bolt upright. He seemed unconcerned by the clatter of chairs and tables being dragged outside from the cafe.
The piercing glare in my sun-shocked eyes thumped my head. My featureless thick skirt, long-sleeved blouse and tight shoes felt heavy and inappropriate. For years I had chosen clothes that made no promises. I was ashamed of English holidaymakers who loafed around seaside resorts in beachwear, skimpy shorts and vests in shrieking colours, with too much sunburnt red flesh on View.
I had brought little more than the clothes I stood up in as I had been informed that the kibbutz would provide my work gear. I had wedged my luggage, just a duffle bag, beside me on the aeroplane seat. It was my first flight; at the back of my mind was the thought that if something went wrong, up there in the sky, I’d have my duffle bag at the ready to take with me into the void, using my voluminous skirt as a parachute, leaving nothing of myself behind.
I now stood in the partial shade of a tree, my bag propped up against my leg, as I sucked in the hot, still air. I saw myself for a moment as part of the scene, in the way I sometimes did, and realised I looked like someone lost. There were a few dilapidated shops around, their crumbling walls scribbled with mysterious graffiti. There were no signposts, but I had an idea in which direction my kibbutz lay.
What now? Should I stay, or go?
‘Shalom!’
I blinked. The young man, the waiter from across the road, stood beside me, staring at me with a look that was half amusement, half concern. I wondered for an instant how long he had been there. Had I been talking out loud? He said something in Hebrew which I didn’t understand.
‘English,’ I said pointing to myself. ‘I’m going to Kibbutz Ramat Yohanan. How far away is it?’
‘A few miles,’ he said after a silence.
‘Is there a bus?’
‘No bus for a long time.’
‘Is there a taxi I could hire?’
‘Taxi? No.’
‘Then how am I to get there?’
‘You will have to wait for the evening bus.’
‘I can’t wait,’ I said in exasperation. ‘I’m two days late already.’
He stared at me with dreamy curiosity. I had been told that Israelis were friendly people, but this man, while not exactly hostile, was not giving me the reaction I needed. He had looked at me a little strangely when I told him where I was going. Perhaps that was it. I hardly seemed the type to play the part of a pioneering kibbutznik sweating from toil.
I took a breath and decided. ‘I shall walk then.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘OK, but be careful,’ he said politely.
I nodded. ‘I’m here to learn Hebrew.’
‘Ah, come in for a drink some time, yes?’
I saw now how foolish it has been not to have arrived at the kibbutz at the designated time. It had seemed less alarming to come at my own pace. I stared through the haze at the road that led to the kibbutz.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, of course,’ though I doubted I would. When he reached the awning, he turned and gave me one brief, curious glance before disappearing into the dark doorway of the bar. The street fell silent again.
I picked up my duffle bag. Let’s go so we can come home. I started down the street, moving robotically, as I had been doing for years. Was I really ready for this world? I didn’t know. My intentions for being here were still masked from myself. Maybe I just wanted to belong somewhere, needed to be part of something - the humorous yet sorrowful sound of the Yiddish tongue that I did not even understand, yet always loved to hear from my grandparents; a history that I had been removed from, a history that might not be mine, yet one which I wanted to learn more about.
Or perhaps I was running away from the memories that had threatened to overwhelm me since I rediscovered my childhood diary.
Six months earlier my mother had asked me to help clear out her loft. Together we sifted through old magazines, shelves of dusty jars, a stash of different-sized boxes and strapped suitcases.
I was crouching on the floor when I found the parcel. A brown paper package tied with a piece of string. A sticky label, yellowing slightly with age, bore my mother’s round writing in black ink.
‘Judith. N. H. Convent,’ it read.
‘What have you found?’ my mother looked up, her lips parted. She stiffened when she saw what I was looking at, and reached out in an effort to lift the parcel away from me.
‘Please Judith, don’t open that.’
But I had already untied the string, feeling a strange sort of breathlessness as I did so. It did after all have my name on it; I felt I had the right.
‘It’s all right, Mum,’ I said, patting her gently on the arm.
‘No, it’s not all right,’ she said with a sudden authority. ‘I should have thrown all that stuff away long ago. There’s no point in raking up the past.’ Her face was taut with concern.
‘What do you mean?’ I was sounding petulant now. ‘I’m just interested, that’s all.’ I carried the parcel away from her, out of the loft.
In the seclusion of my bedroom, I let the contents stream to the floor. The smell of mould blossomed upwards. There were a few letters in my childish scrawl and a lot of yellowing newspaper cuttings. ‘NUNS PRAY AT SEA RESCUE’ the headlines declared. Underneath the cuttings lay a book with a glossy religious picture stuck on the cover. It was the diary I kept during my days at Nazareth House convent. An old photo album revealed the frozen images of assorted children standing stiffly with either beach huts or the familiar facade of the convent in the background. All the photos included black-veiled nuns.
Sweaty and uncomfortable, I stared blankly at the photographs. Many years of carefully guarded emotion struggled Sweaty for release as the faces I sought burst through the gate of my unconscious, rioting horribly into my memory. Up to that moment, my convent days had remained bottled within me like a dark brew ready to blow its cork at any time.
I sat on my bed, turning my back on the faces. I used to be unable to remember exactly how they looked, and then I taught myself not even to try. Now, in a chance moment, like an unexpected encounter in a busy street, I’d seen them again. The past was swimming back to me, as though the guard had been removed from the gate.
My mother entered the room. ‘That girl,’ she said, ‘the friend of yours who died. What was her name?’ She looked at me, a little slyly, as if testing.
I cleared my throat. ‘Oh, heavens, I don’t remember. It was so long ago. Another lifetime.’
But I knew from the way her face froze that she was anxious. She could see through my lie, and she wondered why I had bothered.
I didn’t know, either, except that I believed it was my duty to appear happy. It was the least I could do for her. I didn’t want her to feel bad; she had plenty of worries in her life. But even now, so many years on, was I still hiding from my time at the convent?
After she left, I sank down on to my bed again. I picked up the diary. I didn’t quite dare open it, not then. It was as if I had been living under an anaesthetic that was only now beginning to wear thin. Suddenly I was frightened of what might await me if I awoke.
Would reading my childhood diary start it all up again? The guilt, the despair that had tinged my days for years. Then I remembered the recurring dream that still preyed upon my nights. I would awake from it gasping and choking, eleven years old again, standing on the jagged rocks watching my life end.
I stared at the faded picture on the cover and I knew that I had to find a way to understand myself.
‘Frances McCarthy,’ I whispered as I opened my diary.
And as I heard the ragged sound of my breathing, I knew my safe comfortable shell was beginning to crack. I found the knowledge strangely exciting. It was as though memories were returning to me in broken pieces.
‘Frances,’ I said again.
She had resurfaced - perhaps for ever? - in my mind.
Chapter 2
‘Genuflection, girl. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of the word, have you?’
‘No, Sister.’
One or two of the other girls sniggered quietly and I could feel a blush burning my cheeks.
‘Speak up, speak up. Genuflection is a bow, a bob, a curtsey to the altar. Well?’
‘Yes, Sister,’ I said louder.
‘Yes, what?’ Sister Mary said, poking my shoulder with her cane.
‘I haven’t heard of the word before.’
More muffled laughter from the others. Two of them whispered. Yes, they knew - had never needed to learn nor ever been ignorant.
‘Be quiet, all of you,’ Sister Mary spat. ‘Is there something funny about the word genuflection?’
‘I - I don’t know, Sister,’ I stammered.
‘Well, I want you to practise it now. You must learn to genuflect correctly before you go to church again. Practice makes perfect. Do you understand? That way you will learn.’
The convent stood alone at the top of a hill above Bexhill-on Sea, some distance from the town, and was approached by a long pebbled drive. Mum and I had first entered the building two weeks earlier, blinking in the high, cool gloom after the August heat outside. That’s when I became aware of the worrying silence that enclosed the place, broken only by the swishing skirts of a short plump nun bustling along the corridor to meet us. For all its air of piety and polish, I had the sense of being plunged into something murky - a miserable awareness that this was not the holiday camp I had hoped for.
The nun, who introduced herself as Sister Cuthbert, told us to follow her. She had a gravelly voice that billowed out from under her veil. Her big butter-and-egg face looked tightly packed inside her stiff, white coif and her walk was smooth, hurried, like someone who had numerous tasks to perform.
She led us along a long gaunt corridor with creaky floors which stretched ahead with a row of doors leading off on either side. I slipped on the polished floor, but Mum quickly grabbed my arm to save me. We passed a tall statue of a man wearing white robes, his nostrils curved as though with disgust for the rude humans passing below him. Behind his head a golden halo winked, reflecting each flicker of a little glass lamp that burned on the pedestal. I wrinkled my nose at the smell of floor polish mingled with incense.
‘This end of the corridor is the children’s area,’ said the nun in her throaty voice. ‘The other end is where the old people live. The children are on holiday in London at the moment, but will be returning next week.’
We followed the nun through cathedral-like archways and turned right at the end of the main corridor. In the dim light I could see dusty statues looming on high plinths, anguished expressions on their stone faces. I held tightly to Mum’s hand.
Endless doors opened and closed. Dark empty passageways led into many rooms, including three classrooms. As the nun opened the door to one, she said to Mum, ‘So your husband died four years ago, Mrs Kelly? Such a tragedy that he died so young.’
While they began a whispered conversation together, I thought back to the time when we had lived in a pub in Faversham, and felt sad.
I remembered Dad carrying me up a flight of dark stairs past wooden beer barrels, into a long, smoke-filled bar-room with sawdust on the floorboards. His jacket was a rough tweed that smelt of smoke and had sweets hidden in the top handkerchief pocket. Sometimes he’d place me on the pub counter amid the cozy buzz of noise - small talk, the clink of glasses, the faint rhythmic tunes from a tin-kettle piano - and he’d give me a bottle of cherryade to drink. I called it prickly water. Encased in the warm smell of beer and drunkenness, I watched him down numerous bottles of his own prickly water, with their brass bright depths. Then one afternoon he lay on the floor and wouldn’t get up.
‘He was only twenty-nine,’ Mum told the endless shadowy strangers who popped in for tea and biscuits. And I had thought then how wrong it seemed to entertain, to eat, so soon after they had put Dad into the ground.
‘He drank himself into an early death,’ they said. And everyone heaved a sigh and shook their heads. People came and said soft things to me and chatted about him for a bit, then forgot him and talked of other things. For a long time afterwards I had felt, and still felt, torn up inside and that his dying was my entire fault.
Mum and Sister Cuthbert suddenly stopped talking together and looked down at me. Mum said, ‘Don’t sniff, Judith, blow. What’s your hankie for?’
I rubbed my nose with my hand as the nun continued: ‘Most of the girls here are orphans. Others have one parent who may have fallen on hard times. We do our best to raise them as good Catholics.’
The classroom had a high ceiling and yellowy-brown walls so dusty they appeared to be dissolving into powder. The room was bare, with a line of plain desks in the centre. A tall smeary blackboard towered at the front; at the back, many-paned windows overlooked the convent gardens. The lower half was made of frosted glass, so the children couldn’t see outside. The classroom had an old musty woody smell; if the whole building had an air of gloom, this room was the heart of that feeling. I dismally noticed that most of the books piled in a glass cabinet seemed to be about saints.
A few of the children’s chalk drawings were exhibited on one wall. On the other hung a huge wooden crucifix on a chain. An ivory Christ stretched naked, bleeding, elbows and kneecaps jutting through the skin, flesh protruding from open wounds, crowned with thorns of silver and nailed with nails of gold. Although August sunshine was pouring into the room, I couldn’t stop a shiver trembling through me.
‘See, there is Our Lord always watching over the children,’ said Sister Cuthbert. ‘It reminds them that home for a Catholic is wherever Our Lord is. And what do you suppose Our Lord was thinking while he was up there on the cross, Judith?’
I looked at the painted wounds. ‘Ouch?’ I suggested weakly.
The nun pursed her lips and her eyes narrowed sharply. ‘No, no! He was thinking: I’ve suffered this for you. You obviously don’t know your Bible.’
‘But she’s only eight,’ said Mum.
‘Almost nine,’ I said.
‘Well, there’s time enough to put it right,’ said Sister Cuthbert. ‘Do you have a rosary, Judith?’
I lowered my eyes. I didn’t know what a rosary was. Mum tightened her clasp on my hand. Talking about anything to do with religion made her uncomfortable and self-conscious too.
‘Never mind, I’m sure we can provide you with one,’ said Sister Cuthbert with a kindly expression.
After we had some tea in the parlour, Mum told me to wait outside for a moment while she had a talk with Sister Cuthbert. I watched them through the open door, and tried to lip-read what they were saying. Sister Cuthbert’s mouth was little and plump and curly at the edges and I couldn’t understand anything. Finally the nun said loudly, ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Kelly, Judith will have plenty of playmates once the children return.’
Fear choked through me. I ran back into the room.
‘Mum,’ I said, tugging at her to bend down so I could whisper in her ear. When she did, I pressed my face close to hers. I could smell her perfume as I whispered, ‘I won’t be staying here for ever, will I?’
Straightening up, she took my hand and stroked it. ‘Of course not,’ she soothed. ‘I’ve told you, I’ll be back in a fortnight when I’ve found us somewhere to live.’
When the time arrived for Mum to leave, I wouldn’t let go of her hand; I couldn’t let go. She mustn’t leave me here, I thought. I might never see her again.
‘Stay with Sister Cuthbert,’ ordered Mum. ‘And don’t forget to say thank you for the tea.’
I looked over my shoulder at the silent veiled woman, and my breath caught in my throat. ‘Please,’ I appealed, my voice wild, ‘don’t leave me here.’
Mum stood unsure for a moment, staring at me with wet eyes. ‘It’s not for ever, judith; it’s just until I find so
mewhere for us to live. Bea brave girl and help Mummy, all right? Promise me to write in the diary I gave you every day. Then you can show it to me when I see you next.’ Her voice sounded too loud, nervously cheerful.
When she bent down to hug me, I wanted so much to cry, to hold her close and never let her go. But I didn’t want to upset her. I tried to be strong for her sake. I fought back the tears and tried to swallow the tight feeling in my throat, my mouth dryas I stood on top of the front steps of the convent and watched her go. The nun stood behind me and waved.
‘Goodbye, Judith, goodbye!’ Mum cried out to me, waving her hand before she turned the corner. And then she was gone.
I wanted to please Mum: I wanted her to be proud of me, to stroke my head and tell me how well I had coped, so I wrote regularly in my diary.
17 August I95I
I came here yesterday. Sister Cuthbert gave us tea from a big tin teapot with milk and sugar already in it. It made Mum laugh. When Mum left Sister Cuthbert said Oh dear, I can see someone is about to cry. I said No I’m not and pretended to be happy. Madeleine and Bridget used to be at this school. They are on holiday as well. They are taking me to the beach tomorrow.
19 August
I had my photo taken on the beach. Madeleine asked if I wanted to stay with the other children. I said no.
22 August
I had a bath today and had to wear an apron in it. We went to the beach again. The other children come back from holiday tomorrow. Madeleine and Bridget keep telling me to stay with them.
Wednesday 23 August
Sister Cuthbert made me write to Mum that I wanted to stay here with the other children. I don’t want to really. I sent Mum a photo of me on the rocks by the sea. I told her I looked like the King of the Castle. I wish I could see her and tell her the truth.