by Judith Kelly
I vowed then that I would never allow anyone to get close to me again. That way I wouldn’t get hurt, nor could I hurt in return. There were no tears now. No pain. Just that strange icy coldness inside me.
I leant back against the wall of the church and slid down to the floor, my face in my hands. There were no thoughts at all, just a black hole pulling me down and down. Everyone had either disappeared or died. There was no Dad, Nana and Pop, Frances or Ruth or even Mum. How could I bear it, I wondered, and how could I bear it alone? I was the only one left in this awful life that felt worse than hell. And no one from now on would ever know what it was really like to be me.
Sister Cuthbert found me in the church when she came to lock up. I don’t remember much about it. I was holding on to one of the wooden handrails near the altar and seemed to have got stuck there. She had to force my fingers open. She asked me what I was doing, but I wouldn’t answer her. I felt curiously unwilling to speak; it seemed so difficult. Or maybe it was just that I didn’t see the point of talking any more. Eventually she managed to put me to bed in the isolation ward.
Father Holland came, asked me a lot of questions and called me his little roaming Catholic. I made an effort to speak, opened my mouth and began ‘I’m -’, and could go no further. Mostly I just nodded or shook my head. The next day the Mother Superior arrived carrying a tray. She smiled nervously, peering at me through her cracked spectacles. I watched her with uneasiness; I wasn’t going to be drawn into answering any questions.
‘Glory, glory,’ she said sitting on the end of my bed. ‘Here’s our little wandering Jew. Why don’t you try a bit of this nice pudding I’ve brought you? If you like, I’ll bring you up some jam for it.’
I shook my head.
‘You ought to eat something,’ she said, taking hold of my hand.
It wasn’t right for her to look so merry. It made her seem human in the way that I was human. I didn’t want any grownups in my world. It was enough that they came at me in dreams: the faceless witch who stepped out of the trees, the man with a knife who chased me.
Eventually, she shook her head and hurried away with her tray. I listened to her soft, determined footfalls disappearing down the stairs.
Father Holland returned. More questions, over and over again. I lay on the bed with my back to him and said nothing. It was amazing how easy it was not to react. Easy - and somehow safer. I was afraid that if I let go I might fall completely to pieces. So I said nothing and felt nothing. Then they left, abandoning me to the two holy pictures on the walls; from one the Virgin looked at me with an expression of detached pity, in the other an angel was arrested in mid-act of announcing the good news to the maiden Mary.
I tried to keep Frances’s face clear in my memory. The pure tone of her voice, soaring effortlessly above the others in the choir. If I could only die, I could be with her, I thought. I tried placing my hands around my neck and squeezing hard. Really hard. It didn’t work. So I tried to end it with sleep, black deep sleep, if only for an hour, and lay shuddering by dawn’s blue light until fatigue and fear, hunger and shame, wore me out and closed my eyes.
When I did fall asleep, my dreams were desperate. A black sky and galloping waves, like wild ponies tossing their tumbling manes, hurtling along the beach. I awoke trembling, damp with sweat. The salt smell of the sea haunted me. I longed to forget, but the bubbles broke to the surface and I couldn’t stop them.
Frances dead. Janet dead. At least Ruth got away in time. I clung to the thought; it warmed me. But later I heard that her godmother had sent her to a different Nazareth House orphanage in the Mumbles in Wales.
It was a grey and blue day when they buried Frances and Janet, with a wind blowing and rain clouds banked on the horizon. Mourners formed a circle around the small hole in the ground. As they crammed the two small coffins into the damp earth, there was a weird sound. We girls turned sharply. The nuns stood stiffly in a row. Behind them was the figure of a woman who looked like an older Frances. She was swaying, bending forward and putting her hand to her mouth. I thought for a moment that she was overcome by tears, but then I saw that she was laughing. Monstrous giggles convulsed her from head to foot, turning, as she tried to stifle them, into wet spluttering gurgles. Tears of laughter wetted her cheeks. The graveyard echoed with it.
‘Schizophrenic,’ I heard one of the scandalised nuns mutter. Suddenly the woman rushed forward pushing the priest out of the way. She fell on her knees, clawing at the earth with her bare hands and tried to embrace one of the coffins, her face twisted and contorted. She let out a high-pitched, doleful wail, rising at first like a tendril of smoke into the sky, gathering momentum as it rose.
I put my hands over my ears. Sister Mary was yelling, ‘Get rid of her, get rid of her!’ In a hurry to bury. Frances’s mother was quickly removed from the scene.
The next day Mum turned up. She stood in the visitors’ parlour clutching her handbag, staring at me. ‘I saw the newspapers,’ she said. ‘Judith, I’ve come to take you ...’ she hesitated at the word ‘home’. She put her hand on my head and peered at me like she was trying to get me in focus. I was so cold that I couldn’t stop shivering. She kept asking if I was all right. She said: ‘You look so different, altered.’
I told her a few things about the nuns and she burst into tears.
‘Why didn’t you tell me all this before?’ she asked.
‘I didn’t want to leave my friends.’
‘I left you here in all good faith believing that the nuns would take care of you,’ she said, wiping her eyes. She had a thousand questions to ask, she said, but they could wait.
When I said goodbye to the girls in my class, they were polishing the refectory floor with dusters under their feet. The swishing to and fro movement stopped when I appeared. The room was motionless as they numbly returned my gaze. They seemed shy of me. A shock of despair ran through me. Not mine, but theirs. They knew I was leaving for good, and I knew I’d never know friends like them again. But I had to leave them. The convent was killing me.
Later, when Mum and I walked down the path away from the convent, she clutched my hand so tightly it hurt. ‘Poor little souls,’ she said. ‘I wish I could take them all with me.’
They still have one another, I thought. Yet I knew we would all carry something out of here that would still pulse in our brains come old age, linking us in a rare way and binding us to the same memories for ever.
Mum never asked me one more question about the convent, let alone the thousand.
* Don’t let the bastards get you down.
Chapter 15
My months at the kibbutz were over. Part of me wanted to stay in Israel for ever. Here there was no past beyond yesterday, no future beyond today. But no, my own future awaited me back in England.
The fresh, balmy air caressed me, and the stiff grass gave off a mossy odour. There was a rich newness everywhere. Overflowing with it all, my freedom and a floating sense of high, yet with everything sharp and clear, each grass blade, the buzzing gnats, I walked happily, inhaling the sweet air. It was the first time in my entire life that I had felt that way, my nerves uncluttered. No one to save, nothing to be, no one to escape.
I had spent the morning packing, and now Rick and Cydney were waiting on Miriam’s steps to say their farewells to me. They watched as I strolled towards them.
Rick pushed himself to standing. I tried to smile. I felt nervous at saying goodbye to everyone. Exposed. It was like meeting them again for the first time.
Cydney took in my outfit and grinned. ‘You look more American than I do now.’
‘You mean I’m just as hip and full of shit as you lot.’
It was true, I wasn’t so different from them now, at least in my looks. I wore a kaftan, bell-bottoms and several layers of beads around my neck. But in my case, I still didn’t give a toss about the Bomb or what happened in South-East Asia. I didn’t chant mantras, or read the right books - Kerouac, R.D. Laing, Jung. I didn’t sit arou
nd the volunteer camp and drink beer or chew the fat with the best of them.
In short, I was still weird. I knew I was still damaged in some places, ugly in others, but I didn’t mind. I no longer felt any shame in myself, nor any sense of judgment from the world in general. I was at peace with it, and with myself.
Rick didn’t say anything. He took long strides down the steps and covered the space between us, encircling me with his arms, pulling my face into his neck. He said my name, as if he were calling to me back across the years. My name, spoken in that way, made me laugh - not a real laugh more like a cough. I hid my face in the hollow of his neck, and for a moment, he rocked me slowly, gently in his arms. Gratitude came as a physical pain, and then I felt an easy tiredness that was pure joy. He sighed and looked at me with puzzlement.
‘You seem happy,’ he said almost accusingly.
‘No, just real. I can see a bit clearer now.’
‘Couldn’t you see before?’
‘No. When I first arrived on the kibbutz, it was like I had a black veil tied round my head. Now I’m able to see the world and love it.’
‘Yeah, that’s cool,’ and ducking quickly away, he turned and left. I watched him go, my whole body shifted by that hug. For a minute, I couldn’t speak. I felt suddenly relaxed, like someone who has travelled a long way and arrived. A feeling of intense happiness went coursing through my body in a dazzling quiet stream.
Cydney sat forward, wrist balanced on her knee and cigarette smoke curving a line up in front of her face.
‘Was that odd or is it just me?’ I said.
She shook her head. ‘He’s just freaked out.’
‘Freaked out? By me?’
‘He told me he was nervous about saying goodbye to you,’ she said. ‘The guy’s crazy about you.’
‘Me? Oh yes, I’m sure.’
‘He is. He told me he was. He said you were the only together person on the kibbutz.’
‘I can’t believe he said that. Why doesn’t he tell me himself?’
Cydney shrugged, and took another drag on her cigarette. The heavy smell of Miriam’s flowers hung in the warm air around us. ‘He’s shy. He has a bit of an inferiority complex.’
‘Tell him to join the club.’
‘You tell him.’ She grinned and waved her hand in the direction Rick had taken. ‘He’s too shy to tell you that he’s passing through England on his way home to the States next month.’
I don’t actually remember the moment I said goodbye to Miriam. Was it that morning? The afternoon before? I don’t recall, and it pams me.
But I remember one day towards the end of my time there. I was helping her sort the books in the library, as we had done together so many times before. The conversation was easy, laughing. I was trying out some of my hard-won Hebrew on her, and she was tutting at my pronunciation.
Suddenly - I remember this clearly - she stopped shelving books and put a hand on my arm. ‘When you go back to England, promise me something.’
‘Sure,’ I said, startled.
‘Seek out the other girls from the orphanage. Will you do that? You need each other. And confront the nuns, if you can.’
I slowly put down the book I was holding, keeping my eyes on her lined, freckled face.
She nodded to herself. ‘Go to the nuns and get some answers to your questions. And talk over your past with the other children, so that you can let it go and maybe some day understand. If you want to, write your story. It will help you. And more importantly, get to know your mother better. Find out about her past and discover the answers.’
Chapter 16
Bloomfield Terrace,
London,
SW1
The Mother Superior,
Nazareth House,
Hammersmith Road,
London,
W6
19th August 1977
Dear Reverend Mother,
I am trying to trace two friends of mine who were residents with me at the convent and should be most grateful if you could assist me. Their names are as follows:
Betty O’Dowd
Ruth Norton
Also any information you could provide me as to the whereabouts of Sister Cuthbert and Sister Mary would be most welcome.
Many thanks,
Judith Kelly.
A reply from the convent arrived about a fortnight later. I was curiously unsurprised by the arrival of the letter with its familiar heading ‘JMC’. It was as though I had been expecting it. The previous memories had warned me: we are after you, out of the past.
Nazareth House,
Hammersmith Road,
London,
W6
Judith Kelly,
Bloomfield Terrace,
London,
SW1
2nd September 1977
Dear Judith,
Thank you so much for your letter to the Mother Superior, who passed it on to me.
You will be pleased to hear that Sister Mary is well and living here at Nazareth House in Hammersmith. If you wish to visit her, then you will be very welcome to come along at any time and I’m sure she will provide you with the contact addresses of your old friends.
God bless you.
It had taken me years to follow Miriam’s advice, but at last I was here.
The receptionist was a large, chubby nun whose full-moon face looked as if it had been rubbed raw with a Brillo pad. She moved nimbly despite her bulk. The room she sat in was overlaid with crucifixes and reproduction holy pictures in dark frames. On the window sill opposite her were two black-and-white closed-circuit television monitors.
She glanced at me and then, barely stopping for breath, began a lengthy tirade in an Irish burr: ‘Sure I haven’t had me a moment to drink my tea - look, it’s cold now and the bug in my stomach is playing up something rotten. It must have been the fish I ate last night. Sister Catherine protested that it smelt so noxious that she wouldn’t even feed it to a hungry cat. It seemed all right to me, but I’m not picky about what I eat.’
She took a key from her pocket and unlocked a desk drawer.
‘I’ve a bottle of water here from the Well at Lourdes.’
She took a stoppered flask in the form of a cross from the drawer.
‘I have to keep it under lock and key. I can’t trust the charwoman. The water’s reputed to have miraculous powers. I have a nip whenever I have an upset stomach.’
‘I’m sorry?’ I stood uncertainly, wondering if she had mistaken me for someone else.
‘See these two screens? I have to watch them constantly for visitors. Had them both mended recently, well, I say mended, that is, a bearded hippy in filthy jeans strutted around as if he owned the place fiddling with the aerials, but that’s the Yellow Pages for you. There’s the blessed doorbell again! Who’s that? I can’t make them out, the screen’s all blurred. If it’s not the doorbell, it’s bang, bang, bang, as someone assaults the knocker.’
‘I’m here to ‘
‘Why are you standing? Sit down, sit down! Well, I can’t stop here chatting, much as I’d like to, how might I help you? Keep it brief, I’ve the phones to answer.’
‘I have an appointment with Sister Mary.’ She nodded and bleeped her on the switchboard. Time went by and no reply came. She asked a young man who came in to go and find Sister Mary, and meanwhile continued her diatribe about her job, workmen, the stream of visitors, occasionally taking a swig from her flask. I shifted in my seat, not commenting.
Finally the phone rang; she popped a segment of orange into her mouth as she answered. ‘Sister Mary’s on her way to meet you,’ she informed me, picking up some leaflets from her desk. ‘Take these devotional reflections with you. Should you wish to contribute to our leprosy mission, you’ll find a box in the hallway.’
My mouth became dry with dread. I could feel my throat tightening, and an ache along my jaw line. Stay calm. But a nauseating sensation of fear and shame came over me. It was a familiar feeling. I used to get it eve
ry time I had to face Sister Mary. I’m an adult, I thought, why am I still scared of her?
After what seemed like an age, an elderly nun with a clenched-fist face came into the room. She gave me a dubious eagle-eyed glance.
I rose. ‘Sister Mary.’ As she stood in front of me I felt a desperate nervous flush on my cheeks. Gone was the austere black wimple of old and in its place the milder Mother Teresa tablecloth style.
‘I don’t recognise you,’ she said curtly.
‘Of course not,’ I laughed. ‘I was all skin and grief when you saw me last, hardly a description that fits me now.’
I handed her a small bunch of violets I’d brought to prove that I bore no animosity about the past. I almost shrank back at her reaction. She looked astonished and inexplicably annoyed, and didn’t thank me. I immediately felt diminished in her presence, as if I were a child again - the same ashamed awkwardness, the same fear, the same childish compunction to please. I tried to straighten my spine and remind myself: you are no longer small, vulnerable, a rag that can be torn apart with both hands. Yet now I was a word or two away, the oddness of the situation pressed in on me. Eleven. That’s how old I was the last time I saw her. Yes, that long ago, and after all this time it might seem to her now that I was some menacing thing, a figure from an anxious dream come walking and talking across the wilderness of years to find her.
The receptionist held up a phone message. ‘Sister, could I have a word?’ Sister Mary turned away from me for a moment, and I was given the opportunity to study the nun who had haunted my thoughts for so many years.