Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy

by Rumer Godden

  Over the silver mountains

  Where spring the nectar fountains …

  Nectar. Belle Source. At last she could settle down, And the last trace of me be blotted out, thought Lise.

  The Normandy February was usually wet and cold but there were days of clear sunshine that reminded Lise of her childhood in England when there might be catkins; the willows turned red and the first snowdrops were out. There were no catkins at Belle Source but she found an early primrose in the bank below the aumônier’s house and a scattering of snowdrops. ‘Soon the lawns will be a sheet of crocus,’ said Soeur Fiacre. ‘If they’re not soaked,’ said Lise.

  André Foucan from the village pruned the vines and lettuce was sown in the frames. ‘Crops are beginning,’ said Soeur Fiacre.

  Candlemas came, the last lit feast till Easter, with a procession in the cloister, the candlelight moving in slow rhythm to the chapel which was filled with light for the Purification of Mary and the Presentation of the Child in the Temple at Jerusalem, and soon after, in contrast, was the sombreness of Ash Wednesday; those who could, fasted on bread and coffee; for the rest there were vegetables and soup, and so the days of Lent began.

  ‘Like the weather, Lent is nice or nasty,’ the Prioress said in her address, ‘but remember, unlike the weather, it is what you make it.’ Breaking the austerity there were still feast days: on March the tenth, the anniversary of Père Lataste’s death, when his picture hung in the cloister, ‘and we remember how Béthanie started and why’ – the first violets were always for Père Lataste. On the nineteenth came Saint Joseph’s day; if it were fine enough, tables were set in the cloister for gouter, the midafternoon break, with drinks – ‘children’s drinks,’ Lise would have said in the old days – fruit juice, syrupy grenadine, but to the nuns a treat; there were cakes too, just as there had been a special dessert at lunch.

  Then came the Annunciation, but this was a solemn day when the Martyrology was sung, the long list of the men and women who had died for the faith, died willingly. Those of the nuns who were able prostrated themselves in the choir as a tribute to the courage, steadiness and fidelity, not only of the martyrs, but of that young girl, Mary, who said ‘Fiat’ to the angel’s message knowing, in part at least, what that would bring her.

  And meanwhile, in typical Saint Joseph fashion, the work of the house went on. Spring cleaning was done, whitewashing, and in the garden much was being sown, more carrots, spinach, tomatoes in the frames, more lettuce for the invaluable salads, onions and shallots planted; and it was not only food for humans; there was lucerne, oats and mangolds for the cows. The farm was busy too; chicks were bought and pullets: the first brood of ducklings hatched out, and Bienvenue was heavy with her calf. The plum trees were in blossom. ‘The plums are always the first,’ said Soeur Fiacre. There were daffodils, narcissi …

  Most of the sisters were out of doors, ‘so we are hungry,’ said Lise. ‘Yet we have to fast on Wednesdays as well as Fridays. But we manage – strength comes.’ ‘I was given some roots of white violets,’ said Soeur Fiacre. ‘I thought them rare so some I planted in the shelter of a cold frame and some under cloches, but there wasn’t room for them all, so some had to go outside and face the cold and wind and wet; the ones inside died, or were sickly and pale, the outside ones flourished,’ and it was true that the nuns looked much better, more fresh and clear-skinned than the guests in the guesthouse, always busy for Easter, where no one was asked to fast or work.

  On Maundy Thursday, Béthanie kept the traditional washing of the feet, the Prioress taking the role of Christ and kneeling before her daughters, and, after an evening Mass, just as Christ went from the Upper Room, the Cenacle, to the Garden of Gethsemane, so the Host was taken from the altar’s tabernacle and borne in procession to an altar in the ante-room made welcoming with flowers and candles; the chapel itself was left stark, with the tabernacle door open, showing the emptiness inside. The nuns watched at the Altar of Repose until midnight, taking it in turn, coming quietly in and out, as their work or strength dictated.

  On Good Friday, the ‘big service’, as the sisters called it, was held; it took all afternoon, with the reading of the Passion, the prayers of intercession for the whole world and the Veneration of the Cross and the singing of the Improperia with its poignant refrain:

  My people what have I done to you?

  How have I offended you? Answer me.

  I led you on your way, in a pillar of cloud

  but you led me into Pilate’s Court …

  I gave you manna in the desert

  but you struck me down and scourged me.

  I gave you saving water from the rock

  but you gave me gall and vinegar to drink.

  I gave you a royal sceptre

  but you gave me a crown of thorns.

  I raised you to the height of majesty

  but you raised me high on a cross.

  My people what have I done to you?

  How have I offended you? Answer me.

  The Cross was left exposed on the stripped altar. It was a day of silence; most of the sisters were wrapped in their own thoughts as they still were on the curiously blank day of Holy Saturday, blank as it must have seemed to the apostles and disciples and for Mary and the other women; for them it was the Jewish holy day, the Sabbath, on which all movement and work were forbidden; their own hope of holiness was sealed silent in a tomb. What did they do, wondered Lise, what think? Could they keep their faith and trust? Peter had already denied him. Mary had been warned from the beginning and never lost hope, but Mary Magdalen? She must have known despair. True, she had seen the raising of Lazarus, but could Christ raise himself? It must have seemed impossible and she surely believed him dead. Why else did she bring spices to the sepulchre and ask, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us?’ That Saturday of waiting, when she was held helpless by custom and respect, must have been most terrible of all – or was she stunned by the disillusionment? At Béthanie’s five o’clock Vespers, some of the sisters looked as if they had been weeping; all were pale, but Easter was to come when hope comes back to the church as, long ago, hope came back to the apostles.

  There has never been on earth, thought Lise, anything more beautiful than the Easter Vigil, herald of the first Mass of Easter Sunday; ‘But it’s not of earth,’ said Soeur Thecla. ‘It’s a glimpse of heaven.’

  The new fire was kindled outside the chapel; the big paschal candle was lit from that new fire and the aumônier took the first step into the empty dark church; he raised the candle ‘Lumen Christi – The light of Christ.’ Three times the cry echoed as the new light was passed from candle to candle held by the nuns, then to the villagers gathered in the externe chapel. As the candles caught, one from another, Lise had a vision of the flame running in the same way from one church to another through all Christendom, far around the world: new light, new joy, new hope.

  This is the night on which heaven was wedded to earth. On this night Christ broke the bonds of death.

  and, the night shall be as light as day, the night shall light up my joy.

  On Easter morning, very early, Bienvenue’s calf was born; ‘I heard lowing in the pig-house,’ said Sister Thecla, ‘got up and went out, and there she was in the straw, a little heifer.’ She was called Aurore, in honour of the dawn, and was to be sold a year later down to the South of France. ‘It seems the fame of our cows has gone far and wide,’ said Soeur Thecla. ‘But the papers that poor little thing had to have! The arrangements, more than for an orphan child!’ On that Easter Sunday she had called Lise to see and, after the marvel of the little creature, with its velvet coat, small black muzzle and big wondering eyes, standing upright on its legs, had been admired enough for Soeur Thecla, Lise had come out into the first daylight of the domaine as, long ago, day must have come in its freshness to Joseph of Arimathea’s garden; that was far away from France, yet Lise seemed to smell freshly-watered dust paths, hear the movement of long-stemmed olive leaves, see pink and
white rosettes of oleander flowers.

  ‘You have been to the Holy Land!’ Soeur Marguerite’s exclamation of astonishment and wonder brought Lise up short. They had been talking of the Holy Sepulchre at recreation and, remembering her thoughts of the morning, Lise had said without thinking, ‘No one knows where it was, but I should rather it was there, in that garden, which possibly was Joseph of Arimathea’s, than where people have been taught to believe it is, in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. That seemed to me a dreadful place. But in the garden,’ said Lise, ‘among the olive trees you seem really near – they can’t be the same olives, of course, but they might be from slips of the old …’

  ‘And you have been there?’

  ‘Yes.’ The whole circle of faces watching Soeur Marie Lise was eager.

  ‘To have been there!’

  ‘How wonderful!’

  ‘Were you on a pilgrimage?’

  ‘No.’ Anything but, Lise could have added. Every other year or so Patrice or Emile had gone out to the Middle East, Algeria, Morocco, Cairo, ‘to … to recruit,’ Lise had said finally, trying to find the exact word for Soeur Marie Alcide. ‘Don’t let imagination run away with you; it was not white slave traffic, but they found girls, often in poor circumstances, and offered them “an opportunity,’” she did not know what else to call it. ‘We had beautiful girls at the Rue Duchesne, and many of them were foreign. Patrice also controlled “centres” or houses – I don’t know how many, but there was one in Cairo and he had heard there would be a coming city in Tel Aviv; in those days it was just growing. He was an astute business man in spite of his laziness, Emile more so, and we spent some time in what was to be Israel. I don’t know why he took me – perhaps he was not feeling well and needed ballasting; perhaps Emile was bullying him which, surprisingly, he often did – but most of the time I was at a loose end and I hired a car and drove; perhaps, though I didn’t know it, that was part of the searching. I went to Nazareth and Galilee. We …’

  Lise choked and the Prioress came forward to rescue her. ‘Sister, this was long ago,’ but Lise took breath and went on. ‘If you have seen the stars over Gethsemane, those same stars that shone on the agony in the garden … As I said, no one knows where the sepulchre really was, but at five o’clock in the morning, in Jerusalem, the air is fresh, dew lies on the paths, or they water them early, and the olive leaves stir as they did then; and there are already gardeners going about their work – no wonder Mary Magdalen mistook him for the gardener …’

  In April the apple trees flowered; the orchards all round Belle Source and in the orchard of the domaine were a dream of beauty, but there was no time to dream; all the sisters who could were planting potatoes, dirty, wet work – ‘Try bending double in the rain, wet soaking down your neck, your hands so wet and mud-caked they are frozen.’ A notice appeared on the board of the cloister:

  On Wednesday Lectures will be at two o’clock, not three; the pig is being killed. On Thursday Midday Prayer will be an hour earlier; we are cutting up the pig.

  ‘I never thought,’ said Lise, ‘that making boudins could be part of my trying to serve God!’ The boudins, blood puddings, were laid out in black glistening rows to dry. ‘Ugh!’

  ‘But they are delicious.’ Soeur Fiacre was surprised. ‘I look forward to this time all the year.’

  ‘Ugh!’ said Lise again, taking off, at last and thankfully, her red-spattered apron.

  Soeur Fiacre laughed as she went back to her sowings of haricots. ‘If you have ever lived in a convent you never want to see haricot beans again,’ said Lise; tomatoes were put out, more lettuce, and the garden was a mass of flowers, lilac, tulips, pansies.

  There was the same pattern of festival for Ascension Day; then June was hay-making month – always anxious because rain might ruin the hay – then strawberry time with strawberry picking – more back-breaking than the planting of potatoes; there was picking of currants and gooseberries too, and those nuns who were not outside, toiling in blue aprons and with great straw hats over their veils to keep off the sun, were in the kitchen making jam and bottling fruit; the shelves in the stillroom were gradually filling. ‘We’re like squirrels, working against the winter.’ Some of the sisters dried rose petals for the potpourri they sold; the roses were in full bloom, with lilies, the pinks Lise loved for their clove scent, sweet-peas and, for Corpus Christi, one of the great feasts of June, there were enough flowers to decorate the small altars that were set up around the domaine as ‘stations’ where the monstrance, with its precious burden, was set down for a few minutes and the sisters knelt to sing, while, when they reached the paddocks and pens, the cows, chickens, rabbits and pheasants watched this strange invasion of their territory. ‘But they know that it is holy,’ Soeur Thecla declared. ‘If you notice, the cows watch and do not graze until we have gone.’

  ‘They chew their cud though,’ said Lucette.

  ‘That means they’re thinking.’

  One of the ‘stations’ was by Belle Source’s small cemetery, a fenced enclosure with crosses made from rough apple branches, still with their bark, and marked only with a name and date, sometimes two or three names because more than one nun could be buried in the same grave. Here were other Soeur Irènes or Henri Dominiques or Lucie Magdaleines, row after row lying undisturbed except by the rustling of the trees or by a new burial and, every year, by Corpus Christi with its procession of candles and singing. ‘I like to think they are visited by him each year,’ said Soeur Thecla.

  Before Corpus Christi, though, was Pentecost when the work-rooms were at their busiest because this was the time in the world of First Communions and the robes for boys, the long dresses for girls, all in white, hand-stitched and pleated or tucked and embroidered, were made ready, the white and silver boxes were piled high. Family cars drew up to fetch them, other boxes went by post and, typical of Béthanie, thought Lise, in every box was a paper cornet of white sugared almonds sent without payment to sweeten the day and its demands for some young Pierre or Michel or Jeanne or Solange. Prayers were said for them too.

  It was often penalising to have to wear a habit and veil in July; sweat streamed down Soeur Fiacre’s and Soeur Thecla’s faces – they were the two most outside. It was unbearably hot in the sun and often thunder gave Lise a headache, but no sooner was the picking of soft fruit done than the plums were ripe and there was the added burden of watering and hoeing; the weeds seemed as plentiful as the vegetables and flowers. ‘They must be sinful or they wouldn’t multiply so fast,’ said Soeur Fiacre in unwonted irritation; more irritating were the gnats and flies: ‘We’re so mosquito bitten we look as if we had measles,’ said the Prioress; and, with all the crops, the garnering, the constant work of visiting, rescuing, organising, the unexpected requests and important errands, went on, and the guest-house was crammed. Because of the heat it was a danger time for quarrels; tempers were quick and patience wore thin. ‘If I bottle any more haricots I think I shall go mad,’ said Soeur Monique, and Soeur Anne Colombe, obsessed with cleaning, disturbed even recreation with her mop and bucket. ‘This is rest time, Sister.’

  ‘Maybe, but this floor hasn’t been washed for a week.’

  ‘You washed it yesterday.’

  ‘I certainly did not.’

  ‘Leave her, leave her,’ said the Prioress. ‘She is old.’

  ‘So she, above all, should rest.’ Soeur Irène was the infirmarian.

  ‘To try and make her would only tire her more. Let her go her own way,’ which, in any case, Soeur Anne Colombe would have done.

  Now the harvest was beginning to reach its zenith. From the vines the unfruitful branches were cut away so that each cluster of grapes could get the full sun and swell. ‘The pullets have started to lay,’ Soeur Thecla was content. ‘The new pig is fattening beautifully … we have clutch after clutch of pheasant eggs,’ they sold at a good price, ‘and I have never seen such plums as we have this year.’

  ‘Let’s shake the trees and have done,’ said im
patient Lise.

  ‘Shake them! You will bruise them.’ Some had to be shaken, they were so high, but the ladders came out, the blue-pinafored nuns went up them to pick; baskets were carefully lowered to be carried in. ‘The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,’ said the psalm, ‘but sometimes I wish there were not so much fullness,’ said Lise, and, ‘do we need so much jam?’

  ‘There are forty-five of us and it’s not only for us; there’s the guest-house,’ said Soeur Fiacre.

  ‘Soon it will be tomatoes.’

  ‘Well, what do you expect? Be thankful. Besides, you have seen nothing yet. Wait for the apples and cider …’ but the work was, as usual, broken by feasts, especially one nearer to the heart of Béthanie than even Saint Joseph’s, the feast of Saint Mary Magdalen. It was a day of rest and pleasure, with the beauty of its liturgy, telling all her stories. For lunch a cold buffet was spread in the cloister and in the evening when the heat of the day lessened, the whole community picnicked in the forest by the spring which gave Belle Source its name. To interrupt the work again came the respite of another day, Saint Dominic’s, and, on the fifteenth of August, the Assumption of Our Lady, with its procession and Solemn Mass, acolytes helping the aumônier and the chapel crowded with visitors. ‘After that, I always think summer abates and we begin the slowing down and quietness of autumn,’ said Soeur Thecla.

  ‘Quietness? Slowing down? I think you have forgotten the cider,’ said Lise.

  In September the garden was lovely with late summer flowers and there was mist on the lawns in the early morning, and those minute spider webs spun on the grass that, as a child, Lise had called fairies’ cradles – but there was little time for fairies; not only had the main crop of potatoes to be got up but, in October, the apples were ripe; this time the fruit could be shaken down and the cider apples were piled in a great heap in the courtyard; a few rotten ones among them were left to ferment until the last week of November which brought the hardest work of the year; first the apples were brought into the cellars and put into the heavy wooden press; from the press the juice was poured into barrels and left to work for a month. The knocking out of the bungs was skilled exciting work with the sisters standing by with jugs and buckets to catch the gush. Even the smell was potent. ‘You can be quite drunk without touching a drop,’ warned Soeur Thecla.