She checked her sodden pocket for her aunt’s address and phone number – an aunt she hadn’t seen in twenty years. Aunt Eva, next of kin. Her parents were both dead, had both died fairly young; her father in his fifties, her mother sixty-two. Life had been a trial for them, a purgatory on earth to be endured. Summers hot and airless, winter spoiled by Christmas, even spring uncertain. Prices rising, people getting ruder in the shops.
Aunt Eva was more cheerful. Her mother’s younger sister who dressed in pinks instead of fawn, wore varnish on her toenails. She wrote once a year, at Christmas, never visited. She lived too far away, in a small market town in Gloucestershire – or had done till this year. Six months ago, she’d moved to London: Hurst Road, N14. Where was N14? Close to Oxford Circus? Or nearer Liverpool Street, where she’d first got on the tube? She ought to ask, but people looked so hostile – too busy to be questioned, too sullen to be stopped.
The phone-booth door was opening. A man came out, pulling at his coat. ‘Damn thing’s on the blink.’ The queue muttered, stamped its feet. While she waited, she checked through all her coins. She couldn’t remember money very well – vague memories of shillings, silver sixpences in Aunt Eva’s Christmas puddings, chunky threepenny pieces, flimsy one-pound notes. This money she had never seen – foreign money for a foreign land. It seemed heavier and brighter, even somehow dangerous, perhaps because she’d stolen it. She’d give it back, she’d vowed to. Every penny. More.
By the time a booth was empty, her hands and feet were numb. She flexed her fingers, tried to make them work. Phones were black and bulky, with two buttons, ‘A’ and ‘B’. This phone was slim and blue, and attached to a grey box. ‘LIFT HANDSET,’ said the instructions on the wall. ‘INSERT CARD, GREEN SIDE UP.’ What card? And why didn’t phones take money any more? Was there a supply of cards somewhere in that grey box on the wall? She searched, found nothing but the slot for one.
She pushed the door, looked out. ‘Not working?’ someone asked. She didn’t know; shook her head, then nodded. She could tell they thought her mad. She was mad. They had told her that already, back in Brignor.
She walked away, walked on; passed a strange shop open to the street, as if it had no doors; a throb and blare of music sucking in the customers. The lights were daylight bright; a dozen separate TV screens, suspended from the ceiling, showed long-haired men crooning to guitars, girls jigging in what looked like scarlet swimsuits. Records – hundreds, thousands – were racked up every wall, their lurid covers writhing with gyrating sequined bodies. A real man touched her arm. ‘On your own?’ he asked. She pulled away, dashed across the street, plunged into a side road, turned another corner. Now she was quite lost, in a different street, with different shops, different Christmas lights. The crowds were thinning, people going home. Her scarf kept slipping, couldn’t hide her anyway. She ought to go back underground, somewhere dark and private, deeper than the tube.
Lord, do not reprove me in Your anger.
Punish me not in Your rage.
The Lord had heard her prayer. There was a phone box just in front of her, with someone coming out of it, a kind, good-mannered woman, who smiled and held the door for her. She almost wept in gratitude – the first smile she’d seen in London.
She picked up the receiver. It was a different sort of phone, with pictures of the coins it took stuck up on the wall; a phone box for a mental case, a child. She compared the drawings with the real coins in her pocket, found two or three which matched. Of course she wasn’t mad. She’d always been described as capable and practical, clever with her hands. She pressed a coin in firmly, heard it cough and choke. Immediately, it rattled back again, appearing at the bottom in a small compartment marked ‘returned coins’. She tried again, again, but every time it went straight through, its rattle like a jeer. Yet her l0p was identical to its double on the wall. Maybe phones knew stolen money, always spat it out.
‘I borrowed it,’ she whispered. ‘I only borrowed it.’
She could see her blurred reflection in the glass. She looked dark and very old, though she was still only in her thirties, and remembered being fair, and even pretty. She tried to blank her face out, turned back to the phone; chose a different coin this time, the one they called a fifty, held her breath as she pushed it firmly in. It dropped, stayed put, and she heard the blessed dialling tone, checked her piece of paper for the number – that simple crucial number which meant a home for Christmas. She tried to rehearse her opening words as she listened to it ring; had gone over them already on the train. Her heart was pounding through her clothes, her freezing hands now sweaty. Her aunt might well be angry or incredulous; refuse to help, refuse to say a word. Was it fair to phone at all? Spoil her happy Christmas, turn up like a convict on her doorstep?
‘Aunt Eva, it’s …’
‘I’m so sorry just to phone like this, after all these …’
‘Look, I know this will upset you, but …’
No reply. No Eva. She clung on, hoping, praying. Her aunt might be out shopping like all these other people, could walk in any moment, scattering her parcels as she dashed to grab the phone.
Still the ringing tone – mocking empty ringing tone. Sadder now and slower. Her aunt must be away. Why should cheerful Eva spend Christmas on her own? She sagged against the wall, still holding the receiver. Just one more minute. Two … There was litter at her feet: a coil of withered orange peel, greasy papers, an empty battered can. She let her gaze creep higher, read the terse black messages scribbled on the wall: ‘HELP ME,’ ‘FUCK ME,’ ‘A. LOVES E.’
E for Eva. Her last remaining relative. Her father was an only child, as she was; her mother one of two, and Eva hadn’t married. She had never known her grandparents, not on either side. Not a long-lived family at all.
She jumped. Someone’s fist was knocking on the glass, an angry face squashed up close against it. She dropped her coins in fright, scrabbled on the floor for them, collided with the couple trying to get in.
‘Get a bloody move on! You’ve been hogging that damn phone for hours.’
‘I’m sorry. Please excuse me. I didn’t …
Her words were lost and trampled. The couple had the door shut, arms around each other, their twinned backs like a barrier. Selfish of her, thoughtless; forgetting other people who had more pressing needs than she did – real relatives to ring, not names on scraps of paper.
What should she do now? Her thoughts stopped with Aunt Eva. She hadn’t planned beyond her aunt, hadn’t planned at all. Just found herself in play-clothes and the wellingtons, creeping through the garden, lurching over bare brown Norfolk fields; trembling in the village bus which took her to the station; a pant uphill, a change of trains, then main line on to London – a London closing down now.
All the shops were shutting, people bolting doors and pulling blinds. Gaps between the traffic, empty pavements with only litter left – shattered bottles weeping in the gutter, dirty streamers trampled underfoot. ‘GRAND POST-CHRISTMAS SALE STARTS 27TH DECEMBER!’ Bargain stickers already in the windows, huge posters declaring Christmas over before it had begun. Everything defunct now for two days. She hadn’t any shelter, not a bite of food. A café was still open. She could see a few last stragglers warm inside. She daren’t go in a café, brave those raucous strangers, eat those foreign foods. She tried to puzzle out the strange new words blazoned on the window. What were quarterpounders? Or double shakes and coke-floats? Franks, or fries, or Fanta?
She limped into a side street. The sky was darker there. No Three Kings, no Star. A couple slouched towards her, arm in arm. The girl had shaved her head, one scarlet crest sprouting from the centre, above the sandy stubble. She wore woolly tights, striped red and white to match; a skirt so short it was just a skimpy frill; her boyfriend in a ponytail and earrings.
She glanced down at the gold braid on her own skirt, the silver frills which drooped across her wrists. They were all in fancy dress. This must be a play, an unusual Christmas play, perhaps t
he dress rehearsal. She had always liked the plays, the fun they had rehearsing, the excitement on the day. She smiled at the young girl, couldn’t place her features. She ran through all the names – none fitted – checked back on the face. There was nobody that young, no one with those piercing jolt-blue eyes. Was she new, perhaps, someone who’d just entered? No. They’d have told her that, rejoiced at someone new.
She smiled again. A welcome. Be gentle with the new ones, show them love, see Christ in them.
‘Stop staring, you old fart.’
Chapter Two
‘Sister Mary Hilary?’
‘Yes, Mother?’
‘Would you like to be Mary in the play?’
She felt a rush of pleasure, even pride, tried to suppress them both. They had asked her because she was the youngest, that was all. Eighteen and three-quarters. The youngest and therefore the lowest. Servant to all. But Mary … Mother of the Saviour, Mother to the world. All nuns were mother to the world; contemplative nuns whose job was prayer, who renounced the world to save it.
She tried on the blue robe above her habit. She already wore a white veil, white for novices, already had bare feet. Her Order was a strict one; shoes only for the aged and infirm, apart from garden boots. She scrubbed her feet raw-clean for the dress rehearsal, tried to feel her part, imagine Mary pregnant. She placed her hands across her small flat stomach. She had never wanted babies. As a consecrated virgin, she could be mother to every soul on earth; nurture them and pray for them, implore her Bridegroom/ Father to help and save them all. As Mary, she would be even closer to Him, carrying His child; the human vessel which would hold and shape His Godhead. ‘Be it done unto me according to thy word.’
Was it pride to think like that? You had to be so careful. Pride was everywhere, she rank and riddled with it. She was nothing, nothing – a hole, a mess, a rubbish, Mother Mistress said. She stood on just one foot while they set up the props; a tiny penance to tame and quash that pride, rejoicing when her leg ached. She kept it up while St Joseph dressed: Sister Seraphina, tall and bulky in her thick brown robe – a Franciscan monk’s old habit which they had somehow acquired and stored among the play-clothes. Amazing the things which people brought to convents – old vests, old rusty bedsteads, broken plaster statues, even chamber-pots. Once, a supermarket had sent two hundred chocolate yule-log cakes, all past their ‘sell-by’ date. Two hundred for their community of only twenty-three, which meant eight per nun and still some over. They hadn’t got a freezer, had to share them with the hens. Sister Louis Marie was in charge of all the poultry, and also good at dialects, so she was playing the dozen rustic innkeepers who turned the Holy Family away. She wore a towelling turban above her flowing veil, and a multi-coloured dressing gown bulked out her stern black habit. They never took their habits off, or veils; were forbidden to wear trousers or moustaches. They were still nuns, not actresses; nuns celebrating Christmas, acting out the journey into Bethlehem.
‘I’m sorry. We’ve no room.’ A ‘male’ voice, deep but kindly, with a touch of Somerset.
‘Can’t take you. No, impossible.’ Brusque now and more hostile, with flattened Midland vowels.
‘You should have booked before.’
She felt Mary’s pregnant tiredness, as she trudged on round the Community Room. Full up, no room, can’t help. St Joseph steadied her. The third inn was the bookcase; Sister Louis Marie in a quick-change different turban. Still no joy, no bed.
This was the last rehearsal before the performance proper on Christmas afternoon, with Reverend Mother as audience and all those nuns who didn’t have a part. Tomorrow – Christmas Eve – was a day of fasting and abstinence, and far too busy anyway for plays. She loved the day: the excitement and expectancy of the day before a miracle, the day before a birth; a birth in their own cloister. She even loved the extra penances, which made the Christmas feast more meaningful, more welcome. They stood, instead of sat, to eat their slice of plain dry bread, drink their tepid water. They never called it breakfast, just their ‘drink’. The French Abbess who had founded the Order, back in 1556, had prescribed a mug of beer for each nun in the morning; nothing else, nothing solid. The beer had changed to water in the later 1890s, hot water in a teapot – without the tea.
On Christmas Eve morning, Sister Mary Hilary felt she had drunk beer herself; her brain light and almost fizzing, her stomach full of froth. She tried to think of ash, of coal, to keep her mind on penance, not excitement. It wasn’t easy. The refectory was hung with stars and tinsel, and even with her eyes down, she could still smell the forced red roses – a present from a benefactor, arranged before the statue of St John. The crib was ready in the chapel. She had set it up herself, fetched clean straw from the chickens, shaped rocks from stiff brown paper; was helping Sister Sacristan with all her Christmas duties: pressing vestments, arranging flowers. They worked, as always, in silence. It was a day of total silence, their usual times for talking – one hour in the evening and thirty minutes midday – changed to silent meditation in the chapel.
Seven hours they spent in chapel, every day. Their other work was secondary, and still a form of prayer, performed in silence to keep their minds on God. On Christmas Eve, Compline was said earlier than usual, so that the older nuns could snatch an hour or so of sleep before rising at ten p. m. for solemn Matins, which lasted until Midnight Mass, with carols in between, then a whole night of Exposition on their knees. She could hear her stomach rumbling, a descant to the organ. Supper had been bread and jam. She had done without the jam, taken just the smallest piece of bread. She wanted to be one with Mary, cold and tired and hungry on her way to Bethlehem and birth.
Mother most chaste,
Mother inviolate …
Virgin most prudent,
Virgin most faithful …
Health of the sick,
Refuge of sinners …
The twenty voices rose as one. (Three nuns in the Infirmary, one half-paralysed, all too sick for Compline.) There was an art in unison. It took constant daily practice, attention to one’s phrasing. No voice must be too loud, too strong, too slow. They must not be individuals, not in voices – not in any way. ‘Emptied out for God,’ was how the Novice Mistress put it. They called her Mother Mistress, and it was she who did the emptying; breaking down each novice, rooting out the self, all its petty likes and dislikes, its passions, failings, pride.
It had hardly started yet. Sister Mary Hilary had been a novice just two weeks, after twelve months as a postulant; was still awed by the Office, terrified of solos, scared by Mother Mistress with her blue-steel voice, her hundred eyes which took in every detail while always looking down. Yet she loved the Office – the ritual, the performance, the changing liturgy, circling with the seasons: Advent dark and pleading, spring and Easter rejoicing in new light; every day with its prayer, its saint, its purpose, lifting them to God.
‘Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.’ Sister Michael, solo, with her pure and careful voice. All the nuns repeated it. ‘Into thy hands, O Lord …’
Every night, safe within God’s hands. Safe from nightmares, darkness, safe from Satan who loathed and taunted nuns. They bowed low for the Gloria, Sister Hilary lower than the rest, copying their Foundress who was said to offer her neck to an imaginary executioner at each and every Gloria, to show her complete surrender to God’s will. They were reading her Life in the refectory. She still found it difficult to concentrate, remove fiddly little bones from fish, yet still take in devotions; digest syrup sponge along with miracles.
Sister Gerard switched the chapel fights out. Shadows from the candles fell across the wooden floor, duplicating vases, statues. The heady scent of freesias seemed stronger in the gloom. All the nuns turned towards the statue of Our Lady; blue robe again, bare feet, white veil, and eight feet tall. Their huge and powerful Mother, protecting them, listening while they sung the Alma Redemptoris Mater.
‘Succurre cadenti, surgere qui curat populo …’
Sist
er Hilary struggled with the Latin. She had got an ‘A’ in her Latin A level, passed English and History, too, when only seventeen, but that was eighteen months ago, and her brain had dulled since then. Brains were part of pride, had to be subdued. She had done mainly manual work those first months as a postulant; scrubbing, sweeping, gardening, cleaning out the hens – work which kept the mind free, free for God. Now that she was a novice, she would learn Latin once again, but only the Latin of the Office, so she could understand the Lessons in the breviary, those lengthy expositions of Saints’ and Virgins’ fives.
‘Virgo prius ac posterius …’ She translated as she sang: ‘You, a virgin, then and always, gave birth to your own sacred Creator, while nature watched in awe.’ Only one more night before that birth, that miracle, the day of Christmas joy. The last notes of the anthem died away. She could feel the joy already, tried to burn it out of her, while she knelt praying for the joyless, the sick, the old, and dying, the homeless and the godless, the outcasts and the sinners. ‘Peccatorum Miserere.’
The silence seemed to stretch to heaven. No page rustled, no nun coughed or fidgeted. The shadowed convent garden breathed softly, imperceptibly, outside the chapel windows, and beyond it watched the sombre Norfolk marshes, and above them both the waiting pregnant sky. It was so quiet you could almost hear the sand falling through Reverend Mother’s hourglass, flowing silent as their prayers.
The Abbess rose, to bless her nuns, the last ritual before the night’s Great Silence, sprinkling every nun with holy water, as she walked slowly down the chapel. Sister Hilary bowed her head as the cool drops spattered on her face. This was her second Mother – who had taken over from her own fussing, fretting mother-in-the-world – and who was Serenity and Strength; a woman over seventy, who, when she sat, never let her body touch the chair-back; kept her posture perfect, however long she knelt. Reverend Mother Benedict, who had been born ‘the honourable’, came from a wealthy, high-born family, with horses, servants, extensive lands in Shropshire; had renounced them all for God. Her final words of blessing seemed to lap them all in security, in peace. ‘Vouchsafe, O God, to send thy holy angel from heaven, to guard, cherish, shelter and protect all that dwell in this house and grant them a quiet and peaceful night.’
Devils, for a change Page 2