And what are those lumps on the end of your hands, Ellen Reynolds? Bits of wood from a tree, are they? Turnips perhaps? But the bursts of warmth too that lightened Ellen’s spirits for days afterwards. If she got through some difficult piece, the nun would clap softly and laugh. Ah, you have it, my dear. You have it. Well done!
Once she’d told Ellen, ‘You remind me of my mother, child. Bless her soul. Her hair was dark like yours, and her eyes blue and bright too, and she was a great one for the jolly pieces.’
Ellen had been delighted. It was a running joke between them that Ellen found the light, joyful pieces much easier to learn, even if they were more complex than the sombre ones. Mother Seraphina was always trying to make her see the beauty of a serious piece by Beethoven or Elgar, and Ellen would scowl, which always made the nun shake her head and laugh under her breath.
‘Did your mother play well, Mother?’ Ellen had ventured shyly.
‘She was … competent.’ Seraphina smiled. ‘Let’s just say what she lacked in technique she made up for in enthusiasm.’
Ellen would have loved to know more. She’d been on the brink of asking how many brothers and sisters the nun had, and if they all played and what, if any, instruments they’d had at home, and where was her home in Ireland, but … in the end she didn’t dare. It was an unwritten rule. The Sisters rarely spoke about their former lives. Questions from the girls were out of place.
‘So, my dear?’ The nun was settled into her chair now and looking at Ellen keenly.
But Ellen turned away, unable to meet her gaze.
‘You went to stay with your father?’
‘Yes, Mother.’
‘And his sisters, I believe?’
‘Yes, Mother.’
‘What were their names, child?’ the nun asked softly.
‘Rose and Mary,’ Ellen gulped, willing the terrible constricting feeling to leave her alone. It was as if some kind of crustacean with great horrible claws was crawling up her throat.‘And Rosalind … except she was my sister.’
‘Your sister?’
‘Half-sister. I didn’t know I had one.’
The old nun was confused for a moment. ‘So how old was this sister?’
‘Old,’ Ellen mumbled. ‘Thirty-two, I think.’
‘And her mother?’
‘She died. She’d been sick a long time. And she died last year. But I didn’t know that … I didn’t know anything about her either. She wasn’t my mother.’
‘No,’ the nun said softly. ‘So you’d never met this sister before?’
‘No. I’d never met my father’s sisters, either, or my … I’d never met Agnes. Not before I went there, Mother.’
‘Oh dear.’ The old nun shook her head. ‘So you went into a house with your father, his two sisters and his … other daughter?’
‘Yes, Mother.’
The nun sighed and drew both her hands into her lap, twisting her thumbs around each other.
Ellen’s head was still lowered, but she watched the thumbs moving around. First one way and then they’d stop and do an about turn. Nothing was said for some time. Outside, the day was sliding away and the room was growing dark. Ellen wondered if she should suggest that she turn on the overhead light, but the dark was comforting in a way. It helped the awfulness fade a little. The longer she sat there in silence, the easier it all became. The terrible months became like scenes from a book that she’d read. Being in this room had always made her feel as though the world outside didn’t really exist, and it was the same now.
‘So they were unkind?’
‘Yes … Mother,’ she mumbled.
‘And you were there for six weeks?’
‘Two months, Mother.’
‘And your father?’
‘He went to work.’
‘And you were home during the day?’
‘The new term hadn’t started.’
‘I see.’
Ellen kept her mouth tightly closed. She’d sworn on pain of hell that she would never tell a living soul what had happened in that house. And now she was blurting it out to a prying nun. But what else could she do?
‘So how were they unkind, child?’
‘They said that … I … That my mother was … That I was …’ Ellen closed her eyes.
‘Come, child,’ the nun said softly, ‘come now.’
‘They said I … I had bad blood in me,’ she whispered, ‘that I am a daughter of sin.’
‘Did they now?’ The nun took a sharp breath.
‘And that I would turn out just like her.’
‘Her?’
‘My mother.’
‘Oh.’
Tears rushed into Ellen’s eyes without warning. She knew nothing about her mother, only that she was alive, that her name was Sadie and that she had dark hair. Apart from that she was a ghost, a ghost that Ellen loved nevertheless. Oh, she loved her, there was no doubt that she loved her. Occasionally, in the middle of the night, Sadie would appear at one end of the dormitory, a transparent floating vision of a dark-headed woman in a worn blue coat, right next to the statue of St Therese, the Little Flower. She was there and yet not there. Ellen would sit up and stare down past the other beds of sleeping girls, a wave of relief washing through her. Her mother had come at last!
Mother Seraphina reached out and gripped Ellen’s right hand in her own. This in itself was quite shocking. Ellen couldn’t remember ever touching a nun before. She wished that her own hand didn’t feel so damp and warm against the nun’s dry, papery skin.
‘And your sister?’
‘The worst.’ Ellen gulped and wiped her eyes with her other sleeve. ‘I had to share a room with her and she never spoke to me. She would just stare at me and sometimes throw my things about. And she tipped things on me.’
‘Tipped … what kind of things?’
‘Water.’ Ellen raised her head and looked at the nun. ‘Once she threw a cup of tea in my face when I was lying on the bed reading. Hot tea. It burned. They wouldn’t let me sit with them after dinner … so I would go outside or try to read on my bed. I … I didn’t have anywhere else to go!’ Ellen began to sob, and she turned her face away into her other hand.
‘Oh, dear child.’ The old nun’s grip tightened and she felt in the pocket of her habit for a hanky and passed it across. ‘So, you told your father?’
‘No, no … I didn’t … he … no.’ Ellen took the nicely laundered white hanky but hardly dared use it. ‘He knew a bit, I think.’
‘Wipe your eyes now, dear,’ the nun said.
‘Thank you, Mother.’ It felt wrong somehow to use a nun’s hanky, but she didn’t know how to say that.
‘So what brought things to a head?’
‘I couldn’t eat. He took me to a doctor and I had to drink a tonic and … that made me sick too. I overheard them talking one night, the three of them in the kitchen, screaming at him to get me out of their house. They kept saying I was a whore’s child.’
The nun shuddered.
‘What is a whore, Mother?’ Ellen whispered desperately. ‘Please tell me what it means?’
‘Oh, my dear.’
‘Do I have bad blood?’
The nun shook her head but said nothing. Then she let go of Ellen’s hand and searched in the folds of her habit for her rosary. Ellen opened up the hanky and wiped her eyes and blew her nose properly, all the time watching the nun’s hands fingering the cross.
‘We’ll say a little prayer now, Ellen, shall we?’ Mother Seraphina said softly. ‘Just a little prayer to Our Lady.’
Ellen gulped and nodded as the nun kissed the cross and blessed herself with it.
‘And we will remember always that the Blessed Mother is with us, especially in our sufferings.’
‘Yes, Mother.’
‘That she had to watch her only son die on the cross, and so she knows what it is to suffer, my dear.’ The old woman stood and faced the window. ‘We’ll say the Memorare together,’ Mother Seraphina muttered sof
tly. ‘To ease the pain.’
Ellen stood up and began to pray alongside her teacher.
Remember, O most loving Virgin Mary,
that never was it known in any age,
that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help
or sought thine intercession was abandoned.
Inspired with confidence, therefore,
I cry to thee, most loving Virgin Mary.
To thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful.
Do not, O Mother of the Word Incarnate,
despise my prayers, but graciously hear and grant them. Amen.
The nun stopped and put her rosary aside. She took a couple of deep breaths and then sighed.
‘Will you play the Mozart sonata for me now, Ellen? The one you learnt for your exam.’
‘But I haven’t practised!’ Ellen was genuinely aghast at the thought. She hadn’t touched a piano in months. ‘And Mother ... it’s Holy Week!’ Could the nun really have forgotten that no bright, joyful pieces were played in the week leading up to Easter?
‘I think Our Lord will understand, dear,’ the nun said. ‘I really do. I think Our Lord and his Blessed Mother will love to hear you play that particular piece.’
Ellen began tentatively, quietly and self-consciously, but the music took over. It was a piece they both loved. The nun had told her about Mozart as a young boy, not much older than Ellen was, careering around Austria in his lovely velvet clothes and wig, that he was known to be a wag, boisterous and cheeky, playing tricks on people, and all the while writing the most wonderful music in the world. And that was what Ellen thought about as she played. She pretended Mozart was sitting behind them both, listening and smiling, clicking his fingers and tapping his fancy heels on the polished wooden floor, glad that it was her, Ellen Reynolds, playing his notes.
It was by no means her best rendition, but for most of the way through she was halfway pleased. Not too many notes went missing, and every time she came to the end of a page of music and Mother Seraphina leant forward to turn it Ellen saw she was smiling. Ellen’s fingers flew over the notes. By the end she knew she was making all kinds of mistakes, but it didn’t matter because they were both laughing by then.
‘Bravo, my dear girl! Bravo!’ Mother Seraphina clapped a couple of times before gently putting down the lid of the piano. ‘With no practice, you did very well indeed.’ She sighed and checked the time on the small silver watch under her guimpe.
‘Well, we must be going, dear.’
‘Thank you, Mother.’
The nun took her hand. ‘Tell me what it is you want to do in life, Ellen?’
Ellen could only look at her in shock. No one had ever asked her that before. Not even her father had asked her that. What did she want to do?
‘You mean …?’
‘When you leave school and become an adult.’
‘I don’t know, Mother.’
‘Think, child.’
‘Well …’ Ellen began shyly, ‘I would like to have my own family one day, Mother.’
The nun’s old face lit up. ‘Then you will, my dear,’ she said softly, ‘you will. You’ll have a beautiful family.’
Ellen was surprised that the nun seemed so certain, because she wasn’t at all sure herself. She’d never in her whole life spoken to a boy, and she knew nothing about babies or families for that matter.
‘Oh yes.’ The nun closed her eyes. ‘You’ll meet a good Catholic man. And you’ll have a wonderful family of your own.’
‘With my own house,’ Ellen added softly.
‘Of course, my dear!’ Mother Seraphina stood up. ‘A house full of lovely children. You’ll bring back your first child and show me, if I’m still alive?’
‘Oh I will, Mother! I will. I won’t forget.’
They both stood up. Ellen waited as the nun packed up the music books into a neat pile.
‘Now, Ellen, I have some time on Saturdays around three. We don’t want all that practice going for nothing, do we?’
‘You mean a lesson, Mother?’
‘What else, child? Of course I mean a lesson. As long as you’re here, you’ll have lessons.’
‘Thank you, Mother.’
When everything was shipshape, she turned to Ellen, her face softened into a whimsical smile. ‘What will you call your first child, do you think?’
Ellen smiled and didn’t hesitate. ‘Dominic,’ she said, and the nun frowned thoughtfully as though the name invited deep consideration. Ellen waited, hoping that the nun wouldn’t disapprove. But why would she? After all, it was a Great Saint’s name. Ellen secretly didn’t care much for the saint but rather loved the sound of the name. Dominic.
‘Dominic is a wonderful name,’ the nun said at last. ‘And what about if you have a girl first?’
Ellen looked at the plaster saint in the corner. ‘Cecilia,’ she whispered.
‘Of course!’ This time Mother Seraphina laughed in delight. ‘And she’ll have the gift, too, like her mother. I don’t doubt it. Now don’t you forget,’ she said. ‘If I’m not gone to God I want to see her too. Dominic and Cecilia.’
‘I won’t forget, Mother.’
Cecilia 1964
He has placed his seal upon my forehead and I will admit no other lover but him…
The day had arrived and she was ready for it.
Today. Everything that was meant to happen would happen: hour by hour, minute by minute. And at the end of it, when she lay down to sleep in this bed again, she would be changed. Transformed. No longer nineteen-year-old Cecilia Mary Madden, the only daughter of Ellen and Kevin from Wongabbie Farm near Bendigo but … someone else entirely. The first step had been taken just on a year ago when she’d first walked through the gates, but today was the one that mattered. Today was serious.
Cecilia lay in her narrow bed, staring at the pale-green ceiling. There were eight beds, four on each side of the room, seven of them occupied. There was the huge crucifix down one end, and the big round clock on the wall opposite. She saw the time and smiled. Five minutes to six. An extra hour’s sleep. The night before, Reverend Mother had granted the sleep-in because of it being a special day for the whole community. But to wake before the bell was a first if ever there was one! That terrible clanging sound usually crashed in on her dreams with the force of a hundred stampeding horses, making her hate everything in her new life for a few moments until she managed to gather herself and remember where she was … and why.
There were no pictures in the dormitory, no ornaments, and no mats on the polished wooden floor. The uncovered windows were open in spite of it being winter. All the bedcovers were white.
But Cecilia’s future spread out before her like an exquisite piece of finely worked cloth, with all the different coloured threads making a pattern as subtle and varied and difficult to read as the night sky. Poverty, chastity and obedience. There would be hard times, she didn’t doubt that, dark nights when she lost her footing on the steep narrow road she’d chosen, but there would be joy too. Of that she was even more certain.
Downstairs in the large locker next to the communal basins, the lovely satin wedding dress her mother had made waited on a hanger. It had beaded embroidery around the neck, and a lace veil with three satin roses to hold it in place. Oh, Mum! she’d protested. I won’t be a bride for long. But secretly she’d been glad it was so beautiful.
Now the day had arrived she couldn’t wait to put it on. Nor could she help hoping her family would come in time to get a front pew so they would see how lovely she looked in that dress, walking up the aisle with six other postulants to meet her future. Such vanity, Cecilia! This morning she planned to ask the Novice Mistress, Mother Mary of the Holy Angels, if she might leave her hair to hang loose, for this … her last day in the world.
For the past twelve months the honey-blonde curls had been scraped back from her face into a tight little bun, held with pins under a little thing that was more like a bird’s nest than a veil. During
today’s ceremony the postulants would file into the sacristy for a few minutes to have their hair shorn off. When they came out again into the main body of the church they’d be dressed in their new habit: wimple, bandeau, white veil and guimpe. Proper nuns for the first time!
Her father had always called his only daughter’s hair her crowning glory, and she so wanted him to see it this last time.
‘This is it, kid.’
Cecilia turned to smile at the impish face of Breda Walsh, who was poking her head out from under a pillow in the bed beside hers. There were seven postulants in the dormitory, all more or less the same age as Cecilia and Breda, except for Joan who was twenty-seven, and the rest were still sleeping soundly. Cecilia put a finger over her mouth to remind her friend that it was totally against the rules to speak. The Great Silence was observed from the end of evening recreation until after breakfast the next day – on this of all days it must be so.
‘You having second thoughts?’ Breda whispered in her deep, throaty voice.
Cecilia shook her head. ‘You?’ She mouthed without uttering a sound.
‘A few.’ Brenda nodded seriously.
Cecilia had to stifle a cry of dismay. Four of the original group of eleven had left, just disappeared without a word of goodbye, because that was the way it was done. One, everyone was sure, had been asked to leave because there was something not right about her, but … but not Breda. Not today! Please.
‘Only kidding!’ Breda whispered. ‘You seriously think I’d want to miss out on Babs’s slice?’
Cecilia’s mouth fell open in relief and a giggle escaped before she could hold it back.
Babs was Sister Barbara, the convent cook, and there was no more warm hearted and cheery soul in the world. Everyone loved her, but unfortunately that didn’t change the fact that she couldn’t cook. Her specialty was making meals out of thinly disguised leftovers. Not, of course, that any of the postulants or novices complained. To do so would be to bring the wrath of Mother Mary of the Holy Angels down on their heads. But just occasionally they’d stare down at the food in front of them and look at each other or give a small private sigh that the rest of the table understood. On special Feast Days Sister Barbara let herself go with an array of sweets that were nothing short of amazing: lopsided sponge cakes, soggy puddings with lumpy custard, trifles awash in so much port that a decent serve was liable to make a young Sister tipsy. But it was with the slices that she outdid herself. The chocolate ones were bitter and the lemon slice so sweet it made their teeth ache.
The Convent Page 3