The Convent

by Maureen McCarthy

  In the few minutes it had taken to walk up the aisle, Cecilia’s focus had shifted from feeling nervous and shy and conscious of how she looked, to an utterly joyful sense of being in another world altogether. By the time the first triumphant hymn had ended and the Bishop was making his slow way over to the pulpit, her joy had ripened into a state of mystical ecstasy such that her whole being was yearning to glide like a bird into that other realm of spiritual harmony with her Beloved. She was ready now, and couldn’t wait to discard the beautiful irrelevant dress and put on the habit.

  ‘These young women will remember this as the greatest day of their lives …’ The Bishop’s address was the only part of the ceremony said in English.

  Cecilia sang, letting the rich harmonies of the voices around her, the sweet smell of burning incense and the rich organ music, assault her senses. Never had she felt more alive. The Latin, so alien when they’d first arrived in the noviciate only twelve months before, had now become almost as familiar as their mother tongue.

  Dominus vobiscum

  Et cum spiritu tuo

  One by one the postulants ascended the altar steps to kneel in front of the Bishop and pronounce her free intention to join the community of Sisters. My child, what do you ask?

  Cecilia looked up at the Blessed Sacrament he was holding in front of her and her voice was strong. My Lord, In the Name of Our Saviour Jesus Christ and under the protection of His immaculate Mother Mary ever Virgin, I, Cecilia Mary Veronica Madden called now in Religion Sister Mary Annunciata, most humbly beg to be received to the Holy Profession … In this, the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and sixty-four.

  May God grant you perseverance in this your holy resolution …

  Veni Sponsa Christi,

  Accipe coronam, quam tibi Dominus praeparavit in aeternum

  Come, Spouse of Christ,

  Receive the crown which the Lord hath prepared for thee in eternity.

  And then it was the novices’ turn, making the first of their solemn vows.

  I do vow and promise to God, Poverty, Chastity and Obedience and the Zeal for Saving Souls, and to preserve until the end of my life in enclosure in this Institute for the charitable care and instruction of poor women and girls … I will make my vows to the Lord in the sight of all His people in the courts of the house of the Lord.

  The Bishop sprinkled each newly received novice with Holy Water and handed her a folded white veil, a long white candle and a small, silver, heart-shaped locket in which those same vows were enclosed.

  Receive this holy veil, the emblem of Chastity and Modesty. May you carry it before the judgement seat of Our Lord Jesus Christ that you may have Eternal Life and live for ever and ever.

  The novices and New Professed responded to the words of the Antiphon Vota mea in unison.

  I am espoused to Him whom the angels serve and at whose beauty the sun and moon stand in wonder.

  They filed off the altar in procession to the sanctuary where the capping would take place as His Grace intoned the Regnum mundi. Mother Superior, along with the Mistress of Novices, supervised the cutting off of their hair and the putting on of their new habits, all the time singing in Latin.

  I have despised the kingdom of the world, and all the grandeur of this earth, for the love of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Whom I have seen, Whom I have loved, in Whom I have believed and towards Whom my heart inclines.

  There were so many pieces of clothing and so many prayers to remember as each garment went on. Cecilia was not the only newly professed novice who had difficulty fitting the bandeau properly and pinning the white veil in place. So many archaic undergarments before the voluminous outer dress. How was it going to feel in summer? And where was her chord and how were you meant to tie it?

  She swung around so a stern Mother Holy Angels could set her guimpe straight as they continued singing the psalm.

  He has placed his seal upon my forehead and I will admit no other lover but Him.

  After assessing each new novice for imperfections, the Mistress of Novices motioned for them all to fall back into line. One by one they knelt before the Mother Superior and took a long white flickering candle.

  Cecilia risked a small smile as she caught the eye of Marie Claire, now Sister Mary Scholastica, and Breda, now Sister Mary Perpetua. How different we all look!

  Breda nudged Cecilia. ‘We made it, kiddo.’

  ‘We did.’

  A massive organ and the singing of Psalm CXXXIII accompanied their return into the main body of the church.

  Ecce quam bonum

  Quam jucundum

  Habitare fratres in unum

  Behold how good and how pleasant it is

  for brethren to dwell together in unity.

  Cecilia sensed a rustle of disquiet as the congregation, who’d been sitting and waiting for them for some time, craned forward. She went on singing and didn’t raise her eyes, but for the first time she thought of her own family sitting somewhere in the body of the church. Mum would be fine, but her father and brothers would be finding this long ceremony difficult. She wished suddenly for it all to be over, longed to hug them. No matter about her new religious name, she was still Cecilia, the same person that they’d always known.

  And yet the blunt truth was that she had left them, and she knew they knew it too. Apart from a couple of hours every six weeks, after this day she would be effectively gone from their lives. The new habit said it all. Only her face was visible. A sudden stab of sorrow shot through her, as an image of the home she’d grown up in filled her mind. Never again would she see that house, sit in the kitchen or smell a cake cooking in the oven. Nor would she ever ride again with her brother Dom, race across the paddocks towards Auntie Mon’s back paddock, clearing Patterson’s Creek near the bridge that they’d been warned a thousand times was too wide and dangerous for a horse – then up the hill to the finishing line, neck and neck, the horses wet with sweat, both of them breathless with laughter.

  Never again would she sit on the verandah and drink mugs of tea, listening to her brothers scrapping and fighting and joking with each other. No food or drink would pass her lips in front of any other person for the rest of her life except her fellow sisters. The twins – those two boys who’d arrived after her mother thought she’d finished having babies – were now only eleven. She would never know them, nor they her.

  Nor would she ever have a family of her own. No man to love; no babies to hold.

  In a final act of submission, the line of professed Sisters lay face down in front of the altar. The funeral pall that would be placed over her coffin one day was draped over her body to signify her retreat from the world. She could smell the floor wax and feel the cool of the wood, and she hoped she wasn’t going to sneeze or cry. Already her shorn head felt itchy.

  The new novices walked single file down the aisle joyfully singing the Te Deum along with the other Sisters.

  Te Deum laudamus: Te Dominum confitemur.

  Te aeternum Patrem omnis terra veneratur.

  We praise thee,O God: we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.

  All the earth doth worship thee: the Father everlasting…

  And it was over.

  After a quick lunch with her fellow sisters – they were all ravenous, having not eaten since the night before – there were two and a half hours of sitting about in the convent gardens with her parents and brothers. Dominic really had come, and although he’d been distant with them all, his smile for her was warm. They’d all started off shyly, probably because they hadn’t seen her for months, and the new habit hid the sister that they remembered. But as the afternoon wore on, when she linked arms with them, laughed and joked like old times, they all relaxed. For Cecilia it was such a joy to be with her family. She would never go home again, nor eat another meal with them, but this was the next best thing.

  At one point there’d been a lull in the conversation. Her father had looked up from his paper to the big brick buildings. ‘This place wil
l kill you,’ he’d muttered sourly.

  Cecilia laughed in dismay. ‘I’m happy here, Dad.’

  ‘I heard you telling your mother just now that you couldn’t take your cardigan off without asking the Reverend Mother,’ he growled. ‘That is just plain ridiculous.’

  ‘Oh, Dad!’ Tears sprung to her eyes. ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘You could be using that head of yours.’

  ‘But I am!’

  He slumped down in the chair, closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. ‘My only daughter,’ he said to no one in particular, before turning back to the pink Sporting Globe, ‘cooped up like a bloody chook! I never thought I’d see the day.’

  Cecilia tried to laugh along with her brothers. But his blunt ridicule cut deeply, all the more because he’d intended that it should.

  It was later, when Cecilia pulled the curtains around her bed and began to take off the new habit, that panic hit her. It came in waves, ebbing and flowing around her like the cold green ocean on a bleak day. The new robes were confining and hot, much heavier than the postulant dress. The starched linen encasing her head had chafed both sides of her face and a sharp line across her forehead. It diminished her hearing too. She missed half of what people were saying unless she was facing them directly.

  As she felt for the pins that held the whole set in place, she made herself take some deep breaths. Calm down! If only she had some oil or lotion for the sore bits. But it was when her hands touched the short stubble where her hair used to be that some deep part of her stilled, and her head became a roll of panicky drumbeats, all out of rhythm. What have I done?

  During the ceremony it had been exciting seeing the soft golden clumps fall about her feet, but now, feeling her bare head, and picturing again the grim satisfaction on the Novice Mistress’s face as the curls massed on the floor, something inside her mind gave way. The soft shapes turned into slivers of glass about her feet, and she wanted to cry out. I’m nineteen years old, and I have no hair! She fell to her knees and prayed. Oh God, let me see that it is leading me closer to you! But all the certain calm joy that had carried her through the day had vanished and in its place was a pit of black terror.

  Her heart was rattling, her skin clammy with dread. She put both hands up to her prickly skull and a silent scream echoed around and around her head high above the drumbeat. Oh, what have I done?

  She longed suddenly for human contact. If she could just talk to someone! If she could only pull the curtains aside and sit on the end of Breda’s bed. Ask her if she felt the same about losing her hair. But doing that would make a mockery of all that she’d decided to do that very day. To breach the Great Silence with such an inconsequential matter would be a very grave fault.

  Thou has made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.

  Oh, but it was true! It had to be true. How many times had she said it? And so she must do so again and again and again. They were St Augustine’s own words written during his own dark night of the soul. Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee …

  Ever so slowly her equilibrium returned. Yes. She knew who she was. She was Annunciata, a newly received Sister in the Order of the Good Shepherd. She knew who she was, and why she was where she was. I do. I know who I am. I do. And I know why I’m here. Eventually she rose from her knees, pushed back the curtains and got into bed. She was overwrought, that was all. Overwrought.

  It had been a big day.

  At last the overhead lights were out. Cecilia listened to the quietness of the others asleep around her, and thought of her father and his curt dismissal of everything she held dear. But that didn’t upset her as much as Dominic. Dom was troubled. Anyone could see it in his face, and it tore at Cecilia’s heart. Her eldest brother, who used to put her up behind him on the white pony when she was very little, make up funny little stories for her and whistle tunes for her to guess. When she was old enough, he’d taught her to ride. Now Dom was … lost. If only she could help him. If only she could sit with him, tell him a joke, make him smile.

  ‘Have you been riding?’ she’d asked shyly that afternoon during a quiet moment.

  ‘Nah.’ He’d shrugged and looked away.

  She lay on her back staring at the ceiling, letting the tears leak from the corners of her eyes down onto her thin pillow. Most nights someone cried herself to sleep in this room. So now it was her turn.

  She shifted onto her side in the bed and was just dropping off to sleep when she realised that Breda’s bed was empty. Alarmed, Cecilia sat up and looked around.

  Breda was standing by the window, her small bald head bent to one side in the light coming in from the cold moon. She must be up looking at that tree again. Cecilia couldn’t help smiling. Just then the moonlight caught a glint of something silver in Breda’s hand and the smile froze on her lips.

  Oh my God! Cecilia pushed off the bedclothes and tiptoed over.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ she whispered in awe.

  ‘Dad,’ Breda said simply, holding out the small transistor radio so Cecilia could see. ‘Today.’

  ‘But Breda!’ Cecilia was genuinely shocked. ‘If Mother sees it she’ll have a stroke.’

  ‘Footy,’ Breda said matter-of-factly. ‘I’m sick of relying on Guido.’

  Breda’s only source of information about her beloved team, Fitzroy, was old Guido, a sixty-year-old Italian refugee who worked with Mother Benedict in the garden. Every week she risked the Novice Mistress’s wrath to grab five minutes to find out the Lions’ weekend score. But he didn’t work Mondays, so it meant she had to wait until Tuesday.

  But they weren’t allowed to own anything. Poverty. ‘The female has a natural inclination to make a nest,’ Reverend Mother told them time and time again. ‘My dear Sisters, housewifery is part of our very natures and so must be resisted at all costs. We are not housewives but vehicles for God’s Grace in the world. As such, we own nothing except the sacred vows we have taken and keep as the sweetest flowers near our hearts. They are kept fresh every day with the pure water of prayer.’

  Nothing. We own nothing.

  Indeed, each novice had to humbly beg the community every few weeks to use the simple trifles that she needed to survive, such as crockery and prayer books, the shoes on her feet. If a sister broke anything out of carelessness, then she had to wear it about her person for a whole day as a reminder to be more careful with property that didn’t belong to her. Only the week before, little Sister Paula had had to walk about all day with four broken cups hanging from her belt. The week before that, Cecilia herself had had to carry around a chipped tray that she’d dropped when she was taking one of the old infirm Sisters her breakfast.

  So what could Breda be thinking?

  Cecilia tried with everything in her to hold back the laughter. But when she gave in to it, Breda joined her, and suddenly they were clinging to each other, doubled over and helpless, barely able to stand up.

  ‘You can’t keep it,’ Cecilia gasped. Their lockers were open for inspection all the time by anyone who cared to inspect them.

  ‘Watch me!’

  ‘But how … I mean?’

  ‘I’ll hide it.’

  ‘But what if she finds it?’

  Oh but it was good to laugh, to feel the knots loosening inside, to feel herself just nineteen years old, with all that energy spluttering to life again.

  ‘So how …?’

  ‘Today. Dad slipped it into my pocket.’

  ‘Breda!’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  ‘But it’s so … neat,’ Cecilia whispered.

  Breda pushed it up against Cecilia’s ear. ‘Listen to this,’ she commanded.

  Love me do.

  The simple cheekiness of the tune bounced along Cecilia’s raw nerves like a tennis ball, making her weak suddenly with a dull longing for all that she didn’t know.

  ‘The Beatles,’ Breda breathed excitedly, ‘from
Liverpool in England. They’re coming to Australia. Dad’s going to take my two younger sisters.’

  Cecilia nodded. The yearning in her friend’s voice made her want to weep all over again.

  ‘Where will the concert be?’

  ‘Festival Hall.’

  ‘They’ll tell you all about it at the next visit,’ Cecilia whispered encouragingly. ‘It will be the same as being there.’

  They stared at each other in the light coming through the window, and Cecilia saw then that Breda had been crying too. They both knew that hearing about the Beatles concert from her sisters a month after the event would not be the same as being there.

  ‘It’s so hard sometimes, isn’t it?’ Breda whispered and Cecilia took her hand.

  ‘It is,’ she murmured.

  It was after eleven and very cold, but the two newly received, nineteen-year-old brides of Christ were on their wedding night and there was a Beatles special on 3UZ. They stood side by side at the open window, taking turns with the radio, dressed in long plain flannelette nightgowns, their shorn heads turning occasionally, smiling at each other in the darkness, their fingers thrumming along in time with the music on the heavy wood of the window frame.

  Peach

  Fuck! This can’t be. But … yes, it is. I’m awake now. Well and truly awake, and I know what I’m hearing. It’s the creak of the cutlery drawer followed by the fridge’s soft slam, then the slow shuffle of my sixteen-year-old sister’s slippers along the kitchen floor. Oh God, here goes.

  Yep. Now it’s the low but definitely discernable sound of the television, some strung-out seventies rock band of course, interspersed with bursts of manic applause. Oh please, not the Sex Pistols again! I can’t stand it. They’d have to be grandfathers by now.

  It is three a.m. for Christ’s sake! I have an interview in the morning for a job I want. What to do now? What can I do, short of going down and throwing a fit, slamming a few doors, and screeching at the top of my voice for her to shut the hell up?

  In normal weather the creaks, rattles and groans of this old terrace shuts out whatever is happening downstairs, but tonight is so completely still, and so hot, that nothing is moving. When I hit the sack around midnight I left my door wide open hoping to get some air. So why don’t I just get up and close the door?