Listen, kid, you got to write back! I know some of what happened to you, but I need to know the rest.
But how could she? Her years as a nun had been wrapped up so tightly and thrown into the do-not-disturb section of her brain. She knew that opening the package after all this time might not be wise. What if after sorting through the contents she didn’t know where anything fitted? But Breda had sounded as quirky, sharp and full of fun as she remembered her, and so of course Cecilia hadn’t been able to resist writing back.
And I want to see you! Come home, why don’t you?
A couple of years after leaving the convent, Cecilia decided to give herself a clean break. Dominic was dead and Patrick had fled to Darwin after his acrimonious divorce. She would make a new life for herself in whatever way she could, even if that meant deliberately blocking out her family, the convent years, Peter, and the child. It was time to become someone else.
In spite of some lean years in England the strategy had worked, more or less. Even at her lowest ebb she was never tempted to return home. And when she met the Canadian, Jack, she knew it was the best move she’d ever made. The seven years she’d had with him had been the happiest of her entire life. But Jack had died of cancer too soon and somehow after that her life stopped working. For five years she’d been wandering the globe like a nomad, teaching here and there, taking on photo assignments. She made friends easily but lost them just as quickly.
She was drift in a vast lonely space of her own making. In her darker moments she saw it as her due, the payback for a series of wilfully stupid decisions she’d made in her life.
Then Breda had found her. The email had crashed into her life like a gate left open in a wild storm. No way could she ignore it.
Wake up, Annunciata. Wake up!
1965
‘What is troubling you, dear?’
The Novice Mistress’s hand was on her arm. Cecilia turned around and lowered her eyes. They were red, but surely not enough for anyone to notice. At least, that’s what she’d hoped when she’d splashed her face with cool water an hour before. It was a grey evening and she was walking out from evening prayers in the chapel with the rest of the community. Cecilia was hungry. In Lent the meals were sparser than usual, and there’d been no afternoon tea. The others were passing by on their way in to supper and she longed to join them. But here she was alone with the formidable Mother Holy Angels and no idea how to explain herself.
‘You’re unhappy, Sister Annunciata?’ the old nun said gently, but her eyes were scouring Cecilia’s face critically.
‘No, Mother,’ Cecilia said. ‘I’m very happy here.’
‘Then why the tears?’
Cecilia took a deep breath. ‘I find one bath a week insufficient, Mother,’ she whispered, looking at the ground. There was no reaction at all, so Cecilia continued. ‘And fresh underwear only once a week feels unhygienic.’
It was at the word unhygienic that the Novice Mistress’s face tightened with fury. She threw her shoulders back as though preparing for battle, and Cecilia stepped back in dismay.
‘How dare you!’ The Novice Mistress’s voice was low. ‘The impudence of a twenty-year-old novice calling into question practices that have been part of our Rule for centuries! How dare you!’
‘Oh Mother.’ Cecilia slumped with mortification. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to … I wasn’t … It’s just that …’
‘In case you haven’t realised yet, this convent was not set up to service your personal needs. And if that is what you expect, then why don’t you walk out right now and save everyone a lot of time?’
‘Oh no, Mother. Please don’t send me away!’ Cecilia was blinded with panic. ‘I’m so sorry … I wasn’t thinking at all.’
‘Then perhaps you should begin thinking!’
‘Yes, Mother.’ Cecilia’s stammered apologies sounded inadequate even to her own ears.
‘Go back to the chapel right now!’ Mother Holy Angels said. ‘Kneel in front of the Blessed Sacrament, with both arms extended, until I send someone for you.’
‘Yes, Mother.’
It was torture after ten minutes, but Cecilia remained determined. Within half an hour she was woozy with pain and exhaustion, but she kept her arms extended as she’d been ordered, alone in the dark church.
When Breda was sent to bring her up, she found her lying unconscious on the floor of the chapel, blue with cold.
‘Wake up, Nuncie! Come on, wake up.’
Cecilia jerked awake but didn’t immediately recognise Breda. Her limbs were heavy and she could hardly move her face, but she was nevertheless filled with the overwhelmingly delicious feeling of having died and gone on to another life. Could that red flame flickering in front of the gold tabernacle be the Holy Spirit?
‘What happened? Where am I?’
‘Hush. Mother Angels sent you down here.’
‘Oh.’ Cecilia sat up a little, leaning her back against the polished wood of a nearby pew. The scene with the Novice Mistress flooded back. She groaned. ‘How long have I been down here?’
‘An hour at least,’ Breda whispered, rubbing Cecilia’s cold hands with her own warm ones. ‘What did you do?’
‘Complained about there not being enough baths.’
‘You idiot!’ Breda gave a low chuckle.
Cecilia looked into Breda’s warm smiling face and felt a sudden infusion of energy run into her lethargic limbs. She tried to get up.
‘Stay a minute.’ Breda caught her arm. ‘Take a few deep breaths.’
Cecilia did as she was told as Breda set about straightening her veil.
‘How long did you last for?’
‘I don’t know,’ Cecilia whispered. ‘I think I passed out.’
‘I only lasted two minutes,’ Breda chuckled.
‘But …’
‘Too painful,’ Breda went on casually. ‘I snuck a look behind to make sure no one was there and put my arms down.’
Cecilia smiled. What about obedience? she wanted to ask but didn’t have the energy.
‘Don’t let her get to you, Annunciata.’ Breda’s face had become serious. She took Cecilia’s hands in her own and rubbed them some more. ‘She’s not that important.’
‘You seem so happy,’ Cecilia whispered wearily.
‘Well, I stink too!’
‘But you’re happy.’
‘I am happy,’ Breda admitted.
‘Even though …’
‘Even though I stink and can’t manage most of what I’m meant to manage …’
‘So …?’ Cecilia waited.
Breda met her eye with a shrug. ‘This is what God wants of me.’
Cecilia nodded. Yes. She understood that. It was what she felt herself. She looked across at the Blessed Sacrament and prayed for strength.
Within minutes she was on her feet again. Breda helped her up and they made their way together up the wide gloomy stairs to the dormitory.
On their way back from chapel they stood back as Reverend Mother passed them on the stairs with only the coolest of nods. Cecilia took this to mean that news of her misdemeanour had been reported and that the Provincial would be keeping a closer eye on her now. Oh God! She might not get the votes needed to get through to the next stage. Some novices were taken aside and told that that they were unsuited to the life and should go home. Their relatives were called and asked to come and fetch them. Imagine that! The humiliation of knowing that she’d failed. More than anything in the world Cecilia wanted to be professed.
Breda nudged her when the nun was out of view.
‘Sour old biddy,’ she whispered, laughing under her breath. ‘Don’t let them get to you, Nuncie.’
‘But how do you manage that?’
‘Because I’m loved,’ Breda said softly. ‘I know God loves me, and he loves you too.’
Cecilia stared at her wonderingly. Breda broke more rules than all of them put together and yet she seemed happier than all of them too. Somehow that was difficult
to fathom. It didn’t add up.
‘Pray!’ Breda said as they tiptoed along the corridor towards their dormitory. ‘You’ll be okay if you pray. God listens.’
Peach
Before I put my key in the door I stop, close my eyes and offer up a prayer to whatever God is on duty that day.
‘Please let her be at Ruby’s. Let my sister be out doing something.’ I open the door and I’m immediately hit with a blast of Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’ and hope dies an instant death. I head for the stairs. To say I don’t need Stella right at this moment is a gross understatement.
‘Is that you, Peach?’
I stop on the fifth stair and sigh. ‘Yep,’ I call back, ‘it’s me.’
‘What you doing home?’
I go back down to the family room. Stella is lying on the big couch. There is an empty cardboard noodle container on the table nearby, a crushed packet of chips and a number of lolly wrappers around her. She smiles at me, but I ignore it and turn to the screen. She’s watching an old concert of Bruce Springsteen, Roy Orbison, Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt. Stella senses my mood and turns it down.
‘What’s up?’ she says. ‘I thought you were going to hang out with Det and Cassie all day.’
‘So did I.’
‘So what happened?’
‘I dunno.’
‘Has anything amazing happened to you yet?’ she asks casually.
‘What?’ I look at her blankly, and she gives me a knowing smile. I remember her pronouncement that morning.
‘Not yet,’ I say sourly. Det’s pregnancy does not come under the amazing happenings heading as far as I’m concerned. It’s more suited to diabolical tragedies.
Stella looks at her watch. ‘Plenty of time.’
‘Whatever you say, Stella.’ I stare at the old stars jiving around with their guitars and wonder, not for the first time, why the hell a seventeen-year-old on the edge of a new century wants to watch a pack of performers from her parents’ generation.
‘I got an email from Mum,’ she says, switching off the telly and looking at me.
‘And?’
‘Everything is fine. Loving Paris. You know the drill. They’re going to call us.’
‘What time?’
‘Tonight. Late.’
‘Okay,’ I sigh. I go to the fridge and take a long slurp of milk straight from the plastic bottle. I would kill Stella if she did the same thing in front of me, but seeing as how I’m running this domestic situation, I don’t care. I pick up my big canvas pool bag from the hook and check it. Shampoo, conditioner, soap, face moisturiser, bathers and a towel. Stella watches me intently.
‘What are you looking at?’ I say sharply, as I pull a comb from my other bag. I need to get out of the house. I’m no good to anyone like this.
‘What’s the matter, Peach?’
‘Nothing,’ I say again. You, Stella. You are the matter! ‘I’m going to the pool now.’ I head towards the hall. ‘And then I’m going out again later as well, so I might not be home to talk to Mum and Dad.’
‘You’re going swimming now?’
‘Yes. You should come,’ I say, knowing she won’t and that I don’t really want her to either.
She shakes her head. ‘Where are you going later?’
‘To see Nick’s band at the Night Cat,’ I say. ‘You wouldn’t like it. Too loud.’
‘Okay,’ she returns mildly.
I turn my back and walk out to the front hallway, hating myself because, apart from Mum and Dad, I love Stella more than anyone else in the world, but right at this minute I’m finding it hard to be even civil to her.
‘I brought the mail in,’ she calls after me cheerfully, as if I’m meant to congratulate her. ‘I left it all on the table in the hall. There’s a letter for you.’
‘Who from?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says, ‘but the writing is vaguely interesting.’
‘Okay, thanks.’
‘Have a good swim, Peach.’
‘Shall do!’ I try to sound light, but then I can’t help myself. I turn around and walk back into the room. ‘Did you even ring up Ruby?’
‘It’s going to rain.’ She looks away.
‘You could have hung out together.’
‘Yeah, well … I think she’s got stuff happening.’
You used to make stuff happen too, Stella! I’m on the point of yelling.
‘I’m going swimming now!’ I shout at her. ‘A bit of rain won’t kill me and it wouldn’t kill you either!’
‘Okay, okay,’ she says. ‘Don’t take out your hang-ups on me!’
Hang-ups! I go back into the hall and it’s then I see the a mauve envelope sitting innocuously on the hall table. The loopy letters of my name and address on the front have been written in blue ink with a fountain pen. Apart from official letters from banks and phone companies and the university, I don’t get any mail. But here it is, a fat letter addressed to me. I turn it over in my hands. No name, but an address in Castlemaine that I don’t recognise. It’s obviously from an old person, but … what old person do I know, and why would they be writing to me?
I put my swimming bag down and set the envelope back on the table next to the little vase of white flowers and stand looking at it a while. It’s almost as if I’ve stumbled on an artefact from long ago, or received a message from another planet. As far as I’m concerned it has value, sealed up tight as it is. Why actually open it? Why spoil the delicious sense that all kinds of possibilities are hidden inside that sealed square?
But of course I have to open it. I go out onto the front porch, tear open the envelope and take out eight pages of cheap, lined writing paper that have been carefully filled back and front with the same blue-ink loopy scrawl as on the front of the envelope. As I read each page I let it drop onto the brown tiles, one by one, and at the end I’m left staring down at them.
Eventually I pick them up and sit down on the top step to read them again.
To my dearest granddaughter Perpetua!
My only daughter’s only child!
I think of you every single day. Every day I wonder what became of you, if you are happy and healthy, if you are good at school, if you have friends. Lord, if I could just see you!
My own daughter, Cecilia, your mother – who used to slam down the phone whenever she heard my voice, and now I don’t even have a phone number for her – her brothers think she has left the country, but where would she go? It feels just as though she has disappeared off the face of the earth. I am eighty-eight years old; I’m not a fool. I know I don’t have much time left.
Forgive me for writing, Perpetua. I woke up one morning with this strong conviction that I must contact you. So I got onto little Evie, who is Declan’s girl, and I asked her to see if she could find you. I won’t go into how she did it but I don’t think it was strictly above board. Anyway, after I had the address I prayed long and hard before I sat down to write. But I decided in the end that there are things that need to be said. There are things you need to know.
I never knew my own mother. I was brought up by the Good Shepherd nuns, in a convent in Abbotsford, quite near where you live. So you and I have that in common, not knowing our mothers, I mean. All I know about her was that her name was Sadie. When I left the convent I lived at the Catholic girls’ hostel of St Anne’s on the corner of Rathdowne and Victoria streets, which burnt down some years back. I worked for the public service in Melbourne for nearly eight years at Treasury Place. They were by far the happiest years of my life. I mean the ones after school and before I got married. Maybe one day I’ll get a chance to tell you more.
Please keep reading! I’m not just some crazy old woman. I am old but I have all my wits about me! If you saw me you would be proud of me! I stand quite straight and every day I walk to the shop. Until last year I was able to kneel by my bed on the mat to say the rosary every night. My knees have gone now so I’ve taken to sitting in the chair while I pray. The man Louis at the shop is
my best friend now that Evelyn has gone. He is from Greece and has had a sad life. He tells me he has no faith because of all the terrible things he saw during the war in his home village, and who am I to argue or try to convince him? He helps me up the steps and I sit with him a while before we decide what I need that day. If I’m there before eleven in the morning he gives me a cup of that strong coffee. I don’t tell him that I’d rather a cup of tea because it might hurt his feelings. He saves me something every single day. Sometimes it’s a choice apple, the next day it’s a banana or some of those big black grapes that I love. When he gets things on special then he tells me. I tell you, he is more use than any of my damned sons and their interfering wives! A terrible thing to say I know, but it is the truth.
You get to my age, Perpetua, and you can’t be bothered with anything but the truth.
I had six sons before a longed-for daughter, your mother, and then twin boys. The first son, Dominic, is dead now. He died in tragic circumstances but I won’t go into that now. I have seven sons left, and none of them want to listen to me or know what I have lived through. Not that I blame them. They’re busy with their own lives. They come by and they drop things off that I don’t need and make me food I don’t like. They try to boss me around. ‘Mum, you should do this!’ ‘Mum, you should go there.’ ‘Mum, you’ll be cold if you don’t wear this, or hot if you don’t use this fan or that air conditioner.’ ‘Mum, you should sell this house and move to a hostel.’ Mum, why don’t you try this food or that.’ ‘Yes, yes,’ I say but I don’t take a bit of notice. I go ahead and do what I want. Do they think I was never hot or cold before?
Every year on your birthday I think of you, and the way she gave you away, and every year around that time I had Father Duffy say Mass for you and your mother. When I get home from that Mass I light a candle and pray to Our Lady to keep you from harm. Sometimes I think that Our Blessed Lord is just too busy for an old woman like me, what with the world being the way it is, so it’s best to go straight to Our Lady, who understands better what it is like for a woman and how hard it can be. I wonder if you pray. Most of the young people don’t these days. Remember you don’t have to go on and on or say anything fancy. Our Blessed Saviour knows your heart and so does his Mother.
The Convent Page 10