The Liberation of Brigid Dunne

by Patricia Scanlan

Mother Agnes handed her a white cotton cap, secured by a bandeau, to cover her head and neck with. Brigid’s fingers trembled as she buttoned the bandeau; then she bowed her head as the nun placed the wimple that would hold the small grey veil on her head. Brigid knew that the yoke was now upon her.

  She was given two cream calico chemises for nightwear, two slips and two cream calico shifts for daywear, over which she would wear a grey tunic. Two pairs of black woollen stockings and two corsets completed her ensemble. Mother Agnes instructed her to change into her new attire, in her brisk, no-nonsense tone. She would then be shown to her dormitory, which she would share with five other postulants, Mother Agnes informed her, before leaving the room with her hands tucked under her tunic, like a frozen statue on rollers.

  Brigid sat back down on the hard chair for a moment to absorb the enormity of what was happening to her. At least she would hold on to something of her former identity: her name. Sister Laurence was the name the Order had chosen for her, but she’d pleaded her case successfully, saying that Saint Brigid was one of Ireland’s patron saints and she’d a great devotion to her. Not having to bear the name of a male saint was a small triumph, Brigid had thought with relief, gazing at her new uniform and realising that she would never wear fashionable clothes again. That was something she hadn’t considered in her haste to become a nun.

  Just think of Africa, Brigid told herself firmly, as more tears threatened to fall when she stepped out of her good black-and-white polka-dot swing dress. It was her pride and joy. Her aunt Maureen, a dressmaker, had made it on her trusty old Singer sewing machine, copying a dress Lauren Bacall had worn. Aunt Maureen’s sewing room was an Aladdin’s Cave of treasure. Boxes of buttons and beads, swags of material, and Brigid’s absolute favourite, the big book of patterns that she would spend hours flicking through while her mother and aunt chatted over tea in the kitchen. The bridal dresses were what she liked best. She’d even picked out the one she would choose were she ever to marry.

  An overwhelming tidal wave of grief washed over Brigid when she pulled on the scratchy black stockings. She would never walk up the aisle in a flowing lace bridal gown with a frothy white veil to marry the man of her dreams. Instead she would walk up the aisle as a Bride of Christ, in a nun’s habit, living a lie, as punishment for her sins. All she could do was try to be as good a nun as she possibly could and hope that “The Call” might yet come and she would be forgiven for her mendacity and the sins that had brought her to this place.

  I’ll make the best of it. I’ll stick it out, Brigid vowed silently, slipping the grey tunic shift over her head and tying it with the corded black belt, before the lay sister came back to bring her to the dormitory. She led Brigid along another corridor that smelled of beeswax polish, and up wooden stairs to a narrow passage that had rooms on either side. They walked in silence to the end room, and the young country girl, dressed in a habit similar to Brigid’s own, but with a white tunic and white veil and white corded belt, opened the door and pointed to a cubicle whose curtains were open. “This is yours,” she said. “Put away your belongings and I’ll bring you back down to Mother Agnes.”

  “It’s so small!” exclaimed Brigid in horror.

  “Don’t let them hear you say that. Ye’ll get punished. Never give criticism. Don’t answer back. And do as you’re told or they’ll make your life a misery,” the young nun whispered. “My name’s Fausta in here, and I’ll help you as much as I can.” Fausta flashed her a shy smile.

  “Thanks, Sister Fausta,” Brigid whispered back.

  “Hush, I’m no Sister; I’m just a slave here,” the other girl said scornfully. “That’s the way they treat us girls that had no dowry and no education. We’re here to do the dirty work. You’ll do OK if you came in with a dowry. They’ll send you teaching or nursing. The rich ones get away with murder, getting the easy jobs like sewing and working in the library. Come on, put your stuff away, and close your curtains to show your cubicle is taken. We better hurry or Agnes will come looking for us,” Fausta urged, whisking the curtain halfway around the metal rail.

  Brigid entered her new habitat and gazed around her—not that there was much to take in. The cubicle was surrounded by cream curtains that screened off the narrow single bed and a bedside locker on which rested a lamp and a ceramic wash bowl and jug. A wooden crucifix hung on the wall behind the bed. The bed itself looked even harder and lumpier than the bed at her granny’s, Brigid thought despondently. She placed her new apparel neatly in the bedside locker and followed Fausta back down the corridor to begin her new life.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The shock of her incarceration, the shared sleeping space, and her tiny cubicle were the hardest things to bear during those early weeks of her postulancy, when all Brigid wanted to do was to run home and hide. The prospect of being kept awake by her fellow inmates snoring, sobbing, and rustling behind the privacy of their curtains at night made her frantic with worry that she wouldn’t sleep, because at five a.m. the harsh main lights were turned on by Mother Agnes and Brigid would have to tumble out of bed, bleary-eyed, to kneel and pray at her bedside. Sometimes she fell asleep on her knees.

  Brigid tried her best to read the Latin Office, but she hadn’t got a clue what it meant. After a half hour in silent meditation they would file down to the long, narrow tiled refectory for breakfast.

  Brigid was amazed on her first morning to be served tea in a bowl. It was the French way, she was told, and as the congregation was ruled from France, they followed the Mother House’s rules and traditions.

  In the days that followed, she and her fellow postulants, two Cork girls, a Dublin girl, and two Wexford girls, were introduced unceremoniously to the rigid daily regimes of the Soeurs du Secours Miséricordieux.

  Porridge and brown bread and butter set them up for the day and prepared them for the duties ahead, which included clearing the tables, dusting the chapel, cleaning the dormitories, taking classes with Mother Agnes to study the Rule and the postulant’s manual they had been issued with.

  At midday they would have lunch, but throughout the meal a nun would read passages of the Bible, and then there would be more prayers before it was time to work in the garden. Gardening was Brigid’s favourite chore, no matter how cold the weather. She would breathe in deep lungfuls of fresh air and close her eyes and pretend that she was at home in Ardcloch and not confined behind high stone walls in a convent in Dublin.

  The day was spent mostly in silence, and it was only after tea—usually an egg and bread and butter—that the community was allowed supervised talk time. The postulants and novitiates shared a small common room and Brigid and her five companions would gather together, under the watchful eye of a nun, and try to murmur little snippets of information to each other about where they were from, and what they thought about this new roller-coaster experience.

  The strictness of the regime was difficult to tolerate, especially for girls like Brigid who had minds of their own and were frustrated by the tyranny of it all. No wonder by nine p.m. at night when they lay in the dark, in their hard, uncomfortable beds, many of them, including Brigid, cried themselves to sleep.

  How will I ever stick it? Brigid wondered, knowing that when she got to the Mother House in Paris it would be even worse. The French nuns were sticklers for the rules—it was well known that life in Dublin was a doddle compared to life in the novitiate in France.

  Three months later, Reverend Mother Celestine summoned Brigid to her office. A call to the Reverend Mother’s large, book-lined office was a serious matter. Was she to be chastised for some misdemeanour such as chatting to Joan in the nuns’ garden when they were supposed to be meditating on the Word of God? Falling asleep at Vespers? Tearing a hole in her habit when she’d caught it on a nail in the potting shed while having a sneaky cigarette with the ancient gardener who looked after the grounds?

  All her misdeeds came back to haunt her while she waited for her interview with La Grand Fromage, as they irreverently ca
lled the Reverend Mother. What would the Big Cheese say to her? Had the nuns discovered that she hadn’t a true vocation? Brigid wondered nervously, sitting on the hard chair outside the door of the inner sanctum.

  “Entrez!” The door opened and the stern, austere nun crooked a finger at Brigid, who hastily stood up and bowed.

  “Soeur Brigid, sit please.” The Reverend Mother indicated a chair opposite her at the large, gleaming rosewood desk that dominated the room. Long sash windows looked out on to the manicured front lawns. Sunlight streamed into the pale apple-green and cream room, burnishing the desk and pastel green and gold rug with streamers of light. The décor of the room belied the nun’s severe manner. Perhaps her austerity was all an act that she’d to put on because of her role and the real Mother Celestine came to the fore through her use of colour and light in the décor of her office. Had she too once been a young woman with dreams and desires? Brigid wondered.

  “We have made a decision about your future!” Reverend Mother interrupted her thoughts and Brigid’s hands clasped each other in tension as she awaited her fate.

  “We have decided,” continued the Reverend Mother in her slow, measured tones, “that you are suited to become one of our nursing staff. You’re practical, calm, and hardworking, although lacking in concentration sometimes, but that will come when you are more focused. You start nursing training next month. After your year in a general hospital, you will transfer to a children’s one. Paediatrics will be your speciality. Have you any questions?”

  “No, Reverend Mother. I’m grateful for the opportunity,” Brigid said meekly. Her heart had lifted at the words of praise and the realisation that she would definitely be going to the African Missions. She wouldn’t have been given paediatric training if she weren’t. For the first time since she walked through the doors of the convent, Brigid had a real sense of purpose. Once Mother Celestine had dismissed her with an unexpected smile, it took all Brigid’s newly learned sense of decorum not to skip down the long parquet-floored hall yelling, Yippee!

  * * *

  It was an apprehensive but excited young novice who met her family in Dublin Airport two years later for a final goodbye, before flying to Paris to begin the next phase of her life. The respect and special treatment she and her travelling companions, Agnes and Orla, had received from the moment they had arrived at the airport had been enjoyable. Orla’s family were waiting for her, and they were sitting at a table near the bar, enjoying their reunion.

  Looking out at the propeller plane that would fly them to France—the St. Colman, it was called—Brigid felt somewhat reassured that a saint would be minding her on her first flight. How sophisticated she felt, admiring the white letters on the green fuselage. Aer Lingus Irish International Airlines. The sight of the shamrock on a green strip, painted on the tail fin, made her very proud to be Irish.

  If she was going to flee the convent, this would probably be her last chance, Brigid mused. Joan, one of the girls from Cork, had left a week ago. Having played the game of subservient novice to the hilt until she completed her nursing training, Joan had pulled off a U-turn of epic proportions. The other novices could only admire her spirit and ingenuity.

  Brigid wondered about following suit, but her circumstances were very different from Joan’s. She’d insisted that she wanted to be a nun, and her wish had been fulfilled. Her parents had spent a lot of money on her dowry. She couldn’t throw it back in their faces. How ungracious and ungrateful would that be—to say nothing of the scandal her behaviour would cause, if word ever got out that she’d done a runner. She simply couldn’t do it to them. Nevertheless, she envied the Cork girl, who had become a good friend. She would miss Joan terribly.

  A knot of people at the lounge door caught her attention and Brigid jumped up from her seat with delight, eager to get to her family, who were filing into the departure lounge to say goodbye and wave her off. It would be the first time they’d seen her wearing her habit, she thought proudly. There had been the occasional letters between them, but the letters were read by Mother Agnes, as were the ones Brigid wrote back, so they were pretty dull and samey. Her time apart from her loved ones had made her appreciate them more, and had brought home to Brigid that life in Ardcloch had had its good times as well as bad, and she was very lucky with her family compared to her friend Joan, who had been reared by a crabby aunt who had no love for her. In Brigid’s case, absence had made the heart grow so much fonder, and she’d really missed her parents and younger brothers, and, strange to say, Imelda.

  The Dunnes had all come dressed up in their Sunday best, Brigid noted, touched at the effort they had made for her. Her father was looking smart in his good brown suit and, because it was a special occasion, wearing his black fedora hat rather than his usual grey woollen flat cap. Her mother was dressed smartly in a new wool knit ensemble, a dress and jacket in heathery lilac colours, with a lilac headscarf. Imelda sported a pair of royal-blue slacks and a blue-and-white cheesecloth blouse. She was wearing blue eye shadow and mascara and had pink painted nails. Brigid thought she looked the height of fashion and couldn’t hide the pangs of envy as she caught a glimpse of herself reflected in the big plate windows, in her woollen white novice’s habit, hair hidden under a veil and wimple, and not a lick of make-up. Her brothers wore their white Sunday shirts and ties, their hair slicked back with Brylcreem.

  “Brigid!” Her mother hugged the daylights out of her in a rare display of affection, her familiar scent of lily of the valley and Max Factor powder almost making Brigid cry with nostalgia as she buried her face in Elizabeth’s neck and held her tight. Then it was her father’s turn, and she saw with shock that he had tears in his eyes as he studied her with pride.

  “You look wonderful, Brigid—a real nun,” he said proudly, enveloping her in a bear hug that made her feel like a little girl again.

  “Daddy, Daddy, I’ve missed you so much,” she gulped, loving the feel of his lined, weather-beaten cheek against hers.

  Joan’s tearful goodbye kiss before she got into the taxi to go to Kingsbridge had been the first time Brigid had had any display of affection since her entry into the religious life, and now to be lavished with hugs and kissed from her parents made her realise how much she’d missed the comfort of touch.

  Mortifying though it was for them to display affection in public, her brothers made the effort and kissed her on the cheek. However, Imelda, true to form, couldn’t hide her jealousy. Given that they hadn’t seen each other for so long, Brigid was unprepared for the frostiness of Imelda’s lacklustre peck on the cheek and her sullen, muttered “Hello.”

  “I love your outfit.” Brigid offered the compliment with as good a grace as she could muster, hiding her indignation that Imelda wouldn’t even try to make an effort.

  “When you’re stuck in the sticks, you have to do the best you can,” Imelda responded tartly.

  “Well, it’s very fashionable, Imelda. You look great in it.” Brigid tried to be the better person.

  “Will we have a pot of tea and a few buns?” Tom suggested, glaring at his younger daughter. “And we can catch up with all the news. Sure, we’ve loads to tell you. Lads, go get a table for us. Come on, Elizabeth—you pick the cakes.”

  “Are you enjoying working in O’Brien’s?” Brigid asked Imelda while they waited for their parents to return with the tea and cakes.

  “Eh… no! It’s a job in a hick country village when all I want is to be up here in Dublin living my own life and not sharing a bedroom with Granny and helping out on the farm because John’s in ag college and you ran away to the convent,” her sister drawled derisively.

  “Ah, don’t be like that, Imelda. Don’t ruin my last day in Ireland,” Brigid sighed.

  “Am I to feel sorry for you? Is that it? Flying to Paris on a plane? Heading for Africa? Being trained as a nurse? And what am I? A shop girl. A farm girl. A girl of no importance. Give over, Brigid,” Imelda retorted.

  “Aren’t you walking out with Larry O�
��Brien? Mam told me in one of her letters.”

  “Brigid, it’s bad enough being in the back of beyond without being left on the shelf. Thanks to you, I’m stuck helping out on the farm and living with Granny. So Larry’s the best I can do. We can’t all run away!” she added pointedly.

  “I’m sure you could if you really wanted to,” Brigid muttered, wishing with all her heart that her sister had stayed at home instead of lashing out with her mean accusations.

  “And leave Sean to do everything? Sure, all he cares about is his transistor radio, and making the few bob from Daddy to buy fags and a sneaky bottle of stout! He’ll be gone soon as he’s finished in the Tech. Where will that leave Mammy and Daddy? You knew what you were doing, entering the convent,” Imelda sniffed, lighting up a cigarette, much to her sister’s envy.

  “Shush, here’s Mam and Daddy; we don’t want them to hear us arguing,” Brigid snapped, spying her parents making their way towards them. She wanted to slap her sister’s cross face and tell her where to go, in a most un-nun-like manner.

  When the boarding time for their flight was called, Brigid’s heart felt like lead. She’d no idea when she would see the family again. It could be years. She stood up and tried to keep her lip from wobbling. Her mother hugged her again, tightly, and whispered, “Keep doing what the nuns tell you, Brigid. I’m very proud of you.”

  Elizabeth’s cheeks were damp with tears and that was nearly the undoing of her. “Thanks for everything, Mammy. I’ll write as often as I can,” Brigid promised, her voice breaking.

  “Do, pet, do. I love getting your letters.” Elizabeth stepped away to let Tom take her place. He put his arms around her and told her she was the best daughter in the world and she’d made the family very proud, and to remember them in her prayers. “Travel safely,” he added, slipping a Saint Christopher medal into her hand. As her fingers closed around it, she knew it would be one of her dearest possessions.