by Maeve Binchy
Even the most minor and accidental events made them see Helen as unstable in some way. It was terribly unfair and she wouldn’t add to the long list by telling them about the confusion she was walking away from. Somehow it would be seen as her fault.
Instead she would think about the silver wedding celebrations and what she could do best to help.
Well obviously she hadn’t any money or anything so there could be nothing expected from her on that score. And as well as the vow of poverty that she had taken – or to be more honest was trying to take – she was a bit unworldly these days, she had left the mainstream of everyday life. And even if she did go out to work each day, as all the Sisters did, she didn’t see the side of life that Mother and Anna would be concentrating on, the more material end of things. And she wouldn’t be any good rounding up neighbours and friends. Perhaps she could see whether they might have a special Mass or Liturgy … But Helen was doubtful whether the old priest in the parish church where the Doyles went was going to be well up on the modern liturgy of renewal.
Better leave it to Anna who had plenty of time for all that sort of thing. Anna got so tetchy often when Helen did things to help, it was often better to do nothing, to say in a calm voice, Yes Anna, No Anna, Three Bags Full Anna. This is what Brigid would suggest. Brigid was very big on the calm voice. Or on Helen’s developing it. It often sounded like blandness, and even hypocrisy to Helen, but Brigid said that it was what the world in general seemed to want. And there were times when Helen thought gloomily that she might be right.
Certainly Mother always wanted things underplayed and understated, and in most cases not mentioned at all. Mother would like not so much calm as silence. Perhaps Mother might be pleased if Helen had been born deaf and dumb.
By this stage she had arrived at St Martin’s, the house where the Sisters lived. Brigid never called it the Convent, even though that is what it was. Brigid called it just St Martin’s, or home. She didn’t criticize Helen Doyle for using a more formal and official word to describe the redbrick house where eleven women lived and went about their daily business as social workers in various London agencies.
Nessa was working with young mothers, most of them under sixteen, and trying to teach them some kind of mothering skills. Nessa had a child herself a long time ago, she had brought the baby up on her own but the child had died when it was three. Helen couldn’t remember whether it was a boy or a girl. The other Sisters didn’t talk about it much. But it did give Nessa the edge when it came to looking after children. Brigid usually worked in the day centre for vagrants. Serving them lunches, trying to organize baths and delousing. Sister Maureen worked with the group that were rehabilitating ex-prisoners. The days were gone when these kinds of nuns just polished the big tables in the parlour in the hopes of a visit from a bishop. They went out to do God’s work and found plenty of opportunity to do it in the streets of London.
Helen had moved from one area to another since she had come to join St Martin’s. She would like to have worked with Sister Brigid running the day centre. What she would really have liked is if Brigid would let her run it on her own, and just call in from time to time to see how things were getting along. This way Helen felt she would be really useful and special, and that once seen in a position of calm control over the wellbeing of so many people, she would have no difficulty in proving her readiness to be a full member of the Community.
She realized that Obedience was very much part of it, and like Poverty and Chastity this was no problem to her, Helen believed. She didn’t want to be laying down the law and making rules, she would obey any rule. She didn’t want money for jewels or yachts, she laughed at the very notion of such things. And Chastity. Yes she was very sure she wanted that in a highly positive way. Her one experience of the reverse side of that coin was quite enough to reassure her on this particular score.
She had worked in the kitchen, done her turn as a skivvy. She was never sure why Brigid hadn’t liked her using that term. Skivvy. She had not been able to understand that people used that word quite respectably nowadays, as a sort of a joke. Debs said they were skivvying for a while before going skiing, it meant minding someone’s house. Australians over here for a year often got jobs in bars, in restaurants, or as skivvies. It wasn’t an insulting term.
Helen sighed, thinking of all the gulfs in understanding there were everywhere. She let herself in the door of St Martin’s. It was Sister Joan’s month for running the house, as Brigid liked it called. Joan called out from the kitchen as she heard her come in.
‘Just in time, Helen, I’ll take the stuff from you now. You couldn’t have timed it better, as it happened.’
With a lurch Helen remembered the reason she had taken the large black plastic carrier bag that had been swinging emptily beside her on her journey home. She had meant to come by the market and buy cheaply what the sellers hadn’t got rid of during the day. She had forgotten it once, and that was why she had been heading towards the grocery and off-licence where she had assisted her compatriot to destroy his liver even faster than he was already doing. She had been given three pounds to buy the vegetables. She had spent it on cider for an alcoholic.
‘Sit down, Helen. It’s not the end of the world,’ said Joan, who didn’t know the details of the story but recognized the substance and knew there would be no vegetables for the casserole.
‘Sit down, Helen, stop crying. I’ll put on a cup of tea for you just as soon as I’ve scrubbed some of those potatoes. We’ll have jacket potatoes with a little bit of cheese. It will be just as nice.’
Nessa was tired; it had been a particularly bad day.
An eighteen-year-old mother had sat whimpering in a corner while her fate was being discussed by social workers and a woman police officer. Her baby would live, thanks to Nessa, but what kind of life?
The mother had not turned up at the centre for two days running and Nessa became worried. The door to the block of flats always swung open and as Nessa went in she almost fell over Simon crawling along the filthy corridor. Beer cans and bottles were strewn everywhere, the place smelled of urine, there were dangers every few feet, broken bicycles, crates with sharp corners. Simon was crawling earnestly towards the open door. In a minute he would have been on the street where no car or motor bicycle would have expected a child to crawl. He would have been dead.
As it was he was alive, the sores from his stinking nappies being treated. Anti-tetanus injections were being given against the germs he must have encountered, and his bruised eye was pronounced mercifully intact.
His mother hadn’t beaten him, of this Nessa was sure, but she was too feeble-minded to look after him. He would be in care when he came out of hospital. A lifetime of care lay ahead of him. But care with a capital C.
Nessa was not in the mood for Helen’s tears and explanations. She cut her very short.
‘So you forgot the vegetables again. So what, Helen? Let’s have a little peace. That’s what would be really nice.’
Helen broke off mid-sentence. ‘I was only taking it all on myself, I didn’t want you to blame Sister Joan.’
‘Oh for God’s sake, Helen, who in their right mind would blame Sister Joan or any Sister? Cut it out, will you?’
It was the sharpest remark that had ever been made in St Martin’s House, a place of peace and consideration.
Sister Joan and Sister Maureen looked shocked at Nessa with her white tired face going up the stairs.
Helen looked at all three of them and burst into tears again.
Sister Brigid never seemed to be aware of any little atmosphere. It was one of her characteristics. Sometimes Helen thought it was a weakness, a rare insensitivity in an otherwise remarkable character. Other times she wondered whether it might in fact be a blessing and something that Sister Brigid cultivated purposely.
There was no mention made of Helen’s red eyes and blotchy face as they sat, heads bent, waiting for Sister Brigid to say the simple blessing over their food. Nobody ac
knowledged that Nessa looked white and drawn, though they were solicitous about passing her things and smiling at her a little more often than they smiled at the rest of the table. Eleven women including Brigid, the quiet Mother Superior who never used that title. She had been very stern with Helen for calling her Reverend Mother.
‘But isn’t that what you are?’ Helen had been startled.
‘We are sisters here, it’s a community, this is our home, it’s not an institution with ranks and rules and pecking orders.’
It had been hard to grasp at first, but after three years Helen felt that she had surely earned her place. Biting her lip she looked at the ten women chattering around the simple meal. Made more simple still by the fact of her forgetting the vegetables.
They talked easily about the work they had done during the day, the practicalities, the funny things, the optimisms, the chance of more help here, of fighting the cuts there. Brigid had said that they must not bring their problems to the supper table or even home to the house, otherwise St Martin’s would be weighed down by the collective grief and anxiety of these workers in the sad end of society. They would become so depressed if they were to dwell every night on the amount of misery and pain they had seen in their different worlds that it would be counter productive. People needed escape, time out, retreat. They didn’t have the luxury of going on retreat like the nuns of a previous generation, but neither did they have the demands and responsibilities that many trained social workers who were married women or men had. There were no children needing time, love and attention, there were no social demands nor the intensity of one-to-one relationships. Brigid told them often that small communities of nuns like theirs were ideally situated to serve the many and apparently increasing needs around them in London. The only thing they had to fear was too great an introspection or a depth of worry which might render their help less effective because it was becoming self-important.
Helen looked around at their faces: apart from Nessa who was still looking frail the others were like women who had few cares. You would not know from listening to them that some of them had spent the day in magistrates’ courts, in police stations, in welfare centres or in squats and rundown council estates, or like herself in a clothing centre.
She was pleased that they laughed when she told them about the bag lady who had come in to get a coat that morning. Helen’s job was to arrange the sorting, the dry-cleaning and mending of clothes that came in to the bureau. A generous dry-cleaning firm let them use the big machine free at off-peak hours if they ensured that paying customers didn’t realize they were sharing with hand-me-downs for tramps.
The woman had been very insistent. ‘Nothing in green, I’ve always found green an unlucky colour, Sister. No, red’s a bit flashy, in my day only a certain kind of woman wore red. A nice mauve, a lilac shade. No? Well, safer to settle for a brown then. Not what you’d call cheerful for spring. But still.’ A heavy sigh. Helen Doyle was a good mimic, she caught the woman perfectly, all the others could see her as clearly as if they had been there.
‘You should be on the stage, Helen,’ said Joan admiringly.
‘Maybe she will one day,’ said Maureen innocently.
Helen’s face clouded. ‘But how can I? I’ll be here. Why don’t any of you believe I’m going to stay? I’ve joined as much as you’ll let me.’ The lip was trembling. Dangerously.
Sister Brigid intervened. ‘What did she look like in the brown coat, Helen?’ she asked firmly. The warning was plain.
With an effort Helen pulled herself back to the story. The woman had asked for a scarf too, something toning she said, as if she had been in the accessories department of a fashion store.
‘I found her a hat in the end, a yellow hat with a brown feather in it, and I gave her a yellow brooch I was wearing myself. I said it sort of brought the whole colour scheme together. She nodded like the Queen Mother and was very gracious about it, then she picked up her four bags of rubbish and went back to the Embankment.’
‘Good, Helen.’ Sister Brigid was approving. ‘If you can make it seem like a fashion store with a bit of choice then you’re doing it exactly right, that woman would never have taken what she thought was charity. Well done.’
The others all smiled too, and Nessa’s smile was particularly broad.
‘There’s no one like Helen for these old misfits,’ Nessa said, as if to make up for her earlier outburst. ‘You always get on to the wave length so well.’
‘It’s probably that I’m there already,’ Helen said. ‘You know, about taking one to know one and all that.’
‘You’d never be a bag lady, Helen,’ Brigid said affectionately. ‘You’d lose the bags.’ The laughter around the supper table in St Martin’s was warm and good-natured.
Helen felt very much at peace and very much at home.
She thought she heard Nessa get up in the middle of the night and go downstairs. It was an old house full of creaks and sounds. They could each recognize the others’ steps and coughs. Like a family.
Helen was about to get up and follow her down to the kitchen for cocoa and a chat. But she hesitated. Brigid had often said that when people were upset the last thing they needed was someone to arrive in on top of them offering tea and sympathy. Helen had listened without agreeing. It was what she always wanted. There hadn’t been any of it at home. Daddy too tired, Mother too anxious, Anna too busy, Brendan too withdrawn. It was why she had found this other family. They always had time to sympathize. It was what their work was all about. Listening.
Surely she should go down now and listen to Nessa, and maybe tell her all about the drunk today and how upsetting it had been. But maybe not. As Helen was deciding she heard Sister Brigid’s light step go down the stairs.
She crept to the landing to hear what they were talking about.
Strangely it was all about the garden, and what they should plant. Shrubs would be nice to sit and look out on, Brigid said.
‘When do you ever sit down?’ Nessa spoke in a tone that was both scolding and admiring.
‘I do sit down, lots of times. It’s like that thing we got to charge the batteries for the radio, it puts new energy into me, into all of us.’
‘You never seem tired, Brigid.’
‘I feel it, I tell you. I’m getting old anyway, I’ll be forty soon.’
Nessa laughed aloud. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, you’re only thirty-four.’
‘Well, forty is the next milestone; I don’t mind, it’s just that I don’t have as much energy as I used to. Who’ll do the garden, Nessa? I’m too full of aches and pains. You can’t be spared from the children.’
‘After today I think I could be spared only too easily. I don’t have any judgement …’
‘Shush, shush … Who will we ask to do it? It’s hard work, you know, trying to make that little patch look like something restful and peaceful.’
‘Helen maybe?’ Nessa sounded doubtful.
Helen on the landing felt a dull red come up her neck and to her face.
‘Oh, she’d do it certainly, and she’d be full of imagination …’ Sister Brigid sounded doubtful too. ‘The only thing is …’
Nessa came in immediately. ‘The only thing is she’d lose interest halfway through after we’d bought all the plants, and they’d die. Is that what you mean?’
Helen felt a wave of fury come over her.
‘No, it’s just that I don’t like her to think that we’re shunting her to do something that isn’t really … our work, you know.’
‘But it’s all our work, isn’t it?’ Nessa sounded surprised.
‘Yes, you know that, I know that, Helen doesn’t. Anyway we’ll see. Come on, Nessa, if us old ones are to be any use to this Community we’d better get a few hours of sleep a night.’ She was laughing, Sister Brigid had a lovely warm laugh that included you and wrapped you up.
‘Thank you, Brigid.’
‘I did nothing, said nothing.’
‘It’s the way you do it, s
ay it.’ Nessa was obviously feeling better now.
Helen slipped back into her room and stood for a long time with her back to the door.
So they thought she wouldn’t finish things? She’d show them, by heavens would she show them.
She’d dig that garden single-handed, she’d build a magic garden where they could all sit and think and be at peace and they would realize that Sister Helen more than any of them knew that anything done for the Community was as important as any other thing. Then they would have to let her take her vows. And she would be completely part of their world. And safe. Safe from everything else.
Like everything Helen had touched, the building of the garden had its highs and lows. Helen found three boys who said they were anxious to help the Sisters in their great work building a refuge and they’d be happy to join in with a bit of the heavy work. They brought spades and shovels and Sister Joan said it was beyond the mind’s understanding how much tea they wanted, how they couldn’t have this butter on their bread, or marge, it had to be a particular spread. And they wondered was there a little something going at lunch time. Sister Joan said nervously that the nuns all had their meal in the evening, but fearing that the volunteer workforce would abandon everything, she ran out and bought provisions.
After three days Sister Brigid thanked them and said that there could be no further imposition on their kindness.
The lads had begun to enjoy the good food and overpowering gratitude of the nuns and didn’t really want to leave at all.
They left the place in a possibly greater mess; earth had been turned over certainly, but no pattern or plan had emerged.
But Helen soldiered on, she dug until she had blisters, she spent her scant off-time in bookshops reading the sections of gardening books that concentrated on ‘Starting Out’.
She learned the differences between one kind of soil and another.
