Family Romance
Page 10
That medal is part of how I know her Indian years were a triumph. The rest of how I know is because she told me. But this knowledge was not imparted directly. She gave hints and she told stories and she let you fill in the gaps – dared you to, enticed you to. And at the same time it was impossible to ask questions. In 1979 my mother went back to Madras and visited Church Park. A few days after she arrived home from that trip, she came into my bedroom and gave me some copies of the school magazine. Two of them had articles about her in it: one of them praising the work she had done in general terms; another with a piece by an old girl of the school describing a conversation with Sister Eucharia and the Sister’s great air of saintliness and wisdom and understanding. It spoke about how brilliant and charismatic a teacher Sister Eucharia had been, and how the girl writing the piece, now a woman in her fifties, had never forgotten her.
‘I was Sister Eucharia,’ my mother told me. It was the only time she spoke the name to me.
I was astonished by the magazines. They were the first physical evidence I had seen of my mother’s decade in Madras. I put them in a place on my bookshelves where I knew I’d be able to find them. And then the next time I looked, a couple of weeks later, they weren’t there. I asked my mother what had happened to them.
‘I threw them away,’ she said. ‘You didn’t seem interested.’
I dare say I was a highly annoying adolescent, with a big repertoire of ways to make my parents feel unappreciated. But I do think this was an outrageous thing for my mother to have said. The real reason why she removed the magazines had nothing to do with how interested I did or didn’t seem. It was instead that she did not want me to look so closely at the articles that I began noticing dates or details that might make me ask questions about her life story. But given an open-goal opportunity to accompany her gesture with a rebuke, she took it; she couldn’t forgo a chance to tell me off for not giving her enough attention.
My mother told me – or rather, allowed it to emerge, over years of hints and half-told anecdotes – that she ran the school, or teacher training college, as in some versions of her stories it seemed to be. She was young to have this job, and was proud of it. She was in touch with her family again, and was a heroine again too. In many of her stories she had authority. Once she told me about a young woman who came to her with a problem. As they were talking my mother suddenly said – she didn’t know why, the words just came out – ‘How long have you been pregnant?’ All the woman could say was, ‘How did you know?’ ‘And the truth is,’ Julia told me, ‘I don’t know how I knew, I just did.’ But then, as she knew but I didn’t, she was a trained nurse. The woman had been seeing a young man whom her family had forbidden her to see. My mother was able to arrange for her to go away for a few months. Presumably – though she didn’t say – the baby was adopted. So she had power and responsibility and, I know from those magazines but also because I just do, an aura.
More than any specific anecdote there was somehow in my mother’s memories and stories a sense of India, of its physical realities: heat and dust, obviously, humidity and crowds, dhotis and ceiling fans, punkah wallahs (who operate fans) and long-distance trains, unripe papaya used to induce abortions (there was a famous court case about that), mongooses used to hunt snakes, the crowded, hot classroom of girls trying not to giggle, the relieving airiness of church and cathedral, the Dravidian snobberies of being older Christians than western Europeans, glasses of cool yoghurt, mangoes so ripe the only way to eat them was improperly naked in the bath, biryanis cooked with a topping of gold leaf on wedding days, pork vindaloos from Christian Goa, chota for ‘half’ and burra for ‘big’ (burra peg = a large whisky), the way you would live for the merest breath of breeze. These were the incidental details of which my mother spoke, and it was these she seemed to have loved and missed the most about India. And that would have been all I knew about her time in Church Park, were it not for a batch of letters given me by my aunt Peggie, with which I can fill in the gaps. I know some of my mother’s life story through research, and some through what she told me years afterwards, and some by having lived through it with her and seen things through my own perspective. But this is the only part of my mother’s life story that I know through the words she used herself, at the time she lived through it.
3
The first letter that survives dates from March 1953. Julia had by now done an undergraduate degree by correspondence from the University of London – one of the many things she never told me, since her policy was to let it be understood that her degree was from Trinity College Dublin. She was teaching English at the Presentation Convent. The letter, to her sister Bernie, is too boring to quote at length, but it does show the uncertainty Julia was in about her future. It was in the nature of things that missionary nuns went where they were told, and Julia did not know when she would next be back home. ‘I don’t expect to go to Ireland this year,’ she tells Bernie. ‘Later on they will probably transfer me to Castle Connell and Bernie it is better this way. The work in C.C. for the next year or two would be pure slavery with very little co-operation or sympathy or help financial or otherwise from anyone. I am not a bit sorry to be missing all that. I expect to do B.T. (H. Dip.) here in July, the course lasts until March and after that I don’t know where I’ll be posted.’ The ‘B.T.’ course Julia was planning to take was a Bachelorate in Teaching, equivalent to a BA degree. All through her time in India, Julia was adding qualifications to her CV as she rose in seniority in the order.
The next letter is to her sister Peggie, who was now Sister Jarlath – that being the patron saint of the Tuam diocese. Peggie, who had been Julia’s inspiration for switching to a missionary branch of the Presentations, had drawn what felt to her like a short straw and was teaching at the Sisters’ convent in Matlock, Derbyshire. She was deeply unhappy, though Julia didn’t know this.
Sister Jarlath,
Presentation Convent,
Matlock,
Derbs.
England
Presentation Convent
Royapuram
Madras
31 March 1953
My dearest Peggie,
This will hardly ever reach you in time for Easter, nevertheless you have my loving wishes for a happy joyful feast with an abundance too of that Peace which was our Lord’s gift to the Apostles. I shall not forget you in my distractions and I count on a remembrance in your orisons!
I suppose the sight of my writing nearly brought on an attack of the wallipations – well, I promised to write regularly – but, mind you, I expect a reply. We close today for Easter and re-open next Tuesday. During the week, I plan to do a fair amount of sewing. If I have time I shall make a few guimpettes for you and for Mother Victoire but please don’t expect works of art. My old needlework teacher (Sister Alphonsus) maintains to this day that ‘poor Julia could never sew’. [Sewing had been a big deal in the other branch of the Presentation sisters; it was the activity with which the nuns were supposed to fill their ‘recreation’ time.]
After Easter we have just about five weeks’ school and then the summer holidays. We close on May 8th. It is very hot in Madras just now. The papers say we have not had such weather for sixty years in March. On Saturday the temperature was 105.1. It is hard to realise that it is just daffodil and primrose time at home now. One loses track of the seasons here and quite often I find myself pausing to think what month we are in. We have had a very busy term between one thing and another. First we had a concert for the Public on March 14th. Each class gave a poem on Nano Nagle with a musical accompaniment (we did the latter for Mother General and she loved it – the melodies are picked to suit the story and it is very effective). We had, too, a dumb show which we put together when I was in Calcutta – it is very funny and everyone likes it.
On the 19th we set out for the ‘Croke Park’ of Madras. NO, we were not going to a football match but to the Consecration of three Indian Bishops in an open air ceremony at a Pontifical High Mass which b
egan at 5 pm and was not over until 8. There were twenty eight Bishops and Archbishops including the three Bishops-elect and the three who consecrated them. There were at least 500 nuns of every colour, race and style of habit. The entire congregation numbered 50,000, almost entirely Catholic since no others were admitted except a very few by special invitation. Normally the Indians are noisy and restless but that vast crowd was silent devout and reverent throughout the entire long ceremony. The altar and dais on which the bishops sat was decorated in gold and red satin with the arms of the consecrating Prelates and the new Bishops across the top and behind the altar a kind of sunburst effect, each ray representing one of the gifts of the Holy Ghost. It was a very wonderful ceremony and Heaven felt near that evening in pagan India.
Now I have no more room so I must stop. If I get a reply I shall write. If not – well that’s your look out!! Fondest love to you.
Your loving
Julia
It’s hard to express how strange it felt transcribing this letter half a century after it was written. My mother with her ink pen at her desk in the Madras convent, me at my iBook in my converted loft in London, watching planes heading for Heathrow. About the only familiar thing in the letter is my mother’s habit of covering every available scrap of the blue airmail form with writing – so much so that there were times, after she filled up the main body of the letter, when I would struggle to find the continuation, written sideways along the edge of the form, or across the top, and often across the salutation and address, or along the folded-over gummed flap. But the person who wrote the letter – that person I never met. My mother did not stop believing in God, but the intense devotion and explicit piety she expresses to Peggie here is something I never encountered. I’m glad to meet it, because it makes the time she spent in the convent more explicable to me. I have never felt anything resembling her religious feelings, but it is clear that they were, to her, very real. Peggie was the person to whom she expressed this feeling most, no doubt because she felt her sister was, as a fellow missionary Presentation Sister, the person most likely to understand.
Over the next few years Julia’s letters to Peggie sometimes refer to someone called T. Leetch, or Tommy Leetch – an odd-looking, not-quite-Irish name, which was Julia’s coded way of writing about herself. The code was necessary since letters were not private. ‘I haven’t had any further news of Tommy Leetch,’ she told Peggie in October. ‘I imagine that he’ll get the job eventually but it may take a few years. I hear he is keen on it himself. Let us pray hard for him and for God’s Will. You might get a chance to put in a word for him sometime.’ The letter refers to ‘plans’, a shorthand way of discussing Julia’s hopes that she might be promoted or transferred home or posted to Matlock to be with Peggie.
Julia’s letters are necessarily short on details about her life – since she wasn’t permitted to talk about that – but are instead full of requests for news from home. One exception is the following, after Julia had had a big piece of news: Jane, her youngest sister and her goddaughter, had entered the novitiate of the Columban sisters. She was the fourth Gunnigan daughter to become a nun. This is Julia’s letter of congratulation and consolation. It is one of the few times she went into detail about her Indian life. She was allowed to do so because she was describing a training camp on her teaching course, and not life in the convent.
Mr and Mrs P. Gunnigan
Lurgan
Kilkelly
Co. Mayo
Ireland
Presentation Convent,
Church Park,
Madras-6
18 October 1953
My dearest Mammy, Daddy, Dillie and John,
Thanks very much, Dillie, for your letter received while I was in camp and, Mammy, for yours received yesterday. Indeed I would have written sooner but I was just waiting to get this air letter. I have been thinking of you very much every day since October 3rd. You have made a tremendous sacrifice every one of you, Mammy, Daddy, Dillie and John in letting Jane go, and for all eternity God will reward you for it and indeed you will have great joy in this life too as a blessing for what you have done. And we will all be together in heaven very soon – soon no matter how long we live …
Now to tell you about the Camp.* Well we left here at about 6.15 on Monday morning 28th September. The 60 education students assembled at the College and we left Madras at about 7.45 a.m. We had about 15 miles in the train and then down through a village and ‘across country’ to the Camp. There was no road – just a track through the fields which reminded me a bit of the short cut to Mount View from the Church in Aghamore except of course you must substitute palms (very tall ones like this) for furze bushes and sand for a grassy path and rice and millet fields for oats and barley and of course very cross buffaloes for just middling cross cows. The walk was about one and a half miles and all the little children ran for their lives when they saw the white ‘Kary ass three’ (that’s their word for a nun but it’s not spelt correctly). [The Tamil word for nun is kanniyastiri.]
Well we got to the camping site about 9 a.m. There were eleven tents altogether – nine of these were set aside for the students – and one of the nine was given to us – the three sisters. Each tent was shaped like this and was about 8ft square inside with sloping ‘walls’ so that only in the middle could Sister Dominic and I, who are rather tall, stand up straight. Our tent had been tarred on the outside to make the canvas waterproof with the result that the heat was almost unbearable when the tar warmed up towards mid-day. At night though it was quite cool – so we stayed out of it as much as we could during the day. The 60 of us were divided into squads and each day we had different work to do – one day cooking, another serving, another in charge of clearing up, etc etc. Besides that we had 5 regular classes each day – and talk about work, well, we got up at 5.15 a.m. and we went to bed between 10.15 and 10.30 and for the 17 hours in between we never stopped going for one minute. Thank God it only lasted 10 days – though even that was too long. There was one big shed, about as big as a big hay shed, divided into 4 by 4ft high walls and with a concrete floor. There we had our meals – on the floor Indian fashion in our BARE FEET!!! One of the instructresses was an English woman D.G. [Deo gratias, ‘Thank God’] so she and I shared ordinary food for the 10 days as the students were having red-hot dishes. But of course we sat on the ground in our bare feet like the others (yes we did without stockings during camp!). On the last night a special Indian dish was served – Birryani (awful spelling). And we had to eat with our fingers – the Indians always do and they manage very tidily but you should have seen me try to get the rice into my mouth. I was sitting beside the lecturers and when they didn’t ask for a spoon and fork how could I? We had meetings of Parliament several times and actually passed a Bill!
Sister Eucharia in Calcutta
Then in the middle of the week according to rule there was a general election and to my great surprise they made me Prime Minister – and I was the only ‘foreigner’ among the students. We had Visitors Day on Saturday 3rd – the day Jane entered – and we had big-wigs from the department of education and the Corporation etc out to see the place as well as our College Principal and Senior Members of the staff. In all there were between 80 and 100 visitors and my duty was to make a speech – welcome them and tell them about the Camp. As one of our old nuns said once when telling me a story ‘the perspiration was going up my back instead of down with fright’ only it wasn’t perspiration it was sweat! Anyhow I prepared the speech – brief and to the point mind you. They all said it was very nice and that they heard every word. Then the students gave a little concert for the visitors and after that (at about 5.30 p.m.) the Principal very kindly lent the six Catholic students the College car to take us to the station (a different road from the way we walked – about like the new road to the bog at home) and we came in to Madras to get Mass the next morning. The nuns had great welcome for the three of us – you know, only for their prayers and how good they were to us we
would never have got through the camp. Reverend Mother sent us out bread and butter and coffee essence and tea (we couldn’t get these things there) and they were all so worried about us and the old nuns prayed so much for us. Anyhow we told them all we could about the Camp that night and the next morning we left straight after Mass and returned to the Campers – we were there by 8.30 a.m. The remaining days were taken up with the usual class work plus tests on all we had done in Camp – learning how to put up a flag staff, make knots, bandages, collect nature specimens, hand work, needle work, a map of the area plus map reading, folk singing and dancing! No! I am not going to tell you what I did. I mentioned squads at the beginning, well in our squad there were Catholics, Protestants (of 3 different kinds) and a Hindu. There were an Irishwoman, a Goan, an Anglo Indian, a Madrassi, and two other Indian races. It was the most mixed squad in the whole camp site and it was the squad that got on best together, worked best and had most fun. Everyone was amazed.
You know it was an awful experience for us nuns but it was grand there were three of us (in case you are curious our squad tent was next to ours and we did all our work in the squad tent as it was slightly bigger and had not been tarred and so was cooler). We used to laugh and when things got really bad I used to sing at the top of my voice – well not quite but almost! We came back on Wed 7th and are having holidays until 22nd. Next Monday 26th our 3 weeks teaching practice begins and goes on until Nov. 17th. Please pray for me during that time. Half our exams depend on how we do in this teaching – so then I’ll write soon again. Fondest love to each of you my dearests and thanks again for everything.