The Abbess of Crewe: A Modern Morality Tale

by Muriel Spark

  The nuns are fidgeting, however, in a way that has never happened before. The faces glance and the eyes dart as if they were at the theatre waiting for the curtain to go up, having paid for their tickets. Outside the rain pelts down on the green, on the gravel, on the spreading leaves; and inside the nuns rustle as if a small tempest were swelling up amongst them.

  ‘Be sober, be vigilant,’ says Walburga the Prioress, ‘for I have asked Sister Alexandra to speak to you on the subject of our recent disturbances.’

  Alexandra rises and bows to Walburga. She stands like a lightning-conductor, elegant in her black robes, so soon to be more radiant in white. ‘Sisters, be still. I have first a message from our esteemed Sister Gertrude. Sister Gertrude is at present settling a dispute between two sects who reside beyond the Himalayas. The dispute is on a point of doctrine which apparently has arisen from a mere spelling mistake in English. True to her bold custom, Sister Gertrude has refused to furnish Rome with the tiresome details of the squabble and bloodshed in that area and she is settling it herself out of court. In the midst of these pressing affairs Sister Gertrude has found time to think of our recent trifling upset here at cosy Crewe, and she begs us to appeal to your higher instincts and wider vision, which is what I am about to do.’

  The nuns are already sobered and made vigilant by the invocation of famous Gertrude, but Felicity on the dais causes a nervous distraction by bringing out from some big pocket under her black scapular a little embroidery frame. Felicity’s fingers busy themselves with some extra flourish while Alexandra, having swept her eyes upon this frail exhibition, proceeds.

  ‘Sisters,’ she says, ‘let me do as Sister Gertrude wishes; let me appeal to your higher instincts. We had the extraordinary experience, last week, of an intrusion into our midst, at midnight, of two young ruffians. It’s natural that you should be distressed, and we know that you have been induced to gossip amongst yourselves about the incident, stories of which have been circulated outside the convent walls.’

  Felicity’s fingers fly to and fro; her eyes are downcast with pale, devout lashes, and she holds her sewing well up to meet them.

  ‘Now,’ says Alexandra, ‘I am not here before you to speak of the ephemera of every day or of things that are of no account, material things that will pass and will become, as the poet says,

  The love-tales wrought with silken thread

  By dreaming ladies upon cloth

  That has made fat the murderous moth …

  I call rather to the attention of your higher instincts the enduring tradition of one belonging to my own ancestral lineage, Marguerite Marie Alacoque of the seventeenth century, my illustrious aunt, founder of the great Abbeys of the Sacré Coeur. Let me remind you now of your good fortune, for in those days, you must know, the nuns were rigidly divided in two parts, the soeurs nobles and the soeurs bourgeoises. Apart from this distinction between the nobility and the bourgeoisie, there was of course a third section of the convent comprising the lay sisters who hardly count. Indeed, well into this century the Abbey schools of the Continent were divided; the filles nobles were taught by nuns of noble lineage while soeurs bourgeoises taught the daughters of the vils métiers, which is to say the tradesmen.’

  Winifrede’s eyes, like the wheels of a toy motorcar, have been staring eagerly from her healthy fair face; her father is the rich and capable proprietor and president of a porcelain factory, and has a knighthood.

  Walburga’s pretty hands are folded on the table before her and she looks down at them as Alexandra’s voice comes sounding its articulate sweet numbers. Walburga’s long face is dark grey against the white frame of her coif; she brought that great property to the convent from her devout Brazilian mother; her father, now dead, was of a military family.

  Mildred’s blue eyes move to survey the novices, how they are comporting themselves, but the heart-shape of her face is a motionless outline as if painted on to her coif.

  Alexandra stands like the masthead of an ancient ship. Felicity’s violent fingers attack the piece of stuff with her accurate and ever-piercing needle; she had sometimes amused the late Abbess Hildegarde with her timid venom for although her descent was actually as noble as Alexandra’s she demonstrated no trace at all of it. ‘Some interesting sort of genetic mutation,’ Hildegarde had said, ‘seeing that with so fine a lineage she is, you know, a common little thing. But Felicity, after all, is something for us to practise benevolence upon.’ The rain pelts harder, pattering at the window against Alexandra’s clear voice as Felicity stabs and stabs again, as it might be to draw blood. Alexandra is saying:

  ‘You must consider, Sisters, that very soon we shall have an election to appoint our new Abbess of Crewe, each one of us who is sufficiently senior and qualified to vote will do so according to her own conscience, nor may she conspire or exchange opinions upon the subject. Sisters, be vigilant, be sober. You will recall your good fortune, daughters as the majority of you are of dentists, doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers, businessmen and all the Toms, Dicks and Harrys of the realm; you will recognize your good fortune that with the advance of the century this Congregation no longer requires you to present as postulants the épreuves, that is to say, the proofs of your nobility for four generations of armigerious forebears on both sides, or else of ten generations of arms-bearers in the male line only. Today the bourgeois mix indifferently with the noble. No longer do we have in our Abbey the separate entrances, the separate dormitories, the separate refectories and staircases for the sæurs nobles and the saeurs bourgeoises’, no longer is the chapel divided by the screens which separated the ladies from the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie from the baser orders. We are left now only with our higher instincts to guide us in the matter of how our Order and our Abbey proceeds. Are we to decline into a community of the total bourgeois or are we to retain the characteristics of a society of ladies? Let me recall at this point that in 1873 the Sisters of the Sacred Heart made a pilgrimage to Paray le Monial to the shrine of my ancestral aunt, headed by the Duke of Norfolk in his socks. Sisters, be vigilant. In the message conveyed to me by our celebrated Sister Gertrude, and under obedience to our Prioress Walburga, I am exhorted to appeal to your higher instincts, so that I put before you the following distinctions upon which to ponder well:

  ‘In this Abbey a Lady places her love-letters in the casket provided for them in the main hall, to provide light entertainment for the community during the hour of recreation; but a Bourgeoise keeps her love-letters in a sewing-box.

  A Lady has style; but a Bourgeoise does things under the poplars and in the orchard.

  A Lady is cheerful and accommodating when dealing with the perpetrators of a third-rate burglary; but a Bourgeoise calls the police.

  A Lady recognizes in the scientific methods of surveillance, such as electronics, a valuable and discreet auxiliary to her natural capacity for inquisitiveness; but a Bourgeoise regards such innovations in the light of demonology and considers it more refined to sit and sew.

  A Lady may or may not commit the Cardinal Sins; but a Bourgeoise dabbles in low crimes and safe demeanours.

  A Lady bears with fortitude that Agenbite of Inwit, celebrated in the treatise of that name in Anglo-Saxon by my ancestor Michel of Northgate in the year 1340; but a Bourgeoise suffers from the miserable common guilty conscience.

  A Lady may secretly believe in nothing; but a Bourgeoise invariably proclaims her belief, and believes in the wrong things.

  A Lady does not recognize the existence of a scandal which touches upon her own House; but a Bourgeoise broadcasts it urbi et orbi, which is to say, all over the place.

  A Lady is free; but a Bourgeoise is never free from the desire for freedom.’

  Alexandra pauses to smile like an angel of some unearthly intelligent substance upon the community. Felicity has put down her sewing and is looking out of the window as if angry that the rain has stopped. The other Sisters on the dais are looking at Alexandra who now says, ‘Sisters, be sober, be vigilant. I d
on’t speak of morals, but of ethics. Our topics are not those of sanctity and holiness, which rest with God; it is a question of whether you are ladies or not, and that is something we decide. It was well said in my youth that the question “Is she a lady?” needs no answer, since, with a lady, the question need not arise. Indeed, it is a sad thought that necessity should force us to speak the word in the Abbey of Crewe.’

  Felicity leaves the table and walks firmly to the door where, as the nuns file out, she stands in apprehensive fury looking out specially for her supporters. Anxious to be ladies, even the sewing nuns keep their embarrassed eyes fixed on the ground as they tread forward to their supper of rice and meat-balls, these being made up out of a tinned food for dogs which contains some very wholesome ingredients, quite good enough for them.

  When they are gone, and Felicity with them, Mildred says, ‘You struck the right note, Alexandra. Novices and nuns alike, they’re snobs to the core.’

  ‘Alexandra, you did well,’ says Walburga. ‘I think Felicity’s hold on the defecting nuns will be finished after that.’

  ‘More defective than defecting,’ says Alexandra. ‘Winifrede, my dear, since you are a lady of higher instincts you may go and put some white wine on ice.’ Winifrede, puzzled but very pleased, departs.

  Whereupon they join hands, the three black-draped nuns, Walburga, Alexandra and Mildred. They dance in a ring, light-footed; they skip round one way then turn the other way.

  Walburga then says, ‘Listen!’ She turns her ear to the window. ‘Someone’s whistled,’ she says. A second faint whistle comes across the lawn from the distant trees. The three go to the window to watch in the last light of evening small Felicity running along the pathways, keeping well in to the rhododendrons until she disappears into the trees.

  ‘The ground is sopping wet,’ says Alexandra.

  ‘They’ll arrange something standing up,’ Mildred says.

  ‘Or upside down,’ says Walburga. ‘Not Felicity,’ says Alexandra. ‘In the words of Alexander Pope:

  Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour,

  Content to dwell in decencies for ever.’

  Chapter 4

  THE deaf and elderly Abbot of Ynce, who is driven over to the Abbey once a week to hear nuns’ confessions, assisted by the good Jesuit fathers Maximilian and Baudouin, has been brought to the Abbey; in company with the two Jesuits he has witnessed the voting ceremony, he has proclaimed Alexandra Abbess of Crewe before the assembled community. The old Abbot has presented the new Abbess with her crozier, has celebrated a solemn Mass, and, helped back into the car, has departed deeply asleep in the recesses of the back seat. Throughout the solemn election Felicity was in bed with influenza. She received from her friend Bathildis the news of Alexandra’s landslide victory; her reaction was immediately to stick the thermometer in her mouth; this performance was watched with interest on the closed-circuit television by Alexandra, Mildred and Walburga.

  But that is all over now, it is over and past. The leaves are falling and the swallows depart. Felicity has long since risen from her sick bed, has packed her suitcases, has tenderly swathed her sewing-box in sacking, and with these effects has left the convent. She has settled with her Jesuit, Thomas, in London, in a small flat in Earl’s Court, and already she has made some extraordinary disclosures.

  ‘If only,’ says Walburga, ‘the police had brought a charge against those stupid little seminarians who broke into the convent, then she couldn’t make public statements while it was under investigation.’

  ‘The law doesn’t enter into it,’ says the Abbess, now dressed in her splendid white. ‘The bothersome people are the press and the bishops. Plainly, the police don’t want to interfere in a matter concerning a Catholic establishment; it would be an embarrassment.’

  Mildred says, ‘It was like this. The two young Jesuits, who have now been expelled from the Order, hearing that there was a nun who —’

  ‘That was Felicity,’ says the Abbess.

  ‘It was Felicity,’ Walburga says.

  ‘Yes. A nun who was practising sexual rites, or let us even say obsequies, in the convent grounds and preaching her joyless practices within the convent … Well, they hear of this nun, and they break into the convent on the chance that Felicity, and maybe one of her friends —’

  ‘Let’s say Bathildis,’ Walburga says, considering well, with her mind all ears.

  ‘Yes, of course, Felicity and Bathildis, that they might have a romp with those boys.’

  ‘In fact,’ says the Abbess, ‘they do have a romp.’

  ‘And the students take away the thimble —’

  ‘As a keepsake?’ says the Abbess.

  ‘Could it be a sexual symbol?’ ventures Mildred.

  ‘I don’t see that scenario,’ says the Abbess. ‘Why would Felicity then make a fuss about the missing thimble the next morning?’

  ‘Well,’ says Walburga, ‘she would want to draw attention to her sordid little adventure. They like to boast about these things.’

  ‘And why, if I may think aloud,’ says the Lady Abbess, ‘would she call the police the next night when they come again?’

  ‘They could be blackmailing her,’ Walburga says.

  ‘I don’t think that will catch on,’ says the Abbess. ‘I really don’t Those boys — what are their dreadful names?’

  ‘Gregory and Ambrose,’ says Mildred.

  ‘I might have known it,’ says the Abbess for no apparent reason. They sit in the Abbess’s parlour and she touches the Infant of Prague, so besmeared with rich glamour as are its robes.

  ‘According to this week’s story in The Sunday People they have now named Maximilian, but not yet Baudouin, as having given them the order to move,’ Walburga says.

  ‘“According to The Sunday People” is of no account. What is to be the story according to us?’ says the Abbess.

  ‘Try this one for size,’ says Mildred. ‘The boys, Gregory and Ambrose —’

  ‘Those names,’ says the Abbess, ‘they’ve put me off this scenario already.’

  ‘All right, the two Jesuit novices — they break into the convent the first night to find a couple of nuns, any nuns —’

  ‘Not in my Abbey,’ says the Abbess. ‘My nuns are above suspicion. All but Felicity and Bathildis who have been expelled. Felicity, indeed, is excommunicated. I won’t have it said that my nuns are so notoriously available that a couple of Jesuit youths could conceivably enter these gates with profane intent.’

  ‘They got in by the orchard gate,’ says Mildred thoughtlessly, ‘that Walburga left open for Father Baudouin.’

  ‘That is a joke,’ says the Abbess, pointing to the Infant of Prague wherein resides the parlour’s main transmitter.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ says Walburga, smiling towards the Infant of Prague with her wide smile in her long, tight-skinned face. ‘Nobody knows we are bugged except ourselves and Winifrede never quite takes in the whole picture. Don’t worry.’

  ‘I worry about Felicity,’ says Mildred. ‘She might guess.’

  Walburga says, ‘All she knows is that our electronics laboratory and the labourers therein serve the purpose of setting up contacts with the new missions founded throughout the world by Gertrude. Beyond the green lines to Gertrude, she knows nothing. Don’t worry.’

  ‘It is useless to tell me not to worry,’ the Abbess says, ‘since I never do. Anxiety is for the bourgeoisie and for great artists in those hours when they are neither asleep nor practising their art. An aristocratic soul feels no anxiety nor, I think, do the famine-stricken of the world as they endure the impotent extremities of starvation. I don’t know why it is, but I ponder on starvation and the starving. Sisters, let me tell you a secret. I would rather sink flesh less to my death into the dry soil of some African or Indian plain, dead of hunger with the rest of the dying skeletons than go, as I hear Felicity is now doing, to a psychiatrist for an anxiety-cure.’

  ‘She’s seeing a psychiatrist?’ says Walburga. />
  ‘Poor soul, she lost her little silver thimble,’ says the Abbess. ‘However, she herself announced on the television that she is undergoing psychiatric treatment for a state of anxiety arising from her excommunication for living with Thomas in sin.’

  ‘What can a psychiatrist do?’ says Mildred. ‘She cannot be more excommunicated than excommunicated, or less.’

  ‘She has to become resigned to the idea,’ the Abbess says. ‘According to Felicity, that is her justification for employing a psychiatrist. There was more clap-trap, but I switched it off.’

  The bell rings for Vespers. Smiling, the Abbess rises and leads the way.

  ‘It’s difficult,’ says Mildred as she passes through the door after Walburga, ‘not to feel anxious with these stories about us circulating in the world.’

  The Abbess stops a moment. ‘Courage!’ she says. ‘To the practitioner of courage there is no anxiety that will not melt away under the effect of grace, however that may be obtained. You recite the Psalms of the Hours, and so do I, frequently giving over, also, to English poetry, my passion. Sisters, be still; to each her own source of grace.’

  Felicity’s stall is empty and so is Winifrede’s. It is the Vespers of the last autumn Sunday of peace within the Abbey walk. By Wednesday of next week, the police will be protecting the place, patrolling by day and prowling by night with their dogs, seeing that the press, the photographers and the television crews have started to go about like a raging lion seeking whom they may devour.

  ‘Sisters, be sober, be vigilant.’

  ‘Amen.’

  Outside in the grounds there is nothing but whispering trees on this last Sunday of October and of peace.

  Fortunate is the man who is kind and leads:

  who conducts his affairs with justice.

  He shall never be moved:

  the just shall be in everlasting remembrance.

  He shall not fear sad news:

  his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord.