Quiet as a Nun

by Antonia Fraser

  Then there were the Powers Project fanatics. I'd temporarily forgotten about them. They too had been represented on my admirably impartial programme in the shape of an interview with their leader Alexander Skarbek.

  Before the programme went out, several of the directors of MGV had taken fright and suggested that Skarbek should be cut.

  'We're not here to promote the social ideas of mad extremists,' was the general line taken. Cy Fredericks, Megalith's colourful boss, groaned to me in private:

  'Jem, what are you doing to me? Lord Loggin-Smith is an insomniac and rings me up throughout the night. Dame Victoria believes in making a brisk start to the day and calls me any time from six-thirty onwards.' But in public he merely murmured a few platitudes about television being open to all sides of the question. Actually I had rather enjoyed interviewing Skarbek, who was quite young and was certainly a more sympathetic type to me, fanaticism and all, than most of the directors of MGV.

  The Powers Project aimed quite simply to set up a type of workers' commune all over the Powers Estate. The Projectors, as they became known, dismissed with equal contumely the existing concept of Cubitt's Powers Square and Powers House, and the council's future high-rise blocks. I was never quite clear what kind of rudimentary housing would replace the present Victorian facades, but there would be acres of it, that was certain. I think they were going to grow vegetables there too, like the Diggers, and keep pigs and hens.

  Tom poured scorn on them too.

  'Darling, when we're trying so hard to institute a proper housing policy in that part of London, to have some dangerous loony advocating a return to the standards of the seventeenth century - yes, Skarbek is dangerous. Power mad. You watch out.'

  'Everyone on this particular programme is power mad,' I countered. 'Or rather Powers Mad. In the sense that everyone wants something different from everyone else for the Powers Estate. And wants it like crazy, with no ability to compromise. To coin a phrase, this programme is turning out to be an allegory of our society.'

  'Your programmes always turn out to be an allegory of our society,' said Tom crossly, 'and if you don't say it beforehand, the critics say it for you afterwards.'

  But he had at least provided me with a title for this programme. Powers Mad it became. And Powers Mad it went out, Alexander Skarbek and all.

  'And of course she owned the convent land itself,' continued Mother Ancilla delicately with a little cough.

  This time she had really astonished me.

  'Blessed Eleanor's. You mean Rosa owned Blessed Eleanor's.'

  'No nun owns anything, dear Jemima,' said Mother Ancilla calmly. 'In the sense that you in the world own things. A nun has given everything to God. It is just a case of the formalities of the arrangement.' I had a vision of God's lawyers - hatchet-faced men, as Tom would have them - behind whom the warm and benevolent God was able to shelter. 'Of course it was all handled by the lawyers and made part of a trust. Set up by Sir Gilbert Powerstock long ago. You probably remember him at Parents' Day: an enormous man. I remember thinking what an imposing sight he must have made in his

  Lord Mayor's robes, quite different from Rosabelle - Sister Miriam. She took after her mother. Poor Marie Therese was a Campion of course and all the Campions were small and dark ever since the marriage of the ist Earl Campion to one of dear Queen Mary's Spanish ladies-in-waiting.' I suddenly realised she was not referring to the late Queen Mary of betoqued fame, but to Mary Tudor. In my convent days I had to learn not to refer to her as Bloody Mary.

  'You won't remember Lady Powerstock. She died very young - the Campion chest, you know. We were going through a period of grave financial difficulty at the time. And then dear Sir Gilbert stepped in and bought most of the land on which the convent stands and endowed it in perpetual memory of his wife. But for some technical reason to do with the trust, although the convent buildings became a charity, the land itself was different. I am afraid, as his heiress, Sister Miriam still owned it outright.'

  'You're afraid she owned it outright?'

  It was an odd choice of words, even for a nun.

  'Oh Jemima, I am so worried that the whole wretched business of the land drove her to what she did.' It was Mother Ancilla at her most human and appealing. She stretched out and held my hand in hers. I remembered what ones the nuns were for physical contact, hugs, embraces, kisses, hands warmly held. The contacts whose natural corollaries were denied to them ... No, that was Tom's kind of talk. They were just a bunch of affectionate and sweet, slightly girlish women, frozen perhaps in the girlishness of the age at which they had joined the convent.

  'It worried her so, the responsibility of it, on top of her illness. Our Lord certainly knew what He was talking about when He told the centurion to sell all that he had. How poor Sister Miriam longed to lose all her great wealth into the arms of God. But the lawyers, you know. Even for a nun. They wouldn't let her alone. They kept saying: we must regularise the situation. And then she began to get such odd ideas about it all into her poor sick head. Not at all what Sir Gilbert intended, I can assure you. Ah well, Our Lord saw fit to put an end to all that. He knew that she would have never got such an idea in her right mind.'

  'Mother, you must tell me. What was it that Rosabelle wanted to do with the land?'

  This time Mother Ancilla looked quite genuinely surprised.

  'But, Jemima, don't you know? You must know. I thought she must have written to you, when I found the note. It was after your programme. She wanted to take it away from us and—'

  'Yes?'

  'Give it to the poor.'

  'Give it to the poor,' I repeated. Then the funny side of it all struck me. There had been such absolute horror in Mother Ancilla's voice. I could not resist adding: 'Just like the centurion in fact.'

  'Not at all like the centurion,' replied Mother Ancilla icily. 'The centurion, you will remember, was a responsible man in a high position. Sister Miriam was a very sick woman. Her own lawyer begged her not to perform such a destructive and - one cannot avoid the word - crazy action. It would have ruined the convent of course. No grounds, no land. Right up to our very gates. No, beyond our gates. To our front door. It seems that the chapel itself would have gone. Our own chapel! Oh, we could no longer have existed. All our work gone for nothing. So very very far from the intentions of her father and the memory of her dear mother.'

  She sighed again. There seemed to be more irritation than charity about the exhalation. I felt encouraged to continue.

  'The poor - that's an awful lot of people. How did she choose?' Mother Ancilla gave me a smile of great sweetness.

  'The poor. As Our Blessed Lord said, they are always with us. I remember it was the title of one of your programmes, wasn't it? "They are always with us." I wondered at the time how you selected them.'

  'I doubt if Sister Miriam used the methods of Megalith Television.' Once again I regretted the decision to strike back. Another clasp of the hand. Another desperate look. A nagging feeling that something - or someone - was frightening Mother Ancilla, returned.

  'Look, Mother Ancilla,' I said in my gentlest Jemima Shore manner, ‘I want to help you. Please believe that. But you must explain to me what's going on here. Or what has been going on. I'm really quite at sea. Let me state a few simple facts—' Oh that phrase! Why couldn't I resist it? Even now when I was desperately trying to be honest. A phrase parodied by satirical programmes, which generally had me following it with a load of absolutely incomprehensible gibberish. 'No, Sister Miriam, Rosabelle, never wrote to me about the programme. In my enquiries I certainly never came across the fact that a nun of the O.T.I. had any connection with the properties - why, that would have made a terrific addition to the programme, come to think of it—'

  I reined myself in. This was scarcely the time for such enthusiasm.

  'Jemima knows, she wrote . . . But Jemima doesn't know. You must tell me. Otherwise I cannot begin to help you.'

  There was a silence. It was interrupted by a knock at t
he door.

  'Yes, come in,' said Mother Ancilla sharply. 'Yes, Sister, what is it now?'

  'Oh, I'm sorry, Reverend Mother, I didn't realise you had a visitor—' A slightly breathless voice behind me. But I did not quite like to turn round and stare. I waited for Mother Ancilla to introduce me. But Mother Ancilla continued to gaze over my head at her visitor with barely concealed annoyance.

  'As you can see, Sister, I'm really rather busy at the moment,' was all she said. The unseen visitor - a nun, evidently, but I knew no more than that - departed.

  Mother Ancilla frowned. I noticed that she suspended speaking until there could be no question of the recent intruder overhearing us.

  Then at last she explained. How Rosabelle Powerstock, in her new life as Sister Miriam of the Order of the Tower of Ivory, had never shown any particular interest in her previous wealth. She took her vow of poverty extremely seriously. Naturally she brought a dowry with her to the convent as all the nuns did.

  'A substantial dowry,' said Mother Ancilla, nodding. The language laboratory? The swimming pool? I did not like to interrupt her by asking. 'Our Blessed Lord saw to it that at last we were able to mend the chapel roof, which has needed the most expensive repairs since the day of Reverend Mother Felix.' Ah. I felt reproved for the secular nature of my speculations. But beyond that she had renounced the vast trusts once administered in her name, the beneficiaries being a series of Catholic charities and educational projects.

  Of course, Sister Miriam had made the usual will required by a member of the O.T.I., leaving the residue of her dowry to that community. But that in itself was not expected to be a great fortune. And what with chapel roofs and other religious luxuries ... In the years which had passed since dear Sir Gilbert's death - his dear death, I almost thought Mother Ancilla would say - no-one had had the faintest idea that Rosabelle Powerstock still retained outright ownership of every single inch of the so-called convent grounds of the Blessed Eleanor's. It was, it seemed, an oversight on the lawyers' part that the trust deed which covered the buildings did not in fact cover the lands. A technicality.

  'One can't help wondering why, if they were to make the mistake in the first place, Our Blessed Lord ever guided them to discover it so many years later,' observed Mother Ancilla with something approaching waspishness. But discover it, they had. And in their interminable way had begun the long, long process to rectify it. To establish the deed by which Rosabelle Powerstock would hand over the grounds to the convent, as once her father had officially handed over the buildings.

  'She agreed to do so?' I interrupted.

  'At first. Without hesitation. I told you that Sister Miriam cared nothing for the things of this world. In her right mind.'

  'But lately, there was a change. She wanted to give these same lands away?'

  'Oh, those lawyers, they took so long. And wrote so many letters. And came to see her, and insisted on explaining to her what she was doing. As if Sister Miriam was doing anything. She was simply being a good nun. And putting her signature to a piece of paper which should have been over and done with years ago. And then she became ill.' 'And everything changed.'

  'She changed. Nothing round her changed in the slightest.' Mother Ancilla began to speak more rapidly. 'It was after she saw your programme on television. She was convalescing at the time. She wanted to give it to the poor. Not just any poor, Jemima, but those poor people in the demolished houses of Powers Square. The Powers Projectors they call themselves. She talked of the rich man and the needle's eye. But she was, alas, mad. We know that now - too late. I thought she wrote to you. I thought she must have written to you. But somehow she got in touch with that man, the leader of the demonstrators or the residents' association or whatever they were called. She wrote to him. She offered him our lands. She said they were hers to give. Alexander Skarbek his name was.'

  Alexander Skarbek. The man I had secretly found more sympathetic than the directors of MGV. Secretly and not only because of my job but because he was Tom's bete noire. Tom once said Alexander Skarbek existed to give good causes a bad name. A man without scruple, at least in Tom's opinion: it depended of course upon what your own scruples were. A man who certainly possessed qualities of decision and leadership. A man, a fanatic, sufficiently convinced of the rightness of his cause, who would not have hesitated to accept such an offer, even made by a half-crazy nun. A man who would also have understood exactly how to beat the Powerstock family lawyers at their own game. Had he not defeated the combined efforts of the Ministry and local Council in his efforts over the Greatpark Housing Estate?

  Jemima knows: but I had known nothing of this, even if my programme had been responsible for touching it all off.

  'She talked of Christ's poverty. How she would settle at our gates like Lazarus and teach us the true meaning of the Christian message.'

  I could see that Mother Ancilla in her capacity as Dives, would scarcely welcome such a Lazarus as Alexander Skarbek at her gates.

  'But in the event, Mother Ancilla, it didn't happen,' I heard myself say in my best unemotional manner. 'For I gather she never changed her will. Blessed Eleanor's inherited everything she still possessed.' The old nun shook her head. 'So the community has - forgive me for putting it so bluntly - by the untimely death of Sister Miriam Powerstock acquired the lands for itself.' I almost said: 'Timely death.'

  Mother Ancilla did not seem to notice. She merely nodded. Behind her head there was a reproduction picture of the Virgin and Child in a bevelled burnished gilt frame. By Lippo Lippi. That had not changed since my day. But then Lippo Lippi could hardly be said to date. The Virgin looked infinitely sorrowful. But detached. As though she knew that all the concern she felt for the pitiful human scene taking place beneath her calm sad gaze could not alter the course of the stream of human passion by one iota. Her high round brow, the tendrils of her perfectly delineated golden hair, gave her an implacable beauty.

  Mother Ancilla's brow on the other hand was not visible beneath the white band of her wimple, and no tendrils escaped from this prison. Any hair that did show would be grey and wispy, if not white. Nuns' hair had been a preoccupation when we were at school. The delicious thrill of shock when Sister Thomas, a young nun, had appeared in class with a distinct curl of brown hair showing. She must have dressed in a hurry, poor child. As nuns were not allowed to look in mirrors, she was probably unaware of her solecism. Another delicious thrill at the idea of Mother Ancilla's tart regret when the offending wisp was glimpsed. It all added up to the fact that nuns were not bald and did not shave their heads; they simply cut their hair conveniently short.

  Gazing at Mother Ancilla now beneath the tumble-locked Virgin, I found that I had not altogether lost my preoccupation with nuns' hair. Or their appearance generally.

  'You know, my child, I have not been very well recently,' said Mother Ancilla. I realised that there had been quite a silence between us, although to me her little room - even the headmistress's study was not allowed to waste space - had seemed filled by a voice from the past.

  'Supposing a nun just refused to have her hair cut—' Rosa, young and audacious. But one day Rosa's own hair had been chopped off. That unruly brown curling hair I loved, hair which I used sometimes to brush furiously. Cut into the shape of Sister Miriam. Buried forever, first beneath the severe black headdress, now in the perpetual blackness of the grave.

  Back to Mother Ancilla, another blackness and the shadow of her health.

  'I'm sorry to hear that, Mother.' The conventional gush. 'Don't be sorry. Our Lord has been very good to me. He has allowed me to spend many years at the head of this convent, trying to serve Him. I cannot complain if now He feels that my work here is over. In many ways,' she paused, 'I shall be glad to lay down the burden.'

  'Oh surely things aren't quite so serious.' Another easy riposte. Then with more conviction: 'I can't imagine this convent without you. You've made it what it is. You are the Blessed Eleanor's to most of us.'

  'Nonsense' - bri
skly. 'We are none of us indispensable. I should be gravely wanting in humility if I believed what you have just said to be true.' But under the air of reproof she did look slightly pleased. I was reminded of a recently retired Trades Union leader, appearing on my programme. I had made the same sort of observation along the lines of 'You are the Union'. He too could eliminate ambition but not pleasure in the success of his work. Another admirable martinet, I suppose. At any rate the camera had caught the fleeting expression of self-satisfaction. There was no camera to catch Mother Ancilla's momentary pleasure, and now she was frowning.

  'Like Simeon, I would wish to make haste to be gone. If only I could leave the community as it should be .. . Not divided, frightened.'

  She began to speak much faster again.

  'Jemima, something is going on here. It is not simply the death of Sister Miriam, nor the reports in the Press. Although obviously those shook the community gravely. I feel it. I have been, you know, nearly fifty years in religion. I should have my Golden Jubilee next summer if...' A pause in the rush of words, and then she dashed on, 'I will be frank with you. If I live that long. I have been warned by our doctor that I may not. That I will not, unless I take things easier. That means of course retirement: maybe to our little house at Oxford. Maybe to our convalescent home in Dorset, built incidentally on part of the Powerstock estate. Mindful of my vow of obedience I would go any time. I should go willingly. But how can I leave the community now? When they are—' A long pause. A single sonorous word: 'Troubled.'