Quiet as a Nun

by Antonia Fraser

  But beneath the white band of the wimple there was nothing, blackness, the void.

  I know that I screamed loudly, starkly. Quite different from the brief frenzied panic of the bats' attack.

  And then I must have fainted. I hope I fainted. Or perhaps not immediately. Just before I fainted there were jumbled strange impressions. A blow, a sharp blow from somewhere behind me. Or perhaps I merely fell and hit my head on the ladder. At any rate the light seemed to explode and vanish, and the Black Nun whirled round in the spectrum of my eyes, white hands still clenched on the chair. Then she seemed to rise up. A voice in my gathering dream said 'Now,' very clearly. As the voice of an anaesthetist before an operation. I felt the nun's habit enveloping me, her black skirts muffling my eyes, my head, my senses sinking. After that, everything was totally black and there was no light at all and no sound.

  Much, much later, I felt the habit being gently pulled back from my eyes like a bandage. The total blackness had gone, there was a little subdued light, and something white near to me.

  'Miss Shore,' I heard a gentle urgent voice saying as if from a great distance. 'Miss Shore, Miss Shore.' My name sounded beautiful, like the sound of the sea heard inside a shell.

  Bending over me, her wimple so close to my face that it constituted the bar of white in my darkness, was Sister Agnes.

  'Miss Shore, Miss Shore.' The sibilants receded and stopped. What she was saying was: 'Miss Shore, are you all right?'

  'Of course I'm all right,' I said. 'What the hell are you doing in the tower, Sister Agnes?' I added, struggling unsuccessfully to sit up.

  'In the tower, Miss Shore?' replied Sister Agnes, leaning forward again, and soothing my forehead with the ubiquitous nun's white handkerchief.

  'But this isn't the tower. This is the chapel, Miss Shore.'

  10

  Particular friendships

  'Poor Miss Shore,' said Sister Agnes softly, pausing in her minstrations. 'You have quite a nasty lump here on the back of your head.' Her fingers explored my skull gently. Then she took my hand and guided it to the back of my head. There was indeed a vast lump there. Sister Agnes's fingers had not hurt me, but my own clumsier touch caused me to wince violently. And that in its turn made me realise that my whole head was in the power of a huge headache, dormant, except that, as I lay on one of the chapel's pews, the faintest movement brought it to ferocious life.

  'How in God's name did I get here?'

  '1 think you must have fallen and hit your head. Here on the edge of the pew. See how sharp the wood is.' Once more Sister Agnes guided my fingers to the bevelled end of the pew. Her guidance was rather a pleasant sensation. But I really had to sit up. Reluctantly I did so. The effort certainly aroused all the devils of the headache inside my forehead. And I felt rather sick into the bargain. Sister Agnes also appeared to be dusting off my coat and boots - what an abnormal amount of dust for the spotless chapel to contain - they were really filthy.

  Nevertheless—

  'I mean, how did I get here? Into the chapel?'

  Sister Agnes did not answer immediately, but performed a few more little soft efficient dabs.

  'You're not quite yourself yet, Miss Shore,' she said, her face turned away. 'You've probably forgotten just how you came to be here. A blow-on the head can do that, you know.'

  As a matter of fact, she was right. Or had been right. Up till a moment ago, the precise circumstances preceding my unconsciousness had eluded me. But now they came back, flooding back, along with the headache. And now I felt the shape of my torch - once more back in my pocket.

  What was I doing in the chapel indeed? Yes, but what was Sister Agnes doing in the chapel for that matter? I had no idea of the time. It was still dark outside. No hint of grey showed through the stained glass windows which surrounded the altar.

  Under the circumstances I decided that Sister Agnes had as much explaining to do as I did. I was not disposed to make her my confidante.

  'You're right. I must have fallen and hit my head,' I replied vaguely. 'I can't remember anything else.'

  'That's right, Miss Shore,' replied Sister Agnes sweetly. 'Relax. Don't you try to remember. Don't strain yourself.'

  She helped me to my feet. I staggered and nearly fell on her. But Sister Agnes was unexpectedly strong and wiry to the touch, for all her professional gentleness and grace of movement. She managed to support me. Then, in a passable imitation of a frog-march, Sister Agnes helped me up the visitors' stairs.

  At the outer door to the chapel we paused for breath. It was bolted. Once more bolted.

  'At first I thought there was an intruder,' said Sister Agnes. 'Then I heard a noise - it must have been your fall - I'm sleeping in the cubicle at the end of the big dormitory, with the door open. I came down here. That door was open. Perhaps you opened it, Miss Shore? Then I heard a groan in the chapel. And I found you.'

  It was quite a long explanation from the enigmatic Sister Agnes. Particularly in view of the fact that I had not asked for one.

  'Perhaps you had opened that door, Miss Shore?' she repeated, as we mounted the stairs.

  'I'm afraid I can't remember anything just before the accident,' I said firmly. 'The last thing I remember is watching some rotten play on television in St Joseph's Sitting Room.'

  I got the distinct impression that Sister Agnes relaxed. I added: 'I really think I should go to the infirmary.'

  'You wait here and I'll go and wake up Sister Lucy,' was all Sister Agnes said by way of reply.

  Sister Agnes deposited me on my own bed and departed, almost noiselessly. While she was away, I wondered rather groggily why she hadn't called Sister Lucy in the first place.

  Time passed, or perhaps I dozed.

  But it did seem an age before Sister Agnes returned. There was a frown, or something as near a frown as I had yet seen on that marble face.

  'Sister Lucy wasn't there,' was all she said. 'I'll take you to the infirmary myself.' She lifted me up by my elbow, cushioning it, setting me on my feet again.

  'You're surprisingly strong, Sister,' I said, 'I'm sure I'm no light weight.'

  'It's not a question of strength, Miss Shore. Just how you use your body. I learnt that of course in my profession in the world.'

  She made it sound extremely mysterious. We were whispering as we passed down the passage to the infirmary.

  'What was your profession, Sister?' I asked her jokingly as she tucked me into a clean bed in the end cubicle of the vast - and apparently empty - lay section of the infirmary. 'Weight lifter?'

  'I was trained as a dancer, Miss Shore,' replied Sister Agnes, pursing her lips slightly. 'And later I became an actress.'

  'A dancer? I cried.

  'Shhh. I'm sorry, Miss Shore. But I don't think you should excite yourself. Before Sister Lucy takes charge, that is.'

  It explained many things, her grace, her strength. Even her looks, the huge doe eyes seemed to owe something to the style of the ballet. At that moment, Sister Lucy bustled in, out of breath.

  'Ah, Sister, I found your note.'

  The two nuns conferred together outside the cubicle in low voices. I couldn't hear what they said. Besides, I was beginning to feel sleepy. I wasn't even able to appreciate fully Sister Lucy's night costume, the neat little muslin cap over her head, just as Rosa reported. But she did seem to have quite a lot of hair under it, no shaven head here. Pleasant auburn hair. In fact she looked a great deal more like the nurse she had been, than the nun she was.

  The strain of the evening was beginning to tell, and my head ached. I felt secure and safe in Sister Lucy's care. Sister Agnes must have left because when I opened my eyes again Sister Lucy was sitting composedly by my bed, reading her little black prayer book. It was her office, I supposed, the prayers every nun had to say daily. Composed no doubt by the Blessed Eleanor herself. I continued to feel safe in her care.

  The next day I was officially cleared of concussion, although commanded to spend the day in bed. Everything seemed to be
back to normal - including strangely enough my clothes. I had a distinct, if groggy memory, of Sister Agnes brushing off quantities of dust from them in the chapel. Yet Sister Lucy denied finding any dust at all; it would be fair to say that she positively bristled at the idea of any contact with the chapel, however unplanned, resulting in the contamination of dust. I had another glimpse of the nurse Sister Lucy had once been, in her own way fairly formidable. I composed myself by concocting an official explanation of my fall for any interested enquirer.

  The need to keep my own counsel for the time being was underlined by a discovery I had made in the pocket of the brown overcoat I had worn to the tower. Inside the pocket I found a typed note, exactly similar in appearance to the note which had summoned me to the Dark Tower. 'If you really want to avoid any further nasty bumps on the head,' it read, 'why don't you go back to London and television where you belong? You have been warned.'

  An interested enquirer was not slow to manifest herself. Quite early in the morning, Mother Ancilla swept in at her familiar fast pace. Whatever her problems of health, they were not visible in her walk or her bearing.

  'Jemima, my child, what's this I hear?' She clutched my hand fervently. 'When I asked you to help us, I certainly did not ask you to get hit over the head, did I? We must take better care of you—'

  'I'm afraid I was very silly, Mother.' It was impossible not to feel twelve years old again. I was almost hanging my head.

  'We prayed for you at mass of course. No, don't look cross. Naughty girl. We feel God should take you under His special protection since you are doing His work here.'

  I was not, strictly speaking, displeased to hear I had been prayed for in the chapel.

  I had not rejected Sister Lucy's urgently proffered tranquillizer either. In my philosophy, such activities came under the heading of 'Will probably do no good, will certainly do no harm.' Tom would have had a much stronger reaction to both suggested remedies; he had a personal horror of tranquillizers - having seen their effects on Carrie - and would have felt positively contaminated by the mention of his name in a Roman Catholic chapel. 1 was made of sorter stuff. But it did not do to give Mother Ancilla an inch—

  Sure enough: 'Maybe a little visit of thanksgiving?' she enquired hopefully. 'For your safe deliverance?'

  'I'm sorry, Mother Ancilla,' I said very firmly. 'As far as I am concerned, I owe my deliverance to Sister Agnes.' I gave her my official story: a sudden noise in the night, an investigation in the chapel, stumbling in the darkness, hitting my head hard on the back of the pew. It was all so ridiculous, I exclaimed. My story gained unexpected plausibility from the fact that there had been a sudden noise in the night. It transpired that Sister Lucy had rushed through the nuns' corridor to the aid of Tessa Justin.

  As Sister Boniface observed gruffly: 'That Tessa Justin causes nothing but trouble. Nightmares about the Black Nun indeed! Screaming her head off and saying a nun had tried to put a pillow over her head. And there's Sister Lucy trying to make out she's emotionally disturbed and needs talking to! Showing off I call it. Calling attention to herself. Her mother was just the same. Always showing off. When we were children here, anyone who even mentioned the subject of the Black Nun had to say all three mysteries of the Holy Rosary as a penance. Trying to get out of going to early mass. Or not done her homework ... Showing off, I call it.' And so Sister Boniface rumbled on.

  It occurred to me that Sister Lucy's position as infirmarian was not totally enviable with this old religious war-horse breathing down her neck. How different the healing of the sick must seem to her in the convent, compared to a great London hospital. Was she quite satisfied with ministering to the needs of 'upper class brats' - to quote Dodo Sheehy's evocative if possibly second-hand phrase? At least Dodo's aunt, the late Sister Theodora of the Angels, had died nursing black babies . . . How did nuns decide on the exact expression their vocations should take anyway? I supposed I should really have to ask them: it would make a fascinating part of the television programme I was still valiantly contemplating.

  Not so much 'Why the Cross?' - and hadn't that been done before anyway? - as 'Which Cross?'. . .

  'My recent experiences simply prove to me that I should keep to my self-imposed rule and not pay stray visits to the chapel—' I told Mother Ancilla cheerfully.

  'You're incorrigible!' Mother Ancilla, throwing up her hands, almost roguish, at her best. She looked better than on the day of our first interview. Her cheeks were still white. But I had the impression that the deep lines at the edges of her mouth had softened somewhat. The frightened look had gone. I wondered what had happened to make Mother Ancilla look more cheerful.

  One bell sounded. One bell for Reverend Mother. It sounded curiously loud. But then in the infirmary we were bordering on the nuns' wing. The infirmary was a kind of limbo. I had never liked the definition of that term during Religious Instruction at school - ('But Jem, you must go to Divinity Lessons, whatever they call them,' my mother had insisted. 'You don't want to be different from the other girls.' She meant: more different than you are already.) Limbo: a place for unbaptised babies. It had a punitive sound to it, like an orphanage for outcasts. I much preferred the easy modern usage of my own world. I used it all too often in my investigative interviews:

  'So, Mrs Poorwoman, the social security services have left you in a kind of limbo, have they not?' There being a strong suggestion that something could and would be done about the matter.

  Perhaps I could make some use of my own stay in this limbo. There was one untapped source of information about life in the convent close at hand ... if I could lure Sister Boniface from discussing her personal grudge against Sister Lucy and her methods. An on-going limbo, to combine two jargons.

  'My bell,' Mother Ancilla sighed. 'Just when we were having a lovely talk, dear Jemima.' She sounded almost happy. Was that possible? Her serenity was particularly surprising in view of her next remark: 'It's the day of Sister Edward's funeral. Had you forgotten? Quite natural in view of last night's events,' she went on. 'That bell is probably to tell me of the arrival of the family. Mrs O'Dowd is such a dear woman and Sister Edward was her youngest. I ought to go and greet them.'

  She marched away. A happy warrior. A general whose troops had just won a skirmish. But what was the victory?

  'Mother Ancilla—' I called after her.

  She did not stop. Perhaps she did not hear me. Nuns like ordinary women were capable of growing deaf around seventy and Mother Ancilla would be further handicapped by the head-dress blocking her ears.

  Later in the morning Sister Lucy and I watched the funeral procession together out of the high thin Gothic window of the infirmary. The line of nuns, strung out, single file, paused silently under our gaze out of the chapel door in the direction of the cemetery.

  'What a tiny coffin!' I exclaimed involuntarily. I had forgotten the touching smallness of that rabbit-like figure.

  'Sister Edward herself was not much more than five foot.' Even wood was not wasted at the convent.

  The tall male figures - her brothers? - behind the coffin looked enormous in contrast to the nuns. The nuns' eyes were downcast. The men were looking about them. But they were not carrying the corners of the coffin. Like the Blessed Eleanor, Sister Edward was being carried to her grave by six black nuns.

  'How do they choose the six nuns to carry the coffin?' I enquired idly. 'The six strongest? Or particular friends of the deceased?'

  'Not particular friends,' replied Sister Lucy primly. 'Nuns of the O.T.I. have no particular friends. The rule of our foundress is most specific on that point. Particular friendships within the community are not pleasing in the sight of God since they distract the religious from her work in God's holy cause and can give scandal to other godly women.' I couldn't help laughing.

  'Oh come on, Sister Lucy. You know that I didn't mean that.' Particular friendships - but had I not meant that? Wasn't a particular friendship what Rosabelle and I had enjoyed: but then Rosa had not been a nun
in those days. Nothing against particular friendships at a school, surely.

  'I'm afraid I over-reacted,' responded Sister Lucy. She sounded flustered by my teasing. 'As you can imagine, communities have to be very strict about that sort of thing. Even the very innocent sort of particular friendship, as we call it, can cause disharmony. And disruption.' Seeing that I looked still unconvinced, she went on: 'To the participants themselves, I can assure you. As well as being displeasing to God. Think of, well, you were a friend of poor Sister Miriam,' Sister Lucy coughed and stopped.

  'I should investigate the topic for my programme.'

  'Miss Shore, please—' Now Sister Lucy looked frankly horrified.

  'Oh please don't misunderstand me,' I soothed her. We turned our attention back to the procession.

  At a distance the noise of the singing was thin, a little sorrow, not a mighty lament as it had sounded in the chapel on All Souls' Day. In keeping with the small size of Sister Edward's coffin, the short span of her life. Even the procession itself from our lofty vantage point was like something seen at the wrong end of a telescope. The little black figures became formalised. That veiled and bowed figure between two women wearing black hats must be Mrs O'Dowd, mother of the lovely Catholic family. No Mr O'Dowd, as far as I could make out. He presumably had died years ago, worn out. Of the four men, two were in priests' cassocks and two in equally priestly long black coats. Doctors, had Sister Boniface said?

  On the dull November day, no sun, trees black, there was only a single splash of colour in the procession. One of the women mourners was wearing a bright purple coat. Purple of course was a colour of mourning in the Catholic church as pink was a colour of rejoicing. Purple vestments in Lent, purple coverings for the statues in Holy Week. But there was something about this coat, its cut maybe, its swagger, which did not speak of the funeral. It was also remarkable that of all the mourners, this little purple figure was wearing neither a hat nor a veil. She was wearing shiny black boots - again not particularly funereal - but her head, a head of bubbly fair hair which made it the more noticeable, was not covered.