Then. The building was home to an order of teaching nuns, the bequest of a devout spinster who died in the middle of the 19th century. Despite the warm red brick, mullioned windows and gabled roofs, by the early 1960s the convent school was a cold, forbidding place. Spartan and sunless, with badly lit hallways and corridors and an antiquated heating system, it offered little in the way of comfort to the pupils who were separated from their families during term time.
On school days during break periods, the junior girls congregated out of doors. As they were not quite children, yet still not women, the Sisters hoped they would burn off some of that terrifying prepubescent energy. The older students were allowed to remain inside ostensibly to study for their A-levels, though more usually they would droop around and moan about the boyfriends they had left behind. Or compare and contrast the relative merits of their favourite Beatle.
Because of their age, twelve-year-olds Louise, Barbara, Jennifer and Karen were meant to spend their recreation periods outdoors. Only torrential rain would permit them entry to the relative warmth of the gymnasium. On days that were cold but dry, they wore coats and scarves outside and ran around more than usual to keep from freezing. Louise, their leader, thought this was barbaric and would hug a temperamental radiator before being shooed outside with her peers.
Then one day she happened accidentally upon a warm spot indoors that she thought might provide the perfect refuge.
It happened thus: she had been to swimming lessons in the town with her class. Upon return, the usual procedure was to take wet swimwear to a special small area called rather grandly the “Drying Room”. The space measured some four feet by twelve feet and was at the end of a long, dark corridor; it was windowless and very warm because of the antiquated heating pipes that ran its length. Racks of pegs had been attached to the walls for damp towels and black regulation bathing suits. There was a light switch on the wall outside which Louise flicked on, while she looked for an available peg. As the door closed behind her, the twenty-watt light bulb flickered and went out. She was not one to panic, and felt her way in.
The door opened again and there was her friend Karen fiddling with the switch. Ever the joker, Louise draped her towel over her head and extended a hand to Karen to drag her into the darkened space, while she gave a shuddering, low moan, in the manner of a ghoul from a horror film. No one heard Karen’s scream, Louise’s snigger, or her terrified friend’s shriek that turned into laughter.
Silly Tom, the school janitor-cum-handyman-cum-dogsbody, pushed a broom in the vicinity, yet paid them no heed. How could he when his head was still full of that place called the Somme? Although nearly fifty years past, its noises and its colours were all he knew: white for the rocket flares and artillery advance; blue for the dead horses in the trenches; red for the place where Victor Cotton’s head had been. And so on.
“Listen, Karen,” said Louise. “The weather’s horrible. We could come in here during breaks and keep out of the cold; we’ll stay lovely and warm and they’ll never find us. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before!”
The pair reported back to their other friends, Barbara and Jennifer, and also to fat little Geraldine who was hanging around, as she so often did. She wasn’t really in their gang for although pretty enough, she was too chubby and asthmatic for their tastes. Sometimes she was allowed to tag along when one of them, usually Barbara, showed her a little kindness. And she shared her sweets and her transistor radio, and often helped with their Latin or French homework.
So the girls gathered in the warm and musty hole while their peers shivered outside. To avoid discovery, they had to confine their visits to days when none of the other classes went swimming, yet enjoyed it all the more for that self-imposed restriction. Besides, it gave them something to look forward to.
It became an event. Karen came with crisps, Jennifer brought pop and they let Geraldine bring toffees. They always put the light out lest one of the prefects catch them hiding, and Barbara provided a torch for emergencies, so once their eyes grew accustomed to the dark, it was fun.
Geraldine, although desperate to be included, was a little nervous about the venture. Hadn’t they heard the story about Sister Bernadette, she asked, the old blind nun whose ghost walked the corridors? Maybe even this very one.
The tale of the sightless Sister was part of school legend, though some of the seniors put it down to propaganda. The girls were banned from visiting parts of the building that were not included in their daily routines, and individuality of expression was not encouraged. The Drying Room was merely for the storage of swimming kit, it was not a recognised recreation area.
Louise gave the nuns some headaches as she was often caught in places she was not meant to be. The detention she had earned for talking to the gardener’s boy was the talk of her year for some time.
“Nah,” she said, “it’s just the old girls trying to put the frighteners on us, stop us having any fun.”
She was not entirely wrong, as fun was a commodity sorely lacking at their seat of learning.
“You think?” asked Karen. “It could well be true. Didn’t they say the Sister had a wonderful singing voice and sometimes you could hear her singing the ‘Ave Maria’?”
Unseen by Geraldine in the confined space, she nudged Jennifer, who was happy to continue in similar vein.
“Don’t know about that, but I heard when it was a private house years and years ago there was some story about a bride who was buried alive in the walls in her wedding dress.” Jennifer warmed to her theme. “She was bricked-up by a mad husband. He thought she’d been unfaithful to him before the wedding.”
Geraldine did not disappoint them with her gullibility.
“No!” she gasped. As she reached for her inhaler, the other girls roared until Barbara assured her it was only a story. Still, they were all rather glad to be out in the daylight and the fresh air afterwards. Bricked-up brides and blind nuns indeed!
A few days later, the girls were once more taking shelter from the fine November drizzle that turned the hair of their classmates to nut-brown fuzz.
Once they were settled on their nests of dried towels, Jennifer, the literary star of her year, said, “I came across this tale about a blind beggar and how he took his revenge on a boy who had stolen from his begging bowl. It happened in London, years ago when it was still really foggy. He recognised the robber from his smell and knew he could follow his scent. Anyway, one night the robber was walking home with some more money he’d taken from the poor box at St. Vincent de Paul’s.”
Geraldine said that it was terrible to steal from the blind and the poor too.
Louise shushed her and bade Jennifer continue.
She told them how the robber heard the tap tap tap of the blind man’s cane in the fog and, every time he stopped and turned to check who was following, he could see nothing. Tap tap tap, then stop, turn, still nothing. Tap tap tap. All around him the fog swirled and thickened, and the streetlights gave only spectral outlines of distant buildings; a dog howled somewhere—even Louise shuddered at this—yet still, tap tap tap.
“Who’s there?” said the robber.
Tap tap tap.
“Show yourself!”
Tap tap tap.
“Why are you following me?”
Although he quickened his pace, the tapping still continued. He started to run; he ran down a side street, then another, losing his bearings and slipping over the cobblestones that were damp and greasy. Stopping to listen, all he could hear was the river slapping against the boats, and the sound of a ship’s ghostly horn somewhere on the water. And always:
Tap tap tap.
Because he could see only inches in front of him, he didn’t realise how near the river was, or how low the embankment wall was, and the tap tap tapping grew closer. He stumbled, fell into the water, and because his pockets were so full of stolen coins he sank quickly, dragged down to the muddy bottom by the weight in his pockets.
There was n
o one else to hear his attempted cries, and once the robber’s desperate thrashing was over, the blind man turned and walked away.
Tap tap tap, finished Jennifer.
They all were quiet.
“Wow,” said Louise at last.
“Jen, that was horrible,” said Karen, full of admiration. Typical of many twelve-year-olds, they welcomed the frisson of fear in the dark because soon they knew it would be light again. Barbara’s torch shone on all the girls’ faces as they breathed once more, though Geraldine sat open-mouthed and fumbling for her inhaler.
“Relax, Geraldine, it’s only a story,” said Barbara. And they all, even Geraldine, laughed at last.
For their next visit, as they huddled together surrounded by drying towels and swimsuits, Karen took her turn with the storytelling. She thrilled her small audience with a Gothic tale of a strange priest who came to say the Mass, and fed communicants real blood and dried flesh from children he’d murdered. As she described the moment when one young innocent was slain with a hunting knife and pieces of his body were cut up into bite-sized portions, Geraldine actually screamed out loud.
Sister Benedict happened to be thereabouts, looking for Silly Tom to perform some other mundane task. The nun flung open the door to the Drying Room to find five girls sequestered there during the lunchtime break.
They were summoned to appear before Reverend Mother who issued lines, penances, principally in the form of decades of the Rosary, and banned them from entering the space again, other than to hang their damp swimming togs. She saved her flintiest gaze for Geraldine, at whom she was particularly surprised and not a little disappointed. A prolonged spell in such a place was injurious to her fragile health, and she was seriously minded to inform the girl’s parents.
“You will confine yourselves to the prescribed places at the appropriate times. We cannot, we shall not, permit you girls to wander around the school at will. It is for your own good. You would do well to recall the school’s motto,” said the Superior.
A week or two passed. In December the temperature dropped, sleet fell, and the junior girls were permitted to spend their recess hours in the vast assembly space of the gymnasium. They still wore their coats indoors, but finally there was shelter from the fiercer elements of the weather during the short days leading up to Christmas.
Louise felt it would be safe to resume visiting their favourite haunt; they would not be missed in a gymnasium heaving with young girls killing time in the dinner break.
She said that the stories would continue, and they were to take on a new tone as a result of the dressing down from Reverend Mother. Henceforward, all must feature nuns as the victims or villains.
Louise herself decided to kick-off the new regime. To add theatricality to the proceedings, she took a towel from the rack, and placed it over Barbara’s torch, which she held under her chin. A ghastly green light suffused her face and she was unrecognisable, with sunken eye-sockets and hollowed cheekbones.
The scene was set for the story of Sister Marinella from the Philippines and her evil voodoo doll. With its shadows thrown on the convent walls, greatly magnified by some trickery, it frightened the Mother Superior into a heart attack, which Louise described in all its awful detail. A similar fate befell her successor and, ultimately, Sister Marinella became head of the convent. However, one night, as she was in the chapel alone, she too was visited by this horrible sight, this giant silhouette. The thing was beyond her control, and she was found the next day, features twisted into a howl of fear and her eyes staring madly at some distant spot. At her side was a small broken puppet doll.
Brilliant, they all declared.
Louise asked Geraldine to prepare a tale for the next session, but she refused, she didn’t think she had the imaginative flair. Also, her time was otherwise engaged as she had chosen to transcribe the stories from memory and planned to give each of the others a copy as a surprise Christmas present. It was a lot of work, five copies in all including her own, though she felt it would be worth the effort and the others would be pleased. If she couldn’t add to the collection, at least she could give them all a keepsake.
So it was the turn of Barbara. Her story concerned a deranged nun who was the only survivor of a war. All the Sisters in the tales by definition were deranged, damaged or just plain evil. She stayed on in the ruins of her convent, eking out what little food she could find and praying for deliverance. Weeks passed by, and one night the Devil appeared to her in a dream and told her if she wished to continue with the Lord’s work there was only one hope of survival for her: she must drink the blood of innocents.
Very soon after, some children who were fleeing the advancing armies took refuge at the convent. She shared her bread with them and made them comfortable as best she could, and when they were asleep she slit their throats. She caught the blood that flowed in a chalice salvaged from the ruined chapel and drank her fill. And as more small groups of children came in search of sanctuary, her health and strength continued to improve. Until one day she drank the blood of a poor little boy who had a terrible sickness, and his blood was infected. She too fell victim to the infection and died alone, covered in horrible sores and crying out for God’s mercy.
Shudders of approval all round.
When they were gathered for their next session, they waited for Karen, who had still not joined them. They only had the lunch-break hour, and an afternoon of rehearsing Christmas antiphons and parsing French verbs loomed. They sat in the dark on the beds made from dried towels wondering where she was, for time was precious.
There was a sound of running feet, the door opened and in she burst.
“Look out girls, they’re calling the class registers and going to do a fire-drill, in the gym in ten minutes, so get a move on, we’ll have to pretend we’ve been in there all along!”
After some furious scrabbling around, the girls scooped up pop bottles and crisp packets, which they rushed to stow in their lockers. There was no time to tidy up the towels, and they made it into the gym just as Sister John Bosco rang the bells to announce the fire-drill and called everyone to their assembly points.
Though Geraldine was a little red-faced after the slight panic, part of her enjoyed the thrill of nearly being caught out a second time with her friends. She was one of them! She belonged at last!
As Gerladine prepared for bed that night, she checked her inhalers. There were always two, an extra one in case the first should fail, the consequences of which were too awful to contemplate. There was one on top of her bedside table, and the second, which was always in or near her school bag, she couldn’t locate.
She went through her pockets, turned her satchel upside down, and rearranged all her exercise books and bits of paper, including the loose leaves of the story collection. Nowhere could it be seen.
While the other girls brushed their teeth and said their night-time prayers, Geraldine mentally retraced her steps that day. The inhaler. Where was it? Was in it the dining hall? The gymnasium? Had she dropped it when they ran to the muster for the fire drill? No, if she’d dropped it or left it some place, someone would have found it and handed it in. The pupils and staff were aware of the importance of her small life-support system.
Where could it be?
Could it perhaps…oh no, not there! Not in the Drying Room! She couldn’t go there, not now, it was late!
However there was no choice.
She hissed over to Barbara. Too much chatter in the dormitories was forbidden.
“Bar, could I get a lend of the torch for a bit?”
Barbara handed it over.
“What’s it for? If you want to read in the bed you won’t get far, I think it needs a new battery, it’s getting faint.”
“I only want to look over the verbs for tomorrow; I don’t think I’ve got them off right…”
Geraldine was the star French pupil, so this didn’t quite have the ring of truth to it, but aged-twelve Barbara was not yet the astute judge of character she
was to become in later years.
“Okay. Don’t let it die on you though.”
“Cross my heart, Bar,” said Geraldine. And she did.
She waited until most of the dormitory was settled, and looked over her verbs to pass the time. Then just after eleven o’clock when all was silent and dark, she slid from the hard cotton sheets and scratchy woollen blankets that made up her bed, put on slippers and a dressing gown, and set off for the Drying Room.
A building in the dead of night, however familiar during daylight, can be a foreign country to the most stout-hearted, let alone a small asthmatic girl armed only with a flickering torch. Corridors become unnaturally long; corners conceal unknown perils and must be approached with caution. Sounds are magnified, mouths are dry and pulses race. She pushed all thoughts of Louise’s story and the voodoo doll’s giant shadow from her mind.
Geraldine sent up a silent word of thanks to St. Christopher when she reached her destination on the ground floor. There were no windows at this end of the corridor, and had there been, it would have made precious little difference as the night was moonless, and as black as the raven’s wing. The silence was palpable, not even Silly Tom’s broom could be heard, nor the slightest rustle of a nun’s robes, nor yet the whispered clack of rosary beads that hung from their belts.
The night was cold, but she wiped moist palms on her dressing gown and fought the urge to gasp in short, fast, shallow breaths.
As Geraldine opened the door to the Drying Room, the torch winked, once, twice, then died. She switched on the light, hurried inside lest someone, a nun or a prefect, be patrolling and switched it off immediately, though she left the door open a tiny crack to relieve the unremitting darkness that would otherwise envelope her.
She gave the torch a shake, and mercifully it shone once more. Directing it across the floor area amongst towels and swimwear, the inhaler was not immediately apparent. She switched off the torch to save what little of the battery remained, then dropped to her knees and felt around.
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