Rock Me Gently

by Judith Kelly

  Nothing, however, excuses the unmitigated cruelty and suffering inflicted on these convent children under the guise of discipline and religion. With harrowing descriptions of brutality, savage beatings, reprisals and unrelieved persecution, the author exposes the hypocrisy within the terrifying institution ‘with its air of piety and polish’. The uncomplicated prose is instantly evocative: ‘In the dim light - dusty statues looming on high plinths, anguished expressions on their stone faces’. Justly anguished, considering the abusive regime within the convent walls.

  There is now something of a genre in book and film for this type of Catholic institutional experience, but the writer carefully avoids the dangers of cliche and skilfully intersperses her story with other memories of her life in a kibbutz in her late twenties. By withdrawing from emotional contact in the kibbutz Kelly appears to be protecting herself from a more severe state of psychological breakdown; her mistrust of relationships, including that of a would-be suitor, was perhaps a hedge against further loss.

  Therapy arrives in the form of Miriam, an elderly holocaust survivor with whose experiences at the hands of the Nazis she finds resonance in the spitefulness of the nuns in their white, wimpled, black uniforms. It is Miriam who breaks through the false self adopted by Kelly and her initial offhand, taciturn and sullen behaviour. Miriam helps the writer exorcise her demons including the ghost of Frances, her dearest friend in the convent for whose death by drowning the nuns made her feel responsible and guilty. She is gradually reconnected to society: ‘Alone had always seemed like freedom but I didn’t want it to become a life sentence. A life sentence of self-reproach.’

  At the end, in one of the most telling passages, Kelly chillingly describes a meeting with one of the nuns who persecuted her as a child. Faced with her tormentor’s arrogant attempts at justification and total lack of contrition she regains a kind of harmony and feels not hatred but genuine pity.

  Terry Connor is Director, Catholic Children’s Society, Arundel & Brighton, Portsmouth and Southwark

  © Young Minds Magazine. All rights reserved

  Appendix 4

  Letter from Ruth Norton to Judith Kelly

  10 February 2005

  Judith,

  I’ve just read your book. Congratulations and thanks for bringing my story into it.

  Thank God someone has had the courage to tell of the hell we lived through while in Nazareth House. If I have any criticism it’s the fact that you have been unable to bring out the full feeling of fear that lived with us day and night, week, month and year and for long after we left the place. That place has lived with me all my life.

  Once more, congratulations and may your book do very well.

  Ruth

  Appendix 5

  Letter from Marjorie Lamb to Judith Kelly

  29 May 2006

  Dear Judith,

  I have had your book read out to me. Thank you for writing it. It helps us a lot, although we do understand that you were not able to write about everything. We who have lived in that place know the pain and hurt that has lived within us. It was really good to know that someone had, at last, written the truth about it.

  I remember when you first arrived at Nazareth House. you seemed so bewildered. I also remember the time you were beaten by Sister Mary and locked in the cupboard. We all felt so sorry for you.

  In 1953 I visited my mother who had TB and dropsy. I was thirteen years old at the time. I sat with her, holding her hand and when my step-father came in I told him to be quiet because Mum was resting. He said, ‘You won’t f***ing wake her up. She’s dead!’ I ran to a neighbour who took me back to Nazareth House. I went to the linen room where Sister Leonard asked me what was wrong. I told her that Mum had died. She said, ‘You can stop bawling. It’s finished with.’ She took my mother’s watch away and I never saw it again. Two days later I had to sing with the rest of the choir to an old lady who was dying. I also remember during the following week we had to kiss a nun who had died and who was laid to rest in the chapel. On the Wednesday of that week Janet and Frances drowned.

  I remember you were one of the girls on the rocks and you were pulled out of the water by a human chain. We were told by the nuns to never mention that day on the beach again. Judith don’t let anyone get to you. We are doing this for Janet and Frances and the other girls who cannot say or do anything about what went on while we were in that horrible place. Keep saying to yourself: this cruelty has got to stop. There are many people who, for reasons best known to themselves, are frightened about speaking out.

  Love from

  Marjorie

  A Note on the Type

  The text of this book is set in Linotype Sabon, named after the type founder Jacques Sabon. It was designed by Jan Tschichold and jointly developed by Linotype, Monotype and Stempel, in response to a need for a typeface to be available in identical form for mechanical hot metal composition and hand composition using foundry type.

  Tschichold based his design for Sabon roman on a font engraved by Garamond, and Sabon italic on a font by Granjon. It was first used in 1966 and has proved an enduring modern classic.