by Rumer Godden
At recreation Soeur Théodore let them do as they liked, walk, talk, chatter, play games – badminton was popular. Bella did gymnastics: José ran like a young gazelle and climbed trees: Jeanne stayed in a chair and knitted. Others sat around Soeur Théodore, in summer on the grass or, if it were raining, on the floor of the recreation room, when they played records and idled – no one at Saint Etienne thought it a disgrace to idle at recreation. ‘When you can enjoy yourself do just that,’ said Soeur Théodore. Indeed now and again they spent the whole day at the sea, or in the forests.
The bell rang at three o’clock for ‘Lectures’, readings from the Old and New Testament, prayers and perhaps a talk from the Prioress or one of the other senior nuns. Then came handwork: sewing, knitting, embroidery, painting, ‘I can’t do any of that,’ Lise had said aghast, but it was found she could do something – make scrapbooks for children in hospital. ‘People send us old Christmas cards and catalogues,’ said Soeur Théodore. ‘It seems a pity not to use them.’ Everything was used, one way or another, at Béthanie. The collage was soothing work and Lise found she had a gift for it. ‘It’s a kind of paper patchwork.’ She began a screen and, ‘We could sell that,’ said Soeur Théodore with satisfaction.
The Sisters of Béthanie lived on what they earned and on what was given to them. ‘But it’s astonishing how the money comes,’ said Soeur Théodore: some came by the occasional dowry, ‘but no one with a real vocation is turned away for want of money any more than we would accept anyone who would bring us riches if she hadn’t the “call”.’ It was astonishing, too, how, from that poverty, the nuns managed to give alms – ‘Well, people give things to us and we give them away’ – as they had given them to Lucette – and how they managed to pay for the aspirants, ‘feed, keep and clothe them,’ said Lise. Her black dress was a hand-down from ‘I don’t know how many postulants.’ It was clean and neat, but Lise had had to ask for underclothes and nightdresses. ‘Take what you need and don’t worry,’ said Soeur Théodore.
While they did their handwork, the aspirants listened to more reading, perhaps to a discussion: sometimes one or another would be called apart for special instruction; they all pretended not to know when Cecile, a newcomer, had to be taught to read. Perhaps one of them would have a private talk with a nun, or slip away for a vigil in chapel; but time wore on until all work was put away and they stood in the corridor, waiting for Vespers, and told their faults.
‘I wouldn’t help somebody who asked me.’
‘I answered a sister unkindly.’
‘I contradicted Soeur Prieure.’
And, most often, ‘I used bad language.’
That, for most of the newcomers, was one of the big difficulties – to suppress what rolled so easily off the tongue and was so expressive, from the casual swearing and colloquialism of universities, its fashionable argot, to the argot peculiar to the streets and prisons where it was needed as self-protection.
‘It’s all very well for you,’ Bella told Lise. ‘I’m just a ragbag, but anyone can see you have come from a gentle home.’ Lise felt her mouth drop open. ‘Why, I don’t suppose,’ said Bella, ‘you have ever heard a proper downright filthy word in your life.’
‘Salope: enculée: putain: tu me fais chier!’ said Lise, and it was Bella who was left open-mouthed.
It was a revelation to the aspirants that the sisters, some of them elderly impressive nuns, filled with quiet holiness, should publicly admit their faults. Could Soeur Imelda de Notre Dame, that calm saintly person, really have snapped sharply at anyone? Could Soeur Marie Dominique have lost her temper? ‘Then do you go on being you till the very end?’ they could have moaned. ‘Even after all this trying and training?’ ‘Always,’ Soeur Théodore would have told them. It was a good thing Compline finished with a prayer of Mary Magdalen: ‘Intercede and pray without ceasing for us, Marie Magdaleine, you who are so close to our Lord Jesus.’
After Vespers, supper: soup again, a simple dish of pasta, or vegetables – potatoes in cheese or courgettes and tomatoes baked together or hot chestnuts still in their skins – then fruit or salad. After, there was another short recreation and, finally, Compline that ended with the ‘asperges’, the Prioress or the hebdomadarian – leader of the choir for the week – sprinkling her whole family with the blessing of holy water; then each went quietly to her room and at ten the lights were put out.
‘Of course it’s easier for me, after the discipline …’ Lise told Soeur Théodore, but broke off. One did not talk about the past. ‘I mean I have been drilled to discipline but for those who have come straight from home, and independence, cut off from so many things they had taken as a matter of course – comforts: entertainments: drinks’ – though there was always wine on the table it was understood no one took more than one glass. ‘Cigarettes.’ ‘We don’t make anyone give them up all at once,’ said Soeur Théodore. ‘You can always have a cigarette in the garden … But they have to be denied in the end.’ ‘There is no chatter and also to have only the company of women. Women! Women! The need to curb speech and eyes and feelings. The monotony …’
‘But it isn’t monotonous,’ Soeur Théodore defended. ‘How can it be when, within its frame, every day is different. For instance, you’ll see how you will learn to welcome the feast days and saints’ days, each with a different story, another aspect. The Communion of Saints is real, a living thing.’
‘But intercession. There’s nothing in the Bible about that,’ argued Bella who always argued.
‘No?’ asked Soeur Théodore gently. ‘When the Greeks wanted to see Jesus they came to Philip and asked him if, and how, they could reach him. Philip went to Andrew who perhaps had more authority and together they brought those men to Jesus. What is that but intercession? Think, too, in a worldly way, how sensible it is; if you are trying to do something with all your might, heart, body and soul,’ said Soeur Théodore, ‘and are lucky enough to know an expert in that very thing, isn’t it wise and natural to ask his, or her, help?’
‘I don’t feel I know them as well as that,’ Lise said doubtfully.
‘You will.’
The saints were certainly a vivid certainty at Béthanie. Especially dear was Saint Joseph. ‘Saint Joseph will help you with everything from your work to your dying.’ Soeur Théodore spoke as if he were a friend just round the corner, as indeed he was. One of the favourite places in the domaine for prayer was in the small enclosure round his statue; the statue was sentimental and cheap but that made no difference; it evoked Saint Joseph and many were the little bunches of wild flowers, thank-offerings, laid at his feet – garden flowers were for the chapel.
Then there was Saint Dominic, visionary, founder of the great Order of Preachers of which Béthanie was a humble branch. ‘I tell you we’re proud to put O.P. after our names. Think,’ Soeur Théodore said to Bella, ‘in a few years you may be Soeur Isabella de Notre Dame, O.P.’
‘Sister Bella of Belzébub, more like,’ said Bella, but not altogether flippantly.
And there was Mary Magdalen. ‘Have you noticed,’ Père Lataste had asked those women at Cadillac, ‘that the very things she used before as enticements for men, she used to show her sorrow and love for Christ? Her scent, her kisses, long hair?’
‘Our Lord did not speak of the Magdalen’s faults,’ said Soeur Théodore. ‘He only spoke of her love. It was Mary he defended against excellent Martha whom he also loved, but not as deeply. Mary stood at the foot of the cross: Mary who came early to the sepulchre and, above all, she was the first to see, and recognise him risen. Risen!’ said Soeur Théodore.
Lise never forgot her first Christmas at Saint Etienne. I suppose I had never had a real one, she thought. In England with Aunt Millicent it had been almost a dreary day. ‘You’re too old for a Christmas stocking,’ Aunt Millicent had decided when Lise was seven years old. There had been the long service in the parish church, then Aunt Millicent’s friends, all elderly, for an equally long luncheon which Lise had to help w
ash up. ‘I usually spent the afternoon by myself while everyone slept.’ She did not remember ever making a crib or having a Christmas tree; ‘there was one in the church, but the presents on it were for poor children – not me.’
She had heard of the pageantry and beauty of the Christmas Eve Mass in some of the Paris churches but she had never been able to go – ironically the great religious feasts, Christmas and Easter, were the busiest and hardest times for the girls in the Rue Duchesne. Men seemed to want a relief from too much family and the days of Christmas were, for them, simply a holiday in which they had nothing to do. The girls were exhausted, Patrice at his hardest, Emile gloating because the money poured in – patrons were absurdly generous at Christmas – ‘And I couldn’t get away even for an hour,’ said Lise, ‘though I could hear the church bells ringing.’
There had been no midnight Mass at Sevenet or Vesoul; it would have meant extra work for the wardresses who were already taxed enough. Christmas in prison was always an emotional time; a time of tears and nostalgia, when even parcels from home caused heartache, more tears. The day itself had never been as bad – not even the worst grumblers could deride the Christmas dinner and there were attempts at gaiety and decorations, often carols or a concert, but religion was limited to a crib in the chapel and daytime services. But now, ‘It all seems new – so new,’ said Lise.
‘It is new. Every time a child, any child, is born, it is new – and different; that is the wonder,’ said Soeur Théodore.
Christmas at Béthanie was homely, the only word Lise could find for it – homelike, and simple, as suited the infant Christ. The house was decorated with holly and mistletoe, a crib made in the cloister.
Christmas Eve was a day of prayer with a vigil in the afternoon and, at Vespers, the martyrology was sung: ‘Even in the joy of the Nativity, we mustn’t forget the faith and endurance of the church,’ but just before midnight the Prioress took the statue of the holy child in her arms and went to the end of the cloister where she held him out as the nuns and all the household came in procession with lighted candles to kiss him and take him to be laid in the manger in the crib; then Mass began, the long beautiful solemnity of the Christmas Mass. ‘Its words will stay in your heart,’ Soeur Théodore said rightly.
Afterwards, at the, to the convent, strange hour of one o’clock in the morning, came Réveillon, the Christmas wakening feast with hot chocolate, cake, crystallised fruit, strawberry jam eaten with a small spoon from saucers – Lise never ceased to wonder at the Sisters’ appetite for sweet things – and when they went to their rooms, on every pillow was a small package from the Prioress. ‘Like children!’ Lise could imagine an outsider’s patronising tone, But how refreshing it is, she thought, now and then to become a child again with a child’s sense of joy and wonder.
On Christmas Day, Lauds was not until eight o’clock so that, for everyone, there was the luxury of an extra hour in bed. There was sung Mass to which many of the villagers came, most of them with gifts, provender, a carefully potted flower or cut chrysanthemums for the chapel, ‘And there was a true Christmas dinner,’ said Lise. ‘Turkey, hot chestnuts, the Bûche de Noël – a cake shaped like a log and iced with chocolate – and wine. No wonder we needed a siesta after it,’ – and they slept until they met in the chapel to sing the Vespers for Christmas Day.
Lise was almost at the end of her second year at Saint Etienne when the Prioress sent for her. Twice the year had come round; twice Lise had seen the long rows of vines, so dead-looking after they had been pruned, quicken all along their black branches into bud; first, pale nodules showed on the twisted black stems, then, as the leaves unfolded, there were beginnings of grapes, clusters so tiny they looked like elves’ fingers, until the knots grew and swelled. As the sun grew hotter, men with cans on their backs sprayed the vines with copper sulphate that turned the leaves to turquoise, a blue sheen that shimmered over the hills.
The grapes ripened and, through the long hot days when the girls longed for the sea and Bella ran under the sprinklers on the lawns soaking her clothes so that they clung to her big brown body, the clusters grew heavy with fruit.
Then came the vintage, and all day on the roads the lorries came and went as the pickers toiled. ‘I wish the Catholic church had the Harvest Festival,’ said Lise, ‘when everyone brings their ripe vegetables and fruit and crops to decorate the church.’ She could see herself toiling behind Aunt Millicent, the skirt of her overall held up to carry apples, a marrow, carrots from the kitchen garden – but this vintage was no church gathering; brought up in England, then city-bound, Lise had not seen anything like it. There were shoutings and laughter and songs and, in the evenings, the sound of music came up to the convent with something disturbingly restless in the air. The vintage was always a difficult time for Soeur Théodore and for the aspirants.
‘Ma Mère,’ José announced. ‘I think I have fallen in love with Pierre.’ Pierre was the gardener’s son. Perhaps José expected or hoped the Responsable would be shocked but, ‘That’s natural at your age,’ said Soeur Théodore. ‘The only thing is to ask yourself, do you love Our Lord more?’
‘Blood will be blood,’ said Soeur Théodore. ‘It wouldn’t be surprising if they ran away,’ but there was no need to run. Each was free to go. ‘Our gate is made to open,’ said Soeur Théodore.
It was not only the girls. ‘People think,’ said Soeur Théodore, ‘that we nuns have a mysterious power that lets us sublimate ourselves. Yes, sometimes we are given that but it doesn’t mean we don’t feel desire. It’s odd how it assails one suddenly. I am sure there are sisters who, at one time or another, have had times of longing – almost burning. Then the only thing to do is work, physically hard work. – And you can always pour it all out to Our Lord. He was human too.’
Bella’s rages too were at their worst, the unaccountable outbursts of temper that shook not only Bella but the convent. ‘Don’t they want you to send her away?’ Lise was tempted enough to ask, ‘The other nuns … don’t they advise?’
‘If I listened to all they advised,’ said Soeur Théodore, ‘we should have lost some valuable nuns,’ and, ‘Try counting ten before you speak,’ she urged Bella.
‘Ten! When it’s on me like a flash.’
‘Try counting one … then perhaps it will become two …’ and slowly, ‘It’s working,’ said Bella. ‘I do believe it works.’
‘What have I done wrong?’ Lise asked herself when the summons to the Prioress came. Soeur Théodore was there too and both nuns looked so grave that Lise’s heart seemed to beat quickly while she waited for them to speak.
‘Lise,’ said Soeur Marie de la Croix. ‘If you are still of the same mind …’
‘Yes, ma Mère.’ There, Lise was sure.
‘Then – we are going to send you next week to the novitiate to start your training as a “petite soeur tertiaire,” and soon, I hope, your postulancy. This is earlier than is usual but there is a reason for it which you will be the first to see. We have decided to admit Lucette.’
‘Admit Lucette! But …’
To Lise, Lucette was a perpetual irritant. She had settled well in the ‘foyer’ or waiting-place the sisters had found for her and was working as an auxiliary in a hospital and seemed content except that she was forever coming out to Saint Etienne, asking to see Lise. And, every time, ‘I think you should see her,’ said Soeur Théodore.
‘Why – why do I have to be the confidante of young girls?’ asked Lise.
There had been the awkwardness of those letters sent by Vivi for delivery to Madame Chabot at the tabac; little, badly written, badly spelled missives with the stamps set crooked, often without enough stamps so that a fee had to be paid; the envelopes were often soiled, and there was really nothing in the scrawls. Vivi was well. Luigi was well. They were living with his Mamma. One day they would have a place of their own, Vivi hoped, and always in them was ‘thank you for the money,’ and usually, ‘but could you let me have another hundred francs? Three hundre
d … five … you see Luigi can’t … I can’t ask Luigi …’ But what if Madame Chabot had handed one of those letters to Patrice or to one of the girls?
