Vow of Chastity

by Veronica Black

  ‘I thought something might be wrong for you,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘Me? Oh no, Sister, I’m fine.’ Sister Margaret smiled with evident relief. ‘No, I like to pop in here before the day starts – just for a little chat with Our Dear Lord, you know. I don’t get much time for a heart to heart with all the cooking to be done – not that cooking isn’t a joy. But sometimes it can get a mite lonely with no other lay sister, so a bit of a chat works wonders.’

  She nodded towards the altar, her eyes serene in the plain, practical face.

  Odd, Sister Joan thought, feeling suddenly much smaller, but the idea of Sister Margaret having intimate chats with the Divinity had never entered her head. Sister Margaret was the convent mainstay, managing to produce two meals a day on a limited budget, constantly on the go, her large feet clumping along the corridors.

  ‘Do you mean He –?’ She paused, unsure how to proceed.

  ‘Visions and stuff?’ Sister Margaret looked amused. ‘Never a one. Why, I’d be scared out of my wits, I think. Not spiritual enough yet, I suppose. But we get along, He and I. Are you all right, dear?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Sister.’

  And that’s not true either. I’m so puffed up with my own concerns that I feel an insulting astonishment that a lay sister should enjoy such intimacy with the unseen that she needs no ecstasy.

  ‘Then I’ll get on.’ Sister Margaret paused, looking at the empty vase. ‘Oh dear, what happened to the flowers – ever such nice daffodils they were. I remember thinking at Benediction how Our Dear Lady must be enjoying them. I’ll pop out later and put some more in. Sister Martha will be upset if she sees they’ve gone.’

  ‘Gone where?’

  ‘One of the postulants likely spilled the water and disposed of the flowers,’ Sister Margaret said, looking slightly uncertain. ‘While I’m about it I’d better jot down a note to buy more candles. Sometimes I think we must eat candles – they vanish so fast.’

  ‘Do they?’ Sister Joan cast a frowning look towards the box where the candles were kept and followed the lay sister into the corridor.

  ‘I do beg your pardon, Sister,’ the other said, pausing suddenly, ‘but I caused you to break the grand silence by talking to you. Happily there’s general confession this evening so I won’t have it on my conscience for too long. Just one other thing. I’d take it very kindly if you didn’t mention the little chats – I’d not want anyone to think that I was setting myself up to be singular or anything like that. So, now for the new day.’

  She clumped ahead, lifting the large bell from its hook by the door, beginning to ring it as she mounted the main staircase, her cheerful voice booming, ‘Christ is risen.’

  ‘Thanks be to God,’ Sister Joan responded automatically, following, closing the door of her cell behind her just as the scattered voices began to chorus their sleepy replies.

  She felt sleepy herself now but two hours’ prayer lay ahead before the night’s fast was broken with a cup of coffee, a slice of bread and a piece of fruit, eaten standing according to the rule. She sloshed cold water over her face, dried it on the small towel, cleaned her teeth, wriggled out of nightgown and dressing-gown and into the ankle length grey habit and exchanged the cotton nightcap for coif and short veil, marvelling as she always did that she could achieve perfect neatness without the aid of a mirror. During her postulence the art of doing that as efficiently as the professed nuns had seemed as impossible an ambition as learning how to levitate.

  When she re-entered the chapel she glanced at the Lady Altar and saw that the vase already held daffodils again, their golden heads drooping forlornly as if they knew that Sister Margaret’s chapped and unskilful hands had pushed them in.

  Saturday meant no school, no ride across the moor on Lilith’s broad back. Saturday meant helping Sister David to catalogue the library which was extensive and would take several more years to get into perfect order. It meant preparing her lessons for the following week, making lists of school supplies to be obtained. It meant the general confession at the end of the day – an ordeal at the best of times but doubly to be dreaded when she had so much on her conscience.

  The day went too quickly. Time always sped past when she was in the library under any circumstances and the sorting and cataloguing of the volumes bequeathed by the Tarquin family was an absorbing task.

  ‘Anything of an equivocal nature is to be set aside for my consideration,’ the prioress had said.

  ‘Out with Jackie Collins and in with Barbara Cartland,’ Sister Joan had murmured to Sister Teresa who had looked suitably shocked and then giggled, earning herself an icy look from Mother Dorothy.

  At 12.30 was the first real meal of the day – soup in winter, salad with cheese or fish in summer, two thick slices of bread and nice cold water with a spoonful of honey since Sister Perpetua believed in its youth giving qualities.

  In the afternoon she took herself back to the library armed with a pile of exercise books and a red pencil. The little local school where she taught had been endowed originally for the Tarquin family’s tenants whose children found it difficult in the era before buses to get to the school in Bodmin. It still remained, attended by the younger children of local farmers and intermittently by the Romany children when they weren’t off playing truant and poaching. Sister Joan enjoyed the work though she often wondered if anything she tried to drum into the heads of her pupils would ever be of the slightest use to them in after years.

  For homework during the week she had set them a short composition on their favourite flowers. The task had been completed and handed in by six out of her ten pupils, which wasn’t too bad when she remembered the groan the boys had sent skywards. Two of the entries could scarcely be classified as homework, however. One was smudged with so much ink that it was impossible to read; the other contained a statement of rebellion.

  I cant make up stuff about flewers becaus I am NOT QUEER,

  Yurs respectful,

  Conrad Smith.

  Conrad was thirteen and should have been sent regularly to school years before. He came from the less law-abiding branch of the large Romany family camped out on the moor, and only sat in her classroom now because of the threats of his mother who was sick of being chased by the school inspector. Conrad, thought Sister Joan, showed a pleasing spirit of independence, and turned with less enjoyment to Madelyn Penglow’s book in which she had carefully copied the over familiar lines by Wordsworth, apparently under the serene misapprehension that her teacher would regard them as her own invention.

  Two of the others had drawn pictures of rather stylized-looking birds – or perhaps they were meant to be flowers? The remaining piece of work was also about daffodils, which at this season was hardly surprising. What was surprising was its content.

  They say daffodils are trumpets.

  I say daffodils are strumpets,

  And lads are bad and girls black pearl,

  And little roses full of worms

  Neatly written, properly spelt, and not from any poetry collection that Sister Joan had ever seen. Samantha Olive’s book. She was new to the district, her parents having just moved here. A slim child of eleven or twelve with bright green eyes in an otherwise ordinary little face. Sister Joan hadn’t paid much heed to her, deeming it better to let the child settle in before she started assessing her. The doggerel rhyme was not what she would have expected.

  She put the books aside, drew the copy of the timetable towards her and began to jot down ideas for the coming week – a nature ramble, a spelling bee, a talk about Philip Sidney to get across the idea that not all poets were effeminate – the bell for private study rang. Time to get out the journal that every Sister kept and note down her sins, her meditation thoughts, her private heart – all useful evidence in the unlikely event of the cause for canonisation being introduced for any of them in the future.

  I accuse myself, Sister Joan wrote neatly in the thick, black-covered notebook, of having dreamed erotically – was a dre
am a sin? Had it ever been erotic? More frightening and embarrassing, she considered. Not erotically then. She inked out the work, apple-pied the offending letters as the prioress was sometimes constrained to do, writing the words ‘apple pie’ over parts of letters and books that might prove disturbing or unsuitable for more susceptible nuns to read.

  I accuse myself of not taking sufficient time to consider my sins and thus of being forced to cross out words, wasting space and defacing the book. I accuse myself of dwelling overmuch on a nightmare concerned with things quite irrelevant to my present situation –

  ‘I never thought I’d end up as an irrelevancy,’ Jacob said inside her head, his eyes tenderly mocking.

  She rubbed him out of her head and wrote on.

  I accuse myself of having left my sleeping quarters, gone down to the kitchen, and drunk a mug of milk without permission and of having broken the grand silence and of having incited two of my Sisters in Christ to have followed my example – not strictly true since Sister Gabrielle had broken silence first, but she was old and might be excused on the grounds of forgetfulness.

  I accuse myself of spiritual pride and aridity, and pray God and you, my dear Sisters, to forgive and understand these my faults.

  If, at some future date, the devil’s advocate came looking for reasons why Sister Joan wasn’t suitable to be raised to the altars he’d find lots of evidence here, she thought.

  The bell rang again. She picked up the journal and descended the stairs, sliding into her place as the rest of the community filed in, all except prioress and novice mistress clutching their books. The two senior members of the convent were excluded from general confession lest anything they felt constrained to say denigrate their standing in the eyes of the others. A prioress was elected for five years after which she returned into the body of the community and took her place at general confession with the rest. Sister Joan wondered if it was worth wasting any hopes on the unlikely chance of her ever being elected prioress or put in charge of any novices and decided not to waste her time.

  Mother Dorothy, hunched and plain, rimless spectacles perched on a nose that was nearly as sharp as her tongue, came in. Sister Joan, kneeling with the rest, wondered gloomily what penance this little lot was going to earn her. About two hundred Hail Mary’s and salt in her coffee for a month probably. Mother Dorothy belonged to the old school of discipline and hadn’t yet decided if she was going to accept Vatican Two.

  I accuse myself of levity and uncharitable thoughts about my dear Sister, Sister Joan thought, rising, beginning the Confiteor. She would save those two for the following week. A thin shaft of sunlight broke free from the prism of stained glass and dyed the daffodils in the vase on the Lady Altar a sinister red.

  Daffodils are strumpets, Sister Joan’s mind whispered the phrase as her lips shaped Latin.

  Two

  Monday morning had come as a relief. Usually Sister Joan cherished the slow, quiet hours of the Sabbath. On Sunday only the bare minimum of secular work was done; in addition to the two extra hours of prayer there were two hours of recreation instead of one, and stretches of spare time when it was possible to read and write letters.

  Sister Joan, however, had been constrained, after general confession, to spend the whole day in chapel.

  ‘With your faults so heavy on your conscience you will not wish to partake of the pleasures of the Sabbath‚’ Mother Dorothy had said. ‘Your meals you may take in the kitchen. I am sure you will want to spend the day fasting, however.’

  Sister Joan was equally sure that she wouldn’t want to spend the day fasting, but she controlled the rebellious flash of her dark blue eyes and bowed submissively.

  ‘What a treat,’ Sister Margaret whispered in passing, ‘to spend the whole day in chapel with no distractions.’

  Her own breaking of the grand silence had been met with shocked gasps from the two postulants and an icy lecture from Mother Dorothy. Sister Gabrielle had been told to set her own penance. That she would apply a harsh one to herself went without saying.

  The day had crawled on leaden feet, through the morning meditation, the mass, the long hours of solitude. Today the companionship of the Unseen was entirely fled; Sister Joan knelt alone, combatting cramp by making the Stations of the Cross at regular intervals, unhappily aware that true contrition still lay a long way off. Towards late afternoon her stomach had started growling discontentedly.

  No, it was a relief to wake up on Monday and start the week afresh. On Wednesday Father Malone came to hear confession and she would have to tell her sins all over again. Father’s penances, however, were light compared with those inflicted by Mother Dorothy.

  She had just mounted the placid Lilith for the ride to the schoolhouse when Mother Dorothy had appeared unexpectedly at the stable gate, her pinched face emphasized by the sunlight.

  ‘Good morning, Sister Joan.’ Her dry voice had held neither praise nor blame.

  ‘Reverend Mother Dorothy.’ Sister Joan hastily pulled down the skirt of her habit, apt to ride up when she was in the saddle.

  ‘I believe that it would be quite consistent with the rule if you were to wear a pair of – long trousers beneath your skirt when you ride to and from school,’ Mother Dorothy said. ‘More comfortable and less likely to give rise to scandal. I shall tell Sister Margaret to purchase two pairs in your size.’

  ‘Thank you, Reverend Mother.’ Sister Joan had smiled her gratitude.

  ‘I used to ride myself when I was a girl,’ Mother Dorothy said. ‘A most enjoyable exercise but only when suitably clad. Good morning, Sister.’

  ‘Good morning, Reverend Mother.’

  Sister Joan had watched the small, hunched figure turn and walk back towards the kitchen quarters. Generosity of spirit manifested itself in strange guises.

  Now, mistress of her own domain, she sat at the large desk in the single classroom that comprised the local school and let her eyes rove over her pupils. There were only ten who came now to the school on the moor, and at eleven or twelve years old they would move on into the State school at Bodmin, catching the bus every morning, returning at teatime. At least the farmers’ children would do that; the Romanies, she suspected, would find excuses to stay away.

  The farming children – represented by three boys and two girls sat in one block, in an instinctive drawing away from the gypsies that Sister Joan deplored but hadn’t yet succeeded in combatting. Madelyn and David Penglow sat together, faces scrubbed clean, fair hair and blue eyes making them look like twins drawn in a child’s storybook. The polite manners and pleasant smiles couldn’t really compensate for the fact that the Penglows were dreadful little prigs, Sister Joan thought. She had a softer spot for Billy Wesley who was as mischievous as a cartload of monkeys but had twice the Penglows’ intelligence. Next to him Timothy Holt was already fidgeting, his eyes wandering to the clock on the wall. Tim considered any lessons that didn’t have a direct connection with agriculture to be a waste of time. The odd one out in the ‘farming’ group, as Sister Joan thought of them, was the newcomer, Samantha Olive. She had been scarcely a month in the school and still sat slightly apart, shifting her desk slightly before she sat down in the morning as if to emphasize her isolation. A plain child, though not so plain that her face became interesting, only the cat-green eyes alive as they watched from a curtain of thick, pale lashes. Sister Joan realized there was something unnerving about that unwavering, eleven-year-old scrutiny.

  The Romanies sat across the aisle, though ‘sat’ was a relative word, since they preferred to slide down on to the floor or squirm their legs around their chairs as if they were poised for instant flight. For a wonder the five of them were present, even thirteen-year-old Conrad sitting upright with shining morning face. His sister, Hagar, jet pigtails touching the desk before her, sat next to him. Hagar ought to start going to the Bodmin school, Sister Joan thought. She was twelve and looked older, her breasts already well developed, a certain knowing look in her eyes that deepened when
they were turned on any of the boys. Hagar, however, was devoted to her brother and certainly wouldn’t attend regularly at any establishment where he refused to go.

  The Lees, cousins and rivals of the Smiths, completed her small quota of pupils. Petroc sprawled at his desk, already yawning – the result, probably, of a night’s illicit rabbit snaring; Edith and Tabitha huddled side by side, looking like two of the rabbits that Petroc regularly hunted. At six and seven they were still greatly in awe of anything to do with education – a happy state of affairs that Sister Joan knew from experience wouldn’t last long.

  She drew the homework books towards her and gave what she hoped was an encouraging smile.

  ‘I asked you to write about your favourite flowers,’ she began, ‘and the work that was handed in pleased me on the whole. Petroc, you’ll have to copy yours out again, I’m afraid, because you got the inkwell muddled up with the paper. Conrad, it was thoughtful of you to explain why you didn’t hand in any work, but the explanation won’t do. This week I shall be telling you about Sir Philip Sidney who was a very brave soldier and a poet – also married. Madelyn, your work was very neat but you copied the poem from a book, didn’t you?’

  ‘No, Sister.’ The blue eyes were limpid. ‘David copied it and then he read it to me.’

  ‘You both copied the same poem? Then where is David’s work?’

  ‘We didn’t want to hand in two the same, Sister, in case you got bored,’ David said pedantically, ‘so I tore the pages out of my book.’

  ‘Logical, I suppose,’ Sister Joan said, ‘but in future I’d like you both to work by yourselves and try to compose something of your own.’

  The twins, unable to contemplate a separate mental existence, stared back at her blankly.

  ‘Timothy, your drawing was very good though it wasn’t quite what I’d asked for.’ Sister Joan nodded at the child pleasantly. He had drawn what he saw, neatly and unimaginably dully, but she had a soft place in her heart for those who expressed themselves in paint rather than words. Tabitha had also sent in a drawing – less neat and accurate but infinitely more colourful. Edith hadn’t sent anything in. She told her gently that she must try to do the homework, aware that any harsher scolding would bring the tears flooding to the little girl’s sloe-black eyes, and spoke rather more sharply to Hagar about her failure to do the set task, knowing that her words were making no impression upon the girl at all. Hagar merely smiled, one side of her full mouth curving in mute contempt, as Conrad said quickly and loyally, ‘Hagar don’t mean to be lazy, Sister. She has lots to do at ’ome – washing and cooking and the like, and she needs time to enjoy.’