The minds of a few turned to jelly at this destruction of their inner security; they became senile. One such nun spent all her remaining days in the top storey of her convent, among the linen. She was always carrying parcels of linen from one place to put them somewhere else. With her very fine face, large staring eyes and tight mouth, she became the living ghost of the convent.
THE NEW REGULATIONS allowed nuns to spend time away from the convent, to visit their families. In the past we had been told over and over that to be a nun was to ‘leave your father and your mother and brothers and sisters and come, follow me’—words attributed to Jesus. Now we were allowed to return to our relatives and even spend several days with them.
Our families were delighted and a little embarrassed, not least of all my parents. The daughter once so far removed had suddenly come among them again!
We went to the movies together, my mother, my sister Liesbet and me. We saw Far From the Madding Crowd and The Sound of Music.
We nuns were still heavily obliged not to divulge any ‘religious community matters’ out of loyalty to the order and the community we belonged to. I was completely loyal and never uttered a word of complaint or blame to my family. I reinforced their picture of me as a happy nun, the same picture they knew from the regular letters I sent them. For their part, they didn’t share any of their own worries, thinking it their duty to entertain me.
NEW THINKING SOON inspired more new thought. It occurred to me to ask to learn to play the piano. I had always been attracted to the piano but there wasn’t one at home, and when the Billingses from across the road had offered to let me use theirs, I was thought by the music mistress at Vaucluse to be too old to start learning at sixteen.
So here I was at the age of twenty-eight, feeling the urge to train my long fingers for the piano. I knelt by my superior’s chair and put my request to her. She busied herself with some papers while she considered it. She didn’t seem particularly inclined to refuse, but she couldn’t feel any enthusiasm for the idea. Then she came up with a suggestion. ‘I shall ask Sister Cecilia to give you an audition,’ she said, ‘to gauge your ability.’
I was happy with her answer and confident, because I knew one thing for certain: I had rhythm and pitch in my blood; I could sing both alto and soprano. The day came, and Sister Cecilia, who had won a prize at some time in her life for brushing her teeth correctly, demonstrated a few musical phrases for me to imitate, then a few more, and a few more. She said nothing, but her verdict came about a week later, when I asked my superior.
‘I’m afraid you don’t have any talent for music at all,’ came the cool reply. ‘Sister Cecilia is very sorry, but in her opinion that is so. I can’t afford to give lessons to someone who has no aptitude, Sister.’
My heart didn’t want to accept this. It was one thing to be refused, but quite another to be told I had no musical talent whatsoever. This wasn’t true, but there was nothing I could do about it. The insidious snake of anger injected some of its venom inside me; another drop into the poisonous pit.
Soon after, something else occurred to me: this time I wanted to learn to drive. Since the introduction of the reforms the convent had acquired a car, and nuns could now visit the doctor and dentist, instead of them having to drag their gear along to the convent. The car was also used for shopping and for outings. At first, however, no one knew how to drive! When necessary, we had always been chauffeured by a lay teacher or a friend of the convent. It was considered a favour to the community to learn to drive and so be of service. I offered with a great deal of enthusiasm and was surprised by the total lack of appreciation for my offer. An immediate flat refusal came, with no thanks, not even a lift of the head this time.
If the hierarchy had no control over the way I discussed our vows and religious life, they certainly had the power to frustrate my desires to grow into a more useful and expanded human being, or to ask for anything out of the ordinary. My heart thumped in desperate frustration, but what right had I to assume that I would be allowed to drive? I so much wanted to spread my wings, but others might be better at it.
A week or so later I noticed Sister Madeleine with a sling around her arm. ‘I caught my arm in the steering,’ she said honestly. I smiled wryly. It wouldn’t have happened to me, I said to myself. The hot feeling of having been denied was still with me, but it was funny to see my superior’s choice walking about with a broken arm. Yet I knew that if all the nuns in the convent broke an arm, I would still not be chosen.
If I was not to play the piano, I could still choose to play records at recreation time, under the new regulations. I stood up so everyone could hear what I had to say. ‘Does anyone want to come with me to the concert hall to listen to music and to dance?’
There was a silence so that all might consider my suggestion, but no one wanted to come with me. I didn’t really expect anyone to. Waltzes, minuets and ballet music—I danced to all of it, magnificently and totally alone, with the music resounding so loudly that it must have reached the ears of my sisters in the common room. I thought that maybe if they heard the music they would feel like dancing, but it never happened, and from week to week my dance became more lonesome and poignant. Self-pity beckoned seductively; the lid of Pandora’s box of hidden emotions was slowly opening.
THE NEXT TIME I went for my weekly private session with Reverend Mother, I asked her if she would be a mother to me for a little while. What did I have in mind, she asked, her tone cool as her cheeks took on a deeper colour and her eyes glinted in her attempt not to look at me too closely.
‘I want you to hold me,’ I said, ‘like a mother.’ And she did, God bless her kindness, while I cried helpless tears.
My sobs spoke to Mother Clare’s heart, and she held me patiently against her bosom, so I could smell the special soap she used and feel her softness. Neither she nor I had any idea what these tears were about, but they seemed endless, coming from a pit of sorrow she hoped I would soon see the bottom of. Instead, my need grew bigger. Sometimes I wouldn’t be able to function at all unless I was first held like a child, kneeling beside her on the floor, wetting her habit shawl and taking up her valuable time.
The schoolchildren were exposed to the fact that their nun teacher was human: she came to class with red eyes and nose. They might have talked about it among themselves, but took no further notice. I was more a function and utility to them than a person, and what they couldn’t understand they easily dismissed. Nuns were supposed to suffer.
The changes hadn’t done away with penances; they were still very much in vogue. This was an area of convent life I did not challenge. Instead, I adopted a new penance that was particularly painful for me, which was to stand up in the classroom when my legs were tired, until I could hardly stand up any more. My legs had varicose veins, and they hurt.
Even more painful, and unplanned, were the premenstrual cramps that had begun to attack me, sometimes in the middle of a lesson. The blood would leave my head, I would turn pale as death and become unsteady on my feet. I stumbled out of class one day, asking a girl to run and tell the headmistress. I didn’t know that it was premenstrual tension; I just thought I had a bellyache. The infirmarian wisely gave me a hot water bottle to hold against my stomach as I lay curled up on the bed.
During that year a host of emerging energies—forbidden and dangerous—leapt up within me. I used all my desperate willpower to suppress them in order to stay functional, but the volcanoes inside clamoured to erupt. I became more and more confused, and would have happily buried myself in my superior’s bosom to cry myself to death.
One of the older nuns accosted me and said she was worried about Mother Clare. ‘You are taking up too much of her time,’ she said, ‘and your behaviour worries her. I beg you to be more considerate.’
Sister Antoinette managed to cheer me up. She would lift her eyes to me and whisper words of comfort from her hare-lipped mouth. As a virtual outsider to the process of renewal—she was a lay sister and there
fore hardly counted—she had plenty of time to reflect, and was able to assess better than most what was going on.
‘Don’t take any notice of them,’ she’d say with her lovely little rabbit smile. ‘They can’t hurt you if you don’t take any notice of them.’ Such simple, wise words. That is exactly what she was doing: letting every new thing wash over her. Sister Antoinette knew that it was important to love God and keep your mouth shut, but secretly she admired me for my vocal stance. She agreed with my views, but wisely knew her limits.
MOTHER WINIFRED WAS now a well-recognised resident of Broadstairs and was sent on an official visit to the convent of Our Lady of the Angels. We prepared a musical concert for her. Along with all the others, I sang my heart’s devotion to God, to the Society and to her. I earnestly wanted her to know, from my singing, that my intentions were good; that I had ‘the right spirit’ after all. But, alas, Mother Winifred seemed not to notice me. Her eyes went everywhere as she smiled with that full set of good teeth in her broad, ruddy face, but they never met mine. I felt I was shouting into a vacuum.
The purpose of her visit was to gauge our progress and report back to Broadstairs. She saw each of us, one by one. When it came to my turn, as soon as I knelt by her side I was warned not to be critical of authority. ‘Sister Carla, it is my duty to remind you of the spirit of our society, and to beg you to honour it.’
Her bushy eyebrows frowned as first she pleaded with me, then commanded me, to toe the line. She would have preferred it if I never opened my mouth again on any subject, instead waiting mutely for improvements to develop in their own time.
I knew it wasn’t any use opening my heart to her and asking for her understanding, never mind her support. She wasn’t unkind, but she obviously had a preconceived agenda on that visit to Benalla. She did not make any effort to befriend me or to make me understand that she appreciated anything about me whatsoever. There might have been overarching changes, but nothing had happened to change her attitude towards me; nor did she show any sign of respect for those who, like me, wanted to throw their energies into suggesting and making improvements.
Upon her departure, she did not say an individual goodbye and left me with a deep pain in my heart.
I WAS CALLED to Mother Clare’s side once more.‘Sister,’ she said, ‘you are no longer to write to your sister at Genazzano. I have it from her superior that you are influencing her the wrong way. This is an order, and I expect you to obey.’
This was very painful, because my letters to my sister were a sort of catharsis. I tried to obey, but I needed someone to listen to me. So that no one would see me, I wrote to her on toilet paper, while sitting on the toilet. I stole an envelope and stamp from my superior’s desk and watched what happened to letters left in the vestibule for collection. I got to know the regular time and surreptitiously added my letter in among the others just before collection time. Genazzano was a big convent. My sister received my letters and no one noticed that they were from Benalla.
THE BOARDERS WERE allowed out more often as a result of renewal. One day the senior girls attended a concert in a nearby civic hall. A group of German women singers, backed by the Victorian Arts Council, were making their way around the country to present their songs, accompanied by the piano. We nuns accompanied the boarders.
I was not prepared for the power of this music. The women let go a stream of passionate songs: songs of praise for the beloved, songs of unrequited love, and songs of devotion. The pure, fresh energy of the music went straight and unexpectedly to my heart, and cut it, so that my breath was taken away and deep, deep tears started to flow again. I couldn’t stop them and didn’t really want to.
In spite of a couple of huge cotton hankies retrieved from one of my bottomless habit pockets, grief soaked the starched linen under my chin and made its way right under my collar. No one spoke as we moved out of the aisles of wooden chairs and onto the late-afternoon street. Everyone was moved in her own way and nobody said a thing to me; not then, nor afterwards.
It must have been an unusual sight, though, for a nun to be so affected by songs of human love. What could set off such a reaction but a feeling of missing out, of desperately wanting to experience love; a yearning for a trusted, warm, humorous embrace of affection and devotion, of mutual appreciation? I had never been able to imagine such a thing before, not even when reading Jane Austen or the Brontë sisters’ novels. But this music had flowed from a composer in love, and I felt the force of it for the first time.
Was it this pure love of a man for a woman, a woman for a man, that I had sacrificed to God? Such a sacrifice sounded like lunacy. What exactly had I given up for God, and why? In the normal course of life I had only experienced the kind of love that is easy to do without. Anything beyond that, I had told myself, was all imagination. But how could I now be sure that a life lived for God, in a convent, really was the ultimate life of love?
THE DIE IS CAST
THERE CAME A last-straw event—though I didn’t recognise it at the time—which set me on a path of no return.
I was called to the head of the large polished table in the common room, where the superior sometimes sat to read her mail and make herself available for requests, permissions and reports. It was almost time for the six o’clock reading, when we would all assemble around the table to listen and do our needlework. I had entered the room with the idea of starting my needlework early, when Reverend Mother Clare summoned me. I went over to kneel beside her.
‘I am taking your art class away from you, Sister Mary Carla,’ she said evenly. ‘I’ve heard that you discussed religion with the students after your class yesterday. I want to ensure that the students are taught art when they are supposed to be learning art, and not religion.’
She kept busy with the mail as she spoke, her tone somewhere between angry and righteous, and avoided looking me in the face until she had finished.
Rage welled up in me. Yes, it was true: three students had asked me questions after school, sparked off by a discussion about a classical painting of Adam and Eve. I had been reading some of the works of Teilhard de Chardin, and had presented his ideas in class as an alternative interpretation of the official version of creation. The girls had heard of Teilhard de Chardin, the excommunicated poet-priest and thinker, and were keen to explore more open ideas. They had an emergent feminist streak and had also wanted to know my opinion about wearing hats in church. I had no trouble telling them that I thought it was probably a custom introduced by Paul of Tarsus, who, I had read, looked down on women. We had talked amicably for half an hour or so. Either I had been overheard or one of the girls had betrayed me. The new rules allowed me to speak freely, but apparently not about religion! The hot flush of anger I felt gave me immediate courage.
‘OK,’ I said breathlessly. ‘If you want to make sure that the pupils learn what they’re supposed to learn, you’d better get someone else to teach them. I’m quitting!’
I just had time to take in her complete surprise and the stunned reaction of the nuns who had filed into the room, before leaving to go upstairs to my cubicle bed. And there I stayed.
I came down for meals, making sure Sister Antoinette understood that I would be there, so heading off any chance of my sisters pretending they didn’t know and arranging no place for me at table. I came down for meditation and Mass the next morning, had breakfast and went back to my room, determined to stay on strike unless the decision to remove me from my art class was reversed.
I knew my sudden departure from the workforce would be sorely felt because I had a full timetable and my sisters would have trouble covering for me or finding a replacement. My anger sustained me into the third day, when they sent Sister Madeleine—the little shy one, a friend to me because she couldn’t be my enemy—up to my room to negotiate. I was begged to come down and help because everyone was overworked; no word about reinstating my class. I sent her down with my commiserations and the message that I would resume work as soon as my class was
given back to me.
Several times Sister Madeleine came up to reason and plead with me and, in the end, I gave in. Unprincipled as I was then, I thought I’d better do the right thing as my sisters had suffered enough. I let myself down badly for the sake of their doubtful approval, since I did not get my class back. ‘Never mind,’ I told myself, ‘I’ve got more free time now,’ and devoted it to redesigning my habit. But my heart had been insulted and compromised in a way that was not going to heal.
Soon letters from previous superiors in Australia, England and Brussels, and even from the local bishop, began to arrive on my desk. People had been active during my strike.
‘I am most disappointed to hear that of late you have been missing some of your classes with the children, and that you are not always in the places where duty lies,’ began the letter from my erstwhile geography lecturer at Sedgley Park, Sister Gertrude, who was once so proud of my getting perfect marks in the finals. ‘Sister, this is most unprofessional of you and it is letting Sedgley down badly! Sister, what has come over you that you seem to find it so difficult to act like everyone else? Do you think that if you find life such a strain, you ought to see a psychiatrist?’ And, ‘You must think of your community, Sister. It is most distressing for them to have to live with you if you are not going to live our life properly.’
The worthy Gertrude ended by asking whether it might not be best to ask to leave. Leave! That was a red rag to a bull, as was everything else she and everyone else said. They were taking sides against me while steeped in ignorance of the real situation. I was unmoved by their attempts to intimidate me.
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