My suitcase is the same large red one that I took with me when I left for the convent in the first place. It had been stored for me and returned to me with every move I have made over the years, and there have been several. It was by far the largest of all the suitcases the other postulants brought with them, and I’d been worried that Mother Superior and all the other professed Sisters would look down on me, would find me too attached to earthly belongings to take me seriously, even though I had been to stay with them more than once as an aspirant so I would find out if convent life was for me.
They did not bat an eyelid, especially since it was virtually empty when I arrived. I’m sure they would have thought differently then if they’d known then there was even the possibility that I would take to stealing things when I left the Sisterhood, secreting them away in the suitcase’s voluminous depths. Not that I have stolen anything. At least I don’t think I have. I honestly don’t remember packing. I do remember telling myself to hold it together, to not cry, to not throw myself on Superior’s mercy and beg her to take me back. I do remember the earthquake that erupted in my chest when I was being driven away from all I have known. I had only lived in that convent a year this time around, but it had been the first one I had gone to when I’d left home. I was being driven away not only from my physical home, but also from the home that was my way of life. I had sobbed and sobbed in the back seat, trying to hang on to what Superior had whispered to me when she had hugged me goodbye. ‘Have a drink for me, Sister Grace. That would be a fitting goodbye.’
Coventry, 2015
‘Sister Grace, it is so lovely to see you.’
I smiled at Mother Superior. I had been around the world, it felt like, I’d had so many different experiences, many conflicts, many fears and many moments of joy, all thanks to her decision not to allow me to remain there back in 2000, when she sent me off to train as a teacher. I was grateful to her, although at the time, if I had been honest, as I had been in confession, I’d harboured some resentment that she thought she knew what was best for me. When I had applied to come back this time because I had decided I wanted to live the next few years in cloisters, away from the noise and chaos of the outside world, she had willingly welcomed me back.
Her office had not changed in the time I had been away: it was snug and warm. Old wood, incense and what I now knew was the smell of comfort and acceptance. From the smile on her face, I could tell she already knew why I was there.
‘Superior, I have been thinking a lot about Judas,’ I began. ‘About his betrayal. Do you think, I mean, truly believe with all you have seen of the world, all that you have read in Scripture and prayed on, that Judas betrayed Jesus for money and money alone?’
‘Do you believe that?’ she replied.
Under the table, my left leg began to jiggle. I hadn’t done that in years. I didn’t know what Superior was going to say, though. How she was going to receive this news. I knew even less why I’d started the conversation this way. An attempt at honesty? ‘I believe that sometimes, you can think you’re doing something for one reason, but deep down you’re doing it for another reason. I think to betray someone you love in such a fundamental way, there must be more to it than money. Maybe it was fear of what is being asked of you. Maybe Judas couldn’t reconcile who Jesus was asking him to be and rather than take a chance on being that person, on making that personal sacrifice, he turned on our Lord instead.’
‘Are you asking to be released from your vows, Sister Grace?’
Was I? I had walked in here asking to be released. Coming full circle, living here again with complete silence outside of my head, had reminded me of where I came from. The life I had had before was visiting me in the quiet times. In the moments of stillness and prayer, I had the tugging, the pull to be elsewhere. I would close my eyes, and I would try to will it away. Then the thoughts of Judas would settle. I would wonder about betrayal from the ultimate betrayer. Why had he done it? Judas. His name was synonymous with betrayal, with the act, with the most devastating thing anyone could do to someone they loved. I am a Judas. I am a betrayer. Those thoughts kept preying on my mind. I needed to make it right. Like the tug towards this life, the ache and yearning that had brought me to this place where I chased the silence, I needed to go back. Maybe for ever, maybe for a month or two. Maybe that was it. As I had sat down, I had thought that I would have to leave for ever, but maybe I needed to leave for a little while, to make things right, and then I would come back.
‘Yes, Superior, I am. But only for a little while. Maybe I can have some time off to think about things and then return?’
Superior smiled at me, in that way she always did that said she knew what was in my heart even if I didn’t. ‘Sister Grace, I will apply for you to be released permanently.’
‘I’m not sure I want to be released permanently.’
‘I am. You surprised me. I thought you would not stay, you would not take final vows. I rejoiced when you did, but I was surprised. No one worked harder than you, but your calling was always driven by escape, and I believe you are now strong enough to face what you were running from, therefore it is time for you to leave.’
‘I’m not sure I want to go, now.’
‘Pray on it. When you have prayed on it a while longer, come back. My door is always open.’
‘Do you feel I have wasted your time, Superior?’
‘No, Sister Grace. I feel blessed to have had you amongst us. Have more faith in yourself, Sister, and your ability to do the right thing. I will make the application in five days if I have not heard from you in that time.’
London, 2016
My attention is still on the suitcase.
I hope I haven’t stolen anything. Of course I haven’t. I am being ridiculous. Why would I go against everything that I am and start stealing?
I don’t feel like changing my clothes, though. In actual fact, I want to fall down on the creaky bed and sleep fully clothed, so I have no need to go near the suitcase. It can stay there unopened for a while longer. Kicking off my socks with the big toe of the opposite foot, I swing my legs off the ground and lie back. Then I turn off the lamp on the floor, plunge my former bedroom into darkness. The moonlight throws shadows from the oak tree in my parents’ back garden against the wall. Menacing and beautiful at the same time. So much like a lot of life.
I close my eyes. When I first learnt to pray, I would lie in bed and close my eyes. I would think of all the things I wanted to say to Nika – all the little happenings and challenges and victories in my day – and I would share them with God. I would try to empty some of the noise inside. It was like trying to empty the sea with a child’s beach bucket, but I would still try. I would simply talk to God, like I was talking to Nika, and hope that God didn’t mind too much.
When I answer his knock on my door, my uncle Warren puts his head to one side, and smiles at me with his mouth closed. He is mollified and altogether different from before.
‘It was nice to see you again, Veronica,’ my uncle says. ‘I just wanted to say goodnight. I’ll be leaving soon.’
‘Goodnight,’ I reply.
‘About before,’ he adds before I can step back to shut the door. ‘I’m sorry, I was a little out of order.’ He must see the scepticism on my face because he adds: ‘All right, yes, I was a lot out of order. I forget, sometimes, that not everyone finds me funny.’
‘I’m sure a lot of people find you funny,’ I say. I am trying to be kind. My uncle has very little in his life. Over the course of the evening it’s become clear that his life has stalled: he does not have a wife or significant partner, he doesn’t have children and he holidays alone two or three times a year in Spain. He has friends, and he regaled us with tales of them tonight, but underneath it all, he has nothing, really.
He smiles at me again, even though I am keeping my gaze fixed over his left shoulder as I have been since he arrived in the house. ‘You’re a good girl.’ He nods. ‘I always thought you were a good girl.
Like the daughter I never had.’
This was always the ‘problem’ with Uncle Warren overall. He could be mean, his tongue and phrasing exhibiting a vicious edge, then he would apologise, he would be nice. And it’d be particularly hard to hold those earlier things against him. After my brother’s bike accident, he came over a few days later with a real leather football and a full England footie strip to say sorry for what had happened. Damian had loved that football so much that he’d forgotten how much pain he’d been in.
It always felt wrong to hold a grudge against Uncle Warren, but it feels even more wrong to hold a grudge after I have learnt about forgiveness and atonement. Especially since I have left my vocation to try to find Nika, to try to atone for what I did to her all those years ago. Everyone deserves a second chance. At least I hope they do.
‘Goodnight,’ I say to him.
‘Goodnight, Roni,’ he says.
I shut the door on my uncle. Another metallic groan fills the room as my full weight makes contact with the bed again. The noise in my head is filling up, when I thought it would be quieter tonight without the imposition of the Great Silence. Why did I think I could do this? I am supposed to know humility, and so why does it feel like this idea to find Nika and make everything right is one of the biggest exercises in conceit I have ever undertaken?
3
Nika
Brighton, 2016
I strum my fingers over my guitar, sitting on a bench, facing the sea, watching the sun climb out of the water and into the sky. I have a place to stay, but for reasons I’m not too sure of myself, I wanted to sit out with my guitar and watch the day come alive.
I’m not as tired as I should be, since I grabbed half an hour’s sleep on the coach journey from London Victoria to Brighton. I’d checked into a B&B but then had found myself walking along the front with my guitar and rucksack, needing to be outside for a while. When I sat on this bench, I started to think of Todd, and how I got involved with him. After those memories were all played out, used up and cast back into that unvisited area of my mind, I’d started to think about Veronica Harper. Roni. She had been my best friend back when best friend meant ‘my whole life’. Our virtually identical names, and our absolutely identical love for ballet, had joined us early. I’d started to revisit that love we had for each other, the friendship that had defined my childhood, and then a big STOP sign had gone up in my head. There was no need to go back there again. What happened, happened. I really had to get over it. I had got over it. I would never understand why she did what she did and some things are best left in the past where they originally lived. What would be the use in dragging it all back out again?
I move my fingers over the taut strings again as the guitar’s wooden body lies flat on my lap. The sound rises up and dissolves into my ears, the chords to signal the start of a new day. Of my new life in Brighton.
I’ve moved on, haven’t I? From all of it. Everything that has gone before is in my history and I do not need to revisit it again.
Even if Roni did want to find me, if she did want to explain, what would she say that would make it all right? Nothing at all comes to mind. If I can’t think what would rewrite the past and make it all right, then how can she?
I create another chord from my guitar, watch the sun shake off the drops of the sea that cover its body, making those drops into the orange that brightens the sky.
I am in Brighton and this new day is the start of a new life for me. I do not need to think of the past. I only need to face the front, tackle my future.
Roni
London, 2016
It is 5 a.m. I know that because my eyes snap open at 5 a.m. no matter where I am.
My body stays still as my mind scrabbles around for its bearings. The window, it is large and has a blind on it. There is a band of roses circling the middle of the room. My large wooden cross is missing. There is a large amount of furniture in here. Where am I? I ask myself.
At home of course, I reply. And I remember … I remember that I am not home any more, I am ‘home’ instead. I tug the duvet up until it is under my chin and I lie still, listening, settling, pushing myself outwards to become part of the fabric of this house again. This is my home. This is not my home.
The night before last I lay in my cell, taking in every inch of it, plain as it was, simple as it was, it was part of my home and I knew I would miss it. I tried to experience every part: the shadows, the shapes, the smell, the feel. I had tried to hold on to them, make them a part of my memory so I would not forget. Even though that was wrong: a nun has no possessions, she is bound by the vow of poverty and everything she has is to be shared with her community. I wondered what my Sisters would say if they knew that one of my last acts as a nun was to try to steal a permanent mental image of the way I lived?
5 a.m. I am awake. I am ready to start the day. I hear the final peals of the bells, the gentle nudge to begin the day. I close my eyes and see myself. I see myself in my last cell, opening my eyes, staring at the ceiling, sitting up to start the day. I move away the covers, I slip down on to my knees and I pray. I ask for a good day, for God to bless my family, my friends, my fellow Sisters (professed and aspiring). From my bed in my parents’ house, I watch myself shower, get dressed, taking time and care to make sure my habit is neat and in place; everything I do is a service to God and I must do it properly, carefully.
It is 6.40 a.m. I am at Vigils, observing the first Office of the day, readings from the Scriptures, passages from the Psalms; they wash over me, wash into me; they bring me peace, they ease me closer to the silence I am always searching for. A line from a psalm, it touches me today, causes my heart to skip a beat. I understand it today. I have never understood it before. I heard its surface before, listened and thought I understood its meaning. Today, I can see how it fits over my experiences of the world.
It is 7 a.m. I am standing in the oratory, singing Lauds (our morning prayer) – the voices of my Sisters bring tears to my eyes every morning. The purity and the innocence rise up towards our Lord, and I feel a part of it. It is not silence, but I am a grateful, happy part of it.
It is 8.15 a.m. and I observe myself from my present as I listen to today’s selection of readings as we eat breakfast. I am working in the kitchen today. I like to cook. I like to lose myself in the silence of working for my Sisters, making food that will fill their stomachs and lift their spirits.
It is 5 p.m. I have worked all day, and the silence imposed upon me is tiring now. I am always searching for silence, but today it seems hard, it seems a burden, not part of my vocation. I know I have to pray on that, to try to uncover why I am struggling. I watch myself hang my head in shame as I enter for Vespers, our Latin songs every bit as beautiful and moving as our Lauds in English. I watch myself sing our evening prayer and I know I am sad because I am struggling.
It is 7.30 p.m. And I am not reading my book, taking part in my free time as usual. I stare at the pages of the book, seeing nothing but alien squiggles that I cannot decipher today. Those few words I do manage to read fall out of my head again, unable to find purchase or rest in my mind. Inside my head is becoming loud. That is why I am struggling. The noise inside wants to come out.
It is 8.30 p.m. I am a little more careful with Compline (Night Prayer) tonight. I see myself enunciating every word, pushing the noise inside my head out by trying to coat every word we sing in it. I feel better as I enter the Great Silence for the night. I do not feel I will combust because I have let a little of what is inside out and I will not struggle to stay silent and extremely quiet until Lauds tomorrow.
I see you, Sister Grace, I think to myself. I see you lying in bed, reading that book and seeing the words this time. I see you, Sister Grace, waiting for Lights Out at eleven so you can sleep until five. I see you, Sister Grace. I see you and I see that what is on the outside is not what you are feeling on the inside.
In my parents’ house, I roll over, I close my eyes again, shut out the visions I have of S
ister Grace, the person I used to be, and try to be Veronica Harper. Roni. The girl who was so very often hungover from drink and drugs, for whom waking up at eight every morning was an issue, let alone waking at five. I tug the duvet right up over my head, feel the metallic groan of the fold-out bed in every part of my body. I can sleep as late as I want now. I can do whatever I want, whenever I want. I missed Vespers and Compline last night. Once I came to my room Uncle Warren ensured that the Great Silence didn’t happen by coming to my bedroom door. I am no longer a nun, nor am I a Sister. I am Veronica Harper and sleeping in is what Veronica Harper does.
It takes me another minute of pretending before I slip back the cover, I get down on my knees and I start to pray.
4
Nika
Brighton, 2016
‘You seem to have a lot of long gaps in your CV, Miss Harper,’ the interviewer, Mrs Nasir, says diplomatically.
‘Yes, yes, I do,’ I reply. I had thought of an explanation, something that would help gloss over the mess that is my CV. No college experience, A levels started but not finished, three years of waitressing and working as a stagehand in a London theatre. And then yawning years between then and now when I was Nikky Harper, then Grace Carter. My CV isn’t so much like Swiss cheese as the crater-pocked side of the moon – big gaps everywhere. I did have an explanation polished up and ready to present to her with a clever flourish of diversionary prowess, but I can’t quite recall it. Not when I’m sitting in front of a real-life person, and not when I know it would sound like a load of nonsense. It would be lying, anyway. Concealing, like I did when I was living as Grace Carter, I can do – I had to do – but out-and-out lying goes against my nature.