What happened about that boy, the one you met at the Poetry reading at the Y? Did he leave for London? He hasn’t shown up. You couldn’t come before Christmas I suppose? There can’t be much on at the UN, so much is happening this end. Get me one jar Rennett’s Formula Twenty-three from Saks if it is still going. Charge it on card. I wish you could come soon. Beatrice, the first Lady Suzy before your Mother’s turn rang up very officiously about the robbery when she read of it in the papers, telling me what to do. All the china and so on was really hers. I said it was a bit late in the day to say all this, she’d better write to Brian or his solicitor. She can drop dead, with his china and her glassware. I didn’t tell Brian she rang. Why upset him more?
Tons of love. Do write.
Helen
THE little through-street off the Gray’s Inn Road, in the area of St Pancras in London, was not very active at two in the afternoon. A three-storey nineteenth-century house was the modest Anglican convent of Mary of Good Hope. The street, only a few yards long, and narrow, was closed to traffic. Its usual pedestrians were lawyers and office workers taking a short cut. Margaret Murchie, however, arrived on her motor-bike, parked on the pavement and pressed the bell. She had an appointment to be interviewed as a novice. A minister of an Episcopalian church in Scotland had made this arrangement.
It was shortly after the death by murder of her grandmother at the Calton Nursing Home in Edinburgh that Margaret had gone into a silence; she was also thinner and paler. The public fuss had died down, Margaret’s aunts had made off with their loot, and her father had made himself comfortable with his mother’s fortune. But nothing would induce Margaret to benefit from the money. She made this well known. Her family and their friends were impressed by her attitude. Her sad pallor and silence were deeply felt, too, by Margaret’s fellow-workers in the ceramics studio in Glasgow. It came about, now, that everyone was sorry for Margaret. Even her sisters, in their different ways, expressed pity for her suffering and the wrong that everyone had done her in their secret thoughts. Only Dan Murchie, passionate and bemused by his daughter, could not prevent himself from half-wondering what she was up to, without fully realizing that he was wondering at all.
‘I always said,’ wrote Flora to her mother, ‘that one thing had nothing to do with another. And now you can see that Margaret had nothing to do with the unfortunate incident. Must close now as it’s bed time and I have to run my bath.’ Eunice wrote: ‘It was a great relief to Peter and I that nothing came of the scandal after all. It would have been so bad for me in my condition. Poor Margaret was questioned much too long by the police and too often. And now as you say she looks ill. I’m not surprised. It was hard enough on Peter and I.’
Margaret’s ring at the bell brought a nun to the door, a young woman in a pale grey dress of a modern length and with a grey and white veil on her head.
‘I have an appointment,’ said Margaret, ‘with Sister Lorne.’
‘She’s expecting you. If that’s your bike would you mind bringing it into the courtyard? Just a minute and I’ll get the key.’
She shut the front door again completely, but after a few moments appeared again with a large key with which she opened a side-door. Margaret wheeled her motor-cycle into the courtyard which was bare except for a six-passenger panel van. ‘You can come up this way, Miss Murphy,’ said the girl.
‘Murchie,’ said Margaret.
‘Oh, sorry, I heard “Murphy”. This way.’
Beeswax was the smell Margaret had always heard that convents smelled of. She saw that the wooden banisters and the stairs were brightly polished and felt that the rather musky fragrance in the air must be beeswax. In fact it was an aerosol spray but that did not detract from the austere clean conventual atmosphere of the house. Plain cord matting formed the stair carpet. Margaret was shown in to a small sitting-room with elephant-grey plastic-seated chairs, a round table with a lace centrepiece on which stood a vase of coloured glass flowers and a desk on which were piled some brown cardboard folders containing ragged papers, a four-part London telephone directory and a black telephone. There were plain nylon curtains in the two windows, which had long curtains at each side made of some homespun green and brown stuff.
Margaret draped herself as far as that was possible on one of the chairs, her head to one side with an arm resting on the chair-back. In came a middle-aged woman dressed in her short grey habit and floating veil. She breathed heavily as if with a chest complaint. ‘Miss Murchie?’ she said. ‘I’m Sister Lorne, the deputy Superior. Our Reverend Mother is in bed, not well at all. We all have to look after her.’ She paused for breath, put her hand to her chest. ‘To tell you the truth,’ she said, ‘I smoke too much.’
‘Is that allowed in a convent?’ Margaret said.
‘Oh, goodness, yes. We’re a very modern order, you know. Few people realize how the C of E has marched on. They think the old-fashioned dogmas still prevail; they think the repressive colonial missionary system of the upper classes can bring our message of Good Hope to the Third World. Have they read Marx? — No. Would they under-stand —under — stand with a hyphen — his message to the toiling masses? — No. We of the Order of Good Hope —’
‘Can I help you? — A glass of water?’ said Margaret springing up from her chair, since the emphysemic nun at this point had broken down into a distressing condition of wheeze and puff. Sister Lorne waved Margaret’s offer away while she clung to the edge of the table, recovering.
She recovered eventually. ‘Thank you,’ she said to Margaret. ‘It shows a good spirit to make a gesture of help. I had a letter from the Reverend Mr Wise and of course he explained your case. I read it to our sisters after prayers last night. There are only nine of us including our sick Superior. We all agreed to pray that you would suit us as a novice. There are few real vocations in these days of yuppies and murky capitalism. I hope you have one. You were sent. I can only say you were sent.’
‘I feel sent,’ said Margaret. ‘It is a most extraordinary feeling.’
It is sad to observe that of those nine nuns of St Pancras only three were of vital interest, and that those three were fairly unprincipled. The remaining six were devout and dutiful, and two of them very sweet and trusting, but all those six were as dreary as hell.
Margaret made great progress as a novice at the Convent of Good Hope. Their mission was largely in social work, and as they had a small community and limited funds, this was mainly confined to hospital visiting. The liturgy of the morning consisted of a psalm and prayers. They busied themselves about the housekeeping, the shopping and the cooking all morning. After lunch, which was very simple and served with hot water to drink, they set forth on their visits to elderly patients who had no friends or relatives to visit them.
Margaret made herself useful as a frugal shopper. On her motor-bike she would go to buy their daily rations at Clerkenwell and Finsbury where the food shops were cheaper and the wares not much inferior.
Dear Dad,
It is quite a good life, and I believe I have a vocation. It is all a question of thinking of les autres. Of course, yes, you can come and visit. But not just yet.
Sister Lorne is standing in for the Mother Superior. She is a leftie, as you would call it, but that’s the result of thinking of les autres. The old men and the old women in those hospital wards would make you left wing if you could see them.
Sister Marrow has a big say in running the convent. She’s the Novice Mistress. She has a wild artistic temperament, sometimes breaking the glasses set out on the table in the refectory. We get hot water to drink, a drop of sherry on Sunday with the vicar after the service. Well, to get back to Sister Marrow she is known as the four-letter nun. She makes Sister Lorne laugh and I see why. Sister Rooke is a master plumber, you wouldn’t believe how much in demand. She was sent for by the Bishop as he couldn’t get a plumber in the whole of London, at least not one who understood those antique drains. The other nuns I’m afraid are lacking in a bit of IQ, at least
so it seems to me. But they go forth with their little basket of goodies over their arm like little Red Riding Hood to visit the sick, except of course their capes are grey like we all wear. Sister Rooke doesn’t use four-letter words, she says you’re more of a plumber if you use the words that stretch to five, six, seven letters.
Sister Lorne is furious because the Bishop sent a dictionary to Sister Marrow. He said he had been given to understand she was at a loss for words, how to express herself. He wrote something like that. And he recommended she should study the dictionary or look it up when the accurate epithet was called for. We had a meeting about the letter. Sister Lorne has written back to the Bishop that this was an insult. She said that four-letter words were the lifeblood of the market place, the People’s parlance and aphrodisiac, the dynamic and inalienable prerogative of the proletariat. Sister Marrow added a PS. Fuck your balls Bishop, you are a fart and a shit. I posted the letter myself. The Bishop can’t do a thing. Sister Lorne remarked that there is no power in Church or State that can stop the inexorable march of Marxism into the future.
The old Mother Superior is in bed. Such a tragic case.
Kisses to Mum and all.
Margaret
This letter was shown to Magnus the next Sunday, after lunch. He was tweedily dressed, with a deerstalker hat which he kept on in the house in case of cold. ‘Conceivably’, said Magnus, ‘what she says is true. But some of it may be the fruit of a fertile Scottish imagination. The Murchies of old were great cursers, oath-takers and foul-mouthers; it was known of them on both sides of the Border. I could cite the manuscript sources.’
‘I never thought of her account not being genuine,’ said Dan. ‘Greta and I just felt she had got in with a funny lot.’
‘Undoubtedly. But as she is still under shock, she probably sees things double, treble, not as they really are.’
‘Of course this nun-business won’t last,’ said Dan. ‘She’ll be out before long. At the same time, as a picture of what the churches are producing her letter doesn’t seem too exaggerated. A friend of mine in Suffolk — the vicar wears one ear-ring and his boy-friend serves at the altar in a dazzling gold cope lined with black satin. The Bishops can’t do a thing about it, and half the time they’re just as bad.’
‘I don’t like the sound of the old Mother Superior lying sick in the attic,’ said Magnus.
‘Attic?’ said Dan, lifting the letter to scrutinize it. ‘She doesn’t say attic.’
‘It sounds like an attic,’ said Magnus. ‘I hope nothing is going to happen to the old lady.’
‘Oh, God!’ said Dan. ‘Oh, God!’
‘Hot water to drink on week-days and a drop of sherry on Sunday,’ Magnus remarked as Greta came in with whisky, water and two glasses on a tray. ‘One for the road, Magnus,’ said Greta.
‘I just showed Magnus the letter I got from Margaret,’ said Dan. He poured neat whisky for Magnus and one for himself with water. ‘Don’t overdo it,’ Greta said.
‘Magnus has just raised the question whether what Margaret says is true or not,’ said Dan.
‘Oh, I daresay it’s true,’ said Greta. ‘We have a friend in Suffolk — you have no idea the carry-on. The vicar wears an ear-ring and —’
‘Dan just told me,’ said Magnus. ‘All I say is, true or not is neither here nor there. The fact is we don’t know a thing about what Margaret does with her life at night. I don’t, myself, see Margaret getting into bed by ten.’
‘She is very sincere about this venture,’ Greta said.
‘Sincerity is neither here nor there. The fact remains that madness commonly takes the form of religious mania,’ said Magnus, not in the least troubled by any thought that this might apply to himself. ‘In fact,’ he said, ‘Margaret is a Murchie, Covenanting stock who refused to accept the rule of bishops. It is written in the scriptures, Samuel 9: 11, “According to all that my lord the king hath commanded his servant, so shall thy servant do.” Which you should meditate: Margaret might well be under divine orders. And again it is written, Proverbs 26:17, “He that passeth by, and meddleth with strife belonging not to him, is like one that taketh a dog by the ears.” You can work that one out for yourselves.’ Magnus swigged down his whisky and reached for more.
‘No more, Magnus, it’s bad for you,’ said Greta. She looked very wild-eyed.
‘Time to go home, Magnus,’ said Dan, standing up. Magnus heaved himself up, chuckling to himself. He followed Dan, but turned at the sitting-room door and said to Greta, ‘Do you know anything of hypnotism? It’s at the bottom of witchcraft, you know. Remember Orpheus with his lute.’
‘Come on, Magnus,’ said Dan.
‘Yes, goodbye, Magnus,’ said Greta.
Shortly after Margaret’s arrival at the convent the BBC television came to do a profile of the Sisters of Good Hope. The preliminary arrangements had been made some months before between the Mother Superior and the director of the programme, a young woman with long yellow hair and hard blue eyes who wore dark skirts to her ankles and heavy boots. The short-skirted Mother Superior, then in fairly good health, had shown her over the premises and given a rational account of what the Sisters did with their time. Rita Jones, the young director, was introduced to the nine-nun community. She made copious notes in her desk-size filofax. ‘Of course, Miss Jones,’ said the Mother Superior, ‘we are not all cut to measure like the more ancient monastic orders. We are extremely individualistic in our tastes, in our personalities, in our backgrounds, in our views on life and society, including religion and politics.’ Miss Jones took note of this on a blue page of her filofax.
‘There has been talk that your community might be leaving the Church of England. Is that likely to happen?’
‘Oh, it could happen, but not for a good while,’ said Sister Lorne, perceiving that the question was, basically, whether it was worth planning a programme if in fact the community was in a state of flux.
‘Sister Marrow — she’s our Novice Mistress, except we have no novices at present — has not yet finished painting her masterpiece, a mural in our refectory. It will take time, months, years. Sister Marrow is an artist.’
‘Can I see the painting?’
‘Oh, not yet. I’ll have to ask Sister Marrow. But we can promise to have something ready to televise if you decide to come.’ Sister Lorne lowered her voice. ‘Sister Marrow has temperament. Naturally. But she’s very sound basically. Very with it, very politicized like myself.’ She raised her voice again and pronounced, ‘Religion pure and simple is not enough.’
‘About the hospital visiting,’ said Miss Jones. ‘That is your main concern, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it’s our mission,’ said Sister Lorne. ‘We do just that. Whatever criticism may be levelled at us, nobody can say that we don’t visit the sick. It’s a very important work. We are widely appreciated.’
‘Yes, I know. That’s why we thought of a profile.’ Rita Jones evidently smelt a possible good programme in that phrase ‘whatever criticism …
She asked, ‘Can you say something about the criticism?’
‘No,’ said Sister Lorne.
Miss Jones changed tack: ‘Would it be possible for us to take some shots of the members of your community visiting the sick in hospital?’ And on hearing that the Sisters of Good Hope would have no objection, the programme had been agreed upon.
Before she left Miss Jones said, ‘Take care of your chest, Sister Lorne. It sounds like bronchitis.’
So it happened that shortly after Margaret Murchie had joined the community as a novice the BBC duly arrived: Miss Jones, a team of five and their cameras. The first thing they did was to change the lighting arrangements in the recreation room and the refectory, clobbering through the hall with their unnecessarily stout boots. Sister Marrow appeared in the hallway. ‘What the fucking hell do you think you’re doing?’ she enquired of the chief cameraman, who was immediately joined protectively by the other four technicians.
‘Are you a nurse, then?’ asked
one of the men.
‘No, I’m a Novice Mistress. Now, what are you doing with this trail of crap?’ She indicated the photographic gear and a long trail of wiring leading out from the refectory. Just then Margaret appeared through the front door. ‘Sister Murchie, our new novice,’ said Sister Marrow. ‘Meet the team,’ she said to Margaret. ‘They think they’re going to film the fucking refectory but they’ve no bloody right. My work, my unfinished painting is there. Not ready for the crapulous public to take in.’
A voice from the landing above said, ‘Sister Marrow, I did promise …’ It was Sister Lorne leaning over the banisters. Miss Jones was with her. ‘The refectory is an essential,’ she said. The bemused camera team looked up towards Miss Jones for further orders.
‘Follow me,’ said Margaret. ‘I’ll explain the painting to you. It is by far the most important thing in the convent. Sister Marrow is much too modest.’