God's Callgirl (26 page)

The cramps got worse and I paced up and down the deserted passageways and empty rooms for hours, while everybody else was in chapel. All of a sudden an anxious and angry infirmarian appeared. The note had finally reached her after two whole days and she couldn’t believe that I hadn’t simply said something to her. We went into a nearby room, where she grilled me about the symptoms, then asked me to wait. Back she came with Mother Clare, eyes large with consternation, and the upshot was that I was sent away immediately to isolation in the The Knoll.

The Knoll served as a guesthouse every so often, but most of the time it was empty. It was the furthest building from the main house, a red-brick structure with four floors and a winding staircase. It looked like one of those tall, skinny buildings you see in ghost stories; each floor dwindled in size, so that the little room at the top held only three beds. I was to sleep in that top room, which was more like an attic and had no curtains. There was no light—the globe had blown a long time ago and nobody had bothered to replace it. At night it was hardly dark, though. The North Foreland lighthouse swept its invasive beam right through the room at regular intervals.

I was the only soul in this lonely place. The doors on the bottom floor were always kept locked. A novice left a tray of food at the back door for me three times a day and sometimes some clean underwear. The infirmarian came once to ask me for a stool sample, then ordered samples to be collected by a silent nun every few days. I was never told of the results, but written messages arrived intermittently under the teacup on the food tray, such as: ‘Clean all the stairs today, Sister’; then, perhaps the next day: ‘Do nothing today’; or ‘Keep to your bed today’; and once a note from Mother Mary John asking me if I needed any books. At least it indicated that she knew where I was and hadn’t forgotten me. I had the life of the foundress with me, a biography of Saint Theresa of Avila and the rule book. I had no idea what other book to ask for when given a choice. It never occurred to me to ask for a novel. In the end, I asked for a book on the lives of the saints.

My mind had shut down more than ever. I had no means of knowing when my isolation would end and I adjusted myself to the possibility of a long haul. I kept on cleaning the rooms and the stairs, collected my food from the back door, usually ate it cold, read, and meditated a lot on what I read. I really wanted to understand the rules and the importance of the life of Madame de Bonnault d’Hoüet. At night, I would undress between sweeps of the lighthouse and begin my solitary night’s sleep.

The weeks passed as if in a dream. The diarrhoea had long since disappeared, but I felt terribly weak. I was so hungry! I could have eaten at least three times the amount of food left for me at the door.

I felt that the only person who had any shred of belief in my sincerity was me. It was a painful feeling, but I coped by submitting to everything that happened as the Will of God.
I didn’t rave, I never complained, never even checked the door to see if I could get out or run away. I was unquestionably, and frighteningly, obedient. I may even have dared the General to kill me, or at least do her worst. It would have made no difference to my equanimity.

The day came when I was told to return to the community. I was a wraith who had to leave her homeland of shadows, her ghostly house, to go back to the land of the living. The world had changed. Everything was too bright! And everything moved so fast! Mother Mary John explained to me that I had been suspected of a transmittable disease but that the danger had passed now. I could tell from the calendar that I had been in isolation for six weeks.

My body had become frightfully thin; my wrists were transparent; there was nothing but skin on the bones. I longed for FAT! At breakfast the next morning, which must have been a Sunday because there was bacon, I sent my plate back for more and whispered for ‘the juice, please’. The message didn’t get through, but I could have licked the tray clean, I was so hungry for grease.

Recreation time arrived. It was such music to my ears to hear voices! I joined in whenever I could, quipping, laughing, and was surprised to hear Mother Mary John, who was presiding, ask me to speak up more. She was actually providing a space for me to do some talking! The gesture touched me deeply.

I was now even more conditioned to endurance, and to doing any silly thing for the sake of obedience. I rather expected the bizarre to be normal. I heard silly orders even when they were not so, and regularly misunderstood directives. I walked in big rubber boots every time I went outside that wet spring, and took myself around the front of the house when the express directive was to not do
that. I had lost my sense of judgment and was blithely unperturbed about it.

I was finally summoned by Mother Mary John for a talk. We sat in the cushioned alcove of the recreation room. She looked at me over her glasses and I could see from her brown eyes that she wasn’t angry, but slightly perturbed.

‘I have to give a report soon on all the tertiary novices,’ she began. ‘What shall I say to Reverend Mother General about you? That you are stupid?’

She wasn’t being unkind, I could feel it. She was merely chiding me, inviting me to save myself. I could feel laughter growing inside me, helplessly. It came from the understanding that here was someone who cared for me; she was a reminder that I was loved by God and everything was all right. A wave of relaxation swept through me which made me reckless.

‘Yes! All right! Do!’ I laughed, then smothered my laugh and said, ‘Oh no! Please don’t tell her that!’, but couldn’t stop myself from laughing. ‘Oh dear!’ I said, in fits now, ‘I might be going mad!’

Then I told her what was absolutely true at the time: ‘I don’t care what the General thinks of me!’, and laughed some more. My superior looked at me quizzically, compassionately, even humorously for a little while, then the twinkle in her eyes died and she turned away. No doubt she knew that this sort of attitude wouldn’t get me far. I was both sane and insane at the same time. I could feel fresh, irrepressible humour bubbling up in me like a freedom, and recklessness like a death warrant.

I had no idea that the die had already been cast. It was made to look as though I wasn’t professionally fit enough to return to Australia and be put to work there, but the fact was that because I held a Dutch passport, I was a foreigner
as far as Australia was concerned. After having been away for more than four years I would have to seek re-entry as a migrant. Since I wasn’t aware of these issues—no one told me—this gave the General the opportunity to do her ghastly ego-destroying number on me.

I was called in to see her. Her great eyes watched me with contempt as I knelt nervously in front of her. I noticed with fascination that they were grey and watery, and amused at my expense. If I didn’t know better, I might have read compassion there; but those eyes were so deceptive that they fooled everyone, even the people closest to her.

‘You will not be going back to Australia.’ The words came like a prison sentence. ‘We can’t palm you off the way you are,’ and she brushed the palm of one wrinkly hand with the other as she spoke. ‘You will go to Brussels instead, where you will be trained by Mother Josephine.’

I bit my lip and fought back the tears. The other Australians were due to sail home in a month. I would miss them, and miss the fun of the informality on board ship. Besides, Mother Josephine’s name brought desolation to my heart; she was an Irish woman full of energetic ambition, clever and determined.

When the ivy on the walls started to change colour, my Australian companions left Broadstairs for their homeland. The lucky five had just been through an English summer and were going home to an Australian one. They would begin teaching in the new term. Goodbyes were swift and subdued. Neither they nor I could fathom the exact reasons why I was being left behind, nor for how long. It wasn’t for any of us to ask any questions.

WINTER OF BAD DREAMS

A FORLORN FERRY
took us from Dover to Calais; then my new Reverend Mother and I boarded a grey, dirty train to take us to Brussels. We travelled in silence all the way, which seemed oddly rude because Mother Josephine was the epitome of refinement. Maybe she was just very deep in thought.

Mother Josephine was heading back to a pretty serious job. Her convent in Brussels was a huge responsibility; it would need every bit of her phenomenal wit, courage and tenacity to keep it on an even keel.

The Reverend Mother was not an ordinary woman. She was about forty when I knew her, a well-made Irish woman with a very pale but beautiful roundish face. In many people pallor would not be attractive, but it somehow suited Mother Josephine very well, bestowing a kind of ethereal beauty to her regular features and giving her a deceptive air of delicacy. Her most distinguishing feature was her full, pink, mobile mouth. Such kissable lips! I was sure that her sacrifice of celibacy was a much bigger one than mine; after all, she could have been a phenomenal social hit! When she opened that mouth of hers, you were likely to be carried away by the magic of her Irish lilt, which stirred vague dreams of Celtic witches, elves and fairies. Glasses worn
over her expressive eyes made them seem even bigger and, to the simpler minds of some of the people she dealt with, intriguingly innocent.

Mother Josephine was definitely not naive, nor delicate. She could have been successful as a politician, had women been active in politics in the 1960s. In Margaret Thatcher’s time, she would easily have topped that lady’s intelligence, strategic flair and verbal dexterity, as well as floored the chamber with the sheer beauty of her feminine Irish charm. Mother Josephine put these skills to use within her own domain of influence, for the sake of the convent’s survival.

Being a natural psychologist, she learned to use people without entirely losing compassion for them.

Belgian women, like the Dutch women I used to know, love to gossip, and many reputations were made or broken in the parlours of the wealthy. It was important for Reverend Mother Josephine to be well-spoken of. The convent’s bank account, on the other hand, owed much of its success or failure to the menfolk.

Montjoie was a convent of huge proportions. It took up an enormous frontage along Avenue Montjoie, while two adjoining properties, Longchamps and Le Chateau, faced onto another road. It took bottomless funds to maintain this ancient, three-storeyed structure. The heating of the enormous complex in winter was granted by the benevolence of one of Brussels’ rich and famous. The oil bill must have been fabulously high, as the interior was kept at a constant twenty degrees on all three floors throughout winter. The convent school took in about nine hundred boarders and many day pupils as well. Everything in the boarders’ quarters was supersized: the dormitories, the dining room, the classrooms, corridors, even the chapel. The ceilings were so high that the windows were set above head height, to be in proportion.

The chapel on the second floor was a Gothic gem. It held about a thousand people, very nearly losing the intimacy of a chapel. Wooden beams arched from end to end, focusing attention on an impressive raised and marbled sanctuary. There were wooden carvings throughout and the communion rails were of carved wood and marble. The chapel statues were magnificent; the Virgin Mary had the sweetest, pale marble face I have ever come across. She resembled Mother Josephine somehow. It was a most beautiful chapel, but it echoed to the sound of footsteps. I so missed the intimate immediacy of the tiny stone chapel at Broadstairs.

I was introduced to everyone during talking time in the refectory, and was placed next to the lay sisters in accordance with my lowly status. After all, I had not done any teaching work at all and had no ‘image’ as yet. I didn’t want one, for that matter, but that attitude was a mistake: people who were able to prove themselves as image-makers were useful and highly respected within the system of things. I felt completely inadequate when it came to image games. All I could do was hope to convince everyone of my good intentions and prove my as yet untested abilities as a teacher.

The long refectory tables were arranged in a U-shape, with one at the head and two down each side. This way we were all in sight of each other and it was easy for the servers to do their jobs. The room itself was ancient, dark and creaky-floored, as all of them were. Each morning the reading from the
Imitation of Christ
was read out by a volunteer, who offered on the spur of the moment—a surprising arrangement in such a militarised institution. I was keen to practise my French and show it off, so I became a frequent volunteer. I loved the musical sound of the
French language. It was a rare joy, as a foreigner, to listen to others speak it in this bilingual city, even if rules usually prevented me from joining in.

MONTJOIE CONVENT WAS
embarking on a daring new venture: to provide education for the young children of rich American businessmen. American families did not want to expose their children to the deep and sometimes violent Belgian prejudice aimed against them
(Americans are upstart foreigners who think they know better than we do, and they’re robbing us of our business opportunities).
By sending their children to a specially established school the Americans deepened the social rift, and Mother Josephine had to field the annoyance of her Belgian benefactors. She did this with her usual grace and diplomacy.

St John’s, as it was called, catered for all the primary school grades, but from its inception was short of space. I was given the task of teaching crafts to each class. There was nowhere to store the craft materials and the children’s work, except in places already occupied by things like books, so they very often ended up on the floor.

Mother Josephine’s ambition was reflected in her demands that the children do well; especially in craft. After all, hand-made objects were something concrete. A five year old’s coordination isn’t as advanced as that of a nine year old, but why not push them to expand their limits? The children became fodder for the convent’s image machine, and I was there to be tested anyway, so it didn’t matter how impossible the task.