She mopped her burning forehead. Odd to be perspiring in midwinter in a cold unheated church. Stranger still to be alone on Christmas Eve, least of all in London. The church was empty, silent, seemed very much a haven. It was down a flight of steps, as if hidden in a basement, away from prying eyes: not bright and crowded like the tube, but solemn, shadowy, lit only by low lights and votive candles. She was back with her old friends, the statues of Our Lady, St Thérèse, St Patrick; a small wooden figure of St Genesius, standing on two masks of Comedy and Tragedy and with a notice underneath: ‘Patron Saint of Actors’. She tried to still the questions as she knelt there in her play-clothes. Was her whole life just a sham? Had she been nothing but an actor, taking part in some ancient mystery play? Were her nun’s clothes as spurious as her present fancy dress?
She sat back on the bench, to rest her legs. She had tramped for hours in those clumsy chafing Wellingtons, trying to keep to darker streets where nobody could see her; had stumbled on this Catholic church, which stood beside a restaurant called the ‘Greek Gods Taverna’ and opposite a public house. The church sign was like the pub sign, both swinging up above. A strange place for God’s house, its sooty brick hemmed in by worldly buildings such as betting shops and wine bars, a police van parked outside. The van had startled her, made her dart inside to the shelter of the church. Were they after her already, alerted by the Abbess?
She slumped back on the bench, too weak and sick to kneel. Crazy to trudge round all day, when she’d been told to rest, advised to stay in bed. She’d been taken ill that morning, fainted when she was laying out the vestments, and been rushed to the Infirmary. Could it really have been this morning, just thirteen hours ago? It seemed another age, a blurred and distant age; she a different person now from the quiet committed Sister slowly regaining consciousness in the convent’s cold Infirmary.
‘Don’t stay,’ she’d tried to whisper, as she struggled to sit up. ‘I’m fine now, Sister, really. And I know how rushed you are.’
Sister Infirmarian had two invalids already, both crippled over-eighties; had just flurried from the kitchen, where she’d been helping out with all the Christmas cooking.
‘But you’ve got a temperature. And you still look deathly pale.’
She’d murmured an apology, as she sank back on the bed, let Sister take her blood pressure. She’d no right to be ill, especially not today, when there was so much extra work. She was always needed, desperately, in such a small community, which had shrunk to only twelve; several of them elderly, two completely bed-ridden. She was able-bodied, strong, with skills – the sacristan, the vestment-maker, with a powerful singing voice. All the reasons why she couldn’t leave; hadn’t left for years and years, through all the doubts and struggles, when joy had changed to darkness, and superiors and priests kept urging ‘Carry on. Accept it. Pray.’ She’d prayed – prayed to darkness and to silence, prayed without an answer, without any consolation, yet continually assured by their chaplain, Father Martin, that this was just a proof of God’s love. ‘Those He loves He crucifies.’
She was still praying in the Infirmary when Sister Infirmarian at last went down to chapel, leaving her to rest. She didn’t rest; staggered to her feet instead, removed the small white envelope from the pocket in her habit. A kindly local farmer had left a £20 donation, his annual Christmas offering to the convent. Twenty pounds in cash. The extern Sister had passed it through to her, to entrust to Reverend Mother. She was shaking as she crept up to the attic, the money in her hand. She couldn’t steal, couldn’t even think of it. If she rested for an hour or so, she would be strong enough to continue with her duties, be in choir for Compline. She rummaged through the play-clothes, heard rustlings in the attic – a mouse, a squirrel? – smelt mould and pigeon droppings. Of course she wasn’t leaving; simply checking through the clothes in time for the next play. Except they never acted plays, not now. The community was far too small, too old for dressing up. No new recruits in five whole years. A struggle even to run the place, keep the huge house clean, weed and tend the garden. She was strong enough and young enough to hoe and dig and plant in her spare time.
She didn’t feel at all young, but as if she’d lived for aeons, or had withered like some sickly plant kept too long in the dark. Yet she was still only thirty-eighty a child compared with all those nuns who had passed their Golden Jubilee, gone on to their Diamond. She didn’t feel strong either, was often dizzy, nauseous, but those things you ignored. You could still dig with a headache, weed through pain or sickness. Impossible for someone strong to leave. She was feverish, that’s all, hallucinating. Only dreaming that she went out in the freezing cold, couldn’t find her boots, borrowed someone else’s, snatched a dirty anorak from the spidery gardener’s shed; then dashed across the orchard, past the chickens, though the gate. Still dreaming as she panted to the station, caught a train, arrived in teeming London, descended underground, then floated up again, walked and walked until she found this silent sanctuary.
‘Maiden Lane’, the street plaque said, and the church was Corpus Christi, Body of Christ. She struggled to her knees again, tried to feel His presence – failed – despite the seven sanctuary lamps flickering red above the altar. Christ present seven times, and she couldn’t feel a fragment of Him. She must stay till Midnight Mass, remain there on her knees, however ill or faint she felt; beg God for the gift of faith, keep repeating with St Thomas, ‘I believe.’ She had doubted Him before, confessed to Reverend Mother, the new glacial Reverend Mother who had replaced saintly Mother Benedict. It was a sign of mental disturbance, she was told, to doubt one’s Maker, Creator of the world. No one in their right mind doubted God.
She had redoubled all her penances, the fasts, the prayers, the vigils. ‘God is kind in allowing you your Purgatory on earth,’ the chaplain had explained. So her mother had been right about the Purgatory – her mother-in-the-world, who had died alone without a daughter’s comfort. Selfish daughter shrivelling in the dark.
She clutched the bench in panic. Someone had come in. Slow uneven footsteps were closing in behind her. She shut her eyes, drops of perspiration snailing down her back, as a clumsy hand landed on her shoulder. She swung round, saw a nun – a modern nun, in a calf-length navy skirt and short blue veil. She must be still hallucinating, imagining a nun because her thoughts were on the convent.
‘We’re locking up now, dear.’
‘I … beg your pardon?’
‘We’re locking up the church. I’m afraid you’ll have to go.’
‘But Midnight Mass?’ Her voice was just a whisper, hoarse and rusted up.
‘We’re not having it this year. We’ve only got a tiny local congregation. Most of our regulars are office folk and so on, who come here after work, but live out of London. They’ll have all gone off home by now. Public transport stops earlier than usual and British Rail packed up at nine o’clock. Try St Patrick’s, Soho, or St Anselm’s. They’ll have Midnight Mass.’
She swayed slowly to her feet, still clinging to the pew. Their own Order hadn’t modernised – no hair on show, or leg. This nun had thinning greyish hair, thick and swollen ankles. But she was still sacred in her habit, protected by her rosary, defended by her crucifix. The habit kept you safe: sound-proofed, world-proofed, endowing you with dignity and status. How could she have thrown hers off so lightly? The act seemed sacrilegious, almost unbelievable – stripping off the robes she’d worn for over twenty years. Yet she had blanked it out completely. All she could remember was standing semi-naked in the attic, pulling on her play-clothes.
‘You should be careful on your own, you know. There’s a lot of funny types about, and it’s even worse in Soho. A girl was knifed there just last week, and in broad daylight. I’ve got my car outside. I’ll drive you to St Patrick’s, if you like.’
She fought the tears back as she tried to mouth her thanks. Every kindness made her weep.
‘That’s it – mind the step. It’s a bit gloomy down here, isn’t it? I’m Sister Pauline, by the way. What’s your name?’
‘Sister Mary Hila …’ She stopped abruptly, gagging on the ‘a’. That couldn’t be her name – not now. Sister Mary Nothing. Twenty years ago, she had changed her name to Hilary. A man’s name, a fifth-century Bishop’s name: Hilary of Aries, an over-zealous prelate who had quarrelled with the Pope. She hadn’t chosen it; had wanted to be Sister Anne, the mother of Our Lady who was mother to the world. She had never felt much sympathy with Hilary of Aries, an apparently high-handed man, from a rich and noble family in Northern Gaul, who had made a lot of enemies, was even excommunicated at one point in his career. He had been removed from the calendar in 1969, along with better-loved saints, such as Christopher and George. She kept his name and feast-day, but felt somehow disappointed in him; prayed to him only as a duty.
The nun drew both the bolts. ‘I didn’t catch, I’m sorry.’ They were out in the cold again, cold and glare and fear again.
She didn’t answer, couldn’t. She was a nothing with no name. She’d been christened Gloria, because her father was a fan of Gloria Swanson, and had called his crumpled infant daughter, with her bald head and scarlet face, after an exotic femme fatale. The name had been a burden. Swanson was sophisticated, glamorous, every inch a star, with a voluptuous figure, wavy warm-brown hair, whereas she was flat – both sides – with hair so straight and heavy it wouldn’t hold a curl, and a fairish wheaty colour. Swanson wore a different gown each day, all of them sensational, dripping fur and jewels; she wore boring blue school uniform five days a week, a bargain basement grey skirt most weekends. All they had in common was their height – or lack of it – both only five foot tall. At school, they’d laughed at Gloria, shortened it to Gee, but the femme fatale returned again when she entered as a postulant and became Sister Gloria. It sounded so pretentious, as well as inappropriate, but at least no one knew the Swanson connotation. Gloria in Excelsis rather than Gloria from Hollywood. And with names like Seraphina and Agnellus all around her, she was really not conspicuous. Twelve months later, Gloria was dead; reborn as Sister Hilary.
Should she resurrect the Gloria, placate her father who had chosen it himself? She stared down at her clothes. How could she be Gloria in a dirty anorak, with an inch of hair, cropped ragged, and the boots?
‘Er … Hilary,’ she muttered. At least it didn’t sound male. Hilary was either, male or female. She didn’t feel a female, didn’t have the parts required. Her breasts had grown at last, at the advanced age of sixteen, but two years later had been flattened by the stiff and swaddling bodice which went beneath her habit; her newly rounded hips lost in three serge underskirts. For twenty years, she’d been shapeless, breastless, spayed; a sexless neuter in service to her God.
‘Well, happy Christmas, Hilary. My car’s just round the corner.’
Hilary. The nun had christened her. Her new name in the world. It seemed too brief, too crude, without the ‘Sister’; without the holy middle ‘Mary’ to uplift it.
She was nervous in the car. Only the two extern sisters drove – Sister Mark and Sister Bernadette, their link between the convent and the outside world, who ran the errands, answered phone and door bell, and so allowed the other nuns to avoid all contact with secular distractions which might interrupt their life of constant prayer. Only those two Sisters could venture out beyond the convent walls, contend with shops and traffic, handle money. The nuns in the enclosure never left it, save for hospital and dentist, flood or fire. One silent annual car trip to the dentist – an aged lady dentist who practised in a sleepy country town; one brief stay in hospital in her whole long twenty years.
This car was very different from Sister Mark’s genteel aged Humber – smaller, more bad-tempered, as it jerked and whined through traffic lights, neon lights, Christmas lights, and flashing lights on hoardings. She kept her eyes cast down. It was Advent still, and her mind should be on the four Last Things: heaven, hell, death and judgement. She shivered – judgement – couldn’t block the lights out. They were still flickering on her hands, tigering her clothes – lights from theatres, lights from dazzling windows. How did London nuns survive, drive in all that traffic, pray through all that din?
St Patrick’s looked enormous. The nun had parked, walked her to the door. ‘You’re very early, dear. I’m afraid I’ve got to drive to Bath, otherwise I’d stay and keep you company. Don’t trail around – it isn’t safe. Just wait here till the Mass begins. At least it’s nice and warm.’
Hilary faltered in the porch. This church was far too big, too grand; imposing vaulted ceiling arching over rows and rows of pews; pomp and pillars; gold and alabaster; huge statues frowning at her shabby clothes. She glanced at the Pietà, Mary holding Christ’s dead body, her marble face a mask of pain. She searched round for the crib – needed Mary joyful – found it in an alcove at the back. Not as nice as their crib. They had precious ancient figures brought from France a hundred years ago, carved in wood, dressed in silks and velvets, the Mary with real golden hair. These figures were just crudely painted plaster, which seemed cheap and out of place against their background of white marble.
She stared at the hollow in the yellow painted straw. No Christ in the manger, no God in His church. Mary still looked anguished. How could she not, when Bethlehem prefigured Calvary, birth leading on to death? The death of God. She fell onto her knees. No one in their right mind doubted the good God. Good God? Who let people jump from platforms, left broken bodies on the line, tiny babies screaming in the ruins?
She turned back to the altar: another dying God. A huge Crucifixion hung above the tabernacle, Christ’s limbs starkly white against the rich gold of the frame.
‘I believe.’
‘Take this, all of you, and eat. This is my body.’
All heads in the church bowed low, as the priest recited the words of consecration; then held up the host – Christ’s Body.
She couldn’t eat it, couldn’t receive Christ’s Body, not in mortal sin. It was a mortal sin to leave one’s convent, break one’s solemn vows. The punishment was excommunication: exclusion from Communion and community, from the communion of believers in this world, and from the Communion of Saints in the next. It was an even graver sin to doubt God’s goodness. If His world were less than perfect, then man’s own free will had spoilt it. Free will in a baby who had perished in an earthquake? She tried to quash the thought, joined in with the prayers again, the eucharistic prayers. No unison in this church. Men’s voices boomed, children’s shrilled and wavered, everybody gabbling out of time. She had forgotten how distracting a congregation was – all those startling clothes and colours, coughs and fidgets, infants wailing, people dropping Mass-cards. Back in Brignor, the extern chapel was separate from their own, and set behind it; closed off with a grille. They rarely saw the villagers, and the few who came were always quiet and prayerful. Families and babies went to St Augustine’s in the town. So many here were foreigners – black hair, dusky faces. Yet she herself felt more foreign than them all: someone who had strayed into an alien land and didn’t know the rules or speak the language.
The priest was speaking now again, as he prepared to distribute the Communion. ‘Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.’
God couldn’t heal her, wouldn’t say the word. She had sinned too gravely this time. She had never missed Communion before, had received it every day from the age of seventeen, and twice a week before that, since her First Communion at seven and a half. That had been traumatic. They had been strictly instructed not to touch the host. You didn’t touch Christ’s body unless you were a priest. And they were not to leave the altar rails until they’d swallowed it right down. The problem was she couldn’t get it down. It seemed to block her throat, stick just above her windpipe. She’d coughed, panicked, stared blindly round at the throng of nuns and parents just behind. No one helped, or told her what to do. She was alone at the altar rails, which was also forbidden; the priest tutting at her, angry, motioning her to go. She touched the host with just one finger, managed to dislodge it.
Her cheeks were flaming as she slunk back to her pew. She had poked God’s body with an unconsecrated finger, a finger used for dipping into sherbet or licking out the mixing bowl, a finger which had wiped her bottom earlier that morning. That was sin, grave sin. Which meant her First Communion was blighted, her frilled white dress and rose-wreath just a sham. She bowed her head as the nuns had taught her, hid it in her hands, felt hot and shameful tears splashing on the wood.
She wiped her eyes. The blue school nuns in their huge starched wimples, their elaborate fussy pie-frills, had changed into the sombre nuns of Brignor, kneeling in their dusty black for solemn Midnight Mass. She saw her choir stall empty, fought a sudden wave of shock. She hadn’t told them where she was. They would be sick with worry, frantic, searching every niche for her, every inch of ground, even more alarmed for knowing she was ill and faint already. She must be gravely ill if she could forget a thing like that, wreck their peaceful Christmas through her thoughtlessness. Yet she hadn’t meant to leave, had simply gone out for some air, sleepwalked in a fever. Sleepwalkers didn’t plan, leave notes explaining where they were. She would have to phone immediately, tell them she was safe.
She struggled to the door, stood shivering just outside, looking out at neat black railings, bare but graceful trees. ‘Soho Square’, the plaque said. She recognised the name. That nun had mentioned Soho, warned her to beware of it. Yet the square looked safe enough, with its stylish buildings, quiet deserted streets.
She broke into a run. The nuns’ Mass would be ending. They would be filing now, in silence, to the refectory, for tea and one plain biscuit, before returning to the Chapel. If she didn’t catch them in that one short break, they’d be back in choir all night, till six a. m.
She dodged a crowd of party-goers in paper hats and evening dress, turned another corner. The hushed dark square had changed into a maze of narrow streets, throbbing with the lights from lurid bars. She crossed the road, skirted round a crate of mouldy cauliflowers, a box of black bananas rotting in their skins; turned right again, then left; was suddenly confronted by a blaze of spinning signs: ‘PEEPSHOW’, ‘BED-SHOW’, ‘SAUNA’, ‘STRIPTEASE’. She stopped in shock. She could see two nuns – nuns in veils and wimples, but wearing black suspenders, seamed black fishnet stockings, and brandishing black whips. She backed away, disorientated, remembering stories of medieval saints who had seen such things, but only in their minds – peepshows staged by Satan, to wreck and taunt their faith. She glanced back at the window. Those nuns weren’t in her mind. They were paper nuns, painted nuns, pouting in a frieze of flashing lights; crucifixes dangling between huge naked fleshy breasts.
She turned and fled, her heavy boots thrumming on the pavement, until she found a phone box, collapsed in it, still shaking. A row of small white cards were stuck up on the wall. ‘Heaven or hell. Yasmin offers both. Phone 736 …’ ‘Madame requires submissive subjects …’ ‘Call Cherry, just eighteen, ripe, juicy and ready for picking.’ She shut her eyes. She could see the stern black letters above her cell: ‘Contempt For The World.’ Each cell had its painted sign, its virtue – a custom brought from France, like so much in their Order. She had changed her cell so often, but, every time, she tried to live the virtue which came with it – Obedience, Holy Indifference, and these last two months, ‘Contempt For The World’ – as if God had picked the words to warn her and restrain her.
She lifted the receiver, suddenly swung round. She could hear a noise outside. A man was urinating, right against the phone box; a coarse-faced, drunken man, gnawing on a dirty piece of pizza, as he stood there with his legs splayed. She watched in horror as he dragged his trousers back, then lurched off down the street, colliding with another man who seemed to wrestle with him.
These were the souls she had prayed for in the chapel, these dirty vulgar drunks, their trousers tied with string and streaked with faeces; not souls, but bodies: dirty stinking bodies with gummy eyes, whisky breath. She had often seen them in her mind, as she knelt there in her choir stall, but seen them still as souls – poor perhaps, drunk perhaps, but clean poor and noble drunk. How stupidly naive she’d been, how sheltered. Christ had died to save these men, and she’d shrunk in sheer distaste at her first glimpse of a sinner.
‘Christ is born,’ she whispered; saw Him dying in the manger, a baby crowned with thorns.
The Mass was over, the last stragglers shuffling out. She crept back inside the church, tried to wrap herself in smells – candle wax and incense, damp coats, hot feet, ripe flowers. The congregation had left their smell behind – the good odour of good Catholics who believed in God, who had fed on Bread and Wine, not dirty pizza, urine. She was totally alone. The empty church seemed to echo all around her: heavy laboured breathing, whispered accusations, yet no one there except the ghostly watching statues. She had to pray. It didn’t matter what she felt, believed. St Anthony had said that no man was really praying if he knew what God was, or what he was himself. The void, the mystery, was simply part of prayer. She looked back at the crib. The Christ was born now, a plump and solid bundle in a dirty plaster nappy.
She limped towards the figures, swaying, almost falling, as a sudden wave of dizziness seemed to make the church dissolve. All the flashing lights and flickering signs had come in from the street and were whirling in her head. Slowly, she bent over, picked up the plaster baby, held Him very awkwardly, His pudgy feet jabbing in her side. She wasn’t used to babies, had vowed her womb to God. ‘Rejoice, thou barren, that bearest not, for many are the children of the desolate, more than of her that hath a husband.’ ‘Rejoice,’ she repeated silently, tears sliding down her cheeks, splashing on the infant’s face, so that He was weeping, too. She ought to rest, sit down. The hammering in her head had merged now with the throbbing in her feet; the double pain dulling thought and will. The baby felt too heavy, His naked body dragging down her arms. She wasn’t a good mother, was letting Him get cold – burning hot herself, but her baby stiff and chilly like a corpse. She returned Him to His coffin, sank back on her knees. Must pray – not rest – pray for souls. She was Mother to all souls.
The noises in her head had changed, sounded now like footsteps, heavy booming footsteps tramping closer, closer. She mustn’t listen, must block out all distractions, keep her mind on God; pray in sickness, darkness, as Father Martin urged. She closed her eyes, bowed low.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you in your prayers, my dear, but it’s getting on for two o’clock, so I’ll have to lock the church.’
She glanced up at the shifting blur of black. A larger, kinder priest than Father Martin, but without a clear-cut outline; maybe two of him, or three.
‘It’s time you got back home now. You have a home, do you?’
She tried to think through the fog and swirl of images, the stab of hurting lights. Oxford Circus. N14. ‘My aunt,’ she said. ‘Aunt Eva.’
‘You live with her?’
She shook her head. Words seemed very difficult.
‘She’s meeting you from Mass?’
‘Yes,’ she said, uncertainly; could hear Aunt Eva’s pounding feet rushing down the platform, as time hurtled back to childhood and she met her from the train; saw the clashing swirl of colours as Eva’s emerald raincoat embraced her blue school mac.
‘Well, if you could wait outside … All right? If there’s any problem and she doesn’t show up, I’ll get Father John to sort it out. Okay?’
Priests didn’t say ‘okay’. He was someone in the play. The one with the deep voice. St Joseph, or an innkeeper. ‘No room at the inn. I’m sorry, we’re full up.’
‘Sure you’ll be all right, dear?’
The innkeepers were surly, didn’t call you ‘dear’. He must have got his lines wrong. She was forgetting hers, as well. Yet she’d been given the main part – Mary, God’s own Mother, trudging into Bethlehem. Would she ever get there, when she felt so weak and faint, or simply fall, lie useless in the road? Mary hadn’t fainted. Mary always smiled and struggled on.
‘You’re not ill or something, are you? I mean, if you need a doctor, I can always …’
She shook her head, made one last desperate effort, gripped the bench in front of her, used its strength to haul her to her feet; then smiled at him, as Mary would, as she staggered to the door.