When Mother Sarah Grace told me I was to spend my first six weeks at the Mother House digging up the rhododendrons I was a bit perplexed. The Mother House had a nursing home attached to it, and I had presumed that because I had told them I wanted to become a nurse, I would start off working there. However it seemed she thought I would be better employed digging up some of the roots of the huge bushes that lined the driveway. I only hoped my newly mended ankle would be up to it.
My one consolation was that my digging companion was to be Sister Rachel. I had observed Sister Rachel from afar. She looked like fun. This impression was confirmed one night when, waiting outside the bathroom for my turn for a bath, I heard peals of laughter coming from inside. Within minutes Mother Sarah Grace was hurrying down the corridor and banging on the door.
‘Sister Rachel, Sister Rachel, open this door immediately! Who have you got in there?’
The laughing stopped. There was silence.
‘Sister Rachel, I demand that you open the door. Now!’
There was the sound of dripping water and padding feet. The lock turned and the door opened a crack to reveal a dripping-wet Sister Rachel, wrapped in a towel and holding a book.
‘I’m sorry, Mother, but it’s that Lent book you gave us to read. Chapter Two is so hilarious.’
(It was quite amusing, but I thought hilarious was pushing it a bit.)
The Reverend Mother looked stunned.
‘Really, Sister Rachel! I do not think the bath is an appropriate place to contemplate a spiritual text.’
And with that our Reverend Mother turned on her heels and left. Sister Rachel winked at me, closed the door and locked it again.
So we started digging. Six hours a day. It was dirty, hard work and it wasn’t long before the old question was popping out of my mouth.
‘But why? Why are we doing this? Why are we spending our time digging up perfectly good bushes?’
‘Ours is not to question, Catherine Mary,’ Sister Rachel said wryly.
‘But this is ridiculous. There’s a nursing home up there filled with people whom we could really help.’
‘Obedience, Catherine Mary, obedience. This is where we are required to start doing things that are asked of us with a gracious spirit, even if we can’t see a logical reason behind it. These are the first steps towards giving ourselves to God and one another.’
I looked at her to see if she was being serious. She looked like she was. Sister Rachel continued.
‘Yes, I think you may find obedience the most challenging of the three vows. It certainly has been in my experience anyway.’
‘Oh.’ I was a little surprised.
‘Have you ever heard the stories about how the Benedictines used to ask their novices to water twigs?’
‘No.’
‘Well, they did; to teach them obedience over rational thought, I presume; something about releasing the soul from the ego. They might still do it actually.’
I had to stop and think for a moment.
‘Gosh!’ I said, ‘that’s extraordinary. But surely they run the risk of turning us into unthinking children. What about individual choice and responsibility and our own relationship with God?’
‘Catherine Mary, I am going to ask you a question and I want you to think hard before you answer it.’
I nodded.
‘If you are looking for the truth, what do you think you have to have above all else?’
I thought, but in the absence of anything more profound I said, ‘An absolute determination to find it?’
She shook her head.
‘No. To find truth you have to have the ability and willingness to admit you may be wrong. Truth is based on listening to those around you, this is the only way to grow closer to God.’
That set me thinking, and gradually, as the days went by, I began to wonder whether there was method in the Reverend Mother’s madness. By putting me in such close proximity to Sister Rachel and making us share such an arduous task, we were bonding. Sisters come in all psychological shapes and sizes, but Sister Rachel was a clever choice for me. She was fun, open and genuine. I wanted to know her story and she was happy to tell me, and suddenly the days of hard labour started to fly past.
Sister Rachel had spent the Second World War working in the East End, firstly at the London Hospital in Whitechapel and then at the Mission House in Poplar. Her stories were painted against a background of fear. She told me how when she thought of Whitechapel, she tasted dust.
‘It used to get in my mouth, in my ears, up my nose. It was all the debris from the bombing, I think. I was very lucky I was on my day off the day the hospital was hit. My best friend was a nurse on the same ward and one minute she was tucking up the men in bed and the next minute there was an enormous explosion. She said it was followed by a strange silence. Then a patient said, “Hold on, Sister. Don’t move until I’ve found a light.”
‘He found a torch, she turned round and there was the most enormous hole in the wall. Just a gaping hole, where seconds before there’d been two beds. Imagine. A terrible thing for two of your patients to be there one minute and poof, gone the next!’
She paused, then went on, ‘Actually I had the only cigarette I’ve ever had just a few weeks later during another bombing raid.’
Sister Rachel had a day off and went to visit an old aunt in South London. On her way back she got caught in a bombing raid while on the Tube somewhere around St Paul’s. The packed Tube train stopped at the station and the doors opened. Rachel started to get anxious. She was due back at the Mission House at 10 p.m. If she got out and ran, she might just make it back in time. If she waited for the train service to start again she could be there all night. She was standing next to two rather attractive naval officers. ‘Excuse me, I wonder whether you could be so kind? I really need to get out of here,’ she said. They grinned and picked her up and carried her over the heads of the passengers, out of the train, and pushed passed the wardens, shouting ‘Sorry, emergency!’. The wardens were so stunned they waved them past and suddenly the three of them were standing in the street, with bombs falling all around. ‘We watched as the planes flew low over London and the fires burned around St Paul’s Cathedral. We even shared a cigarette. It was the most destructive and yet the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.’
‘Weren’t you scared?’
‘No, I wasn’t. I knew God had a lot more He wanted me to do.’
I was impressed by Sister Rachel’s quiet faith and yet puzzled by how such a feisty young woman came to find herself tucked away in the cloisters, so one day I asked her about her vocation.
‘I felt God calling me to the Community when I was quite young,’ she said, ‘really, it was all to do with my mother’s death.’
Sister Rachel’s mother had been fragile for as long as she could remember. One day, walking home from visiting her in hospital, Rachel’s father stopped on the corner of their road and said, ‘This is it for your mum. She’s never going to get any better. You’ve got to be brave and face it: Mum is going to die.’
For the next few years, with her father at work, and being an only child, Sister Rachel had to work hard at school as well as nurse her fading mother. The district nurse taught her how to wash her, measure out her medicine and prepare her for injections. It was hard watching her mother get weaker but Rachel’s grief was tempered by the fact that she could help her mother. In those precious last years together, Rachel and her mum grew very close. Then, when Rachel was 13, her mother finally died. Again the wise district nurse helped Rachel by letting her help lay out her mother’s body. Rachel helped wash and dress her. It was an experience that left a deep impression on her.
That summer she was sent to stay with her penfriend in Sweden. When Rachel got back, her father greeted her with the news that he had remarried. For Rachel, this marriage came completely out of the blue and seemed so soon after her mother’s death. Indeed, she felt she was no longer welcome in her own home.
Touched by her plight, Rachel’s head teacher paid a visit to the local hospital and managed to get Rachel accepted to train as a cadet nurse much earlier than usual. It was while she was training that she found herself working alongside a woman who regularly visited the Community and she took Rachel first to church and eventually to visit the Mother House.
‘From the moment I arrived, I knew I had found my new home, I had found the right place.’
Sister Rachel smiled at me.
‘I hope it will come to feel that way for you too, Katie.’
I was touched. I hadn’t heard my Christian name spoken for a long time and I didn’t know quite what to do with myself. So I dug just a little bit harder at the rhododendron roots and watched my tears fall into the hole.
At the end of the six weeks I was called back to Mother Sarah Grace’s office.
‘Catherine Mary, I have decided it is time you were introduced to the nursing home.’
I was delighted. Ever since the day I helped Sister Dorothy make Old Sue comfortable, I had thought I would like to join the nursing profession in some capacity (while not being convinced about the vision of myself as a Sister).
The nursing home was in a house further up the drive. There were three floors, with a kitchen in the basement, a long refectory, an office and a communal visiting room on the ground floor. Upstairs there were two wards and then on the top floor there were some private rooms. We had about 30 patients. They were mainly elderly people who needed nursing care but did not have much money, but there were also a few younger patients who needed respite care, and then a few who were chronically or terminally ill. The Community wanted to provide good-quality care for people who otherwise could not have afforded it.
The first thing that struck me was how hard the work was. The hours were long – we started with early prayers at 6 a.m., and then had a Communion followed by breakfast. The day shift at the nursing home lasted from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., with a couple of hours off duty either in the morning or the afternoon. A period of night duty would involve 14 nights in a row working from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. There was, though, some recognition that this was tough. After my first night shift, I was enormously touched to find a full kettle and some biscuits left outside my room. Mother Sarah Grace had put them out for me when she got up. Unlike most of the others, I’d had no nursing training and so I was given the most basic jobs – cleaning the equipment, making the beds, washing the commodes. After six weeks on commode duty, Mother Sarah Grace called me into her study.
‘Catherine Mary, I know you have been working very hard on the commodes. It’s time to give you something different … from now on you will be in charge of washing the dentures.’
I really didn’t find this an improvement. In fact it took me a while to get used to the intimacy of nursing. We had a very high standard of care towards our patients. Much of my time was spent clipping nails, brushing hair and cleaning teeth. Our incontinent patients were kept scrupulously clean. We gave bed baths every day. All the patients had little bells beside their beds that we answered immediately. One old patient, an old Sister of St John’s, just used to tap her wedding ring on the metal side of her bed to get attention; the sound lives with me to this day. Then there was Miss Wittering. She was a sweet old lady who loved her cups of tea, but she always spoke in code. The novice’s habits at that time were bright blue and she used to beckon me over and whisper in my ear, ‘Hyacinth, darling.’
I was confused until one day I realised that this was her way of asking for the bedpan. She always used to wake up in the middle of the night and ring her bell and shout ‘Hyacinth, darling’, disturbing all the rest of the patients. I worked out that I could stop her from waking up the rest of the ward by creeping over and whispering in her ear, ‘I’m going to make a cup of tea, Miss Wittering, would you like one?’ She’d be instantly awake and nod vigorously. ‘I’ll bring you a hyacinth first, shall I?’ Again there would be a vigorous nod. In this way the other patients got a good night’s sleep.
Miss Wittering was also very useful because of her crossword skills. Sister Joan was in charge of the night wards at the time. She was a lovely gentle soul, but definitely a creature of habit. One of our patients had worked for the News of the World and was sent a complimentary copy every Sunday. Once he’d read it, the newspaper would be laid on the floor downstairs to stop people slipping. Sister Joan could be seen peering down at the copy, with her hands on her hips, tutting and giggling, totally engrossed. She absolutely refused to do the rounds until she’d had three cups of tea and finished the crossword. This was fine if the crossword was easy, but sometimes she got stuck and sometimes I got stuck too; and then we all got behind, which wasn’t good, not least because the patients were late having their medicines. All was resolved when I realised I could take Miss Wittering a cup of tea and ask to have a look at her paper. She’d invariably have completed the crossword and I could go back to Sister Joan and miraculously suggest the answers.
‘My child, you are a genius!’ Sister Joan would chuckle.
Working in the home I also saw a different side to our Reverend Mother. There was a woman in one of the top rooms whom I dreaded visiting. Mrs Gidding made me nervous; the flesh was weak but the spirit still fearsome. She watched me closely, and of course the more she watched, the more nervous I became, and the more I fumbled about. One day I was struggling with her bed, when Mother Sarah Grace walked in and said, ‘Hello, Mother, and how are you feeling today?’
‘Well, it took you long enough to come and ask,’ Mrs Gidding replied.
I looked up, confused. Had I imagined it or had she just called her ‘Mother’?
Mother Sarah Grace turned to me and said, ‘Catherine Mary, have you been introduced to my mother?’
‘Yes. Yes, I have, Reverend Mother.’
I felt myself blushing and tried to make myself invisible as the conversation continued.
‘And why didn’t you come and see me last night?’ Mrs Giddings demanded.
‘I was in London visiting the Mission House and the train got back late.’
‘Well, what makes you think I want to see you now? I don’t. Go away.’
Mother Sarah Grace bowed her head and with an air of resignation, rolled her eyes at me and walked out. This strong, disciplined, authoritative woman could also be a chastened, humble daughter.
As I got to know the patients, and overcame my inhibitions, I began to really enjoy the work. There seemed to be something special about caring for these people who, at the end of their lives, were vulnerable. It felt like God’s work and I felt a humility and a wave of love for them – they had been somebody’s child, survived wars, and had lived long and full lives. I felt they should be treated with respect.
There were some heartbreaking moments too. A few of our patients were younger and were staying with us because they were chronically ill. Cathy was in her thirties and crippled with multiple sclerosis. A ‘healing’ woman used to visit her and eventually persuaded her that she should go to a special healing service in a church close by. As the day approached Cathy got very excited. She kept talking about what she was going to do once she had been healed. I was concerned that she was putting too much faith on the service working a miracle. It’s not that I thought that the service couldn’t work or that miracles don’t sometimes happen, but I believe they don’t always happen. It’s an important distinction and I felt the healer was raising Cathy’s hopes too high. Anyway, the day arrived and she went off in a special ambulance in great spirits. We all went out to wave her goodbye and wish her luck. But when she arrived back in the evening, she was still in her wheelchair. The healer, who was pushing her, was bright and breezy but I didn’t like the look on Cathy’s face.
‘I’ve told Cathy that these things can take time. All you need is faith, isn’t that right, Sister?’ the healer said.
I didn’t know what to reply. I felt as if I had been put on the spot and if I agreed and Cathy didn’t get better she’d think that it was because she didn’t have enough faith. I just didn’t know whether God worked in that way or, indeed, whether anyone had the right to claim that was the way God worked. So although Cathy was looking up at me imploringly, I felt I had to be honest.
‘I’m just at the beginning of my journey towards God,’ I said. ‘I believe he does indeed move in mysterious ways and I cannot claim to know how miracles work and indeed I’m not sure I will ever be able to claim that I do. But I hope with all my heart that you improve and find a greater peace, Cathy.’
Cathy looked crestfallen and that day marked the start of a rapid decline in her health. It was as if she gave up hope and lost the will to live. She died just a year later. It upset all of us greatly and was terrible to witness. No matter how much I know that if there was a mistake anywhere it was more likely to do with the faith invested in the healing service, I still couldn’t help but blame myself a little for Cathy’s decline.
There was also a man in his early sixties who had multiple sclerosis and was paralysed from the neck down. He had the mind of a grown man in the body of a baby; we changed his nappy, fed him with a spoon and wiped his nose. He had fixed ideas how he wanted everything done, and however way I did it, it was never to his satisfaction. As I leaned over him I had to brace myself for a running barrage of criticism. Sometimes I walked off the ward in tears. After a particularly difficult day I was walking back to the Mother House, trying to hide my tears, when I was spotted by Sister Rachel. She saw my distress and I had to explain. She paused for a minute, then took my arm and, walking me slowly back to the Mother House, told me a story.
‘At the time of the Second World War, Whitechapel had a large Jewish community and the London Hospital had a special Jewish ward. We even had a kosher kitchen. There was a young rabbi in the ward who was dying from cancer. In those days there was no treatment, just some pain relief given every four hours that involved a lot of morphine. One night I was on duty and the rabbi kept asking for a bedpan. In those days we didn’t just hand them the pan and leave them to do the job. We had to silently move the screens around their bed to give them privacy, and then we had to hold the pan for them and clean them up afterwards. Poor man! He had to ask me for the pan over and over again. But just as morning came and I went to him one last time, as I knelt at his bedside, he put his hands on my head and said, “Dear Sister, I have asked you to come how many times tonight? And every time you have come with a smile. Bless you, my child.”
‘A few weeks later he was dead, but I realised how important the way you behave is, to come with a smile, to have compassion. This is the work, the test, our vocation. This is truly what God is asking from us.’
She put her arm around me and reached into the pocket of her habit.
‘Here, have a humbug,’ she said and handed me a sweet. That afternoon I felt her compassion towards me too.
Later on that month my difficult patient went on his annual pilgrimage to Lourdes. A specially prepared ambulance, known as the ‘jumbulance’ arrived to drive him all the way through France. When he came back he seemed much better, at peace with himself. I realised it was his own terrible inner demons that had been attacking me and I was glad that God had given me the inner strength to carry on nursing him.
In my novitiate classes, learning about the history of the Community, I realised that this question of obedience is a constant tension in the religious life. When is God calling us to obey and when is He calling on us to stand firm? It is a question of judgement and I was struck that when I was taught about the early history of the Community how Mother Superiors themselves could be rather disobedient. Indeed, Sister Mary Jones was anything but obedient. Right from the start she objected to the interference of the male Master, the Reverend Gipps. As happens in many families, Mother kept trying to overrule Father and vice versa, but unlike in a real family, there was a governing body that both could run to in order to adjudicate. Mary Jones found that she couldn’t dismiss the nurses whom she felt were proving unsuitable, without Reverend Gipps’s permission. Anyone whom she tried to ‘let go’, Reverend Gipps supported.
She complained that his pressure to employ more probationers had led them to become disobedient. The Reverend claimed that, on the contrary, the probationers were unruly because Mary Jones was ‘unjust and unmerciful’, and treated them as overgrown children. He said that Mary Jones didn’t allow him to investigate whether the nurse was in the right or wrong. He thought that she had caused the disciplinary problems by setting such a bad example herself. He said that the Mother Superior must always defer to the Master, ‘where the law of nature places him, over and not under a female officer’. Gipps insisted that any alteration in the rules was ‘a course of policy which must terminate in substituting a woman for a man in the government of a house: a result of which, I believe, would speedily leave no house to be governed’.
Mary Jones was having none of this. She threatened to resign unless Gipps was replaced and Gipps threatened to resign unless Jones was replaced. Mary Jones responded by asking the governing council to abolish the post of Master and appoint her as the ultimate authority in the Community. She was so indispensible and capable that the Board of Governors agreed not only to remove the troublesome Reverend Gipps, but also gave her a seat on the governing board. This was perhaps the first time that a woman had managed to sit on such a committee with the same authority as men.
However, a couple of years later Sister Mary stretched her lack of obedience too far when she asked that the Sisters be allowed to appoint a chaplain of their own choosing. In reality Mary Jones and many of her Sisters were longing to become a more strictly and overtly religious order, closer to their Catholic counterparts. But in the 1860s anti-Catholic feeling was still very strong. The Bishop agreed to her request as long as the chaplain did not hear Confession and the Sisters did not take the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Sister Mary Jones insisted that these ministrations would be in no way compulsory and only for those Sisters who wanted them. She wrote: ‘I am an old woman now and I have seen this longing for the religious life spreading widely and deeply among the daughters of our beloved church.’
Her best friend, Florence Nightingale, waded in, ‘Tell them what you want is not a Committee of inquisition but a simple chaplain. Pricipios Obsta [sic] – oppose any such ecclesiastic domination.’
But the new Bishop of London would not allow it and wrote to Mary Jones: ‘You must be ready to sacrifice your own individual tastes and wishes when those placed over you in the Lord advise you should make the best of the circumstances in which you find yourselves.’
It was not the response that Sister Mary Jones was looking for and she resigned, stating, ‘We must demand the right to regulate our own inner life’.
She left, taking six of the eight Sisters with her, and, despite offers to take up a leading role in the London hospitals, she set up a Sisterhood of district nurses and a chronic care hospital which is still flourishing today, independently from the Community of St John.
I felt this spirit of rebellion keenly during my first Christmas at St John’s House. As the festive season approached, I became acutely aware of what I was missing in the outside world, not least what my family would be up to at my old home. Edward coming back from work with a tree, the party at the local Labour building just round the corner with dodgy rum punch which always ended in a singalong round the piano and a crazy mix of carols and ‘We’ll Keep the Red Flag Flying’, Elsie and my nephews and nieces coming round. The men would all retreat to the Gloucester Arms while the women prepared lunch and would be back in time for the Queen’s Speech. My grandmother decorating the Christmas pudding with a sprig of holly and too much lit brandy and the lethal threepenny pieces she’d hidden inside, with the day culminating in our own family sing-song, ‘I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls’, with the harmonium squelching because some uncle had poured beer inside it.
I had been at the Mother House for nine months without a break. However much I was beginning to appreciate it, it was incredibly hard, unrelenting work. The half day a week that we were given off only started at 2.30 p.m. I was starting to feel really tired. Not the sort of tiredness that could be sorted with one night’s good sleep, but a more profound, deeper tiredness that seemed to be sinking right down into my bones.
Of course at Christmas we gave most of the support staff a few days off, which meant that we all had to work especially hard. We also had more religious services to fit in. So, after a full 12-hour shift on Christmas Eve we had to stay up for Midnight Mass and then we had to get up to sing Christmas carols on the stairs at the nursing home at 5.30 a.m. My ‘Ding Dong Merrily on High’ was sung through gritted teeth. I have no idea if the patients appreciated it. Then we started a full day of the normal nursing duties punctuated by a large Christmas lunch. By the start of the Boxing Day shift my goodwill to all men was practically non-existent. ‘How on earth am I going to survive a lifetime of this?’ was the question I kept asking myself through that first festive season.
You can imagine, therefore, how much I was looking forward to the day of silence and contemplation that was planned a few weeks later. Part of the religious life involves periodically taking time out for retreat. This is a time of specific length spent away from one’s normal life in order to connect at a deeper level with God. I was told I was allowed to spend my day in any way that I chose, as long as it was solitary and in silence, and I was back in the chapel for evening prayer.
I had been gazing at that enchanted forest outside my bedroom window for a while and I was determined to grab my chance. After my silent lunch I headed off into the trees. It was beautiful. London girl that I was, the closest that I had got to a forest was a small copse on Hampstead Heath. I found myself surrounded by peace and darkness, as if I was the only person alive. I heard my footsteps snapping twigs underfoot, the odd bird singing, a rustle as I disturbed a woodland creature. With this freedom I decided to go off the path, to wander and see where the Holy Spirit took me.
In my reverie I remembered the film of Disney’s Snow White that I had seen as a child and I half expected to see a small cottage complete with seven singing dwarfs on their way home. I wasn’t afraid, but I felt that God was with me, taking me on a magical journey out of the intensity which at times felt overwhelming to something free and more basic, the beauty of creation. It was easy to forget God’s natural world when I spent so many hours in man-made buildings. As I pondered these things I suddenly remembered the time: I had to be back at five o’clock for evening prayers. I felt an instant sense of panic. Where was the path? I started to head in what I thought was the right direction, but I only seemed to be getting deeper and deeper into the forest and the light was fading fast.
I imagined the Sisters gathering, an empty space on my pew. The forest didn’t seem so benign now, and I had an image of Hansel and Gretel and their breadcrumbs being eaten. ‘Dear Lord, show me the way,’ I prayed. Shadowy thoughts started to enter my head. Perhaps I hadn’t been guided by the Holy Spirit but something darker? An internal debate started with one voice saying, ‘What’s the worst that could happen? It was a genuine mistake, so you miss Evening Prayer.’ But another voice was telling me off for my stupidity, my willfulness, my arrogance in thinking I could find my own way. There is only one path. ‘Dear God,’ I prayed. ‘Please let me find the path. I promise I will never stray from the path again.’ Into my head strayed a paragraph about those who chose the religious life from the rule of St Benedict: ‘It is love that impels them to pursue everlasting life; therefore, they are eager to take the narrow road of which Jesus says “Narrow is the road that leads to life”. They no longer live by their own judgement, giving in to their whims and appetites; rather they walk according to another’s decisions and directions, choosing to live in monasteries.’
I realised however much I was irritated by the rules of the convent, deep down I still really wanted to conform, I wanted to be part of the Community and I wanted to make it work. I don’t know how long I walked in what seemed like circles, but suddenly I saw the path in front of me. Filled with relief, I quickly headed out. In front of me was the Mother House and a group of Sisters walking towards me.
‘Where have you been? We have all been worried about you, you silly girl.’ Sister Julia seemed to relish the opportunity to scold me.
I was taken into Mother Sarah Grace’s study, where I was given a lecture about missing prayers, the selfishness of worrying the Community, how I must never do this again. I apologised and she could see I was genuinely shocked and upset.
‘I’m so, so sorry. I was lost; I wandered from the path. I will never do it again,’ I said.
Her face softened. ‘Yes, I can see. You look frightened. I’m sure you have learnt a lesson. Sometimes we have to wander from the path in order to see how important it is for us to stay there.’
I nodded.
‘Christ himself spent 40 days in the wilderness. You’ve just had an afternoon and yet how powerful just an afternoon can be. It might be useful to spend some time thinking about that. God sometimes allows us to wander, so we can make our own decision whether to come back. And it seems you have come back. Which leads me to something I have been wanting to talk to you about. Catherine Mary, we have decided that if you wish, you should proceed to the next stage: to your clothing, to becoming a novice. We think you are ready. Is that what you would like?’
I was overcome with joy. I hadn’t realised how much I really wanted to take the next step until this moment.
‘Oh yes, Mother, thank you.’
A few years later I watched The Sound of Music. In the opening scene the postulant nun, Maria, is so caught up in the joy of singing on top of a mountain that she misses evening prayers. I chuckled and felt the truth of it. Was I Julie Andrews? And as soon as I had the thought, I realised I was not: I had taken a different path. I was glad that Mother Sarah Grace hadn’t banished me to be a nanny in the outside world, but instead had had faith, as I had done at that moment, that I was on the right path.