me that too, that it was a strict order, I mean.”
“Was she your headmistress?” I asked.
“No, just a nun in the school. She taught me history.”
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen. Seventeen and never been kissed,” Marie quoted, simpering affectedly, and then gave me a deliberately vulgar wink. “I don’t think!” she added, smiling at me roguishly.
“So am I, seventeen I mean,” I said. And we laughed companionably, drawn together by the shared joke. I liked Marie, I decided; she was fun. Still, I was curious to know what on earth had made her decide to enter. She looked quite different from the rest of us. I decided to ask her. She wouldn’t mind.
“What brings you here?” I asked, as though we’d met accidentally at a street corner.
“Well, it’s such a beautiful life,” Marie said. Her black eyes, which usually glinted in her face like shiny currants, misted over dreamily. “You know, the habit. It’s lovely, isn’t it?” I smiled vaguely. I’d never given it much thought. “And at school the nuns sing so beautifully. It’s such a pure life—being a bride of Christ, giving up the world and all that. And then my best friend Angela entered last year.”
“Is she still here?” I asked.
“Yes, she’s a first-year novice. I can’t wait to see her again. Well, I went to her clothing last July. That convinced me. I had to come here. And I’ve not looked back since.”
I smiled vaguely. I felt something was wrong somewhere. Where did God fit into all this? Still, I reasoned, you didn’t start spouting about God to someone you’d only just met. I’d certainly feel a bit awkward amidst the teacups and the bread and butter.
“Wish I had a fag!” Marie whispered. “I smoked my last one on the train. My last cigarette!” she added, dramatically throwing her head back in a studied pose and closing her eyes. They were thickly coated with emerald green eyeshadow that was not quite the same color as her pearlized nails. “Still,” she sprang out of this and grabbed a piece of shortbread. “Eat up, my girl! If we can’t smoke, we might as well eat!”
“Honestly!” Edna muttered on my other side. “I don’t know how they can do it. I can’t eat a thing.”
I nodded at her sympathetically. I want this to be over, I told myself urgently. At the moment I felt as though I were suspended between two worlds. The feeling was accentuated by the fact that the nuns around us were not eating themselves. I had never seen a nun eat. “Why won’t you eat with us?” we had asked the nuns on picnics and outings.
“Because we are separate,” Mother Katherine had explained. “Nuns live apart from the world. Eating with somebody implies a sharing of values, a common outlook. We don’t eat with seculars—people who are not religious—because we have turned our back on the world. You must always respect a nun’s separateness.”
And here we were now, come from all over the globe to share their lives.
As if she were answering my unspoken wish to begin the new life properly, Mother Albert now spoke.
“Reverend Mother,” she said respectfully to the Provincial, “I think as the hooding is at six-thirty we’d better be going along now.”
“Ah yes! Splendid!” said Mother Provincial. “Yes. Well, you’ll go along now with Mother Albert to the Postulantship,” she said, smiling at us. “There the second-year novices will help you to change into the postulants’ dress. Then at half-past six we have the hooding ceremony.” She paused and her voice swelled out. “You will come into the church and you will receive the postulants’ hood, the short white veil you will wear during these first nine months. It will be your formal reception into the community. Shall we say grace together?” Shuffling, we all stood up.
We went back into the garden where the sunlight was almost blinding after the darkness of the parlor, a straggling little procession headed by Mother Albert, who walked with an odd springing step, seeming to dance on the ball of her right foot. We limped along behind, tight skirts, orlon sweaters, one or two neat suits. I felt weak with relief.
Mother Albert smiled at us. “Well,” she said, “this is it. The moment you’ve been thinking about for months. You’ve been imagining what it was like, I expect, wondering what you’d feel. And now you probably don’t feel anything very much at all.”
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