usually, unless there is a girl going spare in which case we might be four. We are careful NOT to act like we are waiting for the Angel Gabriel. Whichever girl shepherd knows how to play a recorder has a recorder stuck in her shepherd costume and she has to WAIT for some other designated girl shepherd to say, Dan! DO play us a tune on your pipe! Then she plucks out the recorder and plays a tune. She must not jump the gun or the girl with the line about the pipe, a Nativity play word for wind instrument, will feel downright silly and not know what to do, to say it or skip it. That girl was me one time, another horrible experience, my ears aching like someone had turned the volume up everywhere, the breathing of the audience, soft, the breathing of Directing Nun in the pit, cross, the flutter of girls in the wings, and the awful noise of Lucy White rustling her garments and hauling out her pipe, playing a tune without being asked first. Last year, though, it came out all right, though I was pretty knocked out from how my heart raced gearing up for my big moment and as soon as I spoke it, Dan! DO play us a tune on your pipe, I had a ferocious desire to lie down in a faint and have ministrations. No, Jem. Remember job number two.
Lo! Here comes the Angel Gabriel.
Gabriel points two fingers at us to signify the dual nature of Christ, even though catechism has not been invented yet and it will make no sense to shepherds, Gabriel waving two fingers in the air like that. Never mind. When Gabriel shows up, shepherds have to act spooked and make ridiculous movements, lunging away from the angel and throwing arms aloft like we are being ambushed by German Waffen SS and have no weapons. This is goofy, let’s face it. If I were a shepherd and an angel came my way, I would have no problem with it, but you cannot tell nuns this because they are too excited directing this play and will get confused if they have to make changes, such as maybe having one shepherd NOT in a state of fear and terror. The way they see it, shepherds have to act spooked so the Angel Gabriel can say, Lo! Be not afraid! I am the angel of the Lord! etc. If we do not act as if we were riding the ghost train at the funfair, it just won’t work for nuns. We have to show some hysteria and then we cool our jets for the next bit, the tidings bit, so all the attention can be on Gabriel, no distractions. ‘I bring you great tidings!’ Meaning, news. The news = the Nativity = the birth of Jesus. The Queen of the Waste Lands speaks this word also. When heard ye tidings? I tried it out on my dad once.
‘Any good tidings?’ I asked from the doorway of the living room. ‘In your tidings-paper?’
‘Jem, take my dirty plate back to the kitchen, will you?’
‘OK, Dad.’
Shepherd job number two. Go to Nativity. This is the topmost important part of the play for nuns and they get fretful trying to organise it. It is the Adoration part wherein we all traipse to the manger to peek at Jesus, all the shepherds, royalty and Drummer Boy, and Mr and Mrs Innkeeper who would not let Mary and Joseph have a room, maybe because Mary and Joseph were too shabby for their inn, and now, of course, since the great tidings and ensuing events, the innkeepers feel pretty bad about this. Thems the breaks. OK. Now we crowd around the Little Lord Jesus and show our great joy and next, it is time to face the audience and hold hands and sing We WISH you a merry Christmas, we WISH you a merry Christmas and a HA-ppy New Year, which is quite a boring song but it is the end of the play, one more Nativity over and out, and after the clapping, we take off costumes and go home and have a big snack and this is the beginning of the Xmas holidays. Yay.
Last year, Directing Nun had a big idea for the Adoration part. She decided the shepherds and kings and Drummer Boy (girl), etc., ought to go on a long march to the Baby Jesus and not merely sweep in from offstage in the usual scrummage, making it so obvious how we are all just waiting to do this, huddled in the wings ready to sweep in all at once and do some adoring. It’s not realistic, she said. I don’t think realism is a big issue for nuns. I think Directing Nun wanted more of a party scene last year, that’s all, like a Trooping of the Colour parade involving a long march, drum rolls and singing and gifts at the end.
Directing Nun decided we must go down the stairs on the offstage side that leads to outdoors, putting on outdoor shoes first, of course, as we are all in olden times bare feet or sandals and also because nuns are very keen on the right shoes in the right places no matter what kind of emergency situation a girl is in. Girls have three types of shoes. 1) Outdoor shoes: dark brown / lace-ups. I choose Clarks Commandos for type 1 due to the word commando. 2) Indoor shoes: dark brown / buckles. Most girls have the kind I have, with buckles and little holes over the toes part like on a cheese grater, and soft soles so as not to scuff up the stone floors or old wooden floors of our convent. In my view, you would need ice skates to scuff up convent floors, but you cannot say this to nuns. 3) Plimsolls. This is a nun word for gym shoes: black canvas / lace-ups or slip-ons. I choose slip-ons for variety and for the funny feel of stretchy elastic in a tongue shape where laces or buckles usually go. I slip them on and off, on and off. These shoes are like gloves for feet.
Playground Nun is an old nun who watches over us in the playground. I don’t know what else she does apart from praying and wandering up and down the playground. Sometimes she plays tricks. I am patient with Playground Nun who is maybe not all that well. She seeks me out quite often.
‘Jemima Weiss!’
‘Yes, Sister!’
‘What is plimsoll?’
‘Um. Gym shoes, Sister. For gym only.’
‘No! It’s the waterline on the hull of a cargo ship! A safety mark! Named after Samuel Plimsoll, MP, and his Merchant Shipping Act, 1876!’
‘I see. Great. Thank you, Sister. Is that all, Sister?’
‘Yes, my girl!’
Playground Nun pushes her glasses from the speaking to girls position (all the way down the nose for close-up inspection purposes) to her wandering the playground position (top of nose for general countryside vision). She pats me on the head, well chuffed with her trick on me. I don’t like pats on the head because I am not a dog, but Playground Nun is old and she is a nun and she may not be entirely well and you have to allow for things. Furthermore, she is full of special information that is not all to do with God and I believe she needs to impart it from time to time. She chooses Jem. Fine with me.
Three types of shoes. And then come rules. Shoes rules: Do not wear plimsolls outdoors. Even in sports. Do not wear Clarks Commandos indoors. Do not wear indoor shoes in gym (unless you have forgotten your plimsolls) and definitely not outdoors where they will get ruined and become perplexing, unfit for indoors or out. Nowhere shoes. If you have the wrong shoes, a nun will get flustered and usually call upon Mean Nun to sort out the bad situation of the wrong shoes. Mean Nun has an eye out for crime. She is the only no-good nun around, though I am not wild about Sister Clothilda, Nativity play Directing Nun who is also Music Nun. She makes me sing separately from the other girls, standing on a chair on my own, far off from the other girls standing up on benches and singing happily in one voice on the stage of the assembly hall.
Music Nun sits down below in the nun pit, looking up at girls and glancing my way now and again with a cross and confused expression on her face, like she is not quite sure what the bloody-bloody I am doing on her stage, or why I am causing such a terrible disturbance in the sound department. The waves. She is also confused due to my Jewish side. Not all nuns are the same, not all of them have this problem, and I can easily tell the ones who do, catching them looking at me with a cross face and confusion in their eyes, as they try to fathom it, and simply cannot, how I am alive and not Catholic, and nevertheless quite hearty, by which I mean not downtrodden or obviously impaired in any way. Mean Nun has a very bad case of confusion and she will watch me until she comes up with a crime of some sort and then she makes straight for me.
The day Susannah Bonnington found a maggot in her banger, I was right there and saw it poking its little head up like a periscope in a U-boat, weaving
