“Splendid!” she said again. “And now you must meet Mother Albert, the Postulant Mistress.”
A shorter, round-faced nun with glasses bobbed up to me. She seemed to be bubbling inside, laughing at some private joke. Once more my cheeks were struck with hers in a gesture of welcome and affection.
Then other names were called and I gave up registering them. The members of the Provincial Council, the superior of the convent, and other dignitaries of the Order embraced me. Dazed and drowning in their musty blackness I submitted to their arms, turning my cheeks obediently to meet theirs, my hands hanging awkwardly at my sides. Often their cheeks never actually met mine and I felt myself poked in the eye, in the mouth by the starched borders of their wimples. Their lips, carefully avoiding all contact, moved in embarrassed little messages of greeting: “So glad, dear!” “Welcome to Tripton!”
“Ah! I remember Karen!” one of them said jauntily, as she held me away from her. “Do you remember me?”
I looked blankly at her crumpled white face, the mouth that seemed to move independently of the rest of her, the shrewd, rueful black eyes. A kind face. I thought frantically. I can’t start off with a lie, even a white one, I told myself in the silence.
“Of course she remembers Mother Greta!” Reverend Mother Provincial came to my rescue. And just then, I did remember her. She had come to Birmingham years ago for a term. She had taught me Latin. I remembered that her hands had been shaking while she tried to write the principal parts of diligo on the board. A gentle, birdlike nun with a sharp mind. I smiled at her in relief. “Mother Greta will teach you theology,” Mother Provincial explained. “But not yet. Not until the second year of your noviceship.”
“Oh no!” someone said, laughing. “There’s a lot to go through before she gets to theology!”
Again that gust of laughter, teasing now, withholding something from me. What? I wondered shiveringly, feeling outside the little circle.
“Now, Mother,” Reverend Mother Provincial’s voice was firm and commanding as she turned to Mother Albert. “I think the others are all ready and we can go in to tea. Come along, Karen; you must come and meet your brothers.”
“Brothers?” I muttered, bewildered, as the nuns swept out of the hall, following their superior in a cloud of billowing veils. I turned to Mother Albert, who was walking beside me.
“Oh!” she threw back her head, laughing silently, her shoulders shivering in little eddies of mirth. “Well, in the religious life, Karen, we are all sisters, but in this Order we call the people we enter with, the people who are trained with us in the postulantship and noviceship, our ‘brothers’. Your brothers have all arrived and you’re going to meet them now while you have tea.”
We entered a large parlor, rather dark, with heavily paneled walls and a dark red carpet on the floor. In the middle of the room was a round table, around which some nine or ten girls were sitting. They fell awkwardly silent as the procession of nuns filed into the room.
“Well, here’s Karen,” said Mother Provincial as she took her seat between two girls, who looked at her nervously. “Karen comes to us from Birmingham. Is there a chair for her, Mother? Ah yes, there you are; now on your right is Marie from Bristol and on your left is Edna who comes from Dublin.”
Other names were called—Adèle, Joan, Margaret, Irene, Nessa, Pia, Teresa. I blinked dazedly but could not take it all in. I registered Teresa’s dark Nigerian face: “Our first Nigerian postulant!” Mother Provincial had announced proudly, and I looked with respect at the young, plump, giggly girl who had dared to come to another civilization to search for Christ. Then my eye was caught by Marie’s green nail varnish. I turned to look at her. Marie, I recognized with a slight shock, was another Suzie. Her tight skirt was pulled tautly over her knees; her hair was dark and curly, her face sharply pretty. She was at home with the world outside. What had brought her to abandon it? I wondered.
It was a sobering thought. Helping myself to a piece of cake that Mother Greta smilingly offered me, I stole a guarded look at my “brethren”. I had been so absorbed in getting myself here that it had never really occurred to me that other girls were going over similar hurdles. Now here we all were together in this convent parlor. And we would remain together in close proximity for the next three years. What a motley assortment we were. A Nigerian, an Irish girl, a Suzie, and that dark, dignified girl over there—Adèle—who was obviously French. Those were just the superficial differences. Heaven only knew what inner differences there were. Would we have anything in common?
“And now you must all eat a good tea!” Mother Provincial said jovially. “Some of you aren’t eating anything. They’d better eat up, hadn’t they?” she appealed to the other nuns who were standing round the table, pouring tea into china cups. “They don’t know when they’ll be eating again.” She laughed, and the other nuns again joined in that teasing laugh of exclusive knowledge.
Mother Provincial wheeled back to Teresa, turning not just her head but her whole body in an urgent, swooping movement. “Do you think you’ll have any meals in the religious life, Teresa?”
Teresa shook her head and turned her eyes down so that she crouched low over her plate. Her body was convulsed in silent laughter. Silence. She raised her eyes eventually to look at us all and was then caught in the grips of another paroxysm. “I don’t know, Reverend Mother,” she finally brought out in a low, trembling whisper.
It’s not that funny, I thought as the nuns again trilled into a chime of laughter.
We all watched Mother Provincial tensely, smilingly obedient to her mood, which swept us dutifully along in her wake. Eventually she took pity on us. “What do you think, Mother?” she barked at Mother Albert.
“Oh, I expect so, Reverend Mother,” she said, her round face friendly. “Just a little,” she added in the exaggerated tones of deliberate teasing, “just a little supper as it’s the first night.”
“Sadists!” muttered Marie under cover of the dutiful laughter that completed this exchange.
I jumped and turned to look at her again. I had been thinking much the same thing but I would never have dared to voice it like that. Marie grimaced at me.
“Oh! I think they’re only trying to jolly us through,” I said defensively. “I don’t think they mean to make us feel worse.”
“No, I suppose not, but it’s still pretty tactless, isn’t it? I mean, for all we know we may not have any supper tonight. We don’t know anything that goes on behind the locked enclosure door, do we?”
“No,” I nodded apprehensively. It was amazing, now that I came to think of it, how little Mother Katherine had actually told me. There had been hints at hardship but no details had been given at all.
“Did they tell you anything?” Marie asked with interest.
I shook my head. “No, just that it was a very austere order.” Now that I was actually on the brink of this strange new world Mother Katherine’s words struck a pang of fear through me. What had they actually meant? She had obviously been warning me to be prepared for anything, and it was one thing to be that when the convent was still a year away, but quite another now. How many people, I wondered, looking round the table at the chattering nuns and girls, would embark on such an important commitment knowing so little of what was in store for them? Still, I told myself firmly, there can’t be any half-measures with God. You have to be ready
