Sisters of the East End Read online

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  THE EMPTY PLACE

  It all started with an empty place at the dinner table at the Mission House. Usually we all ate lunch together at a large wooden square table in a room rather grandly referred to as the ‘refectory’ even though it would have been a bit poky as a dining room in a country vicarage. The unspoken rule was that we all sat in the same places; there was quiet consternation and a gentle whispered correction when an unsuspecting visitor happened to sit in one of our seats. In line with tradition at the Mother House, the head of the House, Sister Ruth, sat at the top of the table, while the Sisters sat down from her according to their unofficial place in the hierarchy. So next came my tutor, Sister Alice, and the Sister I’d brought to Old Sue, Sister Dorothy, then Sisters Belinda and Sarah Jane, followed by Cecilia and me sitting opposite each other with the five trainee nurse midwives down at the bottom end.

  Today Sister Cecilia wasn’t there. Normally Sister Ruth would wait until everyone was present and standing behind their chairs before she said grace. Today she said grace even though there was no Cecilia. I thought it was slightly odd. Turning to Sister Belinda, I asked, ‘Has there been an emergency?’

  I noticed she looked a bit on edge and she couldn’t look me in the eye.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I was just wondering where Sister Cecilia might be.’

  Looks passed between Sisters Ruth, Alice and Dorothy. There was silence and they bent over their plates and carried on eating. I got the message: I was obviously not supposed to know, or at least be asking.

  I was busy in the clinic in the afternoon, but when we went into our little chapel for Evening Prayer and Cecilia wasn’t in her usual place in the pew, I knew something was wrong. Then I felt even more anxious when there was still an empty place at supper. As soon as I’d finished my meal, I headed up to the top floor where the Sisters had their bedrooms. All the rooms in the Mission House had been given names, typed in large letters and pinned to the doors. Some of them didn’t seem entirely appropriate – the office was called ‘Love’, the patients’ waiting room ‘Wisdom’, the kitchen ‘Counsel’ and I had the honour of a small bedroom on the top floor called ‘Endurance’. Cecilia’s bedroom was the last one at the end of the corridor and called ‘The Prophet’s Chamber’.

  I knocked on the door. There was no sound. I tentatively pushed it open. There was nothing. No Cecilia, and none of her things; only clean, neatly folded sheets on the bed and a clear desk. Her pictures of the Virgin and the Crucifixion were gone from the walls. I opened the wardrobe but there was just a rail of empty coat hangers. Then I wondered whether I had got the right room. I backed out and looked at the name on the door. Yes, ‘The Prophet’s Chamber’.

  I felt like I was going mad. I headed straight for Sister Ruth’s office, but walking was difficult; I had run out of air. I dreaded what I was about to hear, but then I knew I wouldn’t be able to shake this feeling until I’d asked the question. She couldn’t have gone. Maybe she’s ill, I thought, and with horror I realised that would actually feel like good news.

  The worst news would be that Cecilia had gone. But leaving after she had taken her life vows would be very unusual. Many women realise that the religious life is not for them in the early stages – perhaps only a tenth of those who start on the journey end up taking their life vows. But once they have been through all those years of testing, very few ever leave. In my whole time at the Community, none of the Sisters had gone – not least because it is very difficult to revoke lifetime vows.

  Of course it is possible to just walk out of the door but most women who leave don’t do that. You have to imagine what you might feel after living so many years in Community. You have, effectively, consecrated yourself to the service of Christ. It would be like walking out on a marriage without ever getting divorced – unfinished business and impossible to marry someone else unless bigamy was your thing. So to be officially released from your vows, you have to undergo another long process of examination. Cecilia would first have had to apply to Sister Ruth and then she would have had to stand in front of a special Chapter of the Sisters, where they would listen very carefully to what she had to say and give their advice. After prayerful discussion, a period of what is rather sinisterly known as ‘exclaustration’ is generally (although not always) offered. This is a specified cooling-off period, where a Sister would be allowed to leave and live outside the Community. It usually lasts two or three years and is a difficult time. She would be given a small allowance by the Community but effectively she would be on her own. Often Sisters would choose to go home to their parents, but I knew Cecilia’s parents were both dead. Where would she go? And even then, at the end of this period, if she still wished to be released from her vows, a letter from the Bishop would have to be sent to the Archbishop of Canterbury, asking him for secularisation.

  I tried to imagine Cecilia going through this long ordeal on her own. Leaving was seen as an act of disloyalty, a failure. The prospect of facing such a long intense process filled me with dread.

  Feeling sick, I knocked on the door to Sister Ruth’s office. It was marked ‘Hope’. I couldn’t help it, but every time I knocked on it, the words went through my head, ‘Abandon it all ye who enter here’, and today was no different. I had the feeling I was about to step over one of those lines and do something stupid.

  Sister Ruth was tiny and inscrutable. Though generally an approachable and kind lady, ‘communication issues’ was a phrase we quietly muttered to each other. She could make anything a secret. Rumour had it that before she became a Sister, she used to work for the Intelligence Services. On reflection, there are many skills that are transferable between being a spy and being a Sister – obedience to orders, total discretion and impenetrability, to mention but a few.

  I walked in. Sister Ruth looked pale but then she always looked pale. It had constantly amazed me how most of the Sisters had eventually managed to perfect inscrutable faces: Sister Ruth was a master at it. I looked to see any sign of worry. There was the usual blank canvas.

  ‘And how might I help you, Sister Catherine Mary?’

  ‘It’s Sister Cecilia. I don’t understand. She’s not been here all day. I’ve just been to her room; it’s completely clear of all her things.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘So you know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was silence. I couldn’t believe it. That was all she was going to say. I could feel red-hot anger starting to bubble up from the depths.

  ‘Has she gone to the Mother House?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, where is she?’

  ‘It is not for you to know.’

  ‘Not for me to know?’

  There was a pause. That was really all she was going to say.

  ‘Not for me to know? Not for me to know? I don’t believe you! My friend has disappeared and it’s not for me to know!’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Sister Catherine Mary. Collect yourself at once. You have lost control. It does not befit you or any member of our Community.’

  ‘You call this a Community? Someone can just disappear off the face of the earth and no one will talk about it? As if she never existed? I mean, is she ill, is she alright?’

  There was more silence.

  ‘Don’t you care?’

  Sister Ruth took a deep breath and seemed to slightly soften.

  ‘Sister Cecilia has decided to leave us and I doubt whether you will ever see her again. I think you need to go and spend time praying for her and her future.’

  I hovered uncertainly; I didn’t want to leave Cecilia’s fate so unresolved. I had no idea where this rage was coming from. It didn’t feel like me; I didn’t even know I had it in me. In the end there was a sensible voice talking quietly but firmly over the rage, telling me to just pause and think before I crossed a line I probably wouldn’t be able to come back from, so I just turned my back and left.

  I sat in my room – ‘Endurance’ – in the
dark, wracking my brains trying to work out just what had happened. Cecilia had gone, but where? Forever? Just like that, without telling me. It didn’t seem possible that someone could just disappear. I couldn’t accept it, not without being given some kind of reason. And why hadn’t I known? Why hadn’t she talked to me? I felt rage at the stupidity and inhumanity of the Sisters, but also rage towards Cecilia, leaving me here like this. I tried to imagine a world without her and her friendship, and it was horrible. I felt abandoned in a cold empty universe, spinning alone. And then I wondered whether it was actually me who had abandoned her. I remembered the conversation on our first night at the hospital. I didn’t know for certain but my instincts were telling me that I already knew why she had gone: she didn’t want to be a midwife, she must have been suffering all this time and I hadn’t noticed. But then why hadn’t she talked to me? Why on earth had they made her carry on if she was finding it so difficult? There was plenty of demand for plain district nursing in the parish. And then the big question: if she had gone, why was I still here?

  I prayed: ‘Dear God, forgive me. I’m supposed to be a Christian. I’ve devoted my life to the service of others and yet I missed the need of my best friend right here under my nose.’

  I went on, ‘Dear God, forgive me my anger towards the Sisters and towards Cecilia too.’

  And I lay on my bed in my habit and spent the whole night awake with my mind racing on its own hellish motorway of ‘if onlys’, speeding up as the dark receded and the morning light started to come in through the window.

  As the bell to rise began to ring, I got up and automatically went through my morning routine. I joined the Sisters wending their way across the square in their black capes to the parish church of All Saints for our early-morning Communion. The church was right in the middle of the square; a large, beautiful mid nineteenth-century church built in a classical style, with steps up to a grand entrance flanked by large columns. Inside was uncluttered. There were no stained-glass windows, only clear glass, giving a sense of space and light, room for the spirit to roam free, space to think. There were two side chapels, one with a beautiful statue of Our Lady, but the small chapel of the Blessed Sacrament was where we usually had our early-morning communion.

  This church and I were old friends. I had spent many hours in there as a parish worker. Sometimes I felt as if I could almost catch a glimpse of my younger un-nunned self sitting in her seat in the main church in the middle of the left aisle. This idea had always given me comfort. I was on a journey, making a natural progression through the church as I went up the ladder towards God – the same person in the same church and yet transformed and about to be transformed again. Today this thought brought me no comfort. In fact, I had no sense of it at all. Instead I wanted to grab my younger self and say ‘Run!’. Usually I felt held and comforted by my silent older Sister companions, one of a Community. Today, the black capes either side of me felt oppressive. Now that one of us had escaped, I felt imprisoned. I tried to pray but my lines of communication with the Divine were silent. ‘Is there anyone out there at all?’ was the question that popped into my head.

  As we walked back, we were usually hit by the smell of freshly baked bread coming from the cellar of the bakery on the square. I was always hungry by this time (often I felt as if I were about to faint at the altar rail as I took Communion) and the smell of the bread tipped me over into a ravenous frenzy. Today, it made me feel sick. When I tried to eat my breakfast, my buttered toast tasted like cardboard: one bite and it stuck in my throat. My cup of tea was good, though. It’s amazing how tea never fails to hit the spot in emotional crises. I noticed there was no longer an empty place in front of me; the nurses had all moved up one.

  For the next couple of days I struggled with work. One afternoon I was in the antenatal clinic. In a way it was easier just to go through the motions in the clinic. There was a bit of a routine: we’d ask the mother how she had been since her last visit, we’d weigh her and take her blood pressure, put her on the bed and measure the baby, and make a note of its lie and presentation. We’d ask how she was eating and, if her pregnancy was well advanced, we would make sure she was making all the right preparations. I was doing all the right things, but I wasn’t really concentrating. I kept asking questions and then missing the answers and having to ask my mothers to repeat them. When I asked one lady for the third time whether she was all right, she replied, ‘I’m all right, Sister, are you all right?’

  I also had to check the mother’s urine to make sure that there was no protein present. In those days we had to boil the urine in a test tube over a Bunsen burner. I was standing holding the test tube in the flame, obviously away with the fairies, because suddenly there was a crack and the glass shattered. Shards of glass and hot urine splashed my habit and flew across the room.

  I noticed it wasn’t only me who was suffering. Before she entered the religious life, Sister Belinda had been a concert pianist. She was now a quiet devout woman, probably in her late fifties. Although we had an old upright piano in the Community Room, ‘Charity’, we were not allowed to play it. That evening, as I walked past the door, I saw Sister Belinda go up to the piano and kick it. I worked out that it was probably 30 years since she had last been allowed to play a piano.

  I urgently needed to talk to someone about Cecilia, but with no Cecilia, there was no one to talk to. When I found myself alone with Sister Dorothy that evening, her face bent low over her needlework, I took a risk and said, ‘Sister Dorothy, I wonder do you know what happened to Sister Cecilia?’

  She didn’t lift her head but carried on sewing and said with a snort, ‘Silly girl! Fancy giving up all this.’

  I looked round the room, ‘Charity’, and for the first time imagined what it must look like to an outsider. Two Sisters, one older, one younger, sitting in the semi-darkness, crouched over needlework. A dusty piano that never got played, a couple of old standard lamps with heavy, mismatched floral shades, ten stiff-back armchairs arranged round the edge of the room with, again, various floral coverings, some more worn than others, a dark brown carpet and a rather sorry-looking aspidistra plant. I nearly laughed.

  Officially of course there was someone we could talk to. Once a month we had to go and confess our sins to our chaplain. Father Matthew was an ageing member of the Anglican Society of St John the Evangelist, otherwise known as the Cowley Fathers. They were strict with a tradition of ‘custody of the eyes’. This meant they were careful about making eye contact so that, as much as possible, they avoided images that could lead to sinful thoughts. I remember being affronted one day when travelling back from a visit to the Mother House in Hastings. I walked into a carriage and Father Matthew was already sitting down. I sat opposite him, all ready to make polite conversation, but he totally refused to acknowledge me and we spent the whole hour and a half-long journey in silence, not looking at each other! For the last five years I’d been pouring out my official innermost darkest secrets to him and he couldn’t even acknowledge me in a train carriage. Of course by avoiding making eye contact with me Father Matthew was just fulfilling the requirements of his Order, but it was this kind of institutionalised rigidity that got on my nerves. Would Christ have done that?

  Of course I hadn’t really been pouring out my innermost thoughts to him. Along with most of the Sisters, I think, I presented him with a made-up list of things I hadn’t done. As he appeared brusque and really the last person you would actually want to confide in, the whole exercise seemed a little pointless. My real confessions went straight in prayer to God. However, at this point I decided to give him one last chance.

  Confession took place in the sacristry of the small chapel in Deptford. At my allotted time I walked down the dark stairs to the little crypt lit by candles underneath. Father Matthew sat on his chair, facing away from me. I knelt at the small bench called the prie-dieu and stared at the crucifix on the wall. Father Matthew was dressed in his plain black habit, tied round the middle with a rope with its
three knots and a crucifix hanging from it. He was still facing in the opposite direction. As I have said, eye contact was something to be avoided. The whole exercise was terribly formal. I started with the prescribed words, ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned …’

  I then said the standard Prayer of Penitence. The Confession was a bit more tricky and you had to put some thought into it. It always had to be about the negative, having difficulty with meditation, being so busy with work that we forgot to say our offices, the difficult relations with a certain Sister. It was like a shopping list of minor sins. Today, I was determined to make it more meaningful.

  ‘Sister Catherine Mary, may you speak with honesty before your God, what have you to tell me?’

  Determined for once to actually speak the truth, I concentrated on the crucifix and started to speak.

  ‘Father, I am struggling. Deeply struggling. Sister Cecilia has left and I am finding it difficult. I don’t understand why she has gone. No one will tell me and I am feeling angry: angry that she has left without speaking to me, angry towards the Sisters for not seeming to care. I am left wondering who she was, who the Sisters are. Everything looks different and most of all, I miss her …’

  He stopped me in my tracks.

  ‘Sister Catherine Mary, get a hold of yourself! What are you saying?’

  I struggled to keep back the tears.

  ‘Father, please listen to me. I don’t think I can go on.’

  ‘Well, Sister you’ve got to deal with it! Give it up to God … Immediately.’

  At this point I looked round at his back, willing him to turn round. He did not stir.

  ‘Give it up to God, Catherine Mary, give it up.’

  I took a deep breath and stopped. I could not say another word. He said a quick prayer of Absolution, gave me a penance of prayers and I left. I didn’t look at him again.

  The next day I was on my way to deliver a baby when my bicycle wheel hit a patch of ice and I came tumbling off and hit my head on the kerb.