Saturday Snippet: A nun, an ending, and a beginning

 

Rumer Godden is perhaps not as well-known a novelist in America as she was in England, where she was one of the most popular novelists for many decades.

One of her best-loved novels is "In This House Of Brede".

Based upon and informed by her decades-long friendship with the Benedictine nuns of Stanbrook Abbey, the novel tells of the entry into religious life of Philippa Talbot, and her struggles to adapt to an enclosed contemplative community.  It's been one of my favorite books ever since I read it, and has remained in print since it was first published in 1969.

To introduce you to the book, I've chosen to skip over the introit and go straight to the first chapter, where Philippa has been in the community for four years, and is about to make her formal entrance into lifetime vows.  It's also a moment of transition for Brede Abbey.

The tower of Brede Abbey was a landmark for miles through the countryside and out to sea; high above the town of Brede, its gilded weathercock caught the light and could flash in bright sun.

The weathercock bore the date 1753 and had been put there by the Hartshorn family to whom the Abbey – in those days the Priory of the Canons of St Augustine – had been given after the Reformation; it had then been the Hartshorns’ private house for more than two hundred and fifty years. When the nuns came they had thought it prudent not to take the weathercock down – ‘Brede wouldn’t have tolerated a Catholic nunnery here in 1837,’ Dame Ursula Crompton told the novices. ‘We had to disguise ourselves.’ The cross was below, a stone cross interlaced with thorns – and it had known thorns; it had been thrown down, erected again and stood now high over the entrance to the church; it was said to be nearly a thousand years old; certainly its stone was weathered but, though the wind from the marshes blew fiercely against it and rain beat in the winter gales that struck the heights of Brede so violently, the cross stayed unmoved, sturdily aloft, while the weathercock whirled and thrummed as the wind took it. Dame Ursula had pleasure in underlining the moral, but then Dame Ursula always underlined.

The townspeople were used to the nuns now. The extern sisters, who acted as liaisons between the enclosure and the outside world, were a familiar sight in their black and white, carrying their baskets as they did the Abbey’s frugal shopping. Brede Abbey had accounts at the butcher and grocer as any family had; the local garage serviced the Abbey car which Sister Renata drove; workmen from Brede had been inside the enclosure, and anyone was free to come through the drive gates, ring the front door bell which had a true monastic clang, and ask for an interview with one of the nuns; few of the townspeople came, though the Mayor made a formal call once a year; the Abbey’s visitors, and there were many, usually came from farther afield, from London or elsewhere in Britain, from the continent or far overseas, some of them famous people. The guest house, over the old gatehouse, was nearly always full.

From the air, it would seem that it was the Abbey that had space, the old town below that was enclosed; steep and narrow streets ran between the ancient battlements and its houses were huddled, roof below roof, windows and eaves jutting so that they almost touched; garden yards were overlooked by other garden yards while the Abbey stood in a demesne of park, orchard, farm and garden. Its walls had been heightened since the nuns came, trees planted that had grown tall; now it was only from the tower that one could look into the town, though at night a glow came up from the lights seeming, from inside the enclosure, to give the Abbey walls a nimbus.

The traffic made a continual hum too, heard in the house but not in the park that stretched away inland towards the open fields; it was a quiet hum because the town was quiet and old-fashioned; besides, no car or lorry could be driven quickly through its narrow cobbled streets. The sparrow voices of children, when they were let out of school, were heard too, but the only sound that came from the Abbey was dropped into the town by bells measuring, not the hours of time as did the parish church clock, but the liturgical hours from Lauds to Compline; the bells rang the Angelus, the call to Chapter and the Abbey news of entrances and exits; sometimes of death. There was a small bell, St John, almost tinkling by contrast; it hung in the long cloister and summoned the nuns to the refectory. The bells of the Abbey, the chimes of the parish church clock, coming across each other, each underlining the other, gave a curious sense of time outside time, of peace, and the only quarrel the town had with the Abbey now was that the nuns insisted on feeding tramps.

A winding stone stair led up to the tower, going through the belfry above the bell tribune where the hanging bell ropes had different coloured tags. Though the bells were numbered, they had names. ‘Dame Ursula says they are baptized,’ said Sister Cecily. Dame Clare, the zelatrix, Dame Ursula’s assistant, was more exact. ‘There is a ceremony in the pontifical which is called baptizing the bells; it is, rather, a consecration,’ but to Cecily they seemed personalities. Well, they are the Abbey’s voice, but she did not say it aloud – already she suspected that this Dame Clare, so cool and collected, thought her, the new postulant Sister Cecily, whimsical; but the bells were the Abbey’s voice and its daughters knew the meaning of every change and tone, from the high D of Felicity to the deep tone of the six hundred pounds weight of Mary Major; when this was rung, it made the whole tower vibrate.

The stair came out on a flat roof that had a parapet on which tall Philippa could rest her arms and look far out, over the marshes and the river winding through them, to the faint far line of silver that was the sea. I shall never see the sea again. That thought always came to her up here on the tower: ‘I shall never see the sea.’ She whispered it aloud. The silence the nuns kept most of the day for concentration and quiet sometimes made Philippa long to use her tongue, even to herself. But then I’m still new, as religious life goes, not quite four years old, new but with the dragging disadvantage of old habits. ‘I shall never see the sea,’ but Philippa said it with content. Four years had gone since she had made her solitary journey across the marshes, four years except for two months and a few days. If all went well she, Sister Philippa, would make her Solemn Profession next summer, take her vows for life in this house of Brede.

Philippa had discovered the tower in her second week at Brede, when Burnell, the Abbey’s handyman, had pulled a muscle in his leg, leaving it stiff, and Dame Ursula had called on her strong young novices and juniors to do some of his tasks: chopping wood and carrying it in for the common-room’s great fire: carrying kitchen swill for the pigs: cleaning out the deep litter of the hen houses for old Sister Gabrielle, the poultry keeper. Philippa, neither young nor strong, had volunteered to go up and sweep the leaves out of the church tower gutter. ‘Very well, if you have a head for heights,’ said Dame Ursula. Philippa had, and, as a reward, had discovered the high platform, ‘where I can get away,’ she would have said – after only two weeks, she had wanted to get away. ‘I can imagine you living with ninety men,’ Richard had told her, ‘but not with ninety women.’ Yes, it’s somewhere I can breathe, Philippa had thought of the tower and, in spite of Richard, breathe before going on.

From where she stood now, she could look down on her Abbey – it had become ‘her’ Abbey – look over its precincts, over the buildings, the outer and inner gardens and park to the farm outside the walls. The Hartshorns had pulled down most of the old priory, though they had left the L made by the refectory and library wings above the cloister that had been paced by those Augustinian Canons of long ago. The cloister, called the long cloister, was of stone, beautifully arched, its grey weathered, while the new cloisters that ran round the other side of the garth, as the inner court was called, were of red brick, with glazed windows – Lady Abbess shuddered every time she saw them. Another grief to her were the Victorian additions to the church in the sanctuary and extern chapel – ‘Abominations of mottled marble,’ she said. The choir itself was exquisite, part of the Augustinians’ old church, with pointed stone arches and delicate tracery that matched the chapter house; the Hartshorns had kept that intact but used it for breeding pigeons. ‘Pigeons in a chapter house!’ said Dame Ursula. ‘I rescued it from worse than pigeons,’ the Abbess had said, ‘from what our nuns did there when they got some money! they lined it with pitch pine and put in a plaster ceiling!’ It was Abbess Hester who had restored it, uncovering the delicate arches that met at the apex of the roof. ‘All that beautiful stone,’ said Abbess Hester, glorying.

The buildings held spaciousness in refectory, libraries, workshops, though the cells in their long rows on the first and second floors were narrow. Across the outer garden a glimpse of the Dower House, used as the novitiate now, showed among its trees and, dominating the whole, the church with its tower on which Philippa stood.

* * * * *

The Abbey was hushed this afternoon in a hush deeper even than its normal quiet; though the nuns went about their work and the bells were rung at the appointed time, and the chant of voices came, as always, from the church, the hush was there, a hush of waiting. The parlours were closed. ‘No visiting today,’ said Sister Renata when she answered the front door. She and the other extern sisters went softly in and out, but they did not go into the town, where the news had spread. ‘The Abbess is dying: Lady Abbess of Brede.’

This was the community recreation hour but, looking down, Philippa could see only two figures instead of the many, habited in black and white and as alike as penguins, that would usually at this time have been gathered in the park, or on the paths or pacing together in the cloisters. The prioress and senior nuns were keeping vigil in the Abbess’s rooms, the others had withdrawn, some to their cells, most to their stalls in choir, to pray while they waited – Philippa, still renegade, seemed to pray best up here – but the life of the monastery had to go on and Dame Ursula had as usual sent her novitiate to the tasks they undertook in the afternoons for the community; gardening, helping the printers in the packing room, sewing or taking messages to relieve Dame Domitilla whose office as portress was arduous. The two small figures below were silently mulching the rose beds.

By their short black dresses and short veils Philippa knew they were Sister Hilary, a postulant of two months’ standing, and the new postulant, Sister Cecily Scallon, who had arrived only yesterday afternoon.

‘It is strange,’ Dame Beatrice Sheridan had said when with Mother Prioress and the other councillors she had waited for Cecily at the enclosure door, ‘strange how often an entrance coincides with a death in the house. One comes, in faith and hope, to make her vows, as the other reaches their culmination – or should have reached it,’ she could have said.

Lady Abbess Hester, old and mortally ill, was lingering – unaccountably; the inexplicable waiting had gone on now for thirty hours, all yesterday from the morning, through the night, all this morning and into this windless but chill October afternoon, a day and a half, and still it seemed she could not die. ‘Why can’t she?’ The question was spreading and dismay growing through the grief, the stupor they all felt, ‘What is troubling Mother? Why can’t she die?’

Abbesses of Brede Abbey were elected for life and Abbess Hester Cunningham Proctor had ruled Brede for thirty-two years; she was now eighty-five but, up to yesterday, had still been active and filled with power – sometimes too much power, her councillors felt; headstrong was the right word, but they dared not use it. The community knew that their Abbess could be as wilful as she was clever and charming – and lately there had been favourites, that threat to community life – but still their trust in her was infinite, and her small black eyes, so filled with humour and understanding, had still seen ‘everything,’ said the nuns, and she seemed to know by instinct what she did not see. She had grown heavy for her height and she limped from a hip broken ten years before and that had never properly set. ‘It was never given time,’ the nuns said, but, ‘no more oil in my bones,’ said the Abbess. Her hands, too, shook; of that she had taken not the slightest notice.

As Dame Hester she had made her mark as a sculptor; it had been such a mark that, when she was elected Abbess, her friend Sir Basil Egerton, art critic and a keeper at the British Museum, had written: ‘This is absurd. What time will you have now for your own work?’ ‘I have no “own” work,’ she had written back. ‘I do God’s work.’ It would seem that God had also endowed her with a genius for friendship, warm and lasting. All her adult life, she had worked and prayed only in the Abbey – ‘I entered at nineteen’ – and yet, from its strict enclosure her influence had spread far.

‘Her life is a beacon,’ Dame Ursula told her novices, ‘that sends its rays all over the world and to unexpected places, unexpected people.’ The Abbess’s friends came from every walk of life from dukes to chimney-sweeps. The cliché happened to be true though the nuns had no inkling that the Duke of Gainsborough often came to see the Abbess, nor that she had a good friend, a woman chimney-sweep, ‘who has often given me the most sane advice’. Happenings in the parlours, letters and telephone calls were, for every nun, strictly private. Some of Abbess Hester’s friendships had ripened through decades – as with Sir Basil – from conversations in the parlour, where a unique mixture of wit, learning and humour had come through the grille, from thought ‘and praying’ the Abbess would have said – and from letters. ‘Her letters ought to be published,’ said Sir Basil.

‘I suppose,’ said Dame Maura Fitzgerald, the precentrix, ‘we had taken it for granted she would live for ever.’

‘No one lives for ever,’ Dame Ursula made her usual truism.

At first it was difficult for the nuns to understand what had happened; they only knew that yesterday morning young Sister Julian Colquhoun had gone to the Abbess’s room and had, of course, been admitted. ‘Sister Julian who can do no wrong,’ as Dame Veronica Fanshawe, the cellarer, said bitterly, Dame Veronica of the wistful harebell-blue eyes whose chin trembled at the Abbess’s slightest reproof. Dame Anastasia, the nun telephonist who was at the switchboard next door, had heard Lady Abbess’s, ‘Deo Gratias,’ giving permission for the Sister to come in, and then Sister Julian’s blithe, ‘Benedicite, Mother,’ as she shut the door. Half an hour later Sister Julian had come out and had – she said – gone straight to the church where she had said the Te Deum. ‘I was so happy,’ said Sister Julian. A few minutes later Abbess Hester had had a stroke.

‘But she can’t be dying,’ Sister Cecily had said yesterday when she was met with the news: ‘I had a letter from her this morning.’

‘We would have put you off,’ Dame Emily Lovell, the prioress, told her, ‘but you have had such a long struggle to get here that we felt we shouldn’t.’

Cecily had had constant shivers ever since – shock, thought Philippa; as a senior in the novitiate, Philippa had been asked to take the new postulant under her wing. Before she came to Brede, Philippa had not been close to young girls – Joyce Bowman had dealt with them – except perhaps Penny Stevens. Penny, Philippa thought, must be the same age now as this Sister Cecily, twenty-three, young girls, still at the beginning; they had not had time to be spotted and stained, chipped and scarred, thought Philippa with a pang of envy. There was an innocence about Cecily that reminded her of Penny; they had the same humility, probably because they had both been bullied – Dame Clare had told Philippa a little about Cecily’s mother – but Cecily Scallon was beautiful as Penny certainly was not. Cecily was tall, not slim but giving the impression of slimness, because she carried herself so well. Her hair was ash-blonde, so flaxen fair that it was only when sun or lamplight caught it that it gleamed pale gold. ‘People bleach their hair that colour,’ said Dame Veronica, but Cecily’s hair was natural and naturally curly. ‘But it won’t grow,’ said Cecily who detested it; it showed under her postulant’s veil in short feathery rings like a child’s. Her habit of veiling her eyes by exceptionally long lashes gave her the look of a child too, a shy child. The eyes when she lifted them were dark, not black but dark brown. ‘Striking with that hair,’ said Dame Veronica, ‘and that wonderful skin,’ while Dame Maura, the precentrix, said, ‘She looks like a seraph.’ That was misleading: Cecily was too tall and too feminine to be a seraph – or a child.

There had been nothing misleading in Penny; she was stubby, grey-eyed with dark hair that always looked tousled, but Penny was firm – ‘All of a piece, all through,’ as Joyce Bowman used to say – and her eyes were as openly trustful as a dog’s, while Cecily veiled hers from any direct gaze. Two girls, but utterly different and not only in looks and character; fulfilment, for Penny, lay in loving Donald, however he might treat her, Donald and, one day, Donald’s children; while for Sister Cecily … up on the tower Philippa said a prayer, not for the dying Abbess but for the new postulant.

The novitiate of any convent or monastery is, in a way, a restless place with its entrances and sudden exits. ‘They comes and they goes,’ Sister Priscilla Pawsey, Brede’s old kitchener said, ‘but mostly they goes.’ In Philippa’s four years there, she had tried to keep her eyes down, her thoughts on her own purpose, as Dame Ursula directed, but she had not been able to help casting a professional look over her fellow novices and juniors. ‘Haven’t I sat on selection boards for years?’ Even in her first days, – Sister Matilda won’t stay, she could have said. Sister Matilda had kept the Rule with scrupulous fidelity – scrupulous exaggeration, thought Philippa. No bows had been as exact as hers, no books marked as correctly, no one else obeyed with such alacrity. By reason of nine months’ seniority, she had been kind to the new postulants, always setting them right, ignoring the fact that Julian had a lifetime’s knowledge of Brede and its ways. ‘And I should let Sister Philippa manage her own Latin,’ said Dame Ursula. ‘My poor girl!’ Julian had told Matilda afterwards. ‘Sister Philippa took a “first” in languages at Oxford.’ Everyone had been glad when Sister Matilda was sent away; Sister Angela too: ‘She sits about, waiting for someone to put a halo on her,’ Julian had said. ‘She certainly doesn’t make much effort,’ Philippa had to say. ‘Only in trances,’ said Julian, scornfully and, ‘We don’t put much faith in ecstasies here,’ Dame Ursula had told them. ‘The nun you see rapt away in church isn’t likely to be the holiest. The holiest one is probably the one you would never notice because she is simply doing her duty.’ Sister Angela had left after four months, but there were many who persevered in the life: Sister, now Dame, Benita, once a teacher of art: Sister, again now Dame, Nichola, daughter of a chemist – ‘He lets us have drugs at cost price.’ Sister Sophie, just senior to Philippa: Sister Constance, tiny and quick as a bird, who had come in Philippa’s third year, as had Sister Louise whose father and brothers were miners.

From the beginning Julian had seemed to be set apart as a leader. In the novitiate it was Julian who calmed troubled waters and never seemed to have any troubles of her own; who somehow made a cross person less cross and who encouraged the others when a tedious task flagged. ‘Let’s all get at it,’ she would say; her energy was infectious. ‘She wants to put the world to rights,’ but Dame Ursula had said it in affectionate amusement, and, ‘How much better it is to curb than to prod,’ said Dame Clare, who as zelatrix was Dame Ursula’s right hand.

When the Abbess paid one of her frequent visits to the novitiate, it was Julian who had sat next to her, sometimes at her feet and the Abbess had allowed it. She would put her hand down and let it rest against Julian’s cheek as she talked. If they were in the garden or park, Lady Abbess would lean on Julian, ‘I need a strong young arm.’ The others walked around or ahead of them, but it was Sister Julian who was close, whose laugh rang out; she seemed to give the old woman new life, but Philippa, by habit and long training, was cool; she made her own judgements and every now and again she had found herself wondering why Sister Julian had chosen to be a contemplative nun. Could it have been propinquity? thought Philippa.

Julian had first come to Brede when she was four years old; the same Julian, stocky and strong, with the same dark curly hair and bright brown eyes. She was the daughter of James Colquhoun, one of the Colquhoun Brothers of the building firm, who had built the new cloisters. Often, when he had come to inspect the work, Mr Colquhoun had brought his small Barbara, the future Julian, with him. Even at that age she had wanted to stay. ‘But nuns have to work,’ said her father.

‘I can work,’ said four-year-old Julian.

‘What can you do?’ the Abbess had teased her; even then, the community said, Julian had been Lady Abbess’s pet.

‘I can laugh and I can sing.’ The Abbess had been delighted. ‘A perfect Benedictine!’ she had told Mr Colquhoun, and fifteen years later Barbara became Sister Julian. It had not stopped at Julian; her brother John, the only son, was a monk. ‘Two out of three are a lot to give,’ the Abbess told the Colquhouns.

‘If God wants them, who am I to say “no”?’ Mr Colquhoun had said and, ‘We still have Lucy – perhaps she will give us some grandchildren. I should dearly have liked a son to come into the firm – maybe it will be a grandson.’

Julian Colquhoun should have made her Solemn Profession in February of the coming year. ‘February the 19th, to be exact,’ said Dame Domitilla. ‘Sister Philippa is due next, on the 1st of July.’ Dame Domitilla, as portress on the ‘turn’, knew all the comings and goings of the Abbey, took in the post and sent it out and, with the years, had become like a reliable clock, telling the exact time or date of any event in Brede Abbey. Her memory was phenomenal and the nuns vowed she could recite the register: ‘June 19th, 1953. Entered, Barbara Colquhoun as choir postulant, in religion Sister Julian, elder daughter of James Colquhoun and his wife Helen Baird. Born August 24th, 1934. ‘January 1st, 1954. Entered, Philippa Talbot (widow née Sweeney) as choir postulant, in religion Sister Philippa, only daughter of the late Giles Sweeney and his wife Isabelle Cayzer, deceased. Born June 30th, 1911.’

‘And no two entrances could have been more different,’ said Dame Domitilla.

When Julian came, the Abbess had taken her, as it were, from her father’s hands. Father, mother, brother – the young monk John – and the little sister Lucy had all come with Julian, spending two days at the Guest House, and though there had been tears and embraces before she knocked at the great enclosure door, it was with pride that they saw her go through. Mr Colquhoun had made handsome financial arrangements for her; it was all sure and firm. Philippa, that uncertain prospect, came alone; she had given her briefcase to Sister Renata, the extern portress, to send through the ‘turn’ to the Abbess. It contained transfer notes for shares worth round about five thousand pounds, ‘to go on with,’ Philippa told the Abbess and the cellarer, Dame Veronica. ‘There may be a gratuity to follow in lieu of my pension. There would have been a gratuity if I had married ordinarily – but will this qualify as a marriage? I don’t know. My friends are looking into it for me. It’s a tricky point.’ She had added, ‘I thought I should make the investments for you; I didn’t know how good your man was.’ Dame Veronica had given a little gasp, but Philippa did not realize that she had been presumptuous and the Abbess only said gravely that the money seemed well invested.

* * * * *

Abbess Hester had sent for Philippa yesterday – ‘Only yesterday,’ whispered Philippa now on the tower – and told her it had been decided to bring her into the community for the last six months of her Simple Vows. ‘It’s absurd to keep you in the novitiate any longer.’ She had put her hand on Philippa’s shoulder. ‘You have fought a manful battle, as I knew you would.’ She had said that yesterday morning; indeed, it had been as Philippa was leaving the Abbess’s room that Julian had come so blithely towards it.

Julian’s brother John had spent the weekend before at Brede – ‘Providentially,’ said gentle Dame Beatrice to whom most things were providential. ‘If he had not come, Sister Julian might have made a terrible mistake.’ Brother John Colquhoun had changed his Benedictine Order for a missionary one in India, the Brown Brothers, and at the end of his year as a novice there, had been sent back to England to take a year’s course in hydrostatics.

‘What on earth’s that?’ asked Hilary.

‘Water engineering,’ said Julian and she had said, ‘You shall all see him,’ as one granting a rare privilege. ‘Mother says he will talk to the whole community this Saturday in the large parlour about his province in Bengal – the work and problems there. You can’t imagine what it is like,’ said Julian, with shining eyes.

‘I can. I once lived there,’ said Philippa. Now and again Sister Philippa lifted the curtain over these – to the others – tantalizing glimpses of her past. ‘I believe Sister Philippa has been everywhere,’ declared Sister Constance, but if Philippa had, she did not say a word about it to Brother John and he had breezily taken it for granted that there was no one in his audience who had been out of Britain except Dame Thecla, the Ethiopian who, to the least observant eye, was not English, and he had explained things, ‘not exactly in one-syllable words, but very nearly,’ as Dame Agnes said.

‘Wasn’t it deeply interesting?’ said little Sister Constance.

‘Not deeply,’ said Philippa.

‘Oh, Sister!’

‘It couldn’t be; he is not a deep young man’ – any more than Sister Julian is a deep young woman, Philippa had wanted to add, but refrained. Not yet ordained, Brother John was only twenty-four and exactly like Julian – or as Philippa had sensed that Julian was. He looked like her, thick set, cleanly, with the same bright brown eyes, the same enthusiasm. His hair was crew-cut, his cassock short. ‘John’s a worker,’ said Sister Julian proudly.

‘And he thinks we are not.’

That had been evident, evident too that Lady Abbess had not been entirely immune from the missionary fever that was spreading. ‘Brother John thinks you would be interested,’ she told her senior nuns on the Sunday following the talk, ‘to meet him for an informal discussion in the parlour, perhaps five or six of you at a time. He asks me to say there will be no gloves on. That’s good because we have a great deal to learn.’

‘Hasn’t he?’ they had wanted to ask, but were silent.

‘Shall we say after None in number three parlour?’

There was another silence, then, ‘Yes, Mother, if you are interested.’ The Abbess had felt the silence and over-rode it. ‘I am interested and you should be too – unless you prefer to shut your minds.’

‘Why do we have to waste our time with this young whipper-snapper?’ Dame Agnes Kerr, the tart old scholar, had asked when the Abbess had gone. ‘Why?’

‘He is Sister Julian’s brother.’ That was Dame Veronica. She and Dame Agnes were seldom in sympathy but over this, for different reasons, they were at one.

‘Mother is building too much on that girl,’ said wise Dame Agnes. ‘Far too much,’ and wondered why Dame Veronica’s harebell-blue eyes had looked at her, with such fear? thought Dame Agnes uneasily.

To Dame Agnes, Sister Julian and her brother with their new-fangled ideas were like woodpeckers busily making holes until the life of the tree was destroyed. ‘They don’t care a rap for history or tradition, and are completely ignorant of them. They won’t even listen.’ It was the beginning of the restlessness, the growing power of the young.

‘I don’t like to see these,’ Brother John had said, tapping the grille of the parlour. ‘I look forward to the day when the bars will come down and you can mingle freely with your guests – perhaps even wear lay clothes as they do.’

‘Just as we did a hundred years ago,’ said the young councillor Dame Catherine Ismay.

That took him aback.

‘Didn’t you know?’ asked Dame Beatrice, sweetly. ‘When we first came to Brede that was how we had to live. We could not wear our habits, and were not allowed enclosure until 1880. We had to fight to get our grilles.’

‘One who informs, ought to be himself informed, not?’ Dame Colette, who was French, asked of the air.

‘But then you could open a hospital, run a school,’ he argued.

Dame Maura, the precentrix, rose with a swish of skirts. ‘I have an organ practice,’ she announced and left the parlour. Dame Maura was privileged – and did not believe in wasting time.

‘We kept a school in those days. Now, thank God, we don’t have to,’ said Dame Agnes.

‘Why thank God?’ he had bristled.

‘Because it took us away from our proper work.’

‘Which supports the likes of you.’ Dame Perpetua, Brede’s stout, steady, subprioress, was always forthright.

It was the old argument. ‘Our Lord taught and healed …’ said Brother John.

‘And prayed; withdrew into the mountain or the wilderness to pray,’ said the nuns.

‘Do you not believe in prayer?’ asked Dame Colette.

‘Of course – but if you are shut away it must be limited.’

‘Or concentrated,’ said Dame Catherine Ismay.

‘Brother John, you want to be a missionary,’ said Dame Agnes. ‘Then you might reflect, Brother, that the greatest missionary of modern times was, and is, little St Thérèse of Lisieux who never, even for five minutes, left her cloister.’

* * * * *

John Colquhoun, though, had become likeable when he talked about his work, ‘his, not ours,’ said Dame Agnes. The Brown Brothers were called ‘Brown’ – ‘not because we have Indian priests, though I’m glad to say we have many, but from the coarse brown clothes we wear’. They were Indian clothes, a kameeze, loose tunic shirt, and loose trousers coming in to the ankle, ‘much more practical for manual work than a tunic and scapular.’ The mission was a new venture in India’s ‘moffusil’ or countryside and was formed, not to open schools or hospitals, but for agriculture and irrigation. ‘Farms and wells,’ said Brother John.

‘What could be needed more?’ asked Lady Abbess.

The Order lived as the peasants did; their centres were village huts; the brothers slept on charpoys, Indian string beds; ate Indian food. ‘And we need sisters’; his eyes had swept over the ranks behind the grille. ‘Sisters for the women, to teach them hygiene, how to look after their children and feed them better; how to make the most of what they have: plant vegetable gardens and rear chickens and bring back the village handicrafts. Every minute counts.’ His face had burned with zeal and there had been an answering fire in the eyes of many of the nuns, especially the young ones. ‘Wonderful, wonderful work,’ said Sister Constance as they had all talked of it in the novitiate during recreation. ‘If one could do it, but it must be terribly hard.’

‘Is it harder than ours?’ asked Philippa.

‘Of course it is,’ said Julian but Philippa had shaken her head. ‘Is it easier to “be” than to “do”?’

‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’ The blood had risen in Julian’s cheeks. ‘Those poor poor people. Look at our clothes, our habits,’ she had cried. ‘They ought to be made of the cheapest serge.’

‘Why?’ asked Philippa. ‘We weave our own, and hand-woven cloth wears better than serge, especially cheap serge.’

‘Yes, I have had this winter habit for thirteen years,’ Dame Ursula had put in.

‘But our white linen. Our shoes.’ Julian had been up in arms. ‘We should be barefoot like the Poor Clares.’

‘The Poor Clares do more manual work, less study,’ said Dame Ursula. ‘With our long hours of stillness, bare feet would not be practical.’

‘They would be exaggerated,’ said Dame Clare.

‘I still feel ashamed.’

‘Did Mary feel ashamed for not helping Martha?’

Philippa still had not learned to let an argument go, or temper it; she still used the quick riposte, ‘and we haven’t a chance against her,’ muttered Julian but, ‘The Church needs many, many Marthas,’ Dame Clare had said gently, laying her hand on Julian’s.

‘Yes!’ cried Julian. ‘Look at the state of the world.’

‘Which is why she needs a few Marys too.’

* * * * *

Philippa had undoubtedly been right but she had had a rebuke from the zelatrix. Brother John Colquhoun had left Brede on the Monday after that memorable weekend; he had telephoned Julian that evening and later that night she had gone to Abbess Hester and asked permission to telephone her father and mother. On Tuesday morning she went to the Abbess again.

Kneeling by her chair, Julian had told her she would not now be taking her vows at Brede. ‘I see where my real vocation is.’ She would be joining the Brown Sisters, ‘as soon as John can arrange it.’ Her father and mother approved and they would write to Lady Abbess. ‘It will be work, real work, and with John. I shall have to start all over again.’ Julian had had a new humility but her face was radiant; this undoubtedly was the path for Julian. She thanked the dear Abbess and dear Dame Ursula and Dame Clare for all their love and care. ‘For all you have taught me, and I know, dearest Mother, you will give me your blessing.’

The Abbess had succeeded in blessing and kissing her – until then she had not said a word – and Julian had danced away. Twenty minutes later Sister Ellen, who looked after the Abbess’s rooms, had found Abbess Hester slumped and unconscious in her chair.

But, no matter what the affection or the hopes, thought the nuns, a great Abbess does not die because a junior nun leaves, even one as dear as Sister Julian. ‘It doesn’t happen,’ they would have said, but it was happening now. ‘Yes, she’s defeated this time,’ Doctor Avery had said. He had been the Abbey’s doctor for a score of years and had come at once. The Abbess was paralysed, except for the smallest movement of her head and fingers, and unable to swallow; Dame Joan, the infirmarian, had stood by the bed, hour after hour, constantly moistening the strangely swollen lips. Abbess Hester was plainly dying – ‘A matter of hours, perhaps even an hour,’ Doctor Avery had said.

The whole community, the choir nuns in their cowls, had lined the long cloisters, each carrying a lighted candle, and knelt as the enclosure door opened; escorted by the sacristan, Dame Beatrice, softly ringing her little silver bell, and by Dame Agnes who, as mistress of ceremonies, bore a lighted candle before him, Dom Gervase, Brede’s young chaplain, had carried the holy oils and the Blessed Sacrament to the Abbess’s cell. The nuns followed after, singing the ‘Miserere’ and knelt, as many as could, in the Abbess’s rooms, the rest on the bare floor of the corridor. Dom Gervase put down the ciborium on the table, ready with its white cloth, candles and crucifix and came to the bedside, but Abbess Hester had motioned him away by the restless movement of her head, while her fingers plucked feebly in distress, at the sheet. Her lips formed the word ‘No’, though only a distorted sound came through; then the prioress, bending over her, thought she heard the word ‘want’ welling up from the mind below that thickened speech, ‘Wa-ant.’

‘I am here, dear Mother,’ said the prioress as she had said day in, day out, all these years.

‘Wa-ant.’ It went on after Dom Gervase had gone away. ‘I shall be waiting, every minute,’ he had said, ‘but I think we should send for Abbot Bernard.’ Abbot Bernard Rossetti was Abbot of Udimore Abbey, twenty miles away, companion monastery to Brede; for years, he had been Abbess Hester’s trusted counsellor and friend; he had come at once but she had given him no flicker of recognition.

‘Wa-ant.’

‘Want something or someone?’ The prioress, Dame Emily, bent low. ‘Is it Dame Veronica?’ she had asked, selfless, as always.

Mother Prioress looked as white and strained as if it were she, not the Abbess, who was dying, and – how thin she has grown, thought the nuns, almost emaciated.

As subprioress, Dame Perpetua was below, holding the reins, the guiding strings as, since she took office, she had held them a hundred times when Abbess and prioress were locked away in the Council or other business. ‘But not business like this!’ said Dame Perpetua. Dame Perpetua was as simple as she was downright and she had not tried to stop the tears running down her cheeks as she went about her work; the work was carried out as usual from her room or in the refectory or choir, and, ‘She’s the only one of us who can sing through tears,’ said the nuns. ‘We don’t usually lament over a death,’ they would have said, ‘but this is worrying.’

Next to prioress and subprioress in importance was the cellarer, Dame Veronica of the harebell-blue eyes that were ‘always brimming’, as Dame Agnes said in irritation. Dame Veronica was the most baffling of all Abbess Hester’s appointments; the Rule of St Benedict lays down that a cellarer should be ‘wise, of mature character, not a great eater, not haughty, not excitable, not offensive … not wasteful’. ‘Well, Dame Veronica is not a great eater,’ said Dame Agnes.

The cellarer before had been the younger Dame Catherine Ismay, who had held that office for six years and who seemed to have all the qualities needed; Dame Catherine was capable, unhurried, noted for her evenness, and sturdy, perhaps too sturdy for the Abbess. Three years ago when the day for Distribution of Offices had come round, contrary to all expectations Dame Veronica Fanshawe, pliant Dame Veronica, had been appointed in Dame Catherine’s place, though it had not been done without arguments from the Council, arguments produced with reverence and politeness, unshakeable, but of no avail. In those days, Dame Perpetua, in whose eyes Abbess Hester was the pattern of wisdom, had been on the Council; she and, as always, Dame Emily as prioress, and Dame Beatrice, who saw only the best in everyone and would not go against the Abbess, voted with her for the appointment. None of the arguments had been repeated to the community but, in the way of communities, the nuns seemed to know about them without being told and, when Dame Perpetua became subprioress, leaving a vacancy on the Council, the community had elected Dame Catherine Ismay.

The Abbess had been quick to catch the unspoken criticism and it did not make her like Dame Catherine any better, though Dame Catherine had had no choice but to accept what had happened to her: to be displaced as cellarer, when, because she held that office she had automatically been a councillor, and then to be elected councillor again. Now she was the youngest on the Council as she had been the youngest cellarer ever appointed at Brede but she took it with her accustomed quietness. ‘Quietness or aloofness?’ asked Dame Agnes. It was hard to tell.

As Dame Catherine knelt now, she was bigger, taller than the rest, except for the immensely tall precentrix, Dame Maura. Dame Maura was slim and with her height gave the effect of a mast in a ship scudding before the wind, perhaps because she always moved too fast. Dame Catherine, proportioned like a Brunnhilde, seemed more the figurehead of the ship, first to breast calm or storm; now her face was shut in prayer and an almost visible strength flowed to the tormented figure on the bed.

Dame Beatrice Sheridan knelt closer; though as sacristan her work was exacting, she had been appointed a councillor by the Abbess, whose right it was to appoint three out of the requisite six, the community electing the others. The Abbess had chosen wisely because Dame Beatrice was much loved; no one had ever heard her say an unkind word of anyone. ‘She’s not of this world at all,’ said Dame Veronica.

‘Which will make her of singularly little use on the Council’; that was Dame Agnes.

‘Perhaps we need her to keep the peace,’ was Dame Maura’s retort.

Dame Maura Fitzgerald and Dame Agnes Kerr were the two most prominent nuns in the community, prominent because they were outstanding. ‘I think of them as twin towers,’ Philippa said once, ‘which is odd because Dame Agnes isn’t tall.’

Dame Agnes Kerr was little and bony, even her shoulders looked sharp. She had a red lump on her forehead that the younger nuns said was a third eye, seeing even farther than the other two that, with their red rims and sandy lashes, were so shrewd they stripped away all humbug and pretence. Brede was proud of Dame Agnes. ‘She is our acid test,’ said Dame Maura. When Dame Agnes was working, she was like a terrier down a foxhole. ‘And she will always get her fox,’ the Abbess had said.

Dame Agnes was not only a classical scholar but also a mathematician; she had been Eighth Wrangler at Cambridge and, since coming to Brede, had specialized in Anglo-Saxon; she was writing a book on the history, in art, literature and devotion, of the Holy Cross, ‘been writing it for fifteen years,’ said Dame Veronica who, herself, wrote poems.

Dame Maura Fitzgerald, precentrix in charge of all music and Brede’s first organist, was equally noted. ‘People come from all over Britain to hear our chant,’ Dame Ursula told her novices.

Dame Ursula was not kneeling in the Abbess’s room; as mistress of novices her first duty was to the novitiate; Dame Ursula was called Ursa, the Great Bear, or Teddy according to her moods, ‘though we’re not supposed to nickname,’ Hilary warned Cecily. With the councillors knelt French Dame Colette Aubadon, mistress of church work: Dame Camilla, the learned old head librarian: Dame Edith of the printing room. Dame Mildred, gardener, while Dame Joan Howard, the infirmarian, stood on the other side of the bed from Mother Prioress.

‘W-ant.’

‘Is it Dame Veronica?’ but Dame Veronica seemed as if she too had had a stroke and was semi-paralysed. ‘She hasn’t once been in the proc’s room since Mother fell ill,’ said Dame Perpetua wrathfully. The proc’s room was the procurator’s or cellarer’s office where Dame Veronica’s ‘second’, young Dame Winifred, was trying to fill her place. At her name, Dame Veronica looked up, white and cowed as if she were terrified, and the nuns had to push her forward, but when she knelt by the bed and quavered, ‘Mother,’ the Abbess’s restlessness increased, the fingers plucked in torment. ‘W-ant.’

‘Want Sister Julian?’ When the prioress asked that there was a sudden stillness in the old body and, ‘Send for Sister Julian,’ said the prioress.

Sister Julian did not want to come. ‘She’ll try and make me change my mind.’

‘Don’t be silly, child,’ said Dame Perpetua who had gone in person to fetch her. ‘Mother cannot even speak.’

When Sister Julian was defiant, her underlip stuck out and, with her tear-stained face, she looked like a cross child, but when she came to the bed, all her inherent kindliness warmed her into pity, deep sadness and regret for this ruin of her dear and august friend. ‘Oh, I didn’t mean to do this. I didn’t mean to,’ she whispered, shrinking against the prioress and, kneeling by the bed, ‘Dear Mother. Dear, dear Mother,’ she said, over and over again, but the head still moved, the fingers twitched and, ‘Want,’ came again. Then it was not Sister Julian.

Dom Gervase tried once more, his dark young face tense with the anguish of his grief. Lady Abbess had been his lifeline but, for all the upholding power of his office, he could not reach past the trouble that tormented her, nor could Abbot Bernard; even he could not soothe her, but towards that evening another word had come welling up, forced out by great effort. The prioress thought it was ‘tell’. ‘Want. Tell.’

‘You want to tell us something, Mother?’ but the Abbess could only say ‘tell’. ‘Why?’ asked the nuns. ‘What could she have to tell?’ ‘Why should she be so troubled? She cannot be afraid.’ No true nun is afraid of death. ‘I wish I knew when I was going to die,’ ninety-six-year-old Dame Frances Anne often said, ‘I wish I knew.’

‘Why, Dame?’

‘Then I should know what to read next.’

In the early hours of the morning, those hours of low ebb when so many souls slip quietly away as if all resistance were gone, the ‘want’ gave way to ‘sor-ry’. ‘Sorry.’ The prioress knew the Abbess’s every shade and tone – she would have believed she knew her every thought – and her quick ear had fathomed that this ‘sorry’ was not only regret; there was contrition, deep contrition. ‘Then it is not only Sister Julian; it is something Mother has done, for which she cannot forgive herself.’

Mother Prioress had not said that aloud but the infirmarian had caught the ‘sorry’ too; Dame Emily and Dame Joan looked at one another and, as if it were a contagion, deeper qualms spread through the monastery: ‘something Mother, our Mother has done.’

There had been, they all knew, no suggestion of impropriety, even in thought, with Sister Julian. In the last years there had been favourites but never inordinate love. ‘Lady Abbess has loved more people than most of us could begin to know.’ Dame Ursula often said that and, ‘we have only one love to give,’ Abbess Hester had told the community at one of the conferences she gave twice a week. ‘We don’t give bits of our hearts but love everyone with the love we give to God. That keeps it safe.’ That was how she had loved Sister Julian; though often she had not been exactly wise over her, the nuns knew and trusted that. Now it was as if the Abbey trembled. Something – and Sister Julian’s defection may have been the spark that lit it – something had been brought home. ‘Sorry.’ The word was clearer now though it still seemed to come from a depth they could not reach; tears slid down from the Abbess’s closed eyes and soaked the pillow. Abbot Bernard came to the bed again. ‘Dear, dear friend. Dear child …’ but again the head moved in refusal and again the effort welled up from the Abbess, ‘sorry.’ As the second afternoon waned, it seemed to the waiting nuns that the weary word would never end.

It was Dame Catherine who stood up. She was always strong and, though now she was as white and worn as any of them, resolution shone in her hazel eyes, such resolution that Dame Joan made way for her. Dame Catherine stilled the Abbess’s fingers by taking the shaking hands in her own firm grasp; her voice was strong as she spoke. ‘No matter what it is,’ she said. ‘You have said sorry. We have all heard. No matter what it is, we shall deal with it. Dear Mother, there is no more you can do now. Lay it down.’

She knelt and kissed the Abbess’s hand and went back to her place with such swiftness that when the Abbess’s black eyes opened it was only the prioress, Dame Emily, she saw.

She looked at her, a look of gratitude, affection and respect; then the Abbess gave a sigh, closed her eyes, and head and fingers were still.

Back in her corner, Dame Catherine felt her face burning; she thanked heaven for the wimple that hid the nervous patches on her throat and the veil that shadowed her face. ‘What made me do that?’ she asked herself. She, the most contained of creatures? And a voice in her, the same voice that had impelled her forward, answered, ‘Someone had to,’ and to do anything else would have been a betrayal of what she had clearly seen as duty. ‘They may think it was Dame Emily,’ she comforted herself. ‘Mother herself thought it was,’ and, ‘as long as it was done, what does it matter who did it?’

* * * * *

Up on the tower, Philippa, lost in her prayer, felt a vibrating under her feet as soft-toned Michael began to ring; it was the Passing Bell.

I hope you enjoyed that snippet into the life of a contemplative order in the "old days" before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.  Stanbrook Abbey, on which the book is based, is still in existence, but has moved to a new location in Wales.

Peter