Kicking the Habit (eBook)

CHAPTER 1

An Ordinary Girl

“Would you like a drink?” Susan’s question to me, in the roomy Caravelle aircraft that brought us to France on a sunny September day in 1961, was posed in the lofty tones of the seasoned air traveller.

“A drink?” I said uncertainly. I was beginning to feel a bit unsure of myself, despite my self-conscious sophistication. I had never been on an aeroplane before. Did one pay for drinks? What sort of drinks did one have? In the end, she took pity on me, although I had been so cocky up until then she could have been forgiven for taking a slightly malicious satisfaction in putting me on the spot.

“I’m going to have a sherry,” she said at last. Gratefully, I accepted one too.

I was nowhere near as confident as I looked; uncertainty about the drink had rattled me and I began unexpectedly to have an overwhelming feeling of general apprehension. What the devil am I doing? I thought. And where the devil am I going? It’s one thing to think about becoming a nun in the abstract, to stun your friends with your announcement, to decide to take the plunge when you are sitting at home with the reassuring support and pride of your mother, and quite another to find yourself literally flying toward it. My hands felt clammy. I hadn’t even looked up my final destination on a map, for heaven’s sake; I only knew that the Mother House was in a small town in the heart of rural France. What had seemed a lovely adventure when I first set off was becoming frightening. I looked at my companion out of the corner of my eye, wondering if I wanted a drink at all.

Following Susan, I stumbled out of the Arrivals hall. A young, slim, and very pretty nun was waiting for us. With admirable efficiency, she collected our suitcases and shepherded us outside. She was supremely aloof, and ignored the low catcalls she got from the assembled taxi drivers. Summoning one with a raised hand, which I noticed had beautifully cared-for fingernails, she bundled us into the cab.

“Isn’t she elegant!” I whispered, looking at her black habit, snow-white headband, and neat but floating veil. My companion was silent. There is something very unsettling about a comment being ignored. I barely knew Susan, who was going to enter the convent with me; I did hope she was not going to remain quite so distant.

Paris was shimmeringly hot and unbelievably exotic. The traffic, the buildings, the crowd, the noise and chatter crowded in on me. It was a barrage of sound, and all of it incomprehensible. I was a small-town girl and the panic attack on the plane was forgotten. I might never be here again. I mustn’t miss anything, I thought. I offered up a quick prayer: “Thank you, dear Lord, for helping me to choose this French congregation.” I remembered some of the grim English ones I had met on exploratory visits to other convents. Certainly my proud sophistication began to slip a bit; I was as excited as a schoolgirl, which was what I was! Susan and the pretty nun exchanged a few words as we drove through the streets, the former translating as we went along.

“We’re going to have lunch in the Sisters’ convent in Rue de Roule, and then perhaps go out to see a bit of the city,” said Susan. “Our train isn’t until this evening.” She gave me a thin smile, which I returned, determined not to be put off by her coolness. It was understandable; we had no common ground apart from entering the same religious congregation as postulants at the same time. If I was horribly brash and affected, then she, older than me, had all the reserve that foreigners associate with the English. She was a highly qualified music teacher and I a barely educated teenager. Propinquity made us friends in the end; our Englishness allowed us to present a united front against some of the more arcane customs that we would meet during our noviciate.

The convent was a tenement flat in a narrow street behind the recently demolished market “Les Halles”, leaving, I was told, “the biggest hole in Europe”. The sisters ran an inexpensive canteen for local people, distributing any leftovers to the homeless. It was all so different from England, where nuns ran schools and hospitals, in the main for the affluent. This convent was small, and so was the community: just four nuns. Inside, it was oppressively claustrophobic, but the welcome was warm and a smiling nun came bustling toward us, wiping her hands on her apron.

“Sister Superior,” said Susan.

The bedrooms, where we stowed our cases, were also very small, a couple of narrow beds in each. I was initially charmed by their austerity, although even then, when I had begun to find asceticism quite appealing, it did occur to me that living in such very close proximity, in the intimacy of a bedroom, might give rise to more than a few difficulties. My bedroom at home was my own personal bolt-hole; there didn’t seem to be anything very personal here.

“Are the bedrooms as small as this in the Noviciate?” I asked Susan. It had not occurred to me that I might have to share.

“I’m not sure; I haven’t been upstairs in the Noviciate.” She had visited the Mother House the previous summer. “I think there are dormitories. I slept in a guest room. It was bigger than this.”

“Dormitories!” Once again, under all my excitement, there was a pang of trepidation and my hands felt clammy. I had not shared a bedroom since boarding school.

All activities in that small convent – meals, recreation, and work – seemed to take place in the kitchen. Apart from the bedrooms, where was the rest of it? The Sister Superior took us along a passage and opened a door.

“Notre chapelle,” she said, and smiled. It gave out onto the street, but the noise of traffic was muted, the room shaded by pale wooden shutters. Autumn sunlight, soft and golden, filtered through and fell on the pale stone of the small altar and the two beautiful pewter candlesticks. “Cream and gold, cream and gold,” I thought, then unexpectedly, “Butter and toast.” The muffled street noises, the shuttered sun, the warm stone, the flickering sanctuary lamp, and the smell of wax mixed with incense were soporific and mesmerising. Sister Superior took her place at one of the prie-dieux, bowed her head, and seemed lost in prayer. Self-consciously, we followed suit. Did I pray or not? I was certainly silent and felt a little overwhelmed.

As I knelt, I gradually became aware of three sensations, none of them to do with God: I was terribly hungry, I was desperate to go to the lavatory, and the prie-dieux were horrendously uncomfortable. Thankfully, after about five minutes, and five minutes is a long time to be on one’s knees in those circumstances, Sister Superior rose and we followed.

“Where’s the loo?” I hissed at Susan.

I found myself in a small windowless room with a washbasin in it. There were two doors. The first revealed a cleaning cupboard: brushes, buckets, and mops. Expectantly, I opened the second and found myself looking into a small cubicle. I could not at first imagine its purpose. It was tiled, floor and walls, the floor was concave and there was a hole in the centre of it, either side of which there were two tiled footprints. It smelled strongly of bleach. The chain flush was the giveaway. I stared at it, appalled. I was wearing high heels. How could I possibly balance? What if I didn’t get my aim correct? I had peed many times “al fresco”, so to speak, but this primitive arrangement was in a flat, for God’s sake. The blasphemy rose instinctively to my mind.

I wondered for a moment if my discomfort could be ignored. Maybe if we were going out I could find a public toilet in Paris where they had a proper lavatory. It was just as well that I didn’t succumb to that idea: this was the sixties and public lavatories in France were renowned all over Europe for their unsavoury aspect.

Driven to desperation, I decided to improvise, although in fact it would have been far simpler to use the lavatory. Making sure the door was locked, and as quietly as I could, I opened the door of the cleaning cupboard. Gritting my teeth against the noise, I took out the metal bucket, turned it upside down, kicked off my high heels, clambered onto it, hoisted up my skirt, lowered my pants, and, perching on the edge of it, praying that I wouldn’t bring the whole thing off the wall, urinated luxuriously into the sink.

Back in the kitchen there was a warm yeasty smell of fresh bread. Among the bread, butter, and cheese on the table was a strange, greasy, potted meat.

“Taste the rillettes.” Susan pushed the pot toward me. “I know it doesn’t look very appetizing, but it’s lovely. Go on, try it with these small pickled cucumbers.”

Gingerly I took some. It was delicious. It was followed by a rich creamy cheese with a yellow rind that Susan told me was made by the Trappists. Afterwards we had peaches and grapes. The grim memory of the “squat-down” loo began to fade.

As we had hoped, Sister Superior suggested, via the ever willing Susan, that we might like to see something of Paris before our train left that evening. Four hours was not long, but I hoped that the Eiffel Tower might be on the itinerary and would anyone come to Paris and not at least look at the outside of the Louvre? So with some enthusiasm and a...