The Convent
Also by Maureen McCarthy
Rose by any other name
Somebody's Crying
Queen Kat, Carmel and St Jude Get a Life
Careful What You Wish For
Flash Jack
Chain of Hearts
When you wake and find me gone
Cross my heart
Ganglands
In Between
series
Maureen
McCARTHY
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the
Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
First published in 2012
Copyright © Maureen McCarthy, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The
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Cover design: Kirby Armstrong
Cover photo: © Mark Owen/Trevillion Images
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Convent
is a work of the imagination. Apart from some known aspects of my mother's early life no resemblance to real people is intended nor should be inferred.
As far as possible I have tried to make the personal dates of my characters tally with the historical chronology of the Abbotsford Convent, but I have taken some liberties. For example, Peach's story â the ânow' of the novel â takes place in 1999. At that time the fight to save the Abbotsford Convent from development was only just beginning; there were no painters' or writers' studios. The Convent as it appears when Peach works there is very much how it is today â a vibrant, bustling, artistic community with cafes and galleries and bars. Any mistakes made regarding convent conventions, in dress, ceremonies, speech or anything else are entirely my own.
Maureen McCarthy, 2012
For Sadie, the grandmother I never knew
You may find in that far-off land to which you go, sorrows which
may often fill your Chalice to the brim. Yet I say to you, Go!
my dear daughters, go with great courage where God calls you!
St Mary Euphrasia Pelletier
Foundress of the Congregation of the Good Shepherd
Contents
My sister and I often rode past the convent that summer.
I'd been trying to get her to do some exercise every day â apart from the three hundred daily trips she took back and forth from the chair to the fridge â and bike riding was the one thing she didn't mind. Most evenings I was able to cajole her out when it was still light enough to see but dark enough for her not to feel too exposed.
We'd head down the backstreets to the river, and at Dights Falls we'd turn right onto the bike trail and follow the river towards the city, zooming under the Johnston Street bridge and through the Collingwood Children's Farm. It was a nice easy ride, a winding track with little hills and flats and corners, not too hard on the muscles and plenty to look at on either side.
At that time of day there usually weren't too many people about to stare at the large olive-skinned girl with the wild black mane, cycling in stately fashion behind her slim, fair-haired sister. The brown river was on our left; on our right was a cliff face dotted with natives, the odd palm and clumps of peppercorn trees, or concrete walls covered in wild graffiti. When we came to the farm there were horses and goats and cows, even bee boxes and a few wonderful old oaks. Once we were through to the open space of the river flat we could look up to our right at the massive grey building that was known locally simply as âthe convent'.
We got into the habit of stopping there so Stella could catch her breath. She liked to lean against the fence and wax on about the spires and turrets visible through the trees, and how interesting it would be to go back in time and see
what
really went on there.
It was all a bit of a ruse, I think, to stop me getting her back on the bike too quickly, but I liked looking at the convent too, especially towards evening when some of the lights were blazing, and the beat from a band playing outside the cafe and the smell of cooking would waft down to the bike track.
We knew it had been set up by French nuns back in the 1860s and from then until the early seventies it had operated as an industrial laundry, a farm, an orphanage and a school, as well as a home for destitute women and girls in trouble. Once the nuns left and the place closed down there was a long fight to save it from the housing developers.
But all that was long over by the time Dad and Mum shifted to Collingwood to be nearer their work in the city. The place had stood empty for years. Now the old dormitories and refectories and parlours were in the process of being renovated and let out to health practitioners and theatre companies, artists and writers.
But when Stella and I stood musing in the middle of our bike ride, it was mostly the past we were trying to conjure up.
Why would anyone choose to become a nun? Who were the orphans? What about the
bad
girls who'd been locked up there? What crimes had they committed?
We were not from a religious family, so the lives of the women and girls who'd lived there were enticingly remote.
I liked the way the building seemed to change mood. Against a pale blue sky or a pink-and-gold sunset it looked full of magic, as pretty as a castle in a young girl's fantasy. But when the sky was low and grey with cloud, the buildings took on the menacing undertones of a jail.