The Convent (13 page)

Cassie is obviously feeling the same thing. She edges closer and puts one hand on Det's knee.

I put one arm around her skinny shoulders. ‘What's done is done,' I say softly, ‘and we'll help, won't we, Cass?'

‘Of course,' Cass sighs.

‘Thanks,' Det sniffs.

Cassie takes her diary out of her bag. ‘You've been to the clinic?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Okay, that's good. And they've given you a date?'

‘Yep.'

‘So when do you go?'

‘Next week,' Det mutters. ‘Tuesday, I think.'

‘Okay, good. We'll get it over with and then you can start picking up the pieces again.' Cassie looks at me. ‘There is no need to assume that it will be as bad as last time.'

I murmur in agreement.

‘This time will be different, Det,' Cassie says sternly. ‘You won't go down the way you did before.'

‘Will you go to the same place?' I ask.

‘Yep.' Det bends down and takes her packet of tobacco out of her backpack and begins to roll one of her thin little cigarettes. ‘Except that this time, I'm not going to have a termination.'

‘What?'

‘I'm not going to have an abortion.'

Neither Cassie nor I speak.

As horrible as another abortion is to contemplate, the alternative is simply
impossible.
Det is the best person, generous, and kind to a fault, but her life is a total train wreck. She has never lived in the same share house for more than about six months. She takes drugs, she drinks, she smokes, she has no family behind her. Or none that she has anything to do with, anyway. She doesn't know how to eat or look after herself.

Probably more important than any of that, she has never wanted children. It isn't a matter of her being ambivalent about it. She was adamant when we first met her.
I will never have a kid.
She explained that some people just know in their bones they are not cut out for it. I believed it then, and I believe it now.

‘If you don't have an abortion then you'll have a baby,' I mutter.

‘Yeah, well …' She smiles weakly. ‘I guess that is the way it goes.'

‘And you don't want a baby,' I went on relentlessly. ‘Do you?'

‘No, that's right … I don't … want a baby.'

‘Because you are an artist who loves her work,' I push on. ‘You love music, dancing all night, getting off your face on whatever is around. You are twenty-one years old, Det, and you have never wanted a baby.
Ever.
You have no boyfriend or partner. It would be really irresponsible for you to have a kid.'

She nods. ‘You're right,' she says in a small voice.

‘So … what are you really saying?' I persist, more gently now, thinking that she is just overreacting to the idea of having to have another termination.

She turns and looks at me directly. ‘I guess I'm saying that I'm going to have a baby.'

‘What do you mean?' Cassie shrieks. ‘You
guess
you're going to have a baby? Det, that is exactly what will happen if you don't have a termination. You
will
have a
baby
! A screeching tiny human being that needs attention around the clock! It has to be fed and changed and … rocked all the time. Have you any idea how boring that is? Well I do! My sister's first kid sent her absolutely spare for six months. It never shut up.' Cassie is yelling, her hands flying around Greek style. ‘And
she
has a husband, a house, the whole friggin' shebang
with bells on
… an army of people to help her! You don't get to give it back when you get sick of it, Det. It's not a dog. I'm telling you that you must
not
have a baby. It will ruin your fucking life.'

‘I'm pregnant, and I'm going to have a baby,' Det says firmly, and takes a long drag of her cigarette.

‘Look at you smoking! Look at you. You have no money. You're are a drug addict.'

‘I am not a drug addict, Cassie,' Det cuts in mildly.

‘It will be born damaged! All the alcohol and the cigarettes you consume. And you don't eat properly.'

‘I know,' Det mutters.

‘What do you mean,
you know
?' Cassie is virtually hyperventilating. ‘Do you know that all that stuff affects how the kid will turn out?'

‘I know. I've got to change some … stuff.'

‘Some
stuff
? What the fuck does that mean? It's too late. Vital stuff has happened already to that foetus. Ask Peach. She knows all about biology. Peach, isn't that true?'

I nod uneasily.

‘See!
It's too late.
'

‘Hey, calm down,' I say. People walking past are staring at us. ‘Come on, Cassie. Screaming doesn't help anyone.'

Cassie glares belligerently at a middle-aged couple and their two pre-teen kids who seem amused by us yelling at each other.

‘Fuck off!' Cassie snarls. They turn away in embarrassment. She stands up, her face ferocious and unforgiving. ‘Listen, I can't handle this. I really can't.' She looks at me. ‘For Christ's sake, talk some sense into her.' Then she picks up her bag and flounces off towards the entrance gates.

Det and I sit and watch her neat little figure as she disappears out the gate. Cassie hardly ever goes off the deep end. She prides herself on always seeing things through. She likes being in control. So … this is big.

Eventually Det gets up, gives me an apologetic smile and mumbles something about needing to go back to work.

‘How pregnant are you, Det?'

‘About nineteen weeks.'

‘
What?
'

‘I haven't known for that long.' She shrugs helplessly. ‘I thought it might be something else.'

Something else?

I get up to leave too. There doesn't seem to be a lot to say.

Cecilia

Cecilia shifted in her seat and tried to stretch her legs, but it was impossible to get comfortable. Since the Singapore stopover she'd been stuck halfway down the plane between two men. One had some kind of breathing difficulty – he wheezed constantly. The other, in the aisle seat, took every opportunity to engage her in conversation. Cecilia had been friendly at first until she realised that he was flirting with her. He couldn't have been more than thirty-five! She looked at her watch. Three hours to go. She was due to land in Melbourne at nine p.m.

‘Excuse me again,' she said apologetically and stood up. It had only been an hour since the last time, but she couldn't sit still any longer.

‘Getting excited, huh?' He stood up to make room.

She smiled without meeting his eyes and edged past, cursing her own naiveté. When they'd first sat down together she'd made the mistake of telling him that it had been fifteen years since she'd set foot in the country of her birth. Whenever she looked up from the book she'd long since finished reading, he was ready with suggestions about the bars and restaurants she should go to, along with interesting places that had changed or been built since she'd last been home. It wouldn't be long before he was offering to show her around.

She made her way slowly up the aisle to the toilet, stepping past row after row of tired, cramped people trying to sleep, the evidence of the long flight strewn about them – bags full of duty-free alcohol, shoes, earphones and plastic cups.

Cecilia was over fifty and still an attractive woman who looked at least ten years younger than she was. She thought it was ironic that at precisely the stage in life when her looks were fading, she'd finally realised that she was beautiful. She was slim with a good curvy figure. Her hair was honey blonde and curly with only occasional strands of grey. She had bright blue eyes and a full mouth. Apart from the crow's-feet around her eyes when she smiled, and a few lines etched into the corners of her mouth, her skin was as fine as ever – one of the few positive legacies of spending her twenties in the convent when most of her generation were at the beach.

She noticed a couple of empty seats near a window and she bent down to peer out. She saw the red sun making the clouds pink and gold. Then the plane dipped a little and swung around and she was looking down on red earth.
Australia
. Her stomach lurched with apprehension.

Why? After all this time.
Why?

But she knew why. Breda had written.
Breda
. After all these years she had hunted her down and written a quick breezy email with promises of more ‘juicy info' when and if Cecilia wrote back.

Hey there, Annunciata, is that you?
Cecilia had stared at the screen disbelievingly. It had been so long since she'd been called by her religious name. She hadn't set eyes on Breda since that last evening in the convent. One morning, just two days before they were to make their final vows, Cecilia woke to find that Breda was gone. Not a word to anyone and no note. Her bed was made neatly with just her black lace-up shoes at the end. Not a thing was out of place. It took a whole morning before it became clear that she'd done a bunk in the middle of the night. It turned out that not only Breda was gone, but one of the girls from the laundry had gone too. Cecilia smiled as she remembered how
shocking
it had been at the time.

Listen, kid, you got to write back! I know some of what happened to
you, but I need to know the rest.

But how could she? Her years as a nun had been wrapped up so tightly and thrown into the do-not-disturb section of her brain. She knew that opening the package after all this time might not be wise. What if after sorting through the contents she didn't know where anything fitted? But Breda had sounded as quirky, sharp and full of fun as she remembered her, and so of course Cecilia hadn't been able to resist writing back.

And I want to see you! Come home, why don't you?

A couple of years after leaving the convent, Cecilia decided to give herself a clean break. Dominic was dead and Patrick had fled to Darwin after his acrimonious divorce. She would make a new life for herself in whatever way she could, even if that meant deliberately blocking out her family, the convent years, Peter, and the child. It was time to become someone else.

In spite of some lean years in England the strategy had worked, more or less. Even at her lowest ebb she was never tempted to return home. And when she met the Canadian, Jack, she knew it was the best move she'd ever made. The seven years she'd had with him had been the happiest of her entire life. But Jack had died of cancer too soon and somehow after that her life stopped working. For five years she'd been wandering the globe like a nomad, teaching here and there, taking on photo assignments. She made friends easily but lost them just as quickly.

She was drift in a vast lonely space of her own making. In her darker moments she saw it as her due, the payback for a series of wilfully stupid decisions she'd made in her life.

Then Breda had found her. The email had crashed into her life like a gate left open in a wild storm. No way could she ignore it.

Wake up, Annunciata. Wake up!

1965

‘What is troubling you, dear?'

The Novice Mistress's hand was on her arm. Cecilia turned around and lowered her eyes. They were red, but surely not enough for anyone to notice. At least, that's what she'd hoped when she'd splashed her face with cool water an hour before. It was a grey evening and she was walking out from evening prayers in the chapel with the rest of the community. Cecilia was hungry. In Lent the meals were sparser than usual, and there'd been no afternoon tea. The others were passing by on their way in to supper and she longed to join them. But here she was alone with the formidable Mother Holy Angels and no idea how to explain herself.

‘You're unhappy, Sister Annunciata?' the old nun said gently, but her eyes were scouring Cecilia's face critically.

‘No, Mother,' Cecilia said. ‘I'm very happy here.'

‘Then why the tears?'

Cecilia took a deep breath. ‘I find one bath a week insufficient, Mother,' she whispered, looking at the ground. There was no reaction at all, so Cecilia continued. ‘And fresh underwear only once a week feels unhygienic.'

It was at the word
unhygienic
that the Novice Mistress's face tightened with fury. She threw her shoulders back as though preparing for battle, and Cecilia stepped back in dismay.

‘How dare you!' The Novice Mistress's voice was low. ‘The impudence of a twenty-year-old novice calling into question practices that have been part of our Rule for centuries! How dare you!'

‘Oh Mother.' Cecilia slumped with mortification. ‘I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to … I wasn't … It's just that …'

‘In case you haven't realised yet, this convent was not set up to service your personal needs. And if that is what you expect, then why don't you walk out right now and save everyone a lot of time?'

‘Oh no, Mother. Please don't send me away!' Cecilia was blinded with panic. ‘I'm so sorry … I wasn't thinking at all.'