The Convent (32 page)

That night, Mum and Dad ring us again to say that Dad's mother's health is a lot worse than they thought, and that they'll probably have to extend their stay.

‘How long?' I ask in alarm.

‘Well, love …' Dad says guardedly ‘I don't think your grandmother is going to get better … so we'll have to see.'

My
grandmother?
No.
My grandmother is an old lady living in an Australian country town.

Cecilia
1972

‘Whose side are you on?' The young priest looked around at the packed lecture hall and smiled. ‘My friends, that is a question some of us have to ask ourselves every day.'

Unlike the other speakers during the week-long Church Conference, he didn't use the lectern but strode up and down in front of them, cracking jokes and gesticulating with his hands and occasionally laughing at himself. It was very different to anything Cecilia had heard before.

She'd known nothing about poor sugar farmers in the Philippines, but he made them come alive for her. His descriptions and anecdotes let her feel what it would be like to be in the sweltering heat of Manila, amid the open drains and mosquitoes.

‘Being on the side of the poor is not only dangerous,' the priest went on, ‘but it is beset with all kinds of contradictions. Is it right to baptise the landowner's child and officiate at his daughter's wedding when we know that he is behind the disappearance and death of a local union organiser? What do
you
think?' he asked the audience.

What do
I
think?
Cecilia stopped breathing.

‘We are sometimes the only ones standing between the peasants and those who rule over their lives, and believe me, it's fraught and sometimes gets dangerous.'

A very old nun down the front, only a few seats from Cecilia, tentatively raised her hand.

‘Sister?' The priest broke off from what he was saying.

‘In what way dangerous, Father?'

‘Well, our lives are threatened sometimes.'

There was a gasp as the audience took this in.

‘You must get some support, though, Father, from the bishops?'

‘The only contact we get is to tell us to stop what we're doing. It's not surprising,' he added with a dry laugh. ‘The wealthy have lived off the backs of the poor for centuries. They've got very good at intimidating people who ask questions. After all, a priest's only role is to save souls,' he added.

Cecilia leant forward in amazement.

‘Last time I looked that
was
our role,' a male voice came from the back of the audience. ‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.'

‘And what if Caesar demands your children don't eat and don't go to school?' the priest asked mildly. ‘Rich countries – France, England, the USA, Australia – also have poor and marginalised. Isn't it time to speak on behalf of the indigent, the dispossessed and the poor?'

There was an uneasy silence for a few moments before a young nun in the middle of the room raised her hand.

‘With respect, Father, that is exactly who most of us are serving,' she said quietly, ‘in our hospitals and schools and outback missions.'

‘Yes, Sister,' the young priest cut in, ‘that is what most of our religious orders were originally set up to do. But things have changed and we haven't. Governments have stepped in with money and know-how. So what is the Church's role now? And let's ask ourselves, why is it so often on the side of the conservative and repressive?'

Whose side are you on?
When the lecture finished, Cecilia had a lump in her throat and she was hardly able to speak for the rest of the day.
Whose side was she on?

Ideas spun and danced in her head. After the last speaker, late in the afternoon she sought the priest out.

‘Father, I need to know something.'

‘Yes, Sister?' He turned away from the men he was talking to and indicated that she should sit down at the table.

‘Your talk confused me.'

‘Well, that is a good start.' He smiled, and she saw that he was older than she'd first thought – well into his thirties – and that his eyes were warm.

She relaxed a little. ‘Did you baptise the corrupt landowner's child?' she asked and when he sighed deeply and nodded, she went on awkwardly, ‘I would like to know
how
you decided to do that.'

‘Why?' His eyes twinkled with laughter. ‘Has Rome come through at last?'

She looked at him, not understanding.

‘With the ordination of women, I mean?' He laughed at her shock. ‘Of course women should be ordained,' he went on, smacking one hand down on the table for emphasis.

‘But …?' Cecilia was suddenly hot with confusion because she had the feeling that he was actually serious. What could she say? The very idea was preposterous
.

‘Well, you tell me why not.' He leant forward, his brown eyes gently mocking her. ‘What makes me better than you?' He stuck a finger down his dog collar and rolled his eyes.

She laughed at that and he motioned at all her garb – the stiff white casing around her face, her voluminous dress, the cape and long veil – and shrugged as though it was a whole lot of nothing very important.

‘In fact, probably the opposite is true. The nuns we work with in Manila are much better than most of us. Men have such big egos, Sister!' He laughed at her confusion again. ‘You might not know that, but it's true. Why shouldn't the Sisters baptise children, say Mass and hear confessions? Tell me, please?'

Cecilia was dumbfounded. She had never heard anyone, much less a priest, talk like this. When he understood that she was truly shocked he smiled.

‘Anyway, Sister, to answer your question: How do we decide what to do in difficult situations? Well, there are ten of us in the house: six priests and four lay brothers. We decide together how to go about things.' He smiled again. ‘There are a lot of arguments because everyone has a different view, but in the end we always come back to the same thing.'

‘Which is?' she asked curiously.

‘What else is there?' He shrugged, then smiled disarmingly. ‘There is only the Jesus of the Gospels. So we ask ourselves,
Where
is Jesus in all this
? Whose side would
He
be on?'

Cecilia got up. ‘I see,' she said slowly, ‘thank you, Father.'

‘You're welcome, Sister.'

Whose side was she on?

Finally Cecilia decided she must at least
see
her daughter. Just that. See her. She would not try to talk to her or make any other kind of contact.

So she found herself walking the bike path along the river towards the convent, dressed in a long dress and big sunglasses with a scarf covering her hair.

To Cecilia's incredible surprise, when she entered through the big convent gates she was overcome with a deep flood of joy. It flowed through her like soft rain on parched ground, and was so unexpected that her first instinct was to sit down on the grass and cry. Instead she leant up against one of the gateposts to steady herself and stared around. There were people everywhere, ordinary people, walking around as if they had a perfect right. She almost burst out laughing. There they were, sitting at wooden tables, eating, drinking and talking.

Along with the gladness came an unfamiliar tenderness towards her own younger self. That girl who'd come so willingly through these gates to embark on the biggest adventure of her life.
Where
was she now?
And the others who'd entered with her.
Where were
they all?

Cecilia forgot her initial reason for coming and wandered around, staring at everything, peering into rooms, walking up stairs and along corridors, intrigued and amused by how the place had changed, and at times utterly moved by the way every room was somehow just as she remembered it. Memories bubbled up only to be replaced by more. Here was an ATM in exactly the place where she'd lost her veil that day in the high wind and had been reprimanded by Mother Agnes as a scatterbrain.
A scatterbrain!
She was the least scatterbrained person she knew. As a young novice she'd been so serious and methodical, way too much so in fact. If only she'd been more like Breda, easily distracted, quick to laugh at the ridiculous and respond from the gut.

But the smell of coffee was new. Yes, she would have one of those in a little while. She would sit in that little cafe and remember sweet Mother Our Lady of Fatima O'Reilly who worked with the old Italian gentleman whose name she couldn't remember, making the bread every day for over a thousand Sisters, girls and women.

She walked up the front steps and stood in the lobby outside the Bishop's Parlour and saw herself on her first day, feeling grown up and worldly in her sleeveless red dress with the black high-heeled sandals, her hair tied back with a clip-on bow.

Except for Dominic, her whole family had come. Patrick was dressed in stovepipe pants and a daring black cotton shirt, his hair slicked back in rocker style. Brendan was wearing the pink-striped shirt that Mum had begged him not to wear because it would ‘shock the nuns'. The twins were eyeing everything warily as if they might have landed in jail.

Mother Gabriel had come out of a side room in full regal splendour, tall and straight, her fine Gallic features on display inside the stiff white bandeau encasing her face. She raised her chin as she greeted them, holding out her hand like a queen deigning to greet her subjects.

‘Ah, the Maddens!' she said. ‘You are all so very welcome. Was the drive long? And in such heat. Well, you must be ready for afternoon tea.'

They'd traipsed meekly after the Reverend Mother through the vast building, out along the path and into a large high-ceilinged room, which was cool despite the heat outside. There was a big polished-wood table in the middle laid with fine china and silver spoons and tiny cakes and stiff white table napkins, and already a couple of family groups were sitting at the table, all looking uncomfortable as at least a dozen smiling nuns hovered over them offering more tea and hot water.

‘Now I'm going to leave you in the capable hands of our Mistress of Novices.' The Reverend Mother gave one of her high musical laughs and motioned with a slight lifting of one hand for Mother Mary of the Holy Angels, who was speaking to a very anxious-looking older couple. ‘So nice to meet you, Mr and Mrs Madden.'

Cecilia's family, even her father, had chorused humbly, ‘Thank you, Mother Gabriel. So nice to meet you too.
Thank you
.'

But her father had muttered, ‘I can't stand these places,' as soon as the Reverend Mother was at a safe distance. ‘If Cecilia left tomorrow it would be a day too late.'

The boys had all laughed, but her mother had said,
Hush, they'll
hear you!

Now Cecilia peered through the old refectory window, hardly seeing the artwork on the walls or the new coffee machine and modern chairs. Instead, she was wishing Breda was with her.
And
here is where we ate,
they would say to each other.
This very spot was
where I lay in disgrace after keeping that photo. Do you remember? Where
have all the long tables gone? Do you remember?

She wandered up the stairs to where they'd slept, to the long corridors with the cells on either side. Things seemed very quiet, and a little musty and worn. But she loved it that the old paintwork was still there even if the polished boards had been replaced with fraying carpet. There were names on the doors now, notes stuck on with sticky tape, jokes and posters. A couple of young arty types ignored her as they passed, talking animatedly. A little redhead in jeans smiled before disappearing into one of the rooms, and she could see a few people at the end of the corridor standing right where the Sacred Heart statue used to be, drinking coffee.
My God.
Cecilia was filled with a mad impulse to run over and tell them to stop. She wanted to ring the bell, knock on the doors, call everyone to order and tell them …
what?
That they must never forget that the rooms did not belong to them, but to the hundreds of women who'd gone before, to those who'd willingly sacrificed their young lives to silence and ritual and prayer in a quest for holiness?

She passed the cell that had become hers after her final Profession, but the door was closed and she didn't dare knock although she stood outside for a full minute and thought about it. Instead she headed back downstairs again.

How many times had she rushed across that bit of ground from the Sacred Heart enclosure, worried that she'd be late for lunch, the day's dramas and the girls' sad stories swirling around her brain?

Would Leanne ever learn to iron properly? Why was that girl Sonia
so quiet? Would they get the Windsor Hotel laundry done by the end of
the day? If not, she'd have to stay up with some other Sisters and get it
done, and there was her university work to complete.