Quiet as a Nun by Antonia Fraser Read Free Book Online

a suffering distance, Carrie's mother had the power and caprices of a Byzantine Empress. Much of Carrie's innate disturbance of personality was laid by Tom at her door. Carrie's fear of having children for example:
    'Can you wonder with the sort of mother that she had, that she doesn't want to take on the role herself?'
'Why don't you adopt a Vietnamese orphan pour encourager?
    Tom looked reproachful. Vietnamese orphans were not subjects for humour. I was well aware of that. My own programme on the subject had been deadly serious. He also looked reproachful now when I murmured how convenient it must be for Carrie to have Tom with her after all to help stave off her mother's onslaughts. But I did not pursue the point.
    That night was perhaps the tenderest we had ever known. It was also a whole night. I do not know what story, if any, Tom told Carrie. She was quite forgotten by us both, along with everything else.
    The next morning at breakfast I told Tom all about Mother Ancilla and the Order's inheritance and Rosabelle's will and her intention to leave the land away from the Order. I did not, of course, mention poor crazy Sister Edward's accusation. Then, out of nowhere, or so it seemed at the time, we quarrelled violently about Rosa's right to give away the convent lands. I felt buffeted by a series of prejudices, my own and his. On the one hand Tom had clearly not overcome his innate revulsion for convents, nuns and their like. The words 'black crows', although not spoken again, were implicit in several of his remarks. On the other hand, he criticised anew a social system which allowed an individual -Rosa - to own so much land.
    I pointed out several times that Rosa's ownership was an anomaly, which it was intended that time would set right. Community ownership after all was exactly what Sir Gilbert Powerstock had in mind when he handed over the buildings to the Order. I also pointed out that the nuns had worked the lands honourably for many years - generations of them - long before Sir Gilbert bought it in fact and, like the working-class residents of the Powers Estate, were now in danger of seeing the fruit of their labours handed over to another body. All this because of an arbitrary accident of birth which gave Rosabelle Powerstock the legal - if not moral - right to do so.
    'Well, she's dead now. Your old friend. So you can't argue with her,' replied Tom heatedly. 'Mind you, I still think there's something fishy about her death. A little too convenient if you ask me—'
    It was those last words that did it. That, and the cruel awareness of three blank weeks in my life. A week later, I was once again driving down to Churne. It was precisely the date on which I should have been boarding a plane to Dubrovnik with Tom, I reflected, as I pressed into the deep countryside. Various skeletal trees reminded me that winter was coming. How quickly autumn passed! Like every pleasure, it seemed momentary.
    It was dark when I arrived at the convent. The same small hedgehog of a nun let me in at the gates. On the telephone I had been brief and reserved to Mother Ancilla. I merely told her that after all I had decided to accept her offer of a few weeks' relaxation at Blessed Eleanor's. To the curious, it might be hinted that I was contemplating a programme on women in religious orders in the modern world, i.e. post Vatican II .
    'I am not sure that we are the best example of such changes,' said Mother Ancilla drily down the telephone. 'A great deal of prayer and thought has persuaded us that to move with the times is not necessarily to move according to the will of God. Or indeed the intentions of Our Blessed foundress.'
'Precisely. A balanced programme. In other words, it takes all sorts.'
    I did not see Mother Ancilla that evening. The girls had already eaten. The small nun - Sister Damian - brought me supper on a tray in the Nuns' Parlour. The food was delicious. Each dish not only tasted good but was also exquisitely presented,