The Abbess of Crewe (2 page)

Not to say what is idle or causes laughter.

Not to be fond of frequent or boisterous laughter.

To listen willingly to holy reading.

The forks make tiny clinks on the plates moving bits of fish pie
into the mouths of the community at the table. The reader toils on …

Not to gratify the desires of the flesh.

To hate our own will.

To obey the commands of the Abbess in everything, even though she herself should
unfortunately act otherwise, remembering the Lord’s command: ‘Practise
and observe what they tell you, but not what they do.’ — Gospel of St
Matthew, 23.

At the table the low nuns, high nuns and novices alike raise water
to their lips and so does the reader. She replaces her glass …

Where there has been a quarrel, to make peace before
sunset.

Quietly, the reader closes the book on the lectern and opens
another that is set by its side. She continues her incantations:

A frequency is the number of times a periodic phenomenon
repeats itself in unit time.

For electromagnetic waves the frequency is expressed in cycles per second or, for the
higher frequencies, in kilocycles per second or megacycles per second.

A frequency deviation is the difference between the maximum instantaneous frequency
and the constant carrier frequency of a frequency-modulated radio
transmission.

Systems of recording sound come in the form of variations of magnetization along a
continuous tape of, or coated with, or impregnated with, ferro-magnetic
material.

In recording, the tape is drawn at constant speed through the airgap of an
electromagnet energized by the audiofrequency current derived from a
microphone.

Here endeth the reading. Deo gratias.

‘Amen,’ responds the refectory of nuns.

‘Sisters, be sober, be vigilant, for the Devil goes about as a raging lion, seeking
whom he may devour.’

‘Amen.’

The Abbess of Crewe’s parlour glows with bright ornaments
and brightest of all is a two-foot statue of the Infant of Prague. The Infant is adorned
with its traditional robes, the episcopal crown and vestments embedded with such large
and so many rich and gleaming jewels it would seem they could not possibly be real.
However, they are real.

The Sisters, Mildred the Novice Mistress and Walburga the Prioress, sit with the Abbess.
It is one o’clock in the morning. Lauds will be sung at three, when the
congregation arises from sleep, as in the very old days, to observe the three-hourly
ritual.

‘Of course it’s out of date,’ the Abbess had said to her two senior
nuns when she began to reform the Abbey with the winsome approval of the late Abbess
Hildegarde. ‘It is absurd in modern times that the nuns should have to get up
twice in the middle of the night to sing the Matins and the Lauds. But modern times come
into a historical context, and as far as I’m concerned history doesn’t work.
Here, in the Abbey of Crewe, we have discarded history. We have entered the sphere, dear
Sisters, of mythology. My nuns love it. Who doesn’t yearn to be part of a myth at
whatever the price in comfort? The monastic system is in revolt throughout the rest of
the world, thanks to historical development. Here, within the ambience of mythology, we
have consummate satisfaction, we have peace.’

More than two years have passed since this state of peace was proclaimed. The Abbess sits
in her silk-covered chair, now, between Matins and Lauds, having freshly changed her
white robes. Before her sit the two black senior sisters while she speaks of what she
has just seen on the television, tonight’s news, and of that Sister Felicity we
have all heard about, who has lately fled the Abbey of Crewe to join her Jesuit lover
and to tell her familiar story to the entranced world.

‘Felicity,’ says the Abbess to her two faithful nuns, ‘has now publicly
announced her conviction that we have eavesdropping devices planted throughout our
property. She’s demanding a commission of inquiry by Scotland Yard.’

‘She was on the television again tonight?’ says Mildred.

‘Yes, with her insufferable charisma. She said she forgives us all, every one, but
still she considers as a matter of principle that there should be a police
inquiry.’

‘But she has no proof,’ says Walburga the Prioress. ‘Someone leaked the
story to the evening papers,’ says the Abbess, ‘and they immediately got
Felicity on the television.’

‘Who could have leaked it? ’ says Walburga, her hands folded on her lap,
immovable.

‘Her lax and leaky Jesuit, I dare say,’ the Abbess says, the skin of her face
gleaming like a pearl, and her fresh, white robes falling about her to the floor. That
Thomas,’ says the Abbess, ‘who tumbles Felicity.’

‘Well, someone leaked it to Thomas,’ says Mildred, ‘and that could only
be one of the three of us here, or Sister Winifrede. I suggest it must be Winifrede, the
benighted clot, who’s been talking.’

‘Undoubtedly,’ says Walburga, ‘but why?’

‘“Why?” is a fastidious question at any time,’ says the Abbess.
‘When applied to any action of Winifrede’s the word “why” is the
inscrutable ingredient of a brown stew. I have plans for Winifrede.’

‘She was certainly instructed in the doctrine and official version that our
electronic arrangements are merely laboratorial equipment for the training of our
novices and nuns to meet the challenge of modern times,’ Sister Mildred says.

‘The late Abbess Hildegarde, may she rest in peace,’ says Walburga,
‘was out of her mind to admit Winifrede as a postulant, far less admit her to the
veil.’

But the living Abbess of Crewe is saying, ‘Be that as it may, Winifrede is in it up
to the neck, and the scandal stops at Winifrede.’

‘Amen’ say the two black nuns. The Abbess reaches out to the Infant of Prague
and touches with the tip of her finger a ruby embedded in its vestments. After a space
she speaks: ‘The motorway from London to Crewe is jammed with reporters, according
to the news. The A51 is a solid mass of vehicles. In the midst of the strikes and the
oil crises.’

‘I hope the police are in force at the gates,’ Mildred says.

‘The police are in force,’ the Abbess says. ‘I was firm with the Home
Office.’

‘There are long articles in this week’s
Time
and
Newsweek
,’ Walburga says. ‘They give four pages apiece to
Britain’s national scandal of the nuns. They print Felicity’s
picture.’

‘What are they saying?’ says the Abbess.

‘
Time
compares our public to Nero who fiddled while Rome burned.
Newsweek
recalls that it was a similar attitude of British frivolity and
neglect of her national interests that led to the American Declaration of Independence.
They make much of the affair of Sister Felicity’s thimble at the time of your
election, Lady Abbess.’

‘I would have been elected Abbess in any case,’ says the Abbess.
‘Felicity had no chance.’

‘The Americans have quite gathered that point,’ Walburga says. ‘They
appear to be amused and rather shocked, of course, by the all-pervading bitchiness in
this country.’

‘I dare say,’ says the Abbess. ‘This is a sad hour for England in
these, the days of her decline. All this public uproar over a silver thimble, mounting
as it has over the months. Such a scandal could never arise in the United States of
America. They have a sense of proportion and they understand Human Nature over there;
it’s the secret of their success. A realistic race, even if they do eat asparagus
the wrong way. However, I have a letter from Rome, dear Sister Walburga, dear Sister
Mildred. It’s from the Congregation of Religious. We have to take it
seriously.’

‘We do,’ says Walburga.

‘We have to do something about it,’ says the Abbess,‘because the
Cardinal himself has written, not the Cardinal’s secretary. They’re putting
out feelers. There are questions, and they are leading questions.’

‘Are they worried about the press and publicity?’ says Walburga, her fingers
moving in her lap.

‘Yes, they want an explanation. But I,’ says the Abbess of Crewe, ‘am
not worried about the publicity. It has come to the point where the more we get the
better.’

Mildred’s mind seems to have wandered. She says with a sudden breakage in her calm,
‘Oh, we could be excommunicated! I know we’ll be excommunicated!’

The Abbess continues evenly, ‘The more scandal there is from this point on the
better. We are truly moving in a mythological context. We are the actors; the press and
the public are the chorus. Every columnist has his own version of the same old story, as
it were Aeschylus, Sophocles or Euripides, only of course, let me tell you, of a far
inferior dramatic style. I read classics for a year at Lady Margaret Hall before
switching to Eng. Lit. However that may be — Walburga, Mildred, my Sisters —
the facts of the matter are with us no longer, but we have returned to God who gave
them. We can’t be excommunicated without the facts. As for the legal aspect, no
judge in the kingdom would admit the case, let Felicity tell it like it was as she may.
You cannot bring a charge against Agamemnon or subpoena Clytemnestra, can
you?’

Walburga stares at the Abbess, as if at a new person. ‘You can,’ she says,
‘if you are an actor in the drama yourself.’ She shivers. ‘I feel a
cold draught,’ she says. ‘Is there a window open?’

‘No,’ says the Abbess.

‘How shall you reply to Rome?’ Mildred says, her voice soft with fear.

‘On the question of the news reports I shall suggest we are the victims of popular
demonology,’ says the Abbess. ‘Which we are. But they raise a second
question on which I’m uncertain.’

‘Sister Felicity and her Jesuit!’ says Walburga.

‘No, of course not. Why should they trouble themselves about a salacious nun and a
Jesuit? I must say a Jesuit, or any priest for that matter, would be the last man I
would myself elect to be laid by. A man who undresses, maybe; but one who unfrocks,
no.’

‘That type of priest usually prefers young students,’ Walburga observes.
‘I don’t know what Thomas sees in Felicity.’

‘Thomas wears civilian clothes, so he wouldn’t unfrock for Felicity,’
observes Mildred.

‘What I have to decide,’ says the Abbess, ‘is how to answer the second
question in the letter írom Rome. It is put very cautiously. They seem quite
suspicious. They want to know how we reconcile our adherence to the strict enclosed Rule
with the course in electronics which we have introduced into our daily curriculum in
place of book-binding and hand-weaving. They want to know why we cannot relax the
ancient Rule in conformity with the new reforms current in the other convents, since we
have adopted such a very modern course of instruction as electronics. Or, conversely,
they want to know why we teach electronics when we have been so adamant in adhering to
the old observances. They seem to be suggesting, if you read between the lines, that the
convent is bugged. They use the word “scandals” a great deal.’

‘It’s a snare,’ says Walburga. That letter is a snare. They want you to
fall into a snare. May we see the letter Lady Abbess?’

‘No,’ says the Abbess. ‘So that, when questioned, you will not make any
blunder and will be able to testify that you haven’t seen it. I’ll show you
my answer, so that you can say you have seen it. The more truths and confusions the
better.’

‘Are we to be questioned?’ says Mildred, folding her arms at her throat,
across the white coif.

‘Who knows?’ says the Abbess. ‘In the meantime, Sisters, do you have
any suggestions to offer as to how I can convincingly reconcile our activities in my
reply?’

The nuns sit in silence for a moment. Walburga looks at Mildred, but Mildred is staring
at the carpet.

‘What is wrong with the carpet, Mildred?’ says the Abbess.

Mildred looks up. ‘Nothing, Lady Abbess,’ she says.

‘It’s a beautiful carpet, Lady Abbess,’ says Walburga, looking down at
the rich green expanse beneath her feet.

The Abbess puts her white head to the side to admire her carpet, too. She intones with an
evident secret happiness:

Walburga shivers a little. Mildred watches the Abbess’s lips
as if waiting for another little quotation.

‘How shall I reply to Rome?’ says the Abbess.

‘I would like to sleep on it,’ says Walburga.

‘I, too,’ says Mildred.

The Abbess looks at the carpet:

‘I,’ says the Abbess, then, ‘would prefer not to
sleep on it. Where is Sister Gertrude at this hour?’

‘In the Congo,’ Walburga says.

‘Then get her on the green line.’

‘We have no green line to the Congo,’ Walburga says. ‘She travels day
and night by rail and river. She should have arrived at a capital some hours ago.
It’s difficult to keep track of her whereabouts.’

‘If she has arrived at a capital we should hear from her tonight,’ the Abbess
says. ‘That was the arrangement. The sooner we perfect the green line system the
better. We should have in our laboratory a green line to everywhere; it would be
convenient to consult Gertrude. I don’t know why she goes rushing around, spending
her time on ecumenical ephemera. It has all been done before. The Arians, the
Albigensians, the Jansenists of Port Royal, the English recusants, the Covenanters. So
many schisms, annihilations and reconciliations. Finally the lion lies down with the
lamb and Gertrude sees that they remain lying down. Meantime Sister Gertrude, believe
me, is a philosopher at heart. There is a touch of Hegel, her compatriot, there.
Philosophers, when they cease philosophizing and take up action, are
dangerous.’