I was 11. A trunk with my name, in large white letters, appeared at home one day and boom! I did not get to choose the school, nor was I given any warning. I should have known something was up when all of a sudden we were all christened. I had no idea we weren’t, nor what it meant not to be, until ….Catholic Convent.
We were not Catholic.
The corridor had a really noisy floor, especially between the two sets of fire doors, just as you ran past the deportment room. It was in this strange vacuum that you would always first become aware of the chapel: The smell of frankincense.
Girls in blue striped summer dresses, white gloves and blue straw boaters, knee length white socks and t bar shoes, all jostling between the two sets of fire doors. Nuns huffing in their white, starched, flat and shiny ironed wimples, pinned in place with rusty shafts of metal, the whiff of moth repellent coming off of their flapping black dresses, barely concealing the taint of their loathing for all of us.
The Convent of the Immaculate Heart of Mary was a dead dodgy place.
Irish nuns, violently confused by the pubescent girls in their charge, most of them shipped out to be educated, from the army bases in Ireland.
It was the 70’s, the time of The Troubles.
Jimmy Saville was King, in his noisy shell suits and his large cigars, small boys on his lap on tv, Top of the Pops, Marvin Gaye hearing it through the grapevine.
Father Bernard was the Man in Charge of the Nuns. He was the priest, the one the nuns bowed to, he was the boss. He was fleshy and jowled. He would stride down the path, past the class windows, on a mission:
If there was a random small child, yes, they were sent as young as three, he would pick them up by squeezing the arms to their ribs and kiss them full on the lips…. we would sit in class and watch him stride on in his long black dress, having put her down again, on the path, arms still stuck tightly to her ribs. We would all be dazed, each time, as though it was the first. The slavered child would just stand there, stunned, dripping and bewildered. We called him The Kissing Bandit.
Do I digress? No, I set the scene: We arrive at the chapel. The nuns range around the back of the room and we move down between the pews in two rows, white gloved fingers gliding over each pew as it was passed. All of them, and here is the division, wore a black veil to replace the boater. All of them genuflected to go into the pew, all of them crossed themselves. All of them could go up for the bread and the wine.
I was not Catholic. I was not allowed to genuflect…..
I was not Catholic. I was not allowed to cross myself…..
I was not Catholic. I was not allowed to take communion…..
I was not Catholic. I was not allowed to wear a black veil…..
So I would sit and watch as they lined up along the bar in front of the altar.
Little girls and teenagers alike, blue striped summer dresses, white gloves, knee length white socks and t bar shoes, the soles all pointing towards me.
And Father Bernard, with his shiny pate, smiling as these littles girls and teenagers all……
Tipped their heads back, one by one, opened their throats, stuck out their tongues and closed their eyes…..
as he smiled and delicately placed a wafer representing the Body of Christ upon their little pink tongues.
He was wearing a floor length white lace dress over his Habit.
Images that stay in ones mind a very long time.