Quiet as a Nun Read Online Free PDF Page A

Spanish ladies-in-waiting.' I suddenly realised she was not referring to the late Queen Mary of betoqued fame, but to Mary Tudor. In my convent days I had to learn not to refer to her as Bloody Mary.
    'You won't remember Lady Powerstock. She died very young - the Campion chest, you know. We were going through a period of grave financial difficulty at the time. And then dear Sir Gilbert stepped in and bought most of the land on which the convent stands and endowed it in perpetual memory of his wife. But for some technical reason to do with the trust, although the convent buildings became a charity, the land itself was different. I am afraid, as his heiress, Sister Miriam still owned it outright.'
'You're afraid she owned it outright?'
It was an odd choice of words, even for a nun.
    'Oh Jemima, I am so worried that the whole wretched business of the land drove her to what she did.' It was Mother Ancilla at her most human and appealing. She stretched out and held my hand in hers. I remembered what ones the nuns were for physical contact, hugs, embraces, kisses, hands warmly held. The contacts whose natural corollaries were denied to them ... No, that was Tom's kind of talk. They were just a bunch of affectionate and sweet, slightly girlish women, frozen perhaps in the girlishness of the age at which they had joined the convent.
    'It worried her so, the responsibility of it, on top of her illness. Our Lord certainly knew what He was talking about when He told the centurion to sell all that he had. How poor Sister Miriam longed to lose all her great wealth into the arms of God. But the lawyers, you know. Even for a nun. They wouldn't let her alone. They kept saying: we must regularise the situation. And then she began to get such odd ideas about it all into her poor sick head. Not at all what Sir Gilbert intended, I can assure you. Ah well, Our Lord saw fit to put an end to all that. He knew that she would have never got such an idea in her right mind.'
    'Mother, you must tell me. What was it that Rosabelle wanted to do with the land?'
This time Mother Ancilla looked quite genuinely surprised.
    'But, Jemima, don't you know? You must know. I thought she must have written to you, when I found the note. It was after your programme. She wanted to take it away from us and—'
'Yes?'
'Give it to the poor.'
    'Give it to the poor,' I repeated. Then the funny side of it all struck me. There had been such absolute horror in Mother Ancilla's voice. I could not resist adding: 'Just like the centurion in fact.'
    'Not at all like the centurion,' replied Mother Ancilla icily. 'The centurion, you will remember, was a responsible man in a high position. Sister Miriam was a very sick woman. Her own lawyer begged her not to perform such a destructive and - one cannot avoid the word - crazy action. It would have ruined the convent of course. No grounds, no land. Right up to our very gates. No, beyond our gates. To our front door. It seems that the chapel itself would have gone. Our own chapel! Oh, we could no longer have existed. All our work gone for nothing. So very very far from the intentions of her father and the memory of her dear mother.'
    She sighed again. There seemed to be more irritation than charity about the exhalation. I felt encouraged to continue.
    'The poor - that's an awful lot of people. How did she choose?' Mother Ancilla gave me a smile of great sweetness.
    'The poor. As Our Blessed Lord said, they are always with us. I remember it was the title of one of your programmes, wasn't it? "They are always with us." I wondered at the time how you selected them.'
    'I doubt if Sister Miriam used the methods of Megalith Television.' Once again I regretted the decision to strike back. Another clasp of the hand. Another desperate look. A nagging feeling that something - or someone - was frightening Mother Ancilla, returned.
    'Look, Mother Ancilla,' I said in my gentlest Jemima Shore manner, ‘I want to help you. Please believe that. But you