The Convent Read Online Free PDF Page A

‘Once she threw a cup of tea in my face when I was lying on the bed reading. Hot tea. It burned. They wouldn’t let me sit with them after dinner … so I would go outside or try to read on my bed. I … I didn’t have anywhere else to go!’ Ellen began to sob, and she turned her face away into her other hand.
    â€˜Oh, dear child.’ The old nun’s grip tightened and she felt in the pocket of her habit for a hanky and passed it across. ‘So, you told your father?’
    â€˜No, no … I didn’t … he … no.’ Ellen took the nicely laundered white hanky but hardly dared use it. ‘He knew a bit, I think.’
    â€˜Wipe your eyes now, dear,’ the nun said.
    â€˜Thank you, Mother.’ It felt wrong somehow to use a nun’s hanky, but she didn’t know how to say that.
    â€˜So what brought things to a head?’
    â€˜I couldn’t eat. He took me to a doctor and I had to drink a tonic and … that made me sick too. I overheard them talking one night, the three of them in the kitchen, screaming at him to get me out of their house. They kept saying I was a whore’s child.’
    The nun shuddered.
    â€˜What is a whore, Mother?’ Ellen whispered desperately. ‘Please tell me what it means?’
    â€˜Oh, my dear.’
    â€˜Do I have bad blood?’
    The nun shook her head but said nothing. Then she let go of Ellen’s hand and searched in the folds of her habit for her rosary. Ellen opened up the hanky and wiped her eyes and blew her nose properly, all the time watching the nun’s hands fingering the cross.
    â€˜We’ll say a little prayer now, Ellen, shall we?’ Mother Seraphina said softly. ‘Just a little prayer to Our Lady.’
    Ellen gulped and nodded as the nun kissed the cross and blessed herself with it.
    â€˜And we will remember always that the Blessed Mother is with us, especially in our sufferings.’
    â€˜Yes, Mother.’
    â€˜That she had to watch her only son die on the cross, and so she knows what it is to suffer, my dear.’ The old woman stood and faced the window. ‘We’ll say the Memorare together,’ Mother Seraphina muttered softly. ‘To ease the pain.’
    Ellen stood up and began to pray alongside her teacher.
    Remember, O most loving Virgin Mary,
    that never was it known in any age,
    that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help
    or sought thine intercession was abandoned.
    Inspired with confidence, therefore,
    I cry to thee, most loving Virgin Mary.
    To thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful.
    Do not, O Mother of the Word Incarnate,
    despise my prayers, but graciously hear and grant them. Amen.
    The nun stopped and put her rosary aside. She took a couple of deep breaths and then sighed.
    â€˜Will you play the Mozart sonata for me now, Ellen? The one you learnt for your exam.’
    â€˜But I haven’t practised!’ Ellen was genuinely aghast at the thought. She hadn’t touched a piano in months. ‘And Mother ... it’s Holy Week!’ Could the nun really have forgotten that no bright, joyful pieces were played in the week leading up to Easter?
    â€˜I think Our Lord will understand, dear,’ the nun said. ‘I really do. I think Our Lord and his Blessed Mother will love to hear you play that particular piece.’
    Ellen began tentatively, quietly and self-consciously, but the music took over. It was a piece they both loved. The nun had told her about Mozart as a young boy, not much older than Ellen was, careering around Austria in his lovely velvet clothes and wig, that he was known to be a wag, boisterous and cheeky, playing tricks on people, and all the while writing the most wonderful music in the world. And that was what Ellen thought about as she played. She pretended Mozart was sitting behind them both, listening and smiling, clicking his fingers and tapping his fancy heels on the