Through the Narrow Gate: A Nun’s Story

“Oh!” she threw back her head, laughing silently, her shoulders shivering in little eddies of mirth. “Well, in the religious life, Karen, we are all sisters, but in this Order we call the people we enter with, the people who are trained with us in the postulantship and noviceship, our ‘brothers’. Your brothers have all arrived and you’re going to meet them now while you have tea.”

We entered a large parlor, rather dark, with heavily paneled walls and a dark red carpet on the floor. In the middle of the room was a round table, around which some nine or ten girls were sitting. They fell awkwardly silent as the procession of nuns filed into the room.

“Well, here’s Karen,” said Mother Provincial as she took her seat between two girls, who looked at her nervously. “Karen comes to us from Birmingham. Is there a chair for her, Mother? Ah yes, there you are; now on your right is Marie from Bristol and on your left is Edna who comes from Dublin.”

Other names were called—Adèle, Joan, Margaret, Irene, Nessa, Pia, Teresa. I blinked dazedly but could not take it all in. I registered Teresa’s dark Nigerian face: “Our first Nigerian postulant!” Mother Provincial had announced proudly, and I looked with respect at the young, plump, giggly girl who had dared to come to another civilization to search for Christ. Then my eye was caught by Marie’s green nail varnish. I turned to look at her. Marie, I recognized with a slight shock, was another Suzie. Her tight skirt was pulled tautly over her knees; her hair was dark and curly, her face sharply pretty. She was at home with the world outside. What had brought her to abandon it? I wondered.

It was a sobering thought. Helping myself to a piece of cake that Mother Greta smilingly offered me, I stole a guarded look at my “brethren”. I had been so absorbed in getting myself here that it had never really occurred to me that other girls were going over similar hurdles. Now here we all were together in this convent parlor. And we would remain together in close proximity for the next three years. What a motley assortment we were. A Nigerian, an Irish girl, a Suzie, and that dark, dignified girl over there—Adèle—who was obviously French. Those were just the superficial differences. Heaven only knew what inner differences there were. Would we have anything in common?

“And now you must all eat a good tea!” Mother Provincial said jovially. “Some of you aren’t eating anything. They’d better eat up, hadn’t they?” she appealed to the other nuns who were standing round the table, pouring tea into china cups. “They don’t know when they’ll be eating again.” She laughed, and the other nuns again joined in that teasing laugh of exclusive knowledge.

Mother Provincial wheeled back to Teresa, turning not just her head but her whole body in an urgent, swooping movement. “Do you think you’ll have any meals in the religious life, Teresa?”

Teresa shook her head and turned her eyes down so that she crouched low over her plate. Her body was convulsed in silent laughter. Silence. She raised her eyes eventually to look at us all and was then caught in the grips of another paroxysm. “I don’t know, Reverend Mother,” she finally brought out in a low, trembling whisper.

It’s not that funny, I thought as the nuns again trilled into a chime of laughter.

We all watched Mother Provincial tensely, smilingly obedient to her mood, which swept us dutifully along in her wake. Eventually she took pity on us. “What do you think, Mother?” she barked at Mother Albert.

“Oh, I expect so, Reverend Mother,” she said, her round face friendly. “Just a little,” she added in the exaggerated tones of deliberate teasing, “just a little supper as it’s the first night.”

“Sadists!” muttered Marie under cover of the dutiful laughter that completed this exchange.

I jumped and turned to look at her again. I had been thinking much the same thing but I would never have dared to voice it like that. Marie grimaced at me.

“Oh! I think they’re only trying to jolly us through,” I said defensively. “I don’t think they mean to make us feel worse.”

“No, I suppose not, but it’s still pretty tactless, isn’t it? I mean, for all we know we may not have any supper tonight. We don’t know anything that goes on behind the locked enclosure door, do we?”

“No,” I nodded apprehensively. It was amazing, now that I came to think of it, how little Mother Katherine had actually told me. There had been hints at hardship but no details had been given at all.

“Did they tell you anything?” Marie asked with interest.

I shook my head. “No, just that it was a very austere order.” Now that I was actually on the brink of this strange new world Mother Katherine’s words struck a pang of fear through me. What had they actually meant? She had obviously been warning me to be prepared for anything, and it was one thing to be that when the convent was still a year away, but quite another now. How many people, I wondered, looking round the table at the chattering nuns and girls, would embark on such an important commitment knowing so little of what was in store for them? Still, I told myself firmly, there can’t be any half-measures with God. You have to be ready to sign that blank check. I steeled myself and cast a surreptitious glance at my watch. Five forty-five. Any time now we’d go through the enclosure door and start our religious lives properly. I wished we could get on with it. The reflections Marie had inspired filled me with a fluttery sense of anticipation, but there was a quiet excitement there too.

Marie was speaking to me. “Mother Louise told me that too, that it was a strict order, I mean.”

“Was she your headmistress?” I asked.

“No, just a nun in the school. She taught me history.”

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen. Seventeen and never been kissed,” Marie quoted, simpering affectedly, and then gave me a deliberately vulgar wink. “I don’t think!” she added, smiling at me roguishly.

“So am I, seventeen I mean,” I said. And we laughed companionably, drawn together by the shared joke. I liked Marie, I decided; she was fun. Still, I was curious to know what on earth had made her decide to enter. She looked quite different from the rest of us. I decided to ask her. She wouldn’t mind.

“What brings you here?” I asked, as though we’d met accidentally at a street corner.

“Well, it’s such a beautiful life,” Marie said. Her black eyes, which usually glinted in her face like shiny currants, misted over dreamily. “You know, the habit. It’s lovely, isn’t it?” I smiled vaguely. I’d never given it much thought. “And at school the nuns sing so beautifully. It’s such a pure life—being a bride of Christ, giving up the world and all that. And then my best friend Angela entered last year.”

“Is she still here?” I asked.

“Yes, she’s a first-year novice. I can’t wait to see her again. Well, I went to her clothing last July. That convinced me. I had to come here. And I’ve not looked back since.”

I smiled vaguely. I felt something was wrong somewhere. Where did God fit into all this? Still, I reasoned, you didn’t start spouting about God to someone you’d only just met. I’d certainly feel a bit awkward amidst the teacups and the bread and butter.

“Wish I had a fag!” Marie whispered. “I smoked my last one on the train. My last cigarette!” she added, dramatically throwing her head back in a studied pose and closing her eyes. They were thickly coated with emerald green eyeshadow that was not quite the same color as her pearlized nails. “Still,” she sprang out of this and grabbed a piece of shortbread. “Eat up, my girl! If we can’t smoke, we might as well eat!”

“Honestly!” Edna muttered on my other side. “I don’t know how they can do it. I can’t eat a thing.”

I nodded at her sympathetically. I want this to be over, I told myself urgently. At the moment I felt as though I were suspended between two worlds. The feeling was accentuated by the fact that the nuns around us were not eating themselves. I had never seen a nun eat. “Why won’t you eat with us?” we had asked the nuns on picnics and outings.

“Because we are separate,” Mother Katherine had explained. “Nuns live apart from the world. Eating with somebody implies a sharing of values, a common outlook. We don’t eat with seculars—people who are not religious—because we have turned our back on the world. You must always respect a nun’s separateness.”

And here we were now, come from all over the globe to share their lives.

As if she were answering my unspoken wish to begin the new life properly, Mother Albert now spoke.

“Reverend Mother,” she said respectfully to the Provincial, “I think as the hooding is at six-thirty we’d better be going along now.”

“Ah yes! Splendid!” said Mother Provincial. “Yes. Well, you’ll go along now with Mother Albert to the Postulantship,” she said, smiling at us. “There the second-year novices will help you to change into the postulants’ dress. Then at half-past six we have the hooding ceremony.” She paused and her voice swelled out. “You will come into the church and you will receive the postulants’ hood, the short white veil you will wear during these first nine months. It will be your formal reception into the community. Shall we say grace together?” Shuffling, we all stood up.

We went back into the garden where the sunlight was almost blinding after the darkness of the parlor, a straggling little procession headed by Mother Albert, who walked with an odd springing step, seeming to dance on the ball of her right foot. We limped along behind, tight skirts, orlon sweaters, one or two neat suits. I felt weak with relief.

Mother Albert smiled at us. “Well,” she said, “this is it. The moment you’ve been thinking about for months. You’ve been imagining what it was like, I expect, wondering what you’d feel. And now you probably don’t feel anything very much at all.”