Boarding Schools 6: More about the Convent

In my first few weeks at the Convent (I was 10), a much older girl told me to tell another girl (Pippa Leonard) that there was a phone call for her. I couldn't speak to older girls. I couldn’t say “No”, or “I don’t know who she is”, so I just didn't do the task. Later the first girl found me and said "I told you to give her the message and you didn't, did you!" She was furious. She said, “Ooh, I could crown you!”

In that first term, one of the younger nuns got us to choose and prepare a piece from a book, and read it into a tape recorder. I chose a little Victorian girl talking about her lovely new outfit and “merino fan”, and read it in a squeaky affected voice. Afterwards, older girls were cruel to me about my performance, claiming they couldn’t hear a word I’d said. (I was at the back of the room and the nun didn’t think to bring us up to the microphone.) Of course they were trying to test our reading skills without our being aware, or humiliating anybody. The older girls were still at the “thee – cat – sat – on – thee – mat” stage.

When we were about 14, we were made to memorise 25 lines of poetry once a week, and recite them one after another in class. Our teacher, Miss Kirby, endured 20 children reciting in a monotone without any expression or understanding. One week we were given “Friends, Romans, countrymen”. Independently, Antonia and I decided to learn the whole speech, not just the 25 lines ripped from the middle. Separately, we stood up and delivered the oration as if we were Marc Antony, with great emotion (“You blocks, you stones, you worse than useless things!”). No reaction. At the end of the class Miss Kirby said “Thank you everybody, and” (sneering) “a special thanks to Lucy and Antonia”. No smile. Exit. Soon after that, we were told to write out the lines instead of reciting them. After several decades, I put two and two together: we had raised the bar too high.

Our marks for the week were averaged. I couldn’t do maths at all, or physics or chemistry. I was OK with the sciences to start with, they were even interesting, but then one day they became maths. I must have got low, or no, marks for these three subjects every week, so my average looked terrible. I was taken aside one day by an elderly nun who drew me a map on which to record my progress week by week, and told me I must “try harder”. I never filled in the map – I didn’t care what my marks were. And wasn’t it rather dense of the nuns not to see what the problem was?

When I first went to school, we had “tests” at the end of every term. Other girls would “revise” for these. I didn’t know what the word meant. I thought they were testing us on what we remembered. Eventually I began to grasp the concept of revising, so I decided I would do it too, to be like other people and join in the conversation. A friend saw me in the corridor carrying an exercise book. I felt very pleased to be able to show off this badge of normality. But she looked at it and said, “Why are you revising that? We didn’t do that this term.” At the end of one term the art teacher, Miss Walker, told us to “write about a picture”.  I picked Moroni’s The Tailor. She sneered at me and said “But we haven’t studied it this term.” But she’d said “a picture”, not “a picture we’ve studied this term”?

I arrived back at school one September, and we were eating lunch when an older girl (she was supervising our table) asked me: “You must be doing O Levels now?” I replied: “What’s an O Level?” The nuns decided which subjects we’d do. Thankfully I was no longer in the Physics and Chemistry class, but I had to do Maths for two years. The lights came back on when we did geometry, and once a term the maths teacher would set us logic puzzles. Otherwise I just had no idea what was going on. The nuns also had the bright idea of putting us in for exams a year early, so we didn’t do as well as we might have. You'd think my parents might have mentioned O Levels?

Nobody told me that when answering an exam question, you should plan what you're going to say and write a structure. Nobody told me to read over what I’d written. When I’d answered the question, I used to stop, and be terribly bored and play word games because you couldn’t leave the room. Another ex-pupil adds that they barely mentioned external exams to anybody. You just did the curriculum, then sat the exam.

The school didn’t, deep down, really care about our academic progress. Very few of us went on to any kind of higher education. We were all supposed to marry young and have lots of Catholic children. Apart from me, of course – I was never going to get married. That was something everybody just knew, my family included.

I dropped out of doing two of my A levels. Did the nuns ever discuss that with my parents? Did they ever discuss it with me? No. You’d think they would. You’d think they’d ask me what subjects I wanted to do instead. I had a year in hand: I could have moved down a year and done history and French.

Aged about 11, I was leaving the refectory after tea and the nun in charge – let’s call her Sister Mary – told me to stand in the corner. Sister Mary was terrifying. She had a pale face and glittering specs, and shouted at us and pinched our arms as we processed into chapel. She stood in the refectory while we ate, oversaw our behaviour and clicked a fearsome castanet to signal “Stop talking. Clear the tables. Stand up. Say the Angelus”. I stood in the corner by the window and the fruit stands sobbing until my handkerchief was soaked – at least I had one. Pippa Leonard came and asked me if I was all right, but I couldn’t speak. Sister Mary didn’t release me, and eventually I just walked out of the room, and the incident was never spoken of again.

“Exemptions” was a ceremony that took up most of Saturday morning. We sat in the hall with our knees and feet together – no crossing legs or even ankles. The three head nuns sat at a desk with a little box of coloured cards. A fairly high-up nun would read out our names in threes, together with a judgement of our behaviour for the week. (How did they compile the reports? Did the prefects report back? Was there some kind of surveillance network?)

The judgements were printed on the coloured cards: Very Good (dark blue), Good (pale blue), Fair (beige) and Unsatisfactory (I don't think these cards existed). We went up in threes, curtsied, then approached the desk individually to get our card. We curtsied again and went back to our places. Getting “Fair” was a bit like being sent to Purgatory. Unsatisfactory or “no note” were the equivalent of Hell. I can’t remember what I got “no note” for. (And we are still wondering why the whole farrago was called "Exemptions".)

Why did Sister Mary put me in the corner? Probably for being "uncontrolled". (A frequent judgement during Exemptions was "Good, for being uncontrolled in the cloister".) It meant "running and shouting", or "raising your voice and dancing about". We were supposed to be "controlled" at all times: walk calmly, keep our elbows in and our voices low.

In the winter, I never went outside, because it was too cold. I dropped out of sport, and hid. They must have known, but they never did or said anything about it. What did my report say? Why weren’t there activities for people who just couldn’t do sport? We could even have done sport with people our own age, instead of a year or two older. Now another ex-pupil tells me that if you didn’t want to do sport you were allowed to go for a walk. Well, for heaven’s sake.

More here, and links to the rest.

Boarding Schools 5: Why I Was Expelled

A school, organisation or religion has a few completely pointless rules. But they are markers: if the children, flock, workers obey the pointless rules, they will obey all the others. Because “a school must have rules”, and “to break one is to break them all”. And “if you doubt one item of Catholic doctrine you are not a Catholic any more and will go to hell and burn for all eternity”. Some of the flock adore the pointless rules and really enjoy forcing the others to follow them “because it’s the way we do it”. Result: most people follow the rules in public, break them if they can avoid being found out, impose them on others, tell everybody how important they are; while accepting the “hell” element as “metaphorical” – ie “imaginary”. But I didn’t know all that at the time (the mid-60s).

I was told not to think about what other people were thinking about me, so I didn’t – until recently. It’s like suddenly acquiring a sixth sense. I never wondered what the nuns were thinking about me, but they must have added up all my odd, or “bad”, behaviour, and I acquired a reputation. I had to be rigidly controlled. When I was told to get out of the swimming pool, and swam to the opposite ladder instead of taking the nearest, I was banned from swimming for the two hottest weeks of the year.

There were hockey, netball and tennis matches against other schools. I never watched them. Winners were announced at an interminable ceremony, with a lot of cheering, at which the whole school were present. I used to bunk off. During one of these farragos, I went for a walk up to the hockey pitches, and came home through a rainstorm, singing at the top of my voice. I was happy. But then I was hauled in to see the Head Nun again, and underwent more hand-patting as she smilingly explained I couldn’t just “follow my bent” but must fit in with society. That was after she’d told me off for getting my clothes soaking wet and making the laundry room nun dry them. I wasn't aware this had happened – I probably changed into my never-worn games clothes.

We had a rather ineffective drama teacher who never managed to put on a play. We read a historical drama which she wanted us to act. She thought it would be a big joke to cast me as the Archbishop of Canterbury. I thought this would be utterly humiliating and begged not to have to do it but she giggled a lot and insisted. I went alone to our classroom and lay face-down on the rug and sobbed. Eventually the school nurse came in (an elderly nun devoid of bedside manner). She made me get up and go to bed, and gave me a sleeping pill. The incident wasn’t mentioned again, and the play was never put on. I was rather too old for toddler tantrums – but it was the only way I knew of getting out of doing anything I simply couldn’t face.

So, how did I get expelled? Let me explain the layout. The school was housed in a Victorian Gothic stately home, with much oak panelling and carving. There was a large room with a fake Tudor fireplace, a minstrels’ gallery, mullioned windows with seats, a TV and a grand piano. Three doors led off it: one to another Gothic hall with a magnificent staircase (pictured), one to the new-built “cloisters” and one to a classroom. It was 9pm in the summer term, and still light. I was in the large room when the Head Nun appeared like a vision in the minstrels' gallery and told me to go to bed. Instead of going through the door into the cloisters (that led to my bedroom), I went into the classroom, which had no other exit. Some younger girls (who’d been playing in the big room) came in and told me that the Head Nun had ordered them to tell me to go to bed immediately. I sent them back to tell her that I wouldn’t. This happened several times.

Eventually I climbed out of the window, and walked round to the building that housed my dormitory. You have to understand that we weren’t allowed outside after a certain time and what I did was simply unthinkable. No more was said about the incident.

Then my mother rang the Head Nun to ask if she could take me out at the weekend. The Head Nun replied: “Take her away and I don’t care if you never bring her back!” My mother, again, was mortified. So I had to leave school, and have my education – academic and social – severely disrupted.

And what had I done? I suppose over the years I’d clocked up a record of “difficult” behaviour. These days wouldn’t somebody send me to a psychologist? Wouldn’t my parents appeal – or ask for reasons? All they knew about our school lives was a report at the end of term. My maths report always read “Must try harder”. I sat in the O Level class with an entirely blank mind for two years, and then was quietly withdrawn from the exam. Nothing was said about it. My ability to do maths (completely absent) was never tested.

And people think I’ve been taught how to do everything – the “proper” way – and don’t need to be told what to do or how to do it. But we had all the advantages and privileges.

From the Head Nun's obituary in the school magazine: Things of which she disapproved were stamped on immediately, but on those which she either thought unimportant or harmless fun, a blind eye was turned, provided of course one was not actually caught – a most valuable lesson for life of the importance of observing the 11th Commandment: Thou shalt not be found out.

More here, and links to the rest.

When Sister April O'Leary contacted me for a contribution to the history of the school she was compiling, I wrote back that the most important lesson the school taught was hypocrisy. She used everybody's offerings without editing or much editorialising. It's a brilliant book. Did I learn the lesson? You decide.

On reflection, I'd obeyed the Head Nun while appearing to disobey her, so she could do nothing about it.

Convents, digested.