Farewell To The East End

Novice. Time will reveal if you are truly called. It is a hard life, and doubts will always plague you. Just go with God.’
    Mention of the Nazis brought to mind what Sister Julienne had told me some time earlier; that there was in Germany a community of Lutheran nuns, started in 1945 or 1946, just after the war, whose vocation was contemplative prayer and repentance for the sins of their fellow countrymen. The women lived a life of extreme privation, as near to concentration camp life as they could get: minimal food (the nuns were all close to starvation), scant clothing, no shoes, no heating in winter, and no beds, just a straw mattress and a thin blanket. And this life they lived in atonement for the sins of others. I had found this story deeply impressive, though I could not really understand the spiritual side of the vocation. I was grappling in my mind with the problems of sin, guilt, atonement, redemption, religious vocation and many unfathomable subjects, when abruptly Sister Monica Joan stood up.
    ‘The water is not very deep,’ she announced, ‘I don’t see how anyone could drown in it.’
    ‘It is in the middle,’ I pointed out. ‘It takes cargo barges.’
    ‘But you can see the bottom. Look, you can see the stones.’
    ‘That’s only at the edges. Anyway, the water level is low at the moment. I assure you it is deep in the middle.’
    ‘I don’t believe it. We shall see.’
    Before we could stop her, and she was surprisingly nimble, Sister Monica Joan had crossed the few steps to the canal and now stood ankle deep at the water’s edge .
    ‘There, I told you,’ she cried triumphantly, ‘the stories about people drowning in the Cuts are just fancy.’ And she took another step towards the centre.
    ‘Come back’ screamed Cynthia and I in alarm. We leaped into the water beside her, but Sister was too quick for us.
    ‘Don’t be silly,’ she called out, taking another step forward. But the Cuts was cut away, and instantly she fell forward into deep water.
    Cynthia and I were not the only ones to hurl ourselves in after her. As many as a dozen East Enders dived, fully clothed, into the canal that Sunday afternoon. None of us need have bothered. It was immediately obvious that Sister Monica Joan could swim. Her habit did not absorb the water at once, and it floated around her like the wings of a huge black water-fowl. Her head was held high, and her white veil floated behind her like exotic plumage.
    All might have been well, and Sister might have swum back to us, had it not been for the enthusiasm of three local lads who dived in from the other bank. They grabbed hold of her and began swimming back whence they had come.
    ‘No, not that side!’ I screamed. ‘Come back – this side!’ Everyone around, including those in the water, was screaming instructions. We all knew that if the boys landed Sister on the opposite bank there was no towpath exit to the bridge. But the lads did not or could not understand in all the confusion. They had pulled Sister to the middle of the canal and saw themselves as heroes. A powerful man, with muscles of oak and the speed of an Olympic swimmer, reached them first. He clouted one lad around the ear, pushed the other boy under, took hold of the protesting nun and swam back with her to our side.
    Do not ask me how we got Sister Monica Joan to the convent. The whole process was too complicated and confusing. My memories are hazy: getting her clothes off with modesty and decorum; dozens of wet people offering advice; wondering what on earth to put on her; someone donating a raincoat, a cardigan, a baby’s shawl; trying to find her shoes. The swimmer and another man got her to the Commercial Road by giving her a chair-lift. She sat regally on their crossed hands, holding their arms with perfect composure, as though a ducking in the Cuts were a regular experience. Someone must have stopped a lorry in the Commercial Road, because I remember the two men lifting Sister up into the lorry and settling her comfortably. She thanked them with queenly grace, and two tough, strong dockers blushed with pleasure. ‘No trouble at all, ma’am,’ they said. ‘Any time. Good day, ma’am.’
    Back at the Convent she was put to bed with hot-water bottles and hot drinks. She slept for twenty-four hours, and when she awoke, she appeared to have no memory at all of what had happened. She suffered no ill. It must have been the angels again.

TOO MANY CHILDREN

    ‘I’m sorry,