Through the Narrow Gate: A Nun’s Story. Karen Armstrong
Mother Katherine retorted. “Of course we do admit people into the Order who find later that they haven’t got a vocation. But you know, Mrs. Armstrong, I’d hesitate to call that a mistake. If they were accepted by the Order, then God, in His infinite wisdom, called them there for His own special purposes. And this may happen to Karen. She may find after a while that it isn’t God’s will and she will be free to go, or we shall be free to send her home. Yes, Mr. Armstrong, we do send people home,” she laughed, “at any time during the first three years.”
Sadly my parents, faced with these cosmic immensities and Divine purposes, realized that their own feelings didn’t count for much. Helplessly they felt themselves carried along by the force of Mother Katherine’s certainty.
“Believe me, Mrs. Armstrong,” Mother Katherine was saying, “if Karen has no vocation she couldn’t stay. It’s a very careful training, you know. She will be trained as a postulant and novice by people who really know how to look into a girl’s heart. There is no way she could bear to stay if it weren’t God’s will. All the other reasons for entering get refined in the noviceship. The only reason for staying is that God wants it.”
“And she can leave at any time during the first three years?” my father asked.
“At any time before first vows.”
“I suppose,” said my mother, voicing for the first time the reason she would use again and again to comfort herself, “that if we stop her now and insist that she go to college, she’ll spend the whole time pining for the convent and never really enter into anything properly.”
“Yes,” said Mother Katherine. “She’d just be marking time.”
“Whereas if she goes next year and then leaves, she’ll have gotten it out of her system sooner,” capped my father.
“Exactly, Mr. Armstrong, but don’t bank on that. I think she has a true vocation—thank God—and I don’t think she will leave. I must tell you that. And believe me, if Karen doesn’t do the will of God, she can never be happy. God makes each of us for a special purpose. If we choose to thwart that purpose, our lives are useless.”
My parents must have thought then of my grandmother. Was that where it had all gone wrong for her? Perhaps she was right. Perhaps she should have been a nun.
“Mr. Armstrong, Mrs. Armstrong, will you give her to God?”
I had been waiting nervously on the stairs for them when I heard the key turn in the lock. It was a moment that was to decide my whole life. As soon as I saw their faces, I knew.
“Well?”
They looked so tired.
“You can go, if you really want to.”
“Oh! Thank you!” How inadequate to say it, to embrace them. And how inadequate as the expression of the joy that suddenly filled me. There was nothing to stop me now. The road stretched clearly ahead to God.
The little train jolted to a stop. Anxiously I leaned out of the train to read the sign. Tripton. At last, I had finally arrived. But though it was in one sense the end of a journey I knew it was only the beginning of another.
By the time I’d handed in my ticket and started to walk up to the convent I felt already in another world. The country land that led to the village was banked on either side by thick hedges, lush and tall, enclosing the road in a green silence. Birds sang in the bushes and—yes—there was a faint smell of blackberries.
It was a hot day. Very hot. Already I was regretting that I was wearing my winter coat—navy blue, smartly cut with gold reefer buttons. I was sweating as I labored up the hill. “Don’t you think it’ll be too hot?” I’d asked my mother.
“Oh, I’d take it. This autumn weather is so unpredictable. You might be cold later on.” And I could see what she was thinking: you may leave in the middle of winter and then you’ll need it. Hoping silently. I thought of them now sitting in the theatre, very aware that I wasn’t with them and never would be again. And then they would drive home where my bedroom was empty, the sheets folded on the bed.
They had bought me the black suitcase I was carrying. 'A black, simple suitcase' I had been told to get. And a black umbrella, a good stout one. I was clutching it in my other hand, a heavy man’s umbrella that looked so out of place with my stiletto heels on this brilliantly sunny day. It would have been more sensible to have worn flat shoes, I thought, grimacing as I stumbled on the uneven surface of the country road. Why hadn’t I? And why had I applied a last dab of makeup before leaving the train? Vanity, no doubt, I thought ruefully. I couldn’t bear somehow not to be looking as nice as possible on my last day in the world. Still, after today, there won’t be any more of that. It was a good thought—the future stretched ahead, clearly unencumbered with stupidities of dress.
At the top of the hill I came upon the village. Just one main street. And so pretty, I reflected, looking at the timbered cottages, the quaint little shops, the picturesque pub. A few people were shopping; ladies in expensive tweeds with poodles on leads strolled on the cobbled pavements. A car or two cruised peacefully down High Street. It was like a chocolate-box village.
Two people passed me, and I saw them glancing at my suitcase and umbrella.
“There’s another one!” I heard one of them say.
Of course. All the postulants arrived at Tripton on the same day to begin their religious life. In a little village this size, dominated by the imposing convent, the inhabitants must see girls carrying black umbrellas toiling up the hill at about the same time every September. I wondered how many others they had spotted today.
I looked at my watch again. Four thirty-five. I was on time. I had been so afraid of missing the train, of being late. What a terrible start that would have been! The empty place in the line of postulants, the raised eyebrows. They might think I had changed my mind or was having a last minute panic, or even a last fling. There must be girls who wanted a last cigarette or who were bidding their boyfriends a passionate and tearful good-bye. Lots of the saints, I reflected, had fought against their vocation right up to the last second. And of course I could change my mind right now. All I had to do was turn back, catch the next train to London, and arrive home. How delighted everybody would be! But I didn’t want to do that. I was excited. Already I was impatient to begin, to tear off these worldly clothes, to start the new life at once. The mental numbness was wearing off and I was feeling slightly sick with anticipation, a bit nervous, and very shy. But glad.
Suddenly on my left I saw the tall convent wall stretching austerely far down the street. And there was the huge gatehouse arching medievally over the heavy iron gate. You couldn’t see the convent from the road. Only a mass of trees down a long drive. The gates were flung back invitingly. The road from one world to another. I suppose I ought to take my last look at the world, I thought,but it seemed theatrical and unreal. What had I to do with that sleepy village?
I walked through quickly without a backward glance.
Turning the corner, I saw the convent. Tranquil and silent, it lay before me. Even the little village street seemed noisy by comparison. There on the left stood the old buildings. I remembered what I knew about Tripton. Before the Reformation it had been the palace of an eminent ecclesiastic. A hundred years ago, in 1863, the Foundress of the Order had brought the little girls in their nearby boarding school here on a picnic. They had their lunch in the palace ruins, just a mass of broken grey stone, save for three huge arches that had once towered over the banquet hall. Now the arches reared triumphantly over the Bedfordshire meadow, the second largest of their kind in Europe. The Foundress had determined then and there to restore the palace to its former beauty and win it back for the church. She had sent her nuns in pairs all over Europe to beg from the Catholic aristocracies who were eagerly watching the Catholic revival in England. And they had raised the money, and the building stood again, noble and majestic.