An Experiment in Love by Hilary Mantel

Author:Hilary Mantel [Mantel, Hilary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, British & Irish, Contemporary, Literary, Literary Fiction
ISBN: 080505202X
Amazon: B003J48C9U
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
Published: 2010-04-02T08:00:00+00:00

I did not see this at once. When I was eleven years old, I understood that I also was meant to be a nun. Where does one acquire a sense of vocation? In the chapel after a school dinner, a queasy mass of processed peas and tinned apricots rolling slowly through the gut: great girls whooping in the playground with the cold stinging their cheeks, and inside, silence and the scent of winter flowers: the frozen oily touch of holy water: the creak and snap of a knee joint as a sister rises from genuflection. If you stare for a long time at a candle flame you lose all sense of self. I found this: I felt my thin, hungry essence flit upwards towards the gilded roof. I thought that was what holiness was – this loss, this flitting – and I may have been right.

The only jewellery permitted to Holy Redeemer girls was of a Catholic nature – a Lourdes medal, a cross and chain. Karina wore a sharp silver crucifix, over-sized, that was always edging up over the top button of her blouse or summer frock. She used to thrust it back with ostentation – impatient yet reverent – and glance up at the teacher of the moment to see if she was watching. She did novenas, First Fridays, rosaries: obligations over and above weekly Mass and regular confession. When the sacred host was in her mouth she looked as if she were sucking a stone.

One thinks of the loss of faith as a gradual process, a seeping and trickling. In my case it was sudden. I woke up one day, in my Chinese room; I was twelve, and the torpor of adolescence was seeping through me, and I hated mornings. There was a prayer, that Sister Monica had told us to say on waking: Holy Mother Mary, I humbly thank you for preserving your hand-maiden from the perils of the night. Downstairs, my mother was already gushing water into the kettle; soon she would be yelling for me. I sat up and slid to the edge of the bed. Now I beseech you preserve your hand-maiden from the snares and temptations of the day to come. My feet were cold on the linoleum: I looked down at them, narrow and blue. Through Jesus Christ Our Lord – just as I was about to add ‘Amen’, something made me look up. Perhaps it was God, climbing out through my window, absconding. I looked around the room. What perils? I wondered. My satchel rolled fatly on the floor, stuffed with maths textbooks. My outdoor shoes stood obediently side by side, waiting for my feet. What temptations? I moved to the window and opened it a crack. The sullen morning slid its fingers inside. So I’m doing today on my own, I thought. In that pendant second before my feet touched the lino, God had become de trop; I felt vaguely embarrassed that I had ever believed anything.

Soon after this I had a short conversation – my first – with Julianne.

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