The Spiral Staircase. Karen Armstrong

a gentler, more thoughtful girl; her constant companion Pat, who had been a pupil at one of the boarding schools run by my order; and finally Jane, who was also reading English. All were Catholics. All had some experience of nuns. Jane retained a great fondness for the kindly semi-enclosed sisters at her rather exclusive school. Pat had actually known me as a nun, since I had been sent to help out at her school in Harrogate. There were other people at the table for whom Catholicism and convents were alien territory and who clearly intended to keep it that way. In Beginning the World, I made them all tease me good-naturedly about my gaffe, question me about convent life and express shock and horror at such customs as kissing the floor, confessing faults in public and performing elaborate penances in the refectory. Maybe there was some discussion along these lines; certainly people were curious, up to a point. But I doubt that anybody was really very interested.

      These young women had been quite wonderful to me. It had been Rosemary, Fiona and Pat who had marched me down to Marks and Spencer a couple of hours after my dispensation had come through and helped me to buy my first secular clothes. Rosemary had cut and styled my hair and all three had escorted me to dinner, my first public appearance as a defrocked nun. But they were probably wary of prying too closely into the reasons for what they could see had been a traumatic decision. I certainly had no desire to discuss the matter with them. In the convent we had been carefully trained never to tell our troubles to one another and it would never have occurred to me to unburden myself to my peers. And these girls had their own concerns. They too had essays to write; they were falling in love, and trying to juggle the demands of concentrated academic work with those of an absorbing social life. They were making their own journeys into adulthood, and now that the drama of my exodus was over, they almost certainly assumed that I was happily revelling in my new freedom, and were content to leave well alone.

      I also knew that they could not begin to imagine my convent existence. Occasionally one of them would express astonishment if I inadvertently let something slip. ‘My nuns weren’t a bit like that!’ Jane would insist stoutly. ‘Your lot must have been abnormally strict.’ Pat would look even more bewildered, because she and I had lived with exactly the same community, but her perspective, as a secular, was different. ‘They were so modern and up-to-date, even sophisticated!’ she would protest. ‘They drove cars, were starting to go to the cinema again, and were changing the habit!’ Both girls would look at me reproachfully, because I was spoiling a cherished memory. Nobody likes to be told that things were not as they imagined. But I was quite certain that my own order had not been particularly austere, and agreed with Pat that it had been far more enlightened than many. Most nuns had observed these arcane rituals, had kissed the ground, confessed their external faults to one another, and were forbidden to have what were known as ‘particular friendships’, since all love must be given to God. That was why the reforms of the Second Vatican Council were so necessary.

      I also knew that, taken out of context, such practices as kissing the floor or reciting the Lord’s Prayer five times, with your arms in the form of a cross, would seem sensationalist, exaggerated and histrionic. But in reality they became as normal to us as breathing, a routine part of our lives, sometimes even a little tedious. To speak of these things outside the convent would give a false impression. I had not left the convent because we had to do public penance, but because I had failed to find God and had never come within shouting distance of that complete self-surrender which, the great spiritual writers declared, was essential for those who wished to enter into the divine presence.

      So I did not speak of my old life to anybody and most people assumed that I had, therefore, simply put the past behind me.

      

      ‘Much better out than in,’ Miss Griffiths, my Anglo-Saxon tutor said decisively, as we sat in her elegant college rooms drinking sherry one evening. ‘You look much better out of that habit, my lamb. And, you know, however things turn out in the future, I’m certain you made the correct decision. If you come back to me in fifteen years’ time and say “Look, five children and a divorce!” I shall still say that you were right to leave.’

      This, of course, was quite true. There had been no other option. But as I looked around at the richly coloured William Morris curtains, the massive bookcases, and the oriental rug in front of the fire, I felt entirely out of my element. Every item of furniture, down to the tasteful ornaments glinting on the marble mantelpiece and the cunningly arranged lamps, had been designed for comfort and pleasure. In the convent, everything had been pared down to essentials: scrubbed floorboards, uncurtained windows, starkly positioned tables and chairs. Each was a perpetual reminder of how we too were to be stripped inwardly of any lingering attachment to the world, to people and to material objects, if we were to be worthy of God. Nevertheless, it was nice here, I reflected, the sherry blurring the room in a golden glow. Perhaps I could become a don one day, and have a pretty room like this, piled high with books. Perhaps I could dedicate myself to scholarship, as I had once devoted myself to the disciplines of the religious life.

      My tutors’ comfortable, peaceful rooms increasingly seemed a haven. As I walked around Oxford, I realized that the world had undergone radical change while I had been inside. I had begun my Postulantship in 1962, just before the sexual, social and political upheavals of the 1960s. In the 50s, when I had grown up, young people had looked like miniature versions of their parents. Boys wore flannel trousers and ties; and girls were clad in demure twinsets and prim pearl necklaces. We were kept under fairly strict surveillance. I had been only seventeen years old when I had left this world, a product of convent schooling with an ingrained fear of sexuality. The dangers of premarital sex had been burned into my soul. And, indeed, before the contraceptive pill, it was a risky enterprise for girls. But all that had clearly changed. Girls and boys walked with their arms casually slung around one another, in ways that might or might not be sexual. Some embraced languorously in public places. They certainly did not subscribe to the old shibboleths, though I knew that my Catholic friends still agonized about how far they could go without falling into mortal sin. But the demeanour of these young people was even more startling. They had long flowing hair instead of the tidy repressed bobs of my youth. The neat sweaters and ties had been thrown out. Their attire was careless, ragged and often eccentric – flowered or ruffled shirts for the men, evening dress worn with jaunty insouciance in the middle of the day; the girls wore skirts that barely covered their thighs or long, flowing, vaguely eastern robes.

      Above all, they were confident. I had just come from an institution in which young people were required to be absolutely obedient and submissive. We were never supposed to call attention to ourselves, never to question or criticize established custom, and, if you were invited to address your elders, you did so with deference and courtesy that bordered on the obsequious. We knelt down when we spoke to our superiors to remind ourselves that they stood in the place of God. These young people, however, seemed openly and unashamedly rebellious. They protested, noisily and vociferously. They even took part in events called ‘demonstrations’, where they publicly aired their grievances, a concept that could not have been more alien to me. What on earth were they trying to demonstrate? What had they got to be so angry about?

      This was the spring of 1969, and I now realize that, on the international stage, the weeks that had elapsed since my departure from the convent had been momentous. Richard Nixon had been inaugurated as President of the United States, Yasser Arafat had been elected chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and a military coup had taken place in Pakistan. Palestinian terrorists had attacked an Israeli airliner at Zurich airport; Nixon had authorized the secret bombing of Cambodia, and Soviet and Chinese forces had clashed on the Manchurian border. I knew nothing of this. I had never heard of either Nixon or Arafat, and would have had difficulty in locating either Cambodia or Manchuria on the map. In the convent, we had not kept abreast of current events. In the novitiate, indeed, we did not even see newspapers. We were told of the Cuban missile crisis, which occurred a few weeks after I entered, but our superiors forgot to tell us that the conflict had been resolved, so we spent three whole weeks in terror, hourly expecting the outbreak of World War Three. Mother Walter also told us about the shocking assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Catholic president. Later, this strict embargo on the news was mitigated somewhat, but in general political interest was frowned upon. As a result, I entered the secular world completely ignorant of the problems of our time, and because I lacked basic