The Spiral Staircase. Karen Armstrong
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brown blur in front of me composed itself into the grain of a polished wood floor, and I groaned and rolled over on to my stomach to try to blot out the world for a few more minutes.
‘I think she’s coming round now.’ The voice was male and familiar. Slowly, as from a deep well, the memories came back to me. The lecture … John Jones … ‘Keep back and let her get some air.’ To my right I could see a large scuffed brogue and an expanse of worn corduroy trouser. I knew that in a few moments I would feel embarrassed, but right now the world had shattered into separate, meaningless shapes, none of which seemed related to anything else.
‘Look, I think we’d better call it a day,’ Mr Jones was saying. I tried to raise my head, but it was pushed firmly down again. ‘I don’t think any of us feels like carrying on with the lecture. Does anybody know who this poor lady is?’
‘Yes, I do – she’s at my college. I can take her home. Karen, it’s Jane.’ I peered up at her and tried to smile. She looked strange from this unfamiliar angle and I realized that she was alarmed. Gradually I began to be aware of the disruption I had caused.
‘I am … so sorry,’ I muttered, as I always did after one of these attacks. ‘So sorry.’
‘For heaven’s sake,’ Mr Jones sounded genuinely astonished, and when I looked round at him, his large kind face was creased with concern. ‘You didn’t do it on purpose. We’re just sad for you.’ That was a bit of a change. I blinked uncertainly. ‘You still don’t look too good to me. How are you feeling? That was quite a long faint. Better get her to a doctor?’ That last, clearly, was addressed to Jane.
‘Definitely.’ Jane sounded uncharacteristically subdued. ‘Do you think we could phone for a taxi?’ I closed my eyes, mentally shaking my head. Sympathy, doctors, taxis – I could not take it all in. I must have tried to protest feebly, but nobody took any notice and I lay there gratefully, thankful that it was over, but feeling hugely tired.
As we drove up the Banbury Road towards St Anne’s and climbed the short flight of stairs to my room in the Gatehouse, Jane kept up a determined flow of chatter. The fright that I had seen in her eyes had gone and she was now recasting the whole event in her usual ebullient manner.
‘I always longed to faint at school,’ she said cheerfully, as she opened the large window overlooking the college lawn. We could see students hurrying past in ones and twos, going about the business of a normal Tuesday morning. ‘I always thought it would be a sign of such sensitivity and refinement. I tried everything. Put blotting paper in my shoes, held my breath. Nothing happened. Not a hope. I’m just too horribly healthy.’
I smiled as Jane glared at herself in the mirror and threw back her long blonde hair. It was indeed difficult to imagine her wilting feebly; she was built on too large a scale, was too confident for that. ‘Have you ever fainted before?’ she asked, suddenly serious.
I nodded. ‘It used to happen quite a lot in the convent. It’s all emotional – all in the mind. At least, that’s what the nuns said.’
‘Don’t tell me! I was at a convent school, remember? And I suppose you have been under a strain, giving up that lovely peaceful life.’ I grimaced slightly, amazed as I always was that even people who knew nuns at first hand had such an unrealistically idyllic image of convent life. ‘Tell me,’ Jane said abruptly, ‘do you feel guilty?’
I thought hard for a moment. People often asked me this, because they seemed to associate Catholicism with guilt. ‘No,’ I said at last. ‘I don’t feel at all guilty. Guilt is not the word.’ One of the good things that I had learned from my superiors was that guilt could be pure self-indulgence, a wallowing in the ego. Guilt, I was told, usually sprang from misplaced pride; it might simply be chagrin that you were not as wonderful as you hoped. ‘I feel sad,’ I went on, ‘a failure, in some ways. But not guilty exactly.’
‘God, you are lucky!’ Jane flung herself down in my armchair. ‘I feel endlessly, endlessly guilty about sleeping with Mark. It means that I can’t go to mass, communion or confession, because I don’t have a “firm purpose of amendment”, as they say. I’m not going to stop doing it, so I haven’t truly repented. So now I’m that dreadful thing called a lapsed Catholic.’
‘Do you miss it?’ I asked, and then surprised myself by adding, ‘Do you care?’ I noticed how far I had moved in the last few months. This time last year, I could not have imagined living outside the Catholic Church, but now I wasn’t so sure. Did God really care so much about Jane’s sexual life? Was sleeping with her fiancé as bad as telling lies or being unkind, sins which didn’t debar anybody from the sacraments?
Jane sat quite still for a moment and then shrugged. ‘In some ways, no – of course, I don’t care. I can’t believe that God – if there is a God, I must say I do wonder sometimes – is really a narrow-minded prude. And I know that lots of people right here in college just carry on going to communion, no matter what they do. But I can’t manage that. It seems dishonest …’ she tailed off.
‘But do you miss it?’ I probed. Jane seemed so much at ease with the world and so bracingly positive, that it was hard to imagine her style cramped by a disapproving Church.
‘Oh, heavens, yes!’ she breathed. ‘I used to love the liturgy at school. Last Christmas, Mark and I were in Paris and went to Midnight Mass in Notre Dame. You can imagine … Mark couldn’t believe that I had been able to give all that up. “You’re a heroine,” he said. Though I can’t say I believe in much of it any more, frankly.’
I wondered how much of a Catholic I really was. No one would ever have admitted to doubts in the convent, and it was somehow liberating to have Jane do it for me. ‘But that’s enough about me!’ Jane got up and reached for her books. ‘I’m going to get the college nurse to have a look at you … I know, I know, she really is perfectly awful, but I promised Mr Jones. And it is sensible, you must admit, even if it is all due to stress. Mr Jones was right. That really was a very long faint.’
Before she left, Jane looked around the room. A typically modern box: shiny cork flooring, matching orange curtains and bedspread, desk and dressing-table combined. ‘You ought to try to put your own stamp on this,’ she said appraisingly. ‘It looks anonymous. Have some of your own things around. Whoops!’ she laughed. ‘You probably haven’t got any things. Well, you’d better acquire some. You’re not a nun now. No more holy poverty for you. What about a record player? You like music and you won the Violet Vaughan Morgan last year. You must have some of that prize money stashed away in the bank. Go on, treat yourself.’
‘Yes,’ I replied thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps I will.’
The college nurse was brisk and matter-of-fact. Yes, the fainting was almost certainly due to stress. I had had a confusing time and it was bound to take its toll. But worse things happened at sea. Mustn’t give in or feel sorry for yourself. Get back into the swing of things. Put your best foot forward. I listened to this string of clichés with mounting irritation. It was easy to be brisk and bracing about other people’s difficulties. I was quite aware that leaving a convent must rank very low on the scale of human suffering. Certainly, a bad divorce or bereavement must be even more painful, but, after all, it was not a competition. ‘Do make an appointment with your GP, however,’ the nurse concluded. ‘Always wise to get these things checked out, especially if it’s happened before.’
I promised that I would. It did seem a sensible precaution, and I was grateful for the concern that was so different from the icy response of my superiors. News of the faint travelled fast. People I scarcely knew stopped me in the corridor and asked how I was feeling. Pat and Fiona gave me a bunch of flowers and Rosemary had thoughtfully provided a little vase, realizing that I probably didn’t have one. Charlotte asked me quite a lot about the incident and we again silently sized each other up as fellow-neurotics.
Charlotte and I were no longer tutorial partners. Dr Brentwood Smyth had got rid of me fairly rapidly and passed me on to one of his graduate students. The college had responded indignantly. I was being groomed for a first-class