The Unbreakable Trilogy. Primula Bond

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      ‘Adventurous as well as talented,’ someone else piped up. ‘I can see you come alive when you talk about your travels.’

      ‘My travels last year are what kept me alive.’

      Across the river the inky black clouds scud across the sky.

      ‘This was an enclosed order of nuns, you say?’

      ‘There was no speaking to each other in there, let alone the outside world. Apparently once a year or so, they talk to outsiders through a grille.’

      ‘So you never asked for permission to enter the convent, or spoke to anyone?’

      ‘God, no. They would have chucked me out. It’s a silent order, but they are still very – active.’

      The journalist is biting his pen. The others are standing about like deer in the fens, waiting for more.

      ‘Active? So what made you think there was a photo op in there?’

      ‘The first thing I witnessed, hiding behind a pillar obviously, was a prostration.’

      Several pairs of eyebrows rise questioningly.

      ‘I think the nun I followed was a novice. One of the reasons I was able to get in so easily was that the entire community was gathered in the chapel to watch this initiation ceremony. Or penance. I couldn’t linger too obviously to find out. No wonder the young nun was in such a rush. She must have been making her initial vows, or she could have been confessing to some heinous sin. Either way they were whipping her.’

      Mouths drop open. Crystal is standing next to Gustav, her eyes wide with undisguised admiration. Gustav glances up at me, then back at what he’s writing. Annoyance flares at me. Why isn’t he paying attention?

      ‘It was hard to see at first because they had this heavy incense pouring out of a large silver basket swinging back and forth on a silver chain. It made my eyes stream and I had to stop myself sneezing. Anyway, it was a beautiful vaulted chapel and in all these pews were rows of nuns, standing so still I thought they were statues. Then this young nun came out, there she is in that picture.’

      All heads turn back to the pictures hanging there, at the soft-focus pictures of my favourite nun in her cell.

      ‘She came in, dressed in a kind of thick linen nightdress. She lay down on the floor, flat on her face, and spread her arms and legs out like a star. The nuns were all singing, fingers telling their rosaries, and singing some sort of Gregorian chant. Some of them were stretching their arms up to the ceiling, others were stretching their arms out sideways as if to embrace something.

      ‘I’ll never look at The Sound of Music in the same way again!’

      I allow a space for some light relief. I glance at Gustav who nods his head for me to carry on.

      ‘Some lay down on the floor, too, but it was this new one who was the centre of attention, and then the Mother Superior – it was obviously her, she was astonishingly beautiful, but very tall and terrifying-looking, with an enormous crucifix hanging on her chest – she came and stood over the girl brandishing this long black whip. It was all pretty alarming. I wondered if I should step in, you know, I was worried it was some kind of black magic, not holy at all, but something awful might have happened to me if they discovered an interloper.

      ‘I wonder what …’

      I let the question hang in the air, remembering how my heart pounded with fear that night. How sick and dizzy I felt with that incense clouding the air in that chapel, how the chanting of the nuns grew louder in my ears. The sweat trickling down my back, gathering in my armpits, prickling in my hair. The stifling heat of Venice in summer. The stink of the canals penetrating even into that hallowed space. The sheen of sweat on everyone’s skin.

      ‘The Mother Superior planted her feet on either side of the little nun and folded her dress right up over her bottom so that I could see she was wearing these Victorian-type white bloomers.’

      The journalist groans and snaps his biro in half. ‘Pretty barbaric.’

      ‘You and I might think so. But we all know that there are some people who do this for a living. For pleasure. And for these nuns it’s an initiation process. Routine. The girl’s face was shining with happiness. What do they call it when the saints in those paintings and statues look as if they are having an orgasm? Ecstasy.’

      There is a really hearty laugh around the gallery.

      ‘Did they hit her with these horrible whips?’

      ‘You’re obsessed,’ someone else laughs at the questioner.

      ‘I can answer that if you want me to?’

      Everyone nods and cheers. Gustav is shaking his head in amused disbelief, still looking down at his pad. It’s all so flattering. I’m tempted to confess what really happened inside me, the dark flowering of fascination when I watched those nuns. But I mustn’t get carried away. I haven’t the nerve to reveal now, at my first ever public show, how the shock of the public flagellation in the chapel turned to a twisted pleasure when I crept upstairs and saw the sisters continuing it in private. The swish and bite of those whips on snowy white skin. The answering bite and swish inside me as I hid watching in the shadows and my body tightened with anguished recognition.

      I rouse myself. All those faces are so expectant now. Crystal’s thin eyebrows are crescents of surprise. Gustav is looking at me from under lowered brows as if he’s never seen me before.

      ‘Well, the Reverend Mother stepped forward. She had to push up her sleeves and it was a shock to see human limbs under there, she could have been a robot, but yes, she whipped the girl’s bottom. It was so loud. So sharp. The acoustics in there are designed for singing and praying, not punishment. So discordant in a quiet, holy place. I saw the girl’s fingers clawing at the polished wooden floor, but she wasn’t trying to get away. She kind of flinched under the blows and even though she wasn’t supposed to make a sound I could see her lips mouthing “I’m a sinner, cleanse me Mother, please cleanse me.”’

      You could hear a pin drop. Later Crystal will tell me that it’s a first. Probably a last. But the story of my private view revelations will run in the industry press for weeks afterwards.

      ‘I didn’t get a picture of that initiation ceremony, unfortunately. I was stuck by the door. If I’d started fumbling around for my camera under that stolen habit they’d have seen me. Probably got me on the floor and whipped me, too.’

      I look round calmly, enjoying the eyes all fixed on me as if I have become some kind of oracle. I point at the next enlargement showing the young nun in her cell.

      ‘And this is Sister Perpetua, later that same night.’

      The heads turn to follow my finger, as if they are all students in a riveting lecture. Several cameras follow me. We all stare at the picture, the bony line of the nun’s bare shoulder, the moonlight streaking the bars of the arched window across her spine.

      ‘I’ve never told anyone this. But I did speak to this one. She saw me. I watched her standing in the room, her nightdress falling off her, and I watched her whip herself. The other, older sisters were doing it, but I didn’t get many shots of the others, because she warned me not to. I saw them, СКАЧАТЬ