Jennifer Worth - Farewell To The East End

There was considerable discussion amongst the nuns as to how best to control the mounting problem. Sister Julienne had a very serious discussion with Sister Monica Joan about the vows of poverty, the need to economise for the sake of running the convent, the expense of taxi fares, and the need to take the bus wherever possible. Sister Monica Joan was very amenable and fully understood that she had been extravagant, so she agreed to take the bus in future. But perhaps she forgot. Or perhaps she could not resist the temptation when she saw a shiny black taxi-cab in the street. Or perhaps her intentions were good, but it was raining, and Sister Monica Joan could not abide the rain. Whatever the reason, the situation continued as before. Sister Julienne felt obliged to refund to the nephew all the taxi fares incurred to date, because a nun is the responsibility of the convent, and not of her family.

The Sisters had further discussions. At the start of her next journey Novice Ruth took Sister Monica Joan to the bus stop, put her on the correct bus, paid the bus conductor, and told him where she was to get off. But Sister Monica Joan was crafty, and she always got what she wanted. She thanked Novice Ruth kindly for her assistance, sweetly waved goodbye and quite simply got off at the next stop and took a taxi.

Things were going too far. Sister Julienne was obliged to inform the Reverend Mother Jesu Emanuel. Large sums of money were regularly leaking out of the convent funds, and she could not seem to control it. A Chapter meeting of all the Sisters at the Mother House in Chichester was convened, and the financial adviser was requested to be present. Thirty-two Sisters who worked in the Mother House attended, and many of them were very critical of Sister Monica Joan. Her behaviour was outrageous. She had first brought scandal to the Order through a court case for alleged theft, and now, instead of being humble and contrite as any other nun would be, she was spending money with reckless abandon. Why should they have to skimp and save and live a life of poverty while she was riding around London like a duchess?

The Reverend Mother pointed out to the younger Sisters that Sister Monica Joan had given over fifty years of dedicated service to the poorest of the poor, in conditions of unimaginable squalor, and it was the policy of the Order to allow privileges and comforts to elderly Sisters who had retired from nursing. Two or three of the elderly Sisters spoke up to say that they had also given lives of dedicated service to the poor and needy, and that they defined ‘comforts and privileges’ as jam on Sundays, or an occasional cup of tea in bed. They could not approve of taxis all over the place. It was a question of what was reasonable.

The Reverend Mother sighed; Sister Monica Joan had never been reasonable. She asked the financial adviser, an independent auditor and accountant, for his opinion.

The accountant said that he had carefully studied the finances of the Order, and had observed that Sister Monica Joan’s dowry to the Order in 1906, when she made her life vows, was greater than that of all the other Sisters put together. In addition, a very large inheritance which she had received in 1922 on the death of her mother had immediately gone into the convent funds. Had it not been for these two large deposits of money, the accountant questioned whether the Sisters would have been able to continue their work at all.

That settled it. The Chapter ruled that finances should be made available to Sister Julienne to use at her discretion. There were still a few sour faces and mutters of ‘not fair’, which the Reverend Mother dispelled by saying that she was sure that all the Sisters would be relieved by the decision, as many would be anxious at the thought of an old lady roaming alone around London by bus – especially as her mind was wandering, as had been made clear by the recent scandal. ‘Let’s face it. She’s senile and shouldn’t be let out,’ muttered one of the younger Sisters. To this the Reverend Mother replied sharply that the remark was uncharitable, and she would not countenance the thought of Sister Monica Joan being confined to the house like a prisoner.

Sister Julienne was relieved by the decision of the Chapter and was able to finance several more taxi fares to and from Richmond with no further anxiety. Nonetheless, she had another little talk with Sister Monica Joan about limiting the number of visits, the need for economy and the vows of poverty. Sister Monica Joan must have taken this to heart; perhaps her conscience had been pricked by the reminder of her life vows, or perhaps she just wanted a bit of diversion. After all, she had always been an adventurous soul, seeking out a challenge. The next thing we heard was that she had been seen by many witnesses standing at the traffic lights by the Blackwall Tunnel. When the lights turned red and the traffic stopped, she would totter into the road, round the front of the cars and lorries, tap on the window of a car, and ask the astonished driver to take her to Richmond.

Whatever might be said of nuns, thumbing lifts from strange men is not the way they are expected to behave. The reaction of the drivers can only be imagined. Sister Monica Joan would have been wearing the full monastic habit of her Order. If you were a businessman going to your next appointment, such an apparition weaving its way unsteadily into the road must have looked like a visitation from God – or perhaps the devil. When the apparition tapped on your window and started a long, convoluted yarn about pretty nieces in Richmond, and how she had got a new lotion from the woman in the market for the one with spots, but she suspected blackheads really, guaranteed to make them go away, and that was why she needed to get to Richmond, but buses were so difficult, you would probably have thought you were going a bit mad, particularly if the business lunch had been of the liquid variety.

Without exception the drivers refused, but Sister Monica Joan persisted in what to her mind was a perfectly reasonable request. The man had a car, and she did not, she would point out. It would surely be no inconvenience to him to make a small detour to Richmond? She knew the address – what was the difficulty? She was a lady inclined to become extremely cross and snappish if she did not get her own way, and many of the conversations ended in acrimony.

Several times, while she was still talking, the lights turned green, and the traffic started up again. Lorries in the free-moving lane passed alarmingly close as she stood in the road. The car driver, who would still be trying to reason with her, could not start, and there would be honking and hooting and shouts from frustrated motorists piled up behind. Eventually (and this happened several times) she would accept that the car driver was not going to Richmond and would not divert his journey to take her, and she would totter back to the pavement, only to try again when the lights turned red and another car stopped on the nearside lane.

After half a dozen such attempts she was caught in the act by two policemen, who observed her actions for a few minutes and then apprehended her for causing an obstruction to the traffic and for endangering her life and that of others. Sister Monica Joan was very sensitive about policemen and protested violently at finding herself between two of them, and being escorted back to the convent.

After this little escapade, Sister Julienne begged her to take taxis, and hang the expense.

A printed letter arrived for Sister Monica Joan from Wandsworth Borough Council, stating that a lady’s hand bag containing a little money, a prayer book, a pair of spectacles and a set of false teeth had been found and awaited her collection at a lost property office in West London. Sister Julienne was taking no chances. A taxi was ordered to collect Sister Monica Joan, to take her to the address on the letter and to return her to the convent.