his life; he
admits quite frankly that he has committed sins exceedingly all through his own grievous
fault. Whereupon the altar boy says: “May almighty God have mercy on you.”
And all I am saying, Winifrede, is that what’s good enough for the Supreme Pontiff
is good enough for you. Do you imagine he doesn’t mean precisely what he says
every morning of his life?’
Winifrede takes the pen and writes under the confession, ‘Winifrede, Dame of the
Order of the Abbey of Crewe,’ in a high and slanting copperplate hand. She pats
her habit to see if the emerald is safe in the deep folds of her pocket, and before
leaving the parlour she stops at the door to look back warily. The Abbess stands,
holding the confession, white in her robes under the lamp and judicious, like blessed
Michael the Archangel.
Chapter 6
‘W E have entered the realm of
mythology,’ says the Abbess of Crewe, ‘and of course I won’t part with
the tapes. I claim the ancient Benefit of Clerks. The confidentiality between the nuns
and the Abbess cannot be disrupted. These tapes are as good as under the secret of the
confessional, and even Rome cannot demand them.’
The television crew has gone home, full of satisfaction, but news reporters loiter in a
large group outside the gates. The police patrol the grounds with the dogs that growl at
every dry leaf that stirs on the ground.
It is a month since Sister Winifrede, mindful of the Abbess’s warning not to choose
a ladies’ lavatory for a rendezvous, decided it would show initiative and
imagination if she arranged to meet her blackmailer in the gentlemen’s lavatory at
the British Museum. It was down there in that blind alley that Winifrede was arrested by
the Museum guard and the attendants. ‘Here’s one of them poofs,’ said
the attendant, and Winifrede, dressed in a dark blue business suit, a white shirt with a
faint brown stripe and a blue and red striped tie, emblematic of some university
unidentified even by the Sunday press, was taken off to the police station still hugging
her plastic bag packed tight with all those thousands.
Winifrede began blurting out her story on the way to the police station and continued it
while the policewomen were stripping her of her manly clothes, and went on further with
her deposition, dressed in a police-station overall. The evening paper headlines
announced, ‘Crewe Abbey Scandal: New Revelations’, ‘Crewe Nun
Transvestite Caught in Gent’s’ and ‘Crewe Thimble Case — Nun
Questioned’.
Winifrede, having told her story, was released without charge on the assurances of the
Abbess that it was an internal and ecclesiastical matter, and was being intensively
investigated as such. This touchy situation, which the law-enforcement authorities were
of a mind to avoid, did not prevent several bishops from paying as many calls to the
Abbess Alexandra, whitely robed in her parlour at Crewe, as she would receive, nor did
it keep the stories out of the newspapers of the big wide world.
‘My Lords,’ she told those three of the bishops whom she admitted, ‘be
vigilant for your own places before you demolish my Abbey. You know of the mower
described by Andrew Marvell:
While thus he drew his elbow round,
Depopulating all the ground,
And, with his whistling scythe, does cut
Each stroke between the earth and root,
The edged steel, by careless chance,
Did into his own ankle glance,
And there among the grass fell down
By his own scythe the mower mown.’
They left, puzzled and bedazzled, having one by one and in many
ways assured her they had no intention whatsoever to discredit her Abbey, but merely to
find out what on earth was going on.
The Abbess, when she finally appeared on the television, was a complete success while she
lasted on the screen. She explained, lifting in her beautiful hand a folded piece of
paper, that she already had poor Sister
admits quite frankly that he has committed sins exceedingly all through his own grievous
fault. Whereupon the altar boy says: “May almighty God have mercy on you.”
And all I am saying, Winifrede, is that what’s good enough for the Supreme Pontiff
is good enough for you. Do you imagine he doesn’t mean precisely what he says
every morning of his life?’
Winifrede takes the pen and writes under the confession, ‘Winifrede, Dame of the
Order of the Abbey of Crewe,’ in a high and slanting copperplate hand. She pats
her habit to see if the emerald is safe in the deep folds of her pocket, and before
leaving the parlour she stops at the door to look back warily. The Abbess stands,
holding the confession, white in her robes under the lamp and judicious, like blessed
Michael the Archangel.
Chapter 6
‘W E have entered the realm of
mythology,’ says the Abbess of Crewe, ‘and of course I won’t part with
the tapes. I claim the ancient Benefit of Clerks. The confidentiality between the nuns
and the Abbess cannot be disrupted. These tapes are as good as under the secret of the
confessional, and even Rome cannot demand them.’
The television crew has gone home, full of satisfaction, but news reporters loiter in a
large group outside the gates. The police patrol the grounds with the dogs that growl at
every dry leaf that stirs on the ground.
It is a month since Sister Winifrede, mindful of the Abbess’s warning not to choose
a ladies’ lavatory for a rendezvous, decided it would show initiative and
imagination if she arranged to meet her blackmailer in the gentlemen’s lavatory at
the British Museum. It was down there in that blind alley that Winifrede was arrested by
the Museum guard and the attendants. ‘Here’s one of them poofs,’ said
the attendant, and Winifrede, dressed in a dark blue business suit, a white shirt with a
faint brown stripe and a blue and red striped tie, emblematic of some university
unidentified even by the Sunday press, was taken off to the police station still hugging
her plastic bag packed tight with all those thousands.
Winifrede began blurting out her story on the way to the police station and continued it
while the policewomen were stripping her of her manly clothes, and went on further with
her deposition, dressed in a police-station overall. The evening paper headlines
announced, ‘Crewe Abbey Scandal: New Revelations’, ‘Crewe Nun
Transvestite Caught in Gent’s’ and ‘Crewe Thimble Case — Nun
Questioned’.
Winifrede, having told her story, was released without charge on the assurances of the
Abbess that it was an internal and ecclesiastical matter, and was being intensively
investigated as such. This touchy situation, which the law-enforcement authorities were
of a mind to avoid, did not prevent several bishops from paying as many calls to the
Abbess Alexandra, whitely robed in her parlour at Crewe, as she would receive, nor did
it keep the stories out of the newspapers of the big wide world.
‘My Lords,’ she told those three of the bishops whom she admitted, ‘be
vigilant for your own places before you demolish my Abbey. You know of the mower
described by Andrew Marvell:
While thus he drew his elbow round,
Depopulating all the ground,
And, with his whistling scythe, does cut
Each stroke between the earth and root,
The edged steel, by careless chance,
Did into his own ankle glance,
And there among the grass fell down
By his own scythe the mower mown.’
They left, puzzled and bedazzled, having one by one and in many
ways assured her they had no intention whatsoever to discredit her Abbey, but merely to
find out what on earth was going on.
The Abbess, when she finally appeared on the television, was a complete success while she
lasted on the screen. She explained, lifting in her beautiful hand a folded piece of
paper, that she already had poor Sister
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