The Bell by Iris Murdoch Page B

tower?’ she asked.
    â€˜Well, you know, we’re not going inside ,’ said Mrs Mark, slightly scandalized. ‘This is an enclosed order of nuns. No one goes in or comes out.’
    Dora was stunned by this information. She stopped. ‘Do you mean’, she said, ‘that they’re completely imprisoned in there?’
    Mrs Mark laughed. ‘Not imprisoned, my dear,’ she said. ‘They are there of their own free will. This is not a prison. It is on the contrary a place which it is very hard to get into, and only the strongest achieve it. Like Mary in the parable, they have chosen the better part.’ They walked on.
    â€˜Don’t they ever come out?’ asked Dora.
    â€˜No,’ said Mrs Mark. ‘Being Benedictines, they take a vow of stability, that is they remain all their lives in the house where they take their first vows. They die and are buried inside in the nuns’ cemetery.’
    â€˜How absolutely appalling!’ said Dora.
    â€˜Quiet now, please,’ said Mrs Mark in a lowered voice. They were reaching the end of the causeway.
    Dora saw now that the high wall, which had seemed to rise directly out of the lake, was in fact set back more than fifty yards from the edge of the water. From the lake shore there ran two roughly pebbled paths, one up to the great gateway, whose immense wooden door stood firmly shut, and the other away to the left alongside the Abbey wall.
    â€˜This door’, said Mrs Mark, pointing to the gateway and still speaking softly, ‘is never opened except for the admission of a postulant: a rather impressive ceremony that always takes place in the early morning. Well, yes, it will also be opened in a week or two. When the new bell comes it will be taken in this way, as if it were a postulant.’
    They turned to the left along the path which ran midway between the wall and the water. Dora saw a long rectangular brick building with a flat roof which seemed to be attached as an excrescence to the outside of the wall.
    â€˜Not a thing of beauty, I’m afraid,’ said Mrs Mark. ‘Here are the parlours where the nuns occasionally come to speak to people from outside. And at the end is the visitors’ chapel where we are privileged to participate in the devotional life of the Abbey. The nuns’ chapel is the large building just here on the other side of the wall. You can see a bit of the tiled roof there through the trees.’
    They went in through a green door at the end of the brick building. A long corridor stretched ahead with a row of doors leading off it.
    â€˜I’ll show you one of the parlours,’ said Mrs Mark, almost whispering now. ‘We won’t disturb your husband just yet. He’s down at the far end.’
    They entered the first door. Dora found herself in a small square room which was completely bare except for two chairs and the shiny linoleum upon the floor. The chairs were drawn up at the other side of the room against a great screen of white gauze which covered the upper half of the far wall.
    Mrs Mark went forward. ‘The other half of the room,’ she said, ‘on the other side, is within the enclosure.’ She pulled at the wooden edge of the gauze screen and it opened as a door, revealing behind it a grille of iron bars set about nine inches apart. Behind the grille and close up against it was a second gauze screen, obscuring the view into the room beyond.
    â€˜You see,’ said Mrs Mark, ‘the nun opens the screen on the other side, and then you can talk through the grille.’ She closed the screen to again. It all seemed to Dora quite unbelievably eerie.
    â€˜I wonder if you’d like to talk to one of the nuns?’ said Mrs Mark. ‘I’m afraid the Abbess is certain to be too busy. Even James and Michael only manage to see her now and then. But I’m sure Mother Clare would be very glad to see you and have a little talk.’
    Dora