Oh Sister
A visiting nun and a petulant teen watch The Benny Hill Show.
London, September 1973 — eighteen months after the funeral.
Dad announced it casually, between puffs on his pipe.
“Sister Kyran is staying next Wednesday night.”
“Here?” I howled. “Why?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It won’t kill you for one night!”
But I was already flouncing off to my room, stomping on each stair.
For reasons I couldn’t explain, then or now, I was outraged — and resolved to covertly boycott the whole occasion by feigning an illness. This, I reasoned, which would allow me to stay in my room until my great aunt was off the premises and heading back to her convent in Kent.
So I spent the next few days creeping around the house, theatrically moping my brow and speaking in a whispery voice. Nobody took any notice.
Then, on the eve of the visit, an odd thing happened. For once in my life a wish came true and my fake illness turned into a real one. That night I slept very badly, with strange feverish dreams.
At breakfast I picked at my toast and declared that I wasn’t feeling very well.
Dad looks at me intensely. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t know I just ….”
“Take his temperature, Mary,” he said.
“No don’t bother,” I said, my resolve crumbling. How had I thought myself into this strange aching discomfort? My head hurt too much to work it out. “It’s not that kind of… sickness.”
“What kind is it then?” There was a sudden flash of anxiety in his eyes, the shadow of which we did not speak.
“Oh, I’m okay. I just feel a bit — sort of tired,” I said, truthfully at last.
“The walk to school will probably do you good,” he said.
When I got home my dad was already out ferrying my great aunt somewhere or other.
“When will they be back?”
Mum was serving me (many) frankfurters and a mountain of chip and peas. An over-sized meal in the middle of the afternoon was one of the many strange customs in our house.
She shrugged. “Later. Before tea.”
“I can’t eat this much,” I said, as I often did, in our unspoken war of attrition. This time though, I really didn’t have an appetite.
Again, this barely registered. I noticed that my mother was wearing lipstick, thickly applied — an ominous sign.
“I wish she wasn’t coming,” I said meanly.
My mother took out an Embassy Filter and lit it. “Leave out your washing,” she said blankly
I complained some more, picking at my food. Mum smoked her cigarette and then silently removed most of the food she had brought out.
I flop onto my bed and fall asleep. I dream of Skippy, our West Highland terrier, now lying on my feet, and of my sister and her piano — gone forever.
When I awake the room is dark. I can hear the front door opening and then voices.
“Is this the new wallpaper, John?” My great aunt is admiring the mad purple flowers climbing in every direction. “You’ve done a grand job.”
Dad, pleased as punch, says it was the divil to put up.
For a few minutes I doze, as their voices fade away towards the kitchen. Then they’re back and Dad is roaring my name up the stairs.
I come out with my hands up, stumbling out onto the landing.
“He’s coming now, Sister!”
I slowly descend. Each step is like walking on a giant beanbag.
Sister K waits for me at the foot of the stairs, arms outstretched, in full battledress.
I grant her a stiff hug .
In the kitchen my father is unpacking a large paper bag. “Fish and chips!” he declares proudly.
“I’ve eaten,” I say.
“Not much,” corrects my mother quietly.
Plates clatter onto the black and white checked formica table. “This will give you your appetite back,” says Dad, unwrapping the greasy paper.
It would normally — but not this evening. “I’m really not hungry.
They stare at me. “Are you still feeling sick?” demands Dad, suddenly doubtful, anxious.
“He does looks poorly,” says Sister K, turning to her niece, my mother.
“I think I’ll go into the front room and rest for a bit.”
“I’ll get him a blanket,” says my mother, drifting out of the kitchen.
I doze on the sofa in front of a new series ITV have been trailing for weeks. It’s called The Six Million Dollar Man.
To the sound of a chattering electronic typewriter, I fall asleep again. When I awake bionic Steve has gone and my mum is delivering my evening snack: a mug of tea and thick slices of buttered toast.
“What time is it?”
“Nearly nine,” she says. “They’re coming in now to watch the news.”
We both look over at the TV where the adverts are ending. “It’s on the wrong side,” I say. Mum nods but doesn’t move.
And now The Benny Hill Show.
I can hear movement in the hall. “Mum, you need to change the channel-”
She tilts her head, her face lighting up as Benny’s smirks and grins and gurns.
Dad and Sister Kyran move into the room, deep in conversation. Sister K slides across the carpet, her habit rustling like a closing curtain. They reverse park in adjacent armchairs.
On screen, a highlights reel of Benny’s lewd antics is playing out to his theme tune. Middle-aged men chase young women around a park. Skirts are falling down. Slaps bounce off Henry McGee’s bald head.
There is a split second of slack-jawed silence before Dad launches himself out of his armchair. He catapults across the room, nearly toppling the telly as he wrestles with the channel changing knob.
“The rubbish they show these days,” he mutters.
Sister Kyran ignores the TV. She is looking at me, sympathetically. “I think you need a some sleep, young man” she says. “Perhaps you could take his temperature, Mary?”
Mum nods and ghosts out of the room again.
From 8 Davisville Road — a sort of memoir. Illustrations by Dom Davis.
