Chummy had opened the door, apparently, to a sergeant and a constable who had asked to see the Sister-in-Charge. Chummy was all of a flutter, because she always went to pieces when any man entered the room, but chiefly because the constable was the policeman she had knocked over when she was had been learning to ride her bicycle. Intense embarrassment at the sight of him had rendered her speechless. The men had entered the hallway, and in her awkward confusion she had banged the front door so hard that it had sounded like a gun shot. Then she had tripped over the doormat and fallen into the arms of the policeman she had injured the year before.
Chummy was still in a state of such nervous distress that it was hard to get a word out of her, but Cynthia, apparently, hearing the bang of the front door and the noise of poor Chummy falling over, had come to see what it was all about. It was she, apparently, who had taken the policemen to the office and called Sister Julienne.
No one knew much more than that, but female speculation can make a great deal out of very little. Whilst we boiled our instruments, cut and folded our gauze swabs and filled our pots and bottles, our imaginations ranged over everything from arson to murder. Chummy was convinced the visit had something to do with her assault on the policeman, but Cynthia gently calmed her down, saying that there was no way a charge would be brought a year after the event, and his coming to Nonnatus House must be a coincidence.
We went to the kitchen for supper, deliberately leaving the door open, of course. We heard the office door open and heavy footsteps. We all pricked up our ears, but heard only a quiet: “Good night, Sister. Thank you for your time, and you will be hearing from us in morning.” The front door closed, and four inquisitive girls were left in a state of unbridled curiosity.
It was only after lunch the following day that Sister Julienne asked us all to remain in our seats as she had something to say. Fred the boiler man and Mrs B the cook were also asked to the dining room, because the matter had to come out into the open, and Sister did not want rumours flying around that would undoubtedly be exaggerated.
Apparently, Sister Julienne told us, Sister Monica Joan had been in Chrisp Street Market and the owner of a jewellery stall had seen her fingering several items. He had heard from other stall-holders that one of the Sisters was “light-fingered” so he watched her, but pretended not to be doing so. He saw her pick up a child’s bracelet, look around her and then deftly tuck it under her scapular. Then she had assumed her usual haughty aspect, head held high, and attempted to walk away. But the stall-holder stopped her. When he asked to see what she was holding beneath her scapular, she was extremely rude to him, telling him not to be so impertinent, and calling him a “boorish fellow”. A crowd, of course, had gathered. The man grew cross, called her a “scraggy old God-botherer” and said she’d better hand it over, or he’d get a peeler. Whereupon Sister Monica Joan had flung the gold bracelet across the stall with a contemptuous gesture, crying: “You can keep your tawdry trinkets, you loutish lump. What do I want with them?” and stalked off with an expression of offended dignity on her fine features.
Mrs B exploded: “I don’t believe a word of it. Not a word. He’s a liar, vat bloke. I knows him, an’ I knows as what he’s a liar, I do. You won’t get me believing a story like vat about Sister Monica Joan, you won’t, love ’er.”
Sister Julienne silenced her. “I’m afraid there is not a shadow of doubt about the truth of the matter. Several people are ready to testify that they saw Sister Monica Joan throw the bangle across the stall before she stalked off. But I’m afraid that is not all. There is worse to come.” She looked around at us, sadly and we held our breath.
The costermonger, probably enraged at having been called a “boorish fellow” and a “loutish lump” went round other stall-holders who had talked about a “light-fingered Sister” and collected eight men and women who claimed that they had strong suspicions about her having stolen from them, or who had positively seen Sister Monica Joan take something small and hide it under her scapular. Collectively they had gone to the police.
Sister Julienne continued, “The police were here yesterday and this morning. I felt bound to confront Sister Monica Joan with their report, but she wouldn’t say a word to me. Not a single word. She just looked out of the window as though she had not even heard me. I told her I was going to look in her chest of drawers, and she just shrugged her shoulders dismissively, and pursed her lips and said, ‘Pooh to you.’ I must say her attitude was extremely annoying, and if she behaved in that way to the coster, it is not surprising that he was so enraged.”
Sister Julienne produced a suitcase from under the table, saying: “This is what I found in Sister Monica’s chest of drawers,” and she withdrew several pairs of silk stockings, three egg cups, a great quantity of coloured ribbons, a lady’s silk blouse, four children’s colouring books, an ornate hairpiece, a corkscrew, several small wooden animals, a tin whistle, a quantity of teaspoons, three ornamental china birds, a bundle of knitting wool all tangled up, a necklace of gaudy beads, about a dozen fine lawn handkerchiefs, a needle case, a shoe horn and a dog collar. All of the items were unused, and some of them still had a label attached.
There was really no need for Sister Julienne to say, “I’m afraid this has been going on for some time.” It was painfully obvious to all of us and Mrs B burst into tears. “Oh, the love, bless ’er, oh the poor lamb, she don’t know what she’s doin’, she don’t. Wha’s going to ’appen to ’er, Sister? Vey wouldn’t lock ’er up, not at ’er age?”
Sister Julienne said she didn’t know. Prison seemed an unlikely outcome, but the costermonger was definitely bringing a charge, and Sister Monica Joan would be prosecuted.
Sister Monica Joan was a very old nun born into an aristocratic family in the 1860s. She had obviously been a strong-willed young woman who had rebelled against the restrictions and narrow self-interest of her social class, because she had broken away from her family (a shocking thing to do) around 1890 in order to train as a nurse. In 1902, when the first Midwives Act was passed, Monica Joan trained as a midwife and, shortly after, joined the Sisters of St Raymund Nonnatus. Her profession to a monastic order was the last straw for her family and they disowned her. But Novice Monica Joan didn’t care a hoot and carried on doing her own thing. When I knew her, she had lived and worked in Poplar for fifty years and was known by virtually everyone.
To say that by the age of ninety she was eccentric would be an understatement. Sister Monica Joan was wildly eccentric to the point of being outrageous. There was no telling what she would say or do next, and she frequently gave offence. Sometimes she could be sweet and gentle but at other times she was gratuitously spiteful. Poor Sister Evangelina, large and heavy, and not gifted with verbal brilliance, suffered most dreadfully from the astringent sarcasm of her Sister-in-God. Sister Monica Joan had a powerful intellect and was poetic and artistic, yet she was quite insensitive to music, as I witnessed on the occasion of her shocking behaviour at a cello recital. She was very clever – cunning, some would say. She manipulated others unscrupulously in order to get her own way. She was haughty and aristocratic in her demeanour, yet she had spent fifty years working in the slums of the London Docklands. How can one account for such contradictions?