A Case of Conscience


Mr. Marlow, the milkman, delivered milk to the Convent School in Essex
Street in London. He was a man who didn’t believe in religion, and
sometimes it gave him quite a turn to see the medieval costume of the
nuns. ‘Mumbo jumbo,’ was how he described it to his wife. ‘You take
those women and stick them into ordinary clothes and nobody would send
his kids there. But call them ‘Sister’ and cut their hair and put veils
on them and they can charge what they blooming well like. You can get
away with anything, provided you dress the part. Like lawyers. They
don’t know any more than you or I do.’

He made an exception of the lay sister who came there two years after
he had started delivering. She was young and pretty and she had a nice
smile.

‘You’re not from these parts?’ he asked.

‘No, I’m from Ireland,’ she said.

‘Oh! Come a long way from base, haven’t you!’ he exclaimed.

‘I feel a terrible stranger still,’ she said.

‘Oh, you’ll get used to it,’ he said.

‘I suppose so,’ she replied. ‘God is everywhere, Mr. Marlow. Isn’t that
right?’

It took Mr. Marlow aback. Nobody had ever talked to him in that tone
before. The parson had said words to that effect when he was a small
boy, but the parson had sounded neither convinced nor convincing. This
pretty girl in her outlandish costume seemed to think it was true.

‘Don’t ask me, miss,’ he muttered. ‘I never made His acquaintance.’

This seemed to take her by surprise as much as her remark had taken
him, but she gave him a gentle, timid smile.

‘Ah, but you will, Mr. Marlow, you will,’ she said. ‘God is waiting for
all of us.’

It gave him another turn, but it left him with a lingering interest in
the girl. She wasn’t like anyone else he had met. ‘She’s a bit simple,’
he told his wife.

But she hadn’t been there more than six months when he began to notice
the change in her. She seemed to lose her high spirits, and though she
smiled as brightly as ever when he rang the bell, there was a sadness
behind the smile.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked one morning.

‘Nothing, Mr. Marlow,’ she said falsely. ‘Why?’

‘You’re not happy,’ he said.

‘We can’t ask for happiness in this life,’ she said, clouding over.

‘You used to be happy enough,’ he said.

‘Ah, I suppose I made a mistake,’ she said. ‘I should never have left
home.’

‘Somebody picking on you?’ he asked shrewdly.

‘Of course, I’m not clever.’

‘You’re not supposed to be clever, are you?’ he asked. ‘You do your
work, don’t you?’

‘I make mistakes.’

‘Everybody makes mistakes. It’s how people correct them that matters.
This is an unnatural life. All them women living in one house—it
isn’t right. You’re a good looking girl. You should have a husband and
family of your own.’

‘I could have,’ she said. ‘I never wanted them compared with what I
thought I wanted.’

‘What did you want?’ he asked.

‘I wanted to have the chapel near me, and to be able to pray and
think. Now I can see they don’t even want me in the chapel. They say I
should be at work.’

‘Oh, it’s all class,’ he growled. They despise you because you’re Irish
and working class, but you can’t let them walk over you. You’ve got to
stand up for yourself, girl. Next time one of them criticizes you, you
say, “Very well; you come and do my work yourself.”’

‘I suppose I should,’ she said mournfully.

But Mr. Marlow suspected she would do nothing of the sort. He suspected
that she would go and tell God about it and ask Him for help, and
Mr. Marlow didn’t believe in telling God about it even if there had
been such a person.

His wife was becoming suspicious.

‘You take a great interest in her,’ she said.

‘She’s unusual,’ Mr. Marlow admitted.

‘But there must be something wrong with her,’ Mrs. Marlow said.

‘Of course there’s something wrong. There’s something wrong with
everyone, if you want to find it out. That’s from your point of
view. But there’s something worse wrong with them. She believes all
this stuff about God being there in the chapel, and so on, and they
don’t, not really. And they’ll take it out on her, you mark my words.’

It was all very mystifying to Mr. Marlow. He did not believe in all
that nonsense about God any more than he felt the English sisters did,
but whenever he thought of it he found his heart warming to the Irish
nun until he even began to make excuses for her and argue with himself
that for her, perhaps, there was something in the chapel. He found it
even more difficult to explain himself to the Irish nun. Her state was
now going definitely from bad to worse. She was simply terrified if
one of the choir nuns came into the kitchen while Mr. Marlow was
delivering the milk. One morning a choir nun came in as Mr. Marlow
appeared, and she began to scold her in her well-bred way.

‘Sister Agatha, did you forget you had left the dusting pan in the
hall? Someone would trip over that, you know.’

‘Strikes me Sister Agatha ought to join the nuns’ trade union,’
Mr. Marlow snapped before he realized what he was saying.

The choir nun drew herself up and surveyed him coldly. Mr. Marlow put
his pitcher down and surveyed her back. Then she turned and left the
kitchen, banging the door behind her. Sister Agatha was crying.

‘Don’t you be a little fool, girl!’ he said fiercely. ‘That’s the way
to talk to them, and they know it.’

‘Oh!’ she said. ‘She’ll never forgive me now.’

‘Who cares whether she forgives you or not? Will you forgive
her—that’s the question you should ask. Ill-bred woman! Correcting you
in front of a third party. Don’t you stand for that from her!’

He went on his rounds in a state of fury that was rare with him, aware
too that he was behaving foolishly. He knew that he had thrown down a
challenge to the choir nun and that it was one he would probably have
to answer for. His wife realized it as well.

‘Oh, Dan!’ she said. ‘Did you have to get tied up in something that
doesn’t concern you?’

‘I don’t care,’ he said angrily, feeling more than ever in the
wrong. ‘If I can’t stand up for my principles at this hour of my
life. I’ll get another job.’

‘But they’re not even your principles, Dan.’

‘In one way they’re not, but in another way they are. They’re turning
that poor child into a skivvy—the worst sort of skivvy.’

But it was worse than he thought. When he saw Sister Agatha again she
was terrified to speak to him. When she did speak it was in a guilty
whisper.

‘Go away!’ she said. ‘I don’t want to talk to you any more.’

‘Why not? I didn’t do you any harm, did I?’

‘They said it was a disgrace, the way I talked to you. Carryings-on,
they called it.’

‘Did I do any carrying on with you?’

‘No, but they don’t understand.’

‘I’ll damn soon make them understand,’ he said in a loud and angry
voice. ‘You’ll have to get out of this place.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You’ll have to. They’re out to destroy you, and they’ll do it, what’s
more.’

‘But where can I go?’

‘Go back to Cork.’

‘How could I? Everybody would laugh at me.’

‘They will not. You write and tell your mother and father the way
you’re being treated.’

‘I can’t, sure. The sisters would know.’

‘Very well, give me their address and I will. And tomorrow you’re going
to walk out of this place.’

‘But how can I?’ she asked tearfully. ‘These are all the clothes I
have. And my hair!’

‘What about your hair?’

‘’Tis cut.’

‘We’ll think out a way. Leave that to me. And tomorrow, mind, be ready
when I come!’

‘Oh, I’d never be able to do it.’

‘You’d better,’ he said. ‘If you don’t, they’ll send you somewhere
else, and then you’ll see.’

The following morning he brought in the milk as usual and gave her a
look.

‘Well,’ he asked, ‘are you all set?’

‘How can I?’ she asked, but he knew she was desperate.

‘You wait!’ he said.

A few minutes later he came in with an empty milk churn and took off
the lid.

‘Hop in!’ he said.

‘Into that?’ she cried, aghast.

‘Hop in, I said, before anyone comes. Come on—I’ll lift you.
Upsy-daisy.’

Before she knew what she was doing she was in the milk churn and felt
herself being rolled through the door and out the yard. Then
Mr. Marlow raised her triumphantly onto the truck and started the
engine. He drove slowly and carefully to his own door, swung the milk
churn to the ground and pushed it through the door. Then he helped her
out of the churn. She looked strange in her nun’s costume, and his
wife gave a little cry.

‘Oh, Dan, I hope they won’t follow her here.’

‘Nobody knows where she is,’ he said. ‘If they come, don’t answer the
door. I have to finish my rounds.’

She stayed with them for a few days until Mrs. Marlow had equipped her
with some clothes. They saw her off at Euston station, and she sobbed
as she thanked them.

‘I know you don’t believe in God, Mr. Marlow, but He won’t forget you
for this. He’ll be with you when you need Him most.’

Mrs. Marlow said it showed nice feeling, but her husband wasn’t really
at his ease as they went home on the bus together. He had never had
anything against the Irish, but he did hope their God was not going to
annoy him further. He had already got him into trouble enough.


(1970)