Rock Me Gently: A Memoir of a Convent Childhood

By Judith Kelly

A harrowing and moving memoir about childhood and coming to terms with the past

'Simple yet shocking ... Sad and disturbing, it's unexpectedly uplifting too' Elle

'A searing account of the emotional and physical cruelty meted out at the orphanage' Sunday Times
In the 1950s, shortly after her father's death, Judith Kelly was left in the care of nuns at a Catholic orphanage while her mother searched for a place for them to live. She was eight years old.

But far from being cared for, Judith found herself in a savage and terrifying institution where physical, emotional and sexual abuse was the daily norm and the children's lives were reduced to stark survival. As the months became years and no word came from her mother, she sought comfort from the girls around her, and especially the bright, angel-voiced Frances.

When a tragic accident robbed Judith of her dearest friend, the memories were too traumatic to confront. It was not until years later, on a Kibbutz in Israel, that a friendship with an elderly Holocaust survivor gave Judith the strength to revisit her past - and the orphanage of her broken childhood.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Aug 17, 2009
• ISBN: 9781408806906

Book preview

Introduction to the Paperback Edition

On one Internet blog site, I am condemned as ‘a thief, a soapy sneak masquerading as an author’ in order to get my memoir noticed. This blogger, who has not read my book, believes that I have cribbed from many best-selling books written by well-known authors and therefore the truth of my story is in doubt. Apparently, if a newspaper reports it, then it must be true. In the New Statesman* (30 January 2006) I am accused of fabricating my story and that details of my ‘awful memories, have been plagiarised from other books. My dissenters have even protested that I never attended the institution I describe in my story. Others imply that I had left the convent before the incident that is the focal point of my story (Daily Express, † 28 December 2005). My publisher has given me this opportunity of replying to these accusations. I realise that plagiarism is wrong and although I do not wish to excuse my actions, I would like to offer an account of what happened.

The seeds of my decision to tell my story were sown in the early 1970s following the discovery of the diary I kept whilst at Nazareth House convent from 1951 to 1953. In September 2000 Sister Alphonso, also known as Marie Docherty, was found guilty of terrorising the children in her care at Nazareth House in Aberdeen and Lasswade from the 1960s to the 1980s. This same nun had at one time been ensconced in Nazareth House, Bexhill-on-Sea, which is the home I attended as a child. My decision to embark on the story you are about to read could no longer be put off. The pressure of injustice against so many innocent children, particularly the two girls that died, had grown too great to be ignored and my determination to move forward and tell the truth became my primary goal.

I had no idea that the final result would be of such interest to anyone - I was writing this book for myself, and for my two friends - and sadly, I thought there was nothing new to be revealed about the ill-treatment of children within religious institutions. But I was proved wrong. Yet writing my story was a journey through terror and horror and certainly after the book was published, reaction to it proved to be something I had not anticipated.

It was clear to me even in those early days that while writing my story I would have to remain objective, despite the trauma of revisiting my past and the way it would affect me. I had to distance myself from the emotive content in both the convent and kibbutz chapters. Detaching myself in this way helped me endure the telling of my story.

When I embarked on my mission I lacked confidence in my writing ability. I sat in libraries reading stacks of books in order to understand how a sentence or chapter is put together. I learnt how other authors use words, the turns of phrases they employ I learnt by seeing how the greats had done it. I slowly learnt what inspired me and what didn’t. So at first I began by a process of imitation making copious notes whenever a sentence produced an image that best fitted my childhood memory with the intention of later changing the language into my own words.

As I progressed the many notes and Post-its stuck around my walls and computer grew. As did the many dog-eared books I had gathered in my need for guidance. And that is where, to my deep regret and to the immense pain of other authors or their representatives, I grew careless. As the years went by, I became muddled about which sentences were my own and which belonged to the masters of literature. This last sentence may sound immensely egotistical because how could an amateur author confuse her own dilettantish writing with the likes of Charlotte Bronte? I admit to being fully aware that similarities to Jane Eyre existed in my story. I hoped the reader would be aware of them too, thereby illustrating the many similarities between Nazareth House and Loworth School. In some respects, I was unconsciously attempting to contrast my life with Jane Eyre’s.

Although my story is tragically factual, after receiving advice from an editor I changed the style of my story from factual to a ‘show not tell’ format. In other words I had to strive to make the reader feel as if he or she was watching the events by showing, not merely telling, the story. My progress was slow. The only certainty about my childhood is what I remembered. The evidence I painfully gleaned from the Coroner’s report about my friends’ deaths and the details from my diary had to be distilled to a few paragraphs. How to put them together? The chapters of my days on the kibbutz also required this type of consideration - here eight months had to be reduced to eight chapters. In both the convent and the kibbutz chapters, I describe a dialogue that never happened, yet the tone of those conversations remains the same - all accurate but never before having been brought together.

I tried to remain true to the facts and feelings of my story, but if sentences have inadvertently been taken from another author’s book, whether fiction or non-fiction, then I am deeply apologetic to the authors and to my publisher and have amended those sections for this edition, but this does not alter the fact that the events within my story remain true. I am aware that some of my contemporaries from the convent contradict my account of events as documented in my story. However, for the matter of testimony there are also a number of witnesses who support my story. One woman’s reaction was: ‘You described the inside of the convent and the rituals of Nazareth House to a tee, but why did you dampen down the truth about the nuns’ cruelty?’ My response is that if we all had written our own version of those days, each account would have been diverse, yet each one true. If two people recall an event differently, does it mean that one is lying? Each of us remembers our time spent in the convent according to our varied circumstances, ages and emotional needs at the time, all of which makes for our own individual truth. Therefore, two children witnessing the same event are bound to remember it differently. And who could condemn any of our stories? As to the accusations that I have taken characterisations and scenarios from other books: I received written permission from each person in the convent and the kibbutz chapters and they will vouch that I have truthfully represented their personalities and the circumstances of each setting.

My account of my days at Nazareth House does not attack the Catholic Church as much as it takes the nuns to task for failing to live up to what they preach. Only by facing up to the truth, by apologising to the victims or even by acknowledging what they did will everyone who attended these institutions be set free. The power the nuns wield could be an enormous instrument for good. It should never be used to conceal or stonewall when confronted with misdeeds or outright crimes. This is not just my opinion, but it is also that of some nuns and a member of the clergy who contacted me to thank me for writing my book.

Since the publication of the hardback version of my book in February 2005, I received numerous letters from people telling me that my story had helped them speak up for the first time in their lives about their own childhood abuse. Knowing they were not alone in their suffering seemed to help them. The one review of my book that deeply moved me appeared on a website called Young Minds* (www.youngminds.org.uk) which is a national charity committed to improving the mental health of all children and young people. Written by Terry O’Connor, director of the Catholic Children’s Society (Arundel & Brighton, Portsmouth and Southwark) he understood the purpose of my story, to expose the hypocrisy within those institutions.

I offer no solutions in my book, nor do I point out ways in which church officials or social workers could have prevented abuse within these homes that were located in the UK and many other countries, but I will admit that if the nuns had dealt with these situations openly, honestly and wisely, then so many people who still carry the scars of mental and physical abuse could have recovered and there would have been no need for a book like mine.

For the future, I intend placing the diary I kept at the convent, together with all the letters I have received since my book was published into an archive.

Judith Kelly

April 2006

* Appendix 1

† Appendix 2

* Appendix 3

Prologue

‘Do you remember Frances McCarthy?’ She asks the question without expression.

I’m sitting opposite the nun who abused numerous children in her care in a convent situated in the sedate English seaside town of Bexhill-on-Sea.

The light is fading, and I cannot distinguish her features. From the sunset through the window, bright glints catch her hooded eyes, which look straight at me, sharp and mocking.

‘Yes, of course I do. She was my best friend.’ My voice is tense.

She shifts in her seat, watching me. ‘Does it bother you that I ask that question?’

‘It doesn’t,’ I say curtly. ‘I no longer feel any guilt about what happened.’

I know what she is trying to do, and I want to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until her teeth rattle. Instead, I sit here very still and remember all that I have tried so hard to forget.

For many years I suffered the nightmares born of the time I spent at that convent. The memories that project across my mind are shared by the silent community of victims who once lived as I did, in a world that was deaf to our circumstances. And it all took place in middle England.

This is a true story about love and caring among children in the face of extreme cruelty. It is my story, about the only two friends in my life who have truly mattered to me. One of them died at the age of twelve. The other recently said: ‘I’m still trying to get over my childhood, and now I’m ready to go into an old people’s home.’

Chapter 1

Let’s go so we can come home, let’s go so we can come home. I chanted the catchphrase to myself over and over as the Israeli bus began to rumble its way towards Haifa.

It was August 1972, early morning and not yet light. In the waist of the bus sat a party of bearded Jews, Hasidim, like gnomes in black, with curly side-locks, broad hats and dangling fringes. I nodded at them but none responded; they regarded me with an air of haughty contempt. A large elderly woman shifted over in her seat to make room for me next to the window. I squeezed myself in. I hated the sensation of another human being wedged against my side. I could feel my own perspiration and was beginning to smell that of the others. I reflected that I was lucky to have a seat, and with a certain satisfaction watched the aisle fill up with people who had to stand. Sprinkled among them were several young backpackers with Stars and Stripes stuck on their rucksacks. College students, I thought, the types I would be mixing with on the kibbutz. I envied their cool clothes.

I rested my face against the window. It had all been very sudden, my decision to come here. I knew I should feel excited, happy at the prospect of living and working with other young people for six months. It was idiotic to feel apprehensive. Nerves, of course. Life wasn’t meant to be easy.

In the seat ahead of me one of the Hasidim read the Talmud, running his finger across the page. I watched him with envy. That man had a God and a community. He had a belief system in which pain and loss were explained in terms of an inspirational balance sheet, in which everything worked out in the end, and death was not really death. He believed he was one of God’s Chosen, whereas I felt like a digit in a random series of numbers. Maybe I should pray. But God would turn a deaf ear to me.

I felt obvious and alone; the only one on the bus without group affiliation. Perhaps I could start up my own group - the Sisters of Reluctant Tourists?

I squinted as bluish buildings and objects rushed jerkily past the windows, all stiff and brittle. Tel Aviv gradually fell away and the scenery outside the bus unscrolled itself like a speeding tapestry. We raced through hamlets of squat houses with corrugated iron roofs, which nestled among secretive woods of aspen and fir. Long stretches of trees with dusty foliage brushed the bus as it passed. And across a golden stubble field, small bands of farm labourers - male and female together could be seen tilling and sowing, clearing the land of rubble with the shallow blue line of distant hills behind them. Combine harvesters heaved yellow grain and straw, spewing it on to the land. Old men shuffled past, nodding their skull-capped heads. Young, richly bronzed, hard-muscled men in denim shorts stepped into rusting vans loaded with tomatoes.

The talk and laughter of the other passengers faded away as the bus changed to a lower gear and a news bulletin buzzed loudly through the bus. The raspy consonants of the broadcaster’s voice made it difficult to understand what was being said. I examined the faces of the other inhabitants of the bus. The Hasid near me hunched his face over a cupped match, sucked the flame in through his cigarette with all his strength, and funnelled the smoke out through his teeth. Time thickened.

As the radio crackled on, the other passengers lit up cigarettes from packs tucked into shirt pockets and handbags. Let’s have a fag and forget our troubles. We sat in a pea-soup fug of cigarette smoke until the broadcast ended. Had it not been for the large woman sitting next to me, barring my way, I would have jumped off the bus.

The anxiety hit me full blast, without warning. My body was numb, inert, as I felt the slow, rolling pressure of panic building inside me. I could hardly move, hardly breathe. Things began scratching at the edge of my awareness, pulling, tugging at me. No! Not today, not here. I came to Israel to get away from these feelings. Just ignore them, they’ll die down of their own accord, I told myself. I must remain composed. I willed my mind to concentrate on the bus’s rocking movement. Let’s go so we can come home, let’s go so we can come home.

Slowly, slowly, the panic ebbed away, and I could breathe again. I wiped my perspiring forehead with my handkerchief and gulped in great lungfuls of cool air gratefully. See? I scolded myself. It’s not so hard, if you just try. I relaxed into the hammock-swaying of the bus. It held me suspended between the life I had left and the life that waited for me somewhere ahead.

Suddenly the rattle of the bus seemed a threat from which I must escape, just as I had from England. I was a caged bird wherever I was. I believed myself to be free of all prejudices - I hated everyone equally. As if in response to my thoughts, the bus shifted down a gear and the brakes squealed to a halt. The driver gave a loud nasal shout of ‘Kiryat Ata!’

That was my stop. Suffocating with nerves, I felt the blood glowing in my face. I grabbed my things and scrambled out, relieved. I was the only person to get off.

The street was just a long row of squat, rust-coloured shops, like cubes of pink sugar, with green shutters over every window. The bus coughed away in a cloud of dust, leaving me feeling helpless and frightened, like an out-of-season tourist who had lost her coach party. I had not expected this solitude. I had not expected this strange abysmal town. When I had looked at the map of Israel, Kiryat Ata had been marked in quite large letters; I had been sure it must be a civilised place with modern shops, restaurants and banks.

A voice in my head whispered: ‘You asked for it. It’s up to you now. You’re moving forward. That’s progress, isn’t it?’ But from what? Towards what? Did I really want to be here? Questions without answers, they spun in my head. I should turn myself round and go back to England at once, before I got caught up here. Let’s go so we can come home. Vainly I tried to recall another of Ruth’s catchphrases to calm myself - take the plunge, go with the flow, sink or swim - but stale cliches were no help. I was no longer a child. I was supposed to have accumulated things by now: possessions, responsibilities, goals, experience and knowledge. I was supposed to be a person of substance. But I didn’t feel weightier. I felt lighter, as if I was shedding matter, losing calcium from my bones, cells from my blood; as if I was shrinking.

A young man wearing purple braces was bringing out chairs and tables under the awning of a shabby cafe-bar across the road from me. Propped up in a chair, an old man slept bolt upright. He seemed unconcerned by the clatter of chairs and tables being dragged outside from the cafe.

The piercing glare in my sun-shocked eyes thumped my head. My featureless thick skirt, long-sleeved blouse and tight shoes felt heavy and inappropriate. For years I had chosen clothes that made no promises. I was ashamed of English holidaymakers who loafed around seaside resorts in beachwear, skimpy shorts and vests in shrieking colours, with too much sunburnt red flesh on View.

I had brought little more than the clothes I stood up in as I had been informed that the kibbutz would provide my work gear. I had wedged my luggage, just a duffle bag, beside me on the aeroplane seat. It was my first flight; at the back of my mind was the thought that if something went wrong, up there in the sky, I’d have my duffle bag at the ready to take with me into the void, using my voluminous skirt as a parachute, leaving nothing of myself behind.

I now stood in the partial shade of a tree, my bag propped up against my leg, as I sucked in the hot, still air. I saw myself for a moment as part of the scene, in the way I sometimes did, and realised I looked like someone lost. There were a few dilapidated shops around, their crumbling walls scribbled with mysterious graffiti. There were no signposts, but I had an idea in which direction my kibbutz lay.

What now? Should I stay, or go?

‘Shalom!’

I blinked. The young man, the waiter from across the road, stood beside me, staring at me with a look that was half amusement, half concern. I wondered for an instant how long he had been there. Had I been talking out loud? He said something in Hebrew which I didn’t understand.

‘English,’ I said pointing to myself. ‘I’m going to Kibbutz Ramat Yohanan. How far away is it?’

‘A few miles,’ he said after a silence.

‘Is there a bus?’

‘No bus for a long time.’

‘Is there a taxi I could hire?’

‘Taxi? No.’

‘Then how am I to get there?’

‘You will have to wait for the evening bus.’

‘I can’t wait,’ I said in exasperation. ‘I’m two days late already.’

He stared at me with dreamy curiosity. I had been told that Israelis were friendly people, but this man, while not exactly hostile, was not giving me the reaction I needed. He had looked at me a little strangely when I told him where I was going. Perhaps that was it. I hardly seemed the type to play the part of a pioneering kibbutznik sweating from toil.

I took a breath and decided. ‘I shall walk then.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘OK, but be careful,’ he said politely.

I nodded. ‘I’m here to learn Hebrew.’

‘Ah, come in for a drink some time, yes?’

I saw now how foolish it has been not to have arrived at the kibbutz at the designated time. It had seemed less alarming to come at my own pace. I stared through the haze at the road that led to the kibbutz.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, of course,’ though I doubted I would. When he reached the awning, he turned and gave me one brief, curious glance before disappearing into the dark doorway of the bar. The street fell silent again.

I picked up my duffle bag. Let’s go so we can come home. I started down the street, moving robotically, as I had been doing for years. Was I really ready for this world? I didn’t know. My intentions for being here were still masked from myself. Maybe I just wanted to belong somewhere, needed to be part of something - the humorous yet sorrowful sound of the Yiddish tongue that I did not even understand, yet always loved to hear from my grandparents; a history that I had been removed from, a history that might not be mine, yet one which I wanted to learn more about.

Or perhaps I was running away from the memories that had threatened to overwhelm me since I rediscovered my childhood diary.

Six months earlier my mother had asked me to help clear out her loft. Together we sifted through old magazines, shelves of dusty jars, a stash of different-sized boxes and strapped suitcases.

I was crouching on the floor when I found the parcel. A brown paper package tied with a piece of string. A sticky label, yellowing slightly with age, bore my mother’s round writing in black ink.

‘Judith. N. H. Convent,’ it read.

‘What have you found?’ my mother looked up, her lips parted. She stiffened when she saw what I was looking at, and reached out in an effort to lift the parcel away from me.

‘Please Judith, don’t open that.’

But I had already untied the string, feeling a strange sort of breathlessness as I did so. It did after all have my name on it; I felt I had the right.

‘It’s all right, Mum,’ I said, patting her gently on the arm.

‘No, it’s not all right,’ she said with a sudden authority. ‘I should have thrown all that stuff away long ago. There’s no point in raking up the past.’ Her face was taut with concern.

‘What do you mean?’ I was sounding petulant now. ‘I’m just interested, that’s all.’ I carried the parcel away from her, out of the loft.

In the seclusion of my bedroom, I let the contents stream to the floor. The smell of mould blossomed upwards. There were a few letters in my childish scrawl and a lot of yellowing newspaper cuttings. ‘NUNS PRAY AT SEA RESCUE’ the headlines declared. Underneath the cuttings lay a book with a glossy religious picture stuck on the cover. It was the diary I kept during my days at Nazareth House convent. An old photo album revealed the frozen images of assorted children standing stiffly with either beach huts or the familiar facade of the convent in the background. All the photos included black-veiled nuns.

Sweaty and uncomfortable, I stared blankly at the photographs. Many years of carefully guarded emotion struggled Sweaty for release as the faces I sought burst through the gate of my unconscious, rioting horribly into my memory. Up to that moment, my convent days had remained bottled within me like a dark brew ready to blow its cork at any time.

I sat on my bed, turning my back on the faces. I used to be unable to remember exactly how they looked, and then I taught myself not even to try. Now, in a chance moment, like an unexpected encounter in a busy street, I’d seen them again. The past was swimming back to me, as though the guard had been removed from the gate.

My mother entered the room. ‘That girl,’ she said, ‘the friend of yours who died. What was her name?’ She looked at me, a little slyly, as if testing.

I cleared my throat. ‘Oh, heavens, I don’t remember. It was so long ago. Another lifetime.’

But I knew from the way her face froze that she was anxious. She could see through my lie, and she wondered why I had bothered.

I didn’t know, either, except that I believed it was my duty to appear happy. It was the least I could do for her. I didn’t want her to feel bad; she had plenty of worries in her life. But even now, so many years on, was I still hiding from my time at the convent?

After she left, I sank down on to my bed again. I picked up the diary. I didn’t quite dare open it, not then. It was as if I had been living under an anaesthetic that was only now beginning to wear thin. Suddenly I was frightened of what might await me if I awoke.

Would reading my childhood diary start it all up again? The guilt, the despair that had tinged my days for years. Then I remembered the recurring dream that still preyed upon my nights. I would awake from it gasping and choking, eleven years old again, standing on the jagged rocks watching my life end.

I stared at the faded picture on the cover and I knew that I had to find a way to understand myself.

‘Frances McCarthy,’ I whispered as I opened my diary.

And as I heard the ragged sound of my breathing, I knew my safe comfortable shell was beginning to crack. I found the knowledge strangely exciting. It was as though memories were returning to me in broken pieces.

‘Frances,’ I said again.

She had resurfaced - perhaps for ever? - in my mind.

Chapter 2

‘Genuflection, girl. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of the word, have you?’

‘No, Sister.’

One or two of the other girls sniggered quietly and I could feel a blush burning my cheeks.

‘Speak up, speak up. Genuflection is a bow, a bob, a curtsey to the altar. Well?’

‘Yes, Sister,’ I said louder.

‘Yes, what?’ Sister Mary said, poking my shoulder with her cane.

‘I haven’t heard of the word before.’

More muffled laughter from the others. Two of them whispered. Yes, they knew - had never needed to learn nor ever been ignorant.

‘Be quiet, all of you,’ Sister Mary spat.

Reviews for Rock Me Gently

[carmarie_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I thought this book had a lot of potential to be really interesting. But it wasn't. I didn't think it was sad OR heartwarming. It was just a one note book without a lot of dimension. I was disappointed.