By Rosemary Easton
The latest contribution from Rose City Writers, this week from ROSEMARY EASTON…
“Glory be to God! Sally Mathews is under the bell rope again!”
Yes, I’d be there again, suffering one of the worst punishments given to wayward students at this prestigious boarding school. Nuns passed the point often and each chastised the unfortunate student. Occasionally one of the more human ones said a few kind words or winked.
What type of behaviour warranted such a severe sentence?
Well, for me, refusing to go to a music lesson and reacting to the call by throwing all the books off my desk and stomping out of the room. Who would want to go to a crabby old spinster who smacked your fingers and scribbled all over your music? Plus, associated with music was the 6.30am rising every day of the week to practice piano in a cold, draughty room.
If the powers that be knew what happened, there would be several people under the bell rope. We were all aware that the nuns were at Mass from 7am to 7.30am so on the dot of seven we would congregate in one of the rooms, talking, laughing, singing, playing forbidden songs, to assiduously return to individual rooms for a full fifteen minutes or less of real practice.
Boarders tended to push the boundaries and make the most of loopholes. By the way, I passed grade five piano with honours!
Another example was on a Monday afternoon when we went to a nearby golf course. We had professional lessons and most days played seven or eight holes. One week, four of us decided to play fairway one, disappear into a nearby pine forest and play home on the fifth. We enjoyed our hour in the eerie atmosphere of the pines, carefully watching the time to tee off. As we were putting out, we were ambushed by two prefects who had observed our truancy, reported us to the supervisor and you guessed it, four of us spent an hour under the bell rope to the tune of “abuse of privileges”!
What would you think if you were in year eight and the door of your classroom opened opposite a pear tree? The temptation of ripening pears was too much so a few succumbed, stole and ate the pears. The whole class was lined up and severely chastised for stealing from the hard-working nuns who had been looking forward to sinking their teeth into the juicy fruit. No one confessed so we were all marched off, not to the bell rope because there were too many of us, but to the chapel where we had to kneel for half an hour to pray and repent of our sins!
And of chapel stories! A nun died and whether we were comfortable with it or not, we all had to file past the open coffin to show our respect and say a prayer. For most this was the first corpse they had seen so it was very traumatic. The next day we attended the funeral Mass in the chapel. There were extra people in the congregation. We were told to squeeze up in the pews. Unfortunately, our row pushed too hard and the end girl fell into the aisle. Our shoulders shook with suppressed giggles. This helped solve the accommodation problem as six of us were removed by a side door. Maybe God moved in a mysterious way! Yes, we were sent to the bell rope and witnessed the tolling of the bell as the coffin was removed to the hearse.
There were many misdemeanours committed in our junior years so much so that I knew all the bell codes off by heart. The codes were used to summon a nun to that area to receive a message. Knowing them was handy as I knew when a supervisor was summoned and as they say, “When the cat’s away…”
In middle school we didn’t see as much of the bell rope, so new methods of punishment were introduced.
In year nine, I carelessly marked a sum wrong with an unruly cross. I was sitting next to a new student and sent from the room for giving bad example. The teacher, Sister Mary of Good Counsel, slapped my face so I ran away, packed a bag and rang the front doorbell to demand money for a fare home. “Goody”, as we called her, found me and asked my intentions. I said I was going home to which she replied, “You can’t do that, dear, you aren’t wearing your hat!” I wasn’t given a bus fare but was sent out to the aforementioned golf course to serve afternoon tea. Not a bad punishment, hey?
The punishments graduated to lines. I wrote “I must keep my towels straight” two hundred times one Sunday afternoon. Of course, my towels were crooked. I had an end rail beside a set of stairs and people used it as a banister. I had lines for reading a novel during study, having non-library books which were confiscated except for “The Saint Goes It Alone” by Leslie Charteris. It was deemed to be of a religious nature!
Would you believe, boys caused us trouble? A friend and I had brothers at boarding school in the same town. We went with our parents to a Sports Meeting and two boys we knew escorted us on a tour of their school, even to dormitories where there were up to twenty beds. We enjoyed the tour and that is all it was. We were dobbed in and because it deemed as entirely immoral, we were stripped of our membership in the Children of Mary, a special privilege for year elevens. Our blue cloaks were taken away and folded on Mary’s altar in the side chapel. This was in public view.
Each Saturday night, we attended prayers with the whole cohort and wore our blue cloaks. The degree of solidarity was so great that no one wore their cloak of honour the evening after our exclusion, so we didn’t stand out at all. Our membership was reinstated. Strangely enough we met up with the same two boys at a Sporting Event in the holidays. We were photographed by the Weekly Times and appeared in the newspaper. Sometimes secrets are leaked!
My big disappointment was, on one occasion I had a tooth extracted and unwell. Being the last day of term, all the other girls in the dormitory short-sheeted beds, were chastised and sent to the bell rope. I MISSED OUT.
How was it possible that such a wayward student was awarded Ideal Student when she left school? Must have learnt from her mistakes!
