The convent was a squat, ramshackle building, its roof more corrugated iron than Gothic pinnacle.
It was set among high walls spiked with shards of glass, forbidding enough to repel voyeurs,
religious obsessives, nun-stalkers, sex offenders, militant Protestants, enraged atheists. But the walls
were also there to keep the occupants in. For this was a convent of enclosed Carmelite nuns, who
once the gate had slammed behind them would see nobody but their fellow nuns and a few priests
and altar boys for the rest of their lives.
I was the gatekeeper. As a ten-year-old altar server in the convent chapel, I had to be on hand
when a novice, perhaps nineteen or twenty-one years old, took the veil and disappeared into the
place for good. She would first be dressed as a bride to symbolize her marriage to Christ, her hair
cropped almost to a crew-cut beneath the white lacy veil. In some cases, no doubt, the honeymoon
would prove something of a disappointment. Then she would be ushered away by her fellow nuns
to return decked in the black veil and rough brown habit of the Carmelite order. I heard later of a
young woman who had turned down the Carmelites and opted instead for a religious order which
allowed you to wear Marks & Spencer knickers. Though I myself had no personal acquaintance with
the knickers of Carmelite nuns, I feel sure that they were forbidding, skin-chafing affairs, slid into
place with steel bolts, as the order never missed even the mildest chance for mortification.
Terry Eagleton, The Gatekeeper