‘Soeur Brigid, sit please.’ The Reverend Mother indicated a chair opposite her at the large, gleaming rosewood desk that dominated the room. Long sash windows looked out onto the manicured front lawns. Sunlight streamed into the pale, apple green and cream room, burnishing the desk and pastel green and gold rug with streamers of light. The décor of the room belied the nun’s severe manner. Perhaps her austerity was all an act that she’d to put on because of her role, and the real Mother Celestine came to the fore through her use of colour and light in the décor of her office. Had she too once been a young woman with dreams and desires, Brigid wondered.

‘We have made a decision about your future!’ Reverend Mother interrupted her thoughts and Brigid’s hands clasped each other in tension as she awaited her fate.

‘We have decided,’ continued the Reverend Mother in her slow, measured tones, ‘that you are suited to become one of our nursing staff. You’re practical, calm and hardworking, although lacking in concentration sometimes, but that will come when you are more focused. You start nursing training next month. After your year in a general hospital, you will transfer to a children’s one. Paediatrics will be your speciality. Have you any questions?’

‘No, Reverend Mother. I’m grateful for the opportunity,’ Brigid said meekly. Her heart had lifted at the words of praise and the realization that she would definitely be going to the African Missions. She wouldn’t have been given paediatric training if she weren’t. For the first time since she walked through the doors of the convent, Brigid had a real sense of purpose. Once Mother Celestine had dismissed her with an unexpected smile, it took all Brigid’s newly learned sense of decorum not to skip down the long parquet-floored hall yelling ‘Yippee!’

*

It was an apprehensive but excited young novice who met her family in Dublin Airport two years later for a final goodbye, before flying to Paris to begin the next phase of her life. The respect and special treatment she and her travelling companions, Agnes and Orla, had received from the moment they had arrived at the airport had been enjoyable. Orla’s family were waiting for her, and they were sitting at a table near the bar, enjoying their reunion.

Looking out at the propeller plane that would fly them to France – the St Coleman, it was called – Brigid felt somewhat reassured that a saint would be minding her on her first flight. How sophisticated she felt, admiring the white letters on the green fuselage. Aer Lingus Irish International Airlines. The sight of the shamrock on a green strip painted on the tail fin made her very proud to be Irish.