An Unconventional Love

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Whether it was the injections or something else altogether, I don’t know, but one day my father collapsed, showing all the signs of a stroke. First he felt numbness in his legs, then Mother and Father Picachy realised that the left side of his face had collapsed and he couldn’t speak or move his left arm. There was no telephone on the plantation so a servant boy was dispatched to fetch the doctor. Father Picachy sat comforting him but Mother was distraught and couldn’t contain herself. She told us later that she ran out into the tea gardens to watch anxiously for the doctor.

Suddenly, there was a piercing light and one of the tea bushes in her path burst into flames. She stopped in fright, and as she stood there she heard a voice speaking to her. ‘I will take you out of India,’ it said. ‘Go back now. He is cured.’

The voice was so calm and sure that she turned and hurried back to the house. When she got there she found her husband sitting up and talking to Father Picachy. His face had returned to its normal configuration, and he could move his left arm again.

‘I saw a burning bush!’ she cried. ‘I saw the flames and I stood thinking of Moses, and a voice told me he would be cured.’

Father Picachy had his own extraordinary story to tell. ‘Just after you left, I placed a crucifix in Percy’s hand and instantly he seemed to recover.’

They realised these occurrences—the bush, the crucifix and Dad’s recovery—must have been simultaneous, and knelt to pray and give thanks. The doctor arrived and expressed his astonishment at the patient’s rapid recovery from such ominous symptoms. He said it sounded as though Dad had had a stroke and was lucky to have come through it so well, but still he referred him to hospital for further tests.

Once he’d finished his examination, Mother led the doctor and Father Picachy out into the garden to show them the bush that had been on fire, but to her astonishment she couldn’t find any sign of it. There wasn’t so much as a cinder on the ground or a singed leaf in sight.

‘I’m sure it was right here,’ she gestured. ‘I’m not a psychiatric case. I definitely saw a burning bush. The flames shot out and there was a very bright light and then I heard the voice.’

Everyone believed her and it became part of family lore that God had saved Dad from a stroke. It was proclaimed as a miracle. Father Picachy spread the word and soon the house was full of Jesuit priests, coming and going in their white robes, saying mass and being fed in the big dining room. The crucifix Dad had been holding was kissed and venerated, and placed on display in the hall with candles lit on either side of it.

Clara became even more pious and told me ever more ridiculous stories about Jesus taming lions so they would lie down with lambs, and saving newborn babies from tigers and snakes. I was given a children’s bible and several religious story books with pictures of Daniel in the lion’s den and David and Goliath and the miracle of the loaves and the fishes. My whole life was centred around religion. It took over the family from that point on.

I had to kneel down every night to recite the Rosary before bedtime, which took fifteen whole minutes. My parents would recite one part, then I had to give the response and so it went on. Every Sunday Harold and I had to sit quietly through mass. We said grace before meals and prayers before bed, and the only stories we were told were religious ones. We were taught to offer everything we had and did to God, and to talk to God all the time. I didn’t rebel against this because I wanted to be good, I desperately wanted my parents to be pleased with me.

Both Mother and Dad were overwhelmed by the experience with the burning bush, our very own Family Miracle, and felt they had a debt to God that must be repaid. What better way than to offer Him their children?

My father said, ‘It’s not enough to be good, Adeline. I don’t want a good girl; I want a saint. You have to be perfect.’ That was fine, because I fully intended to be a saint and live on top of a pillar like Simeon Stylites.

Mother wanted me to be a nun. ‘Only good girls become nuns,’ she said. ‘You have to be especially good.’ So that’s what I’d do; I’d become a nun. She wanted Harold to become a priest as well. I wondered if I could be a nun and a saint at the same time, and Mother said yes, I could, so that was fine.

I wanted what they wanted. I was determined to become a nun and a saint, no matter what sacrifices I’d have to make, no matter how hard it was or how long it took. I decided then and there that’s what I was going to do with my life.