Chapter 41

• Julia’s robust plea that desecration was never her intention seemed only to inflame the sisters’ wrath. Still, she feared her parents’ reaction even more. Julia was surprised to be told that the school would not be notifying her ‘poor’ parents. She was strongly encouraged to keep the matter from them, too, since ‘they’ve enough on their plate without the shame of your sins adding to their burden.’
• It was years later when she was going through her mother’s papers, that Julia discovered some old photostats of a parents’ guide to the convent school rules. It was evident from those rules that Julia’s desecration, as the nuns had seen it, should have led to her immediate expulsion. It occurred to Julia that the nuns had been even more attached to her school fees than they were to the idea that the blue of their habits represented purity. Perhaps they’d enjoyed stripping and caning Julia? The rules were also clear that corporal punishment, where needed, was to be delivered with pupils fully clothed. Julia shivered as she recalled bending naked in the stable, feeling the eyes of every nun burning into her. Perhaps, given their deviation from the rules, they’d chosen the stable to be as far away from their precious religious buildings as possible. Julia mused on that thought for a moment but doubted the nuns had that kind of compunction or self-awareness.
• Julia briefly considered divulging the story to Richard. But she found an intoxicating appeal in the idea of him caning her that was in sharp contrast to the aversion she felt at the memory of the haggard nuns having done the same. It didn’t feel appropriate to burden Richard with the baggage of her past quite so early in their acquaintance. Besides, she’d prefer not to feed the rising anger she felt as she recalled her ecclesiastical chastisement.