Bad Girl Magdalene (20 page)

The listening nun wanted to see their faces as they spoke, though she knew well enough who they were. It would have been more right to see how they looked when they talked, but she had never been caught yet. She did not know quite what she would do if ever they called, ‘Come out, Sister, come out. We know you’re there listening away!’ It would be so shaming.

‘What did you have for a lock-up?’

‘A tin bath. It was on the steps outside.’

‘You had to get in?’

‘No. You got put under it. It was put upside down on the ground, see? You had to be invisible, and the girls coming past
on the way to dinner or prayers had to hit it. It made you get sick. I was sick all over myself more than once, I can tell you, that banging. Like being in a drum.’

‘How long were you kept in that old bath?’

‘Half a day. For bed-wetting, see?’

‘Oh, well, there is that.’

‘I always got the whacks as well. There was a leather belt thing the nuns wore round their middles, some part of their habit, I suppose. This one nun would take hers off when it was time for me to come out, and that was me up for the belting.’

‘I prayed a nun would die.’

‘Was she poorly?’

‘She started going pale, but much we girls knew about being pale. She had to lie in her bed of a day at the finish, and we older girls – I must have been fourteen, maybe, because I think I’d started my periods – had to take turns watching over her.’

‘They always did that.’

‘It was the white spit.’

‘We called it the bloody spit.’

‘It was the cough I hated. That nun coughed her old lungs out.’

‘The nuns always went to sleep in the night. It was me always got the spit watch.’

‘I prayed for this one to die, and die she did.’

‘You didn’t…?’

‘No. How could I? I was nothing but a barn myself.’

‘I used to try to filch the food, if there was any left.’

‘From the dying nun?’

‘This one didn’t die. She seemed asleep when I started to nick her slice of egg-and-butter in a sandwich. I had a night light to see by, how she was getting on. And she said, as my
hand went out, “I can see what you’re doing,” and that was the end of my watching. I got the whacks.’

‘Was your place as bad as St Kyran’s?’

‘Darmuth? How should I know? That was the Sisters of Mercy, only for boys, wasn’t it? County Wicklow?’

‘One of the men – I think he was the one who went to England and won a bright silver chalice for bowling – went to St Kyran’s.’

‘Then he deserves all the silver things he earned, poor lad.’

‘Did any of them old nuns…y’know?’

‘No, thanks be to God. I heard of lots.’

‘You can never tell, though, can you?’

‘Not now. Only those of us who were there.’

The pause almost set the nun thinking of moving from the shadows into the corridor and stealing away, when one old lady said, ‘Them things. The one the person’s nicking. Is it tablets or medicines?’

‘Tablets, I think. I’ve forgotten. My mind’s not what it was.’

‘The wrong things stay in your mind, don’t they? I find that. I went to England, stayed with some cousin who’d turned up and had a fine little house on the outskirts of a town called Oldham. She was frightened because I kept waking up from my sleep and her children got scared. I was twenty-two, or so I thought.’

‘What did you do?’

‘My cousin took me to see a doctor, right there in that Oldham. He was worried, and sent me to see a psychiatrist. He made sure it was a lady, because then I’d not be frightened.’

‘Did she make you better?’

‘No. She said just to pretend nothing bad ever happened back when I was little.’

‘It doesn’t work.’

‘She said forgetting’s the best. She didn’t seem to have heard of any schools like we lived in, and wrote what I said down, but I got scared, because what if the old Gardai came after me for telling on everybody? She asked me to come back again and she’d see me a few more times, but I couldn’t stay with Glenda, my cousin, after that and came back to Eire.’

‘When’s the next meeting?’ the nun was startled to hear one of the old ladies say in a matter-of-fact voice. There were no meetings in the St Cosmo, except among the nuns.

‘Two days or so.’

‘Who is telling us?’

‘I think that old Liam. It was Mr Gorragher last time.’

‘Will it be when they put us out by the pond where the fishes are?’

‘How on earth do I know?’

Sometimes, the nun thought, the old ones who had to stay most of the time in bed got wheeled out in chairs or their trolley beds to sit under cover where they could see the goldfish in the pond. One or two were allowed to feed the fish, but you had to watch them do it because they’d empty every packet of fish food, like they were doing something surreptitious. The fish food cost a fortune, but the old folk seemed to think everybody and every living thing, flesh, fish or fowl, was secretly starving and had to be fed with anything to hand. It was the old folks’ sickness.

‘They’ll tell us.’

‘Did you ever find out who’s pinching the medicines?’

‘You’ve forgot. We didn’t know.’

‘Maybe it’s that old Mrs Wheelan.’

A sigh. ‘Go to sleep.’

‘Did you hear about when she pinched the newspaper with that plant in it? I think it was a poppy.’

‘Yes, I heard. Go to sleep.’

‘I wonder where she puts all them things she steals? She’s a terror, that Mrs Wheelan.’

‘Know what?’

‘What?’

‘When I go, I don’t want them to bury me just as that old number. I’ve a name.’

‘Names are best.’

‘They always bury you by your name, don’t they? Not some old number.’

‘Always a name. That’s the truth.’

‘Mrs Wheelan’s a terror.’

‘You’re right. She is that.’

Sister Francesca stole silently away. The old ladies slept.

There had once been, Father Doran remembered, floating as free as if he flew on some power-free glider, a place dedicated to the care of children, in the tender mercies of Holy Mother Church.

Who burnt them to death.

This was in living memory. The nuns had protected the little girls so well that death by burning was almost inevitable. It was not the only incident. He tried not to think about the terrible fire, but it kept coming into his almost absent, drifting mind.

He floated, mildly uncaring of his being moved from one place to another. Beautiful, this airy sensation. He heard one of the ambulance men – was that accent Galway? – say to his mate, ‘Down that end a bit,’ and on he glided into the ambulance.

So many strange things had happened. Not many minutes since, there he was, doing as he was told by Nurse Duggan, SRN, with her, ‘Go to sleep and rest, then you can go jogging, ha ha.’

First was that he had realised he was going to recover after all his terrible imaginings. Being struck down, and with calamitous results to this ticking heart of his with its frequent
wobbles on those traces across the screens – now four of them, for Heaven’s sake – would scare anybody, even the most religious and well-balanced personality. He was no exception. He truly had been really frightened. Now, though, it would be smooth sailing. ‘Once we have the wrinkles ironed out, Father Doran,’ Dr Strathan had said only this early morning in his predawn visit, ‘you’ll be into hospital then you’re off my hands, thank the Lord.’ The doctor’s usual quip, provoking the right sense of confidence in the patient. Was it all a mannered front? Father Doran did not care. It sufficed.

Then, lying there while the nurse went out to check the departure details with Sister Stephanie, he had sensed, dozing, rather than seen, a presence of somebody who smelt of Mansion Polish, that familiar tin of waxy orangey polish women used to clean church furniture. Mam had used that, so he knew he must be imagining it. He’d concentrated on obeying the nurse, and in truth he did feel sleepy. She must have given him something for the journey, to keep him calm.

‘Father Doran?’

The whisper had almost made him open his eyes, but he was nearly away and could hardly flicker his eyelids. The voice reminded him of another. A woman’s, sure, but whose? Did it matter? Not really. If it had been Nurse Duggan he would have recognised it.

He felt his tube being moved, and heard the slight plop of the spigot. Then she was gone, and with her the aroma of Mansion Polish. Only when he was woken by the return of the bustling nurse did he recall the voice. It had sounded very like the woman who had stood in for the nun that time, when Sister Francesca had gone for Dr Strathan. She had spoken of Sandyhills, where she and a friend had been Magdalene girls.

A girl died there. She fell one night in the stairwell. The cleaning woman was called Magda. She had been the falling girl’s friend.

He had said his confession the previous day to Bishop MacGrath, of the girl who had died. Realising how close the cleaning woman must have come to him, he became momentarily anxious, then calm. In fact, it felt quite like resignation. Whatever happened would happen. Yet had the cleaning woman adjusted one of these wires, flexes, tubes? How had she dared, her with no nursing training whatsoever?

But why would she? Perhaps she had come in merely to say goodbye, to perhaps express forgiveness or ask for a blessing. That happened all the time. A priest, after all. He considered asking Nurse Duggan what the woman had been sent in for, then decided not to. He had no idea why he started thinking of that horrendous fire. The ‘death toll’, as the media always logged the dead at any calamity. Thirty-five children, and one elderly woman. Why did he remember that?

He felt the stretcher sliding then a slight shudder as it clicked into place. A door slammed shut.

‘Is that it?’ a man asked.

‘Don’t they come out and see he’s OK?’

‘Nobody said anything. Sister?’

Sister Stephanie’s voice: ‘Nurse Duggan will accompany the patient.’

‘In with him?’

The door opening shuddered the whole vehicle, Nurse Duggan, it must be.

‘Dozing away as usual. It’s working.’

‘Ready now?’

‘Yes.’

The men’s footfalls crunched the gravel. He heard Sister Stephanie’s goodbye and thanks to the ambulance men. The vehicle started. He felt movement. He was safe!

‘Father Doran?’ the nurse said.

He did not reply. Odd how voices became similar in odd circumstances, but then he’d been given some drug or other. There was no telling what drugs did to you. Certainly he had been managed well enough at the St Cosmo. Good that Dr Strathan had been so unsparing of his time.

The Cavan fire had been the subject of so much discussion at the seminary. Of course there was blame. Criticism that was still going on, and why not? For Heaven’s sake, so many little girls dying in a fire. And not in some great tower block. It was in Cavan Town, in 1943, where the Order of the Poor Clares ran the St Joseph’s Industrial School for Girls.

There was no blame attached, the Poor Clares being a closed Order. That was a given, in the way of some religious things. Nothing more or less than logic, not to examine history with a blaming hindsight. Otherwise you could level accusations at Wellington for not finishing Waterloo hours earlier, for not using tanks. Ridiculous. No, the Poor Clares were a closed Order, and so constituted. The townsfolk who came to try to rescue the children from the burning building were not allowed entry.

Intrepid souls from the locality somehow gained access but could not find light switches to see who was there in the smoke and the flames. They did not know where the staircases were, even. They had no idea how many children lived in the place or where the dormitories lay. Disorder was total, would-be rescuers hunting for dormitories where the children were dying.

The Inquiry said so. That too was a given. A fire escape door could have been got open somehow, had hopeful rescuers
worked it out. It was kept closed. The nuns wasted valuable time, insisting that the little girls be completely dressed so they should not be seen in a state of partial undress by outsiders.

The final Report exonerated the nuns, all of them saved. The Inquiry praised the Sisters, of course, for they had the responsibility of coping with survivors. No lawsuits. The thirty-five children were reported by their assigned numbers, none by name. And were buried in a mass grave by number. Unknown soldiers?

In one sense, it was a beautiful instance of worthiness, the way society in Erin responded to tragedy. The dead children of Cavan were frequently invited – he had conducted such prayers himself – to ‘pray for us here on earth’. What was more of a testimony to the Church’s enduring character than that? In the very best sense, it was proof of holiness.

A true deep slumber came. He almost smiled as he felt the nurse’s hands on him, tucking him. Very like being a child again, after a bad fall, something like that. Cosy. His mind glided among clouds.

The girl was called Lucy. He had been given the account of the ailing child’s progress, at Sandyhills.

The nun – what on earth was her name? – had primly given him the doctor’s verdict.

‘The white phthisis has her, Father,’ she’d said.

‘TB?’

‘Yes. Tuberculosis. Lucy’s always been a frail child.’

‘It is getting worse?’

‘The cost of treatment is so expensive. We don’t know what to do for the best.’

‘I’m sure you have done everything.’

The nun sighed. ‘We certainly have. She has been allowed all kinds of special favours, but has wanted to work. She would have felt left out if she were left in idleness. Life,’ the nun said with arched primness, ‘is instruction, Father, with these young girls.’

‘I agree.’

‘Without it, there is nothing but a mad void.’

‘Indeed.’

‘And into that void Communism can rush like an invasion. Children are at such risk.’

‘More now than ever.’

‘I blame the loosening of family ties.’

‘Yes. And some of these children are the product of that laxity.’

He thought of Lucy, so waif-like and sinking fast.

‘Is the girl in the sick room?’

‘No, Father. That is reserved for the nuns.’ She averted her eyes, quite coyly he thought. ‘We have a rule that wherever possible the girls should be kept together. We foster their sense of community, of belonging to the Church’s society, in a way that will work in their interests when it is time for them to go out into the world.’

‘She hasn’t responded to treatment?’

‘Nothing like the way she should.’

‘Unfortunate. The poor child.’

‘It will be a merciful relief when she finally goes.’

Startled, he exclaimed, ‘Is it that close?’

‘Yes. The doctor himself said that last week. We try to have him up to see the sick girls once a month, sometimes sooner if we can afford it. You know only too well our lack of funding.’

It was his turn to sigh. ‘Yes indeed, Sister. Always too little, always so much to do.’

That had been the start of his thoughts of Lucy. She was vulnerable, not merely to any passing germ, but to any moral onslaught. She was too weak to resist. The thought was a kind of affliction. The notion kept coming back. Seriously troubled by the image of the poor pale girl so weakened as to be hopelessly defenceless, he found he could not push her from his mind. Images, of people averting eyes, of the pale girl, at the mercy of anyone and anything, recurred.

Three times in the next month he made a point of asking after the poor girl. He was given details. Yes, she was an orphan, a product of a sinful mother. The children of such casual encounters never amounted to anything. They were doomed in life. Thanks only to the Church, they got a semblance of life. They inherited wrongdoing, sins of the mothers. It was their fate. What good could they do in a world where they were marked for failure?

‘Are you feeling all right, Father?’ somebody said. It was a woman’s voice. He felt so tired now, probably the ambulance journey taking it out of him. Remember, he told himself, he had been stuck in a bed for quite some time now, to be put on the road to recovery.

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘Father Doran?’

That squeezing on his chest had come back. Probably nothing more than the effects of the vehicle juddering. They were turning right now, probably onto the road into Dublin proper. The hospital would be getting his bed ready, and the doctors well warned he was on his way in.

Lucy had been so docile, as if her complicity stemmed from the certainty of her impending death. Poor girl. He had been so solicitous, and explained it all to her with great sympathy. He had almost wept, back there in her dark dormitory.

Life, he had gently told her, gave her a chance to do some good, so her record as she ascended to Heaven was unsullied. He was sure she was always helpful. He told her that. He remembered it quite clearly, his words precise and compassionate.

This was her chance, he’d said, perhaps even her final chance, to do some good, create happiness and love that would be appreciated by God. It was not given to everybody to be so kind and loving. It was an opportunity she should take.

None of us could ever know when the last moments would come, but to some it was given as a friend, by someone like himself who really could guide her, and truly did care. The chance was too good to miss, to administer love in the only way left to someone who was ill and near to her end. And in that love, freely given and freely taken, she would bestow a kind of sacrament on the other person. It was the most beautiful thought, and the happiest way for a girl to leave the Church Militant and enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

He spoke her name in his mind, ‘Lucy, Lucy.’

Hers was a melody, a tuneful statement of love and generosity that would remain with him for ever. There was something here magical, quite mystical. The thought was certainly not blasphemous, though some with less perceptiveness than he would be unable to recognise a gift so holy that it would be a lasting treasure for the person left behind. God-given, through Lucy herself. It would guarantee for the giver a constancy of prayers and devotion from the one receiving her gift. It would be exactly like those Crusader
knights of old who, inspired by God in motive and spiritual ecstasy, took up the Cross and abandoned all to help the great cause of the Faith. In doing that, they rescued their souls from peril and achieved immortality. They entered the Kingdom of Heaven right here on earth.

They were even now receiving their reward in Heaven, and were sitting at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.

He whispered his promises of lasting devotion to her in the darkness even as he reached that enormous ecstasy in consummation with Lucy. It was beautiful, more a raising of the heart and mind to God than any prayer he had ever uttered. Of course she had to suffer a little, but she was in no doubt or she would have protested. It was worthy of her, and supreme to him. It was everything a sacrament should be.

Her last sacrament, in a mystical way. It was the most glorious gift he had ever received. He was blessed because of her. In giving, she received the benefit of his eternal devotion. He had prayed for her ever since, and would continue to do so. This was the reason God spared him from the inquiry, when somehow news and rumour spread from somebody in Sandyhills. Who started that rumour he was unsure. He had tried to discover that. The girl Magda could not read or write, he knew that, but there was always somebody who was disaffected, malicious, or inspired by Satan to assault Holy Mother Church with wicked lies and scandal, spreading tales of perversion and abuse and injury. It was all so unfair.

That was the reason, he was sure, he was now so devoted to the clerical life. The Church was everything. He had endured the transfers, got his letter of obedience from the bishop to report to a personal board who would judge his progress. Fair enough. He had fallen in line, and obeyed. Now the matter was
entirely over. Done. The girl was still there in his mind, and an object of, almost, worship in his dark hours.