Bad Girl Magdalene (21 page)

Love was of so many special kinds. He knew where his love lay. It was with the Church and all her wonders.

The voice came nearer.

‘Father Doran?’

He tried to reply but the pain gripped. It was more severe than before. It came again with renewed force and he felt sick, almost unable to move.

‘Father Doran?’

The pain took hold of his chest, his heart, and finally his mind, and he relaxed, surrendering to its majestic power. It recurred, bringing with it a sense of peace.

‘They can go out in the yard today, Magda.’

‘Yes, Sister.’

‘You’re to go with them.’

‘Me, Sister?’ Magda was taken aback. This was new. She was always straight onto cleaning duty.

‘Nine-thirty. Old Mr Gorragher will need wheeling out in his bed. Two others can help, and Mr Cronin can lend a hand from the garden. He will be at the chapel end.’

‘But I’m to clean the sluice this morning.’

‘You get them out. Sit with them. Who’s to go, they’ve done themselves.’

‘They have decided?’

Magda felt uneasy. Too many new things disturbed even the worst lives, as Lucy had ever since disturbed hers. Only this morning she said her prayers, asking Lucy’s forgiveness for failing in the murder of Father Doran. The previous night had brought the clearest recollection, the worst re-enactment, of Lucy’s fall to her death that Magda – meaning Lucy, of course – had ever experienced. She even remembered Lucy talking
about dying and then having tea in a garden in Heaven, with white cups and saucers with grapes drawn round the edge. Magda had woken up weeping worse than almost ever, even when she’d been frightened by that Damien rubbing his old thing round her front bottom and spilling his seed like in the Old Testament and scaring her to death until her month came round.

‘They are allowed, today. Get on, girl.’

‘Yes, Sister. Who will clean the sluice?’

‘You shall do it this afternoon. They will be in by then.’

‘Yes, Sister Francesca.’

Magda went to make her peace with the other cleaners. Magda saw Sister Stephanie put the list of which inmates were to be taken out in the little yard where they could talk and daydream within sight of Mr Cronin’s flowers and them old yawning goldfish. Truth to tell, the blooms weren’t up to much, but he’d worked in a nursery garden in England so knew a thing or two about blossoms. He was always on about vegetables. Hear him talk, they were all mankind should eat.

‘That poor priest,’ Mrs O’Hare was saying when she arrived to put her mops in the queue for the sluice sink.

‘What’s happened?’

‘He was taken bad in that old ambulance on the way to the hospital. Sister Stephanie was phoned as I came.’

‘Is he all right?’

‘Don’t take on so, Magda.’ Mrs O’Hare could be kind sometimes, for all her bad mouthing. ‘He’s in the very best hands.’

‘No use crying over a priest. They’re halfway to Heaven anyway.’

‘Amen.’

The cleaning women chattered, and Magda explained about the oldies being wheeled out early today into the yard. They already knew, and were critical. It would disrupt the whole rota. It was unfair. Magda said she’d been told plain as day what to do, and did what work she could until somebody said it was half-nine.

They put Mr Gorragher out first because he said it was his turn, otherwise that Mrs Borru, who could go today in a wheelchair, would take the corner spot where the sunshine started its climb – like there might actually be some in gloomy old Dublin, Short-Change City. Only one day in the week there hadn’t been rain.

Mrs Borru, of course, created and said she would complain to Sister Stephanie, but Magda was taking no grumbling today. She had suffered the previous night. It was all right for all these old folks, who had nothing to do but sleep all day and all the night too if they’d a mind.

She returned for Ted, who was surprised to be included, or so he told Magda, because he had never been part of the team talkers. And then Mrs Duffanan, who arrived complaining the air in the city was terrible.

‘I’m more used to Temple Lane South,’ she was already whimpering. ‘Down along Wellington Quay was never this cold. We was a better breed of person there. We knew how things should be. Now it’s all these supermarkets.’

‘Daft auld bat,’ Mrs Borru said, comfortably ensconced in her wheelchair with the lock on so she didn’t rock about. ‘You wus nivver down Wellington Quay except for the wrong reasons.’

‘Here we go,’ Mrs Duffanan said, happy now the rows had started as Mr Cronin and Magda positioned her recliner.
‘Jealousy. That’s what’s made us worse than we are.’

‘How d’you reckon that?’ Ted asked.

‘It’s made us worse.’

‘You can’t be worse than you are. Stands to reason.’

‘Jealous of what?’ demanded Mrs Borru, stung.

‘Jealousy’s made Eire a bad lot.’

‘Jealous of what?’

‘Everything else.’

‘How d’you reckon that?’ Ted asked a second time, wondering how women kept things straight in their heads. ‘I knew a sniper once who did everything by order, but they were orders he gave himself, not from officers or sergeants, no. He was the best marksman ever trod land.’

‘Shut up, you and your auld wars,’ Mrs Borru said, truly annoyed now with Mrs Duffanan for starting the old men off. Once they got reminiscing about killing there’d be no stopping them, and it wasn’t yet drinks time. Drinks were ten-to-eleven, and there was still the rest of the day to get through.

‘Jealous,’ Mrs Duffanan said, comfortable the day was decently begun. ‘All Dublin’s jealous of everything everybody else has. That’s why Dublin is hated all over Eire.’

‘Is it?’

Ted felt he was asking for two, because George arrived already dozing. He’d had a bad night, talking from one in the morning. George would have wanted this thing about Dubliners being jealous explained, if he’d been awake. With any luck he’d not rouse until drinks time, and maybe the women’s row would be all over and done by then so it wouldn’t matter. Ted felt he’d get the blame from George if the silly old sod missed a good explanation. Nothing George liked more than some longwinded gripe that meant nothing.

‘Course it is. Hated. Hated from jealousy.’

‘Is it?’

‘I’m telling you. That’s why Mrs Borru here’s got it all wrong.’

‘I’ve not. It’s you that always starts things off by saying something daft.’

‘I got a plate in my head,’ Mr Gorragher said. ‘Did I tell you?’

‘Can I have this wheelchair moved, Magda?’

‘No, Mrs Borru. We’ve to bring one more yet.’

‘There isn’t room here for six!’

‘Sister Stephanie said bring out Mr Liam MacIlwam.’

‘There isn’t room!’

‘There is that.’

‘Bring Sister Stephanie and make her tell us where Mr Liam MacIlwam’s to go, then.’

‘No,’ Magda said reasonably as she could. ‘It’s what Sister Stephanie said.’

‘There’s no room. You’ll see.’

‘Look, Magda,’ Ted said, as usual trying for peace. ‘There’s never been more than five of us here.’

‘Never,’ George said, eyes closed, which astonished Ted who thought he’d been asleep all the time. That’s a comeuppance, he thought, worried how many explanations old George had missed and would now think he was entitled to ask for. ‘Ted’s right.’

‘There wus four once or twice,’ Mrs Borru said.

‘That’s never been the case,’ said Mrs Duffanan. ‘Down the St Simon and Jude’s Care Home at Wellington Quay there’s a rule, you can’t have more than three in one place. But they’re a cut above the rest of Dublin’s old dumps.’

‘Don’t go on about Dublin.’

‘I’m not. I’m just saying.’

‘Here he comes.’

Magda and Mr Cronin wheeled in old Liam MacIlwam, and had difficulty manoeuvring him round to get him between Mrs Borru’s wheelchair and Ted’s spot.

‘There’s hardly room for six,’ Mr Cronin the gardener said.

‘There!’

‘There what?’ the gardener said, surprised.

‘Complain to that Sister Stephanie and tell her straight out.’

‘That’s not my place, missus.’

Mrs Duffanan waited until Mr Cronin was through the gate of the walled yard then yelled, loud as she could, ‘Your chrysanthemums aren’t half as good as them they sell cheap at Barlow’s!’

‘Mrs Duffanan!’ cried Mrs Borru, scandalised. ‘That’s terrible.’

‘It’s true. His don’t last.’

‘They do!’

‘He won a prize at the great flower show once.’

‘Yes,’ cried Mrs Duffanan, adding in a loud yell for Mr Cronin’s benefit, ‘And I’ll bet they wus bought from Jersey.’

‘Stop it,’ Mr Liam MacIlwam said, conversational. ‘You’ll be at each other’s throats.’

‘Aren’t you going?’ Mrs Borru asked Magda.

‘No. I’ve to stay.’

‘Why?’ Two oldies said it together, full of mistrust.

‘Sister Stephanie said so.’

‘What for, though?’ Ted asked quite amiably, smiling. ‘Think we’ll get up to no good?’

‘Stop that, Ted,’ George ordered. ‘It’s him and his wicked ways. He was stationed in France, see?’

‘I knew this woman in France,’ Ted said. ‘She had false hair on her head, great big wig.’

‘Why?’ Mrs Borru asked, interested. ‘Was she bald?’

‘You can go bald from being ill,’ Mrs Duffanan told them all. ‘I had a cousin like that. It only happens to the better class of persons.’

‘Why, Magda?’ Mr Liam MacIlwam asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘We don’t need any extra tablets or medicines, do we?’

‘Not that I’ve been told, no. Anyhow, that’s the nurses say that, not me.’

‘Today isn’t a nurse’s day. It’s tomorrow.’

‘Magda,’ Mr Liam MacIlwam said. ‘Can you see if Sister Stephanie or one of the other nuns is there?’

Magda went to look. ‘What do you want her for, Mr MacIlwam?’

‘Nothing. Just wondering.’

‘No. You want me to give her a message?’

‘No. Just in case.’

Magda did not know what they meant. They went silent, looking at each other.

‘In case of what?’

‘In case she hears something she shouldn’t.’

‘Like what?’

They were worrying Magda. They seemed less sleepy now than before. Old George was definitely awake, and Mr Gorragher’s old tin plate in his head was having no effect at all.

‘Like what we might talk about.’

‘You want me to go?’ Magda asked, in doubt now because Sister Francesca had definitely said she was to stay.

‘Not if you’ll get in trouble.’

‘It’s the tablets, see? We want to know.’

‘Know what?’

‘If anybody has worked out who took the tablets.’

‘Whose tablets?’ Magda said in a shocked whisper. Old Mrs Borru had asked her that once. Then Kev. And here it was again.

‘Well, mine for one.’ Mrs Duffanan said, ‘I laid a trap for whoever it was. I put one tablet near the glass of water on my bedside table, and it went.’

‘You took it yourself,’ Mrs Borru said with disgust. ‘I told you at the time. I said you’d woken up in the night and taken it.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘You must have.’

‘Father Doran was took bad in the ambulance,’ Mr Liam MacIlwam said. ‘That’s the point.’

‘What point?’

Mr MacIlwam looked at Magda and answered, ‘Our question. We wonder if somebody was stealing the tablets for old Mr O’Mucherty.’

‘I did it once, for Mrs O’Dowd.’

‘Shhhh, Mrs Borru. You’re not to talk like that.’

‘Why not? It was a kindness.’

‘It was nothing of the sort. It was a misunderstanding. We decided.’

‘It was.’ Mrs Borru went into a sulk. Magda knew it would be half an hour before she came out of it now. That was her way, stubborn old crow.

‘What did Mrs O’Dowd want them for?’

‘Misunderstanding,’ Mr Liam MacIlwam said sharply, altogether different from the way he normally spoke. It made
Magda feel quite queasy, and she was tired enough without that.

‘It was kind. I did most of it anyway.’

‘Now stop it.’

‘I didn’t start it, Mr MacIlwam. She starts it, every time.’

‘What does Mr O’Mucherty want other people’s tablets for?’ Magda asked.

‘It’s medicine, not tablets.’

‘Tablets,’ Mrs Borru explained, ‘make him gag. He can’t get them down. If he manages to get one swallowed, up it comes after a retching.’

‘We don’t steal tablets or medicines at all,’ Mr Liam MacIlwam said. ‘Nobody does, do they?’

Silence fell at that. Their glances missed Magda out. She began to feel she was somewhere else.

‘Do you know, dear?’ Mrs Borru asked Magda sweetly.

‘Know what?’

‘If anybody mislays any of the medicines, or tablets?’

‘No.’

‘No,’ Mrs Borru was triumphant. ‘See? I told you.’

‘Somebody does.’ Mrs Duffanan looked from one to the other. They were almost in a semicircle, so could see each other. ‘Did I tell you I left one by my glass of water that time?’

‘Yes.’

‘And it was gone when I woke up in the morning?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then that proves it. Somebody is filching.’

‘Magda wouldn’t know what to do with them, would you dear?’

‘No, Mrs Borru.’

‘There! Told you.’

‘People who filch medicines and that don’t always tell up. They say they don’t when they do.’

‘What would anybody take tablets for and give them to Mr O’Mucherty? He’s got his own.’

‘That’s the point,’ George said. ‘In the war we didn’t see a doctor from one campaign to the next.’

‘Unless you got shot or wounded in some way,’ Ted put in comfortably. ‘It depended on how badly you got hurt. If you wus really bad, then you got left behind. There wasn’t much else you could do.’

‘Were you in the Eighth?’ George asked him.

‘We had a bloke called Holer. I ever tellt you about Holer?’

‘You talk about nothing else, you daft auld sod.’

‘Really?’ Ted was astonished. ‘I thought I’d respected his confidence and said nothing. He was my oppo for a time. Taught me to be a marksman. I lay down on my back, the only good way I managed the Lee-Enfield Three-O-Three. Holer, though, he’d stay in one position hour after hour.’

‘Stop it, you two,’ Mrs Duffanan protested. ‘Tell them to shut up, Magda.’

‘If they want to, they can, can’t they?’ Magda felt embarrassed appealing to everybody. They took no notice.

‘That Mr Cronin’s chrysanthemums is rubbish,’ Mrs Duffanan told them. ‘I’ll say it to his face. Says he won a silver cup in some English garden championship, but where is it? Tell me that!’

‘Once I saw Holer – a furlong away he was, in a cess pit. Know what he did? Stays like a statue. Unless you knew he was there to start with, you wouldn’t know there was anybody alive there at all.’