Scandal in Skibbereen (21 page)

“She’s still alive? Where would I find her?” Althea asked eagerly.

“At the nunnery in Ballybeanrialta.”

“There are still nunneries around?” Maura said, incredulous. “Oh, I’m sorry—was that rude? I just thought nobody did that kind of thing anymore.”

“Fewer and fewer do,” Bridget said sadly. “Many of the ones that hang on do so only because they’re waiting . . .”

Maura mentally filled in the rest: waiting for the remaining aging sisters to die. “Can we visit the sister? I mean, outsiders are allowed in?”

Bridget laughed. “Of course they are—we’re not in the Middle Ages here. In fact, they’d be glad fer the company. They have few visitors these days. I’m sure they’d welcome you.”

Maura refused to look at Althea, who was no doubt itching to leave immediately to go interrogate some elderly nun.

“Do you know,” Gillian said suddenly, “I believe I know the place—I’ve driven by it many a time, without thinking.”

“As do so many these days,” Bridget said. “It’s Sister Benedicta you’ll be wanting to speak with. She may be able to help. More tea?”

Despite the offer, Maura could tell that Bridget was tiring, so it was time to clear out. “Thank you, Bridget, but we should be on our way. It was kind of you to talk to us, and I’m sure Althea is grateful. Aren’t you, Althea?”

“Of course. Thank you, Bridget,” Althea said warmly. “I promise I’ll let you know if I find out anything more. It was lovely to meet you.”

“Good to see you, Bridget,” Gillian echoed. “I’ll give my mother your regards.”

“Don’t get up, Bridget,” Maura said. “I’ll see everyone out. And I’ll stop in tomorrow?”

“God willing, I’ll be here.”

Maura and Gillian cleared up the tea things quickly, while Althea paced. Once outside, they walked quickly back to Maura’s cottage. “I feel like every person I talk to just pawns me off to the next. Where the hell is this nunnery, now?” Althea demanded.

Gillian laughed. “Watch your language, Althea. It’s not far, maybe half an hour. I assume you want to drive straight there?”

“Of course I do! Maybe this sister has the answer or knows something useful. And the way my luck has been running lately, she’ll probably drop dead fifteen minutes before I get there. If you don’t want to go, I’ll go myself. If somebody will tell me where it is.”

Gillian looked at Maura. “I’m willing to take you there, Althea. Maura, do you want to come?”

Maura was torn. She shouldn’t leave Rose alone in the pub, in the unlikely event that a tour bus full of tourists broke down in front of Sullivan’s. But maybe Jimmy could cover for her. She pulled out her cell phone. “Give me a minute.”

Miraculously Jimmy answered and agreed to fill in. Maura promised that she’d be in no later than three. “Okay, I’m in. Let’s go!”

“Right, then, ladies, we’re off to the nunnery,” Gillian said, laughing. “How often do we get to say that in this day and age?”

M
aura was relieved that Gillian was doing the driving, because she still got lost in the lanes, and there were pitifully few road signs to point the way anywhere, if she even recognized the names on them. This way she could enjoy the scenery, something she didn’t have the chance to do when she was driving, since it still took concentration for her to drive on the left, and she was always more worried about running into hedgerows or stone walls or even cattle. They passed through more pretty country: small roads that wandered around, passing the occasional church or even an isolated roadside pub plus a lot of fields. There were patches of vivid yellow gorse, and the hedgerows were high and in full leaf.

Gillian’s estimate proved correct, and they arrived at the nunnery after a half hour’s drive. The nunnery turned out to be a rambling building behind a high wall in a midsized town, although in a part of town that had seen better days—maybe a century earlier. Gillian passed through a gate and pulled up in front of an L-shaped building that looked as though it had been built in the middle of the nineteenth century; there was a more modern school building visible beyond it, down a hill, its windows festooned with crayon drawings. The entrance was in the middle of the left-hand wing, and Gillian parked near it.

“Here we are,” she proclaimed.

“I’ve never been inside a nunnery. Do we just walk in and ask for Sister Benedicta?” Althea said, sounding surprisingly uncertain.

“There must be some sort of reception desk,” Maura guessed, although she knew no more than Althea. “Maybe we should have called ahead. Are the nuns allowed to have telephones?”

Gillian laughed. “Are the two of yeh afraid of some elderly ladies in long dresses?”

“I thought they gave up wearing habits a while ago,” Althea said.

“The younger ones have done, but these here more likely stick to the old ways. They’re the last of their kind. Come on.”

Gillian waited until Althea and Maura had emerged from the car and then led the way into the building. There was in fact a reception desk of sorts, although it was unoccupied. The afternoon sunlight illuminated silent, empty rooms: there was no one in sight, but there was a bell on the desk, and Gillian rang it. After perhaps two minutes, someone finally appeared, moving slowly.

“May I help you?” the elderly nun, prim in her blue habit, inquired gently.

“Yes, I’m looking for a sister here,” Gillian said—and a touch loudly, in case the nun was hard of hearing, Maura guessed. “Her name is Sister Benedicta?”

“Ah, yes, we do have a sister here by that name. And why is it you’re after seeing her?” The nun’s expression was only mildly curious as she eyed the three women in front of her.

“Well, we’ve actually come regarding her sister Jane, who moved to America a long time ago. Bridget Nolan in Knockskagh told us we’d find Sister Benedicta here.”

“Ah, a family matter. I’m sure she’ll be happy to see you. Follow me, if you will.”

They all followed dutifully, and since the nun’s pace was slow, Maura had time to study her surroundings. The building was clearly old, with a corridor along the side they had entered and rooms opening to the other side. The hallway was filled with light from the many large, tall windows. There were short flights of stairs in unexpected places, and it took some time for their elderly escort to negotiate those. And then there were unlikely turns and corners—apparently several buildings had been thrown together at some time long past. It was all quiet and immaculately clean; the patterned linoleum floor and the old oak woodwork gleamed with polish.

Sister Benedicta’s room turned out to be on the next floor up, and its wide window overlooked a small and charming garden. Maura wasn’t sure what she had expected, and she had wondered about the state of the sister’s health, both physical and mental. As the four of them bumbled into the small room, Maura spotted a diminutive figure sitting in a comfortable armchair, a book in her hand. Her face was softly wrinkled, but her blue eyes were clear and observant, in spite of the reading glasses she had removed as they arrived.

The sister who had escorted them said, “Sister, you have visitors. Something about your sister Jane . . .”

Sister Benedicta responded crisply, “Thank you for showing them the way.” It was clearly a dismissal, and the first nun smiled dubiously and all but backed out of the room. Sister Benedicta turned to them and asked, “And you are?”

Nobody seemed sure how to start. Maura wondered briefly if Althea was Catholic and was intimidated by nuns, but she decided to break the ice. “Sister, I’m Maura Donovan, and this is Althea Melville and Gillian Callanan. Althea’s American. Well, so am I. But it was Althea who really wanted to talk to you . . .” She was babbling. Did nuns make her nervous? She’d never even been to a Catholic school, although she’d heard some bad stories about the ones friends had attended.

Sister Benedicta regarded the unlikely trio with something like amusement. “Well, two of you have come quite a way. I’m assuming you didn’t come here just to look at a very old woman in a habit, now, did you?”

“No, but it’s complicated,” Maura said. “If you have the time to hear it.”

Sister Benedicta settled back into her chair and motioned to the others to sit down, which produced some awkward shuffling because there was only one other chair in the room. Finally Althea took the chair, while Gillian and Maura perched on the neatly made single bed. “My dear,” the sister resumed, “these days I welcome any diversion, especially from someone younger than I am. There are few of us left here, we’re all much of an age, and we’ve all heard each other’s stories too many times. So tell me, what brings you here?”

Althea took a deep breath. “First, I don’t know if you’re aware that your sister Jane died last year.”

The nun stared at her, more with curiosity than with sorrow. “Heavenly days, I thought she’d died years ago. I haven’t heard from her for, oh, close to fifty years now. Mary Margaret, my other sister in America, she used to write the odd letter, but I know she’s been gone for quite a while. And she never mentioned anything about Jane, so I assumed they had lost touch. Poor Jane.” She crossed herself and fell silent, reaching back into her memories, and nobody interrupted her.

Then she turned again to Althea. “And how does that bring you here? Certainly not just to tell me about that—you could have written a letter, you know. Don’t tell me she’s left a fortune.”

Althea smiled briefly. “I suppose that may depend on your point of view,” she said and launched into the now-familiar tale about Dorothy Ryan and Jane Deasy’s painting. At the end of the tale Althea said, “I found out that Jane had come from Ireland, so I came over here to do some more research.”

Surprisingly, Sister Benedicta appeared to have kept up with Althea’s rather headlong explanation. “And you found yourself at Mycroft House.”

“Yes,” Althea said, startled. “How did you know?”

“Is Eveline Townsend still alive?” the sister asked, ignoring the question.

Althea glanced briefly at Maura before answering. “Yes, she is.”

“I wondered . . . So, Jane kept the painting.”

Her audience was momentarily stunned into silence. Then Althea managed to say, “You know about the painting?”

“Oh, yes. Jane told me about it. Richard Townsend gave it to her.”

Maura could almost see wheels spinning in Althea’s mind. “Richard Townsend? Who is that? Gillian, do you know?”

Gillian thought for a moment. “I think Richard was one of Harry’s great-uncles, another of Eveline’s brothers. Do I have that right, Sister?”

“You do. Richard died in World War Two, near the end. I don’t know this young Harry, but it’s a family name. Well, if you want the whole story, you’ll have to take tea with me.”

Althea said, “Yes! We’d love to,” before Gillian and Maura could confer.

Sister Benedicta smiled. “How kind of you to humor an old woman. Stay where you are—you needn’t do anything. One of the few pleasures of growing old is that you can ask others to do things for you. One of the young acolytes will bring it, if you’ll be kind enough to pass the telephone to me.”

As the nun requested tea and refreshments on the vintage black phone, Maura sat back on the bed, lost in amazement. Althea must be over the moon: Sister Benedicta had just casually confirmed that Jane Deasy’s painting had come from Mycroft House, which confirmed its link to the large portrait there. And, according to Sister Benedicta, it had been given to her by a member of the Townsend family, although the legal status of that gift might be murky now.

The nun hung up the phone. “There, now. It won’t be but a few minutes. I don’t want to start on the story until I’m sure we won’t be interrupted, so perhaps you can tell me a bit about yourself while we wait. Gillian, I’m guessing you’re a local woman. Who are your people?”

Maura watched Althea swallow her obvious impatience as they passed the time in polite pleasantries until the tea arrived, when a very young novice in a simple habit arrived with a rolling cart arrayed with tea and bread, which she set down on a table under the window. Was the order still managing to recruit young nuns, in this day and age? Maura wondered. Sister Benedicta lifted the full pot carefully with both hands and poured a cup for each of them and one for herself. Then she waited until they had all helped themselves to soda bread and butter and jam, and were settled back in their seats, before she began her story.

“It’s been a good many years since I’ve thought about all of this, you know. It was the 1940s, before I entered the nunnery—a difficult time, for our family, for our country and others. Yet we didn’t complain—we worked hard, and we had each other. Until Mary Margaret left . . . She was the first to go. What do you know about our family, the Deasys?” Sister Benedicta asked.

Maura began, “Althea has worked it out that Mary Margaret went to America first, and that Jane joined her in the 1940s. Is that right?”

The sister nodded. “Well, the story goes back a bit before that. If you know anything about Ireland, especially in the first half of the century—my goodness, I mean the one before this, don’t I?—you’ll know life was hard. Families were large and the land was small—not enough to support everyone. You could get by on a farm if you worked hard and were careful; if you kept a cow for milk and butter; if you had your potato beds; and, if you were lucky, you had a pig. The money came from the sheep and cattle—selling wool, meat, milk. There wasn’t much a girl could do to earn money in those days besides teach school, perhaps, but once she married and the babies started coming, that was the end of that.”

She took a sip of her tea. “There were six of us children, the three girls first—Mary Margaret, Jane, and myself—then the three boys. That made it hard, since we girls weren’t as much use on the farm, and Da had to wait for the boys to grow up. Many people went to America, where there was work, and the girls usually ended up in service in a city there, until they married. The wages were so much better there that they almost always managed to send something home, to help out. And since so many of us went, there were always friends and relatives who could help a young girl find a place, get her started. That’s what Mary Margaret did. She was sixteen, the eldest, and our mother had a cousin in New York City to look out for her, so off she went. It was hard on all of us, seeing her go. She wrote back to us, sometimes, and she always put a little something in the envelope. We so enjoyed reading her letters.”

The old woman paused to work out her dates. “So it must have been about 1937 when she left—before the war—and she worked for a couple of years, and then she married a nice Irish boy, Joseph Ryan, a milkman she met through the back door—from Galway, I think he was, not from Cork. When they married, she stopped working, and their son Joseph was born in 1945. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Would you like some more tea?”

“Let me,” Maura volunteered. Something about time in Ireland—no one ever seemed to rush. It must be driving Althea crazy.

Sister Benedicta resumed her story. “Where was I? Ah, yes. Well, Jane, bless her, was four years younger than Mary Margaret, and when she was sixteen, she went into service as well. Surely you can guess where.”

“Mycroft House,” Althea said.

“Yes,” the sister said. “It was the nearest manor, and she was lucky to get a place. It was nice for us, because it meant that we could see her when she had a free day. Once, when the Townsend family was away, she took some of us littler ones round the house. Oh, it was grand. So big and elegant and full of lovely things. It was all we could talk about for days after. Nearly drove Mam crazy. So . . . Jane was there about two years, working her way up—she was bright and the prettiest of us and a hard worker. I was two years younger than Jane, and I hadn’t joined the sisters yet—that came later. I was thinking about looking for work myself and asked Jane could she get me a place at Mycroft House, but she put me off. I didn’t push at first, but I asked her again and again, and finally she told me she was leaving, going to America, to Mary Margaret. I was that surprised—I hadn’t known she was even in touch with her, and she hadn’t said anything to Mam yet. And it made no sense. She liked the job, she liked the place, and she was making good money, for the time. But she’d changed—she’d always been cheerful, good-natured, but she’d become more quiet. So I asked her why. And Jane fussed and fretted and wouldn’t answer me, but I was a determined girl, and I kept after her. And finally she told me she was going to have a baby.”