The Ballymara Road (21 page)

They had needed no convincing that redemption from sin was to be achieved via hard work. There was even talk that they would send them more girls, because they felt the Abbey could easily handle an increase in numbers.

More girls meant more money.

‘That high and mighty, overeducated Rosie O’Grady will not be happy if she discovers that her interfering has brought us more penitents,’ Sister Assumpta had grumbled. ‘I wonder if she knows her complaining has made things better for us. I have no notion what it is that woman was trying to achieve by reporting us to the authorities, as she has half a dozen times. Will she not stop?’

As she prayed, Sister Assumpta gave thanks that the councillors hadn’t asked to look at her paperwork, nor enquired what happened to the girls or the babies who died. There were no death certificates to show them, only plots of earth in the garden. Underneath the weeping willows.

Disgraced girls who had arrived at the convent from the country were not even given the grace of a requiem mass, nor a name – their own name – to mark their graves. Only the penitents who came directly from the industrial schools run by the brothers or other convents were issued with a death certificate, but, even then, not always. Money came into the Abbey for living penitents, not dead ones. On occasion, Sister Assumpta would delay as long as a year before informing the authorities that a girl had died.

The dead babies and children were laid together, deep in the earth. She had lost count of how many there were or even what their names had been. There must have been hundreds by now. The nuns had begun digging the plot over fifty years ago at the turn of the century. The previous Reverend Mother had kept a ledger in which she entered in ink the name of each child and the date they were buried. Sister Assumpta had thought for a long time now that the ledger needed to be destroyed.

Babies were lost in childbirth. For those who survived, many fell victim to disease and infection.

Their pitiful bodies had been preserved in the gently receiving, peat-rich earth, condemned to purgatory for eternity.

When mass was over, Sister Celia took the Reverend Mother her lunch on a tray: boiled beef left over from the previous evening’s supper, with salad leaves that the nuns grew in their own garden, and an apple pie, made by Sister Celia from the apples stored in the straw-layered wicker baskets, down in the dark cellar.

‘Put the tray by the fireplace,’ said Sister Assumpta as Sister Celia wobbled precariously through the door, ‘and stay for your own. I’d like you to join me as I don’t feel like eating alone today.’

Sister Celia flushed with pride. She was the only nun the Reverend Mother ever invited to eat with her.

‘I’ll be right back then,’ she gabbled and rushed from the room with the empty tray.

Sister Assumpta took over to the fire the few letters she hadn’t yet tackled and, after pouring the tea, she picked up the last remaining airmail letter.

She noticed it was from America, but this was not unusual by any means. Sister Assumpta received such letters every day. Sometimes they were from priests, writing on behalf of families in need of a baby or a child to adopt easily and quickly. Sometimes the families wrote themselves.

Some might be letters containing begging pleas and offers of money from barren parents willing to pay any price to adopt a child of their own.

Shovelling into her mouth a huge bite of salted beef and lettuce, sandwiched between freshly buttered white bread, the Reverend Mother leant back in the chair, flicked open the letter with the ornate silver-and-bone-handled knife and began to read.

‘I’m back,’ Sister Celia trilled as she waddled through the office door, laden with an ample lunch for her own consumption.

Reverend Mother didn’t answer.

‘What is wrong?’ Sister Cecilia enquired. ‘You look a little pale. Is it the beef? Is it all right now? We saved the best cut for you, Reverend Mother.’ Sister Assumpta still did not reply.

She turned the letter over in her hand and looked at the sender’s address on the back of the envelope. And then she turned it round and read it again.

‘It concerns the child who was adopted by the Moynihans in Chicago, the builders who paid us three thousand dollars for the baby if they could take it quickly. The baby is sick and they need to know who the mother is. They are on their way here on an aeroplane to talk to us. As if we need more visitors. We may as well open as an hotel and start charging an entry fee.’

‘Ye can’t tell them that anyway.’ Sister Celia looked shocked. ‘It is against the rules, and the authorities wouldn’t allow it. Besides, who is the mother? Is she a penitent?’

‘No, it was the girl Rosie O’Grady sent and delivered.’

‘Oh, Heavenly Father, no.’

The flush faded from Sister Celia’s own cheeks. Rosie O’Grady was trouble. Nothing had been the same since the day she had taken that girl. They had even had a reporter knocking at the door last week because Rosie O’Grady had written a letter to the newspaper, calling for an explanation of the role of the laundries and the mother and baby homes.

‘What will ye tell them?’ Sister Celia asked.

‘I will tell them the truth, which is all I do know: that the girl’s name was Cissy, and that she came from Liverpool. She kept her own name because of that Rosie O’Grady’s involvement. I shall send them straight on to see Mrs O’Grady in Dublin. Let her deal with it. We upheld our part of the bargain; the girl has nothing to do with us. She was neither a penitent in the laundry nor a country girl from the mother and baby home. She was a favour we did for the matron. I hope they aren’t after getting their money back just because the child is sick.’

Sister Assumpta gazed into the fire deep in contemplation while Sister Celia ate. The airmail letter hung loosely in her hand and rested on her knee.

She startled Sister Celia when without warning she said, ‘There is no moon tonight, Sister Celia. I want all the ledgers from the locked cupboard to be carried out to the midden. Everything, all the papers dating right back from when the first girl arrived here sixty years ago, except for the contracts each girl signed, agreeing to surrender her baby. Set the lot on fire. We can’t be blamed for what can’t be proven.’

‘Sure, well, we will do that, Reverend Mother. I’ve plenty of girls to get that done, but then what?’

‘No, don’t use the girls. Don’t even use the novices. Let this be done by the nuns. I don’t want the girls’ prying eyes seeing this, not that any of them can read. We will burn the lot and, tomorrow, we will pay a visit to the sisters up the road at St Vincent’s and suggest they do the same. They have been here only a few years but, sure, they will be keeping good records, I have no doubt.

‘That Sister Theresa was always a stickler. I don’t want people assuming that what they practise there, we follow suit here. More secrecy is what is needed and, if I know Sister Theresa, that won’t even have crossed her mind. Oh, yes, come along in now, she would say to anyone who asked. She always was a foolish woman who could never see what was right under her very nose. They would have her tied up in knots. We will drive over first thing in the morning.’

‘
SHALL I WAIT
, nurse? Will he be long or would you rather I came back in half an hour?’

Stanley was instructed to wait. It was a Monday morning in the X-ray department of the children’s hospital. The nurse was obviously keen to finish and empty the department so that she could rush to the canteen and meet the other nurses for their post-weekend, lunchtime gossip.

Stanley sat on one of the hard wooden benches as he waited for the young boy he had brought in a wheelchair to be pushed back out to him. In the meantime, he took the opportunity to roll up two cigarettes for both himself and Austin, then carefully laid them on a bed of tobacco in his tin, which he slipped back into the large pocket of his brown overall.

Stanley always experienced the same frisson of excitement when he took a call at the porter’s lodge to collect a little lad from the children’s ward. This one had been a disappointment. He was far too young.

Stanley had standards. He regarded himself as above the others in the ring, especially Austin.

Just at that moment, Austin breezed into the X-ray department in his long brown porter’s coat and sat next to Stanley, having himself wheeled into the department another child from the same ward.

Austin seemed agitated.

‘She’s back,’ he whispered to Stanley.

‘Who’s back?’ Stanley asked. A puzzled frown sat on his face.

‘The housekeeper, Daisy, she escaped and she’s back.’

‘Jesus, are you fucking joking?’

‘Do I look like I’m fucking joking?’

Indeed, Austin was as white as a sheet.

‘How? How did that fucking happen? I thought the bishop had sorted it and that she was put away?’

‘He did and she was, but she is back and she has fingered the policeman, Simon, the one who took her to the home. I knew it was fucking crazy, sending someone she could finger if she was asked.’

‘Jesus, let’s hope she doesn’t remember you, Austin. She was one of your favourites. You and the bishop had more than your fair share there when she was a kid. Anyway, she’s simple, isn’t she? No one will believe anything she says. She’s mental, isn’t she? That’s what you always said.’

‘You cheeky bastard,’ said Austin, ‘don’t blame any of this on me.’

‘I’m not blaming you, but what do we do now?’

‘We do nothing, Stanley. We aren’t the main players in this, for fuck’s sake. Why do you think everyone’s identity is kept secret? You and I only know each other because I took you. We only know Arthur because he took me. The only other people we know are the bishop and that policeman, but I know this, Stanley: there are people way, way more important than you or me in that ring. Jesus, who do you think I sell all my photos to?’

‘I don’t fucking care,’ said Stanley, his voice rising.

Austin lightly placed his hand on his sleeve.

Stanley dropped his voice and continued, ‘Who is that Daisy going to finger next if she’s named the policeman? This is a disaster, Austin. She knew all about what went on at the Priory, for fuck’s sake. She even opened the door and let some of the kids in. The priest was so up his own arse he thought he was too important to do it himself.’

‘It isn’t people like me and you at the bottom of the pile that they will be looking for. It’s the posh nobs, the politician from London with the chauffeur-driven car, the ones who speak like they’ve got a finger stuck up their arse – those are the ones they will be after. And anyway, like you say, she was fucking simple. She won’t even remember our names. It’s much easier for her to say, the policeman, the bishop or the politician. That’s why the policeman has been fingered. She said a policeman and then probably identified him. She didn’t know where we work or what we do for a job. Relax, mate, haven’t I always been right, eh? Eh? Haven’t I? Every time you’ve had a wobbly, didn’t I always know what was what and that it would all be all right?’

Stanley nodded. It was true, Stanley was always the nervous one and Austin had always been right.

‘It’s all right for you, Austin, you live alone. I have me mam to worry about. I can’t even think how it would affect her, if she ever knew what I did.’

‘Relax, mate,’ said Austin. ‘There’s nothing to worry about with your mam, it will all be good.’

Austin’s words weren’t having their usual calming effect as, Stanley had noticed, his voice shook slightly.

The nurse called out for Austin as she wheeled her child out of X-ray.

‘Let’s meet up for a fag in ten in the lodge when you are done here,’ he whispered to Stanley as he rose from the bench.

It was Austin who had kept Stanley on the straight and narrow when he had the collywobbles, on the days when he was tormented by guilt, fear and worry about his being caught and his mam being disappointed in him. It was Austin who pulled him up sharp and made him see right again.

Not today, though. Never before had Austin failed to reassure Stanley. His guts had turned to water.

Since he and Austin had become involved in the group to which Arthur had introduced them, they often talked about the legalizing of their own inclination. Stanley had even gone by coach with Austin and Arthur to a meeting in London about that very thing. Times were changing. Arthur never stopped saying, ‘Homos will be legal soon, we will be next.’

Soon, paedophiles like themselves would be protected by the law just as homosexuals would soon be. This, they firmly believed.

Stanley knew that someone in the ring was involved in all of this progress. He just didn’t know who it was, which was how it would always remain. They were each protected by their own anonymity.

Stanley could tell Austin was spooked. The cool, untouchable swagger was gone, replaced by rounded, almost slumped shoulders.

The pretty little girl in the wheelchair was about six years old, Austin’s favourite age, but even this hadn’t put the usual grin on his face. He carried his Kodak Brownie in his big overall pocket everywhere he went. In normal circumstances, in the lift, he would have slid the little girl’s blanket and nightdress up over her knee and photographed her, before she was returned to the ward, laughing and joking as he did so.

It was so easy. The poorer and more impoverished the children were, the more they loved the attention of the camera. Not today, though.

Stanley stood and, through the circular porthole windows, high in the wooden doors leading to the X-ray department, he followed Austin’s retreating back. Agitated at the news that Daisy was in Liverpool once more, he then sat down and turned to look through the large window to the courtyard. He could watch Austin cross, wheeling the chair to the ward doors on the opposite side.

It took a few moments for Stanley to register what was happening as, with an action as slick as an uncoiling snake, a policeman stepped out through the ward doors and snapped a pair of handcuffs onto Austin’s wrists.

Stanley immediately knew what he had to do. They had been through the drill so many times at their monthly meetings. Slowly, he rose from the bench and, so as not to draw attention to himself, he walked calmly out of the back door.