The Convent (35 page)

‘She will.'

‘Maybe.'

Cassie is unlocking the car door now, throwing her bag in. She turns to me seriously. ‘None of you seem to realise how huge these things are. This baby of Det's …'

‘That's why we need you, Cassie,' I say.

And I mean it.

Cecilia

‘And have you seen your daughter?' Breda asked.

‘No one who looks even remotely like they could be her,' Cecilia replied truthfully.

‘It might have been a holiday job,' Breda said thoughtfully. ‘If she's a student she'd be back studying now.'

‘Yes.'

‘But you're still hoping to see her?'

‘Well…' Cecilia didn't know how to explain that there was something else about the convent itself that kept drawing her back. Most days she walked down there and stayed about an hour. Somehow it helped with the feelings of dislocation. The past was beginning to unlock itself.

And then, the day after her conversation with Breda, the girl appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. Cecilia had already placed her coffee order with a young man at the counter when a gorgeous blonde girl with pale skin and bright blue eyes like her own bounced out from the door leading to the kitchen. Some of her curly blonde hair was falling out of the red band she'd tied it up with.

Cecilia knew her straight away because she used to look exactly like that herself.
My daughter.

‘Have you been served?'The girl was smiling straight at her now.

Cecilia had a mad impulse to lean across the glass and place one hand on the girl's soft cheek, to run a thumb softly over her eyelids, just as she'd done when they'd put her tiny daughter, still sticky with blood and muck, into her arms. But instead she merely adjusted her sunglasses.

‘Yes,' she gulped. ‘Thank you.'

There was a momentary flicker of curiosity before the bright eyes moved on to someone else.

The man behind the coffee machine was holding out a paper cup to Cecilia. ‘Long black to take away!' he said, without looking up.

Cecilia took the coffee and headed outside. The jangling feeling inside made her unsteady. She needed to sit down. She found a seat and tried to calm herself. She knew now that somehow or other she would have to speak to the girl. With shaking hands, Cecilia pulled out her book.

When she next looked up, the girl was standing near the cafe door having an animated discussion with a heavy, dark-skinned girl with thick, coal-black hair. Hidden as she was in the busy weekend crowd, Cecilia was able to observe her properly. She held back a smile as she watched both girls' hands flying around in all directions as they talked. How lovely the girl was in her tight jeans, with the black square apron tied to her slim waist, big round silver earrings swinging down to her shoulders.

The two girls stepped away from each other before doubling up with laughter. Then they both held out their arms at exactly the same time, and the sudden fierce hug that followed made Cecilia's throat jam with longing.

My daughter.

Peach

Dearest Perpetua,

I can't tell you the joy your letter brought me. And don't you
go worrying about the photo not being so good. To me it is just
beautiful. You look just like your mother did at your age. It was
just lovely to hear that you're alive, that you're with good people
and that before I die we might meet.

But all those questions! They've caught me on the hop. But
I'll do my best because I can tell you are genuinely interested in an
old woman's struggles.

Yes I do still have my faith but I must be honest, it took a
battering when Dominic died. And it never really recovered.

Not so much that he is dead. Many a poor mother has had to
see her child dead. But that his death was so very unnecessary!
At least that is my opinion. I have never forgiven my husband
for it. And that is where my problems lie, Perpetua. He is long
dead and yet I still just can't forgive him. Our Lord tells us that
we must forgive. Our lives are useless if we can't forgive. And yet
I can't do it.

The boy was one of those difficult, cranky, contrary kids. He
wasn't often able to be cheerful or helpful or even kind, although
he could be all those things when the mood took him. But my
husband thought that the way to deal with a difficult boy was to
beat it out of him. He thought that because the boy liked fashion,
smoked and drank and preferred mucking about with horses to farm
work, that it meant he was hopeless.

I tried to protect the boy as much as I could. But I wasn't always
there and I was so often expecting the next child. Oh, Perpetua,
I should have done more.

Kev was a good man in many ways. A good provider, loyal
and true but his harshness drove that boy to drink and from there,
as we all know, it is a rough slide down.

When he died so did I. And so did your mother. Cecilia never
got over Dominic's death. I believe that is why she left the convent
and I believe it is why she has nothing to do with us. I believe it
is why she thought she couldn't manage a baby. His death took
the stuffing out of every one of us.

That Kev had the gall to cry at his funeral and shake hands
with people solemnly was particularly irksome to me. ‘Tragic,' he
kept saying when people came up to shake his hand. ‘Yes, the
poor boy had a tragic life.'

It was a bleak day in the middle of winter, Perpetua. I stood
watching him accepting condolences from the few brave souls who'd
showed up, and I was overwhelmed with hatred, and vengefulness
and I'm ashamed to say it has never really left me. I could have
shot him that day if I'd had a gun. The way I saw it then was
that he put the bullet through his own son's head.

Because that is the way my Dom died, Perpetua, all alone in
a room. He put the shotgun in his mouth and pressed the trigger
and blew his own head off. How can a mother get over that?

We rang to tell the Mother Superior that her brother was dead
and she told Cecilia before we got there. As soon as I saw your
mother that day I knew the extent of her lonely suffering. She'd
lost weight and her eyes were ringed with tiredness and grief.

She neither kissed us nor let us hug her. All through that twenty-minute
visit after Dominic's death her hands clung to her rosary. We
were strangers to her. Your mother left the convent a couple of years
later and it was like she'd decided she'd had enough of everything.

As to my life, the convent days, Perpetua … I hardly know
where to start.

Living in the girls' hostel in Rathdowne Street and working
in Treasury Place were the happiest years. The country was in
the grip of the Great Depression so we were glad to have jobs to
go to even if we could barely keep ourselves on the money we got.
I'm ashamed to say that having a job didn't mean that I worked
hard. No one got sacked from a government job in those days.
I remember when the supervisor would go out I'd often stop typing
and read my book or do knitting under the desk!

Every morning hail or shine I was at six o'clock Mass at St
George's just up the road. Not just me. Most days there were at
least a dozen girls from St Anne's. The parish priest was a young
fellow named Father O'Rourke and we all loved him. He arranged
the tennis club and came with us often for trips to the country for
picnics.

Every Saturday morning I practised violin in the Parish orchestra.
We were often asked to play evening concerts, weddings and the
like. I was the leading violinist for the two years before I got
married. We all revered the nun who ran the orchestra. When she
saw me showing off my engagement ring to the other members of
the orchestra, she just glowered at me sourly and turned her back.
Oh that hurt! Her refusal to congratulate me had me in tears. But
she lived for the orchestra and I was letting them down by getting
married.

The other thing I lived for was horses. I was a city girl – with
no real home, much less a spare paddock to keep a horse – but
my friend Anne's Uncle Len took a shine to me. When I came
up to stay with them in Marysville he always gave me the same
horse and I thought of her as my own. Pearl. She was a big, dark-grey
mare with one white sock and a lovely splash of white on her
forehead in the exact shape of a drop pearl. While I was working
all week in the tax office at the Treasury buildings up the top of
Melbourne I would be thinking about Pearl and those dirt tracks
around Marysville and Healesville, riding that horse amidst the
tall trees and the smell of eucalyptus.

I am lucky enough to be able to say that I have always had good
food. Sometimes there wasn't much for anything else, but I could
feed my children well and for that a mother must always be grateful.
A word of advice from an old girl, Perpetua, don't ever scrimp on
good food! It's more important than anything. Simple good food.
And some light in your house too. Never rent a house where you
don't get plenty of daylight coming in. The meat doesn't have to
be the best cut and you don't need a lot of vegetables. If you've got
any sort of garden at all then you can grow tomatoes and silverbeet
and, depending on the soil, spuds. For years I had nothing but the
vegetables I grew myself in the backyard, along with the eggs from
the chooks and milk and butter from the cow. I suppose it wasn't
very interesting but the children went to bed with full bellies and
for that I was always grateful.

I never saw a banana when I was a child and oranges were hard
to come by too, but my kids often had them, along with plums and
cherries from our trees in the summers. I have always loved oranges
and so did your mother. Sometimes my friend Evelyn and I would
get a box sent down from Mildura on the train, and we'd share
them out. Cecilia would stand by me while I peeled one for her.

Up until two years ago I went to Mass every morning. I got a
ride with Evelyn, who was also a widow. Every day, rain, hail or
shine, I was on the footpath in front of my house at six-fifteen a.m.
in Bellrose Street waiting for Evelyn. Sundays was our sleep-in.
We would go to the nine o'clock with Father Mannix. (No relation
to the Archbishop!) But old Father Duffy said Mass during the
week and he was just the most wonderful man. Evelyn and I loved
him and I think we were his favourite parishioners. Sometimes in
the winter he'd invite all the early weekday Mass attendees up to
the presbytery for a cuppa before we went home. Sometimes he had
biscuits and once he cooked toast for everyone because he'd had a
win at the races! Oh that was a day. We stayed for over two hours,
laughing and talking over old times. But old Duffy got arthritic a
few years back and had to retire. I don't think he's dead yet.

Up until last year there were usually only a dozen or so at six-thirty
a.m. mass during the week, but I don't know who is left
now because I don't get there anymore. No one to take me! On the
26th Dec the year before last, Evelyn didn't come to pick me up.
(That's right, the day after Christmas!) Oh Lord, the things that
went through my mind that day! Perhaps she'd had an accident or
she was caught out in the highway in her car? I don't know why
I was so surprised to find out that she'd died overnight; she was
actually older than me. But I do miss her dreadfully. She was my
dearest friend for close on sixty years. She grew up in Abbotsford
Convent, too, but we didn't know each other there as girls because
she was in a different section to me. I had my father, you see, who
would come and take me out and pay for the extras that I needed,
but Evelyn had no one at all, so she did it very tough when she
was young. She worked the laundry from the time she was thirteen
up to twenty-six and it was hard work. No pay either, and some
of the nuns were very strict, but Evelyn was never bitter.

Poor Evelyn. Seven kids and thirty-two grandchildren and she
died alone. No priest to give her the last rites and hear her last
confession; no one to hold her hand either. I suppose that is the
way I'll go too. I just wish we could have said goodbye. Anyway,
I still talk to her in my dreams; she's never dead there.

When I first came to this district as a young wife we became
close. Neither of us had families yet, but we knew the same nuns
back at the Abbotsford Convent, so we had a lot to talk about.
There was a nun back at Abbotsford called Mother Peter. Oh she
was a character! Very pretty with a wonderful light laugh and just
the most joyous nature. You wouldn't believe this but if there was
a priest around she'd have perfume on. God knows where she got
it! She was as prissy and vain as a film star!

There was a lot of work running a family in those days. None
of the mod cons like now. Every day that blasted copper had to be
lit and the nappies boiled. It's wash day every day when you've
got a lot of kids. My hands were raw with all that scrubbing! And
the midday meal had to be on the table on the dot of twelve for
Kev and his father.