The Convent (37 page)

‘So you still working?'

‘No. But I'd love to see your stuff.'

The girl's pale face suddenly tightened into a scowl. ‘Do your own dirty work,' she said sharply.

‘
What?
'

‘Don't think for a minute you can get to her through me. I'm not going to play the go-between.'

Cecilia took a deep breath and tried to stay calm. ‘I'd still like to see your work.'

‘I'm on the second floor of the west wing, room 207.'

‘Right.' Cecilia tried to smile.

‘And let's get something else clear,' the girl continued sourly. ‘As far as I'm concerned, parents who bail out on their kids and then turn up twenty years later have to cop
whatever
happens, okay?'

Cecilia nodded, numb with humiliation. ‘I understand what you're saying,' she managed.

‘Good.' The girl gave her a brusque nod. About to walk off with her bag over her shoulder, she stopped. ‘I'm Det, by the way.'

Cecilia stood up and held out her hand. ‘Cecilia. Pleased to meet you, Det.'

Peach

I forgot to shut the blind properly and a shaft of golden light in my face wakes me early. I push off the bedclothes, get up and walk across the hall to my parents' room. Their neat, empty bed sends a shiver down my spine. Dad rang last night to say that his mother is back in hospital.

I push open the doors onto their little balcony and go out and stand there, breathing in the cool early-morning air. A sharp gust of wind sends a smattering of last night's summer shower from the leaves of the big peppermint gum straight into my face. I look over at the white moon resting in folds of mauve early-morning light above the trees and think of Stella.

She has been at her new school now for a few weeks. She doesn't say a lot about it, but I know I'd be hearing about it if things were really bad.

I look down and catch sight of her in her white nightdress moving about in the garden below, mucking around with the hose. It's six-thirty on Sunday morning. Why the hell would she be up?

I resist the tempatation to spy on her, and call down,‘Hey, Stella?'

‘Wondered when you'd see me,' she yells back. ‘I've been up for ages. Want to go for a ride?'

‘Yep.'

I pull on my jeans and runners and a T-shirt, gladness filling the empty spaces inside me.

We unlock our bikes and pull them out of the shed.

‘So where to?' I ask.

‘You'll see.'

Instead of turning right at Dights Falls we go straight ahead across the bridge and along a dirt path to the vast green expanse of the Yarra Bend golf course. We pass a couple of speed walkers and then another bike rider going really fast, head down and dressed in bright green lycra. After that, apart from a stray white dog, we have the track to ourselves. Stella takes the lead and once we're over a rough patch she picks up speed. I have to pedal hard to keep a few yards behind. Her broad back is encased in a long red shirt, and her black hair blowing out behind her in the wind makes her look like a pirate ship in full sail.

‘Where do witches keep their magic?' she yells back at me.

‘Under their toenails, of course!' I reply without hesitation.

‘Do spiders go to school?'

‘Of course,' I reply. This was a game we used to play when we were younger. She'd come to me with these crazy questions and I'd have to try to answer them.

‘Where?'

But I am drinking in the early sunlight falling on the grass. The way it rolls away over the hills and between the trees like new carpet. I love the sharp breeze in my face. My feet push hard against the pedals and my fingers grip the handlebars tightly.

‘Peach?'

‘Under leaves?' I say hopefully.

‘No!' she yells. ‘How could you have forgotten?'

‘So where?'

‘In little girls' shoes at night!'

‘Oh yeah, of course. How could I have forgotten that?'

She snorts with laughter. ‘And what do kids do
before
they get born?'

‘Play on top of the clouds.'

‘Okay.'

She stops suddenly next to a huge gum, it's branches splayed out against the sky like an arterial roadmap. We drop our bikes, and beckons me over to the river.

‘This is a special place,' she whispers.

She is right. At this time in the morning the high cliff face opposite looks ancient against the sky. Rocks jut out and recede, making a moonscape surface, full of cracks and crevices and smooth patches of oranges and rust red and yellow. At the top a tracery of black trees stand like lonely skeletons waiting for their chance to jump. All of it, the trees, the rocks and crevices, are reflected in the still brown river below.

She crouches down as near as she is able to the river and dips her hand in dreamily.

‘I come here sometimes,' she says as though reading my mind.

‘When I'm at work?'

She nods and my gladness intensifies. We sit together, the morning sun on our backs, and when I catch a whiff of her hair I feel giddy with hope.

‘Cecilia would have seen this.'

‘They weren't allowed out,' I say quickly.

‘By the seventies they were,' she counters. ‘Groups of them sometimes went for walks along the river.'

‘How do you know?'

‘I've been reading about them. I know all kinds of stuff.'

I look at her bent head, and her plump hand drawing in the dirt with a stick, knowing she is dying to tell me more. But I can't bring myself to ask what else she knows. I stand up and throw a stone into the water, trying to imagine a group of nuns walking along the path. The soft plopping sound of the stone is full and final in the silence. Already the cliff face opposite us is changing as the sun rises higher in the sky.

‘Have to get going,' I say. ‘Work.'

We ride back along the beautiful river track. At Hoddle Street we stand together waiting for the lights to change.

‘Do you think that one soul is worth the whole world?' Stella asks seriously.

What a stupid question,
I am about to say.
What does it even mean?
But I close my mouth and search around my brain for the answer I know she wants. ‘Yes,' I manage to say firmly, ‘definitely.'

She turns around and gives me one of her dazzling smiles, making me feel as if I've just passed a very difficult exam.

The lights change and we cross the road together.

Cecilia
1970

‘Sister, may I please be excused?'

Cecilia turned around and sighed. It was Margaret Hurley again, the poor, skinny, snivelling little thing. She'd come to them at fifteen, was twenty-three now and still looked about twelve. She had some kind of trouble with her periods that had her running to the lavatory all day for the best part of two weeks of every month. Only the night before Cecilia had suggested to Mother Bernard that the girl be shifted to the sorting room because she wasn't strong enough for the mangle, and neither of them wanted a replay of the fainting scene of earlier in the year.

But Mother seemed to have forgotten that drama. She told Cecilia firmly that the sorting room was full to bursting and that the girl couldn't be trusted to keep the baskets from the different hotels separate, and that if she really couldn't manage then she could be given a try in the ironing room.

‘Yes, Mother.'

Why Mother Bernard had been put in charge of the laundry was a mystery to everyone. She hadn't the first idea how to deal with troublesome girls.

It was summer, and sometimes the temperature in the ironing room got to forty degrees. Poor little dithering Margaret wouldn't have the concentration to stand at an ironing board for eight hours a day.

‘Are you still taking the iron tablets, Margaret?' Cecilia asked cautiously, knowing that any such question was likely to bring on a barrage of information from the girl about the blood clots that were the size of plums, and cramps that felt like ‘claws in her belly'.

‘Yes, Sister.'

‘And?'

‘Same, Sister,' she said, eyes swivelling this way and that. ‘Got to go now or there will be a … flood.'

Oh, if only you could look whoever you're speaking to in the face, girl!
Your life would become so much easier.
‘Yes, of course, dear. Off you go then.'

The girl reminded Cecilia of a badly treated dog they'd had at home on the farm. Old Gunner would cringe and crawl on his belly as soon as her father came anywhere near. It always upset her to see it, further proof that her father was a bully.

The Angelus bell went for lunch, and the noise of the machines gradually died away as the girls slipped off their aprons and knelt down where they were, in front of the machines. Cecilia sighed her relief as she began the prayer. There would be lunch and an hour-long break from the noise.

There were four big ships in dock, and along with their usual hotels there was a lot of work on. The laundry had been operating since eight-thirty that morning. The girls had been working in the heat for a four-hour stretch with only a fifteen-minute midmorning break. They all looked exhausted, with slumped shoulders and sweat patches under the arms of their dresses.

‘No chatter, please, until you're outside,' Cecilia said sharply.

There was a sudden scream from the back of the room. She craned forward to see what was happening. Josie Dalton, of course, making trouble for someone. Cecilia walked towards the lumpy, tiresome girl, trying to hide her distaste. She had light, pink-rimmed, protruding eyes, a small mean mouth, and her hair hung like damp straw about her face.

‘What is it, dear?'

‘She took my comb, Mother!' Leanne Harris whined, another misfit who always managed to wheedle some sympathy from somewhere.

‘You are not meant to bring combs into the laundry, Leanne.'

‘I know, Sister, but … I forgot.'

‘Please try to act your age!' Cecilia was unable to hide the exasperation in her voice. ‘You are both over sixteen and you behave like primary school girls!'

‘But we get treated like children, Mother,' some cheeky voice muttered behind her. The comment was followed by a ripple of agreement, but Cecilia didn't turn around. It was too hot and she needed to be gone. Anyway, it was the truth. Half of them were over twenty and they had no personal autonomy at all.

‘But I want my comb back!' the girl wailed.

Josie threw the comb hard at the window and then let out a shout of nasty laughter.

A sudden flare of rage suffused Cecilia. She imagined grabbing that great lump of a girl by the back of the neck with both hands and drowning her in the nearby sink of dirty, soapy water.

‘Pick that up, Josie!' she hissed. ‘At once!'

‘But, Mother!' The girl was enjoying herself now. ‘She said I was a
fat bitch
!'

The rest of the room stilled. Swearing in front of a nun was defiance on another level altogether.

‘I will not have that language in here!' Cecilia sounded rattled even to herself and that wouldn't do. Unlike Margaret, Josie was clever in her own sly way, with an unpleasant cruel streak that made her unpopular with just about everyone.

‘Josie,' she lowered her voice to an ominous whisper, ‘do you want to stay in here over lunch?'

Josie smirked. She could tell Cecilia's heart wasn't in the threat. ‘Not really,' the girl shrugged.

‘I beg your pardon!'

‘Not really,
Mother
,' Josie sighed insolently, and began to tap a rhythm with her feet, as though she was bored. There were titters of laughter from the other girls.

‘Not really?' Cecilia repeated warningly.

‘No, Mother.'

‘Then pick up the comb, please, and give it back.'

Josie looked around and saw that all the other girls were tired of her antics. She lumbered over to the window, picked up the comb.

‘Here.' She smirked as she handed it over.

‘Thank you, Josie,' Cecilia said.

‘That's okay, Mother,' the girl replied.

This too is one of God's precious creatures!
Cecilia reminded herself
.
And yet … I loathe her. I loathe her and this terrible laundry and the fact
I have to be here and …

The patches of sweat under the girl's heavy arms had fanned out onto her back and chest and Cecilia's heart softened even as she shuddered in revulsion. ‘Please go and change your dress before lunch, Josie.'

‘Haven't got another one, Mother,' the girl sang as though it was a big joke.

If it had been any other day, Cecilia would have let the others go and tried to talk to her. Her insolence was getting worse. Something must be happening with that wayward father who brought a new woman with him every time he came to visit. But after lunch was the meeting with Mother Mary of the Archangels, and she didn't have time.

‘Then go to Mother Bridget and say I sent you for a clean dress from the spare linen closet.'

‘Nothing there will fit me, Mother!'

‘She'll find you something, Josie.' Cecilia clapped her hands. ‘All right, girls! Is everyone ready?'

‘Yes, Mother,' they all chorused.

Cecilia peered into the centre of the room at two girls who were having a heated discussion under their breaths. Sandra and Janice were a little older than the rest of the group and had to be watched. The small, dark-haired Sandra slipped an envelope into the front pocket of Janice's pinny.

‘When you're ready,' Cecilia said icily.

They both looked up when they realised that everyone was waiting for them. Sandra went red with fright.

‘Sorry, Mother,' they said in unison.

Cecilia made no comment. ‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost …' At the end of the prayer Cecilia told the girls that they could all go except for Sandra and Janice. They came over reluctantly, eyes downcast.