The Convent (44 page)

‘This one is … Dominic?' I point to the eldest boy.

‘Yes,' she says stiffly. She reaches out and takes my hand in her old rough one, and squeezes it and lowers her head and closes her eyes. ‘Your mother loved Dom.'

For a few moments she stays like that, quiet, with her eyes closed, both hands now holding my hand. Disconnected thoughts surge and swell inside my head until my skull feels ready to crack open. The air around us is heavy, holding its breath with all the unspoken things. I have a weird impulse to spread both hands over my head to hold everything in place.
Oh God, why
did I come here?

I look around at Det and Stella for help, but they seem struck with the same dull sense of blank helplessness. None of us knows if we should speak or not.

Det eventually reaches out and touches my other hand. ‘You okay?' she whispers. I nod.

Eventually Ellen seems to pull herself from her slide backwards into the past.

‘Would you like to see a few more of your mother?'

Not really.

‘Okay, thanks, Ellen.' What I'd really like is to get up from this couch, say a few quick goodbyes and go home.

The first one is Cecilia in her postulant's dress, black and simple with a very white collar. She has a small veil on her head, but her neck and ears are visible, and a belt holds in the dress at her slim waist. She is laughing, pretty and young.

‘Her entry into the noviciate,' Ellen says, pointing to the next photo, where her head and face are encased in white. The dress is voluminous with wide sleeves. Her hands are hidden under a long apron-like thing hanging down from the shoulders at the front and back. In spite of having seen her in a similar dress in a photo in the archivist's office, I find it strangely shocking.

‘Is that thing an apron?'

‘No … it was part of the habit. A scapular.'

‘Did they wear all this in the summer?' Det asks.

Ellen nods. ‘So hot and impractical,' she mutters and hands me another photo. It's of Cecilia sitting next to a couple of women in ordinary dress, looking down at something. This time her veil is black and she has a ring of flowers on her head.

‘She made her final vows that day,' Ellen says. ‘The ring of flowers was put on their heads during the ceremony. Of course it all changed not long after this …'

‘When did it change?'

She frowns and gives a deep sigh. ‘I'm not much good with dates, love, but it wasn't long after she made her final vows that they changed the habit.' She hands me another photo. There is Ellen alongside her daughter the nun. Both of them looking cheerful.

‘She's lovely, isn't she?' Ellen says, looking at me shyly.

‘She looks happy,' I say.

‘She was happy.'

‘So what happened?'

But Ellen just smiles and hands over a picture of a closed door set into a black granite wall.

‘See this gate? It was the only way into the convent. Cecilia asked me to take that picture when she'd been a novice for a couple of years. See, here is the grille. You had to ring the bell and someone would open this and talk to you.'

‘Checking you out?'

‘Yes.'

‘Like a jail?'

Ellen smiles again.

‘She asked you to take a picture of
the gate
?' Det asks. ‘Why?'

‘Because for three years she never went outside the walls of the convent,' Ellen laughs.‘She said she'd forgotten what it looked like!'

Oh God.
There is a pause. I think they're all waiting for me to say something, but I can't. It's too weird. I'm thinking about this young girl, younger than me,
willingly
putting all this stuff on. Willingly shutting herself off from the world, behind a big thick wall. There are so many questions that I want to ask. So much I want to know. Det and Stella are hunched over the photos, smiling and intrigued. All very well for them, but this girl was …
my mother
.

‘Have you heard from your mother, Perpetua?'

The question jolts me into the present. I look at this old woman and know that of course she is talking about her own daughter, not the mother that I spoke to on the phone last night. ‘No, I haven't,' I say.

‘So you have no idea if she is in the country?'

‘No.'

And that is when Det makes her move. ‘Stella and I are going to go now. We'll find Fluke,' she says firmly, ‘and give you and Ellen some time.'

Det is digging Stella in the ribs, making her get off the couch. I can see Stella is reluctant to leave me, and I love her for it.

They turn in the doorway. ‘Thanks for the delicious tea, Ellen. See you later.'

Ellen closes the door behind them and we are left looking at each other. It is only politeness that stops me from running out after them.

‘You can help me clear up the cups,' she says.

The kitchen is a small yellow room at the back of the house, freshly painted, bright and cheerful, full of things like the other room, but much nicer. I go to the window and stare out onto the small back garden. There is a lemon tree in the middle and a plum in the corner. Two rows of tomatoes line the fence.

‘You said in your letter that you never knew your own mother, Ellen?' I say, putting the cups in the sink and turning the water tap. Washing up will give me something to do. ‘Why was that?'

‘I was put in the convent by my father.'

‘Why?'

‘We didn't ask questions in those days,' she says.

‘And you never saw your mother again?'

Ellen sits down at the little table. ‘Only the once,' she whispers. ‘My memory is very faint, but they told me what happened.'

‘Who told you?'

‘One of the nuns who was there that day told me years later, and I've felt guilty ever since.'

Guilty?

‘Silly, isn't it? I was only four years old.'

An eighty-eight-year-old woman feels
guilty
about something she did when she was four? I sit down on the opposite side of the table and take her hand.

‘Tell me what happened,' I say.

Sadie
1916

All the way home Sadie thought about how much easier it was working with men. They might pinch you and touch you and put their dirty hands where they shouldn't, but most of them knew how to have a laugh, which was more than you could say for the sniping old bats she was working for now. Men didn't trick you with smiles that meant the exact opposite of what was coming out their mouths. Bar work was better pay too. Give out a bit and you got it back in tips. Simple.

But Sadie had good reason not to go back to any of that. She was making hats now and proving not too bad at it. She was determined to stick it out for as long as she could.

Today, old Dolly Simpson had kept her back out of spite. Sadie had had to go to the dental hospital and have a tooth pulled. It was Friday and she wanted to go home early to deal with her aching face, but when she got back to work her boss hadn't even looked up from her machine when Sadie asked if she could make up the hours the next week.

‘You'll stay back tonight or your wages will be docked,' the old biddy had snapped, as if she was pleased to have a chance to say it. ‘There is a war on, in case you haven't noticed.'

Sadie had gone back to her table and picked up the red felt that she'd been working on for two days. It didn't have to be done until the next week.
The war!
Couldn't they talk about anything else? People made it an excuse for everything. But those lists of the dead every Monday morning were enough to sicken a saint.

Anyway, she was home now. Bone tired and alone, her eyes sore from a day of close needlework, one side of her face swollen and throbbing where the rotten tooth had been. She flipped open the letterbox and fumbled for her key at the same time, expecting nothing. But there was a slim envelope with her name in extravagantly beautiful letters on the front. She pulled it out and stood still a moment, trying to guess who might have written. She pushed open the door and hurried down the hallway.

There was only one thing on her mind these days. One thing. If it meant working hard for terrible money and putting up with sour old biddies who used any power they had to make life hell for her, then so be it. There would be no more pub work. No more booze and no more men either until …

Stan had given her the idea. Stanley Kindred, a forest cutter from Gippsland down for a few days in the big smoke. She'd met him at a dance in the Collingwood town hall and they'd got on well. Poor eyesight had saved Stan from the war. He told Sadie it was the best bit of luck he'd had in his life. All these bloody warmongers needed their heads read. There was no reason to fight. None at all. He had nice hands and a gentle way with him, too, and so she'd ended up telling him about the way her little girl had been taken from her.

For the first few weeks she hadn't been able to stay away. She'd walked to the convent every day and simply stood there on the street next to the high walls, for hours, in the hope that some kind of miracle might be granted to her, that if she longed hard enough the child would materialise out of thin air.

If she heard children's voices she'd press herself up against the bricks and close her eyes and pray that her child was on the other side, pressing her little plump body up against those same thick walls.
Ellen
, she whispered,
my little one.

Most days she heard nothing except her own ragged breathing, but just occasionally she thought she heard the child whispering back.

Mumma. Come and get me. I'm waiting for you to take me home.

Those were the good days.

The bad days were when she heard only her own dull heartbeat. At such times she searched the walls for small cracks in the cement to peer through. She half knew she was going crazy when she found herself imagining getting hold of some kind of small shovel or knife and scraping the cement away, making it wide enough for her to slip her hand through at first and then one by one pulling the bricks out. Not too many, but enough for her to be able to edge her body through. She'd wait until dark and then crawl inside and find where her daughter was sleeping. She'd pull her from her bed and wrap her in a nice cosy rug and sneak away with her without anyone seeing. They'd get on a train. Head off somewhere and never be found. Oh, if only, even for a little while. Just to have her on her knee, wrapped in a towel after her bath, to hold her there and smell her neck and hair. Kiss the rosy cheeks, the fat knees and dark curls.

Ellen had been gone fifteen months now, and it still wasn't real.

Once, a junior nun came out and told her to go away. That if she didn't stop loitering outside the premises the police would be called and she'd be locked up. Fearful and ashamed, Sadie had gone away and she'd stayed away until …

She began to turn up again, after work and between shifts, usually with a few drinks inside her. She would stand banging her head softly against that convent door, crying.
Give me back my
child. I want my little girl.

Once there'd been movement on the other side and a small square panel had slid across, creating a tiny window in the door. Sadie stopped crying. Eyes were staring out at her.

‘What do you want?' a disembodied voice asked.

‘My child,' Sadie gasped, ‘I want my baby.'

The door creaked open and she was brought inside

Within a few moments she was being ushered into a huge room with very high ceilings. The young nun, who couldn't have been more than seventeen, left her there to stew as she hurried off to get the one in charge. Afraid, Sadie began to shake as she looked around at all the polished wood, the tables and chairs and windows, the sombre religious paintings.

As soon as the old nun swept in, done up in all her white starch and fancy long robes, Sadie's heart fell.

‘What did you want, dear?' The nun didn't bother to soften her voice.

‘My child,' Sadie said, too desperately.

‘Name of child?'

‘Ellen Reynolds,' Sadie whispered.

‘And you are …?'

‘Mrs Sadie Reynolds. Her mother, Sister.'

‘Please rest assured, Mrs Reynolds, the little girl is perfectly well.'

‘I'm her mother,' Sadie began to sob.

‘I am well aware of that.'The iciness in the woman's voice made Sadie stop crying. ‘But you have no claim to her.'

‘I'm her mother,' Sadie said again hopelessly.

‘Mrs Reynolds.'The Sister took Sadie's elbow and sat her down in one of the straight-backed chairs and then sat down herself in a similar one a couple of feet away. ‘It usually takes mothers some time to adjust, and that is why we've shown you leniency up to now. But this loitering outside our gate has got to stop. If it happens again, the police will be called.' Her eyes bored into Sadie's, not letting up for even an instant. ‘Do I make myself clear?'

Sadie nodded. Such was the older woman's power that within a few minutes Sadie was allowing herself to be led to the door, her elbow held in a vice-like grip.

She nodded meekly when the nun said that she should be grateful that her child was well and happy, and no, she would not make a nuisance of herself again. But at the doorway she suddenly realised that she was being dismissed, got rid of, thrown aside like a piece of rubbish, and that made her forget about the formality of the situation. The high ceilings, the paintings, the polished wood and the formidable woman herself ceased to exist.

‘Give me back my baby!' she yelled. ‘Give her back, you heartless
bitch
! You have no right!'

It ended badly, of course. She was dragged kicking and screaming onto the street and the police were called and she was locked up for two hours until she calmed down.

But then here was Stan telling her that he knew of a woman who had got her kid back from the babies' home in Broadmeadows, and Sadie was all ears. It was a matter of ‘cleaning up her act', he told her. She needed to put a bit of gloss on things. First off, she'd better give up the pub work and take on something more respectable. Chuck away the make-up and wear dowdy clothes and make damn sure no male ever darkened the door of her house because they'd have the spies out. Then she should write to the kid's father. Tell him that she'd turned a new leaf, beg him to meet with her so he could see for himself. Then she should write to those nuns, whoever they were, apologise for all the trouble, tell them she'd seen the light and changed her ways. If Sadie couldn't write the letter then he had a sister who'd help.