The Whipping Club (14 page)

             
Rosemary’s beauty and the weatherman held Adrian’s attention.

             
“Wind gusts from the south-southwest with low visibility in the north around Mizenhead…severe convective storm on its way…”

             
“Now, are you all right, then?”

             
He stared up at Rosemary, prettier than any rose, with her black curly hair and large brown eyes. What he’d told Peter was wrong;

she was even cuter than Betty Boop.

             
She hung his wash bag from the end of his iron bed.

             
“I’m sorry, Rosemary. Please forgive me.”

             
“Ah, go on. I’m here for you, you know that,” she said quietly. “You’re grand. Peter’s ma rang up, Adrian. She’s unable to make it today, so you’ll have to be content with the likes of me,” she said

smiling, her two front teeth slightly curled. “I’ll keep you company, young man,” she added as a comfort.

             
“Have you a fellow, Rosemary?” She giggled and blushed, and

he knew, of course. She must.

             
“Thank you, God, for your mercy,” he whispered, his hands clasped together.

             
“Are you praying to God for me?” she asked him.

             
“Yeah.”

             
Her pretty face lit up, her dimples laughed out at the world.

             
“You’ll be all right, then.”

             
She leaned down and kissed him on the forehead and left.

Marian and Ben secured Mr. Greene, a solicitor from Parks, Greene and Sons, Limited. To no avail, Marian spoke with Judge Moran at the Four Courts to gain custody of Adrian. In 1960, Sister Agnes, Headmistress of Silverbridge, had become Adrian’s legal guardian,

Mr. Green reminded them, as if they didn’t know. Institutionalized, marginalized, Marian thought with bitterness. Although it was not easy to face, Marian knew they would have to come to grips with the fact that Sister Agnes would determine Adrian’s future. Still, Marian could not understand how a wanted child, their biological son, could be forced to remain someplace cold and unwelcoming, when their own warm home beckoned. No matter how loudly and often Mr. Greene spoke in her ear, Marian did not hear, cou
ld not be convinced of
his drivel.

             
Mr. Greene advised them that Ben was throwing away his money trying to get custody of Adrian. Marian implored Mr. Greene to talk with Judge Moran, that Adrian’s case is unique and should not require the input of the Silverbridge Orphanage Headmistress.

             
“You know the adoption laws, we’ve gone over it,” he said.

             
“Any overruling by a judge is a pie in the sky dream,” said Marian.

             
“I’m afraid it would be impossible. The final consent order is

irrevocable.” He waffled on and on about it.

             
“What about bringing this to the High Court?” Marian asked. She looked to Ben who did not return the look. He seemed only to hear Mr. Greene.

             
“I’ve rethought it, and the passage of time, I’m sorry, would

defeat us. Your child has, according to law, assimilated into a new environment, and would not be awarded a subsequent adoption order.”

             
“How can you be so sure? We’re his parents. We want to adopt him.” She spoke slowly in low tones. “He’s in an orphanage, Mr. Greene, for God’s sake. He has not assimilated; no doubt he would like nothing more than to be with his proper family. He’s suffering in there. The law should not apply to children who have not been properly adopted, certainly.”

             
“We’d have to employ a barrister for any court hearings, but I wouldn’t recommend going that course.”

             
“Why not?”

             
“Let’s listen, Marian,” Ben admonished her. Marian felt a tidal wave of anger.

             
“In the end, the process would be long and fruitless,” Mr. Greene advised. “You would be wiser to convince Sister Agnes to relinquish her rights to your son; that would be the better way.”

             
“Laws can be changed,” Marian said.

             
“To change the law for minors, particularly orphans, will not–”

             
“Our son is not an
orphan
. Neither are half the kids in there. The Irish Constitution is all for preserving the family, first and foremost.”

             
“Yes, but according to law, you abandoned your child. He was left in the care of the Sisters of Benevolence. There is no law stating that you automatically get him back on your slightest whim just because you have since married and had another child.”

             
“My slightest whim?” 

             
“It’ll all be for the good, Marian,” Ben said, placing a hand on her arm. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Greene?”

             
“’Tis.”

             
“I’ve had a meeting with Sister Agnes on your behalf,” Mr. Greene continued. “The whole family needs adjusting, that’s all.”

             
“Johanna’s to be considered as well,” Ben agreed.

             
Marian flashed Ben another look. His mild contempt of the system was diametrically opposed to her rage. He was letting her down, again.

             
“I didn’t relinquish my rights to him. I don’t even remember signing that supposed legal paper.”

             
“You did. That’s your signature and there was a public notary that signed as well.”

             
Marian studied the papers. Memory vague, but still, there were two documents: one admitting her into Castleboro Mother Baby Home, the other, the release papers, placing Adrian in the care of the Sisters of Benevolence. She studied the signatures.

             
“Wait,” she said. “These are not the same signatures. Look at this, Ben,” she said. “This is mine, but this, I never signed this!” She passed the papers to Mr. Greene, Ben standing and leaning over the table.

             
“I don’t know. That would be hard to prove.”

             
“They look nothing alike,” she said.

             
“We can raise the issue, but there will be claims that your signature differed because you were not yourself
after the birth: tired, upset,
et cetera. There’s really no way of proving whose signatures these are.”

             
Marian hadn’t been able to recall signing release papers before Adrian was taken away in a black car. She couldn’t remember walking past the guards and out those iron gates. She had a hazy remembrance of meandering down O’Connell Street some time that week. She’d bought Ma a scarf at Marks & Spencer, from England, supposedly, and herself a simple blue suit, leaving the maternity green tweed outfit Nurse had folded into her suitcase when she first arrived, in the fitting room.

             
“I’ve something else,” Marian said now. “I thought I’d wait and show it to Mr. Greene as well, Ben” she said, pulling the tattered letter Nurse had left for her, the identical letter both she and Adrian had received at the orphanage. “‘Dear Adrian,’ it reads, ‘I gave you to the nuns as I couldn’t raise you. Be good for the nuns now. Pray for them every day, Ma.’” Marian searched their faces. Ben read the letter, looked at the solicitor for an explanation.

             
“That’s a form letter, probably given to all the kids, as a comfort.”

             
“A comfort?” Marian said.

             
“I don’t know. Perhaps it’s better than what they might imagine in their little heads,” Mr. Greene said.

             
“Most of the children, I would imagine, would be too ashamed to show anyone such a letter, and might go into adulthood believing something appalling like this,” she countered, feeling herself losing her temper. “This is an outrage. I never gave him up!” She stood up. “He was ripped from my arms. I was told nothing. Nothing!
Dress him in this. He’s leaving in the morning.
Just like that!” she said, and snapped her fingers. “They took him from me. I wanted him.” She was now crying.

             
“We should leave,” said Ben, rising from his chair.

             
“It’s best to cry,” she shouted at him. “Something has to be done.”

             
Ben’s arm went around her as she fell back into her seat.

             
“Where in these documents is Adrian’s birth certificate,

Mr. Greene?”

             
“I don’t know that they would have formally produced such a

document.”

             
“You mean no title, no record of his birth, not even a baptismal

certificate?” Marian asked.

             
“The baptismal certificate. I believe that’s usually left to the adopting parents in a Catholic church of their choice before obtaining a passport and leaving the country.”

             
She recalled an American couple, in her childhood parish, Father Riordan baptizing their child, handing them their baptismal document to sign, the couple beam
ing over their three-month-old
little girl as if over a miraculous gift. Mary Elizabeth Cooper was to be her name; the couple couldn’t thank the Irish enough for their generosity. “So the child is born untitled according to this policy,” she said. “The original name changed. If ever the child should want to search, there would be scant records, tampered records, or no record.”

             
“Look, I’ll ring up Mr. Toole, a barrister, for his opinion, see if he can get a court date, but I’m advising now. I wouldn’t do anything you might think would annoy Sister Agnes, because the truth is, I’m afraid, it’s going to be all up to her. I can guarantee you Judge Moran will side with her, and you should know that.”

             
“Perhaps you’re right, I’m sure you’
re right,” she said in a daze,
and apologized for the outburst. They’d work with Sister Agnes before they took legal action against anyone or any institution, she said, feeling frustrated that she had to genuflect to lawyers and clergy to get her own son back, yet grateful for the unique circumstances which had led to her reuniting with Adrian—grateful in the oddest way to Nurse.

             
Father Brennan,
she thought, revving her heart like a Ford engine. He had surprised her recently when he told her he was trying to see the world more openly. Recently he’d borrowed Ben’s copy of
The Screwtape Letters
by C.S. Lewis, and they had in-depth discussions about personal faith. Rather than a solicitor, Father Brennan might convince Sister Agnes to let Adrian come home. Mr. Greene’s advice had been spot on. She would forget her uncle’s part in the past. She would make an effort to befriend Father Brennan.

“I will get the job of Reverend Mother,” Sister Paulinas professed in the privacy of her office, just before twilight hour, a time she reserved for personal dreams. “I am the Reverend Mother.” And then she bowed her head, peeked into a dainty mirror, and practiced her serene smile. Hidden beneath an array of prayer books was
Psycho-Cybernetics
, by Maxwell Maltz, a book she found unattended on a train seat eight weeks ago and confiscated, a book she found fascinating and shameful. In the twenty-six years since she’d been received by ballot into the order of the Sisters of Benevolence, the vow of obedience struck her as the most challenging. Inquisitive by nature, her greatest joy as a child had been the hours spent reading books with her father. The memory of the scent of his tobacco still brought comfort. More than once she succumbed to purchasing a packet of unfiltered Old Golds and lit them behind the farm buildings just to be reminded of his smell. Behind closed doors, she read and reread this psychology book, imagining the possibilities that life might offer. Her one major indulgence.

             
That and the dainty mirror. And the occasional cigarette. The Reverend Mother, now seventy-one, was in failing health, and Sister Paulinas daydreamed in this office and around the convent grounds of a second ballot establishing her as the next Reverend Mother.

             
Sister Paulinas heard the vibration of Nurse’s heavy, thudding feet. A timid knock and Sister slammed her desk drawer shut as Nurse peeked through the door. Sister ushered her into her office with a brisk, exasperated wave of a hand. She knew how to keep Nurse in her place. It was sad, the Sister sighed, but necessary for Nurse’s own good that this constant balance be maintained.

             
Sister Paulinas once again sat flabbergasted in her wooden swivel chair, looking at paperwork on her desk. It had been less than one week earlier that the Reverend Mother informed her that on the Saturday coming Nurse would escort Adrian Ellis, along with Sister Agnes, and Father Brennan, from the orpha
nage to Donnybrook
to meet Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Ellis, Adrian’s biological parents. Sister Agnes did not want to cause undue stress for him or any of the other children for that matter, the nun had told Judge Moran, who was still in charge of this case down at the courts.

             
“Happy endings do not begin with witless indiscretions, Nurse,” Sister Paulinas said now, exhaling a long, tired breath. Nurse stood in her office and nodded, her nurse’s hat already removed from her ragged hair. “You look ready. Are you off, then?” Sister Paulinas wished Nurse would stop fidgeting and said so. The halfwit reminded her of a squirrel. She added, “You might want to go to your room and fix up your hair.”

             
“Yes, I’ll be off, then.”

             
For a moment, Sister Paulinas remembered Nurse’s dear sister Anne, God rest her, who had been her supervisor when she was only an acoly
te and so alone out here in the
countryside. She’d felt responsible for Nurse after Sister Anne’s debilitating pneumonia and subsequent death. It was Sister Paulinas who found a home nearby in County Westmeath for little Beth, Nurse’s bastard child. And what a blessing Beth’s adopted family had been for her, sending her off to Dublin to earn a college degree, bless their hearts. She made the sign of the cross and prayed that these occasional visits to deliver babies to the orphanage did not make Nurse pine for her daughter.

             
“But you’re a crafty one after all, are you not? A lucky one at any rate, with another day off on your hands.”

             
“They think Adrian might become their–”

             
“I know what they think, Nurse, thank you,” she retorted. “You mind yourself, girl, and don’t miss your train,” she said, handing her enough shillings for her fare.

             
“Yes, Sister Paulinas.”

             
“You are aware that telling the Ellis family the whereabouts of their out-of-wedlock child was against the rules?”

             
Nurse lowered her head.

             
“You had no right to involve yourself in a past inmate’s life,” Sister Paulinas scolded. “You had no business sharing information with her, you realize that now.”

             
Nurse shook her head.

             
“Are you a dumb ox?”

             
“Yes, Sister.”

             
“Pray for all the Ellises now, every day, Nurse.”

             
“I will, Sister.”

             
“I’m not to be toyed with.”

             
“No.”

             
“Further, you do realize if there should be any sort of repercussions from this, you will pay the price?”

             
“Yes.”

             
“You will be asked to leave. And where you shall be taken, I wouldn’t think you would want to return. Or worse. Do you understand?”

             
“Yes, Sister.”

             
“I don’t want to hear any more about this. This is your last visit to the orphanage and to the Ellis residence. Go on, now.” Sister couldn’t stand the possum any longer.

             
Nurse curtsied and waited for Sister Paulinas to shoo her away before she hurried off.

Everything seemed perfect.

             
Marian surveyed the table, rearranged a set of peony and leaf dessert plates, teacups and saucers, and took the matching tea tray from the cupboard. Linen tea cloths were laid out. Platters of scones and clotted cream and raspberry tarts looked lovely. The kettle was steaming.

             
Everything seemed perfect if you didn’t count the undercurrent of nerves flying about the room like late summer moths batting against screen doors. Like a calculating housecat, Johanna sat on her father’s knee, eyeing her mother’s marmalade sandwiches. Ben looked out the bay window; an overzealous bounce of his knee belied his composed face. Even their garden, just beginning its new season of life, budding green flowers peeking out from tomato stalks, was tentative in its infancy.

             
Tentative yet hopeful,
Marian thought. These feelings were to be expected. How would Adrian react to all this. Marian walked to the love seat and placed a firm hand on Ben’s shoulder.

             
“You look perfect,” he said absently.

             
“Ben, don’t say that.”

             
Why did he try to say what he thought she wanted to hear? Why the desire to please her with platitudes? He hid behind the passive expression on his face. Didn’t he know that she’d been robbed of the girlish belief that anything was perfect?

             
“You look motherly?” he said. “Better?”

             
She looked at him and let out a nervous chuckle. Somehow, a mystery to her, Marian suffered piques from Ben, and yet, the core of her love seemed to remain intact.

             
“Better,” she said and walked toward the gilded hall mirror, courtesy of Tatte’s picture frame shop, and smelled the day-old lilac blooms on the foyer table, their heavy fragrance filling the stained oak entry, and she scolded herself silently for having arranged her flowers too early. She cleared off the fallen blossoms, brushed them into an ashtray.

             
“You’re too old for that,” Marian said, rousing Johanna off Ben’s knee. Marian looked into Ben’s glassy eyes. A spring cold reddened his nose. He looked miserable, and she knew he suffered inside as she did.
Suffer in silence.
Oh, how she hated that old adage growing up, and still did. All the stifling repression had to end. She thought of a recent news story about a single, pregnant, Dublin-born woman who had decided to keep her baby. Her sister was moving in and would help her.

             
“Johanna, dear, I think you should stay in the background when he first arrives,” she said. Johanna slid up against the armchair. “Only until he gets a bit used to the place.”
We wouldn’t want to make him jealous of you,
Marian was thinking.

             
Ben wiped his eyeglasses and abruptly rose and Johanna walked dutifully upstairs. “Go and read in your room awhile, Jo,” he said.

             
“Nothing’s ever going to be perfect,” Marian reminded him.

             
“You don’t have to keep fecking reminding me,” Ben said, the curse thrown in for heft. He hurled the newspaper in her direction right after that, with another curse, but she ignored him and walked into the kitchen. 

             
“I’ve asked Father Brennan to take charge,” he called after her.

             
“That’s grand,” she answered, coming back in. He was picking up disheveled pages, and she picked up a section and rapped him on the head.

             
“Oh, for goodness sake, come on down now, love,” Marian said, spotting Johanna on the landing. “Or go into your room for a bit longer. Unless you want to do a bit of vacuuming,” she added, turning on the Hoover for one last go around.

             
After Jo had told Mr. Hinckley and Sister Agnes about her brother’s homecoming, her classmates’ wide-as-a-kite eyes stared at her when she returned to class, waiting for more of the explanation. Even as she rejoiced inside, when the class fell silent, she felt for the first time her parent’s shame and wished she hadn’t shared with her principal. Marian heard Johanna opening her window and calling to Anna and Rona.

             
“Sure, we should have gone to England rather than sneaking about like nincompoops, behaving like children ourselves,” Marian said. “Stop your leg shaking when we sit for tea,” she added, hoping Sister Agnes would find them and their home in good form. Ben rubbed his temples, lit a cigarette.

             
“Everything’s going to be set right now,” she said to him, but he just stared out the window.

The cast-iron gate creaked. Footsteps could be heard coming up the walk. Father Brennan’s signature three quick taps of the lion-mask knocker, and Marian took off her apron, gave Ben and Jo a nod, and Jo raced to answer the door.

             
Adrian.

             
The child she had never forgotten stood there, in between Father Brennan and Nurse, and to Father Brennan’s left, the short and strapping Sister Agnes, but they could all disappear into thin air. Except for him. The yearning had never diminished. All these years, all she had ever wanted was to see him again in the flesh, and dreamed that he would be returned to her and their home where he would be safe and happy.