Bad Girl Magdalene Read online

  And he sang a little bit of that song that started:

  The wandthrin’ one

  Since time begun

  Has yearned for native soil

  And sorely grieves

  The man who leaves

  His homeland by the Foyle.

  ‘Now you shush, Mr Gorragher, there’s a good man.’

  Magda said that because it wasn’t really a very Christian song at all, but was probably one of them songs they sang in Northern Ireland, where the English drank themselves stupid on their strawy old beer and there were Union Jacks all over the place and the Red Hand of Ulster, which caused all the wickedness that haunted mankind ever since God had made the Garden of Eden. You didn’t ought to sing some songs, that’s all. Magda tried to stop him singing his song, but not caring much at all, while she vacuumed away round his bed and then the rest of his alcove.

  The old man sang on:

  To preach the word

  Face battle’s danger

  Praise the Lord

  And serve the stranger

  Then came the awful uncomfortable part Magda never liked. It went:

  And one by one

  They took their bonds

  And bad farewell to Erin…

  The song left you hanging there and thinking, well, get on with it, did the soldiers ever come home or not?

  ‘I used to sing that with a Lancashire lad who was a thief.’

  ‘A thief, was he, Mr Gorragher?’ Magda had heard it all before.

  ‘Nimble as that little fairy thing that goes red at Christmas with Peter Pan on that old stage show.’

  ‘Oh, I know that one all right, Mr Gorragher,’ said Magda, though she didn’t. ‘At Christmas, isn’t it?’

  She left the hoover running, standing straight up so it wouldn’t fall, so as to keep bat-eared Sister Raphael happy in her old office along the corridor, and started dusting round Mr Gorragher’s few possessions – just a lick and a promise, as the cooks would say when they had to wipe down the kitchen surfaces for the inspecting nun to come and say they could all go and the day was ended.

  ‘I took the grandchildren. Pantomime.’

  ‘Ah, them things.’

  ‘He never stole from me, or from lads in the company.’

  ‘That’s a good lad, then.’

  ‘Not even from any other squaddie in our unit, though God knows we were hungry enough. The fighting started and the shells were bursting all over and round. Shit flying everywhere.’

  ‘God help them poor boys.’

  Magda wasn’t sure whether she had heard this story before. She got mixed up with other tales the old men drifted into telling of a late afternoon when she had to side up and finish the cleaning. She knew soon Mr Gorragher would start telling how he and his mate stole some stores from the locals and sold them. Then he would offer her a drop of whisky, telling her it was ouzo or wine from Italy.

  ‘Two boys bought it next to me and Lanky, standing there one minute then simply folded up like newspapers with blood all in their middles.’

  ‘God rest the poor souls.’

  He was in his afternoon chair, legs out on them raised things Magda could never lift, so the old man’s feet would raise up to where they didn’t get fat and start having big red sores.

  ‘It was so peaceful.’

  ‘With all them old guns and bombs? I’m coming round that side with the hoover. You’ll have to let me swing your feet round, Mr Gorragher.’

  ‘Best job I ever had. War isn’t so bad. It’s like a raffle.’

  ‘Is it, now. Feet.’

  ‘A million times better than in the Ranter.’

  ‘Ranter. Is it, now.’ Magda tried to make this bit without a question in case it got the old man started on how he’d been a little boy in the Ranter. She never liked this bit. ‘Keep still.’

  ‘War was the same for us all, officers and men up against it. The war took you in ones, twos, a few at a time, or a lot, or none of you and you were safe. Ranter wasn’t.’

  ‘Wasn’t it.’

  Still without a question, but what could she say? She couldn’t pretend she wasn’t there, the old hoover whirring away or she’d get in trouble with Sister Raphael, and what then?

  ‘Ranter was hell. Blothey was there too. A Christian Brother slammed his head through the stair sticks and twisted him. That’s why he died. He wailed. He didn’t scream, didn’t Blothey. He just wailed. I’ll remember it to the day I die.’

  ‘God rest the poor boy.’ Blothey was a new name. The last time Mr Gorragher had told this tale it had been a boy called, what, Dondie, was it?

  ‘They made a picture for the television. I should have gone to them and told them. I heard they were asking for oldsters like me to come and tell them what happened. The priest said at St Gabriel the Archangel that telling things and making TV pictures about them was the devil’s work. He said it would be destructive to the Faith.’

  ‘You didn’t go.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s just as well, Mr Gorragher.’

  ‘You think I should have, Jane?’

  So she was Jane now. Two afternoons ago she’d been Elspeth. She knew neither, had never even seen Mr Gorragher have a visitor, except for Father Doran to swill some of the old man’s dreadful poteen stuff.

  ‘Least said soonest mended,’ she said, coming under his outstuck feet.

  ‘That’s what everybody said in the parish. I don’t know. I started to watch the fillum but couldn’t go on with it. Blothey died soon after. He couldn’t walk.’

  ‘God rest him.’

  ‘I wondered after, when the fighting ended and we came back and I got a medal, a real decoration, not just a dinner gong like they called the routine issue, why they didn’t know Blothey died when the Christian Brother – Patrick, spelt the old way, not this new showy way – shoved his head through the staircase railings and twisted so he started wailing and died.’

  ‘They didn’t know.’

  Magda said all these standard replies in a comforting kind of voice so it would ease the old man, who would often get agitated when he spoke of these things. There was a terrible story of a well and somebody shoved down there that was particularly frightening. Ding, dong, dell, like in some children’s rhyme they sang on RTE. Odd, though, it was the food that got her most. She sometimes found herself weeping for no reason, because what was she crying for?

  ‘Nobody knows unless you tell them.’

  ‘Well, they wouldn’t.’

  ‘I should have gone to the lady who was making the fillums. She had real cameras and everything.’

  Did Lucy keep on falling because Magda didn’t tell anybody? Was that what he was saying? But she had never ever told anybody, except God and He knew anyway. The question was, if she went and told…told who, though? If she did, would Lucy then stop falling, all night long in Magda’s dreams, just like that? Magda knew she wouldn’t. Magda would have got herself out of trouble, a responsibility that she owed to Lucy, not herself, especially after what Magda had done the night Lucy died.

  No, she had to rescue her dead friend without help from anybody. That’s what the deal was. A deal with God Almighty, no less. A promise was a promise. In doing that, Magda would rescue herself from the pit of Hellfire.

  ‘My hand was turned wrong at the wrist.’

  And here old Mr Gorragher would always hold out his left hand like an offer. He would keep it there held out, though he was practically blind and couldn’t see a thing any more, simply waiting for Magda or somebody to take hold of it.

  ‘Go on, test it. There’s a bone missing, see?’

  And Magda had to press her fingers round the old man’s wrist, feeling the bones, though what was there to feel in an old man’s wrist? Except where there should have been a kind of a knob sticking out, there wasn’t.

  ‘The army took me in spite of that, and they said it wouldn’t matter. I should be a driver, they said. But we were in uniform and learnt shooting and t
hen we were off overseas. The fighting began and nobody worried any more about my old wrist being a bone short. I was taken prisoner just like the rest of the lads.’

  He sounded so proud.

  ‘No driving, then?’

  ‘No driving. Me and Lanky went through the war together. We got taken up by a unit of the Duke of Wellington’s, noisy load of sods they were. Me and Lanky got captured. They suddenly came one day. The enemy guards cleared off. We were taken back. Know what?’

  Magda had finished her cleaning and started winding up the flex.

  ‘No. What?’ though she already knew. There were only slight variations in the story. Some others did vary, though. The old ladies were the most consistent, never varied a single phrase or a word out of true, like a poem learnt in school.

  ‘They kitted us all up. We had hardly a stitch left from the prisoner-of-war camp. We went through some Yanks, a whole battalion. They stood watching us march through, just silent, rows of them. They looked like giants and fat and tall. They hardly spoke a word, but one said, “Jeez, Tommy, you alive under that thar skin?” And his mate said, “Never seed anybody that thin in ma laaaf, man.” I didn’t even know them Yanks spoke English like us till then.’

  ‘Then you came home.’ Magda wanted it all over and done, old Mr Gorragher getting to the terrible bits like he had to come back full circle before he’d let anybody go.

  ‘We got examined then back to the teeth arms. I was made a rifleman again, and we landed on the fucking sand with all kinds of shit flying. Know what?’

  ‘No.’ Magda was despondent, standing there knowing the hoover was silent and if Sister Raphael set up one of her shouts she would be for it. She hated these know-whats, because it meant the old man knew she was still there even though he was almost blind.

  ‘However bad it got in the army, even in prison camp, nothing was as bad as Ranter, that school right here in Eire. They killed another Irish lad’s brother in our unit. He got transferred to the Gunners, twenty-five pounders. Survived. I met him afterwards. He liked the army too, same reasons as me. We were safe there. Latree Industrial School was Christian Brothers too.’

  ‘I’ve to go now, Mr Gorragher.’

  ‘There should be a kind of court, but I wouldn’t go if there was. Would you?’

  This was the point in the chat when Mr Gorragher would turn his head as if he could see properly again, and raise his chin like he was looking. Magda hated the trick. He only did it to keep her there when she wanted to go.

  ‘I don’t know, Mr Gorragher.’

  ‘You mean no.’ His chin sank then. She wanted to ask if it was disappointment that made his chin sink like that, but that would prolong the conversation and she’d catch it from Sister Raphael. ‘You mean no.’

  ‘See you, Mr Gorragher.’

  ‘See you.’ And as she carried the vacuum cleaner from the alcove, ‘Here, Father.’

  ‘Yes?’ she said. Talking to him tired her out more than work.

  ‘Would you like a spot of the old poteen? Good stuff, got from them Scotch, not local. Yes?’

  ‘Not just now, thank you.’

  ‘You sure?’

  And, grotesquely, the old features would wrinkle even more and the old man would give a monstrous wink, moisture running down his face almost like tears, but only one eye.

  ‘Thank you, but not today.’

  ‘I’ve some right here.’

  And the old man would pat his bedside locker and wink. Then Magda would leave. She had seen Father Doran pause, return just as he was about to leave, and reach into the locker for a flat bottle of brown liquid. And he would take one swig and sometimes another. The old man would cackle then, as if complicit in some crime.

  Magda left, sickened by the recurring story, wondering if everybody her age or older had been slain inside by events at some horrible place they could never escape from. Prisoner-of-war camp better than school? War safer than the Church’s care?

  On the way home, though, she remembered laying the tray for Father Doran, and the order of the things. Crockery just so, the Dundee cake exactly positioned, the small knives with their decorated blue handles and the cake plates with borders of flowers.

  That evening she walked slowly down the Borro to the residence of the outdoor girl workers, and in her small room she tried to make one of the stolen white tablets dissolve in water, then tried to press it in a chewed piece of bread. It wouldn’t melt or even go away. Whatever she did to it, it looked like a thick little wart of white stuck there, easily seen. Daring, she pressed it into her mouth. She felt it there, to her horror. Father Doran would spit it out and say, ‘What on earth is this, Sister?’ and they would send for Magda and then for the Garda Siobhana.

  She washed her mouth out after washing the test tablet down the sink, and sat on the bed staring at the wall. The thing was, the bottle of fluid that Mr Gorragher had concealed in his locker, or somewhere near, might do. She resolved to test the tablet next day when she could get hold of some of that fluid, whisky or whatever the Scotch Protestant heathens brewed in their old bogs over The Water. She knew gin wasn’t coloured, whereas the tea-coloured fluid Mr Gorragher sometimes showed her was dark brown, or variations between coffee-coloured and a light tan.

  That might be it. She abandoned the idea of feeding Father Doran poisoned cake, and settled for good and all on Mr Gorragher’s dark brown Scotch, if the tablets could be made to melt in a test drink.

  One thing more worried her. Leaving Mr Gorrhager that day, she saw Sister Francesca standing by one of the other alcoves along the corridor. Just standing, and not doing a thing. Hearing Magda coming, she instantly moved away. Surely Sister Francesca couldn’t have been listening, could she? Other people eavesdropped, but never nuns.

  Whatever had made Sister Francesca stay like that, so quiet for no reason, Magda knew that glimpse to be a special warning. She had to be careful of everybody, even if they were supposed to be on God’s side.

  Chapter Ten

  Father Doran’s appointment with Bishop MacGrath still stood, in spite of the press conference the bishop had arranged for three o’clock that afternoon. The prelate was affable to an industrial degree, creating the impression of posing during the interviews he conducted regularly during the day – two in the morning, two in the afternoon, one sometime round sevenish. Well known among his colleagues was his wish that the evening meeting would take place in some restaurant where the friend would pick up the tab. At such, his lordship would chuckle amiably and, tilting that giant head of bright silvery hair, say with twinkling benignity, ‘I pray my chiselling tactics will keep debtors from the diocesan door!’

  ‘Influence, Father Doran,’ he sighed, welcoming the priest and gesturing to an armchair. ‘The Church has lost influence, I fear. Look at the recent publicity.’

  ‘Indeed, m’lord.’

  ‘It is not as if we don’t try.’

  ‘I can’t imagine anyone trying harder, m’lord.’

  ‘Tea in a moment.’ The bishop gazed across his study at some distant vista before going on. ‘The problem is, the university has asked for a debate. Title: Family Issues versus Church Doctrine.’

  ‘Soon?’ Father Doran asked, sharper than he intended.

  ‘Two weeks.’

  ‘Do they really mean versus?’

  ‘Without doubt.’

  ‘Inviting the diocese?’

  ‘Me in particular.’

  ‘Any particular department?’

  ‘Guess,’ the bishop said dryly.

  ‘Sociology?’

  ‘You have it.’ The bishop waited as a housekeeper entered and served the tea. Both clerics watched her fingers, the biscuits, the milk, teaspoons, and thanked her as she withdrew. ‘You can imagine such an encounter. It will be planned as a ritual very like the one Mrs Mahoney has just enacted. A service.’

  ‘Indeed. A sermon attended by a congregation of aficionados.’

  ‘That would have been so, once. No longer.’


  Father Doran began to fear he was being sent to the firing line. The last thing he wanted was to invite publicity that might prove adverse. Times were changing. There would be no opportunity to withdraw if any scent of scandal rose. He had spoken only twice at such gatherings, and had had an uncomfortable passage at each. Foreign students, of course, were the unpleasant catalysts.

  ‘Modernists abound, James.’

  ‘Indeed, m’lord.’

  That use of his Christian name disturbed the priest. Something unpleasant this way comes, he thought unhappily. Was this the bishop’s hint he would instead send some up-and-coming younger man, who might prove more theologically nimble to the student body in Dublin?

  ‘I suppose it is the Catholic…?’

  ‘Yes. Though Trinity College has its moments.’ The prelate’s irony was not lost on the priest. Trinity College was the non-Catholic element in Dublin.

  ‘That is half a hurdle, then.’

  ‘I may suppose so.’

  The bishop clinked his teacup. He had lately abandoned sugar, to his personal grief, some Lenten tactic that still oppressed. He did have some revisionary views about doctrine, elements of ordinary life. Taste was one such, for instance. He decided to move things on, because this Doran man was too cunning to commit many errors. Advancement into the diplomatic sphere of Church activities often came to mind after conversations with this priest.

  ‘As it happens, James, I am too busy on that date, so I am stymied. I simply can’t suggest an alternative date.’

  ‘Publicity, though, m’lord,’ Doran said unhappily, trying to give the bishop a way out. He saw he would have to deputise. It would prove a cauldron, considering the adverse media lately put about. ‘It might be embarrassing if no Church representative attended the debate. I suppose it is a debate, not a lecture?’

  ‘Debate.’ The bishop detected Doran’s reluctance. It amused him to keep the idea going a little longer. ‘How would one approach the topic?’

  ‘Modernists, m’lord.’

  ‘Modernists?’ Bishop MacGrath was surprised by the alacrity of the reply.

  ‘I should begin my argument – stability of society, proper detailed assessments of what happens in one age and another, changing worlds – by stating how great modernists have managed in the past.’