Bad Girl Magdalene Read online

  ‘Ted?’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘Some of that auld swill had bits of meat in it.’ A sigh. ‘I swear to God it tasted better than any meat I’ve had since.’

  ‘Spuds,’ Ted said. He waited a bit then said again, like he was disappointed at not having elicited a response, ‘Spuds.’

  ‘You had spuds?’

  ‘I thought they were from Heaven itself, spuds. Get one cooked just right, it’s still like Paradise. I could go on eating them all my life, and that’s a fact.’

  ‘Why did Holer do it, then?’

  ‘Holer? The marksman? Did you know him too?’

  ‘No. You just tellt me. The bell tower, the sergeant saying Jesus Christ because he’d shot the sniper through the hole he’d made the previous night.’

  ‘One of the poacher lads from Dorset, I think it was from Dorset, said he wasn’t shooting the enemies in the trees, the canals – Christ, but Holer loved shooting anywhere near water. I could tell you some tales. The canals was his favourite. Never smoked in the four years in our unit. Never let hisself get promoted.’

  ‘What did the Dorset lad say?’

  ‘He was a poacher. He said Holer wasn’t shooting enemy at all. He was shooting people he knew.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I dunno, do I? How do I know?’

  ‘Didn’t you ask the Dorset lad?’

  With amazement, ‘Did you know Jendy from Poole too? I thought you wus in the Dirty Dukes, the Wellingtons.’

  ‘No. You tellt me. You said the Dorset lad told you Holer was shooting people he knew.’

  ‘That’s right. Jendy said it was always the way, always like that. Snipers who got lurk-happy, had to keep stiller than in real life because they weren’t killing enemy soldiers they’d never met at all. No.’

  ‘Who, then?’

  ‘They were killing somebody else, over and over. The same folk they’d started out killing from anywhere before they took their bonds for a soldier.’

  ‘Who, then?’

  They were silent at some distant complaint down the corridor before they resumed in a whisper.

  ‘Maybe from Ranter?’

  They paused without being grumbled at from the lane of alcoves leading to the red pilot light. It was quite three or four minutes before they started their whispering again.

  Sometimes, the nun thought, standing listening in the shadow by the alcove curtains, they could start their talking again quite as if their minds were young and vigorous and unhindered by old age. Other times, she listened to their mumbled chat as it became incoherent. Though of course, she knew they spoke of a life, and lives, worlds away in time and distance, in eras rather than mere moments.

  ‘Maybe from Ranter, and the same one over and over.’

  ‘Did the Dorset lad – Jendy, you called him? – ever tell you who it was that Holer kept on killing?’

  ‘No. Somebody else from Brummy, Birmingham, asked Jendy that, not wanting to ask Holer outright, because them sort of things is personal.’

  ‘There is that, sure, right. Personal.’

  ‘And Jendy just said, “Oh, that’d be something to do with being a little lad.”’

  ‘Ah, then sure it’s only the one he was a-killing over and over every time. Did the Brummy mate ask Jendy why Holer would keep on collecting up them auld cartridge cases like that?’

  ‘Once, Holer had twenty-three spent cartridge cases, just emptied them into a hole he’d dug in some floor of a church. Somewhere in North Germany. You remember how it was, you never knew where the fuck you were one minute to the next.’

  ‘Sure, I never did. Once, I asked our sergeant why everybody’d started talking French. Know what he said?’

  ‘No. What did he say?’

  ‘He said, “You stupid git. It’s Italian. We’re in fucking Italy, you burke.” I didn’t get laughed at, because the rest of the lads was as surprised as me.’

  ‘Well, you would be. I never knew, either.’

  ‘It was the weather, see? One of the lads was a fell walker. That’s moorlands. He collected lost sheep for a living.’

  ‘That’s a grand job.’

  ‘Made a good living out of it. Couldn’t talk English proper even though he was English, but like he was from out of some olden times and suddenly found hissel’ here in this fucking war with shit flying and putting wounds in your old head. I hated grenades. The fucking plug always comes back at the thrower, no matter how you hold it. Did that happen to you?’

  ‘All the fucking time. I got so I wouldn’t chuck them. Gave them to my mate.’

  ‘They ever put you on a charge for not lobbing when you were ordered?’

  ‘No. They knew every squaddie had his foibles.’

  ‘This fellwalker. They called him Tarn, from like the lakes they have over there. Well, he come from an old fell-walking family. Whatever weather forecast the officers got, whatever country we were supposed to be in, when we got orders to push on or fall back, they’d send for Tarn.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘He knew weather, see?’

  ‘The officers asked him about the weather? Jesus.’

  ‘Twice the staff officers talked to him. He’d stand outside, maybe half an hour just looking at the ground – this could be night or day, rain or snow, gale or sun – and then he’d come in and tell them.’

  ‘Was he right?’

  ‘Every single fucking time. At first, the officers would ask him was he sure, how did he know and had he some machine or seaweed, how did he do it? He could hardly talk the King’s proper, so they gave up trying to understand what he said. He come from them Pennine moorlands, see? Talked Old English. Except one officer, a young chap who played cricket somewhere, lived up there and could tell what he was saying, this Tarn, and just said to our major, “Sir? He says he listens to the air that’s moving.” And one colonel says but there isn’t any wind. And the young snooks says, “Well, that’s what he says he does, sir.” And ever after nobody asked, just trusted what Tarn said.’

  ‘Things are different wherever you come from, and that’s the truth.’

  ‘That’s true as today.’

  They remained silent while they both belched and grumbled, then Ted spoke in a low mutter the nun had to strive to hear.

  ‘Who would you kill, George?’

  ‘Kill? Me? Have to think about that, Ted, ’less you mean the bastards who run the hurling team from Leinster.’

  They laughed so much at that they choked from wheezing and gasped quite a time before being able to talk again.

  ‘It’s them bastards from Dublin. They own the racehorse stables and want Manchester United.’

  ‘Jesus, what bastards. Don’t they own a shipping line somewhere?’

  ‘It’s airlines, silly bugger, airlines nowadays. They don’t have shipping lines any more.’

  ‘I’d kill them Christian Brothers.’

  ‘Here, mate.’ A pause for effect, then, full of meaning, ‘You could do worse!’

  More laughter and folk calling down the lane of alcoves and somebody ringing the night bell, but the nun paid it no heed and stayed still where she was to listen.

  ‘My brother, the one they called Bonham. He couldn’t stop eating, him. Jayzuss, but he was a grand eater. I knew him later once I was out. He comes up to me, this feller, and says to me right there on Inns Quay, me being about to cross the auld Liffey, “I’m Bonham, your brother” and you could have knocked me down with a feather.’

  ‘You didn’t know him?’

  ‘No. He’d got himself wed, great fat feller that he was.’

  ‘Does he come here to see you?’

  ‘No. He died young, didn’t even reach fifty.’

  ‘God rest him.’

  ‘Amen.’

  The silent nun mouthed the word, Amen.

  ‘Couldn’t stop eating, couldn’t Bonham. It was like once he had sight of his dinner he couldn’t stop. Went out to the kitchen. His wife said he was a terrible eater
. She said he’d have anything that stood still long enough, eat it right down.’

  ‘I like gravy on thick bread.’

  ‘He’d have everybody else’s fat right off their plates.’

  ‘Poured right on. The bread needn’t be buttered or marged, just thick. Soda bread fritters in your hands, doesn’t it? I’d rather have it in one piece.’

  ‘He took ill and died. You know that place near Ha’Penny Bridge? Well, in there. He was supposed to be on his way to work, a clerk in the Pensions Office – he did well for himself did our Bonham – when he keeled over. The doctor said it was his heart.’

  ‘I like a fry-up. Best thing is them bacon things in fried bread.’

  ‘I cried over Bonham. See, if he’d had any decent things to eat when he was little, he’d have been all right with food. Put him in sight of it and he was like, there’s a word for it, when you’re driven to do something and you know it’s daft and you keep on all the same, a word. I heard it on telly.’

  Compulsion? The nun did not say the word, just thought.

  ‘They used to call me Baldy,’ Ted’s voice said. ‘At the school.’

  ‘I got the head-shave the same. They did it to me as a routine.’

  ‘I only got it when I bled on my shirt after the Freezer gave me a right old whacking.’

  ‘Freezer? Did I know Freezer?’

  ‘No, you auld daftie. You were in a different school.’

  ‘I forget. Where were you, then?’

  ‘Freezer used to freeze his leather belt in some fridge. The boys called him that because he used to freeze his leather belt in some fridge, see? The Christian Brothers wore this…you’ll know that anyway. Did you have a Brother who did that to whack you?’

  ‘Freezed his belt? No. We had one used a hurley and the sliothar, stand you against the wall then fire it at you. If you dodged he got mad and would come right up and whack you with the hurley and make you promise to stay still, then back he’d go and fire his sliothar at you.’

  ‘They always did that.’

  ‘This Brother used to let out a right roar of a cheer if he caught you. I got the staggers. That’s what we called it when we got to falling around the place after a whacking. I still can’t bend my elbow from falling that way.’

  After a pause, ‘You know what?’

  ‘No? What?’

  ‘I reckon Holer had his elbow bent like that from a breaking of it.’

  ‘How’d it get broken, then?’

  ‘One Brother had a leather hoop he put your arm through on the wall to stop you ducking. You had to face the wall anyway, so you’d try to stare back over your shoulder, kind of, see the old thing coming, like a rocket it was. The loop stopped you twisting out of its way, see? I broke my elbow doing that. Got mysel’ whacked for it.’

  ‘You knew Holer from before, then?’

  ‘No. I tellt you, no. But I reckon he knew. Jaysus, a fine marksman he was. I reckon the Army should send him a turkey at Christmas for what Holer did.’

  ‘Seen him since, have you?’

  ‘No. I heard somebody say he might have gone to work the ships in Cork somewhere. Has a wife and two grand children. Somebody said they’d seen him walking along to the park of a Sunday. Stands watching the games. Never speaks to anybody, just stood watching them two children of his, turned out like new pins. He just watches.’

  ‘Watches them, does he?’

  ‘Somebody went right up to him and asked if he was Holer. He just stared straight ahead and said, eyes on them two grand little children of his, “Never heard of anybody by that name, friend” and turned away. Odd, that.’

  ‘That’s not odd.’

  ‘No. I didn’t think it was.’

  ‘I hated the well.’

  ‘I heard they filled it in.’

  ‘It’s a housing estate now.’

  ‘Some lad drowned. Nobody knew why.’

  ‘They make a lot of money from the housings.’

  ‘That’s how they can buy them auld racehorses.’

  Grumblings of laughter at the thought of owning racehorses, and some recollections of which they would bet on next time they went to Leopardstown, made them laugh and chuckle and set the calls to shut up from along the ward corridor. The silent nun thought they themselves were quite like a sort of weather, and reflected how strange men were, so different from women. She almost started wondering how it was that they could speak to each other from those frail minds of theirs and their even more fragile memories, and why God had made everyone so different in the genders.

  ‘I’d burn down Daingean,’ Ted said simply, after a long gap.

  ‘I got beaten for peeing my bed, started when I was four.’

  ‘I heard I had a cousin somewhere in St Joseph’s. He got whacked terrible for bed-wetting. I was scared to ask anybody if I really did have a cousin or not in case they started on me for having a cousin who peed his bed.’

  ‘I got whacked in the night.’

  ‘I don’t like nights, not even now.’

  ‘Nor me.’

  ‘That’ll be why old Mr Gorragher sings all the night through, to stop it being night.’

  ‘I have to have everything in the house laid out in order. That’s what you had to do not to get whacked.’

  ‘I’ve a tube in my dick, save me peeing my bed now I’ve got the dribbles. I was so happy the doctor said that and the nurse stuck it in.’

  ‘So you’d not pee the bed?’

  ‘Course. That’s what that bottle’s for underneath.’

  ‘I tellt my daughter, anything in the house, don’t throw that away. I keep on saying it, and she says, “Dad, it’s only yesterday’s, and what do you want with an auld newspaper anyway?” I don’t let her.’

  ‘Saves me peeing the bed, my tube.’

  ‘She clears them out while I’m down the boreen having a drink. She thinks I’m so gaga I don’t notice, but I do. Sometimes I take them right out of the dustbin and put them in order on the table. She goes mad.’

  ‘I’d burn that old Ranter school down to the ground, if I could get away with it.’

  ‘The Australians were as bad.’

  ‘Were they?’

  ‘Christian Brothers do it to the little ones. They’re called abusers nowadays. I seed it on the television.’

  ‘Even over there?’

  ‘They showed it.’

  ‘There was that great page, pages of it, in the newspapers.’

  ‘There was this great spread, double, saying the Church had gone sorry over what they did.’

  ‘No good now.’

  ‘It’s to save the Church money.’

  ‘It’s unnatural.’

  ‘The trouble is when you get through the day.’

  ‘I like to think of the war instead of times I was small.’

  ‘That’s God’s truth. Wars are best.’

  ‘And horse racing.’

  ‘I don’t like to watch the hurling.’

  ‘Nor me. Horse racing’s better. Football, maybe too.’

  ‘And the war. I had a pal went into the RAF. He liked being not spoken to, in the bombing. Bomber Command, him. He did bomb-aiming. He said it was so quiet, just his old bomber humming away.’

  ‘Was he in the Industrial School with you?’

  ‘No. I think he was from Encrelge in County Wicklow somebody said.’

  ‘Bomb-aimer, eh? Clever, he must have been.’

  ‘They had pencils and maps to work out where they were.’

  ‘Clever lad. They picked them out special, I heard.’

  ‘Said it was so quiet and peaceful. He made up hymns from the airplane.’

  ‘What hymns?’

  ‘One particular. I forget what it was.’

  ‘I’ll bet I know.’

  ‘Bet you don’t.’

  ‘Bet I do.’

  ‘Go on, then. Guess.’

  ‘If I guess right you’ll say I’m wrong so’s you win the bet.’

  ‘I won’t.�
��

  ‘You will.’

  ‘Bet you a punt.’

  ‘Who’ll decide who’s right?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘What’s the point of that?’

  Calls began from down the corridor, complaints of George and Ted talking. Sister Francesca gathered her skirts and silently moved away.

  Chapter Twelve

  Magda was late, from instinct more than accident. She deliberately took her time walking along the Borro, bold as brass, about to meet her young man.

  Over and over she said it to herself, meeting her young man. Greatly daring, meeting her young man. Then meeting her young man. It made her breathless, though the whole day she’d done nothing but forget everything she decided to do. Twice she started the hoovering without plugging the thing in at all. And once Mrs MacLehose, with the five children (with her still saying, wicked old ironing woman that she was, ‘and no more of that malarkey, I can tell you now’), had to reprimand Magda for daydreaming, who was secretly saying over to herself about meeting her young man. ‘Sure to God it’ll be some young feller-me-lad she thinks is going to be her bonny for ever and a day like in them fairy stories, that’s it, sure as Sunday.’

  Magda thought Mrs MacLehose dreadful sometimes, but Oonagh laughed at her and even egged the old ironing woman on with, ‘Tell ’em, old un,’ causing Mrs MacLehose to erupt with a mouthful. This only started Oonagh off laughing all the more.

  Oonagh it was who told Magda about lipstick. Magda said it was the tool of the devil himself, because they’d kept reading out bits from St Jerome’s letters, and he was a saint sitting up there at God’s right hand. Oonagh said no, St Jerome hated women being beautiful because he knew girls were always up to something, but as long as you kept your hand on your ha’penny you’d be all right. She lent Magda a lipstick and gave her her first lesson about cosmetics.

  ‘It doesn’t mean you’re hanging out of the windows in Babylon, Magda, just because you dab a bit of stuff round your eyes and use scent and colour on your mouth.’

  ‘It’s wrong, Oonagh.’

  ‘Stuff that old nonsense, girl. Watch.’

  And Oonagh got on with it right there and then, standing in front of the mirror by the bathroom door in the St Cosmo with her lips all pursed up like she was going to kiss the mirror. Magda exclaimed in alarm, remembering that if you looked too long into the mirror the devil himself would stare right back at you.