Bad Girl Magdalene Read online

  Then, lying there while the nurse went out to check the departure details with Sister Stephanie, he had sensed, dozing, rather than seen, a presence of somebody who smelt of Mansion Polish, that familiar tin of waxy orangey polish women used to clean church furniture. Mam had used that, so he knew he must be imagining it. He’d concentrated on obeying the nurse, and in truth he did feel sleepy. She must have given him something for the journey, to keep him calm.

  ‘Father Doran?’

  The whisper had almost made him open his eyes, but he was nearly away and could hardly flicker his eyelids. The voice reminded him of another. A woman’s, sure, but whose? Did it matter? Not really. If it had been Nurse Duggan he would have recognised it.

  He felt his tube being moved, and heard the slight plop of the spigot. Then she was gone, and with her the aroma of Mansion Polish. Only when he was woken by the return of the bustling nurse did he recall the voice. It had sounded very like the woman who had stood in for the nun that time, when Sister Francesca had gone for Dr Strathan. She had spoken of Sandyhills, where she and a friend had been Magdalene girls.

  A girl died there. She fell one night in the stairwell. The cleaning woman was called Magda. She had been the falling girl’s friend.

  He had said his confession the previous day to Bishop MacGrath, of the girl who had died. Realising how close the cleaning woman must have come to him, he became momentarily anxious, then calm. In fact, it felt quite like resignation. Whatever happened would happen. Yet had the cleaning woman adjusted one of these wires, flexes, tubes? How had she dared, her with no nursing training whatsoever?

  But why would she? Perhaps she had come in merely to say goodbye, to perhaps express forgiveness or ask for a blessing. That happened all the time. A priest, after all. He considered asking Nurse Duggan what the woman had been sent in for, then decided not to. He had no idea why he started thinking of that horrendous fire. The ‘death toll’, as the media always logged the dead at any calamity. Thirty-five children, and one elderly woman. Why did he remember that?

  He felt the stretcher sliding then a slight shudder as it clicked into place. A door slammed shut.

  ‘Is that it?’ a man asked.

  ‘Don’t they come out and see he’s OK?’

  ‘Nobody said anything. Sister?’

  Sister Stephanie’s voice: ‘Nurse Duggan will accompany the patient.’

  ‘In with him?’

  The door opening shuddered the whole vehicle, Nurse Duggan, it must be.

  ‘Dozing away as usual. It’s working.’

  ‘Ready now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The men’s footfalls crunched the gravel. He heard Sister Stephanie’s goodbye and thanks to the ambulance men. The vehicle started. He felt movement. He was safe!

  ‘Father Doran?’ the nurse said.

  He did not reply. Odd how voices became similar in odd circumstances, but then he’d been given some drug or other. There was no telling what drugs did to you. Certainly he had been managed well enough at the St Cosmo. Good that Dr Strathan had been so unsparing of his time.

  The Cavan fire had been the subject of so much discussion at the seminary. Of course there was blame. Criticism that was still going on, and why not? For Heaven’s sake, so many little girls dying in a fire. And not in some great tower block. It was in Cavan Town, in 1943, where the Order of the Poor Clares ran the St Joseph’s Industrial School for Girls.

  There was no blame attached, the Poor Clares being a closed Order. That was a given, in the way of some religious things. Nothing more or less than logic, not to examine history with a blaming hindsight. Otherwise you could level accusations at Wellington for not finishing Waterloo hours earlier, for not using tanks. Ridiculous. No, the Poor Clares were a closed Order, and so constituted. The townsfolk who came to try to rescue the children from the burning building were not allowed entry.

  Intrepid souls from the locality somehow gained access but could not find light switches to see who was there in the smoke and the flames. They did not know where the staircases were, even. They had no idea how many children lived in the place or where the dormitories lay. Disorder was total, would-be rescuers hunting for dormitories where the children were dying.

  The Inquiry said so. That too was a given. A fire escape door could have been got open somehow, had hopeful rescuers worked it out. It was kept closed. The nuns wasted valuable time, insisting that the little girls be completely dressed so they should not be seen in a state of partial undress by outsiders.

  The final Report exonerated the nuns, all of them saved. The Inquiry praised the Sisters, of course, for they had the responsibility of coping with survivors. No lawsuits. The thirty-five children were reported by their assigned numbers, none by name. And were buried in a mass grave by number. Unknown soldiers?

  In one sense, it was a beautiful instance of worthiness, the way society in Erin responded to tragedy. The dead children of Cavan were frequently invited – he had conducted such prayers himself – to ‘pray for us here on earth’. What was more of a testimony to the Church’s enduring character than that? In the very best sense, it was proof of holiness.

  A true deep slumber came. He almost smiled as he felt the nurse’s hands on him, tucking him. Very like being a child again, after a bad fall, something like that. Cosy. His mind glided among clouds.

  The girl was called Lucy. He had been given the account of the ailing child’s progress, at Sandyhills.

  The nun – what on earth was her name? – had primly given him the doctor’s verdict.

  ‘The white phthisis has her, Father,’ she’d said.

  ‘TB?’

  ‘Yes. Tuberculosis. Lucy’s always been a frail child.’

  ‘It is getting worse?’

  ‘The cost of treatment is so expensive. We don’t know what to do for the best.’

  ‘I’m sure you have done everything.’

  The nun sighed. ‘We certainly have. She has been allowed all kinds of special favours, but has wanted to work. She would have felt left out if she were left in idleness. Life,’ the nun said with arched primness, ‘is instruction, Father, with these young girls.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘Without it, there is nothing but a mad void.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘And into that void Communism can rush like an invasion. Children are at such risk.’

  ‘More now than ever.’

  ‘I blame the loosening of family ties.’

  ‘Yes. And some of these children are the product of that laxity.’

  He thought of Lucy, so waif-like and sinking fast.

  ‘Is the girl in the sick room?’

  ‘No, Father. That is reserved for the nuns.’ She averted her eyes, quite coyly he thought. ‘We have a rule that wherever possible the girls should be kept together. We foster their sense of community, of belonging to the Church’s society, in a way that will work in their interests when it is time for them to go out into the world.’

  ‘She hasn’t responded to treatment?’

  ‘Nothing like the way she should.’

  ‘Unfortunate. The poor child.’

  ‘It will be a merciful relief when she finally goes.’

  Startled, he exclaimed, ‘Is it that close?’

  ‘Yes. The doctor himself said that last week. We try to have him up to see the sick girls once a month, sometimes sooner if we can afford it. You know only too well our lack of funding.’

  It was his turn to sigh. ‘Yes indeed, Sister. Always too little, always so much to do.’

  That had been the start of his thoughts of Lucy. She was vulnerable, not merely to any passing germ, but to any moral onslaught. She was too weak to resist. The thought was a kind of affliction. The notion kept coming back. Seriously troubled by the image of the poor pale girl so weakened as to be hopelessly defenceless, he found he could not push her from his mind. Images, of people averting eyes, of the pale girl, at the mercy of anyone and anything, recurred.
/>   Three times in the next month he made a point of asking after the poor girl. He was given details. Yes, she was an orphan, a product of a sinful mother. The children of such casual encounters never amounted to anything. They were doomed in life. Thanks only to the Church, they got a semblance of life. They inherited wrongdoing, sins of the mothers. It was their fate. What good could they do in a world where they were marked for failure?

  ‘Are you feeling all right, Father?’ somebody said. It was a woman’s voice. He felt so tired now, probably the ambulance journey taking it out of him. Remember, he told himself, he had been stuck in a bed for quite some time now, to be put on the road to recovery.

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘Father Doran?’

  That squeezing on his chest had come back. Probably nothing more than the effects of the vehicle juddering. They were turning right now, probably onto the road into Dublin proper. The hospital would be getting his bed ready, and the doctors well warned he was on his way in.

  Lucy had been so docile, as if her complicity stemmed from the certainty of her impending death. Poor girl. He had been so solicitous, and explained it all to her with great sympathy. He had almost wept, back there in her dark dormitory.

  Life, he had gently told her, gave her a chance to do some good, so her record as she ascended to Heaven was unsullied. He was sure she was always helpful. He told her that. He remembered it quite clearly, his words precise and compassionate.

  This was her chance, he’d said, perhaps even her final chance, to do some good, create happiness and love that would be appreciated by God. It was not given to everybody to be so kind and loving. It was an opportunity she should take.

  None of us could ever know when the last moments would come, but to some it was given as a friend, by someone like himself who really could guide her, and truly did care. The chance was too good to miss, to administer love in the only way left to someone who was ill and near to her end. And in that love, freely given and freely taken, she would bestow a kind of sacrament on the other person. It was the most beautiful thought, and the happiest way for a girl to leave the Church Militant and enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

  He spoke her name in his mind, ‘Lucy, Lucy.’

  Hers was a melody, a tuneful statement of love and generosity that would remain with him for ever. There was something here magical, quite mystical. The thought was certainly not blasphemous, though some with less perceptiveness than he would be unable to recognise a gift so holy that it would be a lasting treasure for the person left behind. God-given, through Lucy herself. It would guarantee for the giver a constancy of prayers and devotion from the one receiving her gift. It would be exactly like those Crusader knights of old who, inspired by God in motive and spiritual ecstasy, took up the Cross and abandoned all to help the great cause of the Faith. In doing that, they rescued their souls from peril and achieved immortality. They entered the Kingdom of Heaven right here on earth.

  They were even now receiving their reward in Heaven, and were sitting at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.

  He whispered his promises of lasting devotion to her in the darkness even as he reached that enormous ecstasy in consummation with Lucy. It was beautiful, more a raising of the heart and mind to God than any prayer he had ever uttered. Of course she had to suffer a little, but she was in no doubt or she would have protested. It was worthy of her, and supreme to him. It was everything a sacrament should be.

  Her last sacrament, in a mystical way. It was the most glorious gift he had ever received. He was blessed because of her. In giving, she received the benefit of his eternal devotion. He had prayed for her ever since, and would continue to do so. This was the reason God spared him from the inquiry, when somehow news and rumour spread from somebody in Sandyhills. Who started that rumour he was unsure. He had tried to discover that. The girl Magda could not read or write, he knew that, but there was always somebody who was disaffected, malicious, or inspired by Satan to assault Holy Mother Church with wicked lies and scandal, spreading tales of perversion and abuse and injury. It was all so unfair.

  That was the reason, he was sure, he was now so devoted to the clerical life. The Church was everything. He had endured the transfers, got his letter of obedience from the bishop to report to a personal board who would judge his progress. Fair enough. He had fallen in line, and obeyed. Now the matter was entirely over. Done. The girl was still there in his mind, and an object of, almost, worship in his dark hours.

  Love was of so many special kinds. He knew where his love lay. It was with the Church and all her wonders.

  The voice came nearer.

  ‘Father Doran?’

  He tried to reply but the pain gripped. It was more severe than before. It came again with renewed force and he felt sick, almost unable to move.

  ‘Father Doran?’

  The pain took hold of his chest, his heart, and finally his mind, and he relaxed, surrendering to its majestic power. It recurred, bringing with it a sense of peace.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ‘They can go out in the yard today, Magda.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  ‘You’re to go with them.’

  ‘Me, Sister?’ Magda was taken aback. This was new. She was always straight onto cleaning duty.

  ‘Nine-thirty. Old Mr Gorragher will need wheeling out in his bed. Two others can help, and Mr Cronin can lend a hand from the garden. He will be at the chapel end.’

  ‘But I’m to clean the sluice this morning.’

  ‘You get them out. Sit with them. Who’s to go, they’ve done themselves.’

  ‘They have decided?’

  Magda felt uneasy. Too many new things disturbed even the worst lives, as Lucy had ever since disturbed hers. Only this morning she said her prayers, asking Lucy’s forgiveness for failing in the murder of Father Doran. The previous night had brought the clearest recollection, the worst re-enactment, of Lucy’s fall to her death that Magda – meaning Lucy, of course – had ever experienced. She even remembered Lucy talking about dying and then having tea in a garden in Heaven, with white cups and saucers with grapes drawn round the edge. Magda had woken up weeping worse than almost ever, even when she’d been frightened by that Damien rubbing his old thing round her front bottom and spilling his seed like in the Old Testament and scaring her to death until her month came round.

  ‘They are allowed, today. Get on, girl.’

  ‘Yes, Sister. Who will clean the sluice?’

  ‘You shall do it this afternoon. They will be in by then.’

  ‘Yes, Sister Francesca.’

  Magda went to make her peace with the other cleaners. Magda saw Sister Stephanie put the list of which inmates were to be taken out in the little yard where they could talk and daydream within sight of Mr Cronin’s flowers and them old yawning goldfish. Truth to tell, the blooms weren’t up to much, but he’d worked in a nursery garden in England so knew a thing or two about blossoms. He was always on about vegetables. Hear him talk, they were all mankind should eat.

  ‘That poor priest,’ Mrs O’Hare was saying when she arrived to put her mops in the queue for the sluice sink.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘He was taken bad in that old ambulance on the way to the hospital. Sister Stephanie was phoned as I came.’

  ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘Don’t take on so, Magda.’ Mrs O’Hare could be kind sometimes, for all her bad mouthing. ‘He’s in the very best hands.’

  ‘No use crying over a priest. They’re halfway to Heaven anyway.’

  ‘Amen.’

  The cleaning women chattered, and Magda explained about the oldies being wheeled out early today into the yard. They already knew, and were critical. It would disrupt the whole rota. It was unfair. Magda said she’d been told plain as day what to do, and did what work she could until somebody said it was half-nine.

  They put Mr Gorragher out first because he said it was his turn, otherwise that Mrs Borru, who could g
o today in a wheelchair, would take the corner spot where the sunshine started its climb – like there might actually be some in gloomy old Dublin, Short-Change City. Only one day in the week there hadn’t been rain.

  Mrs Borru, of course, created and said she would complain to Sister Stephanie, but Magda was taking no grumbling today. She had suffered the previous night. It was all right for all these old folks, who had nothing to do but sleep all day and all the night too if they’d a mind.

  She returned for Ted, who was surprised to be included, or so he told Magda, because he had never been part of the team talkers. And then Mrs Duffanan, who arrived complaining the air in the city was terrible.

  ‘I’m more used to Temple Lane South,’ she was already whimpering. ‘Down along Wellington Quay was never this cold. We was a better breed of person there. We knew how things should be. Now it’s all these supermarkets.’

  ‘Daft auld bat,’ Mrs Borru said, comfortably ensconced in her wheelchair with the lock on so she didn’t rock about. ‘You wus nivver down Wellington Quay except for the wrong reasons.’

  ‘Here we go,’ Mrs Duffanan said, happy now the rows had started as Mr Cronin and Magda positioned her recliner. ‘Jealousy. That’s what’s made us worse than we are.’

  ‘How d’you reckon that?’ Ted asked.

  ‘It’s made us worse.’

  ‘You can’t be worse than you are. Stands to reason.’

  ‘Jealous of what?’ demanded Mrs Borru, stung.

  ‘Jealousy’s made Eire a bad lot.’

  ‘Jealous of what?’

  ‘Everything else.’

  ‘How d’you reckon that?’ Ted asked a second time, wondering how women kept things straight in their heads. ‘I knew a sniper once who did everything by order, but they were orders he gave himself, not from officers or sergeants, no. He was the best marksman ever trod land.’