The Women of Primrose Square

by Claudia Carroll

  Violet may have been shocked and frightened, but it would take more than a hatchet-faced nun in a wimple to crush her spirit.

  ‘No, I do not understand,’ she answered crisply. ‘I don’t know where I am or why I’ve been brought here. I need a cup of tea and the ladies’ powder room. Then, if you won’t take me back home with you, Monsignor, you’ll have to leave me at the nearest train station or else a hotel for the night—’

  A series of hard, sharp slaps across her face from Sister Helga immediately silenced her.

  ‘From now on, your name is Mary,’ she said icily. ‘And I have a feeling this won’t be the first time you’ll need to be subordinated in the strongest way possible. We’ll beat that snobbery and haughtiness out of you if it’s the last thing we do, Mary Magdalene.’

  *

  Prison can’t be this bad, Violet thought, as another younger nun led her down an interminable length of corridor after corridor, then up four flights of stairs and on into what appeared to be a dormitory filled with at least a dozen other girls, who all looked blankly back at Violet as she was led inside.

  ‘Give me your clothes,’ the nun barked, thrusting a horrific-looking blue serge uniform at her, made from the roughest fabric Violet had ever seen.

  ‘Prayers are at five a.m., and after that, you’ll work in the laundry for the rest of the day. Get a good sleep now because tomorrow, you’ll be working hard; you’ll fast and pray and you’ll offer it all up to God as penance for your sins.’

  ‘You mean I’m expected to share this room?’ Violet asked, looking aghast as a dozen pairs of eyes watched her closely. ‘But it’s so cold! And there’s only one blanket on the bed. You can’t possibly expect me to sleep here.’

  ‘None of your nonsense now, Mary,’ the nun said, before swishing off and locking the heavy door behind her.

  Then there was a chorus of titters from the other girls as soon as the door was banged shut.

  Violet started to get upset now. Why the hell had her father sent her here? So none of his fancy Dublin businessmen friends would see her pregnant? There’s no way he’d have done something like that, had he known what a nightmare this place was. This was no better than a prison.

  Tomorrow, she thought, rubbing her face where it stung from the walloping Sister Helga had given her. I’ll find a telephone and throw myself at his mercy. I’ll do anything and go anywhere else Father sends me, if it’ll just get me out of here.

  For tonight she may have been stuck there, but tomorrow she’d break out, if needs be. Sharing a freezing cold dormitory with twelve strangers all watching her undress? Not on her life. Before this, whenever Violet had been away from her own beautiful bedroom at Primrose Square – apart from those few fateful nights in London – she’d always stayed in the finest hotels. But this place was certainly no hotel.

  ‘So what’s your real name, Mary?’ one of the girls asked her in no accent Violet recognised. This girl was about her own age and sported a black eye and a garish-looking laceration right down her face.

  ‘I am Miss Violet Hardcastle,’ she replied, her face still stinging like it was on fire ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Concepta.’

  ‘In that case, Concepta,’ she said, ‘can you please direct me to the ladies’ powder room? And I haven’t eaten. Where can I go to get a cup of tea, please?’

  Guffaws from around the room, loud and raucous.

  ‘Listen to Lady Muck, would you?’

  ‘The powder room? Go on up and ask Sister Helga for the powder room, I dare you!’

  Then a low growl from a bed just opposite Violet’s.

  ‘We’re going to have a bit of fun with Lady Muck here,’ a girl with acne on her face and a shaved head said. She must have been the dorm alpha, because the minute she spoke, the others went silent.

  Violet got into the rough, scratchy uniform, climbed into bed and realised that she was feeling real fear now, like an ice-cold clutch on her heart. Something she’d never felt before, not once, not in the whole course of her life.

  Emily

  On her second morning at work, and with a spring in her step, Emily bounced away from Primrose Square and strode towards Flynn’s department store on George’s Street.

  She’d good reason to be in top form; finally, finally, finally things really seemed to be turning a corner for her. She’d had a fantastic evening with Frank – or rather Francesca – the previous night and had spilled out all her plans for the Ambrosia Independent Living and the special surprise she was plotting for her mother and her friends.

  It was a huge undertaking and she needed all the help she could get.

  ‘It sounds fantastic,’ Francesca had said, as she served up a sweet and salty caramel trifle she’d bought for dessert. ‘And you know I’ll help you out in any way I can. I’ll rope in my daughter Amber too – she loves a good party.’

  ‘Supposing we go to all this trouble,’ Emily said a bit worriedly, ‘and Mum hates what I’m doing?’

  ‘And supposing you do nothing?’ she replied calmly. ‘Then you’ll never know, will you? This way, at least your mother will see all the time and trouble you’re going to, to give them a wonderful treat, won’t she? Who wouldn’t be proud of that?’

  You haven’t met my mother, Emily thought to herself, although she said nothing out loud. It wasn’t that kind of night. She and Francesca were having too much fun chatting and plotting and planning late into the night.

  Mind you, it was a bit strange that Violet hadn’t joined them, Emily thought the next day, as she weaved her way through all the early morning commuters. She would have enjoyed all the chats and the laughs they were having. Of course, she would probably have bossed Emily around and insisted Francesca use the correct china for dinner, but in spite of that, she might actually have had a good night.

  Was she feeling all right, Emily wondered? She knew Francesca was being extra mindful of her too, because she’d insisted on leaving a tray of cold meats for her outside her bedroom door, ‘just in case she gets hungry in the night’.

  Then, just as Emily was passing a newsagent, she saw a glossy magazine with Meghan Markle’s beautiful, glowing face on the cover. Sod it, she thought. I’ll buy her the shagging magazine. Anything to have the old curmudgeon back to normal, and giving out to me once again.

  That wasn’t the only bit of shopping Emily did. With Alec and his new little baby at the forefront of her mind, she nipped into the kid’s department at Flynn’s Stores and bought a few dotey little Babygros – fluffy blue for a boy – thinking she’d post them to Alec and his new partner, now that they were at peace with each other again.

  It was early evening when she got back to Primrose Square, so she left her shopping on the kitchen table, then zipped straight back out again to meet Susan across the square for a hot yoga class that they’d both been threatening to go to for the longest time.

  The house was quiet when Emily finally got home – almost 10 p.m. There was no sign of Francesca either, but she remembered her saying something about working late that night and not to wait up for her.

  ‘Violet?’ she called from the darkness of the hallway. ‘You still awake? I’ve got a surprise for you – come and get it! I’ll give you a hint: it’s not unconnected with Meghan Markle.’

  Silence, though, nothing but stone-cold silence and the sound of the grandfather clock ticking away in the hallway. Slowly, Emily came downstairs to the kitchen, switching on lights as she went and wondering where in hell Violet had gone to. She couldn’t have gone out – the woman never went anywhere. And she was hardly still upstairs in her bedroom, holed away from the world yet again, was she?

  Turning on the light in the kitchen, though, there was a sight that made her blood run cold. The Babygros that Emily had bought earlier were still on the kitchen table, but this time they’d all been ripped and shredded into a hundred pieces, scattered everywhere in a big blue cotton puffy ball of mush.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. Sitti
ng at the top of the table, bent double and sobbing silent tears, was Violet, fingering the shredded Babygros and looking for all the world like her heart would shatter in two.

  Violet

  Bells. This place was dominated by the sound of bells ringing. When the bells rang at 5 a.m. punctually each morning, that meant you got up out of bed, got dressed, then went straight downstairs to the freezing cold chapel for morning matins.

  ‘But where am I supposed to wash?’ Violet asked in vain, to sniggers around the dormitory and a dig in the ribs from the alpha female, who all the others seemed to kowtow to and who everyone referred to as Moluag. A suitably ugly name, Violet thought bitterly, for such an ugly person.

  They were made to dress in that horrific starchy blue uniform, then after prayers, they were all marched down to the refectory for breakfast. Food, Violet thought ravenously. Well, at least that was something. She’d eaten nothing the previous day and was starving. Besides, she had a busy day ahead; she planned on getting to a telephone so she could reach her father and explain to him that there had been some horrific kind of mistake. She’d howl, she’d cry, she’d crawl on her hands and knees to apologise to him, if he’d only just arrange to have her collected as quickly as possible.

  Breakfast, however, turned out to be nothing of the sort. A tiny glass of milk and a piece of stale bread – that was it?

  ‘But I’m still hungry!’ Violet whispered to Concepta, who was beside her. But you weren’t supposed to speak at meals, so even her hushed whisper carried down the long hall, and a moment later, that terrifying Sister Helga was beside her, brandishing a wooden cane.

  ‘You again, Mary?’ she said, glowering down at Violet. ‘I might have known you’d be trouble. Do you all hear that, girls?’ she said loudly to the room. ‘Little princess here seems to have been expecting a meal from the Royal Hibernian Hotel.’

  Suppressed titters from around the room, but Violet held her head high.

  ‘Do you know what we do here with filthy sinners like you,’ Sister Helga demanded, ‘who are riddled with arrogance and pride?’

  The room fell silent at that and Violet knew something very, very bad was about to happen. Then the crack of a loud clatter, as Sister Helga walloped the cane sharply across Violet’s back. She cried out in shock and pain, and the more she cried, the more the blows kept raining down on her, till she could feel the blood seeping through her thin blue uniform and she could take no more.

  ‘And that’s not the only punishment we keep for sinners like you,’ Sister Helga said coldly. ‘Stand up at the top of the room beside the head table and read passages from the Bible aloud to us. Every single day for the rest of the month, until I decide that you’ve done enough to purge the pride out of you.’

  Violet could barely stand, let alone walk, but somehow she got to her feet and managed to stand shakily where she was told and read aloud from the Book of Psalms.

  That particular punishment lasted for the best part of two months, by which time Violet had learned to keep her mouth shut. Worst of all though, was having to read aloud when she was weak with hunger, forced to watch the nuns feasting on scrambled eggs and proper toast, as her own stomach rumbled.

  To her absolute horror, her waistline had begun to thicken by then, and in the mornings, she was particularly nauseous. The sickness was worse than anything; Violet had never been ill a single day in her whole life and now she could barely stand without needing to throw up. As the weeks wore on, the stench of the greasy fry-up as the nuns gorged themselves was more than she could take.

  But even that was nothing compared with the backbreaking work the girls were made to do to fill in the long days. They were sent to a laundry in the basement of the convent, and were forced to wash, scrub, launder, hang out, dry and iron sheets and shirts, some of them covered in the most unimaginable human filth.

  Throughout her first few weeks there, Violet thought she’d die from exhaustion, and plenty of times she actually did pray for death as a form of release. The work was gruelling and some of the girls were in advanced stages of very visible pregnancies. Surely they shouldn’t have been working like dogs every hour that God sent? Violet had never done any kind of manual labour before in the whole course of her life and said so loudly on her first day.

  ‘But at home I have a housemaid who does all our laundry for us!’ she said. ‘You can’t expect me to work like this. Ladies don’t work inside a laundry room!’

  That particular beating was so bad, her face swelled out like a balloon and she was fairly certain that the nun in charge of the laundry had broken a few ribs. Yet again, that night Violet was made to stand starving by the nun’s dining table in the convent refectory and read aloud to them, as the blood dripped from her swollen eye down onto the page below. Most tortuous of all, she could smell the roast chicken and gravy the nuns were gorging themselves on, just a few feet away from her.

  That night, as Violet eased her aching, battered body into bed, Concepta slipped up beside her and, unseen, slipped an orange into Violet’s pocket. The kindness was something that stabbed at Violet’s heart and made her cry worse than any beating any nun could give her.

  At night, after lights out, the taunting would start, generally led by Moluag and her cohorts.

  ‘Oh, at home we’ve got a housemaid who does all our manual labour for us!’ Moluag would say, doing a high-pitched, crude impression of Violet’s well-spoken accent.

  ‘I’m so hungry, can’t you drive me to a hotel nearby for dinner?’ another would chip in.

  ‘My uniform is scratching at my skin; can’t you take me shopping for nice new clothes?’

  ‘And my hands are all red from washing laundry! You can always tell a lady by her hands and mine are ruined!’

  ‘And my favourite of all?’ Moluag sneered. ‘This is all a horrible mistake! My father will be here to collect me any day now!’

  At that, Violet snapped. Unable to take any more, she leaped on Moluag and walloped her hard across her face. But the beating she was given in return was far more savage than anything any nun inflicted on her. The whole dorm seemed to join in, viciously punching Violet time and again till she howled out in pain, begging them to stop, afraid for her baby, even though this pregnancy had been the ruination of her.

  Two things happened after that savage attack. She never picked a fight with Moluag again and she earned herself the nickname Violent.

  ‘Violent Violet, Violent Violet, VIOLENT VIOLET.’

  Night after night, the taunts would grow louder and louder, and Violet would turn into her pillow on that stiff, freezing cold bed with just a single blanket to cover her face, so she could really let the tears flow.

  *

  ‘Hey, hey, hey, come on, missus,’ Emily said now, cradling Violet’s frail, bony shoulders in her arms and handing her a lump of kitchen roll to mop her eyes as best she could. ‘What’s all this, then? What’s brought this on?’

  But Violet couldn’t answer, she was still too choked up with tears and with the depth of her own pain.

  ‘Is it your father?’ Emily asked, as her eyes fell on the old black and white photo of him that dominated the kitchen sideboard. ‘Some kind of anniversary, maybe?’

  ‘No,’ Violet wept – big, gulping, uncontrollable sobs. ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘What?’ Emily persisted gently. ‘What don’t I understand?’

  ‘I’m not crying for my father at all,’ Violet said, wiping her nose in the lump of kitchen roll Emily handed her. ‘I’m crying for my little boy.’

  Gracie

  Gracie felt very guilty when she thought back to how crassly she’d written off Beth Taylor and her therapy sessions as a load of useless twaddle. Boy, she really had cause to eat her words now.

  Because Beth was actually proving herself to be invaluable.

  ‘Frank and I have finally spoken to Amber – together,’ Gracie told her, during a one-on-one appointment she’d requested at the last minute. ‘Mainly because�
��. . . well, it just seemed like the right thing to do on the day in question. You know, natural and unforced.’

  ‘And how did she take it?’ Beth asked.

  ‘Amber was . . . oh, she was amazing,’ Gracie said, unable to stop herself from smiling. ‘She knew things hadn’t been quite right between Frank and I for some time, of course . . .’

  She broke off there, remembering back to the previous Saturday, when they’d all gone zip lining. How serious Amber’s face had been at first when both parents had sat her down and said: ‘There’s something we’d really like to talk to you about, pet.’

  ‘Are you and Dad getting a divorce?’ was her first question.

  ‘Nothing like that at all,’ Frank rushed to reassure her. ‘It’s just that . . . well . . .’

  ‘It’s just what?’ Amber had said, abandoning the dregs of a 99 ice cream and looking from her mother to her father, not having a clue what was coming next. ‘Is it something even worse? Because you look so worried, Dad. Are you sick? Is that it? Are you sick and do you have to go into hospital? Do you have cancer, like Mrs Dolan on the square, who had to take medicine that made all her hair fall out?’

  ‘Oh n-no, love,’ Frank stammered, fiddling with his glasses. ‘I promise you, I’m as healthy as a horse.’

  ‘Here’s the thing, honey,’ Gracie said, picking up the reins, seeing as, for the life of him, Frank couldn’t manage to find the right words. Her years of summing up in court helped her, as she knew of old the best and clearest way to communicate anything important was to be short, concise and to the point.

  ‘How would you feel, Amber,’ she asked calmly, ‘if Dad was to make some changes to himself from now on?’

  ‘Oh, I already know about this,’ Amber said brightly. ‘Me and Ben talked about it for ages. You mean, like . . . Dad’s going to wear the kind of outfits you and me wear? Like girls’ clothes?’

  Frank nodded. ‘Yes pet, that’s the idea.’