The Wonder

by Emma Donoghue

“I can tell you nothing, Mrs. Wright. I have only questions. For the past four months I’ve been burning with curiosity, as I’m sure you are now.”

  No, what Lib burnt with was a desire to end this interview and get the man out of her room. “Doctor, science tells us that to live without food is impossible.”

  “But haven’t most new discoveries in the history of civilization seemed uncanny at first, almost magical?” His voice shook a little with excitement. “From Archimedes to Newton, all the greats have achieved their breakthroughs by examining the evidence of their senses without prejudice. So all I ask is for you to keep an open mind when you meet Anna O’Donnell tomorrow.”

  Lib lowered her eyes, mortified for McBrearty. How could a physician let himself be snared in a little girl’s game and fancy himself among the greats as a consequence? “May I ask, is the child under your sole care?” She phrased it politely, but what she meant was, had no better authority been called in?

  “She is,” said McBrearty reassuringly. “In fact, it was I who took a notion to work up an account of the case and send it to the Irish Times.”

  Lib had never heard of it. “A national paper?”

  “Mm, the most lately established one, so I hoped its proprietors might be somewhat less blinded by sectarian prejudice,” he added, wistful. “More open to the new and the extraordinary, wherever it may arise. I thought to share the facts with a broader public, don’t you know, in the hope that someone could explain them.”

  “And has anyone done so?”

  A stifled sigh. “There’ve been several fervent letters proclaiming Anna’s case to be an out-and-out miracle. Also a few intriguing suggestions that she might be drawing on some as-yet-undiscovered nutritive qualities of, say, magnetism, or scent.”

  Scent? Lib sucked in her cheeks so as not to smile.

  “One bold correspondent proposed that she might be converting sunlight into energy, as vegetation does. Or living on air, even, as certain plants do,” he added, his wrinkled face brightening. “Remember that crew of shipwrecked sailors said to have subsisted for several months on tobacco?”

  Lib looked down so he wouldn’t read the scorn in her eyes.

  McBrearty found his thread again. “But the vast majority of the replies have consisted of personal abuse.”

  “Of the child?”

  “The child, the family, and myself. Comments not just in the Irish Times but in various British publications that seem to have taken up the case for the sole purpose of satire.”

  Lib saw it now. She’d travelled a long way to hire herself out as a nursemaid-cum-gaoler, all because of a provincial doctor’s injured pride. Why hadn’t she pressed Matron for more details before she accepted the job?

  “Most correspondents presume that the O’Donnells are cheats, conspiring to feed their daughter secretly and make fools of the world.” McBrearty’s voice was shrill. “The name of our village has become a byword for credulous backwardness. Several of the important men hereabouts feel that the honour of the county—possibly of the whole Irish nation—is at stake.”

  Had the doctor’s gullibility spread like a fever among these important men?

  “So a committee’s been formed and a decision taken to mount a watch.”

  Ah, then it wasn’t the O’Donnells who’d sent for Lib at all. “With a view to proving that the child subsists by some extraordinary means?” She tried to keep even a hint of the sardonic out of her voice.

  “No, no,” McBrearty assured her, “simply to bring the truth to light, whatever the truth may be. Two scrupulous attendants will stay by Anna turn and turnabout, night and day, for a fortnight.”

  So it wasn’t Lib’s experience of surgical or infectious cases that was called for here, only the rigour of her training. Clearly the committee hoped, by importing one of the scrupulous new breed of nurses, to give some credence to the O’Donnells’ mad story. To make this primitive backwater a wonder to the world. Anger throbbed in Lib’s jaw.

  Fellow feeling, too, for the other woman lured into this morass. “The second nurse, I don’t suppose I know her?”

  The doctor frowned. “Didn’t you make Sister Michael’s acquaintance at supper?”

  The almost speechless nun; Lib should have guessed. Strange how they took the names of male saints, as if giving up womanhood itself. But why hadn’t the nun introduced herself properly? Was that what that deep bow had been supposed to signify—that she and the Englishwoman were in this mess together? “Was she trained in the Crimea too?”

  “No, no, I’ve just had her sent up from the House of Mercy in Tullamore,” said McBrearty.

  One of the walking nuns. Lib had served alongside others of that order in Scutari. They were reliable workers, at least, she told herself.

  “The parents requested that at least one of you be of their own, ah…”

  So the O’Donnells had asked for a Roman Catholic. “Denomination.”

  “And nationality,” he added, as if to soften it.

  “I’m quite aware that there’s no love for the English in this country,” said Lib, summoning a tight smile.

  McBrearty demurred: “You put it too strongly.”

  What about the faces that had turned towards the jaunting car as Lib was driven down the village street? But those men had spoken about her because she was expected, she realized now. She wasn’t just any Englishwoman; she was the one being shipped in to watch over their squire’s pet.

  “Sister Michael will provide a certain sense of familiarity for the child, that’s all,” said McBrearty.

  The very idea that familiarity was a necessary or even helpful qualification for a watcher! But for the other nurse, he’d picked one of Miss N.’s own famous brigade, she thought, to make this watch look sufficiently scrupulous, especially in the eyes of the British press.

  Lib thought of saying, in a very cool voice, Doctor, I see that I’ve been brought here in hopes that my association with a very great lady might cast a veneer of respectability over an outrageous fraud. I’ll have no part in it. If she set off in the morning, she could be back at the hospital in two days.

  The prospect filled her with gloom. She imagined herself trying to explain that the Irish job had proved objectionable on moral grounds. How Matron would snort.

  So Lib suppressed her feelings, for now, and concentrated on the practicalities. Simply to observe, McBrearty had said. “If at any point our charge were to express the slightest wish, even in veiled terms, for something to eat—” she began.

  “Then bring it to her.” The doctor sounded shocked. “We’re not in the business of starving children.”

  She nodded. “We nurses are to report to you, then, in two weeks?”

  He shook his head. “As Anna’s physician—and having been dragged into this unpleasantness in the papers—I could be considered an interested party. So it’s to the assembled committee that you’re to testify on oath.”

  Lib looked forward to it.

  “Yourself and Sister Michael separately,” he added, holding up one knobby finger, “without any conferring. We wish to hear to what view each of you comes, quite independently of the other.”

  “Very good. May I ask, why is this watch not being conducted in the local hospital?” Unless there was none in this all too dead centre of the island.

  “Oh, the O’Donnells balked at the very idea of their little one being taken off to the county infirmary.”

  That clinched it for Lib; the squire and his lady wanted to keep their daughter at home so they could carry on slipping food to her. It wouldn’t take two weeks of supervision to catch them out.

  She chose her words tactfully because the doctor was clearly fond of the young faker. “If, before the fortnight’s up, I were to find evidence indicating that Anna has taken nourishment covertly—should I make my report to the committee straightaway?”

  His whiskery cheeks crumpled. “I suppose, in that case, it would be a waste of everyone’s time and money to carry on any l
onger.”

  Lib could be on the ship back to England in a matter of days, then, but with this eccentric episode closed to her satisfaction.

  What’s more, if newspapers across the kingdom were to give Nurse Elizabeth Wright the credit for exposing the hoax, the whole staff of the hospital would have to sit up and take notice. Who’d call her uppish then? Perhaps better things might come of it; a position more suited to Lib’s talents, more interesting. A less narrow life.

  Her hand shot up to cover a sudden yawn.

  “I’d better leave you now,” said McBrearty. “It must be almost ten.”

  Lib pulled the chain at her waist and turned her watch up. “I make it ten eighteen.”

  “Ah, we’re twenty-five minutes behind here. You’re still on English time.”

  Lib slept well, considering.

  The sun came up just before six. By then she was in her uniform from the hospital: grey tweed dress, worsted jacket, white cap. (At least it fit. One of the many indignities of Scutari had been the standard-issue costume; short nurses had waded around in theirs, whereas Lib had looked like some pauper grown out of her sleeves.)

  She breakfasted alone in the room behind the grocery. The eggs were fresh, yolks sun yellow.

  Ryan’s girl—Mary? Meg?—wore the same stained apron as the evening before. When she came back to clear away, she said Mr. Thaddeus was waiting. She was out of the room again before Lib could tell her she knew no one by that name.

  Lib stepped into the shop. “You wished to speak to me?” she asked the man standing there. She wasn’t quite sure whether to add sir.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Wright, I hope you slept well.” This Mr. Thaddeus was more well-spoken than she’d have expected from his faded coat. A pink, not quite youthful snub-nosed face; a shock of black hair sprang out as he lifted his hat. “I’m to bring you over to the O’Donnells’ now, if you’re ready.”

  “Quite ready.”

  But he must have heard the query in her voice, because he added, “The good doctor thought maybe a trusted friend of the family should make the introductions.”

  Lib was confused. “I had the impression Dr. McBrearty was such a friend.”

  “That he is,” said Mr. Thaddeus, “but I suppose the O’Donnells repose a special confidence in their priest.”

  A priest? This man was in mufti. “I beg your pardon. Should it be Father Thaddeus?”

  A shrug. “Well, that’s the new style, but we don’t bother our heads much about it in these parts.”

  It was hard to imagine this amiable fellow as the confessor of the village, the holder of secrets. “You don’t wear a clerical collar, or—” Lib gestured at his chest, not knowing the name of the buttoned black robe.

  “I’ve all the gear in my trunk for holy days, of course,” said Mr. Thaddeus with a smile.

  The girl hurried back in, wiping her hands. “There’s your tobacco now,” she told him, twisting the ends of a paper package and sliding it over the counter.

  “Bless you, Maggie, and a box of matches too. Right, so, Sister?”

  He was looking past Lib. She spun around and found the nun hovering; when had she crept in?

  Sister Michael nodded at the priest and then at Lib with a twitch of the lips that could have been meant for a smile. Crippled by shyness, Lib supposed.

  Why couldn’t McBrearty have sent for two Nightingales while he was at it? It occurred to Lib now that perhaps none of the fifty-odd others—lay or religious—had been available at such short notice. Was Lib the only Crimean nurse who’d failed to find her niche half a decade on? The only one sufficiently at loose ends to take the poisoned bait of this job?

  The three of them turned left down the street through a watery sunlight. Ill at ease between the priest and the nun, Lib gripped her leather bag.

  Buildings turned different ways, giving one another the cold shoulder. An old woman in a window at a table stacked with baskets—a huckster peddling produce of some sort out of her front room? There was none of the Monday-morning bustle Lib would have expected in England. They passed one man laden with a sack who exchanged blessings with Mr. Thaddeus and Sister Michael.

  “Mrs. Wright worked with Miss Nightingale,” the priest remarked in the nun’s direction.

  “So I heard.” After a moment Sister Michael said to Lib, “You must have a power of experience with surgical cases.”

  Lib nodded as modestly as she could. “We also dealt with a great deal of cholera, dysentery, malaria. Frostbite in the winter, of course.” In fact the English nurses had spent much of their time stuffing mattresses, stirring gruel, and standing at washtubs, but Lib didn’t want the nun to mistake her for an ignorant menial. That was what nobody understood: saving lives often came down to getting a latrine pipe unplugged.

  No sign of a market square or green, as any English village would have possessed. The garish white chapel was the only new-looking building. Mr. Thaddeus cut right just before it, taking a muddy lane that led around a graveyard. The mossy, skewed tombstones seemed to have been planted not in rows but at random. “Is the O’Donnells’ house outside the village?” Lib asked, curious as to why the family hadn’t been courteous enough to send a driver, let alone put the nurses up themselves.

  “A little way,” said the nun in her whispery voice.

  “Malachy keeps shorthorns,” added the priest.

  There was more power to this weak sun than Lib would have thought; she was perspiring under her cloak. “How many children have they at home?”

  “Just the girl now, since Pat’s gone over, God bless him,” said Mr. Thaddeus.

  Gone where? America seemed most likely to Lib, or Britain, or the Colonies. Ireland, an improvident mother, seemed to ship half her skinny brood abroad. Two children only for the O’Donnells, then; that seemed a paltry total to Lib.

  They passed a shabby cabin with a smoking chimney. A path slanted off the lane towards another cottage. Lib’s eyes scanned the bogland ahead for any sign of the O’Donnells’ estate. Was she allowed to ask the priest for more than plain facts? Each of the nurses had been hired to form her own impressions. But then it struck Lib that this walk might be the only chance she’d get to talk to this trusted friend of the family. “Mr. Thaddeus, if I may—can you attest to the honesty of the O’Donnells?”

  A moment went by. “Sure I’ve no reason to doubt it.”

  Lib had never had a conversation with a Roman Catholic priest before and couldn’t read this one’s politic tone.

  The nun’s eyes stayed on the green horizon.

  “Malachy’s a man of few words,” Mr. Thaddeus went on. “A teetotaler.”

  That surprised Lib.

  “Not a drop since he took the Pledge, before the children were born. His wife’s a leading light of the parish, very active in the Sodality of Our Lady.”

  These details meant little to Lib, but she got the drift. “And Anna O’Donnell?”

  “A wonderful little girl.”

  In what sense? Virtuous? Or exceptional? Clearly the chit had them all charmed. Lib looked hard at the priest’s curved profile. “Have you ever advised her to refuse nourishment, perhaps as some sort of spiritual exercise?”

  His hands spread in protest. “Mrs. Wright. I don’t think you’re of our faith?”

  Picking her words, Lib said, “I was baptized in the Church of England.”

  The nun seemed to be watching a passing crow. Avoiding contamination by staying out of the conversation?

  “Well,” said Mr. Thaddeus, “let me assure you that Catholics are required to do without food for only a matter of hours, for instance from midnight to the taking of Holy Communion the following morning. We also abstain from meat on Wednesdays and Fridays and during Lent. Moderate fasting mortifies the cravings of the body, you see,” he added as easily as if he were speaking of the weather.

  “Meaning the appetite for food?”

  “Among others.”

  Lib moved her eyes to the muddy ground in fr
ont of her boots.

  “We also express sorrow over the agonies of Our Lord by sharing them even a little,” he continued, “so fasting can be a useful penance.”

  “Meaning that if one punishes oneself, one’s sins will be forgiven?” asked Lib.

  “Or those of others,” said the nun under her breath.

  “Just as Sister says,” the priest answered, “if we offer up our suffering in a generous spirit to be set to another’s account.”

  Lib pictured a gigantic ledger filled with inky debits and credits.

  “But the key is, fasting is never to be carried to an extreme or to the point of harming the health.”

  Hard to spear this slippery fish. “Then why do you think Anna O’Donnell has gone against the rules of her own church?”

  The priest’s broad shoulders heaved into a shrug. “Many’s the time I’ve reasoned with her over the past months, pleaded with her to take a bite of something. But she’s deaf to all persuasion.”

  What was it about this spoiled miss that she’d managed to enrol all the grown-ups around her in this charade?

  “Here we are,” murmured Sister Michael, gesturing towards the end of a faint track.

  This couldn’t be their destination, surely? The cabin was in need of a fresh coat of whitewash; pitched thatch brooded over three small squares of glass. At the far end, a cow byre stooped under the same roof.

  Lib saw all at once the foolishness of her assumptions. If the committee had hired the nurses, then Malachy O’Donnell was not necessarily prosperous. It seemed that all that marked the family out from the other peasants scratching a living around here was their claim that their little girl could live on air.

  She stared at the O’Donnells’ low roofline. If Dr. McBrearty hadn’t been so rash as to write to the Irish Times, she saw now, word would never have spread beyond these sodden fields. How many important friends of his were investing their hard cash, as well as their names, in this bizarre enterprise? Were they betting that after the fortnight, both nurses would obediently swear to the miracle and make this puny hamlet a marvel of Christendom? Did they think to buy the endorsement, the combined reputability, of a Sister of Mercy and a Nightingale?