The Devil and Mary Ann

by Catherine Cookson

  Now she had the attention of them both.

  ‘Height?’ said Lola. ‘But you should be down in zee Lower School. Thees is Middle School, nine to thirteen.’

  ‘But I’ll soon be nine—in August.’

  They did not remark on this, but turning in the opposite direction from the main staircase they joined a mass of girls hurrying, but not running now, towards a narrower stairway at the end of the gallery.

  Mary Ann could see nothing but gymslips and white blouses until, reaching level ground again, she had her first glimpse of the dining hall. Tables jutted out from the walls all round a great room, except for a space at the bottom end, which was taken up by a long table running lengthwise. Still attached to Lola, she was guided to a table some way down the room and pushed into a seat. And there before her was a plate holding three slices of bread and butter, a square of cake and a dob of jam, and, leaning against it, a card which bore the words ‘Mary Ann Shaughnessy’.

  She was staring at the card when all shuffling was suddenly cut off. So quick did the silence fall, that she turned round to see the cause, and just as she glimpsed it her head was brought to the front again by a shove from Lola. But by straining her eyes sideways she could see, filing through a side door and into the centre of the hall down towards the long table, a stream of nuns. She thought of them as a stream: she counted ten black-robed figures with white collars, and following these ten more in unrelieved black, and then, slightly behind, a small figure, so small that Mary Ann had the funny impression that the clothes were walking by themselves. She watched fascinated as they all filed into their seats, and towards the seat in the exact centre, facing the room, went the little black-encased figure.

  ‘Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts which we receive through Thy bounty. Through Jesus Christ, Our Lord. Amen.’

  ‘Amen.’

  The echo by the school to the Reverend Mother’s voice seemed to be the signal for activity. Six of the white-collared Sisters left the table, and going, one after the other, to a lift in the wall, reached into the depths and brought out great enamel teapots and proceeded to supply the tables.

  The grace that had just been said was at this moment giving Mary Ann a faint trace of comfort, for was it not the very same grace that she and their Michael said every day? After all, apart from its bigness, this school might be just like the one at Jarrow. That the grace was the only thing in common that the convent had with her late school was mercifully withheld from her.

  ‘Eat your tea.’ A Sister was standing over her.

  She looked up. ‘I’m not hungry, Sister.’

  ‘Nevertheless, eat your tea.’ The voice was low, thickened with an Irish twang, and the tone brooked no discussion.

  Many of the plates about her were quickly emptied. Yet it was heartening to note that a number, like hers, still held a quantity of bread. So intriguing to her were the actions of the Sisters who were serving, and also the apparent immobility of all the black-robed figures at the top table, that when a little bell tinkled and the thin voice came again, saying the grace, the fifteen minutes the tea had taken seemed like one to her.

  In silence, the top table was vacated, but as soon as the last nun had disappeared through the side door the room became a hive of bustle, but, strangely, no chatter.

  As Mary Ann went to move from her place, the Sister who had told her to eat her tea appeared again, but with a smile splitting her face now, and dropping to her hunkers, which in itself was a surprise, as Mary Ann had always been in some indecision whether or not there really were real legs beneath the skirts of nuns, she took Mary Ann’s hands and said in a voice gurgling with laughter, ‘Mary Ann Shaughnessy. What a name! Are you from Ireland, child?’

  ‘No. No, Sister.’ Who, even with all the sadness of the world on their shoulders, could help but smile back into this round, beaming face?

  ‘No? But your father was?’

  ‘No. Well, yes…’ There had always been a doubt about this, but how could she say. ‘Me da was an orphan without any name and the name Shaughnessy was just given him. They took it from the porter who picked him up at the gate.’ She had never said, even to herself, ‘Workhouse gate.’

  ‘Ah, ha! Now don’t try and tell me you’re Welsh or something with a name like Shaughnessy…Shaughnessy. Oh! What a lovely mouthful. And what a North Country voice it is.’ She patted Mary Ann’s cheek as she got to her feet. ‘Well, there, off you go…Oh, you’re with Lola? That’s grand; Lola’ll look after you.’

  The Sister patted Lola’s cheek now, and for the first time Lola really smiled, and Mary Ann thought, She’s nice, I like her, which could have meant, in this case, either or both of them.

  ‘I’ll take you to Mother St Francis.’

  ‘Will you?’ They were now in the Lower Hall. ‘What do they call that Sister?’

  ‘Sister Alvis.’

  ‘Oh.’ A question arose in Mary Ann’s mind. ‘Why do they call some Mother and some Sister?’ she asked.

  ‘The Mothers har mostly teachers, the Sisters do the work. They har the ones who wear the white collars.’

  ‘Oh…Is the Reverend Mother nice?’

  ‘She ees all right. You weel not see much of her. Come this way.’

  More corridors.

  ‘Will you wait for me? I’ll get lost comin’ back.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And will you show me what to do? I don’t want that Beatrice to show me.’

  ‘She wouldn’t, hin any case.’

  ‘But the Sister told her,’ Mary Ann’s eyes widened.

  ‘Sister Catherine is always telling her. She tries to punish her by geeving her duties, but it makes no deefference. You will see has time goes on.’

  ‘Are you from a foreign country?’

  ‘Yes.’ Lola now smiled down on her. ‘France and Germany.’

  ‘Two!’

  ‘Yes, my mother is French and my father German. But you, too, are from a foreign country.’

  ‘Me!’ Mary Ann stopped, slightly indignant. ‘Me! No, I’m not, I’m from England, Jarrow.’

  ‘Oh. Ha, ha!’ It was a small laugh and did not annoy Mary Ann in the least, nor did the insult to her beloved North which followed. ‘It is, nevertheless, odd how you talk—very guttural. Some people in France speak like thees. You will soon mend it here. I am only three terms, and I am mending mine very much.’

  Mary Ann didn’t know now whether she wanted her voice mended—mending it, she understood, would make it sound swanky. And yet, that’s what she was here for, that’s why Mr Lord has sent her.

  ‘Here is Mother St Francis.’

  They were approaching a nun. She had a round, fat face and, not to be disguised by her habit, a round, fat body. She looked about sixty, but appeared like a hundred to Mary Ann.

  ‘Mother, this is Mary Ann Shaughnessy. She ees to see Reverend Mother.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Hallo, my child.’

  ‘Hallo, Sister—Mother.’

  ‘You are small. You’re in Middle House, aren’t you? Yes—I remember. I’m the bursar, I look after your money.’ She laughed. ‘And your letters and everything—and everything. You see? Come along this way. From the Tyne, are you? I know the Tyne…Ah, yes, this way. You wait, Lola.’

  It was evident to Mary Ann that Mother St Francis didn’t need any answers, she gave them all to herself. She talked quickly as she waddled along.

  ‘Now when Reverend Mother asks you a question, you answer “Yes”, or “No, Reverend Mother”, you see? And don’t speak unless you are spoken to. You see? There now, here we are.’

  A tap on a door, to which a small voice replied, and they were inside the room. And there was the little woman, sitting behind a big desk. As Mary Ann was pressed nearer she could see less and less of her, until, standing right close up to the desk, there seemed only the head and shoulders left.

  ‘And you are Mary Ann?’

  ‘Yes, Sis—Reverend Mother.’

  ‘And you’ve come a lo
ng journey by yourself?’

  ‘Yes, Reverend Mother.’

  ‘And do you think you will like being here?’

  ‘No, Reverend Mother.’

  There, it had dropped out before she could stop it. And on its heels came a little gasp from herself and a loud one from somewhere behind her, but from across the table came a laugh, a little tinkling laugh that reminded her somehow of the bell that went just before you had Communion.

  ‘Come here.’

  She followed the beckoning finger and went round the side of the desk, and there two small, dry hands took hers.

  ‘Let me look at you.’

  The Reverend Mother looked at Mary Ann, and Mary Ann looked back at her, wondering that anybody so small could be in such a position of majesty—she didn’t, at close quarters, seem much bigger than herself.

  ‘Tell me, child, how is my brother?’

  Her brother? Mary Ann’s mouth fell open in perplexity, and then snapped quickly closed as she remembered that this person before her was Mr Lord’s sister. How this could be she didn’t rightly know for Mr Lord wasn’t a Catholic and he didn’t, she felt, like Catholics. She didn’t connect ‘turning’ with the woman before her—no-one could ‘turn’ into a Reverend Mother.

  ‘He’s all right.’

  ‘He’s well?’

  ‘He gets cold now and then, but that’s because he lives in that big old house and he’s only got Ben to see to him. When he comes to live at the farm, me ma…’

  ‘Ahem!’

  The sound was behind her again, and she finished lamely, ‘She’ll see he’s all right—Reverend Mother.’

  ‘He is very interested in you, my child.’

  She gave no answer to this, for didn’t she know it. Look where it had landed her. She was forgetting again where it had also landed her father and mother and Michael.

  ‘And he desires that you learn, and learn well. Are you going to do that?’

  ‘Yes—Reverend Mother.’

  ‘That’s a good child. Now go with Mother St Francis, and God bless you and make you happy here.’

  Her hands were released, she was turned about by her guide and the next minute she was in the corridor being handed over to Lola.

  ‘There you are then. There you are, that’s over. You see? Now, up to the dormitory. Get your necessary things put in your drawers, then bring all the rest down to the stores. Leave your cases empty. Away now, then come to me and bring your money to be looked after. Off you go.’

  Not until they had reached the corridor leading to the dormitory did Mary Ann speak, and then she asked, ‘Do you really get your money back?’

  ‘Yes, of course, when we go out on half-day, or to the beach.’

  Mary Ann was again silent—she didn’t want to part with her money, any of it. She was glad now that Mr Wilson had stuffed the notes in her locket. She touched her chest and felt a sense of comfort.

  Her hand was still flat on her chest when she entered the dormitory, but it was immediately doubled into a fist as Beatrice’s voice, which, at this moment, sounded strangely like her own, hit her, saying, ‘I’m from Jarr…aa…no, in the coun…tree. Pee…laa.’

  Beatrice was standing in the middle of the dormitory and causing a great deal of amusement with her imitation, but as Mary Ann slowly advanced towards her the laughter died away leaving a strained silence.

  By her own bed and within a yard of Beatrice, Mary Ann stopped. Her face screwed up to a button, she glared at Beatrice. She knew now who she reminded her of—it was Sarah Flannagan.

  Schools may be housed in elaborate country mansions with extensive grounds and terraces and playing fields; awe-inspiring nuns and Sisters might float through their richly-furnished interiors; rich men’s daughters could be packed in dozens in air-conditioned dormitories; yet what were these girls after all but exactly the same types that filled the schools in Jarrow and suchlike towns? The only difference was they talked swanky. This would have summed up Mary Ann’s thoughts had she been able to define them, but all she was aware of at the moment was the feeling that had ousted both loneliness and fear. It was a feeling that was not uncommon to her, and now it was telling her that this Beatrice was a cheeky thing, a cheeky beast—even a cheeky bitch!

  ‘Who you makin’ game of?’

  Was there anything awe-inspiring or electrifying in that question? It would undoubtedly seem so, for never before had anything happened in the school lives of the ten spectators to call for such expressions as were now very much apparent on their faces. This new girl had dared to cheek a prefect, and such a prefect. She must be mad. The mouths were agape and hanging, the eyes stretched wide and bulging. Had Sister Alvis been present she would have supposed that nothing short of the second Pentecost, which alone she was forever prophesying would be required to arouse them, had actually taken place. It is almost certain to say that to them something of equal importance had happened, for only a visitation by the Deity Himself could possibly have called forth the gasp that rose to the ceiling.

  ‘You’re a cheeky beast! And if you keep on I’ll write and tell me da about you, so I will!’

  The situation was quite beyond all recognised bounds. It was undoubtedly the first of such that had happened to Beatrice, and, as smart as she was, she could call up no move to counter it. All the unwritten rules on behaviour between prefects—although her real power would not begin until six forty-five a.m. tomorrow morning—and the crawling subservient sycophants known as pupils had been swept away by this—this…The word ‘common’ leapt to Beatrice’s rescue, and using it in a way that would turn defeat into victory, she lifted her nose as if detecting a violent smell, slowly raised her head on high, and turning away gave her authoritative sentence to the audience: ‘Common individual!’

  The spring Mary Ann was about to make was abruptly checked by Lola’s hand, and so painful was the grip on her arm that sanity returned to her, and with it deflation. Shrugging off the guiding hand of Lola she went to her bedside and, kneeling down with a thud beside her cases, she turned the key in the lock of the largest one and lifted up the lid. Then sitting back on her heels, she gazed through misted eyes at the neatly folded clothes her mother had packed away only yesterday, and, her head drooping lower to hide her raining tears, she cried silently, ‘Oh, Ma, Ma, I want to come home! Oh, Ma!’

  Chapter Five

  Was it seven days or seven years or seven lifetimes that Mary Ann had been in the Convent of the Holy Child of Bethlehem? If you had asked her she would have pondered, refusing to believe that all the many different things that had been pushed into her head had taken only seven days to accomplish.

  This time last week she had been a small creature of another world, but now the doings of that world had become vague, and to remind her that it had ever existed there remained only a few people. Her da—always her da; her ma—when she was in bed at night; their Michael at odd times; Mr Lord, when she was in class; Father Owen when she was in church; Mrs McBride rather funnily enough when she saw Sister Alvis; and Sarah Flannagan whenever her eyes alighted on Beatrice, which unfortunately, even with the disparity in their ages, was often, for Beatrice was the allocator of marks—black ones. If nothing else had stuck in her mind the sources from which these were derived were firmly fixed. Dearly was she paying for cheeking a prefect. Although you acquired only one mark for being late, already her score in this section was four. But if you were skilfully manoeuvred to the last washbasin, and even there were the last to use it, what could you do? Only finish your dressing running along the corridor. Well, she had done that twice. The first time, encountering Mother St Bede, she had been helped into her things, but the second time Mother St Bede had not only sent her back to dress but had added two to her score. Then this same Mother St Bede, who took English, a language quite different from any Mary Ann had previously listened to, had yesterday yelled at her, right at the top of her voice which was of some surprising height. ‘Child! Child! Child!’ she had yelled, ‘It is no
t the BOO…CHER, it is the BUT…CHER. Say after me, the BUT-CHER, the BAY-KER, the CANDLE-STICK MAY-KER.’

  Dutifully she had repeated the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, and the laughter this oration in her own language had evoked had aroused her fighting spirit, yet at the same time made her want to cry. The whole place, in her estimation, was daft, with a daftness that went on in an intermittent never-ceasing whirl from seven-thirty a.m. till eight forty-five p.m.

  On Mondays and Wednesdays the daftness was, if anything, intensified, for these were early Mass days when you were hoiked out of bed at a quarter to seven by Sister Monica, who slept behind a curtain at the end of the dormitory, and who brought you to life by slapping your bottom, and not just a little slap either, and at the same time calling, in a surprisingly cheerful voice at that unearthly hour, ‘Arise, arise. Arise to the glory of God. Come on now, up with yous.’

  Mary Ann was of the opinion that Sister Monica never slept. How could she, when even before that time she had said an hour’s Office?

  Having experienced as yet only one Monday and Wednesday, Mary Ann had already decided that she hated Mondays and Wednesdays. Back home she had liked going to Communion on a Friday and church at any time, but here church was different. It was inside the grounds, and the four houses, comprising children of seven to young ladies of seventeen, marched there in straggling, silent crocodiles. If you dared to open your mouth it was ten-to-one that somebody would pounce on you and up would go your score. You wouldn’t think they would have bothered at that time in the morning, but they did.

  This scoring of marks was not an individual thing either. Through them you apparently carried on your shoulders the honour of your house, for one girl’s misdemeanours could prevent her house from getting the cup, and already Mary Ann knew just to what pitch of fervour each house could reach in their struggle to obtain this cup. Only yesterday it had been made clear to her by a spontaneous deputation, surrounding her on the playing field, that the attainment of the prize did not lie with her, but the loss of it did, and she had to stop getting black marks—or else.