For once in her life she had found nothing to say, but had stood near to tears in the corner of the field thinking, Oh, Da! Oh, Da! Then an odd thing had happened which took her mind off her troubles for a few moments. Over the railings in another field where the big girls were playing hockey she saw a strange sight. Her mind seemed to suggest that it was even a sacrilegious sight, for there, with her gown tucked up, was Mother St Jude, and she was running, flying and shouting as she bashed out with a hockey stick as if she were throwing the hammer. Mary Ann knew very well now that nuns had legs, but this was the first time she had ever seen them, even a bit of them, and it didn’t seem right. She was sure that none of the nuns in the North would ever run like that. Nuns should walk—and walk slowly.
Then there was Sister Agnes Mary. She couldn’t get over Sister Agnes Mary. Sister Agnes Mary could take a car right to bits—she had seen her doing it yesterday in the yard—and she bred mice, called hamsters; and she laughed. She was laughing all the time, except when she said her Office; and when saying that she would go round muttering to herself with a very straight face, being sorry, Mary Ann supposed, for all the laughing she had done.
This saying of ‘the Office’ business both interested and puzzled Mary Ann. In all odd places she would come across a nun saying this Office. Sister Alvis had really startled her one day, for when passing her, and she apparently deeply engrossed in her reading, she had suddenly heard her exclaim, and loudly, ‘Jesus!’ It had sounded so like Mrs McBride that she had looked at the Sister and exclaimed, ‘Eeh!’ before being pushed in the back by Lola.
And then there was the timetable. Oh, the timetable! It was the axis of the daftness. Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, you rose at seven-thirty, washed and dressed, and got down to breakfast, if no impediment, by eight o’clock, and not until after the meal were you allowed to open your mouth. This compulsory silence was a great trial to Mary Ann. Between eight-twenty and nine o’clock you were expected to do various things, which included making your bed, going to Mother St Francis for your letters, toothpaste, soap and salts if you couldn’t go to the lavatory, and to Sister Catherine if you had buttons off or things like that. Then nine o’clock was upon you before you knew where you were. From nine o’clock till half past you had religious instruction. It was like the Bible history she used to have in Jarrow, and she didn’t mind that in the least. But from nine-thirty to ten it was science.
Now Mary Ann knew nothing whatever about science, and she didn’t want to know, for science was all about frogs and tadpoles and she was repulsed by both, even before they were cut up. From frogs she went into French and Mother St Matthew. Un, deux, trois, quatre…The first four she could remember quite easily, for she resorted to a little unconscious Pelmanism and thought of the four figures as ‘under two cats’. Le and la was another business entirely. Did it matter whether you knew they were males or females as long as you said Mr or Mrs? That’s all that mattered, surely. But apparently not to Mother St Matthew.
Then followed milk; then gym. She liked gym—she could jump and skip better than some of the bigger girls, and ‘cowp her creels’. This statement for turning a somersault had caused quite a diversion, but nobody was going to make her believe it should be ‘head over heels’…they were daft, all of them. Following gym, innocently arranged, was the visit to the infirmary and Matron who dealt with toothache, spots and blisters. If you didn’t have any of these things you had fifteen minutes to yourself.
From the infirmary you were pitchforked into history. Mary Ann thought of it as being pitchforked. She knew the word for her da used it a lot at one time. ‘I was pitchforked into the shipyard,’ he used to say, and now it seemed to describe the entry into the room where they took history. The room was at the end of a long corridor, and to Mary Ann that particular corridor was lined with prefects who pushed you along if you were speaking and pushed you along if you weren’t, and at the classroom door, a week’s experience had taught Mary Ann, Mother St Bede would be waiting—as if she didn’t have enough of her in English—to fling you into your seats. The only consolation she felt was that here she wasn’t the only one to experience the nun’s treatment for tardiness.
Mother St Bede was identified to Mary Ann by three things. She yelled in her English class, she pushed in her history class, and, thirdly, she was known privately as ‘Mother Fear-o’-God’, for at the height of exasperation she was known to fling her arms wide and cry, ‘Nothing but the fear of God will knock it into you. It’s past me, it’s past me!’
The only thing to be remembered during history was that it would be followed by geography and Mother Mary Divine. Oh Mother Mary Divine was nice…she was lovely. She loved Mother Mary Divine. Mother Mary Divine patted her cheek and called her ‘Dear child’, and she had won Mary Ann’s heart forever by asking, and in the proper voice, ‘And how is canny Jarrow?’
At twelve-fifteen she reluctantly left Mother Mary Divine and went tearing with the rest of her class in the scramble for letters. If you were lucky and there was one for you you took it into the General Study and there devoured it. If you weren’t you went out into the playground or into the fields where Sister Agnes Mary usually was. But you couldn’t get near her, everybody wanted to be with Sister Agnes Mary ’cos she made you laugh. If you liked you could go and feed the rabbits or the mice, or the budgerigars. These latter were bred by an old Sister, so old that Mary Ann was fascinated by her wrinkles. She had little apples on her cheeks and her eyes were blue and sunk far into her head. Her name was Sister Prudence, but she was known, even to her face, as Sister Gran-Gran.
Dinner was a further trial to Mary Ann, for whether you liked it or not you had to eat it; if you didn’t one of the Sisters stood over you until you did. Mary Ann didn’t like cabbage. She hated cabbage and she had said so. This was another thing that had caused a diversion and, indeed, even some smothered chortling from the servers.
The afternoons hadn’t been too bad at first. There was art and botany and games, followed three times a week by a bath. And no fire to sit at after you were dry either.
Then yesterday she had been told that one lesson had to be missed every afternoon to be replaced by elocution. At first she had been excited and thought, Now I’ll show Sarah Flannagan, but that was before the lesson. Bas—kets…bill—iards…bat—ter—ies, and bluebot—tles…Cas—kets, cam—els and castles, and sticking her tongue all over the place to try and talk swanky.
Following tea at four-fifteen there was twenty minutes’ recreation, before the most trying part of the day. Whereas at home after school she could, and had, run wild, now she had to go and sit with her house in the study, and after the first ten minutes a bell would ring which meant ‘No talking’. This was a foretaste of purgatory. It was no use trying to slip a word in, for at the high desk near the window sat first one study mistress and then another. Every half-hour they changed, and no matter who they were silence was the order of the day. The only diversion was the signal to leave the room, but even her courage failed at anything more than two requests.
From six-thirty to seven you could write your letter, that is if you had done all your homework, but they didn’t call it homework. At seven o’clock you knelt and said the Angelus, and it was always wonderful to Mary Ann to hear the sound of her own voice again. Yet when, following this, they went to supper, she seemed to have very little to say to anyone—the inactivity of sitting always seemed to dry her up. After the meal for one full hour the time was her own, to go out to play, weather permitting, or to write or read. The only thing you couldn’t do was—moon. Nuns seemed to drop from the ceiling, appear through the walls, or up through the floorboards should you show the least suspicion of mooning.
Following on this hour was chapel for fifteen minutes. And here began another trial, because from the moment you stepped into line you were as good as gagged until breakfast the following morning. You could talk, oh yes, if you were one of those people who were clever enough not to be caugh
t, but Mary Ann had not yet learned the trick, so she was as good as dumb.
But tonight, the beginning of this particular trial was a good half-hour away. It was only eight o’clock and she was hugging three letters to her breast. They had all come at once, one each from her da, her ma and their Michael. This was only the second letter she’d had from her da, and wasn’t very long, but it was lovely, all about the farm. And then he said he missed her and was ticking off the days to the summer holiday. Her ma’s letter was nice, but her ma’s letters and everything about her ma were always nice. Her ma brought no worry to her mind, she could always be relied upon to be the same. She laughed at their Michael’s letter. It was the first he’d written to her and it was funny, so different from when he talked. He said such things as ‘Up the school!’ and ‘Miss la-de-da Mary Ann Shaughnessy’. Then he had told her some bits of news that made her homesick in a different way. ‘You should have been home,’ he said, ‘on Wednesday. Mr Polinski hit Mrs Polinski and she came running to our house, and there was a to-do. And what do you know? The new hand is going to stay with us. I like him, so does me da—my father. Sorry, Miss Shaughnessy.’ Oh, their Michael was funny.
As it was raining the recreation room, if not crowded, was well filled and Mary Ann, lucky for once, had bagged a little table near the window and was busy, between chews at the pen and glances out of the window on to a view whose beauty was entirely lost on her, writing to her ma and da. Only the heading on the paper did not say ‘Ma and Da,’ said, ‘Dear Mother and Father.’ Her first letter had been confiscated not only for beginning with ‘Ma and Da’ but because she had gone on to give graphic details of meals, at which there was cabbage, marks, of which she was acquiring a burden, Mother St Bede, who was awful, and last but by no means least Beatrice. Now her gazing out of the window was a concentrated effort to formulate her news in such a way that it would get through. As the time was beginning to ebb away and her mind would suggest nothing in the nature of a code, she continued her letter by saying, ‘I am lerning to talk proply every afternoon and say bas—kets, bill—iards, bat—ter—ies and bluebottles. Cas—kets, cam—els and castles. Tell Mr Lord and I will write him the morr—tomorrow. I had a pain in me stomach this morning ’cos I had a pill, and oh it was awful, and then I had to eat—’ She had been going to say cabbage, but remembering that this slip might mean the rewriting of the whole letter she substituted instead a kindness she had received from the very Sister who had stood over her and made her stuff the cabbage down her throat, thereby bringing censure on the poor woman who had been trained to show no discrimination among the children. She scratched out ‘I had to eat’ and wrote ‘Sister Mary Martha slipped me three sweets ’cos I ate me dinner. I wish I could see you. I have got to go to bed now. I think of you in bed and say Hail Marys for you. The Holy Family in the church isn’t like ours in Jarrow, they are cut out of wood and haven’t any colours on them, and haven’t got nice faces. It’s confession tomorrow, I wish Father Owen was here. Will our Michael tell him about me on Sunday? I’ve got to go, they’re clearing up. Oh Ma. Goodnight Mother and Father and our Michael, and twenty million kisses, Mary Ann.’
There, that was done. Just as she folded up the letter and placed it on top of the envelope ready for Mother St Francis’s inspection Marian came up and sat on the window seat.
‘You writing again? You are always writing.’ She sounded slightly offended, and Mary Ann said, ‘Well, I like to write to me ma and da.’
‘Why do you always say ma and da?’
‘Well, ’cos they are.’
‘You’re funny.’ This statement was given as a criticism, but Mary Ann took it in good part and looked at her new friend, whose face was very straight and whose mouth was tight and who, Mary Ann knew from a week’s experience, could burst into tears at any moment.
‘Why don’t you write to your da…father?’
Marian turned away, breathed on the window and drew a pattern with the point of her finger. ‘He’s always travelling, he’d never get my letters.’
‘Then why don’t you write to your ma then?’
‘I do, every week.’
‘But why don’t you every day?’
‘Oh, that would be silly.’ With a swift movement of her hand Marian wiped out the pattern. ‘What’s your father like?’
This was the first time anyone had asked after her da. Mary Ann closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them wide as she began on the subject that forever filled her heart. ‘He’s wonderful. He’s big—oh, ever so big, and he’s got a lovely face.’ At this point, before she had even got warmed up, her discourse was broken into by Marian’s voice saying abruptly, ‘Oh, all right. What’s your mother like?’
Mary Ann blinked. ‘Oh, me ma? She’s lovely an’ all. Her hair’s like gold and she’s got masses and masses of it.’ Then, looking at Marian’s tight face, she asked, merely out of politeness and not because she wanted to know, ‘Is your ma nice?’
‘Yes, she’s lovely, she’s wonderful.’ Quite lively now, Marian gave Mary Ann all her attention and described for her in glowing detail the wonder that went to make up her mother, and this description of a most glamorous being went on until Mother St Francis’s inspection interrupted it.
Mary Ann’s letter having been passed with only her English at fault, which was nothing to worry about, at least in her opinion, the bell alone brought Marian’s oration to a final stop. But she went to the chapel with her face aglow, and even later, when she was finishing her undressing under her nightie, as they all did, she smiled brightly across at Mary Ann. So it was surprising that some time later Mary Ann should wake in the faintly illuminated dark to hear the sound of muffled sobbing coming from Marian’s bed. As she lay listening to it, it saddened her and made her want to join in, and she thought, Oh, Da! Oh, Ma!
When, after what seemed to her a long, long time, Marian was still crying, she raised herself up and peered towards her.
In the glow from the night light at the end of the dormitory all she could make out was a contorted heap, and so it was the most natural thing in the world that she should get out of bed and creep over to Marian.
‘Marian, what’s the matter?’
Marian raised her head. ‘I—I want my—my Mummy and Daddy.’
It was only a whisper, and Mary Ann whispered back, ‘So do I.’
‘Nobody loves me.’
This statement stumped Mary Ann for a moment, then putting her arm around Marian’s shoulder, she whispered, ‘Yes they do—I do, and Lola.’
‘Do you?’ Their faces were close, their breaths fanned each other.
Mary Ann, shivering with the cold, at this point said, ‘Move over, and I’ll come in with you.’
Within a second she was well under the clothes and lying close to Marian, and, as if she were the elder, she put her arms about her and comforted her, saying, ‘Don’t cry, Marian.’
‘I’ve no-one to talk to,’ said Marian. ‘Lola won’t listen, she says I’m to forget it.’
Mary Ann did not inquire what she had to forget, but said, ‘Why don’t you talk to the priest? I used to tell Father Owen everything.’
‘Did you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t like to.’
‘Why not? They don’t know who’s telling them.’
‘They don’t know?’ There was a sound of amazed inquiry in Marian’s voice; and after a couple of sniffs, she asked, ‘What do you mean?’
‘Why, ’cos priests are blind when they are hearing confessions.’ Mary Ann spoke with authority. ‘I know ’cos Father Owen is in Jarrow; I used to tell him everything and he never knew it was me, ’cos God strikes them all blind once they get in the box. But they’re all right when they come out again.’
‘That’s silly!’
‘’Tisn’t, Marian, honest.’
‘Who told you?’
‘I’ve always known.’
‘Is it the truth, honest? I’ve never heard it before.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, what are you crying for?’ This was diplomacy at its worst.
There was a silence, during which Mary Ann became aware that she was being nearly smothered beneath the quilt, and she came up for air. And as she did so she had the terrifying impression that someone was moving about at the end of the dormitory. Then Marian said, ‘It’s about my Mummy—my Mummy and Daddy don’t live together.’
‘What!’ Mary Ann brought her attention back to her bed-mate.
‘They’re separated…I—I’ve only seen Daddy once in—oh, once in a long, long time.’
This admission threw everything else out of Mary Ann’s mind, and bringing her head under the clothes again she whispered in deepest sympathy, ‘Oh, Marian!’ Her arms tightened around the bigger girl. ‘Oh, poor Marian! Look’—she had an idea—‘when I go back home you can come with me. You’ll love me da, and he’ll—’
What Mike was to do in the way of giving Marian comfort died in Mary Ann’s mind almost in the act of its conception, for was it up from Hell or down from Heaven that the hands came. She didn’t know, but come they did, two great powerful hands, and she was lifted sky high, swung through the air and plumped into her bed, and it stone cold. And a voice, which had certainly not been nurtured in Heaven, hissed over her, ‘Move out of there again if you dare! I’ll see you in the morning, you wicked child!’
Terror filled the night. What had she done? Only got into Marian’s bed ’cos she was crying…Oh, Ma…Ma…I want to come home…Why was she a wicked child? And what would happen in the morning? She wished she was dead. This was a surprising thought, for up to now nothing but the trouble between her ma and da had power to evoke a wish for her own demise. Her feet were cold and she was shivering. She began to cry, and to the chant of ‘Oh, Ma! Oh, Da!’ which went round and round in her head, she went to sleep.
The Devil and Mary Ann Page 10