The outcome of the bed episode had an effect on the occupants of the dormitory equal in Mary Ann’s opinion to that of someone swearing at a priest or hitting a teacher, or some such earth-shaking catastrophe. She was gaped at, talked at, talked about, and pushed around, and, what was more, she received five discipline marks and six more for discourtesy. This latter injustice because she had dared to speak back to Sister Mary Martha, when all she had said was that she didn’t know it was forbidden to get into another girl’s bed. What was more, everybody in the house was laughing about priests being blind in confession, and this hadn’t come about by Marian talking, but by Beatrice, who, seeing an opportunity to work for the cause of discipline marks had risen stealthily and listened to the comforting advice Mary Ann was giving to Marian, and solely, let it be understood, in the cause of discipline had gone and informed the Sister.
And now Mary Ann was learning the deep science of comparative values of behaviour. Outside a convent you could sleep in a bed with somebody else, inside you couldn’t. Sister Monica said so; Sister Agnes Mary said so; and Sister Catherine said so. Of course, Sister Catherine would! She said it a number of times, and in a number of different ways, as she took Mary Ann along to Mother St Francis—who also said it. So, by ten o’clock, Mary Ann was left in no doubt as to the procedure of sleeping in a convent. And finally she awaited the order to appear before the Reverend Mother. But this threat did not materialise; instead, she was sent to Mother St Bede—and English. And so unnerving had been the events of the morning that her stomach felt sick, and she wanted to go to the lavatory all the time; but such was the power of Mother St Bede that her internal organs sympathetically understood the impossibility of a request to be relieved and did the only thing that was left to them, they swelled.
Halfway through the lesson Mother St Bede banged the flat of her hand on the desk and called out loudly, ‘Mary Ann Shaughnessy! Will you stop wriggling. Are you sitting on a pin?’
‘No, Mother.’
‘Then don’t act as if you were. Did you leave the room before you came in?’
This Irishism was fully understood by Mary Ann, and she said, ‘Yes, Mother,’ but had not the face to add, ‘but I want to leave again.’
‘Then sit still. Better still, stand up and read page fourteen.’
Mary Ann turned the pages of her book, and to her relief she saw that the poem was one of Longfellow’s. Oh, she could do him, she knew yards of Hiawatha—if only she didn’t want to leave the room.
‘What does it say?’
‘Musins, by Longfellow.’
‘What does it say?’
‘Musins…’
‘It does not say “Musins”, it says “Musings”. Repeat “Musings.”…And who by?’
‘Longfellow.’
‘It does not say Longfellow.’
‘Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.’
‘Begin.’
‘I sat by my window one night
And watched how the stars grew bright.
And the earth and the skies were a splendid sight
To a sober and musin’ eye.’
‘Mus…inge…inge. Musing…eye.’
‘Musing eye.’ Oh dear! She felt sick.
‘Go on.’
‘From Heaven the silver moon shone down,
With gentle and mella ray…’
‘Stop! What’s a mella ray?…Mellow, child.’
‘…mellow ray,
And beneath the crowded roofs of the town
In broad light and shadda lay.’
Bang! Bang! Bang! Mother St Bede’s hand bounced on the desk.
‘Shadda! Shadda! Shadda!…Shad—ow—ow—ow—dow…Shadow!’
Mother St Bede’s lips were so far out that her mouth resembled a snout, and her ‘ow—ow—ow’ sounded like the wailing of a screech owl.
‘Shadow.’
It was hot, she felt sick, her stomach was bursting…Oh, Ma!
‘Go on.’
But Mary Ann did not go on. To the amazement and surprise of both Mother St Bede and the whole class she sat down with a plop. As she saw the great black figure of the English mistress looming towards her all the self-control, of which she had shown a great deal, fled. She was sick, right over the desk and onto the back of the girl in front of her. This was disgusting enough, but, what was more disgusting to her, for it was happening for the first time in her life that she could remember, she wet her knickers. This act released a wave of homesickness, and it was set free on a flood of crying and gabbling, which mounted as she was led from the room, and the gist of it which fell on the tortured ears of Mother St Bede was, ‘Oh, Ma! Oh, Da…Aa wanna go hoom!’
Chapter Six
All trials have their end, and after five weeks of them Mary Ann was now sailing along in the stream of school life. She remembered to sound her g’s and draw out her a’s; she was even beginning to take an interest in English, so much so, that she talked swanky to herself in bed, and even, by mistake, did it once in class, which did not annoy Mother St Bede, but on the contrary seemed to please her.
She could now count up to fifty in French, and also ask in that language, ‘Is that the pen of your sister, and the house of your brother?’ and other such profound questions. She had also begun to learn German. But she hadn’t any real fancy for German, because her mouth filled up with spit when she tried to say the words. She was good at catechism, and exceptionally good at PT, and she was learning to swim.
This last feat had developed a joyful anticipation in her, and she lived for Monday afternoons and the visit to the baths. And when, as was happening this week, the Wednesday afternoon walk was to be turned into two hours on the beach, life, when she didn’t think of her da, was bearable. At least it had been until she received the letter from Michael.
Michael had never missed writing to her once a week, and his letters were a source of constant surprise to her, for in them there was more news than in either her da’s or her ma’s letters. Michael told her about the farm, the new hand, whom Mr Lord didn’t like, Mr Polinski, and Mrs Polinski. He told her a lot about Mrs Polinski, and because of this, Mary Ann was puzzled. Sometimes, as she read, she would say to herself, ‘What’s he got to keep on about her for?’ and then last week he had said, ‘I don’t like Mrs Polinski, and don’t blame Mr Polinski for hitting her. And you know something? Me ma doesn’t like her either. She’s never out of our house, and always comes at mealtimes. Me ma was stiff with her last week, and she hasn’t been back since.’ And then he had finished quite abruptly, ‘I wish you were here.’
Never before had Michael ever expressed a need of her. At home he had been wont to push her away from himself and his concerns, but now through his letters she felt him very close to her. It could be said that she looked for his letters even more than those of her da, for only through his letters did she sense the real feeling at present in her home. Her mother’s letters were all about what she must do and be a good girl, and her father said mostly how he missed her, and Mr Lord’s—one arrived every Monday morning, as if to set the tone for the week—were, in their briefness, all about learning, her learning. So it was Michael’s letters she really looked forward to.
What does our Michael mean? she had asked herself for nearly two whole days. Somehow it seemed mixed up with Mrs Polinski. And then she had a funny letter from her da that made her laugh. They had got a new bull and it had chased Mr Jones up a drainpipe. Her da had added a postscript that nearly made her roll up; he had said, briefly, ‘Outside the drainpipe.’
She had laughed and laughed as she imagined Mr Jones clinging on to the drainpipe. And so Mr Jones and the bull had dispelled the vague fear that Michael’s letter had aroused. Until this morning, when she had received another one from him, and again he was on about Mrs Polinski. After saying that Mr Lord had gone for Tony in front of the men, he said, ‘It was all through that Mrs Polinski; she was standing talking to him and making him waste his time. She’s always talking to somebody. She’s al
ways waylaying me da. She’s a brazen thing, paints and everything. There’s only five more weeks to the holidays, but I wish you were here now.’
Again Mary Ann experienced a disturbed feeling, and it overshadowed the day. She had been so excited when she knew they were going to the beach this afternoon, even if it were all pebbles and not sandy like it was at home, but now all she could think of was, I wonder what’s up with our Michael, keeping on about Mrs Polinski. I wish I was home. She had consulted the picture calendar in the corridor on which days were marked off delegated to various causes, such as Our Lady of Calvary, Our Lady of Sorrows, Blessed Mother of Bethlehem, the Precious Blood, the Blessed Sacrament, the Sacred Heart, Blessed Michael the Archangel—and, of course, the Saints; it seemed to Mary Ann the whole lot of them. After she had mentally replaced them all by dates, she worked out that there were not only five whole weeks but also three more days before they broke up, and only then would she know what their Michael meant.
In the scramble after lunch for bathing costumes, towels and their tent bags, under which they undressed, and then the arranging of herself in the crocodile so as to be next to Marian, she forgot, or at least pushed to the back of her mind, Michael and his letter.
The sun was fierce, the sky high and blue, and although she was wearing one of her outdoor dresses which was cool and light, she still felt hot and longed for the moment when the waves would splash over her.
The nuns in charge of the company of fifteen were Sister Alvis and Sister Agnes Mary, and no two Sisters could have been more suited for the job in hand, for they enjoyed the beach as much as did the children, and their broad smiles and rejoinders to the continual stream of questions flung at them on the bus journey caused surprised glances from the other passengers. When Sister Agnes Mary’s hoarse laugh rang out there were raised eyebrows, and small, surprised smiles from various quarters, and when the company alighted, before entering St Leonards in order to take a short cut to the beach, the eyes of the passengers followed them, the Sisters in particular, as if they had witnessed for the first time two laughing bears.
Mary Ann had hold of Sister Alvis’s hand. She liked Sister Alvis, for although she wasn’t as old as Mrs McBride, she was the nearest thing in looks and sound to her, particularly when she said, ‘Jesus’, that could be found in this polite part of the world. And now Mary Ann, in an effort to draw the nun’s attention, informed her of her prowess in swimming of which Sister Alvis, having helped with her coaching, was already well aware. ‘I can swim six breaststrokes, Sister.’
‘Can you, my child? Glory be to God.’
‘I’ll soon be able to swim the length of the bath.’
‘You will, you will. With God’s help, you will.’
‘I wish me da could see me.’
Ah, we were on a very delicate subject here. Sister Alvis had had her instructions of how to deal with the da complex, and she now threw her attention to the front of the disordered ranks and found diversion as a small figure leaped away, in answer to the call of her first glimpse of water, and she cried, ‘Oh! Sweet Jesus in Heaven, there’s Anna Maria off again. Come back here this instant…Sister’—she turned to where Sister Agnes Mary was walking with the bigger girls—‘look, Anna Maria has started again.’
‘Oh, she has—Anna Maria!’ Sister Agnes Mary was after the enthusiast, running over the dunes, leaving the rest of them laughing. Everybody loved to see Sister Agnes Mary run, for she did so with a strong, almost masculine galloping gait, doubtless occasioned by the bulky habit, of which, as she watched the Sister running, Mary Ann became consciously aware for the first time. Oh! Poor Sister Agnes Mary, she must be hot in all those clothes. And poor Sister Alvis—and all the Sisters and Mothers. She knew a sudden pity for them. Why couldn’t they take some of them off? She had an overpowering desire to put this question to Sister Alvis, but already she had learnt one thing at the convent—painfully she had acquired a quality of restraint—so she turned her question into a statement. ‘Isn’t it hot, Sister?’ she said.
‘It is, child—lovely. God be thanked for such a lovely day and may He send many more this summer.’
Without asking, Mary Ann had been given her answer. Sisters and nuns didn’t feel the heat.
The water was beautiful, even if you weren’t allowed to go out past the sentries, the sentries being Lola and Beatrice and another girl. At first she lay at the edge and let the waves, which were gentle today, roll over her; then, enough of that, she kicked the water and yelled, and, taking Marian by surprise, pushed her face forward into a wave, only to be concerned when Marian, having recovered herself, looked on the point of crying.
‘Oh, Marian, I was only playing!’ Her contrition was equal to a misdeed of far greater magnitude. ‘Push me—come on, I’ll let you. Come on!’ Marian pushed, and Mary Ann, letting herself go, fell over backwards with a great deal of spluttering and not a bad performance of drowning, and then turning over she cried, ‘Look, watch me, I can swim seven now. Look!’
Marian watched her. She, after four years of learning, could swim about as much as Mary Ann was doing after as many weeks. But she didn’t like the water; the baths were bad enough, but the sea was frightening to her.
Spluttering and squeezing the water down herself, Mary Ann stood beside her friend…‘Can’t—can’t I do it!’
‘Yes, you’re doing fine. But come on out: let’s go and pick shells.’
‘But we’ve just come in; and, anyway, Sister won’t let us.’
‘She will if we don’t go far, just to where the rock comes out. If she’ll let us, will you come?’
‘Oh, all right.’
This was indeed a sacrifice, and in case permission should be given, she plunged into the water again to make the most of her time, but almost before she had completed her six strokes, Marian was back, and pulling her up by the costume.
‘She says we can, just as far as the rock, but not round it. We must keep in sight.’
‘Oh, all right.’ Mary Ann stood puffing and blowing. ‘But—let’s plodge along at the edge; we’ll find a lot then.’
So they paddled slowly to where the rock, jutting out, formed the cove, and when they reached it they sat down on one of the sandy patches and sorted out their shells.
At what point Mary Ann became aware of the voices from the other side of the rock she didn’t know. She was lost for the moment in the wonder of the shells and her sense dulled somewhat by the heat, and perhaps she had forgotten she wasn’t on the sands at Shields, and so the voices that came to her at intervals were not from another world but the everyday sounds she was used to. And then she was brought upright by a long-drawn sigh, and a voice saying, ‘Eeh, by, it’s hot!’
She stared at Marian, but Marian was engrossed in grading her shells. And when the voice came again, saying, ‘Giz a drink, lass,’ she rose to her feet and carefully paddling to the point of the rock she craned round it and saw two people seated in the shade of the cliff. As she recognised them her mouth fell open and everything else was forgotten.
‘Mr Wilson!’ She was scrambling round the small promontory and over the shingle to the couple who had now risen to their feet.
Well, hinny!’ Mr Wilson greeted her as if she were his own child. ‘Well, me bairn, where’ve you sprung from?’
‘Hallo hinny.’
‘Hallo, hinny.’ Mary Ann thrust out a hand to each of them, and they hung over her, exclaiming their wonder at her sudden appearance.
‘I’m from round the bend…I’m with me house. It’s Wednesday, we have it off, an’ I was picking shells an’ I heard you…Oh!’
Her joy at being among her own kind again was something she as yet could not formulate into words, but Mr Wilson did it for her. ‘An’ you heard our voices, and it was like home again, eh?’ he said laughing.
‘Yes,’ she nodded.
‘Well, come and sit doon’—he made his voice broader for her benefit—‘and hev a drop of tea. Well, hinny, we’ve often spoke of you.
How you getting on?’
‘Oh, all right, Mr Wilson.’
‘You like it?’
Mary Ann did not answer immediately, but looked up at Mrs Wilson who was handing her the top of the Thermos flask, brimful of milky tea.
‘Ta.’ She slipped back as naturally as breathing into the old idiom. And then she answered Mr Wilson. ‘Sometimes…but—’ her face suddenly lost its brightness—‘I wish I was home, everything’s different here.’
‘You’re telling me, hinny; we’ve had ’bout enough an’ all, haven’t we, lass?’ He looked at his wife, and Mrs Wilson said, ‘Well, it isn’t like home…though, mind, everybody’s been more than kind. We came to stay for three months with me daughter, but we think we’ll be making a move back soon. But it’s a problem—we’ve let our house.’
‘Oh, we’ve been into that’—Mr Wilson waved the house question aside—‘we’ll get fixed somewhere. But, hinny’—he took Mary Ann by the shoulders—‘you’re not as bonny as when I saw you last…thinner. Do they gi’ ye enough to eat?’
‘Oh, yes, heaps—and they make you stuff it down, cabbage an’ all. And—’
‘They treat you all right?’ Mr Wilson, finding nothing to get at in having too much food, altered his approach.
‘Yes.’
‘Hit you or anything? Lock you up?’
Mary Ann’s eyes widened. ‘No. No, they don’t.’
‘Look, have a bit of cake,’ Mrs Wilson thrust a paper plate towards Mary Ann.
‘Oh, ta, Mrs Wilson.’
‘Mary Ann! Mary Ann!’ The almost hysterical shouting coming from behind the rock startled them all, and Mary Ann, springing up and remembering that she wasn’t on the sands, said, ‘Eeh! I’ll catch it, I’m not supposed to be round here. That’s Marian, my friend.’
The Devil and Mary Ann Page 11