Sister Agatha

by Domhnall O'Donoghue

  “Uno!” he mumbled.

  And just like that, with perspiration cascading from every pore, Riccardo lugged Sister Agatha one step forward before slumping onto Mrs Smith’s beautiful red velvet couch.

  The dynamic duo had made it.

  Absolute hysterics followed from the onlookers and media. Around the globe, suckers for happy endings were glued to their television screens and computers. Even some of the world’s most hardened leaders and politicians had taken time out from passing brown envelopes to each other to get in on the act.

  Riccardo clasped Sister Agatha’s hands and let his head fall on her shoulder.

  “Grazie,” he muttered in a barely audible manner, although Sister Agatha wasn’t altogether confident that she knew what he was referring to, but suspected that Riccardo had had his fill of this life and was eager to be reunited with his chisel and marble in the next.

  A moment was all the pair was afforded, however. As the applause died down, so too did Riccardo Trentini. The world’s oldest person let out a soft groan and took his last breath. The crowd released a loud, collective gasp, moving from elation to despair in the blink of an eye. Their attention quickly turned to Sister Agatha to see what form her sorrowful reaction might take.

  While there were no hard and fast rules to grief, some eagle-eyed observers were a little surprised to detect something of a smile etched across Butsy Miller’s face.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The final week of June 1932 was one that Ireland would never forget. A flurry of excitement enveloped Dublin due to the arrival of the thirty-first International Eucharistic Congress. The city promised to pull out all the stops to ensure that this was a Congress to be envied the world over. A fleet of ocean liners had even gathered along Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, acting as floating hotels to meet the demand for accommodation from the country’s three million Catholics who had descended upon the capital for this auspicious occasion.

  While daily prayer was commonplace in the country at that time, who or what they were being said for often varied: a sick relative; an end to poverty; a wayward husband. That summer, only one reason had seen the Irish people on their hands and knees: to beg the Lord above that the rain would stay away. Wind or a sky covered in clouds they could handle, but rain just wouldn’t do. Think of all the cardinals and archbishops in their lovely regalia—and what a disaster if would be if they got wet. And it seemed that God took pity on them, because their prayers were answered and the weather held out, much to the delight of everyone.

  On the final day of the five-day event, a mass took place in the Phoenix Park, and a quarter of the country’s population was present, including a much younger Sister Agatha, who had never seen anything quite so magnificent in all her life. In fact, the celebrations proved too fantastic for the thirty-four-year-old country girl, and she was forced to slip away from the crowd, just to catch her breath.

  Not knowing the layout of the city at all, Sister Agatha found herself strolling in the direction of Kilmainham Gaol, the prison where some of Ireland’s most prolific freedom-fighters had been incarcerated just sixteen years earlier. She happened upon a bench close to the commanding building, sat down, and enjoyed a much-needed break.

  After a minute, probably the only other person who had dodged the mass, sat beside her. With him, stood a pram, although inside, instead of some sleeping baby, a bounty of religious paraphernalia and accoutrements burst from the seams—rosary beads, bibles, crosses, candles, pictures, and so on. If ever there was a day to make a few pence selling your God-worshipping wares, Sister Agatha mused, it was today.

  With the help of a battered leather pouch, the seller then started to roll a cigarette. Who could begrudge the man a small moment of relief amidst a busy day of wheeling and dealing? she also decided.

  Just as she prepared herself to re-join her contingent at the Phoenix Park, Sister Agatha noticed that the hands of this man sitting next to her on the bench appeared to be completely scorched and charred. She turned her attention to his face and became saddened to see that, beneath his tweed cap and bushy beard, his face also bore the signs of some misfortune with fire.

  “I don’t suppose I could trouble you for a light?” he asked, his voice soft, familiar.

  “I’m afraid I don’t smoke,” she answered.

  “Not to worry, I shouldn’t either anyway.”

  After he returned his tobacco pouch to his pocket, the two strangers sat in silence. Or were they strangers? Sister Agatha asked herself—she had this strong hunch that she had met this man before. Not only was she convinced that she had heard his gentle voice sometime in the past, she also felt certain that she had been in his company on some previous occasion as well.

  While she knew that common decency deemed it vulgar to stare at somebody, Sister Agatha couldn’t resist and, without apology, she gave etiquette short shrift. The man’s facial hair, coupled with his extensive scarring, made it difficult for her to properly study his features, but when her new companion turned and smiled at her, Sister Agatha’s now racing heart started to pulverise the walls of her delicate chest.

  It couldn’t be, could it?

  Ever since he had failed to show up that morning under the old sycamore tree, Sister Agatha had whiled away the hours wondering whatever had happened to Pádraig Keogh. Did he still call Ireland home? Had he fallen in love again? What did he look like now? But never in a month of Sundays did she ever think she would receive answers to these questions.

  Until now.

  “I’m sorry, would you mind if I asked you your name?”

  “Are you going to try to convert me?” he joked.

  “No, of course not! You just remind me of someone I used to know.”

  “Eamonn,” he said, outstretching her hand. “And you?”

  “Sister Agatha. Pleased to meet you.”

  It was the exact second that their hands touched that Sister Agatha knew for certain.

  “I suspect that Eamonn might not have been the name your parents gave you at birth, sure it wasn’t, Pádraig?”

  On hearing these words, Eamonn sat rooted to the spot, stupefied. It had been over seventeen years since anyone had called him by that name.

  “Butsy, is that you?”

  And that was exactly how the first reunion of those two old flames had gone.

  In his modest lodgings, Pádraig—or Eamonn, as he had been calling himself since leaving County Meath in a bid to start anew—invited Sister Agatha to take a seat wherever she liked.

  “Please excuse the mess, though—I wasn’t expecting visitors today.”

  But to her untrained eye, the flat, while the size of a shoe rather than a shoebox, appeared to be one of the cleanest and tidiest spaces she had even seen. Clearly proving to have something of a talent for interior design, Pádraig had adroitly transformed the Rathmines flat into something she would have expected to see in the Gresham Hotel.

  “It is beautiful,” Sister Agatha lauded as she combed the space, looking for a few possible ideas to bring back to the convent.

  From a press, Pádraig fished out a couple of bottles of ale and offered one to his guest. While the convent frowned upon alcohol consumption—unless its main ingredient was the blood of Jesus—given the occasion that was in it, Sister Agatha decided to ignore the strict rules and regulations that had shaped her life so far.

  “I’ll have just a drop,” she said, unaware that such a promise had been the undoing of many an Irish person over the years.

  Bottles in hand, the pair sat on the couch and, for several moments, they sat in complete silence, unsure of what to say.

  “The Battle of Passchendaele in October 1917,” Pádraig finally announced—the couple of swigs of Beverwyck’s that he had just swallowed giving him a little Dutch courage.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The burns—I’m sure you’re wondering.”

  In truth, Sister Agatha couldn’t think of anything else, but didn’t know how to broach the su
bject.

  “The Great War. Not knowing what else to do, I signed up to the army after…”

  “After you reneged on your promise and humiliated me in front of the whole village?”

  She gasped at her own candour—alcohol is the work of the devil, she soon realised.

  “What—reneged? Good heavens, no! Is that what you think I did?”

  “Well, wasn’t it?” she replied, unable to keep her loose tongue under control.

  For the next hour or so, Pádraig went into painful detail about his deceptive and scheming mother and the extraordinary charade she’d conjured up, all so that the engagement would run aground.

  “And you never received any of my correspondence?”

  Sister Agatha, dumbfounded by what she had just heard, shook her head.

  “Did you really think I would abandon you like that?” he asked.

  She wasn’t sure if it was the effect of the mouthful of alcohol she had just sampled or the news she had just received, but all of a sudden, Sister Agatha felt quite light-headed. She could feel the blood abandoning her cheeks.

  Her heart broke—not for herself and what had been stolen from her by the reprehensible Mrs Keogh— but for the woebegone existence to which this once vibrant and spirited man was subjected. Grappling with poverty, the brutal loss of a once angelic appearance and, worst of all, solitude, his life had been completely and utterly destroyed.

  “I have been told time and time again at the convent that God works in mysterious ways,” she ruminated, as she received much-needed support from the arm of the chair. “But how can He justify making your life so difficult and lonely?”

  “Lonely?” he probed. “Why do you think I’m lonely?”

  But before he could receive an answer, the door burst open and in ran a young and beautiful sallow-skinned girl, followed by her equally appealing mother.

  “Daddy!”

  The girl jumped into Pádraig’s arms, and as he embraced her, it appeared to Sister Agatha that all of his facial disfigurements momentarily faded away. This warm, domestic scene enlivened the young nun who, moments earlier, had been in need of medical assistance. Loneliness had not, thankfully, bullied its way into her old flame’s life; in fact, he never seemed happier and more at peace with himself.

  It appeared that God does, in fact, work in mysterious ways, she concluded.

  Over the course of the afternoon, Sister Agatha received the warmest of welcomes from the little family of three. She learned that Pádraig—or Eamonn, as he was known to everyone—met his dear wife, a nurse, while recovering from his injuries fifteen years previously. She also discovered that little Margaret boasted an impressive six and a half years—and, more importantly, in about four months’ time, the youngster would become a big sister. And, above all, she established that her former swain had, after all, realised his potential and become the man she knew he could be.

  “Look at the hour!” Sister Agatha exclaimed when she realised that it was fast approaching five o’clock—she desperately had to return to the Phoenix Park before the bus departed without her (not to mention finding a minute to pick up a sandwich along the way to soak up all of the grog that was currently making merry in her stomach).

  As Pádraig walked her out, he expressed how elated he felt following their reunion, but beseeched her to make a pledge.

  “I lost you once, Butsy Miller. I don’t want to lose you again. Please promise me that you will remain in my life. Good friends are hard to come by, don’t you think?”

  Without hesitation, Sister Agatha threw her arms around Pádraig and held him closely for a few heavenly moments. When she released him, she removed the emerald ring from under her habit.

  “I actually never lost you, Pádraig—and never plan on doing so.”

  Over the following years, Sister Agatha kept her word and maintained a constant correspondence with her old partner-in-crime through letter-writing or, in later years, midnight phone calls. Sometimes, they would simply share snippets of gossip, or exchange recipes or opinions on current affairs; on other occasions, they would both remove their armour and completely lay themselves bare, revealing their hopes, fears, dreams or regrets. Their relationship had been completely rebranded since their days in Kilberry, but it was all the better for it.

  They were soul mates: they always were and always would be.

  Then, one particular Christmas, a note arrived in place of the traditional greeting card. Granted, Pádraig couldn’t hold a candle to the likes of Oscar Wilde or G.B. Shaw in the literary stakes, but as Sister Agatha glanced at the convent’s address on the envelope, she became concerned by how illegible her old friend’s writing had now become. Suspecting that something was amiss, she crept into the empty chapel to read the correspondence in private.

  As her eyes scanned the opening lines, she felt her throat tighten: Pádraig had cancer and the prognosis did not appear to be too promising.

  “There’s littel to be dun now, xcept to ask for one finel faver.”

  Pádraig went on to explain that while he had no fear of his impending death—such was his gratitude for the delightful life he led, especially when his dear Butsy had made such a welcome return—his only regret continued to be his inability to stick up to his despicable mother, particularly when it came to defending his childhood sweetheart and the mistaken belief that a farmer’s daughter wouldn’t amount to anything.

  “You have acheeved so much over your life, Butsy, and I could not bee more prowd of you. But, if I may, I would like to make one small demand before I finelly wither away four good.”

  Sister Agatha did not notice the rest of the sisters arriving into the chapel for vespers; she was far too preoccupied reading and re-reading the final lines in the note.

  “Prove that old wench wrong and do something so marvelus that your name will bee etched in the history bucks forever. While time isn’t on my side, you have plentee of good years a head of you. After all, milk has an expiry date, but life isn’t milk.”

  Before Sister Agatha could reach the front door of the convent and make a sprint for the hospital so that she could be by his side, a phone call came with the news that Pádraig had died that afternoon, on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, at the age of seventy-two.

  A few days later, as the coffin was lowered into the ground, Sister Agatha clasped the emerald ring in her hand, looked down at her best friend, and repeatedly nodded her head.

  “I promise you I will do something sensational,” she whispered. “I promise I will.”

  Sister Agatha was not immune to grief, and struggled badly with her loss. She even found herself becoming increasingly irritated by other people’s presence; whether they were simply offering her a cup of tea or a friendly smile, she wanted to do like Attila the Hun and gouge their eyes out. (Sister Cecilia rued the day she suggested playing musical chairs following the Christmas turkey…)

  Over time, Sister Agatha wisely decided that it might be more advantageous—and law-abiding—to channel her energies into fulfilling the vow she had made to Pádraig instead: to do something so magnificent that universities would be studying her accomplishment for centuries to come.

  As the months and years went on, and the “how” of this bold statement remained unclear, Sister Agatha decided to place her faith in God, assured that a plan would emerge one day, which is exactly what happened.

  On the morning of her eightieth birthday, everything finally fell into place. Being an octogenarian in a convent was nothing unusual; in fact, you were considered a spring chicken until you passed the century mark. What if, Sister Agatha wondered, she was able to reach that landmark age, and then surpass it by a handful of years and become the oldest person in the world? Now that would be a feat that would madden the late Mrs Keogh, who didn’t even make it to fifty!

  And so, from that day forth, she had kept one eye on the prize and the other on her health to ensure that she would successfully accomplish her bold objective.

&nb
sp; And all was going swimmingly well until a certain pesky medical professional rather inconsiderately dropped the bombshell of her nearing passing. Ever the chameleon, though, Sister Agatha had adapted to the situation and produced a gutsy Plan B, which saw her travelling across three continents in under a week, before conveniently returning to the village where it all began in 1915.

  If Pádraig wasn’t smiling down upon her now, proud of his old pal’s splendid efforts, Sister Agatha would need to get new friends, alive or otherwise, that was for sure.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “What do you mean you don’t know who he is?”

  Ludovico, who had little interest in keeping his frustrations in check, dragged Sister Agatha behind the tree and—for now, at least—away from the world’s media. Completely at sixes and sevens, he tried desperately to make sense of what had just been whispered into his ear, and prayed that the old gal was simply confused and that her scandalous claims were a manifestation of shock and not rooted in any reality. But the fact that Sister Agatha showed none of the other traditional symptoms of grief suggested that her words might actually be genuine. In the space of ten seconds, the poor chap had aged about forty years.

  “I never saw that man once in my life until yesterday,” Sister Agatha repeated, although noticing the abject terror hijacking the nurse’s face, she felt she should be a little more sympathetic to his plight—or stand the risk of being responsible for his nervous breakdown.

  “So, this Pádraig person never existed?”

  “He did, of course, and he had the most beautiful blue eyes and the most terrible mother you could imagine, but Pádraig died way back in the late sixties. Although, if he were here today, I know he’d be tickled pink!”