The Magdalen

by Marita Conlon-McKenna

  They waited and waited as afternoon turned to evening and eventually to night. One by one the other boats returned. Toddy had arrived back only an hour before darkness.

  “The fishing was grand! Dermot’s a greedy devil, he’s staying out to get another run before nightfall,” he chuckled. “I’m too old for it. Anyway, ’twas getting a bit rough, so I turned for home.”

  By suppertime Esther began to feel afraid, as gusting gale-force winds screeched along the headland and grinding waves crashed and roared against the shore and there was still no sign of the Sally Anne. How far could Daddy have taken the boat? Would the engine have let him down!

  Esther couldn’t believe what was happening. Gerard was like a crazy man, scrabbling along the rocks, hoping for a glimpse of their boat; Donal and Tom racing up and down along the beach, frantic. Still there was no sign of her daddy at all. Her mammy was as white as a ghost, standing at the window watching out for him.

  “Your daddy’ll be back soon, Paddy! He’ll be back soon, Nonie pet!”

  The neighbours gathered at dusk down by the pier, whispering together, talking low, then, windblown and anxious, making their way up the shell-lined path to the door and sitting themselves in the large open kitchen, keeping Majella company. Nonie was frightened by the strangers, who poked and prodded and kissed her. She threw a temper tantrum, pulling and lashing at Esther as she cried hysterically. Maureen Murphy made pot after pot of tea, all the time keeping an eye on Majella, worried for her. Through the window panes Esther could see the flicker of the paraffin-oil lamps that the men and boys were carrying as they formed a circle to light up the small harbour inlet. She watched as they lit a huge bonfire of driftwood and old fish boxes on the beach, hoping that Dermot would see the dazzle from afar. The wind scattered the flames hither and thither, tossing them out into the inky darkness. A chink of light, that’s all her daddy would need to guide him.

  It was almost midnight when Father Brendan came. He had heard the news on returning from visiting friends in Spiddal. Bowing his head, he drew the heavy circle of beads from his pocket, relishing the comfort of the polished wood. “A decade of the rosary, my good people!” he suggested, knowing that there was little else he could do to comfort Majella Doyle and her family and neighbours on such a night. “The most sorrowful mystery,” intoned the priest, kneeling on the floor as the people of Carraig Beag joined in.

  Chapter Five

  The weeks following her father’s disappearance at sea dragged on, the whole family in a state of shock and disbelief. The nuns were kind to her, saying prayers for him each day in school, Anna and Fidelma and the rest of her friends doing their best to console her. Rumours and gossip circulated up and down the coast. He’d been seen! The selkies had taken him! He was drunk! And the worst rumour of all, put about by the neighbourhood gossip Frances Fahy, that Dermot Doyle had gone to England to join his fancy woman. “The woman is evil. There isn’t a kind bone in her body!” murmured their mother angrily.

  For the best part of the week three lifeboats had searched for him, and Donal had heard that even the American coastguards had been notified of their father’s disappearance. But they all knew it would be impossible for such a craft to survive the high waves and storms. Every ship using the lanes had been radioed to keep a lookout for him, but still there was no sign.

  Esther prayed day and night to the plaster-cast statue of Our Lady on her bedroom shelf, kissing the hard blue folds of her dress and the painted pink feet, trying to avoid the coils of the green snake which lay underfoot. Strange, but she didn’t pray for her daddy. Somehow she already knew that he was dead, and that his looming figure would never cross the front door of home again. The Virgin Mother had already seen to his being taken from them, so instead she prayed for her mammy and her brothers and Nonie. Help Mammy to get over this and stop crying. Help her brothers lose the red-rimmed look to their eyes. Help all of them survive this desperate sadness!

  One Thursday evening after school, Esther was sitting at the kitchen table, trying to write out an English composition for Sister Clare, when the knock came at the door. It was two of the local garda, and Father Brendan was with them. Her mother sobbed the minute she caught sight of them.

  “Have you found him?” she begged.

  The sergeant nodded. “Aye, we think so. A man’s body was washed up near Spiddal this morning. It could be Dermot.”

  Majella gripped on to the tall ladderback kitchen chair, her knuckles white, willing herself to stay standing.

  “Majella, they’d like you to come and identify him,” said Father Brendan softly. “He’s at Mackey’s Funeral Parlour in Spiddal.”

  “Let me get my coat and bag.”

  Gerard got his heavy brown jacket from behind the door. “I’ll go with Mammy,” he offered.

  “What about you, Esther? Perhaps you should come too,” suggested Father Brendan. “Majella might need you.”

  Esther ran into the bedroom and grabbed her school coat, catching a glimpse of her own scared white face in the mirror.

  “Will you mind the others, Donal?” asked Majella. “Make sure Paddy has a drink and goes to the toilet before he falls asleep, and—”

  “Mammy, Tom and I know what to do, so don’t be worrying yourself! We’ll be grand, honest.”

  The Doyles climbed into the back of the big black garda car, Father Brendan following behind in his silver Austin as they swerved back down the narrow roadway, through Carraig Beag and on to the Spiddal road. Esther held her mother’s hand the whole time, as the car bumped and jolted along the way, Gerard sitting stiffly beside them, steeling himself not to cry.

  Mackey’s Funeral Parlour was really only the Mackeys’ front sitting-room, the windows draped in sombre green velvet curtains, overlooking Spiddal’s main street. Two huge brass urns with palm plants sat in the window. At a yard to the side Tim Mackey made coffins, the timber stacked in neat lengths along one wall. There wasn’t a huge call for undertaking in the district so he supplemented his earnings with carpentry.

  Tim Mackey, like his father before him, was always polite and the soul of discretion when attending to grieving relatives, leading them to a group of mahogany chairs in the hall.

  Esther could tell her mammy was anxious to get it over with. She had to know one way or another what had happened to Dermot. The sergeant and Father Brendan stood up. “Are you ready, Mrs. Doyle?”

  “Aye! But I’d prefer if Esther didn’t see him. I want her to remember her daddy as he was.”

  Gerard took her arm, his face red and blotchy, as Tim led them into the room. Esther sat listening to the ticking of the clock in the polished hall, then she heard her mammy moan aloud. It was her daddy they’d found!

  Esther held her mammy when the tears came, Mrs. Mackey fetching her a large glass of whiskey and making her sit down. “The dote is after having a terrible shock!”

  “My poor, poor Dermot. So long in the water,” sobbed Majella. “Imagine, an old man found him washed up on the rocks, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! The crabs and the fish got at him. Mother of God, I feel sick even thinking about it. It didn’t even look like him!”

  “Maybe it wasn’t!”

  “It was!” shouted Gerard. “He was wearing the jumper Mam knitted him for Christmas, the one with the diamonds down the middle.”

  “It took me two months to knit it for him and I remember every stitch of it!”

  The sergeant was satisfied that there had been an official identification, and along with the priest and Gerard started to make funeral arrangements. The doctor had already made a report confirming death by drowning.

  Hot tears coursed down Esther’s face, her father’s death now all too real. She would never ever see her daddy’s handsome face again, hear his deep laugh or the crunch of his boots on the step. The sea had finally claimed him.

  Father Brendan drove them back to Carraig Beag, her mammy’s breath stinking of whiskey, her tired strained face and red eyes declaring the knowledge and f
inal acceptance of her husband’s death, Gerard and herself silent.

  Donal, Tom, Liam, and Paddy stood like four stiff soldiers at the cottage door, waiting for news. Father Brendan watched as Majella Doyle’s children helped her inside, wrapping their arms around her as grief overwhelmed her. Turning on the ignition, he reversed the car, thinking of the solitude and loneliness of his parish house.

  Father Brendan stretched himself in the dim light of the confession box. He was getting a dead leg from sitting in the same position for so long. He tried to shift sideways. From outside came the coughing and subtle noises of those awaiting their turn. Seventy-year-old Vera Casey was reciting a long tirade of imagined sins, the same ones she had told him last Saturday, and the Saturday before. He racked his brains, trying to think of a suitable penance. What kind of penance could you give a lonely old woman with neither chick nor child to comfort her? She was living it already!

  It had been a long week. He’d given the last rites to the young O’rady girl. Bernard Lawless had confirmed her final stage in the two-year battle against TB. There was nothing more either of them could do. A ninety-four-year-old farmer had died in his own bed in his sleep. The family had wanted a simple mass, a tribute to his long life. And then there had been the Doyle funeral. The whole parish had turned out for the fisherman. The widow and children had sat rigidly up the front of the church, still unbelieving and shocked by the loss of the head of the family. It was Majella and all those boys and the two girls that worried him. He might have a word with John Joe McEvoy and a few other local bigwigs with regard to setting up a fund, something to help them to get by. The eldest boy looked nearly grown-up. He was just like his father, a fisherman too! Perhaps a fund could purchase a new boat. Aye, a fund! That would be the very thing. The people hereabouts would look after their own.

  “An Our Father,” he muttered against the grille, dismissing Vera and pulling open the other side.

  The voice was so soft that he could barely hear it. “Speak up, child!” he chided.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned …”

  He ran his fingers through his grey hair, waiting. “Yes, child!”

  “I wanted my daddy to go away, to leave us alone and never come back,” whispered Esther. “I didn’t want him to hurt and upset my mammy any more. I prayed for it.”

  “Prayed to who?”

  “To the Virgin Mother. I prayed for her to take my daddy away,” the voice faltered for a second, “and she did!”

  Sweet Jesus! He knew what this was about. He recognized the voice and the face in the shadows on the other side. It was Dermot Doyle’s daughter, and obviously the child was blaming herself for the fisherman’s death. He let her ramble on, the words of confusion and anger tumbling out of her. He couldn’t have this, the young girl blaming herself, he had to free her from this, remove the guilt. It was not confession she needed—there had already been enough of that—it was consolation. He drew in a huge exaggerated sigh, knowing full well that she could hear it, letting sternness fill his voice.

  “So am I to understand, my child, that a bit of a girl like yourself honestly believes that God the almighty and all powerful, maker of heaven and earth, would answer such a request! Or that the mother of the Saviour would pay attention to the beseechings of a girl like yourself!” He could almost sense her blush, her mortification. “If you have sinned, my child, it is the sin of pride!” He let the words sink in. “None of us can tell God the almighty, he who created day and night, the living and the dead, when to call one of his flock home. Do you believe that, child?”

  “Yes, Father,” she mumbled, feeling embarrassed and stupid.

  “I know it is a sad time for you all, but you must learn to accept God’s holy will.”

  “Yes, Father!” she agreed meekly.

  “An Act of Contrition and a Hail Mary, and remember me to your poor mother.”

  “Thank you, Father.” Esther smiled, relief coursing through her veins as she slipped from the near-dark of the confession box, and knelt down in one of the wooden pews to the front of the altar, the sunlight splattering through the leaded window, spilling on to her. She was forgiven.

  Connemara, 1951

  Chapter Six

  The war had ended only a month after her Dermot’s death. Peace at last! Adolf Hitler shooting himself in a bunker rather than being captured, and Winston Churchill and the British people ecstatic with their victory. Eamon De Valera had spoken to the Irish people, the whole Doyle family sitting listening to Radio Eireann as he thanked God for sparing Ireland from the conflagration that had left much of Europe in ruins, and praised the success of their neutrality and spoke of their small nation and how she had stood alone for hundreds of years, never accepting defeat or surrendering her soul. United around the radio, Majella had reached for her children’s hands, all of them knowing that they too must start again.

  The last six years had been hard. Majella was lonesome without Dermot, watching her children grow up.

  The boat lost, Dermot had left them penniless, dependent on the generosity of others. She thanked God that at least they owned the roof over their heads. The boys were strong and healthy, prepared to work hard, and she did not know how she would have coped without Esther’s help. Her beautiful daughter almost running the house and caring for Nonie, when she was too low and depressed and unable to get out of bed. Prayer was her only consolation in these times of trouble.

  Not long after her fourteenth birthday Esther had left the whitewashed convent school, staying home to help with the house and minding Nonie and her small brothers. Mother Brigid had pleaded with Majella to let her stay on and do her exams, so that in time she could study to be a teacher or a nurse. Esther hoped that her mother would listen to the nun, but Majella and Gerard wouldn’t hear of it, and so she had given in to their wishes, though she missed seeing her friends and the stimulation of learning and studying.

  “You lucky ducker!” joked Anna Mitchell, her very best friend. “No more books and exams and nuns telling you what to do and say! I wish my ma and da would let me leave school too.”

  Esther tried to put a brave face on it, but she missed the girls and the chat, and even the nuns. Being stuck at home wasn’t much fun, but she tried to get used to it, making a point of seeing the girls after school or at the weekend. Gerard and Donal had followed their late father into the fishing business, and thanks to the generosity of the local people a fund had helped purchase a replacement boat, Gerard agreeing to pay off the balance of the cost with a loan from a big bank in Eyre Square in Galway. Her older brothers worked long and hard, putting to sea as often as possible. The fishing was good and they were both well prepared for hard work.

  Gerard himself had grown thick and muscular over the years, a stockier version of their father. He demanded that his meals be ready and served the minute he returned from fishing. At night he would sit at the table counting out the money they earned, passing only a fraction of it over to Mother for the housekeeping, making her plead for any little bit extra she might need. Esther hated him for that. Gerard planned to buy a small farm from one of the old bachelors or spinsters in the locality when the time was right. He had already purchased a small flock of sheep that rambled around their fields and the grassy headland. “Me or mine’ll never be beholden to the charity of others again,” he’d say, determined.

  Donal was the complete opposite, and would give you his last penny, if he had it. For the moment he seemed content to let Gerard boss him around and be rewarded with a small wage, and he would slip off and play Gaelic football or hurley with a few of the local lads whenever he had a chance. He was well over six foot, his fair hair bleached by the sun and wind and, she supposed, handsome, judging by all the girls that were mad about him. Even Fidelma and Anna had taken to flirting with him every time they saw him. He had a way with women and was the only one in the house that could put their mother in a good humour, coax a smile back into her eyes.

  Esther herself wa
s closest to Thomas; they had always been best friends. He was one of the brightest boys that had ever stood in the small parish school, for ever stuck in books and reading, trying to discover more about the world. Mr. Brennan said that he was one of the best pupils that he had ever had the privilege to teach, and had given him a hearty recommendation for a scholarship place in the Christian Brothers school outside Galway. He’d won it no problem. Majella was fierce proud of him too, and at night would clear a spot for him at the kitchen table so that he could get all his homework done.

  Esther would often stay up late, keeping him company, helping him study for his exams, asking him questions, reading his essays. She envied him his education and would often find he’d left her a book or a piece of poetry or a short story he had enjoyed on the small side table in her room.

  Liam and Paddy were as wild as March hares and their mother was worn out with scolding and chastising them. They never stopped fighting and bickering and kicking footballs, and galloping around the place pretending to be cowboys and Indians. “They’ll get sense when they’re a bit older!” Majella would declare hopefully, though Esther doubted it.

  Nonie had become a sturdy child. Deep blue eyes were topped with a wavy mass of black curls that tumbled around her wide, open face. She lived in an imaginary world, rambling around the fields and ditches, playing games in her head, not caring if she was wet or that splodges of dung or dirt clung to her clothes. Mixer, the old dog, followed her around devotedly, trying to guide her away from brambles and briars like a mother hen with a chick. Esther loved her with all her heart, but knew just how difficult it was for her mother having to cope with such a “special child.” They all knew how awkward it was for Mr. Brennan to manage Nonie in the small school which Mammy had insisted on sending her to, saying, “She needs to be with other children.” Liam and Paddy told them how hard it was to get Nonie to stay sitting in her seat, or to listen to the lesson. The child could make no head, arse, or tail of the simple alphabet and numbers that all the other children were learning.