The Magdalen

by Marita Conlon-McKenna

  They all had a fitful sleep as Bernice thrashed and turned through the night. “I’ll never see him again!” were her waking words as dawn broke.

  They all looked out for her as Sister Gabriel sent her back to work straight away. Bernice returned to her old routine, ironing men’s shirts, folding and wrapping them neatly, but her usual good humour and sparkle seemed to have disappeared. She haunted the orphan girls, asking them all about the nursery and how the babies were treated in the orphanage. Saranne had worked for more than a year with the infants and was able to relay lots of information. Bernice had her pestered. “What time do they get the babies up?” “Will Stephen be bathed every day?” “How often do they change the nappies?”

  Saranne, who was a serious sort, with straight mouselike hair and a nervous expression, had been raised in the Holy Saints orphanage. She knew no other life, only that which the nuns had exposed her to, hardship and duty and routine. “The babies are well cared for, Bernice, honest to God! Sister Angela would strap anyone who would harm any of the babies. Your baby will be fine.”

  Bernice at least took some comfort in that.

  Esther herself felt both physically and mentally weary. She was tired all the time, and longed to lie down and rest. Her feet and ankles were swollen and although she was only twenty she had varicose veins like those of a middle-aged woman. It came from all the standing. She also felt depressed, Bernice’s situation seeding doubts in her own mind about what would happen to her.

  “From next week on, you’ll work in the kitchens,” Sister Josepha had informed her. “You’re too near your time to be of much use to me here. Ina will have plenty of jobs for you.”

  She almost cried with gratitude.

  As Bernice seemed to gradually resign herself to what had happened, only crying in her sleep at night, it was Rita who really worried Esther. She seemed totally distracted, slipping away too often to meet Paul. She seemed crazy, in love almost, recklessly courting danger and disaster, taking risks to see her lover.

  “They’ll get caught!” warned Jim Murray. “Sure everybody knows about them.” Every day the van driver appeared at the kitchen door for a mug of Ina’s strong dark tea and a slice of whatever was fresh out of the oven.

  The cook had a soft spot for him. “He’s a gentleman, Esther, and you don’t get many of those in this neck of the woods.”

  He always enquired about Esther’s well-being. Watching him, she realized what a good, kind man he was. Although he was only of average height, he was broad and strong, which was obvious from all the heavy loads he lifted day after day. Every day he read the Irish Press and could tell you all the latest news, as he always collected an early edition hot off the presses down in Burgh Quay.

  “Any mention of Galway?” she’d ask, dying for a bit of local news about her own place.

  Jim’s blue-grey eyes were serious as he tried to see if there was anything worth reading aloud.

  “I think you have an admirer yourself, Esther,” joked Ina. Esther flushed. ’Twas very unlikely she’d have any admirer with the state she was in, ready to drop a baby. Ina needed her head examined. Anyways, Jim was far too old, he was at least thirty-five and what in heaven’s name would he be bothered with someone like her for? “I’m telling you, Esther, the man is lonely out ever since his wife died and he trying to raise those poor children on his own. Why do you think he keeps coming to the kitchen looking for a bit of home cooking and a bit of a chat, instead of gallivanting off to the pub like most men would do? He’s lonesome, if you ask me!”

  Jim didn’t strike Esther as the lonely type at all, for he was always laughing and chatting with the rest of the drivers and enjoyed delivering and collecting and meeting his regular customers. Still, she remembered how her mother used to cry for her daddy at night, alone in the kitchen when she thought all the rest of them were asleep.

  “If I were twenty years younger I’d be mad about him myself. He’s got a great look of that actor fellow that can sing and dance, Gene Kelly!”

  Esther thought Ina was half daft.

  “Will you lift out two or three of the buckets, Esther, and leave them in the yard? I think I hear the pig-man coming.”

  It was the one kitchen job she hated: the buckets stored in the scullery, the smell of rotting food making her nauseous. Taking a grip of the handles, she grabbed two, choosing not to look at them in any detail at all as she rushed outside.

  “Hold on, lassie!” She ran into Jim, almost spilling the buckets. “What in God’s name are you doing?” he asked, all annoyed.

  “I’m putting these out for Joe.”

  “You shouldn’t be lifting things like this in your condition. Ina shouldn’t be asking you when you’re so near your time. Give them to me and I’ll leave them down for you!” He took the buckets from out of her hands, leaving them in the laneway outside the yard where Joe stopped every second day to collect the institution’s food scraps. Esther smiled to herself. Ina was right, he was a gentleman. No wonder he was saying so little about Rita and the good-looking Paul.

  Rita herself had got friendly with Saranne, and Esther couldn’t help but wonder if she was up to something. Why was she so interested in the young girl from the orphanage all of a sudden? Perhaps Esther was getting too suspicious of her, like the rest of them.

  As the days dragged slowly into one another, she longed to see her own child, feel it in her arms. She wondered if Conor ever thought of the baby he had fathered, or was he so caught up in his marriage to Nuala that his own flesh and blood no longer mattered? One thing was for sure: that old McGuinness bride of his would never give him a child!

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Rita had escaped! The news had spread like wildfire among the Maggies. It had been at least two years since anyone had managed to break free of the laundry. Two of the orphans had made a half-hearted attempt the previous June and had been brought back by the guards, but, knowing Rita, she would not be careless enough to be caught. She had pretended to sleep all night in her bed and in reality hidden somewhere down near the laundry. Sister Josepha had locked up, not realizing that Rita was still inside. They’d found one of the tall narrow windows in the steam room slightly open and surmised she must have wriggled through it and somehow climbed the yard wall. Sisters Gabriel and Vincent were behaving like Nazi storm troopers, searching the dormitories and every nook and cranny of the convent and laundry, even checking the outhouses, for the runaway and the possibility that one of the other penitents had aided and abetted her. The women were frightened by the nuns’ behaviour, but poor Sister Jo-Jo bore the brunt of Gabriel’s anger. The gardener had found a high wooden stool abandoned in the thorny pyracantha bushes near the wall, which made it far more likely that Rita had escaped.

  The women ate their breakfast in suppressed silence, feigning interest in the thick gloopy porridge and stale brown bread. Esther prayed silently that Rita had actually managed to break free and get out of this prison to which they’d all been abandoned.

  “They’ll bring her back,” murmured Maura. “They always do!”

  “She’s not a prisoner!” Esther protested. “None of us are. They can’t force her to stay.”

  “But she’s run off with a fellah!” guffawed Sheila. “Old Gabriel will just love that!”

  Rumours and stories circulated all morning and Sister Jo-Jo kept slipping in and out of the laundry to go up to the office. By midday a further piece of information had been added to the story: a baby was missing from the orphanage. There were rumours of a nun or a fancily dressed woman lifting it in her arms and walking straight out of the gates with it. “She stole a babby!” whispered the three Marys.

  “She took her own baby,” said Maura tersely.

  “She took baby Patrick!” declared Sheila triumphantly. “Herself and the baby have got away!”

  No wonder Rita had kept on refusing to sign the papers to let Patrick be fostered, thought Esther. She must have been planning her escape for ages.


  Saranne Madden was called to Sister Gabriel’s office. She had started to shake the minute she was summoned. Esther had suspected that she might be involved.

  “The nuns’ll beat it out of her!” warned Maura.

  They all pitied Saranne: like the rest of the orphans, her life so far had been nothing but misery. She had never known a home or family life, or had someone to care about her. Rita had turned her head, flattered her, returned her craving for attention and affection. Saranne did not return for an hour, her thin face swollen with crying.

  “Did she hurt you, lovey?” enquired Sheila.

  “She strapped me!” whined sixteen-year-old Saranne, holding out her livid red hands; wide welts of bruised torn skin covered her palms. They were too sore for her to bend or use. “She slapped me too. I did nothing! Honest! Rita kept asking me about the orphanage, what it was like growing up there. I thought she were interested in me, not just the babies and the nursery.”

  “Rita’s a bitch, a selfish bitch!” Bernice spat out vehemently to the group of them. “She could have taken me with her. We could have got my Stephen too, but no, Miss bloody Rita Whatever-her-real-name-is didn’t give a damn about anybody but herself, wasn’t interested in me or my baby!”

  “Ber! Shut up! There’s enough trouble as there is without you bringing Sister Jo-Jo down on us all.”

  “I thought she was my friend!” sobbed the distraught Bernice. “Why didn’t she take me with her? Now I’ll never get out of here. There’s no-one in my bloody family going to come looking for me or my baby. I’ll be left to rot here and never get out!”

  Esther had to steel herself to keep her sanity in the days following the breakout. The Mother Superior, Mother Benedict, had introduced stricter disciplinary measures in both the orphanage and the laundry.

  The platter-faced head nun talked to them all in the refectory. “The matter of a woman absconding with a child is not one that I or my fellow-sisters take lightly. Think of that poor child, taken from the care of nuns who are devoted to their small charges, his young life ruined. Mrs. Byrne the social worker and myself had high hopes for that baby. As we speak there is a heartbroken couple who were chosen to be his parents. They were willing to raise him and educate him and consider him as their own son, despite his low background. I had the unpleasant task of informing them of this situation. Now they will have to rejoin the waiting list, along with hundreds of other good couples. What of this child? He is reunited with his mother. What will happen to this innocent babe if she returns to her fallen ways? Who will look after him then?”

  The question hung heavy in the air, the women silent, not daring to reply.

  Sister Gabriel blamed Sister Josepha’s easygoing ways, and was determined to come down hard on the penitents. They deserved no trust or understanding. She had a vindictive streak, and had Saranne’s hair shorn close to her scalp, making an example of her. Saranne looked like a small scared skeleton, her bruised hands constantly touching her almost bare skull.

  “Wait till you see, lovey!” promised Sheila. “Your hair will grow back thicker and glossier than before, honest!”

  In the laundry they now had to work in almost complete silence, and at night each dormitory was locked. The women, nervous, had complained about it.

  “What if there’s a fire, Sister, how will we manage to get out?”

  “The window.” That was all the old battleaxe had said. Obviously she considered their lives, their discomfort, nothing in her scheme of things.

  The slight trust that had existed between the Maggies and the nuns, their “guardians,” totally disappeared.

  “We’re like bloody slaves out in Rome or Africa!” jeered Bernice.

  At all times the whereabouts of the women were to be known and there was to be no break from routine. Break-times were supervised, and even visits to the toilet had to be accompanied, Sister Vincent arriving unannounced in the laundry a few times a day to check on them all.

  “They’ll want to put us in chains next, the old bitches!” spat Sheila, her face livid with temper. “A fecking chain gang!”

  Esther was glad at least to be working in the kitchen, where Ina was in some ways kind to her. She helped with the washing-up, the table-setting, and clearing the plates when the others finished eating. Scraping nuns’ leftovers into the big tin buckets for collection by Joe, the pig farmer from Rathfarnham, Esther occasionally managed to retrieve a choice piece of meat or a nice soft bread roll, even a slice of unwanted fruit cake which she could share with the others later or savour herself. The last few weeks she always seemed to be starving, and was glad that Ina turned a blind eye, knowing well that scavenging food was one of the few perks of kitchen duty.

  There was still no trace of Rita. Ina reckoned she’d gone to England on the mailboat.

  “She’s away in Liverpool,” confided Jim Murray over his usual mug of tea at the kitchen door. “That Paul fellow helped her. They were always scheming, more luck to them!”

  “I knew that pair were up to something, she was always making eyes at him,” grunted Ina. “She were probably having it off with him!”

  Esther blazed, hoping that they wouldn’t look over in her direction. Rita would have had no idea of the trouble she’d brought on the rest of them by escaping.

  “Joe Reilly went up by his digs yesterday. They were meant to be going to a football match together. His landlady said that he’d just upped and left, didn’t even bother giving her notice or nothing.”

  “Do you think they’ve run off together, Jim?”

  “Maybe!”

  “Of course, when they hear, all the rest of them’ll want to escape too,” muttered Ina. “‘Tis always the way. One goes and they all get notions. Sure, where would the like of the poor craters here be going? Who’d have them!”

  Esther attended to her work, washing about a hundred mugs, clinking them together in the Belfast sink in temper, Jim Murray looking over at her, bemused. Business they had discussing the women and girls, belittling them! Everyone looked down on the Maggies, it wasn’t fair!

  As the days of her confinement grew closer, Esther felt like a prisoner sentenced for a crime she did not commit, like an animal trapped in a tunnel. She knew that the imminent birth of her baby was all that mattered. Her body was more than ready to be rid of its burden, and she herself yearned to finally see and hold her baby. Soon she would be a mother without ever having been a bride or wife. Romance and sexual pleasure, that’s what had brought her to this, and yet somehow she had to believe that God intended for this child to be born, and for her to carry it.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Her labour had started early on the Sunday morning, though her baby was not due for another two weeks. She had woken with deep, heavy pains low in her back.

  “You’ve started, Esther love, that’s all!” reassured Maura.

  She felt a mixture of excitement and slight nervousness. She had been waiting a long time for this day. The whole convent was freezing at that early hour, the ancient boiler struggling to heat the length of stone corridors, vast dormitories and rows of individual cubicles. She shivered as she dressed quietly, not wanting to disturb her room-mates as most of them were still asleep.

  Sister Gabriel had escorted her over to the mother-and-baby annexe, leading her up the wide stone stairs. She had to stop halfway as a contraction suddenly gripped her.

  Sister Bridget had welcomed them. She was a small wiry nun, her veil pushed back to reveal a crown of tight white curls. She wore a large white apron over her habit and had her sleeves rolled up. She bustled with activity, leading Esther to a small room off the main corridor. The walls and floor were completely tiled and it smelt strongly of some kind of pine disinfectant. The three women could just about fit in it comfortably.

  “Here you go, Esther, put this on!” suggested Sister Bridget, passing her a washed-out blue cotton gown. Embarrassed, she waited till the two nuns went outside before undressing and slipping it on.

 
Sister Bridget returned with a strange-looking black trumpet-like instrument. “Lie up there on the bed, girl, and let me take a listen to your baby’s heart.”

  Awkwardly Esther tried to arrange herself on the high narrow bed, the nun pulling up the front of the gown and placing the black thing against her enormous, almost egg-shaped stomach. Mortified, she watched as the nun pressed her ear to it and listened.

  “A good strong heartbeat! That’s what I like to hear! Now flop open the legs and let me see how you’re doing!”

  Matter-of-factly the little nun poked her head between her legs, pushing her hand up inside her. Esther wanted to die with mortification. “You won’t be too long till your baby’s born,” she announced before disappearing outside.

  Sister Gabriel returned, sitting herself down in the leather chair beside the bed. Retrieving her black missal from the folds of her habit, she began to read.

  Esther wished she would go away and just leave her alone. “I’m all right, Sister, if you want to go back down to the others.”

  The nun barely glanced at her and just kept on reading her prayers.

  Sister Bridget slipped in every so often, just to see how she was doing. The pain in her back was definitely getting stronger, but that was all.

  “I think you might need an enema,” suggested Sister Bridget, pursing her lips. “It would definitely help.”

  Esther wanted to beg them not to give her one, but she knew from Bernice and Rita that Sister Bridget was a great believer in the power of the enema. Absolute shame and humiliation filled her as the two nuns made her turn on her side and administered the soapy-water enema, running it from a bucket via a rubber tube into her backside. They ran it into her until she felt she was going to burst, and barely made it to the toilet next door where her bowels exploded. They were trying to torture her, that’s what it was! Well, she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of crying and screaming like some of the girls did. She was young and fit and well prepared for the birth of her baby. Hadn’t she helped to deliver her own baby sister? There was nothing to be scared of, she tried to tell herself; all women go through this, and survive.