The Magdalen
Page 24
“Majella won’t believe it when I get back home, though I suppose in a way I don’t blame you, Esther child. You’ve had a very hard time. Listen, we’d better start making tracks to the platform, else I’ll miss the Galway train. Are you certain you won’t change your mind, come home to my house in Galway if you want, and have a think about things?”
Esther shook her head. She couldn’t go back to the west yet. It held too many painful memories. She knew she wasn’t up to confronting her brothers and mother or, worse, having to face Conor.
She hailed a taxi for Rathmines as soon as her aunt had departed on the Galway train. She wasn’t very sure of where she was going, as they passed one red-brick terrace of houses after another, all looking the same. She’d stay in Dublin for a while, get a job, earn a few bob, then she might go to London. She’d heard that it was “mighty” over there.
Deirdre Kelly was Ina’s first cousin, a plain mousey-looking woman who lived in the basement of 25 Churchview Road with her chain-smoking husband. Esther followed her up the three flights of steep stairs, lugging her case up step after step. Mrs. Kelly showed her into a small plain bedsit. The shared bathroom was situated up on the return. Esther agreed to pay a month’s rent in advance; although the room was small, at least it was clean. It contained a single bed, an old mahogany wardrobe, a tapestry-covered armchair, a rickety table that stood in front of the high narrow window, and a single polished dining chair. In one corner there was a tiled ledge with a two-ring gas cooker and a sink. It was only when Esther decided to make a cup of tea for herself that she realized she hadn’t even a kettle. She had to rush out to the shops, finding a treasure trove of a hardware store before it shut, to equip her small abode with a kettle, two saucepans, a pair of cups and saucers and plates and a bowl, plus knives and forks and spoons. At the grocer’s she had bought tea and milk, a big square loaf of bread and a small packet of butter, thankful for the lunch she’d already eaten. On the way back she bought a paper off the boy on the corner.
Sitting in the flat, she realized just how alone she was. She had never ever really been alone like this, the novel peace and quiet unsettling her. In the distance she could hear the vague sound of someone’s radio, and promised to buy herself one just as soon as she had some money earned. The bed was hard and rather damp, and despite the warm summer weather outside she was glad to get into bed and pull the blankets up around her. Silence enveloped her.
She thought of what the Maggies would be doing now, and of her mother’s reaction when Patsy told her that she wasn’t going back to Carraig Beag. She thought of Roisin and curled herself into the pillow, imagining her child beside her. Closing her eyes, she tried to sleep, pretending everything was all right.
Every day she walked the streets of Dublin, searching for work, all the employers wanting a reference from her previous job, something she was unwilling to provide. Having left the laundry, she was trying to forget all that had happened to her.
Yet guilt stalked her. How could she walk away from her own flesh and blood, sign a form that would take away her rights of motherhood and leave her small daughter to the care of strangers? What kind of a woman was she, that she had done such a thing? They had all reassured her that she was making the right decision, the correct choice. Esther was not sure. Her eyes were constantly drawn to young mothers pushing prams with gurgling babies sheltered from the sun by white canopies and cute cotton bonnets; she would sit for hours watching as small toddlers threw bread to the ducks in St. Stephen’s Green, their mothers and nursemaids keeping a good hold of them. At times she heard a child’s cry that reminded her of her own baby and her heart swelled with the ridiculous hope of seeing her child again. Every precious day she had spent with Roisin in the nursery of the mother-and-baby home was recalled, the images seared on her soul for ever.
She’d been a young eejit of a country girl when she’d first gone into the Magdalen home; now she was changed. She would find a job, one that paid her decent wages and didn’t make her feel like a slave. She was determined to earn money of her cwn and have the fun of spending it. She was still young, and perhaps in time she would meet another man, a good man that would love her and care for her and not go and break her heart. She thought of kind and dependable Jim Murray. He would never make her heart race and her breath catch the way Conor O’Hagan had done, but he would give her friendship and care. In time she longed for another baby, one that would fill the aching emptiness for the child she’d given up.
Roisin would grow up strong and free, unaware of the circumstances of her birth, and the mother who loved her. Esther had to learn to accept that she could never play any part in her child’s life.
No life is ever wasted, that’s what Detta had believed. Everything has its purpose. Esther Doyle was not prepared to turn her back on life, stay hidden away like some of the Maggies. She was a Connemara woman, a survivor, a Magdalen ready to put the past behind her and begin again.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
THE MAGDALEN
Copyright © 1999 by Marita Conlon-McKenna
This book was originally published by Bantam Press, an imprint of Transworld Publishers, Ltd., in the United Kingdom.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Edited by Claire Eddy
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
eISBN 9781429968102
First eBook Edition : August 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Conlon-McKenna, Marita.
The Magdalen / Marita Conlon-McKenna.—1st ed. p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
1. Dublin (Ireland)—Fiction. 2. Unmarried mothers—Fiction. 3. Female friendship—Fiction. 4. Pregnant women—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6053.0456 M37 2002
823’.914—dc21
2001054741