by Tom Murphy
His look changed then. The color rose in his face the way Lily had seen it rise many times, times when fate frustrated his plans, when reality came knocking upon the door of his castle of dreams. Fergus looked away from his sister. He had no answer. The gold was there. He would get it. The connecting links in this very long chain had not been filled in. It was a magical idea, instant riches, and it would therefore happen magically. That was all the logic Fergus needed for any scheme, the mere ghost of it floating in the air just beyond his reach.
“California, Fergy, is three thousand miles away. There are deserts and grizzly bears and wild Indians.”
“Barry and me can lick ’em.”
“Barry and you can’t even get through one day in St. Paddy’s orphanage without finding yourselves in some kind of trouble, Fergy. ’Tis a fine mess you’d be in, alone on the great desert when the Indians come to get you.”
“Laugh, will you? Just see if I give you my gold.”
Lily did laugh, then. Her native sense of humor had been some time coming back to her, but come it did, and stronger than ever, after those first bad months of grieving for her lost parents.
“Sure, Fergy, and don’t think your scalp wouldn’t make a fine prize for some wild heathen Indian chief, red as it is. Your scalp would have the place of honor on his flagpole, or wherever it is they hang such things, and it might just be the first place of honor my old Fergy ever won, isn’t it the truth, now?”
“I’ll be rich and famous and ride by in my silver coach and splash mud on you, and not even look your way.”
“Fergy, Fergy, get on with you, now. ’Tis a fine dream, but it is a dream after all, then, isn’t it?”
He turned away from her then and walked to the window and looked out “It is a dream. And maybe you’re right. But someday I’ll get out of this prison, Lil, and go out into the great world and do fine things, things you’ll be proud of.”
“I truly hope you will, Fergy.”
“Then why do you laugh at me?”
“Sometimes I wonder that myself. Sometimes maybe I’m laughing because if I weren’t, ’tis crying I’d be, have you ever thought of that, Fergy?”
Lily knew he hadn’t, for Fergus seemed hardly to think at all, except for the inventing of new and wilder schemes. He turned away from the window and walked up to his sister and awkwardly put his thin arms around her.
“There, now. I’m not the easiest brother in the world to put up with, am I, Lil?”
She looked up at him and smiled. This was better. At least this was human. “You’re about the only one I have, Fergy, ’tis why I value you so. You’re a bit of a scarce commodity, don’t you know?”
“I love you, Lil, can you believe that?”
“Sure I can.”
The bell rang then, and it was time for Fergus to go back to the boys’ orphanage. They had an hour to themselves every Sunday afternoon, and sometimes half an hour on Saturdays. Otherwise, the two parts of the orphanage were kept strictly apart, for some of the girls and a few of the boys were of an age and disposition to cause some concern among the nuns should they be allowed to mingle.
So Lily got to see her brother for an hour or a bit more each week. Sometimes these sessions were fine and friendly, sometimes sullen and strained. It all depended on Fergus, whose moods changed like the weather. And while her worries about Fergy and what Fergy seemed about to do continued, life at the orphanage of St. Patrick’s Cathedral went on with a consistency that Lily found reassuring.
She did not question her lot, for she knew that poor as she was, and orphaned, she was yet better off than many girls her age. It’s alive I am, after all, and I’ve got my health, and I’m learning things that will be useful one day in a shop or in service somewhere.
For the most part, Lily enjoyed her life at St. Paddy’s.
Frances, going on thirteen, was her closest friend.
Together they studied sewing with Sister Mary Agnes, English with Sister Claudia, religion with Matron herself, and mathematics with Sister Hilda, who was a bully. Together they fended off Dreadful Dolan, exchanged secrets, and speculated almost nightly upon the mystery of Sister Claudia.
For there was, beyond any doubt, a mystery.
Sister Claudia, on wings of rumor and fragments of fact, had become the focus of a glamorous and provocative legend at St. Paddy’s. One of four daughters from a very rich family, she was said to have retreated to the convent to nurse a broken heart. No one knew, or would tell, exactly how or when this valuable organ had been so damaged, but this ignorance only fed the fires of speculation. There was, to begin with, the undeniable fact of Sister Claudia’s beauty. Surely that alone was sufficient to break hearts left and right and inevitably to run the risk of having one’s own heart broken in return.
The girls would have it no other way, and since Frances and Lily were perhaps Sister Claudia’s greatest admirers, they were also the most vulnerable to the legend, which they embroidered to the best of their small experience and soaring imaginations.
“She loved,” said Frances darkly, “a man who loved another.”
“Another what?”
“Another woman, silly. That’s what happens. And then you get a broken heart. Sometimes you even die of it. You pine away.”
“Maybe,” said Lily in a voice of the utmost gravity, “he was married.”
“Maybe he was…is…a p-r-i-e-s-t!”
“Never!”
“How do you know?”
“It would be a mortal sin.”
“Lily Malone, it’s all a mortal sin.”
It was usually Lily who started laughing first, as their inventions got wilder and wilder. She did this now, and stuck her finger with the needle she was wielding.
“Ow! Anyway, it’s a real tragedy. And she so young.”
“Maybe he had a broken heart, too. Do men get them?”
“I think so. Only not so often. They’re very often heartless, I believe.”
Frances had the advantage over Lily in these discussions. She had thought about it more.
“Maybe,” said Lily, her eyes gleaming with vicarious pleasure, “he became a priest, and she became a nun to follow him, don’t you know?”
“Then maybe they’ll run away together.”
“And be defrocked!”
“Exactly.”
“Wouldn’t that be thrilling? They’d have to flee the country.”
“In disgrace!”
“Heavily disguised!”
“At midnight!”
“Just imagine.”
The deep and sullen tones of Bertha Dolan then came rumbling out of the night. “If you two don’t shut up right now, I’ll call Sister Claudia and tell her exactly what you said.”
This was greeted with derisive giggles, more whispers, secrets, and promises that eventually trailed off into drowsiness. Dreadful Dolan would get hers one of these days—that, at least, was for sure.
The very next day Lily discovered a way of getting back at Dreadful Dolan.
She was walking in the back garden with Frances, coming from their afternoon sewing lesson with Sister Mary Agnes. Lily had her own sewing bag now, just like Frances’. It was made from a scrap of the same blue cotton twill as their uniforms, sewn with a drawstring, filled with odds and ends of fabric, needlepointing canvas, needles, pins, and thread.
“There,” said Lily, pointing, “is a lovely little friend for Dreadful.”
Sunbathing at the foot of a rosebush was a small brown-and-yellow-striped garter snake. He was lazy with the lateafternoon heat, and easy to catch. Lily quickly did this, held him up for Frances to admire, then popped him into her sewing bag.
The deed was done in darkness.
There was no giggling that night in the middle dormitory. Sister Claudia came by to turn the lantern off at nine P.M., just as she always did, and to wish her charges a good night “Good night Sister Claudia,” a chorus of sleepy-sounding voices responded, and the young nun vanished down the
hall. All was silence for the next few minutes, until Bertha Dolan came back from the lavatory and stumbled into her bed. Still there was silence. For a moment Lily and Frances thought the snake had made his getaway. Then Dolan’s scream came, long and high-pitched and deliciously satisfying.
“Eeeeeeeeeeee! Eeee! Eeeeee!”
If Bertha Dolan, menace of the middle dormitory, were being slowly torn apart by the wild Indians, she could hardly have made more of a fuss.
“It’s in me bed! It’s in me bed!” Her voice was so shrill with terror that the words were almost indistinguishable, one from the other.
“Yes, Bertha Dolan,” replied Lily in a deep basso profundo, “and it’s a cobra, and you have about five minutes to live.”
“Eeeeeeeeeeee!”
“Make your peace with God, Bertha, your time is nigh.”
The room filled with giggles then, and three nuns appeared in the doorway, led by Sister Claudia with a lantern, prepared to fight off the devil himself.
“Girls, girls, what is this?”
“Eeeeeeeeeee!” was the only reply. “Eeeeee’s in me bed, Sister. A cobra!”
The flickering lantern revealed Bertha Dolan standing on her pillow, the skirts of her nightdress drawn up to her fat thighs, screaming mindlessly.
“All right, Bertha, you’re not dying, are you, anyone with strength enough to make this much noise can hardly be wounded.” Sister Claudia was not amused.
“But he’s in me bed.”
“Let me have a look, Bertha, and do come down from there.”
Sister Claudia drew back the sheet and the blanket and discovered the very frightened garter snake coiled at the foot of the bed. Sister Claudia brought the lantern closer. The snake’s black eyes sparkled like jet. His tiny forked tongue flicked in and out nervously.
“Goodness, Bertha, ’tis only one of the little fellows from the garden.” Sister Claudia picked up the snake gently. “And quite a fright he’s had, poor creature. A cobra indeed! You’re too big for such ideas, Bertha Dolan. Why, sure and he’s more frightened than you are, by the look of him. I’ll see that he gets safely back to his garden. But now, girls, I must know who has done this mischief. I’m sure ’twas someone’s idea of a good joke, but the fact is, someone might have been hurt by it Poor Bertha might have had a fit for heaven’s sake. Now. Who did it?”
For a moment there was silence, and a muffled giggle or two. No one answered.
“If the culprit,” said Sister Claudia sternly, “doesn’t come forth and confess her crime, why, then, I’ll simply have to punish the lot of you, much as I’d hate to do that.”
Slowly, fearfully, Lily stood up beside her bed. She had taken great pains never to get into trouble at St. Patrick’s. God only knew, Fergus got into trouble enough for the both of them.
“I did it, Sister Claudia,” she said in a small voice, “and I am sorry.” This was a lie before God and all his angels, for Lily wasn’t sorry at all. Dreadful Dolan deserved it, and worse.
“I’m truly surprised at you, Lily. You may come see me in Sister Cathleen’s office tomorrow morning after breakfast. We will see what the matron makes of all this. Now, for the last time, good night, children.”
“Good night, Sister Claudia.”
The three nuns disappeared, and there was a moment of silence. Then the laughter broke out, gales of laughter, ripples and currents of stored-up mirth.
“To hell with ye all,” said Bertha, sullen as ever.
“That,” said an unidentifiable voice from the darkness, “was a wonderful performance, Dolan. Have you considered a career in the opera?”
More giggles followed, then silence. Lily did not look forward to her interview with the matron in the morning. Sleep was a long time coming.
Sister Cathleen’s door had never looked more forbidding than it did to Lily on the morning after the Dreadful Dolan snake incident, which was fast becoming one of the basic legends of St. Patrick’s orphanage. Freshly scrubbed, combed, and fearful, Lily knocked on the big oak door.
“Come in.”
Sister Cathleen sat on her perch, tiny as ever, and wearing an unfamiliar frown. Sister Claudia was not in the room.
“Sit down, Lily.”
As always, the matron had piles of papers on her desk, neatly stacked, and a ledger, and fresh quills to write with. She looked at the papers, then at Lily. The frown did not go away.
“You have been with us more than a year, Lily, and until last night, all reports have been most favorable. Sister Claudia, in particular, has good things to say about your progress here. Now. Is there anything you’d like to say about the events of last night?”
Lily sat on the edge of a chair that was much too big for her. At first she looked at the floor, then remembered Fergus, who did just that when in trouble, and looked at Sister Cathleen.
“If I had known,” Lily began, “how very frightened she’d be, Sister, I never would have done it.”
“I can believe that, Lily. A joke was all you meant, something to tease Bertha. But I think you girls don’t understand Bertha. There is a sad, sad child, Lily. Bertha is the way she is because she thinks no one cares for her. And, in truth, no one does. We try, of course. We have tried, and we continue to try. Her rude ways, Lily, are the only means Bertha has of defending herself against the world. The story of her family is a sad one, and not like yours, or like the story of most orphans, where accident or illness has broken up a home. I won’t burden you with that tale, but ’tis enough to make you weep, thinking on it. So let me say this, Lily, my dear: try to help poor Bertha, for there is a deeply unhappy child, and showing every sign of getting worse, I’m afraid. And where you, or Frances, or most of our other children can take a joke, it’s worse, don’t you see, for Bertha. Do you understand that, Lily?”
“I think so.”
“Then let your punishment be this: to try to be a friend to Bertha Dolan. I know that is not the easiest thing I can ask of you, Lily, but the poor child has no friends at all, and she is her own enemy on top of it all. Do you think you can help her?”
“I’ll try, Sister.”
“Well, then. That’s all any of us can do, isn’t it? Try, Lily, and report to me in a week and we’ll see what comes of it.”
“Thank you, Sister.”
“Pray for Bertha, Lily, and for all the poor ones in this world whom no one loves.”
“I shall.”
“Get on with you, then, Lily, and try to be better.”
Pray for Bertha! Lily had never thought of being loved, or not loved. Now she did, and the effort confused and saddened her. Ah, and a fine lot of good it does you if they love you and die, or run away as Fergy will. What kind of love is that, if all it leaves is a memory? But at the worst of it, Ma loved me, I do remember that, the sadness was in the leaving, and to think of poor Dolan with her family alive, and still leaving her. No wonder she is what she is.
Lily thought much about Bertha Dolan, and went to find the bigger girl in the afternoon, in the dormitory, where she might be alone, sweeping.
But Bertha was not sweeping this afternoon. She sat huddled on the edge of her cot, trembling with sorrow, making low sobbing noises that seemed more animal than human, a beast in pain.
Lily went up to her and touched her on the shoulder. It was a gentle touch, but Bertha jumped as though Lily had nudged her with a red-hot poker. She wheeled around on the bed and looked at Lily with wild eyes. When Bertha spoke it was more like spitting than speaking.
“And to hell with ye, too, Lily!”
It was not going to be easy to be Bertha’s friend. Lily looked at the girl, and remembered all Sister Cathleen had said. The look of Bertha confirmed the matron’s words, if they needed confirming.
“What’s wrong, Bertha?”
“And what the hell do ye care?”
“Why, I’d like to help, if I can.”
“Help, would ye? Put more snakes in me bed, that’s the way you help, slut.”
“I said I was sorry for that Bertha, and truly, I am. I never thought you’d be so upset.”
“Slimy, nasty creatures they are, serpents.”
“They do some good, like all of God’s creatures. The gardeners like them.”
“Well, ’tis sure and I don’t. So just keep your damned slimy serpents to yourself, then.”
“What’s troubling you, Bertha? Why were you crying just now? Surely it wasn’t just the snake?”
Bertha was sitting up now. Her hair was wet and it fell across her forehead in greasy strings. In truth, Bertha Dolan was not an attractive-looking girl, even at her best. And right now she was far from her best. Lily sighed. Bertha looked at her, and slowly the resentment in her eyes changed to a kind of dull acceptance of an unjust fate. When she spoke, it was no more than a whisper.
“Ah, Lily,” she said, “in all this damned world there’s no one cares if I live or die.”
“I care. So do the sisters. Sister Cathleen cares, and Sister Claudia too. Lots of people would care, Bertha, if you only let them.”
“Not truly care.”
“They would, too!”
“Not for Dreadful Dolan, they wouldn’t.”
“I cared last night because I thought you were going to have a seizure. You scared the very devil out of me. I thought I was going to be a murderess, Bertha, and me not even twelve years old.”
Bertha laughed then. It was a short, harsh laugh, and it went as quick as it came. But it was a real laugh, there was humor in it not the mockery or scorn that usually animated Bertha’s laughter.
Having found a note that produced some response, Lily pursued it: “Can you see me, then, all in chains, being led to the gallows?”
“Ha!”
“And would you pray for me, Bertha? As I went to my doom?”
“I might.”
“I’d pray for you.”
“Would you? Truly?”
“Truly.”
“Then maybe I’d pray for you. But not if you put snakes in me bed.”
“I won’t do that anymore, you can be sure of it.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”