Bad Girl Magdalene

by Jonathan Gash

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘I said his name, Dominic. It was such a strange sound in my head, and kept saying itself round and round.’

  ‘And you didn’t know…’

  ‘I didn’t know I hadn’t said a single word at all until the Mother Superior told me to say hello politely like a sister should, and thank him for bringing the legal papers from the law so I should leave.’

  ‘And you were so scared,’ Magda prompted, tears in her eyes every time it got to this bit, because Philippa did as she was bid and then simply flew to get her one other pair of knickers and her comb, which you weren’t allowed to carry with you, and the prayer book that was always sent out with any girl who suddenly got a family or somebody to rescue them safe out of the Magdalenes.

  ‘Terrified,’ Philippa said, every time making it worse and worse, ‘that my brother would have gone when I got back to the Mother Superior’s office.’

  ‘But he was still there!’ Magda cried at this juncture, almost delirious each time Dominic was still waiting in that old Mother Superior’s office, still standing like he was planted on that grand carpet with his precious paper that would get Philippa walking with her brother out of that old Magdalene machinery place.

  ‘He was still there.’ Philippa always entered into the story when she got to that bit, saying ‘still…there’ like he could have gone anywhere else on earth but no, there he was all right. And Magda, in her ecstasy and relief that Philippa was about to be saved yet again, so the story would still be true for ever and ever, cried it inwardly with her, ‘Still…there!’ And it was the very best feeling.

  ‘I listened to the Mother Superior telling me about Christian duties and responsibilities and how I must conduct myself in the family I was going to live with from then on, and I hardly heard a single word because I was thinking, oh, please, God, let us go and let my brother here not say something like he’d come back to collect me next week or sometime that might never come.’

  ‘But he didn’t!’ Magda knew her face was shining with rapture.

  ‘No. He took hold of me, my actual hand, bold as brass, with the head nun right there, him looking right in my face, and smiled and told me—’

  ‘He told you,’ Magda always interrupted here, beside herself with impatience to get Philippa out of that corridor smelling of Mansion Polish and down those big wide stairs with the bannisters and out of that front door and crossing herself so she could leave with her brother and her brother saying…

  ‘And Dominic said to me when we stepped onto the top step—’

  ‘Put your arm through mine, Philly,’ Magda said, out of breath at so much contact between a brother – a man, after all – and a girl in full view of the world and especially the nuns, and Mother Superior probably itching to call a Novena to save their lost charge from perdition and the burning in Hellfire at such goings-on.

  ‘And I’ll tell you what was the strangest thing on God’s earth,’ Philippa said, remembering what had happened that fateful day. ‘I’d no idea that my mother had a pet name for me before she died, but she had always called me Philly, God rest her soul.’

  ‘Amen.’

  ‘And ever since Dominic always calls me Philly. So do my aunties and my uncle, like I’d never ever been anyone else at all.’

  ‘That’s marvellous,’ Magda breathed, relaxing with the utter relief of Philippa’s tale, as Dominic with Philly on his arm walked bold as brass out of the gate to a car belonging to the Garda Siobhana parked at the kerb, where two of the Gardai were having a smoke.

  ‘I kept thinking, will they send me back?’

  ‘They couldn’t, though,’ Magda protested, anxious now at this bit and keen to defend Philippa from last-minute dangers. She explained for the sake of thoroughness, ‘Because your brother had the papers, see?’

  ‘Because he had the papers.’

  ‘And nobody could touch you.’

  ‘That’s the truth, Magda. Thanks be to God.’

  ‘Amen.’ Magda had started asking, a routine as the story of Philippa’s rescue reached its conclusion, ‘Can the Magdalenes still come for me?’

  ‘Now you’re eighteen? I don’t think so.’

  ‘I’d run away.’ Magda said it without conviction, because there was never a chance of anybody running away, not ever. They always sent the Garda Siobhana after you and brought you back. Look at the story the old man Mr Liam MacIlwam told her, whose relative she was going to see tomorrow – if she dared turn up where he’d told her to be at six o’clock, him on his old motorbike and dripping tears on his chin.

  ‘I keep asking Dominic to look at the papers and tell me if they’re making new laws about me,’ Philippa said, putting the fear of God into Magda who instantly felt faint.

  ‘Can they do that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will they?’

  ‘To take us back? Not any more they won’t. That’s what Dominic tells me, but he never says it when my aunties are there or my uncle.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They get mad.’

  ‘With him?’

  ‘Sure. Dominic says talking like that makes them feel bad, like they ought to have done something a lot earlier and didn’t.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s been in all the papers, Magda.’

  ‘What has?’

  ‘Bad things. At the industrial schools and that. The Magdalenes too, though we got away light, so they say now. Except they weren’t there.’

  ‘Who? What schools?’

  ‘Ranter. Lots of others.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I listen to the old ones here talking. Sometimes it’s them who were there. Sometimes it’s their friends. Sometimes it’s their relatives. It’s what happened.’

  Magda knew the old folk talked when they should have been sleeping in the afternoon, but she never woke them or even went to them unless they called for her because the nuns were always off somewhere and the real nurses, who wore hospital badges to show they’d got trained proper, only ever said hush, hush, to them and said things were all right now. You could never tell with old people if what they saw was real and what they were thinking was from times past. Magda knew then it was the same with her and her friend Lucy, the falling girl.

  ‘What things?’ Magda was mad with herself for being so stupid she couldn’t read. Otherwise she would have been able to read newspapers like Dominic. He was a clerk in the library and ‘could look things up’ any time of day or night, even while he was at work. This meant finding things out.

  ‘Shhhh.’ Philippa’s warning came just in time to interrupt Magda’s daydreaming, because the lecture was ending. Father Doran in there was chuckling and the nuns were tittering and the chairs scraping away and feet sounding on the boards. So it was time to carry the trays in.

  Father Doran had been about on duty the evening of the night Lucy had fallen. Magda had seen him, but Father Doran had not seen her, thanks be to God.

  ‘The tea trays, girls,’ Sister St Jude said, cruising past with her long skirt swishing the floorboards.

  ‘I hope it’s Dundee cake today,’ Father Doran said with a laugh as he emerged among the nuns.

  ‘Oh, Father Doran!’

  ‘I trust I shall be forgiven in Heaven!’

  ‘Amen to that,’ Sister Francesca said, but without a smile.

  ‘Now, Sister Francesca,’ Sister Winifred said in mock rebuke which set the nuns laughing. Magda noticed, but instantly averted her eyes so she would not earn a rebuke, that Sister Francesca did not smile with the rest and wondered if she had been told off. Though nuns could hardly be told off as if they were ordinary lay people, could they? They were nuns, after all.

  Father Doran slapped his own hand in sham punishment.

  ‘Take that, for going on too long about Infallibility. I knew I should have chosen a different subject!’

  The nuns laughed, and this time Sister Francesca did permit herself a small smile, but tig
ht like she had a kind of coming toothache that was causing her difficulty. She scanned the tea trays, her duty, and saw Magda was holding the one for the office where Sister St Jude would entertain Father Doran to tea for a half hour, and gave a curt nod.

  ‘Dundee, I see, girls.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  ‘Who baked it?’

  ‘Please, Sister Francesca, Mrs Malahide did it last evening. She says it should be left a day or two more to get firmed up, but it was either that or Battenberg.’

  ‘Then Mrs Malahide did right, girls. Please tell her thank you from us, will you?’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  ‘The tray now, and set the water boiling.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  Philippa had the gift of seeming just the same the instant the nuns showed, but Magda knew she could not stay looking like she was innocent. Philippa could be talking all kinds of perdition, yet once the nuns were in sight her face composed itself into a diligence that would deceive an angel. It was remarkable. Magda was so envious of Philippa, not just because she had a real brother and real aunties and an uncle she lived with, but because she was untouchable and nobody could take her back into the Magdalenes, having a family.

  Soon, though, she thought, as she picked up the tray and went slowly and carefully up to the office where Sister St Jude and Father Doran waited for their teas, she would have set Lucy free by killing this Father Doran, and that would free herself too and she could sleep like a Christian safe from dreams.

  One terrible, possible horrendous, thing happened as she carried the tray slowly inside and laid it on the tray trolley within Sister St Jude’s reach, as she and the priest sat facing and talking, and received a nod to leave.

  Father Doran said, quite audibly, as Magda reached the door, ‘Has that girl been here some time, Sister St Jude? I have a notion she was at one of the places I ministered to.’

  ‘Magda? She was a Magdalene child, orphan and farmed out to work.’

  ‘Ah. Maybe it was there I noticed her previously.’

  ‘You remember her from somewhere?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ A sigh. ‘There are so many.’

  ‘Yes, and more is the pity, Father.’

  ‘Indeed. The plight of the schools is my concern in this diocese, Sister.’

  ‘Has Bishop MacGrath said anything more? Anything that may be divulged, I mean.’

  ‘I blame the gutter press. They lack all sense or restraint or responsibility to children, Church or the state of Eire. Thankfully, though, they seem to have dropped it for the whilst.’

  ‘Perhaps other things concern them.’ Sister St Jude spoke with irony.

  ‘Yes. Some scandal with a pop star, or some football outrage.’

  Magda slowly let the door click. It was glass, though, and she knew the shape of any listener could be seen quite clearly if the light was on in the hall, which it almost invariably was even in daylight. She stood listening but to one side of the door.

  ‘Magda?’

  Sister Francesca’s voice almost made Magda yelp. She stood back, startled and afraid. She stared at the nun, who was within a yard of where she had been eavesdropping.

  ‘Sister?’

  Sister Francesca beckoned Magda away to stand close to the vestibule.

  ‘Were you deliberately listening to the priest’s conversation with Sister St Jude?’ And after a pause, ‘I am waiting, Magda.’

  ‘Please, Sister Francesca, Father Doran asked if he had seen me before.’

  ‘He meant you in particular?’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  ‘And did he address you directly?’

  ‘No, Sister.’

  ‘To whom was he speaking, Magda?’

  ‘To Sister St Jude.’

  ‘Then by what right do you listen to the conversation of two people in authority over this establishment?’

  ‘Please Sister, I know I was doing wrong, but I was frightened.’

  ‘Frightened? Of what?’

  ‘That Father Doran would send me back, Sister.’

  ‘Back?’ Sister Francesca inspected Magda as if for presenting to an audience. ‘Back where? You were in the Magdalenes, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  ‘Where? Sandyhills, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  ‘There is no possibility of that, not now or at any future time. That is the case.’

  ‘Yes, Sister,’ Magda said, who didn’t quite believe it.

  ‘You were an orphan?’

  ‘Please, Sister, yes. I was Six-One.’

  ‘And you are happy here?’

  ‘Yes, Sister! Of course, Sister!’ Magda’s constant, if terrified, reply since she was rising five.

  ‘Then do not commit an offence of that kind ever again, do you hear?’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  ‘Very well. I shall say no more about it. Go back to your duties.’

  As Magda turned away with a mutter of thanks, the nun said, ‘Magda? You did not meet Father Doran before, did you?’

  ‘No, Sister. Not that I remember.’

  ‘Did he attend your convent?’

  ‘I don’t know, Sister. I never saw him, no.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Magda was dismissed and hurried away. She felt Sister Francesca’s eyes on her all the way to the bend of the corridor.

  It had been a near thing. She wondered about Sister Francesca. How many of the lies Magda had just told her had she detected? Any? None?

  Chapter Nine

  Magda finally worked it out.

  Killing a priest counted as murder, so you would have to be careful. Two more days, and she’d do it. The question was, how? Dundee cake, or the liquid he swigged when talking to old Mr Gorragher, who had no first name but who said he once worked in Sheriff Street on the north side of Dublin? He worked in a bar there.

  Killing a priest was a serious matter, and she didn’t want the ginger-headed Garda motorcycle lad to come round in his black leathers and boots arresting her with his sergeant and taking her to be hanged. Where would that leave Lucy? Forever falling into that terrible pit of suffering as she fell again night after night, and her bloodied head and matted hair spread across her pillow. And the nuns struggling to carry out the girl’s body from the dormitory so ineptly because they’d forgotten something. Silly stupid women that they were, in spite of God backing them up. No man would ever be so forgetful when he had some serious lifting to do, no, he’d be whistling and maybe grunting a little then saying things like, ‘This side down a bit, George, now go straight’ while the other man, his mate, would say, ‘Got it, Harry,’ and they’d lift easy as wink with that incomprehensible, ‘One, two…six’ they called out to lift anything together. They’d remember the iron things to put across between the poles that slotted into the canvas stretcher. No, the nuns that horrible horrendous night forgot the iron so they couldn’t lift it properly and they carried the dead girl from the dormitory in a canvas bundle like a carpet.

  Old Mr Gorragher was a man who had been a soldier. She heard him talking to nobody when she hoovered round his bed and he was scratching, forever scratching at nothing on his head where several scars showed ugly puckering of the skin that had gone extraordinarily white, like it was trying to untangle something all knotted up within. She heard him the afternoon Father Doran came. That’s what gave her the idea of changing her scheme of how to kill the priest and so stop poor Lucy falling.

  ‘See, Alanna,’ old Mr Gorragher suddenly chimed up, quite as if she had been chatting to him the best part of an hour when in fact she had only just come into his little alcove with her noisy vacuum cleaner, ‘I thought the whole fucking army was terrible, seeing everybody was trying to kill everybody. That’s what they say, Father.’

  Alanna? Father? thought Magda, hoovering away round the old man’s bed but saying nothing, just keeping on with her work because Sister Raphael had ears like a bat and would come swishing up in her old nun’
s gown complaining and asking what was wrong. Sister Raphael forbad any interruption in the cleaning, the business of housekeeping, the cooking and especially the machines – Jesus, the machines, they had to keep going night and day because otherwise it proved to Sister Raphael that you’d ‘caused serious expenses to be incurred by the Care Home that were quite unwarranted’. It meant it was your fault. A girl called Liz, whose mam was born in Mary’s Lane back of Four Courts, where she kept telling everybody there was nothing but judges and lawyers as far as the eye could see, and who was so misshapen you had to be charitable about her legs, this girl called Liz left something cooking in the microwave – she knew how to work it – and Sister Raphael smelt the burning. There was merry Dickens to pay, and Liz was told she’d have to pay the money for the microwave oven, only a titchy thing, from her wages. Liz said that was unfair and said she’d get those old judges to write to Bishop MacGrath to complain that Liz was being oppressed and disadvantaged, words she had to explain to Magda, who overheard and was intrigued. She was intrigued because somehow Sister Raphael never said another Christian word about the microwave and Mr Bourne, who came to mend things, mended it and said it was good as new but was like to catch fire if used much longer.

  That caused a right old barney for two days.

  When old men started going on about what had happened in the past, they tended to use bad words Magda did not quite follow. She never tried to get to the bottom of such talk because Heaven alone knew what they might mean. So when Mr Gorragher started on about his wounds – he had several more, one great long one in his belly because of some terrible fight in one of his old wars – and the swear words came, Magda just hoovered on, not listening. He was only talking to himself and not really to her at all.

  ‘I learnt different.’

  ‘Oh?’ One of Magda’s absent responses.

  ‘Truth to tell, they were the dregs.’

  ‘Dregs, eh?’ Another of Magda’s keep-going responses then she could get finished and clear herself for the next job with Sister Raphael and not get into trouble.

  ‘Armies always are, see?’

  ‘That’s so, is it?’

  ‘Sure ’tis. Gutter crew, they said we were, all for the King’s shilling.’