by Bill Walsh
Daddy goes next door with Mossy and when he comes back he says they’ll take us. Uncle James, the millionaire, will take Danny and me. He’d take all five if he could but he has five of his own and his wife won’t take any more. Aunt Patricia will take Mona and Sheamie and Aunt Collette will take Pippa, but Patricia and Collette want Daddy to pay. They have children of their own and they’re not made out of money. I never thought I’d have to live anywhere without my brothers and sisters and I start to cry again. Nanny clasps her hands, Thank God it’s sorted, and makes the sign of the cross. Daddy says no. He won’t pay. He’s changed his mind about everything. He wants us where he can get us back. He’ll find our mother and he doesn’t want us settling into new lives. I don’t want them broken up, he says to Nanny. Not like that.
He tells Nanny to get the five of us ready and he leaves in Grandad’s car. Sheamie goes out to the garden and closes the back door behind him while Mona sits quietly on the arm of the brown sofa. Grandad lifts Danny into his arms and cries, Ah, no, Annie, the poor children. Nanny waves him away and goes upstairs. Pippa holds my hand and we follow Nanny upstairs.
Pippa cries and I cry too even though I shouldn’t because I don’t have Pippa’s way with tears. Everyone says Pippa has a cry would break your heart. The way her teardrops hang on the tip of her eyelashes is like a raindrop on the edge of a leaf. It’s the most beautiful sight in the world.
Nanny is standing in front of the wardrobe putting the little white balls back in the pockets of Grandad’s green coat. Pippa is looking up at Nanny with her lovely blue eyes and her teardrops hanging but Nanny won’t look at us. My koala is on the bed but I’m not going to take him. Nanny might see him and miss us and say we can come home. I want to say to her, Remember, Nanny, when you said we’d never be left on our own again, and when I sat behind the counter and you gave me jellybeans. But my tongue is tied and the words won’t come. Nanny won’t kiss us goodbye, either. She turns her back to us and says it’s our own fault. She hangs Grandad’s green coat back in the wardrobe and closes the door.
4
A small shutter opens in the metal wicket gate. A nun, her head covered in a long black veil set out high over her forehead so only the circle of her wrinkled face can be seen, peers through. I hear the bolt scraping back. The gate creaks slowly open and we step inside to a courtyard surrounded by high stone walls. Away to one side are lawns, a pond, low red-brick buildings scattered in the mist. Ahead of us stands a great building made of stone. Four storeys high, its slated grey roof seems to reach Heaven. The nun grips my wrist with her bony hand. Daddy turns his collar against the October wind and takes Mona in one hand and Pippa in the other and we follow a straight gravel path lined with trees. The pebbles crackle under our feet and the wet leaves stick to our shoes. A door ahead of us in the four-storey building creaks open just enough to let us through and we’re in a hallway where holy pictures hang from white walls. Nuns with their arms folded inside their wide black sleeves are waiting. Daddy stays outside the door. We turn back to it screaming, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, don’t leave us, Daddy. But nuns grab Mona, Pippa and me and tell Daddy to leave. There are tears in his eyes and we scream again, We’ll be good, Daddy, don’t leave us, Daddy, we’re sorry, we promise we’ll be good.
Daddy kneels with his arms held out and tears running down his cheeks and my heart dances. I pull away from the nun and run to him but the door is slammed in front of me and the hollow sound echoes all around.
We’re dragged down long dark corridors through doors with more dark corridors behind them and all the time getting farther away from Daddy. I scream, Let me go, I want to go home. They keep dragging and saying, Stop that nonsense. Stop it now! I keep looking back. Daddy has changed his mind. I know he has.
We’re led to a big room where an old nun sits behind a desk in the corner. Her face is nearly as wrinkled as my Nanny’s. Her eyes flecked with yellow in a circle of white. She wears a white habit and veil and twists a walking stick in her hands. We’re put standing in front of her and warned there will be no crying and no nonsense in front of Reverend Mother. There’s a crucifix on the wall from floor to ceiling and Jesus hanging with a white rag around his waist and the Crown of Thorns ripping his flesh. His face is bloody. The rusty nails buried deep in his hands and feet and his eyes filled with sadness. We’re standing on a red carpet. It’s as if all the blood from Jesus has dripped into a lake on the floor. Two girls are standing by the door, one big, one small, their faces turned to the wall.
On a glass shelf high up in the corner there’s a statue of a woman wearing a blue robe. Reverend Mother points to the statue with her walking stick and tells us that’s the Madonna. She makes us walk around the room and wherever in the room we are the Madonna’s eyes follow and make the small hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
Reverend Mother hiccups as she writes our names and ages into the big black book on the desk, and, without lifting her head, snaps at the big girl standing against the wall.
What are you laughing at, Shore? No father, no mother, an orphan like you laughing. Do you suddenly find something amusing in your predicament?
It wasn’t me, girl.
What?
I meant, Reverend Mother. I swear it wasn’t me though. I didn’t do that to Sister Ellen’s eye.
You know where you’re heading, Maggie Shore?
Outside, Reverend Mother.
There will be no outside for you, Shore. The laundry is where you’re heading. Get on your two knees and pray to Our Saviour suffering up there on the cross. Suffering for the sins of the world. Suffering for the likes of you, Maggie Shore. I’m sure God had a purpose when he sent his only begotten son to die for us, but when I see the likes of you, Maggie Shore, then I shudder at his wisdom.
Reverend Mother glares at Pippa. Why is your mouth gaping? Shut that mouth. You only open it here for prayer or God’s Holy Food and, by the scrawny looks of you, you need plenty of both.
Sorry, says Pippa.
Sorry, what? Sorry, pig?
Sorry, Reverend Mother.
The rubber tip squeaks on the wooden floor when Reverend Mother eases herself up on her stick then rests the stick over her shoulder like a soldier carrying a gun. When she walks across the room it’s as if she’s gliding over the polished boards. I can tell that stick isn’t for walking with. There’s a great bunch of keys hanging from a chain that jangles against her thigh. She stops by the door and lashes the younger girl so hard with her stick the girl’s eyes water and her knees buckle.
Don’t think I didn’t see you sniggering, Molly Driscoll.
Sorry, Reverend Mother.
I’m sure you are. Haven’t I told you enough times about fighting?
Yes, Reverend Mother.
What did I tell you, Driscoll?
Turn the other cheek, Reverend Mother.
Reverend Mother tells the first girl, Stay on your two knees and pray, Shore. You little gurrier. You’re man mad. Any more of your screeching out windows to those tomcats from Trinity Park and you’ll do your praying with the nuns in Cork. They’ll knock the man madness out of you. You should have been in the asylum long ago.
There’s a knock on the door and a rustle of black skirts. A young red-faced nun is here. She’s big and looks like she could run with the Reverend Mother under her arm. She has bushy black eyebrows, big red eyes, a stern look and a clean holy smell but no stick to threaten us. I wonder will she listen if I tell her I want to go home. Daddy changed his mind.
Reverend Mother pulls a white handkerchief from her pocket and wipes her sweat from the handle of her stick and the palms of her hands and tells us to go with Sister Gabriel. I look up at Mona, her eyes swollen and red around the edges when she answers, Yes, Reverend Mother. Pippa moves away from me and nearer to Mona. She keeps her hands clasped in front of her and her mouth closed and nods. Reverend Mother looks at me and I tell her my Daddy is coming and she lunges with the walking stick and gives me a rap on the back of t
he legs and tells us go with Sister Gabriel. But remember, you’re being watched. My leg stings and I want to cry out, but you can’t cry out when there’s nobody to listen.
We follow Sister Gabriel. Her habit puffs around her feet like a black bell when she glides along the corridor. The darkness is falling outside and the corridor lights are on. She leads us up a stairway where girls in scraggy clothes have pieces of torn jumpers strapped to their bums and feet and are bumping down the steps and I wonder are all these girls sent away for doing bad things with their uncle. A skinny girl with a freckled forehead stops bumping and looks up at Pippa and me.
Are yee new? Are yee?
Pippa squeezes my hand and I squeeze back but our hands are sweaty and it’s hard to grip. A gang of girls surrounds us on the landing and I feel a pull on my arm.
Where’d yeh get them clothes?
I look up at Mona because she’s nine and she’ll know what to do, but Mona turns her eyes away and pushes her back against the wall. Pippa lets my hand go and squeezes in beside Mona. Strange faces gather round me and wait for my answer and there’s a cry from the cupboard under the stairs, Let me out, Sister. I won’t do it again. Ah, Jasus, let me out.
Sister Gabriel tells the girls, These are the Kellys: Mona, Pippa and Matilda. Get on with the work, all of you. I want those stairs to sparkle.
Yes, Sister Gabriel.
The girls move away and we follow Sister Gabriel to the top of the stairs where there’s a landing with tall windows rattling in the wind. I can look down to a wet playground and over it to the pathway where we came in with Daddy, but I don’t see Daddy. There is a line of trees on this side of the wall; their leaves have fallen away and blow in circles around the playground. The windows have iron bars on the outside and at the other end of the landing there are more stairs like the ones we walked up. One stair must be for coming up and the other for going down. I bite the corner of my lip and look behind for Daddy but all I see are girls bumping.
Through a door and we’re in the dormitory. I’ve seen one like it. I was four and there were beds with curtains around them like white walls. I remember we ran, Mum, Mona, Sheamie, Pippa, Danny and me. We packed our bag when Daddy wasn’t there. One bag. Mum said we didn’t have time for more. We took a train a long way away and stayed in a big house by a river with other mothers and children who had run away. We stayed there until Daddy found us.
The five rows of iron beds stand head to head and almost side by side, with barely room between them to walk. There must be a hundred of them. Tall windows light the room but it’s gloomy from the half-closed shutters. Dark wooden wardrobes as high as the ceiling line the walls and down in the corner a black-haired girl is sitting on a bed. She’s my age. Her bare feet dangle above the floorboards and the stained white sheets hang near her by the open window.
Sister Gabriel nearly pulls the scalp off me when she checks our hair for lice. Then she makes us undress. Underwear included. Get on with it. We stand naked in the dormitory while she roots around the wardrobes. I’m cold and I want to go home but I’m in prison because of what I did with my uncle and can’t go home until Daddy comes or Nanny says it was a mistake, we never done anything wrong.
Sister Gabriel hands me white woollen knickers that dangle loose and make my bum itch. She puts our own clothes in a cardboard box for the missions. We’re given old clothes and with a red marker that she takes from her pocket she writes our initials on the square white tags sewn to the inside.
The three of you get dressed, she says, and don’t forget your slips. There’s dark corner in Hell for girls who don’t wear their slip. It’s shameful and a sin.
All I can think of is my new black shoes Daddy sent from London. I hope she doesn’t take my shoes.
She shouts to the girl on the bed.
Are those sheets dry, Lucy Flynn?
Yes, Sister Gabriel.
Make your bed and if you wet it tonight you’ll spend tomorrow in here as well.
Yes, Sister Gabriel.
Pippa has big tears in her eyes and, when the light catches her soft pink cheeks, you can see how wet they are, and I don’t know if she’s crying over her clothes or if she’s like me, hoping Daddy comes to take us home and frightened she’ll wet the bed if he doesn’t.
Sister Gabriel leads us downstairs and across the rain puddles of the playground to a room like a shed that smells of stale feet and when she opens the wooden closet I want to cry. It’s full of metal hooks and every hook has a pair of worn shoes. Mona has big feet. Sister Gabriel gives her a pair of boy’s brown shoes. Pippa’s are bright pink and her yellow stockings show through the toes. Mine are black painted, and the straps curl at the ends and don’t fit, so Sister Gabriel stuffs the backs with old newspaper but they still clack when I walk. My Daddy will get my new shoes back when he comes. I know he will.
There’s a bell at seven o’clock and we follow the other girls upstairs to the dormitory. Pippa and me are given a bed each by the window. Mona is further down between the girls my age and the bigger girls.
Sister Gabriel says we make our own bed, we’re not at home now. I’ll show you this time but you must learn.
She takes two sets of sheets, pillows and pillowcases from different shelves in different wardrobes and already I can see there’s place for everything and everyone. The sheets are stiff and white and when she spreads them they land on the bed like flat pieces of cardboard. She talks and works quickly. You must tuck the sheets in properly, like this, at the top and bottom corners and she shows us how to fold each corner by flattening it with her hand. The top sheet comes in line with the end of the mattress. The blankets go the same way as the top sheet, but not tucked in. Do you see how I’m doing it?
We nod we do, but we don’t.
The bedspread is tucked in like the bottom sheet but only at the bottom of the bed. Pull your quilt over the pillow and fold back slightly, then we have this nice straight crease here under the pillow.
Yes, Sister Gabriel.
She hands us white wool pyjamas that zip up the front. They smell like starch and make my skin itch and I wonder am I wearing a dead girl’s pyjamas and sleeping in a dead girl’s bed.
The dormitory lights go out and we are in darkness when I hear the metal click of the key in the lock. I lie on my back listening to the weeping girls and the movement of bedsprings as girls toss and turn and wait for sleep. I watch the shadows on the wall of girls sitting up in their beds, too scared to sleep. Everywhere there’s the stench of pee. I hear the tiptoe of big girls across the floorboards to each other’s beds. I hear the moans from under blankets and that means they must be freezing. I want to be home at Nanny’s where the five of us slept together in one big bed. Where I could feel my brothers and sisters beside me and we could cuddle together to keep warm and where I had Grandad’s green coat with the smell of the ocean to keep me safe.
Slowly my eyes get used to the darkness. I turn to see the shadow of the rusty iron bars on Pippa’s soft pink cheeks as she lays on her back sucking her thumb and trying not to cry.
I worry about my brothers, Sheamie and Danny. We left them sitting in the car. Daddy said they were going to a place for boys. A place in Kilkenny. It was thirty miles away. I didn’t know how far that was and I didn’t care. I just wanted my Sheamie and Danny. I stood on my tippy-toes on the pavement and waved in the window to them. I never had such an ache in my heart not knowing if I’d never see my brothers again. Sheamie was crying in the back seat, he couldn’t look at me. Danny was sitting on Sheamie’s lap, laughing. He climbed across the back seat and stuck his face to the glass and made a funny shape with his lips. His breath was left on the glass with the shape of his mouth. The window steamed over and I couldn’t see them anymore.
When the dormitory falls silent, the only noise is from cars passing on the other side of the high stone wall. Their headlights waltz across the ceiling and the flaking brown paint. Tears run into my mouth. I taste the salt on my tongue like the firs
t day we came from Australia, when Grandad gave us the round crusty bread with country butter. You can taste the salt, he said. I think of our grandmother when she said we’d never be left alone again. I hear her voice in my head when she stood in front of the mantelpiece promising us, making sure we believed her.
This is yeer home as long as I’m alive and there’s breath in my body. Do yee hear?
And we nodded that we did.
I want to be angry with her. But I’m scared to in case she finds out and doesn’t come for us and then it’ll all be my fault again. I want to hate her but I can’t hate my Nanny, not when she’s all we have.
It’s late now. Maybe Daddy will come tomorrow. Maybe even Mum will come tomorrow.
In the morning, the dormitory lights come on and Sister Gabriel is walking between the beds ringing a bell. The stars are still shining in the dark blue sky and the windows are white with frost. We get up and make our beds.
Not like that, child, pyjamas inside your pillowcase.
Yes, Sister Gabriel.
Bottom sheet tucked in, folded at the corner.
Yes, Sister Gabriel.
Get washed and dressed and ready for mass.
Yes, Sister Gabriel.
We line up behind girls pushing and shoving each other away from the big cream washbasins against the wall. We wash and come back to our beds, get dressed. I’ve forgotten my slip. I don’t have time to put it on, so I hide it in my pillowcase and chase downstairs after the other girls. By seven o’clock, the dormitory, stairway and corridors are empty and we’re lined up in pairs in the dark icy playground.
A big girl at the front of the line complains to the nun with a black eye, Why can’t we go through the corridor, Sister Ellen? It’s all right for you out here with them big bloomers. The girls around her titter behind their hands but the nun with the black eye keeps walking down the line counting heads and, when she’s happy everyone is here, she rings her bell. A door ahead of us creaks open and the line shuffles forward.