The Forgotten Secret

by Kathleen McGurl

  I didn’t want to, did I? Even as I said it, I was unsure of myself. If Paul was really recognising that things needed to change, was there some way back for us?

  ‘You could split your time, between here and home,’ he said. ‘Don’t cut me off as completely as you have done. I wouldn’t stand in your way. Just … come home now and again. For a couple of weeks each month, perhaps.

  ‘What do you say, Clare? We could stay married, just living apart for some of the time. You come home to me now and again, and we’ll have the boys to visit as well. Perhaps you’ll allow me to come back here as well.’ He glanced around the living room, with its threadbare carpet, peeling wallpaper and battered furniture. ‘When you’ve made the place more liveable, anyway.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, again. ‘I really don’t. Let’s just see how we get on for the next couple of days. I assume you’re in Ireland till after my birthday? Where are you staying? There’s a couple of decent small hotels in Blackstown—.’

  ‘Can I stay here?’ he interrupted.

  Paul asking permission rather than assuming was a novelty in itself. He did seem different. It’d be OK, I thought, as the boys were here too. An image of Ryan, cupping my face as he kissed me, flitted through my mind. I quickly suppressed it, before Paul noticed my flushed face.

  ‘I’ll go and make up a bed for you, then,’ I said, and went off to do that. I had no more new linen. He’d have to have one of the ancient orange floral duvet covers. The only remaining spare bedroom was the smallest, tucked under the eaves, half filled with boxes as I had been using it as storage. It’d have to do.

  I was still upstairs trying to make the little room respectable when I heard a car pull up outside. I peered out of the bedroom window and noticed Paul’s Focus parked next to my hire car. The noise I’d heard was a taxi, and Matt and Jon were climbing out. They’d saved me a journey into Blackstown to collect them from the Dublin bus. I hurried downstairs to warn them Paul had come, and arrived at the foot of the stairs just in time to hear Matt say, ‘Dad! What on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘Aren’t you pleased to see me, Matt? I’m here for your mum’s big birthday, same as you. Isn’t it nice that we’re all together again? First time since last Christmas, isn’t it? Jon! Good to see you, buddy.’ Paul gave each son a manly hug, which they each reciprocated rather awkwardly.

  ‘Hey, Mum. Got you a little present in Dublin,’ Jon said, once he’d extricated himself from his father’s embrace. He pulled a box of Bewley’s chocolates from a carrier bag and handed them over.

  ‘Thanks, love. Did you have a good day? Go on inside and I’ll put the kettle on. Or is it beer o’clock yet?’

  ‘Beer o’clock,’ Matt said firmly, with a glance at his father.

  ‘OK. I’ll bring them through.’

  It was an odd sort of evening. I’d made a lasagne and salad, another of the boys’ old favourites. We sat around the battered old table in the kitchen. Paul kept up an air of jollity, making jokes and bantering with the boys. They played along, but threw me some questioning sideways glances at times.

  Halfway through, my phone rang. It was Ryan.

  ‘Hey!’ I said, as I pushed my chair back to leave the room. Paul frowned, watching me go.

  ‘Just checking how you are,’ Ryan said, as I went out to the hallway. ‘You know, after last night …’

  ‘I’m fine. No regrets, if that’s what you’re asking. It was a lovely evening.’

  ‘Having fun with the boys?’

  ‘Yes, it’s great having them here. Although …’

  ‘What?’

  I’d always felt I could say anything to Ryan. I wanted to tell him what had happened. ‘Paul turned up. It was totally unexpected. He … wants to talk. I think he’s going to stay for a couple of days …’

  ‘Ah. All right, so. Well, you have a full house. I’ll let you get back to them. Bye, then.’

  ‘I’ll ring again in a couple of days,’ I said.

  ‘Sure. Speak to you later, then. Bye, now.’ It was odd, hearing his voice, with Paul the other side of the kitchen door. I hadn’t time to analyse my feelings about it all. There’d be a sleepless night or two ahead of me, I suspected.

  I took a deep breath and went back into the kitchen, where Paul was telling the boys some long, involved anecdote about someone he worked with. The boys were laughing. Perhaps we could play happy families for a few days. Perhaps we’d even enjoy doing it. And then I’d make it clear once again to Paul that our marriage was over, though if we could stay on good terms, that would be a bonus for all of us. If that was how I still felt.

  Chapter 22

  Ellen, Christmas 1920

  Ellen had lived with the Merciful Sisters for four months now. Sometimes it seemed hard to imagine any other life, as she hauled a basket of wet laundry out of the wash room to hang on the lines outside, or the inside lines if it was raining. It was back-breaking work, and now that she was nearly full-term and as round as a bale of hay, it was getting harder and harder. She’d asked to be given lighter duties but the sister had scowled at her and told her she was lucky to have somewhere warm and safe to sleep and regular food, and not be out in the fields, and what more did she want?

  There’d been no news of Jimmy. In all these months she’d had no visitors. Even her father had not come. He was too ashamed, she supposed. But it was Jimmy she’d been longing for. Surely, she told herself, if there was bad news of Jimmy her father would have come to tell her, or written to tell her. She wrote weekly letters to him, and had the occasional brief reply back. Da wasn’t much of a letter-writer. She’d dared not ask for news of Jimmy or Madame Carlton directly, but surely her words, Please let me know any news you hear of my friends, especially those closest to my heart, were clear enough. All Da ever wrote was that the farm was still standing, the ‘big house’ was still closed, and that he’d not heard from her brothers in America and England.

  Ellen often thought of Siobhan. She still had not forgiven herself for not warning Madame Carlton. Was Siobhan proud of her actions? Or had she come to regret what she’d done? Ellen supposed she’d never see her old room-mate again. That was for the best.

  She did get some news from the outside world, from occasional newspapers that were passed around and read from cover to cover. Like the atrocity at Croke Park, when the RIC had opened fire on the crowd during a football game, in retaliation for the assassination of several undercover British intelligence agents. Ellen had wept for those innocent people, enjoying their day of rest, who’d lost their lives just by being unlucky.

  The one thing that kept her going was her friendship with one of the other girls. Mairead slept in the next bed to hers, in the dormitory they shared with six other women. Mairead had been living at the Merciful Sisters for two years. She’d been living in a room in Dublin where the rent was paid by her lover, who kept saying he was going to marry her as soon as he’d saved enough, but who’d turned out to be already married. When his wife found out, he stopped visiting, stopped paying the rent, and Mairead found herself out on the streets. She’d been arrested and charged with soliciting, although in truth she’d been simply begging, and sent to the Merciful Sisters, where she was admitted as a ‘fallen woman’.

  ‘Not fallen as far as you though,’ Mairead had said, eyeing up Ellen’s bump, with a twinkle in her eye.

  Ellen had laughed. ‘Awful expression, so it is. Why is it the women who’ve fallen? What about the men? I mean, it takes two …’

  ‘Ah, tis the world we live in, Ellen, A man’s world. They make the rules and we can only follow them.’

  Her days since entering the Merciful Sisters had followed a pattern. A bell woke them at six o’clock, and they had to rise immediately, wash in cold water and dress in drab grey with a white apron, their hair covered with a white cap. Breakfast was a bowl of thin porridge and a cup of weak tea. From then until midday they worked in the laundry, opening the sacks of dirty laundry that came in daily – mostly s
heets and uniforms from prisons and hospitals – leaning over huge tubs of steamy water, pummelling the laundry with huge wooden paddles, hauling it out, putting it through massive mangles and hanging it out to dry.

  Lunch was a bowl of soup and a few ounces of gritty bread. More laundry work in the afternoon, from one till six. Often she’d be put to ironing sheets, then folding them ready for return. Her hands were red raw from the washing and there were several burn marks on her wrists from the irons.

  The evening meal would be a slice of pie and a hot potato, with another cup of weak tea. There were daily church services, where the nuns would preach about penance and humility. If anyone stepped out of line or appeared to be slacking in their work, the punishment was a week of floor-scrubbing. And because the floors needed scrubbing every week, there was always someone being punished, whether they’d transgressed or not. Ellen had been set to do the floors twice. Her knees had been so sore by the end of each day she’d been barely able to stand.

  Today it was Christmas Eve, but that meant no let-up in their chores. ‘Sheets still get dirty at Christmas,’ Sister Anthony said. ‘Get to it. You have an extra hour for your lunch break tomorrow, when we will celebrate the birth of Our Lord, and for which you will be grateful.’

  Ellen sighed, and stretched her back as she reached up to peg a sheet on the line in the yard outside. At that moment she felt a spot of rain. She glanced up at the darkening sky, put the sheet back in her basket and went over to speak to Sister Anthony, who was overseeing the day’s work.

  ‘Mother, I’m fearing it’s about to rain. Will I peg these inside instead, save bringing them in later?’

  The sister’s face was thunderous. ‘You’ll peg them outside as you’ve been told. And if the good Lord sees fit to make it rain, you’ll then fetch them in, put them back through the mangle, and hang them inside.’

  ‘But Mother, I was only trying to save us the bother, if they get wet …’ As she spoke, the rain began to fall. Ellen picked up her basket of laundry and hurried towards the door that led back to the laundry room.

  ‘Where do you think you are going? Get back here, and hang those sheets outside as you’ve been told!’ Sister Anthony was standing under the eaves of the building, sheltered. As she spoke, two other girls, including Mairead, came running out to bring in the other laundry that was already hanging outside.

  Ellen stared at the nun. It was ridiculous, hanging this set out only to give them all more work. But Sister Anthony was glaring at her, and there was no choice. She hoisted the heavy basket onto her hip, ignored the feeling of a tightening band around her bump that she’d been experiencing all day, and went back to the washing line. Mairead ran over to her.

  ‘This is madness, so it is,’ whispered Mairead. ‘Let me help.’

  Ellen shook her head. ‘You’ll only get in trouble yourself. I’ll do it.’

  Mairead pressed her lips together but ignored her, pulling the sheets out of the basket and helping hang them up, while the rain grew steadily heavier. As soon as they were all pegged up they looked over to Sister Anthony, who nodded her approval for them to be taken down again. The basket was too heavy for Ellen to carry in by herself, now that the sheets were soaking, but Mairead helped. The two of them were drenched, rain water dripping from their hair and noses, their aprons and dresses soaked through, their shoes muddy.

  ‘Look at the state of you,’ Sister Anthony grumbled as they went indoors. ‘Clean yourselves up. Then report to me for your punishments.’

  ‘Yes, Mother,’ the girls said, and hurried off to their dormitory. They had two uniforms each, so could change into the other set and hang the wet clothes on the bentwood chairs each woman had beside her bed, to dry.

  Ellen felt that tightening again, as she bent to remove her wet stockings. She put a hand on her midriff and tried to suppress a groan.

  ‘Are you all right? Is it – is it your time coming?’ Mairead put a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Ah no. I’m grand. No, I don’t think it’s my time till the middle of January, as far as I can work out. Just the baby moving, I suppose.’ Ellen smiled, hoping to reassure her friend. No need for Mairead to be worrying about her. She’d heard from other women in the laundry, that the body sometimes ‘practised’ contractions, a month or even more before the due date. That was all that was happening, she was sure.

  In dry clothes, they reported back to Sister Anthony as ordered, and stood before her with hands clasped in front, heads lowered.

  ‘Mairead, you’ll miss your dinner tonight and instead will spend the time praying for forgiveness in the chapel. I’m being lenient on you as I know you did what you did only out of concern for your friend. But I’ll not have disobedience. The work was Ellen’s to complete and she should have been left to do it alone.’

  Out of the corner of her eye Ellen saw Mairead open her mouth as if to speak. She nudged her friend gently with her elbow. Don’t say anything, she thought, it’ll only make it worse. One missed dinner wasn’t too bad a punishment. One of the girls would smuggle a piece of bread up to the dormitory for Mairead to eat later.

  ‘And as for you, Mary-Ellen, you’re on floor-cleaning duty for the next fortnight. Starting this afternoon.’

  ‘Ah, but Mother,’ Mairead blurted out, ‘Ellen’s baby is almost due, and sure isn’t scrubbing the floors hard enough without having the weight of a baby pulling you down too? May I do the floors instead of her? Maybe Ellen could take her turn later, after her baby’s come?’

  Ellen held her breath awaiting the nun’s response to this. While she hated the idea of Mairead doing floors for two weeks, she knew her friend was right – in her condition she’d never manage to spend two weeks on her knees, scrubbing. How she’d ever make it up to Mairead she didn’t know, but she’d find a way.

  ‘And another harlot tries to tell me how to run this place! My word is law here, not yours. How dare you try to tell me who’ll scrub the floors and when. Mary-Ellen will do them for the next fortnight. And you, Mairead, will do them the fortnight after that, for your insolence. Away with you both. Back to your duties. Mary-Ellen, the first-floor corridor today, for you.’

  There was no point saying anything more. Mairead squeezed Ellen’s hand as they left. ‘Take it easy,’ she whispered. ‘They won’t even notice how well it’s scrubbed. I’ll come past as often as I can to check you’re all right.’

  Ellen smiled her thanks and went to collect a bucket of water and scrubbing brush. If only there was something she could kneel on while she worked, but there was nothing, other than taking her shoes off and kneeling on those. She tried this, but the buckles on her shoes hurt her knees as much as the floor would, and her toes were cold. The baby seemed heavy as she knelt and stretched and scrubbed. Her back began aching, so much so she could only scrub a small patch before she needed to sit up and arch backwards to ease the pain.

  And those tightenings continued, growing stronger and more insistent, more frequent and longer. Were they still those practice contractions the other girls who’d given birth had talked about? Or were they – she hardly dared even think the words to herself – were they the real thing? Was it starting?

  She kept going, scrubbing, stretching, trying to breathe deeply through the contractions, trying to keep an image of Jimmy at the forefront of her mind. It was Christmas tomorrow. What she would give to be able to spend it with him! Next year. Ireland would be independent, Jimmy would be home, they would be married and the two of them, no, the three of them, would be living in a little cottage somewhere near Blackstown, keeping their own chickens, farming their own few acres. Or maybe Jimmy would be at college, training to be a lawyer, and they’d be renting rooms in Dublin. Either way, she’d be there, alongside him, raising his child.

  Another contraction hit, this one fiercer than all the others, and Ellen could not stop herself from letting out a long, low moan. She lay on the floor, curled up, her arms around her bump. She became aware there was something wet between he
r legs – was it what the other mothers had called her waters breaking? When the contraction eased off she hauled herself to her feet and staggered along the corridor towards the hospital wing. Coming the other way was Sister Anthony.

  ‘Shirking your job, Mary-Ellen O’Brien? Get back to it at once!’ The nun caught hold of Ellen’s arm and pushed her backwards.

  ‘Mother, I can’t, the baby …’ and at that moment, another contraction hit. Ellen leaned against the wall, doubled over, moaning in pain. The pain became everything, her whole world, and it was only as it tailed off that she realised the sister was still standing beside her. ‘I’ll get on …’ she began to say, but Sister Anthony’s expression had changed.

  ‘No. You need to be in the hospital wing. That baby of yours will be here any moment now, so it will. Come on.’

  The nun took hold of Ellen’s arm again, but not roughly this time, more supportive. Ellen allowed herself to be led along. It was the first time she’d experienced anything approaching kindness from this nun, although some of the others weren’t as bad. The next contraction hit just as they entered the hospital wing, and another sister rushed over to help Ellen onto a bed.

  ‘Stop your yelling now, you’ll upset the other girls and wake the babies,’ this new sister, who Ellen didn’t know, scolded. ‘Tis only natural – it doesn’t hurt, so stop making such a fuss about it all. To be sure, tis your own fault you’ve a baby in you anyway.’

  ‘I’ll be leaving you to it,’ Sister Anthony said, giving a curt nod in the general direction of Ellen’s bed.

  ‘Mother, will you tell Mairead where I am? Please, if it’s not too much bother …’

  The nun regarded her with cold eyes for a moment, and then nodded once more, before leaving the room.

  ‘Now then, let me have a look at you,’ the new sister said, and she forced Ellen’s knees apart and tore at her underclothes. Ellen tried to stop her, but the nun scowled. ‘How am I to see how far gone you are if I can’t have a look? Down there’s where the baby comes out, so you’ll have to take your bloomers off sooner or later.’