Another Kind of Life (3 page)

May knew there would be no such understanding at Sister Raphael’s hands. She waited, in growing agony, as the questions went all the way up the first row of desks, down the second, ready
to start again at the front of her row, the third. She stared at the bright blue pencil lying in its little groove at the top of her desk, its paint indented here and there with tiny teeth-marks.
She tried to focus on it, tried to stop her mind from skittering away in all directions as it usually did whenever she was frightened. She wished that something, anything, would stop the questions
before they got to her. The problems had been getting steadily more difficult too, she was sure of it.

‘Multiply twelve by three, and add four,’ Sister Raphael said, nodding at Kathleen.

May thought what a cold thing it was not even to try to know her girls by name; she seemed to have no interest. ‘You there’ or ‘Girl with red hair’ seemed to be enough
for her. May missed Sister Paul sorely. If only . . .

‘Thirty-six plus four are forty,’ said Kathleen.

The nun nodded. She turned to May.

‘Add twelve, then divide by four,’ she said.

May couldn’t reply. She could see the nun’s lips move, understood that words had been spoken, that an answer was now required of her. But she was unable to make sense of anything
that had been said. Even her limbs felt heavy, leaden. She wanted to sleep, or to wake from this bad dream. She said nothing.

‘You, girl, you’re not even paying attention!’

The whole class sat silent, expectant. May stared blankly at the old nun, who was now beginning to harness the anger which had hovered around her, uselessly, restlessly, all morning: waiting for
its moment to come.

May felt the back of her neck growing hot. What was she to do first? Add something? Subtract? Divide?

Still she didn’t speak. Even to herself, her silence seemed like defiance, a refusal to bend her will, rather than the muteness born of sheer terror.

‘You’re an insolent girl!’

Sister Raphael rose from the desk, her hand already on the leather strap tied around her waist along with the rosary beads.

‘Hold out your hand!’ she commanded.

May could feel Kathleen stiffen in the desk beside her. She well knew that if any girl didn’t do as Sister told her, the whole class would be punished. Playground lore terrified children
into submission long before they met Sister Raphael. The unfairness of it all suddenly struck May. She would make sure that nobody else suffered because of her stupidity.

‘I’m not insolent, Sister. I need more time. Sister Paul said . . .’

The old nun’s eyes widened in disbelief. The class held its collective breath.

‘How dare you answer me back!’

‘I’m not, it’s just . . .’

May watched as the nun walked quickly towards her desk. Already she could feel the sting of leather across her palm and prepared herself for the inevitable. She spread her hands out in front of
her, a gesture of apology, submission. Instead, there was a sudden sharp pain in her right ear as the nun dragged her across the classroom, pulling hard on her ear lobe. May was startled, conscious
of nothing now except the jagged point of pain that seared its way down the right side of her face. She cried out, tried to raise her hand to ease the burning sensation which now seemed to flush
hotly across her eyes, down the other cheek.

And suddenly, all was darkness. For a moment, May couldn’t understand what had happened to her. There was the sound of a door slamming, then a sudden creaking and rustling all around her,
unfamiliar whispers which made her heart beat even faster. Cautiously, she raised her hands and began to feel around her in the darkness. Dry, choking sobs escaped her from time to time. In front
of her was a door, wooden, rough in places, but warm to the touch. Beside her were what felt like cylinders of paper, stacked four or five deep. Voices still reached her, but they were muffled,
droning, sounding like your ears did under water. May pressed her cheek to the door and listened hard: the girls were chanting their tables.

‘Twelve
threes
are
thirty
-six, twelve
fours
are
forty-
eight, twelve
fives
are
six
ty . . .’

The blood pulsed loudly, warmly, all down both sides of her face.

She knew suddenly where she was. She was in the map cupboard. The cylinders of heavy paper were like those Sister Paul had hung across the blackboard every Wednesday, when she had pointed out
continents, subcontinents, countries with strange shapes and stranger customs. May had loved those geography lessons; she loved repeating the names of rivers, exotic, unfamiliar, sometimes
unpronounceable words: Nile, Ganges, Potomac, Amazon, Tigris, Euphrates.

She pushed with both hands hard against the door. It wouldn’t give. Not even a thin shard of light insinuated its way into the cracks and joins of its sturdy surface. The darkness was
complete, terrifying. What if they all forgot about her? What if they all went home and left her? Nobody would know where she was – not Mama, not Hannah, not even Sister Paul. What if she ran
out of air? She could feel the panic rising again; a different panic from before. She no longer felt frozen. Now she felt open and vulnerable, watery and insubstantial. Tears threatened. The lump
in her throat was already making it harder to breathe. She tapped on the door with the knuckles of her right hand and waited. No response. Sister Raphael was obviously determined to ignore her. She
was afraid to tap again. She did not want to face the full force of the nun’s wrath, and, later, Mama’s displeasure, her tight-lipped silence and disapproval.

She felt around her, desperately. There was no room for her to sit down, and her legs were getting cramped. It was hot; the material of her uniform felt even more scratchy than this morning. And
she was so afraid of the dark. Mama always let her and Hannah have a night light burning in their bedroom, a fat tallow candle with a gas mantle for protection. She wished she were at home now,
snug in bed with Hannah, watching the patterns made by the diffuse light on the bedroom walls and ceiling, making up songs and stories, giggling in the chiaroscuro of the chilly bedroom.

Suddenly, she had an idea. How to take her mind off the darkness, the tiredness of her legs, the hot and stuffy cupboard. She began to sing to herself, not too loudly at first, but enough to
hear the comforting sound of her own voice. Singing was always a happy thing to do, just like in bed at night, or when Hannah would let her sit down on the piano stool while she practised, and both
of them sang together.

May began to sing a few lines, tentatively at first, clapping to their rhythm, just as Hannah had taught her. It was a new song, one that Hannah had just learned. Remembering her older sister
gave May a great surge of confidence. She sang five verses, making up words here and there, singing ‘la, la, la, la,’ when her imagination, or her memory, failed her.

She had even begun to forget about her fear of the dark, about the oppressive heat inside the cupboard, about the unjust punishment meted out to her when the door was suddenly wrenched open.

There, red-faced and furious, stood Sister Raphael. Her head was wobbling from side to side, as though her neck had difficulty in supporting its weight. Her right hand fingered the smooth
surface of her strap. All of this May took in, but her attention, for a couple of seconds, was drawn irresistibly elsewhere. Just over Sister Raphael’s left shoulder, she saw Kathleen
Mulhall’s mischievous brown eyes looking at her, face pink with the effort not to laugh. She lifted her hands off the inky surface of the desk and slowly brought her palms together in silent
clapping. Then she bowed with difficulty from the waist, still seated, trapped in the double desk.

‘. . . to Sister Paul, right this minute. And don’t think I won’t tell her just what you’ve been up to.’

May snapped her attention back to the lined, angry face in front of her. Suddenly, light-headedly, she didn’t care. At least the door was open and she could breathe. Kathleen was her
friend and Sister Paul would surely understand what had happened. She hadn’t meant to be badly behaved; it had all just come about, somehow, without her willing it.

She stepped out of the cupboard with an air of bravado she didn’t quite feel, encouraged by Kathleen’s grin and the admiring glances of some of the other girls. Most of the faces,
however, were terrified, and May felt a rush of pity for them all, a renewed fear for herself.

She marched out of the classroom, her head held high. She walked much more slowly across the yard and into the hallway outside Sister Paul’s office. She knocked on the door and waited.
Suddenly, starting with her legs, then her shoulders, she began to shake all over. Under her arms felt hot and cold at the same time. Her stomach began to cramp, as though she had eaten too much.
Her palms were damp, clammy to the touch. She tried to draw a deep breath, but something dark and unforgiving in her chest seemed to obstruct the clean air, refusing to let it pass. Then the
pictures on the wall began to shift, one after the other, in front of her eyes. Even the walls began to sway, to crowd in on her. She cried out to Sister Paul just as her legs crumpled under her
and a thin, warm ache filled the space behind her forehead.

She tried to hold on to the light, to keep her eyes open. She was dimly aware of Sister Paul standing over her, sensed her hands being warmly held until, once more, all was darkness.

M
ARY
JOINED
THE
queue that was shuffling its way damply, anxiously towards the desk on the ground floor.
Late December sleet still sparkled across the shoulders of the people in front of her. The air was filled with the heavy, fleecy smell of wet wool drying. She had never been inside the workhouse
before. She decided she didn’t like the echoing corridors, the remote, cold ceilings. She wanted to be home.

Cecilia pulled at her sleeve.

‘What am I t’say?’

‘Nothin’. Just leave the talkin’ to me.’

The whole room was filled with girls who looked about Cecilia’s age or younger, all of them accompanied by a sister or a mother, a grandma or a granda. Mary felt a sudden stab of pity for
all of them. They looked awful young to be starting. But it was worse for others. Mary knew dozens of doffers at her place of work, no more than eight or nine years of age, their small faces
pinched and yellow with exhaustion. At least Cecilia was older and bigger than that.

Ma had sworn she would not send Cecilia as a half-timer before she was twelve. It already broke her heart, so it did, to see her youngest child now snared by the linen mills. She had held out as
long as she could, but Mary’s shillings were not enough to feed and warm the three of them. It had been a particularly harsh, unforgiving winter. Jimmy’s brothers had been good to her
after he died, but they had mouths of their own to feed, empty bellies to fill. She couldn’t expect them to keep sending her postal orders while their own went hungry. And she had had such
high hopes for Cecilia, too: the clever one, the wee girl so much at home with her books.

The man at the desk had iron-grey hair, surprisingly black and springy eyebrows. His collar was shiny, Mary noticed, and his cuffs had been turned more than once. He barely looked up at her
approach.

‘Name?’

‘Cecilia McCurry.’

‘Date of birth?’

‘Tenth of January, eighteen seventy-eight.’

Now he looked up sharply.

‘Is the birth certificate for you?’

‘For me sister.’

‘Why doesn’t she speak for herself, then?’

Mary felt her face grow hot. Wee shite, she thought. Here he is, warm and dry, burdened by nothing heavier than a pen. What gives him the right to be snotty with me?

She felt Cecilia begin to stir beside her, and squeezed her arm in warning.

‘Because she’s shy. Sir.’

Instantly, his frown began to clear. Mary congratulated herself silently on her stroke of genius. It was the ‘sir’ that had done it; she was sure of that. Be respectful to them, Ma
had said. At all times, show respect, even if ye didn’t feel it.

‘Address?’

‘Number seven, Carrick Hill.’

The clerk filled in the birth certificate slowly, dipping his pen into the brass well of ink on the desk in front of him. Mary noticed that their clerk was writing much more slowly than any of
the others. She sighed. Trust her to get it wrong.

Suddenly, he signed his name with a black flourish and turned the certificate over on his blotter, pressing on it with his clenched fist.

‘Pay over there,’ he said, pointing to the far side of the room.

Mary nodded.

‘Thank you, sir,’ she said. But he had already lost interest in them, his face cross again as he turned to the next in line. Mary walked rapidly across the room towards the cashiers
and pulled Cecilia into the shortest queue. She watched the new clerk’s face closely, watched as he summoned one person after the other, learned to judge the moment when he would avert his
sharp eyes. Just before their turn came, she ducked swiftly out of the line, grabbing Cecilia by the hand. Then she turned casually away and walked towards the exit, nodding and smiling at her
sister. Anyone watching would have seen two young girls, one only slightly taller than the other, chatting happily, glad to be on their way home. Cecilia had been warned to ask nothing, no matter
what Mary did. Now her eyes were full of questions.

Once they were outside in the rapidly darkening afternoon, Mary grinned broadly at her sister, fixing her shawl for her over Cecilia’s long fair hair.

‘We have yer lines, Cecilia,
and
I still have Ma’s sixpence. Let’s go home.’

Mary couldn’t help feeling pleased with her little bit of thievery. It almost helped her forget the reason for getting Cecilia’s lines in the first place. They were close, as close
as sisters should be. Every bit as much as Ma, Mary would have done anything to keep her younger sister out of the mill. Instead, she had just spoken for her a week ago and the spinning master said
that Cecilia could start straight after Christmas.