Bad Girl Magdalene (22 page)

‘Give it a rest,’ Mr MacIlwam said in a tired voice.

‘Know what I asked him when he shot the Jerry and came crawling back? I sez, “Here, Holer. What happens if you want a piss?” Know what he said?’

‘Mr Cronin orders them flowers from Jersey in the Channel Islands. It’s cheating.’

‘Holer said, “I piss in my pants.” So I sez, “And what if you want a shit?” Know what he said? He said, “I did.” And he had, shat right there in his keks.’

‘Please.’

‘Nothing stopped him.’

‘Listen,’ Magda said, desperate to stop all this. ‘If there’s anything I can get you, just say. Do you want the telly on? I can ask Sister Stephanie. There’s one in the lounge. I think I can move it.’

‘It won’t work out here.’

‘Won’t it?’

‘We want to decide,’ Mr Liam MacIlwam said. ‘No more talk of shooting and flowers.’

‘Tablets.’

‘Did you go with Father Doran in the ambulance, Magda?’

‘Course not. I was here when he went.’

‘Were you?’

‘Yes.’

Magda felt desperate. It was as if nobody believed her. She remembered one time when Faith, her friend at the paper packing and who told her all about men and women being so different, had said how she’d not stolen any clothes brush from any of the nuns when one went missing. And how Faith had said she’d actually prayed to God to let her die in the night so she’d not be blamed for stealing the brush. It was a silly old clothes brush for the nuns’ long habits. And,
remember, she had been to a different convent and actually had a last name and everything. She was marvellous and knew everything.

The end of that story was, the brush was found under the wardrobe in the vestry by one of the cleaning girls the second day after Faith had got the lock-in in the pail cupboard and she was taken out and was the subject of a stern telling-off by the nuns. They’d told her class that punishments had to be accepted by all because it was love made manifest. God wanted it that way. And, if accepted in the spirit in which punishment was administered, it was full of merit. That was God’s ineffable design, for us to be meek and bear His yoke.

Faith said it was a load of old crap, because there she was praying for God to rescue her from getting whacked and stuck for two days in that dark old pail cupboard. And when she came out and couldn’t read her lessons, it was all because some nun had been fucking stupid.

That was what Faith actually said, words right out while they were packing that old paper in the paper packing, ‘It was that nun’s fault, stupid old cunt. She should go to Hell for making me say bad words.’

And Magda was amazed Faith wasn’t struck down where she stood for saying things like that. Well, these questions from these daft oldies were making Magda feel like that.

‘You saw him upstairs, didn’t you, Magda?’

‘In the sick room? The priest? Yes.’

‘Did he say anything?’

‘No.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not a thing?’

‘He was asleep most of the time. I was only there for a few minutes.’

‘You usually do the top corridor?’ Mrs Borru asked, sly old thing.

‘Yes. The polish.’

‘Why did they ask you?’

‘I was there. Sister Francesca had to go to the phone. Or, no, this was it – Dr Strathan whispered with her about the priest in the office.’

‘Did you give him his tea, then?’

‘No. You weren’t allowed. Only the sisters and the nurses were allowed to give him anything.’

‘That was the day a last lot of tablets went missing. I lost three. I’m sure it was three more than I’d taken. I counted them.’

‘Did you?’ Magda couldn’t count, let alone read, so that seemed a strange beauty, this old lady who wasn’t long for this world, counting away and able to read.

‘Yes, after you went with my tea. It couldn’t have been long after four.’

‘I don’t remember.’

This denial seemed the most brilliant thing Magda had ever thought of, a true deception, but Mrs Borru wasn’t convinced. She simply snorted and said, ‘You nicked them, Magda.’

‘Did you?’ from Mr Liam MacIlwam.

‘No!’

Magda was frightened of Mr Liam MacIlwam, because she associated him in her mind with Kevin MacIlwam, his grandson the Garda, and Kev could come any time and arrest her.

Like the seventeen prisoners who were marched in to that old prison and seventeen thousand heroes marched out, which
is what they all said these days, but Magda knew it was more a sarcasm than a truth. Like Christ’s tale of the Good Samaritan who had found that old soul battered on the highway, and who got taken for his last penny. Magda reckoned – though was this Emily’s version, one of her old slants on the Gospels – it was simply Christ saying don’t you lot be so daft as to get taken in. It would be a lot better all round if they used Emily’s version than the Church’s, though you went to Hell for saying things like that.

‘The thing is, Magda,’ Mr Liam MacIlwam said, ‘did you give Father Doran anything?’

‘No.’

‘No tablets that went missing?’

‘No. I wouldn’t know how to.’

‘That’s true,’ Mrs Duffanan said. ‘She’s an orphan, and they’re all degenerate runts.’

‘That’s not true,’ Mrs Borru said.

‘The sins of the mothers and fathers shall be visited on the infants,’ Mrs Duffanan intoned.

‘You made that up.’

‘I didn’t. It’s in the Good Book.’

‘Prove it.’

‘It is. Everybody knows that.’

‘Where does it say that?’

‘Everywhere.’

‘Ignore her, Magda. Daft auld cow.’

‘I’m going to tell Sister Stephanie. Magda, ring for Sister Stephanie. I want to make a complaint.’

‘Don’t, Magda.’

‘She’ll have forgotten what she wanted Sister Stephanie for by the time she comes anyways.’

‘Listen,’ Ted said. ‘Who has them if Magda hasn’t?’

‘They say Father Doran is going under the knife today.’

‘They’ll give him a new heart, will they?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘They’ll give him new blood vessels. They get them from people’s legs.’

‘God help him.’

‘Amen.’

Magda said nothing. She had caused the most terrible things to happen, and sat stricken. How did these old folk know so many things? She’d thought she was so clever, all unnoticed. The question was, if these old people saw so much, did the nuns notice?

‘Do you talk like this when you’re here on your own?’ She was amazed at herself for asking it outright.

‘When?’

‘About getting tablets and medicines for Mrs O’Dowd and Mr O’Mucherty?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does anybody hear?’

They fell silent, and one or two cleared their throats as if to start talking, but deferred to Mr Liam MacIlwam.

‘We actually thought in the night that somebody was listening when we spoke. We thought it was you. It must have been one of the nuns.’

‘That’s why we wanted you to make sure nobody was there.’

‘Just now?’

‘Yes.’

Magda thought, and went to see if anyone was inside the door to the lounge. Nobody. She returned and told the oldies.

‘The door at the end is open, but nobody could be out of there before I saw them, no.’

‘That’s all right, then.’

‘You’re a load of old dafties,’ Magda chided, wanting things to be back where they should be, these old folk daft in the mind and herself in charge. ‘I can get the radio?’

‘No, thank you, Magda.’

‘You didn’t give him anything, then, Magda?’

‘Father Doran? How could I? I wouldn’t know what to give.’

‘He was moved after some things happened.’

‘Moved?’ Magda placed a hand on her throat. Mrs Duffanan gave one of her sharp glances at Mrs Borru, as if that proved anything at all.

‘From wherever. Dingean, Nigl, or somewheres?’

‘I don’t know.’

The oldies talked among themselves, though none said Sandyhills like she would have done.

‘That Bishop MacGrath was the worst, I think.’

‘Worst for what?’ Magda asked.

‘There’s that abuse. The children.’

‘Is there?’

The silence hung as if it was something living and looking down into the yard. Magda had only ever felt this kind of imagined being, quite like a cloud or huge leaf that would not fall of its own volition, a few times before, and they were when she was waiting for the worst things to happen. One, quite the worst ever, was the night Lucy fell. The others were less, but frightening all the same. Like when she was going to get punished. Why God never answered her prayers to let her die instead of having to face punishments, she never quite worked out.

‘Shall we tell her?’ Mrs Borru said.

The others were silent. They avoided looking at Magda, except slyly when they thought she was not aware.

‘It’s that some of us get tired, Magda,’ Mr Liam MacIlwam said. ‘Like old Mrs O’Dowd.’

‘She was so desperate,’ Mrs Duffanan said. ‘I’d want you to do the same for me.’

‘Mrs O’Dowd isn’t here any more.’

‘No, Magda. She passed away.’

‘Weeks since.’

‘Yes, Magda. Weeks.’

‘We went to her…’ Magda could not say the word. She had been sick in the churchyard at Lucy’s. She’d had to go out of the church in the middle of
Sweet
Heart
Of
Jesus,
the hymn she would always hate now because Lucy said it was all only show.

‘Funeral’s the word you want,’ Mrs Duffanan said, getting a hard look from Ted and Mrs Borru.

Magda thought. How strange that they were talking about extra medicines for somebody who was already passed on to her eternal reward, and somebody like poor old Mr O’Mucherty, who was still alive but very ailing, when the doctor saw to his treatment anyway and nurses did the injections on the drugs rounds.

‘Why do you want extra medicines for Mr O’Mucherty?’

‘We don’t. He does.’

‘Why? The doctor comes every…’

Words seemed harder in the yard among these oldies. Normally, the rare times she’d had to sit with them, perching on the cold wall so her bottom almost froze like today in the weak watery sun, she’d either doze or imagine stories to pretend everything was all right. Or, even, the truly superb
fairytale, that somebody came in to the Magdalenes with a motor car and a dog called Spalpeen, and said, like in them old fillums, ‘Hey, there, child. You wouldn’t be Magdalene, would you? Birthday on the Twenty-second of July?’ And Magda would say, ‘Yes, sir.’ And the gentleman (he would be a gentleman with a hat and everything and shiny shoes) would say, ‘Then you are my brother’s daughter, and they are all waiting at home for you in a lovely warm house and the kettle’s on and there’ll be ham and biscuits, so go and get in the motor car where your auntie is waiting at the entrance.’ And he would go and sign some papers and the nuns would not be able to do a single thing, and if they came to the gate snarling and threatening the gentleman with the pail cupboard or the leather belts, he would just give a gay cavalier laugh and flourish his walking stick (he would have everything, including monocle and leather gloves) and say, ‘Do your worst, nuns. The Gardai are outside on their special motorbikes and will ensure our safe departure.’

And she would be taken away to meet her very own father and mother and she would have two sisters and three brothers, the eldest a lawyer and equal to any trick them old nuns and priests might try just to get Magda back, and the other two would be Gardai on motorbikes like Kev. So many like Kev in her new dreaming, and none like Bernard.

‘Sister is coming.’ Magda said it in a harsh whisper, quite as if they had all been guilty of something bad and would get punished if they were found out.

‘Shhh,’ George said, waking up quickly and smiling to pretend he’d been enjoying the air.

It was only Sister Francesca, not Sister Stephanie or one of the nurses.

‘Hello. Everybody all right out here?’

‘Yes, Sister.’

‘Magda not bullying you, is she?’

‘Fine, Sister.’

Sister Francesca smiled, but more tightly than usual.

‘We have some serious news about poor Father Doran. They will operate on him this afternoon.’

‘Will he be all right, Sister Francesca?’

‘That is in God’s hands.’

‘Will they make him better?’

‘Don’t take on, Magda. We have every hope. They are very hopeful. This afternoon we shall lead prayers for his recovery.’

‘What time, Sister?’

‘Three o’clock. Magda, it will soon be time for their drinks. Could you attend to that, please? I’ll stay with these miscreants and chat until you come back.’

‘Yes, Sister.’

Magda went quickly, thinking, if somebody at the St Cosmo was to put a good foot under her, she might get somewhere – a Dublin hospital, say – before the operation began. That would be a kindness, wouldn’t it? Or, if she was not allowed to go, and she wasn’t, then she could always ask how long these operations took. She could leave here and get there before the hospital ended its work. Or, maybe, get there as he woke up and tell him what she’d done, so he could tell the doctors, even if it meant they’d then tell the Gardai and they’d come and hang her.

What was best? She went to make drinks for the oldies, and came out carrying their tray with her decision made. She would hurry to the hospital the minute she finished work, and tell Father Doran what she had done to him.

That would rescue him. Even if Lucy kept falling all Magda’s life long so Magda never got a wink of sleep from the horror, then it would be some reparation for the wrong she, Magda, had committed on the poor man.

Tomorrow was the day she was to go and meet Kev’s family. She was frightened now all round the clock. It was a terrible way to be. For once she was glad she couldn’t tell the time.

No more news reached the St Cosmo that afternoon, and Magda was out of the place like a cork from a bottle. Kev was waiting by the gate. He did not have his motorbike. He was dressed in casual clothes, no leathers. He insisted on travelling with her, two buses and then a hurry along the road to the hospital. She told him about Father Doran’s calamity, breathless at all this distress.

‘Is he badly, then?’

‘Serious. They’ll cut his heart.’ The thought staggered her. ‘His
heart
!’

‘Why the hurry?’ Kev was laconic, wanting to stroll rather than dash, but that might be the way men were. They had so many things on their mind, as she knew.

‘Father Doran’s maybe dying in there.’

‘You can’t stop it, Magda.’

‘I know. I must see him.’

‘Have you a message for the man?’

‘No.’

‘Then what?’

She slowed. Maybe she should tell Kev because he was, after all, Gardai and would find out soon. She had a notion of the speed of time because it figured so largely, having a measurement all of its own.

‘I did something.’

‘You did what?’

‘Something serious.’

Did this feel like confession, she wondered, without the priest but like in maybe some kind of court? Kev was a Garda, though, and would instantly dash off for his old handcuffs and chain her to the railings. That would stop her from going in to confess to the priest, and that would delay telling the doctors what she’d done. It was a desperate choice for sure.

‘What did you do?’

‘I think I gave him something he shouldn’t have had.’

‘What something?’

‘Nothing.’

He hauled her round to face him there on the pavement.

‘You gave him the wrong things in the St Cosmo?’

She said nothing, feeling tears on her cheeks. She couldn’t wail like some women did, giving out satisfying bellows of weeping to encourage everybody all around to start up just the same.

No. She could only do it dead quiet in case some nun would come and thrash her and have her standing in the cold waiting for more.

‘Let me go, Kev. I have to tell them.’

The hospital was now a mile away, that was all. She knew the way to go. A cross was up there among the street signs plain as day. There was no time to stand and talk, not even to Kev. The terrible thought came that, once she had confessed
to him, he would walk away like on them old pictures she watched all night long. He would sneer and never look back and that would be the end of meeting his family and seeing his real if cavalier sister Jean who didn’t care what went on anywhere but who came along to help her brother ask to help their grandad.

‘I can save him, see?’

‘Save who?’ Kev wondered what on earth she was talking about.

‘Father Doran. I’ve to tell the doctors what I did.’

Kev stayed her. ‘Look, Magda. They are doctors, surgeons, saving his life by an operation.’

‘But they might be doing the wrong thing, see?’

‘No.’ He stood between her and the hospital in her path. No way round. ‘Look, Magda. They know what they’re doing. You think they haven’t done all the right tests? You think they haven’t made sure of everything he’s had and eaten and drunk since he was taken ill? Course they have!’

‘Have they?’

‘Yes, Magda. You can’t have done anything they don’t already know about.’

She looked at him through her tears, still trickling down.

‘Is that right?’

‘True as you’re standing here.’

‘Will he be all right?’

‘Course he will. They make everybody better in them old places.’

She felt safer, though the consequences for her and poor Lucy would be serious. Sometimes she faced the future with despair, almost, and interminable nights full of darkness and Lucy falling, with exhaustion tomorrow at work. Work, in
fact, was the only brightness in the world. That, and Kev. His arrival occupied her mind more than it should. Bernard was almost forgotten, whatever he was getting up to now long in the past. Two days previous she had kept her door closed when he had knocked. The day following he had returned. She had not opened to him then, either. He had gone away.

It had been a wrench, and she had stayed white-faced behind her door, glad for once that Mrs Shaughnessy along the landing would be listening and, eventually, coming out to peer. Magda had heard the exchange: Where is she? Oh, she’s in, right enough, Sergeant. Why doesn’t she answer? I don’t know, it may be she’s sleeping. And then the clumping boots on the stairs, then the knock and Magda opening to the old lady and telling her no, she would not be in to Sergeant Bernard again because the Garda work was finished thank you very much and the old lady going away satisfied.

Magda didn’t know how she would manage after those two episodes, him getting spurned, but that was the way things were. It was only thinking this that she realised Kev’s coming had changed things more than she understood. Was it morality, in a hidden way the Church always taught? The Jews had invented Original Sin to keep Christians under. Was that it?

Lucy always said, and Emily too believed, most of what they taught you in the Holy Catechism was crap. This didn’t mean it wasn’t to be believed, did it? She had no means of telling Kev these thoughts out loud, because how could you speak words like cunt and prick and genitalia and penis to a man? Even womb was hard. She always went red when Holy Writ went on about it. Lucy was much more critical, telling Magda off for even bothering.

‘We’ll be lucky if we ever find out what it’s about, girl,’ Lucy would say between coughing the blood-specked phlegm onto her mouth, chin, lips.

‘Will we?’

‘Sure as God made apples, Magda. Or,’ and here Lucy would laugh, sometimes setting herself off with that red cough, ‘unlucky, truth be known.’

And that was frantically desperate to Magda, for then Lucy would laugh herself into one of them dreadful coughing fits. Magda would bang her back to stop her coughing because the sisters – especially Sister Annuncion, who kept on about all the girls being hard-line sinners – would clout Magda for setting Lucy off. She always insisted that Magda told her word for word what she had told Lucy to make her laugh. Then the round rulers would come out and the leather belt and Magda would be slapped across the backs of the calves. Coughing was dangerous to everybody in the Magdalenes, and twice she had her skirt raised and her thighs thrashed black and blue to the admiration of all in their dormitory because it was the worst ever they could remember, and God knows they had plenty to recall right enough.

The thoughts rushed through her mind, standing there in the rainy street staring at Kev, him in his casual clothes saying, ‘What’s the matter? You’ve gone white as a sheet.’

Magda came slowly back from wherever she had got to. ‘I think I must have given him the wrong medicine.’

‘Did you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What medicine did the nuns tell you to give him?’

‘None.’

‘Then how can you have given him wrong?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Know what I think, Magda?’

‘No.’

Kev started walking again, and this time he let go of her arm and thrust his hand casually through her arm so they walked along arms linked – that’s
linked
– together and it felt so odd she wondered if she ought to stop in case people saw.

‘I think you dream what goes on in your head.’

‘Dream?’

‘Like, imagine.’

‘But I did…’

‘You did what?’ Kev was so sure of everything he said. She began to believe he must see inside her. That was truly terrible, for all kinds of thoughts were in her head and her body. God, even that word, body, was enough to cause trouble, think of it that way.

‘See?’ he said with a kind of triumph. ‘See? You can’t even think what you’re supposed to have done wrong. Or right. My sister Jean says it’s the wrong road them old nuns took you on, berating you for fuck all and then sending you out wrong.’

Magda’s head was spinning, Kev using words like that and the world still going along on its old axis or whatever it did. She didn’t want him struck by lightning just when…just when what? He walked with her, his arm through hers, not pressing it, nor breathing funny like that Damien did so many years ago behind those sheds, or Sergeant Bernard as he spilt under her or into a contraceptive he sheathed on himself before starting. That was all over now. She had rescued herself, this time without Faith’s help. She was free of encumbrances (the word learnt from a Victorian story about a squire’s goings-on, some old black-and-whiter. She liked their voices).

‘I try not to think wrong, Kev.’

‘Good for you. It’s something everybody has to learn for themselves, once they’re out from under the Church. It’s run by a lorry-load of miseries, that it is.’

‘What is?’ she asked, startled.

‘The Church. Nobody believes them any more, unless they’ve been forced into it when they were little. Me and the family don’t. Unless…’

He eyed her, and she knew he was speculating on whether he was giving offence, her having been a Magdalene girl and all.

A right lorry-load of miseries was something Lucy might have said, and Emily without a doubt. Magda admired him for risking all sorts of Heavenly punishments, here in the open street where anybody could hear him and take action. Maybe because he was a Garda it was something he could get out of?

‘The hospital, now. That’s another thing.’

‘What must I do, Kev?’

This made her feel grown-up, at the hospital gates with those notices full of words and coloured letters telling folk where they were to go. It was a whirlwind of people, cars in the car park and a bus, people coming in a drove and bringing flowers. Flowers!

She had some money in her purse. A proper handbag seemed a terrible waste of money, once she learnt how much handbags cost. What, she was to pay a king’s ransom for a bag in which to hold another bag, just because one was called a purse and the other a handbag? It seemed ridiculous.

‘Must I take flowers?’ she asked Kev, timid now. She had never visited a hospital before, though she knew what you had to do from hearing the other cleaners.

‘Who to? Father Doran? Why?’

‘Well, it’s him I’m going about.’

‘He won’t be able to have them for days. They take hours over that kind of operation, then there’s recovery.’

‘Isn’t it the right thing?’

‘Doubt it.’

‘I can leave them at the desk.’ She had heard of people leaving flowers at desks for newly born babies.

‘I shouldn’t. What will you say?’

‘I’ll tell the doctors I think I might have given him the wrong thing when I was minding him at the St Cosmo.’

‘They’ll laugh in your face.’ He shook his head slowly, just as she imagined him at a traffic accident before he took out his notebook and started writing it all down.

‘What do I do, then?’ This was even worse. Now she was lost.

‘Look, Magda. The best thing you can do is leave a note at the Reception, and then come away.’

‘A note.’

‘They’ll lend you a pen and a note-pad. They have them. God knows I’ve been in that old place often enough.’

‘Leave a note?’

‘Ask which ward he’ll be in, leave a note addressed to him, then I’ll see you home.’

‘No!’ She wanted to conceal the shabby place she lived in. ‘I’ll do that, then visit the chapel a minute. I’ll see you Sunday.’

‘If you’re sure.’

‘It seems proper.’

‘My folks are looking forward to seeing you Sunday. Is twelve o’clock all right? They said to ask.’

‘Yes, thank you. Twelve.’

This was the sort of invitation they wrote yet more notes for, from a reticule with a silver pencil that unwound itself, while a footman waited obediently to do the lady’s bidding. She, being Magda, was at a casement window looking wistfully out onto extensive gardens laid out by her great-grandfather before the family’s fortunes fell prey to the wiles of a wicked neighbouring squire who had designs on the maidens of Magda’s once-exalted family.

‘You don’t want me to wait? It shouldn’t take more than a minute.’

‘No, thank you.’ No lengthy note with this offer. ‘I’ll get on, and speak to the desk, ah, lady.’

‘Fine. See you then, Magda.’

‘See you, Kev.’

She waited until he waved. He made for the bus, caught it with a bound. She was relieved but saddened. He was lovely to be with, though troubling. What did he want, coming all this road to the hospital he had no intention of visiting?

A sense of growing choice, such a rare word to her, came on her as she went slowly into the hospital grounds. She felt afraid of it. Before now, choice was beyond her, as if it was a colour she could never see or even guess at. It was out of reach and too far for sight. It was unknowable. Now? Now, choice was somehow here and blocking her path. She simply did not know what it was. The distress within made her feel ill. She’d had no idea it had such intensity. It was so gentle and gay in those grainy old pictures, a sort of game. Was this how – what was her name, in that story they kept re-making in London and showing on late TV, Miss Bennet? – felt? Magda had reservations about her, though, for wasn’t she just a gold-digger? Or was she the tender
innocent she made herself out to be? Magda distrusted her for chiselling.

Magda judged the hospital. Choice was here again, in front of her face.

In the Magdalenes, she was punished for being an orphan. She deserved it. She was a lesser person, without real certainty. Whatever the world of nuns, older girls, the Church, the cosmos of her Magdalenish existence and priests, said was so, had to be so. If some element seemed, just for a fleeting instant, not to be quite so – like the dog, the vegetable man, the girls who fainted, being whacked and thrust into the pail locker, whatever – was forced into the mould. The world was made to comply. Everything was forced to come into and be an orthodox part of the world as the Church defined it. The world was the Magdalenes. She was an orphan. God decided that for her, for Lucy, for everybody.

Now, she seemed able to do things without reference to anybody else. Uncertainty was a new and dreadful thing. She could go into the hospital and ask after Father Doran. She had phrases all ready, from being awake in the night worrying what to say. Or she need not go in at all. She could go home and have her meal – egg and oven chips tonight, red sauce and bread-and-marge to make butties, then settle down to watching them old black-and-whiters rerunning the livelong night, to save Lucy her frightening fall again. Or she could stay here a bit, watch folk going in or out. But rest was sinful. ‘Do nothing, you sin,’ Sister St Paul the provisions monitor of the kitchen at the Magdalenes, explained as she leathered Magda’s thighs for dozing behind the scullery when she should have been hard at the newly scrubbed pans. The litany was always three questions fired at her, all the girls in earshot responding.