Bad Girl Magdalene (24 page)

‘OK,’ Marla said. ‘But I’m desperate for a drink, so you’ll have to have one too. And this old Dad of ours grumbles if he doesn’t get his rotten old tea, so we all have to suffer.’

‘That’s right. Isn’t he in a terrible mess?’ Mrs MacIlwam led Magda away. ‘Dad never finishes them heaps of rubbish. Would you believe he’s been working on the one wretched thing for a year now? Costs him the earth and he won’t give up.’

‘Dad’s a railway fanatic,’ Kev told Magda. He came with them. ‘Don’t let this rabble get you down. They’re trouble enough without a visitor. Heaven knows what they’ll be like now we have one for the first time in our history.’

Magda almost went giddy with delight. A visitor! Like when that cleric arrived at the Bennet house and Mr Bennet had to receive him in his study! Just for one moment she thought, this is really happening to me!

Jean came flying in and said hello. Her hair was different.

‘Come and see what we have ready.’

They went into the kitchen, Dad calling after them that Magda would be more interested in hearing about his engine than any old women’s chatterboxing, but they just laughed. At their father! Magda felt nothing but amazement and doubt.

As Mrs MacIlwam brewed tea and poured for Magda, she explained about Kev’s dad working on the trains. He used to travel a deal, but now nothing like so much. He worked in some engine centre, easier on his time.

‘Even when he comes home he’s fiddling with that toy,’ Jean said.

From the front room came a shout, ‘Don’t say toy! It’s a model.’

‘It’s an old toy engine,’ Marla agreed without a care. ‘Child’s game.’

‘I can hear you!’

‘Shhh,’ Magda said, desperate.

They only laughed. ‘Ignore him,’ Beth said. ‘Marla’s right. A grown man, too!’

‘Do you cook at home, Magda?’ Mrs MacIlwam asked. ‘We’re doing lamb and roasted potatoes.’

‘I have a Baby Belling thing,’ Magda admitted. ‘There’s only me, see?’

‘Haven’t you brothers and sisters?’

‘No. I was an orphan.’ She said it outright, bold as brass, readying herself to be asked to leave because she was the product of a sinful liaison.

‘What a shame!’ Marla said. ‘That’s awful.’

‘You poor thing,’ Beth said. ‘Well, never mind. You can share us for the whilst.’

‘I was a Magdalene girl.’

Even this did not faze them. Marla nodded. ‘Kev told Dad that. Dad said you’re to have the top brick off the chimney for braving that lot.’

Magda stared round the kitchen. It was plain, with just a sink, an old-fashioned kitchen range with a fire, and an iron oven of the sort she had seen illustrated in one of the Charles Dickens TV serials. This looked authentic, but the family’s words were extraordinary. So much disrespect around, or was it just casual and quite uncaring and even, she risked the thought, friendly?

‘Was it bad?’ Beth asked, anxious.

‘Stop all that,’ Mrs MacIlwam commanded. ‘You know what I told you. No cross-examinations, the lot of you.’

‘I only want to know.’

‘So do I, Marla,’ Beth said. ‘Grampa’s always on about the Industrial School and them Christian Brothers and the Rosimians—’

‘That will do,’ Mam said. ‘Enough questions. Magda will be driven demented.’

‘You know Grampa, Magda, don’t you?’

‘Yes. Except I’m only a cleaner. I don’t do anything with his treatments, just clean and help in the kitchen sometimes.’

‘Well, it’s a job.’

‘Magda worked in a paper packers, out of the Magdalenes,’ Jean said.

Kev came in and took a mug of tea. Magda filled with admiration; him so full of confidence simply picking up a cup without even asking and putting his feet up on the chair’s stretchers, braving all kinds of rebukes and abuse. Transgression was Sister St Paul’s favourite sin.

‘Was it hard?’

‘Just ordinary.’

The question puzzled Magda. Hard? What sort of a question was that? As if your thoughts of it mattered. Like asking if life was all right or not. How could you answer?

Mrs MacIlwam talked of how she’d done the lamb, and how her mother had insisted on timing the cooking and getting the oven just right. Father came in wiping his hands on a rag and plonked himself down on a chair, feet up on anybody else’s chair’s stretchers and was given a mug of tea by his wife.

‘I’m glad you’re here, Magda,’ he said.

‘Thank you, Mr MacIlwam,’ she said formally.

‘Is Grampa much trouble?’

She took her time adjusting to the notion of Mr Liam MacIlwam being Grampa, perhaps even once having lived here in this very house.

‘No trouble at all.’

‘He says you are the kindest there.’

She felt her cheeks grow hot and Mrs MacIlwam exclaimed he was embarrassing the poor girl and to stop right there.

‘What Dad means,’ Jean translated without a blush, ‘is that Grampa says you aren’t cruel as them nuns.’

‘Now, then.’

‘It’s true, Mam, isn’t it?’ Marla was indignant. ‘Grampa says they’re treated like prisoners.’

‘It’s the Church,’ Beth said quite casually. She was buttering bread. ‘We don’t eat vegetables enough in Eire, do we? I have a friend who’s gone veggie.’

‘Vegetarian?’ Kev was interested. ‘Don’t you get anaemic?’

‘No, silly. They live longer, that’s all.’

‘Do they?’ Marla asked. ‘Do they, Mam?’

‘Nobody knows whether they do or not.’

‘It is the Church,’ Beth said. ‘Grampa says so. And he knew.’

‘I escaped by the skin of my teeth,’ Dad said. He was sent to clean his hands ready for the meal, and took his wife’s order without demur, just telling Magda he’d be back and to watch his tea so that nobody else would drink from it.

The whole concourse of opinions and instructions, ignored or rebutted, confused Magda. She felt like crying because it was all too different.

‘Escaped?’ Magda wanted to know as he left.

‘Tell you in a minute,’ he said over his shoulder.

She kept an anxious eye on his mug of tea, almost reaching out to keep it safe when Marla took some bread and butter without asking.

‘Make sure you eat the crust, Marla,’ Mam said. ‘It’ll make your hair curl.’

‘Do you have to curl yours, Magda?’

‘No. It does it on its own.’

‘Where do you go?’

‘I do it myself.’

She explained how she didn’t know how to go into a hairdresser’s, and not being able to read or write properly.

Marla and Beth were fascinated.

‘Oooh, Beth!’ Marla cried. ‘We can take her! Show you the ropes, Magda. There’s a decent one near Little Mary Street that charges the earth, but they’ve started an offshoot that’s half price on Wednesdays. We’ll go there.’

‘Stop it,’ Mam ordered. ‘You’re bewildering the girl. Let her decide what to do in her own good time.’

‘Grampa is very nice,’ Magda put in, hoping to avert the looming war.

Kev cut in. ‘He was raised in an Industrial School, Magda. He suffered a lot. He got away into a ship from the Maltebior School one day, just didn’t go back when him and two other lads were out scrounging for things to eat.’

‘Sailed away,’ Marla said, proud.

‘And stayed a ship’s boy until he worked in England. He came back and got married. They had Dad.’

‘Who,’ Dad said, returning and waggling his clean fingers at his wife, who shook a fist in mock anger, smiling, ‘was told never to trust a word of them old holy folk. He sent me to a school, me and my three sisters, where there was no religious teaching.’

‘And Dad turned out the better for it.’

Magda looked about, aghast. No crucifix, no pictures of Christ in agony on the walls. None of the girls wore a cross. She felt as if she had emerged into a Wonderland with no Alice to guide her.

‘That’ll do about religion,’ Mam said firmly. ‘Come to the table everybody. Fingers.’

‘Mam means wash our hands.’

‘Inspection in one minute.’

Marla and Beth showed Magda to the bathroom and she diligently washed her hands. For some reason she felt
close to tears. The family seemed so contented, for all their pretence of squabbling that wasn’t squabbling at all. Was this how all families were, behind their doors and blind windows?

Magda was going to hold out her hands for inspection but Mam seemed to have forgotten her order. She was given a chair by Marla, who kept asking her about the Magdalenes until Dad said, ‘That’ll do, Marla’, and she pulled a face at him and went unpunished. Marla was allowed to sit for the meal as if she had not shown the slightest defiance.

Grace Before Meals never came, though Magda waited. They started their dinner straight off. Kev saw Magda’s hesitation and gave her a slight wink. She went red.

‘We’re not holy here, Magda,’ he said with a grin.

‘Kevin,’ Mam said, serving, ‘Magda will start believing you, and then what?’

‘We’ll be the better for it,’ Dad said. ‘Are they nice people in them rooms, Magda? Where you live?’

‘I don’t know many, Mr MacIlwam. There’s one old lady, Mrs Shaughnessy, along the landing. The rent collector comes every Friday. There’s somebody on the ground floor who plays a lot of music. I think they’re two music students from Trinity College. One writer sings sometimes, they say he writes books but I’ve never seen him. On the ground floor. Then two women who work in a bank, and one who is a caterer. I don’t know any of them to speak to.’

‘Is that it? Who’re your friends?’

‘Nobody.’

Magda almost started to say she had a friend called Emily who worked sometimes at the St Cosmo, but now didn’t even bother to come to work most days because she was going
over the water to England to train as a veterinary nurse with animals. Faced with this family, though, it didn’t seem much of a friendship.

‘Well, there’s plenty of time,’ Mam said comfortably. ‘There’s plenty more, Magda, so start.’

Magda looked at the plated meal. It was gigantic. She’d never seen so much food on one plate. The lamb was in great slices, and four roasted potatoes, gravy and green cabbage pressed dry, and carrots. She was offered some vinegary liquid with leaves chopped up floating in it. Kev took it from Beth and spooned out some to drip it onto his own meat.

‘I can’t get enough of this mint,’ he said. ‘Oh, sorry, Magda. I grabbed it first.’

‘Manners, Kev.’

‘He was always a rude lad,’ Dad said. ‘No hope for some people.’

‘Oh, he’s very…’

Magda halted and Mam said quickly, ‘Grampa is worried because somebody keeps losing some medicines, Magda. That’s not the reason I was glad when Kev said he’d asked you here.’

‘Thank you.’

‘It’s just that Grampa was a sniper during the war,’ Kev said. ‘So he notices things. Even when you think he’s dozing, he’s really awake in a bit of himself.’

‘They called him Holer,’ Mrs MacIlwam said. ‘Didn’t they, Dad?’

And Dad said, ‘Yes. I believe he was very famous. I only learnt that from somebody who came up to him in the park while I was at the lads’ football one Saturday.’

‘He’s got medals.’

‘Doesn’t like to talk about it. He told this chap, “No, you’re mistaken. I was never in the wars.” It’s not true. Just he doesn’t like talking about it.’

‘Thanks for looking out for Grampa, Magda,’ Kev said. ‘I feel you’re an ally in that old place.’

Magda was stunned. An ally and a visitor all in one day.

‘I’m always frightened,’ she said.

‘Frightened?’

They were interested in that. Marla even stopped eating. Magda noticed how, despite their proximity to each other, none of them had need to guard their dinners from the rest. That was family, she supposed, or maybe that Mam and Dad were there to see it didn’t happen.

‘What of?’

‘The nuns telling you off. They look after the old people.’

‘Why are you scared, though?’ Jean was indignant. ‘They’ve no right.’

‘If you get told off and it’s not your fault, you just tell them to stuff their silly old job and walk out.’ Beth glared round the table.

Mr MacIlwam said in a bland voice, ‘Easy for us to say. Difficult for many.’

‘I can’t see why.’

‘That’ll do, Marla.’ Mam made Marla keep quiet a second time and Marla became even more outraged, then started on about the prices they charged in supermarkets for meat these days, and how the costs were going up, Euros or not.

From there Kev started on the routes to get into Dublin, best on a Sunday for bus and train services. Marla grumbled about the buses she had to take to school. Beth said it was all the same to her because she was going to work in a video
shop selling videos, and then would be promoted and make TV films. Magda admired their bravery and said so. Beth said it wasn’t bravery, it was taking opportunities.

Marla asked how Magda managed, not being able to read, and kept on despite the warning signals from her mother. Magda told her of her many tricks, such as pretending she’d hurt her hand for a signature, then the business with the bank card and her wages, and then about telephones she didn’t know how to use. Marla thought it lovely, really sweet. Beth and Jean decided Magda was clever. Magda had never told these things before, not to anyone.

Dad blamed them nuns, and said the only way out of the Pit of Despond, which Magda had of course heard about, was for Eire to go socialist and get rid of the Church altogether. Kev grinned at that and said, sorry, it was one of Dad’s soap boxes, and that when Eire did vote for a socialist Dail everybody would have to do model engineering for a hobby. Everybody laughed at that, even Dad, just when Magda was waiting for his explosion of anger.

‘Ignore them, Magda,’ Dad said. ‘Have some more or you’ll starve to death in this house.’

‘Toy trains will be compulsory in school,’ Kev said.

‘You can laugh, son.’ And the father confided to Magda, ‘My ambition is to make a scale model of the
Great
Eastern
, Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s wonder of the world. I’d start with a scale model outlined in wood before tackling the metal components…’

‘Hello,’ Kev said. ‘That’s torn it. Off we go.’

His family groaned as one.

Beth said, ‘We’ve had it now. He’ll not stop his old yakking now until it’s dark.’

The family meal frittered itself in mild squabbles until it was time to leave. Magda was shown back to the bathroom by Beth, and when she came down, worried she hadn’t been polite by using the loo when Kev was waiting to take her to the bus stop, nobody seemed to think it was anything out of the ordinary. It was an astonishment.