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Authors: Marita Conlon-McKenna

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BOOK: The Magdalen
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Esther nodded. This cold fish with her big hands and feet would have no understanding of what had happened between herself and Con, the sheer physical attraction that a man could have for a woman.
“Well, Esther, since you have decided to have this baby on your own, myself and the rest of the good sisters here will endeavour to provide a place for you to stay and three meals a day. In return you are expected to work, for as long as your condition allows, in the laundry we run, or the kitchens. You are a strong-looking girl, and Father Brendan tells me that you are used to hard work.”
“Aye, that she is, she's been all but running the house for my sister the past few years,” interrupted her aunt.
“Very well then, we are agreed that you will obey our convent rules, and our ways, and in time when your baby is born it will be given into the care of our sisters who run the orphanage. They will try to place your baby with a fine hard-working Catholic family. The child will have a proper upbringing.”
Her heart breaking, but conscious of a strange sense of relief, Esther could only agree.
Her Aunt Patsy was in danger of becoming overemotional, and was searching for her hankie in her handbag.
“Mrs. O'Malley, I think it's better if you say goodbye to Esther now. I'll leave the two of you on your own for a minute.”
The nun stepped out of the parlour and Esther embraced
her aunt frantically, not wanting her to go and leave her, wanting to run back outside too.
“It's not too bad a place as convents go, Esther. Better than the home in Galway anyways, and it's not for ever.”
How could her aunt say that? Esther thought: the place was awful, cold and damp and dreary, with its high walls and barred windows. It was like a prison, and the nuns like gaolers.
“Don't go, Patsy! Don't leave me here!” pleaded Esther, weeping now, clasping at her aunt, not wanting to let her go. Why had she ever agreed to come to this awful convent? “I want to go back home with you! I'll not stay in this place, don't make me!”
“Hush, Esther, don't take on so! ‘Tis bad for the baby when you get upset. It's only for a few months, you know that, and I promise I'll be down to take you out of here and bring you back home as soon as—”
“The baby's born.” Esther finished.
“Aye!” Steeling herself, her aunt hugged her one last time before taking her leave as Sister Gabriel opened the parlour door. Esther pushed past the nun and like a small child clung on to her aunt, sobbing and begging her not to go.
“That's enough of this nonsense and carry-on,” said the nun. “Your aunt has a taxi waiting at the door and will miss her train if you delay her any longer.”
Esther felt scared and foolish. She didn't want to start off on the wrong foot with the Holy Saints nuns, so, trying to regain her composure, she said a final goodbye to her aunt, watching her leave from the parlour window.
“You will join the rest of the penitents in the laundry tomorrow, but for now I will show you to the dormitory where you'll sleep,” announced Sister Gabriel, leading her up a flight of steep cold stone stairs to a long hallway bordered with wood-panelled doors. Esther was to share the dormitory-type bedroom with nineteen other women. The room smelt of stale sweat and damp. Her bed was in the middle of the room with a small wooden locker beside it.
“The girls were good enough to make up your bed for you. The wardrobe over there will have some hanging-space for your clothes, and there is a bathroom across the landing.”
Esther tried to smile and look grateful.
“I suggest you have a rest now after your long journey. You know I was expecting you much earlier, but I suppose the train was delayed. Tomorrow you will start work in earnest. You will join the rest of the penitents for early-morning mass, then breakfast in the refectory, and be in the laundry by half-past seven. The deliveries start from about six-thirty. One of the girls will give you a call at teatime. You missed lunch!”
Esther watched as the tall ungainly figure of the nun left the room. She made a half-hearted attempt to put away her few bits of clothing, hoping that the woodworm that were eating their way through the peeling cream-coloured locker would leave her underwear and blouses alone. Through the long narrow window she watched two nuns parading along a gravel path, their heads bent as they said the rosary. She was jaded, tired, stretching herself out on top of the bed. Ignoring its hardness she pulled the quilted
pink sateen over herself and slipped off her shoes; she needed to sleep.
 
 
“Wake up! Wake up, missus!”
For a second Esther forgot where she was, gaping at the young girl standing at the end of the bed.
“Get up, missus! Else I'll be murdered and we'll miss our tea!”
Esther tried to disguise her reaction to the huge swollen belly of the girl in front of her, who looked only about fourteen.
“Tina's my name and in case you haven't noticed my baby's due in about three weeks. When's yours?”
Esther couldn't believe how matter-of-factly the girl had assumed her condition. It felt so strange not having to hide or disguise it any longer. Tina waited while she used the bathroom, fixed her hair and pulled on her shoes.
“Hurry on!” she called, “they'll all be waiting on us.”
The dining room rang with the clatter of cups and saucers and plates, the low hum of women chattering coming to a standstill the minute she entered the room, all heads turning to see who she was, the noise then resuming. Tina led her to a table off in the far corner where a group of about six women sat, and pulled out a chair for her to sit on. They were all clad in the same dreary faded blue-grey overalls with a collection of different-coloured cardigans over them. Two of the women kept on eating, ignoring her.
“Would you like a cup of tea, love?” enquired a motherly-looking middle-aged woman, pouring her out a
cup of dark strong tea. It was so hot it nearly burnt her lip, but pretending to sip it gave her the opportunity to have a good look around her and get her bearings.
The women and girls that sat in the refectory were all different ages, young, old, and many middle-aged. Downcast and broken, defiant, dispirited. How had so many women and girls ended up here? She couldn't understand it. What sin had they committed to be sent here?
“What would you like us to call you?” asked the woman.
She must have looked puzzled, because the woman explained.
“You don't have to give us your real name if you don't want to, we're all entitled to our privacy. You may not want us to know your business, and naturally we'd respect that.”
Esther hesitated. Nobody in Dublin knew her, sure there was no chance of any of them knowing her people. “It's Esther,” she murmured, “really,” but she refrained from telling them her second name or where she was from.
“Maura's my name,” introduced the kindly grey-haired stranger, “Maura Morrissey.”
Esther shook her hand, glad to know that she had at least one friend.
“This is Rita, Sheila, Bernice, and Detta, and those two are Kathleen and Joan.”
Rita was a dark-haired, dark-eyed, voluptuous beauty with full pouting lips, and Esther had no doubt that she had called herself after the film star Rita Hayworth. Who could tell what the other's names were or were not?
“Did you have much of a journey?” enquired Sheila.
“Is it your first time in Dublin?” added Bernice.
They were all curious about her, everyone listening to her, wondering why a country girl like herself had ended up coming to the city. She hedged her reply, telling them about the train journey but not saying where she had got on the train. They knew she was a country girl, that was something she couldn't disguise no matter what she said. A slice of cooked tongue and white-streaked fatty ham lay on her plate. Helping herself to two slices of brown bread, she tried to eat, listening as they chatted among themselves. Copying Tina, she began to stack her plate and cup when she finished.
“Prayers are at eight o'clock,” the old woman, Detta, reminded her.
Tina joined her after tea, walking her along the long corridors, pointing out the nuns' refectory, the kitchens, the parlour, the recreation room, the visitors' parlour, the laundry corridor and the chapel. “You'll get used to it, Esther, honest to God you will. I cried for the first few days I were brought in here, bawling like a baby, and now I feel like I've been here for years.”
Esther sighed. She had no intention of getting used to the place, ever!
Tina was very inquisitive about her condition and wanted to know every little detail, about how she'd met the baby's father, and what he'd looked like, and how much she loved him. “Ah, go on and tell me, Esther! Cross my heart and hope to die I'll never tell anyone else.”
Esther doubted it.
“Was he gorgeous, Esther?”
Despite herself Esther blushed, thinking of Conor.
“I knew it!” said Tina triumphantly.
“Tina, will you leave the poor girl alone and not be bothering her?” warned Maura. “You should be saying your prayers and not gossiping!”
Esther followed Tina and the rest of the women and girls into the candle-lit chapel for evening prayers. The brass candlesticks were golden in the gloom as the candles sent a warming glow around the room, highlighting the faces of the women as they knelt to pray.
Tina whispered as the nuns filed in and sat in the carved seats that lined either side of the chapel walls: “That's Sister Gabriel. She's the boss; keep out of her way, Esther. She's got the eyes of a hawk, never misses a thing.”
Esther didn't need telling; the nun had made a similar impression on her already. “There's Sister Jo-Jo. She's grand! Kind-hearted, she follows the Bible, love thy neighbour as you love thyself and all that, and there's Sister Margaretta, Detta's friend.”
One of the middle-aged nuns glared over at Tina, who finally stopped talking as the recital of prayers began. Esther joined in the familiar litany as the sing-song rhythm of the women's voices combined and filled the church. She tried to concentrate on the words, not wanting to cry in front of all these strangers. She should never have agreed to coming here, or let her mother force her into this. Carraig Beag and the wild shores of Connemara and everything she cared about suddenly seemed a million miles away from the cold grey walls of this bleak institution and these penitent women. She didn't belong here!
E
sther yawned her way through the early-morning mass, mumbling the Latin prayers mechanically, only managing a slice of brown bread and a cup of strong tea for breakfast, Tina shoving in beside her and eating the rest of the bread off her plate. “Sister Vincent will want you when you're finished,” she warned. “She always does the hair!”
Sister Vincent, a hatchet-faced nun, had called her into a small upstairs room, requesting her to sit on a chair. A large silver pair of scissors glinted as it hung from the belt around her waist.
“You've lovely hair,” she murmured, fingering it.
“Then don't cut it, sister, please!” Esther pleaded. “I'll tie it up, promise.”
“Long hair can get stuck in the machinery here! Of course, for cleanliness and hygiene reasons, everyone has to get it cut, that's the rule.” Ignoring her protests, the bloody old bitch of a nun dosed her hair in a foul-smelling liquid. Esther recognized it: her mother had used it when her brothers had come home from school with their heads crawling with lice. It stung her scalp, the fumes making her eyes water. “You've no scabies or worms have you?” demanded the nun as she combed the lotion through her hair.
Insulted and angry, she didn't trust herself to reply. What kind of girl did these nuns think she was? What kind of family did they imagine she came from! They were making assumptions and judgements about her that were totally unfair, she thought bitterly.
Taking her scissors, the nun began to clip away at her light brown curls till her hair barely reached beyond her ears. Esther watched as her hair feathered on to the linoleum below, wondering at the likelihood of her barber being bald under her nun's headdress. Moving the comb through her hair, Sister Vincent parted it to the side before passing her three clips to pin it in place. The nun then reached into a cupboard, handing her out a clean overall and a rather limp-looking green cardigan. “You can run upstairs and change, then I'll bring you down to the laundry, Esther.”
Esther tried to mask her shame and anger until she reached the upstairs dormitory. Tears welled in her eyes when she caught a glimpse of herself in the cracked mirror
in the corner near the wardrobe. She looked awful, almost as bad as she felt. Her dampened hair hung straight and limp; her eyes were huge and lost in her pasty face; the unflattering overall shift dress was geared to accommodate expanding waistlines and bulges, the dirty blue colour making her look even paler. Already she looked just the same as the rest of them.
 
 
Heat and steam enveloped her the minute she stepped inside the laundry doors.
“Leave your shoes out in the corridor,” Rita had advised her. “They'll be soaked otherwise.”
The laundry floor was soaking wet, water swirling across the tiles, running in lines down into the silver drain-holes that studded the floor. You had to walk extra slow and careful if you didn't want to lose your footing.
“Mind you don't slip!” hissed Rita, who had tightened her dress with a narrow green belt so that it clung to her full breasts and curving stomach. She had given birth to a baby boy about six months before. She had called him Patrick.
Esther swallowed hard. Laundry days back home had been bad enough, washing all her brothers' clothes—sweat-stained, reeking of fish guts, covered in grease or mud—but this washing for strangers was an entirely different thing.
“Over here, girl!”
Esther turned towards the voice. A small red-faced nun, bundled into a white apron and with her sleeves rolled up, gestured to her.
“Sister Josepha wants you,” whispered Rita. “You'd better go over to her!”
“You're the new girl?” quizzed the nun, peering at her from top to toe. “A country girl, like myself. I always find the country girls better workers than the city girls; why, I don't know.” Esther wasn't sure if she was meant to make any comment on this and just smiled, not wanting to antagonize her workmates.
“This laundry not only serves our own religious community and our orphanage,” Sister Josepha informed her, “but the local hospital, two boarding schools, a number of hotels and guest houses and four of the best restaurants in the city, along with a large number of loyal clients, so you see there's plenty of jobs to be done.”
She began to explain all the intricacies of running a laundry, walking from one section to another, the noise of the heavy machines and running water almost drowning out her voice. “This is the sorting area, where the baskets come first, and we check off the wash list. There's a card or a book for everyone, so we can manage the ins and outs and special orders. The baskets are stacked there. Through here is the main washroom. Those machines are for washing large quantities of soiled goods; that wall of sinks is for soaking, handwashing, rinsing, delicates. This is the drying room, there's the machine, the racks, the mangles and of course if the weather's good a door to go outside to the washing lines. Over there we've the steam room, the pressing-benches and the ironing room.” The small nun was all excited, pointing in every direction, presuming that Esther had understood everything.
“For today I'm going to start you over at the baskets with Sheila, she'll show you the ropes.”
Pulling on a long white apron, Esther was glad to be working with the ginger-haired girl with the husky voice whom she already had met. Some of the women seemed sullen and uncommunicative; they had no interest in talking to anyone and avoided your eyes. Sheila squeezed her hand as they opened one heavy wicker basket after another. Each one had to be unpacked, the list checked and the clothes sorted and separated ready for washing, in the huge machines or by hand. They mostly worked in silence. It was such a strange feeling, rooting around, up to her elbows in other people's clothing, sheets, pillow-cases and towels. Her back and arms ached from all the bending and stretching. Sister Josepha walked up and down past her a few times, obviously checking that she was working.
They broke mid-morning for a cup of tea that was served by Tina and another young girl. Sheila urged her to go outside and sit on a bench to get a bit of fresh air and cool down. She felt hot and tired. Here she was, years younger than some of the women, and she was exhausted already! She watched as the laundry vans arrived and the drivers dragged the baskets inside. She wondered what her mother was doing back home now. She used to love the sight of the clothes line full of washing, blowing in the breeze coming in off the ocean, and all their clothes smelling of sea. They could do with a bit of that here. Wiping the sweat off her face, she went back inside.
More baskets had arrived and Sheila was working away. At midday the angelus sounded and everyone
stopped what they were doing, the nun leading them in prayer. This was also the signal for lunch and they all trooped back up to the dining room.
Sitting at the same table, she was almost too tired to talk to the others. They were served vivid-pink corned beef and pale watery cabbage. She pushed a jelly-like piece of fat to one side of her plate and cut up a potato instead.
“Bleedin' eat your meat!” whispered Tina.
“I can't! I'd be sick!”
Tina put her head down, concentrating on her own plate, devouring every mouthful. Sister Gabriel paraded up and down the room, her heavy skirt trailing along the floor, eyes intent, watching who was eating and who was not. She came down and stood between them. “Esther, you must remember that your child needs nourishment. You must eat for the sake of your baby, and it's a sin to waste good food!”
“Yes, sister.”
The nun stood at the end of the table watching her, all conversation around ceasing. She knew by the uncomfortable expression on the other women's faces that they were silently warning her not to have a showdown with the nun, as she would only be the loser. Totally nauseated, she swallowed her pride and ate the vile lump of jellied fat, disguising it in a layer of soapy potato, the other women watching her. Satisfied, the nun moved away, leaving her in peace.
“Good food, my arse!” muttered Bernice, who'd spent her break searching the stinking kitchen bins for something to eat. Like the rest of the penitents, she was often hungry.
The only good thing about being here was that at last she could talk about the baby, mention its existence; she didn't have to pretend she was not pregnant. Here the women and nuns accepted her condition, it was not a secret like it had been at home. This was a relief in itself, for she could not have hidden her growing child much longer. At least a dozen of the women that she'd seen working in the laundry were in a similar condition to herself. All the women worked so hard, it was as if they were being punished. It was bloody awful work too, with arms and legs and backs aching, standing in suds and water, eyes stinging from the bleach; still none of them complained. “The sisters took us in when nobody, not even one of our own, would have us,” Sheila had confided. “Sure we can't begrudge them making us work to earn our keep!”
 
 
That night Esther cried and cried, trying to muffle the sound so as not to disturb the others in the dormitory. She hated the laundry and the work and everything about the Holy Saints Magdalen Home for Wayward Girls and Fallen Women. She could hear the exhausted snores of the women and girls as they tossed and turned in their sleep, some muttering the odd disjointed word, others grinding their teeth as hour crawled into miserable hour.
“Here's a hanky for you, child.”
Esther started. It was the old woman called Detta, from the bed beside her. She was standing at the right-hand side, her white hair loose and streaming around her shoulders, in a voluminous pink nightie, her scrawny chicken-like legs sticking out beneath.
“Have a good blow!”
“I'm sorry for waking you,” sniffed Esther.
“That don't matter, I don't need as much sleep as I used to, and the old bladder is weak so I'm up and down to the toilet all night.”
The old woman peered over at her.
“Funny, I hadn't reckoned on you being one of them cry-baby types.”
“I'm not!” denied Esther.
“Well, it does no good to be upsetting yourself and your baby like this.”
Esther raised herself up on her elbows, moving the lumpy pillow behind her, leaning forward to see Detta better as she'd slipped back into her own bed.
“The first few nights are always the hardest; the new girls always weep on their first few nights here,” declared Detta matter-of-factly. “Leaving your home and family is enough to make anyone cry. I'm sure I cried when I came here first too.”
“How long ago was that, Detta?” she asked, curious.
“Too long, child! Far too long. Almost fifty years I suppose.”
“Nearly fifty years!”
“Aye, it must be that since my baby was given up and I've been doing my penance here ever since.”
“Why didn't you ever go home, or get out of here?”
“You're nearly as bad as Sister Margaretta, child. She was always on at me to go out and make a fresh start and put the past behind me, till in the end she gave up on me. I'd had my baby, given her up. She went to a good family. You're not supposed to know, but Margaretta told me: he's
a doctor. They live in a big house not too far from here. My daughter was sent to the best schools, educated. I used to think about her a lot, wonder what she was doing. My daughter, just imagine it! I didn't need to be out in the world. She was out there. Do ye understand, Esther?”
“Of course I do,” she said softly.
“My father was a strict man; he threw me out of the house, locked the doors and refused to let me in. He wouldn't listen to my mother or my sister Eileen. He disowned me, said that I was no daughter of his anymore. Just imagine!”
Esther didn't need to, as it reminded her of her own mother's reaction to her pregnancy. “Were you in love, Detta?”
“I'm not sure now, looking back, that love came into it at all,” chuckled the old woman. “Charley was a handsome devil, home on leave from the Royal Navy. We lived down in Cobh. I used to love watching the big ships and liners coming in and out. Charley was very attractive, and all the girls were mad about him. He'd travelled the world and he made me feel very grown-up and clever. I was always a bit giddy and wild and one night we went to this big party that one of his friends was having. I got tipsy and Charley offered to walk me home. We made a detour at his lodgings. All I wanted to do was sleep, well, sleep my eye!”
Esther burst out laughing.
“I know, I was such an eejit, but he was that gorgeous I couldn't resist him. I saw him every day and night for the next three weeks before his leave was up. Then he went back to his ship in Southampton and I ended up here.
He came back to Cobh about two years later; my sister thought he might have been looking for me. He never knew about the baby, there was no point telling him. Went to live in South Africa then. I wouldn't have fancied living out foreign. Never set eyes on him again!”
BOOK: The Magdalen
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