The Ballymara Road
Read The Ballymara Road Online
Authors: Nadine Dorries
About The Four Streets Trilogy
For Clifford
1959–1991
It’s a long way to Tipperary…
IT WAS EARLY
on Christmas morning at St Vincent’s convent in Galway.
‘Frank, wake up, did ye hear that?’ Maggie O’Brien prodded her sleeping husband in the back, in an attempt to wake him. ‘Frank, ’tis someone knocking on the lodge gate. Wake up now.’
Frank O’Brien was not in bed with his wife. Deep in the heart of a dream, he had just won first prize for his best onions at the Castlefeale show. All around him, people clapped and cheered as he stood at the front of the produce tent, holding high a bunch of onions so big, brown and sweetly perfect that it aroused naked envy in the eyes of the assembled gardeners and farmers.
‘Frank, will ye fecking wake up, ’tis the gate. Who can it be, knocking at this ungodly hour? ’Tis the middle of the night.’
Frank woke with a start, as his ethereal body entered its earthly form with an unpleasant jolt. Startled, he begrudgingly opened one eye and viewed the world of the living. His first-prize elation faded within seconds. Blinking in the darkness, he rolled over to face his wife, but she had already leapt out of bed and nimbly hopped onto the wooden bench under the high, arched, mullioned window that looked down onto the main gate.
As the bench rocked back and forth, precariously and noisily, on the uneven stone floor, Maggie reached up to draw the heavy curtains and, in doing so, exposed her plump and naked backside beneath her old and tattered nightdress.
This is no ordinary morning, thought Frank. It feels special.
‘Ah, ’tis Christmas,’ he said, smiling as he focused his gaze on his wife’s round buttocks.
Maggie was blissfully unaware of her husband’s burgeoning arousal as she attempted to peer out, carefully peeling the curtains back from the thick layer of ice that coated the inside of the window.
‘Merciful God, it has snowed heavily overnight. I don’t know how that car has made it here. Maybe it has trouble, that’s why they is knocking,’ Maggie hissed as she rubbed her eyes, blinded by the car’s headlights reflected in the window.
‘’Tis odd, indeed, to be knocking on a convent gate at this time,’ said Frank, swinging his legs out of bed to place his feet on the cold stone floor.
All thoughts of an early romp between the sheets with his Maggie disappeared as she finally managed to draw the curtains, leaving behind thin threads of fabric stuck fast to the ice.
Frank squinted as the car headlights flooded the small lodge with their brilliance. ‘Fecking hell, I can’t see a thing, ’tis so bright,’ he said furiously.
Frank and Maggie worked as the gardener and cook at St Vincent’s convent, on the outskirts of Galway. It had been in existence for just a few years, having been hurriedly established by local Catholic dignitaries and busybodies to meet what they believed were declining moral standards amongst the local female population. It was five miles away from the more established Abbey, which was run by the same order of nuns and so full to the rafters with sin that it couldn’t possibly take any more.
The convent chiefly comprised the large main house and an adjoining chapel, connected by a long passageway. A mother and baby home occupied the top floor and the girls – mothers and penitents alike – slept in the attics. Closest to the elements, they froze in winter and boiled in summer. A chapel house in the grounds was home to a retreat, used mainly by visitors from Dublin. An orphanage lay on the outskirts of the convent, almost entirely concealed from sight by an overgrown hedge of juniper trees.
Maggie and Frank, who also doubled up as gatekeepers, lived in the tiny lodge at the entrance to the grounds, which was as near to the main house as any man was allowed after dark, unless he was a priest. Frank maintained the grounds and grew enough produce to ensure that the convent remained amply supplied. Maggie ran the kitchens with the help of the orphans, who, as she constantly grumbled, were used as nothing more than slaves by the sisters, even though they were paid for by the state.
Maggie and Frank had grave misgivings about both the mother and baby home and the orphanage, but they were wise enough to keep their own counsel and, with it, the roof over their heads.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, it is not yet five o’clock in the mornin’,’ said Frank, as he pulled on a donkey jacket over his nightshirt. Then, placing his cap on his head, he stepped out through the front door into the snow, making for the pedestrian gate set into the green iron railings attached to the lodge.
‘Have ye trouble?’ he asked, shining his torch into the face of the tall man outside the gate.
Frank felt as though ice-cold water drizzled down his spine as the man’s eyes met his. He wore a trilby hat, not usually seen in the country and certainly never before on any visitor to the convent. It was pulled down low, obscuring his face, and his overcoat was buttoned up to the neck, with a scarf wrapped around his mouth.
‘No, no trouble. I think I am expected,’ the man replied through the scarf in a muffled English accent.
‘Not here,’ said Frank. ‘I have no message to expect ye and I’m the gatekeeper. Is it the Abbey ye want? If so, ’tis a further five miles towards Galway. Ye do know it’s Christmas morning, don’t ye? We aren’t expecting anyone at the retreat today.’
As soon as Frank had spoken, he heard Sister Theresa’s voice behind him.
‘I will deal with this, thank you, Frank.’
‘Reverend Mother, what are ye doing out in the snow at this time in the mornin’?’
Frank was incredulous. Life at the convent followed a very strict routine. No one ever caught sight of Sister Theresa before she began prayers at five-thirty and never, since the day Frank arrived, had she walked down to the gatehouse to meet a visitor. Not in fine weather, and very definitely not in the snow, at four in the morning.
‘That will be all, thank you, Frank,’ Sister Theresa replied curtly. ‘You can step back indoors now. I will deal with this.’
Frank turned to look at the stranger once more. He didn’t like him. He said later to Maggie, ‘He was shifty-looking, all right, and something about him made my skin crawl.’
‘Well, who will lock the gate then, Reverend Mother? Sure, I can’t leave it wide open.’
Frank was not as keen to move indoors as Sister Theresa would have liked. He did not like disruption any more than she did.
‘Wait then, Frank, and lock the gate when we have finished.’ Sister Theresa, distracted, had already begun talking to the man directly. ‘It’s impossible. You can’t drive the car up,’ she said. ‘She will have to walk. There is no guarantee you would make it, either there or back again. The slope leading to the house is very steep.’
The man appeared relieved. ‘I would rather just hand her over here, if it is all the same to you,’ he replied. ‘The bishop said he didn’t want her to be seen, so I hope everything is as discreet here as it should be.’
Frank noted the sideways glance the man threw in his direction.
‘There is only one return ferry to Liverpool today and I need to be on it.’
Frank watched as the man opened the back door of the car; to his amazement, a young woman stepped out. She was very well dressed, wearing a smart hat, and although the man had clearly woken her from sleep, she appeared quite content.
She also recognized Sister Theresa. ‘Hello, Reverend Mother,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘Are they here?’
‘Hello, Daisy,’ said Sister Theresa, who, it appeared to Frank, was less than pleased.
The man lifted a small suitcase from the boot of the car and placed it on the frozen ground, next to the girl, saying, ‘I will be off now.’
And Frank, with his mouth half open in shock, watched as he jumped into his car and drove away. Sister Theresa turned on her heel and marched up the driveway, with the young and tired woman following along behind.
‘Well now, it never broke anyone’s mouth to say a kind word and yet no one out there had one, not even for the young woman, although she looked as though she could do with one and as likely give one back, it being Christmas morning an’ all.’
Frank made this speech at the back door as he removed his coat and cap, shaking snowflakes onto the floor, before he hung them both up to dry.
He gratefully took a mug of tea out of Maggie’s waiting hand. Much to Frank’s disappointment, she was now dressed in a long, black quilted dressing gown, decorated in bright red roses as large as dinner plates. Her hair was wrapped in a turban-style headscarf and her eyes twinkled, alight with curiosity concerning their early visitor.
‘Was she a postulant, maybe?’ she asked eagerly. ‘Although, sure, ’tis an odd time to be arriving, on a Christmas morning.’
‘I have no notion, Maggie, but no postulant arrives wearing a hat as nice as that one. We know from your sister’s girl that anything half decent they leave behind for the family to wear. What use is a fancy hat to a postulant? I know this much, the Reverend Mother recognized her and called her Daisy.’
‘Well, I know of no Daisy who has visited here before,’ said Maggie thoughtfully.
‘Me neither, but then they keep so much secret up at the house, what would we know anyway? They told me the nuns was digging that land for medicinal herbs and yet there’s not a sign of anything green put into the ground, but they keep on digging.’
They both stood and looked at each other.
‘Is it blasphemous to say what I think is happening?’ whispered Maggie.
‘Aye, I think it probably is,’ Frank replied. ‘When I asked the priest what they had been digging for, he near exploded in front of me eyes and ripped the tongue right out of me head, so he did.’
Maggie and Frank both made the sign of the cross and blessed themselves.
‘Well, I’m sure the nuns and the priest know what they are doing and, sure, ’tis none of our business. We’re here to grow food, cook it and answer the gate. We should remember that.’