The Ballymara Road (13 page)

‘Why did ye not say something to someone as he was leading ye off the boat?’ asked Frank.

‘I was scared and at first I thought he was taking me to my brother’s house. I had no idea.’

‘Don’t ask such stupid questions, Frank,’ Maggie remonstrated with him. ‘Do ye remember what she was like when she first arrived here? As nervous as a kitten she was. Look at her now, talks fifty to the dozen, she does. ’Tis me that can’t get a word in edgeways these days. All this girl needed was for her mouth and brain to be worked a bit.

‘Simple, my arse. I’ll give ye this, Daisy, the butcher would find ye an easy one to cheat. Yer counting is not strong and yer trust in others is blind, but ye can hold yer own in any conversation and I’ll take the credit for that. Frank, pop a drop of poteen in these mugs. Enough of the tea now, we need to think of a plan. Daisy, ye is welcome on that mattress, but ye can’t sleep there forever, or in that storeroom the nuns have put you in. They keep plenty prisoner up in that place, but they can’t keep ye. We have to find a way to get ye back to Liverpool. I’ll tell ye this, it’ll be a long time before Sister Theresa notices, so little attention do they pay ye.’

Frank and Maggie’s chance to smuggle Daisy away arrived more quickly than any of them had expected. Sister Theresa had taken the decision to compete with the Abbey and convert the old stables into a laundry.

She was swayed by the opulence of the Abbey, which she and her nuns had cause to visit from time to time, and by the luxury of Sister Assumpta’s office. She took little convincing that a laundry was what they were missing.

The carpets and silver picture frames ate at her heart each time she visited. Her envy was not unnoticed by Sister Assumpta.

‘Did you see the way they were looking at my ornaments?’ she asked Sister Celia, following Sister Theresa’s latest visit to the Abbey with Sister Virginia in tow to spy.

‘Were they?’ asked Sister Celia.

‘Were they? Of course they were. Are your eyes afflicted all of a sudden? Rome has given them next to nothing. They have a lot of catching up to do. It’ll be a few years before they can afford a Persian runner or a set of French doors in the study.’

Sister Theresa, unhappy with running the most recent and the poorest convent in the area, had very different ideas. Rome had indeed been mean.

‘There is machinery now that can turn those girls into a far more productive operation altogether,’ she had said to Sister Virginia on their return journey from the Abbey. ‘We have enough money saved to install washers and dryers. That means the girls we take on can turn round twice as much as the Abbey, at the very least, I would say. The hospital may decide to transfer its custom to us on this side of Galway.’

‘Won’t the girls become soft altogether if we use machines?’ sniffed Sister Virginia, who was driving the new Mini the nuns had purchased from Donegal only the week before.

‘No, not at all. They will still have to do all the work, the lifting, the sorting and the ironing. The machines mean that we won’t lose a day’s drying when it’s wet and we can put more dirty laundry through and faster too. The longer we keep that bit of information from Sister Assumpta, the better. They have used their own money to buy fancy ornaments and carpets. We will use ours to buy washing machines and, once we do, we will be secure forever. It’s all about making sure there are enough funds to keep the convent running, come what may, Sister Virginia. I think Sister Assumpta forgot that, somewhere along the way back there.’

Within a month, Frank had opened the gates to the delivery of industrial-sized washing machines and dryers.

A week later, he welcomed the fitters who would convert the barn into a laundry. Although Irish by birth, they were based in Liverpool, travelling back to Liverpool every Friday night and returning on Monday morning. It occurred to Frank that this arrangement could be quite handy. He made a point of chatting to them as they unloaded their vans. It took him only a couple of days to strike up a friendship with the works foreman, Jack, who knew the location of Daisy’s former home, the four streets.

Thursday was Frank’s regular night for a jar at the local pub, a habit of which Sister Theresa was blissfully unaware. When he found out that the workmen were boarding there, Frank arranged to meet Jack in the bar after work. A week after they had first arrived, Frank strolled down to the pub to meet Jack. He needed to take a measure of the man’s trustworthiness.

As he walked into the bar, Frank greeted the foreman, who was more than pleased to have someone fund his night of Guinness.

It took six pints before Jack agreed to smuggle Daisy out of the convent. It took a further two to convince him to deliver her personally to the police station and to stay with her until he could be sure she was safe. Daisy had provided Frank with enough details for him to work out the address of the Priory and of Nelson Street.

The decision was taken not to smuggle Daisy out until the day the job finished and the workmen were leaving for the last time. That way, it would look as though one of the workmen was to blame. Frank and Maggie would be free from suspicion.

As the day approached, they became more and more twitchy and Frank worried that Jack would change his mind.

‘Jesus, we have helped many in the mother and baby home to hear word from a relative or snuck out a letter. I’ve even smuggled food into the dormitory for the girls, all of which would see me strung up, but I’ve never done anything as bold as this,’ said Maggie to Frank.

The thought of what they were about to do almost made Maggie shake with fear, but she would not let this deter her.

The night before they were due to put their plan into action, there was a gentle ring on the gate bell.

‘Jesus, who can that be?’ Maggie almost jumped out of her skin.

Frank had already opened the door from which he could see the gate.

‘’Tis the foreman, Jack.’

A minute later, Jack was standing in front of the fire with a mug of Frank’s poteen in his hand. He looked on edge.

‘I’m not sure we should be doing this, Frank,’ he said. ‘If we are caught, the Reverend Mother may stop our money and, sure, ’tis serious money. I have wages to meet for the week’s work on Friday night. I cannot risk the men not taking their pay packets back to their own families.’

Maggie began to speak, but Frank held up his hand and stopped her. Instead, Maggie placed her arm round Daisy’s shoulders. She looked crestfallen.

‘I understand that now, Jack, sure I do, but how about this? We carry on with the plan and, if we are caught, Maggie and I will own up. We will say that it was us that smuggled Daisy into the back of yer van and ye had no idea whatsoever what was happening.’

Maggie and Daisy both gasped. Maggie was more aware of the consequences.

They would be turfed out of their home there and then. No amount of Maggie’s prowess in the kitchen would save their necks from that. Within an hour, Frank and Maggie, together with what belongings they had, would be on the wrong side of the convent gate.

‘Well, I’m sorry to say as I know the risk to you now, but that would put a different complexion on things. As long as I could have your word, Frank?’

‘As true as God, ye have my word,’ said Frank, holding out his hand to shake Jack’s.

‘Did I do the right thing, Maggie, love?’ Frank whispered to Maggie later that night as they lay in bed while Daisy slept on the lodge floor in front of the fire.

‘Ye did what yer heart told ye to do, Frank, and that can never be wrong. I’m sure someone or something was guiding yer words as there was no time to think.’

‘There will be plenty of time to think tomorrow, if we are caught,’ whispered Frank.

Maggie stroked Frank’s arm and silently said her own prayer that they could safely survive the next twenty-four hours.

They had helped lots of the girls, but none had presented as great a risk as this.

The following morning, the tension they all felt was palpable.

‘What clothes will I wear, Maggie?’ said Daisy, who had worn nothing other than her calico since the day she had arrived.

The girls weren’t allowed bras and Maggie always thought there was something particularly degrading in the way the nuns dressed them.

‘Leave that to me,’ said Maggie. ‘I know where the linen room is and where the clothes the girls turn up in when they first arrive are stored. I will fetch them later, after breakfast. If I don’t find yours, I’ll find something better than that outfit ye is wearing now.’

Daisy smiled. The thought of not having to wear the disgusting uniform filled her with pleasure.

‘Could ye look for my hat, Maggie? I don’t really care about the clothes, but I would really like my new hat back.’

The hat was the only present Daisy had received in her entire life. It had happened on such a special night. She grinned stupidly to herself when she thought of that moment, seeing the mothers and children in the school hall, clapping as Miss Devlin had placed the hat on her head.

The final day of the fitting out of the laundry was one of celebration.

The bishop had arrived and was to bless the brand-new facility with a mass.

From nowhere and with no warning to Frank and Maggie, there had been a fresh intake of girls, with bleakness and sadness in their eyes. At the same time that the laundry was fitted, an attic had been converted into a dormitory.

When Frank saw the Reverend Mother inspecting the gardens, he had the audacity to ask her where the girls had come from.

‘Frank.’ Sister Theresa talked down to him, her expression disdainful. ‘We are here, at the behest of the Irish authorities and the Vatican, to become the guardians of local morals. Where girls do not behave as they should, they are sent to me by the local priest, or the council, and they will live here. They are not girls who abide by the word of the Lord our God, Frank, they are penitents. Sent here to work, in order to seek salvation and to atone for their sinful lives. These girls will work in the new, mechanized, very latest, up-to-the-minute laundry. There is no other like it in all of Ireland, and with the sheets each girl washes, she will be filled with the knowledge that she is rinsing away the stains of sin from her life.’

‘Aye, Sister,’ said Frank, looking as though he fully understood and agreed with everything she said.

He had once asked one of the girls what had brought her to the convent’s door. She told him she had been sent from the convent orphanage in Dublin, where she had been left by her mother when she was barely twelve, to prevent her father from coveting her. The lust she had incited in her father had made her a sinner in the eyes of her mother.

‘There is nothing to choose now between ourselves and the Abbey,’ said Sister Theresa to Frank, changing the subject. ‘In fact, there will be many institutions preferring to use our services. We have dryers. They don’t have those in the Abbey now, do they? Our laundry will be far more productive.’

‘Yes, Reverend Mother,’ Frank replied, ‘superior altogether, I would say.’

He had no idea what they did and didn’t have in the Abbey, and he cared even less.

The workmen were invited to the mass to bless the sinks and the dryers. Jack, the foreman, said they had better stay, even though the men were kicking off, all hoping to be back in Liverpool for a Friday night in the pubs, which they now saw slipping away.

Jack had also agreed to keep his promise to stop at the lodge to collect Daisy. He would hover on the outer side of the gate while Frank and Maggie bundled her into the back of his van.

When the time came, Daisy stood inside the lodge door with Frank and Maggie.

It had been difficult for Maggie to run back to the lodge, which was half a mile from the convent, since Sister Theresa had wanted to put on a special tea, to bless the laundry.

Local dignitaries had been invited, and the Reverend Mother and the nuns from the Abbey had been invited too, to admire the new equipment.

It was now their turn to be envious.

Frank watched from inside the lodge as the workmen’s vans made their way down the drive.

He saw the brake lights of the first van as it slowed down to pass through the wrought-iron gate.

‘Jesus, Holy Mother, where the feck is Jack?’

Frank opened the front door to look the other way down the drive. He saw Jack’s van turn out of the parking area at the front of the convent at the same time as Sister Assumpta and Sister Celia slipped into their own car to return to the Abbey.

‘I cannot wait to be out of here,’ said Sister Assumpta to Sister Celia as she placed her key in the ignition. ‘I think the bishop needs to provide a few more lessons in the scriptures down here. Are they not aware that greed is a sin? I have no idea why the Holy Father thought there was a need for another convent around here. God knows, ’tis we who take in sin in abundance and who work wonders, converting these girls into something far more holy altogether.

‘’Tis we who suffer and now the Holy Father rewards Sister Theresa with the laundry equipment. They have the home and the orphanage and the retreat. Do they not have enough?’

Whilst Sister Assumpta ranted, Sister Celia listened. And then she ranted some more.

‘Why is that van stopping at the gate? And that’s another thing: this convent employs staff. We do all our own work ourselves. We have never employed gardeners or cooks or kitchen maids. Seems to me as though they are all a little too high and mighty around here, so they are.’

Their car pulled up behind the van, which had stopped at the gate.

The van driver put his arm out of the window and waved Sister Celia to overtake him.

‘Sorry, Sister,’ he shouted out of the window as she drove past. ‘Something wrong with the engine now, sorry, Sister.’

Sister Celia raised her hand in acknowledgment and slowly moved round the stationary van.

She turned down the road and, as she did so, in her rear-view mirror she noticed a woman leave the lodge house and then quickly step back inside.

But Sister Celia’s thoughts were elsewhere.

‘Do you know,’ she said to Sister Assumpta, ‘I would love the recipe for those coconut golf balls. Now, where in Galway would sell desiccated coconut? Would we have the time to call in?’