The Ballymara Road (29 page)

‘Stop, would ye, stop, not at all, not at all,’ said Sister Celia as she ushered Mary down the corridor. ‘Reverend Mother has a visitor with her, Sister Theresa from St Vincent’s, but, sure, she was on her way when the bell rang, which is why I was in the hall. Come along now, I will make sure ye go straight in.’

Alice hung back a little. Surrounded by statues of the sacred heart and paintings depicting scenes from the bible, she was uneasy, and felt as though the initials C of E burnt brightly on her forehead.

Alice and Mary stepped into the Reverend Mother’s huge office with its vast expanse of Persian rug.

‘Beautiful carpets,’ Alice whispered to Mary. ‘Just like the make we had in the foyer of the Grand in Liverpool. That was called Axminster, the best.’ The opulence of the carpet made Alice feel at home. This was more like it.

‘Come along in, ladies,’ Sister Assumpta called out from behind the desk.

Alice felt she had better do something to make herself useful, as well as to divert the nuns’ attention away from her, just in case they could spot a soul in limbo. While Sister Celia prattled on and pulled out chairs, Alice whispered to Mary, ‘Give me the baby to hold so that you can concentrate.’ As she held out her arms to take the sick baby, she noticed Sister Assumpta looking at her with more than a hint of curiosity. Alice smiled back, tentatively, as she rewrapped the shawl around Dillon. The smile was unreturned. God, she can tell, Alice thought. She began to tremble and all thought of defiance in the face of intimidation fled.

Nervously, but calmly, Mary began to explain her situation. She had practised her words over and over the evening before, but now, sitting in front of the Reverend Mother, she was unable to prevent the tears from filling her eyes and thickening her throat, making it difficult to speak without almost breaking down.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she sniffled as she opened the clasp on her handbag and took out a hankie.

Mary felt overwhelmed. Neither nun spoke or offered a gesture of comfort.

On the plane over, she had rehearsed this scene in her mind. In her imagined scenario, the nuns had been kindly. In reality, they were unyielding, devoid of compassion.

‘We are in a desperate situation, Sister. We have no choice other than to come here and ask for your help. The baby is very poorly and we need to find his mother urgently, or he will die. There is almost no chance of finding a stranger with a good enough match. We must find the woman or the girl who gave birth to him.’

As Mary spoke, Sister Assumpta occasionally altered the position of something or other on her desk.

She moved her pen slightly further up. Straightened the blotter. Stroked the silver and ivory letter opener. Raised her eyebrows. Tipped her head to one side.

Mary felt she wasn’t really listening and, worse, that the Reverend Mother had known what her answer would be and was waiting impatiently to deliver it.

‘We desperately need a member of his family to donate a sample of bone marrow. ’Tis a simple operation and we would pay for the family member to be flown to America. Everything would be covered. There would be no problem with that. We would make sure the family were very comfortable.’

When Mary had finished talking, Sister Assumpta ceased the constant rearrangement of her desk. She remained quiet for an unnaturally long time, as though in prayer, and then, slowly looking up, she gazed first at the baby and then at Mary. For a moment, far too long for comfort as far as Alice was concerned, she fixed her eyes upon Alice. The clock chimed, the fire hissed and an air of expectation built in the room.

Mary felt as though something was wrong. Things were not quite as they should be. She had expected much greater concern. Sister Assumpta and Sister Celia appeared very different from how they had been when the baby was first offered for adoption.

At the time, they had been kindness itself. Had they really altered so much in those few short months? Had her recollection been warped by her own emotional state when she had collected her son? Mary felt sick to her stomach as every nerve in her body told her, this is not right, and yet what could she say? There could be few circumstances in life more serious than the one she was trying to explain and this was the one place she had expected to find help and compassion. She had even expected Sister Celia to be overfussy, just as she had on the day they had collected her baby boy.

The atmosphere in the room now was tainted and surreal. She wondered to herself, do they not understand? This is life and death.

Mary was about to speak again, fearing that maybe she had not explained the gravity of the situation clearly enough, when Sister Assumpta broke the silence.

‘Well now, ’tis a dreadful problem you have there.’ Sister Assumpta broke her silence at last.

She emphasized the word ‘you’. This was not her problem, nor that of the convent. There would be no return of a faulty baby.

‘We do, however, have the greatest sympathy for your situation, don’t we, Sister Celia.’

Sister Celia had not taken a seat, but hovered near the door, waiting for the tea to arrive. ‘Oh yes, Reverend Mother, sure, ’tis a shocking state of affairs.’ She was saved from having to say anything more by a novice arriving with a tray of tea, which she gratefully took and placed on the table between the chairs occupied by Alice and Mary. Saved by the tray.

‘Tea, ladies?’

Two words, which gave everyone a moment to think and Sister Assumpta, time to nuance her message.

She knew very well what her answer had to be. There must be no room for ambiguity when she delivered her response. This was the last time she would ever want this mother and baby in her office.

The ceremony of tea and cake commenced. Alice began to relax. No one had asked her a question and it didn’t look as if anyone was about to. She breathed a sigh of relief, as she adjusted the baby in her arms and reached for her teacup. She really wanted to look occupied, too busy to speak.

Two doves had landed on a branch on the tree outside the window behind Sister Assumpta’s chair. Alice tried not to look but became fixated by them. She wanted to be anywhere other than in this room. Mentally joining the two noisy birds on the branch in their mating ritual, she thought it as good a distraction as any.

‘You see, the thing is, Mrs Moynihan, would ye believe, we have no idea at all who the mother is, do we, Sister Celia.’

Sister Celia, not expecting to be involved in the conversation until she was required to show Mary and Alice out of the office, looked up and, with her mouth full of cake, answered, ‘Well now, no, Reverend Mother, I don’t believe we do.’

Crumbs flew out and landed on her lap as she spoke. Sister Celia hurriedly stood and, waddling to the fireplace, held out the skirt of her habit to shake the contents into the hearth.

Mary began to feel angry. This was a farce. She sensed acutely that the nuns were not telling the truth and that, in the midst of this roomful of women, the only person fighting for her baby’s life was herself.

The pitch of her voice rose. ‘I’m sorry, Sister, but I cannot believe that to be the case and I’m afraid I cannot leave here, without some information. My son will die without help and I have to make contact with his mother and his family. I simply have to. This is not what I want to do. I do not want to meet his mother. I did not want to make the journey from America. But if this baby is to live, I have no choice.’

Tears ran silently down her cheeks.

‘Please, please, I’m begging you, check your records for any information you may have. Anything will help.’

‘Mrs Moynihan, we would love to do that, now, wouldn’t we, Sister Celia, but I’m afraid it just isn’t possible. You see, a few weeks ago we had the most desperate fire and all our records were destroyed, weren’t they, Sister Celia. We have nothing, can ye imagine, nothing left. But let me check now as some of the paperwork survived. We may have the contract the girl signed when she handed the baby over for adoption.’

Sister Assumpta walked over to the long, tall press at the end of her study and opened one of the lower drawers. A few moments later, she returned to her desk.

Alice was confused. The words ‘fire’ and ‘where?’ ran through her brain as she looked round the spotless room.

The convent smelt of incense, not smoke, and there was no sign of the desperate fire Sister Assumpta had spoken of.

‘Ah, here we have it now,’ the Reverend Mother said with a flourish. Then her voice altered dramatically and took on a tone of disbelief. ‘Sure, now, I think the girl may have signed the contract with a false name. Don’t they often do that, Sister Celia?’

Sister Celia had just taken a bite of cake the size of a baby’s head whilst Sister Assumpta had been distracted, searching through the drawer. She was not about to be caught out again and nodded furiously in agreement.

‘Now, I know for a fact that the girl’s name was Cissy. She was brought here by her family, but she was sent here by the matron midwife from the hospital, Rosie O’Grady and she wouldn’t get a name wrong. But see here, on the contract the girl has signed her name Kitty Doherty, and yet her name was very definitely Cissy. The girl must have been deluded when she signed this. All we know is that she was from Liverpool. My best suggestion to you would be to travel to Dublin and visit the midwife because the girl obviously lied when she signed this.’

Sister Assumpta felt foolish. This was the first time she had bothered to check the signature.

The room grew dark as storm clouds gathered in the sky, resulting from the heat of the previous week.

As the light faded, the first drops of rain spattered the glass. The doves huddled together on the branch and Alice looked down at the baby on her lap.

Had she heard right?

The baby spat his dummy out onto the floor. He looked up and smiled seraphically at Alice. She stared back at him, dumbfounded.

She leant down to retrieve his brown rubber dummy from the rug and placed it in her hot tea to clean it, a trick she had learnt on the four streets. Her movements were studied and unhurried, concealing the pace of her thoughts, which were racing.

She spoke for the first time, slowly and deliberately.

‘I’m sorry, what did you say the name was on the contract?’

Sister Assumpta held the document out towards Mary as though ignoring Alice.

‘Here, see for yourself. Kitty Doherty.’

Maura had taken Kitty to Ireland to have the baby. Alice had read the letter that Kathleen had sent Maura.

Alice felt dizzy as her two worlds collided and became one.

Just at that second, the door to the office swung open and closed again. A novice re-entered with a jug of hot water for the teapot.

Bang. Bang. The door slammed shut.

Alice flinched. This could not be possible. She held out her hand to take the contract Sister Assumpta waved in front of Mary.

‘Please, please, let me see,’ she whispered.

A thousand reasons flew through her mind as to why it could not be Maura and Tommy’s Kitty, but only one thought made any sense, drowning out all else and pounding in her brain.

The sickly baby sitting on her lap was Kitty’s child and Maura’s grandson. Alice struggled to breathe. This could not be. The reason for the night that no one would ever speak of was right here, on her knee. That awful night, when Alice had become an accomplice to murder. She looked back at the doves taking shelter from the rain, which now battered the windows, and felt the floor shift beneath her chair.

She looked round at the faces in the room, which were fixed upon her and the baby.

Oh good Lord, can the nuns see what I have done? Alice thought. Surely, this was a nightmare. This could not be really happening. The ghosts of her past life filled the room, laughing and taunting her.

Somewhere outside, in the rain, she heard Maura and Tommy crying. Alice rose slowly from her chair. She looked down at the baby in her arms and, as she did so, the eyes of a dead priest stared back at her.

‘
ARE YOU SURE
you witnessed this with your own eyes? ’Tis a grave accusation. God knows how we will manage without them if this is true. The kitchens run like clockwork and the garden is one of the most productive I have ever known.’

Sister Theresa peered over her glasses at Sister Perpetua who sat in front of her desk, still and calm, with her hands clasped loosely in her lap. A statue of poise, marbled with malice. Sister Theresa had read through the journal of evidence Sister Perpetua had placed before her and the facts were there, in black and white. The trouble was, she would so much rather they weren’t.

‘Yes, Reverend Mother. I have been keeping a watch for a month now and I have seen everything.’ Sister Perpetua didn’t even blink.

From the opposite side of the desk, she glanced across at her own handiwork, perched lightly in Sister Theresa’s hands.

The list of accusations against Maggie and Frank was damning.

Feeding village children through the railings. Taking garden vegetables to their own kitchen. Giving food to the orphans and slipping bread up to the orphanage in the pockets of the kitchen helpers. The poteen still behind the secret wall in the potting shed.

‘I will have to phone the Gardai, you realize that, don’t you? This amounts to theft. We prefer to be private here, Sister Perpetua, and I have no notion of calling the Gardai every five minutes. Are you absolutely sure you have seen all this with your own eyes and there is no mistake?’

‘Aye, Sister, I saw it all from the orphanage windows.’

‘Holy Mother, I have two bishops arriving in an hour. We will leave this until our visitors have left. I cannot have visitors here and nothing to feed them and, besides, only Maggie knows how the kitchen runs, apart from, possibly, Maggie’s kitchen helper.

‘She was with us in the Dublin orphanage. We heard good reports about her from the bishop in Liverpool. When he arrives today, I shall ask him if he thinks she would be up to taking over the kitchen. She worked as a housekeeper for a priest in Liverpool and she will have had enough experience downstairs by now, I should think, wouldn’t you?’