The Whipping Club

Deborah Henry is a natural storyteller and she is far more. Her novel
The Whipping Club
is a compelling read, but it also seriously explores the terrible ways the world—as a society, as individuals—often fails its children. Most importantly, her book offers a searingly lovely vision of how wrongs can be made right. Deborah Henry is a splendid young novelist who deserves a wide audience.

— Robert Olen Butler,
Pulitzer Prize-winning author of
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

An intimate, assured first novel, the story of Marian McKeever and her child hidden by cruelty and custom. It rings with the authenticity of shame and courage. You can put it down but you will not forget it.

—Jacquelyn Mitchard,
bestselling author of
The Deep End of the Ocean,
named by
USA Today
as one of the ten most influential books of the past 25 years

Deborah Henry’s debut novel is a wonderful portrait of a world seldom depicted in fiction, that of a small Jewish enclave in 20th-century Ireland.  Echoing  Joyce’s
Ulysses,
the novel nonetheless creates its own compelling vision, peopled by vivid characters and compelling voices. With near pitch-perfect dialogue, the story’s long-buried secrets compel the reader forward in a way that is both intriguing and heart-wrenching. A new and exciting voice in fiction.

—Michael White,
bestselling author of
Soul Catcher
and
Beautiful Assassin

A hauntingly beautiful literary landscape. Henry writes with great passion, deep vulnerability and sharpest prose about perils and plights, joy and triumph. Commanding a winsome literary voice, Henry would go far to tell many a tale. And she should. 

—Da Chen,
bestselling author of
Colors of the Mountain
and
Sounds of the River

Harrowing, haunting, and brilliantly written, Henry’s stunner of a novel is about secrets, so-called sins, and the way even the deepest scars can begin to heal. So breathtakingly good it seems burned into your heart.

—Caroline Leavitt,
New York Times bestselling author of
Pictures of You

—Martine Bellen,
author of
The Vulnerability of Order

Gripped me from the beginning. Henry beautifully evokes the terrifying journey in and out of church-run systems in a heart wrenching and lyrical manner. She creates a frighteningly authentic world of authority gone mad and the long term effects of abuse. Her provocative novel is very timely in today’s Ireland which still suffers from the ghosts of those whose lives were destroyed, yet the book transcends and gives us the hope of the human spirit. Henry has a great future ahead of her. A beautiful writer and a stunning debut.

—Alan Cooke,
Irish filmmaker and writer, winner of a 2009 Emmy for
Home

Exquisitely written, unflinching and spare. Deborah Henry is a gifted storyteller. The steely realism of her prose, her fiercely drawn characters and startling plot twists make
The Whipping Club
one of those rare novels that linger in the mind long
after the last page is turned.

—Dawn Tripp,
Bestselling author of
Game of Secrets

A story of survival, redemption, and the courage that is born of love. One of m
y favorite reads of the decade!

—Susan Henderson,
author of
Up From the Blue

THE WHIPPIN
G CLUB

A NOVEL

DEBORAH
HENRY

T. S. Poetry Press • New York

© 2012 by Deborah Henry

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. To view
a copy of this license, visit  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Fr
ancisco, California, 94105, USA

Cover image by Will Amato. willamato.com

Author photo, copyright Marion Ettlinger.

This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and
dialogue,
are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

ISBN 978-0-9845531-7-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Henry, Deborah

             
[Fiction.]

             
The Whipping Club/Deborah Henry

             
ISBN 978-0-9845531-7-4

             
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011944486

The author and publisher wish to express their grateful acknowledgment to the following publications, which first featured portions of this work:
The Smoking Poet, The Copperfield Review,
and
The Litchfield Literary Review.

for Brian

and our beloved Catherine, John & Sara

PART I

MARIAN spent the morning in Dr. O’Connell’s office. The room was frigid and she wore nothing but a threadbare gown. She did not look at him as he examined her but stared a
t the low chair in the corner.
It was yellowed with wear, the kind of chair used in the classrooms at the Zion school where she taught. It seemed out of place here.
             
“I’m ringing your uncle,” said Dr. O’Connell. “Nurse Dwyer will take you to my office when you’re clothed.”
             
Once Marian was ready, the nurse escorted her to Dr. O’Connell’s office. A small diamond ring winked on the nurse’s finger. The girl had a soft look, and Marian could see why she’d been asked to marry so young. She felt a strange kinship with this girl now, as if she wanted to share with her that they were travelling on similar paths. But then a surge of heat ran through her. She pushed high above her guilt, then returned to the nagging fear again. The Catholic self-loathing. She was a degenerate to have done the misdeed. She’d been taught better, hadn’t she, but she
had been unable to control her
desires for Ben. No, she wasn’t like her because the young nurse was a lady and ladies waited. The girl closed the door behind them and invited Marian to sit down while she herself remained standing, hovering by the door. It was then Marian realized the nurse wasn’t there for comfort, but to keep her from running. 
             
Marian gazed out the window. The broad avenue bustled with men carrying umbrellas, youngsters lugging school bags, and she would have given anything to be at home getting ready for work. She felt a sudden longing for her father. She needed his arms around her now, his smoky neck pressed against her nose, the comforting smell of his woodbines filling her up inside. He was a small, sturdy man with a big voice, and she could hear him telling her that the hard times would pass away, and she should rise above the inbred and useless shame, the way he used to whenever she’d gotten herself into trouble with the nuns. But this trouble was different and there was no rising above it. It was inside her and it was growing. Why hadn’t she done something before this?
             
The door opened and her uncle, Father Brennan, entered. He thanked the nurse for her time as she scurried away. With a deep breath, he ran one hand through his thick hair and sat down. As good looking as Spencer Tracy, he could have played the part of a priest in the pictures, she’d told him after his first Mass at Loreto College Church last year. But he was acting no role then, nor now, and she knew she should not count on a familial smile to help her get through this conversation.
             
“Hello, dear.” He gave her a grimace; his presence held no warmth.
             
“I’m sorry, Father,” she said.
             
“Well, you’re not married, Marian.”
             
“I have a plan in place, though.”
             
“Does the boy know the state he’s put you in?”
             
“I didn’t know until a few minutes ago.”
             
“That’s best, anyway. No need to involve more people into this mess. He’s a Catholic?”
             
“No.”
             
“No,” Father Brennan said, nodding.
             
Marian pressed down her skirt. “I should ring Ben,” she said.
             
“What, child?”
             
“I should ring Ben Ellis, the father.”
             
“Ellis? Ellis,” he repeated, and then paused. “I’m surprised he’s not here, Marian.”
             
“He loves me, Father.”
             
“He loves
you
?” Her uncle sat back in his chair.
             
Marian looked down at her black boots, anger rising inside her.
“I know he loves me. We’re getting married. I’m meeting his parents tonight.”
             
“Oh, you are? So when is this wedding, Marian?”
             
She looked hard at him. “Whenever we decide, Father.”
             
“Listen, girl. Don’t you be bold with me. I’m trying to help you. And your mother. She’s never to know about this, you hear?”
             
Marian straightened in her chair.
             
“What you don’t seem to understand, is that there is no
whenever you decide
anymore. You tossed that option long ago.”
             
She’d known girls who had left quietly for London to see a doctor on their own and rid themselves of their trouble. The vision of their humiliation horrified her.
             
“You’ll be ruined in Dublin if anyone finds out. There are only two options left.” He lit a cigarette. “You can go to this boy right now, and tell him that you’re pregnant. If he marries you immediately, and we don’t know how this Johnny will react, you can have this child and start a life.”
             
He took a long drag and blew the smoke upward. “I know this sounds rosy, but let me tell you, he’ll resent you. And he’ll resent the baby, as well. Further, whatever love’s between you will be lost.”
             
She could feel the drumming of blood in her chest.
             
“Because sometimes love is not enough, Marian. That’s the truth.”
             
“You don’t know us, Father.”
             
“Ah! But I do, Marian. I’ve seen it over and over. You think this baby will bind you together, but it won’t. It’ll burden you. I don’t want to scare you, Marian, but I want you to fully understand your predicament.”
             
“We’ll withstand this, Father,” she said, still growing hot as he spoke.
             
“This is not just an obstacle, Marian. It’s a person you’re going to have. Do you have any idea of the cost involved to raise a child? For God’s sake, Marian, you’re little more than a child yourself. How are you going to manage a job when you’re getting up in the wee hours, night after night, sacrificing for this infant? Think straight. And what about this boy? What does he do for work?”
             
She was about to tell him but he waved her off with his hand.
             
“It doesn’t matter. Whatever he does for a living, he’ll lose his standing. Would he be needing a night job to make ends meet? Would you put him through that? These are tough times, Marian, look around you. Would you live with his parents? Ah, that’s right! You’re meeting them for the first time tonight.” He shook his head.
“Marian, let me tell you about option two. I have a place in mind,” said Father Brennan.
             
He leaned in close and when he spoke his voice was conspiratorial. It was the muted tone she remembered him using with her when she was a child and he sneaked her candy cigarettes.
             
“It’s a gorgeous spot down the country. Great Oaks line the driveway. It’s only available to the best families, Marian. I took it upon myself to call before I came over and these nuns—very kind nuns—have a bed available. They’ve agreed to hold the bed for one week as a favor to me.”
             
“You’re talking about giving it away?” A yet untried instinct drove her hand to the flat of her stomach.
             
“I’m talking about giving you a chance at happiness, Marian. If you really do love this man, you’ll think this through. If you go to that man of yours, tell him your situation and he agrees to marry you immediately, you won’t have my confidence but you’ll have my blessing, you know that,” he said. He stamped out the cigarette butt.
             
“Or option two,” he continued, “and the far better decision. Let him marry you on his own terms, Marian. Trust me, dear, he’ll thank you and you’ll thank me someday, too. If you choose this, you don’t mention the pregnancy. You never tell him. Instead, you come to me this Sunday and I’ll bring you down to the lovely place.”
             
She’d heard about those hideaways where the girls give up their babies and whisperings around Dublin about the wicked girls who had stained the world. Marian remembered the derogatory remarks about her friend Ceci, who mysteriously left secondary school and was never the same after that. She’d told Marian about the smell of watery oatmeal and about the iron bars in vertical rows, the invasive silence punctuated by the ping of knitting needles.
             
“One week to get married to this young man, or all the time you need to give him and yourself a proper start, are we clear?” he said.
             
“Yes, Father, we’re clear. You have one week to marry us.”
             
He gave her a sad smile.
He’s just a lonely, old man, she thought. He might even be a virgin.
She pictured his evenings spent reading under that one lousy lamp in that small, one-room sublet. He would never understand what he’d never had.
             
Patting the back of her neck with a dampened paper towel hours later, Marian saw Principal Rosenberg on the school playground, making another assessment of the less experienced members of his staff.
             
“Come on, everyone. The bell’s ringing,” Marian said, ducking them into their classroom. She made her way down the school hall, taking a deep, calming breath of potter’s clay in the air. The children put on their caps and coats, and soon came the parade of mothers chatting up and down Bloomfield Avenue as they collected their children.
             
Marian pretended to grade English papers after hours in the privacy of her classroom, and then studied Ben through the side window of the Zion School, his leg fidgety, his left hand tapping the school’s black iron gate with his newspaper. She sighed in exhaustion, all too aware of his deliberate tardiness; tired, too, of all the elusive tactics the couple now employed to halt the spreading of more gossip. Slick auburn hair, strips of sideburns an inch and a half below his ears, a
Think Yiddish Dress British
red button pinned to his lapel, a paisley tie. Sure Ben Ellis was different.
An rud is annamh is íontach,
Marian thought. What is strange is wonderful.
             
“I spent the entire afternoon running to the ladies to hairspray my hair and look,” she said, meeting him by the gate. “Your parents expect a serious schoolteacher and they’re going to get a hot bird instead.”
             
“Hotter than Maureen O’Hara. You look perfect,” he said, casting a look at her as they continued together along the Zion School perimeter, blue hydrangeas still in bloom lining the red brick walk.
             
I’m not perfect,
is what she thought. She paused. “Do you need me to be perfect?” She lingered in the inviting smell of his peppery aftershave.
             
“We have thirty minutes before sundown,” he said. He took her hand and they walked to the left, down Bloomfield Avenue and on to the South Circular Road, their steps quick and bold, a faint autumnal chill in the air.
             
They had only five blocks left to walk when Marian started to panic. She had strolled through Little Jerusalem twice before, but never at sunset, never on the Sabbath, and now everything felt teeming and ancient and threatening in its foreignness. Across the street, ladies in dark kerchiefs huddled around a bucket of thrashing mackerel. Men in black hats dragged lines of children by the wrist down the pavement. The Hebrew letters in storefronts and candlelit windows made her think of shattered tombstones, graveyards filled with crows.
             
She clung firmly to Ben.
             
“We’re almost there,” he said.
             
She tried to smile. Three girls chattering in Yiddish glanced as they passed by and she wondered if they were talking about her: the pale goy clutching one of theirs. But he wasn’t theirs, and she forced herself to remember this; Ben was more hers than anyone’s.
             
“Let’s grab a raisin babka from Erlich’s,
” he said. “Tatte loves them.”
Ben opened the storefront door and the sour smell of pickled herring made Marian nauseous. She told him she’d wait outside.
             
“Are you okay?” he said.
             
She gave him a quick kiss. “I’m grand.”
             
He walked into the store and entered the frenetic line. Marian looked around her at the crowds. Everyone seemed to be rushing, trying to get home before dark. One after another, men tossed their newspapers in the trash. A woman carrying sweet cakes bumped against her and hurried off. She felt like an obstruction standing immobile on the street corner, strangely invisible yet scrutinized. She turned toward Ben and watched him thumb through his wallet, noticed his clumsy mess of hair, the way the thin, brass arms of his eyeglasses hugged his temples. He d
rew close to the cash register.
The lining of his pocket hung against his coat after he retrieved his wallet, and Marian felt an impulse to reach across the store and tuck it back in place. He turned to check on her, and when he spotted her on the curb he gave her a wink.