The Whipping Club (36 page)

             
“No, no—I have relatives in the area,” Nurse lied. But if she could find Sister Paulinas’s relatives, and then surprise her with updated news from Sister’s hometown…but—no, no—she’d do no such thing. Or would she?

             
No, no—don’t be a mentaller,
she told herself, looking up at the wee nun’s lively face. The only thing she’d like to remember from that place is her sister Anne and Officer Dolan. “No, no—I don’t have relatives here. I’m only making a stopover on my way to London.” Nurse rose suddenly, but confused, a fuzziness coming over her eyes, a tingling on her tongue, she sat back down and blurted that she was out of a job.

             
The old nun introduced herself as Sister Cecilia and offered her a room for the night. “You’re knackered is all, just like me, you old goat,” Sister Cecilia said. She laughed, and picked up Nurse’s case.

             
Nurse stayed on with the small order of Dominican nuns, the Convent of Our Lady of Compassion, at their generous invitation in the neighboring seaside town of Portstewart. The Convent House overlooked the Irish Sea and no doubt had a positive effect on these fortunate nuns. Their views were spectacular and so were their worldviews. They were open-minded, energetic and fun-loving, especially Sister Cecilia, who enjoyed a good game of gin rummy with her nightly gin aperitif. Around the fire one night, Nurse confided to Sister Cecilia about her relationship with Officer Dolan and told her about her daughter Beth, as well.

             
Throughout the remainder of August, Nurse sat on a green deck chair most days making rosary beads for the African poor. Noble work, Sister Cecilia complimented her often. Nurse hated making them as a child, the long tedious process and the wire cutting into her fingertips, but now looking out at the sea, she found the precision work engrossing. An antidote to her headaches and to the stress and confusion of trying to figure out how to spend the rest of her life.

             
“What to do with the rest of your life?” Sister Cecilia admonished Nurse one afternoon. “Get off your fanny. What is your name, your real name, for God’s sake?”

             
“Ava.”

             
“Ava what? Let’s have it.”

             
“McDonald.”

             
“All right, then. Stop the malarkey. Use your name, for God’s sake. You’re a person first not a nurse, are you not?”

             
Sister Cecilia’s words came out harsh, but her eyes, their shiny quality, said she was trying to help and was speaking out of loving kindness. The other nuns who laughed with Sister Cecilia, confirmed this, and sometimes Nurse would join in. They would all laugh at Sister Cecilia’s rambunctious tone.

             
“You want to know my a
dvice, Miss Ava McDonald?” she
said now.

             
Ava nodded.

             
“It would do nobody any harm to write to this Officer Dolan. Perhaps he could track down Beth, you never know. He is an officer, after all. And he fancies you.” She rose, hands on her hips, waiting for Nurse’s reply.

             
“No harm, I suppose. I have his address.”

On a late July afternoon, it was Officer Dolan himself who reached into the brass letterbox at the Garda Station and retrieved the envelope from the Convent of Our Lady of Compassion in Portstewart. Sister Cecilia’s name was handwritten in black ink above the return address. Inside was a faded photograph—
Beth, 1948,
inscribed on the back. A letter asking outright if he could search for her file, they were kept in the metal cabinet in Sister Paulinas’s office. She would await his reply.
Ava McDonald, sister of former headmistress Sister Anne McDonald
scribbled at the bottom, enclosed with a light blue rosary.

             
Besides feeling stunned that Nur
se had a child, Officer Dolan,
to his own surprise, missed the time spent with Nurse in the shed. He often wondered about her. So he saw this favor as an opportunity to see her again. Tickled he was, too, that she ended up in so lovely a spot.

             
The following Tuesday, at four o’clock sharp, while Sister Paulinas had her regular check-in with the Reverend Mother, Officer Dolan entered her office. With the help of Nurse’s note, he found the file quickly and left with detailed information on the McDonalds’ history. Most of the girls’ files were nearly empty, but there was some general information about Anne, and about Nurse and her child, perhaps maintained by the late Sister herself. Officer Dolan used his skills in the field and tracked Beth down at University College Dublin. He found his way to her dormitory address and rang her, requesting a meeting about “a distant relative in trouble” and they set a time to meet.

             
Meanwhile, back at Castleboro, the missing file went unnoticed. A few days before he was to depart for a week’s vacation in Dublin, Officer Dolan slipped the manila folder back into Sister Paulinas’s metal cabinet, and left her office as quietly as he came.

             
With great anticipation and curiosity Officer Dolan set out for his meeting with Beth. Sitting at the last table at Brewbaker’s, a small coffee shop across from University College, he ordered black coffee but didn’t bother to look at the menu. Not yet eleven o’clock, the place was nearly empty and serving food was on no one’s mind as the young waiters bustled to set up their stations. There was another group of three young people at a table in the window, and he wondered how he would recognize the young lady he was here to meet. Dolan had found Beth enthusiastic on the phone and was on the lookout for an eager type. And there, yes. He could guess that this rather large-boned young woman with a fashionable black handbag peering through the restaurant’s door before she entered was Beth. Officer Dolan put up his hand and she waved, came bustling over.

             
“Sorry. I’m a bit late,” she breathed, her cheeks flushed from the cold. She appeared to have been running, a bit out of sorts as she anchored herself in the wooden chair. He took a sip of his coffee to give her a minute to collect herself. She had all the qualities of the young and healthy about her: rushed, apologetic, a large appetite for drama in her manner. He wasn’t really sure how to talk with her. She was so different from the inmates at Castleboro. She breezed out a bunch of words he didn’t quite catch.

             
“Shall we have a coffee?” he asked as a waiter stood by their table.

             
“I’m grand,” Beth said. “Nothing for me right now.” Beth said hello to the fellow; apparently this was a familiar place for her.

             
She had a big, round face and a ready smile. “I’m sorry if I’m staring, but I haven’t seen a uniform up close.” She seemed fixated with the police cap on the table.

             
“Go on. Have a look,” Dolan said, handing her the cap.

             
As she took the police cap in her hands, she began to talk quite naturally, and already he had the feeling this meeting, this discussion about Nurse, would be easier than he had imagined.

             
“May I, really?” She laughed.

             
“Go on,” he said.

             
Beth had thin brown hair, not unlike her mother’s, but worn pulled back. They talked of her school and her family and about the fact that she had made no decisions about her future, although she knew she was interested in police work. Officer Dolan told her about her birth mother and Beth seemed almost intoxicated with the idea of meeting her.

             
“I’m excited and interested and honestly grateful to you for finding me out, Officer Dolan. Do you think…”

             
“I know for a fact she wants to see you, Beth. Shall I make the call?” He pulled the phone number from his wallet.

             
“I’m so nervous, but, yes, how exciting!”

             
“I’ll not be a minute,” Officer Dolan said and went to the telephone box on the corner.

             
He reached Sister Cecilia with the news that he hoped to bring Beth to meet Nurse.

             
“Ava,” Sister corrected him over the phone. “Call her Ava, always,” she said. And then, warm but still brusque, Sister Cecilia none too politely advised them to get their bums up there, so the two boarded the train at Connolly Station for Coleraine, just four miles from Portstewart and the Convent that very afternoon.

             
Not three and one-half hours later, “No, no,” Nurse said. Sister Cecilia hustled down the sloping lawns of the convent grounds waving her wrinkled hands wildly at her.

             
“You have visitors, Ava.”

             
Nurse touched her hair. “I’m not prepared for any visitors, you can plain well see that.”

             
“It was to be a surprise for you, you ninny. Since when is anyone prepared for a surprise?” Sister Cecilia said. “Save us your melodrama, Ava. You’ve been sitting on your fanny for weeks, for God’s sake. Up, up, for God’s sake. Greet your guests!”

             
Nurse blushed as Sister Cecilia pointed toward the open convent doors by the terrace. Officer Dolan waved, popped a mint into his mouth. She stared and saw clearly the girl by his side.

             
“Ah, my God!” she whispered.

             
Beth made the first move. She strode down the slope, smiling, her arms swinging, giving Ava pause. Not at all what she expected. She could barely budge. Officer Dolan followed behind Beth.

             
“No, no—I’m not myself today.” She almost giggled, as Beth

approached too closely. Then, Beth bear-hugged her.

             
“I won’t stay long,” Beth reassured her, still holding her.

             
“No, no—you should have told me. I would have–”

             
“You would have done nothing different,” Sister Cecilia said.

             
Officer Dolan sauntered down
and greeted Nurse with a wet,
offhand kiss to her cheek, his tobacco and minty smells still delighting her.

             
“Ava, your daughter’s a pistol,” he said, and Beth laughed. “It’s our little officer joke,” he explained. Beth reprimanded him with a wave of her plump hand.

             
“I’ll put on the tea,” Sister Cecilia said. “Likely I’ll put out the bottle of gin for Officer Dolan as well.” The three of them managed a slow stroll across the hilly expanse of lawn, and Ava regained herself, just barely.

             
“Every time you feel nervous,” Officer Dolan said, “think about Sister Paulinas and say ‘to hell with you’ to her again in your mind. You’ll be all right.”

             
The three spent the afternoon in conversation. Mostly Beth talking about this and that, about university and the future. She told Ava about her contented life with her adopted family and, at the same time, how she always wanted to know her real mother and often fantasized about meeting her.

             
“I’m thrilled to bits and grateful to Officer Dolan,” Beth said.

             
“I’ve never stopped thinking of you,” Ava answered quietly. “Thrilled to bits, as well,” she blurted, thinking suddenly and with shame about her penknife as the blood was rushing to her head. She wondered aloud if maybe the visit should end, but Officer Dolan seemed to have another plan.

             
“You’ll not keep us from the seashore. What do you say, Ava? Will you join us?” Officer Dolan coughed slightly. “I’ve decided to leave Castleboro behind now, Ava.” He paused as Nurse blinked at him. “I’ll be looking for work in Dublin, so we’ll want a good rest before all that.”

             
Nurse giggled, thought about Sister Paulinas’ reaction when she learned that Officer Dolan had left, too. And by all appearances, to her surprise, he seemed to be telling her that he thought she might join him in Dublin.

             
“No, no,” Ava answered, her eyes darting about, Sister Cecilia fussing about the room. “I have a letter you can bring to Marian for me. No, no—she’d be happy to meet you. And Father Brennan, he’d help you if you need a place while you’re looking for work.”

             
Officer Dolan nodded at her, and she turned away.

             
“Seriously,” Beth whispered. “If you don’t want–”

             
“No, no,” Ava said, giggling again. Officer Dolan seemed to want to wipe the distress off her face. “You can’t leave me here with Sister Cecilia and the others after I’ve seen the likes of the pair of you,”

she said in her mixed up way. Her attempt at humor brought an apprehensive smile to Beth’s face and a scoff from Sister Cecilia.