The Wonder (4 page)

Mrs. O'Donnell bristled. “There does be nothing rancid in this kitchen.”

“Did you plead with her to eat?” asked Lib.

“I might as well have saved my breath.”

“And Anna gave no reason for her refusal?”

The woman leaned a little closer, as if imparting a secret. “No need.”

“She didn't need to give a reason?” asked Lib.

“She doesn't need it,” said Rosaleen O'Donnell, her smile revealing her missing teeth.

“Food, you mean?” asked the nun, barely audible.

“Not a crumb. She's a living marvel.”

This had to be a well-rehearsed performance. Except that the gleam in the woman's eyes looked remarkably like conviction to Lib. “And you claim that during the last four months, your daughter's continued in good health?”

Rosaleen O'Donnell straightened her frame, and her sparse eyelashes fluttered. “No false
claims,
no impostures, will be found in this house, Mrs. Wright. 'Tis a humble home, but so was the stable.”

Lib was puzzled, thinking of horses, until she realized what the woman meant: Bethlehem.

“We're simple people, himself and myself,” said Rosaleen O'Donnell. “We can't explain it, but our little girl is thriving by special providence of the Almighty. Sure aren't all things possible to him?” She appealed to the nun.

Sister Michael nodded. Faintly: “He moves in mysterious ways.”

This was why the O'Donnells had asked for a nun, Lib was almost sure of it. And why the doctor had gone along with their request. They were all assuming that a spinster consecrated to Christ would be more likely than most people to believe in miracles. More blinkered by superstition, Lib would call it.

Mr. Thaddeus's eyes were watchful. “But you and Malachy are willing to let these good nurses sit with Anna for the full fortnight, aren't you, Rosaleen, so they can testify before the committee?”

Mrs. O'Donnell flung her skinny arms so wide, her plaid shawl almost fell. “Willing and more than willing, so we'll have our characters vindicated that are as good as any from Cork to Belfast.”

Lib almost laughed. To be as concerned for reputation in this meagre cabin as in any mansion…

“What have we to hide?” the woman went on. “Haven't we already thrown our doors open to well-wishers from the four corners of the earth?”

Her grandiloquence put Lib's back up.

“Speaking of which,” said the priest, “I believe your guests may be leaving.”

The singing had ended without Lib noticing. The inner door hung open a crack, shifting in the draught. She walked over and looked through the gap.

The good room was distinguished from the kitchen mostly by its bareness. Apart from a cupboard with a few plates and jugs behind glass and a cluster of rope chairs, there was nothing in it. Half a dozen people were turned towards the corner of the room that Lib couldn't see, their eyes wide, lit as if they were watching some dazzling display. She strained to catch their murmurs.

“Thank you, miss.”

“A couple of holy cards for your collection.”

“Let me leave you this vial of oil our cousin had blessed by His Holiness in Rome.”

“A few flowers is all, cut in my garden this morning.”

“A thousand thank-yous, and would you ever kiss the baby before we go?” That last woman hurried towards the corner with her bundle.

Lib found it tantalizing not to be able to glimpse the
extraordinary wonder
—wasn't that the phrase the farmers had used at the spirit grocery last night? Yes, this must have been what they were raving about: not some two-headed calf but Anna O'Donnell, the
living marvel.
Evidently hordes were let in every day to grovel at the child's feet; the vulgarity of it!

There was that one farmer who'd said something malign about the
other crowd,
how they were
waiting on her hand and foot.
He must have meant the visitors who were so eager to caress the child. What did they think they were doing, setting a little girl up for a saint because they imagined her to have risen above ordinary human needs? It reminded Lib of parades on the Continent, statues in fancy dress promenaded through the reeking alleys.

Though in fact the visitors' voices all sounded Irish to Lib; Mrs. O'Donnell had to be exaggerating about the
four corners of the earth.
The door swung wide now, so Lib stepped back.

The visitors shuffled out. “Missus, for your trouble.” A man in a round hat was offering a coin to Rosaleen O'Donnell.

Aha. The root of all evil. Like those well-heeled tourists who paid a peasant to pose with a half-strung fiddle by the door of his mud cabin. The O'Donnells had to be party to this fraud, Lib decided, and for the most predictable of motives: cash.

But the mother flung her hands behind her back. “Sure hospitality's no trouble.”

“For the sweet girleen,” said the visitor.

Rosaleen O'Donnell kept shaking her head.

“I insist,” he said.

“Put it in the box for the poor, sir, if you must leave it.” She nodded at an iron safe set on a stool by the door.

Lib rebuked herself for not having spotted that earlier.

The visitors all slipped their tips into its slot on their way out. Some of those coins sounded heavy to Lib. Clearly the minx was as much of a paying attraction as any carved cross or standing stone. Lib very much doubted that the O'Donnells would pass a penny on to those even less fortunate than themselves.

Waiting for the crowd to clear, Lib found herself close enough to the mantelpiece to study the daguerreotype. Murky-toned and taken before the son had emigrated. Rosaleen O'Donnell, like some imposing totem. The skinny adolescent boy rather incongruously leaning back in her lap. A small girl sitting upright on the father's. Lib squinted through the glare of the glass. Anna O'Donnell had hair about as dark as Lib's own, down to the shoulders. Nothing to distinguish her from any other child.

“Go on into her room now till I fetch her,” Rosaleen O'Donnell was telling Sister Michael.

Lib stiffened. How was the woman planning to prepare her daughter for their scrutiny?

All at once she couldn't bear the smoulder of turf. She muttered something about needing a breath of air and stepped out into the farmyard.

Putting her shoulders back, Lib breathed in and smelled dung. If she did stay, it would be to accept the challenge: to expose this pitiful swindle. The cabin couldn't have more than four rooms; she doubted it would take her more than one night here to catch the girl sneaking food, whether Anna was doing it alone or with help. (Mrs. O'Donnell? Her husband? The slavey, who seemed to be their only servant? Or all of them, of course.) That meant the whole trip would earn Lib just one day's wage. Of course, a less honest nurse wouldn't speak up till the fortnight was gone, to be sure of being paid for all fourteen. Whereas Lib's reward would be seeing it through, making sure sense prevailed over nonsense.

“I'd better be looking in on some others of my flock,” said the pink-cheeked priest behind her. “Sister Michael's offered to take the first watch, as you must be feeling the effects of your journey.”

“No,” said Lib, “I'm quite ready to begin.” Itching to meet the girl, in fact.

“As you prefer, Mrs. Wright,” said the nun in her whispery voice behind him.

“You'll come back in eight hours, then, Sister?” asked Mr. Thaddeus.

“Twelve,” Lib corrected him.

“I believe McBrearty proposed shifts of eight hours, as less tiring,” he said.

“Then Sister and I would both be up and down at irregular hours,” Lib pointed out. “In my experience of ward nursing, two shifts are more conducive to sleep than three.”

“But to fulfil the terms of the watch, you'll be obliged to stay by Anna's side every single minute of the time,” said Mr. Thaddeus. “Eight hours sounds long enough.”

Just then Lib realized something else: if they worked twelve-hour shifts and she took the first, it would always be Sister Michael on duty during the night, when the girl would have more opportunity to steal food. How could Lib rely on a nun who'd spent most of her life in some provincial convent to be quite as attentive as herself? “Very well, eight hours, then.” Calculating in her head. “We might change over at, say, nine in the evening, five in the morning, one in the afternoon, Sister? Those times would seem rather less disruptive to the household.”

“Until one o'clock, then?” asked the nun.

“Oh, as we're only beginning now, midmorning, I'm happy to stay with the girl until nine tonight,” Lib told her. A long first day would allow her to set up the room and establish the procedures of the watch to her liking.

Sister Michael nodded and glided away down the path back towards the village. How did nuns learn that distinctive walk? Lib wondered. Perhaps it was just an illusion created by the black robes brushing the grass.

“Good luck, Mrs. Wright,” said Mr. Thaddeus, tipping his hat.

Luck?
As if she were off to the races.

Lib gathered her forces and stepped back inside the house, where Mrs. O'Donnell and the maid were lifting what looked like a massive grey gnome onto a hook. Lib's eyes puzzled it out: an iron crock.

The mother swivelled the pot over the fire and jerked her head towards a half-open door to Lib's left. “I've told Anna all about you.”

Told her what, that Mrs. Wright was a spy from across the sea? Coached the brat in the best means of hoodwinking the Englishwoman as she had so many other grown-ups?

The bedroom was an unadorned square. A tiny girl in grey sat on a straight-backed chair between the window and the bed as if listening to some private music. The hair a dark red that hadn't shown in the photograph. At the creak of the door, she looked up, and a smile split her face.

A humbug, Lib reminded herself.

The girl stood and held out her hand.

Lib shook it. Plump fingers cool to the touch. “How are you feeling today, Anna?”

“Very well, missus,” said the girl in a small, clear voice.

“Nurse,” Lib corrected her, “or Mrs. Wright, or ma'am, if you prefer.” She found she couldn't think of anything else to say. She reached into her bag for her miniature memorandum book and measuring tape. She began making notes, to impose something of the systematic on this incongruous situation.

Monday, August 8, 1859, 10:07 a.m.

Length of body: 46 inches.

Arm span: 47 inches.

Girth of skull measured above brows: 22 inches.

Head from crown to chin: 8 inches.

Anna O'Donnell was perfectly obliging. Standing very straight in her plain dress and curiously large boots, she held each position for Lib to measure her, as if learning the steps of a foreign dance. Her face could almost have been described as chubby, which put paid to the fasting story right away. Large hazel eyes bulging a little under puffy eyelids. The whites were porcelain, the pupils dilated, although that could be explained by the faintness of the light coming in. (At least the small pane was open to the summer air. At the hospital, no matter what Lib said, Matron clung to the antiquated notion that windows had to be kept closed against noxious effluvia.)

The girl was very pale, but then Irish skin was generally so, especially on redheads, until the weather coarsened it. Now there was an oddity: a very fine, colourless down on the cheeks. And after all, the girl's lie about not eating didn't preclude her from having some real disorder. Lib wrote it all down.

Miss N. thought some nurses relied on note-taking too much, laming their powers of recall. However, she never went so far as to forbid an
aide-mémoire.
Lib didn't mistrust her own memory, but on this occasion, she'd been hired more as a witness, which called for impeccable case notes.

Something else: Anna's earlobes and lips had a bluish tint to them, and so did the beds of the fingernails. She was chilly to the touch, as if she'd just come in from walking in a snowstorm. “Do you feel cold?” Lib asked.

“Not especially.”

Breadth of chest across level of mammae: 10 inches.

Girth of ribs: 24 inches.

The girl's eyes followed her. “What's your name?”

“As I mentioned, it's Mrs. Wright, but you may address me as Nurse.”

“Your Christian name, I mean.”

Lib ignored that bit of cheek and continued writing.

Girth of hips: 25 inches.

Girth of waist: 21 inches.

Girth of middle of arm: 5 inches.

“What are the numbers for?”

“They're… so we can be sure you're in good health,” said Lib. An absurd answer, but the question had flustered her. Surely it was a breach of protocol to discuss the nature of her surveillance with its object?

So far, as Lib had expected, the data in her notebook indicated that Anna O'Donnell was a false little baggage. Yes, she was thin in places, shoulder blades like the stubs of missing wings. But not the way a child would be after a month without food, let alone four. Lib knew what starvation looked like; at Scutari, skeletal refugees had been toted in, bones stretching the skin like tent poles under canvas. No, this girl's belly was rounded, if anything. Fashionable belles tight-laced these days in hopes of a sixteen-inch waist, and Anna's was five more than that.

What Lib really would have liked to know was the child's weight, because if it went up even an ounce over the course of the fortnight, that would constitute proof of covert feeding. She took two steps towards the kitchen to fetch a weighing scales before she remembered that she was obliged to keep this child in sight at all times until nine o'clock tonight.

A strange sensation of imprisonment. Lib thought of calling to Mrs. O'Donnell from inside the bedroom, but she didn't want to come off as high-handed, especially so early in her first shift.