The Wonder (7 page)

Rosaleen O'Donnell bustled in. “Mr. Reilly's ready to do your daguerreotype, Anna.”

“Is this really necessary?” asked Lib.

“'Tis to be engraved and put in the paper.”

Printing a portrait of the young chancer, as if she were the queen. Or a two-headed calf, more like. “How far off is his studio?”

“Sure he does it right there in the van.” Mrs. O'Donnell jabbed her finger towards the window.

Lib let the child go outside in front of her but tugged her out of the way of an uncovered bucket, pungent with chemicals. Alcohol, she recognized, and… was it ether or chloroform? Those fruity stenches brought Lib back to Scutari, where the sedatives always seemed to run out halfway through a run of amputations.

As she handed Anna up the folding steps, Lib wrinkled her nose against a more complicated reek. Something like vinegar and nails.

“Scribbler been and gone, has he?” asked the lank-haired, disheveled man inside.

Lib narrowed her eyes.

“The journalist who's writing the girl up.”

“I know nothing of any journalist, Mr. Reilly.”

His frock coat was blotched. “Stand by the pretty flowers, now, would you,” he said to Anna.

“Mightn't she sit instead, if she'll have to hold position for very long?” asked Lib. On the one occasion when she'd posed for a daguerreotype—in the ranks of Miss N.'s nurses—she'd found it a wearisome business. After the first few minutes one of the flightier young women had shifted and blurred the image, so they'd had to start all over again.

Reilly let out a chuckle and manoeuvred the camera a few inches on the wheeled foot of its tripod. “You're looking at a master of the modern wet process. Three seconds, that's all. The whole thing takes me no more than ten minutes from shutter to plate.”

Anna stood where Reilly had put her, beside a spindly table, with her right hand resting next to a vase of silk roses.

He tilted a mirror on a stand so a square of light hit her face, then ducked under the black drape that covered his camera. “Eyes up now, girlie. To me, to me.”

Anna's gaze wandered around the room.

“Look to your public.”

That meant even less to the child. Her eyes found Lib instead, and she almost smiled, although Lib wasn't smiling.

Reilly emerged and slotted a wooden rectangle into the machine. “Hold that, now. Still as stone.” He rolled the brass circle off the lens. “One, two, three…” Then he flicked it shut and shook the greasy hair out of his eyes. “Out you go, ladies.” He pushed the door open and jumped down from the van, then climbed back in with his reeking bucket of chemicals.

“Why do you keep that outside?” Lib asked, taking Anna by the hand.

Reilly was tugging at cords to let blinds fall over one window after another and darken the interior of the van. “Risk of explosion.”

Lib yanked Anna to the door.

Outside the wagon, the child took a long breath, looking towards the green fields. In sunlight Anna O'Donnell had an almost transparent quality; a blue vein stood out at the temple.

It was a long afternoon back in the bedroom. The girl whispered her prayers and read her books. Lib applied herself to a not-uninteresting article on fungus in
All the Year Round.
At one point Anna accepted another two spoonfuls of water. They sat just a few feet apart, Lib occasionally glancing at the girl over the top of her page. Strange to feel so yoked to another person.

Lib wasn't even free to go out to the privy; she had to make do with the chamber pot. “Do you need this, Anna?”

“No, thank you, ma'am.”

Lib left the pot by the door with a cloth over it. She repressed a yawn. “Would you care for a walk?”

Anna brightened. “May we, really?”

“So long as I'm with you.” She wanted to test the girl's stamina; did the swelling in Anna's limbs impede her movement? Besides, Lib couldn't bear to stay cooped up in this room any longer.

In the kitchen, side by side, Rosaleen O'Donnell and Kitty were skimming cream off pans with saucer-shaped strainers. The maid looked half the size of the mistress. “Anything you need, pet?” asked Rosaleen.

“No, thank you, Mammy.”

Dinner,
Lib said silently,
that's what every child needs.
Wasn't feeding what defined a mother from the first day on? A woman's worst pain was to have nothing to give her baby. Or to see the tiny mouth turn away from what she offered.

“We're just stepping out for a walk,” Lib told her.

Rosaleen O'Donnell swatted away a fat bluebottle and went back to her work.

There were only two possible explanations for the Irishwoman's serenity, Lib decided: either Rosaleen was so convinced of divine intervention that she had no anxiety for her daughter, or, more likely, she had reason to believe the girl was getting plenty to eat on the sly.

Anna shuffled and clumped along in those boy's boots with an almost undetectable lurch as she shifted her weight from one leg to another.
“Perfect thou my goings in thy paths,”
she murmured,
“that my footsteps be not moved.”

“Do your knees hurt you?” Lib asked as they followed the track past fretful brown hens.

“Not particularly,” said Anna, tilting her face up to catch the sun.

“Are these all your father's fields?”

“Well, he rents them,” said the girl. “We've none of our own.”

Lib hadn't seen any hired men. “Does he do all the work himself?”

“Pat helped, when he was still with us. This one's for oats,” said Anna, pointing.

A bedraggled scarecrow in brown trousers leaned sideways. Were these Malachy O'Donnell's old clothes? Lib wondered.

“And over there is hay. The rain usually spoils it, but not this year, it's been so fine,” said Anna.

Lib thought she recognized a wide square of low green: the longed-for potatoes.

When they reached the lane, she turned in the direction she hadn't yet been, away from the village. A sun-browned man was mending a stone wall in a desultory way.

“God bless the work,” called Anna.

“And you too,” he answered.

“That's our neighbour Mr. Corcoran,” she whispered to Lib. She bent down and tugged up a brownish stalk topped with starry yellow. Then a tall grass, dull purple at the top.

“You like flowers, Anna?”

“Oh, ever so much. Especially the lilies, of course.”

“Why
of course?
”

“Because they're Our Lady's favourite.”

Anna spoke about the Holy Family as if they were her relations. “Where would you have seen a lily?” asked Lib.

“In pictures, lots of times. Or water lilies on the lough, though they're not the same.” Anna crouched and stroked a minute white flower.

“What's this one?”

“Sundew,” Anna told her. “Look.”

Lib peered at the round leaves on stalks. They were covered with what looked like sticky fuzz, with the odd black speck.

“It catches insects and sucks them in,” said Anna under her breath, as if she feared to disturb the plant.

Could she be right? How interesting, in a gruesome way. It seemed the child had some capacity for science.

When Anna stood up, she wobbled and drew in a deep breath.

Light-headed? Unused to exercise, Lib wondered, or weak from underfeeding? Just because the fast was a hoax of some sort didn't mean that Anna had been getting all the nourishment a growing girl needed; those bony shoulder blades suggested otherwise. “Perhaps we should turn back.”

Anna didn't object. Was she tired or just obedient?

When they got to the cabin, Kitty was in the bedroom. Lib was about to challenge her, but the slavey stooped for the chamber pot—perhaps to give herself an excuse for being there. “You'll have a bowl of stirabout now, missus?”

“Very well,” said Lib.

When Kitty brought it in, Lib saw that
stirabout
meant porridge. She realized that this was probably her dinner. A quarter past four—country hours.

“Take some salt,” said Kitty.

Lib shook her head at the pot with its little spoon.

“Go on,” said Kitty, “it keeps the little ones off.”

Lib looked askance at the maid. Was she referring to flies?

As soon as Kitty had left the room, Anna spoke up in a whisper. “She means the little people.”

Lib didn't understand.

Anna formed dancers out of her plump hands.

“Fairies?” Incredulous.

The child made a face. “They don't like to be called that.” But then she smiled again, as if she and Lib both knew there were no tiny beings floundering around in the porridge.

The oatmeal wasn't half bad; it had been boiled in milk rather than water. Lib had trouble swallowing it in front of the child; she felt like some uncouth peasant stuffing herself in the presence of a fine lady.
This is only a smallholder's daughter,
Lib reminded herself,
and a cheat to boot.

Anna busied herself darning a torn petticoat. She didn't ogle Lib's dinner, nor did she avert her gaze as if struggling with temptation. She just kept on forming her neat little stitches. Even if the girl had eaten something last night, Lib thought, she had to be hungry now, after at least seven hours under the nurse's scrutiny, during which Anna had taken in nothing but three teaspoons of water. How could she bear to sit in a room fragrant with warm porridge?

Lib scraped the bowl clean, partly so that the remains wouldn't be sitting there between the two of them. She was missing baker's bread already.

Rosaleen O'Donnell came in a while later to show off the new photograph. “Mr. Reilly's kindly made us a present of this copy.”

The image was astonishingly sharp, though the tints were all wrong; the grey dress had bleached to the white of a nightdress, while the plaid shawl was pitch-black. The girl in the picture was looking sideways, towards the unseen nurse, with a ghost of a smile.

Anna glanced at the photograph as if only for politeness's sake.

“Such a smart case too,” said Mrs. O'Donnell, stroking the moulded tin.

This was not an educated woman, Lib thought. Could someone who took such naïve pleasure in a cheap case really be responsible for an elaborate conspiracy? Perhaps—Lib glimpsed Anna out of the corner of her eye—the studious little pet was the only guilty party. After all, until the watch had begun this morning, it would have been easy for the child to snatch all the food she wanted without her family's knowledge.

“It'll go on the mantel beside poor Pat,” added Rosaleen O'Donnell, admiring the picture at arm's length.

Was the O'Donnell boy in distressed circumstances now, overseas? Or perhaps his parents had no idea how he was; sometimes emigrants were never heard from again.

When the mother had gone back into the kitchen, Lib stared out at the grass left flattened by Reilly's wagon wheels. Then she turned, and her eye fell on Anna's awful boots. It occurred to Lib that Rosaleen O'Donnell might have said
poor Pat
because he was a natural; simpleminded. That would explain the boy's curious lolling posture in the photograph. But in that case, how could the O'Donnells have brought themselves to ship the unfortunate abroad? Either way, a subject better not raised with his little sister.

For hours on end, Anna sorted her holy cards. Played with them, really; the tender movements, dreamy air, and occasional murmurings reminded Lib of other girls with their dolls.

She read up on the effects of damp in the small volume she always carried in her bag. (
Notes on Nursing,
a gift from its author.) At half past eight she suggested it might be time for Anna to get ready for bed.

The girl crossed herself and changed into her nightdress, eyes down as she did the buttons at the front and wrists. She folded her clothes and laid them on the dresser. She didn't use the pot, so there was still nothing for Lib to measure. A girl of wax instead of flesh.

When Anna undid her bun and combed her hair, masses of dark strands came out on the teeth. That troubled Lib. For a child to be losing her hair like a woman past the prime…
She's doing this to herself,
Lib reminded herself.
It's all part of an elaborate trick she's playing on the world.

Anna made the sign of the cross again as she got into bed. She sat up against the bolster, reading her Psalms.

Lib stayed by the window, watching orange streaks scrape the western sky. Was there any tiny cache of crumbs she could have missed? Tonight was when the girl would seize her chance; tonight, when the nun would be here in place of Lib. Were Sister Michael's ageing eyes sharp enough? Her wits?

Kitty carried in a taper in a stubby brass candlestick.

“Sister Michael will need more than that,” said Lib.

“I'll bring another, so.”

“Half a dozen candles won't be enough.”

The maid's mouth hung a little open.

Lib tried for a conciliatory tone. “I know it's a lot of trouble, but I wonder whether you could get hold of some lamps?”

“Whale oil do be a shocking price these days.”

“Then some other kind of oil.”

“I'll have to see what I can find tomorrow,” said Kitty with a yawn.

She came back in a few minutes with some milk and oatcakes for Lib's supper.

As Lib buttered the oatcakes, her eyes slid to Anna, still lost in her book. Quite a feat, to go all day on an empty stomach and give the impression of not noticing food, let alone caring about it. Such control in one so young; dedication, ambition, even. If these powers could be turned to some good purpose, how far might they take Anna O'Donnell? From having nursed alongside a variety of women, Lib knew that self-mastery counted for more than almost any other talent.

She kept one ear open to the clinks and murmurings around the table on the other side of the half-open door. Even if the mother proved to be blameless as far as the hoax went, she was relishing the fuss, at the very least. And there was the money box by the front door. How did the old proverb go?
Children are the riches of the poor.
Metaphorical riches—but sometimes the literal kind too.