The Wonder (8 page)

Anna turned the pages, her mouth forming silent words.

A stir in the kitchen. Lib put her head out and saw Sister Michael taking off her black cloak. She gave the nun a courteous nod.

“You'll kneel down with us, won't you, Sister?” asked Mrs. O'Donnell.

The nun murmured something about not liking to keep Mrs. Wright waiting.

“That's quite all right,” Lib felt obliged to say.

She turned back to Anna. Who was standing so close behind—spectral in her nightdress—that Lib flinched. That string of brown seeds ready in the child's hand.

Anna slipped past Lib to kneel between her parents on the earth floor. The nun and the maid were down already, each fingering the little cross at the end of her rosary beads.
“I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth.”
The five voices rattled out the words.

Lib could hardly leave now, because Sister Michael's eyes were shut and her face in its obstructive headdress was bent over her joined hands; nobody was keeping a sharp eye on Anna. So Lib went and sat by the wall, with a clear view of the girl.

The gabbling changed to the Lord's Prayer, which Lib remembered from her own youth. How little she retained of all that. Perhaps faith had never had much of a hold on her; over the years it had fallen away, with other childish things.

“And forgive us our trespasses”
—here they all thumped their chests in unison, startling Lib—“
as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

She thought perhaps they'd stand up and say their good nights now. But no, the group plunged into a Hail Mary, and then another, and another. This was ridiculous; was Lib to be stuck here all evening? She blinked to moisten her tired eyes but kept them focused on Anna and on the parents, their solid bodies bracketing their daughter's. It would take only the briefest meeting of hands for a scrap to be passed over. Lib squinted, making sure nothing touched Anna's red lips.

A full quarter of an hour had gone by when she checked the watch hanging at her waist. The child never swayed, never sank down, during all this wearisome clamour. Lib let her eyes flick around the room for a moment, just to relieve them. A fat muslin bag was tied between two chairs, dripping into a basin. What could it be?

The words of the prayer had changed.
“To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve…”

At last the whole palaver seemed to be over. The Catholics were standing up, rubbing life back into their legs, and Lib was free to go.

“Good night, Mammy,” said Anna.

“I'll be in to say good night in a minute,” Rosaleen told her.

Lib picked up her cloak and bag. She'd missed her chance for a private conference with the nun; somehow she couldn't bear to say out loud in front of the child,
Don't take your eyes off her for a second.
“I'll see you in the morning, Anna.”

“Good night, Mrs. Wright.” Anna led Sister Michael into the bedroom.

Strange creature; she showed no sign of resenting the watch that had been set over her. Behind that calm confidence, surely her mind had to be scurrying like a mouse?

Lib turned left where the O'Donnells' track met the lane, heading back to the village. It wasn't quite dark yet, and red still stained the horizon behind her. The mild air was scented with livestock and the smoke from peat fires. Her limbs ached from sitting for so long. She really needed to talk to Dr. McBrearty about the unsatisfactory conditions at the cabin, but it was too late to go seeking him out tonight.

What had she learned so far? Little or nothing.

A silhouette on the road ahead, a long gun over one shoulder. Lib stiffened. She wasn't used to being out in the countryside at nightfall.

The dog came up first, sniffing at Lib's skirts. Then his owner passed, with barely a nod.

A cock called urgently. Cows filed out of a byre, the farmer behind them. Lib would have thought they'd put their animals outdoors by day and indoors (to keep them safe) by night, rather than the other way around. She understood nothing about this place.

watch

to observe

to guard someone, as a keeper

to be awake, as a sentinel

a division of the night

In her dream the men were calling for tobacco, as always. Underfed, unwashed, hair crawling, ruined limbs seeping through slings into stump pillows, but all their pleas were for something to fill their pipes. The men reached out to Lib as she swept down the ward. Through the cracked windows drifted the Crimean snow, and a door kept banging, banging—

“Mrs. Wright!”

“Here,” Lib croaked.

“A quarter past four, you asked to be waked.”

This was the room above the spirit grocery, in the dead centre of Ireland. So the voice in the crack of the door was Maggie Ryan's. Lib cleared her throat. “Yes.”

Once dressed, she took out
Notes on Nursing
and let it fall open, then put her finger on a random passage. (Like that fortune-telling game Lib and her sister used to play with the Bible on dull Sundays.) Women, she read, were often more
exact and careful
than the stronger sex, which enabled them to avoid
mistakes of inadvertence.

But for all the care Lib had taken yesterday, she hadn't managed to uncover the mechanism of the fraud yet, had she? Sister Michael had been there all night; would she have solved the puzzle? Lib doubted it somehow. The nun had probably sat there with eyes half closed, clacking her beads.

Well, Lib refused to be gulled by a child of eleven. Today she'd have to be even more
exact and careful,
proving herself worthy of the inscription on this book. She reread it now, Miss N.'s beautiful script:
To Mrs. Wright, who has the true nurse-calling.

How the lady had frightened Lib, and not only at first meeting. Every word Miss N. pronounced rang as if from a mighty pulpit.
No excuses,
she'd told her raw recruits.
Work hard and refuse God nothing. Do your duty while the world whirls
.
Don't complain, don't despair. Better to drown in the surf than stand idly on the shore.

In a private interview, she'd made a peculiar remark.
You have one great advantage over most of your fellow nurses, Mrs. Wright: You're bereft. Free of ties.

Lib had looked down at her hands. Untied. Empty.

So tell me, are you ready for this good fight? Can you throw your whole self into the breach?

Yes,
she'd said,
I can.

Dark, still. Only a three-quarter moon to light Lib along the village's single street, then a right turn down the lane, past the tilting, greenish headstones. Just as well she hadn't a superstitious bone in her body. Without moonlight she'd never have picked the correct faint path leading off to the O'Donnells' farm, because all these cabins looked like much of a muchness. A quarter to five when she tapped at the door.

No answer.

Lib didn't like to bang harder in case of disturbing the family. Brightness leaked from the door of the byre, off to her right. Ah, the women had to be milking. A trail of melody; was one of them singing to the cows? Not a hymn this time but the kind of plaintive ballad that Lib had never liked.

But Heaven's own light shone in her eyes,

She was too good for me,

And an angel claimed her for his own,

And took her from Lough Ree.

Lib pushed the front door of the cabin and the upper half gave way.

Firelight blazed in the empty kitchen. Something stirring in the corner—a rat? Her year in the foul wards of Scutari had hardened Lib to vermin. She fumbled for the latch to open the lower half of the door. She crossed and bent to look through the barred base of the dresser.

The beady eye of a chicken met hers. A dozen or so birds, in behind the first, started up their soft complaint. Shut in to save them from the foxes, Lib supposed.

She spotted a new-laid egg. Something occurred to her: Perhaps Anna O'Donnell sucked them in the night and ate the shells, leaving no trace?

Stepping back, Lib almost tripped on something white. A saucer, rim poking out from beneath the dresser. How could the slavey have been so careless? When Lib picked it up, liquid sloshed in her hand, soaking her cuff. She hissed and carried the saucer over to the table.

Only then did it register. She put her tongue to her wet hand: the tang of milk. So the grand fraud was that simple? No need for the child to hunt for eggs, even, when there was a dish of milk left out for her to lap at like a dog in the dark.

Lib felt more disappointment than triumph. Exposing this hardly required a trained nurse. It seemed this job was done already, and she'd be in the jaunting car on her way back to the railway station by the time the sun came up.

The door scraped open, and Lib jerked around as if it were she who had something to hide. “Mrs. O'Donnell.”

The Irishwoman mistook accusation for greeting. “Good morning to you, Mrs. Wright, and I hope you got a wink of sleep?”

Kitty behind her, narrow shoulders dragged down by two buckets.

Lib held up the saucer—chipped in two places, she noticed now. “Someone in this household has been secreting milk under the dresser.”

Rosaleen O'Donnell's chapped lips parted in the beginnings of a silent laugh.

“I can only presume that your daughter's been sneaking out to drink it.”

“You
presume
too much, then. Sure in what farmhouse in the land does there not be a saucer of milk left out at night?”

“For the little ones,” said Kitty, half smiling as if marvelling at the Englishwoman's ignorance. “Otherwise wouldn't they take offence and cause a ruction?”

“You expect me to believe that this milk is for the fairies?”

Rosaleen O'Donnell folded her big-boned arms. “Believe what you like or believe nothing, ma'am. Putting out the drop of milk does no harm, at least.”

Lib's mind raced. Both maid and mistress just might be credulous enough for this to be the reason why the milk was under the dresser, but that didn't mean Anna O'Donnell hadn't been sipping from the fairies' dish every night for four months.

Kitty bent to open the dresser. “Get out with ye, now. Isn't the grass full of slugs?” She hustled the chickens towards the door with her skirts.

The bedroom door opened and the nun looked out. Her usual whisper: “Is anything the matter?”

“Not at all,” said Lib, unwilling to explain her suspicions. “How was the night?”

“Peaceful, thank God.”

Presumably meaning that Sister Michael hadn't caught the child eating yet. But how hard had she tried, given her trust in God's
mysterious ways
? Was the nun going to be any help to Lib at all, or only a hindrance?

Mrs. O'Donnell swung the iron crock off the fire now. Broom in hand, Kitty flicked the hens' greenish dirt out of the dresser.

The nun had disappeared into the bedroom again, leaving the door ajar.

Lib was just untying her cloak when Malachy O'Donnell stepped in from the farmyard with an armful of turf. “Mrs. Wright.”

“Mr. O'Donnell.”

He dumped the sods by the fire, then turned to go out again.

She remembered to ask: “Might there be a platform scales hereabouts on which I could weigh Anna?”

“Ah, I'm afraid there would not.”

“Then how do you weigh your livestock?”

He scratched his purplish nose. “By eye, I suppose.”

A child-size voice in the room within.

“Is it herself up already?” asked the father, face lighting.

Mrs. O'Donnell cut past him and went in to their daughter just as Sister Michael stepped out with her satchel.

Lib moved to follow the mother, but the father held up his hand. “You had, ah, another question.”

“Did I?” She should have been by the child's side already to prevent a moment's gap between one nurse's shift and the next. But she found it impossible to walk away in the middle of a conversation.

“About the walls, Kitty said you were after asking.”

“The walls, yes.”

“There do be some, some dung in there, with the mud. And heather and hair for grip,” said Malachy O'Donnell.

“Hair, really?” Lib's eyes slid towards the bedroom. Could this apparently ingenuous fellow be a decoy? Might his wife have scooped something out of the cooking pot in her hands before she rushed in to greet her daughter?

“And blood, and a drop of buttermilk,” he added.

Lib stared at him. Blood and buttermilk—as if poured out on some primitive altar.

When she finally got into the bedroom, she found Rosaleen O'Donnell sitting on the little bed, and Anna on her knees beside her mother. There'd been enough time for the child to have gulped down a couple of griddle cakes. Lib cursed herself for the politeness that had kept her chitchatting with the farmer. And cursed the nun, too, for slipping away so fast; considering that Lib had sat through the entire Rosary yesterday evening, couldn't Sister Michael have stayed a minute longer this morning? Although they weren't supposed to share their views of the girl, surely the nun should have given Lib—the more experienced nurse—a report on any pertinent facts of the night shift.

Anna's voice sounded low but clear, not as if she'd just bolted food.
“My love is mine, and I am his, in me he dwells, in him I live.”

That sounded like poetry, but knowing this child it was Scripture.

The mother wasn't praying, just nodding along, like an admirer in the balcony.

“Mrs. O'Donnell,” said Lib.

Rosaleen O'Donnell put her finger to her dry lips.

“You mustn't be here,” said Lib.

Rosaleen O'Donnell's head tilted to one side. “Sure can't I say good morning to Anna?”

Face closed like a bud, the child gave no sign of hearing anything.

“Not like this.” Lib spelled it out: “Not without one of the nurses present. You mustn't rush into her room ahead of us or have access to her furnishings.”

The Irishwoman reared up. “Isn't any mother eager for a little prayer with her own sweet child?”

“You may certainly greet her night and morning. This is for your own good, yours and Mr. O'Donnell's,” Lib added, to soften it. “You wish to prove you're innocent of any sleight of hand, don't you?”

For answer, Rosaleen O'Donnell sniffed. “Breakfast will be at nine,” she threw over her shoulder as she left.

That was still almost four hours away. Lib felt quite hollow. Farms had their routines, she supposed. But she should have asked the Ryan girl for something at the spirit grocery this morning, a crust in her hand, even.

At school Lib and her sister had always been hungry. (It was the time the two of them had got along best, she remembered; the fellow feeling of prisoners, she supposed now.) A sparing diet was considered beneficial for girls in particular because it kept the digestion in trim and built character. Lib didn't believe she lacked self-control, but she found hunger pointlessly distracting; it made one think of nothing but food. So in adult life she never skipped a meal if she could help it.

Anna made the sign of the cross and got up off her knees now. “Good morning, Mrs. Wright.”

Lib considered the girl with grudging respect. “Good morning, Anna.” Even if the girl had somehow snatched a sip or a bite of something during the nun's shift or just now with her mother, it couldn't have been much; only a mouthful, at most, since yesterday morning. “How was your night?” Lib got out her memorandum book.

“I have slept and have taken my rest,”
quoted Anna, crossing herself again before pulling off her nightcap,
“and I have risen up, because the Lord hath protected me.”

“Excellent,” said Lib, because she didn't know what else to say. Noticing that the inside of the cap was streaked with shed hair.

The girl unbuttoned her nightdress, slipped it down, and tied the sleeves around her middle. A strange disproportion between her fleshless shoulders and thick wrists and hands, between her narrow chest and bloated belly. She sluiced herself with water from the basin.
“Make thy face to shine upon thy servant,”
she said under her breath, then dried herself with the cloth, shivering.

From under the bed Lib pulled out the chamber pot, which was clean. “Did you use this at all, child?”

Anna nodded. “Sister gave it to Kitty to empty.”

What was in it?
Lib should have asked but found she couldn't.

Anna pulled her nightdress back up over her shoulders. She wet the small cloth, then reached down under the linen to wash one leg modestly as she balanced on the other, holding the dresser to steady herself. The shimmy, drawers, dress, and stockings she put on were all yesterday's.

Lib usually insisted on a daily change, but she felt she couldn't in a family as poor as this one. She draped the sheets and blanket over the footboard to air before she began her examination of the girl.

Tuesday, August 9, 5:23 a.m.

Water taken: 1 tsp.

Pulse: 95 beats per minute.

Lungs: 16 respirations per minute.

Temperature: cool.

Although temperature was guesswork, really, depending on whether the nurse's fingers happened to be warmer or colder than the patient's armpit.

“Put out your tongue, please.” By training Lib always noted the condition of the tongue, though she'd have been hard-pressed to tell what it said about the subject's health. Anna's was red, with an odd flatness at the back instead of the usual tiny bumps.

When Lib put her stethoscope to Anna's navel, she heard a faint gurgling, though that could be attributed to the mixing of air and water; it didn't prove the presence of food.
Sounds in digestive cavity,
she wrote,
of uncertain origin.

Today she'd have to ask Dr. McBrearty about those swollen lower legs and hands. Lib supposed it could be argued that any symptoms arising from a limited diet were all to the good, because sooner or later, surely they'd provoke the girl to give up this grotesque charade. She made the bed again, tightening the sheets.