Marilyn’s Child. Lynne Pemberton
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I’m enjoying myself, holding court amidst four girls hungry for every detail of the new film-star curate. We are in the dormitory; I’m standing, and the other girls are sitting facing each other on the edge of two cast-iron beds. The north-facing room is cold and dark, the walls a sour yellow, dull even on the brightest day. The orphanage was built of granite and grey stone in 1896 – so the plaque above the entrance says – as an industrial school. Enclosed by high granite walls and black wrought-iron gates, I often feel I’m living in a prison. The floors of planked wood are highly polished by the inmates, and God forbid that a speck of dust should be found by one of the nuns. There is a Sacred Heart of Jesus on the wall opposite my bed, a constant reminder of how Our Lord suffered on the cross for me, and on the opposite wall Mary Mother of Christ set in a 3-D gilt frame. Mary is clothed in a long, flowing midnight-blue dress and has the usual smile on her face, which looks to me like she’s a bit daft in the head. I’d mentioned this once and got thumped so hard it’s a wonder I’m still all right in my head. Under Our Mother is a candle that burns constantly night and day. There’s not much furniture, and what there is was not designed for comfort. Two chairs stand either side of the dormitory, like soldiers on guard, there is a basic wooden table next to the door holding a bible, two prayer books, and the catechism.
The nuns live in separate quarters, two to a room. They have sunlight and white glossy walls. When I go to the nuns’ domain, as we call it, I’m always dazzled by the brightness. Bridget says it’s because their long sash windows face south. Rosemary Connelly once suggested that the sun only shone on the righteous, which had made me mad and I’d listed some of the things the nuns did that were far from righteous, in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost.
‘What about suffer the little children?’ I’d said.
She’d backed down with, ‘Bejasus, Kate O’Sullivan, I was only joking. Keep yer hair on.’
I’d gone on to question why the nuns had masses of beautiful flowers in brass vases and bowls of fresh fruit everywhere, when we were lucky if we even saw a peach from a distance. At the back of the building there’s a walled garden, with a lawn so green my eyes hurt to look at it, narrow paths that wind through fruit trees and great clumps of flowering bushes of every colour, and several wooden benches placed in shady spots where the nuns often sit in contemplation. We, the girls, aren’t allowed in the garden and I’ve only seen it from the top of the wall of the school house attached to the side of the building. This is where we were taught until the age of sixteen, or fourteen if, like me and Bridget, we passed primary certificate and went on to the local secondary school. The house is spotless; it smells of disinfectant like a hospital, and damp. I learnt very young that Catholics are obsessed with washing – well, nuns most certainly are. How often had I heard the words: ‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness, dirty people are pagan, clean ones divine.’
Four eager faces are looking into mine, eight wide eyes fixed on me. ‘He puts Robert Redford in the shade. His eyes are the deepest blue, like the sea. And not the Irish Sea, more like the Indian Ocean. His hair is so smooth it shines like polished glass, and when he smiled, sweet Jesus …’ I pretend to swoon. ‘I swear he made me feel faint just to be looking at him.’
‘Did he say much?’ It was Mary Flanagan. Then in the next breath: ‘How old is he?’
‘I’d say he’s in his late twenties, and yes we talked for more than an hour. He asked me millions of questions about myself. To be sure, he hung on my every word.’
‘How long?’ Bernadette Kennedy looks dubious.
‘Well, almost an hour,’ I say quickly. ‘He even told me where he was born.’
‘Where?’ Bridget pipes up.
‘Dublin. He misses city life a lot, so he says. It’s going to be mighty quiet here in Friday Wells, I say. Very boring after Dublin. Nothing much goes on here apart from John Connor throwing up his wages every Friday night outside the pub, Paul Flatley giving his missus a black eye once a month, or me causing havoc in the orphanage. Jimmy Conlon sometimes has an epileptic fit, and John Joyce coughed up his insides last year.’
‘Mother of God, Kate O’Sullivan, did you really say all of that?’ That was Rosemary Connelly, her black eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t believe you. Tell the truth, or let the good Lord strike you down dead this very minute.’
I point my forefinger in Rosemary’s direction. ‘Rosemary, will you stop it with the good Lord Almighty stuff? You know as well as I do I don’t believe God will be my judge. I think I can be my own best judge. To be sure, don’t you think I get enough of that from the sisters without you preaching? I’m telling the truth when I say that Father Declan Steele is a god amongst men, and I for one would like to kiss him full on the lips. I’m in love, I tell you. In love with Father Steele.’
Bridget screams, ‘Mary, Mother of Christ, he’s a priest!’
I’m enjoying myself. ‘He’s a man, the most handsome man I’ve ever seen in my whole life.’
‘And who, pray, is the most handsome man you’ve ever seen in your life, Kate O’Sullivan?’
I swivel my head in search of the voice, and spot the stooped figure of Mother Thomas, her black habit shining like sealskin in the overhead light. Her eyes are button bright and piercing behind the rimless spectacles, and her cheeks are puffed out and red, bright red, like she’s been daubed with scarlet ink, or has applied too much rouge. Since she doesn’t wear make-up I assumed she’s been running. She always gets red-faced when she exerts herself.
I’m shaking inside but, determined not to cower or show fear, I look her straight in the eye. What can she do to me that she hasn’t already done, I ask myself. And the knowledge that I am leaving soon, in a matter of weeks, gives me added strength. ‘The new curate, Mother Thomas, Father Declan Steele.’
‘That’s enough.’ The nun raises her voice. ‘It’s himself, a Catholic priest.’
I shrug. ‘That doesn’t stop him being handsome. Surely God made him so?’
I can see the tip of the cane she keeps hidden inside the wide detachable sleeves of her habit. With a look that would, less than six months ago, have filled me with terror, Mother Thomas takes three long strides, her rosary beads making a clanking sound as she comes to a halt a few inches from where I’m standing.
We face each other, adversaries as always, only now I’m not afraid. For the first time since Mother Thomas had come to the orphanage in the summer of 1967 when I was five she didn’t scare me. The five-foot-three eleven-stone battleship of a woman has in the past year shrunk, and now seems to shrink even more before my very eyes. Ha! Perhaps there is a God. The thought makes me smile. She knows I’m no longer afraid, the knowledge makes her more aggressive, yet strangely less terrifying. When we’d first met I was small for my age, and Mother Thomas had seemed huge. Now it was I who towered above the diminutive nun; it felt good.
Within weeks of her arrival she’d singled me out for her own particular brand of discipline. ‘Evil rebellious child, it’s a hard lesson you need to be taught, someone has got to do it if we are to save your soul.’
Often I was to wonder, Why me? What had I done to make her hate me so much? We were all afraid of her, and most of the girls still are; I suspect even Mother Virgilus, the Mother Superior, is. The bead-eyed monster nun from hell I call her – behind her back, of course, and always in hushed whispers.
I’ll never forget an incident that happened about four months after her arrival. The memory, I’m convinced, is one that will remain with me until I’m very old, maybe until I die. I hate liver. Is that so bad? I know it’s good for me, or so everyone says, but I can’t stand the taste and gag at the smell. One evening, with a loud disgusted grunt, I’d refused to eat a plate of liver and onions. Mother Thomas had rapped my knuckles hard with my knife and fork before forcing my head into the plate of rapidly congealing food. Yet still I’d refused to eat, even under threat of house arrest (all free time spent in the bedroom for at least a week). Four hours later the liver and I met again; still I refused