about the three girls due to leave?’
‘Bridget Costello, Mary Shanley and Kate O’Sullivan come of age this year. Kate’s the first, sixteen in a few weeks’ time. She’s an artist, got a grand future ahead of her, paints like her hands were touched by something sent from heaven. And Mary, sure, she’s a lovely child, going to enter a religious order. Bridget Costello, well, I’m not too sure about that one, forever talking about going across the water to that pagan country England. Sure that would be the death of her.’
A metallic sound drowns out all other noise, and I realize Paddy is closing the van doors. Then he’s speaking again.
‘Aye, she’s a grand lass, Kate, a sight for sore eyes. I remember coming up here when she first came to the orphanage. If me memory serves me well we had a fearful thunderstorm that night. Mother Superior, God rest her soul, had asked for a delivery of potatoes and cabbage. I was near out of cabbage, so brought some beets instead. She was grateful, said she liked beets. I says they were good for her, and the kids, no rumbling bellies if you fill ’em up with beetroot soup and potato pancakes. That same night as I’m pulling out of the gates who should I see but Father Sean Devlin – almost knocked him down. You remember Father Devlin, don’t you, Mother Peter?’
There was no reply. I assume she must’ve nodded, because I heard Paddy’s voice again: ‘He was in a fearful hurry, sweating like a pig, his cheeks bright red and all puffed out, like. He was carrying something in his arms, a little bundle. At first I wasn’t sure what it was, then it moved, and I could see it was a baby wrapped up real tight in a blanket. In fact it was the blanket that attracted my attention. I’d never seen anything like it: bright red and yellow zig-zags – Mexican, I think. I wound the window down and doffed me cap, as you do, but the priest just looked at me like he didn’t know me from Adam, and him usually so chatty and friendly like, and me a God-fearing man who hasn’t missed church since me communion. So I asks him if everything is all right, like, since he seems sort of agitated. Not stopping, he mumbles something about a baby having come a long way, and getting her into the warm. I don’t drive off straight away; I watch the priest in the rear-view mirror, running up to the front of the house, and I wonder why he’s so worked up, and why he’s carrying a baby. Aye, I remember the day well. How could I forget? The same day me missus went into labour. Eight hours later our Molly was born. Now she’s gone and got herself pregnant, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and her not yet sixteen. If I wasn’t such a God-fearing man meself, and for the love of God I love me daughter – our Moll has always been the apple of me eye – I’d send her far away up north to have the baby. The father, Sean, is naught but a lad himself. He’s gone missing, can’t lay salt to his tail, last seen boarding a boat headed for England. If I could lay me hands on the young bugger right now, I’d tan his hide so hard he wouldn’t be able to walk for a month at the very least. But soon as he was able, I’d make him walk up the aisle with our Molly.’
‘Now, now, Mr Fitzpatrick, calm yourself. Sean O’Halloran was an altar boy, I seem to recall. The son of Tom O’Halloran … A good man, Tom. The lad’s no more than a slip of a thing, no bigger than an ounce of copper. In saying that, I’m not condoning what young Sean has done, not fer a minute. Sure, the young pup needs a good hiding and to be made to do the right thing by Molly …’ She sighed. ‘But if it’s God’s will, so be it.’
‘It’s all well and good you saying that, Mother, but I’ve got ten mouths to feed at home. I can’t afford another one. I thought you might be able to help out for a while. At least the baby would be near so as our Molly could see it from time to time. Just a few months would do, maybe stretch it to a year until our Moll gets on her feet, gets a job and a place of her own, like, then she can have the baby back. The orphanage is always needing more veggies: I’ll see to it that you get them at the right price.’
‘Mother Virgilus says your prices are too high now, Mr Fitz.’
‘My prices, like I keep telling her, haven’t altered in nigh on five years, and if she was to go and buy the same stuff down at the supermarket she’d be paying twice what I charge. So if you could have a word with her, I’d be mighty grateful.’
A jackdaw crowed, drowning out the nun’s reply.
Then I heard Paddy’s voice again. ‘A good woman, so yer are, Mother Peter. I knew you’d try and help. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours, so to speak.’ Paddy chuckled. The nun said nothing, so Paddy went on, ‘Good day to you, Mother Peter.’
‘God be with you, Mr Fitz,’ she says.
I hear the gravel crunch under his feet, the clunk of the van door, then the engine starting up. Without making a sound, I wait until the van rumbles past the lavatory then count out five minutes in my head before slowly opening the door to step outside.
The yard is empty. A quick peek in the scullery window reveals nothing. As I walk from the yard around the east wing to the front of the house Mr Fitzpatrick’s words are running around my head: ‘a baby having come a long way.’ I’d always been led to believe that I’d been left on the steps of the village church, less than three miles away. Well, surely that couldn’t, even in the wildest imagination, be described as a long way. It sets off bells in my head, the ones that ring whenever I think about who my parents were, and if, as in my recurring dream, they are still alive. I suppose I’m like the rest of the girls, the same as orphans everywhere: we all want to know where we’ve come from, who we are. Mrs Molloy, after seeing a film on TV, had told Lizzy I was like a young film star. Lizzy had said it was one of the star’s first films and she thought it was called Bus Stop. After that I’d become obsessed with films, to the extent of letting Eugene Crowley, warts and all, kiss me in the playground in exchange for a movie magazine. I’d spent hours poring over the glossy pictures, imagining my mother was a film star. That, I convince myself, would account for my platinum hair and beige skin tone. Who in all of Ireland looked like me?
I cling to the thought, the idea, the dream. It explains why I feel different. If I’d been born in America to a film star who couldn’t keep me for some reason it would make perfect sense. When we were about eight or nine, Bridget had stolen a telephone book from a box in the village, and we’d spent days picking out the O’Sullivans and Costellos, making a list of the numbers, imagining that one of them might be related and intending to ring them all when we had the money. But of course we never did.
I’ve reached the front door now. A makeshift dressing of cardboard and tape seals a wound in one of its panes of glass. As I push the door it makes an eerie creak, the sort they always have in horror movies. And I think, not for the first time – more like the hundred and first – that the house should have been demolished years ago. It’s damp: in summer the humid smelly type of damp, and in winter the bitter seeping-into-your-bones kind. There’s a wet patch above my bed that’s got bigger every year; now it covers half the wall and is furry to the touch. I know twelve girls shouldn’t be sleeping in a room that by rights should be condemned unfit for human habitation. After Theresa had died of the whooping cough I’d mentioned the damp to Mother Superior, who’d promised to look into it. True to her word, she’d looked at it, but that was six weeks ago and nothing’s been said or done since.
The house is deserted. It’s Saturday morning and most of the girls are working: the younger kids have household duties at weekends, on a rota system that includes cleaning rooms, washing floors, changing beds, gardening, swilling out the lavatories, and the dreaded laundry. The older ones are out working, like Bridget at Mary O’Shea’s, and Mary Shanley on Fitzpatrick’s Farm. Back-breaking labour: I know, I’d done it for two months last year before I got peritonitis – ‘For my sins,’ according to Mother Thomas; ‘Our Lord works in mysterious ways.’ Just as well I hadn’t been out picking crops on my own, else I might have been a goner. As it was I had to be carried off the potato field where I’d passed out in the most terrible pain, rolled up in a tight ball, face-down in the damp earth.
I’d spent three weeks in St Francis of Assisi Hospital; in truth, the best three weeks of my life so far. For the first time I’d had constant attention without having to fight for it. The nurses had chatted and the young doctors had taken pains to explain what they were doing