It was a restless place to sleep, even in our exhaustion. The nursery was just below us, and we could hear babies wake and cry. When Susanna last stayed here there had been a different Mother Superior. At night the nuns would pin the babies’ gowns to their cots and leave them till they could be nursed in the morning. ‘It was the worst agony I ever felt,’ Susanna said, ‘hearing my baby cry with no way to get to her. Of course it’s no accident they have us sleeping where we can hear them.’
Punishment, wherever it could be found. The new Mother Superior was kinder, at least when it came to the babies. I’d only ever glimpsed the woman at Mass, so far across the chapel that I had no sense of her colouring, age or features. During her reign, two girls were chosen to work as night attendants. When inconsolable wails reached us, at least we knew the children weren’t all alone, but held and rocked. Every morning, the most recently delivered mothers’ gowns would be soaked with milk, expressed for their out-of-reach babies.
Of course, the girls cried too, at night. Not just the nursing mothers but girls who’d just arrived, mourning their austere fate. Girls whose babies had been adopted or fostered out, or moved to the adjoining orphanage even though they were not orphans, their mothers mere yards away, longing and toiling and hoping against all expectations. We were a desperate lot, and the desperate seldom sleep well.
Bess’s bed was next to mine. I woke one night to hear her sobbing, and sat up to squint through the darkness, making sure it was her. My hands went immediately to my burgeoning belly, the little child kicking and rolling, dancing and thumping. I didn’t yet think of my baby as ‘her’. But that’s how it is in memory. Her, my baby, my little girl. I see her, smiling at me and waving. I wave back. I blow kisses.
‘Bess,’ I whispered. ‘Is that you?’ I put my thin blanket aside and went over to her. She startled like a war veteran when I put my hand on her shoulder. ‘Hush now, Bess, it’s only me. Nan.’
She put her hand over her mouth, shaking, trying to pull herself together.
I sat on the edge of her bed. ‘You don’t have to stop crying on my account,’ I said, and stroked the strands of her cropped hair off her forehead. She had a sweet face, fresh and pretty. It was easy to imagine a young soldier falling in love with her. She should have been out in the world, wearing long hair and fetching clothes. Laughing.
‘I can’t bear it,’ Bess said. ‘I thought once I got bigger he’d leave me alone. Move on to someone else. But he won’t. He won’t.’ She pushed herself up on her elbows. Eight months pregnant, at least, but one of those women who carries very small. Her whole figure was slight and spare except for the globe of her belly.
I gathered up Bess’s hand and kissed it, searching my mind for something helpful or comforting. ‘We could tell Sister Mary Clare.’
Bess didn’t have the heart to tell me. Sister Mary Clare already knew. Come now, it’s nothing you haven’t done before, she’d say in a singsong voice. Other times she’d change her tune as if Bess wouldn’t remember anything she’d said before. Of course Father Joseph would never do such a thing. He’s a man of God.
How I wish she had told me but it was kindness that prevented her. She wanted me to hold on to whatever comforts I’d managed to find. Instead, she said, ‘And what can Sister Mary Clare do? She’s only another woman. None of them can do anything. I should’ve been brave enough to throw my body off a cliff before they could ever bring me here.’
‘Don’t say that.’ I told her, in a few quiet sentences, about Colleen.
‘She was a smart girl, your sister.’
‘Please. I mean it. Don’t say that.’
‘I’m sorry, Nan. I am. I have five brothers and a sister back in Doolin. Every day I think about my little sister Kitty. For all she knows I did throw myself off a cliff. Whatever Da told her, it wasn’t that he brought me here.’ Bess lay back down on her side. She placed her hands in a ‘V’ and lay them between her pillow and cheek. ‘Kitty wants to be in pictures,’ she said. ‘She’s pretty enough, too. Only twelve years old. I hate not being there with her. I wish I could write to her and say, if you ever get in trouble, don’t tell the priest, don’t tell Da. Don’t tell anyone. Just get yourself away.’
Away to where? I thought, but didn’t say. If there was a place in this world that welcomed pregnant, unmarried girls, I hadn’t heard of it.
‘I hate to think of Father Joseph touching Kitty,’ Bess said fiercely. ‘I’d have to kill him. I would.’
She started to cry again. I hated myself for feeling terrified that Father Joseph’s attentions would turn towards me if he ever lost interest in Bess. A few days earlier I had hid from him, ducking into the kitchens when I saw him walking down the hall with Sister Mary Clare. ‘All girls are the same,’ I heard him say to her. He sounded as if it made him angry.
‘Father, you can’t say that,’ the young nun replied, with her light and cheerful trill, I would have thought it flirtatious, if I hadn’t known that’s how she always spoke. ‘Why, we nuns are nothing like these girls, are we?’
Father Joseph stopped and touched her arm. ‘Surely no,’ he said. ‘You’re the purest angels, tending to the most wretched devils. Snow-white lilies alongside ragwort. A wondrous thing to behold.’
We girls, identical devils. And the nuns, identical angels, each with the same grave awaiting. Here Lies Sister Mary. I had seen Sister Mary Frances strap the palms of girls not much older than Bess’s little sister Kitty. In the months I’d been here, nobody had touched my palms. I hadn’t received a single lash. I kept my head down and did what I was told. Obedience seemed the safest plan. I hadn’t learned yet. In this world it’s the obedient girls who are most in danger.
Bess moved a hand from under her cheek and I held it. If we were all the same, and if Father Joseph could choose Bess, when indeed she did grow too large, he might choose me. I persisted in that way of thinking, even though it amounted, in my mind, to turning her over to him for the sake of myself. One of the worst aspects of this prison life was the way it could make us ruthless mercenaries, fighting in an army of one.
‘I’m sorry,’ I told Bess. ‘I wish I could help.’
‘It’s all right.’ She moved over and I lay down beside her, facing the opposite direction, both of us squeezed onto the narrow cot, close enough so that, through her belly, pressed into my back, I could feel a great bold kick. We drew in our breaths, hearts lifting at least for a moment.
‘Oh, this baby’s a strong one,’ Bess whispered.
‘Could be a boy,’ I said. ‘Could be, when he’s grown, he’ll take care of Father Joseph for you.’
‘No. I’d never let him. It’s my job to protect him. He’ll never know a priest and he’ll never go to war. I swear it.’
‘Have you chosen a name?’ Any name we chose wouldn’t last. We could see them, the couples who arrived to adopt our babies. In those days women seldom delivered their babies in hospital; they delivered them at home. They stayed in confinement during their last months rather than roam about visibly pregnant. So it was easy not only to steal our children but also to pass them off as their own.