The nun wrenched her arm out of Bess’s grasp, darkness finally crossing her face. ‘Come now, Bess,’ she all but hissed. ‘The Father knows what’s best for all of us. You know he does.’ She put her hand to the small of Bess’s back and propelled her over the threshold.
The office door shut. The priest’s face changed. Furious. As if Bess were at fault, forcing him to defile an already defiled girl.
‘You said you wanted to lie down. Lie down. There.’ He pointed to the floor behind his desk and removed his collar, slapping it down to the floor like something to be conquered and discarded.
‘Father,’ she said. Her voice cracked. She hated calling him that. ‘I really do feel poorly.’
‘I’ve heard that before, haven’t I?’
It was no use. The fastest way to get upstairs was to do as she was told. Bess lay down. She closed her eyes.
‘None of that, now,’ he said. ‘Eyes open. Wide open.’
She opened her eyes. When Bess first arrived at the convent, when Father Joseph first began forcing his way into her, she would wait for it to be over. Now, even as she wished for a deliverance that left herself and her baby intact, Bess knew it never would be over. Not after the priest’s final grunts and pushes. His righting of his costume and her escape back into the halls. If she ever left this place, if she lived to be a hundred years old. The priest’s face would hover over hers, darkening all the moments to come that should have been happiest, even intruding upon her past. When she thought of her brothers she imagined them delivering her to Father Joseph’s door. When she thought of her little sister Kitty, only twelve years old, she thought of Father Joseph, ordering her to lie down and keep her eyes open. Until Bess had to push the beloved face out of her mind, to save her from this horror, even if it only existed in her imagination.
‘I hate you,’ Bess whispered, before she realized the words had left her mouth. She braced, thinking he might hit her, but instead her words seemed to do the trick and bring today’s ordeal to one final, thrusting end.
All the while, Sister Mary Clare stood outside in the hall. Waiting. Smiling as if nothing had happened when Bess emerged, shaking, to be led upstairs.
‘You see,’ Sister Mary Clare sang, musical voice caroming from one stone wall to the next. ‘Now your rest will be all the better. Father Joseph always knows just what to do, doesn’t he, to restore a girl’s soul.’
In our dormitory, Bess lay down on her cot. She heard the door lock with a click and Sister Mary Clare’s humming off into the convent. Downstairs in the nursery a baby cried, then another. One of the girls assigned to night duty had been released from the convent only last week, leaving a lone harried attendant tending the babies. But during the day there were plenty of hands, including the nuns, so most wails quieted before too long.
When was the last time Bess had been in a room alone? Truly not very many times in her life, coming from a family as large as hers. Her body ached in pulsing, insistent waves. Next time she’d refuse. Whether or not he was done with her, she was done acquiescing. He might be able to do whatever he wanted to any of us, but he didn’t want a scene. He didn’t want to hear the things he did spoken out loud. He wanted to move among us as a ruddy, fatherly figure. Pious and jolly. He wasn’t so jolly when she flinched away from his meaty hands. He wasn’t so jolly when he groaned himself into her. Sometimes she would lie beneath him, her eyes wandering to things she might grab and plunge into his neck. She had her teeth. If she sank them into his jugular – so close and exposed – and pulled hard enough, would a flood of blood open, rushing over her, himself unable to make a noise, falling off her to the side, clutching? Enough time for her to grab something – the thick glass paperweight from his desk, perhaps, or a lamp, or the letter opener – and finish him off.
Downstairs I raked the scrubbing brush back and forth over the tarnished grout, my lower back aching, and thought of Bess. I imagined Sister Mary Clare, accidentally on purpose leaving the door to the dormitory unlocked. And Bess, swift-footed despite her advanced pregnancy, stealing away. An open gate somewhere. Her American soldier waiting outside the convent. She held details about him close, so I didn’t know his name, or what he looked like. But he’d arrive still in uniform. Once she was delivered, I’d never see her again, but would not permit myself to miss her. Because her escape would be evidence. Any of us might be rescued at any moment. And one day, I’d be back home in London, and a letter would arrive, across the envelope the address she’d memorized so faithfully. And we could write to each other to say how everything had worked out fine in the end.
Upstairs, Bess had not escaped but had fallen into a sleep she couldn’t battle her way out of. She imagined her little sister Kitty standing in the corner of the room. You must wake, Bess, Kitty called, and Bess tried like mad to wrest her eyelids open, tried to find the voice in her throat to call back, You must run, Kitty, you must run away from here. From far away she heard Sister Mary Declan’s footsteps, pounding into the dormitory, furious to hear Bess had been allowed a lie-down. For Bess it was like being at the bottom of a pool, fathoms deep. Far off above her she could see the faint suggestion of light and echoes. But there was no swimming to the top. None at all. She imagined Sister Mary Declan’s footsteps belonged to Kitty, not running towards but away from her, fast as she could on coltish twelve-year-old legs, fast and sure and so far away. Now that Kitty was safe, it felt fine for Bess to stay deep under the water. Everything up top was vile and brutal. Let me stay under, she thought. Don’t ever make me come back up.
She didn’t know, but finally her American soldier had made his way to her father’s door. ‘I’ll marry her the very hour they let her go,’ he promised, when he learned where Bess had landed.
‘Bess,’ Sister Mary Declan cried. She slapped one cheek, then another, not in anger but genuine fear. Sister Mary Clare looked on, clutching her crucifix. It was important to all the nuns, to believe anyone who called them angels. By evening they would already be offering each other forgiveness, running down the rosary. Naming their sins and flinging them aside, ready to commit more tomorrow.
There was no time for hospital, or even to bring her downstairs to the mattress by the laundry. Susanna and Sister Mary Declan helped Bess deliver as best they could, right there in the dormitory. By the following morning Bess had finally clawed her way to the surface of the water, alive and whole. A miracle.
Another miracle: that same morning her young man appeared on the doorstep of the convent, demanding to see the Mother Superior. In time to walk Bess out of the convent, but too late for their baby boy. Little Ronan was one of the few babies who left the convent in Sunday’s Corner in his mother’s arms, swaddled in a yellow blanket: perfect and round-faced and stone-cold dead.
The Disappearance
Day Six
Thursday, 9 December 1926