by Anne Bennett
‘Plenty, but not labour pains,’ Lizzie said. Funny that although she’d wanted to get rid of the baby for so long, now she wanted the child to live, to have a crack at life. ‘My dearest wish now,’ Lizzie said, ‘is for my baby to go to a good and loving home and have the chance of a happy life.’
‘You’ll leave it here with the nuns then?’ the doctor asked.
‘There is no alternative,’ Lizzie answered. ‘How could I take to a child born of a brutal rape, and even if I could, how could I do that to my husband, expect him to raise a bastard child. He might think I was playing fast and loose while he was away fighting. This is best for the child, for everyone. The nuns will keep it in the nursery and it will go to a Catholic and childless couple.’ She gave a small sigh and went on, ‘They probably have parents lined up already.’
The doctor, looking at Lizzie’s wistful face, thought it might not be as easy as she thought to give up her child, but there was nothing to be gained by going down that route, so he said instead, ‘And then what?’
‘Then I go back to Birmingham.’
‘And take up your life again?’
‘Aye. What would you have me do?’
The doctor shook his head helplessly. He had no answers, he just felt bad that such a young woman should have to shoulder the anguish and stress all by herself, especially when she was totally blameless.
However, anything he might have said was cut off by the entrance of the nun. ‘The teeth are bedding down nicely,’ he told her, ‘so from tomorrow, she can have something more solid than broth. Good red meat, cheese, eggs and milk should build her up. And she should have about ten days’ bed rest. I’ll be in Thursday of next week to remove the stitches, and by then she should be able to get up.’
‘Yes, Doctor.’
‘There is no sign of her going into labour prematurely either,’ he said, ‘and she would have done by now, I think, so that is at least one problem we haven’t to deal with.’
‘No, Doctor,’ Sister Benedict said, and she led the doctor out of the infirmary. Lizzie leant back and shut her eyes.
For ten days, Lizzie languished in bed, even glad of the altar cloths she was brought to embroider, for time hung heavy. Celia came most times with her tray and shared Lizzie’s food if they were left alone long enough. They also shared many confidences and fears about the future and grew closer than ever, and Lizzie was worried over what would happen to Celia when she went away with Johnnie. A plan began to formulate in her mind, but for it to succeed she needed the help of the doctor and her brother.
Johnnie was expected on Saturday, but first the doctor would come to remove her stitches, and once that was done she would be back in the fray. As soon as Sister Benedict left the room, Lizzie, knowing she’d probably not have the opportunity to speak to the doctor alone again, told him that when she left she wanted to smuggle another girl called Celia out with her.
He stared at her as if he couldn’t believe his ears. ‘D’you know what you’re risking, for the girl at least?’
‘D’you know what the alternative is?’ Lizzie snapped back. ‘You’re not stupid. You know the set-up here.’
‘But…Oh, God Almighty,’ the doctor cried in horror, for he couldn’t see how this planned escape could be achieved. ‘What will you do if the nuns get wind of it?’ he asked. ‘If they should catch you?’
‘Then we may as well be dead,’ Lizzie said. ‘But I’m prepared to risk it.’
‘What about the other girl, this Celia?’
‘Listen, Doctor,’ Lizzie said earnestly. ‘If Celia doesn’t get out soon, you might be called back here in a short while to declare the girl clinically insane and have her committed to an asylum. She really is that close to the edge, and there is no hope that any family member will ever come for her. They have totally disowned her, every one of them. It is as if she never existed.’
‘That’s appalling!’
‘In the real world it may be,’ Lizzie said. ‘Here it is surprisingly common. Look, I once said that I’ll not talk about what goes on here until I’m well away from it, and I won’t go back on that, but you must believe me that this place is Hell on earth. All the girls suffer and I am sorry for them, desperately sorry, but I can’t smuggle them all out; and Celia…well, she’s my friend. I feel sort of responsible for her and I am seriously worried that she will go under if I don’t do something.’
The doctor still hesitated and Lizzie said impatiently, ‘We haven’t much time. Sister Benedict could be back at any moment and it’s not even going to involve you. I’m only asking that whenever the child is born you give some excuse that I’m not ready to leave until it coincides with the laundry van that comes on Friday. I know my brother would find a Friday easier than a Tuesday, and the van comes at about half past ten.’
‘And if I refuse?’
‘Then you’re not the man I took you to be, and I’ll bid you good day and hope you sleep easy in your bed tonight,’ Lizzie replied testily.
The doctor laughed, but checked his mirth lest the nuns heard. ‘I’ve got to hand it to you, Lizzie, you have a way with you. But have you thought I might have nothing to do with your baby’s birth? It isn’t their normal procedure to contact the doctor.’
‘They’ll call you if you say they must,’ Lizzie said emphatically. ‘They’re scared stiff of you. Celia heard what you said the time you wiped the floor with Sister Jude and their reaction afterwards. It gave the girls some lighter moments even thinking of it.’
‘So, if I go and lay the law down and say I must be called for the birth, then I will be.’
‘Aye, I’d say so, and I’ll feel happier too.’
‘Then, madam, it shall be done,’ the doctor said with a mock salute, but despite his bantering manner he was a worried man. Lizzie had coerced a promise from him, and if the whole plan should go wrong then God help those two young women. He didn’t know the full extent of the horrors of that place, but what he had seen reflected in Lizzie’s eyes and the fall that was no fall at all told him enough.
Lizzie smiled at him. ‘See you then,’ she said. She was sorry to see the doctor go, sorry that she would soon be back to sternness and forbidding silence.
Not five minutes after the doctor had left, Lizzie was back in the laundry, and it was well she had the doctor’s promise to sustain her, for Sister Carmel took great pleasure in taunting and goading her at every turn. She was given the job of heaving the bedding from the boilers to the poss tub to be pounded with the dolly, and then to the sinks where stubborn stains would be rubbed with the washboard, and then on to the rinsing sinks.
It was one of the most strenuous jobs, for the sheets weighed heavy, but when another girl suggested taking her place, Sister Carmel refused. She’d looked over the glasses she had perched on her nose and knew she’d be glad to see the back of Lizzie Gillespie. She was a troublemaker, and look now at the fuss made of her over a wee fall. Well, she needn’t think she was having an easy ride here. ‘Isn’t Lizzie Gillespie just back from nearly a fortnight’s bed rest and over nothing at all, waited on hand and foot and special food prepared? If you ask me, she’s more able for the work than any of you.’
Lizzie flashed a smile of gratitude at the girl who’d risked censure to ask, and bent to the task. Before too long she felt the strain on her neck muscles and her back began to ache so badly that pains shot down both her legs.
When Johnnie arrived the following Saturday she was glad to sit down on the chair in Sister Jude’s office where she told Johnnie of the fall she had had and showed him the scar under her chin and the shaved part of her head, which her hair was beginning to cover nicely. Lizzie made great play of the fact of how ungainly a woman could be when she was expecting, and how light-headed they often are, to allay any suspicions he might have.
It was later, with the letters written, that Lizzie said, ‘When it’s over, Johnnie, what happens?’
‘I’m to come for you,’ Johnnie said. ‘I’ll have the loan of t
he car again and I’m to take you straight to the docks at Dun Laoghaire and set you on a ferry.’
Lizzie nodded slowly and then said, ‘I want to take Celia out with me.’
‘Are you mad?’
‘She has no one to speak for her. And she is my friend.’
‘And what manner of girl is she, to be here?’ Johnnie said.
‘Don’t turn your nose up like that, Johnnie,’ Lizzie said sharply. ‘Don’t judge on rumour or say-so. Celia lived with her family on a farm in West Meath and was engaged to a fellow. He said it was what engaged people did and she gave in, just the once. As soon as he heard of her pregnancy, he’s off to England, no engagement and seemingly no address. Her family disowned her. She had a little boy and gave him away. Now she’s set here for life.’
Johnnie bit his lip. Her life sounded harsh, but she wasn’t his problem. ‘I still don’t…’
‘Please, Johnnie. I’ve never asked anything of you before,’ Lizzie said.
‘But how is it to be done? I can hardly bundle the two of you into the car and wave a cheery farewell to the nuns.’
‘No, look,’ Lizzie said. ‘I have a plan. I’ve had nothing else to do most of the time but plan Celia’s escape. The laundry van comes here every Tuesday and Friday about ten o’clock, full of the town’s dirty washing. We have first to unload the dirty washing and put it into the laundry and then load the clean washing in the van. It takes time, for there is a lot of it and all the girls are in and out of the door and it is the only time a girl would have a chance to slip away unnoticed, especially as when we have finished, the men lock up the van and Sister Carmel takes them up to pay Sister Jude.’
‘So, why hasn’t anyone tried escaping before now?’
‘They have,’ Lizzie said. ‘A girl hid in the van, but she was soon hunted down in the town and brought back and whipped. The men keep a weather eye on it now, so that that trick can never be tried again. And even if you were to get out of the convent building, where could you go? The gates are locked and you’d never climb that wall.’
‘And you’d stick out like a sore thumb,’ Johnnie said. ‘You must see, Lizzie, that this is madness. Sheer madness!’
Lizzie sighed in exasperation. ‘Please, Johnnie,’ she pleaded. ‘You must help. There is no one else I can turn to. When you come to fetch me, you’ll be bringing a case full of clothes, right?’
‘Aye.’
‘Well, there is bound to be something suitable for Celia to change into later,’ Lizzie said. ‘And she’ll need a scarf or something for her head, until we are well away from here anyway. You turn up to fetch me when the laundry van is here and Celia will be able to slip off in the confusion, climb into the back of the car and cover herself with the blanket.’
Johnnie surveyed his sister. She’d thought it out carefully and it could just work. But did he want to get involved in this? No, he bloody didn’t. Yet how could he do that to Lizzie? It obviously mattered so much and she’d been let down at every turn so far.
He sighed and said. ‘Okay, Lizzie, say I do agree to this crazy plan. If it succeeds, and to my way of thinking it’s a bloody big if, what do I do with Celia when I get her away from this place?’
‘Nothing,’ Lizzie replied. ‘For nowhere in Ireland is safe. She’ll come to Birmingham with me.’
‘What of Steve and Flo?’
‘What of them?’ Lizzie said recklessly. ‘I’m past caring about Flo and I’ll tell Steve she’s a workmate who has been bombed out. He’ll swallow that. Jobs were ten-a-penny when I left and she’ll soon be independent. She’s that kind of girl.’
Johnnie had got to his feet and was pacing the room, running his hands through his hair distractedly. ‘I just don’t know, Lizzie. I mean, what if you’re ready to leave before the day the laundry vans arrive?’
‘I won’t be. The doctor is going to help and when the baby is born he will tell the nuns when I can be expected to leave the infirmary.’
‘And if he breaks his word?’
‘He won’t,’ Lizzie said confidently. ‘He has no time for the nuns, and that’s not so much what he says, but the way he speaks to them and looks at them. As for Celia…she’s not yet eighteen, Johnnie.’ She touched his arm. ‘Please, do this one thing for me?’
Johnnie looked at his sister, banished from her home and separated from her children for an incident she was no willing partner to. And now she had to give birth to the child and see it given away to someone else, and he knew he had to help her in this one thing.
‘All right.’
‘Do I have your word?’
‘You have my word.’
‘Oh, thank God.’
It was hard in that accursed place to find anywhere a person could talk, let alone talk privately where no one might eavesdrop, for to give the plan any chance of working at all, secrecy was essential.
Lizzie was like a cat on hot bricks, but she had to wait until she was sent with Celia and two others for kitchen duties. There, with the nun called away and the others girls the far side of the room, Lizzie told Celia, quietly covering her words with the clatter of the pots, plates and dishes they were washing.
It was even harder for Celia to listen to this fantastic, magnificent and yet terrifying plan in silence. ‘So, have you got it?’ Lizzie whispered urgently.
‘The doctor is to say you are not fit to leave until a Friday morning after the birth, and Johnnie is to come the same time as the laundry van and I am to slip away and hide in Johnnie’s car,’ Celia whispered back.
‘D’you think you can do it? That it will work?’
‘God knows,’ Celia said. ‘I know I can’t not do it though. It’s my one chance to get out of this hellhole and I am going to grasp it with both hands.’
Celia wasn’t a fool and she knew it was risky. She also knew the arrival of the laundry van was the only time that she could slip away unobserved, for with the loading and unloading it was hard to keep tabs on everyone. As long as Johnnie was on time and he parked close to the hedge on the gravel path before the door, it might just work, especially as Lizzie said there would be a bag of clothes for her and something to cover her up with.
‘Oh sweet Jesus,’ she said. ‘I can scarce believe it.’
‘Well you’d better start believing it,’ Lizzie said, her face aglow, ‘because it is going to happen.’
‘I’ll never forget you for this,’ Celia said solemnly. ‘Not as long as there is breath in my body.’
The girls at the convent were not encouraged to touch each other, but Celia threw her arms around Lizzie and kissed her cheek. The other two girls looked at them askance and then averted their eyes quickly, and Lizzie warned Celia in a shaky voice, ‘Don’t let them see you looking happy. They’ll want to know the reason for it.’
Celia knew Lizzie was right and yet it was hard to assume a serious, ever-sorrowful face with a heart full of joy. Oh, for Lizzie to have such a brother! Yet she knew the path to freedom was strewn with thorns, and if she was to be found or brought back then it would be God alone who would help her. She might not be kept in the convent at all: the asylum was host to the girls who couldn’t or wouldn’t conform.
But then, she thought, what were the odds? If she didn’t take this chance offered out to her because she was afraid, it would never come again, of that she was certain. Then she was condemning herself to a living death. The thought of spending the rest of her years here was one that would surely send her clean mad. Then she’d be knocking on the doors of the asylum herself, asking to be let in.
The strenuous work at the laundry went on and each day it got harder for Lizzie. She was in more and more discomfort, but she wouldn’t complain. She’d bite her lip and go on. Never would she let those malicious cows know they were getting to her. Celia often heard Lizzie crying with the cramping spasms in her back and legs, even though she tried to muffle the sobs in a pillow, and in the laundry her face was often blanched with the unrelenting pain that was also reflected in
her eyes. She hoped to God Lizzie wasn’t doing herself harm.
Johnnie too saw how exhausted she looked when he called the following fortnight, but when he asked her if she was doing too much, she laughed. She had the urge to take his dear head between her hands and tell him what she did each day, but she resisted. She didn’t want him to rock the boat now. Time enough to tell him when she was well-away from this place and free. ‘I’m grand,’ she told him. ‘The last few weeks are like this for everyone.’
Johnnie took her word for it, and why wouldn’t he? ‘Not long now, anyway,’ he said. ‘Soon it will be all over for you. An end to the nightmare and time to look forward.’
‘Aye,’ Lizzie agreed, ‘and it can’t come soon enough for me.’
Lizzie’s pains began on Thursday, 7th November, when she was working in the laundry. The girl beside her saw her give a grimace as she lifted the heavy tongs. She said nothing, but her two eyebrows went up questioningly and she nodded her head towards Sister Carmel bent over her embroidery.
Lizzie shook her head vehemently. She would let the nuns know only when she had to. She could well do without them telling her how sinful she was and how the pain was purging her soul.
She had pains all morning. They were niggling ones at first, just a bit stronger than she’d experienced every month. She toyed with her dinner, unable to eat the tasteless thin broth let alone the slice of stale bread, and she saw many girls look at her as if they couldn’t believe it, for they were too hungry to be choosy. Surreptitiously, Lizzie passed her bowl and plate to the girl next to her. If she hadn’t, the nuns would have gone on about wasting good food when the poor wee heathens in Africa were starving, and she couldn’t have borne that.
By the afternoon the pains had worsened, and now, in the last hour or so, they’d become almost unbearable. But still Lizzie hung on. The small groans she couldn’t help were covered by the noise in the laundry: the bubbling water, the creak of the mangle and hiss of the irons.
