by Tara Hyland
She sniffed disparagingly. ‘Well, you can be as bold as you like, but we’ve agreed to take care of you until you’re sixteen. Three years will be a long time without speaking. I imagine you’ll find your voice soon enough.’
She rang a bell, and another nun appeared. She was younger, but no less forbidding.
‘This is Sister Jude. She’s in charge of your year group.’ Sister Concepta addressed the younger nun then. ‘Get her processed, will you?’
From there, Cara was taken through to a tiled room and made to undress. The nun turned a rusty handle, and there was the sound of pipes clanking as the shower system went to work. Cara gasped as needles of ice water hit her. She tried to jump out, but Sister Jude used a broom to push her back in.
‘Stay under until I say so.’
Cara’s fingers and toes were blue with cold by the time she was allowed out. Using the small, threadbare towel to dry off, she then stood naked and shivering until she was handed a pile of clothes. She looked down at them. This wasn’t the nice outfit that Mrs O’Donnell had given her. Instead, it was a plain dark grey dress, like she’d seen the other girls wearing.
Against her instinct, Cara decided to speak up. ‘These aren’t my clothes.’
The nun looked at her with scorn. ‘There is no room for vanity here. We’re all the same in God’s eyes, and you will look the same as the other girls.’
The woman’s eyes challenged Cara to dare object. She was smart enough not to. Instead, she dropped her gaze, and turned away to get ready. The dress was shapeless and the woollen mat erial itchy; she had to tie a knot in the huge knickers to keep them up around her skinny waist. But she knew better than to complain.
By the time Cara had got dressed, it was a little before five thirty, and already dark outside, the winter evenings drawing in quickly these days. During the day, the small, high windows let little natural light in, while in the evening the few oil lamps were spaced far apart, providing only the barest illumination.
‘It’s suppertime now for the girls,’ Sister Jude explained, as they walked back along the corridors. ‘Niamh!’ she called out.
At the sound of her name, a small, slight girl turned. Eyes wide with fear, she walked towards the nun. Cara was pleased to see she wasn’t the only one terrified of the Sisters.
Sister Jude pushed Cara roughly forward. ‘This is the new girl. I’m putting you in charge of her.’
The girl called Niamh, who Cara decided looked around her age, bobbed her head. ‘Yes, Sister.’
For the fourth time that day, Cara’s fate was handed onto someone else. The other girl waited until Sister Jude was out of sight, and then whispered, ‘What’s your name?’
‘Cara.’
‘Well, I’m Niamh, and I’ve been here for four years. Do what I do, and you should be all right.’
The last part sounded ominous, but before she could ask what Niamh meant, they rounded a corner where there was a long line of girls standing in silence. Cara guessed correctly that they were queuing to go in for dinner. At six on the dot, the doors opened, and the girls began to file inside.
The dining hall was a vast room, with long refectory tables and wooden benches on either side. The girls filled one row, before moving to another. There was no jostling, and no more than a low murmur of chatter as they shuffled to their places.
When all the orphans were assembled, the nuns came in and sat at a top table, and then one of the girls began to read Grace. Only once this was all finished did they finally sit down to eat. The nuns were served first, and Cara watched as girls came out of the kitchen carrying plates of food.
‘Kitchen duty’s the worst,’ Niamh whispered. Cara nodded sagely, although she had no idea what the other girl meant. She supposed she would find out soon enough.
The whole process had taken ages, and Cara was famished, having not had anything since breakfast. When she finally had food plonked in front of her, she thought that she was ready to eat anything. Then she looked down at her plate. She had no idea what was on it – a stew of some sort. The other girls around her had picked up their cutlery and were already digging in hungrily. With her fork, Cara poked around the brown sludge until she found a piece of what looked like meat. She tentatively took it into her mouth. It was half-cooked and lukewarm, which she could put up with, but it was chewy too, mostly gristle. She felt bile rise up from her stomach and into her mouth. Somehow she managed to swallow it down. Feeling sick now, she pushed the plate away.
Niamh spotted the gesture. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
Cara had been used to preparing her own meals for the past few months, simple dishes of bread and cheese, and at Mrs O’Donnell’s the little food that she had eaten had been delicious. She wasn’t usually a fussy eater, but she couldn’t consume something so unappetising.
‘I can’t eat this,’ she said. ‘It’s disgusting.’
A big-boned girl with a sharp tongue, whom the others called Molly, raised her head. ‘Do you hear that? Her Highness here thinks she’s too good for our supper.’
The others sniggered. Niamh was the only one who didn’t join in.
‘You have to eat it,’ she insisted. ‘You won’t get anything more until you finish. That’s the rule. And, believe me, it’ll taste a whole lot worse tomorrow morning.’
Cara looked down at the plate and felt tears gathering in her eyes. She knew she ought to eat, but she just couldn’t. It was all too much: her grandmother’s death, and now being put in this strange, hostile place.
‘I can’t,’ she whispered. Glancing up, she made a silent plea to the other girl not to make her.
Niamh studied her for a long moment, as though trying to determine if her distress was genuine. Then, quickly glancing around to make sure no nuns were nearby, she reached over and took Cara’s full plate, and substituted it with her own empty one. Almost as an afterthought, she gave Cara her piece of bread – the only edible item on the table.
‘I’ll do this for you as it’s your first day, but after that, you’re on your own.’
Cara looked on in surprise as the girl proceeded to devour every last morsel on the plate. Seeing the look on her face, Niamh smiled wryly.
‘I told you, I’ve been here a long time. I know how to survive this place. Listen to me, and you will, too.’
After dinner, there were chores to do. For the moment, Sister Jude said, Cara was to remain with Niamh, until her schedule was officially determined. Niamh worked in the dressmaker’s, along with five others, under the charge of Sister Agnes. They were assigned to make and repair all the nuns’ habits and the girls’ clothes, and also sometimes did dressmaking for locals, to bring in extra money for the convent. The orphanage was largely self-sufficient, Niamh explained, run mainly by the children’s labour. Other duties included helping tend the vegetable and fruit patches; scrubbing the floors; cooking or washing up. Dressmaking was one of the easiest options for work duties, mostly because of Sister Agnes.
‘She’s one of the good ones,’ Niamh told Cara.
Certainly she was the most welcoming. As soon as they got to the sewing room, the moon-faced nun came over to the two girls.
‘So you must be Cara,’ she said warmly. ‘Let’s find something for you to do.’
She set Cara up repairing hems. The work wasn’t hard, and the girls chattered easily under Sister Agnes’s benevolent eye. It was the first time Cara had been able to relax a little since she’d arrived.
Soon, it was time for bed. Niamh showed Cara to their dormitory. There was a spare bed next to hers, so Cara took that. With half an hour until lights out, the girls went about their bedtime preparations, while talking in low, hushed tones. With no rituals of her own yet, Cara watched as Niamh began to unpin her long, fair hair. It fell in a thick rope down to her waist. Sitting on the edge of her bed, she began to brush out the tangles, while Cara looked on enviously. Her own hair was short and dark, and while she’d always liked being a tomboy, she couldn’t help feeling a
little jealous of the other girl’s princess locks.
Niamh must have felt her staring, because she looked over and smiled.
‘I have to do this every morning and night, and it takes ages,’ she explained. ‘But I don’t want to cut it.’
Cara could see why.
By ten, everyone was in bed.
‘What happens tomorrow morning?’ Cara wanted to know.
But Niamh hushed her. ‘Be quiet,’ the girl warned.
Her timing was impeccable. The moment after Cara shut up, Sister Concepta appeared in the doorway.
Eyes tightly closed, Cara could hear the nun making her way round the room, checking that everything was in order. When she got to Cara’s bed, the girl could feel her heart beating faster. But she managed to keep her breathing steady and feigned sleep. The nun stood there for a long time, but then finally moved off. There was a click as the light went out. Only then did Cara open her eyes. She desperately wanted to ask Niamh more questions, but she sensed it was a bad idea. Instead she reflected on the events of the day.
As she went to sleep that night, Cara made a quick assessment of her position at St Mary’s. To her mind, she had made one true friend so far and one powerful enemy. She just hoped the former was strong enough to help her combat the latter.
Record-keeping wasn’t a strong point for social services at this time. Rushing to get home that day, it was little wonder that Miss Lynch, who felt overworked and under-appreciated, misplaced the paperwork of the child found in Theresa Healey’s house, which meant that Cara disappeared without trace into the system. So when a man came looking for her several weeks later, he had no choice but to approach orphanages individually. He still might have had a chance of finding her; it was just unfortunate that when he went to St Mary’s looking for a Cara Healey, he met with Sister Concepta who, out of spite or sheer devilment, claimed to have no child of that name in her charge.
Chapter Thirty-one
Galway, May 1961
Sister Jude raised the broom up high. ‘There’s no worse sin than laziness!’
Cara braced herself for the inevitable blow. The broom struck her clean across the legs, the sharp sticks of the brush grazing her skin. She bit down on her lip, and the metallic taste of blood flooded her mouth. It was better than letting the nun see her cry.
She’d brought the punishment on herself, of course, having been too slow cleaning the kitchen floor. But her knees had been aching, and she’d had to stand up for a minute to stretch her legs out. Molly had hissed a warning to her that Sister Jude was coming, but it had already been too late.
‘You big, lazy lump!’ Sister Jude brought the broom down again. ‘The devil makes work for idle hands!’
This time, the blow sent Cara reeling face-down onto the hard floor. She landed flat on her stomach, winding herself.
‘Let this be a lesson to you.’
Satisfied with her handiwork, Sister Jude threw the broom on the floor and made to walk out. At the door, she hesitated for a moment and turned back. Too late, Cara guessed her intention, and she looked on helplessly as the nun kicked over the bucket. Before she could roll away, the dirty water spilled across her legs, the bleach stinging her cuts. Despite her vow not to show any reaction, she couldn’t help grunting in pain.
Once the nun finally left, Cara managed to get to her feet. Looking down at the floor, she wanted to cry. She would need to start all over again.
It was May 1961, and Cara had just turned fourteen. She had been at the orphanage for over a year, although it felt like longer. The drudgery of the routine there made the days and weeks bleed together. The girls rose at six during the week. After cold showers, a breakfast of bread and tea was doled out at seven, followed by lessons, with a break for lunch. After schooling finished at four, there were chores to be done, which resumed again after dinner. Religion played a big part of every day. The priest came from the neighbouring parish to hear Confession on a Friday afternoon; Grace was said before every meal, prayers before bed.
Saturdays were the best. After chores in the morning, the girls were usually brought into town, and allowed to go to the pictures. But then there were Sundays: the long Catholic Mass in the morning, followed by an interminable day of prayer and contemplation.
Other than religion, beatings also formed a regular part of Cara’s life. She wasn’t sure why, but Sister Concepta clearly loathed her and took every opportunity to make her life a misery. When she’d found out that Cara was working in the dressmaking room, she’d had her reassigned to scrubbing the floors, the worst duty. Cara hated it. Her hands were permanently raw and stinging from the bleach; her knees sore and broken from shuffling across the wet floor. She’d come to detest the smell of disinfectant; it hung in the air throughout the orphanage, and seemed to seep through her clothes and get absorbed into her very skin.
It wasn’t just Sister Concepta who victimised Cara. She had two cohorts, Sisters Jude and Bernadette, who joined in her persecution of the girl. Cara wasn’t the only one who suffered at their hands. Beatings and punishments were a regular and accepted part of the regime at the convent. Cara, however, had it harder than most. Today’s beating was typical. What made it worse was the way outsiders thought the orphans should be grateful to the Church. When they went into town, people would greet the nuns, pressing money into their hands and saying, ‘God bless you for looking after the poor children, Sisters.’ Cara would have loved to tell them exactly what the kind Sisters did every day to their charges, but there was no point. The belief that the Church knew best was too deeply ingrained.
It was Niamh who made life bearable. The kindness she had shown Cara on that first day was just the start. During those initial weeks, when Cara had struggled to settle in, the other girl had helped her in any way that she could – particularly when it came to lessons. After six years without formal schooling, Cara had found that she was behind in most areas. While she was highly literate, thanks to the fact that there had been nothing to do apart from read in the cottage, she had little knowledge of Arithmetic, Geography or History. Because of this, the nuns had at first labelled her slow. But in reality she was a quick learner, and with Niamh’s painstaking help in the evenings, she had eventually caught up.
To Cara’s surprise, Niamh was actually only a year younger than her, but she looked less than her thirteen years because she was small for her age. Pretty in a soft, sweet way, she had a heart-shaped face, long-lashed blue eyes and thick, fair hair that fell Rapunzel-style to her waist. Like all of the girls, Niamh’s story of how she’d ended up at St Mary’s was a sad one. Her father had died when she was eight, and after his death, her mother had struggled to cope with two children. Deciding to start a new life in England, she’d left Niamh at the orphanage and taken her son with her to Birmingham, promising that once she was settled she’d fetch her daughter. That had been five years earlier. She’d remarried now, but still her promise to come back for Niamh hadn’t been fulfilled.
Sister Concepta didn’t like Niamh much either, and Cara suspected this was because of her beauty. Niamh did her best to conceal it, always wearing her hair pulled into a bun or tucked under a cap, only letting it down at night, brushing the locks out with a hundred strokes, to prevent tangles. Cara sometimes helped when she got too tired to lift the brush.
Sister Concepta had caught them once. She’d stormed across the room, grabbed the brush from Cara’s hand and used it to strike first one girl and then the other.
‘Vanity is a sin,’ she’d said over and over again, as she’d beaten them.
Sometimes Cara wondered if there was anything that wasn’t a sin.
After the beating had ended, the nun had confiscated the brush. Seeing how distressed her friend had been at losing her most precious possession, Cara had managed to sneak one of the new scrubbing brushes from the kitchen, for Niamh to use as a makeshift comb. Now, the other girl was more careful about when she brought it out.
Not all the nuns were mean, of course
. In fact, Sister Agnes, who along with heading up the dressmaking group acted as Sister Concepta’s deputy, was a gentle, fair woman. But she seemed to be the exception rather than the rule.
The six years that Cara had lived with her grandmother had been hard. But Theresa’s initial indifference and later madness, could not compare with the culture of cruelty and bullying in this institution. Cara spent a lot of time thinking up ways to escape. The only problem was, she had no idea where she would go if she did get out. Sadly, the orphanage and the girls within it were the closest she had to home and family.
Cara wasn’t the only one who dreamed of running away. Molly in particular talked about it all the time. She had been the one hostile to Cara on the first night, but it had quickly become apparent that her anger was a defence mechanism, built up after a lifetime in Church-run institutions. A large-boned girl of fifteen, she suffered nearly as much at the nuns’ hands as Cara. She was always coming up with schemes for escape, but it was about a week after Cara’s beating in the kitchen, when Molly and two of the other girls finally managed to get out. They’d been on laundry duty, and had got dressed up in the freshly washed nuns’ habits and simply walked out through the front gate. All three were large girls, and so no one had thought to stop them. It was only later, when the headcount was taken at lunchtime, that their subterfuge was discovered.
The Garda were alerted straight away. It didn’t take long for them to find the girls. They hadn’t thought their plan through very well; as soon as they got out of sight of the orphanage, they had dumped their habits, making themselves conspicuous by being outside in the middle of the day when other children their age were in school. A local busybody spotted them walking along the road to Galway, and contacted the police. Molly and the others were brought back later that afternoon.
Niamh told Cara what she’d heard of their fate. ‘They’ve been put in the Quiet Room.’
