She turned away with everything Kitty could call her own in her arms.
Kitty didn’t know how she survived the day.
The work in the laundry was hard and there was no food until evening. She thought she would faint.
There were girls of her own age and many much older. Not one dared speak a word. Silence reigned the entire time whilst she plunged dirty sheets into the large sinks.
The laundry was filled with the sound of hissing steam and the noise of rollers and trolleys being wheeled in and out.
The only distraction arrived in the afternoon when the nuns, seemingly on the verge of hysteria, ran round the washrooms, demanding to know where a girl called Besmina had gone. No one knew, but Kitty noticed the looks that passed from one girl to the next.
Hours after she began work, a girl who seemed to be about her own age, with short red hair and freckles, passed her a wicker basket of dirty clothes. As she did so, she whispered, ‘Don’t cry so. Ye will make yourself sick. We will have a natter tonight, after they put out the lights.’
She gave Kitty’s hand the gentlest of squeezes.
Kitty had finally lain down on the dormitory bed, having carefully watched and followed what the other girls did. Minutes after the nun had said a prayer and put the lights out, Kitty became aware of the noise of rustling sheets and feet pattering on the floorboards.
Then a kindly voice whispered, ‘Come on then, shift up so we can get under yer blanket and have a natter.’
Kitty opened her eyes to a circle of girls standing round her bed.
They told Kitty about the routine and how they survived it. She learnt about the missing Besmina, who had been in the laundry for years. Her family had never returned to collect her, but every day she used to imagine that she saw her mammy, who had died years earlier, walking up the steps and knocking on the Abbey door.
‘God knows where she is now,’ said Aideen, the girl who had spoken to Kitty in the laundry. ‘She was mad to escape and has tried so many times. She always ends up being brought back and then she gets punished so badly with the stick, poor Besmina.’
‘I know my family will come for me,’ said Kitty quietly. ‘I counted the days today when I was washing. My mammy will be back for me. I know she will. I will count them down every day.’
They talked on Kitty’s bed for over an hour.
‘Not all the nuns are scolds,’ said Aideen. ‘We have new ones every now and then. They all start out nice.’
‘Aye, but once they’ve been here a few months, they turn into fucking witches,’ said an older woman on the end of the bed who had hardly spoken until that point.
Some of the girls had already birthed their babies, but had to stay, working without pay in the Abbey until the children were three years old, because they couldn’t raise the one hundred and fifty pounds without which they couldn’t leave. Kitty could hardly believe what she was hearing.
‘I had my little lad two years ago,’ said Maria, in a quiet voice. ‘I have one more year with him and then he will be adopted and live with an American family. I pay my way here by working in the laundry and the parents in America will pay for his adoption. It’s a win all round for the nuns. They use our baby money to buy their grand silver and Persian rugs, so they do.’
‘Is Cissy yer real name?’ asked Aideen.
Kitty was shocked. How did Aideen know?
Before she could reply, Aideen elaborated. ‘We were all given different names on the day we arrived, and we can only be called by saints’ names but, sure, it doesn’t happen anyway. We are only ever called by our last names. No nun has ever called me anything other than O’Reiley since the day I arrived.’
‘My name is Maria but on the day I arrived they told me that my name is now Frances.’
‘They can’t take away your name,’ said Kitty as she sat further up in the bed. She felt enraged at the notion that someone could have their name removed. She was only hiding her name; it wasn’t being taken from her. She was still Kitty.
‘Aye, they can and they do,’ said Maria.
The older woman spoke again. Kitty thought that she looked the saddest. She later discovered that she had been in the Abbey for five years and that her baby had long since gone but that she had no home and no money. Ever since, she had remained in the Abbey, working twelve-hour days every day for no pay and at the mercy of Sister Assumpta’s whim and temper.
‘Just be sure to never speak,’ she advised Kitty. ‘Even if you are at the rollers in the laundry and ye think the noise will drown out what ye is saying, it won’t. The witches have fuckin’ good hearing, now they do. They will hear and ye will be sent to the Reverend Mother and when ye are, she will beat ye with a stick so bad… See this.’
She pointed to a thin, bright-red weal down the side of her neck.
‘And these.’
She held out her hands to Kitty, who inhaled sharply at the sight of the cuts across the older woman’s palms.
‘I got the stick because Besmina disappeared, like it was my fault. Besmina was put with me on the corridors and the bathrooms this morning. I’m just warning ye…’ She tailed off as she saw the look on Kitty’s face. Kitty was appalled at the idea of a woman, the age of her own mother, being beaten.
The light from an oil lamp at the bottom of the stairs crept under the door. In seconds, everyone had fled to their own beds.
Kitty lay awake. The footsteps, belonging to the lamp-carrying nun, clipped away into the distance.
The gentle breathing of her roommates became deeper as they succumbed to exhaustion. Kitty heard the unfamiliar creaks and groans of the building as it moaned in objection to the wind buffeting it from all sides. Her eyes adjusted to the starlight shining in through the skylight opposite her bed, illuminating the faces of the sleeping girls.
She thought about the harvest, which might almost have happened weeks ago. Could it have been only yesterday that she met Aengus? She felt for the charm bracelet Maeve had given her. It was still there. She removed the bracelet and tucked it underneath her mattress in case a nun saw her wearing it and took it away.
As the faces of Tommy, Maura and her siblings filled her mind, she thought about home. She wondered, would the baby even know who she was by the time she returned? Everyone and everything felt as though it belonged to another life, a life she had left. Was it only this morning that she had arrived?
As she closed her eyes, she heard Sister Evangelista praising her English essay and remembered her pride when she had won a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate, the class prize for reading. A feeling of utter homesickness overwhelmed her. Tears ran silently down her cheeks. She had never slept in a room with so many people nor ever felt so alone.
‘Not long,’ she whispered, as she scrunched the bed sheet tightly in her hand, as though it were a rope holding her onto the edge of sanity.
After breakfast the following morning, a novice instructed Kitty to visit the Reverend Mother’s office before she began work in the laundry.
There had been no talking at breakfast. Everyone remained silent while the nuns ate their bacon and sausages, and the girls their milky gruel.
Once the ordeal was over, the girls sat straight-backed on their wooden pews, hands folded in laps, waiting to be dismissed to the toilet before work. Kitty closely watched what they did and copied them, exactly.
Once the bathroom call was over, they were sent straight down to the laundry. Some were issued with house-cleaning duties, which meant having to scrub long corridors on their hands and knees. This was regarded as light relief after washing other people’s dirty linen.
Kitty knocked on Sister Assumpta’s door, the biggest she had ever stood in front of in her life, painted a glossy white with six tall panels. She stood with her hand resting on the large brass knob and strained to hear the instruction for her to walk in.
The word ‘Enter’ boomed towards her from across the vast room and penetrated the door with no difficulty whatsoever.
; Kitty turned the knob and nervously stepped inside. The fading aroma of Kathleen’s 4711 eau de cologne lingered behind the door, and ushered her across the acreage of pastel-green Persian carpet.
Kitty’s heart leapt and then sank again. There was no one in the room other than Sister Assumpta, seated at her desk. As before, she was but a silhouette against the light flooding in through the window behind her.
Kitty hovered, not knowing what to say.
From what she could make out, Sister Assumpta was scrutinizing a letter. On her desk lay a long-handled, bone-and-silver letter opener.
In the absence of any acknowledgment or instruction, Kitty acted upon her own initiative and walked to the same chair in front of the desk on which she had been instructed to sit only yesterday. The dark wooden seat was upholstered in a beautiful, cream damask silk. Before she sat down, she glanced out of the window behind Reverend Mother and noticed that, on the front lawn, a long row of heavily pregnant young girls were on their hands and knees, picking at the grass with their bare hands.
Kitty watched for a moment, amazed that this was how the vast expanse of lawn was maintained. The girls crawled backwards as they shredded the grass, harvesting daisies. Following behind them were two more girls, pushing an enormous metal roller that was at least twice the size of them both, flattening the freshly picked grass.
‘Did I tell you to sit?’ the Reverend Mother roared with such ferocity, it made Kitty spring back to her feet.
She cupped her hands in front of her and stood looking down at them, for no other reason than she felt it would be impertinent to look directly at Sister Assumpta and she didn’t know where else to look.
‘Would you like me to send for tea, would you, Cissy?’
Sister Assumpta’s voice was laced with sarcasm. Kitty lifted her eyes and could just make out that she was peering at her over her spectacles. She was not smiling.
‘No, Sister, I have had my tea, thank you,’ she replied with more confidence than she felt.
Sister Assumpta laughed. A hollow, unkind laugh.
‘Have you, girl? Then, that’s just as well, isn’t it? I wouldn’t like you to be thinking you could wander in here for a cup of tea at any old time of day, would I?’
Kitty knew she was being laughed at and remained silent.
‘Would I?’ Again the roar. Kitty was close to being afraid.
Her words wobbled on the edge of tears as she replied, ‘No, Sister.’
Sister Assumpta stared at Kitty for what seemed like an eternity.
Kitty listened to the seconds ticking by on the grandfather clock in the corner and, with each second, her fear grew.
A fierce heat slowly crept upwards from her neck, under her chin and onto her face, as she looked down again, afraid of causing offence if she turned her eyes elsewhere.
‘I have received a letter this morning, Cissy.’ She stopped. ‘Cissy.’
Kitty’s head jerked upwards. She looked bolder than she felt. In truth she was terrified.
‘The midwife has written to say that she will be calling to see you. Now, that’s very special treatment, isn’t it, Cissy?’
Kitty didn’t know how to answer but her heart skipped a beat.
She knew the midwife, Rosie, was a relative of Nana Kathleen.
‘She will be here a week on Wednesday. I will see you again before she arrives. However, the reason I have asked to see you today is that I need to ensure that you always remember that many of the girls here are penitents. Just like yourself, Cissy, they are fallen women and have been placed in my care to help them find salvation through obedience and work. They do not have an esteemed midwife in the family, money, or indeed relatives gagging to take them out when the time comes. They will end their days here, seeking salvation and forgiveness from the good Lord. If you lived in Ireland, and had none of the privileges you do, you would likely be one of them, as you surely have their sinful ways, girl.’
She stopped talking and again stared at Kitty, waiting for a reaction.
Sister Assumpta was not happy that she had agreed to take in this girl. She had been given no back story and she didn’t like that at all. She had not even received a letter from the girl’s priest in Liverpool, which would have been the usual means of introduction. Something was not right with this situation. Kitty and her family were hiding something.
The Reverend Mother was no fool. However, she could not ignore the midwife, Rosie O’Grady. Since the hanging incident, it had been hard indeed to persuade a midwife to work at the convent under any circumstances. Rosie O’Grady was the matron at the women’s hospital in Dublin where she had made a name for herself as the most senior in her profession in Ireland. She was not someone to be refused.
The most recent hanging had cast a grave shadow over the convent. The nuns had tried to keep it quiet, but bad news travels faster than any other. ‘If only the stupid girls hadn’t shouted out of the window for the laundry van drivers to help, we would have stood a better chance of keeping it quiet. We had managed it every other time,’ Sister Assumpta often complained to Sister Celia.
She had to repair what damage had been done to the convent’s good name.
News like this could stop the prison and the hotels sending their laundry out to the Abbey and that would be a catastrophe. The nuns would receive little help from Rome if their income dried up.
Refusing to take a referral from Rosie O’Grady would infer they had something to hide.
The Reverend Mother focused her attention on Kitty and noticed her tremble.
‘I don’t want you upsetting things and so you must not discuss your situation with anyone, do you understand me?’
Kitty nodded.
‘Do you understand me?’
Kitty began to shake. She tried to not to, but she couldn’t stop herself. The trembling began in her hands, travelled upwards through her arms and soon took over her entire body. Her teeth began to chatter uncontrollably. She could not stop them. But something unexpected washed over her. The knowledge that she was loved.
She was not alone. She was not friendless. She had people who cared about her who had brought her here out of kindness and, seemingly, at great expense.
A confidence she didn’t know she possessed forced her to lift her head to look at Sister Assumpta straight in what she took to be her eyes.
‘Yes, Reverend Mother,’ she replied defiantly and almost slightly too loudly. ‘I have committed no crime. I am not a penitent. I am here of my own free will, because this is the place my mammy and Kathleen chose for me, on Auntie Rosie’s say-so. I’m glad Auntie Rosie is coming to see me next week. I shall be able to send a message home when she does and let them know I am all right.’
Sister Assumpta peered over her glasses in surprise at Kitty. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish and then, with a wave of her hand, she shouted, ‘Oh, get out of here, girl. Get out and just remember, you are forbidden to talk. Everyone is forbidden, but you even more so.’
With a new-found and growing confidence, bordering on reckless, Kitty forced a smile to her lips. She looked straight at the blurred dark form in the midst of the light and said, ‘Thank you, Reverend Mother,’ and, turning on her heel, she moved towards the door.
Just as she pulled it closed behind her, she heard the voice booming impatiently behind her. ‘And don’t walk on the carpet.’
Once safely out of the room, Kitty whispered to herself, ‘This must be what hell is like. I’ve been sent to hell. I’ll bloody beat it, though.’
And, for the first time since she had arrived, she strode with her head held high.
23
HOWARD KNEW HE would have to be especially kind when questioning Daisy. He was also keen to impress Miss Devlin.
‘Have a heart, Howard. What can she possibly know? Sure, Daisy is a bag of nerves most of the time. This is freaking her out altogether, so it is,’ she said.
Howard had popped into the school office to have a word with Sister Evangelista
and afterwards had lingered, making pointless small talk, until Miss Devlin offered him a cup of tea.
Had he but known it, Miss Devlin was delighted to see him again.
She had taken to wearing her newly lightened hair in a fashionable short pixie style, in place of the ponytail tied up in a bow that she had sported since she was six years old.
Miss Devlin had recently celebrated the universally acknowledged spinster age of thirty. Alone. Reading Madame Bovary, with a pot of Earl Grey tea and a lemon puff. As far as she and most of the people around her were concerned, she was well and truly on the shelf. Howard’s attention was an answer to her prayers. He wasn’t a Catholic, but she was so keen, she was prepared to overlook this previously non-negotiable requirement.
Howard loved to stare at her soft powdery face, drowning in her liquid blue eyes with the first signs of crow’s feet appearing at the corners. And now, as he became transfixed by her gently moving, cherry-red lips, he had trouble concentrating on what she was saying.
‘Pardon?’ he asked, as she finished speaking.
‘I asked you, what could Daisy possibly know? She is simple and has been in the care of the sisters since she was born.’
Before he could answer, a loud metallic crash followed by a violent ping echoed across the room as the school secretary frowned over the top of her prim and proper, horn-rimmed spectacles. She was a click of a letter away from informing both Howard and Miss Devlin that she did not approve of flirting at work.
Miss Devlin frowned back. She made a mental note to inform the school secretary that in future she could take herself and her solitaire diamond engagement ring over to the convent for half an hour and leave them alone.
Howard could not tell Miss Devlin what Daisy was supposed to have confided in Molly. They needed to hear it for themselves. It was no use to them as hearsay and now that Molly was dead, they had to move quickly. They didn’t want to be made fools of, yet again.
‘We will be very careful with Daisy, you needn’t worry.’
‘What is it like down on the streets? Are the women anxious about the murder whilst the men are out at work?’
Hide Her Name Page 27
