Death of a Novice

by Cora Harrison

  An immediate reaction from two out of the three. Sister Brigid turned scarlet, her cheeks flushing to a poppy-like shade. She pressed her hands against them and stared at the Reverend Mother. Sister Joan paled and then stiffened. Sister Catherine looked bewildered, darting tentative glances from one to another.

  ‘Sister Bernadette, unfortunately, feels that she has to clean your dormitory, though, goodness knows, she has enough to do, otherwise. And when doing so, she discovered that a large tin of treacle, which had been missing from the kitchen was under one of your beds.’ She stopped there and looked keenly from one face to another. There had been, she noticed, an immediate slackening of tension. Sister Catherine looked bewildered and the other two relieved.

  ‘It was under one of your beds.’ The Reverend Mother looked from face to face. Sister Catherine assumed a self-righteous expression, Sister Brigid stifled a giggle and Sister Joan looked somewhat scornful.

  ‘It’s very easy to put something under someone else’s bed, Reverend Mother.’ Her voice was quite steady and she met her superior’s eye courageously.

  ‘Indeed,’ agreed the Reverend Mother. ‘Children play those sort of tricks, don’t they?’

  ‘It was probably that lay sister in the kitchen, the small one. Sister Imelda,’ said Sister Catherine triumphantly.

  ‘Why would she do something like that?’ enquired the Reverend Mother.

  ‘To get us into trouble,’ responded Sister Catherine instantly and looked at the other two novices.

  ‘I don’t think that she would,’ said Sister Joan. She looked at Sister Brigid and then said defiantly, ‘Neither of us thinks that she would do a thing like that.’

  ‘And the collecting boxes for the Foreign Missions,’ asked the Reverend Mother. This time she looked directly at Sister Catherine. Was it some private enterprise, some effort to speed her on the way to sainthood. All three girls were shaking their heads, though.

  ‘I wonder whether they could have belonged to Sister Gertrude,’ said Sister Joan. Her tone was calm and her manner as self-possessed as normal. ‘She told me once that she had thought of joining the Foreign Missions. She said that it would be a great way of seeing the world.’

  ‘Yes, I remember.’ Sister Brigid looked relieved. ‘It was that day when it was so foggy.’

  ‘We were coming down the hill from Wellington Road and we could hardly see Patrick Street, just a few flashes from the trams, and a glow from the gas lamps.’ Sister Joan picked up the story in an animated fashion while Sister Catherine looked from one and then the other of her fellow sisters in a bewildered fashion. ‘It was very interesting, Reverend Mother. Sister Gertrude started talking about America. She said an American came over to Ford’s Factory when she worked there and he was telling her about Arizona and how hot it was and how—’

  ‘Thank you.’ The Reverend Mother, conscious of all that she had to do, thought it best to terminate the conversation. It really didn’t explain either the presence of the tin of treacle or of the two Foreign Missions’ collecting boxes, but now that the name of the dead novice had been introduced there was a shadow of doubt over whether the articles had been placed there by some or all of the three girls facing her, or whether a fourth person had been responsible. ‘You may go,’ she said aloud.

  Once they had left the room, she sat back and thought about the matter. And then she scribbled a note, put it in an envelope, printed on it: ‘MISS EILEEN MACSWEENEY’ and put the words ‘BY HAND’ in the top left-hand corner. It might be hours or even a day before Dr Scher could find the time to contact Eileen and she did want to see the girl, urgently. She left the note upon her desk and then she rang the bell for Sister Bernadette.

  ‘I wonder could Sister Imelda deliver this note to the printing works off South Terrace, Sister. There is no hurry about it. She can go whenever you can spare her.’

  That soul of discretion, Sister Bernadette, did not venture to enquire about her interview with the three novices. Just as well, thought the Reverend Mother ruefully when the lay sister had left the room. She would have had to admit that she had been totally vanquished by a pair of young girls. Sister Catherine, she thought, seemed guiltless. The tin of treacle could have been a joke, a prank, though whether committed by the two girls of her own age, or by the completely mature Sister Gertrude, that she could not tell. And the more she thought of it, the less likely either alternative seemed. After all, why do it? It was not particularly funny, especially as Sister Catherine was noted as someone who ate very little and was certainly an almost painfully thin girl.

  And then she sat back in her chair and stared fixedly at the window opposite, now, despite Sister Bernadette’s efforts, once again, streaming with moisture.

  Yes, Sister Catherine appeared guiltless, but what was it she had said? The girl’s words came back to her mind. I’ve felt for a long time that the Holy Ghost has put a shield around me, that a mantle has descended from heaven and that it wraps around me; something that keeps me isolated from all evil and wrong-doing. No matter what was going on among sinful souls, I was kept protected from it.

  What if this magical shield had also the properties of shutting off unpleasant or unwelcome memories? What if Sister Catherine was serenely unaware of any act which she would prefer not to remember?

  TEN

  St Thomas Aquinas

  Unde non dicitur bonus homo, qui habet bonum intellectum, sed qui habet bonam voluntatem.

  (Hence a man is said to be good, not by his good understanding; but by his good will.)

  ‘I tried to put a stop to it, Reverend Mother. I tried and I failed.’ Eileen looked earnestly into her former teacher’s eyes. ‘I’m really sorry, but I did try. I was threatened. Not myself. I could have looked after myself. My mother. You know my mam, Reverend Mother. She’s an innocent. She’d talk to anyone, fall for any story. Some of these fellows are very ruthless. I couldn’t chance it. I had to go along with it. I had to keep quiet. In fact …’ Eileen stopped as the Reverend Mother shook her head at her. Just as well to say nothing to anyone of the part she had played on Spike Island. Oddly, and to her great relief, there had been nothing said about the young man with the yacht and the girlfriend who had danced and sang and kept all eyes upon her, during the afternoon before the Spike Island explosion. No doubt, she thought shrewdly, the commanding officer had decided not to mention this to the military authorities. It would make him look a fool and might even have been a court martialling offence. The story seemed to be that a party of men swam over from Cobh and landed on the island after dark.

  ‘I did hear that two young nuns from the Gaelic League classes were delivering letters,’ she said aloud. ‘I thought I could put a stop to it, but I couldn’t. But, in any case, I would have been too late to save Sister Gertrude.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Eileen. You are not responsible for others’ evil deeds. Your first duty is to yourself and to your mother. It’s important to keep both of you safe. Now, Eileen, tell me about those classes at Scoil Ide, St Ita’s, the MacSwiney school, those Gaelic League classes. Something strange has been going on, I think, and I am quite worried about it.’ The Reverend Mother watched the girl’s face and saw her nod.

  ‘Dr Scher told me about Sister Gertrude. But I didn’t think that she was involved. It was the two younger ones that I was worried about.’ Eileen frowned in a slightly puzzled way and then said quickly, ‘Unless, Sister Gertrude had found out something. Was a threat to them … I don’t mean the young nuns, the young novices, I mean. You see, Reverend Mother, Sister Gertrude was different to Sister Joan and Sister Brigid. She hadn’t fallen for the propaganda, she wasn’t interested, so she became a threat to them; well you know who I mean, Reverend Mother. You’ve heard me mention Tom Hurley, and …’ Eileen stopped and looked at her appealingly. The Reverend Mother felt a surge of compassion. Eileen had sacrificed her future, had abandoned any plans that might have raised her from the slums where she had been reared, had foregone the chance to go to u
niversity and to carve a new and bright future for herself. And all for the chimera of a bright new future for Ireland, for the dreams that were, in many cases now, peddled by hard and ruthless men such as ‘them’ such as Tom Hurley. She looked at the girl compassionately. It was a shame to have to involve her, but she needed to know what had happened to Sister Gertrude.

  ‘Tell me what you know – that’s if you are not sworn to secrecy or anything like that.’

  Eileen, the Reverend Mother reminded herself, had no obligation to her and the ties to old comrades might still be of great importance to the girl. Ireland, like England in the time of the civil war, was split, brother against brother, cousin against cousin, and neighbour against neighbour. For Eileen, the struggle had been of huge importance, had promised a bright new future where all would be equal. It must have been difficult for her to make the break with her former comrades.

  However, the girl was shaking her head. There was, thought the Reverend Mother, something new about her. Almost as though Eileen had aged, had been forced to confront some unwelcome truths.

  ‘I’ve finished with all that stuff now,’ said Eileen emphatically. ‘Just banging our heads against a brick wall and no one benefiting. The poor are getting poorer. There are no more jobs around than there were before all the fighting started. And,’ she finished rather bleakly, ‘in every graveyard in the country there are a lot more graves filled with young people than there used to be. I’ve known four boys that were killed and I don’t know what good their deaths did to Ireland.’

  The Reverend Mother bowed her head. ‘At least no one was killed by that explosion on Spike Island,’ she said.

  ‘You guessed that was it, did you?’ Eileen looked at her with an admiration that amused the Reverend Mother.

  She shook her head at her former pupil. ‘Don’t tell me anything about the explosion,’ she warned. ‘I would not put either you or your mother in the slightest danger. Just tell me about those Gaelic League classes at Scoil Ide. You weren’t present, were you?’

  Eileen shook her head, one of those quick, impatient movements that reminded the Reverend Mother of the bright little girl who was always three steps ahead of anyone else in the class. ‘No, I’m busy in the evenings now. I’m trying to earn some extra money for university by doing typing at home. But I know someone, his name is Raymond, and he went there. I got it out of him. He told me that Miss MacSwiney took a great fancy to Sister Joan, your novice. She knew a lot of Irish and she was very patriotic. That’s what Raymond told me. He said that Miss MacSwiney started to give her private lessons, conversation lessons, they were supposed to be, down in her sitting room.’

  ‘Raymond,’ queried the Reverend Mother slowly. Someone had been talking to her recently about someone called Raymond. Who could it have been? And then she remembered. Her cousin Lucy had been talking about her granddaughter. Something about an unsuitable young man. Aloud she said, ‘What’s this young man’s name?’

  ‘It’s Raymond Roche,’ said Eileen. ‘He’s very posh. Got pots of money.’

  ‘Raymond Roche,’ repeated the Reverend Mother. Yes, that was the name. The Roche family would have ‘pots of money’ and would, she thought, certainly be deemed by Eileen to be ‘posh’, but according to her cousin Lucy the young man himself had no money at all. However, Lucy would be visiting her tomorrow and so she put the question about this young man to one side and went back to the private lessons given to Sister Joan.

  ‘So Miss Mary MacSwiney gave lessons to Sister Joan by herself. Sister Brigid and Sister Gertrude were not present?’

  ‘No, not them. They stayed with the rest of the class. Raymond said that Sister Gertrude wasn’t very interested in learning Irish and that she kept asking what was the point and Miss Annie MacSwiney got very annoyed with her and told her not to bother coming if she felt like that. Mind you,’ said Eileen sagely, ‘I don’t know what Raymond was doing there. He doesn’t know a word of Irish, even went to school in England, so I don’t know what on earth he was doing there. I expect it was a recruiting job. Tom Hurley sent him there to recruit some new people for the cause. Raymond does everything that Tom Hurley tells him to do. He’d be in his pay is what I reckon.’

  The Reverend Mother compressed her lips with exasperation. If only she had made some searching enquiries about these Irish classes. She had been too busy with raising funds to employ a teacher specially qualified in the teaching of reading. That had been a driving ambition for her during the past weeks and she had just absent-mindedly seen the young novices off and then welcomed them back, expressed vague hopes that they had enjoyed themselves and had found the classes interesting. Looking back over it now, she remembered that Sister Gertrude had been hesitant over her answers and would no doubt have opened up if questioned.

  ‘I was always too anxious to get onto money matters with her,’ she said half to herself and then when Eileen looked at her in a slightly startled manner, she said, ‘I relied on Sister Gertrude to keep an eye on the other two. She was a good four or five years older than them and she had been out in the world. I could not have imagined that she would have condoned any business like pretending to collect for the Foreign Missions. They had boxes under their beds, you know. Perfect replicas of the real thing. No money in them.’

  ‘No, of course,’ said Eileen. ‘They were only a front.’ As usual, Eileen’s mind had worked fast and she had jumped to the right conclusion. ‘No one would ever worry about a couple of nuns collecting for the Foreign Missions,’ she continued. ‘Even if they were calling at houses that were under suspicion, no army spy or guard would take any notice at all of nuns.’

  ‘What were they really doing?’ asked the Reverend Mother, but she knew the answer to her own question. ‘Delivering notes, instructions, I suppose,’ she said.

  Eileen nodded. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘It was a perfect cover. Tom Hurley had to gather a gang together for the Spike Island attack. He has to stay under cover. Most of these men were under surveillance so he dared not visit them or be seen in their company. These silly girls, all dressed up in their nuns’ uniform, carrying boxes, going to houses on their list, knocking at the door and delivering a letter, or giving a message. I suppose Raymond set it up. He does all that sort of thing. Tom Hurley would have sent him to those Irish classes to get hold of someone and a pair of nuns would be more than they would have hoped for. They looked such a pair of innocents,’ said eighteen-year-old Eileen with a world-experienced air.

  ‘So you think that they were inveigled into working for the rebels.’

  Eileen nodded. ‘They were just a godsend to Tom Hurley and their gang. No one would ever have noticed them. These nuns from the Foreign Missions; they are forever collecting. I remember them even from away back, when I was a child. I remember my poor mother saying to one of those sisters, “I’ve only got sixpence in the house for myself and the child.” You’ll excuse me, Reverend Mother,’ said Eileen apologetically, ‘but it really annoyed me when the nun said, “The unfortunate pagans in Africa need that sixpence more than you do.” I was only ten years old at the time, but I remember shouting at her, “At least they get lots of sun in Africa; they don’t have to put up with the rain and the fog!” It was pouring rain that day and we had no turf for the fire and I was really cold. The nun didn’t know what to say and so I whipped out, right in front of my mother and shut the door in her face.’

  The Reverend Mother smiled. ‘I remember you at ten years old, Eileen,’ she said. She could imagine the scene, remembered the ten-year-old Eileen, brim-full of confidence and already showing all the signs of a girl who might have a bright future ahead of her. She sighed. Perhaps she had failed there, also. Something should have been done for Eileen. She should never have been allowed to leave school and to throw in her lot with those misguided patriots.

  ‘You couldn’t have stopped me.’ Eileen had read her mind. ‘I had to learn my own way. But I am sorry about your novice. I don’t know what happened. Sister
Joan was the one that had been picked out. The one that they depended on to deliver the letters. Raymond told me that. Sister Brigid was just a nonentity and the other one, Sister Gertrude, was just going to be kept out of the way. Raymond said that Miss MacSwiney, Miss Mary MacSwiney, was going to take care of Sister Gertrude.’

  The Reverend Mother thought about the matter. There were three personalities to ponder. Sister Brigid didn’t matter. She would do what her friend, the strong-minded Sister Joan, would instruct. But there was Sister Gertrude, clever and decisive, used to making her way in a man’s world, used to trusting her own judgement. She had thought that Sister Gertrude would have influence over those two young girls, barely out of school. But she had been wrong and it had been stupid not to have checked on how matters were progressing. Perhaps if she had done so, Sister Gertrude might still be alive. And then there was the enigma, there was Mary MacSwiney, the patriot, the woman who had challenged Michael Collins and his treaty with Britain, had even challenged Eamon de Valera himself. The woman who was always certain that she was right. What part had she played in the tragedy of a wasted young life?

  ‘Miss Mary MacSwiney?’ she said aloud and introduced an interrogative note into her voice.

  Eileen looked across at her, slightly unsure. ‘Raymond said that Miss Mary MacSwiney was going to take care of Sister Gertrude; I overheard him say that to another man, another member of the Sinn Féin party. He said Máire, that’s what they called her, he said that Máire, would take care of Sister Gertrude,’ she repeated and there was a note of hesitation in her voice, almost as though an unwelcome thought had made its way into her mind. ‘I thought that he meant that she would delay her, or send her home without the others, something like that. I don’t think he meant … I don’t think that she …’