Bad Girl Magdalene

by Jonathan Gash

  ‘What happens in hospital, Mrs O’Hare?’

  ‘They make you better. They’ll have him back on his feet in no time.’

  ‘Then will he come back?’

  ‘Right as rain, trust me.’

  A third cleaner came in then, so the whole thing had to be told over again to her. Mrs Connery was a middle-aged woman who fancied herself – so current opinion ran – and who spent too much time dolling herself up. She was often reproached for being too heavily scented. The trouble was, she was a good cleaner. Unable to get as splendid a shine on the linoleum as Magda, for nobody could manage that, she devoted herself to the chapel and the furniture, and was an acknowledged class act. She said that herself, the ‘class act’ of the St Cosmo Care Home.

  ‘Some of them hospitals are good,’ she agreed, joining in once she had caught up, ‘but you have to be fit when you go in or your chances go down. My Jim says it’s always odds-on.’

  ‘What does that mean, Mrs Connery?’

  ‘Like a bet on the horses.’

  Magda left it there because it was her turn at the sink with her mops. She always gave hers the best rinsing before starting work.

  Her duties today were on the ground floor, the vestibule and the porches, front and back, then the kitchen entrance and then the nuns’ separate doorway, which was still called, for no reason she could understand, the postern door. About mid-morning, she would have to do the top floor corridor. That was the one running over the chapel – the chapel was two storeys high, its ceiling the floor of the sick-room corridor.

  She set to, thinking what might happen when the priest got better and told the Gardai what she’d said in that old sick room. She would be taken away. What if they were the same magistrates that sent her to the Magdalenes in the first place for being an orphan? She would rather die than go back in the Magdalenes, even though things had changed so much now that children necked in the classrooms right in front of the teachers and didn’t get their legs black and blue for it.

  Magda had always caught it on her knuckles and her bottom. That was bad enough, but nothing as painful as the thick round rulers that caught her them dreadful whacks across her thighs. They lasted for days, the bruises never seen. That was for the inspectors. She wondered about the inspectors now. What if they came into the class and found the pupils necking at the back when they were supposed to be learning their old drama like Mrs O’Hare’s daughter said?

  She set to. The morning’s work was on a rota. She had to pretend she kept forgetting her glasses, though Sister Francesca, the meekest of the nuns, if there could be such a thing, usually read the rota out. Not being able to write a word had made Magda remember everything she heard, so she was always where she had been told.

  The work went fine. By quarter-to-eleven she had had her places checked by Sister Rita, head of the domestics turn and turn about with two other nuns, and was free to start the top corridor. She carried her mopping things back to the sluice and left them ready, then went for her polishing stuff. The cleaners always fought for the best of those, because Mrs Connery was a right one for taking the best. She was not above actually stealing from the polish tins, which were marked with colours for different cleaning staff. Everybody said Mrs Connery was light of finger.

  Magda did not pause for a break, but was hard at it when she heard what she had been listening for ever since the cleaners separated for the day’s work.

  One of the lay nurses, a state registered nurse who wore two badges on her uniform, one from the Rotunda, one from somewhere Magda did not recognise, was speaking on the phone. Magda assumed it was Dr Strathan. She gave a load of numbers and mentioned something about the traces.

  ‘He seems more rested,’ the SRN said. ‘I think he may have stabilised.’

  Pause. The nurse answered.

  ‘About two-thirty? Will they come to the front, then?’

  Pause.

  ‘Yes, yes, sir. One thing. Must he be accompanied?’ A prolonged pause, then, ‘Very well, sir. I’ll have everything ready. The transfer will happen about two? Unless you ring back on my mobile, it’s to go ahead? Transfer definite before three o’clock, then? Yes. Very well.’

  The phone went down with a click. Magda got busy, so as not to delay.

  About two hours later she helped to give a blanket bath to one of the patients, doing the heavier work because Mrs Borru had a tube in her nose that a nurse had to keep control of.

  Magda had to hold the old lady sideways on while the nurse went for another tube. Magda was always fascinated by the way the new tube slid right into the old lady’s nose. It was like magic, such a length of it going in and in and even further in. It set you wondering why on earth God had designed us all like that, such a distance to get inside an old nose. Who’d imagine?

  When time for her dinner break came, she had her sandwich from the machine in the ground floor corridor (coins were easy, the slot being the right size for only one sort) and was immediately back at her post on the top floor. She was there polishing when the time came.

  Father Doran felt better, except for a serious cramp in his chest, and had asked if he could have his tea before leaving the St Cosmo.

  ‘You can starve for all I care, Father,’ the nurse called out cheerfully, swishing in and out and not caring how loud she was at doing anything at all. Magda admired her. The thought even crossed Magda’s mind that the nurse, with her strange badge, might even have come from a Protestant hospital, so casual was she talking to the priest.

  He seemed to like her because Magda thought she heard his small bark of a laugh.

  ‘Not even a bite of anything?’

  ‘You mean one for the road? I know you lot.’

  ‘Don’t be hard, Nurse.’

  ‘It’s you being hard, Father, playing on our heart-strings crying hunger. Look at the belly on you! Gob less at dinnertime and you’d not be dying away like y’are.’

  Magda gasped at the nurse’s effrontery, speaking like that.

  ‘That’s the spirit, Nurse.’

  ‘Be sarcastic all you want, you’ll not get me to shift.’

  ‘Where’s your charity?’

  Both enjoyed the banter. Magda thought it all vaguely immoral, the nurse so encouraging and him a priest and all.

  ‘My charity ends with what Dr Strathan orders. He says nothing by mouth except a plain old drink without milk, until they’re sticking tubes into you at the hospital. That’s what I’ll do, so shut your noise.’

  Just listen to the woman, Magda thought, aghast, losing her chances of going to Heaven in a few breaths, all for the sake of showing off with a cheeky word. She must have necked at the back of the drama class, for sure.

  ‘Who will be with me?’

  ‘In the ambulance? One of the nurses.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Are you going on about that again? There’s nobody else to mind you except me or Sister Eugenia, and she’s away with the fairies in Wicklow.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Hand on my heart. I’ll travel with you every inch of the way – make sure I get rid of you.’

  He did that relieved half-laugh. Magda had heard enough, and went to shake the few tablets she had taken urgently from Mrs Borru’s small brown bottle of white tablets into water. She had a discarded pill bottle from the men’s alcoves, and had washed it out with great care while watching the singing competition from London, drying it in the Baby Belling oven, turned down after heating some soup. Tomato was the sweetest soup. That and bread with margarine. A cheap meal of an evening, but it had been the first meal she had ever bought herself once released from the Magdalenes, so it was her favourite.

  She was on hand when the priest was being got ready for his transfer.

  Father Doran was concerned about the tubes.

  ‘Do they have to stay in?’ he asked anxiously.

  ‘The one in your nose, yes. I plug it for the journey.’

  ‘And these wire things?’

 
; ‘Can’t you see I’m taking them off?’

  ‘Will they know to put them back in the hospital?’

  ‘Of course they will, softie.’

  ‘In the same order?’

  ‘Where d’you think I was trained?’

  ‘Will they do that artery thing to me this afternoon?’

  ‘I wish I’d not told you, only Dr Strathan told me to.’

  ‘I wanted to know.’

  ‘You’re an old softie.’

  ‘Just so I’ll know.’

  ‘Just to worry yourself into another attack, you mean.’

  ‘No, just asking.’

  ‘Men are worse patients than women any day of the week.’

  The priest tried for jocularity. ‘I’ve been a model patient. You have to agree with that.’

  ‘You’ve been a babe-in-arms. Pest.’

  ‘What did I do wrong?’

  Magda listened to the bickering, feeling sick at heart. He should have died by now, not be cheerily joshing the nurse and almost teasing, with her responding almost like a harlot with her simpering.

  ‘A woman would be easy and ready for the journey, no questions, just accepting.’

  ‘What’s going to happen?’

  ‘A short ambulance ride, for God’s sake. You don’t even have to walk downstairs yourself. The ambulance men will do it for you. Now you just lie back and try to sleep a short while. Ten minutes, and you’ll be off. I don’t want you worn out before you leave.’

  Magda was there half an hour later when the nurse emerged and went across to the office. She smiled, deliberately getting in the nurse’s way, but only a little.

  The nurse swept on by. Magda hurried away to the other end of the corridor as the nurse spoke to Sister Stephanie, to promise she would have the patient ready soon. The ambulance men could be brought in. They spoke of the priest’s condition. The nurse was frank about his prognosis.

  ‘Dr Strathan will be there when he arrives at the hospital, Sister. I must say he’s concerned about Father Doran’s lack of improvement.’

  ‘I got the same impression. Has he given different instructions?’

  ‘Dr Strathan? No. Just the one small drink of plain tea before he goes.’

  ‘Is he ready now?’

  ‘Any minute.’

  ‘Then he can leave. I’ll come.’

  In the sick room, Magda took the drink to the priest. He was flushed, lying back on the pillows, dozing. He did not open his eyes.

  Magda had only a few moments, but that was all it took. She had twice seen the nurse administer the fluids through the tube, and had the small syringe in her pinafore pocket. He stayed somnolent throughout. She replaced the spigot in the tube and slipped the syringe into her pocket, and was out and down the corridor making a show of domestic industry when Sister Stephanie and the nurse crossed to the sick room.

  Magda went downstairs to the sluice where she was checked out by Sister Hilda.

  ‘Did you finish off up there, Magda?’

  ‘Yes, Sister Hilda.’

  ‘All of it?’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  ‘Did they tell you anything about Father Doran leaving?’

  ‘No, Sister.’

  ‘Very well.’ The nun went to enquire while the domestic staff talked.

  ‘Is he very poorly?’ Magda asked. She felt amazingly calm, as if she had passed one of those examinations other girls were always doing.

  ‘The priest? Of course he is. Heart attacks are dreadful. I had an uncle once died of one.’

  ‘Poor man, God rest his soul.’

  ‘Does the soul know if it’s going to die?’

  ‘That’s a funny question, Magda. What makes you ask that?’

  ‘I was just wondering.’

  She did not say, but thought the priest’s eyes had flickered for just one instant as she had inserted the nozzle of the syringe into the gastric tube. Except he would have raised Cain if he had sensed that someone was actually there, giving fluid into him without making a single sound, wouldn’t he? You don’t just lie there and let folk come in and do anything they want, do you? She had heard him being cheery with the nurse only half an hour before.

  ‘He’s coming down.’

  They heard the heavy footfalls of the ambulance men on the stairs, and listened in something like awe to the shuffling and the grunts of the men as they lifted the priest downstairs on a stretcher.

  ‘There ought to be a lift here, a building like this,’ Mrs O’Hare said. ‘I keep telling them that.’

  ‘Shall I go out and see if there’s any way I can help?’ Mrs Connery asked, but Mrs O’Hare rebelled immediately.

  ‘You stay put, m’lady,’ she said rudely. ‘I know what you’re up to, seeing if your stinking dabs round your earholes work on them ambulance men. No, stay here.’

  ‘You’ve a terrible mouth on you, O’Hare.’

  ‘You’ve an ugly face on you, Connery.’

  ‘Please,’ Magda said, distressed. ‘Don’t fight. Heaven alone knows what’s happening to the poor priest out there being carried away to his ambulance.’

  ‘There!’ Mrs O’Hare said angrily to Mrs Connery. ‘See what you’ve done? Upsetting the poor simple girl.’

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ Mrs Connery shot back. ‘It was you, mouthing off like that.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘There, girl,’ Mrs O’Hare soothed. ‘Don’t take on. We’re only pretending, really. We’ll all pray for the poor priest.’

  Even Mrs Connery was touched by the girl’s tears. ‘He’ll get better, just you see, Magda.’

  ‘Sure he will, girl. He’ll be right as rain once they get him in that old hospital.’

  ‘All them doctors. They say it’s the best hospital in the world. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘Yes. That’s true enough. Everybody knows that.’

  The three listened as the main door closed and the ambulance started up and drew away.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The two old women talked. For nursing convenience their beds were pushed into the one alcove. Normally it was Mrs Borru’s, but when night came she sometimes drew the short straw – her husband’s old phrase for luck unwelcome but not disastrous. By this she meant Mrs Duffanan, who was from Temple Lane South, near Wellington Quay, lying auld bitch that she was. Mrs Borru knew deep down Mrs Duffanan was all fur coat and no knickers, so said her crude old, now dead and God rest the poor restless bugger, husband Fergus. And no prizes for guessing how his firm conviction was found out. Fergus had been all hands, a randy old sod.

  Not difficult to tell, when readying oneself to die as gradually as the St Cosmo Care Home usually managed. Wheeled into a shared alcove for a night’s long impatience, waiting for one dawn after another, you had time to reflect what kind of girl an old crow like the wizened Mrs Duffanan would have been. Mrs Borru kept herself to herself and never revealed anything, no. Sure to God, enough would be called out right in front of all them angels and Seraphims and things once she shuffled off the mortal coil, so gossip could wait until then.

  About one-thirty of that night, Mrs Duffanan began to talk. For a daft old bat, her voice was surprising, quite mellow and gentle. Maybe that’s what sleep did, somehow annealed thoughts to make them presentable for anyone who chose to listen. Normally the beds were rolled by the domestics into alcoves that were deliberately alternated – Mrs Borru would sometimes draw the affable, perennially dozing Mrs Cafferty, who never was awake long enough to put on airs like Mrs Duffanan.

  ‘I wish I wasn’t so old,’ Mrs Duffanan said into the air. Only minutes since, she’d been snoring like an old carthorse. This was her usual beginning.

  ‘You always wish that,’ Mrs Borru said back, also as usual.

  ‘You don’t.’ Mrs Duffanan, ever ready for any old argument, even in her doze. ‘When you’re small, you want to be older so’s you can decide things for yourself. It’s when you’re older you want to be young.’

  ‘I don’t.’


  ‘Don’t what?’

  This was as it usually started, quite a litany. Mrs Borru loved the sequences. She even loved the sacred Litany against the Jews, though nobody seemed to do that nowadays in the Church services. Too many changes. This liberal thinking did it. The Litany against the Jews really went with a swing. It was the only bit of Church she had enjoyed when a child in the Magdalenes. Nobody went to sleep in that, all the children bawling the responses with gusto, approval glowing from the nuns.

  ‘Don’t want to be back there.’

  ‘You were a Magdalene?’

  ‘Course I was. Everybody was.’

  ‘Everybody wasn’t.’

  ‘They were.’

  ‘They weren’t.’

  ‘They were.’

  And so on, quicker and quicker, keeping it quiet but going ever faster until they gave up exhausted and lay in silence, staring up at the ceiling that was hardly visible in the red-stained darkness. Mrs Borru hated the red pilot light further down the lane of alcoves. Why put it there? It ought to be switched out, or shared about the place. Fine, it would need a workman to make another plug, but that’s what your workman is for.

  Mrs Duffanan knew what Mrs Borru thought of her. Well, she hadn’t the benefit of a rascally bit of harlotry that Mary Duffanan had made for herself round Ha’penny Bridge and the fine old bars that grew up all over Dublin in them days. One was a grand place for a riot. They called it Ha’Penny Bridge Inn, like some grand Elizabethan tavern from some wicked old English novel, when it was only the old roaring place where she’d learnt to give a decent wank to some randy boy for as many coppers as you could squeeze out of him. It was only later she began to regret not having used her time better, got on and made something of herself. She heard the sneers in the old bitches’ voices when she got talking of a night, never fear. The joke was on them, for how many of their loyal husbands had she sucked off in the dark along the towpath of the Grand Canal, and them glad to pay for the privilege?