Bad Girl Magdalene

by Jonathan Gash

  ‘Do you remember whose?’

  ‘No. I found it under a lady’s bed, but it wasn’t hers. It had rolled from someone opposite.’

  ‘Did you not check the label?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Why not, Magda?’

  Here it was, her moment. Magda felt morality, that ineffable thing called goodness, with all its attendant virtues and lovely consequences, was giving her a chance to declare her soul to stand firm on the side of righteousness. But that way had served Lucy nothing but falling every night, time after time, hour after hour. Lucy had to be rescued. That was her promise when she’d done it, and she would stand by Lucy. She prayed a moment to God, looking at her shoes on the Wilton carpet. Sorry, God, but I have to save Lucy from perdition. Magda longed to be able to read enough, anything, just to look up words like promise and rescue and saviour, and even perdition.

  ‘Why did you not look at whose name was on the bottle, Magda, when you found it?’

  ‘I found it lost,’ she said lamely, trying to postpone the inevitable. The man Garda gave a glance at the woman. Neither spoke.

  ‘But you knew it had to be reported, Magda. Why didn’t you simply take it to the person whose name was on it and ask them how it came to be there?’

  She took a breath and said softly, ‘I haven’t the reading, sir.’

  ‘You can’t read?’ Maria said.

  ‘No.’

  Now it would come out, fingerprints and everything. She had disposed of that flat whisky bottle in a waste skip that had been standing at the corner of Ryders Row. She had walked miles to reach some place she was not likely to be seen. Drinkers were about there, she knew. They must have found the glass fragments, though she had heard it smash on rubbish in the skip. She was not tall enough to stand on tiptoe and see inside them old things, but she had cast it well enough and it had gone into smithereens.

  ‘Nor write either?’ Joe Murragh was lost. He shrugged at Maria Finty to take over.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Did you know that, Sister Stephanie?’ Maria Finty asked directly.

  ‘No.’ The nun was almost inaudible.

  ‘Magda, did you tell the sisters that when you came here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I might not get the job.’

  ‘Is your sight all right? I mean, can you see everything clearly?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you always been able to?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How do you know which inmate is which?’

  ‘I ask them.’

  Maria Finty smiled. ‘And very sensible too, Magda. Some of us don’t have the common sense you do.’

  ‘Did you go to see Father Doran at the hospital, Magda?’

  Here it was, the evidence coming up they needed. It had to be the truth.

  She vowed to Lucy, Lucy, I’m so sorry I haven’t been able to save you now, or back then, like I should, but I swear on my mother’s grave and my father’s if I ever learn them and where they lie, that I will rescue you some time, honest to God. Please don’t listen now because I have to tell the truth so it won’t be the worse for you when I’m put in that old prison and strapped to a chair and shot to death, Amen. Amen.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why was that, Magda?’

  ‘I wanted him to get better.’

  ‘Not because you had done anything wrong?’

  ‘No. I wanted to leave a message to him, say we hoped he would get better soon.’

  ‘Magda.’ Maria Finty held up a restraining hand when Sister Stephanie wanted to speak. ‘How could you leave a message when you couldn’t write?’

  ‘I don’t know. I asked somebody to write it down for me.’

  ‘And did they?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And did you leave anything else for him? Chocolates? Flowers? Some gift?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I haven’t the numbers at all. I can’t buy things. I only have what’s in my purse ever, see. I keep back part of my wage to use, and put the rest into the book they gave me.’

  ‘You have a savings book?’

  ‘Yes. But I can’t buy things. They’re all numbers, see. I don’t know how to pay, if I’ll have enough money to pay. If I don’t, and I’d have asked for something like flowers, they’d see I hadn’t enough money and laugh.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘That was a very kindly thought, Magda,’ Joe Murragh said, ‘to visit the hospital. Did you see Father Doran?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How do you telephone anybody, then?’

  ‘I can’t. It’s the numbers.’

  ‘I see, Magda.’ Maria Finty rose, smiling at Magda and ignoring the nun. ‘Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.’

  ‘That’s all. Off you go, miss.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Magda stood waiting. Sister Stephanie finally gave a nod. Magda left, closing the door.

  Had Kev told them about her visit to the hospital? He had accompanied her there. Or the lady at the desk who wrote her message? Yet why had she been allowed to go and not arrested? It was puzzling. She knew they put a tail on you, to find things out. This was some clever sort of Garda stalking you through the city streets near downtown Manhattan so you would reveal all. Were they going to do that?

  She would tell Kev. They were to meet soon, at the corner of Ha’Penny Bridge, because he wanted to buy some records. He would explain how he had to tell the Gardai that she had visited Father Doran, and say how he asked her to keep a look out for his Grampa on account of somebody stealing medicines to poison people.

  Kev would be fair about it, she knew, for he was honest. There was no pride and prejudice about Kev, who was the loveliest man any girl could wish to know. He simply drove a motor bicycle instead of riding a thoroughbred steed, that was the only difference. Freed by them Gardai, she felt on holiday until she remembered their trick of setting a tail to trail you through the gas-lanterny streets of Victorian London to hunt Jack the Ripper. She was glad Mrs O’Hagan would still be there in the sluice and wash room below.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Kev had his motor bicycle when she got to the corner. She was silent until he took his helmet off and said hello.

  She said hello and she had something to tell him, please, if that was all right. He said sure, and they sat on a bench by the edge of the small park. He must have been waiting quite some time, and she worried if he might get in trouble at the Gardai for wasting his hours, but could police suffer in that fashion?

  ‘What is it, Magda?’ He laughed. He had a nice laugh, though thinking that was probably a sin, for where did thoughts like that lead?

  ‘The Gardai came today. To the St Cosmo.’

  ‘Did they?’ He looked away.

  ‘They wanted to ask me questions.’

  ‘What about?’

  She told him, and how she had responded. She did not explain the reasons for some of her answers to Mr Murragh and Miss Finty. He gave curt nods to help her along. She told him they asked about a Father Kilfoyle, and said she told them she hadn’t known him or heard anything about the incidents they kept on about.

  ‘I didn’t think they would. I wonder who told them.’

  ‘Who told them what? Did they know about you telling me to watch out for Mr Liam MacIlwam?’

  ‘No.’ He held her look. ‘No, Magda. I said nothing. It’s nobody else’s business.’

  He asked her about this Father Kilfoyle. Magda replied with care.

  ‘He was in the Care Home before I came. He was a priest and passed away when something happened to one of his old tubes, or his medicines. I don’t know.’

  ‘Did they say what they were going to do?’

  ‘They made me remember everything I did that day Father Doran took badly. I told them.’

  ‘They’ll have been to see Father Doran.’
r />   ‘Will they?’ Magda was shocked. Here it was, the truth coming out and her soon to be taken off in chains. ‘Did they tell you so?’

  ‘No.’ Kev smiled at her innocence. ‘I don’t know them, Magda. They’re in a different division, department, a whole place away. I’ve never seen them. I don’t want to, either. They just investigate things like, well, sudden deaths or wrong things.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like that Father Kilfoyle dying sudden, I suppose.’

  ‘Kev.’ She felt broken, for it was now the time to confess to him, and to Father Doran. ‘I want to telephone Father Doran in the hospital.’ She decided this was the only way to make it all right with the priest she’d tried to poison, then she’d tell Kev, and he would drive away and never be seen again. Her message had failed somehow to get her arrested and properly punished, so she’d have to speak up to Father Doran himself.

  ‘What for?’

  Definite care needed. ‘I did something wrong.’

  ‘Might have, d’you mean? Or might not?’

  ‘Might.’ It was as far as she could go for the moment, to him at least. ‘Would you help me?’

  He stared at her, blank. ‘Help?’

  ‘Do the telephone.’ She rummaged in her handbag. ‘I have money.’

  He laughed. ‘You can use mine.’ He handed her a cell phone no bigger than a box of matches.

  She gazed at it in astonishment, having seen these small gadgets but never close to. It was curved at the sides, with buttons sticking out carrying numbers and signs.

  ‘Here. I’ll get the hospital for you.’

  He stood, stretched and strolled a pace or two while she watched in admiration. How marvellous it must be to be so, what, carefree, casually telling his little phone to get him a number and then tapping it as if in chastisement. He strolled back and handed her the little creature.

  ‘Press that sign there, and you’ll reach the hospital.’

  ‘What do I say?’ She gaped. It had a screen with numbers in black written all across.

  ‘Tell them who you want to speak to.’

  ‘Then what?’ Suddenly it didn’t seem a good idea.

  ‘You say, “Please can I speak to Father Doran.” Tell them he’s in the cardiac unit.’

  ‘Thank you. Now?’

  ‘When you’re ready, do it. It’ll ring a little, then somebody will answer and you say your piece.’

  She waited and he understood he was to move away. He pushed his motor bike a few yards off and sat on it, legs extended and feet crossed. Two women approached with prams, and he moved to let them pass, casually resuming his pose, hands in his pockets. She admired him for thinking nothing of this phoning business, but then he’d been raised in that cavalier household Mr Liam MacIlwam had provided. The dot was surprisingly simple to press. The gadget gave two small thrills then fuzzily spoke in her ear.

  ‘Hello?’ she said. ‘Can you hear, please?’

  Father Doran went through his stack of envelopes. He was able to eat almost normally now, and was up during the day for three spells, walking slowly between physiotherapists. His chest was still sore. Misgivings about the Gardai lingered, with a feeling of foreboding. They contacted him by telephone after their visit, and then another occasion through an intermediary, a uniformed woman with a summary of his remarks to Finty and Murragh. He said, guardedly, that it was a fair approximation and signed her slip of paper.

  The nurse had said it might not be long before he could go out to rehabilitation. The bishop himself would be along to see how the hospital was mistreating him, her standard quip. He was sure she enjoyed light-hearted banter, thinking it cheered everybody up. It almost succeeded.

  First thing this morning she told him the doctors would assess him the next day, and say when he was to get his skates on.

  ‘You’ll leave us in peace, thanks be to God, Father Doran,’ she announced. ‘Get rid of all the twelve-lead ECG, so you can do it again to all your other arteries and waste our money.’

  His remarks were much less jocular, wholly inept, too hearty.

  ‘Be clearing that stack of nonsense, Father.’ She indicated the pile of cards and letters. ‘You started on them twice. I can see we’ll be having to post them after you.’

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘See you do. We’ve enough on our plate without your leavings getting in our way.’

  The nurse left him smiling. The staff were marvellous, and there was no residual trace of suspicion once the Gardai left. He was back on course.

  He took up the first card. He needed a pencil to open it, with its fancy Euro stamp. He smiled, reading the sentiment. Inevitable that parishioners felt it necessary to be so tortuously formal when addressing a priest. No brief good wishes, except from those with difficulties getting thoughts down.

  The next was a small thing written on a piece of hospital notepaper, evidently done at some admissions desk, and was signed Lucy.

  He thought, still half-smiling, of the name. It rang a bell. Lucy? He vaguely remembered that name, some…

  Memory returned, a wash as if a picture’s opaque covering slowly dissolved.

  A girl’s eyes, glimpsed or possibly not? It had been gloaming somewhere. The girl coughed and coughed. She lay in bed in a long place of beds. During that night, she had died.

  The next day, he remembered with sudden clarity, he had definitely been telephoned. Disturbing questions were asked. He was moved, at his own request, and Bishop MacGrath, a man of sound judgement and wholly behind the Church, advised him as a counsellor on readjustment. Changes had become necessary, a switch of duties, for the whilst. It had been beneficial to his career, and would be safer for the Church.

  Father Doran felt no guilt. Guilt was something for the confessional, to be told then the sins expiated. He had a vision of faces, the coughing girl’s eyes, other eyes moving in darkness, and wondered mildly why this was. Good heavens, he remembered thinking once when he woke up too suddenly, probably from the anaesthetic, his heart banging away like a drum of the Orange Order in July, how strange that these early undeveloped thoughts disconcerted a mind.

  A face swam into his mind. He had to think hard, trying to identify the expression, then make an abrupt change so he didn’t need to think at all. How disturbing, to reflect on images and sensations that came unbidden and proved so disturbing. He knew that regret could prove a source of dismay, if you let it enter in. But how to control regret for things done?

  One of his colleagues at the seminary, now in Rome at the College and doing very well, thank you, progressing up the firm ladder of ecclesiastical promotion, held to the view that it was far easier for a lay person to reach Heaven than a priest. Father Doran tried to follow Edward’s logic, stepwise and solid though it was. Definitely provable, yes, but it did not feel right, as if some mathematical proof of a theorem provided the answer so you could see it was correct in every particular, yet you knew by instinct it would not work out in practice. The sheet metal would not fit the designed space, the weight would be short, and the plank’s length measure far above the limit you’d wanted to set. Did poets feel this when, their glorious syntax in place and a newly composed sonnet ringing beautifully, the poem’s first reading fell flat and holes seemed to appear in the metre and cadence? He imagined a newspaper taking fire in simultaneous patches as it was being read. That felt like his ambition.

  He stared at the name. Lucy?

  Then he recalled the matter, or something of it.

  Lucy. A girl had died. He had celebrated Holy Mass for the repose of Lucy’s soul. It had been a Mass for the Dead, before a congregation of nuns and girls. Wordsworth’s lines had been said, he remembered, but not at the funeral for the girl. Had he said them alone for her, somewhere in private? He could not quite remember. Were they around still somewhere in his head?

  She lived alone, and few would know

  When Lucy ceased to be

  But now she’s in her grave, and oh

 
; The difference to me.

  Had he got it right? Lucy was perhaps a mixture of several different people, girls of any age. He could not think. This note was there to be read again. A woman’s hand, rounded letters. Or a girl’s? But Lucy was dead. He could remember conducting the service, many girls and several nuns forming that congregation. He was absolutely sure. The girl had been spoken of by a number, not name.

  Lucy had been Three-Two, only that. No name. He’d learnt her name by asking her in the semi-darkness of that long dormitory.

  ‘Father Doran?’

  ‘Yes, Nurse?’

  ‘There’s a call for you. I’ll bring in the phone trolley, right?’

  He was pleased to be interrupted. Sombre thoughts, and this seemed to be some ill-remembered gloom from the past that would only prove a source of regret, that terrible indelible traumatic derivative of mind games. Regret was for outside, not inside, hospital. He would deal with it later, if at all.

  He smiled as the nurse brought the trolley in and plugged the thing into the wall.

  ‘If it’s your bookmaker ringing from Fairyhouse, Father, I’ll be the first to tell the bishop what you’re up to, unless you give me a share of your winnings.’

  ‘It’s a deal.’ Another lame rejoinder. The door swished to on its rubberised flaps.

  He picked up the handset.

  ‘Hello? This is Father Doran.’

  A girl’s voice said, muted and diffident, ‘Father?’

  ‘Yes? Who is it?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Father.’

  ‘Yes?’ He paused, inviting her to go on. Was this a confession over the telephone? It would not be the first he had heard. ‘Do you want me to hear your confession?’

  ‘Yes. Sort of.’

  ‘Then please start.’

  ‘Not yet, Father.’ The pause lengthened. ‘I want to say I’m so sorry.’

  ‘For what? Something you did that was wrong?’

  ‘Yes. For what I did. To you.’

  ‘Did to me?’

  ‘Yes. I thought I’d kill you.’

  ‘You thought…?’ Had he heard right?

  ‘Not kill you, just kill you back. For what you did.’

  He lay, receiver in his hand, and closed his eyes. ‘I don’t understand.’