Bad Girl Magdalene

by Jonathan Gash

  The appalling sin of murder came to her, and Magda knew herself for a murderess. Murder someone, you went to Hell and got hanged or shot in the prison where they killed people on chairs or made them stand upright. She lay down, her heart banging away like an old drum waiting for morning to come and herself be dragged off screaming by the Gardai.

  But that didn’t happen. She was wakened by somebody tiptoeing into the dormitory and then somebody carrying something heavy, several pairs of feet treading as softly as it was possible for people to tread, and a lot of whispering in the dark. And then she knew somebody was carrying Lucy’s body, several nuns perhaps, back to her truckle bed, and then leaving. But one nun stayed there, breathing so softly it was as if she was in hiding from Magda, who was supposed to be asleep in her own truckle across from Lucy.

  She knew they had come carrying Lucy back to bed. But why were they not helping her, calling the ambulance, taking her to hospital so she’d be mended and got better from her coughing and whatever hurt her when she fell?

  And Magda, for the first time in her mind only, but for the second time in reality, saw Lucy, her dearest and best and only friend, turning over in the darkness of the stairwell as she’d fallen. And Magda knew it was the Pit of Despond and that Lucy was in Heaven, or maybe not? And Magda saw herself as a murderess, never more to see her dear friend, not even in Heaven when she too died.

  She would have to go to confession and say what happened, and confess her terrible sin.

  And in the morning, when the darkened-out windows began to look ash grey, the whispering nuns came and silently carried Lucy away.

  Sad, that was the last Magda saw of anything, for the truckle bed and everything was gone next day, and she woke up and was talked to by Sister Natalia, and then by two other sisters and then Sister Natalia again, and that was the end of Lucy at Sandyhills, and the start of Lucy falling every night, and Magda knowing she had done wrong killing her friend by pushing her from the bannister of the top floor so she flew down the stairwell to her death.

  Magda was to blame. She knew it. She should have watched over her friend, like St Peter should have watched over Jesus in the Garden of somewhere Magda could never pronounce, and that was the way life would be for ever and ever, without any sleep, in case, when she tried to sleep her friend Lucy fell again, and kept on falling again and again. To protect Lucy, Magda would never sleep.

  And Magda woke up in the morning having slept, at first ashamed, then frightened by what she’d done, so she had betrayed Lucy even more than three times. She was worse, and more guilty, than anyone ever.

  Chapter Thirty

  Magda knew what she must do now. There could be no going back.

  If she only knew how to telephone, she would be able to call the St Cosmo Care Home for the Elderly and explain the reason she was unable to come to work today. She could imagine how they would all go on, especially in the sluice and the kitchens, saying, ‘Goodness. Who would even think that a simple girl like Magda, such a holy name, called after such holiness, to go and try to poison a priest to death?’

  And one or two might say, ‘Well, she wouldn’t have even tried that on unless there was some sort of reason.’

  Or, ‘Once a bad lot, always a bad lot. It’s always taught in the Magdalenes, that if you’re spawned in sin you’ll be forever in sin.’

  Then the conclusion of them all, sighing together, ‘That’s true, sure to God.’

  She caught the bus into the centre of Dublin. She had bought the usual day ticket, travel anywhere you could with that, all over the DART they said, if you’d all day to go nowhere in. She only had the vaguest notion of where Kev worked, but had heard his family mention some place he had to get to every day. That must be where he did his garaging. He mended motor cars and noisy power bicycles for the Gardai so they could go crazy all over County Dublin like madmen, reckless as they always were. Kev had told her about one special motorbike he admired, talking of it like it was a hero. She’d pretended to agree with him, not knowing a thing he was telling her. Or was there a separate place they mended bicycles? She had no idea if Kev could drive a car.

  Getting arrested for confessing this was the right thing. She had promised Father Doran she would confess all, so she must. A promise is a promise. Lucy had told her that, so she had to.

  Somehow, it was degrading to be arrested by Gardai who were not Kev. Also – think of it this way – there was a plus. Kev might get promotion for capturing a dangerous killer, and she would have done some good. She felt a faint glow of pride at this last achievement. He might get made sergeant, or was he already that? And while those two in plain clothes who questioned her in the St Cosmo hadn’t been bad or cross or anything, really quite pleasant if you took away what they were asking about and why they were there, she was not beholden to them the way she was to Kev. He had invited her into his family, where at one go she was made a visitor and an ally, and shown her how holy and pleasant a family truly could be. Without that glimpse, she would never have known.

  All right, she was a little taken aback by the light-hearted manner in which they had joked with their father and pulled his leg over his old toys, but he had seemed to be glad of it. And he had criticised his wife for her cooking, saying visitors starved to death waiting for her to get serving a meal up and hardly anything on the table when she finally got round to it. And Kev’s mother had taken a mock swipe at her husband, calling him an idle good-for-nothing when he said that. But it all seemed so casual, and nobody was angry and it was lovely.

  So she would get Kev his promotion, by confessing all to him, and that would be excellent. She would help them Gardai all she could, and be as frank as could be. She would have thought words like, ‘make a clean breast of things’, but that sounded a little obscene, too blunt anyway.

  She asked somebody in the Busaras how to get to the garage place, proudly giving the name of the Gardai garage. She was pointed to a bus. She caught it and asked the driver to tell her when she got there.

  This will be my last bus ride, she thought, remembering a fillum about coloured people in the United States of America, who got on a bus they weren’t allowed to. And there was such a fuss. People took sides about whether it should be all right or not. Well, she was like that. It was in colour, not black-and-white like most of the all-nighters. How strange, she thought, that she had not made Lucy suffer during the night again – first time ever – for Lucy had not fallen once even, and Magda had roused with her eyes not grainy, her head clear as a bell.

  She had had a good bath this morning, first thing, and had as much food as she could take in without making herself sick, for she knew they starved prisoners in gaol before shooting them, on chairs or standing didn’t matter much. And she had her clean knickers on underneath, with her shoes polished and her teeth done. If she’d had the sense, and the knowledge, she’d have gone to that hairdresser saloon where Kev’s family said, and made herself look really smart for her arrest, but would that be pride? She had no way of judging, because she had never been arrested and imprisoned before.

  The street was called. The driver indicated the garage. It wasn’t just a small place, like a small brick shed. It wasn’t even like a place where motors went to get petrol. It was more a yard, with buildings. She thought, goodness me, and approached the uniformed man on the gate and asked for Kev.

  ‘I have an important message for Mr Kevin MacIlwam,’ she had ready, standing ready, purse in hand.

  ‘Is it a complaint?’

  ‘No. Just a message.’

  ‘Nothing serious that could be handled by somebody else?’

  ‘No.’

  She wondered why the man seemed suspicious. Did her guilt show on her face? She supposed it must, to the trained eye.

  ‘What is the nature of your message?’ Yet more suspicion.

  ‘I work at the St Cosmo Care Home for the Elderly. Kev’s grandfather is one of the inmates.’

  She spoke quite proudly, a venial sin bu
t all right, she could work those off in Purgatory with a decent penance after confession. This was, after all, important business for Kev’s family.

  ‘Oh, nothing serious, I hope?’ His brow cleared.

  ‘It is important.’

  ‘Right.’

  He went inside his hut and spoke briefly on a telephone. Magda saw Kev emerging from a long narrow building across the opposite side of the wide yard. He came walking over. She felt so proud. It should be a black-and-whiter, of herself about to get shot and her friend – you couldn’t say boyfriend because that meant all sorts of prideful implications, and she would never reach there anyway – and it would make everybody cry real tears when they saw it.

  She wanted to go forward and meet him like on the pictures but the gate guard said no and pointed to a bench a few paces off. That was a pity because it was much prettier the way she had imagined on the road in, but if they were the rules she didn’t want anybody getting into trouble just because it would be better on TV.

  Kev came up to her, concerned.

  ‘Magda? Is it Grampa?’

  ‘Nothing like that, Kev. I came to confess.’

  ‘Confess?’

  He came with her and they sat on the bench facing the road.

  She got herself ready, and said, ‘I poisoned Father Doran. It was me stealing the medicines, those tablets.’

  ‘You, Magda?’

  ‘Yes. I gave it to him in the poteen stuff, that whisky Mr Gorragher gives him.’

  She told how she had hovered, making sure the old inmate didn’t drink from the bottle she had poisoned. She explained about the tablets.

  ‘I don’t know how many tablets I put in, not having the counting.’ It seemed vital to say this and make sure he understood, because it was evidence and lawyers were always trying to trick material witnesses.

  ‘If Mr Gorragher tried to drink first, I’d have come in fast and taken it off him and say to him I’d tell Sister Francesca, and I’d have taken it away.’

  ‘Magda. Are you sure of this?’

  She was puzzled by his doubt. ‘I could prove it, but I washed the bottle clean. I smashed it in a skip the other side of the Liffey. I did it in the night so nobody could say they’d seen me.’

  ‘Magda. You know what I have to do now, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Kev.’ She tried to look noble, as befitted somebody on the pictures. She wanted to behave her best for him. ‘What do I have to do?’

  ‘I must report this. You see that?’

  ‘Yes. I knew you would.’

  ‘Will you come and stay in the gate hut while I telephone, please, Magda?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She wished she’d been able to get a new coat, but had put on what best she had. Maybe, she suddenly thought with a pang of regret, she actually did have enough to buy something nice to look smart for her arrest, in her old savings book the bank gave her. It was too late now, and anyway, how could she have asked over the counter at the bank after a new coat?

  The gate keeper gave her a chair and Kev spoke to him beyond Magda’s hearing. He returned and kept glancing at Magda as she waited but she didn’t cry. She wasn’t going to gaol with her eyes all red and face all blotched. Kev would be ashamed enough, somebody he knew getting herself arrested for poisoning a priest.

  Some time later, after watching cars entering and leaving and Gardai coming through and getting bits of paper signed by the gate man with much consulting of watches and checking duty rosters, she was called in by Kev. He accompanied her to a separate building that looked more of a set of offices than anything belonging to a garage.

  In the interview room Maria Finty and Joe Murragh rose to greet her. They did not seem particularly angry, just puzzled. They checked her name, agreed she was Magda whom they had interviewed before. Kev was asked to stay.

  They had a desk and pens and paper and everything, with a kind of radio playing silently to itself. Magda noticed the occasional movement of numbers, and a red light shining.

  ‘Could you repeat what you said, Magda?’

  She explained that she had tried to kill Father Doran. That’s what had put him in the hospital.

  ‘Father Doran died last night, Magda,’ Maria Finty said.

  ‘That can’t be,’ Magda said firmly. ‘He’s in hospital.’

  ‘When did you see him last?’

  ‘In the Care Home.’

  She explained that she had gone to leave a message to wish him well the day of his operation. She looked at Kev, and he said immediately that he had gone with her there.

  ‘Magda looks out for my grandfather, Grampa MacIlwam. He is an inmate at the St Cosmo. That’s how Magda and I became acquainted. I was visiting Grampa.’

  ‘You haven’t visited Father Doran since?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Magda, this may be a shock to you. But Father Doran really did die last night.’

  ‘He seems to have taken his own life.’ Joe Murragh looked his apologies at Kev. ‘At least, that’s how it appears. He seems to have taken an overdose of something. How he actually got hold of the drugs is still unclear.’

  ‘He can’t have,’ Magda said. It was going all wrong.

  ‘Magda, we’ve just come from there.’

  ‘He distracted the nurse somehow, then misappropriated drugs from the schedule drugs store. The hospital authorities will make a statement later today.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I did it. Not Father Doran.’

  ‘Magda telephoned Father Doran last evening. I was meeting her,’ Kev said slowly, looking directly at Magda.

  ‘You telephoned Father Doran?’ Murragh asked Magda.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Why?’ Maria Finty asked.

  ‘To say I was so sorry he was ill, and it was my fault.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I heard Magda speak to Father Doran,’ Kev put in. ‘I did the dialing, and it was my mobile phone she used. It can be checked with the hospital switch.’

  ‘I see,’ Murragh said, remembering. ‘You’d need help with it, somebody to dial the numbers?’

  Magda made to speak, but Kev interrupted a second time and said more or less the same thing. Magda thought, does Kev not want me to say anything else about what I told Father Doran? She kept quiet, but as long as they all knew she was confessing, that was the main thing.

  ‘Was that it? You didn’t go to the hospital?’

  ‘No. I just went home. I was late. Then I got ready to come in here and confess.’

  ‘Can I explain to the officers, Magda?’

  ‘Explain what?’ She saw Kev’s determination so she said yes, not knowing what was to come.

  ‘Magda hasn’t the letters yet. She is going to learn writing and reading, but she doesn’t quite know enough so far as to be able to use a telephone or shop or buy things or count. It will come, because I am going to arrange for her to be taught. I’m going to ask one of my sisters to show her.’

  Joe Murragh left the room a few moments. He returned, and spoke to Maria Finty before saying, ‘Magda. You were right. You did not attend the hospital yesterday. Father Doran definitely did take his own life. Probably while the balance of his mind was disturbed. He might have become delirious, from his operation, stress, or anything. There will be an inquest, I suppose, but that’s as far as we can go at the moment.’

  The officers left with Kev, and she heard them speaking in low voices in the corridor but could not get their meaning.

  Kev came back alone and took her hand.

  ‘Come on, Magda. There is nothing more to be done. They will take your statement down from the recording device, but that’s it. It is as they said, about Father Doran.’

  ‘Am I not to go to prison?’

  ‘No. They say there’s no need for that. It looks like the priest was under serious stress from something in the past. They don’t know what. That’s an end to it, I think.’

  ‘Are they sure?’

  ‘Yes. Absolutely sure.
They said so.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said, but then she never did.

  ‘It’s all in hand, Magda.’

  They walked to the gate. She was so sure of what she’d done, and knew it was wrong.

  ‘They said things had gone on. The priest did it to himself. They know it was so in the hospital.’

  ‘But I started him off doing it.’

  ‘They don’t see how you can be certain. You couldn’t work out the dose or anything.’

  ‘I gave him what I had. In the poteen.’

  ‘How can you prove it? How can the Gardai?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘The tablets could have been any old thing, Magda.’

  She was worried now that her confession somehow didn’t seem to count. She told him so. And now she would be told off for taking time off and not turning up at work when she was supposed to.

  ‘Look, Magda.’ He faced her at the bus stop. ‘Wait until it’s my dinner hour. I’ll get permission in the circumstances to come with you to church. You can call there and ask for a Mass to be said for Father Doran.’

  ‘I don’t know how much it will cost.’

  ‘I’ll come with you. It can be your first lesson in counting. I’ll work the money out with you and show you. Like I told the Gardai detectives.’

  ‘That was a lie, Kev. Saying you were teaching me.’

  ‘No. It’s true. Your lessons start now.’

  ‘Is it true?’ She was getting a headache from not knowing where she was with any old thing.

  ‘First of many, Magda. I’ll be about forty minutes. See the clock at the gate?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When the long stick gets to the top, I’ll be able to come with you. We’ll pay for the Mass, then you can go on to work and tell them you’re late because you called to arrange a Mass for Father Doran. OK?’