Marilyn’s Child. Lynne Pemberton

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СКАЧАТЬ so hard he wouldn’t be able to walk for a month at the very least. But soon as he was able, I’d make him walk up the aisle with our Molly.’

      ‘Now, now, Mr Fitzpatrick, calm yourself. Sean O’Halloran was an altar boy, I seem to recall. The son of Tom O’Halloran … A good man, Tom. The lad’s no more than a slip of a thing, no bigger than an ounce of copper. In saying that, I’m not condoning what young Sean has done, not fer a minute. Sure, the young pup needs a good hiding and to be made to do the right thing by Molly …’ She sighed. ‘But if it’s God’s will, so be it.’

      ‘It’s all well and good you saying that, Mother, but I’ve got ten mouths to feed at home. I can’t afford another one. I thought you might be able to help out for a while. At least the baby would be near so as our Molly could see it from time to time. Just a few months would do, maybe stretch it to a year until our Moll gets on her feet, gets a job and a place of her own, like, then she can have the baby back. The orphanage is always needing more veggies: I’ll see to it that you get them at the right price.’

      ‘Mother Virgilus says your prices are too high now, Mr Fitz.’

      ‘My prices, like I keep telling her, haven’t altered in nigh on five years, and if she was to go and buy the same stuff down at the supermarket she’d be paying twice what I charge. So if you could have a word with her, I’d be mighty grateful.’

      A jackdaw crowed, drowning out the nun’s reply.

      Then I heard Paddy’s voice again. ‘A good woman, so yer are, Mother Peter. I knew you’d try and help. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours, so to speak.’ Paddy chuckled. The nun said nothing, so Paddy went on, ‘Good day to you, Mother Peter.’

      ‘God be with you, Mr Fitz,’ she says.

      I hear the gravel crunch under his feet, the clunk of the van door, then the engine starting up. Without making a sound, I wait until the van rumbles past the lavatory then count out five minutes in my head before slowly opening the door to step outside.

      The yard is empty. A quick peek in the scullery window reveals nothing. As I walk from the yard around the east wing to the front of the house Mr Fitzpatrick’s words are running around my head: ‘a baby having come a long way.’ I’d always been led to believe that I’d been left on the steps of the village church, less than three miles away. Well, surely that couldn’t, even in the wildest imagination, be described as a long way. It sets off bells in my head, the ones that ring whenever I think about who my parents were, and if, as in my recurring dream, they are still alive. I suppose I’m like the rest of the girls, the same as orphans everywhere: we all want to know where we’ve come from, who we are. Mrs Molloy, after seeing a film on TV, had told Lizzy I was like a young film star. Lizzy had said it was one of the star’s first films and she thought it was called Bus Stop. After that I’d become obsessed with films, to the extent of letting Eugene Crowley, warts and all, kiss me in the playground in exchange for a movie magazine. I’d spent hours poring over the glossy pictures, imagining my mother was a film star. That, I convince myself, would account for my platinum hair and beige skin tone. Who in all of Ireland looked like me?

      I cling to the thought, the idea, the dream. It explains why I feel different. If I’d been born in America to a film star who couldn’t keep me for some reason it would make perfect sense. When we were about eight or nine, Bridget had stolen a telephone book from a box in the village, and we’d spent days picking out the O’Sullivans and Costellos, making a list of the numbers, imagining that one of them might be related and intending to ring them all when we had the money. But of course we never did.

      I’ve reached the front door now. A makeshift dressing of cardboard and tape seals a wound in one of its panes of glass. As I push the door it makes an eerie creak, the sort they always have in horror movies. And I think, not for the first time – more like the hundred and first – that the house should have been demolished years ago. It’s damp: in summer the humid smelly type of damp, and in winter the bitter seeping-into-your-bones kind. There’s a wet patch above my bed that’s got bigger every year; now it covers half the wall and is furry to the touch. I know twelve girls shouldn’t be sleeping in a room that by rights should be condemned unfit for human habitation. After Theresa had died of the whooping cough I’d mentioned the damp to Mother Superior, who’d promised to look into it. True to her word, she’d looked at it, but that was six weeks ago and nothing’s been said or done since.

      The house is deserted. It’s Saturday morning and most of the girls are working: the younger kids have household duties at weekends, on a rota system that includes cleaning rooms, washing floors, changing beds, gardening, swilling out the lavatories, and the dreaded laundry. The older ones are out working, like Bridget at Mary O’Shea’s, and Mary Shanley on Fitzpatrick’s Farm. Back-breaking labour: I know, I’d done it for two months last year before I got peritonitis – ‘For my sins,’ according to Mother Thomas; ‘Our Lord works in mysterious ways.’ Just as well I hadn’t been out picking crops on my own, else I might have been a goner. As it was I had to be carried off the potato field where I’d passed out in the most terrible pain, rolled up in a tight ball, face-down in the damp earth.

      I’d spent three weeks in St Francis of Assisi Hospital; in truth, the best three weeks of my life so far. For the first time I’d had constant attention without having to fight for it. The nurses had chatted and the young doctors had taken pains to explain what they were doing and why – especially Dr Conway, who’d only to look at me with the gooey-eyed expression, the one I knew he kept specially for me, and I’d go bright red and feel a bit faint. Lizzy Molloy had come with her mother, who had brought me a box of Cadbury’s Milk Tray. I’d tried – not very hard, I have to admit – to make them last, but had ended up scoffing the lot in one long glorious chocolate afternoon. Once, Mother Peter came with a bunch of flowers. She said they were from all the nuns, but I knew she was lying; she’d bought them herself.

      How anyone can say they are bored in hospital is beyond me. I wasn’t bored for a moment, there’s always so much happening. After I’d devoured my own supply of books and any others I could lay my hands on, I’d sketched all the patients on my ward, including a girl called Sinead Webster. She was ten, and had very white skin, even whiter than Bridget’s; she looked like an alabaster doll I’d seen once in an antique shop in Cork. She could sit on her brown hair, and had hundreds of tiny freckles on her thin face. Her mother had been delighted with the portrait, and offered to pay me. I’d refused but had been over the moon when she’d bought me a Yardley soap and talcum set smelling of lavender. Sinead died two days before I was discharged. When I’d watched them take her body away I’d tried to cry, because I thought I should, but I couldn’t. I was too busy thinking about presenting a caricature I’d done of Dr Trevor Conway, who had bright red hair and small owl-shaped glasses. It turned out he was less than pleased with it, said it made him look fierce, but the ward sister had chuckled and said, ‘It’s a very good likeness, Dr Conway, to be sure.’

      As I mount the stairs that lead to the first-floor landing and the dormitory, I repeat in my head a promise I made to myself a long time ago. The first thing I’m going to have when I get to Dublin is my own room, and it will have a pink-and-white floral bedspread with matching curtains, and a kidney-shaped dressing table with a glass top and a frill around the base. Once I’m settled and selling lots of paintings, I’m going to hire a private detective to find my parents. I’m certain they are alive and, at this very moment, are no doubt searching for me.

      I gather together my canvas, pencils, paints and treasured purse with the sheepdog on the front. Bridget had been given it, and she’d given it to me for my fifteenth birthday. It didn’t matter that it was second-hand, or third- as it turned out, it was as good as new. I put all my things into my bag. The bag is large and square, the type I’ve seen hanging on the shoulders of young women from the village when, all dolled up, they go out to the pub on Saturday СКАЧАТЬ