Small Things Like These(7)

4




It was a December of crows. People had never seen the likes of them, gathering in black batches on the outskirts of town then coming in, walking the streets, cocking their heads and perching, impudently, on whatever lookout post that took their fancy, scavenging for what was dead, or diving in mischief for anything that looked edible along the roads before roosting at night in the huge old trees around the convent.

The convent was a powerful-looking place on the hill at the far side of the river with black, wide-open gates and a host of tall, shining windows, facing the town. Year round, the front garden was kept in order with shaved lawns, ornamental shrubs growing neatly in rows, the tall hedges cut square. Sometimes, small outdoor fires were made up there whose strange, greenish smoke carried down over the river and across town or away in the direction of Waterford, depending on how the wind was blowing. The weather had turned dry and colder, and people remarked on what a picture the convent made, how like a Christmas card it almost was with the yews and evergreens dusted in frost and how the birds, for some reason, had not touched a single berry on the holly bushes there; the old gardener himself had said so.

The Good Shepherd nuns, in charge of the convent, ran a training school there for girls, providing them with a basic education. They also ran a laundry business. Little was known about the training school, but the laundry had a good reputation: restaurants and guesthouses, the nursing home and the hospital and all the priests and well-off households sent their washing there. Reports were that everything that was sent in, whether it be a raft of bedlinen or just a dozen handkerchiefs, came back same as new.

There was other talk, too, about the place. Some said that the training school girls, as they were known, weren’t students of anything, but girls of low character who spent their days being reformed, doing penance by washing stains out of the dirty linen, that they worked from dawn til night. The local nurse had told that she’d been called out to treat a fifteen-year-old with varicose veins from standing so long at the wash-tubs. Others claimed that it was the nuns themselves who worked their fingers to the bone, knitting Aran jumpers and threading rosary beads for export, that they had hearts of gold and problems with their eyes, and weren’t allowed to speak, only to pray, that some were fed no more than bread and butter for half the day but were allowed a hot dinner in the evenings, once their work was done. Others swore the place was no better than a mother-and-baby home where common, unmarried girls went in to be hidden away after they had given birth, saying it was their own people who had put them in there after their illegitimates had been adopted out to rich Americans, or sent off to Australia, that the nuns got good money by placing these babies out foreign, that it was an industry they had going.

But people said lots of things – and a good half of what was said could not be believed; never was there any shortage of idle minds or gossips about town.

Furlong didn’t like to believe any of it but he’d gone, one evening, to the convent with a load well before it was due and, finding no sign of anyone at the front, had walked down past the coal house on the gable end and slid the bolt on a heavy door and pushed through to find a pretty orchard whose trees were heavy with fruit: red and yellow apples, pears. He went on with the intention of robbing a freckled pear but as soon as his boot touched the grass, a flock of wicked geese ran out after him. When he retreated, they stood up on their toes and flapped their wings, stretching their necks out in triumph, and had hissed at him.

He’d carried on to a small, lighted chapel where he found more than a dozen young women and girls, down on their hands and knees with tins of old-fashioned lavender polish and rags, polishing their hearts out in circles on the floor. As soon as they saw him, they looked like they’d been scalded – just over him coming in asking after Sister Carmel, and was she about? And not one of them with shoes but going around in black socks and some horrid type of grey-coloured shifts. One girl had an ugly stye in her eye, and another’s hair had been roughly cut, as though someone blind had taken to it with shears.

It was she who came up to him.

‘Mister, won’t you help us?’

Furlong felt himself stepping back.

‘Just take me as far as the river. That’s all you need do.’

She was dead in earnest and the accent was Dublin.

‘To the river?’

‘Or you could just let me out at the gate.’

‘It’s not up to me, girl. I can’t take you anywhere,’ Furlong said, showing her his open, empty hands.

‘Take me home with you, then. I’ll work til I drop for ya, sir.’

‘Haven’t I five girls and a wife at home.’

‘Well, I’ve nobody – and all I want to do is drown meself. Can you not even do that fukken much for us?’

Suddenly, she dropped to her knees and started polishing – and Furlong turned to see a nun standing down at the confession box.

‘Sister,’ Furlong said.

‘Can I help you?’

‘I was just looking for Sister Carmel.’

‘She’s gone across to St Margaret’s,’ she said. ‘Maybe I can help you.’

‘I’ve a load of logs and coal for ye, Sister.’

As soon as she realised who he was, she changed. ‘Was it you that was out on the lawn, upsetting the geese?’