Lynne Pemberton - Marilyn’s Child

Four eager faces are looking into mine, eight wide eyes fixed on me. ‘He puts Robert Redford in the shade. His eyes are the deepest blue, like the sea. And not the Irish Sea, more like the Indian Ocean. His hair is so smooth it shines like polished glass, and when he smiled, sweet Jesus …’ I pretend to swoon. ‘I swear he made me feel faint just to be looking at him.’

‘Did he say much?’ It was Mary Flanagan. Then in the next breath: ‘How old is he?’

‘I’d say he’s in his late twenties, and yes we talked for more than an hour. He asked me millions of questions about myself. To be sure, he hung on my every word.’

‘How long?’ Bernadette Kennedy looks dubious.

‘Well, almost an hour,’ I say quickly. ‘He even told me where he was born.’

‘Where?’ Bridget pipes up.

‘Dublin. He misses city life a lot, so he says. It’s going to be mighty quiet here in Friday Wells, I say. Very boring after Dublin. Nothing much goes on here apart from John Connor throwing up his wages every Friday night outside the pub, Paul Flatley giving his missus a black eye once a month, or me causing havoc in the orphanage. Jimmy Conlon sometimes has an epileptic fit, and John Joyce coughed up his insides last year.’

‘Mother of God, Kate O’Sullivan, did you really say all of that?’ That was Rosemary Connelly, her black eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t believe you. Tell the truth, or let the good Lord strike you down dead this very minute.’

I point my forefinger in Rosemary’s direction. ‘Rosemary, will you stop it with the good Lord Almighty stuff? You know as well as I do I don’t believe God will be my judge. I think I can be my own best judge. To be sure, don’t you think I get enough of that from the sisters without you preaching? I’m telling the truth when I say that Father Declan Steele is a god amongst men, and I for one would like to kiss him full on the lips. I’m in love, I tell you. In love with Father Steele.’

Bridget screams, ‘Mary, Mother of Christ, he’s a priest!’

I’m enjoying myself. ‘He’s a man, the most handsome man I’ve ever seen in my whole life.’

‘And who, pray, is the most handsome man you’ve ever seen in your life, Kate O’Sullivan?’

I swivel my head in search of the voice, and spot the stooped figure of Mother Thomas, her black habit shining like sealskin in the overhead light. Her eyes are button bright and piercing behind the rimless spectacles, and her cheeks are puffed out and red, bright red, like she’s been daubed with scarlet ink, or has applied too much rouge. Since she doesn’t wear make-up I assumed she’s been running. She always gets red-faced when she exerts herself.

I’m shaking inside but, determined not to cower or show fear, I look her straight in the eye. What can she do to me that she hasn’t already done, I ask myself. And the knowledge that I am leaving soon, in a matter of weeks, gives me added strength. ‘The new curate, Mother Thomas, Father Declan Steele.’

‘That’s enough.’ The nun raises her voice. ‘It’s himself, a Catholic priest.’

I shrug. ‘That doesn’t stop him being handsome. Surely God made him so?’

I can see the tip of the cane she keeps hidden inside the wide detachable sleeves of her habit. With a look that would, less than six months ago, have filled me with terror, Mother Thomas takes three long strides, her rosary beads making a clanking sound as she comes to a halt a few inches from where I’m standing.

We face each other, adversaries as always, only now I’m not afraid. For the first time since Mother Thomas had come to the orphanage in the summer of 1967 when I was five she didn’t scare me. The five-foot-three eleven-stone battleship of a woman has in the past year shrunk, and now seems to shrink even more before my very eyes. Ha! Perhaps there is a God. The thought makes me smile. She knows I’m no longer afraid, the knowledge makes her more aggressive, yet strangely less terrifying. When we’d first met I was small for my age, and Mother Thomas had seemed huge. Now it was I who towered above the diminutive nun; it felt good.

Within weeks of her arrival she’d singled me out for her own particular brand of discipline. ‘Evil rebellious child, it’s a hard lesson you need to be taught, someone has got to do it if we are to save your soul.’

Often I was to wonder, Why me? What had I done to make her hate me so much? We were all afraid of her, and most of the girls still are; I suspect even Mother Virgilus, the Mother Superior, is. The bead-eyed monster nun from hell I call her – behind her back, of course, and always in hushed whispers.

I’ll never forget an incident that happened about four months after her arrival. The memory, I’m convinced, is one that will remain with me until I’m very old, maybe until I die. I hate liver. Is that so bad? I know it’s good for me, or so everyone says, but I can’t stand the taste and gag at the smell. One evening, with a loud disgusted grunt, I’d refused to eat a plate of liver and onions. Mother Thomas had rapped my knuckles hard with my knife and fork before forcing my head into the plate of rapidly congealing food. Yet still I’d refused to eat, even under threat of house arrest (all free time spent in the bedroom for at least a week). Four hours later the liver and I met again; still I refused to eat. Two days later, weak with hunger, my hands raw from the repeated beatings, I began to eat. With each bite I cursed Mother Thomas, and almost choked on the last morsel.

A few minutes later, the entire meal mixed with a glob of phlegm had flown out of my mouth to land on the hem of Mother Thomas’s habit. I don’t think she ever forgave me for that, and even now, after all this time, I can’t bring myself to think about the look on her face as she’d carefully spooned my vomit from her habit on to my plate. She did it slowly and methodically, and as I watched the realization of what she intended to do had dawned, and I remember wishing with all my heart that I’d eaten the liver when it had first been served.

Now I can feel her breath, hot and moist; it smells rank like bad meat. I want to spit in her face, and think of the pleasure it would give me. I watch her tongue dart out to lick her thin and curly lips, the top one puckered like ragged scar tissue. It’s a face better suited to a witch than an angel of the Lord. She’s from the north; Belfast, I think Bridget said. ‘That’s why she’s cruel, been taught by the English.’ Her accent, unlike mine, sounds almost English, her voice high-pitched and squeaky like a child.

‘A Catholic priest is not an object of desire. I won’t have you talking about the good father in that way. Blasphemous it is, you know so, Kate O’Sullivan. If you dare utter one more word about Father Declan Steele, I’ll see to it that you –’

I interrupt. ‘You’ll see to what, Sister Thomas? See me burn in hell? See me get my comeuppance?’ I can see her anger rising and feel a familiar panic. I’ve got what I call jelly belly and I take a deep breath.

‘What did you call me?’

‘Sister Thom—’

I glimpse the cane, like a rigid snake sliding down her sleeve. Now the jelly belly has gone to my legs and I’ve got to summon up every ounce of strength to say, ‘I called you Sister.’

‘It’s Mother to you, Mother, Mother, Mother! Say it, you evil girl. Say it, or I’ll see to it that you –’ The banshee shrieks have a familiar ring and I know she’s lost it, her mind that is, and as of now anything can happen. With all my strength I fight my fear. At the very worst she’s going to cane me, and I can survive that.

In a calm voice I say, ‘I suppose you’re going to do what you always do, give me a good beating, and not just a thump round the head, a really good hiding. How can anyone be taught a lesson unless they’re black and blue and bleeding like our Lord on the cross with nails in his hands, suffering so that we might suffer? When I was a little girl I really believed grown-ups when they told me I had to suffer for my sins. I don’t believe that any more, and I’m not afraid.’