Brendan Graham - The Brightest Day, The Darkest Night

‘Why don’t you come with us?’ Mary asked the woman, thinking of Sister Lazarus’s words. But Biddy Earley, however hardened, was no candidate for ‘melting’ by nuns.

‘I ain’t no sinner, Sister – I don’t need no forgivin’,’ she retorted, unyieldingly. ‘Now sit quiet till t’other one comes back and then clear off out o’ here, the three o’ yis!’

Mary sat silently, offering thanks for the all-seeing hand that led herself and Louisa to this place. With her fingers, she stroked her mother’s hair, recalling the hundred brushstrokes of childhood each Sunday before Mass. As much as the dimness would allow, she studied her mother, hair all tangled and matted, its once rich lustre dulled. The fine face with that mild hauteur of bearing, now pin-tucked with want and neglect. How could her mother so terribly have fallen?

The woman’s term for Ellen – ‘widow-woman’ – what did it mean? And Ellen using her old, first-marriage name of O’Malley, as Mary had also learned from Biddy.

And Lavelle? What of Lavelle – Ellen’s husband now? Had he never found her … that time he had left the note at the convent … gone looking for her in California? The questions came tumbling one after the other through Mary’s mind.

She wished Louisa would hurry. It was all too much.

Then Ellen slept, face turned to Mary’s bosom, like a child. But it was not the secure sleep of childhood. It was fitful, erratic, full of demons. She awoke, frightened, clutching fretfully at Mary’s veil. Then, bolt upright, peered into the near dark.

‘Mary! Mary! Is that you Mary, a stor ?’ Ellen said, falling into the old language.

Then, at the comforting answer, fell to weeping.

It was some hours before Louisa returned.

Ellen, startled by the commotion, awoke and feverishly embraced her. ‘Oh, my child! My dear child!’ Then she clutched the two of them to her so desperately, as though fearing imminent separation from them again.

Along with the clothing, Louisa had brought some bread and some milk. This they fed to her with their fingers, in small soggy lumps as one would an infant.

Ellen alternated between a near ecstatic state and tears, between sense and insensibility, regularly clasping them to herself.

When they had fed their mother, Mary and Louisa prepared to go, bestowing God’s blessing on Biddy for her kindness.

‘I don’t need no nun’s blessing,’ was Biddy’s response. ‘D’you think He ever looks down on me … down here in this hellhole? But the Devil takes care of his own,’ she threw after them, to send them on their way.

Out in the alleyway, they took Ellen, one on each side, arms encircling her. As they passed the old blind woman on the stoop, she called out to them. ‘Is that you, Ellie? And who’s that with you? Did the angels come at last … to stop that blasted singing?’

Ellen made them halt.

‘They did Blind Mary, they did – the angels came,’ she answered lucidly.

‘Bring them here to me till I see ’em!’ the woman ordered, with a cackle of a laugh.

They approached her.

‘Bend down close to me!’ the woman said in the same tone.

Mary first, leaned towards her and the woman felt for her face, her nose, the line of Mary’s lips.

‘She’s the spit of you, Ellie. And the hair …?’

‘What’s this? What’s this?’ the blind woman said, all agitated now as her fingers travelled higher, feeling the protective headdress on Mary’s face.

‘A nun?’ the woman exclaimed.

‘Yes!’ Mary replied. ‘I am Sister Mary.’

‘And the other one? Are you a nun too? Come here to me!’

Louisa approached her. ‘I am called Sister Veronica.’

Again the hands travelled over Louisa’s face, the crinkled fingers transmitting its contents to behind the blindness.

Louisa saw the old woman’s face furrow, felt the fingers retrace, as if the message had been broken.

‘Faith, if she’s one of yours, Ellie, then the Pope’s a nigger,’ Blind Mary declared with her wicked laugh.

Louisa flinched momentarily.

The old woman carried on talking, her head nodding vigorously all the while, but with no particular emphasis. ‘I’m supposin’ too, Ellie – that you never was a widow-woman neither?’

‘No, I wasn’t – and I’m sorry …’ Ellen began.

The woman interrupted her, excitedly shaking her stick. ‘I knew it! I knew it! Too good to be true! Too good to be true! That’s what my Dan said afore he left to jine the cavalry … for the war,’ she explained, still nodding, as if in disagreement with herself … or her Dan. ‘ What was you hiding from, down here, Ellie?’ she then asked.

This time however, Ellen made no answer.

It was a question that resounded time and again in Mary and Louisa’s minds, as they struggled homewards. Out under the arch they went, drawing away from Half Moon Place, the old woman’s cries, like the stench, following them.

‘The Irish is a perishing class that’s what!’ Blind Mary shouted after them. ‘A perishing class … and my poor Dan gone to fight for Lincoln and his niggerology. This war’ll be the death of us all.’

By the time they had reached the door of the convent, Louisa and Mary were in a perfect quandary.

They could not reveal Ellen’s true identity, lest they all be banished. Acceptance into the convent as a novice implied a background and family beyond blemish. There could be no whiff of scandal attached to those who were to be Brides of Christ.

It would be held that they had known all along of their mother’s fallen state and engaged in the concealment of it.

‘It was not a deceit then but it is a deceit now,’ Mary said to Louisa, ‘to continue not to reveal her identity … whatever the consequence.’

‘It is a greater good not to reveal her,’ Louisa argued. ‘Mother is in dire need of corporeal salvation, if not indeed of spiritual salvation!’

‘That is the end justifying wrongful means,’ Mary argued back, torn between her natural instinct to follow Louisa’s reasoning, and the more empirical precepts of religious life.

‘We have been led to her for a purpose,’ Louisa countered. ‘It would not be natural justice to have her now thrown back on the streets. Natural justice supersedes the laws of the Church.’

Mary prayed for guidance. ‘Lord not my will, but Thine be done.’ Having passed the question of justice to that of a higher jurisdiction, Mary was somewhat more at ease with Louisa’s plan.

‘I don’t think “Rise-from-the-Dead” will recognise the likeness between you and Mother.’ Louisa gave voice to Mary’s own fear.

Mary looked at her mother’s sunken state. Sister Lazarus would have seen her only the once … and that many years ago. Still, little passed unnoticed with ‘Rise-from-the-Dead’.

They both impressed upon Ellen the importance of not revealing herself. She was a Penitent, rescued from the streets. Nothing more.

‘That I am,’ she echoed.

Sister Lazarus received them full of concern.

‘Oh, the poor wretch! Divine Providence! Divine Providence that you rescued her, from God knows what fate!’

Mary’s heart beat the easier as the older nun bustled them in without any hint of recognition.

‘A nice hot tub, then put her to bed in the Penitents’ Infirmary,’ Sister Lazarus directed. ‘You, Sisters, take turn to sit with her, lest she take fright at her unfamiliar surroundings.’

They stripped her then, Louisa supporting her in the tub, while Mary sponged from her mother’s body the caked history of Half Moon Place, both of them joyful beyond words at having been her salvation. She, who through famine and pestilence, had long been theirs.