He’s smiling and I know I’ve made him happy. I find myself smiling too. I had a lot to smile about. I was leaving the orphanage, going to art college, and Father Steele obviously liked me – he was even willing to give up his free time to teach me the ways of the world. He cared. God for once had listened to my pleas. Sometimes God was good.
I’d expected to feel different. Yet I feel the same as I did yesterday and the day before. I’d dreamt of this day for such a long time, how could it cheat me this way? Being sixteen meant freedom, so why didn’t I feel free? And why this heavy feeling in the pit of my belly, like I’ve swallowed a lump of lead? My hand under the covers slides across my groin; it aches just above my pubic bone. It’s June 2, too early for my period. Perhaps I’ve got a temperature. With my other hand I touch my forehead: it’s cool. I’ve felt like this a couple of times before, once after eating too much pudding at Lizzy’s house, and the time I try not to think about too much, when a couple of years ago Mother Paul punched me in the stomach. That had hurt a lot and I’d cried a lot, but not in front of her. At the sound of coughing, I swivel my eyes right. Christine Donovan has the worst cough I’ve heard since Theresa Doyle died. Her nose scabs and she makes it worse by picking at the scabs until they bleed. Bridget reckons she’s got bronchitis, but Mother Thomas won’t have it. ‘Nothing that a bit of Vick and cough medicine won’t sort out.’ The nun’s been saying that for the last six weeks; it’s not sorting it out, in fact it’s worse. Some nights her tubes rattle so much I think I’m on a railway siding. I can’t watch as she hacks then spits into a metal dish on the floor, but I can hear and I feel sick.
I’m sorry for her, we all are, but I wish she slept somewhere else. In that instant I remember I’ll be sleeping somewhere else very soon. Tonight. With both arms I pull myself into a sitting position, my legs sprawled wide. My mouth is dry, as are my lips. I run my tongue over the top lip and bite a piece of loose skin from the bottom. It’s early, very early, about six a.m. I yawn, glancing up and right to the window above my bed. Idly I watch a bird land on the windowsill; it pecks at the glass for a few seconds before hopping along the sill. I think it’s a thrush but I’m not certain. I turn over, the bed creaks and the bird, startled by the sound, takes flight. I close my eyes tight and think of where I’ll be tonight, and the ache in my belly starts to ease.
I’m going to be with him, in his house, just the two of us. The thought fills me with joy and just a tiny frisson of fear. Afraid of being alone with the curate? I ponder the question then dismiss it as silly and childish. The curate is a good man, I tell myself, his outburst over the broken vase an isolated incident.
I believe, rightly or wrongly, that Father Steele and I have formed a friendship, a bond. After the initial portrait sitting when the cat had given me back my tongue we’d talked a lot. He’d talked about his family, mostly his da, who he’d had a very close relationship with. I recall the pride in his voice when he’d talked of his father working all his life in the shipyards, till at forty he got to be foreman, the proudest day of his life. ‘God-fearing and honest, salt of the earth, my Dad,’ he’d said. ‘Allowed himself one Woodbine and a pint of Guinness a night. Said he’d seen too many good Irishmen go bad with the drink.
“‘Aye, there’s a great big wide world out there, Declan,” he’d say. “Way past Dublin and Ireland even. It’s out there for the taking, lad.’”
The priest was interested in me, I knew by the amount of questions he asked. No one had ever shown so much interest in me and I’d found myself responding to him in a way I’d never done before. He made me feel special and grown up. I think for my part I made him laugh a lot, and once he said I was like a breath of fresh air.
Since meeting Father Steele I’d thought about God a lot. Perhaps getting the job with the curate was the work of the Lord. Could He, who had for so long overlooked me, have had a hand in this twist of fate, I ask myself. Perhaps I wasn’t all bad, as the nuns would have me believe. I’m not, I have never been, convinced I was truly bad – deep inside that is. Mischievous, yes; cheeky, or lippy as Mother Thomas said; and I’ll give them wilful sometimes, but evil, never. Is locking Mother Paul in the lavvy and hiding the key evil? Or creeping downstairs with Bridget on a Thursday night after the weekly grocery delivery to ease the ache in our howling bellies? It had been my idea to shave thin slices off the cheese and corned beef then re-wrap it, and then water down the milk. We’d got away with it for five weeks until Bridget dropped a milk bottle. It had shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces on the stone floor and Mother Paul had caught us red-handed, desperately trying to clean up. I don’t want to think about what happened later – not today, not on my birthday.
Sliding my legs from under the cover, I let them dangle from the side of the bed. My toenails are dirty and the soles of my feet hard with a thick scaly layer of dead skin. This makes me think about a hot bath, with bubbles and deep water right up to my chin. My feet are long and slender, I take a size eight. Bridget, who is a tiny four and a half, always says they are too big for my body. I’m five feet eight and most of that height in my legs, so I’ve always thought my feet match my legs.
I’m the tallest girl in my class, and by far the tallest in the orphanage. I don’t look like any of the other girls from the village. I suppose it’s because I don’t look Irish. I recall Father O’Neill’s words when repeating what Mother Peter had said: ‘Not an Irish angel.’ I make a silent promise to ask her about that. For a start (as a rule) the Irish have different skin to me, very different: pink and freckled, and they rarely tan. At the first sight of the sun my skin turns a golden brown. Nor are they (again as a rule) tall and willowy, with hair the colour of a tropical beach and eyes that can be grey or blue depending on the light.
In the past I’d often wondered if the way I look had made some of the local villagers treat me with what I felt was a sort of suspicion. They often whispered behind their hands as I passed; some of the women looked at me with blatant disapproval; and lately I’d seen the odd look in the eyes of some of the men. Bridget said it was the eye of lust. They wanted to poke inside my knickers. From a very young age I’d decided that the only man to enter my secret place would have to love me, a lot, and be prepared to show me just how much he cared. If he didn’t come along then I wouldn’t settle for second best. I’d be celibate. I’d learnt the word last week when reading a magazine piece on feminism. I’d have my work and surround myself with friends and like-minded people. Then I wouldn’t need the sex thing at all.
Idly I wonder how people will react when they find out I’m to be living and working for the curate. Ha, the news will get the tongues wagging.
I brighten at the thought of that and of Mary O’Shea’s anger. Rumour had it she’d wanted her own daughter Marjorie to get the job. Marjorie who has carthorse legs, black hair on her upper lip and on her stomach (according to Lizzy Molloy) and a distinctly fishy body smell. How anyone would even consider putting mangy Marj in the same space as the divine curate is beyond me. She’d best stay with her monster mother; at least then there wouldn’t be two houses spoilt.
Dropping my feet to the floor I stand up very straight, stretch, then pad quietly towards the window. I was right about the time, the milk van is pulling out of the gate. Terry O’Leary always delivers no later than six-fifteen every morning, except Sunday, when it’s seven a.m. But I was wrong about the sun: a whitish mist hangs above a ragged strip of wall in front of my window. Tiny lavender flowers blossom from a deep crack, prompting a memory of when two lads from the village, one of them Noel Duggan whom Bridget had a crush on, but whom we found out later was secretly in love with me, had tried to sneak into our dormitory. They’d been caught and Bridget and I had been punished. For a couple of minutes I watch a sharp shower pound out a beat on the corrugated roof of the laundry, then I turn away from the window. With a jolt of anticipation I think about the day ahead and of how everything is going to be different. A fresh start, the first day of my new life.
Dressed and downstairs in the breakfast hall before anyone else, I’m greeted by Mother Peter. In her right hand she’s carrying a package. ‘Top of the morning to you, Kate O’Sullivan.’
I’m smiling. This woman, I believe, is a good woman. She behaves the way I think God-fearing