‘I’ll ask if she can see you.’ She squinted her eyes. ‘She may be in chapel, but you can wait in here.’ Beckoning for Merryn to follow, she opened a set of double doors to a parlour.
After she left, Merryn heard her shovelling down the corridor and the tap tap of her walking stick disappearing in the distance. The parlour was a long narrow room with high cathedral ceilings, gleaming parquetry floors and cut glass windows overlooking a cobbled courtyard with a couple of wooden benches placed against the far wall—where an iron gate opened to the forecourt of the church. Along the side of the room were rows of hardback chairs, almost as though it was set up for a meeting. For nearly an hour Merryn waited, pacing up and down, picking up a copy of the Catholic Weekly and then the Advocate, which she thumbed through. Unable to concentrate, she put them back down again. She wondered if she’d been forgotten. Perhaps the old nun had got distracted. Just when she was about to go to the door to see if anyone else was around, she heard the sound of feet padding down the hallway. But it wasn’t Sister Bernadette who entered the room. It was the Mother Superior.
‘Sister Bernadette is unavailable,’ she said, gliding across the parquetry to Merryn. ‘I recognized your name. Maybe I can help you?’ When Merryn explained why she had come to see Sister Bernadette, an even sterner look came over the nun’s severe face. Feeling her face burn, Merryn felt as though she was back in primary school being scolded for bad behaviour.
‘Well, perhaps you should have thought of that then,’ the nun said, appearing to lack any compassion whatsoever. ‘Before you did what you did with the young man...and before you signed the adoption papers. There’s absolutely nothing we can do at this stage. We are sworn to secrecy.’ She stood up and went to the window. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go or I’ll be late for Benediction. I can see Father O’Leary has just arrived.’
‘But can’t you at least tell me where he is? Is he in the orphanage? Or has he gone to a family? Is he happy?’
A pause. ‘As I have said, we are sworn to secrecy.’
With one hand placed on the brass cross of her thick wooden rosary beads tied around her waist, she then moved swiftly towards the door, her habit flailing around her body as though she was a black bird flapping its wings. Holding the door handle, she turned and held Merryn’s desperate gaze.
‘If you like you can join us in the chapel,’ she said, her voice softening a smidgen. ‘Maybe you could light a candle for him and say a prayer.’ She looked at her watch. ‘The service will start in five minutes.’
A few minutes later, Merryn sat in a wooden pew in the hugely ornate church, having lit a small white candle and placed it in the holder by the altar. Is this how her son would end up? she wondered as she stared at the little boys sitting in front of her. Surely not. She hoped desperately that he was out in the world somewhere with a kind family. Before the little boys filed back down the aisle, where they would have had to pass in front of Merryn, the Mother Superior ushered her outside. It was then that Merryn’s eyes met Sister Bernadette’s for just a moment, and in those eyes, she thought she could see a look of great empathy. Hurriedly she rummaged in her bag for a pen and a piece of paper, quickly writing her address down.
‘Just in case,’ she whispered, handing Sister Bernadette the piece of paper and at the same time looking around to see if anyone was watching. Fortunately, the Mother Superior was deep in conversation with Father O’Leary, and the other nuns were walking back to the convent.
For months after that visit, Merryn had fallen into a deep depression. Eventually, however, she came to terms with the fact her son was gone for good. Yet there had not been a day before or since when at some stage she didn’t think of those beseeching little eyes and wonder about him. Who did he look like? And if he was with a family, was it a good family? Did they love him? Cherish him? Would they tell him he was adopted? And if they did, would he wonder who his real parents were? And why those cruel parents had given him away?
Not long after that visit to the convent, Merryn received a Christmas card and a short note from Sister Bernadette. She wrote in a chatty sort of way, almost as though the mail was being censored, talking about life in the convent and how she loved teaching the little children in the orphanage. And how she was praying for Merryn each day, particularly at Christmas time. Merryn had answered in much the same vein, hoping to build up confidence. This is how it went on each year, with Merryn careful not to overstep the mark, for she was sure the nun would have passed on any news if she could. Last Christmas, she told Merryn the Mother Superior had sadly passed away. Merryn wondered if this was a good omen. In any case, she took the bull by the horns and asked Sister Bernadette if she could please tell her anything about her son. It was not as though Merryn wanted to turn up on the doorstep demanding the little boy back. It was just that she wanted to know he was okay. See him. Just once. Even from a distance. She knew she had signed papers giving her rights away and she shouldn’t be hounding the convent, but it was her only chance. When she didn’t hear back, she wrote again, this time telling her how she and Jake were going to be married.
Now she had received that last letter—telling her not to write anymore. It was as if Merryn had definitely overstepped the mark, which she knew she probably had.
She imagined her mother’s heartbroken face if she ever found out Merryn had given her grandson away, a grandson to take the place of the only other male in the family. Her father. And what would it do to her beloved sister, Amy? Shatter the belief she had in her big sister forever. For after their father was tragically killed, when crop dusting, Merryn had tried to fill the huge void he left behind by helping Amy with her homework and driving them both to school in the old Holden Ute, singing all the way at the top of her voice to try and lift Amy’s spirits.
And then at school, Merryn would take her lunchbox and sit with Amy during recess, even if that meant Merryn missed out on netball practice. For although Merryn was hurting as much as Amy, perhaps even more so, she felt as the eldest, it was her duty to ensure her little sister got through that dreadful time, even giving the school bully, who called Amy a sis for crying, a black eye down behind the toilets, which his parents reported to the headmaster. Two days later the headmaster summoned both Merryn and the bully to his office. However, looking at the size of the bully and then Merryn, he told the boy’s parents it must have been an unfortunate accident. Why else would a boy that size let himself be bashed up by a mere slip of a girl? Later, in the playground, the headmaster gave Merryn a conspiratorial wink as he walked past. To this day, Merryn felt that the dreadful anger she had felt inside must have given her a supernatural strength to do such a thing.
As it was, Amy had been devastated when Merryn left to go to Perth on a supposed working holiday, but by then she was two inches taller than Merryn and could drive herself along the winding dirt road to the school in Musellbrook. When she’d first found out she was pregnant, Merryn had thought of telling them. Yet even though she was desperate for some emotional support, Merryn knew her mother would have been mortified. How could she hold her head high at Mass each Sunday, let alone with her friends? And if Merryn had told Amy, it would have put too much pressure on her to keep it a secret. Merryn had landed herself in this mess. She had to accept her lot and get on with it. Perhaps, if her father had been alive, it might have been different.
Yet despite all this, Merryn felt it wasn’t just the fact she got pregnant that would now shatter her mother and Amy, but that she gave the baby away without consulting them. That’s what would kill them both. If they knew they hadn’t been given a chance to make that baby part of their lives, to celebrate every birthday, every Christmas. For as it was, Merryn had done that on her own, even hanging a Christmas stocking over the fireplace of whatever house she lived in and awaking