12 The Family Way (26 page)

We had reached the raspberries. She surveyed them and shook her head. “Not much here,” she said. “I love that talk about their vegetables and fruit having to last the sisters all winter. The ground is so poor here that they never get a decent crop of anything. We’re on a rock, you see. The soil is just not deep enough.” She started plucking raspberries and dropping them into the basin. I followed suit.

“Why do they need enough vegetables for the winter if the convent has money coming in from these donations?” I asked.

“Good question. I’ve had to help prepare the sisters’ meals and frankly they don’t eat too well—lots of soups and beans and coarse bread. Of course they may like it that way, as a continual penance.” She grinned. “But the ground is so rocky they can’t even dig graves for the nuns to be buried here, because they can’t get down far enough in the solid rock.”

“So where are the nuns buried then? I thought I was told they never left this place after they made their profession.” I looked around at the rows of plants and then the small orchard beyond. Someone had been digging up a patch of bare earth over by the orchard. On one side of us was the severe façade of the building with its turrets in the corners and sloping slate roof, and on the other three the high brick wall. I saw no cemetery.

“They aren’t,” she said, then laughed when she saw my surprised face. “There’s a crypt under the chapel and the dead nuns are put in big stone coffins down there. Poor old Sister Francine was taken down there only a few weeks ago.”

“I gather she was very kind.”

“And a good midwife too,” Elaine said. “To be honest with you, Molly, I’m not looking forward to having this baby with those sisters helping with the delivery. I don’t think either of them has much idea what to do. And they are both horribly impatient. If there’s an emergency then God help us all.”

“Couldn’t you ask to send for a doctor if there was an emergency?” I asked.

“Jerome sent for a doctor with Blanche’s baby in the end,” Elaine said, “but we have no telephone or means of communication with the outside world so sending for a doctor requires somebody to run to the nearest house. By the time he got here it was too late.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off that high wall. Now that I was close to it I saw that it was topped with broken glass. I wondered whether this was to keep intruders out or the occupants in.

“So are we ever allowed out to go down to the town or for a walk?” I asked. “Or do the girls sometimes slip out when Sister isn’t looking?”

Elaine laughed. “Allowed out? Slip out? Honey, we are prisoners here. Haven’t you noticed Sister and her keys? We can’t even get to the nuns’ part of the building.”

“What about the chapel?” I pictured it in my mind’s eye, with each half open to the altar. “All one has to do is go up to the altar and walk around into the nuns’ half and leave through their door.”

“I tried that,” Elaine said. “When they are at one of the services in chapel they lock our door. When they are not they lock their door.”

The tension that had been steadily growing inside me was ready to explode. This charade had gone on long enough. I would go to Sister now and tell her that I had changed my mind and no longer wanted to stay. Blanche could have her bed back and I’d be leaving.

“I need to go and find Sister Jerome,” I said.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Elaine warned. “She’d think you were trying to get out of work, and you don’t want to annoy her on your first day.”

“But I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to stay,” I said.

This made Elaine laugh. “Oh, that’s a good one,” she said.

“What do you mean? She can’t keep me here against my will.”

“My dear sweet innocent, she wants that red-haired baby. She wants it badly. There is no way she is going to let you go,” Elaine said. She threw another raspberry into the basin, then paused to brush back a wayward curl from her face.

“Surely, if I went to the other nuns and explained to them—Sister Perpetua seemed nice enough. They’d understand, wouldn’t they?” As I said this it occurred to me that perhaps they enjoyed their share of the money that Sister Jerome earned for them and they too were looking forward to the money this red-haired baby would bring in.

“You’d never have a chance to speak to them. We’re cut off from them, in fact the only time we see them at all is through the screen at morning mass.”

“What about all the other times they go to pray? Don’t nuns have services in chapel all the hours of the day and night?”

“They do, but I told you—they lock our door when they are in chapel.”

My indignation was now rising. “This is ridiculous,” I said. “I’m not going to stay against my will. What about those girls who act as porters? They can open the front door. Doesn’t she worry about them getting out?”

“You’ll soon notice that the only girls selected to be porters are those who really want to be here and have nowhere else to go. Also those who aren’t likely to have a beautiful baby.”

I listened to this in stunned silence. It was almost too much to believe. Then I shook my head. “Very well, if she thinks she can keep me locked away in here, I’ll escape. There must be a way to climb out somewhere.” As I said this I looked at the wall with its broken glass on top.

Elaine shook her head. “In case you haven’t tried yet, none of the downstairs windows open and the upstairs windows only open onto this garden. And there is only one door that connects our part of the building to the front part where the nuns live, and that door is always kept locked.” She moved conspiratorially closer, lowering her voice even though we were far enough away from the bean pickers. “To tell you the truth I’ve been itching to get out of here myself. Not to run away or anything. I know I’ve got to see this through if I want to have a chance at a normal life. But just to be part of the outside world for a while—for the hell of it. So now that you’re here, we can maybe work on something together. There may be a way to climb over the wall from the roof of the henhouse. We’ll have to experiment.” She grinned. “Yes, that sounds like fun. You’ve cheered me up a lot.”

She hadn’t cheered me up at all. I looked across at the chicken run, tucked in the corner against the far wall. It was completely exposed to the convent building with not a single tree or bush in front of it, and what’s more, I couldn’t see any way that we could climb up to the roof of the henhouse unless we could get our hands on a ladder to use—but if the nuns locked us in so securely, I doubted that they’d be careless enough to leave a ladder lying around. And then there would be the small matter of hauling ourselves over that wall with its broken glass—and lowering ourselves down the other side. I didn’t fancy my chances of climbing or dropping down the other side in my current condition.

But one thing was sure. I was leaving this place one way or another. Keep calm and think logically, I told myself. There was no need to panic. I would first ask Sister Jerome if I could leave. She seemed to have taken to me, as a fellow Irishwoman. If she denied my request, I’d have to think again. Then I realized that I did have a way to contact the outside world and let Sid and Gus know about my predicament. Blanche was due to leave in the morning. All I had to do was to find a pen and paper and write a message to them which Blanche could deliver to The Lighthouse Inn or even mail to them. It was at the most only a matter of waiting. Thus relieved I went back to work.

Twenty-six

I went back to picking raspberries, my hands trembling a little. Now I knew that I had to tread very carefully. From everything I had seen, Sister Jerome was a ruthless and determined woman. I had to make sure that she did not suspect I wasn’t who I claimed to be. I had to play the sweet, obedient Irish girl and look for my chances. She had to sleep sometime. Where did she put those keys when she slept? Did she lock her own door at night?

Now that I realized I was probably committed to spending the night here, my thoughts went to Sid and Gus again. They would be so worried about me. I just prayed that they didn’t try to send a message to Daniel about me. I’d never hear the last of it if he knew what a stupid thing I’d done.
Hear the last of it.
I toyed with the words. They had such a ring of finality to them. Then I told myself that I was perfectly safe for now. Sister wanted that red-haired child. She would do anything to keep me alive and healthy, at least until my baby was born.

I went back to my raspberry picking until a bell started tolling from the chapel tower.

“What’s that for?” I asked.

“It’s four o’clock. Time for the nuns to head back to chapel,” Elaine said. “They have an office every four hours, day and night. You wouldn’t catch me wanting to be a nun.” She laughed. “Not that I have the temperament for it. I enjoy the pleasures of the flesh too much. In fact if Sister only knew how wicked I really am, I’d probably be kicked out tomorrow.”

“So we don’t have to stop and pray or anything?” I asked.

“We just keep on working until suppertime at six,” she said. “Then it’s bedtime at eight-thirty, up at six in the morning, breakfast then mass then work. It’s like school, isn’t it?”

I nodded, distractedly, because something had just struck me. I had my escape route—my way out of here. It was the chapel. All I had to do was to go up to the altar and then cross into the nuns’ side of the screen. A priest would be there. He would surely come to my aid if I appealed to him for help. Now I felt a little better. And hungry. I realized I hadn’t eaten a proper meal all day. When the bowl of raspberries was full I volunteered to carry it through to the kitchen. The kitchen was a cavernous room with only a high window that showed a square of blue sky. It was like a Turkish bath in there with big pots bubbling away on a woodstove and three girls stirring away at them, looking like the three witches in
Macbeth
.

They looked at me inquiringly as I came in.

“Where did you spring from?” one of them asked.

“I just arrived,” I said. “I’m Molly. Here are the raspberries Elaine and I picked.”

“And where’s Elaine?” the same girl asked with a belligerent tone to her voice.

“Where do you think?” another girl said, chuckling. “Off lollygagging somewhere to get out of her share of the work. That’s what we’d expect from Elaine. Never done a real day’s work in her life.”

“Welcome to the female answer to Sing Sing, Molly,” one of the girls said. “I’m Gerda, this is Alice and Ethel. When is your baby due?”

“Another month,” I said, trying to remember exactly what I had said to Sister Perpetua.

“Same for me” the skinny, undernourished creature called Alice said. “Maybe we’ll be lying side by side, calling out to the saints to save us.”

“What a charming prospect you paint,” I said and all three girls laughed.

I looked around the kitchen. “I don’t suppose there is any food I could have, is there? I arrived at lunchtime and I haven’t eaten a bite all day. I don’t think I can hold out until supper.”

Gerda, who seemed to be in charge, pointed at the shelves along one wall. “There’s bread and butter there, and cheese and tomatoes. Help yourself. The one thing they don’t stint on here is food. They recognize we’re eating for two and they want healthy babies. So we can eat all we want.”

I was already on my way to the bread box and started carving myself a hunk of bread. It was freshly baked and I was positively salivating as I spread thick butter onto it and then a good slice of cheese.

“And Sister likes us to drink plenty of milk,” Gerda said. “To make sure we’ve got enough of our own to feed the baby. The milk is kept down in the cellar while the weather is as hot as this. It’s nice and cool down there.”

“The cellar?” Images of rats, spiders, and cockroaches jumped into my head, and those broken steps down which Katy had plunged to her death. “Oh, no thanks,” I said. “I don’t fancy going down to the cellar by myself. Water will do.”

“Oh, it’s not bad,” Gerda said. “Come on. I’ll show you where things are kept. You’ll have to go down there all the time when you’re on kitchen duty.”

She went across the room and into a scullery where clean plates were drying on a rack beside the sink. In one corner a stair led down by the outside wall of the building. I followed her cautiously, then saw that the stair was broad and smooth from continuous wear. What’s more it consisted of six steps, then a little landing, then a ninety-degree turn, and six more down to a narrow room. It also had a good handrail. Surely nobody could have fallen to their death down these stairs?

And when I reached the cellar I saw that it had a high window near the ceiling that let in a shaft of natural light. Gerda went ahead of me, took a dipper from the wall, and ladled milk from a churn into a tin mug. “Here you go. Get that down you,” she said. “We also keep the meat, fish, and fruit down here. As you can see it’s always cool. Apart from that window it’s all underground, sort of cut into the hillside.”

I was staring up at that window. If I piled boxes on the kitchen table it was just possible that I could reach it. However was it wide enough for me to climb through in my present state? And there didn’t appear to be any way to open it—unless I smashed it. I tucked it away as a last chance solution. I drank the milk gratefully, then came up the steps again to the kitchen. After I had eaten heartily of bread and cheese I supposed I should go out to the garden again to do more fruit picking, but it was the first time I’d found myself alone.

As I came out of the kitchen I could hear the sound of chanting coming faintly from the chapel. I went over to try the door for myself. It was indeed locked. I wondered if Sister Jerome was in there with the other nuns. I was sure the door locking must be her idea. I wondered if the other nuns had any idea that she went to such great effort to make sure that none of her charges escaped. But then of course they would all be glad of the money that our babies brought into the convent. They might know everything that was going on with us. If only I could find a chance to talk to one of them.…

I walked the length of the downstairs hallway but found no door apart from the one that led through to the chapel and the nuns’ part of the building. I went through to the extra wing that contained the laundry room downstairs and the maternity ward upstairs. Again I could hear the pathetic cry of a newborn. I felt a wave of contraction through my own body in reaction and tears came into my eyes. I could feel all too strongly what it would be like to go through the pains of labor, to hold a precious child in my arms, and know that it was about to be taken from me. No wonder Maureen changed her mind.