The Whipping Club (34 page)

             
“Yeah,” Peter allowed, and then a quiet grin spread across his face likely sparked by the thought of Johanna’s appealing, adorable, impish face. Peter said that he was daydreaming of a possible future career together, when their faces would be reflected in Dublin bay, the black salty water healing their limbs, the two of them working the docks.

             
Adrian lay down in the grass close to Peter, each boy allowing the other a moment alone to bask in his private reveries. Adrian thought about his Gran, the way she set the perfect tea tray, pansies sketched into her ancient supper plates, her thin, aged hands preparing scones, butter melting on the biscuits, clotted cream scooped into a matching cream bowl rimmed in violet. The gray film on the lace curtains before she took the duster to them, the cobwebs he pointed out to her in the corners of the guest room, the room that was now his, she told him. He was her
stór
, her darling, she said often, wiping a smudge or simply touching his cheek. The statue of Mary she placed inside his room. Kneeling in prayer together, he in cotton pajamas, soft against his clean skin, she fragrant with the smell of Nivea just applied. Clear, strong memories that grew in power as he imagined their most minute details until he was feeling more pleasure than pain.

             
Their reverie was interrupted before too long by taunts from O’Connor and O’Reilly. Soon, Brother Ryder himself came over, told O’Connor to give Peter a little time up in the timber trade to teach Adrian that we don’t go off privately to tell tales out of school.

             
“Peter’s the real mama’s boy, but he don’t have no mama,” the monitors teased.

             
“He does, too,” Adrian shouted at them. He had his fists in the air as they led Peter off to the woods to cut tree stumps.

             
“It’s all right, Adrian,” Peter said, as the sun began to sink behind the woodlands. Anything to be away from Brother Ryder, he must have meant.

             
“Every time you ask for special favors, Peter’ll get his,” the monitors called back.

             
Adrian looked to Brother Ryder.

             
“I’ll learn ya, ya cabbage. We’ll scour the grounds for litter. There’s always work to be done,” Brother Ryder said. “And the two of you don’t have a brain between you, breaking rules under my nose.” He laughed aloud and continued. “I remember my own dirty thoughts at your age.” He hadn’t been so stupid around girls, though, he said, picking up ant infested apple cores, throwing them into an aluminum trash bin.

             
Adrian stumbled upon a wrapped flake bar and two pence just sitting there in the gravel. He looked toward the fields for another glance of Peter, far away now. He bent down to pick up trash and stuffed the goodies into his pocket.

As regular as ever, at three-thirty the following morning, especially invigorated after the picnic, Adrian opened his bleary eyes in the still blackness. He put his arm out to ruffle Peter awake before going off to the bakery.

             
Peter’s cot was empty. In a trancelike state, Adrian meandered past the long parade of cots into the hall. He might be using the downstairs loo, he thought, but halfway down the stairs, he gasped.

             
Leaning over the railing, he spied Peter lying motionless on the cold stone floor below.

             
“Somebody, help!” Adrian tried to scream but little came out of his mouth.

             
He hurried down the stairs and knelt by his friend’s side. Blood oozed from Peter’s mouth. His frame was stiff. Dried blood and smears of dirt covered his colorless face.

             
Boys gathered on the stairs and in the hall.

             
“Call the ambulance! Get him to hospital!” Adrian shrieked.

             
Brother Mack roused and emerged from his room. He left immediately to call for help.

             
“He must have jumped from the landing,” one boy whispered.

             
“He was always a bit delicate. Maybe went soft in the head.

Poor fella.”

             
“He committed suicide, the ultimate sin.”

             
Waking boys shook their hallowed heads.

             
“He was murdered,” Adrian shouted. “Who pushed him?”

He screamed up at the onlookers. “You motherfuckers! You killed him!” he cried as Brother Mack approached, and Adrian broke down in his arms.

             
The timber traders said he’d taken the saw, cut his own arm, and would have lain bleeding to death if they hadn’t been there to carry him home. They’d no idea how he landed on the floor.

             
Adrian didn’t believe the bastards. The very ones who buggered Peter up there in the woods. From the mad look in his friend’s eyes, the exhaustion in his defeated body each night, the rage on his small, fair face each morning—Adrian knew. Brother Ryder had given the bigger lads free rein over Peter. Everyone knew it. No one supervised the goings on in the woods.

             
The following morning, dark vengeance crowded Adrian’s mind during the simple burial service held for Peter. Past the woodlands, in a fallow field, a small, crooked cross marked his friend’s coffin in the boys’ cemetery.

This was only the third time since May that Nurse dared kiss Officer Dolan, his arms snug around her. Silver mints on his breath glossed over the drink he took. She continued to be careful, meeting him in the shed only after her work day had long ended. In the pitch black. The babies bathed and asleep, the girls’ maternity ward lights out for at least two hours. Sister Paulinas more than likely asleep.

             
But for some reason tonight, Nurse and Officer Dolan heard Sister’s heels clicking closer to the maternity ward.

             
Sister Paulinas whisked open the door to the shed, a torchlight shining in Nurse’s eyes.

             
“Suffering ducks,” Sister Paulinas said. “I wondered about this.”

             
Officer Dolan removed his arms from Nurse’s waist. Sister Paulinas slammed the shed door behind her.

             
“You have to help me,” Nurse whispered to Officer Dolan. “I have to leave or there’ll be trouble now.”

             
“Shh!”

             
“I’ll go up to Marian’s.”

             
“Shh! Go collect your things, I’ll tell her it was my–”

             
“Mention Father Brennan, and please wait for me. Don’t leave–”

             
He put his finger to his lips to quiet her, promised he would stay right there in front of the shed until she returned, and urged her to hurry up.

             
Nurse felt terrified as they opened the shed, thought about Marian and Father Brennan, and managed to look Sister Paulinas square in the eye.

             
The nun scowled at the two emerging from the shed, her arms crossed, a long crucifix gracing her white robe like silverware on a tablecloth.

             
“That one surely will rot in hell,” Sister said to Officer Dolan, pointing at Nurse as if smelling something rotten.

             
“And you, Officer Dolan—I’m appalled. You ought to be ashamed, taking advantage of the poor creature.”

             
Nurse twitched at her, gave a little curtsy, and tiptoed toward the maternity ward door.

             
“Where do you think you’re going, sneaky one?” Sister hollered after Nurse. “I always knew you’d never be any good to anybody. You’ve become a hindrance to all of us. Is that clear?”

             
Nurse stopped. “Yes, Sister,” she said.

             
“You’re good for nothing. A dirty whore and nothing more.

I knew one day you’d cause trouble. Too stupid to be saved. Get back inside that ward now.”

             
“Yes, Sister,” Nurse said, and shuffled to the door. Sister followed close behind. Nurse sneaked a look back at Officer Dolan, who fingered the set of keys dangling from his belt.

             
No, no—it was clear, Sister, that you never liked me,
Nurse thought, as she raced to her room, Sister Paulinas making a racket behind her, switching on the light in the hall to her office, ranting about what a whore Nurse was.
You’ll not be going back to work for her, Nurse. You’ll not be going back to the laundry, either, to live out your years behind bars—no, no.

             
She’d never forgotten what Sister Paulinas had told her, that she could remain as long as she was a help and not a hindrance, and she entered the scullery, putting her forefinger through an apple tart that she’d baked for the convent nuns. The last supper, she thought, still brave somewhere inside her from Officer Dolan’s kisses. She poked the pie again then hurried along to her room.

             
Dear Jesus, forgive me for I have shamed the world.
She breathed out one long sigh, glad for the inhalation of air that followed. From her night table, she grabbed her Bible and diary, her little penknife and her rosary beads and packed her second uniform and extra shoes and boxed memories of Beth, and then ran through the empty scullery.

             
Sister Paulinas stood by the large staircase, her arms still crossed. Many of the girls peered from behind the day room door, others at the window.

             
“You’re nothing but a dumb ox,” Sister Paulinas bellowed, looking at Nurse’s packed suitcase. “You know that, don’t you.” Her wild eyes glowed, and Nurse thought of her own sweet sister Anne.

This nun was not fit to clean her boots, and Nurse walked right past her down the long hall to the back door.

             
“Get back here. Nurse!” Sister Paulinas roared.

             
“Nurse
this!
Nurse
that!
The hell with you,” Nurse cried back.
             
             

             
“Start praying to Saint Jude, hopeless case that
you
are.” She managed out the door and fled to Officer Dolan standing with a torchlight by the shed.

Officer Dolan called and told Marian to expect Nurse. Marian greeted the haggard woman with a hug upon her arrival.

             
“You’re looking round like you’re to be arrested. You didn’t do anything illegal, Nurse, for heaven’s sake. You’ve got us.”

             
“No, no,” Nurse said. “I won’t stay. I just thought I might be able to borrow a few shillings,” she said.

             
Marian went for her handbag on the foyer table. “Now sit awhile.”

             
Ben could be heard upstairs in the shower. Trickling water and his occasional
humpf
as he chuckled with comedian Jimmy Clitheroe on Radio 2. A good thing he was in good spirits before another meeting with Nurse.

             
“Sure, you’ll need a bath yourself,” Marian said and handed her the money.

             
“Thanks.”

             
“And you’ve got Officer Dolan now as well, haven’t you?”

             
“He took me to the train station. He’s a kind fellow,” she said, unable to contain a self-conscious smile at the thought of him.

             
“And?”

             
“I thought I might write a letter, see if he would want to join me.”

             
After Marian calmed Nurse down with tea, they wrote a letter to Officer Dolan in care of the Castleboro Garda station so that Sister Paulinas could not seize the mail.

             
“You’ll wait here now until his response. We could use the company,” Marian said, listening to the tick tock of the big brass ship’s clock on the mantelpiece.

             
Nurse accepted Marian’s invitation to stay with them until she heard a reply from Officer Dolan. For the entire weekend, when Ben should have been free from work, he spent most of his time other than meals out of the house interviewing Jewish alumni from Trinity College at the Gresham Hotel. When he was at home he was reading the paper in the drawing room or typing at the library desk.
             
Most recently, Ben worked on a rare and welcome assignment, an international news brief dedicated to D. A. Glaser, the Nobel Prize winner for physics, a story Ben found to be a relief from local news. Mainly he spent his time wherever Nurse was not. Her presence made him edgy, reminded him of what Marian had done, she supposed. In the evenings, or if it was spilling rain, Marian and Johanna played gin or old maid at the dining table with Nurse. Otherwise they were cooking cabbage and potatoes or walking about the garden, all three of them amazed that several white camellias had already bloomed. They were especially thrilled to notice the recent purchase of a large chrysanthemum was also flowering, the scent of pale pink buds especially fragrant this cool July.