By September, Johnnie had made three visits. After each one, always on Saturdays, the nuns taunted and mocked her, but their scorn didn’t touch her, for Johnnie, a real-life flesh-and-blood brother, would hold her tight and kiss her cheek as he left. ‘I wish I had a brother like him,’ Celia had said more than once, ‘or an uncle. Anyone to take an interest in me.’
‘I’m sorry, Celia,’ Lizzie said, and she was sorry. ‘I wish I could help.’
‘Och, I know you do, and I know too you can do nothing. Jesus Christ, you have troubles enough of your own. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be grand.’
But it was hard not to worry when later Lizzie would often hear the muffled sniffles coming from Celia’s bed and know she was crying. She didn’t get out to comfort her, for Celia had no need of sympathetic words or pats on the back; she wanted a way out of that hell-hole and Lizzie was unable to help her there.
But despite Johnnie’s visits, as her pregnancy progressed she was finding the work hard-going, especially as the heat was prodigious. So one day, just after Johnnie’s visit and just before the bell for tea when she was asked to take the vestments across to the sacristy,
she was glad to be out of the heat and steam of the laundry, even for a short time. Celia was going with her and as they walked along the corridors, their arms laden with vestments, Celia said, ‘God, my clothes are sticking to me.’
‘And mine. I’ll be glad of the bath tonight.’
‘The bath’s all right. It’s the nuns, poking and prodding and making fun of us, I can’t stand.’
‘Aye, and if you cry like Queenie did last week, it’s worse for you.’
‘Aye. Still, it can’t stay as hot as this for too much longer. It’s September now, it’s got to cool down eventually.’
‘Then we’ll be complaining of the cold, no doubt. We’re never satisfied,’ Celia said, and then went on, ‘Everything all right at home?’
‘Aye, so Johnnie says. Tom starts school next week, and I’ve told him in the letter I’ll be thinking of him. Mammy has bought him the copy books and jotters an’ all, and he’s had new clothes and a brand-new pair of boots now he’s almost a schoolboy.’
There was a catch in Lizzie’s voice and Celia said gently, ‘You’ll see them before too long, Lizzie, and you can make it up to them.’
Lizzie struggled to control herself. She knew this day would come with Tom, so why was she making such a fuss? Hadn’t she the best outlook of anyone there? And here she was accepting sympathy from Celia, who’d change places with her tomorrow. ‘I know that,’ she told her. ‘It was a momentary pang, that’s all.’
‘Atta girl,’ Celia said, and they laughed together, but gently, lest any of the nuns hear.
Father Conroy was in the sacristy writing something at the desk and surprised both girls. ‘I’m sorry, Father,’ Celia said. ‘We’ve brought over the vestments. Sorry to disturb you.’
The priest looked up. He barely saw Celia. His eyes were drawn to Lizzie. The curls had now grown a little and wouldn’t fit snugly into her cap. Tendrils framed her face and these were set aglow by the slanting September sunlight coming through the window.
The priest watched the girls as they busied about the small room, hanging some garments and folding others into drawers in the chest, and he felt his innards grip him so tight he bit his lip to prevent a cry escaping him.
She looked, he thought, like one of the cherubs, and yet she was alive with sin. It must be writhing inside her, for she was a harlot and whore or she’d not be in this place. One who enjoyed sex and gave herself freely to men, any man. Oh, they came with their stories of innocence, of rape and all, but he knew what these women were, flaunting themselves, even before him, a priest.
He felt a stirring in his loins that he’d fought and prayed to control for months, but this girl was so affecting that he could feel his penis getting harder by the minute. The two girls had finished. He could let them go, and no one would be any the wiser. He’d cope. God, he’d done it before. But at the door the girl smiled at him and he knew he was lost.
He got up from the desk. ‘Go on now,’ he said to Celia, ‘but not you, my dear.’ And he put his hand on Lizzie’s arm as he spoke. ‘It’s time you and I had a little chat.’
Until then, Lizzie had had no feeling of alarm. She didn’t disbelieve the things Celia had said about the priest, but he’d done or said nothing untoward to her and so she’d pushed it to the back of her mind and thought, in a way, her advanced pregnancy protected her.
She saw the priest’s brow glisten with sweat and the fingers holding her arm tremble slightly.
Her startled eyes met those of Celia’s. ‘You poor sod,’ Celia’s eyes said, almost as if she had spoken the words, and the roof of Lizzie’s mouth felt suddenly very dry.
Celia closed the door behind her and the priest released his hold. Lizzie told herself to act normally. ‘What is it, Father?’ she asked, and her dry mouth made her voice husky. ‘What do you want?’
The priest was mesmerised. First the smile and then the husky voice. The girl was coming on to him, gagging for it most likely. And Lizzie saw the look on the priest’s face and every nerve in her body urged her to run from the place, whatever the consequences later. But, as if the priest knew of her intention, he was in front of her, blocking her way to the door. He turned the key in the lock and smiled. ‘Sit down, sit down,’ he urged, and Lizzie, not knowing what else to do, sat on the edge of her seat and the priest sat opposite her, the other side of the desk. He mopped his face with a large handkerchief and tried to control his breathing.
‘What do I want, you ask?’ he said. ‘It’s what anyone wants, what you want too, for you’ve shown me as much.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Father.’
‘You do know what I am talking about,’ the priest said contemptuously. ‘Don’t play the innocent with me. You are a whore, up for it at any time, night or day.’
The priest looked at her and thought it sacrilegious to look so soulful when she was so sinful. Girls such as this one needed no consideration, no respect, for they had none for themselves.
‘No, Father.’
‘What do you mean, no?’
‘I’m not like that, Father.’
‘What sort of girl are you then?’ the priest said mockingly. ‘One who’s pregnant, but wears a wedding ring. Did your husband send you here?’
‘No, Father. We lived in England then and he’s in the army overseas.’
‘And you opened your legs for another,’ the priest said, his breath coming in short pants. ‘How many men? Did they pay well?’
‘No, Father.’
‘Oh, you gave it them free, did you?’
‘No, Father.’ With horror, Lizzie saw the priest’s hands were between his legs, rubbing himself, and her mouth filled with sour-tasting saliva. She must make the priest see what sort of woman she was. She must stop this nonsense.
But the priest had seen the disgust on her face and it had enraged him. What right had she to look at him, a man of God, in that way?
‘Father, it was dark,’ she said. ‘There’s a blackout in England and in this pitch blackness I was attacked on my way home from work.’
‘D’ya expect anyone to believe that?’
Lizzie gave a sigh. Despite herself and her trepidation of the position she was in, the fact that she’d told the truth and that pervert was working himself up over it inflamed her. ‘D’you know, Father, in this place I don’t, for all it’s the truth, that I’d swear on my mother’s life. Here they bend the truth for their own ends.’
‘You are a harlot! A whore!’
‘I am not, Father.’ Even in her anger, Lizzie quailed. What was she doing, answering back to a priest? Sister Jude would kill her for this.
Father Conroy saw the fear flit across Lizzie’s face and he smiled, and the maliciousness that Lizzie read in that smile made her stomach turn over. ‘I’ll tell you how you earned your money,’ he said, and she saw the lust in his eyes and his hands worked faster. ‘You lay down and let men have their way with you. His voice was now punctuated with pants. ‘If you were attacked at all, it was because you wouldn’t give the man what you’d promised him.’
‘No, Father, no. Jesus Christ!’ Lizzie had risen to her feet. ‘Please, please let me go, Father.’
The priest’s face was crimson, she noted, his voice guttural as he said, ‘I know how it was. I know how you girls are, parading yourself, selling your bodies, craving sex.’
‘I’m not, I wouldn’t. Dear Christ, believe me, Father,’ Lizzie cried, leaping towards the door. ‘I can’t stay here. It’s wrong. Sister Carmel will…’
‘The other girl will have told her I have need of you,’ the priest said, as he came from behind the desk and began to approach her. ‘And by Christ I have. Do you know what you have done to me, girl?’
Lizzie began backing away from him, until her knees connected with the chair and she sat on it and watched the priest approach her, soutane lifted, so she saw his penis hard and erect before her. ‘You’re a mass of sin, if you can work a man like me into such a state. Well now you’ll pay for it, you whoring temptress. Take it in your hands.’
‘Oh God Almighty, I can’t, Father, really I can’t,’ Lizzie cried, and tried to screw herself further into the chair.
The priest reached out, plucked the hat from her head and grabbed a mass of Lizzie’s curls, and then jerked her towards him with such force she fell onto her knees, inches from the vile thing the priest was pushing at her. ‘Take it,’ the priest thundered. ‘Or by Christ I’ll beat you black and blue.’
Lizzie knew the man meant it, and in the state he was in he could easily kill her. Then the nuns would name some disease that she’d died from and that would be that, and so she took the pulsating organ with hands that shook.
For all her married state, Lizzie had never held or seen a man’s penis. Steve wasn’t into the niceties of the act. A wife’s duty was to submit to her husband when he wanted sex, and lie passive beneath him while he took his pleasure. Lizzie accepted it as part of marriage, pleased when she enjoyed it, and took the other assaults on her body without complaint.
But now, for the first time, she held a man’s penis, and felt it pulsating as the blood pumped through it. She saw the testicles hanging like two wizened sacks and the mass of brown curly hair, and felt nausea and revulsion course through her.
‘Put it in your mouth.’
Lizzie stared at the priest, unable to believe she’d heard right. He couldn’t mean that. God Almighty!
‘Your mouth,’ he screeched.
She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t, Father. Please don’t ask me.’
‘I don’t ask you, whore, I’m telling you,’ the priest said. ‘I know you’re gagging for it.’
Lizzie was unable to make a reply, for suddenly the priest’s hands were either side of her head, crushing her ears, and he began pushing her head down. Her mouth was fixed open as she’d tried to speak, and now she couldn’t even cry out a warning as she felt sickness rise in her when the penis was just an inch or so from her lips. She tried to move her head, but it was held fast in his hands like a vice, and the priest had his eyes closed and he was groaning. Suddenly, she could hold the nausea no longer, and she vomited over him, his soutane, her hands and down her dress.
Fury like he’d never felt before pounded through the priest’s body. He caught Lizzie under the chin, as he lifted his foot and kicked her with such fury she hit the wall with a sickening thud and slithered to a heap on the floor.
Father Conroy looked at the girl slumped against the wall and her pallor and stillness terrified the life out of him. He cleaned himself off as well as he could and wiped the vomit from her hands with his handkerchief before feeling for her pulse, relieved to find one. He noted blood dripping down her front from the cut
on her chin and seeping into her curls from the one at the back of her head.
He arranged her inert body in front of the desk and went for Sister Jude. He didn’t know if she believed his explanation of how Lizzie sustained her injuries, but he didn’t really care. She’d never betray him and just nodded sagely when he explained how the girl had stumbled and caught her chin on the desk before falling to the floor and banging her head. ‘We must take her into the infirmary,’ Sister Jude said, ‘before we decide what to do.’ She thought the girl might be roused as she was carried on a stretcher, but there was no reaction, and as they laid her on one of the beds she said, ‘I think we must fetch the doctor.’
‘Do you think that’s necessary?’ Sister Benedict said. ‘I’m sure I can cope. Sister Maria can help.’
Father Conroy, who’d followed, was thoroughly alarmed. ‘What happens within these walls is sacrosanct, but outsiders ask awkward questions. Doesn’t she just want a wee sleep and she’ll be as right as rain?’
‘Maybe, aye. But what if she needs more than that?’ Sister Jude said. ‘Remember, this one has a brother who’s concerned for her and comes to see her every fortnight. He might make trouble.’
Father Conroy knew he might. He’d caught sight of the young man himself and so he bowed to the inevitable. ‘Maybe,’ he said to Sister Benedict, ‘you could take off her soiled clothes and put her in a nightdress before the doctor sees her.’
Doctor Murray was very worried about Lizzie and not at all convinced by the explanation of how she came
by her injuries. He examined her gently all over and then asked for help to turn her over so he could see if there was further damage and he whistled at the extent of the bruising on her back. He didn’t like the set-up here at all. He hadn’t liked it the last time he was here, when he lost the girl and baby in childbirth because they’d left it too late to call him in.
He knew Sister Jude ran this place and so he spoke to her. ‘She’s a sick girl, Sister,’ he said. ‘I’ll not beat about the bush. I don’t know what goes on in this establishment and maybe you have reason to behave as you do. But now this young woman is my patient and you ignore what I say at your peril, for if anything happens to her through neglect, I’ll hold you responsible.’
‘Are you threatening me?’
The doctor gave a grim laugh. ‘You give it whatever name suits. I’d call it more in the nature of a warning. The cuts beneath her chin and on her head will not close on their own and she’s lost enough blood already. She is deeply concussed and in shock and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she doesn’t go into premature labour.’