Lizzie smiled at him. ‘See you then,’ she said. She was sorry to see the doctor go, sorry that she would soon be back to sternness and forbidding silence.
Not five minutes after the doctor had left, Lizzie was back in the laundry, and it was well she had the doctor’s promise to sustain her, for Sister Carmel took great pleasure in taunting and goading her at every
turn. She was given the job of heaving the bedding from the boilers to the poss tub to be pounded with the dolly, and then to the sinks where stubborn stains would be rubbed with the washboard, and then on to the rinsing sinks.
It was one of the most strenuous jobs, for the sheets weighed heavy, but when another girl suggested taking her place, Sister Carmel refused. She’d looked over the glasses she had perched on her nose and knew she’d be glad to see the back of Lizzie Gillespie. She was a troublemaker, and look now at the fuss made of her over a wee fall. Well, she needn’t think she was having an easy ride here. ‘Isn’t Lizzie Gillespie just back from nearly a fortnight’s bed rest and over nothing at all, waited on hand and foot and special food prepared? If you ask me, she’s more able for the work than any of you.’
Lizzie flashed a smile of gratitude at the girl who’d risked censure to ask, and bent to the task. Before too long she felt the strain on her neck muscles and her back began to ache so badly that pains shot down both her legs.
When Johnnie arrived the following Saturday she was glad to sit down on the chair in Sister Jude’s office where she told Johnnie of the fall she had had and showed him the scar under her chin and the shaved part of her head, which her hair was beginning to cover nicely. Lizzie made great play of the fact of how ungainly a woman could be when she was expecting, and how light-headed they often are, to allay any suspicions he might have.
It was later, with the letters written, that Lizzie said, ‘When it’s over, Johnnie, what happens?’
‘I’m to come for you,’ Johnnie said. ‘I’ll have the loan of the car again and I’m to take you straight to the docks at Dun Laoghaire and set you on a ferry.’
Lizzie nodded slowly and then said, ‘I want to take Celia out with me.’
‘Are you mad?’
‘She has no one to speak for her. And she is my friend.’
‘And what manner of girl is she, to be here?’ Johnnie said.
‘Don’t turn your nose up like that, Johnnie,’ Lizzie said sharply. ‘Don’t judge on rumour or say-so. Celia lived with her family on a farm in West Meath and was engaged to a fellow. He said it was what engaged people did and she gave in, just the once. As soon as he heard of her pregnancy, he’s off to England, no engagement and seemingly no address. Her family disowned her. She had a little boy and gave him away. Now she’s set here for life.’
Johnnie bit his lip. Her life sounded harsh, but she wasn’t his problem. ‘I still don’t…’
‘Please, Johnnie. I’ve never asked anything of you before,’ Lizzie said.
‘But how is it to be done? I can hardly bundle the two of you into the car and wave a cheery farewell to the nuns.’
‘No, look,’ Lizzie said. ‘I have a plan. I’ve had nothing else to do most of the time but plan Celia’s escape. The laundry van comes here every Tuesday and Friday about ten o’clock, full of the town’s dirty washing. We have first to unload the dirty washing and put it into the laundry and then load the clean
washing in the van. It takes time, for there is a lot of it and all the girls are in and out of the door and it is the only time a girl would have a chance to slip away unnoticed, especially as when we have finished, the men lock up the van and Sister Carmel takes them up to pay Sister Jude.’
‘So, why hasn’t anyone tried escaping before now?’
‘They have,’ Lizzie said. ‘A girl hid in the van, but she was soon hunted down in the town and brought back and whipped. The men keep a weather eye on it now, so that that trick can never be tried again. And even if you were to get out of the convent building, where could you go? The gates are locked and you’d never climb that wall.’
‘And you’d stick out like a sore thumb,’ Johnnie said. ‘You must see, Lizzie, that this is madness. Sheer madness!’
Lizzie sighed in exasperation. ‘Please, Johnnie,’ she pleaded. ‘You must help. There is no one else I can turn to. When you come to fetch me, you’ll be bringing a case full of clothes, right?’
‘Aye.’
‘Well, there is bound to be something suitable for Celia to change into later,’ Lizzie said. ‘And she’ll need a scarf or something for her head, until we are well away from here anyway. You turn up to fetch me when the laundry van is here and Celia will be able to slip off in the confusion, climb into the back of the car and cover herself with the blanket.’
Johnnie surveyed his sister. She’d thought it out carefully and it could just work. But did he want to get involved in this? No, he bloody didn’t. Yet how
could he do that to Lizzie? It obviously mattered so much and she’d been let down at every turn so far.
He sighed and said. ‘Okay, Lizzie, say I do agree to this crazy plan. If it succeeds, and to my way of thinking it’s a bloody big if, what do I do with Celia when I get her away from this place?’
‘Nothing,’ Lizzie replied. ‘For nowhere in Ireland is safe. She’ll come to Birmingham with me.’
‘What of Steve and Flo?’
‘What of them?’ Lizzie said recklessly. ‘I’m past caring about Flo and I’ll tell Steve she’s a workmate who has been bombed out. He’ll swallow that. Jobs were ten-a-penny when I left and she’ll soon be independent. She’s that kind of girl.’
Johnnie had got to his feet and was pacing the room, running his hands through his hair distractedly. ‘I just don’t know, Lizzie. I mean, what if you’re ready to leave before the day the laundry vans arrive?’
‘I won’t be. The doctor is going to help and when the baby is born he will tell the nuns when I can be expected to leave the infirmary.’
‘And if he breaks his word?’
‘He won’t,’ Lizzie said confidently. ‘He has no time for the nuns, and that’s not so much what he says, but the way he speaks to them and looks at them. As for Celia…she’s not yet eighteen, Johnnie.’ She touched his arm. ‘Please, do this one thing for me?’
Johnnie looked at his sister, banished from her home and separated from her children for an incident she was no willing partner to. And now she had to give birth to the child and see it given away to someone else, and he knew he had to help her in this one thing.
‘All right.’
‘Do I have your word?’
‘You have my word.’
‘Oh, thank God.’
It was hard in that accursed place to find anywhere a person could talk, let alone talk privately where no one might eavesdrop, for to give the plan any chance of working at all, secrecy was essential.
Lizzie was like a cat on hot bricks, but she had to wait until she was sent with Celia and two others for kitchen duties. There, with the nun called away and the others girls the far side of the room, Lizzie told Celia, quietly covering her words with the clatter of the pots, plates and dishes they were washing.
It was even harder for Celia to listen to this fantastic, magnificent and yet terrifying plan in silence. ‘So, have you got it?’ Lizzie whispered urgently.
‘The doctor is to say you are not fit to leave until a Friday morning after the birth, and Johnnie is to come the same time as the laundry van and I am to slip away and hide in Johnnie’s car,’ Celia whispered back.
‘D’you think you can do it? That it will work?’
‘God knows,’ Celia said. ‘I know I can’t not do it though. It’s my one chance to get out of this hellhole and I am going to grasp it with both hands.’
Celia wasn’t a fool and she knew it was risky. She also knew the arrival of the laundry van was the only time that she could slip away unobserved, for with the loading and unloading it was hard to keep tabs on everyone. As long as Johnnie was on time and he parked close to the hedge on the gravel path before the door,
it might just work, especially as Lizzie said there would be a bag of clothes for her and something to cover her up with.
‘Oh sweet Jesus,’ she said. ‘I can scarce believe it.’
‘Well you’d better start believing it,’ Lizzie said, her face aglow, ‘because it is going to happen.’
‘I’ll never forget you for this,’ Celia said solemnly. ‘Not as long as there is breath in my body.’
The girls at the convent were not encouraged to touch each other, but Celia threw her arms around Lizzie and kissed her cheek. The other two girls looked at them askance and then averted their eyes quickly, and Lizzie warned Celia in a shaky voice, ‘Don’t let them see you looking happy. They’ll want to know the reason for it.’
Celia knew Lizzie was right and yet it was hard to assume a serious, ever-sorrowful face with a heart full of joy. Oh, for Lizzie to have such a brother! Yet she knew the path to freedom was strewn with thorns, and if she was to be found or brought back then it would be God alone who would help her. She might not be kept in the convent at all: the asylum was host to the girls who couldn’t or wouldn’t conform.
But then, she thought, what were the odds? If she didn’t take this chance offered out to her because she was afraid, it would never come again, of that she was certain. Then she was condemning herself to a living death. The thought of spending the rest of her years here was one that would surely send her clean mad. Then she’d be knocking on the doors of the asylum herself, asking to be let in.
The strenuous work at the laundry went on and each day it got harder for Lizzie. She was in more and more discomfort, but she wouldn’t complain. She’d bite her lip and go on. Never would she let those malicious cows know they were getting to her. Celia often heard Lizzie crying with the cramping spasms in her back and legs, even though she tried to muffle the sobs in a pillow, and in the laundry her face was often blanched with the unrelenting pain that was also reflected in her eyes. She hoped to God Lizzie wasn’t doing herself harm.
Johnnie too saw how exhausted she looked when he called the following fortnight, but when he asked her if she was doing too much, she laughed. She had the urge to take his dear head between her hands and tell him what she did each day, but she resisted. She didn’t want him to rock the boat now. Time enough to tell him when she was well-away from this place and free. ‘I’m grand,’ she told him. ‘The last few weeks are like this for everyone.’
Johnnie took her word for it, and why wouldn’t he? ‘Not long now, anyway,’ he said. ‘Soon it will be all over for you. An end to the nightmare and time to look forward.’
‘Aye,’ Lizzie agreed, ‘and it can’t come soon enough for me.’
Lizzie’s pains began on Thursday, 7
th
November, when she was working in the laundry. The girl beside her saw her give a grimace as she lifted the heavy tongs. She said nothing, but her two eyebrows went up questioningly and she nodded her head towards Sister Carmel bent over her embroidery.
Lizzie shook her head vehemently. She would let the nuns know only when she had to. She could well do without them telling her how sinful she was and how the pain was purging her soul.
She had pains all morning. They were niggling ones at first, just a bit stronger than she’d experienced every month. She toyed with her dinner, unable to eat the tasteless thin broth let alone the slice of stale bread, and she saw many girls look at her as if they couldn’t believe it, for they were too hungry to be choosy. Surreptitiously, Lizzie passed her bowl and plate to the girl next to her. If she hadn’t, the nuns would have gone on about wasting good food when the poor wee heathens in Africa were starving, and she couldn’t have borne that.
By the afternoon the pains had worsened, and now, in the last hour or so, they’d become almost unbearable. But still Lizzie hung on. The small groans she couldn’t help were covered by the noise in the laundry: the bubbling water, the creak of the mangle and hiss of the irons.
It was as they were told to tidy the laundry ready for tea that she suddenly experienced a pain that caused her to crouch with her arm wrapped around her stomach.
Celia, who’d been watching Lizzie for hours, put up her hand. ‘Sister, Pansy is…’
She didn’t have to say any more, for blood was running from Lizzie when she tried to stand, dripping in steady drops onto the floor.
‘Almighty God!’ Sister Carmel cried. ‘Get her to the infirmary and quickly, and someone clean up this mess.’
Celia leapt forward, her arm around her friend, and with Queenie on the other side they almost carried Lizzie, who was letting out whimpers of pain.
She’d had children before and thought she’d have an easier time of it, but the pains went on hour after hour. They were so excruciating she couldn’t help crying out with them, and the nuns took no notice when Lizzie asked for the doctor. ‘You need no doctor,’ Sister Benedict told her sharply when she screamed out. ‘Don’t be making such a fuss. You know what you are about; you knew this day would come. Pain is good for the soul. Bear it bravely.’
There were more words in the same vein as the night wore on, and by then Lizzie was too exhausted to make any sort of reply.
The minutes ticked into hours and Lizzie screamed and writhed on the bed. She felt as if she was being torn in two. The others were never like this. ‘Get the doctor,’ she begged. ‘I’m in agony. Something is wrong. Please, for God’s sake, get the doctor.’
‘We don’t need to bother the doctor.’
‘Get the doctor, you bloody vixen.’
The slap took Lizzie unawares and yet she barely felt it as she was in the throes of a massive contraction; but when it eased a little she looked straight at Sister Benedict. Lizzie’s face was lined with pain and her eyes were glazing over, and yet her voice, punctuated by pants, was definite enough. ‘If anything happens to me, questions will be asked. Both the doctor and my brother won’t rest.’
Sister Benedict knew Lizzie was right. There were
people who cared about Pansy. Most families were too glad to rid themselves of their pregnant daughters and had no wish to hear anything about them once they’d gone into the convent to get rid of their ‘little problem’, but this one…
She came back from the phone and told Lizzie with great satisfaction that the doctor was out on call. ‘The housekeeper was none to happy about being roused,’ she said, ‘especially when the call came from here. Most decent people think the doctor shouldn’t have to treat girls so full of sin and badness. Anyway, she said she has no intention of waiting up, but she’ll leave a note. Whether he sees it when he comes in or not is another matter entirely.’