‘You’re not ready for this, Lizzie,’ he said. ‘None of this is your fault. Why should you suffer?’
‘Why should the baby? She’s totally innocent too.’
‘How will you live?’
‘We’ll manage,’ Lizzie said. ‘I have money in the Post Office. Enough to rent a few rooms for a month or two. When Georgia is a little older…’
‘Georgia?’
‘Aye. It seemed to suit her. When she is older, I will get her a place in a nursery and start war work again. At least jobs are two a penny there still, and according to Violet the raids are over.’
‘You’ve thought this through.’
‘I’ve had little else to do.’
‘And what of Celia?’
‘She can come too, but when she finds out about Georgia she might want to make her own way once we reach England. At least she’ll be safe there.’
‘She knows about Georgia. I told her.’
‘How?’
‘She sneaked across from the laundry.’
‘God, she was taking a risk.’
‘Aye, but she thought it worth it,’ Johnnie said. ‘Apparently, the nuns haven’t said a word about you and all the girls are concerned. Anyway, she wasn’t the slightest bit disgusted, just sorry for you. You didn’t tell me she was so beautiful.’
Despite her own problems, Lizzie had to smile at the dreamy look in her brother’s eyes. ‘Oh, someone is smitten.’
‘Not at all,’ Johnnie said, embarrassed. ‘She’s a nice girl, that’s all. But, to get back to your prob
lems, you know if you keep this child our parents will never let you come home, never let you see the children.’
‘I know, and when I think of that the pain is like a sword piercing my soul, but when I look at Georgia I know I cannot abandon her.’
‘You’ve abandoned the others.’
‘No,’ Lizzie said. ‘They’re with people who want them and love them and wish them well. You’ll be there too, Johnnie. Maybe when they’re older you’ll explain it to them. Don’t let them think too badly of their mammy.’
‘Oh, Lizzie, I’ll do that and gladly,’ Johnnie said, and he kissed his sister on the cheek.
The baby, Georgia Marie, was christened secretly when she was a week old while the other girls were in the laundry. Lizzie was too weak to walk and had to be taken into the chapel in a wheelchair, and two younger nuns were her sponsors. Lizzie burned at the contemptuous way they handled the child and she saw the same look on the priest’s face.
He had a nerve, she thought. Since his attack on her, she’d refused to let him hear her confession. The thought of going into that confined space with the man made her feel sick. Anyway, she thought, how can he judge me and intercede for me before God and give me a penance? What right has he?
She’d been taken to Sister Jude, of course, who said she wouldn’t stand such disobedience. Lizzie had faced her unafraid and told her the power that the nuns held over them all only stretched so far. ‘You can beat me
black and blue, Sister, but no one has the power to make me speak.’
‘You won’t be able to take Communion,’ Sister Jude said.
Lizzie thought of that man placing the host on her tongue that he’d had in his fingers, the same fingers that he’d used to play with himself in the sacristy, and felt revulsion rise in her. ‘I don’t want Communion, Sister,’ she said, and added, ‘not from that man at least.’
Sister Jude’s eyes widened, but Lizzie met the glare levelly. She knew at that moment that Sister Jude knew all about the priest. How did she justify it in her mind? Did she think of it as just ‘a little weakness’, and to be understood, even condoned, when surrounded as the man was by sinful girls parading their sexuality before him?
She watched the nun’s face grow puce with rage, and in the end Sister Jude satisfied herself with two slaps either side of Lizzie’s face. ‘Get out,’ she’d screamed. ‘Out, out of my sight.’ Lizzie went, and despite the two scarlet handprints across her cheeks she knew she had scored a victory.
She didn’t want that pervert to put his dirty hands anywhere near her pure and innocent child either, but she fought her distaste, for she feared even now that the child might be taken from her, for they’d tried that once before.
Unknown to Lizzie, the nuns had arranged for a Dublin orphanage to take charge of the baby and the man had come when Georgia was just five days old. Lizzie had refused to hand her over. ‘It’s what your
parents want,’ Sister Jude pointed out. ‘They told me so.’
‘It doesn’t matter what my parents want,’ Lizzie cried. ‘I am over twenty-one. You, none of you, have rights over my baby.’
She was fighting a desperate battle, for she knew they could take the child by force if they had a mind. It wouldn’t be the first time a baby was wrenched from a frantic, weeping mother. Lizzie wasn’t sure what might have happened if the doctor hadn’t come in then and asked why Lizzie was so distressed. When he heard what the nuns intended to do, he was appalled. ‘What do you want to do, Lizzie?’ he asked.
Lizzie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and said, ‘I want to take her back to Birmingham with me.’
‘Then you shall,’ the doctor declared, and he turned to the assembled people and said, ‘Lizzie is under no one’s jurisdiction but her own and the child too is hers. No one has the right to take the baby away, and no one shall take her away, for it will constitute kidnap. That is against the law and I would make quite certain the authorities were informed.’
Even then, though the nuns backed off and the man returned to his orphanage in Dublin, Lizzie remained nervous.
The following Saturday, Johnnie came again. He’d retrieved Lizzie’s case from the nuns, to pack his sister’s clothes from home for the next time he came, when Lizzie would be ready to leave. Lizzie wrote the all-important letters for Johnnie to post: to Violet telling
her about Georgia and saying she was coming home, and one to Steve confessing everything.
‘The doctor won’t let me go for nearly a fortnight,’ Lizzie told Johnnie. ‘I don’t want to stay here, but he says when I haemorrhaged I lost so much blood that I won’t be fit before then.
‘I know if won’t be a good idea to collapse on the boat, so I’ll do as he says. I’ll be leaving on Friday the twenty-ninth. Can you get things organised for the baby? Just enough for the journey, for it is bound to be cold and I want her well wrapped up. I’ve got all Niamh and Tom’s baby things once I get home, but I’ll not take in one stitch of clothes belonging to this vile place.’
‘I’ll see to it,’ Johnnie promised, ‘But in Sligo, for it wouldn’t do to be buying things like that in Ballintra.’
‘I have money in the Post Office.’
‘Keep your money, you may have need of it yet,’ Johnnie said. ‘I have money of my own. What about Celia?’
‘The doctor will get word to her, don’t worry’ Lizzie said. ‘She’s waylaid him on the way out more than once if she hasn’t seen me for a few days. Between them, they’ll work it out somehow. You just be here to pick me up. Make sure the laundry van is in, even if it means waiting on the road outside for a while. I’ll be ready and waiting for you.’
‘Where will Celia be?’
‘Probably hiding behind the hedge,’ Lizzie said. ‘Just make sure you bring something to cover herself up with in the back of the car.’
‘I have that sorted.’
‘Right then, give me the paper and I’ll write the most important letters of my life.’
Celia was like a cat on hot bricks, when the doctor passed on the news of the escape plan. The others put in down to the news about Lizzie having a black baby and the fact that she was leaving soon. Some of them were inclined to be disparaging over the black baby till Celia took them to task. ‘Don’t curl your lip like that,’ she snapped at one girl. ‘I suppose you were a willing partner when your brother started his hankypanky?’
‘You know I wasn’t.’
‘I know nothing,’ Celia said shortly. ‘I know only what I’m told and I believed you when you said you tried to fight your brother off, just as I believed Lizzie. It’s just her bad luck that the bastard who raped her was black. The majority of us here are victims of one kind or another, and don’t you forget it. We’re in a position to judge no one.’
There was a murmur of agreement, for everyone knew Celia spoke the truth. No one there had the right to condemn the girl, and they sympathised with her and were further disgusted by the nuns when Celia told them of their attitude to the baby, which had made Lizzie decide to take her back with her to England. They could scarcely believe she’d do such a thing and would have asked many questions, but Celia seemed not to want to talk about it. They put her reticence down to the fact that she would miss Lizzie, for they had been close, but whatever it was, something was making her as jumpy as a cat on hot bricks, and
she’d often bite a person’s head off for little or nothing.
Lizzie knew that timing was of the essence if this escape had any chance of success, and the doctor had passed this on to Celia. ‘Get into the car as soon as you can,’ he’d whispered to her, ‘for Lizzie has no intention of lingering and will be ready and waiting for Johnnie.’
‘I’ll be there,’ Celia had promised. ‘Tell her not to worry.’
However, as the days rolled by she’d become increasingly nervous about what she intended to do, and she was berated often and beaten once for the slapdash way she’d ironed the clothes. She’d lain in bed that night smarting from the pain.
She knew that the beating was nothing to what the nuns would do to her if they were even to hear about the plan, and if she was discovered and brought back—dear God! It didn’t bear thinking about and she shook in the bed in fear. And then she thought of the alternative, a lifetime spent in the convent, beaten and degraded, half-starved and worked to death day in, day out until she was old and grey and had lost all will to live. No, by Christ, she rejected that. She would go for it, and she hoped that the God who’d done little for them so far would help them this time.
Both Lizzie and Georgia were ready and waiting for Johnnie. Lizzie was dressed and her suitcase packed. Georgia had on a long woollen dress over a warm fleecy vest, with a matinee jacket over that and little leggings and bootees for her feet. Over the top of this was a thick pram-set. It was far too large for her, as
she was just over six pounds, but Lizzie put it on her anyway: the more layers the better. ‘The lady in the shop in Sligo was very helpful,’ Johnnie said, watching Lizzie wrap the baby in the shawl he’d bought. ‘I pretended I was an inept father-to-be and she was grand. I bought everything she recommended.’
‘Johnnie, you’re very good,’ Lizzie said. ‘I’ll never forget this.’
‘You owe me nothing,’ Johnnie said. ‘Come on, let’s get out of this place. It gives me the creeps.’ He gave Lizzie a peck on the cheek and said, ‘I’ll always be there for you, Lizzie, you know that.’
‘I know it, Johnnie,’ Lizzie said, and there was a lump in her throat. ‘You’ve saved my sanity and I’m not joking, and all my life I will be in debt to you.’
‘No,’ Johnnie said. ‘There is no debt to repay. I have done these things because I love you and think you have been very badly treated, so let’s away out of here and hope your young friend is by now crouched in the back of the car, for if she isn’t there is not a jot we can do about it.’
Celia had been outside waiting for the laundry van, and she heard Johnnie’s car on the gravel path just a few minutes after she’d heard the laundry van chugging along from the back gate.
All the girls knew Lizzie was going that day and they also knew Celia would miss her. A few thought it madness to make a friend of anyone in that place, but sometimes these things just happened. When Celia said to one of the girls nearest to her, ‘Will you cover for me if I slip across and say goodbye to Lizzie?’ the
girl’s eyes were sympathetic. ‘Aye, surely,’ she said. ‘Sister Carmel is not likely to be out in this mizzly rain either.’
She wasn’t. Sister Carmel hated rain and would stay inside, directing action from there.
Celia slipped away, and if any saw her go, none made a sound. She crept along by the side of the convent, hidden by the bushes till she came to the privet hedge. Johnnie, bless him, had parked his car as near the hedge as he could, and for a while she crouched there and felt the rain begin to seep into her clothes.
She knew if any of the nuns should take this moment to look out of the window they would see her when she attempted to get into the car. But, she told herself, who would be looking out on that drab, rain-laden landscape? Anyway, was she going to allow fear to stop her from trying to make a bid for freedom? God knows, she might never have another chance.
This thought gave her the impetus to leave her place of hiding, speed to the car, open the back door, creep inside, and cover herself with the blanket she found there.
She lay panting, feeling the dryness of her mouth, hearing her heart pounding against her ribs, tasting the terror that was almost consuming her. She waited for a shout from the convent and almost felt the hard, vicious hands that would haul her out. They would kill her, she knew that. She could expect no mercy from them, none at all.
But no shout came, no clawing hands reached in for her. When the car door opened, it was the front door.
There had been no committee waiting for Lizzie when she emerged from the room, just Sister Jude and Sister Benedict who looked down their noses at her and her child and her decision to take the baby home. They were glad to see the back of Lizzie. She’d never conformed, not really, never seemed to be fully ashamed of what she had done, and now to find she’d done this with a black man! ‘She could be a very corrupting influence on the other girls here,’ Sister jude had said. ‘We have told them nothing, but rumour does spread.’
‘Oh indeed,’ Sister Benedict agreed. ‘The sooner she is away from here the better.’
None of this had been said to Lizzie. It didn’t need to be. The nuns’ feelings were apparent by their manner and the looks in their malicious eyes. Lizzie had a bag on her shoulder and held the baby protectively in her arms while Johnnie dealt with the suitcase. She lifted her head high when she saw the nuns and met their gaze levelly, and her contempt for them was plain, though she said not a word. She wished she felt stronger, more able to cope, for she still felt incredibly weak and the doctor had been worried about her. ‘You’ve had a tough time,’ he reminded her, ‘and God knows, even in the normal scheme of things you shouldn’t be leaving your bed for another few days, let alone traipsing the country and attempting a sea journey as well.’