A few days later, Angela had returned to work. Mary insisted as she said Christmas was coming and they couldn’t live on fresh air. Angela was glad to be going back and Paddy Larkin’s wife in particular was delighted with Angela’s return.
‘They’ve all been asking for you and, to be honest, I wasn’t sure we’d see you this side of Christmas. Is Mary much recovered?’
Angela shook her head. ‘She’s over the flu, which is a blessing, but she’ll not recover much now I don’t think. But she insisted I go back to work because she hates to think she is being a burden and Connie and I can manage her between us.’
‘You have a good daughter there, Angela,’ Breda said. ‘She’s a credit to you.’
‘Thank you,’ Angela said. ‘I’d be grateful if you’d keep your ear to the ground for a single bed going begging. Mary won’t stay in the bedroom, says there’s no need and we have enough to do without fetching and carrying for her all day long. I can see her point, for the bedroom is cold and probably lonely. She insists on being downstairs during the day as she likes to be in the middle of things. But she does sleep a lot now, and she’s hardly well rested in the chair.’
‘I don’t have to look far,’ Breda said. ‘I have one going spare myself. You can have it and welcome.’
‘Oh, thank you.’
‘No problem,’ Breda said. ‘As it’s a dry day I’ll get Paddy to bring it round later after closing time about half three. Any of his regulars will give him a hand, especially if they know who it’s for.’
And so by four o’clock that same day Paddy and two of the customers carried in the bed. Angela already had firebricks heating up to be wrapped in flannel and laid on the mattress in case it should be damp, and she warmed the sheets and blankets at the fire before she would let Mary into the bed.
Mary would never have complained, but she was very glad to have the opportunity to lie down when she was tired during the day. She never found she had any kind of a refreshing sleep when she dropped off in the chair and she often woke with a crick in her neck. She said how grateful she was and continued, ‘Now, Angela, I want you to go to your own bed each night. I don’t want you sleeping in the chair next to me as you have done the last few nights. I will be as right as rain on my own.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘Angela, I mean it. No one can sleep well in a chair.’
‘And I said I’d see,’ Angela said firmly. ‘I’m having the doctor call to have a look at you and then we’ll decide where I will sleep.’
She was concerned about her mother because, since the long conversation about the abandoned child, she had said virtually nothing of any consequence. Sometimes a day would pass and Mary wouldn’t speak a word, or she would start a sentence and forget the end and look confused and bewildered. Or she would be overcome by tiredness and fall asleep in the middle of talking. The times when she was clear and lucid were getting fewer. Added to this, Angela could get her to eat only sparingly; tucking her into the bed earlier, she noticed that her mother had lost so much weight that the bones could be felt beneath the skin.
‘Don’t want the doctor,’ Mary said mutinously. ‘Can’t do nothing for me.’
Angela knew her mother was probably right, but wanted assurance from the doctor that she was doing all she could and she said, ‘Humour me, Mammy?’
Mary gave a brief nod and added, ‘Now do something for me.’
‘What?’
‘See the priest in confession.’
‘Mammy …’
‘For my sake,’ Mary cried. ‘How can I die happy knowing you are carrying that huge load of guilt on your shoulders?’
Angela didn’t insult Mary’s intelligence by saying she wasn’t going to die any time soon for she was very much afraid she well might. As for Mary herself, in her lucid moments, when her mind was clear and not all jumbled up, she knew she was dying and it was just a toss-up whether her mind or body would give up first. She didn’t much mind, for she was often so weary and full of aches and pains and she didn’t fear death. Maybe it would have been nice to have lasted a little longer to see Connie as a young woman, but she knew that wasn’t going to happen and when she died she would see Matt again and her two beloved sons. She could almost look forward to that.
Neither mentioned their concerns and Mary said, ‘Will you do this one thing for me?’
Angela swallowed the lump in her throat and said huskily, ‘I’ll see.’
Mary lay back on the pillows and said nothing more. Angela pulled the blankets round and saw Mary’s eyelids flutter shut and she gave a sigh as she reached for her coat.
The doctor listened to Angela’s concerns about Mary and agreed to see her, though he suspected he could do little for her because basically what she was suffering from was old age. To give him his due though, he gave her a thorough examination. He felt her limbs all over, asked her to put out her tongue and looked down her throat, then felt her neck, listened to her heartbeat, sounded her chest, checked her pulse and asked her plenty of questions about any aches and pains she might have and her general health. He was surprised she had survived the flu, for he hadn’t been sure she would, but he knew it would make little difference for she was still a very sick woman.
Using the guise of washing his hands, he went to the cubby hole at the top of the cellar steps and Angela poured the warm water into the bowl she had ready.
‘What d’you think, Doctor?’ she said. She spoke softly, though Mary was out of earshot, for the bed was against the window on the other side of the room.
‘Her heart is very tired,’ the doctor said in the same soft tones. ‘You were warned this day would come and you have looked after your mother well for her to last this long, but that last bout of flu has knocked her for six. Don’t worry about her not eating much. Her stomach is distended and her throat is inflamed. She’ll probably not feel like eating much and it isn’t as if she’s using a lot of energy. Just make sure she has plenty to drink.’
Angela nodded. ‘I will, Doctor. D’you know how her illness will progress?’
‘Her organs will gradually start closing down,’ the doctor said. ‘It will be very peaceful and pain-free, I will see to that, but you have to come to terms with the fact that you must say goodbye to your mother sooner rather than later.’
Tears filled Angela’s eyes. It wasn’t that she was surprised, but death was so final.
‘H-How long has she got?’
‘It’s impossible to say exactly.’
‘You must have some idea?’
The doctor gave a shrug. ‘These things are very difficult to predict but it could even be before Christmas.’
Angela gasped. ‘You are talking of weeks, just weeks,’ she said.
The doctor gave a brief nod and Angela knew, whatever her mother said, she would be sleeping in the chair from now on.
‘I’m sorry the news couldn’t be better,’ the doctor said.
‘It’s not your fault, Doctor,’ Angela assured him. ‘Death is one thing that comes to us all.’
After Angela had let the doctor out and her mother had dropped off to sleep again, she made a cup of tea and sat before the fire drinking it. She knew she had to go to confession for she couldn’t deny Mary what she had pleaded with her to do, especially when all her life her mother had asked for so little. Angela knew for the sake of her immortal soul, not to mention her own peace of mind, she had to speak to a priest. She dismissed Father Brannigan straight away for he wasn’t the sort of priest she couldn’t imagine anyone confiding in; he was far too abrupt and judgemental. She didn’t know really that the priest from St Chad’s would be any better, but folk spoke well of him and at least he didn’t know her. She decided to go to confession and tell him all, though it caused a blush to flood her cheeks just to think about it.
She told her mother of her intention when she woke. Mary said nothing but she smiled so Angela knew she was pleased, and that helped convince her she was doing the right thing.
Both St Catherine’s and St Chad’s priests heard confession on Thursday evening from seven o’clock so when, the following Thursday, Angela left the house for confession, only Mary knew which church she would be making for. It was a fair step and the evening was cold and icy. Sour freezing fog swirled in the cold air and Angela pulled her scarf higher to cover her mouth as she hurried through the night.
She was glad to reach the relative protection of the church and she slipped inside gratefully, dipping her hand into the holy water and making the sign of the cross as she did so. She had timed it well for the hour for confession was almost over, as she had intended, and only two old ladies were waiting. Angela genuflected before the altar and went into the pew behind them, knowing if anyone came after her she would let them go in first. She wanted no one outside the confessional box to overhear what she was eventually going to confess.
She knelt down, aware of her heart hammering in her breast and the fact that the trembling of her body was not just due to the cold. She prayed more earnestly than usual and what she prayed for was the courage to go through with this and tell the priest everything. It was like laying her soul bare and she had no way of knowing how the priest would react, and she also knew she mustn’t mention names or anything that the priest might use later to identify who she was.
The two old ladies obviously had few sins to confess and were in the confessional box for only a matter of minutes each. As no one else had entered the church, Angela was next to kneel on the pad in the dimly lit box and face the grille, knowing the priest on the other side would soon be listening intently.
‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,’ Angela said. ‘It is a fortnight since my last confession.’
John Hennessy didn’t recognise the voice. Having heard confession now for some years, he knew the voices of most of his parishioners. He was also aware of the nuances in voices, and knew the woman on the other side of the grille was nervous, and so he said reassuringly, ‘Go on, my child.’
And Angela went on intoning the litany of things she had done wrong. In truth she wasn’t a great sinner. She was honest and trustworthy, she used no profane language – as a child she’d known that if she used any bad words she would have had the legs smacked off her, at the very least – nor did she tell lies in the general way of things. Sometimes she would get a little impatient with Mary. She never said anything and tried hard not to show it, but the church said the thought was as bad as the deed and so she confessed to that and the lackadaisical attitude she had to her prayers, especially in the morning, and then she was silent.
The silence grew between them and eventually the priest asked, ‘Is there anything else?’
Angela almost said there wasn’t. It would be easy to accept absolution from the priest, do the penance he gave her and leave. But then she remembered Mary. She knew her mother wanted her to do this and feared she would never feel proper ease without confessing it. This might be the last thing she could ever do for the woman who had loved her so totally almost all her life, and so she gave a heartfelt sigh and said, ‘Oh yes, Father, and it was one dreadful wicked thing I did too.’
‘Go on,’ said the priest.
Angela felt the slight chill in his voice and her heart sank but she continued, ‘This goes back some time, Father, nine years in fact. You see, when my husband enlisted in 1915 we were left with little money to live on and we had a wee daughter and my mother-in-law also lived with us. One of us had to find work and that person had to be me, and so I took work in the munitions while my mother-in-law minded my child.’
The priest nodded. Many of the mothers in his parish had had to follow the same route during the Great War if their husbands were serving soldiers. It had always seemed monstrous to him that, despite the men putting their lives on the line for King and country, so little was paid to their dependants that the women also had to work in such dangerous places to be able to feed their children and themselves and pay the rent.
‘Did this wicked thing happen in the munition works?’ he asked, because he had heard that some of the people who worked in those industries were no better than they ought to be.
‘Not exactly, but in a way,’ Angela said in an effort to explain fully. She went on to say how, with such few men about, any women who wanted to were given the opportunity to learn to drive.
The priest was surprised at that. ‘And did you take that opportunity?’
‘I did,’ Angela said. ‘And I loved it too. I drove the small truck all over the city, but the firm had brought a man out of retirement to drive the big truck on longer trips. Then, one day, the older man had a heart attack and though he didn’t die, the doctor said he was too ill to continue. There was at the time a great shell shortage and at that moment they had hundreds of shells piled high on the large truck that he had been due to drive to the docks that day. The boss said as I was the best and most experienced driver, and virtually the only one who could read maps, I must go in his stead.’
‘My goodness,’ the priest said. ‘It is a great distance to the docks. Were you not nervous at all?’
‘Oh yes, Father, as nervous as a kitten and scared,’ Angela said with truth. ‘But then I told myself my husband was probably scared when he had to face the enemy but he couldn’t run away. And I knew how badly the shells were needed and with the older man out of action there was no one else to take them but me.’
‘D’you know, you have surprised me,’ the priest said. ‘I shouldn’t be, I suppose, for women are driving all sorts of vehicles these days, but I never imagined girls driving round trucks packed with explosives.’
‘It’s no more dangerous than making them, Father,’ Angela maintained. ‘There have been explosions in other places and girls killed and maimed. Before they let you go on to the factory floor, not only did you have to wear a boiler suit, a hat to cover all your hair and a mask and gloves, you also had to remove any metal you had on you. That included wedding rings and so I left my ring at home after that first day. Even hair grips had to come out because any metal could generate a spark.’
‘I see that,’ the priest said. ‘I must say, the women of Britain were truly remarkable in that war.’
‘Pity we weren’t rewarded properly then, Father,’ Angela wanted to say. She didn’t, though she had been irritated that, despite all the agitation and campaigning by the suffragettes, and after women had been left to virtually run the country in the Great War, only women over the age of thirty who were homeowners had got the vote in 1918. But now wasn’t the time to go into that. So she just said, ‘Yes, Father.’
Time was getting on and Father John’s stomach growled suddenly and he though longingly of the supper his sister, Eileen, would have ready for him at home. Eileen had been widowed early in the war but she was childless and had moved in to care for her brother when his previous housekeeper had left for more lucrative war work. Eileen’s maternal instincts were brought to the fore looking after her younger brother, not least in shielding him from some of his zealous or needy parishioners. She actually had a good and generous heart, but thought some people didn’t think the priest deserved a right to time off. She always said he was too kind for his own good and if he didn’t watch out they would suck him dry.
The priest often thought his sister was probably right, but he did like to give people the benefit of the doubt and because of his profession was often pulled into other people’s lives. And this young woman – for he could tell by her voice she wasn’t old – had spoken of some terrible thing she had done. He really had to get to the bottom of what that was and, if she was truly sorry, dispense absolution, which he imagined was what she had come for.
So he said quite gently, ‘I think there is something specific hanging heavy on your heart that you need to tell me about. You were on your way to the docks, I believe?’
‘Yes,’ Angela said and she told the priest of the long, hazardous journey. She’d been glad of the map the boss had drawn for her, which she’d had to refer to often to prevent getting lost. ‘I was so relieved when I reached the docks and then found I was in a long queue, because many munition works had sent down any shells they had. Most of the drivers were young women like me, though there were a few much older men. When my truck was eventually unloaded, I looked for somewhere to eat before heading back. And after a feed of fish and chips I headed for home.
‘I found it much harder going back, for all I had an empty truck then. There was far more traffic on the roads and I had to really concentrate, especially when true darkness fell and the journey seemed to take forever. I was feeling thoroughly worn out by the time I eventually I saw the lights of the yard. The boss had said he would wait for me, both to see I was all right and to secure the truck in the yard overnight. He wanted to call a taxi to take me home, but I knew it would cause a real stir in the street and so I refused. I offered him the change from the ten-shilling note he’d given me for my dinner, but he told me to keep it and I dropped the money into my coat pocket and left.
‘I was nearly home,’ Angela went on and the priest noted the change in her voice and knew she was no longer telling him her story, but living it. ‘I was just yards away from safety when I was set upon by three drunken soldiers. They wouldn’t believe I was a respectable, married woman because, as I said, I didn’t wear my wedding ring to work. They thought because I was coming home alone at that time, I was a woman of the night, and the fact that I had money loose in my coat pocket seemed to prove it. Nothing I said made any difference. They said they wanted what I had been doing already that night, only they weren’t going to pay for it. I fought them and they beat me up, nearly rendering me unconscious, and then they violated me.’
The priest was shocked and not at all surprised that Angela was upset at the telling. Gasping sobs seemed to be coming from deep within her and the priest said comfortingly, ‘You have not committed a sin, my dear, it’s the men who violated you did that. Did the police apprehend them?’
Angela took a grip on herself and said, ‘I never told the police.’
‘Why ever not?’
Angela told the priest that the families of those in the services had been warned not to worry fighting men about issues at home, especially as they would be unable to do anything about it.
‘How would my husband have felt if he’d heard I had been raped and he hadn’t been here to protect me?’ Angela asked. ‘I wouldn’t tell him, of course, but if I told the police it would become common knowledge and I couldn’t guarantee he wouldn’t find out.’
‘It seems monstrous that they got away scot free.’
‘I know,’ Angela said. ‘But it gets worse from there.’
The priest wondered how it could get much worse, but he soon found out because Angela described the horror she felt when she realised that the violation had left her pregnant.
The priest heard the anguish and panic in her voice and he didn’t wonder at it, because it was the very worst thing to happen to a woman and his heart felt heavy for her. She told the priest about the options they’d discussed. In the end they’d decided that the best thing was for her to hide away with a family member and, when the child was born, give her up to the Catholic orphanage for adoption.
‘That was a very brave thing to do,’ the priest said. ‘In the circumstances you described to me, it was the only thing to do. And by doing this you have probably made a childless couple very happy and—’
‘Father, the orphanage wouldn’t take her,’ Angela cried. She was now desperate that he hear it all, see how wicked she really was. ‘They said that, since the war, applications for adoption had fallen off and they were full to bursting and could take no more babies or children.’
The priest nodded. He could well see how that might happen. ‘So what did you do then?’
‘What d’you think I did, Father?’ Angela said. ‘What choices does a woman have when she is having a child that cannot be her husband’s? Could I bring her home and risk someone writing to my husband to say that not only had I been carrying on with another, I’d had the fancy man’s bastard child? That would have ripped the heart from my dear husband and maybe he would have been too upset to take care and lost his life because of that. He died later anyway, but he died knowing I loved him and would be waiting for him at home with our legitimate daughter when the war drew to a close. And to be honest, I also feared the stigma, and not for myself alone. The open contempt that would have been shown to me would also have been the child’s lot as she grew, and it would have impinged on my other daughter and my mother-in-law as well. Acknowledging all this, I took that tiny, vulnerable baby in a basket and left her on the workhouse steps and ran away.’
Angela was weeping but she carried on through the tears. ‘There isn’t one day, not even one hour in the day, when I don’t think about that child and wish there had been any alternative to doing what I did. I am sick to the soul of me when I remember doing this, for you see I loved her, regardless of how she was conceived. She took away a sizeable slice of my heart and that was why I gave her the locket. To try and show her she was loved even though I was unable to take care of her. I tried to find her later, but the workhouse sent me away.’
She stopped then, wondering if she had said too much. She hadn’t intended to mention the locket but Father John was barely aware she had stopped. He was remembering that Christmas Eve night many years ago when people had come from the workhouse looking for a girl or woman who had dumped a baby on the workhouse steps and disappeared. He remembered thinking at the time she must have been desperate to do such a thing. And she had been, for the woman the other side of that grille was the mother of that unfortunate child, and the child was conceived through a violent rape that she was an innocent party to. The perpetrators had gone unpunished mainly because of her husband who had been serving overseas.
As far as he could see, the woman was a victim as well as the child. He remembered that, when he’d next visited the workhouse to give the last rites to a dying man, he had asked if they had found the mother of the child left on Christmas Eve. They had not and had added that the baby had been clutching a silver locket in her hand.
‘Oh,’ the priest had said, surprised.
‘Yes,’ the governor, a Mr Benedict Masters, had said. ‘It’s not the usual thing foundlings are clutching when they arrive here, because it doesn’t look tacky.’
‘Where is it now?’
‘In the safe in the office,’ Mr Masters had said, ‘I’ll show you.’
He had led the way and a few moments later the priest was holding a beautiful silver locket in his hand.
‘They are not allowed to own things from outside in the workhouse,’ Mr Masters had explained. ‘We provide the uniform and their clothes for church on Sunday and on arrival they are given a comb, a toothbrush and a hairbrush, which they must look after. Very few bring anything with them. In many cases the families have sold or pawned all they owned except the clothes on their back, which are usually in rags, to try and prevent ending up here. But if they have anything they will be given back those things when they leave us, which will probably be when this girl goes into service. I might add, the trustees were all for selling this locket to help pay for the child’s keep as her mother had disappeared. I said it might be risky to do that because the locket looks as if it’s worth something and we might be accused of theft.’
‘Why did you bother to do that?’
‘Oh I don’t know, a moment of conscience, I suppose,’ the man had said. ‘I mean, this child has nothing. Somewhere there is a mother, maybe a family, but all that has gone now and she is alone in the world and I thought the locket might mean something. There was a reason she was given it. Anyway, I thought we shouldn’t just dispose of it.’
The priest had been impressed by the morals of the manager of the workhouse, for he knew many who would have pocketed it.
‘It’s got something inside,’ the manager had said. ‘Open it.’
The priest had clicked open the locket to reveal the miniature of a very old photograph.
‘A wedding, I would say,’ Mr Masters had commented.
The priest had nodded. ‘Yes, but why golden ringlets tied with red ribbon on the other side?’
Mr Masters had shrugged. ‘Might be her mother’s hair, I suppose. It isn’t likely we will ever find out.’
‘No,’ the priest had agreed.
It was incredible that nine years later he was hearing the confession of the mother who had left that child on the steps and he heard her weeping quietly as he said:
‘Please don’t cry and hear what I am going to say. It doesn’t matter how bad a crime is, God will forgive you if you are truly sorry, and in your case I think you were sinned against rather than a sinner yourself. You have been riven with guilt and sorrow ever since, so you will have God’s forgiveness – so trouble yourself no more about that. Your penance will be a decade of the rosary and now make a good act of contrition. Wait in the church for me please. There is something I need to discuss with you. And I will join you as soon as I have said my prayers.’
‘Yes, Father,’ Angela said. ‘Thank you, Father.’
However, when Angela stepped from the confessional she made straight for the door and began to run along Whittall Street that dark and cold winter’s night. She was glad of the fog that helped hide her as she ran under the spluttering street lamps because there was no way she was going to hang about for the priest to talk to her and maybe make waves and uncover the secret she had kept hidden successfully for years. Her heart did feel lighter though, and it was good to know that through the priest God had absolved her of blame, but she wanted no more of the priest than that.
By the time Father John came out of the confessional she was sitting in a tram on her way along Bristol Street.
Connie was surprised her mother had been so long and Angela excused herself by saying that she had met people in the church and chatted to this one and that.
‘Must have had plenty of interest to say,’ Connie said. ‘Wonder you didn’t stick to the floor. That church is always perishing.’
Angela’s eyes met those of her mother, but she said nothing else to her daughter, thinking silence the wisest policy. She would tell her mother everything when they were alone and Connie began telling them both of something that had happened at school and nothing more was said about confession. Angela waited until she had gone to bed before she told her mother what had transpired. Mary was so relieved at what the priest had said; later, when Angela knelt by the bed to do the penance the priest had given her, Mary joined in too.
The priest’s sister had plenty to say about her brother’s tardiness, for the supper she had kept warming for him was almost ruined.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I really couldn’t help it. I heard the confession of a strange woman last thing. It was strange in that I’ve not heard her voice before and she had a long tale to tell and it took some time to hear it all.’
‘I see,’ said Eileen, knowing her brother would say no more. Whatever he’d been told was in the confessional and therefore secret. ‘Well, eat your supper now and I hope it’s not too dried up.’
‘It’s fine,’ Father John said. Eileen was a good cook, and he enjoyed his food.
That night, though, he could have been eating cardboard and he’d hardly have noticed. His mind was full of the young woman’s disturbing tale which he could share with nobody.