(Monty)
“Michael,” I said into the phone when I got home from O’Carroll’s and dialled the number of the rectory. “I apologize for the very short notice here. But you’ll recall our conversation about the orphanage in Saint John.”
“Of course I do.”
“It’s important that I go there and speak to the people in charge.”
“Really! The sisters, you mean.”
“Yes. And you mentioned a trip home if ever I went. But, under the circumstances, I don’t want to wait. I’m sorry about the rush.”
“No worries. When are you leaving?”
“I’d like to go first thing in the morning. I don’t know what Saturdays are like for you. But I can’t go during the week.”
“I’ll palm my Saturday Mass off on Brennan — God forgive me for putting it like that; I’m only joking — and I’ll be ready whenever you are.”
“Great, Mike. See you at eight?”
“Eight it is.”
So we took off for Saint John, New Brunswick, first thing in the morning. Michael kept me entertained during the four-and-a-half-hour drive with stories of his childhood in the old port city, where the orange and the green played out their ancient roles over and over again in the New World. We stopped for a quick bite to eat when we arrived, then headed along Waterloo Street past the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception and around the corner to Cliff Street.
St. Vincent’s Convent, as it was now called, was a three-storey red-brick building, with dormers giving it a partial fourth storey. Crosses topped two of the dormers, and the building had rows of Gothic windows. A stone set high up in the facade displayed the words: “St. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum, A.D. 1865.”
Michael accompanied me inside and introduced me to Sister Theodora. She looked to be in her early seventies, with short steel-grey hair and glasses. She was dressed in a dark navy skirt and white blouse, with a large silver crucifix on a chain around her neck. I explained the purpose of our visit.
“I am eighty years old,” she said, “and I will never forget my first sight of Burton Delaney. Burton McGrath, he was then. We always called him Beau. One of our sisters — Soeur Marie-France — said ‘Qu’il est beau!’ when she first saw him. And it stuck. It would have been when? Forty-five years ago? No, more than that. We were called to see about an abandoned child in a flat on Paddock Street. The boy’s father was a bitter and ferocious man. He had been given a dishonourable discharge from the army early in the war, and never got over it. He and his cronies used to sit around the house and get drunk and rant about the war, and berate little Beau, and humiliate him and beat him. At other times, the child was neglected completely. The mother was cowed into submission. Oh, it was a dreadful situation.
“He was just a wee little boy. Four years old, I think he was. The morning we arrived, he was standing inside the doorway, skinny and filthy, his shorts soiled from, well, lack of proper hygiene. There were tear tracks in the grime of his face. He was holding a fireplace poker in his hands, ready to defend himself, it seemed. I took a step towards him, and he pointed it at me as if it were a gun or a bayonet. I said: ‘You could hurt somebody. You don’t want to do that.’ ‘I do! I’m going to!’ he cried out, and he raised it up and started to bring it down on my head. But I got the poker out of his hands. He began to scream, and scream, and scream. Rage, fear, God only knows what else. I knelt down and took him in my arms. He went absolutely rigid.
“It took a long, long time to bring him around, to get him to the point where he could accept love and affection. I remember sitting in the parlour after we had fed the children. It was around Christmas-time and someone had brought us a box of Florida oranges. The children went crazy; you’d think they’d each been given a brand new bicycle. But Beau refused his. Wouldn’t even look at it. Anyway, I was sitting by myself, peeling my orange, and he wandered in. I ate a section of the orange and offered him one. He hesitated, then took it. Tasted it. His eyes grew wide, and he gave me a great big smile. I leaned over and hugged him. He hugged me back. He began to sob and soon he was positively howling. With grief and desolation. Only now was he getting the love and attention he should have had all his life. He clung to me and wouldn’t let go. He was like that for the next little while. Always around, holding one or another of us by the hand, or by the leg. He suffered a setback when we had a little baby die here. Beau came into the room when Father McDevitt was giving the baby extreme unction. We were standing around the crib, me and some of the other sisters, while he gave the last rites.”
Was this what Normie had seen? People in black robes standing around a dying baby? And another child in the room, crying.
“Sister, what goes on during the last rites? What does the priest do?” I turned to Monsignor O’Flaherty. He gestured towards Sister Theodora to reply.
“This time, when the baby died — his name was Timmy — the ritual of extreme unction was burned into my mind because we all loved that poor little baby. The priest anointed his eyes, his ears, mouth, hands, and feet, and then we said goodbye and pulled his blanket up over his face.”
The man touching the baby under his blanket in Normie’s vision. Not abuse, but the last rites of death.
“Beau wandered in and saw this, and began crying and screaming. It took a long time for him to come around again. But eventually he did.
“He began to be a regular little helper about the place. Couldn’t do enough for us. He was adopted shortly after that, by the Delaneys. A match made in heaven. How they doted on him! He blossomed under their care. He was a tiny, undersized little boy when he came to us. You wouldn’t know it, he’s such a big man now. Children don’t thrive when they’re neglected, when they’re not given love and affection. But we loved him when he came here! Then of course he was all set once he went with the Delaneys. And he grew to the size his genetic makeup intended for him! There are studies showing the same phenomenon over and over again. Anyway, Beau never gave the Delaneys a moment’s grief, at least not that I ever heard. They moved to Halifax just before he started school. Well, you know the rest. He buckled right down, became an A student, the perfect son. He went on to university and law school. Once in a while, his courtroom exploits make the news up here, and we love to read about him, especially when he’s defending the less fortunate, those who never get a break. It’s not surprising that Beau would have an affinity for the underdog. So there you have it. A life well lived, after a disastrous beginning.”