Chapter 4

Shift 2 – An Irish Experience

It was some time before she felt the next point of resisting energy. She knew as she leant into it, that this block really needed to be lifted before she could progress onto the clearing and activation sections of the spirals. She centred herself, paused and then plunged her right foot forward into the vortex of energy. She was immediately sucked downward, down and down, everything rushing past her, glimpses of lives flying past until she found herself outside a very large house.

As she looked around, she could see that she was in a fairly large town and unless she was very much mistaken, she was hearing the lilt of Irish accents as people walked past the driveway. She had walked up the tree-lined drive to a massive front door. Whoever lived here held a position of authority she reckoned.

She felt her stomach spasm, it felt like a movement in her womb, she placed her hand on her stomach and felt the power of the new life pulsating within her. She was pregnant and had come to seek assistance from the person responsible. She looked down at her feet she was wearing simple boots and rough socks, her skirts were soiled and she knew that she obviously came from a working class possibly servile background.

So here she was to plead her case. The door was opened by a snooty housekeeper who looked down her nose at the young woman before her.

“I would like to see the Bishop please, Ma’am,” said Marianna known as Mary in this lifetime as she bobbed a curtsey.

“What would the likes of you have to do with his Grace?” said Miss O’Connor a formidable, cold woman who saw her role as protector of the Bishop and his good name.

“That’s no concern of yours, my business is with his Grace,” she said quietly but steadfastly.

“Cheek me would you, well we will see, wait here”. The woman strode away retreating into the hallway and the rooms beyond. Mary stood and waited, twisting the handles of her old bag in her hands. Her thoughts were running all over the place. What if he wouldn’t help, what then, her Mother would kill her. Her father would go off his head. She would be sent away or made to get rid of the child, in any event, this was the only road available.

The woman returned, indicating by a sharp movement of her head that she was to come in. She was shown into a large reception room with a great fire burning in the hearth. It was warm, cosy, a beautiful house with rich velvet curtains and tapestries on the walls. There, behind the desk, he sat, the Bishop, Adrian, as she knew him. He told Miss O’Connor to leave, and she did reluctantly go.

Mary ran to him as he got up and strode round the desk. The Bishop shouted, “I told you never to come here, what do you think you are doing? I’ll see you at the back of the church hall as usual; your forgiveness will be assured. You must never disclose our secret”.

He grabbed her by the shoulders and made to throw her out of the room. She managed to escape his grasp and turn on him, ” I need you to know, I am pregnant, you can’t just shun me and throw me out, I am bearing your child, are you not happy? No one need know that you are the father, I will bring him up if you will pay for our food and keep and help with his schooling and all”.

The Bishop laughed harshly, “you don’t really think that I feel any obligation to you at all, I merely vented my needs on you, I care absolutely nothing for you or your bastard child and if you dare accuse me of being its father then I will have you locked up as being mad, lascivious, a prostitute who puts her body around to one and all. You will be a laughing stock. Who will listen to you over me, the Bishop of the largest area in Ireland”?

Mary was devastated, she had always known that what was happening between them was wrong. From the start this man had groomed her, pretended to be like a friend and uncle to her and over the years. The level of his intimacy had increased until in the last year he had taken her virginity and had forced intercourse with her on several occasions. He had always sworn her to secrecy that it was their special relationship, given her little gifts and said he would look after her. Why hadn’t she listened to her gut? It had known that what was happening to her was not right. Now the truth was staring her in the face. He had used her, he had abused her and now with equal agility was abandoning her.

This was the Bishop, the holy man, people hung on his every word, and he was the highest of the high in this area, answerable to Cardinal O’Reilly himself. He had exerted his power and dominance over her, exploited her in every way and she let him know that she would tell and some would believe her. “You can say what you like, mud sticks, I will tell everyone and some of them will listen, it will do you no good. I will tell the Cardinal”. This last was uttered with cold menace.

This silenced him, had him pause for thought. After a few minutes he said in a defeated tone, “I will send you to a beautiful home in the country where you will be looked after well, cared for and the child will be cared for along with you. It is the best I can do and at least your parents won’t feel the shame of the situation, you can have a life with your child there”.

He moved to the door, “Wait here, I will arrange it now, you will leave right away”.

She hung her head and cried and cried, she wouldn’t get a chance to say goodbye to her Mam and her Dad, but once the babe was born she would come back and hopefully get a job and settle into a home life. She could always rent a room for her and the baby. Her mind was whirling, distraught though she was, it raced ahead to make plans.

After about 15 minutes, he came back into the room to usher her out the back way from his mansion on to a horse and cart driven by a surly individual. She climbed up, feeling wretched and yet in a strange way she was glad the confrontation was over and a way forward in place. For now she was at peace. Not for long however.

The Sisters of St Magdalene’s home for girls was a draconian place. Possibly, it would have been more appropriately called a prison or an asylum. Girls and women from many different backgrounds were simply abandoned there. This happened if they had been pregnant, or flirted and fooled around with men, looked the wrong way at men, were slightly retarded or ‘not right’. They were dumped by their parents, their friends and everyone they knew, with the Sisters,

It would be lovely to think that the Sisters were all spiritually perfect souls. However, as can be the way at a lot of these places, often they were run by targes, domineering women, verging on the sadistic with authority over poor souls who couldn’t fight back. They turned their backs on the visits from local clergy who were out to release their lustful passions on some of the women who didn’t even know what was happening to them. Suicides were frequent, beatings and whippings daily occurrences and Mary was heading for this tragic life in all innocence.

She had been duped. She soon found out what the place was like. The possibility of escape, nought but a futile dream. She learned to keep her head down as she awaited the birth of her young one. When that day came she would leave with her child and make her own life.

In reality, when the time came, the babe was taken from her breast and she never saw him after the first day. She was told it was for the best and that an honourable family would bring him up as their own. She would remain in this place of hell, her days spent in reflection, do penitence and pay for her sins, repent and see the error of her prostituting ways.

Devastated, she felt hatred build in her, the likes of which she had never dreamt she could feel. She was flogged regularly for her nonconformist behaviours, and each and every time her primal screams rang out over the Irish land, the voice of the Magdalenes, “NOT IN MY NAME”. We shall return with the love that goes beyond all understanding, we shall reclaim and resurrect the Truth and the real Magdalene.

Marianna suddenly became aware of the cold floor beneath her feet, she looked around and through the dimming light of the stained glass windows she realised that she was returned from this horrific and painful journey. Man’s inhumanity or in this case man and woman’s inhumanity to woman and man knows no bounds. How did we learn to be like that? She was reeling from the heart pain of this journey from the understanding now of the patterns of victimhood within her and her feelings of worthlessness, shame, sexual confusion, invisibility and guilt that occasionally came forward and up, unbidden and unwanted.

Once again she breathed deeply, breathing love, peace and forgiveness into her inner world so that calmness and a sense of wellbeing eventually returned. Now there was a curious lightening of the load, as if a burden had been lifted. An easing in her, heartfelt relief at not being in that lifetime, that the present moment was full of hunky Archangels and delectable France in all its glorious colours, flavours and textures not to mention its friendly people.

She felt as if this process was taking hours, as she looked at her watch she was amazed to see that it had only been 15 minutes since she first started, timelessness was obviously with her and in control - if that wasn’t a contradiction in terms.