Esther yawned her way through the early-morning mass, mumbling the Latin prayers mechanically, only managing a slice of brown bread and a cup of strong tea for breakfast, Tina shoving in beside her and eating the rest of the bread off her plate. “Sister Vincent will want you when you’re finished,” she warned. “She always does the hair!”
Sister Vincent, a hatchet-faced nun, had called her into a small upstairs room, requesting her to sit on a chair. A large silver pair of scissors glinted as it hung from the belt around her waist.
“You’ve lovely hair,” she murmured, fingering it.
“Then don’t cut it, sister, please!” Esther pleaded. “I’ll tie it up, promise.”
“Long hair can get stuck in the machinery here! Of course, for cleanliness and hygiene reasons, everyone has to get it cut, that’s the rule.” Ignoring her protests, the bloody old bitch of a nun dosed her hair in a foul-smelling liquid. Esther recognized it: her mother had used it when her brothers had come home from school with their heads crawling with lice. It stung her scalp, the fumes making her eyes water. “You’ve no scabies or worms have you?” demanded the nun as she combed the lotion through her hair.
Insulted and angry, she didn’t trust herself to reply. What kind of girl did these nuns think she was? What kind of family did they imagine she came from! They were making assumptions and judgements about her that were totally unfair, she thought bitterly.
Taking her scissors, the nun began to clip away at her light brown curls till her hair barely reached beyond her ears. Esther watched as her hair feathered on to the linoleum below, wondering at the likelihood of her barber being bald under her nun’s headdress. Moving the comb through her hair, Sister Vincent parted it to the side before passing her three clips to pin it in place. The nun then reached into a cupboard, handing her out a clean overall and a rather limp-looking green cardigan. “You can run upstairs and change, then I’ll bring you down to the laundry, Esther.”
Esther tried to mask her shame and anger until she reached the upstairs dormitory. Tears welled in her eyes when she caught a glimpse of herself in the cracked mirror
in the corner near the wardrobe. She looked awful, almost as bad as she felt. Her dampened hair hung straight and limp; her eyes were huge and lost in her pasty face; the unflattering overall shift dress was geared to accommodate expanding waistlines and bulges, the dirty blue colour making her look even paler. Already she looked just the same as the rest of them.
Heat and steam enveloped her the minute she stepped inside the laundry doors.
“Leave your shoes out in the corridor,” Rita had advised her. “They’ll be soaked otherwise.”
The laundry floor was soaking wet, water swirling across the tiles, running in lines down into the silver drain-holes that studded the floor. You had to walk extra slow and careful if you didn’t want to lose your footing.
“Mind you don’t slip!” hissed Rita, who had tightened her dress with a narrow green belt so that it clung to her full breasts and curving stomach. She had given birth to a baby boy about six months before. She had called him Patrick.
Esther swallowed hard. Laundry days back home had been bad enough, washing all her brothers’ clothes—sweat-stained, reeking of fish guts, covered in grease or mud—but this washing for strangers was an entirely different thing.
“Over here, girl!”
Esther turned towards the voice. A small red-faced nun, bundled into a white apron and with her sleeves rolled up, gestured to her.
“Sister Josepha wants you,” whispered Rita. “You’d better go over to her!”
“You’re the new girl?” quizzed the nun, peering at her from top to toe. “A country girl, like myself. I always find the country girls better workers than the city girls; why, I don’t know.” Esther wasn’t sure if she was meant to make any comment on this and just smiled, not wanting to antagonize her workmates.
“This laundry not only serves our own religious community and our orphanage,” Sister Josepha informed her, “but the local hospital, two boarding schools, a number of hotels and guest houses and four of the best restaurants in the city, along with a large number of loyal clients, so you see there’s plenty of jobs to be done.”
She began to explain all the intricacies of running a laundry, walking from one section to another, the noise of the heavy machines and running water almost drowning out her voice. “This is the sorting area, where the baskets come first, and we check off the wash list. There’s a card or a book for everyone, so we can manage the ins and outs and special orders. The baskets are stacked there. Through here is the main washroom. Those machines are for washing large quantities of soiled goods; that wall of sinks is for soaking, handwashing, rinsing, delicates. This is the drying room, there’s the machine, the racks, the mangles and of course if the weather’s good a door to go outside to the washing lines. Over there we’ve the steam room, the pressing-benches and the ironing room.” The small nun was all excited, pointing in every direction, presuming that Esther had understood everything.
“For today I’m going to start you over at the baskets with Sheila, she’ll show you the ropes.”
Pulling on a long white apron, Esther was glad to be working with the ginger-haired girl with the husky voice whom she already had met. Some of the women seemed sullen and uncommunicative; they had no interest in talking to anyone and avoided your eyes. Sheila squeezed her hand as they opened one heavy wicker basket after another. Each one had to be unpacked, the list checked and the clothes sorted and separated ready for washing, in the huge machines or by hand. They mostly worked in silence. It was such a strange feeling, rooting around, up to her elbows in other people’s clothing, sheets, pillow-cases and towels. Her back and arms ached from all the bending and stretching. Sister Josepha walked up and down past her a few times, obviously checking that she was working.
They broke mid-morning for a cup of tea that was served by Tina and another young girl. Sheila urged her to go outside and sit on a bench to get a bit of fresh air and cool down. She felt hot and tired. Here she was, years younger than some of the women, and she was exhausted already! She watched as the laundry vans arrived and the drivers dragged the baskets inside. She wondered what her mother was doing back home now. She used to love the sight of the clothes line full of washing, blowing in the breeze coming in off the ocean, and all their clothes smelling of sea. They could do with a bit of that here. Wiping the sweat off her face, she went back inside.
More baskets had arrived and Sheila was working away. At midday the angelus sounded and everyone
stopped what they were doing, the nun leading them in prayer. This was also the signal for lunch and they all trooped back up to the dining room.
Sitting at the same table, she was almost too tired to talk to the others. They were served vivid-pink corned beef and pale watery cabbage. She pushed a jelly-like piece of fat to one side of her plate and cut up a potato instead.
“Bleedin’ eat your meat!” whispered Tina.
“I can’t! I’d be sick!”
Tina put her head down, concentrating on her own plate, devouring every mouthful. Sister Gabriel paraded up and down the room, her heavy skirt trailing along the floor, eyes intent, watching who was eating and who was not. She came down and stood between them. “Esther, you must remember that your child needs nourishment. You must eat for the sake of your baby, and it’s a sin to waste good food!”
“Yes, sister.”
The nun stood at the end of the table watching her, all conversation around ceasing. She knew by the uncomfortable expression on the other women’s faces that they were silently warning her not to have a showdown with the nun, as she would only be the loser. Totally nauseated, she swallowed her pride and ate the vile lump of jellied fat, disguising it in a layer of soapy potato, the other women watching her. Satisfied, the nun moved away, leaving her in peace.
“Good food, my arse!” muttered Bernice, who’d spent her break searching the stinking kitchen bins for something to eat. Like the rest of the penitents, she was often hungry.
The only good thing about being here was that at last she could talk about the baby, mention its existence; she didn’t have to pretend she was not pregnant. Here the women and nuns accepted her condition, it was not a secret like it had been at home. This was a relief in itself, for she could not have hidden her growing child much longer. At least a dozen of the women that she’d seen working in the laundry were in a similar condition to herself. All the women worked so hard, it was as if they were being punished. It was bloody awful work too, with arms and legs and backs aching, standing in suds and water, eyes stinging from the bleach; still none of them complained. “The sisters took us in when nobody, not even one of our own, would have us,” Sheila had confided. “Sure we can’t begrudge them making us work to earn our keep!”
That night Esther cried and cried, trying to muffle the sound so as not to disturb the others in the dormitory. She hated the laundry and the work and everything about the Holy Saints Magdalen Home for Wayward Girls and Fallen Women. She could hear the exhausted snores of the women and girls as they tossed and turned in their sleep, some muttering the odd disjointed word, others grinding their teeth as hour crawled into miserable hour.
“Here’s a hanky for you, child.”
Esther started. It was the old woman called Detta, from the bed beside her. She was standing at the right-hand side, her white hair loose and streaming around her shoulders, in a voluminous pink nightie, her scrawny chicken-like legs sticking out beneath.
“Have a good blow!”
“I’m sorry for waking you,” sniffed Esther.
“That don’t matter, I don’t need as much sleep as I used to, and the old bladder is weak so I’m up and down to the toilet all night.”
The old woman peered over at her.
“Funny, I hadn’t reckoned on you being one of them cry-baby types.”
“I’m not!” denied Esther.
“Well, it does no good to be upsetting yourself and your baby like this.”
Esther raised herself up on her elbows, moving the lumpy pillow behind her, leaning forward to see Detta better as she’d slipped back into her own bed.
“The first few nights are always the hardest; the new girls always weep on their first few nights here,” declared Detta matter-of-factly. “Leaving your home and family is enough to make anyone cry. I’m sure I cried when I came here first too.”
“How long ago was that, Detta?” she asked, curious.
“Too long, child! Far too long. Almost fifty years I suppose.”
“Nearly fifty years!”
“Aye, it must be that since my baby was given up and I’ve been doing my penance here ever since.”
“Why didn’t you ever go home, or get out of here?”
“You’re nearly as bad as Sister Margaretta, child. She was always on at me to go out and make a fresh start and put the past behind me, till in the end she gave up on me. I’d had my baby, given her up. She went to a good family. You’re not supposed to know, but Margaretta told me: he’s
a doctor. They live in a big house not too far from here. My daughter was sent to the best schools, educated. I used to think about her a lot, wonder what she was doing. My daughter, just imagine it! I didn’t need to be out in the world. She was out there. Do ye understand, Esther?”
“Of course I do,” she said softly.
“My father was a strict man; he threw me out of the house, locked the doors and refused to let me in. He wouldn’t listen to my mother or my sister Eileen. He disowned me, said that I was no daughter of his anymore. Just imagine!”
Esther didn’t need to, as it reminded her of her own mother’s reaction to her pregnancy. “Were you in love, Detta?”
“I’m not sure now, looking back, that love came into it at all,” chuckled the old woman. “Charley was a handsome devil, home on leave from the Royal Navy. We lived down in Cobh. I used to love watching the big ships and liners coming in and out. Charley was very attractive, and all the girls were mad about him. He’d travelled the world and he made me feel very grown-up and clever. I was always a bit giddy and wild and one night we went to this big party that one of his friends was having. I got tipsy and Charley offered to walk me home. We made a detour at his lodgings. All I wanted to do was sleep, well, sleep my eye!”
Esther burst out laughing.
“I know, I was such an eejit, but he was that gorgeous I couldn’t resist him. I saw him every day and night for the next three weeks before his leave was up. Then he went back to his ship in Southampton and I ended up here.
He came back to Cobh about two years later; my sister thought he might have been looking for me. He never knew about the baby, there was no point telling him. Went to live in South Africa then. I wouldn’t have fancied living out foreign. Never set eyes on him again!”
“That’s awful!” Esther sighed.
“‘Twas my own fault, Esther. Funny, but when I came here I felt safe. Sister Margaretta had just joined the order and she was always kind to me. I didn’t mind the work and I liked being with the other women. I’d be no good on my own. Where would I have gone if I went back outside? My father, Lord rest him, never changed his mind and I’d no place to go. Things were harder for women in those days, so I decided to stay here. My sister Eileen always brought me news from outside. I was a sinner but the good Lord forgave me, and I know I have done my penance.”
Appalled, Esther couldn’t believe how anyone would stay so long in this prison-like home of shame and sorrow, hidden away from the world. It didn’t bear thinking about—and yet Detta seemed contented and at peace with herself. Listening to the old woman eventually falling asleep and snoring lightly, Esther vowed that nothing like that was ever going to happen to her. She was not prepared to give up on life and stay locked away.