A week after Christmas Detta fell sick, coming down with a desperate cold and a rasping cough that would not go away. They were all afraid that it was TB. Detta still insisted on working in the steam room, though Sister Jo-Jo had organized that Sheila would take over most of the burden of her work.
“She’s a divil!” confided Sheila. “She won’t ease up, no matter what I say. I think she doesn’t trust me to do the work.”
The period after Christmas was extra busy, for, as well as all their regular customers getting all their clothing washed and cleaned, every housewife and housekeeper seemed to make a New Year resolution to get every piece
of linen in her household laundered. There were baskets bursting with fine table linen.
“There’s no bloody end to it!” grumbled Rita. “Why don’t those lazy bitches wash their own things? ‘Twill be the Easter before we get through this shagging lot!”
Everyone was working at full stretch, and Esther’s legs and back ached. She had developed varicose veins from standing, and at times they throbbed and pained her.
She could hear Detta coughing all day, and at night it woke her too. The whole dormitory was worried about the old lady as she barely ate, only picking at her food. “I can’t eat with this cough,” she whispered hoarsely. “Everything keeps going against my breath.”
Secretly Ina sent specially prepared bowls of creamy rice pudding and bread-and-butter pudding for Detta, trying to feed her up. “I’m fine,” she lied, her thin face even paler than usual. “Honest, I’m fine!” But she wasn’t.
One dark January morning, after a wretched night of coughing when most of them had got very little sleep, Detta was unable to get out of bed.
“What’ll Gabriel say?”
“It don’t matter what she says,” insisted Maura fiercely. “You’re not stirring, Detta!”
Rita and Sheila helped to change her out of her sweat-soaked nightdress and put on a fresh one, so faded and worn that it was almost see-through. Maura freshened her up with a face flannel. “You rest easy, Detta, and we’ll bring you up a bit of breakfast by and by, after the mass.”
Sister Gabriel noticed her absence in the chapel and deliberately came down to the laundry to check her whereabouts.
Sister Jo-Jo stuck to her guns, explaining how ill Detta seemed.
“This is not a rest home for these sort of women,” Gabriel responded sourly.
Despite the rest Detta failed to improve, and if anything seemed weaker. Even Sister Josepha was concerned and had come up to visit her.
“They should get a doctor for her!” argued Maura. “The old woman’s in pain. Why don’t they get a doctor?”
“Sister Gabriel said that the doctor’s due to visit in a few days’ time. He’ll have a look at Detta then,” promised Sister Josepha.
“She’s old and wore out,” declared Rita. “Like an old horse, only fit for the knacker’s yard. They know they’ll get no more work out of her, the bloody old bitches.”
Esther liked to sit with Detta; even if she barely spoke it didn’t matter. She read her chapters and passages from the Bible, and told her all about Connemara and its wild beauty. At night she kept an eye on her, realizing her friend was getting weaker and weaker.
Even poor Ina had sneaked up from the kitchen to the dormitory to visit her old friend. “Whatever you fancy, Detta. You name it and I’ll do my best to get it for you, honest!”
Detta only patted her hand. “I’ve lost my appetite, Ina. I’m just not hungry anymore.” For most of the time Detta just slept.
Ina waylaid Esther after yet another trip to the toilet. At the moment she seemed to spend half her time peeing or wanting to pee. Her bladder was always full and she felt
a heavy pressure going down into her thighs. The cook beckoned for her to come into the kitchen.
“I’ve made Detta a drop of my beef tea, and there’s a scone to go with it. Will you bring it up to her, Esther? She needs to keep her strength up.”
“What happens if Sister Gabriel sees me? She’d kill me!”
“She won’t. She’s in the parlour with Mother Benedict. I’m just making them a pot of tea. Go on! Run along upstairs, quick!”
Detta seemed asleep as Esther put the mug and plate on the blistered wooden locker. The old lady slowly opened her eyes, but even that seemed an effort.
“Here’s some beef tea. I’ll help you sit up,” she offered, clumsily trying to raise Detta slightly, holding the mug to her lips.
“I’m tired, child. Too tired. Just let me be!”
Esther sat quiet, watching as Detta drifted in and out of sleep. Years of work in the laundry had eventually taken their toll. Detta’s slight frame was stripped of any spare flesh, every vein and sinew showing through her skin. Rita was right, she was worn out. Why, now even her breathing was laboured. The room felt chilly. Someone must have left the upper part of the window open. That was all right during the night, when ten of them crowded into the room and you needed a bit of ventilation, but now it only let in the cold. Moving away from the bed she found the window pole, and reached up to close the window. Outside a hard frost covered the ground.
“There, Detta. That’ll make you feel a bit warmer. ’Tis frosty outside, bed’s the place to be.” Esther didn’t know
what she’d do if Detta died. She couldn’t imagine not having the bossy, kindhearted old woman around. She’d been like a mother to her ever since she came.
Turning around, she was amazed to see that Detta had raised herself up on the pillows, her eyes open, intent. She seemed almost agitated, her fingers clutching frantically at the covers on the bed.
“Are you all right, Detta? Will I fetch you something?”
The old woman didn’t seem to hear her, lost in a world of her own.
Curious, Esther watched as Detta pulled at the bedsheet, forcing it into shape, then arranging and folding it into a crease before running the side of her hand over it again and again, as if smoothing it. She repeated the action again, plucking at the coverlet, folding it too. In silence Esther watched as Detta re-enacted part of her daily routine in the laundry, again and again ironing and ironing and pressing sheets. Esther stood beside her, remembering all the long years of hard work that had filled her friend’s life, replacing the love and joy of raising her child. Heavyhearted, she knew that Detta could no longer hear her, lost in the routine of the Magdalens’ work even as the last breaths left her body. Gradually the frantic movements slowed, the hands holding the cotton stilled as her breathing slackened, eventually slowing, her lungs struggling for each laboured breath, eventually ceasing. Esther took the old woman’s hands in her own. Parchment-like skin, but they were still warm, her spirit not yet gone. Kissing her as a daughter would kiss her mother, Esther said goodbye.
She sat with Detta for more than an hour, until Maura discovered them both, so glad that Detta was finally free.
The funeral mass had been held early in the morning, so that none of them would miss work. Father Enda, smothered with a cold, had made a brief halting sermon.
“Bernadette O’Kelly has atoned for all her past sins. Through long years of penitence she has earned her eternal reward and is now welcome into the kingdom of the Lord.”
The women sat numb and bitter, listening to the young man’s talk. Esther couldn’t help wondering if Detta’s daughter knew of her mother’s death. She supposed there was no-one to tell her. Looking around the convent chapel, there was no sign of any family members or relatives of the deceased woman, only her fellow-Magdalens and the community of nuns.
“Let us take our sister to her place of rest,” intoned the priest.
The women formed a long line running from outside the chapel doorway and along the corridor as the simple coffin was brought out and across the laundry yard. Only a handful of the women were allowed to join the nuns as they walked along the gravel path that led down through the gardens and past the nuns’ graveyard and merged into the rectangular piece of unmarked ground that was the burial-place of the Magdalens. Esther blessed herself as the procession passed her, surprised to see tears in the eyes of some of the nuns.
“Bloody old bitches! What they done to her!” sobbed
Rita that evening, still upset after the funeral. “Detta was holier than any of them!”
“Ssssh, Rita! They’ll hear you!” cautioned Maura.
“I don’t give a damn! They’re a shower of dried-up old virgins who’ll never know the love of a man and are doing their damnedest to make sure no-one else will either. They have us working like slaves to keep the roof over their heads. ‘Tis our hard labour pays for everything in this godforsaken place!”
“Shush!” Sheila giggled. “Gabriel will kill you if she hears you!”
“I’m getting out of here. You mark my words, girls, I’ll not end up like poor Detta, buried up in the back fields with no stone or cross to mark my grave, after slaving for that crowd for years.”
“Rita, shut up!” ordered Maura. “Even the walls have ears in a place like this, so have a care what you say!”
Rita, with a toss of her thick black hair, was about to retort some smart reply, but Esther could tell she had sensed that Maura’s concerns were genuine. The recreation room was totally quiet; everyone had heard what she had said. The three Marys had lifted their heads and the orphans were half curious and half afraid, not used to such outspokenness. Rita could sense the audience there waiting. “I’m pissed off with youse all!” she snarled, turning on the room. “Youse haven’t a back bone between youse all. They’d better keep plenty of space up near poor old Detta, for it’s where youse will all end up!”
The room sat in a stunned silence. Rita’s face looked blotchy red and tearful. “It’s been an awful bloody day. I’m tired, I’m going to bed.”
Nobody said a word or tried to challenge or stop her as truth moved among the listeners, sinking in.
Esther sat, pretending to knit. Already she missed her friend. She still couldn’t believe that Detta was dead. She had never met anyone who was as kind and caring and as Christian as the old woman. Why, Detta almost knew the Bible off by heart, she read it so often.
Father Enda had said Detta was a sinner, but then the priest didn’t know her at all. Anyone who’d taken the time to get to know her would see that she was really a saint. Rita was wrong, assuming that all the Maggies were the same. That was a mistake. They might all share the same work and bad conditions and rotten lives, but each of them was different. Detta had accepted the life of a Magdalen. She had not fought and complained when the nuns had taken her daughter from her and sent the baby away, considering it for the best. She had found peace and almost a quiet dignity living out the rest of her life here with the nuns and the girls and women. She had felt safe within the confines of the convent and the laundry.
Esther herself could not and would not ever feel the same way. She longed for freedom. Once her baby was born she wanted to leave this place, walk away from her past, forget all that had happened. The nuns considered her a sinner, a fallen woman. She knew that. She could see the way they averted their gaze from her swelling belly, turning up their noses and curling their lips with disdain when they had to speak to her or pass her in the corridors. When she’d first come to Dublin she’d been so grateful for their charity and kindness in taking her in. Now she was experiencing a growing resentment and anger towards these
brides of Christ, who had never felt a child kick in their wombs, and who were so cruel to the women in their care. How could they possibly know, or even begin to imagine, how any of the women in their charge felt, or have any understanding of what the Maggies were going through?