you.’ She turned abruptly. He followed her in. His footsteps echoed loudly on the tiled floor of the dimly lit hall. What light there was came from two small table lamps. An elaborate glass chandelier hung from the high ceiling, but it carried neither candles nor bulbs; it was never used. An oak staircase led up from the centre of the hall to a galleried landing and darkness. Darkness and silence. There was a faint smell, not altogether unpleasant. It reminded Stefan unaccountably of one of his grandmothers. His eyes were drawn to the floor, polished so ferociously that it was the only part of the entrance hall that really reflected any light. It wasn’t only praying that kept the women on their knees here.
The nun led him through a door behind the great staircase. Beneath her long skirts, reaching almost to the ground, he could see her black shoes, shining like the floor, oddly similar to a pair of regulation issue Garda boots. Yet while his footsteps filled the silence of the place, the nun made no sound at all. He smiled. If he hadn’t seen those polished boots he would have been tempted to consider the possibility that she was on wheels. A long corridor stretched ahead, still only dimly lit. On either side were doors, evenly spaced, firmly closed, each one bearing a number in Roman numerals. The smell was stronger now, and more unpleasant. At the end of the corridor the nun took a key that hung from her robes, beside her rosary, and unlocked a heavy door that led outside. She held it for him as he walked through, back into the cold night, though it felt barely colder than the house they had left.
There was a courtyard with high wooden gates. Across the courtyard was a long, low, factory-like building. The windows were more brightly lit here and where they were open there was steam billowing out into the frosty air. Stefan could hear the sound of women, shouting and laughing. The nun quickened her pace and led him inside. They were in a laundry. Women of all ages were working, some barely in their teens, some in their twenties, others middle-aged and older. They all wore the same grey, smock-like dresses. They were washing, starching, wringing, hanging up clothes, ironing, folding, packing clean linen into wicker baskets. The smell that had seemed like a pleasant childhood memory in the convent’s entrance hall was overwhelming now and almost made him retch. Soap, endless quantities of pungent, fatty soap, mixed with starch and steam and laundry water rank with the human body’s odours. This was not a place many men saw the inside of, but he was a policeman. He knew who these women were. Unwed pregnancy was not on the statute books as a crime in the Free State but every one of them was serving a sentence. As for the babies they’d borne there, those that survived were long gone, sent away for adoption or to industrial schools, with no knowledge of where they came from. He had never been past the hallway of the convent before, but as a guard in uniform he had brought girls here often enough; sometimes from a courtroom, sometimes straight from a police cell, because there was nowhere else to take them.
As he followed the nun the length of the building, he was assailed by whistles and shouted propositions. Black-robed nuns appeared as if from nowhere to discipline the laughing women. By the time he reached the end of the laundry, order had been restored. The nun brought him into an office where the Mother Superior stood, fingering her rosary beads with a ferocity that had nothing whatsoever to do with prayer. Two startlingly large sisters, who wouldn’t have disgraced a rugby front row, stood shoulder to shoulder before a closed door on the far side of the room. Mother Eustacia looked at Detective Sergeant Gillespie with profound irritation.
‘Are you responsible for this?’
‘Responsible for what, Reverend Mother?’
‘I see, you’re a fool as well as an incompetent.’
‘I understand there’s been a mistake.’
‘Yes, a mistake. You do know this woman isn’t pregnant at all?’
He was thrown by this unlikely non-sequitur.
‘The reason she was in custody — ’
She cut him off.
‘We haven’t been able to examine her. We did try. I have a nun in the infirmary now as a result of the subsequent assault. However, she seems as aggressively confident about her condition in that respect as she does about everything else. I am, therefore, inclined to believe the woman.’
He was still puzzled. It didn’t make much sense of soliciting a miscarriage from Hugo Keller, let alone getting arrested for doing it.
‘Why did you bring her here, Sergeant?’
‘I didn’t bring her here, Reverend Mother.’
‘I don’t care which clown drove the car! She gave your name.’
‘As far as I know she was brought to the convent by Special Branch. A Sergeant Lynch I think. Or maybe someone else. They’ve got so many incompetent fools there it’s hard to pin them down. Women’s welfare isn’t their usual line of work, although they do specialise in dirty laundry.’
She looked at him, tightening her lips.
‘You’ll keep a civil tongue, Sergeant. Just get her out of here!’
‘Did she tell you who she is?’
‘Yes, Sergeant, she certainly did. And what she is!’
The Mother Superior offered no explanation and he could see that she wasn’t about to enlighten him. She nodded at the two nuns who were standing guard in front of the closed door. One of them opened it. In the small, cell-like room beyond the woman from Keller’s clinic sat on the edge of a table, smoking a cigarette. Her hair was dishevelled. Her clothes were torn in several places. She stood up and walked out into the office. Stefan could see that there was a bruise on her face. As she passed them the guardian nuns, despite their size, looked distinctly uncomfortable. It wasn’t physical fear. It was as if her proximity threatened them in some almost spiritual sense. The woman smiled with the insolent confidence she had shown when he was trying to question her at Pearse Street Garda station.
‘Do you know what she is?’ said the Mother Superior darkly.
‘What … she is?’
‘A Jewess, Sergeant!’
Mother Eustacia spoke the word as if she was still struggling to believe it. Stefan was unsure what would be an appropriate reply. He was mildly surprised; simply because it was information he had no reason to know. He glanced from the Reverend Mother, who was staring at him with wide-eyed indignation, to the woman, who was smiling. She seemed to be enjoying this. The look in her eyes made him want to laugh.
‘Well, in that case it’s even more of a mistake, Reverend Mother.’
The woman moved closer to him, drawing on the cigarette.
‘I’m glad they sent you, Sergeant. I didn’t like the other two.’
‘Did they do that?’
She wasn’t sure what he meant. Then she glanced down at herself, realising what he was looking at. She laughed.
‘Oh no, the sisters tried to give me a vaginal examination.’
The two big nuns gasped and then both crossed themselves. Stefan was startled, not so much by the words as by the matter-of-fact tone. Well, it was no more than a description of what had happened after all. But it wasn’t how a woman should speak, not anywhere, let alone here. The Reverend Mother pinched her lips more tightly.
‘You won’t shock me, young lady. I’ve known too much of the foulness of the human heart to be shocked by anything you can say.’
‘I’m sure. From what I’ve seen, you’ll be quite the expert.’
Mother Eustacia processed ahead of Sergeant Gillespie and the woman, with the small nun on wheels beside her, back through the laundry. Work continued all around as they walked, but the eyes of every one of the grey-clad laundry workers followed the figure of the woman. Her hair was still a mess; her clothes were torn; her face was bruised. But she walked with her head upright, her dark skin still somehow reflecting the warmth of a sun that would never find its way in through these windows. As they approached the door to the courtyard the small nun who had brought Stefan in scurried ahead to unlock it. The Reverend Mother turned to the woman. Her anger and indignation were undiminished. The very way this woman carried herself was another insult. But there was one weapon Mother Eustacia had left that would put her firmly where she belonged. She fixed her eyes on the woman, and with a look of almost infinite compassion she prayed for her.
‘Almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from thy mercy even Jewish faithlessness, hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness.’
