Ruby Flynn (4 page)

Lottie didn’t mention that she had also heard the reverend mother say she would be glad of the chance to rid herself of Ruby.

‘She broke our beloved Father Michael’s vase, she has the devil in her that one, so she does. I will gladly pay a housekeeper to take her.’

Ruby had already been looked over by at least half a dozen prospective housekeepers, but none had taken her, much to the annoyance of the reverend mother.

‘’Tis the set of your jaw and the boldness in your face,’ Sister Francis had whispered to Ruby. ‘I don’t want you to go, Ruby, but you can’t stay here for the rest of your life. Being in service will be one way to step into the big world. Who knows what opportunities will be waiting out there for you?’

Ruby looked coldly at Sister Francis when she said this. Somewhere deep inside, Ruby knew that the set of her jaw and the defiance in her face was all that set her apart from the other orphans in the convent. The girls did everything together, woke, slept, ate, prayed, learned and cleaned. And then learned some more. A routine in harmony with the ringing of the bells. Although the best scholar in the convent and a pride to Sister Francis, Ruby was not quite so good at keeping her own temper in check and she was as stubborn as a mule.

‘You were too lenient on her when she couldn’t speak,’ Reverend Mother often said to Sister Francis. ‘You spared the rod and have spoilt the child.’

In her first year, Ruby often overheard such conversations. There was a general assumption that if she couldn’t speak, she couldn’t hear either. This had enabled her to live inside her own head with her memories of the days before the storm, recalling not just fragments of time in the past, but sounds, smells and feelings. She could remember, word for word, conversations with her mother, smell the smoke from the crackling fire and feel the wind rush in through the door as her da and her brother returned from a day’s fishing. She could hear the soft crackling from the gently yielding straw mattress as she lay down in front of the dying embers of the peat fire and she could still recall the silver shimmer of the sea on a sunny morning and how her eyes hurt from the glare.

Her memories always took her to the final week.

The greyness of the eerie haze inside the cottage that came from the thick snow, which covered both windows. Scraping the black cast iron pan to scratch out the last frozen spoon of the broth her mother had made before she became so ill. She had lain down on her own straw mattress ‘for just a minute, Ruby,’ and never got up again.

The conversations she had with Eamonn, her brother, but most of all, their fateful last words, came back vividly to her.

‘Shall we up onto the turf and cut some to bring back down?’ Eamonn had whispered as she huddled next to him for warmth on the mattress between their parents.

‘Can we go without Daddy?’ she asked. They were never allowed near the cliff edge alone.

‘We have to, Daddy won’t answer me. He is so cold we have to get the fire going, Ruby.’ Her brother began to cough again. The phlegm bubbled in his chest and his eyes burnt bright with a fever.

‘Don’t worry, I will look after you all right,’ Eamonn said, ‘but come with me, we can do it, so we can Ruby, we can.’

She could tell he was scared. Scared both of what was outside the cottage and in. He didn’t want to step outside alone, without her. There was another reason he wanted to venture outdoors. It was to look for the priest. Eamonn had been sure that when the priest had come to pray over his daddy, he would bring something with him, or send someone straight back. He had done neither, but maybe a neighbour from the village had left something on the road, as they did when his mother bought flour and they took the cart down to collect it. But the road was white and he could see by the undisturbed snow that no one had been there, so now there was nothing for it but to cut the turf. It was the only thing he knew to do, so he wrapped Ruby in their mammy’s outdoor shawl, lifted her onto the turf cart and lay the sacking across her knee. But the cold slowed him down and slipped into his bones and the lack of food made him feel dizzy. It took an hour to climb the cliff to the turf bed and to remove two frozen lumps of turf from the neat mounds his daddy had already cut. With what remained of his strength he crawled under the cart for shelter and to rest while he recovered, as his lungs filled and faltered.

Ruby had not intended to break her silence on the morning when she spoke for the first time, but the words, which had been beating on the inside of her brain, unravelled and tumbled out, and as they did, Ruby felt life glide through her veins.

It was Deirdra McGinty who brought about her ferocious explosion of anger. Deirdra was a paying student, the child of a land agent. Like many other pupils, she resented the arrival of the non-paying storm orphans and especially Lottie, viewing her kindness as a weakness.

On the way from prayers to the refectory, Ruby noticed Lottie crying.

Ruby had no need of her voice to ask what was wrong.

‘The picture of my mammy and daddy’s wedding has disappeared from under my pillow and I know who has taken it but no one will believe me. My mammy and daddy, they were married in Dublin and ’tis a lovely picture. I brought it here, hidden in my liberty bodice on the day I arrived. Sister Maggie says I shouldn’t have had it anyway and she won’t do nothing to help. I know it was Deirdra McGinty. I saw her rooting around our beds yesterday afternoon. Why would she want the picture of my mammy and daddy? ’Tis the only thing I have left.’

Lottie burst into a fresh bout of raw tears.

‘Lottie, stop your squawking.’ Sister Maggie’s voice rang out from the front of the line. ‘You sound worse than a laying hen. What’s done is done. Quiet girl.’

Ruby noticed Deirdra McGinty giggling behind her hand to another girl, two ahead in the line. Deirdra never missed an opportunity to let the storm orphans know that her family paid for her to attend the convent and that she was not ‘a charity case’ like they were.

Ruby had no idea what overcame her. Leaving Lottie’s side, she let out one loud scream and hurled herself at Deirdra McGinty, who was knocked flat from the attack.

‘Where’s the picture?’ she screamed.

As she stopped screeching, Ruby wrapped Deirdra’s ponytail round her fingers and banged her head up and down on the stone floor.

The shuffling procession of hungry girls stopped in its tracks and stood, open mouthed in amazement.

Ruby had spoken. Ruby had screamed and shouted. Ruby’s voice, which no one had heard before today, was so loud it filled the convent and bounced back at them from wall to wall.

The silent girl had not only spoken, she was blaspheming and beating one of the fee-paying pupils to a pulp on the corridor floor, right in front of their eyes.

Sister Maggie shouted for help.

‘Get off her, you are killing her, leave her alone,’ she shrieked, pulling at Ruby’s shoulders.

But Ruby could only hear the rage in her head, which sounded as loud as waves, beating against the Doohoma shore.

It took two of them, Sister Maggie and the reverend mother, to pull Ruby off Deirdra.

‘Put me down, put me down,’ Ruby screamed as she tried to free herself from the iron grip of the nuns.

Sister Maggie and the reverend mother had each taken an arm and a leg and Ruby found herself helpless, her body arched upwards, with her skirts covering her face as she tried to wriggle free from their vice-like grip while they marched down the corridor with her.

‘Open that door,’ the reverend mother shouted to one of the girls, as they passed the sick bay. As soon as the door opened, Ruby was swung in and dumped unceremoniously on the bed. She heard the key turn in the lock behind her and she knew she would be there for some time.

‘I’m not going to escape,’ Ruby shouted through the keyhole, trying out her new-found voice, but no one replied.

The sick bay was cold and bare. It contained nothing but a cast iron bedstead, a sink, a chamber pot, which the maid had left on the floor, and a large crucifix on the wall opposite the bed. The windows were shielded by wooden shutters, which had been pulled and fastened shut.

She could tell the time by the bells calling the girls to prayer and with each hour, her spirits sank further. She cried for the mammy who she knew was not there. She imagined she could smell the peat smoke in her mother’s hair and feel the warmth of her breath against her cheek, touching her with the most tender of kisses until she finally fell into a deep sleep.

The following morning, the door opened without the usual jangle of keys. In the shaft of light that fell into the room, Ruby could see the outline of Sister Francis, her saviour. As she felt the hot tears of self-pity prickle her eyes. Sister Francis perched on the side of the bed, took Ruby’s hands and held them to her lips.

‘Ruby, what are we to do with you?’ she said.

Ruby softened at the kindly touch. She saw tears of sympathy returned in the eyes of Sister Francis as she scooped her up from the bed and, holding her close, whispered, ‘I have prayed for you child and barely slept while you have been in here. My heart was so heavy. Sister Joseph has been on the door and for the love of God I could not get near you, but it is over now, your punishment is done.’

‘I’m sorry, Sister Francis.’ The words broke through Ruby’s tears.

Sister Francis was filled with joy as her heartfelt prayers were answered. Ruby had spoken. ‘I know you are, but Ruby, you must talk to me and let all that anger out. You mustn’t bottle it up like that and take it out on others. We’ve all felt like you did, at times, but if you want to get on in this life you need to learn to handle things a better way than that and talking, now that is always a good idea.’

She held Ruby away from her as she looked at her tear-stained face. ‘Promise me that in future you will come and find me when you are filled with the anger. I cannot be your mammy, Ruby, and nor would you want me to be, but I can help you and listen to your problems, just like your mammy would have.’

‘She was so wicked to Lottie and upset her and I don’t know what happened. I just felt mad and couldn’t think or hear anyone, there was just this noise in my head,’ Ruby sobbed.

‘I know, I know. Life wasn’t always wonderful for me and I used to get angry too. I found my solace, here, serving God, but somehow, I don’t believe that will be your road to peace.’

Ruby noticed something flit across Sister Francis’s face that she couldn’t identify. Was it sadness, regret?

‘Promise me that you will always come to find me now,’ Sister Francis said again, with an urgency in her voice.

‘I will,’ said Ruby, before whispering in pitiful voice, ‘I wanted my mammy.’ As her tears began to flow Ruby spoke to Sister Francis for the first time of the life she had lost. Sister Francis stroked her hair, her own heart pained for all the young girl in her arms had endured and she wondered why God, her God, had done this.

*

‘Did you hear where the housekeepers are from?’ Ruby asked Lottie.

‘What does it fecking matter, Ruby?’ said Maria. ‘’Tis all the same. We are being sold into slavery. I will run away the first chance I can get. I want to go to a house in Dublin and then I can escape with me wages and take a boat to my cousin, she’s a nurse in Liverpool.’

‘I don’t think you can leave, can ye?’ said Lottie innocently. ‘Do we get wages?’

‘Of course you can’t leave. Lottie, you are so feckin’ dense sometimes. That’s how the convent makes its money. From us who don’t have family to pay the school fees, it sells us into service and jobs. ’Tis a roaring trade they have going in kitchen and laundry maids. The others, they go off to the university in Dublin, but not the likes of us. If you don’t get a wage, never fear, find something to steal and sell. I will and if ye do the same, just make sure ye are careful. Go for something small, silver maybe, eh? Take an ornament or two and then run fer yer life before the Garda leg it after ye.’

Maria laughed. But Ruby and Lottie knew that Maria was from a different world to theirs and on her horizon stood a prison gate.

Ruby had prayed daily that Con and his wife might return to collect her. It was a thought she kept to herself, a hope that burnt deep in her heart. She had spent only a fleeting time with Con and Susan, but she felt that her life in the convent was wrong. Surely, if God had a plan for her, if he did exist, he had meant for her to be with them?

‘Do you think the nice man and his wife may come for me?’ she asked Sister Francis one day.

Sister Francis looked up from the sock she was darning.

‘What man, Ruby?’ she replied in surprise.

‘The man who brought me here.’ Ruby was not now as confident and wished she had kept her thoughts to herself.

‘Con O’Malley, the town clerk? Sure, we haven’t heard a thing from him since the storm. I don’t think we will be hearing from him again. Why, did he say he would?’

Ruby pushed her needle hard into the snowdrop she was embroidering on her tray cloth. It was as though the needle had pierced her heart, so sharp was the pain.

She thought that she must have been mad indeed to have set so much store by Con O’Malley and yet she still remembered the warmth of his coat, the soothing sounds made by his wife and the kindness in their eyes.

*

‘Ruby, get a move on,’ a postulant shouted into the dorm. If there was shouting to be done Ruby, the unforgiven vase breaker, was always the first name to fall from the lips of authority.

‘Now, girls, after breakfast there are six of you to wait in the corridor outside the mother’s room. Are you listening?’

The girls were as close as blood sisters, their bond forged by a unique shared experience and tragic loss. They were all keen to leave the convent, but not to say goodbye to each other.

Waiting on the wooden bench outside the reverend mother’s room, they whispered, ‘Will they beat us?’ ‘Will they feed us?’ ‘Will we ever see each other again?’

They had been scrubbed until their skin was stinging. Their hair was brushed and gleaming. Their cleaning aprons had been changed for fresh.

‘Will we stay here, near to Belmullet?’ Ruby asked Lottie, nervously.