The Ballroom Café (6 page)

Assumpta carefully folded the newspaper, her hands trembling and jerking as if she were trying to parcel an awkward item. ‘No need for that.’

Spinning Marguerite out of the way, she swept along the narrow corridors to the main house. Stomping down the stairs, she stopped on the widest step of the sweep to compose herself before marching into her office to pick up the phone.

‘Miss Kading, dear, is there anything wrong?’

‘I want to talk to Sister Consuelo.’

‘What good would that do? There are no records of your birth here.’

‘She would be able to clear it up. I will have to go further if you don’t let me talk to Consuelo.’

‘Miss Kading, if that is a threat, you are very silly indeed. I am not going to subject an old woman to your senseless, emotional ravings.’

‘Mother Assumpta, I just want some answers.’

‘You have got your answer, Miss Kading: there is no record of your birth here.’

‘Please, can I talk to her?’

‘Sister Consuelo is no longer at this convent.’

‘Tell me where she is and I’ll visit her.’

‘I have no intention of doing that.’

‘Maybe you would, if you could understand why this is so important to me.’

Assumpta sighed loudly. ‘Miss Kading, there is no one more sympathetic than I, but there is simply nothing I can do to help you; you must understand that.’

Debbie was about to answer when Mother Assumpta cut across her.

‘We will leave it at that, Miss Kading. You will not harass members of this community. Go home, Miss Kading, to the family we gave you, and thank God for them.’

Mother Assumpta replaced the receiver gently, shaking her head: a sharp pain was needling the back of her neck and soon she would have a full-blown migraine. The last time she had had such a troublesome enquiry she had managed to frighten the woman off with the prospect of a court order and the ensuing publicity. She dialled Consuelo’s mobile, becoming mildly irked when Consuelo answered with a soft, singsong voice as if she were being interrupted mid recreation.

‘Mother, what can I do for you?’

‘Sister, I have had another bothersome enquiry. Please do not engage in conversation with the latest person, an American. I am sure she will run you down and we certainly do not want such an embarrassment on our hands.’

‘I never did anything but find homes for those unwanted children.’

‘We both know we are in different times now and the less said is the best approach.’

‘Who is she anyway?’

‘A Deborah Kading from New York.’

‘I don’t remember a Kading offhand, but there were so many applications in those days.’

‘Quite.’

Consuela sighed when she heard the frosty edge to Assumpta’s voice. ‘I found good homes for lost souls; that is what I did. I don’t see them traipsing back to thank me. “Ungrateful” springs to mind.’

‘That debate is for another time, Consuela. Please do not engage with this woman, if she makes contact, which I am sure she will. Do not engage in any way. Do you understand?’

‘I understand.’

‘Make sure you do. God bless.’

‘God bless, Mother.’

Assumpta took two painkillers from a drawer and called Marguerite to bring some sweet tea. When she had been elevated to this position two years ago, she imagined presiding over a productive and happy convent and spent hours on plans to improve the accounts and the kitchen garden. When one of the older nuns remarked that her promotion might be a poisoned chalice, Assumpta put it down to bad feeling. Now, as the dark clouds of uncertainty loomed over her patch, Assumpta wondered why indeed she had been picked for this job; maybe it had something to do with her age and the fact that she had so few links to the murky history of the community. She needed to ask Consuelo for the details of all the adoptions she had facilitated, but today she did not have the stomach for it.

*

Debbie stuffed her hands in her pockets and walked against the wind on Main Street. She had been mad to come here; she felt that now. She did not notice when Muriel Hearty waved as she closed up the post office for the day or when Pat McCarthy, chatting at his doorway, saluted her. She was grateful for the family this place had given her, even with all that had happened, but why now, especially now, were there no answers to her questions? She felt like a child again who was not being told, protected from the truth for whatever reason. The sense of helplessness was the same as when sad Rob had tried to build a type of normality back into their lives.

She and Rob, they had stayed with Nancy for two weeks. It was a Saturday morning, early, when Rob announced they were going to move back home. Nancy was dismayed and ushered him to the side, whispering fiercely that it was too early and pleading that the child was not ready. When he could not be moved from his decision, she pleaded to be allowed to keep Debbie.

‘I need her help back home. She knows what to do. God knows, she spent long enough at her mother’s elbows.’

They walked the two blocks side by side. Neighbours pretended not to notice. He quickened his pace as they got closer and she had to scurry to keep up with him.

When they reached the front gate he moved even faster, covering the stone driveway in three strides and lightly skipping up the front steps, as if he were a ballet dancer on stage. He beckoned Debbie to follow.

‘I don’t want to have to push you in, but I will. It’s best to get it over and done with.’

She tried to shrink back among the raspberry canes and flower beds. A red cardinal sat on a window ledge, pecking at the sill. In one stride, Rob came to her and, grabbing her roughly by the arm, pulled her towards the house. Her feet slid across the porch as she half-heartedly resisted her father’s urgent grip.

‘I don’t know any other way. Mommy has left us like this. Now we must get on with it, until she decides to come back.’

He was slightly out of breath, but he did not hesitate for a second. He turned the key and pushed the door. It gave way freely, the door fanning back so they could see the height of the stairs. Sunshine flooded into the hall. The kitchen clock ticked loudly. The floor tiles were polished and the coat stand was empty.

‘I thought you might like to have something of Mommy’s in your room. The necklaces; I thought you would like to mind them for Mommy, and her dressing table. We can move it into your room, if you like.’

Shrinking back, Debbie shook her head fiercely.

‘Sweetheart, I’m only trying to help.’

Debbie knew she would never want the sparkly necklaces. They still belonged to her mother; she had declared her rights to perpetual ownership. Hadn’t she told her so, screamed at the top of her voice two days before she left that she was never to look at or touch the jewellery again? She could still feel the softness of her spit spraying over her, when Agnes had stuck her face in hers. Tiny holes in her skin were clogged with fine brown powder; her nostrils flared red.

Mommy had been in such a good mood when Debbie came home from school, singing as she pushed the power pedal on the sewing machine. Debbie, who was sent to tidy her room, saw a new pearl necklace had been laid out on Agnes’s dressing table. The whirr of the machine on a long, straight seam gave her the confidence to step inside the room. Three lines of pearls and a diamante clasp were draped side by side. It hypnotised her with its perfect simplicity. She should have left it at that, but, mesmerised, she could not leave. The only thing she could do was reach out and touch one of the strands, picking it up and letting the beads run through her fingers. So transfixed was she by the feel of the pearls, like light rain on her cheeks, she never realised the machine had come to the end of the long evening-skirt seam.

‘What’s going on?’ Agnes asked.

‘I was just looking.’

‘Really? Who gave you permission to put your grubby little hands on my pearls?’ Her mother’s arms were folded across her chest, her eyes cold and hard.

‘I was just looking and then I picked it up. It’s beautiful.’

She held the pearls closer. She did not expect her mother to hit her, so when the slap came stinging across her cheek, it knocked her sideways, making her stumble into the dressing table. The pearls shot out of her hand, skittering across the floor; bottles rattled and two tubes of make-up slipped to the floor.

‘You are a thief in the making. Don’t think you can even look at my jewellery. Do you understand? It’s mine. I don’t want your dirty paws near my necklaces again.’

Pushing Debbie roughly out of the room, Agnes banged the door shut. Debbie ran to her own room, where she curled up tight on the bed, sobbing, her tears dampening the pillow.

Mother Assumpta paced up and down, keeping an ear open for O’Hare’s car. When Consuelo had asked for permission to visit she’d wanted to refuse, but knew it mattered little because Consuelo would do as she pleased anyway. Considerably older than Assumpta, Consuelo had expected to be appointed to the chief’s chair when Mother Bridget died two years ago. She not only showed her surprise but also her disgust when the much younger Assumpta was named as Bridget’s successor.

‘After all I have done for this community and those on the outside. There are children across the world who have me to thank for their very good fortune and lives. Not that I ever would go seeking their thanks or gratitude, but I would have expected some recognition within my own community,’ she muttered to anybody who cared to listen.

When the first flush of indignation had passed and Assumpta settled into her role, Consuelo appeared to begrudgingly accept the inevitability of the situation. In the past six months, however, as more and more came to make enquiries about their birth mother and named Consuelo as the adoption facilitator, tensions between the two nuns had grown.

Assumpta sat in the armchair by the window. She felt weary. She should have been more forceful with Consuelo when the woman from Donegal had come asking questions four months ago. It was a familiar story: there was no record of the birth, but of course she had Consuelo’s name and a goddamned letter the nun had penned in a fit of simpering gratitude, decades earlier, to the adoptive parents.

Consuelo refused to budge, sticking to the mantra that she had done no wrong and the God Almighty could be her judge. When the young woman threatened to go to the newspapers, Assumpta retaliated with the threat of an injunction and the public humiliation of having her name in the newspapers for harassing the convent.

The strategy worked, but Assumpta, upset by the aggressive stand she had had to take, moved Consuelo to the Moyasta convent in the hope her unavailability would turn away even the most determined.

She watched the daffodils swaying in the breeze, the blur of gentle yellow across the park a sad reminder of the indignity of pregnant women put to weeding and planting bulbs for the whole of the month of October, rain, hail or shine. Little did those who admired the swathes of daffodils, snowdrops and crocuses know of the back-breaking toil and knee-grinding pain involved for the women, many of whom were in their final weeks of pregnancy.

Closing her eyes, the sounds of the convent were her calming backdrop: the faraway shimmer of Sister Christina’s giggle as she indulged in gossip Martha’s sewing machine, which fell silent at eleven each morning when she went to the kitchens for a coffee; and the hens clucking loudly, waiting still to be fed, because Sister Bernadette had dallied too long at the pig sty. That this normality would be upset by Consuelo was a major aggravation for Mother Assumpta, who decided to take a painkiller.

Gerry O’Hare’s car swung to the steps; he got out to open the car door for Consuelo.

She pulled her big frame from the back seat and rummaged in her handbag until she found her purse. She pushed a generous tip into the palm of O’Hare’s hand on top of the fare after he neatly placed all her luggage in a line beside the front door.

Assumpta waited for Marguerite to greet the visitor, before sitting at her desk, pretending to be writing a letter. Consuelo’s voice bounced through the hall as she bustled into Assumpta’s office without knocking.

‘It is so lovely to be home. This is where I started out and this is where I always want to be. You understand that, Mother Assumpta, surely.’

Mother Assumpta rose up and smiled gently, motioning with her hand for Consuelo to sit down. Consuelo ignored her, walking over to the fireplace.

‘You really should have an open fire; there’s a fierce nip in the air today.’

Mother Assumpta waited patiently for the chatter to stop.

‘The cases, Consuelo?’

Consuelo whipped around and flopped into a comfortable chair at Assumpta’s desk, her face suddenly serious. ‘I have to take the bull by the horns, so to speak. I am moving back. You can’t deny me that as I approach my twilight years, Mother.’

‘You never said, when you requested a meeting.’

‘I need to be among my own; I have done my time in Moyasta. I want to come home.’

‘It is hardly proper to be moving in before even applying to move.’

Consuelo stood. ‘I was never one for formality, Mother. Is it this nonsense with the American that has upset you?’

Consuelo was very good at turning the conversation around, Assumpta thought, and she felt anger stab through her. She stiffened in her chair and straightened the writing sheets on her desk.

Consuelo walked over to the window. ‘I miss this place and the daffodils; I so wanted to see them in bloom. I remember when we planted every single one.’

Assumpta cleared her throat. ‘That may be, Consuelo, but I do not think we have room.’

Consuelo swung around and clapped her hands. ‘The young girl, Sister Marion, is desperately homesick. Why not let her go back to Moyasta? She is from those parts and I can take over her quarters; I am not fussy.’

Assumpta felt her hands clench to fists, and she placed them on her lap. ‘Quite impossible. Sister Marion is an important and integral part of our community here and must learn to swallow her homesickness.’