The Magdalen Martyrs (8 page)

“Ah, Mr Taylor, you’re back on the beer.”

Serious rage boiled in me but I tried,

“Just a few friends in, nothing too boisterous.”

“Says you! Look at this place.”

This was so unlike her. Normally, she wouldn’t comment on an earthquake. When you’re dying with a hangover, the whole world gets a hard on. I said,

“
JANET
. . .
LEAVE IT
.”

“No need to raise your voice, Mr Taylor, I’m not deaf.”

And she began to back out, paused to add,

“I’m going to pray to Matt Talbot for you.”

I managed to drink half a cup of coffee and only throw up once. Put on clean jeans and fresh white shirt. What that did was make me appear hungover in new gear. At reception, Mrs Bailey said,

“A letter for you, Mr Taylor.”

I put out my left hand so she wouldn’t see my torn knuckles. I said,

“It’s from Cathy.”

“Now there’s a lovely girl.”

“She is.”

Mrs Bailey paused, obviously comparing her to Kirsten of the night before, then,

“I get the impression, Mr Taylor, that Cathy is a little cross with you.”

What could I say . . . join the queue?

I nodded, attempting to appear contrite. Not difficult when you’re dying anyway. Outside, I stuffed the letter in my pocket as my system threatened to upchuck anew.

The girls were huddled under the bedclothes, trying to keep
warm and to give each other some meagre comfort. They heard the sound of heels and then the bedclothes were whipped away. The woman they called Lucifer screamed, “What unnatural act are you whores performing?”

She grabbed the first girl by the hair and punched her in the mouth. Then reaching for the second, she pulled her down to the toilets, forced a bar of soap into her mouth and said,

“Chew, chew if you don’t want to get the hiding of your life.”

The girl, blinded by tears and terror, began to chew.

I
began to walk towards the Great Southern. I knew the porter
there. As I came through the revolving doors, he said,

“Rough night, Jack?”

“Yeah.”

“None of us getting any younger.”

I palmed him a few notes, said,

“Get us a pint and a half one.”

The Southern, of course, is not an early house. Good Lord, God forbid. It does have a huge lobby with secluded corners. If you need a cure in tranquil seclusion, you won’t do better.

Had just slunk down in a vast armchair when a man appeared. I thought it was my drinks. No . . . Brendan Flood. He said,

“I saw you come in.”

“Not now . . . OK?”

“I have the information you require.”

I was about to tap the envelope and say,

“Me, too.”

But he sat down.

What I most didn’t want was him seeing me on the booze and first thing of a morning. Everything was down the toilet.
The porter came and seemed surprised I’d company. All our eyes locked on the tray of drinks. Before I could launch into some half-assed lame story, Brendan said,

“Same for me.”

The porter gave us a look of confusion, asked,

“You guys celebrating something?”

Brendan snapped,

“Get the drinks, all right.”

The porter slunk off, and I asked Brendan,

“You’re serious?”

He nodded and I probed,

“You’re drinking?”

He stared at me, said,

“I don’t think you’re the one to recriminate.”

“I’m not . . . I’m . . . surprised.”

The porter returned, and Brendan put a mess of notes on the tray and said,

“Keep the change.”

If he was grateful, he hid it well. Brendan grabbed the shot, drained it, then followed with most of the pint. He sat back, closed his eyes, said,

“This is the best bit.”

Who was I to argue? Did the same with my drinks but stopped short of the eye closing. I like to see it coming. An overwhelming compulsion for nicotine landed. You open the door of one addiction and all the outriders gallop behind. Brendan reached in his jacket, took out a packet of Major. Yer legitimate coffin nails. Popularised by Robbie Coltrane in
Cracker.

He shook one loose, produced a kitchen box of matches and fired up. I asked,

“Can I?”

Enveloped in smoke, he waved a hand, yes. The cigarette felt
odd in my mouth, and the first few pulls were godawful. I stubbed it out. He gave a malevolent grin, said,

“Par for the course. The first is shite, but you’ll be puffing good-oh in jig time.”

I didn’t argue. My own sorry existence was proof of his theory. I waited a beat, said,

“What happened, Brendan?”

He took a deep breath, said,

“The Magdalen is what happened.”

I let him take his time, didn’t push, and finally he ran his fingers through his hair and began,

“I found a woman in the Claddagh, in her seventies, who was one of the inmates. At first she wouldn’t talk about it, but then she heard I go to prayer meetings and she agreed to tell. The first thing you ought to know is this woman was absolutely terrified. The laundry has been closed for years, but it still reaches out to her. There was a woman there the girls called Lucifer, a lay person the nuns employed to help out. She was the devil incarnate, beating the girls, shaving their heads, scouring them for lice.”

He paused, lit a cig, and I saw the tremor in his hand. He asked,

“Any idea
of
how to clean lice from the body?”

“No, no I don’t.”

“Me neither, but I’ll never forget now. You immerse the person in scalding water and then pour carbolic acid in; you have to be real careful lest you flay the creature alive. I believe it stings like a bastard. Lucifer was an expert at the dosage and de-lighted in the process. She’d let the girls know days before so they’d be good and frightened. Not all of the girls were unmarried mothers; some were put there for disobedience to their parents. In an era of dire poverty, it was one less mouth to feed.

“My witness remembers two girls who were friends. One
was there for unwanted pregnancy, but the other had simply been accused of stealing. Lucifer took particular delight in tormenting those two, would tell them that God had forsaken them, and the only thing those girls had was a simple faith. The she-devil systematically eroded that. She used a blunt scissors to hack off the tresses of one and refused to allow the other to wash so she stank to high heaven, if you’ll excuse the pun. All those girls had was each other, no hope of any life after, with just misery every single day, and if you separated them, then they were doomed. Lucifer went a step further and persuaded one that the other had betrayed her. The girl hanged herself a few days later. With constant taunting from the woman, the second drank bleach they used in the laundry. Now if you have ever seen someone who has drunk bleach, maybe in your days on the force, you’ll know it takes days of utter agony to die. Five days to die in the most appalling conditions, with Lucifer telling her the fires of hell, which already had her friend, were being stoked up for her arrival.”

The sweat was pouring down his forehead, and he turned, stared at me, asked,

“Do you know what those two innocents were?”

“No.”

“Martyrs, the real thing, dying in agony for love. Magdalen Martyrs. And if I fucking believed in anything any more, I’d pray for the poor souls. I swear I dream about them every night. Them nuns in that place, you know why they hated the girls so much. This is only my own theory but it works: it’s because those girls had experienced the one thing they’d never know, sex . . . or if you wanted to push, love.”

Brendan said,

“I need more drink, but I don’t think I could stomach that porter again.”

Then he was up and gone. I didn’t know if he’d return.

He did, bearing a tray ablaze with drink. Enough to get a small rugby team blitzed. I said,

“That cost a bit.”

He sat down heavily, said,

“It’s only money, who gives a fuck?”

I’d never heard him swear. This was the man who attended prayer meetings where they spoke in tongues. A man who chastised me if I as much as muttered “damn”. He lashed in more booze, belched, said,

“I’m fucked.”

I waited. He lit another Major, said,

“My wife left me.”

“Oh.”

I was going to say, “Hey, mine left me, too,” but felt he wasn’t looking for identification, so I waited. He said,

“She went to England and then came back. She’s in the house but doesn’t talk one word to me.”

I tried to find some platitude, found none. He continued,

“After I left the guards, I was lost. You know that deal, Jack . . . yeah.”

I nodded.

“Like you, Jack, I could have become a drunk, but I was saved. God spoke to me. The void within was filled.”

Then he stopped, drank some more. So I asked,

“You were happy?”

“Happy! I was bloody ecstatic. Like being high all the time.”

More drink, then,

“But lately, all the things I see, the awfulness of life, the lousy, sordid daily grind of most people’s lives, my belief began to ebb. I was found and now I’m lost. How can you believe in a God who lets those girls die?”

I took a cig and, yeah, the second one wasn’t half bad. I said,

“Maybe it’s just a phase . . . you know, your faith will return.”

He shook his head violently, near spat,

“Naw, I’m done with all that. The prayer group I attended, bunch of hypocrites.”

Anger rolled off him in waves. He said,

“Then the Magdalen, I began to investigate for you. What was done to those poor women, treated like slaves and in the name of religion. My advice to you is, let it go. It will taint you, too.”

I took out Cathy’s envelope, opened it and written there was,

Rita Monroe

17 Newcastle Road.

No phone number, no relatives traced.

Before I could share this, a man in a morning suit appeared, said,

“Gentlemen, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to take your custom elsewhere.”

Brendan looked up. Drunk and belligerent, he asked,

“Who the fuck are you? And where did you get the bloody suit?”

“Please, I must ask you to lower your voice. Guests are not accustomed to such early morning . . . boisterousness.”

Brendan stood up, shouted,

“Once were . . . guards.”

I grabbed his arm, said,

“Come on, I know a place.”

He took a swing at the manager, who ducked, and I managed to drag Brendan out to the street. The fresh air hit him like revelations and he staggered, said,

“Maybe some coffee.”

“Good idea.”

I took him back to Bailey’s. Got him into an armchair. Mrs Bailey came over, asked,

“What happened to him?”

“Bad news.”

“I see.”

But she didn’t. What she saw was a ravaged drunk. I said,

“If I could get some coffee . . . Then probably a cab.”

She gave us another look, then turned away. Brendan asked,

“Are we in Dublin?”

“What?”

“I’m kidding. I’m not that far gone.”

“You tried to deck the manager at the Southern.”

“That wasn’t drink; that was necessity.”

He did seem improved. There was no sign of the coffee. I asked,

“Are you going to be OK?”

“What do you think, Jack?”

A horrible thought occurred to me and I asked,

“Brendan, you wouldn’t, you know . . . do something stupid?”

He turned to stare at me, said,

“You mean, top myself?”

I nodded and he said,

“Dante’s second level of hell is reserved for suicides.”

“Is that an answer?”

He touched my shoulder, said,

“Jack.”

“I might need your word on this.”

He didn’t answer, and Mrs Bailey came, said,

“I called a taxi.”

Brendan stood, said,

“I suppose that means our session is over.”

“I’ll come with you if you want, keep you company.”

“No, I’ll be fine.”

And he was gone.

Mrs Bailey, standing behind me, said,