‘You have a child?’
‘He’s fourteen weeks old. They’ve taken him from me now but they might let me feed him again, if he’s here. I don’t know where he is.’
Furlong began thinking freshly over what to do when the Mother Superior, a tall woman he recognised from the chapel but had seldom dealt with, opened the door wide.
‘Mister Furlong,’ she said, smiling. ‘How good you are to come and spare us your time so early on a Sunday morning.’
‘Mother,’ Furlong said. ‘Tis early, I know.’
‘I’m just sorry you’ve had to encounter this,’ she said, before turning on the girl. ‘Where were you?’ she changed. ‘We’re not long after finding that you weren’t in your bed. We were about to call the Gardaí.’
‘This girl was locked in your shed all night,’ Furlong told her. ‘Whatever had her there.’
‘God love you, child. Come in and get yourself upstairs and into a hot bath. You’ll catch your end. This poor girl can’t tell night from day sometimes. Whatever way we are going to mind her, I don’t know.’
The girl stood in a type of trance, and had begun to shake.
‘Come on in,’ the Mother Superior told him. ‘We’ll make tea. This is a terrible business.’
‘Ah, I’ll not,’ Furlong stepped back – as though the step could take him back into the time before this.
‘You’ll come in,’ she said. ‘I’ll not have it otherwise.’
‘There’s a hurry on me, Mother. I’ve yet to go home and change for Mass.’
‘Then you’ll come in until the hurry goes off you. Tis early yet – and more than one Mass is being said today.’
Furlong found himself taking his cap off and following, as he was bid, helping the girl along the hall and on through to the back kitchen where a pair of girls were skinning turnips and washing heads of cabbages at a sink. The young nun who’d answered the door was standing at a huge black range, stirring something, and had a kettle on the boil. The whole place and everything in it was shining, immaculate: in some of the hanging pots Furlong glimpsed a version of himself, passing.
The Mother did not pause but carried on, along a corridor of tiles.
‘This way.’
‘We’re making tracks on your floor, Mother,’ Furlong heard himself say.
‘No matter,’ she said. ‘Where’s there’s muck, there’s luck.’
She led them on to a fine, big room where a freshly lighted fire was burning in a cast-iron fireplace. A long table, covered in a snow-white cloth, stood surrounded by chairs, and there was a mahogany sideboard, glassed-in bookcases. Hanging over the mantelpiece was a picture of John Paul II.
‘Sit in at the fire there now and warm yourself, won’t you?’ she said, handing him his coat. ‘I’ll take care of this girl, and see about our tea.’
She went on, closing the door behind her, but hardly had she gone before the young nun came in, with a tray. Her hands weren’t steady, and a spoon fell.
‘Ye must expect a visitor,’ Furlong said.
‘Another visitor?’ She looked alarmed.
‘Tis only a saying,’ Furlong explained, ‘over when a spoon drops.’
‘I see,’ she said, and looked at him.
She carried on then, as well as she could, putting out the cups and saucers but struggled in taking the lid off a tin before lifting out a wedge of fruit cake which she sliced up quickly, with a knife.
When the Mother Superior returned, she came slowly to the hearth, where she lifted the tongs and stoked the young fire, pushing the lighted sods skilfully together and surrounding them with fresh lumps of Furlong’s best coal, from the scuttle, before seating herself on the armchair opposite.
‘So, is all well at home, Billy?’ she began.
Her eyes were neither blue nor grey but somewhere in between.
‘All’s well with us, thank you, Mother.’
‘And your girls? How are they? I hear that two of yours are making some progress with their music lessons here. And don’t you have another two next door.’
‘They’re getting on rightly, thank God.’
‘And we see another of yours in the choir now. She doesn’t look out of place.’
‘They carry themselves well.’
‘Won’t they all soon find themselves next door, in time to come, God willing.’
‘God willing, Mother.’
‘It’s just that there’s so many nowadays. It’s no easy task to find a place for everyone.’