Chilton sat on the bed and pressed a pillow to his face. Inhaled. By the time the home’s rightful occupants returned, there’d be no discernible trace of it, but the next person to sleep on this pillow would dream inexplicably of fields filled with purple flowers.
He might not care for his career anymore, but he still had a modicum of pride, plus Lippincott to consider. Unless he managed to find Agatha a second time, he couldn’t possibly reveal, to anyone, the first.
Here Lies Sister Mary
WE SLEPT IN a dormitory on the second floor of the convent, narrow beds in a row, close together. During the day the room was locked so nobody could steal upstairs to rest. At night, once we were in bed, the doors were locked again, the nuns the only ones who had the keys. Sometimes, I still dream about the convent catching fire, all of us locked inside that room with no escape.
It was a restless place to sleep, even in our exhaustion. The nursery was just below us, and we could hear babies wake and cry. When Susanna last stayed here there had been a different Mother Superior. At night the nuns would pin the babies’ gowns to their cots and leave them till they could be nursed in the morning. ‘It was the worst agony I ever felt,’ Susanna said, ‘hearing my baby cry with no way to get to her. Of course it’s no accident they have us sleeping where we can hear them.’
Punishment, wherever it could be found. The new Mother Superior was kinder, at least when it came to the babies. I’d only ever glimpsed the woman at Mass, so far across the chapel that I had no sense of her colouring, age or features. During her reign, two girls were chosen to work as night attendants. When inconsolable wails reached us, at least we knew the children weren’t all alone, but held and rocked. Every morning, the most recently delivered mothers’ gowns would be soaked with milk, expressed for their out-of-reach babies.
Of course, the girls cried too, at night. Not just the nursing mothers but girls who’d just arrived, mourning their austere fate. Girls whose babies had been adopted or fostered out, or moved to the adjoining orphanage even though they were not orphans, their mothers mere yards away, longing and toiling and hoping against all expectations. We were a desperate lot, and the desperate seldom sleep well.
Bess’s bed was next to mine. I woke one night to hear her sobbing, and sat up to squint through the darkness, making sure it was her. My hands went immediately to my burgeoning belly, the little child kicking and rolling, dancing and thumping. I didn’t yet think of my baby as ‘her’。 But that’s how it is in memory. Her, my baby, my little girl. I see her, smiling at me and waving. I wave back. I blow kisses.
‘Bess,’ I whispered. ‘Is that you?’ I put my thin blanket aside and went over to her. She startled like a war veteran when I put my hand on her shoulder. ‘Hush now, Bess, it’s only me. Nan.’
She put her hand over her mouth, shaking, trying to pull herself together.
I sat on the edge of her bed. ‘You don’t have to stop crying on my account,’ I said, and stroked the strands of her cropped hair off her forehead. She had a sweet face, fresh and pretty. It was easy to imagine a young soldier falling in love with her. She should have been out in the world, wearing long hair and fetching clothes. Laughing.
‘I can’t bear it,’ Bess said. ‘I thought once I got bigger he’d leave me alone. Move on to someone else. But he won’t. He won’t.’ She pushed herself up on her elbows. Eight months pregnant, at least, but one of those women who carries very small. Her whole figure was slight and spare except for the globe of her belly.
I gathered up Bess’s hand and kissed it, searching my mind for something helpful or comforting. ‘We could tell Sister Mary Clare.’
Bess didn’t have the heart to tell me. Sister Mary Clare already knew. Come now, it’s nothing you haven’t done before, she’d say in a singsong voice. Other times she’d change her tune as if Bess wouldn’t remember anything she’d said before. Of course Father Joseph would never do such a thing. He’s a man of God.