‘It’s nice having a writer living in Ballycove, isn’t it?’ Elizabeth had said as they ran out into the cold waves.
‘Is it?’ Lucy asked, diving in.
Elizabeth looked across at her friend. It was hard to know how far out they were swimming in the darkness, but the moon spilling across the water gave enough illumination to see each other. ‘It’s cultured, isn’t it? The idea that we have a man of letters in the village.’
‘Oh, dear, listen to you, still hankering after old Mr Abbott’s bookshop.’ Jo whooped. She held little store on what people did for a living and more on what they did for their neighbour.
‘I remember Mr Abbott’s bookshop,’ Lucy said fondly. ‘Did you love it too, Elizabeth?’
‘I worked there, as a girl before…’ Elizabeth sighed. She thought about old Mr Abbott often these days, more so now that Eric had died.
‘When she married old Eric, he didn’t want her to work anymore, so that was that, although you did visit regularly, didn’t you?’ Jo asked. ‘I often wondered if he and Eric had… you know?’
‘Stop it!’ Elizabeth squeaked. She caught her friend’s eye and they both howled with laughter.
‘What is it?’ Lucy turned about to tread water. She was watching the two women intently now, perhaps aware that some great secret had been shared between them.
‘Jo is wondering if Eric and old Mr Abbott were more than friends,’ Elizabeth said diplomatically. She waited a beat for the penny to drop and when it didn’t, said: ‘They were both gay.’
‘Oh my God, I never knew that your husband was gay,’ Lucy said after she recovered her balance again in the water. Elizabeth and Jo laughed at her reaction. Had she really no idea that Eric had been gay?
‘In the beginning, neither did I.’ Elizabeth found herself laughing at the absurdity of it. ‘Why am I laughing?’ She gasped then, but the other two women were laughing just as heartily. ‘It’s absolutely not funny.’
‘It sort of is, when you think about it now.’
‘I suppose he was very neat and precise and… Oh my God, I can’t believe I just said that – it’s such a stereotype. I’m so sorry. And that’s why you never had any more children?’ Lucy said softly as if some invisible piece of puzzle was slotting into place.
‘Yes. My marriage was completely empty. Eric saved me from Saint Nunciata’s, but he condemned me to an empty marriage so he could save face in the village. Back then people wouldn’t have come near a doctor who was gay – it was actually illegal at the time, as if the government could legislate against something so intrinsic in a person. Of course, there was no chance of ever having a family of my own after my little boy died.’
‘Was he stillborn?’ Lucy began.
Elizabeth nodded sadly. ‘It had been a terrible labour. The midwives were all nuns. The same order worked in the hospital that ran the convent and the babies’ home. One of them took him from me to clean him up and I never got to see him, never mind hold him. He died as she was wrapping him up in blankets.’ Elizabeth shuddered. Even now, thirty years later, she cried when she thought about her little boy passing so softly through this world. ‘I knew from the moment they took him from me that something was wrong with him. The matron actually gasped when she saw him.’ She felt the familiar sting of tears on her cheek as she remembered. ‘It was the longest ten minutes of my life, when they took him away and then came back with the news that…’
‘It was how things were done then. There was none of this bonding with the baby or the father being present at the birth. Elizabeth’s little boy was taken from her and buried without ceremony in the plot of the angels up in Shanganagh Cemetery. They wouldn’t even put a name on the grave in those days. He died before being baptised, so as far as the nuns were concerned he remained in a state of original sin,’ Jo put in quickly.
‘That’s terrible,’ Lucy whispered. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘It was just the way of things. We went along with them, because there was no point in expecting anything else. I was one of the lucky ones. Many of the girls who were committed to that place spent years in it. Some of them only got out as old women when the convent closed down. They were literally forgotten about.’ Elizabeth had made a point after she lost the baby of going into the home. She visited once a week with parcels of food and clothes and a healthy financial donation for the nuns to keep the place heated. She was the doctor’s wife, one of the few who could reasonably expect to be allowed in.