‘I’ve tried everything else I can think of and Elizabeth suggested perhaps asking her for help. I’m glad it’s not just me?’ Dan asked hopefully.
‘Definitely not. She’s always been a bit barmy and nasty too. Really, when you hear horror stories about what happened in some of those places, I always think old Berthilde is the devil incarnate and it only takes one bad egg.’
‘I’d say she’s rotten to the core all right.’ He smiled then. ‘At least Elizabeth gave her what for.’
‘Good for her. You’re not giving up though.’ They were at reception now. The ponytailed girl had left her post and Lucy dropped the medical folder she’d been carrying on the desk, pulling a pen from her jacket to fill in whatever updates it needed. ‘Are you?’
‘There’s not much else I can do. I’ve filled in all the forms; Sister Berthilde was my last hope.’
‘Have you tried Mother Agatha?’ She looked at him then, waiting for him to say ‘yes’ probably.
‘Mother Agatha?’ he repeated as if he’d just lost the ability to reason.
‘Hang on, let me fill this in and we’ll have a chat outside.’ Lucy flicked open the file, wrote in her notes quickly and signed with a flourish, by which time the receptionist had returned and she confirmed that all was well with the patient she’d come to see, temperature down and it looked like there was nothing to worry about.
‘So, Mother Agatha?’ he repeated a little stupidly as they made their way towards the car park.
‘Yes. Have you met her? No. Of course you haven’t, she’s been living with her family over in Ballybrack for the last few years. Arthritis, really very debilitating, according to Mum; it’s totally riddled her spine and spread out from there. She can hardly walk at this stage. That’s the thing about these women: they suffer on in silence for years and by the time they actually go to a doctor there is so little to be done about things.’ Lucy smirked. ‘Well, I’m not sure Berthilde ever suffered in silence, but then, thankfully, she’s a rare old kettle of piranhas.’ They had reached Elizabeth who was standing next to her car.
‘I’m so sorry, Dan, but that woman – honestly, she’s had it coming for a long time.’
‘Don’t worry; she deserved every word of it,’ Dan said smiling at Elizabeth. ‘Look who I met and she’s just been talking about a nun called Mother Agatha.’
‘Of course, Mother Agatha – I never thought of her, but I’m not sure she’d know a lot about Saint Nunciata’s. She worked mostly in the local hospital, helping in the maternity ward.’
‘Still, I’d love to go and see her if there’s a chance she might know something…’ Dan heard the words trip from his tongue, despite the fact that only a few minutes earlier he’d promised himself this would be it. No more. Let sleeping dogs lie and all that jazz.
‘Unlike Berthilde—’ Lucy nodded back towards the nursing home ‘—Mother Agatha will be thrilled to have a visitor. She was the last Reverend Mother in the convent, so she’d surely have a good idea of where you might be able to track down more records.’
‘Did they send all of the babies over to English families, do you think?’
‘I don’t know. Nobody really knew much about what went on there. It was all kept very hush and the truth was, I’d say, the older people wanted to forget or even better pretend it wasn’t happening under their noses.’ Lucy shook her head sadly.
‘Elizabeth was the only one to get her nose in the door of the orphanage. She raised plenty of money for them with all kinds of fundraisers and she used to drop in occasionally to help out where she could.’
‘I didn’t do half enough, but I did as much as they’d let me. It was a fine line, between being allowed to help and being seen as stepping over the mark.’
‘The way I hear it, you helped a great many of those girls get out of there when they might have been stuck for years on end.’
‘Ah well, I only wish I could have helped more,’ Elizabeth said sadly, ‘but it’s all in the past now. You do what you can, don’t you?’ Elizabeth said modestly.
‘I’m sure it took courage, a lot more than telling old Berthilde what you thought of her, just now,’ Dan said. He could imagine Elizabeth years ago, helping as many as she could and probably more than she’d ever admit to. ‘Would you come with me, to meet Mother Agatha?’