But in fairness, they weren’t all divils there, she told me. A cook we had in my last years, she took a liking to me. She’d lay the apple skins on the very top of the scraps so I could nick them when I carried the bucket to the pigs. And one time a whole half a boiled egg.
My mouth was flooded with sour.
Bridie went on. I was no hand at knitting Aran jumpers or embroidering vestments, so I was put on novenas. We nibbled on candles those days, or paper, or glue, anything to put in our stomachs.
Novenas? I repeated. As in nine days of prayer?
Bridie nodded. People paid the convent to have them said for special intentions.
That flabbergasted me, the notion of children praying on an industrial scale, children so hungry they’d eat glue.
She added, I loved it the odd time they hired me out to farms, though. I could snatch a few berries or a turnip here and there. Cattle feed, even.
I tried to picture that, the small redhead worming her way between two cows to scrabble in their trough. When did you start work?
As soon as we were dressed in the morning.
No, but what age, roughly?
Bridie didn’t answer, so I rephrased it: Don’t you remember a time before they made you knit or weed or say prayers?
She shook her head a little impatiently. The home needed running. We had to clean and cook and mind the little ones as well as do the money jobs to earn our keep, see?
Such lies! I exploded. The government pays per head.
Bridie blinked.
From what I’ve read, the monks or nuns just run these places for the state. They get a lump sum for each child in their custody every year to pay for food and bedding and whatever else is needed.
Is that right? Bridie spoke with an eerie calm. We were never told.
I realised it was the same shameful trick used in the institution a few minutes’ walk away through these dark streets, the place where women such as Honor White were obliged to work off the costs of their own captivity for years on end.
Enough, said Bridie.
But—
Julia, please, let’s not waste any more of this fine night raking over bad times.
I tried. I gazed up at the sky and let my eyes flicker from one constellation to another to another, jumping between stepping-stones. I thought of the heavenly bodies throwing down their narrow ropes of light to hook us.
I’d never believed the future was inscribed for each of us the day we were born. If anything was written in the stars, it was we who joined those dots, and our lives were the writing.
But Baby Garrett, born dead yesterday, and all the others whose stories were over before they began, and those who opened their eyes and found they were living in a long nightmare, like Bridie and Baby White—who decreed that, I wondered, or at least allowed it?
My stomach growled so loudly, Bridie giggled, and I did too.
I remembered what had been sitting in my bag all day. I asked, Peckish?
Why, what’ve you got there?
Chocolate truffles from Belgium and an Italian orange.
Bridie marvelled, No!
Birthday presents from my brother, Tim.
The fruit was easier to peel than I’d expected. Its perfume spritzed off under my thumbnail. Behind rags of white, the flesh was so dark in the starlight, it looked nearly purple.
Bridie peered at it. Ah, wouldn’t you know, after all that, it’s a rotten one.
It is not! Smell it.
She looked revolted but leaned in for a sniff. Her face lit up.
I said, Blood oranges are called that because of the colour inside. Ever so sweet, and hardly any seeds.
The segments parted in my fingers. I ripped the thin membrane. The sacs ranged from yellow through orange to maroon, almost black.
Bridie bit a segment warily. Oh—the juice almost leaked from her mouth, and she had to suck it back—that’s only glorious.
Isn’t it?
Happy birthday, Julia.
I licked trickles of juice off my hands in a way that would have caused Matron to sack me on the spot. Yours too, now, remember? The first of November.
The first of November, she repeated solemnly. I won’t forget.
Happy birthday, Bridie.
No sound now but the small wet noises of the orange being devoured between us.
You’re awfully easy to talk to, I found myself saying. Since Tim came back from the front, he doesn’t.
Bridie didn’t ask, Doesn’t what? Instead, she asked, Doesn’t talk to you?
To anyone. Not a word anymore. As if his throat’s been cut—except the