Girl in the Tunnel by Maureen Sullivan

Author:Maureen Sullivan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785374517
Publisher: Irish Academic Press
Published: 2023-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

21

ST AIDAN’S

I could hear faint voices instructing children behind one door we passed, and noises of moving furniture from another. A door opened and closed. Emily pulled me by all of them to a staircase at the end with a turned banister, where a white stone saint stood in a niche built for it. There was another one at the top as we went up. She brought me along to double doors that revealed a dormitory beyond with beds lined up against the wall exactly as you’d imagine, each with a pillow and blankets folded neatly under and a white sheet doubled down over the top.

Beside each bed was a small wooden locker. There was nothing else there. Miss Emily showed me the bathroom through a door, where basins stood on wooden plinths in rows and where there were baths and spotless tiled floors.

Well. If you’d walked me into the Ritz itself I couldn’t have been more charmed. I’d never slept by myself, except for in hospital. I could clearly see that I would here. No more little legs and arms waking me in the night. No more pools of warm pee soaking into my skin when one of the others wet the bed, and no more complaints and cries out if I did. No more coats for warmth, no more bare mattress or springs in my back. This was the real deal.

The windows brought great light into that dormitory. It was a warm room and sterile in a way that reminded me of my beloved hospital. Miss Emily placed my suitcase on a bed halfway down the room and said, ‘Put your stuff away, Frances. I will be back for you in a minute.’

She left and I opened my suitcase. It took me a minute to undo the knots of twine holding it closed. Inside were my few pieces of clothing that Sister Cecilia had given me and the nightie from hospital, which still fit because, to be honest, I didn’t grow much as a child. I rummaged around in case my pencil case was in there, but no luck. I really wanted that back.

I didn’t know either where they’d put my books, the ones Sister Cecilia had given me, and I fizzed inside with frustration. These nuns were taking everything and not listening to me at all. They were stealing my things. They took my pencil case, my pencils and my books and copies too.

Miss Emily returned with a bundle in her arms and placed it on the bed.

‘Frances, you need to go wash yourself inside in the bathroom,’ she said. She pointed at the door where she had shown me the bathroom, ‘and use this soap.’ She handed me a paper packet, ‘then come back and get dressed into these,’ she laid her hand on the bundle, ‘and I will come for you in a short while, so don’t dawdle.’

Looking back now as I tell this story, I know I was never destined for St Aidan’s, the school beside the convent.

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