Free The Whore-Mother by Shaun Herron Page A

faces of good nuns.
    He was twenty-two, running for his life from men he had joined in a spasm of ardor and anger and had learned to despise and had not betrayed, and she smiled as if there was nothing odd or desperate or dangerous about him and as if there were no plasters on his battered face.
    She said, “Hullo. It’s nice to see you. Can I be of any help?”
    He didn’t know what to call her. Sister? It was better not to call her anything. Suddenly, for no reason that he could account for and at the instant didn’t try to, he was aware that he was supposed to be dead now and out of the way, and was alive. He was staring hard at the woman.
    â€œIs there something wrong? Can I help you?”
    â€œCould I have a room here?” he said. “Miss.”
    He saw the way her head seemed to dip and her face came forward a little, then lifted up towards him as she smiled and said, “A bed?” It was a shy sort of movement and also a kindly modification of his expectations.
    â€œAnything,” he said. “I....” It isn’t easy for young middle-class Ulstermen to do what North Americans of the same sort do with the ease and acceptance of Egyptian bazaar hagglers or Billingsgate fishwives. “I ... have hardly any money.” It was difficult to say.
    â€œNeither have I,” she said. “Maybe we’re both lucky.”
    â€œYes,” he said, and watched her open a big book. “Would you sign the register?” She turned it round to him and held out a pen.
    He took it, scrambling in his head for a name. Tommy Davison was the first one that came and he stopped it. It seemed to block the exits from his mind. He leaned down over the book, turning the pen in his fingers, roving, over books, records, athletes ... records? Somebody sent him once a recording of the Bethlehem Bach Choir, conductor, Ivor Jones. He wrote Ivor Jones. He had an American cousin who said he knew him. “Ivor Jones,” he said, and turned the book back to her and laid down the pen.
    She read it and put a number after his name and said with a rising inflection, “You’ve been in an accident.” She was looking at his hands, not at his face, but she was thinking of his face, he was sure, not of the cuts and bruises the chair-leg made on his hands. He said nothing. “Come. I’ll show you.” He followed her upstairs.
    It was a large dormitory, with twenty-four narrow iron-framed beds. “That’s yours in the far left-hand corner. Number one. Is that all right?”
    â€œYes, thank you.”
    â€œThe place fills up,” she said, and gave him a key and turned to leave him. “That’s for your locker. It’s under the bed.”
    He walked up the long floor between the beds thinking, “Clean. Who else comes here? Derelicts? Drunk sailors who miss their ships?” When a woman’s voice said, “Mr. Jones,” he walked on. Then she was at his elbow. “Mr. Jones?” That was him. He couldn’t hide his surprise. “Are you hungry?” she said.
    He hadn’t had time to think about that sort of thing. Now that he took time, she watched him asking himself, and said, “I could get you something.” She really was pretty, and restful like a good nun.
    â€œYes,” he said, “I am hungry. If it wouldn’t be any bother....”
    â€œNo bother at all. Put your things in your locker under your.... Oh, did you leave them somewhere?”
    Hadn’t she noticed before that he came empty-handed? “Miss?” he said awkwardly.
    â€œYes?”
    â€œAll I have is twenty-five pence.”
    She took a little change purse from her pocket and looked in it. “We have fifty pence between us,” she said. “Come on down to the office.”
    He hadn’t noticed the little chapel when he came to the dormitory. Going back, he looked right into it. Impulse took him in. He crossed himself,