Free Bad Girl Magdalene by Jonathan Gash Page A

the old folk in case they got shitty so the mattresses didn’t get dirty.
    Old Mr MacIlwam’s eyes were wet. She stared at him with horror, in a panic wondering if this was the start of a stroke because that’s what one old woman had done in the other ward, twisted up on her right side and pissed herself and shat in the bed then her eyes had run water like Mr MacIlwam’s eyes were doing.
    ‘I keep seeing Terry,’ Mr MacIlwam said.
    His voice was creaky like the dormitory door back in the Magdalenes. The only time Magda had heard it before waswhen he had suddenly tried to sing along and join in a hymn and the nun had told him to sing it silently because it would help the others if he kept quiet.
    It had been Sweet Heart of Jesus Fount of Love and Mercy, the hymn, and Magda had heard Sister Claire tell Mr MacIlwam that and thought what a shame, because God might actually like that old scratchy voice. It might have reminded Jesus of some door in St Joseph’s carpenter’s shop in Galilee or wherever and brought a smile to His Face, though you never did hear of Jesus smiling in the Gospels. At least, Magda had never heard of it. But old Mr MacIlwam shut up as he was bound to do and stayed silent all through until the end of the hymn.
    ‘Terry?’
    Who was Terry? Magda wondered if she should run and bring Sister Claire from the laundry cupboards, where she could spend half an hour, always tutting and then going off to tell some other woman from the other side, where the healthy old folk were, that they ought to keep the cupboards tidier because it made difficulties for everybody else and had they no pride in being decent handmaidens of the Lord?
    ‘Terry,’ old Mr MacIlwam said in his cracked-door croak. ‘You remember Terry.’
    ‘Yes,’ Magda bleated as quietly as she could so as not to get the old man in trouble, for conversation had Seeds of Iniquity when exchanged unlawfully. For this reason, Mary the Mother of Jesus never got a look-in in the Gospels, poor woman, because it might have given way to thoughts other than what was holy, because you never could tell. So said Sister Annuncion. One girl back in the Magdalenes got a good point for asking that question when it was Religion and Doctrine,and Magda wished she could read so she too could discover things like that in the Gospel and get a point.
    A good point didn’t give you anything, but the other girls in the same section of the class always treated you better for getting a good point, in case it gave something they might share if anything came of it.
    ‘I keep seeing him falling.’
    Magda almost swayed and fell in a faint at that. She even sank onto the edge of the bed, which made old Mr Liam MacIlwam look surprised because nobody had ever done that. Magda went dizzy too. Nobody else, surely, had the same terrible dream, of seeing the girl falling like she did. Also, Mr MacIlwam was a man, who could only have been in a boys’ school, so how could he have seen the girl fall?
    She had a sudden vision, Lucy’s cardigan so close Magda could have touched her before she moved, and those words Magda could never remember but which were clear as day…
    ‘Falling,’ she repeated, frightened out of her wits.
    ‘Falling down. In the cold.’
    ‘In the cold.’ Magda could have fallen down herself.
    ‘In the schoolyard.’
    ‘Schoolyard!’ Magda repeated with relief, ‘Schoolyard!’
    ‘You remember it, don’t you, Tom?’
    ‘Yes,’ Magda bleated, quietly now so as not to betray Tom, whoever Tom was and wherever he might be.
    They might have been boys forbidden to watch Terry falling down in the schoolyard, and people said funny things in fright or when daydreaming. She knew that, having several times been caught out in the school or at work in the kitchen or in Holy Mass, even, suddenly saying something out loud that one of the other girls heard and repeated along the kneeling lineso they started giggling and that’s how you got found out and your