The Magdalen Read Online Free PDF Page B

resting on his black and white paws.

    Esther would sit and watch, fascinated, as her mother knitted. No matter how often Majella showed her, she knew she would never knit as well: the intricate stitches were too hard to copy. Instead she was content to hold the hank of heavy wool as her mammy rolled it into a ball. The bainin wool was oily and smelt of the woolly creatures that grazed over the local mounds of heather and rocks, scrabbling for rich green grass. “The oil protects not just the sheep, but the wearer of the wool too!” Majella smiled, the huge knitting needles clicking as she made pictures and patterns from the wool, slipping it easily through her fingers as she knitted heavy jumpers for Dermot and the boys, and cardigans for themselves. Diamonds and honeycombs and blackberry shapes all appeared, telling stories of the fields and lands all about them. Fronts, backs, and sleeves. Later her mother would stitch them together, using the same wool threaded through the large darning needle, her eyes straining as she worked. Baby Nonie would howl for attention, her eyes and cheeks raw from crying, Esther always trying to hush and soothe the little one.
    As the storms blew in off the ocean and the months passed, her father would sit staring at the embers of the dying fire, the close confinement getting to them all. Every night after tea her mammy would kneel down and, taking out her mother-of-pearl beads, begin to say a decade of the rosary, the rest of them joining her. She prayed for the soldiers at the front, the English, the Americans, the French, the Italians, even the Germans got a mention too. “Lord bring them back safe to their mothers and families! And let them all get a bit of sense and stop fighting, so there can be peace!” Then Majella would turn her attention to the
needs of her own family, with a whole load of special intentions for each and every one of them, and for some of her friends and neighbours too. The boys shuffled and rubbed their sore knees as the litany of prayers went on and on. Mammy had a good kind heart but was such a worrier, only her faith kept her going.
    The very minute the prayers were over and there was a break in the rain, Daddy would grab his cap and coat and slope off down to McEvoy’s, returning late in the night and falling into bed. Esther tried to block out the rhythmic thumping of the bedhead and the groans of her father before his heavy, exhausted snores eventually filled the house.
    She prayed to the blue plaster statue of Our Lady on the shelf in her bedroom. “Please keep my daddy out of the house as much as possible, and try and stop his drinking, and protect my mammy from him.”
    The strange thing was that Mammy would not hear a word against him. She said that it was both hard and humiliating for a man like Dermot not to be able to provide for his family. Esther remembered a time when she was small and her daddy used to call her his “darling girl,” tickle her ribs and take turns swinging herself and Tom high above his head, telling them, “Touch the sky!” He’d bring them to Galway, and to Spiddal and to the races. He’d show them around the markets and in summer bring them to see the currach races, or take them out in the boat to the islands. He’d help them search for baby crabs in the rockpools and taught them how to hold a fishing line still until you got a bite, and how to land a fish. That had been a long time ago. Her daddy was a different man nowadays,
difficult and argumentative, with little interest in his wife and children. Maybe her mammy remembered other, better times, and that was why she still loved and forgave him. In a million years Esther would never understand the strange bond of matrimony.
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    â€œDon’t go, Dermot! Please don’t go!” begged her mother. “Let it settle awhile!”
    Father was busy pulling on his warm heavy jumper and pushing his feet into his