A Girl Called Blue Read online

  Blue couldn’t imagine. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like to have a father who loved and cared about you and wouldn’t let anyone hurt or harm you.

  When she was dressed and ready the nurse made her sit in the wheelchair and wheeled her down to the hospital door. Sister Agnes followed, silent. A big black taxi was parked there and she recognised Jimmy Mooney, the driver who’d taken them to the zoo, as he opened the car door and lifted Blue gently on to the back seat. He put a cushion behind her back and made her stretch her legs along the seat.

  ‘Sister, you’ll have to sit in the front with me!’ he insisted, ignoring the nun’s cross expression, ‘and give the little girl room. You take care of yourself there in the back, love,’ he called as they began to drive away.

  CHAPTER 19

  The Infirmary

  Jimmy insisted on lifting her out of his car and carrying her all the way up the stairs to the infirmary. ‘You just put your arms around me and hold on tight,’ he said, lifting her easily and cradling her like a baby. ‘My God! You’re as light as a feather!’

  Blue felt safe in his arms, her cheek resting against his rough tweed jacket. He smelled of tobacco and hair oil. He talked to her the whole time, saying that she was a brave girl.

  Nurse Griffin fixed her pillows and pulled back the sheets as Jimmy lowered her down gently on to the bed as if she were a piece of precious porcelain. Her leg was stretched out and the nurse put a pillow under it.

  ‘You take good care of yourself, kid,’ Jimmy said kindly, slipping her the six remaining squares of a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate that he had in his pocket, ‘and get better!’

  ‘Thank you.’ She felt too tired to bite into the creamy chocolate and put it on the locker beside her bed. She’d save it for later.

  * * *

  Blue got bored lying in bed all day in the small infirmary, with her leg stretched out in front of her.

  ‘Let me see how we’re doing, pet,’ Nurse Griffin, with her ginger hair and crooked teeth, would ask every morning as she put on a special white apron and spread a sheet on the bed while she gently soaked the dressing, then removed it and took a look at how the burns were doing.

  Her skin looked disgusting, all bubbles and blisters. Blue closed her eyes, not wanting to see it as the nurse cleaned and treated the burn, then re-dressed it.

  She’d pursed her lips when Blue had told her truthfully what had happened. ‘The old rip! She’s not fit to look after a henhouse, let alone a home full of children!’ Nurse Griffin blushed red immediately, and looked around cautiously. ‘Even the walls have ears in a place like this,’ she remarked as she put the dressings tray away.

  Blue’s right hand was healing but was still stiff and sore and useless. Her left hand was a little better but she found it almost impossible to do anything with it.

  ‘There’ll be no homework or writing for you for a while. Nor stringing beads or cleaning for that matter,’ Nurse Griffin consoled her.

  But Blue wished that she was back in school with her friends instead of being stuck in the sick room. The girl over in the corner bed, Maria, was a real moan. She had the mumps, and her face and neck were all swollen up so that she looked like a big ball. She kept crying and saying how sick she felt, and Blue hoped that she wouldn’t give the mumps to the rest of them. Beside her was a small girl called Una, with a pale face; she had pneumonia and was too tired to talk or do anything. Helen O’Connor was the only one who was a bit of fun. Although she was almost two years older than Blue, she was only half her size. She had a twisted spine and was always in and out of hospital for operations and tests.

  ‘I like hospital and all the nurses and doctors there,’ she said. ‘Beats this stinking place, anyway.’ She grinned, showing off a mouthful of huge buck-teeth, which, with her tiny little nose and huge eyes, made her look just like a rabbit. Blue liked her and was glad to have someone to talk to. ‘Last time I got jelly and ice-cream every day and a lady used to come and give us sweets and comics,’ grinned Helen, tossing her hair. ‘I’ll lend you a comic or two if you want. I’ve got Bunty and Judy and The Beano.’

  Blue took a copy of Bunty, glad to have something to read.

  Mary managed to sneak in at different times to say hello to her and fill her in on everything. Nurse Griffin pretended to be too busy to notice the forbidden visitor.

  ‘Janey Mac, I can’t believe what happened you!’ declared Mary when she saw her. ‘Is it true you kicked and hit Sister Regina and that’s how you fell into the fireplace?’

  ‘No,’ protested Blue, amazed at the lies the nun was telling. ‘I swear, Mary, I didn’t kick her. She was the one using the leather and shouting at me. She was walloping me, and then she shoved me over so hard I got dizzy. I just remember seeing the coal and flames and feeling my skin sticking to the grate of the fire.’

  ‘Janey!’ repeated her friend. ‘She’s put a different story to it. She’s making out you’re the one to blame, that the accident was your fault.’

  Tears welled up in Blue’s eyes at the unfairness of it and she was surprised when Mary caught hold of her sore hand and held it.

  ‘Don’t mind her, Blue, don’t cry! She’s not worth it. She’s nothing but an evil liar.’

  Blue tried to pull herself together, blowing her nose and snuffling, not believing what a weak eejit she’d suddenly become.

  ‘Molly keeps looking for you. She really misses you, and school’s been awful,’ complained Mary, changing the subject. ‘We’ve been doing terrible sums and problems. None of us can do them. Mrs Brady keeps writing them on the blackboard but, sure, none of us can follow them at all. She keeps calling your name and asking you to come up to the board, and I have to keep reminding her that you’re sick. Then she gets cross with us and gives us even more sums to do.’

  ‘I miss it,’ Blue confessed. She liked sums and problems and numbers. It was one of the things she was really good at.

  ‘Janey, imagine missing school!’ joked Mary. ‘You must be mad!’

  Lil crept in another day to see her, nervous as a mouse, hoping the nuns wouldn’t catch her.

  ‘Sister Regina says she has her eye on me,’ she told Blue. ‘What do you think she means?’

  Blue shrugged. The nun was obviously trying to scare the girl, play cat and mouse with her.

  ‘Don’t mind her, Lil. She says that to everyone. She’s like an old eagle keeping her eye on everything and everyone and waiting to pounce. You’ve nothing to be afraid of, honest you don’t. I was the one who went into her office and she knows that.’

  ‘I hate the way she watches me. I get afraid, Blue. Look what she did to you!’

  ‘She’s just a bully.’

  ‘I should never have left you on your own in the office with her,’ sighed Lil, her pretty face etched with guilt.

  ‘Don’t go blaming yourself, Lil, d’ye hear me? None of this was your fault. Sister Regina’s just a bad-tempered weasel who likes to torment children. Some day she’ll get her reward.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Blue, glad to see the look of relief on her friend’s face.

  ‘Sister Carmel let Joan Doherty move into your bed for the moment,’ Lil told Blue, her face angry. ‘You know what a lick Joan is. Anyway, I knew you wouldn’t want her getting her hands on your things so I got this for you.’ It was the darned old money-sock Blue had hidden away under the mattress.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said with relief. She was glad that Joan hadn’t found her sock.

  ‘Don’t worry about the bed,’ smiled Lil. ‘You’ll be better soon and you’ll get it back.’

  Blue went back to the hospital only once. Doctor Lynch was kind but distracted as he checked her knee and hands. Sister Agnes waited outside for her.

  ‘Who’s doing your dressing?’ he enquired. She told him about Nurse Griffin. ‘She’s doing a good job.’

  He made her walk and try to bend, and took each hand in his and stretched her fingers, then clos
ed them, Blue grimacing with the sharp pain it caused.

  ‘There’s no sign of infection and the healing has started. Burns are slow, Bernadette, there’s no rushing them, but you are young and healthy and will get over them. Unfortunately, there will be some scarring, which for the moment I can do nothing about.’

  He disappeared outside to talk to Sister Agnes while a nurse got the tray and began to re-dress her leg. He returned minutes later and wrote a few things in her file.

  ‘I’ve told Sister Agnes that I won’t need to see you again unless there’s a problem,’ he explained, ‘and hopefully there’ll be no more accidents, young lady.’

  Blue slipped off the high bed, the nurse helping her to pull on her coat as the doctor went off about his business.

  As the days dragged on, Blue realised how much she missed the normal routine of the home. Helen had gone back to her dorm and her place was soon taken by a sickly little boy of four who kept puking in a bowl. Sister Carmel had come to see her, but Sister Regina hadn’t even once appeared to check on how she was doing.

  Sister Monica came to visit her most days, pulling a chair up beside the bed and making herself comfortable.

  ‘I know you must be a bit lonely, child, so I said I’d come and keep you company for a while.’

  Blue grinned, always glad to see her favourite nun. Sister Monica was so different to all the other nuns in Larch Hill. She had a heart. Blue loved to listen to her stories about growing up on a farm in Kerry.

  ‘I don’t know how you left the farm, the place you loved so much,’ ventured Blue, knowing that if she had a home and a family, a place and people to love, she would never leave it.

  ‘I got the call, child, the call to follow the Lord. So I packed up my bags and said goodbye to my parents and brothers and sisters and came to Dublin to the order’s big retreat house. I lived there with lots of other young nuns like myself, all of us wanting to do the Lord’s work.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I cooked and sewed and studied the bible and prayed all day and night for the Lord to guide me. I waited and waited. I was about to pack my bags and go back home to Kerry when I was sent to our mission in Africa.’

  ‘I wish I could go to Africa,’ sighed Blue, imagining the warmth on her skin and the strange land of Sister Monica’s stories. The nun’s brown eyes and wizened face always lit up when she talked of the place where she had spent so much of her life.

  ‘They are a simple people,’ she explained, ‘but they always smiled and sang and listened to God’s word. They had hard lives with none of the things that we in Ireland take for granted. The women of Lagira would walk a mile or more for clean water to drink or to wash their children, and gather roots and berries and grain to feed their family. They cooked on open fires just like our own ancestors did, and lived on corn meal and very little else. But, you know something? They rarely complained.’

  ‘Where did you sleep, Sister?’

  ‘Most of the time I slept in a hut made of mud, with a straw roof and no door. It is called a rondavel. I would watch the creepy crawlies clamber above me in the straw! Sometimes one would drop down on you when you slept and you’d wake with a fright.’

  ‘Eeeuuk,’ Blue responded, shuddering at the thought.

  ‘One night I woke to find a big yellow snake moving along the bottom of my bed, about to slither up under my cover. I gave such a scream! I woke all the people around me who came running to help. I was such a ninny.’

  ‘I’d have screamed too if I’d a snake in my bed,’ declared Blue.

  ‘In Africa you have to get used to these things,’ smiled the nun.

  Blue lay back and relaxed as Sister Monica repeated stories of the man-eating crocodile that hid in the river, the cheeky monkeys that would snatch the food from your hand, the lions and hyenas that would kill village goats, stories of children who would race each other barefoot in the dust, laughing and shouting, of how the nuns and villagers worked together to build a mission with a school and small hospital, and of Sister Monica’s trips from one part of the continent to another.

  Blue closed her eyes as she listened. Her mind filled with the pictures the nun’s words conjured up. She imagined herself far from this cold, grey place, with its iron bars and high walls and sad children, in a land of sunshine and warmth and smiling faces.

  ‘You sleep, child,’ the kindly old nun whispered then, bending down and pulling the blanket around her shoulder. ‘You rest yourself and get well.’

  CHAPTER 20

  Christmas

  She did get well again. Nurse Griffin made her exercise, stretching and bending her leg and knee every day. When the dressings were finally taken off, the scars began to heal. She had missed weeks of school.

  ‘I’m throwing you out of the infirmary, young lady,’ laughed the nurse. ‘It’s high time you were back with your friends, but you must come down and let me see you every third day. No rolling in the dirt or getting mud in the scar, now! You must keep it clean! Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, nurse,’ Blue promised.

  Walking back along the corridors and up the stairs towards the dormitory, she realised how much she hated being an invalid, being enclosed and confined. But her heart sank when she opened the door and saw Joan’s things on her locker and the other girl reclining on her bed.

  Mary immediately stepped forward to Blue and squeezed her arm.

  ‘Blue’s back!’ she said loudly, ‘she’s better now.’

  Joan kept her head down, ignoring her.

  ‘Are you deaf? Didn’t you hear me? Blue’s back and you’re on her bed. She wants it back.’

  Blue swallowed hard. For some bizarre reason she felt she was going to cry. All she wanted to do was climb quietly into bed and go to sleep.

  ‘There’s a bed down there.’ Joan pointed to her old bed in the corner.

  ‘She doesn’t want that bed,’ insisted Mary. ‘She wants her own bed, her old bed back!’

  The silence hung in the air. All the girls in the room stopped what they were doing and listened.

  ‘Blue sleeps beside me,’ insisted Molly, standing beside her. ‘She’s my friend and she reads me stories.’

  Joan blushed. Blue guessed she would never in a million years read a story for the little girl beside her.

  ‘Go on, Joan, shift!’ said Big Ellen.

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Because we all say so,’ said Big Ellen, ‘that’s why.’

  ‘Go on, Jo, please let her have her old bed back,’ begged Lil.

  But Joan still sat there, while all of them stood around her. She was waiting for someone to grab hold of her and toss her off the bed. In the end she got up slowly, considering.

  ‘Okay. She can have her stupid bed back. Who’d want to sleep between a bed-wetter and a cry-baby, anyway!’ she said nastily.

  For a second, Blue thought that Mary, Lil and Molly would attack the girl. But they held back.

  ‘Thanks,’ she murmured, grateful, throwing herself down on the soft mattress.

  Disgruntled, Joan took her things from the small, shabby bedside locker and marched back down to her old bed, flinging herself on the mattress.

  At school Mrs Brady made a big fuss of Blue and warned the others not to bump into her or trip her up. The other girls were curious and asked about her accident and did burns hurt. Blue pushed the pain and anger she felt to the back of her mind as she showed off her scar.

  She met Sister Regina on the stairs and stared right at her. She could see the nun’s face redden as they passed each other. ‘I was praying for you, child,’ was all she said.

  * * *

  Halloween passed, Mary finding the brass ring hidden in her slice of the barmbrack Mrs MacFadden had made, swearing that she would be the first married of them all. Poor Lil got the hard green pea of poverty. During November they prayed for the souls of the dead and Blue thought only of Jess as she knelt and prayed in the chapel, still not believing that the girl who’d w
riggled and joked beside her and turned cartwheels in the corridors was gone.

  For Christmas Larch Hill was cleaned and polished as never before. A huge fir tree was put up in the recreation room and Sister Monica supervised the erection of the carved wooden crib in the hallway. Blue had to go to Nurse Griffin to have her leg dressed before the nurse went away for her holiday. Nurse Griffin was rubbing a special oil on to the puckered skin around her knee when Lil ran in.

  ‘Blue, come quick. It’s Molly!’

  Blue jumped up. She couldn’t bear it if anything had happened to the little girl.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, anxious.

  ‘It’s good news. It’s her da. He’s come for her. He’s taking her home.’

  ‘Her da!’

  ‘Yeah. He lives in Liverpool. That’s where Molly’s going. She’s packing her things right now while her da talks to Sister Regina.’

  Molly going! Blue couldn’t believe it. She got to the dormitory in double-quick time, her knee and hands forgotten.

  Molly’s dark eyes were shining. Blue had never seen her look so happy. ‘I told you my daddy would come back for me. I told you!’

  Blue swallowed hard. Molly deserved to be with her father, to share a life with him again. She had missed him so much, pined for him, cried for him.

  ‘Here, let me help you, Molly,’ she offered, bending down and taking the few washed and worn garments that Molly possessed and folding them up. Lil went and got a thick brown paper bag for the clothes from the cupboard on the landing. She slipped two nightdresses from the home in with the clothes, and some extra vests and knickers too.

  ‘Daddy says we’re going to live with my Auntie Maureen and he’s got a grand job on the buildings in England.’

  Blue tried to smile.

  ‘Isn’t it great, Blue! I’ll be with my daddy.’

  ‘It’s the best news I’ve heard in a long time, Molly, the very best news.’