Trio - [9]

He raised his eyebrows and nodded, making it clear that any pleasure was tempered by reservations at how Joan had behaved.

‘You’ll need something to manage on until your first wages come through,’ her mother said.

‘I’ve got a bit in my savings.’

‘You’re dipping into your savings for this?’ Her father looked disapproving. Joan felt a wave of irritation which she fought to hide. The last thing she wanted was to lose her temper now. ‘It’s a week in hand,’ she lied. ‘I won’t need much.’

‘Things are dearer in London,’ her mother put in.

‘Frances will help me out, too. It’ll be fine.’ Joan wiped the sweat from her palms on her slacks and resumed eating. Lies all told. Relief lapping at the edges of her skull. Better than the truth. Why hurt them? They’d be disgusted, ashamed of her. They’d demand to know who the father was. There'd be scene after scene. She couldn’t do that. The tart was sweet and cloying in her mouth, the Carnation milk silky. She was ravenous and nauseous all at once. She wanted more. She’d go for chips later.

‘I’ll see the Tower of London,’ she said to Tommy, feeling a little giddy now it was done, ‘and Buckingham Palace.’

‘They’re changing guards at Buckingham Palace,’ he sang, his eyes dancing, ‘Christopher Robin went down with Alice… Can I come and see it, too?’

‘One day,’ she told him, ‘when you’re bigger. London’s a long way away, hundreds of miles.’

Not a place any of them would visit on spec. No chance of them ever finding out that she wasn’t there.

Megan

The place gave her the heebie-jeebies. It looked like some old house out of a Dracula film with turrets at the corners and ivy all over it. Jesus, there were even gargoyles on the corners of the roof. She half expected Christopher Lee to answer the door, or Peter Cushing.

She’d seen it at its worst when they’d arrived, her mammy clutching her elbow and Megan holding a small, brown, boxy suitcase that had been a wedding gift to her parents. It had her Daddy’s initials on, A.C.D. – Anthony Christopher Driscoll. If everyone had their own, hers would have read M.A.D. – MAD. Megan Agnes Driscoll. Great, that. Hadn’t they thought of that when they picked the names? The kids had ribbed her endlessly at school, ‘Megan’s mad, just like her Dad.’ Could have been worse. Think of being P.I.G. or S.O.W. Whatever she called the baby, she would be very careful about the initials. Brendan’s were B.J.C. – Brendan Joseph Conroy. So her married name would be Megan Agnes Conroy. She wouldn’t be MAD then. One fella in Brendan’s school, the school in Donegal he was at before they came over, he was Terence Gough – T.G. – which everyone used as shorthand for Thank God. Thank God for Terence Gough. Excepting Brendan said he was a poor wee runt of a boy, cack-handed, and he stank, and no one would want to thank anybody for him.

Mammy rang the bell. There was a thick fog that afternoon. It was only four o’clock and already it was pitch black. Megan could taste the soot in the air, the flavour of bad eggs and the feel of chalk on her tongue. There were tall trees round the house, bare most of them in late February. She tried to imagine it in spring with sunshine, in May when the baby would come. And failed. The place seemed built for winter.

The nun who answered the door bore no resemblance to Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee and she was quite cheerful in spite of her surroundings.

‘Come in, come in,’ she chirruped when Mammy said their names. ‘I’m Sister Giuseppe. Matron’s expecting you.’

Megan wondered what on earth possessed her to take Giuseppe for her name? Sounded like the old woodcarver in Pinochio, though his was a bit different, Giuppetty, was it? And she'd a thought that one of the uncles at Granelli’s ice-cream parlour was a Giuseppe. But when you could be a Lucia or a Carmel or something pretty why go for a whiskery old man’s name? Maybe you couldn’t choose for yourself?

Sister Giuseppe showed them where to sit. There were three wooden chairs along the wall in the entrance hall. There was a side table beyond with a holy-water dispenser above it. Our Lady. An old-fashioned one, the paint dull on the plaster. You could get them that glowed in the dark now, crucifixes and all, made of some new plastic stuff.

Megan settled the box case on her knee. The entrance hall had a parquet wood floor with tiles all around the edge in a zigzag pattern. The walls were very plain, green below the dado and cream above. Bit like a hospital. The place was enormous. There was a staircase down the hall, like something from Gone With The Wind, splitting into two on the landing, a huge picture hung up there in a thick gilt frame, a picture of St Joan of Arc, seated on a horse, with temples and hills behind her. The place smelt of beeswax and coal. Megan wondered where all the girls were, the fallen women. She didn’t feel like a fallen woman. She felt very small and scared and she wished they could just go now. Take the box and go back home and have the baby and marry Brendan and make everything right.