The child was stunned momentarily into silence, not only by suddenly finding herself sprawled on the floor, but by the extreme cold. Her wide blue eyes were frightened, her nose was running, yet she still stuck her chin out in defiance.
‘I am in charge here,’ Sister Teresa said, lifting the cane threateningly above her head. ‘You will never answer me back, question anything I say or do. Do I make myself clear?’
The child cowered on the floor, eyes on the cane. ‘I only wanted my dolly,’ she whimpered.
With that the nun brought down the cane, striking May hard on her legs. She screamed in pain, half turned to get up and run, but in doing so presented her bottom. The Sister struck her three more times in quick succession, then tossed the cane aside. Reaching down, she caught May by the shoulders of her pinafore dress, hauled her to her feet, then, holding her with one hand, opened the small door in the wall behind her with the other.
This was the Dark Place. Not a cellar, or a cupboard, but a place used to store ice in the days when the building was a private house. Two steps went down to an area of around six square feet, and as it was built alongside the well-shaft which once supplied the water, it was always very cold even in high summer, the thick stone walls slimy and wet.
‘Get in there,’ the nun said, pushing the child hard. ‘You can scream as loud as you like because no one will hear you. When you are through with screaming, think on why you were put there. By morning I expect you will have seen the error of your ways.’
May did scream as she stumbled down the two steps into the pitch darkness below. But as Sister shut the heavy, lead-lined door and locked it, it was silent again in the basement, for the door made it completely soundproof.
Dulcie cowered away from Sister Teresa as she came into the chapel some time later. ‘I’m sorry, Sister,’ she bleated out. ‘I didn’t mean to pull at you and shout, I was just trying to help May.’
Sister looked down at the girl and took sadistic pleasure in the abject terror in her eyes. During the course of the day she had already observed the new girls were not alike in disposition. May was full of herself, bold as brass, but this older one was fearful, docile and sensitive. There was no need to punish her physically, the anxiety she’d feel by not being told where her sister was would make her suffer enough.
‘Your sister was responsible for what happened tonight,’ Sister Teresa said in a quiet, even voice. ‘Not you. So in future don’t interfere. Now go and see Sister Grace for your bath. I will get you your clean clothes and bring them to you and escort you down to the dormitory. I don’t want to hear another word from you tonight. Is that understood?’
Dulcie was astounded by the gentleness in the woman’s voice and by the knowledge that she wasn’t going to be punished further. Maybe she’d let her imagination run away with her because the other girls said this nun was so nasty. Yet she didn’t quite dare to ask where May was, that might be seen as insolence. Besides, May was probably in bed by now, and she’d find out what happened to her then. ‘Yes, Sister Teresa,’ she said gratefully. ‘I’m very sorry about what happened.’
Half an hour later Dulcie was walking down the stairs behind Sister Teresa to the Juniors’ dormitory on the ground floor. She could barely manage to genuflect at the statue of Mary on the turn of the stairs for she was wearing a flannel nightdress that was too large for her and carrying a bundle of clothes. Her hair was brushed free of its plaits and she had wound the rubber bands from the ends securely around her wrist so she wouldn’t lose them. One set of clothes was the everyday uniform of a maroon jumper and grey skirt, along with clean underwear and grey socks. The other was a worn navy blue kilt and a matted Fair Isle jumper to wear tomorrow.
As she understood it, hers and May’s clothes would go into that cupboard and get dished out next Saturday night to someone, not necessarily them. But right now she didn’t care that she would be seen tomorrow in clothes that were far shabbier than her own. All she was concerned about was May.
Most of the other girls had had their baths by the time she got to the bathroom, for there were three baths in the room and the girls all used the same water. But Carol was still in there, and while Sister Grace turned away for a moment, she whispered that she thought May had been taken to something she called ‘the Dark Place’. She couldn’t elaborate on this, but just the way her eyes had rolled implied it was a terrible punishment.
‘This is your dormitory,’ Sister Teresa said, pointing to the room on her left at the front of the house. ‘The lavatories and washroom are there,’ she went on, indicating the door directly ahead of Dulcie. ‘Put your clothes in the locker beside the bed and you will find your rosary hanging on the bed-head. I shall be back in a few moments for prayers.’
All the beds except one nearest to the window were occupied, the girls burrowed down because it was so cold. Dulcie glanced around her as she made her way to the vacant bed, but as she saw May wasn’t already in one of the other beds, her heart began to flutter with fright. She had been told earlier today there were two Junior dormitories, eight girls in each, so maybe May was in the other one, behind the third door she’d seen by the washroom.
By the time Dulcie had put her clothes away, Sister Teresa was back, ordering all the girls out of bed to kneel for prayers, so there was no time to go and investigate. Dulcie dropped to her knees on the cold lino and closed her eyes, but peeped through her lashes at the other girls. Carol, Helen, Janet, Ruth, Susan and Margaret were there, and another girl with freckles whose name she’d forgotten. All their heads were bent, their fingers flicking along the beads as they devoutly chanted the Rosary.
The girls leaped back into bed afterwards. Sister Teresa turned off the light and left after a stern warning that there must be no talking. Dulcie waited a moment or two, expecting someone to speak, but no one did, so, too scared to be the one to start it by asking where May was, she just lay there. She could hear the soft sounds of thumbs being sucked, the odd cough or the rustle of bedcovers as someone turned over, and she didn’t think she’d ever felt so desperately lonely in her whole life.
She had shared a bed with May for as long as she could remember, and without that small soft body curled up to her back, the bed felt too big, and cold. Since November when it turned cold, they’d shared with Granny too, and though Dulcie had often been irritated by the sound of her snoring and smacking her gums, she’d give anything to hear it now. She turned her face into the hard pillow and cried. She couldn’t even bring herself to say her own private prayers the way Granny always said she must, for she felt God had deserted her.
Sister Teresa waited until after midnight when all the Sisters were sleeping soundly before releasing May. The other Sisters believed she had merely given the girl a couple of strokes with the cane, then put her to bed, and as long as May was found there in bed in the morning, anything she said would be put down to a nightmare.
She had to go right in and haul May out bodily, for she was rigid with cold and terror and incapable of moving unaided. Sister Teresa lifted her out, shut and locked the door again, then sat May on a stool in the kitchen to look at her. She was in a disgusting state – hysteria had made her vomit down her clothes, and she’d wet herself, but that happened to everyone imprisoned in there.
‘Are you sorry now?’ Sister Teresa asked, looked dispassionately at the drawn, dirty face in front of her. May’s eyelids were red and swollen, a clean white track down each cheek from tears, knuckles skinned from banging on the walls and door.
‘Yes, Sister,’ May hiccuped, and tears filled her eyes again as the warmth of the kitchen crept into her frozen body. ‘Very sorry.’
‘You will never answer me back again or question anything I say to you?’
‘No, Sister,’ she whispered, her eyes cast down on the floor.
‘That’s good, because you know if you do where I’ll put you, don’t you?’
May nodded.
The nun turned to the big kitchen sink and began to fill it w
ith warm water. She always bathed the children down here after their punishment – to take them upstairs would attract attention. ‘Take off your clothes,’ she said. ‘You’re in a disgusting state.’
When the child was down to her vest she picked her up and sat her in the sink, using the opportunity to explain that she should never be naked in the sight of the Lord. May said nothing, all the fight had gone out of her, her eyes were vacant, she didn’t even wince as the sponge passed over the weals on her legs and bottom.
Sister dried her afterwards, wrapping her in the towel while she removed the wet vest and replaced it with a dry one. Then she produced May’s own nightdress and put it over her head.
A tiny spark came back into the child’s eyes then. She touched the soft warm material and looked up at Sister with gratitude.
‘You don’t deserve to have that back of course,’ Sister Teresa said in a dry tone. ‘But when I opened your suitcase a while ago and found your doll was broken, I thought it might make you feel better.’
‘Belinda’s broken?’ May’s eyes widened in horror.
‘Yes, my dear, into pieces I’m afraid. But it was very foolish of your grandmother to pack a china doll in a suitcase.’
She went over to the kitchen table and opened a newspaper bundle. There lay the remains of Belinda, her china head caved in. A gaping hole in her skull revealed in a macabre manner the sockets and mechanism which made her eyes open and close. One crushed leg lay beside the trunk, which also had a gaping hole, and the two arms and other leg, all broken in two, were scattered about her.
May just stared open-mouthed at it, her eyes blinking very fast. Young as she was, she knew it was no accident. ‘You smashed her,’ she whispered finally.
Sister Teresa laughed, a cold, evil laugh which echoed round the kitchen.
‘What a terrible mind you have,’ she said. ‘Say that again to anyone and you’ll be right back in the Dark Place.’
On Sunday afternoon Dulcie stood at the playroom window staring bleakly out at the front garden. It had been sunny this morning when they walked to church for Mass, but since dinner the sky had grown darker and darker and it was so cold that one of the Sisters said she thought it might snow.
It was lovely and warm up here in the playroom. Dulcie’s belly felt full from the dinner, behind her all the other girls were talking and laughing, but she was so worried about May she didn’t feel able to join them.
When the bell rang this morning to get up, Dulcie ran straight into the other dormitory to check May was there. She was, but right away Dulcie knew something was badly wrong. Her face was just white and blank, and she was struggling into her clothes faster than Dulcie had ever seen her do before.
‘Go away and get dressed yourself,’ was all she said.
Dulcie did, after a brief warning ‘she’d be in for it’ from another girl. By the time she got into the washroom May was already there, trying to brush her own hair. Dulcie took over, brushed it, plaited it and fastened the ends securely with rubber bands, but as she worked on it, she asked May in whispers what had happened to her.
‘Nothing,’ May said, her face like a blank piece of paper. ‘But she killed Belinda.’
She could see May’s knuckles were skinned, and there was a red welt on the back of her leg just above her knee, but Dulcie couldn’t question her sister further because all the other girls were warning her to get her own hair done before Sister Teresa came in. As it was, she was still cleaning her teeth when the nun entered, and everyone else was already lined up at the door to go to the chapel.
One small girl in May’s dormitory had wet her bed, and Dulcie was so shocked by the way Sister grabbed the wet sheet, draped it over the child’s head and shoulders and ordered her to go and stand in the hall, that any further questioning of May was put aside.
There was no chance to speak in the chapel, or over breakfast, which was porridge and a boiled egg. May had never liked porridge, but she gobbled it down so fast she spilled some of it on her jumper. Immediately afterwards, some of the girls from Dulcie’s dormitory were ordered to go and make all the Junior beds. Carol was told to supervise Dulcie so she’d know how they had to be done.
The beds had to be made just so, the undersheet pulled tightly and tucked in, the top sheet folded back exactly ten inches over the blankets. Not one wrinkle was allowed to spoil the look of the white counterpanes, which had to hang exactly the same width on both sides of the bed.
Later that morning all the girls collected their rosaries and prayer books from their lockers, put on their coats, were handed a navy blue beret each, and then were led by four of the Sisters in a crocodile to church for Mass.
Once again Dulcie got no opportunity to speak to May as they were lined up in twos, the smallest at the front of the line. Janet, who was Dulcie’s partner, told her to cheer up because Sunday was the best day of the week and the Sisters liked them to smile at people on the walk to church.
Dulcie liked Janet, she had pretty dark, curly hair and olive skin and her dark eyes danced with mischief as she whispered information about the school they all went to. ‘It’s good there,’ she said. ‘Hardly any of the teachers are nuns, and they aren’t as strict with us as they are with the other kids. You’ll be in Miss Heywood’s class and she’s lovely.’
If it hadn’t been for May, Dulcie might even have felt happy. The walk was through pleasant roads with posh houses, the other girls all seemed nice, and when they got back from church the dinner was ready. It was almost as good as the dinners Granny made – roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and tasty gravy. Afterwards it was jam roly-poly and custard. She heard too that often on Sunday afternoons they went out to Chinbrook Meadows, but it was considered too cold for that today so they were sent up to the playroom instead.
Dulcie thought this would be the ideal opportunity to talk to her sister, but May just wouldn’t tell her anything. Her little face was still very white and blank. She sat down beside Dulcie with her back against the pipes, but she kept a space between them.
‘What happened? What did Sister do to you?’ Dulcie begged her. ‘Did she cane you?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ May said woodenly. ‘Leave me alone.’
May had always been a great talker. When she told a story she embellished it for all she was worth. She could turn the most trivial incident into something important. Dulcie was fairly certain that if nothing much had happened other than a quick smack, she would have turned that into a beating, just for effect. So it stood to reason that Sister Teresa had found some way of knocking the very stuffing out of her.
‘Just tell me if it was the Dark Place,’ Dulcie whispered. ‘Carol said she might have put you in there.’
At that May got up, so stiffly Dulcie knew she had been beaten and was aching. ‘Don’t ask me,’ was all she said. ‘She killed Belinda and she’ll kill me too.’
‘She can’t kill you, I won’t let her,’ Dulcie retorted.
May just gave her a look, almost one of pity. ‘Daddy killed Mummy,’ she said, then turned away towards the crowd of Seniors who were just coming into the playroom.
During the next few weeks Dulcie tried to convince herself that the Dark Place was just a myth, like the bogeyman the children used to say lived in the coal cellar at Lee Manor School. It had to be a myth, no one seemed to know exactly where it was, and no one admitted to having been in there themselves.
Yet something had drastically changed May. She never spoke out of turn any more, she obeyed the rules, never argued when she was told to do something. She rarely giggled and even out in the playground she never had much to say for herself.
In many ways this had made things easier for Dulcie. She didn’t have to watch May all the time, for she did what she was told by the Sisters without any back-chat. She ate everything that was put in front of her and swallowed the malt and castor oil the Sisters dished up once a week without a murmur. She stood in line for her clean clothes on Saturday nights and never sai
d a word when she saw someone else being given her tartan pinafore dress to wear on Sunday. She didn’t struggle while Dulcie plaited her hair in the mornings and she learned to tie her own shoe-laces.
But it was like having the sister she loved and knew so well replaced with a chilly stranger who just looked like her. The new May didn’t want to be cuddled by Dulcie, she wouldn’t even talk about Granny or the people they’d known in Hither Green. When Mother Superior called both her and May into her sitting-room a couple of days after their arrival and told them they were not, under any circumstances, to tell anyone their father was in prison, Dulcie was quite happy to agree for she didn’t want to tell anyone anyway. But when Mother went on to say she couldn’t allow them to receive or send letters either, Dulcie was horrified. Yet May didn’t seem to care at all. She said she didn’t want letters from him.
What hurt Dulcie most was that May didn’t seem to need her or even like her any more. In the playground she played with the other smallest girls, in the playroom she was a pet of the Senior girls, even on the way to and from school she managed to avoid walking with her sister.
Granny had come to see them on the second Sunday they were there. Dulcie was desperate to tell her about everything, but one of the Sisters sat in the corner of the room for the whole visit, so she didn’t dare. Granny had said she’d come again in four weeks, but she couldn’t make it, her legs were too bad. Susan had been twice, and again a Sister sat in the corner listening, so Dulcie couldn’t tell her anything either.
Dulcie was frantic to tell someone, anyone, how horrible it was here. That her sister was like a stranger, that she had to watch out for Sister Teresa all the time, and they were both terrified of getting on the wrong side of her. She wanted to speak of the children who wet the bed and had to stand in the hall with the wet sheet over their heads, how cold it was in bed at night, the long hours outside in the playground, the awful food, for Sunday dinner was the only good meal. How she hated having absolutely nothing of her own, not even her own vest and knickers. Even the little presents Granny and Susan bought them were snatched and broken as soon as they got back in to the playroom. Surely it wasn’t right that small girls were forced to kneel in the chapel for two or three hours at a stretch just for getting into bed with each other to get warm, or severely caned for helping themselves to a slice of bread while laying up the tables for tea?