The Wonder(43)

She hesitated, then said, very low, “Rosaleen O’Donnell.”

Byrne nodded. “Who was it said that mother is a child’s word for God?”

Lib had never heard that.

He waggled his pencil between his fingers. “Mind, I can’t print a word of this without proof or they’ll have me up for libel.”

“Of course not!”

“If you’ll let me have five minutes with the child, I bet I can weasel out the truth.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Well.” Byrne’s voice returned to its usual boom. “Sound her out yourself, then?”

Lib didn’t like the idea of acting as his snoop.

“At any rate, thanks for your company, Mrs. Wright.”

Almost three in the afternoon, and Lib’s next shift began at nine. She wanted air, but it was drizzling, and besides, she supposed she needed a nap more. So she went upstairs and took her boots off.

If the potato blight had been such a long catastrophe, ending only seven years ago, it occurred to Lib that a child now eleven must have been born into hunger. Weaned on it, reared on it; that had to shape a person. Every thrifty inch of Anna’s body had learned to make do with less. She’s never been greedy or clamoured for treats—that was how Rosaleen O’Donnell had praised her daughter. Anna must have been petted every time she said she’d had plenty. Earned a smile for every morsel she passed on to her brother or the maid.

But that didn’t begin to explain why all the other children in Ireland wanted their dinner, and Anna didn’t.

Perhaps what was different was the mother, Lib thought. Like the boastful one in the old tale who’d vaunted her daughter to the world as a spinner of gold. Had Rosaleen O’Donnell noticed her younger child’s talent for abstinence and dreamt up a way to turn it into pounds and pence, fame and glory?

Lib lay very still, eyes closed, but light prickled through the lids. Being tired didn’t mean one was capable of sleep, just as the need for food wasn’t the same as a relish for it. Which brought her back, as everything did, to Anna.

As the last of the evening light drained over the village street, Lib took a right turn down the lane. Rising over the graveyard was a waxing gibbous moon. She thought of the O’Donnell boy in his coffin. Nine months; rotting but not a skeleton yet. Were those his brown trousers the scarecrow wore?

The notice Lib had made for the cabin door was streaked with rain.

Sister Michael was waiting in the bedroom. “Out like a light already,” she whispered.

At midday, they’d had only a moment for Lib to report on her shift. This was a rare time when they might talk in private. “Sister Michael—” But Lib realized she couldn’t mention her speculations about sleep-feedings because the nun would close up like a box again. No, she’d much better stick to the common ground of their concern for this girl asleep in the narrow bed. “Did you know the child’s brother was dead?”

“God rest him,” said the nun with a nod, crossing herself.

So why had nobody told Lib? Or, rather, why did she seem to get hold of the wrong end of the stick all the time?

“Anna seems to be fretting over him,” she said.

“Naturally.”

“No, but—inordinately so.” She hesitated. This woman might be riddled with superstition, seeing angels dancing across every bog, but Lib had no one else to talk to who saw the girl at such close quarters. “I think there’s something wrong with Anna’s mind,” she pressed on in a whisper.

The whites of Sister Michael’s eyes caught the lamplight. “We weren’t asked to look into her mind.”

“I’m charting symptoms,” Lib insisted. “This brooding over her brother is one.”

“You’re drawing an inference, Mrs. Wright.” The nun held up one rigid finger. “We’re not to engage in this kind of discussion.”

“That’s impossible. Every word we say is about Anna, and how could it not be?”

The nun shook her head violently. “Is she eating or not? That’s the only question.”

“It’s not my only question. And if you call yourself a nurse, it can’t be yours either.”

The nun’s cheeks tightened. “My superiors sent me here to serve under Dr. McBrearty. Good night to you.” She folded her cloak over her arm and was gone.

Sitting watching Anna’s eyelids flicker some hours later, Lib found herself longing for the sleep she should have had that afternoon. But this was an old battle, and like any nurse, she knew she could win if she spoke to herself severely enough.

The body had to be granted something; if not slumber, then food, and if that was unavailable, then stimulus of some sort. Lib set aside her shawl and the hot brick that kept her feet off the floor and walked back and forward across the room, three paces each way.

It struck her that William Byrne must have made inquiries about her, because he knew her full name and who’d trained her. What did Lib know about him? Only that he wrote for a paper she’d never read, had been posted to India, and was a Catholic, if a rather sceptical one. So frank and bluff, yet he’d given away little other than his theory about Mr. Thaddeus—an audacious piece of deduction that now struck Lib as entirely unconvincing. The priest hadn’t even been near the cabin since Monday morning. How could she possibly ask Anna, Is it Mr. Thaddeus who’s stopping you from eating?