Read by Annalie Wilson
Two nuns come to sit with me today – prating and tutting though they have no power here. The younger one is kind enough. She is from the West herself and asks after my Lizzie. She looks after the orphan girls across in Stanhope St she tells me, and would be happy to have Lizzie among them to learn her her letters.
And if she’s an orphan does that mean I’m already dead?
She’s no answer to that. I ask her if she’s seen Lizzie today. Not yet, she says– they will visit the children’s cells before they go if time allows it. I hope to God they’re feeding her all right or else it’s all for nothing in the end. Her bones like a bird when last I held her. The childer used to get the same ration as the rest of us but Matron says they’ve put a stop to that now for they were cutting up and creating riots all over the city just to get in here.
The other sister rattles away at her beads and will not catch my eye. I’m a bad character, so called, yet these two are here at my pleasure. I do not have to see them and I wouldn’t if it wasn’t so lonely here. Anything to break that terrible silence. They do not own me or keep me. The judge is the one who sentenced me, not these black crows. I let down my hair just to annoy her, curling the ends of it around my hand. I can see I disgust her all right. She draws in her lip and says her rosary louder. Hangs on to her beads for dear life, itching to cut off my hair like those poor bitches that go into them as penitents. Shorn like ewes in the yard.
The light is going now from the tiny window and even from the whitewashed walls. The sisters leave me, the hems of their habits trailing the stone floor. The young one gives me a card with a printed prayer. I pretend to read it, moving my lips. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. They say they will pray for me and for Lizzie.
The wardress brings round the bread and water, half frozen to the bottom of the tin cup. Says not a word to me. Silence is part of our sentence, they say, at least while we are here. Soon I will start working my way to my freedom and in seven years who knows where I may be?
I’d send Lizzie my own bread but it’s not allowed and it’s a small enough piece anyway. It’s more than I had before though, and more than many have got now in this hell-hole of a country. I pity them as are in here for the duration and I pity more the ones they send back out after a week or two. If they’d any of them any sense they’d break a window in Sackville Street and rob a fine shawl or slice a gentleman after lying with him.
If I’d stayed just a common streetwalker where would I be now? In the Union or the Magdalene and my Lizzie taken away for good. No, when I leave this place it will be for the last time and I’ll take her with me. To choose the right crime was no easy thing. Too small and we’d be back out on the streets again in short order and I know where that story ends, with Lizzie going walking herself in a few years. Too big a crime and I might swing for it and then the crows would fold their wings around her. The man that I cut was not a cruel man but he was mean all the same. To argue with a poor girl over a shilling. He won’t argue again, I’ll warrant you that.
They lock the doors on us as soon as daylight goes. These winter nights are long and it’s fierce hard not to think back. I roll up in the blanket and think instead of the day I will walk out through these walls and pay my dues, my sins washed away. I take out a hairpin and add another scratch to the wall. In the dark I run my fingers across the chalky surface to count them. Ten days until the ship sails from the North Wall and Lizzie and I go to the ends of the earth.
(c) Aileen O'Farrell, 2017
Aileen O’Farrell is a London-based freelance writer and psychotherapy student. She writes short stories and flash fiction and has completed her first novel. In 2017 she has had stories chosen for Liars' League and longlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction award.
Annalie Wilson trained at Webber Douglas and works as an actor, singer, songwriter, musician and voiceover artist. Notable acting roles include Kate in The Taming of the Shrew for Marlowe Theatre Canterbury and Garance in Les Enfants Du Paradis at The Arcola. Annalie has produced three independent albums and won the UK national Rock the House award for her music in 2014. www.annalie.co.uk
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