Page 153 of The Missing Sister

‘Please, rest for now,’ Ambrose said to her as he placed a mug of tea in front of her and James went to the pantry in search of the salt. ‘Why don’t you give me the baby, whilst you drink it?’

‘I am well, sir, really,’ Maggie reiterated.

‘Even so, I’d like to hold her.’

Ambrose took the child from Maggie’s arms, then sat down and cradled her in his arms.

‘She’s very beautiful,’ he said as he looked down at the sleeping baby.

‘That she is, sir, and big too. Fatter than any of mine, so. Must’a been a difficult birth for the mother.’

‘You have no idea whose baby it could be?’

‘None, sir. And I’d be knowing every pregnant mother round these parts.’

‘Then the baby must have come from outside the village?’ Ambrose queried.

‘I’d say so, yes.’

James came back with salt and a basin and followed Maggie’s instructions to take a little hot water from the kettle and mix it with cold. He was amazed as Ambrose insisted on holding the baby for Maggie while she tended to the cord.

‘There, it’s clean now. ’Twill dry out in a week or so, then drop off,’ she said, re-covering the baby in the blanket. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I must get on with my work, or Mrs Cavanagh will have words with me next time I see her.’

Maggie gave a small bob and left the kitchen.

‘Surely she should be in bed resting, just a day after burying her child? She’s terrified of losing her position here, isn’t she? And of Mrs Cavanagh,’ commented Ambrose.

‘She is, yes, and we will both try to make her rest as much as possible today. Of course, those few extra shillings she gets for her one day a week could make the difference between her family being fed or going hungry.’

‘I wonder who minds her children when she’s here?’

‘I dread to think, Ambrose,’ James shuddered. ‘They probably mind themselves.’

‘How she could hold this perfect healthy baby in her arms and let it feed on the milk meant for her own dead child is truly beyond me. Such bravery, I...’

James could see tears in his friend’s eyes. He’d never seen them there before, even when he’d been badly bullied at school.

‘Is an orphanage really the only route for this poor, innocent child?’ Ambrose looked up at him. ‘I mean, you saw that ring, perhaps we could find out who it belonged to, track down her family... Or if not, there are childless women, desperate to adopt – my English Fellow friend was telling me that American couples come over here to adopt from the orphanages.’

‘Well, if the Irish are normally good at one thing, it seems to be giving birth to fine healthy children. Shall I take her from you? I can lay her upstairs on my bed, and I’m sure Maggie will be able to feed her again later.’

‘What will you do now, James?’

‘I will speak to Father Norton after Mass to find out the protocol on these things down here.’ James lifted the baby out of his friend’s arms. ‘There now, I’m taking her away before you adopt her yourself.’ With a sad smile, he left the kitchen.

While James went to Timoleague church to perform morning Mass, Ambrose took himself off for a walk down the hill, to Courtmacsherry Bay below it. Today it was filled with millpond-still water, and the breeze was gentle as he walked along the seafront. It was a crisp, bright November day – the kind Ambrose loved – and even though he could not imagine how faith alone in an invisible being could tempt his soulmate away to this godforsaken part of Ireland, he could occasionally appreciate its raw natural beauty.

Ambrose had known since the day he’d met James – even at eleven, tall and almost roguishly handsome – that this boy who would become the beautiful man he now was had promised his life to God. He remembered sitting on the hard, uncomfortable pew of Blackrock College chapel, always with a slim paperback to hand in order to surreptitiously read all the way through the endless dirge of Evensong. He’d sometimes glance at James sitting next to him in the pew, his head bowed in prayer, with a look on his face that he could only describe as ecstasy.

Ambrose knew that he could never talk about his lack of spiritual belief in public; after all, he was at a Catholic boys’ school and taught by devout monks. The Holy Ghost Fathers, the order that ran the school, were preparing their pupils to become missionaries in West Africa. Even as a young boy, the idea of travelling far across the seas to an unknown land had terrified him. If he mislaid his glasses, he was immediately tumbled into a blurred, indecipherable world. Unlike James, whose constitution could withstand the wettest, coldest days on the rugby pitch, after a single match, Ambrose could be laid up in the sanatorium for days with a bad chest.

‘Be a man,’ his father was always saying, especially as Ambrose was the heir to an Anglo-Irish dynasty, or at least what was left of it. The family had once owned half of Wicklow three hundred years ago, as the masters of the Catholic poor. But through his ancestor’s philanthropic work for the tenants and their farms at that time, the family had come to be loved. Lord Lister had passed the ethos on to his son, who had taken it one step further and in his will had left the land to his tenants. This act had left future generations of Listers with only a vast mansion and little means of supporting it. Yet that generosity had saved the place from being burnt to the ground like so many other grand houses had been during the War of Independence. And there, his father still lived to this day. Ambrose was technically an ‘Honourable’ as heir to the dynasty, with only a gold signet ring given to him on his twenty-first birthday to mark his noble ancestry. His father also rarely played on his own heritage, unless he needed to impress an Englishman, who he joked may regard him as an ‘Irish navvy’. Ambrose always chuckled when his father returned from England and said this, because despite everything, he had a cut-glass English accent.

Ambrose wouldn’t be at all surprised if Lister House wasn’t mortgaged to the hilt. At the age of eleven, he was certain already that the Lister dynasty was doomed to end with him, because he would never marry. His mother had died young, leaving him a substantial trust fund, inherited through her own family. With his father still alive and drinking through what remained of his Lister heritage, she had sought to protect her son. Ambrose harboured dreams of selling Lister House to somenouveau-richeIrish family who’d made money out of the war, and buying himself a small, cosy apartment near Trinity College, where he could surround himself with his books and, most importantly, be warm...

Which he definitely wasn’t now.

‘Oh, how I hate the cold...’ he muttered as he turned back towards the village, with its pretty pastel-coloured houses, many of whose owners earned their keep from the shops they’d established on the ground floor within them. As always, the Catholic church towered over the village – there wouldn’t be a soul in Timoleague or its surrounds that would miss Mass on a Sunday. Often, James said, there’d be standing room only, even though the church could seat at least three hundred people.