White Linen

Martin Howe

Description

In this gripping story of betrayal by friends, family and the church, Martin Howe explores the relationship between individuals and a society which holds moral codes of behaviour in high regard. White Linen exposes the corrupting influence such constraints can have at all levels of society and on many of the people concerned. Set in Dublin in the mid-1990s, the action centres on the closure of the last remaining 'Magdalen Laundry', where women who had transgressed moral boundaries were sent. The book follows four of the 'Magdalen women' who have spent the best part of their lives confined there and working for no pay. Readers join the women as they have their final drink at the local bar before going their separate ways. The emotions of leaving prompt the women to reminisce, revealing profoundly shocking secrets which fundamentally change everything they believed about themselves and their so-called friends. Relationships that have endured for decades are fractured, new bitter-sweet alliances are briefly formed, and everyone emerges in a different light. It all comes together in a surprising revelatory ending. White Linenis about ageing and the compromises that are made with a painful past that appears to grow more alluring over time. The narrative deals uncompromisingly the imperfections of memory, but is also a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Above all, the novel tells of the moral hypocrisy and the appalling treatment of women by society, sanctioned by the religious establishment of the time.

Sujets

• Dublín
• Dublin

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 novembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781789012859
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

About the Author
Martin Howe is a journalist who has worked for the BBC, Channel 4 and a news agency in Washington DC. He writes literary fiction as an escape from the constraints of factual news. White Linen is his first novel.

www.mbhowe.com

WHITE LINEN

MARTIN HOWE
Copyright © 2018 Martin Howe

The moral right of the author has been asserted.


Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.


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ISBN 978 1789012 859

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.


Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd


For Clare


MRS BREEN: Mr Bloom! You down here in the haunts of sin! I caught you nicely! Scamp!

BLOOM: (Hurriedly.) Not so loud my name. Whatever do you think me? Don’t give me away. Walls have hears. How do you do? Its ages since I. You’re looking splendid. Absolutely it. Seasonable weather we are having this time of year. Black refracts heat. Short cut home here. Interesting quarter. Rescue of fallen women Magdalen asylum. I am the secretary…

MRS BREEN: (Holds up a finger.) Now don’t tell a big fib! I know somebody won’t like that. O just wait till I see Molly! (Slily.) Account for yourself this very minute or woe betide you!

Ulysses – James Joyce
Contents
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Foreword
White Linen is the fictional account of five women who were forced to work for most of their lives in a Magdalen laundry in Ireland. These institutions were attached to convents and took their name from Mary Magdalene, the prostitute, who repented her sins in time to witness the resurrection of Christ. They were set up in the nineteenth century by the Catholic church in Britain and Ireland to “tidy away” problem women and girls. Most were unmarried mothers who had been rejected by their families, but there were also orphans, the wayward, those unfit to look after themselves and the plain unlucky. They were victims of a society which judged by strict moral codes of behaviour, sanctioned by the Church. For those women that transgressed these moral boundaries, the price was heavy. They were often confined for a lifetime of unpaid labour, rejected by and cut off from their families and communities. In the late 1960s the women were finally allowed to leave the convents, but by then it was too late for many of them. They had known no other life and were ill-prepared for the outside world. Often they elected to stay within the safe walls of the convent. As the Twentieth Century drew to a close, the role of the Madgalen laundries was increasingly questioned. From the 1980s the Catholic Church found itself beset by a number of scandals involving the children of bishops and priests, allegations of cruelty and child abuse and concerns over adoption policies. The pressure to modernize was intense. The Magdalen laundries were gradually closed down – the last one in Ireland shut on October 25th 1996 – leaving the Church with the problem of what to do with the many women in their care.
Chapter 1
The Laundry, Convent of our Lady of Mercy at the Magdalen Asylum, Dublin – August 1995
The sun was almost directly overhead. Light streamed through the skylights, patterning the floor of the laundry into an irregular grid, that shimmered as clouds of steam rose slowly from the boilers and presses. By mid-morning the high-ceilinged hall was filled with air so heavy with moisture it had a physical presence. It lay like a blanket over the thirty-two working women, restricting their movements and stifling conversation. The heavy fog, laced with the cutting fragrance of soap, the scything chemical blasts of bleach and the cloying taste of starch, moved around and over the women unaided by any natural drafts, influenced by an energy uniquely its own.
The laundry was strangely silent, the only sounds – the occasional hiss of escaping steam, the dripping of condensation onto stone-flagged floors – distant and inconsequential. Voices were seldom heard and when they were, they appeared muffled and out of place.
It was a scene of intense physical labour, carried out with an economy of effort. A line of six women stood hunched over steaming sinks below the tall windows, which lined one wall. They appeared barely to move and yet they worked for hours on end scrubbing clean clothes too delicate for the boilers, the piles of damp washing growing imperceptibly beside them on the wooden draining boards.
In the centre of the hall other women stood in squares of vivid sunlight ironing lethargically, sweat glistening on their arms and faces. Occasionally, one would stop to mop her brow and glance upwards, but seemed incapable of moving out of the fierce glare. They appeared unconcerned by the intermittent hissing of the two presses close beside them, the steam billowing outwards as the boards gaped open and the pressure was released.
Soiled whites bubbled away in three large copper vats that stood in a line at one end of the long narrow building. Their burnished sides streamed with water that dripped steadily onto the feet of the women, who would step forward in pairs at regular intervals to lift the heavy metal lids and stir the murky foaming liquid with long wooden paddles. They would rub their faces with the back of their hands as they moved back, blinking through bloodshot eyes, to resume their places on the wooden bench pressed up against the damp green-painted wall.
Regaining her breath after this manoeuvre, one of the women called out a warning to another group bent double over a series of smaller basins, brimming with water.
“This lot’s nearly done so. You’d better be getting a move on with your rinsing there.”
Several of the women looked up. Their hair where it had escaped from head scarves was plastered to sweating faces, the fronts of their overalls were drenched and their bare arms red-raw from constant immersion in cold water.
There was exasperation in the voice of the tall, big-boned woman, who spoke up in reply, but nothing more. It was all too routine to get bothered about. Barbara had worked with most of the others at the laundry for over forty years and such exchanges had become commonplace, and for the most part, jovial.
“Jesus, will you give over, Maeve? You can talk. You only look to be halfway through to me.”
She nodded at the pile of bulging laundry bags heaped haphazardly beside the steaming copper cauldrons.
“It’s not us who’s holding things up, Barbara,” replied Maeve in virtuous tones. A slim pale-faced woman, her brown hair scraped back and held tightly by a green headscarf, she shook her head as she spoke. “Sure we can only go as fast as the slowest one here.”
“And that seems to be Margaret at the moment. Where is she? She should have been in by now to take out those clean sheets. There’ll be no room left soon.”
Maeve, who was usually on the receiving end of Margaret’s jibes, enjoyed it when she could for once criticize her tormentor.
“You know her, she’ll be taking it easy outside somewhere. Not pulling her weight. As usual.”
Behind them, a round-faced woman stood silently mop in hand. Her skin was red and blotchy; white overalls darkened between the shoulder blades by sweat and damply matched under each arm, whenever she raised a hand to the perspiration running into her eyes and tickling the end of her nose. But she was smiling, almost hugging the mop to herself in obvious delight.
“Doris, have you seen Margaret?” Maeve asked her.
She held her beatific smile while shaking her head vigorously.
“No Maeve, not recently. She’s gone missing, I suppose?”
“As usual.”
“She’ll be back soon. I’m just off to make the tea.”
Doris had been happy all morning, had in fact been happy for several weeks, ever since they had given her new duties in the laundry. Father Michael, the Convent’s confessor, had quietly explained that she had done an excellent job for many years, for which he and the Church were extremely grateful, but there came a time when everyone needed to row back a bit and take it easy. He had been so careful – not like him at all really – to reassure her that there was still plenty of work to be done, emphatic that she was not being pushed aside and ignored. Doris had protested of course, mildly and without any conviction. The priest had needed few words to brush her objections aside. To be honest, it was amazing to her that her own silent wishes had come true. The Church had long since ceased to surprise her, the dazzlements of her youth now only a distant memory. But a priest fulfilling a banal act of pastoral care had brought those old ecstatic feelings back to