Father O’Brien was already waiting in the confessional. Mary could see his shoes tapping expectantly through the gap under the curtain. But she wasn’t here for the usual forbidden tryst.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…”
“Come into the Vestry, Mary,” Father O’Brien interrupted, breathlessly.
“Father, listen. I’m with child. Yours, of course.” She dissolved into tears.
Father O’Brien muttered a prayer. “Wait there,” he said, finally.
His footsteps echoed and faded as he clattered out of the church.
Twenty minutes later, he opened the curtain. Lit from behind, his face formed a forbidding silhouette standing over Mary. He pressed some cash and a hastily scribbled London address into her hand.
“They’ll take care of everything. The baby will go to a good Catholic family.”
“I’m doing this alone?” Mary’s voice trembled.
“I can’t, Mary…”
“You can’t tarnish your reputation? You’ll forsake me for your precious church!”
The saints and apostles looked down in condemnation as she spat in his face and fled.
Mary walked the streets of Dublin until midnight struck, ringing in 1948. She weaved in and out of drunken revelers, who stumbled and clamored as they sang:
“Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?”
At home, Mary lit a candle and grieved for the child that she would never see grow up. Then she made a resolution to lock away her maternal love. As she blew out the candle, she extinguished her emotions and the light went out in her heart.
*
Rebecca remained seated until all the other students had left the lecture theatre. Dr Nick Hargreaves fixed his gaze on her and approached while she packed up. Ordinarily, she would be excited by that look on his face, like a lion stalking its prey. But not today.
“What?” gasped Nick ten minutes later, pacing his office and stroking his hair frantically.
“I’m pregnant.”
Nick pressed his forehead against the window.
“You’re keeping it? I can’t do this, Rebecca. I’d lose my wife, my job… I’ll support you financially, but never mention my name.”
Rebecca’s face flushed crimson. “No, Nick. You don’t get to carry on uninterrupted while my life is turned upside down!”
By the end of term, Dr Hargreaves was checking into a hotel, single and unemployed.
Cradling her newborn daughter, Rebecca heard fireworks outside as London welcomed 1998. Her thoughts turned to Mary, the grandmother she had never met, who had given up Rebecca’s father for adoption at birth. Rebecca had always branded her heartless. But now, gazing at her own baby, she understood the grief that Mary must have had to bury. She made a resolution to cherish every moment, grateful that single motherhood was a choice available to her.
“We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet, for auld lang syne,” sang the crowds outside.
Meanwhile, in Dublin, Mary was taking her final breath.
The candle in Rebecca’s room flickered and burned out. A warm glow filled the room, bathing Rebecca and her baby in light and love.
