He only nodded. “It’s a great mystery.”
That wasn’t the word Lib would have chosen. “Is she… bedridden, at least?”
He shook his head. “Anna walks around like any other girl.”
“Emaciated?”
“She’s always been a mite of a thing, but no, she seems hardly to have altered since April.”
He spoke sincerely, but this was ludicrous. Were they half blind, his rheumy eyes?
“And she’s in full possession of all her faculties,” added McBrearty. “In fact, the vital force burns so strong in Anna that the O’Donnells have become convinced she can live without food.”
“Incredible.” The word came out too caustic.
“I’m not surprised you’re sceptical, Mrs. Wright. I was too.”
Was? “Are you telling me, in all seriousness, that—”
He interrupted, his papery hands shooting up. “The obvious interpretation is that it’s a hoax.”
“Yes,” said Lib in relief.
“But this child… she’s not like other children.”
She waited for more.
“I can tell you nothing, Mrs. Wright. I have only questions. For the past four months I’ve been burning with curiosity, as I’m sure you are now.”
No, what Lib burnt with was a desire to end this interview and get the man out of her room. “Doctor, science tells us that to live without food is impossible.”
“But haven’t most new discoveries in the history of civilization seemed uncanny at first, almost magical?” His voice shook a little with excitement. “From Archimedes to Newton, all the greats have achieved their breakthroughs by examining the evidence of their senses without prejudice. So all I ask is for you to keep an open mind when you meet Anna O’Donnell tomorrow.”
Lib lowered her eyes, mortified for McBrearty. How could a physician let himself be snared in a little girl’s game and fancy himself among the greats as a consequence? “May I ask, is the child under your sole care?” She phrased it politely, but what she meant was, had no better authority been called in?
“She is,” said McBrearty reassuringly. “In fact, it was I who took a notion to work up an account of the case and send it to the Irish Times.”
Lib had never heard of it. “A national paper?”
“Mm, the most lately established one, so I hoped its proprietors might be somewhat less blinded by sectarian prejudice,” he added, wistful. “More open to the new and the extraordinary, wherever it may arise. I thought to share the facts with a broader public, don’t you know, in the hope that someone could explain them.”
“And has anyone done so?”
A stifled sigh. “There’ve been several fervent letters proclaiming Anna’s case to be an out-and-out miracle. Also a few intriguing suggestions that she might be drawing on some as-yet-undiscovered nutritive qualities of, say, magnetism, or scent.”
Scent? Lib sucked in her cheeks so as not to smile.
“One bold correspondent proposed that she might be converting sunlight into energy, as vegetation does. Or living on air, even, as certain plants do,” he added, his wrinkled face brightening. “Remember that crew of shipwrecked sailors said to have subsisted for several months on tobacco?”
Lib looked down so he wouldn’t read the scorn in her eyes.
McBrearty found his thread again. “But the vast majority of the replies have consisted of personal abuse.”
“Of the child?”
“The child, the family, and myself. Comments not just in the Irish Times but in various British publications that seem to have taken up the case for the sole purpose of satire.”
Lib saw it now. She’d travelled a long way to hire herself out as a nursemaid-cum-gaoler, all because of a provincial doctor’s injured pride. Why hadn’t she pressed Matron for more details before she accepted the job?
“Most correspondents presume that the O’Donnells are cheats, conspiring to feed their daughter secretly and make fools of the world.” McBrearty’s voice was shrill. “The name of our village has become a byword for credulous backwardness. Several of the important men hereabouts feel that the honour of the county—possibly of the whole Irish nation—is at stake.”
Had the doctor’s gullibility spread like a fever among these important men?
“So a committee’s been formed and a decision taken to mount a watch.”
Ah, then it wasn’t the O’Donnells who’d sent for Lib at all. “With a view to proving that the child subsists by some extraordinary means?” She tried to keep even a hint of the sardonic out of her voice.
“No, no,” McBrearty assured her, “simply to bring the truth to light, whatever the truth may be. Two scrupulous attendants will stay by Anna turn and turnabout, night and day, for a fortnight.”
So it wasn’t Lib’s experience of surgical or infectious cases that was called for here, only the rigour of her training. Clearly the committee hoped, by importing one of the scrupulous new breed of nurses, to give some credence to the O’Donnells’ mad story. To make this primitive backwater a wonder to the world. Anger throbbed in Lib’s jaw.
Fellow feeling, too, for the other woman lured into this morass. “The second nurse, I don’t suppose I know her?”
The doctor frowned. “Didn’t you make Sister Michael’s acquaintance at supper?”
The almost speechless nun; Lib should have guessed. Strange how they took the names of male saints, as if giving up womanhood itself. But why hadn’t the nun introduced herself properly? Was that what that deep bow had been supposed to signify—that she and the Englishwoman were in this mess together? “Was she trained in the Crimea too?”
“No, no, I’ve just had her sent up from the House of Mercy in Tullamore,” said McBrearty.
One of the walking nuns. Lib had served alongside others of that order in Scutari. They were reliable workers, at least, she told herself.
“The parents requested that at least one of you be of their own, ah…”
So the O’Donnells had asked for a Roman Catholic. “Denomination.”
“And nationality,” he added, as if to soften it.
“I’m quite aware that there’s no love for the English in this country,” said Lib, summoning a tight smile.
McBrearty demurred: “You put it too strongly.”
What about the faces that had turned towards the jaunting car as Lib was driven down the village street? But those men had spoken about her because she was expected, she realized now. She wasn’t just any Englishwoman; she was the one being shipped in to watch over their squire’s pet.
“Sister Michael will provide a certain sense of familiarity for the child, that’s all,” said McBrearty.
The very idea that familiarity was a necessary or even helpful qualification for a watcher! But for the other nurse, he’d picked one of Miss N.’s own famous brigade, she thought, to make this watch look sufficiently scrupulous, especially in the eyes of the British press.
Lib thought of saying, in a very cool voice, Doctor, I see that I’ve been brought here in hopes that my association with a very great lady might cast a veneer of respectability over an outrageous fraud. I’ll have no part in it. If she set off in the morning, she could be back at the hospital in two days.
The prospect filled her with gloom. She imagined herself trying to explain that the Irish job had proved objectionable on moral grounds. How Matron would snort.
So Lib suppressed her feelings, for now, and concentrated on the practicalities. Simply to observe, McBrearty had said. “If at any point our charge were to express the slightest wish, even in veiled terms, for something to eat—” she began.
“Then bring it to her.” The doctor sounded shocked. “We’re not in the business of starving children.”
She nodded. “We nurses are to report to you, then, in two weeks?”
He shook his head. “As Anna’s physician—and having been dragged into this unpleasantness in the papers—I could be considered an interested party. So it’s to the assembled committee that you’re to testify on oath.”