Winnie of the Waterfront by Rosie Harris Page B

into the smooth, stern features of a middle-aged woman. Her hair was concealed beneath a starched white wimple but her grey eyes were sharp and critical.
    ‘Dear oh dear! What were you trying to do, Winnie Malloy?’
    ‘Answer the door! I heard you knocking.’ Winnie’s voice choked. ‘I was afraid you’d go away and leave me here.’
    ‘Is there no one else in the place with you, child?’ Father Patrick asked in surprise.
    ‘No, Father! They all went home after Mam’s funeral was over. I’ve been on my own all night. I’ve had nothing to eat or drink,’ she sobbed. ‘I want my dad to come home. I’m so miserable.’
    ‘There’s no need to start feeling sorry for yourself,’ Sister Hortense told her sharply. ‘There’s lots of children in the world far worse off than you are. Come along now, get up!’
    Winnie shook her head. ‘I can’t get up,’ she wailed.
    ‘Nonsense! I’m sure you can if you try!’ Sister Hortense told her implacably.
    ‘The child is severely crippled, Sister,’ Father Patrick intervened. He bent down and took hold of Winnie’s arm to try and help her stand, but his efforts were ineffectual.
    ‘You’ll have to pick my chair up first, and then if you each take one of my arms you’ll be able to lift me back into it,’ Winnie snuffled.
    Father Patrick righted the invalid chair and, rather ungraciously, Sister Hortense lent a hand to help Winnie back into it.
    ‘Are you ready to go then, child? Is there anything you wish to take with you?’ Father Patrick puffed.
    ‘Only my clothes, and they’re in that canvas bag by the grate,’ Winnie told him.
    ‘Then we’ll be off.’ He picked up the bag and dumped it on Winnie’s lap in readiness.
    ‘Do we have to take that contraption?’ Sister Hortense asked peevishly.
    ‘Unless one of us carries her, I’m afraid we do,’ Father Patrick stated. ‘Shall we go?’
    Sister Hortense stood to one side pointedly and waited for him to take the handle. As he manoeuvred the ungainly substitute for a wheelchair towards the door, Winnie suddenly remembered her commode.
    ‘Oh dear, there is something else I need to take with me.’
    ‘Really! We must be on our way, we’ve spent enough time here as it is,’ Sister Hortense snapped.
    ‘I’ll need my commode,’ Winnie told her. ‘I can’t use a lavvy because of my legs,’ she mumbled, her face flaming with embarrassment at mentioning such matters in front of a priest. ‘It’s that chair thing over there in the corner.’
    Sister Hortense strode across and seized it by one of its wooden arms. As she did so she tipped it forward and there was a sickening squelch as the chamber pot inside it, which hadn’t been emptied for two days, tipped over. The contents splashed the skirt of Sister Hortense’s long black habit and soaked her shiny black boots.
    There was a horrified silence. Sister Hortense’s face mottled with anger and she seemed to be performing some form of intricate dance as she tried to rid herself of the urine and excrement that was soiling her legs and boots.
    ‘I think perhaps we should leave that device behind,’ Father Patrick decreed solemnly. Hastily he pushed Winnie’s invalid chair out into the hallway and through the front door, leaving Sister Hortense to follow them.
    They walked back to the presbytery of St Francis’s church in uneasy silence. The sky was as grey and as stony as Sister Hortense’s face. There was a keen wind blowing off the Mersey and the gulls circled and shrieked overhead, warning of storms looming.
    Winnie had only one thin blanket covering her and her teeth were chattering and her hands were blue with the cold, but no one seemed to notice.
    When Mrs Reilly, Father Patrick’s housekeeper, opened the door to them, Sister Hortense pushed her way in ahead and demanded a large basin of hot water with disinfectant in it.
    ‘What has happened, have you had some sort of accident?’ Mrs Reilly’s nose wrinkled at the smell that