Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

All of the details had been pre-arranged through the retreat centre--something about how one couldn’t be too careful about giving out personal information across the divide. Michael had, however, known in advance that it was an outdoor pursuits weekend in the company of an all-boys’ school and resigned herself to a weekend full of being droned at by some chain-smoking bespectacled misogynist in corduroys and a jumper with crusty food stains on it.

She certainly didn’t expect to see a petite thing debarking the minibus in pinstripes and nylons. She briefly allowed her mind to entertain the phrase ‘nice-looking’ before letting it waft away.

“Single file!” the woman ordered her lot, who shuffled alongside the minibus into something resembling a line. Michael sidled up alongside her. 

“You must be Miss Taylor.” She’d heard a boy grumble it as he gave one of his mates a shove into a planting bed.
“That’s right. Well… Janet.” They didn’t look at each other, their eyes following the churning mass of youth.

“Michael. Sister Michael.”

They shook hands.

“It’s a pleasure,” said Janet.

“I know.”

Christ, but wasn’t Janet pinging parts of Michael’s brain that didn’t often get pinged.

“Move it,” Janet ordered the boys.

“Shift it,” Michael told her lot.

“Why is everyone so desperate for them to mix?” Janet asked as they watched the children clomp inside. “I think we should keep them separate.”

Michael glanced over—the first time they’d fully looked each other in the face. “I think we should keep them in cages.” 

Janet’s lip quirked, just a bit. Michael found that she desperately wanted it to happen again.

*

It wasn’t bloody likely to happen in a hall full of ravenously horny teenagers, however. Michael suspected the only thing keeping them off each other was the gruesome sectarian conflict that divided their communities. It seemed the only thing that could hold the fort against the battery of adolescent hormones.

“So, Our Lady Immaculate girls have been split into groups, A through to F, as have the Londonderry Boys Academy,” she said, bored.

“We’d like As to find As, Bs to find Bs, etcetera and so on. It’s very straightforward. However, if that isn’t clear, feel free to say so,” Janet finished.

“But know that you will be judged.”

She did get a smile for that one. Michael instantly began plotting how to acquire another one. The bloody things were worse than hard drugs, apparently. And heaven knew that she’d had to give more than her fair share of ‘for feck’s sake, don’t do drugs’ lectures over the years.

After a scuffle and the exchange of teddy bears and half-melted Rollos, Michael continued, “Okay, listen up, people. According to this, you’re going to need a—well, they use the term…buddy…for tomorrow’s activities.” A flick of the eyes, to where Janet was standing by with tea and smiling—smugly, of course. Did she smile this often? Michael had no data to measure it against, but it would be spectacularly foolish to assume that it was the result of her own presence.

To hope it, however, would surely do no harm…

“Sister Michael, I don’t have a Protestant,” keened Orla McCool.

“Well, you’ll just have to share with James,” said Michael indifferently.

“What? No!” wailed James.

“Look, there just aren’t enough Protestants to go around,” Michael said. Janet, bless her, handed her a cup of tea.

“The… mediator’s here. He’s one of your lot,” said Janet archly.

“Not a priest,” Michael groaned. Janet nodded slowly. “Ugh.” Michael rolled her eyes and let her head fall back.

“Quite young. Southern. Bit of an arsehole but oh my God, amazing hair.”

“Oh for feck’s sake.”

*

Father Peter was as insufferable as ever, lounging in his chair and giving everyone his Understanding and Compassionate Face at full wattage. Even the Pope himself would have evoked Michael’s ire for daring to sit between her and Janet; as it was, she wondered idly whether throttling the priest would be considered justifiable homicide.

“Okay, so I see a few familiar faces out there. As some of you may know, I took a bit of a sabbatical last year,” Peter began winningly.

“Do you mean why you shacked up with a slutty hairdresser, but then she dumped you?” Michelle Mallon called out gleefully.  

“Miss Mallon, please,” Michael snapped. She paused, then softened. “Raise your hand if you wish to ask a question.” She leaned back in her chair to meet Janet’s questioning look. Later, she mouthed. Janet’s eyebrows went up.

“Okay, I think we should just move on,” said Peter smoothly.

“The hairdresser certainly did,” remarked Michael. She certainly didn’t watch Janet’s face as she said it. 

Peter’s aim seemed to be to get the children to say some shite about how all humans love and feel and care for others regardless of religious affiliation, but, to Michael’s grim satisfaction, they were having none of it. Instead, the chalkboard filled steadily with nonsense about ABBA and toasters and RTE—the bulk of it fairly accurate, it had to be said.

“Protestants are richer,” volunteered Michelle Mallon.

“Okay, so that’s another difference. And I’m not sure that’s actually… I mean, is that true?” he asked, turning to Michael.

“I would say so.”

“Yeah, I suppose that’s fair enough,” said Janet.

At least she wasn’t in denial, thought Michael with a flicker of strange happiness.

As the afternoon wore on, though, she found herself flagging, Miss Taylor’s presence and Peter’s mortification be damned.  

“Is there anything,” Peter pleaded at last as Jenny Joyce fought to cram Protestants say an extra bit at the end of Our Father and also call it the Lord’s Prayer around the edge of the chalkboard, “That we all want?”

“For this to be over,” mumbled Michael dully.

“And we’ll wrap it up there.”

*

Dinner was a communal affair in the dining hall, meat and two veg dished out by dinner ladies who very strongly did not want to be there. Janet sat across the table from Michael, but as there was no staff table to keep them a healthy distance from hormonal teenagers, Jenny and Aisling slid in alongside them before Michael could protest. Sending them off to sit by Erin Quinn and her gang would surely lead to bloodshed, but before she could come up with a more workable strategy, two lads who must be Londonderry Boys’ Academy’s answer to Jenny and Aisling had slid their trays onto the table.

There was some serious eye contact, though, all the way through the meat and two veg and the irrepressively soggy trifle, to the point where they both had custard sliding wildly off their spoons and had to duck to catch it. Jenny Joyce was nattering on about her pony; the lads were beginning to realise that they had made a grave mistake in their seating choice. Michael and Janet exchanged a series of virtuoso eye-rolls.

Dinner finished, Peter led them all in some ridiculous exercise involving a multi-coloured parachute and a superfluity of the word ‘trust.’ Michael and Janet stood by with tea again; Michael was beginning to be hyper-attuned to the presence off her shoulder. She did not often want and was never required to impress anyone; she had more job security than nearly anyone else in Derry and far too much self-respect to care what moody teenagers thought of her. She was therefore rather badly out of practice at the thing.

She gave it a valiant effort, though, soft comments under her breath to Janet about Peter’s hair and the children’s ridiculous posturing. Janet gave as good as she got, and Michael found herself snorting at a diatribe involving Southerners, Pulp Fiction, and zebras. Michael got the distinct impression that her boundaries were being felt out, the borders of her convictions mapped out by oblique references and long looks.

And then the children were bundled off to bed and it was time to screw her courage to the sticking place. (She hated teaching Macbeth, but the bloody thing had been on the curriculum so long it had set up permanent residence Michael’s subconscious.)

Michael leaned and said quietly, below the din of decamping youth, “I’ve brought a rather nice scotch, if you’re so inclined.”

It was the faintest quirk of an eyebrow, but it was there. “Certainly.”

*

Their rooms were in a separate wing from the children’s dormitories; the retreat centre had once been some English lord’s country manor from which he could comfortably watch the Irish starve and thus had wings in abundance. Michael pointed this out to Janet, of course. It was a well-honed reflex and a patriotic duty and would not be stopped even by the most charming of headteachers, thank you very much. Janet made a noise that could, if one squinted, be read as agreement.

Michael’s room had a small desk in the window with an accompanying ridiculous spindly chair; Janet smuggled in the chair from her own room—there may have been actual giggling involved in the endeavour, heaven above—and they sat there, sort of side-by-side and sort of across. The lamplight was warm and yellow, a small pool around them that glowed on the varnish on the desk and the irises of Janet’s eyes. Michael poured, generously, although if there was an ulterior motive she hadn’t the faintest idea what it could be.

“Janet Taylor, answer me this under pain of severe torture as befits a degenerate Protestant,” Michael said in her severest ‘bollocking the fear of God into a student’ voice. “Do you hate ABBA?” She slid Janet’s cup across the table to her.

Janet laughed, a quick burst, before schooling her features into something more appropriately solemn. “I’ll never tell. Such secrets will never pass my lips even under torture most foul.”

“Well, do you keep your toaster in the cupboard then?”

“Of course. Where else would I put it?”
“On the worktop like a sane person, Christ above.” 

They clinked glasses, as best as wee plastic bathroom cups could be clinked. (Michael had forgot to bring glasses). Janet drank, making a soft noise of enjoyment that went straight down Michael’s spine.

“So how many of these bloody Friends Across the Barricade things have you been on, then?” asked Michael.

“A regrettable multitude.”

“Do they ever work?”

Janet shrugged. “Hard to say, isn’t it? Who knows what influence it will have in the future? Maybe years down the line, someone will actually stop and have a bloody think before they join a paramilitary group.” Michael must have looked dubious, because Janet sighed. “I know.”

Michael didn’t say anything. They were both of an age to well remember a time before the bombing and the shooting, the roadblocks and the bag checks. And they were of an age to remember all of it starting: the unfamiliar terror, the flinching at new sounds, the trickle of grim news turning into floods. The tension wasn’t a novelty, of course, but everyone’s sudden and constant need to blow each other to bits over it was. She didn’t know whether it was better or worse for the children she taught to have been born into it, to not know a life any different. They were inured from birth, certainly. Habituated into something almost resembling ease. There was something to be said for that—although, if Erin Quinn’s tortuously lengthy essays on the subject were any indication, it only worked partway. It certainly gave Michael’s marking sessions an extra dose of eye-rolling.

“What’s the deal with that priest?” asked Janet into the reverie.

“Christ. That dose?” Michael took another sip for fortitude. “Madly in love with himself. Had a massive crisis of faith last year and was sent to the school by the bishop after a group of girls and the wee English fella thought they experienced a miracle. It was just dog piss in the end.”

Janet cocked her head. “I’ve never heard that figure of speech before.”

“It’s not a figure of speech.”

“Christ.”

“Good thing it wasn’t his doing. A miracle is the last thing I need.”

Janet looked at Michael. “Do you—I mean, is it…?” She righted herself and set her glass down on the table as if freshly aware that they were steadily drinking themselves into social permissiveness. “Was belief the motivating factor in your career choice, or was it a more…pragmatic decision?” 

They were schoolteachers, both of them—middle-aged women who could drag information out of anyone. Extreme duress was their friend and one had to admire a lack of faffing about.

“Seventy percent pragmatism, though the figure has doubtless gone up in the intervening years.”

“Is Michael your given name?” Janet asked, watching Michael pour generously again for both of them.

Michael shook her head. “Traditionally, one takes a new name at one’s ordination into the church. It’s meant to symbolise the start a new life, and all that. And the Archangel Michael had a flaming sword, like. It was hardly a difficult call to make.” She capped the bottle and set it down on the table.

“You chose the name.”

“I did. And I’ve had it longer than the other one, at this point. The other one was bloody ridiculous to boot.”

Janet didn’t ask, and Michael didn’t tell her.

“So how did you get into teaching?” asked Michael.

Janet shrugged. “I didn’t want to get married and I wanted to go to university, but I didn’t want to be a nurse. I also apparently have a knack for being terrifying.”

Michael raised her glass to that.

“The summers off don’t hurt either,” said Janet pensively.

“I’ll do you one better. My line of work also comes with free accommodation.”

Janet made an appreciative noise.

“The free accommodation does, however, come with at the price of a rather lot of hellfire and bureaucratic nonsense.”

Janet snorted. “Regrettable, but I suppose one can’t have it all.”

At least it was a relief that Janet seemed to understand that the nun thing wasn’t actually the decree of personal beliefs that everyone seemed to think it to be. It wasn’t clear whether this was a function of her Protestantism—not knowing what being a nun was actually about, in sectarianism-wrought innocence—or because she too understood what one did when one was a woman who didn’t have options.

“Have you got anyone in your life?” It came out lower and quieter than Michael intended.

Janet shook her head and took a sip of scotch. “Hardly. You?”

“Married to God, like.” Michael held up her left hand.

“Ah, of course.”

“We could—” began Michael suddenly, far too loudly. She hauled herself back in at the last possible moment. She and Janet stared wildly at each other.

“Shall we get ready for bed?” asked Janet levelly, ever the pragmatist. Michael could’ve kissed her.

It dawned on her that she shortly might just be allowed to. It was thrilling and terrifying all at once.

There was a knock on the door. It was the caretaker, who had doubtless seen his fair share of teachers getting sloshed of an evening and didn’t bat an eye.

“A Mrs Quinn on the phone for you, Sister,” he said, bowing obsequiously and gesturing her down the hall to the telephone.

Michael sighed and dragged herself out the door.

*

Janet wasn’t there when she got back, but there was a note written on the hotel stationary on the desk—pyjamas. Michael took that as her cue to get into her own, trying to ignore the thrill attempting to batter its way into her mind, and sat back down.

There was a soft rap on the door. It was Janet, wearing plaid pyjama bottoms and a men’s vest. She must have been listening to Michael come back down the hall and close her own door—was she counting the minutes, estimating how long it would take Michael to get in her own pyjamas? Michael poured more scotch in a vain attempt to cope, pretending that she didn’t see Janet staring at her hair, now freed from the habit.  

“What was that about?” Janet asked, sliding back into her chair and wrapping her hands around her cup.

Michael rolled her eyes. “Apparently there’s some high drama involving the circumstances and motivation for the gifting of a particular big bowl.” She handed Janet the crumpled piece of retreat centre stationary. It caught the lamplight as Janet held it between her long fingers. Janet pressed the fingers of her other hand to her mouth as she read, amused.

“Are you going to…” she asked.

“Best leave it till morning, I think.”

“I quite agree.” Janet handed the note back to Michael; their fingers brushed and time seemed to screech to an ungainly halt. Michael held on as gently as she could muster.

“Yes--quite,” Janet murmured, staring at their joined hands for a moment before bringing them down to the table. She appeared to be thinking about something; Michael hoped the outcome was in her favour.

A furious rap on the door made them both nearly hit the ceiling. “Sister Michael! Sister Michael!”

Jenny bloody Joyce.

Grand.

Michael got up; silently, Janet cleared away the evidence of their merrymaking (they were a good team, weren’t they?) in the time it took Michael to snatch up her habit from the sideboard and cross to the door.

“Sister Michael,” Jenny burst out as the door swung open. “They’re having a party, with music and I think they’re drinking—”

“Very well,” sighed Michael, hip-checking Jenny back out into the corridor and shutting the door behind her. Janet had mercifully pulled a disappearing act back into the ensuite with the scotch, but one could never be too careful. Michael could feel the flush on her face from the drink and the company and the interruption. She knew Jenny could see it too, prayed Jenny took it as righteous anger at the thought of juvenile delinquency.  

They were forewarned of her approach; Michael saw the hem of a pyjama leg flash around the corner and, more tellingly, the traitorous squeal of the venerable old floorboards of a centuries-old country home as a fifteen-year-old boy lumbered frantically down them.

She heard the panic, the clink of bottles as the young people tried and failed to hide the evidence of their misdeeds. (Never mind that she had just been engaged in a very similar activity, and probably in the hope of similar outcomes).

She swept in to the dormitory ahead of Jenny and let them have it. At this point in her career, a blistering telling-off was a purely automatic reflex. Sometimes Erin Quinn and her little gang required her to generate a bit of new material to keep things fresh (how did they get up to such outlandish shite all the time?), but Michael could still storm into the dormitory and unleash the words without much input from her brain. This skill was, on balance, a good thing, because she couldn’t stop thinking about Janet bloody Taylor waiting in her room.

Telling-off sufficiently delivered, she whirled on her heel and swept out into the corridor. Top marks for theatricality, that one.

*

She found Janet sat on the edge of the bathtub. It was quite good of her to judiciously stay in hiding until the danger was confirmed to have passed. The things one learned from decades of ferreting out adolescent misdeeds. She looked terribly small in her pyjamas; the hems of the bottoms were rolled up and she seemed to swim in the vest.

“It’s late,” said Michael quietly.

“That it is,” said Janet. She’d capped the bottle of scotch and stacked the wee plastic cups on the sink. Michael watched the beaded amber droplets slide around in the space between the cups, seeking a way out.

“Thank you for your company,” said Michael steadily. 

“It was my pleasure.” Janet levered herself to her feet. “Thank you for the libations.”

Michael had been a troublemaker once, like Erin and Orla and Michelle and Claire. Well, and the wee English fella, but he seemed mostly bewildered and along for the ride. It got beat out of her, eventually, even though she now recognised a lot of it as horrific gender inequality, given what the boys got away with. She wondered if she had rather lost her touch, and whether that was her fault.

“Goodnight, then.”

“Goodnight.”

The door shut behind Janet.

*

The next morning dawned foggy, but it burned off cheerily as they all sat in the dining hall poking at grey eggs and congealed porridge. Peter sat down next to Michael and Janet—the man clearly had no sense of self-preservation; it might be an actual miracle that he’d survived this long—and immediately began holding forth on the joys of absailing. Michael made no efforts to conceal her eye-rolling.

In the interest of fostering peace the children were allowed to pile pell-mell onto the two minibuses without thought to their school affiliation. (At least it lent the usual shrieking some variety.) Then there was an interminable trudge uphill from the minibus to the crag, then tedious milling about on squelchy ground while Peter and the poor sod responsible for the safety of the whole godforsaken operation hemmed and hawed up above.

Janet had brought a massive flask of tea and two mugs; Michael had been on biscuit duty.

“It’s got a bit extra in it, if you catch my drift.” Janet grinned and raised the flask and Christ, but her smiles made Michael go weak at the knees.

“How very enterprising of you,” said Michael, rifling around in her coat for the biscuits.

“Not that watching children absail on a weekend morning isn’t inspiring and invigorating…” said Janet, screwing the top back on her flask.

“Not an easy thing to do sober,” Michael agreed. Janet took a few biscuits in exchange for Michael’s now-filled mug.

The group cohesion lasted about five blessed minutes before there was some misunderstanding about Catholics and athletes that prompted the children to try to claw each other’s faces off and Michael and Janet to, as one, take another sip of their tea.

“Should we break it up?” asked Janet at length, sounding unenthused at the prospect.

“Let’s leave it a minute,” said Michael and reached for another biscuit.

*

The goodbyes were perfunctory, in the end. It was a long, lovely summer evening, the kind that wrapped you in dim blues and violets. They all stood about in the car park, their numbers lessened by the departure of the brawlers with their parents earlier that afternoon. It was disproportionately quieter, too.

“Janet,” said Michael, gripping Janet’s hand.

“Michael,” said Janet, shaking firmly.

If they held on too long, well. The children were too busy trying to murder and/or shag each other to care.

Chapter Text

She was alone in her office with the overdue marking from that wretched sixth-form English class she’d taken over from the regrettable Ms De Brùn. She sat with the radio, a glass of whiskey, and the stillness of the night in something resembling contentment. The lamplight caught the recesses in the oak panelling, casting shadows.

“And tonight’s main story again, a historic evening for Northern Ireland. As of midnight tonight, after twenty-five years, the IRA have called a ceasefire. In a statement released earlier this evening, they said there would be a complete cessation of all military operations. The statement has raised hopes for peace and an end to twenty-five years of bombing and shooting that has led to the deaths of more than three thousand people.”

Michael raised her glass to the radio, quietly.

Six months since she’d seen Janet in that wretched retreat centre in Limavady and the thought of her hadn’t left Michael alone ever since. Maybe, tonight of all nights, it would be permissible... Maybe a nun in a sensible Peugeot could pass over the Foyle unnoticed amid the revelry.  

“The British Prime Minister John Major said, ‘We are beyond the beginning, but we are not yet in sight of the end,’” the woman on the radio said.

Michael picked up the phone and dialled.

It rang thrice, and then, a slightly hoarse--     

“Janet Taylor speaking.”

“Janet. It’s…” there was something stuck in her throat. “Michael.”

There was silence, then a slightly strangled, “Well.” And then more silence that seemed to echo.

“You’ve heard the news?” asked Michael, finally.

“I have.”

“Would you like me to come over?”

“I would like that very much.”

“Right. Yes. I’ll just, erm—” She trailed off, quietly. 

“Please do.”