by Honor Harlow
“It is but still and all, Maura managed to get five Honours without going.”
“I saw she was a smart girl when used to come here.”
“That she is. I’ll miss her when she goes off to Liverpool next month.”
“And you were saying the reason she is going is what again?”
“As she’s gone sixteen, she wants to leave school and start working. I went to Fr Mannion to see if he knew of anything going.”
“Did he help you?”
“Oh, he was of great help. He told us about a nursing order of nuns in Liverpool. It seems they take in young Irish girls to work in their hospital and when the girls turn eighteen, they go on to become student nurses.”
“Isn’t that great altogether. Maura will become a nurse.”
“It will take a few years before she is qualified.”
“Where will she be staying in Liverpool?”
“The nuns take care of that. They have a nurse’s residence, so she doesn’t have to look for anywhere to stay.”
“That’s a great worry off your mind, knowing the nuns are there to keep an eye on her.”
“Indeed, it is, and on top of all that she’ll be getting paid and be able to send me a few bob every week.”
“Isn’t that great, now. Mary and I are off downtown. What would you think would be a good farewell present for Maura.”
“There’s no need to buy her anything, Mrs Blake.”
“But we couldn’t let her leave without giving her a little something.”
“That’s very good of you. The truth is in the letter they sent, the nursing nuns said she needs two nightdresses with her name sewn on the back, so maybe if a nightdress isn’t too much, that would be great.”
“I’ll get her two.”
“Not at all Mrs Blake, one will be fine, sure she has the one she made in the Domestic Science class with Sister Fursey. And the Wynn’s were so good as to get her a pair of slippers, a twin set and gloves.”
The morning Maura left, her mother helped her carry her suitcase down to station, from where she would get the train to the boat. Mrs McLoughlin went with her as far as Drumbeag, the first stop on the train.
At Drumbeag, before Mrs McLoughlin got off the train, she looked at her sixteen-year-old daughter who had never left Drumbron in her life and said, “Now a girleen, there isn’t much I can say to you except to remember to say your prayers and be a good girl.”
“A course I will, Mammy but where will I get the boat. Will it say Liverpool on it?”
“Follow the crowd, Maura a grá. Look at the ones who have a suitcase because they’ll be getting on the boat, too.”
“But Mammy, they all won’t be going to Liverpool.”
“Well, a girl, they’ll be going to England and then you ask, and you’ll get to where you are going.”
Mrs McLoughlin hugged Maura and got off the train before her daughter saw the pool of water glimmering at the bottom of her eyes. She stood on the platform as the train pulled out, waving to Maura, who had her face pressed against the windowpane. Then she walked back to Drumbron as she didn’t have the money for the ticket for the train fare back.
That evening when she came to our house to tidy it up, her feet were swollen. I asked her what had happened. In a jerky voice that cracked and stopped as she swallowed spits, she told me how she had gone with her little girl and given her the only advice she had. On the long walk back, she prayed every prayer she knew asking God to mind her child. I wondered if Mammy had known Mrs McLoughlin had to carry the suitcase to the station and walk back from Drumbeag, would she have given them a lift instead of going to the golf course?
Maura left in 1965 after we finished fifth class. In September, we started sixth class with Sr Bosco. It was the last year of primary school and things were the same as always.
There was going to be another baby to take the place of the last one in the pram because after the summer, Úna’s mammy was going to get another baby. Úna had nine McNulty’s in her family and I only had one Blake – me. I asked Daddy to sow cabbages in our back garden, but he said he was too busy at the pitch with the GAA.
Mammy was listening and said, “The pitch, is it? The one with the music and dancing and queer going on?” meaning the dance hall in the parish hall, where the old people went to dance waltzes and quick steps. Mr Delaney and Mammy didn’t like it, saying it was worse than Sodom and Gomorrah and if they didn’t watch out, God would destroy it with fire and brimstone. I knew it wasn’t true because Daddy helped Fr Mannion and Miss Walsh from the library organise the dances. If God was going to do anything to the hall, Daddy would know cos he was a Garda, and the Gardaí knew everything.
At the end of sixth Class, we did our Primary Cert. Our nun, Sr Bosco, told us it was to test our Irish, English and Arithmetic so we could obtain a certificate to say we had finished primary school. We sat at our desks and our nun, Sr Bosco, placed a paper with the exam written on it in front of us. Loretta started crying. She said she couldn’t answer the questions. Sr Bosco told Regina and Noeleen to help her and tell her what to write. Even then she still couldn’t do it, so Sr Bosco went down to her desk and showed her what to write. It was dead easy for me and my pals. We finished it really quickly because we knew after the exam, we had holidays and we wanted to get out the door as quick as we could, not realising it was our last day in primary school and we would never go back again.
After summer, me and my pals would be going to secondary school. Daddy showed me the old building on Church Street with the high, grey wall with the spiky glass on top and the thick solid, iron door to go in through, I asked him why the secondary school was such a small, dark, dreary building and not nice and bright like the primary school on Cork Road. He explained to me that during the Penal Laws, when it was against the law for Irish children to go to school, the sons and daughters of the wealthy Irish Catholic families were sent to boarding schools and convents on the Continent to be educated. The poorer children went to Hedge Schools.
When the Penal Laws disappeared, a Drumbron merchant petitioned a French order of nuns to come to Ireland to educate the young ladies of the town. He gifted the nuns two small buildings in Church Street. They used one as their dwelling place and the other as the school. At the beginning, there was only the small convent school for all the girls of the town. Daddy said that after the War of Independence, things improved in Ireland and the government built primary schools all over the country and gave them to nuns to teach the children in.
Our primary school was lovely with the statue of Our Lady outside in the green garden and the grainy-white walls with the bright, lacy, see-through railings and the wide gate that opened in two, and where you could fit your foot in the gaps and swing on it. When we skipped out onto Cork Street, at the end of June, it never crossed our minds it would be the last time we would be using the gate.
Lots of girls would not be coming back in September. They would be leaving forever the school we had been in since Low Babies. When I asked Mammy why, she told me secondary school wasn’t free like primary school and not everyone could afford it.
“Will they stay at home and be out all day playing?”
“I doubt it, if they are lucky, they’ll start working in houses around Drumbron and if not, they will go to England.”
“Like Maura McLoughlin on the boat?”
“They will go on the boat but not to a good job like Maura.”
“Does that mean we will only have a few girls in our class in first year?” I asked her as I saw she was talking to me, which she did seldom, and I wanted to find out as much as possible about the new school.
“The class will be full.”
“How can it be full if half the girls won’t be there?”
“Because the nuns have a boarding school. Girls from all over the country will be coming to study in Drumbron.”
“That’s funny cos some of the girls in our class are going as boarders to other schools and other girls a
re coming as boarders to our school.”
“I know, by right you should go to the same school as Loretta Fitzgerald, but your father won’t hear of it.”
I knew well Mammy wanted me to be a boarder at the same school as Loretta, Regina and Noeleen but Daddy wanted me at home. I heard them fighting day after day about where I would study.
“Dervla, you can give out all you like but Arlene is staying at school here in Drumbron.”
“William, this is her chance to mix with the right sort. Only the big people go to boarding school.”
“I was sent to one of the best colleges, Pretoria in Enniskillen, but it wasn’t home. I want Arlene here with us.”
“William, she will be with for the holidays.”
“Arlene is not going away to boarding school. We are lucky there is a secondary school in the town. If it is any way as good as the primary school, she will do well,” he said using his Garda voice.
When Mammy told me I should be going to the same school as Loretta, Noeleen and Regina, I made the mistake of saying, “I’m glad I’m not going. I want to stay at home.” Mammy’s face started to change, and the vexed look was coming onto it, so I edged my way towards the door and headed off to find my friends who were waiting for me.
We knew that in September we would be going in through the gate on Church Street to the old building where the French nuns established their first school, but until then, we were free to enjoy summer.
Glossary of Terms
A grá darling
A tráth It’s time/Indeed
Mhuirnín darling
Smacht manners/discipline
Daoine sibhe fairy folk
A mhac ban My fair son/my blonde boy
A mhic son
a stóirín sweetheart
Le cuige Dé with the help of God
A grá me chroí love of my heart
Banshee ghost signalling a death
Coster Bower headless coachman that collected souls
Ná bé ag caint, tá na clasaí mór ar na páistí agus beal na more ar guid. Be quiet and don’t be talking about what you hear.
a leanbh child
leanaí children
brónach sadness
meas respect
mar dhea pretend
geansaí jumper
cailíní girls
piseog superstition
peata pet
duais treat
Anseo present/here
griog tease
a cailín óg small girl
dearóg little fish
Día ar sábhául God save
In ainm Dé! In the name of God!
Oíche Samhain Halloween
A rua My red-haired one
A cratur A creature
A stóirín beag little sweetheart
Fadó long ago
cailín dubh bold girl
Mhaith an cailín good girl
púca ghost
binóg scarf/wrap
Diabhail imhuid damn it
Ba cheart é a chur soir It should be placed east
haon, dó, trí one, two, three
ceathar, cúig four, five
cailín dána bold girl
seordán A piercing wind that screeches
óinseach fool
rámhaille rambling
spraoi fun
Ná béid ag caint Don’t talk
Amadán fool
sleán tool for cutting turf, similar to a rectangular spade
Tigín agus rudí go leor a little house and all the things
iar cul an tig inside it
bata fada long stick
buille to hit, or a childhood game
bata beag small stick
pucaí mushrooms magic mushrooms
barm breac sweet cake served with butter at Halloween
Coming Soon
The Figure in the Graveyard
The story continues with Arlene Blake and her friends as teenagers with all the typical teenage problems and insecurities growing up in 1970s Ireland. It was a time where ‘The Troubles’ were raging in the north of Ireland, emigration was rife and girls were hurriedly sent to their aunts in England to hide unwanted pregnancies. Set in an era where to be unwed and pregnant was morally shunned and shame and disgrace brought to the families door. Hence the need for quick action to make the problem disappear from ever seeing judging eyes and prejudice.
To her detriment, Arlene learns how oppressive grief and guilt can be used as forms of control, while the crying of the Ghost Babies of the restrained mothers, in the deserted grounds of the abandoned Home, are hushed into silence with a Mass and the sprinkling of Holy water.
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About the Author
Honor Harlow is a woman who thought she was going to live peacefully and quietly in her hometown among the people she knew. Life came along and took her elsewhere. The road she found herself on was bumpy and scary, and sometimes lonely. Against all odds, she kept going, seeing things that changed her. Now she writes what she has witnessed and experienced.
