My Mother's Children: An Irish family secret and the scars it left behind.

by Annette Sills

“I’d love to stay but my husband is waiting in the car park by the church.”

  We started to walk back across the lawn. The rain was letting let up and Louisa put the umbrella down.

  “Just one more thing before you go, Louisa. Can I ask about your mother’s story?”

  “Sure. Like your mom, she was just a girl when she had me. She and my father were childhood sweethearts. He was banished to England and Eileen never saw him again. He died a few years before I traced her. After my birth, Eileen had me then she moved to Dublin and married a man who became successful in business. She had four more children but she never told them or her husband about me. She said the scandal would destroy her family and his career. So we met in secret, in cafés and restaurants in Dublin every summer when I came on vacation. I also called her once a month. It was her dying wish that I never told any of her family. I’ve always respected her wishes.” She smiled and trailed the tip of the umbrella into the soil. “I stalk them on Facebook sometimes though.”

  “God.”

  “I understood why she was scared of anyone finding out about her past. She’d done well for herself. She’d dragged herself up from her life as a farm girl and she had a beautiful home in Howth and a perfect family. I certainly wasn’t about to ruin any of it for her.”

  “Did you like her?”

  She wrinkled her nose.

  “Not really.”

  I laughed.

  “She was kinda cold and steely. She rarely showed emotion and shrank from physical contact. That was tough. All I dreamt about since I was ten years old was hugging my birth mom. She always maintained she did the right thing giving me up. Said it was hard but she could see no way round it.”

  “So sad.”

  “But least we got closure. Not like your poor mom. Now that’s sad.”

  Before she left, I hugged Louisa and thanked her. She gave me her contact details, saying she’d be happy to talk anytime.

  I watched her walk away then I stood at the gate for a while. Staring down at the damp black soil and silver grass, I said goodbye to my brother. I told him how sorry I was for what had happened to him and how his family loved him. I looked up at the lighted upstairs window of one of the houses that overlooked the site. A child was climbing up the ladder of a bunk bed, his mother standing nearby. She turned and said something to him then she stepped towards the window and pulled the curtains shut.

  “Goodnight, sweet Donal,” I said, a lump congealing in my throat.

  Chapter 18

  I woke the next day to the sound of gulls circling outside my window and waves crashing on the rocks below.

  I slid out of bed, the pain of my discovery pressing down on me. I had already lost one brother, now hope had died and I’d lost another. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that the shock of finding out her baby had died in the home might have killed Tess. Being forced to give him up, spending her life never knowing what happened to him then finding out he’d suffered neglect and abuse in his short life. Only the strongest of hearts could survive that. Why had she never told me any of it? The thought that she’d suffered alone was unbearable. It stabbed my own heart over and over.

  Julia had left me a key under the mat the day before. She was in Belfast at the christening of one of the grandchildren and was due back late afternoon. I sat on the bed and glanced over at the window. I knew there was one thing that might lift my mood. So I got up, opened the curtains and took in the view.

  Julia’s stone farmhouse was nestled in the shadow of Croagh Patrick with the Nephin Mountains curving in the distance. It rested on the bend of a winding road overlooking Clew Bay. The sea below was dotted with small islands. Legend had it there were three hundred and sixty-five – one for every day of the year. John Lennon owned one. The rains of yesterday had cleansed the landscape. It was bright and breezy and white puffs of cloud slid across an azure sky. The islands looked like emeralds scattered on turquoise silk. I stood for some time and took in the glorious colours. Maybe there was a God after all.

  Julia’s was the only old house on the road. All the others were newly built mansions with glass box extensions, extravagant pillars and gravelled drives. Most were empty holiday homes owned by Americans or Germans and many were up for sale. Julia longed for families to move into the road again to bring life back to the community. A cyclist passed on the road below. It was the perfect day for a bike ride and I knew exactly where I was going to go. If I got a move on, I’d be back before Julia returned in the afternoon.

  After a hurried breakfast of coffee and a few slices of Julia’s delicious soda bread, I drove to the seaside town of Mulranny. There I picked up a bike from a man with a van and set off for Achill Island on the Greenway Trail, a disused railway line transformed into a cycle path that hugged the coastal roads.

  I visited Achill every time I came to Mayo, alone or with Joe. Cycling on the Greenway was heaven for him. We usually came by ferry from England so he could bring his own bike. The island evoked happy childhood memories for me. Dad loved it. The first time I recall going there it was just the two of us. Tess was heavily pregnant with Mikey and she stayed behind at Granny’s house.

  Before we left, Dad spread a map of Mayo out on the cold stone floor and pointed to a piece of land attached to the coast only by a narrow bridge. It looked like the spout of a teapot.

  “That’s where we’re going.” he said, tracing his finger across the vast blue of the Atlantic. “Next stop America.”

  I looked down in awe.

  “But Daddy, that’s the edge of the world,” I said.

  He laughed and kissed the top of my head. “So mind you don’t fall off.”

  Later, on the white sands of Keel beach, I refused to go near the water, scared I might just do that. Hiding behind his legs, I looked out for the Statue of Liberty on the horizon.

  I cycled on, slapped around by a fierce headwind. There were few other cyclists or walkers on the path. Olive peat-land swept down from the mountains, the rough earth patched with purple heather and chalk-white rocks. The light on the island had a clean quality that polished the colours of the landscape, adding sheen and lustre. When we visited in the seventies and eighties, the island was desolate, the residue of mass emigration everywhere: tumbledown cottages, clapped-out old cars and barely a shop or a hotel in sight. Then the boom brought glass-fronted holiday homes with solar panels, fish restaurants with Michelin stars and surfing schools.

  It was almost two when I crossed the swing bridge then cycled some more until I came to Keel village. The sun was high in the sky and the heat dropped over my shoulders like a warm coat.

  I leaned my bike against the wall of a small shop and headed inside to get a drink and a sandwich. As I pushed the door open, I stopped and did a double take at the man standing in the queue by the till. He was bending down talking to a tousled-haired boy of about ten or eleven by his side. His hair was loose and falling down over his face so I couldn’t be sure if it was him at first. Then he straightened up and tucked his hair behind his ear. Yes, it was Dan, the bloke I’d met at the fundraiser in the Irish Club. I froze, suddenly mortified at the memory of that night, remembering my drunken state and how he’d had to help Joe get me down the steps and into a taxi. My anxiety got the better of me and I hurried out of the door to the far end of the street where I hid behind an orange camper van.

  He came out a few minutes later and sauntered towards a silver Mondeo with the boy. I watched from behind the van. As the boy climbed into the back of the car, Dan took the ice cream, licking it and teasing as the boy tried to grab it back. Then a woman appeared at the passenger side in a loose yellow raincoat, dark curly hair billowing across her face. She was beautiful and, as she opened the car door and lowered herself into the seat, I could see she was heavily pregnant. The sun was high in the sky above their heads, the sea sparkling in the distance. They looked like such a happy family. How could I have suspected anything might happened between him and Karen?

/>   I waited until the Mondeo had driven off before I emerged. He was pretty old to be an expectant father. His wife looked younger but still in her late thirties. They looked so idyllic. Maybe it wasn’t too late for me and Joe after all.

  I headed back into the shop. What were the chances of meeting him again, here on Achill Island, at the edge of the world? Then I remembered he’d said his wife was from Achill and it was half term in England so they were probably visiting family.

  After buying lunch I cycled down to the beach. I was cursing myself for being such a wimp and running off and hiding like that. I thought he might have been embarrassed to see me because he was actually flirting with Karen that night and he might not want to be reminded of it. But the real reason I ran off was because I’d made an idiot of myself and he might remember. Why was I always so anxious about everything? Why couldn’t I have behaved like a normal person, put on a mask, said hello and feign normality? Why did I have to run and hide? I hated the way my anxiety got the better of me. Sometimes it pinned me down and I was powerless to break free.

  I parked my bike, sat on the beach wall and tucked into my salmon and cream-cheese sandwich. Wind rippled through the rivulets of sand like a thousand snakes. Surfers dipped and curled themselves over the high waves and a red kayak appeared, the tide carrying it out further.

  I watched the waves ebb and fall and I thought of all the victims like Tess that shame had put on a boat and sent away from these shores. When I was doing my initial searches for my sibling online, I had come across lots of survivors’ groups across the world that had been going for years; older Irish men and women who’d been gathering in draughty community halls in Ireland, the UK and the US to talk about the traumas they’d suffered at the hands of the Church and State. Women incarcerated in Magdalene Laundries and Mother and Baby homes, grown men abused by clergy in industrial schools and church sacristies, adults illegally adopted who were trying to trace birth parents. It struck me how the diaspora was home to so many wounded souls. In their shoes I’d have fled Ireland too. I’d have tried to erase my past and make a new life elsewhere just like Tess did. I was both devastated and enraged to learn that my baby brother had died. But, at the same time, I could see that something was happening out there. The tide was now turning. Survivors were unearthing their secrets and opening up about what had happened to them. Their stories were spilling out onto the shores all over Ireland and I was rooting for every single one of them. I just wished Tess could have done the same and told me hers.

  Chapter 19

  Julia eyed me as I poured myself another glass of Chianti. It was our second bottle and I’d drunk most of the first. I relaxed into the battered Chesterfield in her front room. It had large windows and spectacular views over the bay. I stretched my legs and rubbed my stomach, bloated from the delicious Thai green curry and cheesecake she’d made for dinner.

  The room was happily chaotic and smelled of dog. Once vivid yellow walls were faded, floor-to-ceiling shelves overflowed with books, photographs and CDs and a Singer sewing machine sat in the corner swathed in fabric. The warm morning had turned into a cold evening and Julia had made a small fire. She leant towards it, coaxing the coals with a poker. The heat was intense but rest of the house, with its high ceilings and cold tiled floors, was permanently draughty. Mattie had stayed on in Belfast to perform at a corporate event after the family christening so I had Julia all to myself. I asked her to put on one of his CDs. His lovely voice filled the room with “O Mio Babbino Caro” so it was like he wasn’t absent at all.

  My favourite aunt was the youngest of Dad’s four sisters and the wild child of the family. The oldest, Moira, worked in finance and lived respectably with her family in Dublin. Twins Nancy and Irene were both nurses who’d settled in Cleveland, Ohio. Julia, also a nurse, had joined them when she was eighteen. After a short stay she’d upped and left Cleveland, hitch-hiked the length and breadth of the States, and settled in a hippy commune in California. There she met and married Tony Shapiro, a chisel-jawed draft-dodger from Brooklyn with red-leather cowboy boots and a Charles Bronson moustache. A honeymoon photo that Julia sent to Dad had pride of place on my living-room wall. She and Tony are in the Nevada desert standing in front of turquoise camper van painted with sunflowers. She looks like Ali McGraw in Love Story, with waist-length dark hair, razor-sharp cheekbones and tiny denim shorts. The marriage lasted only five years because of Tony’s philandering ways. Granny got cancer not long afterwards. Grandad had died a few years earlier so Julia reluctantly returned to Westport to nurse her. She decided she liked being back in Ireland a lot more than she’d expected and stayed. She carved out a dazzling career in women’s health, campaigning on abortion and contraception issues at a time in Ireland when very few did. In her late thirties she stumbled across Mattie at a bridge evening. A bulky Belfast widower, he had six children and a beautiful tenor voice. They lost a daughter, Maeve, to cot death early in the marriage. Julia’s feisty spirit never quite recovered afterwards.

  I loved my aunt dearly. After Dad died I spent three summers at the house in Clew Bay. She taught me to ride a horse, apply make-up, and follow a dress pattern. She took me to the seaweed baths in Enniscrone and she pierced my ears with a sterilised needle. When it was time to go home, I clung to her, dreading my return to Manchester’s drab streets and Tess’s black moods. I secretly wished Julia was my mother just as she probably wished I was Maeve, the daughter she’d lost.

  Now she put the poker in its holder and sat back in her chair. I leant over and touched the silky sleeve of her blouse. It was mustard with an intricate pattern of tiny white butterflies and it looked perfect next to her snow-white bobbed hair.

  “One of your own creations?” I asked.

  She nodded and picked up her wineglass. “I got the fabric at a market in Rome when we were there a few months ago.”

  “It’s gorgeous. My friend Karen’s moving to Rome. You remember Karen, don’t you?”

  “Sure, how could I forget her?” she said with a weak smile. “Wasn’t she the talk of the village here once?”

  I winced. Karen had made quite an impression back then. Eighteen and backpacking around Ireland, we had dropped in on Julia for a couple of nights. After a raucous evening in Lydon’s pub in the village with the local youth, we ended up at a party in the holiday home of the O’Connells, a wealthy Dublin family down the road. Mr and Mrs O’Connell were away and Karen spent the night in the marital bed with their eldest son. Luke was a toned and tousled med student at UCD who revved around the coastal roads on a Harley Davidson. The next day Karen hopped on the back of it and the pair of them took off to a festival in Kerry without telling anyone. Mrs O’Connell was livid, though. She arrived at Julia’s house and paced up and down the kitchen with big, lacquered hair and shoulder-pads, crying and wailing about her innocent boy.

  After she’d gone, Julia stood by the door with her hands on her hips.

  “You’d think he’d been abducted by the fecking IRA,” she said. “Innocent boy, my arse! The woman’s a racist. She’s hysterical because Karen is black.” She turned to me and shook her head. “But she shouldn’t have left you like that. You’re supposed to be on holiday together. She’s supposed to be your friend.”

  I shrugged. I wasn’t concerned. I was used to Karen doing mad spur-of-the-moment things like that.

  Mattie’s CD finished and Julia went over to the sideboard and put Mary Black on. Flushed from the wine and the fire, she fanned her face as she sat down again.

  “You’ll miss Karen when she goes to Rome, so.”

  “We aren’t really that close anymore.”

  “No?”

  “She does her own thing these days.”

  “She always struck me as someone who did her own thing. I had the impression she only ever thought of number one.”

  I glared at the fire, taken aback. “She’s not a bad person. She’s just not that reliable.”

  “You were always very good to her, Carmel.
Too good, if you ask me. You were like a puppy at her heel. I never understood why you were so in awe of her. I’m probably biased but you were always the nicer, kinder girl by far.”

  I felt my neck and cheeks flush. I’d never seen myself as subservient to Karen at all. I shrugged off Julia’s comments. She didn’t like Karen but then a lot of people didn’t. I often wondered how much of it was racist. She was considered “difficult” because she questioned and challenged. Joe didn’t like her when they first met either. He said she was uncompromising and controlling but they got along as the years went by.

  Dev, Julia’s grey pointer, trotted into the room and curled on the Indian rug at my feet. He was called after Eamonn de Valera. Not that Julia was a fan of De Valera’s politics. Far from it. It was because of the aquiline nose and pinched expression.

  “I’m not here to talk about Karen though, Julia,” I said. “I want to ask you about something else.”

  I took a quick slug from my glass and cleared my throat.

  “Did you know Tess had a baby before she had me?”

  Julia swallowed and placed her own glass on the side table with a trembling hand.

  “I did,” she said in a whisper.

  “And about the Mother and Baby home in Tuam and the mass grave?”

  She nodded. “I wanted to tell you, Carmel. I really did. But your mother made me swear not to. How did you find out?”

  “From an old letter Dad had sent her when she was in the home. I also found a list of the children buried in the mass grave. Tess had underlined the baby’s name – Donal. I was gutted. I thought he’d been adopted. For a while I thought he was alive and well. I hoped I had another sibling out there in the world somewhere.”

  She looked down at her feet. “I was the one who sent her the list.”

  “You?”

  “She rang me after she read about the mass grave. She was in a bad way. She said she needed to know if her son had died in the home. I saw that the list had been published in a newspaper, so I sent it to her.”