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

by Annette Sills

  “You are fucking kidding me!”

  “Those bitches lied and tried their best to get me back there because they were terrified I’d talk. But I was lucky. Mammy and Daddy didn’t believe the lies and they showed Father McGrath the door when he returned. But even though I’d done nothing wrong I was sent to London to live with my aunt. I was away five years. I trained to be a nurse at St Thomas’. That’s where I met my Jimmy, a Breaffy man who was working as a porter. He was given the home place and we moved back with the kids. So it didn’t turn out too badly for me in the end. We were married for fifty-three years and I’ve got six grandchildren.”

  “You are a marvel, Kathleen Slevin.”

  I glanced down at my watch. It was almost four thirty and she said her daughter was coming to collect her in ten minutes. I was driving straight to the airport for my six-thirty flight afterwards.

  “My brother Donal . . . Tess’s baby,” I said. “Do you remember anything about him at all?

  “Oh, he was a bonny baby and a good weight, a good weight. Lots of curly blonde hair. I remember him well the day they came for him.”

  I sat up. “Sorry?”

  “The day the two fellas came for him in the fancy car. It was a few days after Tess left for Manchester.”

  I shook my head. “You must be mistaken. Tess’s baby died in the home when he was five months old. His name was on the list of the dead children from the home.”

  Kathleen frowned. “There must be some mistake. I saw them take him away. Two fine-looking men, one dark and one blonde. I’d just arrived for my early shift. They often came for the babies early in the morning or late at night so the mothers couldn’t see them taking them away. The two men took him to a fancy car and drove off. The dark man was driving, the blonde one holding the baby. I knew it was Tess’s baby because of all the hair and the red cardigan your mother had knitted for him.”

  “Are you sure, Kathleen?”

  “I am, of course.”

  “Can you remember anything about the car?”

  “It was a blue sports car. The roof was down. I’d never seen the likes of it before. I remember thinking they were eejits for putting a baby in it with no bonnet on him. The poor mite would catch his death of cold.”

  Chapter 21

  My grandparents’ house in Mayo. A white fuzz of heat, blue skies and the sound of crickets. Tess and Dad were waltzing in front of the bungalow and Karen, Mikey and I were running through the adjacent field. Karen and Mikey were sprinting ahead. I yelled at them to stop and wait but they ignored me, their heads dipping and disappearing into the tall yellow grass. A sudden sharp pain. I stopped and looked down. Blood was oozing from the ball of my foot. A white bone that looked like a needle had pierced it. The grass around me started to roll back like a carpet, revealing a layer of black glistening soil that looked like tar. Piles of tiny white bones were scattered at intervals and more appeared as the grass rolled back further. I shouted for Tess and Dad and Karen and Mikey but they’d all disappeared. All that was left was the outline of the house on a shimmering horizon.

  I woke up in a cold sweat with Joe leaning over me, a concerned look on his face. He said I’d been calling out in my sleep and flailing my arms. Joe went to the bathroom to get me a glass of cold water and I sat up and wiped my damp face with a pillow.

  It was 5am, the morning after I arrived back from Mayo. Shafts of orange and yellow light filtered through the bedroom blinds. It looked like the world was on fire outside and the dawn chorus was alive.

  When Joe returned I finally told him everything, about Dad’s letter, the mass grave, finding the list of dead children and all the things that had happened in Mayo including what Julia had told me and Kathleen Slevin’s sighting of the two men taking Donal out of the home. I told him I was now convinced my brother was alive and well somewhere out there in the world.

  Propped up against pillows, Joe listened in silence. His face had remained expressionless and he hadn’t interrupted once or asked any questions. It was like none of it came as a surprise. But life with Tess and Mikey had always been turbulent and eccentric so to Joe it was probably yet another chapter in the life of my fucked-up family.

  When I’d finally finished, he cleared his throat and stared at the wardrobe door where stripes of morning light flickered like light sabres. He looked at me, the corners of his mouth turned down.

  “And you never once thought of telling me any of this?” he asked quietly.

  I inhaled sharply. “You’ve been away so I haven’t seen you that much to tell you. And I was about to a couple of times but we always ended up having a barney.” A milk van creaked on the road outside and I slumped back on the bed. “You’ve hardly been the easiest person to be around lately.”

  He pursed his lips and said nothing then he leant over and put his arm around me. “Sorry. Work’s pretty stressful these days. Poor Tess,” he said, kissing the top of my head. “And poor you, going through this on your own. So this Kathleen Slevin woman – what she said about the what men taking the baby away – you think it’s reliable?”

  “I can’t think why she’d make it up. She seemed of sound mind to me.”

  “She could be confused. From what you said, she’s getting on. We’re talking sixty-odd years after the event here.”

  “I know. But something tells me she remembers everything about Tess’s story because it affected her directly. She escaped from the home and ended up being sent to England because she helped Tess out. Then there’s the blue sports car. As soon as Kathleen described it, I knew what she was saying had to be true. I rang Julia and said cars like that would definitely have been a rarity in rural Mayo at that time. I’m also pretty sure the blonde man with James was Tadgh Dempsey, Tess’s brother.”

  “Do you really think he’d help steal his sister’s baby and never tell her where he was?”

  “For some reason he was desperate to please James’ family. Plus he and Tess had fallen out. Tess never heard from him again as far as I know. She said he ended up living rough on the streets in London.”

  Joe scratched his chin. “But how did the nuns get away with it? If they faked your brother’s death, surely they had to have a body to get a death certificate?”

  “Or a doctor faked it. The more I’ve delved into all of this, the more I’ve come to the conclusion that the nuns couldn’t have worked alone. Doctors, social workers, solicitors, politicians – they all had to have played a part in the illegal adoptions. There was an organised system at work. It was a well-oiled machine.”

  “A well-oiled adoption machine.”

  “Yes.”

  “James’ family were very wealthy so I’m guessing they paid a lot of money to get Donal back. And Tess would never have known. Before she left the home, she’d have signed consent papers thinking that her baby was going to a good family in America. She’d never have imagined James would return to claim him.”

  “Christ. That’s so fucked up.”

  Joe pulled me towards him and held me tight. I buried my head in the crook of his neck and he ran the tip of his forefinger along my arm. Then he turned my face to his and searched for my mouth. We kissed for a long time. When we pulled apart, I told him I’d stopped taking the pill. Something had shifted inside me when I was in Mayo. Visiting Julia again and hearing about Tess from Kathleen Slevin had made me feel connected to my family and to my past again. And seeing the bloke from the Irish Club looking so serene with his family in Achill, the place I was happiest as a child, had stirred something in me.

  Joe looked at me startled, then his face lit up like a child on Christmas morning.

  “Really?”

  I nodded and smiled. “I thought about it a lot in Ireland. Let’s go for it.”

  He grinned and started to unbutton my nightshirt. His tongue ran down my breastbone with every unfastening. Soon it was circling one nipple then another then his fingers slithered inside me, searching and teasing out the place only he knew existed. When he
was inside me I pushed in rhythm with him, slowly at first then faster, reaching together. When he came his face exploded in pain and joy in the blaze of morning light and I was moved.

  Chapter 22

  In the week that followed I jump-started the search for my brother. I returned to my friend Google for help. Having no surname for James, the baby’s father, I searched for the house outside Tess’s village where his family had lived. It had been turned into a B&B and the current owners were English with no knowledge of an Anglo-Irish family ever living there. I’d need another trip to Mayo to talk to the locals to get the information I needed. A google search for Tadgh Dempsey also came to nothing. It didn’t surprise me. If what Tess had said was true and he’d ended up on the streets, he wasn’t exactly going to have much of a digital footprint.

  The following Wednesday I was at home having breakfast when I received an email back from TUSLA, the government family agency in Galway that I’d written to way back at the start of my search. They more or less stated what I’d feared. As the sibling of a former resident in the Tuam Mother and Baby home, I wasn’t legally entitled to access any records. I threw my phone on the sofa in annoyance and paced the room. It was a major setback. How the hell could family members ever find out what had happened to their relatives without access to records? I remembered what Louisa Schulz said about her search for her birth mother, how she’d had so many doors slammed in her face her nose was put out of joint. But she never gave up and neither would I. I’d fallen into a low despairing mood when I found Donal’s name on that list of dead children but now hope had sent me high again. I was back on the emotional roller coaster, aware that the shock of the fall could be waiting around the corner, but as long as there was the tiniest glimpse of hope I would never stop the search for my brother.

  I hadn’t seen Joe all week. He’d been working in London. I wouldn’t see him that evening either. I was off to a conference at the university in Liverpool on women in Shakespeare. Afterwards I’d arranged to meet Claire, an old friend from my Oakwood High days. Karen knew her too and I’d texted her to see if she wanted to come along but she said she was busy as usual. Claire had booked us a table at one of the best Italian restaurants on Lark Lane. I hadn’t seen her for months. She was a social worker in the adoption services and lived in a rambling house in Aigburth with her lecturer husband, two cockapoos and three kids under ten. She was hard to pin down and any arrangements to see her had to be made months in advance. Claire’s family were Irish and I was hoping to ask her about the illegal adoptions in the Mother and Baby homes and if she knew of any other possible routes I might try to find Donal. That aside, I was looking forward to her company and catching up.

  But before that I needed to get some food in, so I headed out to the local deli for supplies. I used to shop in the Barbakan Deli with Tess when it was a small Polish grocery. Over the years I’d watched it transform into a Mancunian foodie heaven. Nowadays people travelled miles for its sour dough, German rye and ciabatta. They packed bags stuffed with Danish pastries, original Italian pasta, smoked hams, salamis and continental cheeses into the boots of their cars. The outdoor terrace had recently been revamped with new rattan furniture and it had become a popular venue for Chorlton parents after the school drop-off. I parked in the small Tesco car park on the opposite side of the road and headed over.

  As usual it was busy with a queue snaking out of the door. I exited after a long wait with my steaming Americano, soda bread, pasta and cheese. As I crossed the terrace I spotted Bryonie Phillips at a far table with a group of friends. I hadn’t seen anything of her since that night at the fundraiser. She was wearing Jackie O sunglasses and a flouncy yellow top that made her large breasts look like a pair of canary melons. She caught my eye and waved. I had a sudden flashback to the night of the fundraiser when I’d been so shamefully horribly drunk. God only knows what she was saying about me to her cronies. True to form, I panicked. I pretended I hadn’t seen her. Hurrying down the steps onto the pavement, I took my phone from my pocket and started talking into it. Then as I was waiting to cross the road, I heard the unmistakable high-pitched screech of her laughter behind me, like chalk screeching on a blackboard. I froze. It was too loud and too forced to be natural. I was meant to hear it. I walked across, still in conversation with my imaginary friend, my heart pounding.

  On the drive home I cursed myself yet again, powerless in the face of my debilitating anxiety. Why couldn’t I slip on a mask and smile and say hello to Bryonie like any normal person might? Avoidance was supposed to be the worst strategy for anxiety-sufferers but I’d been doing it for so long now it had become second nature. When I got home I put Classic FM on the radio to calm myself as I got ready for work. I tried to fill my head with positive thoughts. The conference looked very promising and I was seeing Claire later. I started to feel better. I shut the front door behind me and headed down the path with a slight spring in my step. Little did I know that when I opened it again I’d be stepping into a very different life.

  Chapter 23

  As the taxi pulled up, Joe’s black BMW was disappearing around the corner of the street in a silver mist of rain. I thought I saw the profile of someone in the passenger seat but I couldn’t be sure because of the rain. A furious wind thrashed around the street and a woman passed me holding her umbrella in front of her face, with all her strength like she was rolling a stone up a hill. I paid the driver and ran into the house. I wondered where Joe was off to. A man of habit, he went to the cycling club every Thursday but it was vicious out there so it must have been cancelled.

  After an enjoyable conference I’d gone for drinks with a couple of colleagues at a wine bar near the university. I was about to call a taxi and head over to Lark Lane to meet Claire when she called. She was stranded in A&E with Sam, her sports-mad ten-year-old. It looked like he’d broken his arm and they weren’t leaving the hospital any time soon. Deflated, I made my way to Lime Street and boarded the train for Manchester Piccadilly. I ordered a coffee from the trolley and gazed out of the window as the train trundled between grey Lancashire towns. Dusk was falling. Rain swept over the valleys and gently undulating hills, avocado and mint green in the fading light. I’d always thought of the Lancashire terrain as mellow and calming compared to the violent landscape of the west coast of Ireland. Both had a beauty of their own. Both were part of me in equal measure. Like two sides of a coin.

  A harassed-looking mother on a nearby seat was trying to placate her crying toddler with a game on her phone. Sometimes I couldn’t help resenting my friends’ children when I saw how they sucked their mothers dry. Of course, I was sorry that Claire’s boy had broken his arm but at the same time I felt hostile towards him for robbing me of an evening with her. From what I could see, children didn’t drain their fathers in the same way. Fathers managed to maintain a sense of self but mothers were left with very little of their own. Something to think about if Joe and I ever did get pregnant.

  I was exhausted and couldn’t be bothered cooking so I helped myself to some of the brie and soda bread I’d bought from the Barbakan that morning. I looked around. The kitchen was spotless but I’d left it in a tip that morning. Now the worktop glistened, the floor had been scrubbed and even the tea towels were piled neatly by the sink. The only time Joe cleaned like that was after an argument or when he’d done something that upset me. It was our standing joke, how doing housework was his unspoken way of apologising. I poured myself a glass of red and smiled. I wondered what he’d done for me to deserve all this.

  I took my food and wine into the front room. I was looking forward to catching up on more Irish history and watching the next episode of Rebellion on Netflix, a show about the Easter Rising. I spent at least five minutes searching for the TV remote and had started cursing and was about to kick the coffee table when I finally located it under a sofa cushion. As I picked it up, I felt something hard and metallic against my fingers. I pulled it out. It was a bracelet, slim and gold with the two ends sh
aped in the form of a snake’s head with tiny emeralds for eyes. Karen’s bracelet, the one I’d admired that day at her house after the fundraiser, the one I’d suspected was a gift from Simon Whelan. I sat down, frowning and trying to remember. I was sure she’d told me that day it was new. To my knowledge she’d never been here to the house since then. I sat down. My chest tightened and my thoughts quickened. We’d texted days before when I invited her to come along and meet up with Claire. She knew I wouldn’t be at home tonight. I stared down at the bracelet for some time, clenching my fist around it and turning it over in my hand.

  I paced up and down the kitchen and glugged my wine.

  “No,” I said aloud. “It can’t be true.”

  Rain fired down on the windowpane and I waved my free hand in the air like I was warding off an invisible threat.

  Karen definitely knew I wouldn’t be home. The clean kitchen, the figure in the passenger seat of the car. I suddenly felt nauseous at the whiff of lemon disinfectant, a smell that would trigger memories of this day for years afterwards.

  I stopped pacing and stared at the upturned coffee cups on the draining-board. I went over, picking them up one by one and inspected them for lipstick smudges. Then I yanked opened the dishwasher looking for wineglasses or plates, for some sign or evidence she’d been there. After that it was the bin’s turn. I upturned it on to the shining floor then got on my knees and rummaged through the rubbish with my bare hands. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking for. He was hardly likely to leave a used condom or the packaging from an M&S meal for two behind, but I was compelled to look just the same.

  When I’d done I raced upstairs, pulled back the duvet cover in every bedroom, frantically running my hands along the sheets. On the landing I heard my phone buzz in the hall and almost fell down the stairs in my rush to get to it. My hand shaking, I yanked it out of my bag. It was a WhatsApp message.