The mystery of my ‘auntie nuns’ was now finally becoming clearer to me. I began to realise that they were part of my family. They were my father’s sisters. It was a concept that I had never allowed myself to explore. It dawned on me then that I really did have a family.
There were also three priests in my father’s greater extended family and if the scandal of my existence were to become known, they would suffer untold consequences from their respective bishops.
She said that my father was a lawyer, and was highly respected in the community, as well as in, and far beyond, Limerick City. She also said that my father was now married and had a large family. If my father found out about me now, it would break up his marriage and his large family. He would be disgraced.
In Sister Bernadette’s opinion, it was best left alone. She advised me to put it behind me, and get on with the rest of my life. That was a piece of advice that I was to hear many times over the next 40 years of my life. It is a very easy piece of advice to give to somebody, especially if you have not endured hardship or pain. While I would have loved to accept that particular piece of advice, many times over, it is just not possible to do. A person can block many things out of their life, such as pain or emotions, but one cannot block out the memories. From that Sunday afternoon, when Sister Bernadette told me about my family, I knew then that I desperately wanted to meet them. I knew that I would not rest until I did.
That same week I had more bad news, although at the time it did not particularly bother me, as I now had the news of my parents to distract me. This next bit of bad news was very final, and it was to remain with me, at the back of my mind, for many years to come.
My appointment with the gynaecologist was the next big occurrence in my life. One evening after the recitation of the rosary, the sister-in-charge came to me and told me that I was to be excused my duties in the kitchens for the next day. She said that as soon as I got out of bed I was to have a bath. Hot water and soap would be provided for me, and she said that I was to wash myself thoroughly, everywhere, inside and out. I was to be ready and standing by the back door at ten o’clock. A sister would then take me by taxi to my appointment with Dr Leahy, the gynaecologist.
I had no idea why I was being taken to a gynaecologist.
I had no idea what a gynaecologist did for a living.
I had my bath the next morning. It was cold, as usual. Neither the hot water nor the soap appeared so, as usual, the time spent in the freezing water was minimal. I dried, dressed and presented myself at the door to await the taxi. It duly arrived and the nun and myself sat in the back seat.
As the taxi drove us through the open gate and we left the orphanage behind us, I realised that there was another world outside the confines of those walls. I realised that people lived a different life out there. People lived a normal life outside. I had been inside the orphanage for approximately seven months, without ever leaving, or wanting to leave it, even once.
Dr Leahy was an old man. He was a real gentleman and really nice to me. The nun waited outside as he explained what he was going to do to me during my examination. He made sure that I understood everything as best as a 13-year-old child could understand, under the circumstances. He emphasised that he was not going to hurt me or perform any surgery on me. He said that he merely wanted to examine me internally.
He told me to get undressed and get into the white smock, which he had given to me. I did this behind a screen in the corner of the room. He put me up on the examination table, in his examination room. There were many strong lights there. Some of the lights were on wheels so that he could move them around.
He told me to lie on my back and put my legs up in what he called the stirrups. He warned me that he was going to put an instrument into my vagina, and that it might be a bit cold for a few seconds. He inserted an instrument called a speculum into my vagina, which he stretched wider, so he could examine me. He probed deeper towards my uterus with different instruments, sometimes tut-tutting as he met unexpected resistance. He then withdrew all the instruments, loosened the speculum and turned off all the high-powered lights.
He came up to my face and said, ‘There you are, young lady, that wasn’t too bad, was it?’
As he pulled me to an upright position, I croaked a weak ‘No’.
He told me that I could get dressed and go home with the sister. As I was getting dressed behind the screen, I heard him tell the nun that he would write a report and post it to the sister-in-charge of the orphanage.
The nun said, ‘That is fine Doctor, but is there anything serious that would affect her daily routine work in the orphanage kitchens?’
‘No. Nothing to be worried about in the short-term, but long-term, it is most unlikely that she will ever have children,’ he said.
That piece of information was filed in my memory in the folder labelled ‘sad’, for thinking about at a later date. I then tried to forget about it. I left Dr Leahy’s rooms that day, feeling unconcerned about my gynaecological future. I just wanted to enjoy the feeling of freedom, on my day away from the confines of the orphanage.
That was to be the first of many visits to gynaecological specialists for examinations resulting in extensive surgery to my reproductive organs and tract, over the coming years.
A couple of weeks after the first examination, I was told that I had some visitors. I couldn’t think who they might be. I was thrilled that someone would think so much of me that they would come as a visitor. It was Kit and Tony. They had come to see how I was after my sudden departure from their home. I told them that I was settling into the orphanage very well, but that the court case had upset me a lot.
Kit asked, in all innocence, ‘What court case?’
They obviously did not know where I had been taken to on that morning, the previous March. I told them a shortened version of the day and Kit hugged me tightly. She then gave me amazing news.
‘We have arranged with the sisters that you can come to us for a week’s holiday, later in the summer. It will be in August.’
I was overjoyed at the thought of going to somebody who wanted me, for a holiday.
Before they left they gave me a present of a crinoline doll, with beautiful pearls on her dress. Afterwards I hid the doll in my bedside locker, which was the only thing I could call my own in the orphanage. The next morning I checked to see if the doll was still there, but it was gone. I was never to see the doll again. I was heartbroken, but I did not cry about it. Instead I counted the days until August when Kit and Tony would come to collect me.
August finally came and I did have my holiday with Kit and Tony. They treated me as if I was their own. They took me for picnics, to a funfair and to the beach.
When the week was over I did not mind going back to the orphanage, although I did cry as I said goodbye at the convent gate. They had promised me that they would come and see me as visitors and that I could come for my summer holidays again the following year. They kept their promise and visited me about twice each year during my time at the Mount.
While my life had changed slightly for the better with Kit and Tony now part of it, the regime at the orphanage remained strict. When Kit and Tony visited me the following Easter, they gave me a large chocolate Easter egg. I remember that it was made by Suchard. I was not allowed to eat the egg. The sister said that I could only unwrap the packaging. I took it out of its box and I unwrapped the silver paper from around the egg. I was not allowed to touch the chocolate. Then the nun took the packaging and the egg, and disappeared with them. I never tasted my Easter egg but I was able to smell it. It smelled delicious.
Life at the orphanage went on as before. I had been there a year and nothing had changed. Work was just as difficult as ever, but I never complained. There was no sexual threat and I felt safe. I could cope with anything after that.
I used to clean the priest’s parlour and serve his breakfast. He had a fruit cocktail and then was served a fried breakfast, followed with bread and butter. He
usually had a grapefruit as well, with a special spoon. If we got the chance we’d lick the priest’s plate to get a taste of his fried breakfast.
The laundry belonging to the nuns was done in a separate area. It was treated as something special. Either the novice nuns did it or the younger professed nuns. The nuns that had to do the washing and the ironing were not of the same high status as the other nuns. The orphans were not even deemed suitable to wash the nuns’ clothes.
But there was one job that the orphans were seen as suitable for. When the nuns’ habits were washed and dried they were sent down to the orphanage. We had to inspect the habits, for stains on the black cloth which had remained after the washing process. These were generally food and drink stains on the bodice of the garment. They obviously occurred during meal times when a nun might actually spill their soup or their food. The nuns were constantly celebrating a feast day and there was always a lot more washing.
To remove these stains we had to constantly dab them with a cloth soaked with liquid ammonia, until they disappeared. We had to hold the cloths at arm’s length. The ammonia was the reason that we ‘orphans’ were allowed to touch the nuns’ habits. It was used undiluted, from a large Winchester bottle. It gave off very strong vapours if you inhaled them directly, they would take your breath away. The vapours were highly toxic, but we were never told about any safety procedures. Many young girls’ lungs were probably irreparably damaged by exposure to the ammonia fumes.
One evening, after another girl and myself had finished removing stains from the habits, we folded them up and returned them to the nuns’ laundry area. When we got there, we left the habits with a young nun. She had just taken a delivery of fruit and was putting it away in a cupboard. As she became distracted by the now, stain-free habits, we were able to steal an apple each, when her back was turned. Both of us began the walk back to the orphanage, through a network of corridors, secretly eating our apples. We had only taken a few bites out of our apples, when we met the Deputy Mother Superior of the entire convent.
‘What are you girls eating?’ she snapped. ‘Where did you get those? Give me those apples at once, and follow me.’
Before we could produce an answer, she snatched the apples from us and marched us into the office of the Mother Superior of the whole convent.
‘These girls stole apples from the pantry, Mother Superior,’ she said.
We both opened our mouths to deny the theft.
‘Silence,’ yelled Mother Superior in our direction. ‘Take them away, and deal with them,’ she ordered her second-in-command.
The sister caught each of us by the ear and led us out of the office. We tried to protest our innocence but were once again told to be quiet, by a stern command of, ‘Silence, you evil pair of thieves’.
She took us to a marble staircase, between the ground and first floor. The staircase went halfway up between the floors to a wide landing and then turned. At the landing, on the wall, there was a large crucifix. She told us to kneel down in front of the crucifix and join our hands in prayer.
‘Both of you will remain here until the morning. You will not move, you will not speak to each other and you will pray to Our Blessed Lady for forgiveness.’
We knelt down and dared not look at each other. We remained in that position for many hours. As kneeling on the solid marble began to feel like agony and my legs started to cramp, I just tried to ignore the pain. When all the lights were turned out, we realised that all the nuns had gone to bed. Only when this happened did we dare to speak to each other, in a barely audible whisper. Eventually we sat down under the crucifix. All night we debated the injustice of the harsh sentence, but every time we heard a sound, we jumped back into the kneeling position.
Eventually morning arrived and the first nun appeared down the stairs, ‘What are you two girls doing here? Get back to the orphanage, at once.’
We both looked at one another and before I could get moving, the nun pushed me. As I was not expecting it, I unbalanced and fell headlong down the marble steps. My face hit the steps with an almighty thud and immediately my nose started to spurt blood. I tried to stop the flow with my fingers. The flow was so strong that it was impossible. It began to drip all over the floor. The other girl was gone.
The nun began screaming at me hysterically to get some cloth from the kitchen and clean up the bloody mess. She half dragged me to the kitchen where she squeezed my nostrils to stem the flow. It took a long time to slow down. She left me leaning over the sink holding my own nose. She said that she would wipe up the blood on the floor.
When she came back to me the bleeding had stopped. She wiped and cleaned my face and calmly told me not to tell anyone what had happened. She said that if I did, she would report me to Mother Superior and have me transferred to the ‘Good Shepherds’. This was an industrial school with a fearsome reputation. No one wanted to be sent to the Good Shepherds’ torture chamber.
It was that old familiar threat, not to tell anyone what had happened to me. I had been keeping silent about bad things happening to me all my life, so one more would not be difficult.
In the following days, my nose swelled up to an enormous size. Some of the girls and maybe even one nun did ask me what happened to my nose. I said that I had fallen down the stairs, but I never mentioned that a nun pushed me.
I learned a valuable lesson that day.
Don’t take something that belongs to someone else.
FIVE
Tough Love
MY TIME AT the orphanage was drawing to a close. From the time Sister Bernadette had told me about my parents, my emotional balance was disturbed, particularly during my last year there. After her visit I had been ecstatic. I had told everyone in the orphanage that I had found my long lost parents. I told everyone that I was going to meet my parents. I told anyone who would listen that my parents were going to take me away from the orphanage. But as week after week passed by and nothing happened, I began to modify my expectations.
I stopped talking to other people about my parents. I began to only think about them in private.
The strange part of the revelation was that I found the story about my father acceptable. I believed that he was a very important solicitor, with a large family, who would be scandalised, and that maybe the whole fabric of society might be damaged if this important man was to be embarrassed in any way, because of the public exposure of my illegitimate existence. So I concentrated on my mother.
I became consumed by my mother.
I became consumed by her actions.
I became consumed by the decisions she made.
I became consumed by the consequences of her decisions.
I became consumed by the fact that she had never tried to find me.
I became consumed by the fact that she had consigned me to the scrap-heap of life.
I became consumed by the fact that she had condemned me, as a young child, her daughter, to a life of sexual degradation, at the whims of uncontrolled paedophiles.
I became consumed by my mother, absolutely!
How could any mother do those things to her young daughter? How could my mother do any of those horrible things to me?
The more I thought about it, the more it affected me. My behaviour changed. I became difficult and uncooperative about my work duties. I couldn’t stop myself looking sad. Over the previous 18 months, I had earned the nickname ‘Smiler’, as my demeanour was always bright and happy and I always had a smile on my face, but it was not always a happy smile. I reasoned that if I smiled at everyone, I would not get into trouble with anyone. It didn’t really work and most of the smiling faces that I wore were yet another attempt at personal survival.
I persisted in asking the nuns when I could meet my mother. I never gave up asking to meet her. After about a year, Sister Bernadette had a message delivered to me, to tell me that she had arranged for my mother to visit me. She was to arrive at the orphanage on a Sunday afternoon, three weeks later. I was over the moon wit
h excitement. I was unable to sleep at night. Every thought that ran through my mind concerned my mother.
What would she look like?
Would she like me?
Would I be acceptable to her?
I was 14 and a half years of age and this would have been the first time that I would have met my mother, the only time since the day that she gave me away, at five months of age.
All the preparations were in place. But it was not to be. I came down with the mumps and so the visit was cancelled.
I was so ill on the day that I couldn’t even get out of bed. I remember I was just left in the dormitory all day. I was heartbroken. I was so disappointed that I had been unable to meet my mother for the first time. But I was optimistic that another visit could be rearranged quickly – it was not to be.
* * * *
When we reached the age of 15, the nuns used to find us jobs outside the orphanage. It was a sort of training for becoming a housemaid. We would go and work for families during the day and we would return to the orphanage at night. We were not paid any wages for this work as it was considered training. We would stay for a period of three months with one family and then we would be swapped around to another house. It was slave labour and to this day I feel that the nuns owe me my pay. I had about five such jobs, one in a pub and others in some posh houses before I left the orphanage for good.
At the age of 16 it was time for me to leave the orphanage and face the big, wide world on a permanent basis. In other words, I was now ready to have a paying job and learn to make my own way in the world. In reality, my credentials for earning a living were very poor. I had no formal education to speak of. I was barely literate. My strengths revolved around the fact that I had experience of cleaning toilets and floors, peeling vegetables and changing babies’ dirty nappies. Yes, I was qualified to work as a housemaid.
No One Wants You Page 7
