Irish Secrets

by Paula Martin

  Her gaze riveted on the display cabinet which stood along one wall, containing glass and china items, and she clapped her hand to her mouth.

  "Oh, my God!" She clutched Ryan's arm. "Look at the top shelf, on the right. It's a knitted pink rabbit, just like the one my mom was holding in that first photo of her."

  Chapter 20

  Kara waited until Margaret put the tray of tea and buttered fruit loaf on the low table between the couches. Her nervousness had eased and her tense shoulders relaxed, but she still needed to be one hundred percent sure. "Mrs. Sheridan, can you tell me anything about the pink rabbit in your display cabinet?"

  Margaret smiled as she sat down. "Fancy you noticing that. It's identical to the one I knitted for Aileen when she was about eight months old. He was her favourite toy, and she called him Pee, because she couldn't say Peter Rabbit. She carried him everywhere, and I made sure she had him when they took her away. I started to knit that one in the cabinet the next day, and tried to picture her still carrying him around. Silly, really, as I expect her new parents gave her lots of toys, and little Peter was probably thrown away."

  Kara glanced at Ryan who gave her a small nod. She pulled the printed copy of the photograph from her folder. "Peter Rabbit wasn't thrown away. This is the earliest photo I have of my mom."

  She handed the small photo to Margaret and held her breath, unsure of how she would react.

  As Margaret stared down at the photo, her jaw slackened, and her hand flew to her chest. "Oh, Jaysus," she whispered. "Oh, Holy Mother and all the Saints." In the next second, she raised her voice. "Jon! Jonny, come here!"

  Jon appeared at the door, his face creased in concern. "What is it? What's the matter?"

  "It's Aileen!" Margaret gasped. "This is Aileen. Look, Jonny, she's holding Peter Rabbit."

  Jon moved to sit next to his wife on the couch, took the photo from her, and studied it. He put his arm around her. "Are you sure, darlin'? Are you absolutely sure?"

  "O' course I am, you silly man. I couldn't ever forget my own daughter, could I?"

  Margaret's voice was choked, and tears trickled down her cheeks. Kara's eyes brimmed, and she reached to squeeze Ryan's hand.

  For a long minute, no one spoke. Margaret and Jon gazed transfixed at the photograph, and Kara had no idea what to say next.

  Eventually Jon looked across at her. "And this is your mother?" She nodded, and he smiled. "Then I—" His voice broke and he swallowed a couple of times. "I can't begin to tell you how amazed and thrilled we both are to welcome you, our granddaughter, to our home."

  Kara's eyes widened. "Our? You mean you—?"

  Margaret gave her a tremulous smile. "Jon was – is – Aileen's father."

  "Oh!" Her word came out like a squeak as she took in this unexpected information. "Oh, I never thought—"

  "Did you think I might have slept around and not known the father of my baby?" Margaret asked gently.

  "I—" The heat rushed to Kara's cheeks. "I didn't know what to think."

  "Then we have a lot to tell you, but first—" Margaret stood and held out her arms. "Jon put my own feelings into words, although I can hardly believe we actually have Aileen's daughter, our granddaughter, here with us, after all these years."

  Kara stood, too, and let herself be enfolded in a hug by both Margaret and Jon, an embrace that reached deep into her emotions. These were her grandparents. Her Irish grandparents.

  "I'm not sure what to call you now," she said.

  "Our grandchildren call us Nana and Granddad."

  "You have other grandchildren?"

  Jon nodded. "Indeed we do, and they are your cousins, of course. But let's sit down and have some tea and brack, and we'll tell you everything."

  During the next two hours, the whole story unfolded. Margaret and Jon first met and fell in love when she was a student nurse, and he was a finance officer at Temple Street Hospital. When she knew she was pregnant, she didn't tell him.

  "Back in the 1950s, he would have lost his job if it was discovered he had fathered an illegitimate child," she explained. "And student nurses weren't allowed to continue their training if they became pregnant or got married. I would have to leave the nurses' home, and Jon only had one room in a lodging house, so I went home to Galway."

  Jon squeezed her hand. "And I thought she'd grown tired of me. I went back to Cork for Christmas, to my parents' home, and when I returned to Dublin, she wasn't there. All they would tell me at the hospital was that she had left. They wouldn't give me her home address, and although I searched the phone directory, very few people had telephones at that time."

  Margaret smiled at him. "I thought it was the only thing I could do, but I was so worried and scared, I wasn't thinking straight."

  "What happened when you went home?" Kara asked.

  "I told my parents I didn't like nursing, which was a silly thing to say, because I wanted to be a nurse for as long as I could remember, so I knew they didn't believe me."

  "Did you tell them you were pregnant?"

  "After a few days, I plucked up the courage to tell my mother, and I'll never forget the fear in her eyes, because it mirrored my own. Fear of telling my father. He was a very strict and stern man, you see, but well respected as the head teacher at a boys' primary school, and a sacristan at Sacred Heart Church. What will we tell your father? my mam said. He'll never live down the shame of this. His only daughter, an unwed mother at nineteen. Anyhow, she said she wouldn't tell him, but arranged for me to go and stay with one of her cousins in England. Then, the evening before I was due to go, my father came home with the priest, and said, Is your bag packed? I nodded, and he went on, Now go with Father O'Malley, and don't ever come back here."

  Kara gasped. "How did he find out? Did your mother tell him?"

  "No, she was as scared of him as I was. Maybe he guessed, I never knew. But his word was law in our house, and that's how I ended up at Ballykane."

  "Did you not try to contact Jon?"

  "Not until after Aileen was born. She was such a beautiful baby, and I desperately wanted him to see her. So I wrote to him several times, at the hospital, and at his lodging house."

  "But I didn't receive any of her letters," Jon said.

  Margaret nodded. "Probably because the nuns tore them up. And that's reminded me, Kara – you said you'd met Bernie O'Brien, and she's a nun now?"

  Kara recounted her meetings with Sister Gabriel, and everything the nun had told her about her life and her decision to take Holy Orders, and went on to describe her meeting with Theresa.

  "Oh, I thought Theresa was so brave," Margaret said. "She didn't care what she said to anyone, and she was often in trouble for giving cheek or talking when it was forbidden. I didn't know Bernie very well, but I do recall she ran away several times. I was far more timid, and tried hard to do everything right and not annoy the nuns."

  "Sister Gabriel said you worked in the children's nursery at Ballykane."

  "I did, which meant I was luckier than most of the girls, who were only allowed to see their babies for about an hour each evening. At least I could see my Aileen all day, although it was hard not being able to give her my undivided attention because we had a lot of babies and toddlers to care for, and so many of them were weak or poorly."

  "What happened when they took Aileen away? If you want to tell me, of course, because the memory must be painful for you."

  "It is, but you need to know, and your mother, too. When Aileen was ten months old, I was summoned to Reverend Mother's office, and she said I had to sign some papers. I knew what they were, because the other girls told me, and I refused. She said, You must sign, and I begged and begged her to let Aileen stay with me. By this time I was down on my knees, crying, but she pulled me up by my hair, pushed the pen into my hand, and said, Sign it, girl."

  Kara winced. "She must have been completely heartless."

  "Indeed she was. She went on about me having to be punished for the sin I had committed, but, of
course, that was drummed into us from the minute we set foot in the home. We were moral degenerates who could not be allowed to keep our children. Then came the ultimate emotional blackmail, about how selfish I would be to condemn my child to a life of poverty and deprivation, instead of letting her go to a family who would give her far more than I could." Margaret shook her head. "I couldn't argue against that, because it was true. I had no job and nowhere to live, and so I signed the papers."

  "And was that the day when Aileen was taken away?"

  Margaret's face creased. "It was. I ran up the two flights of stairs to the nursery, although I could hardly see through my tears, and as I got to the door, Sister Ursula came out carrying Aileen. While I was in the Reverend Mother's room, they'd dressed her in a lovely pale blue coat and bonnet, with white socks and little blue shoes – things I'd never seen before, and she held out her arms to me and smiled and said Mama. Sister Ursula let me hold her for a minute, and I was crying as I hugged her and kissed her. I kept whispering, I love you, I love you, please remember I love you."

  Margaret stopped and swallowed a few times, and Kara wiped the tears from her cheeks. When Ryan slipped his arm around her and tightened his hand on her upper arm, she sensed he was struggling with his emotions, too.

  "They only gave you a minute to say goodbye to her?" she asked.

  Margaret nodded. "Another nun came to the door, and she held me from behind, pinned me by both my arms, while Sister Ursula took Aileen from me and set off down the stairs. I struggled, even elbowed the nun's bosom, and managed to break free but by that time they'd reached the bottom of the stairs, and the last I saw of Aileen was a wee glimpse before they turned into the corridor. Then I fell on the floor in a heap and broke my heart."

  For a few moments, there was silence, apart from the ticking of the clock on the mantelshelf. Jon patted his wife's hand. "Tell them about Peter Rabbit, darlin', so they'll know there was at least one nun with some humanity at Ballykane."

  Margaret smiled. "Oh, yes. Well, the nun yanked me up from the floor, and told me to go back into the nursery. There are plenty more babies for you to look after, she said. I ran across to Aileen's cot, and grabbed the bed sheet and held it to my face, because it still smelled of Aileen, and then I saw Peter in the cot, and I was beside myself. She must have Peter Rabbit, I kept crying. She won't go to sleep without Peter. And Sister Monica, bless her, came and took Peter from me, and said, I'll make sure she gets him. And she came back about ten minutes later and said she'd given him to Aileen. I never knew whether she did or whether she was saying that to make me feel better. At least, not until I saw this picture." She looked down at the photo again, and back at Kara. "I simply can't tell you how much this means to me."

  "I'm sure Kara will let us copy it," Jon said, "and we'll have it enlarged."

  "I have a lot more photos here."

  While Margaret and Jon studied all the photos, Kara told them about her mother's adoptive parents. "They were in their late thirties when they adopted my mom. I don't know why they couldn't have their own children, but they were devoted to her. They called her Linda Jane."

  "Linda Jane. That's a pretty name. Did they tell her she was adopted?" Margaret asked.

  "Yes, and she knows she was born in Ireland." Kara hesitated, unsure of how or even whether to tell them about her mother's attitude. Maybe she should leave that until later. She smiled. "Mom and Dad have always been fans of the Fighting Irish, That's the football team at Notre Dame, where they both went to college, and my brother Matthew is in his senior year there now. Here's a photo of Mom when she graduated."

  "What did she study?"

  "Math and Statistics, and she worked as a financial adviser with Morgan Stanley in New York City."

  Margaret smiled. "Sounds like she takes after you, Jon."

  "You haven't told us how you found each other again," Ryan said. "Which obviously you did."

  "Yes, but not for three years, and then only by chance," Margaret replied. "About two weeks after Aileen had gone, they sent me to Our Lady's Hospital in Crumlin."

  "That wasn't the hospital where you'd worked before, was it?"

  "No, no, I had to go somewhere where I wasn't known, but I did contact someone I knew at Temple Street Hospital, and she said Jon was no longer there. Someone else told me he was working for the Bank of Ireland, but I couldn't get any information from them. I even went to where he used to live, but the whole row of houses had been demolished. I had no idea how to find him, and so I continued my training, and qualified in 1963. The night after we got our exam results, some of us went to the Nag's Head pub in town to celebrate, and I had the shock of my life when I walked in and saw Jon standing at the bar."

  Jon laughed. "And I dropped my glass of Guinness, remember? It smashed on the floor, and I stood there in a pool of beer and froth thinking I was dreaming. I'd given up all hope of ever finding Margaret again, but that night a friend of mine had his stag night at the pub. Was it chance or was it pre-destined? Who knows?"

  Margaret smiled. "And we were married just over a year later, in September, 1964."

  "What about your parents?" Kara asked. "Did they come to your wedding?"

  "My mother did, but not my father. He never forgave me. Such a proud, stubborn man. Mam had to make an excuse to come to Dublin, because he wouldn't allow my name to be mentioned at home. It's so sad, because he never saw his grandchildren, who are your uncle and aunt, of course." Margaret turned to Jon, about to say something more, but he had already stood.

  "I'll fetch the photo from the dining room," he said.

  Kara smiled at this evidence of Jon almost reading his wife's mind. It was wonderful to see this couple in their seventies so perfectly attuned to each other.

  "Patrick Thomas was born in 1966," Margaret went on. "I gave him my father's name as his second name, but it didn't make any difference, my father never saw him. And Susan Aileen was born in 1968. I don't need to explain her second name, do I? They're both married now. Pat has two sons and a daughter, and Sue has a son and daughter. Pat's older son, Jonathan, got married last year. He's twenty-five, and his wife is expecting her first baby in November, so we'll soon be great-grandparents."

  Jon returned with a framed photo of the family group at Jonathan's wedding, and Kara gazed at each one in turn as Margaret explained who they all were. This was her new family. Her mother's siblings, and their children, her cousins. Patrick resembled his father, but Susan and her daughter both had the same features and colouring as Margaret.

  "Susan looks very like my mom," she said with a smile, before raising tentative eyes to Margaret. "Do she and Patrick know about Aileen?"

  Margaret nodded. "They do, although we didn't tell them until they were in their twenties. I was worried about how they would react to knowing I had a baby when I was unmarried and in my teens. It's not something you want to share with your teenage children, is it?"

  "I guess not. What happened when you finally told them?"

  "They were both shocked, and also very angry. Not about me having the baby, but about how I was forced to give her up for adoption, without knowing where in the world she was taken." Margaret smiled at Jon. "Pat drove to Ballykane the next day, didn't he? And when he discovered the home had been demolished, he went to the convent in Galway to demand answers, which, of course, they wouldn't give him."

  "We'd tried that already, hadn't we, darlin'? Once we met up again, we went to Ballykane several times in the sixties, trying to find out where Aileen was."

  "And the nuns waved my signed statement at us, saying I'd sworn never to attempt to find my child. I didn't even know if she was still in Ireland, or whether she had been sent to England or America."

  "Sister Gabriel said you wrote several letters to the convent," Kara said.

  "I did, over a dozen, but all I received was a standard letter, with the excuse of missing records. Did your mother ever write to the convent? I imagine she got the same kind of response. But that doesn't ma
tter anymore, does it? The important thing is that you have found us, and now we can look forward to seeing Aileen – although I should get used to calling her Linda now, shouldn't I? Will you ring her or shall I?"

  "Perhaps Kara should ring her first," Jon said. "But do tell her we'll be more than happy to go over to America to meet her."

  Kara drew in a quick breath. "The thing is – and I'm not quite sure how to tell you this, but she doesn't know I've been searching for you. You see, she never wanted to find out anything more about you." When Margaret's face stilled, and Jon frowned, she went on, "Because she thinks she was given away by a mother who didn't want her."

  Margaret's eyes widened. "Oh, please, please, tell her that isn't true. Not a day has gone by without me thinking about her, wondering where she was, what she was doing, and whether she was happy. Every year on her birthday, I lit a candle for her at the church."

  Kara gave a small smile. "And that's something she will have to get used to, because the wrong date was entered on her adoption certificate. She thinks her birthday is April 2nd, so she's two months younger than she always thought. And of course I'll tell her everything you've told me today, Mrs. Sheri – Marg—" She broke off with an embarrassed grimace. "I'm sorry, I'm not sure what to call you now."

  Jon chuckled. "Call us Margaret and Jon, if you're more comfortable with that. After all, it's not every day you find a new set of grandparents, or indeed that we discover we have two grandchildren we knew nothing about. It takes some getting used to, doesn't it?"