by Shane Dunphy
‘You know,’ Ben said, ‘it’s possible we’ve just done her the biggest favour of her life. She might just benefit hugely. Could put her on the road to recovery.’
‘Ben, I wish I could say I’d like that to happen.’
‘Just pray we haven’t underestimated her,’ Ben said, standing up and gathering his notes. ‘She could just run rings around the poor therapist and come out crazier than she went in.’
15
If Katie’s family were living in Meath when she had been found in Dolphin’s Barn with Alphonso Drake, then there were only a couple of routes they could have taken on the way into Dublin. I figured it would be unlikely they’d use only back roads, so I spent a few days, with Katie beside me, travelling the highways and byways in an attempt to see if any of the landscapes might jog the girl’s memory: could we find the spot where she had been abandoned?
The idea actually came to me during the case review with Vera. Her speech about hurt ‘breeding in the silence’ had impressed me, in a perverse kind of way. Katie seemed to have very effectively repressed all memories of any time with her uncle. I reasoned that, by confronting it head on, we might find the key to her anger and resentment.
The problem, however, was that nothing seemed to ring any bells. We approached Ireland’s capital city using the obvious route, past the Blanchardstown shopping centre and via the Red Cow roundabout. Katie simply seemed bored. ‘Can we get something to eat?’ she asked, as I surreptitiously watched her in my peripheral vision, waiting for her to break down, or at the very least shout ‘Eureka’.
Another day, I tried a more circuitous path, coming through Athboy and taking the winding country roads through Sallins, coming out on to the Naas dual carriageway. Katie sat back in the comfortable seat of my Austin, listening to Gerry Ryan discuss the hygiene conditions of some of his callers’ automobiles.
‘You keep this car really clean,’ Katie commented. ‘Even if it is an old piece of shite.’
‘Thanks. I appreciate the vote of confidence,’ I said.
‘You’re welcome,’ Katie said, rolling down the window. ‘I just farted, by the way.’
It was three days later that I identified the gaping hole in my plan. I was sitting in the kitchen at the unit, with Dorothy and a new member of staff, Tina. Tina had just returned from a holiday in Turkey. Regardless of the fact that she had been on the job for less than a week, the woman seemed to think we might enjoy the vast collection of photographs she had taken while on vacation. Dorothy and I spent an hour and a half, which felt much longer, viewing various snaps of Tina and her middle-aged friends reclining on the beach, drinking vulgar-looking cocktails in a variety of (mostly Irish) bars, and draped around a selection of swarthily handsome, and considerably younger, men. We ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ in all the right places, and were reaching the blissful end of the process when Katie wandered into the room.
‘Watcha doin’?’ she asked, sitting on the edge of the table.
‘We’re looking at some pictures of Tina’s holidays,’ Dorothy said, trying to hide the pain in her voice and the look of abject boredom that was fighting to erupt on her face.
Seeing an opportunity to escape, I piped up: ‘Have you ever been on holiday, Katie?’
‘Ah, yeah, with some of the other units I was in. We went to Courtown a few times.’
A thought suddenly occurred to me. ‘Did you go away when you were at home?’
She thought for a moment, then nodded. ‘Yeah. We went to Courtown as well. Popular holiday destination, Courtown.’
That was it. I excused myself and rang Thelma Rice.
‘Thelma, I need you to think – what time of year was it when you got that call to go out to Dolphin’s Barn?’
‘It was the summer,’ Thelma said immediately. ‘Either late July or early August.’
Of course. It made perfect sense. How many parents, on long drives with small children in the back seat, have imagined stopping the car and dumping their noisy, whining brats on the roadside, then pulling away from the kerb, immersed in blissful silence? It’s a common fantasy, and one that, usually, remains just that – in the realms of make-believe. Had Katie’s father acted upon his cruel impulse, actually ejecting his four-year-old daughter from the car, leaving her miles from home?
The problem was that the Dublin-to-Wexford road had changed dramatically in the ten years since Katie’s alleged abandonment. There was now a motorway, which had not existed back then, a series of flyovers and several roundabouts that would make the approach to Dublin much less familiar than I would have liked. I decided to give it a go anyway.
I made a mix-tape of songs and pieces of music I knew Katie liked, and told her we were taking a trip. The approaches from Meath hadn’t taken up much time – none more than an hour, and I had sneaked them in by taking her to see the Hill of Tara, or going to Bettystown, then home through Dublin. The N11, however, was off the beaten track, and there was a risk that Katie might become bored. But the dark-haired girl just shrugged and took her coat. ‘It’s not like I’m doin’ much else,’ she said.
During our extended drives, I had come up with a game to keep us occupied. It was based on something my sister used to play on long journeys when we were kids, and was all about observation. The game had three different levels: the first stage involved each person looking for red cars. You had to shout out ‘red car’ before your competitor did when you spotted one, and, if you got in first, you were given a point. The goal at this juncture was to reach a score of twenty red cars. You then went on to stage two. In this part of the contest, you had to spot red cars with yellow registration plates, the cry here being ‘red car yellow reg’. These were, of course, much less common, so you had to observe only five of them. The final section involved spotting one yellow car – which is harder than you might think. The game could easily take more than an hour to complete, and I was amazed to find that Katie quite readily stuck with it and became extremely proficient. In fact, her eagerness far outstripped mine, and there were many occasions when I wished I had never conceived of the diversion.
The N11 dual carriageway segues on to the M50 motorway just after the Bray flyover. I didn’t think there was much chance Katie had been left on the roadside anywhere before this point, because she would never have been able to make it into the city from anywhere further away than that.
A decade earlier the road would have run past the Cornelscourt shopping centre, and then on past Donnybrook. Katie’s father would have had to go into the city centre, and then on through Phibsboro to link on to the M50 and from there take the road to Meath. Now there are three routes a driver can take: one that goes to Montrose and from there into the city; one on to the M50 and then to Belfast; and one that goes to Dún Laoghaire and the coast. I took the first exit to the left, and then the second off the roundabout, which led towards the city.
‘Red car yellow reg!’ Katie bellowed.
‘Where?’ I had been concentrating on navigating and hadn’t really been looking out for our targets.
‘There – quick or you’ll miss it!’
I saw the rear end of a red Fiesta, which did indeed have a yellow registration. ‘Okay, that puts you on two in this round.’
‘Yeah, and you don’t even have twenty red cars yet.’
‘You’re the champ, Katie.’
‘I know. I’m so great.’
‘Right, then, I’m back in the game now, and I bet you a bar of chocolate at the next petrol station that I’ll be even with you within the next ten minutes.’
‘No way! You’re on. And I’d like a Mint Aero, please.’
‘You can buy me a Yorkie, when I win.’
‘I don’t have any money.’
‘Yes, you do!’
‘No, I … hang on a minute – I know this place.’
Cornelscourt shopping centre loomed on our left. ‘Stop the car,’ Katie said suddenly. I signalled and pulled over. The child flung open the door and was out on the roadside,
running, almost before the car came to a stop. I switched on my hazard lights and went after her. She stopped a hundred yards from where I parked, her head lowered, her breathing harsh.
‘What is it, Katie? Tell me what’s wrong?’ I remained well back, giving her space.
‘Why did you bring me here?’ she asked, her back to me. There was no anger in her voice, just resignation.
‘You asked me to stop.’
She squatted down, resting her hands on the grass verge. ‘Here,’ she said in a rasp. ‘It was right here.’
‘What? What happened here?’
‘I was only small. Just a little girl.’ She stood up again, and paced up and down. ‘I’d been bold on the trip up from Wexford. I wanted to go to the toilet, and he wouldn’t stop, so I wet myself. He got real mad, ’cause I’d pissed all over the seat of the car. He shouted at me, and I started to cry. He said to me: “If you don’t stop roarin’, I’m goin’ t’ come in back and give you somethin’ to really cry about.” So I stopped. Only, it was hard not to cry, ’cause I felt rotten. I was embarrassed I’d pissed myself, and I was all wet and it smelled bad. I began to feel sick.’
She sat down all of a sudden, as if her legs would not hold her up any more. ‘I told him. I said: “Daddy, I’m gonna be sick.”’ Her voice took on the timbre of a four-year-old’s. It was eerie to hear. ‘“Fuckin’ hell,” he said, and he stopped the car, right over there.’ She pointed to a spot a little behind where the Austin stood idle. ‘I opened the door and sort of fell out on to the grass. I scratched my knee, and it hurt, but I crawled, right to here, and I puked. I remember I’d had cornflakes for breakfast, and they were in it, and some spaghetti hoops I’d had for dinner the night before. Isn’t it funny that I remember that?’
I nodded.
‘While I was pukin’ I heard the car revving. I couldn’t look up or move, because I didn’t want to get sick all over myself. I was already stinkin’ of wee. I think I heard him shoutin’ at me, but I’m not certain about that. Then, when I was sure that I wasn’t goin’ to get sick again, I looked up. But the car wasn’t where it had been. It was far away, off up the road. I – I didn’t understand what had happened. I thought he was playin’ a trick on me, and I remember that I stood up, and I ran after him.’ She struggled to stand and began to lope awkwardly in the direction of the city, an almost exact approximation of a clumsy, four-year-old’s run. ‘Daddy! Daddy! I’m okay now, I feel better. I’m sorry …’ She stopped. ‘Don’t leave me here, Daddy. Please come back.’ Then the tears came. I had only ever seen her cry noiselessly before. This, however, was not quiet. The abandoned child had returned, had possessed her, and all the panic, anguish and loss fell upon her with savage ferocity. She screamed, beat the earth and turned around in frantic circles. I remained where I was, not wanting to crowd her or confuse her with my presence, until I sensed she was about to lose any last vestige of control. Her eyes had become wide and staring, and I was worried she would turn the mania upon herself. I stood up and went to her swiftly, wrapping my arms around her slim frame. She fought against me at first, then looked up, her thin face tear-streaked and twisted in misery. ‘Help me,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, God, help me, Shane.’
‘I’m right here,’ I said, holding her tightly. ‘I won’t leave you, Katie. I won’t leave you alone.’
Cornelscourt is slightly more than eight miles from Dolphin’s Barn. The following day I parked in the shopping centre and hiked the route that, ten years earlier, a terrified little girl had been forced to traverse. I was thirty years old and exercised regularly, but when I finally arrived in that fine old area of Dublin, I knew I’d been for a long walk.
How Katie had done it, how long it had taken her and how she had remembered that she had a relative in the city, not to mention managed to find his house, I never discovered. Dorothy suggested that she must have got it wrong, that her father had to have left her closer to Alphonso’s home. ‘Or maybe it was another shopping centre. There are a couple much nearer to Dolphin’s Barn. He could well have left her just outside one, knowing she’d find her way from there.’
Ben wondered if the Rhodes family might actually have been regular visitors to the old man in those days, and that it was the obvious place for Katie to go. ‘Children are remarkably resilient,’ he reminded me. ‘Her subconscious would have kicked in, acted kind of like a homing instinct.’
Loretta, the woman I shared my office with, suggested to me that Katie’s father may have doubled back and picked her up, then dropped her off closer to her uncle’s house.
‘It could have taken him fifteen, twenty minutes to double back, which would have felt like for ever to a four-year-old who’d just been turfed out on to the roadside,’ Loretta said, chewing the end of her pen and peering at me through her Buddy Holly glasses. ‘She could easily have repressed that part of the memory. It just doesn’t seem possible to me that she made it that far.’
I decided it wasn’t important. The truth was she had been forsaken by her father. Katie had good reason to be as incensed at the world as she was. It had treated her with callous disregard.
I can only imagine the torment that child went through during that lonely march, the road stretching before her like an endless track to nowhere, cars zooming past full of uncaring faces, the sense of disorientation a constant companion. I have thought of it often, tried to put myself in her place, but I can’t. It is just too far beyond my own formative experiences to comprehend. Katie chose, in the peculiar, common-sense way children have, not to dwell on the awful memory. While she made reference to it in subsequent conversations, she never directly discussed it ever again. It was as if that part of her life had been unearthed, examined and could now be reinterred, to rest in peace.
An ideal placement was found for Patrick, and shortly after he had come to stay with me he moved to the home of an experienced foster family, who were happy to have him over the long term, if necessary. I continued to see the boy as often as I could, and, to my chagrin, the subject of his birth family was a regular topic of conversation.
I hedged around the subject, trying to buy myself some time. The truth was that Patrick’s family had proved ridiculously easy to find. Like so many poor families, they never strayed far from where they had always lived, in a block of local-authority flats near the Haroldstown area of the city. I knew this part of town well – it was gangland, an urban wasteland beset by drugs, prostitution and hopelessness. Patrick’s description of living ‘out in the country’ must have stemmed from the number of horses that could be found in proliferation around the flats and estates, and from the huge amount of disused waste- and scrubland. Even in this era of the Celtic Tiger, places like Haroldstown languished in a state of torpor. No one, not even the government, wanted to invest in them. Houses and flats sat for years in states of neglect, windows boarded up, with squatters and homeless people using them as toilets and places to shoot up heroin or drink flagons of cheap cider.
Patrick had, during his time with Gertrude and Percy, become so far removed from this type of life, was so alien to it, that I wondered if anything positive could come from taking him back there.
One evening he was over at my apartment. Christmas being just around the corner, we were baking mince pies, while listening to Phil Spector. I had made short-crust pastry, and Patrick was rolling it out.
‘Why do they call that stuff mincemeat?’ Patrick asked, motioning at the jar of fruit, spices and liquor.
I was mixing an egg wash. ‘They actually used to put minced beef into it. I have a recipe for pies that includes real meat, but I’m afraid I’m not a brave enough gourmet to try it.’
‘It might be interesting,’ Patrick said, setting aside the rolling pin and beginning to grease the pie tin without having to be asked.
‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll dig out the book, and we can give it a shot. But you’re trying one of the pies first – deal?’
‘Hold on, now,’ Patrick said, laughing. ‘I might have
to think about that one.’
We worked on in companionable silence.
‘I’ve found your folks,’ I said, at last.
He walked over to the table and ripped off some kitchen towel to wipe the butter from his fingers. ‘Where are they?’
‘In the city. About a twenty-minute drive from here.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘No. They were never anywhere else, from what I can gather. They’re still in the same place as when you lived with them.’
‘That cottage?’
I cleared my throat. ‘No. They live in a block of flats, Patrick.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. I’m certain.’
The boy came back over to the counter and began to use a pastry cutter to make bases for the pies. ‘When can I go and meet them?’
‘I can take you tomorrow.’
‘Excellent! Thanks a million, Shane. This is like the best Christmas present ever!’
‘Don’t thank me yet, Patrick. I want you to think about the reality of what you’re proposing to do. We could find that they’re exactly as you recall, and you’ll begin to rebuild your relationship with them, and it’ll be great. On the other hand, it might be very different from what you expect. You have some lovely memories of your home, of your mum and dad, and your baby sister. Do you want to risk losing all of those wonderful recollections? You could just keep on living with them, and be content.’
Patrick finished putting the round pieces of pastry into their individual cases and pulled over the jar of mincemeat. ‘I’ve thought about very little else since we decided to find them, Shane. I really want to do it.’
‘Okay. Then you need to understand something, and it’s not an easy thing to accept.’
‘I can take it.’
‘I know you can. But it’s not a pleasant thing to hear. Your father and mother signed what’s called a Voluntary Care Order, which means they made a decision to put you and Bethany in the care of the state. That order is still good, Patrick. It’s on your file – I checked. That means that they could have taken you back at any time and, for whatever reason, didn’t.’
