Little Drifters: Part 3 of 4

‘What did you do that for?’ I asked, shocked.

‘That’s what happens when you back-chat me!’ Sister Helen replied. ‘Now go and get cleaned up!’

I was so mad right then I just wanted to run up to her and pull her stupid veil off her head. My fists clenched at my side, fingernails digging into my palms.

‘I said go!’ Sister Helen barked. ‘Get out of here, both of you!’

Lucy had already run upstairs and I followed behind, boiling with impotent rage. For the first time in our lives we could no longer protect each other. In Watersbridge we had to find a whole new way to survive.

Chapter 12

Grace

There was one nice person in our house and that was Grace, our cook.

She joined Watersbridge not long after we arrived, and from the moment she started working there our meals improved no end.

Now the fish that we had on Fridays actually tasted like fish, the sausages weren’t burned, the mash was creamy, not lumpy, and the stew was delicious, not just a watery bowl of tough meat and soggy vegetables. Grace was kind – she was an older woman with lovely curly, white hair, and unlike the other staff or the nuns she actually seemed to like us children. So I spent as much time as I could in the kitchen, helping her out and letting her peaceful, loving presence soothe and calm me.

One day, after I’d helped her wash, dry and put away the dishes, I sat at the kitchen table, staring forlornly out the window.

‘What’s the matter, Kathleen?’ she asked gently. ‘Don’t you want to go out and play with the others?’

I shook my head, scared to say what was on my mind.

‘Come on, petal,’ she urged. ‘Tell Grace. What’s wrong?’

‘Grace, how am I ever going to learn to read?’ I erupted. ‘All them other children can read and write and I don’t know how. I can’t even read the baby books!’

I was desperate to learn how to read and write but nobody at school ever made the effort to help me. The teacher was so fierce and angry the whole time I just tried to keep quiet and stay out of her way. All the while I was falling further and further behind. Now the lessons just drifted by in an incomprehensible blur. If I failed to do my homework I got called a ‘lazy tinker’ and made to stand outside the headmistress’s office. She had beaten me a few times too. Most of the other kids knew I was having problems and sometimes they’d do my work for me or they’d help me out if I was called on in class to give an answer. But it didn’t help me improve. I had been in Our Lady School for three months now and I was no better off than when I’d first arrived.

Grace looked at me with real concern.

‘I’ll teach you to read,’ she offered.

‘Really?’ I couldn’t believe my luck.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry. It’s not that difficult. We’ll just go step by step. First we have to learn how to spell. Let’s start here in the kitchen.’ She looked around and then went over to the cooker. ‘Right, this is a cooker.’

She sounded the word out: ‘Coo-ker. Get your pencil out. I’m going to write it down for you.’

So I scurried off to get my pencil and rough book. Bringing it back, she spelled out the word on the page then she pointed at every letter individually and read out each one: ‘That’s C-O-O-K-E-R. Right, now you try it.’

So I looked at her work and saw the word and looked at the letters. One by one, I copied them out, saying the sounds in my head as I did so. Then Grace made me do it again and again.

Then she pointed to one of the letters.

‘What’s that one?’ she asked.

‘It’s a K,’ I said.

‘Good!’ she smiled.

Finally, she turned the page over and said: ‘Now try spelling it on your own without looking.’

That was my first lesson. The next day we did table, then chair, fridge, floor, door, ceiling, plate and cup. By the end of the first week we’d exhausted all the words in the kitchen so Grace took me outside to the garden and we went through the whole process out there: sky, grass, house, window, boy, run. For weeks Grace put aside an hour every day to helping me learn to read and by the time I turned 11 I was able to keep up in class.

The only other person I liked was my music teacher in school. At first we just learned the recorder but I found very early on that when it came to music I could hear the tune and just pick out the notes afterwards. I suppose that came from my father. The music teacher was a tall, slim English lady called Deirdre and she was one of the only teachers in the whole school who treated me with kindness and respect. Perhaps because I was good at music, perhaps because she knew I got picked on by the other teachers, or maybe because she was simply a nice person, but for whatever reason she was good to me and I lapped it up. Within a short time she’d moved me on to the piano.

‘Oh, you’ve got a fine ear, Kathleen!’ she praised me whenever I managed to master a new song.

Twice a week for an hour, I shone. Me, Kathleen, the dirty tinker, the girl from the orphanage. I could be somebody. And I could make music with my own hands. I felt uplifted, I felt happy.

And for much of the rest of the time I just muddled along. By now I could keep up in English and History but my Maths was shocking. So bad in fact that our male teacher gave up almost immediately. I was so far behind he simply refused to teach me, and during lessons I’d either sit at the back, working on something else, or I’d go out and walk around the playground until it was time for a new lesson. The nuns at the orphanage didn’t care – there were tests at school and most of the children sat them but they didn’t bother with us orphanage kids. We weren’t important enough, we were never expected to make anything of our lives so we just got left to sink or swim. If it hadn’t been for Grace the cook I would have gone through my whole school life without even being able to read.

Three months into our new life at St Beatrice’s we saw Mammy.

Every Wednesday the nuns herded all of the older children into the local swimming baths for an afternoon of swimming. It was fun – there would be about 60 of us all jumping, splashing, shouting and paddling around. There were no lessons so it took me a little while to learn how to swim. In fact, it was Tara that made me. I’d always be clinging to the edge, terrified of letting go. She’d pull me out to the middle of the pool and then swim away, making me doggy-paddle my way back to the edge. Eventually I stopped screaming in terror every time she did it and realised that I was swimming quite well on my own. From then, we had a grand old time, playing and swimming about.

But afterwards, in the changing rooms, it was always a desperate struggle to get back into our clothes without being seen by the staff.

Most of us now were growing and developing and we were embarrassed about our bodies. But there wasn’t a towel for everyone so we’d have to share and Tara and I would hold it up for each other like a wall while the other one changed behind it, sometimes clambering into our clothes still dripping wet. There was one member of staff who looked after another house called Winifred. Winifred was a harsh lady and we all hated her. She’d line up her girls in the changing room every Wednesday and insist they change in front of her. They’d all stand there, naked, shivering, wishing the ground would swallow them up. We tried not to look, afraid of being shouted at by Winifred or making the girls’ humiliation even worse. One poor girl was more developed than the rest – she had proper breasts and hair down there – and it was always torture for her to stand in front of everyone. This one girl always tried cringing behind a little towel but Winifred would whip it away from her.

‘What are you hiding yourself for?’ she’d demand to know. ‘What have you got that the rest of us don’t? Eh? Nothing special about you!’

We were all thankful that Sister Helen and Rosie never felt the need to come into the changing room.

Once changed, we would all be marched across town, set by set, led by a member of the staff from our house. One Wednesday we were just on our way back and Tara and I had fallen behind the others a little way. We were dawdling and messing about when suddenly Tara stopped dead, her face drained of all colour. I followed the path of her gaze towards a blonde woman across the street. It was Mammy!

‘Mammy!’ I shouted, and we both ran towards her. The woman turned round, alarmed, and in that moment I saw the face I’d been dreaming of for years. The face I’d longed to see so very much. But instead of being full of warmth and love, the face was a mask of fear. And then she ran. She ran as fast as she could and we raced after her, dodging in and out through the crowds of people, still shouting: ‘Mammy! Mammy!’

She was so quick and nimble, we couldn’t keep track of her, and after a little while weaving between people we lost her. Tara and I stopped, looking all around, but we couldn’t see her. Bewildered and hurt, I turned to my sister: ‘She ran! Why did she run?’

Tara now was cursing our mother to hell.

‘Why? Because she’s a stupid bitch! I hate her, Kathleen! I hate the living sight of her. I hate her and I hope that she dies!’

My sister’s words were harsh – I could see she was hurting but I couldn’t feel the same, I couldn’t hate my mother. I was just devastated and baffled. Our mother had come back to Ireland; she’d even managed to find her way to where all her children had been taken. I didn’t expect her to come back and get us all – I knew we weren’t getting out now till we were 16. There was nothing she could do about that. But she could have stopped to say hello.

After all these years dreaming of a reunion, silently praying for my mother to come and rescue me, to take me in her arms and tell me that she loved me, she had run away from me. Why had she run?

That night in bed, Tara and I whispered to each other.

‘That was definitely Mammy,’ I told her, as much to reassure myself as her.

‘That was definitely her,’ she agreed. ‘If it wasn’t her, she wouldn’t have run away. Can you imagine, Kathleen? Running away from your own flesh and blood? Don’t you just hate her for it? I won’t waste another second thinking or talking about that woman. She’s as good as dead to me now. Our daddy was too good for her.’

When it came to our father, we knew one thing for sure: he loved us and he would never have run from us, no matter what. In fact, as soon as he was released from hospital he came to see us in Watersbridge. It was the biggest surprise when he just wandered into the kitchen one day, whistling away and beaming from ear to ear. We jumped up and all raced towards him. He picked us all up one by one, swinging us around.

‘What are you doing here?’ Rosie said when she came in to investigate the hullabaloo.

Daddy smiled at her pleasantly: ‘I’ve come to see my little girls, haven’t I?’

‘No, you’re not supposed to be here,’ she replied primly, pulling her black woollen cardigan over her gigantic breasts.

Daddy towered over her.

‘And who says I’m not? No reason I can’t see my kids – and take them out to get sweets!’

And with that me, Tara, Lucy and Libby started cheering enthusiastically.

‘Won’t be long!’ he called back to Rosie, now utterly stunned and stammering with unconcealed fury.

‘But, but …’

Daddy plonked Lucy on his shoulders, took Libby by the hand and Tara and I skipped gaily out the front door by his side.

It was so wonderful to see our father – he looked well again, and all the way to the sweet shop he asked us about our new life.

‘Yes, they treat us good, Daddy,’ Tara told him happily.

‘We like it here!’ I agreed. ‘There’s nice children and I’m going to school now.’

None of us told him the truth – what was the point? He couldn’t do anything about it now. We were all wards of the state until we turned 16. It would only have brought him anguish and more guilt.

‘We thought we saw our mammy in town,’ Tara confided later as we sat sharing a bag of toffees on the park bench.

‘Yes, I heard she was in town too but I ain’t seen her,’ he nodded sadly.

When he dropped us back at Watersbridge an hour later the police were there, and Rosie was standing next to them, shrieking and pointing at my father: ‘There he is, officer! That’s the man who abducted the children.’

‘What seems to be the problem, Officer?’ My Daddy turned on his famous charm. ‘These are my children and surely you won’t begrudge a man coming to visit his kids or taking them out for a toffee once in a while?’

‘Mr O’Shea,’ the officer said, nodding respectfully at my father. ‘According to our records you only have a twice-yearly visiting permit for these children. And that’s got to be at appointed visiting times.’

Rosie’s little head was bobbing along as he spoke.

‘That’s right!’ she announced triumphantly, jabbing her fat little finger at my daddy’s chest. ‘Twice yearly. And appointed times. You can’t just swan in here without asking and take the children away.’

Sister Helen was standing on the other side of Rosie, smiling coldly at us all. I could see she was acting a part to the police officers. The caring, saintly nun. You’d never believe for a moment that this kindly-looking woman, who’d dedicated her life to the Lord, spent most of her day walloping the heads of little children.

‘Come along now.’ She put on her posh voice as she bundled us inside. ‘Let the officers sort this out with your father. It’s tea-time.’

Daddy winked at us all as we looked back at him longingly.

‘See you next week!’ he called out after us, and we laughed as Rosie exploded at him again.

Nothing on this earth would have kept my father from us. It’s true he only had visitation rights twice a year but he ignored that as much as he ignored Rosie and the nuns. Every two or three weeks he’d come wandering into the house, wherever we’d happen to be, and he’d take us out for toffees. The nuns called the police on him again and again, but only succeeded in annoying the police.

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