Читать книгу Secret Child - Andrew Crofts - Страница 9
Chapter Five Back to the Beginning
ОглавлениеI stood outside the Regina Coeli Hostel with Patrick’s map clutched in my hand for at least twenty minutes, maybe more, trying to work out what I wanted to do next. What was I hoping to achieve here? Was I going to be able to deal with the emotions which I could already feel welling up inside me?
Half of me wanted to run into the building like I used to when I was a small boy, and half of me could hear my mother’s voice inside my head, telling me that we were never going to ‘go back’ and that I must put all such thoughts out of my mind. Had I betrayed her by even coming to look for the place?
The more I stared at the shabby buildings and the overgrown gardens, the more I remembered and the more torn I felt. Part of me was excited at the thought of going back to explore my distant childhood, but the other part was worried that I would be disappointed, disillusioned, or that my memories might prove to be false. Perhaps the past wasn’t quite the paradise that I had believed it to be. There must have been a reason why Mammy forbade me to even think of coming back.
It was fifty years since I had stood on this spot, but it was beginning to feel like it was only yesterday. The difference was that now, looking through adult eyes, I could imagine just how frightening it must have been for my mother when she knocked on the door for the first time with her ‘terrible secret’ growing inside her.
I noticed that the front door was standing ajar but no one seemed to be coming in or out. A kind of silence hung over the place. It was certainly no longer the buzzing hive of activity that I remembered. Taking a deep breath, I pushed my doubts aside, walked up the path and pressed the bell. I couldn’t hear any ringing but I waited a few more minutes, with my heart thumping in my ears, before sticking my head in and calling out, ‘Hello? Anyone there?’
A woman who I guessed must be in her sixties appeared through an internal door which I remembered led to a small office. ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ she said politely. ‘Can I help you at all?’
‘Hello,’ I replied, as nervous as a naughty small boy who had missed a curfew. ‘Good afternoon. I’m looking for Regina Coeli … Is this it?’
‘Yes, sir,’ she smiled at me kindly as if realising that I needed encouragement and gentle handling. ‘My name is Mary, would you like to come in?’
I accepted the invitation and followed her into the office. Everything in the room looked so familiar; everywhere I looked another memory was triggered.
‘This was my childhood home,’ I blurted. ‘I’ve been searching for it for a long time, with no success at all. I feel a bit like I have just struck gold.’
She smiled at me, nodding her understanding and looking entirely unsurprised, as if she had heard this story a thousand times before.
‘It’s God’s will that you are here now,’ she said quietly, gesturing for me to sit down.
‘I want to find out more about Regina Coeli and the mothers and children who lived here at the same time that I did,’ I said. ‘I’m trying to find details about the people here at that time.’
‘When would we be talking about?’ Mary asked.
‘The 1950s. I left in 1962.’
‘Ah, well then, I was here in the sixties, but I was very young, no more than a teenager myself.’
I did a quick mental calculation and realised that meant she must be in her seventies.
‘But we kept no records of the women who came here,’ she continued. ‘That was the policy, to allow them to have a private life. They could go under whatever name they chose and we never asked any questions. It was a refuge for the poor girls who wanted to keep their babies, who didn’t want to get taken into the Magdalene Laundries and have their babies taken away from them.’
This was the second time the subject of the Magdalene Laundries had come up that day. It seemed they still weighed heavily on the consciences of Dubliners.
‘Tell me your name,’ she said.
‘Gordon Lewis.’
‘Lewis,’ she mused. ‘Now, let me think …’
‘My mammy’s name was Kay McCrea, but she was originally Cathleen Crea …’
‘McCrea.’ She looked at me intently. ‘Now that does sound familiar, but it was a very long time ago. I’ve just brewed a pot of tea, would you join me in a cup?’
‘That would be very welcome, thank you.’
As she poured the tea she started to reminisce fondly about her early days. ‘So many memories,’ she said. ‘Over the years I met some lovely women. But what do you want to know about Regina Coeli, Gordon? You must tell me what you remember about living here and I’ll do my very best to fill in the gaps.’
‘The earliest memory I have,’ I said, taking the cup from her, ‘is of pushing a pram around the grounds. I can’t have been more than three years old. There were always prams to play with in the hostel because everyone had babies. We had no real toys but it never bothered us, we just played with whatever came to hand. We could be very inventive with sticks or paper bags, and occasionally there would be the highlight of a live mouse or rat, which we would hunt down with our sticks, the older boys in the lead and the rest of us following behind in a state of great excitement. We were like a pack of wild dogs. There was a constant supply of rats. I used to be frightened that if we managed to corner one it would attack me. The older boys loved to tell us stories about that sort of thing. The danger made it all the more exciting.’
Mary nodded her agreement, sitting down opposite and giving me her full attention as if she were just as eager to visit the past as I was.
‘Back then I was known as Francis, not Gordon,’ I went on. ‘I was blissfully ignorant about the outside world, not a care in the world. I remember everyone in the hostel was a woman or a child, although there was one man, just one, who would visit from time to time. He was a kind old gentleman called Frank. Everybody knew him.’
‘Ah, that will have been Frank Duff,’ Mary nodded. ‘It was he who made it possible for Regina Coeli to exist at all. He founded the Legion of Mary. His idea was that Catholic men and women could help single mothers without judging them. He set up this hostel as a refuge for single mothers who wanted to keep their babies. He believed passionately that it was better for children to stay with their mothers rather than being adopted by strangers. You should be grateful to him. God was looking over you and your mother.’
‘Then there were the priests who came to call. The “men in black”, the women used to call them. They didn’t like them so much; felt they were looking down their noses at them, judging them.’ Mary didn’t comment, merely sipping her tea, so I continued. ‘I had two mammies, my own and my caretaker mammy. She was called Bridie and she would look after me when Mammy went to work. I always knew that both of them loved me dearly.’
‘You were lucky to have two loving mothers,’ Mary said, ‘when so many in the world go through life without a mother at all.’
‘Oh, I know that,’ I assured her. ‘I know just how lucky I was. My mammy got to know Bridie before I was even born, and from that moment onwards she would never allow any of the other mothers to care for me. She and Bridie were best friends.’
‘You say her name was Bridie?’ Mary asked, as if still trying to put the pieces of a jigsaw together in her head.
‘Yes. I remember her as being a kind and gentle soul. She had a son called Joseph, who was like a big brother to me as well as a close friend. Bridie had her own tragic story to tell as to how she ended up here. I think she came from a remote part of the west of Ireland and fell pregnant after being raped by a distant relative.’
Mary tutted; it was more a sound of sympathy than of disapproval. No doubt she had heard many such stories in her years at the hostel.
‘Her family did not believe her story and disowned her, throwing her out onto the streets, alone and pregnant. She was lucky to end up here.’
‘She was indeed,’ Mary agreed. ‘In those days many of those poor girls ended up in brothels or died in the backstreet abortion clinics. It would have been a long journey for her to get here in those days.’
Bridie was a typical young girl from the country, only seventeen years old when she arrived in Dublin, lost and alone. With nowhere else to go, she went into a church to rest and to pray. There she met a nun who took pity on her and directed her to Regina Coeli. From the first day she crossed the hostel’s threshold she never left, at least not in the years I knew her. She became virtually a recluse, dedicating her life to being a caretaker mother to children like me, while bringing up her own son at the same time.
‘I remember she never wore anything but black,’ I said. ‘To me my mammy always looked young and beautiful, but poor, lovable Bridie always looked old. She had a beautiful heart, though. Kind to everyone, especially to me, and she treated me like I was her own son.’
From the moment I was born my life revolved around Regina Coeli. It was my world. I was forbidden to go past the two big wooden gates or ever to try to leave the grounds. These golden rules were drummed into me from the moment I could speak and understand. All the children seemed to have been given the same rules by their mothers. As youngsters we just knew that whatever lay outside the walls was frightening, perhaps because that had been the experience of most of the mothers who had taken refuge there, and perhaps many of the helpers as well. It was a hard life for women in Ireland in those times, particularly women who had ‘sinned’.
The restrictions didn’t bother me in the least. The hostel grounds seemed like paradise. There was everything I could ever want; lots of attention from mothers, plenty of other children to play with and acres of danger-free space to run around in. There was regular food, although I always wanted more.
‘More food again, Francis?’ Bridie would tut as I tugged at her skirt in search of a second helping. ‘You cheeky devil.’
To me it was just one big extended family, with people looking out for one another and sharing what little they had. They were my family.
At the weekends Mammy would always spoil me with sweets or biscuits, bought with her Friday wage packet from the restaurant where she worked as a waitress. I was known as ‘the one with the sweets’ and I was always happy to share my good luck around. I was also considered the best dressed child there. Mammy made sure that I never wore second-hand clothes unlike most of the other children, and she would pass them on the moment I grew out of them. I loved being told how ‘cute’ and ‘adorable’ I was by the other mothers, and I was fast becoming the most talkative child in the hostel.
‘You have the sweetest of faces, Francis McCrea,’ the women would say, unable to resist ruffling my fine, light mop of curly hair. ‘Just the kind of beautiful child any mother would want.’
I think what they liked most about me was that I talked to them like another adult, almost from the start. I could be a difficult child as well; stubborn and single-minded when I wanted something.
In my early days the routine nearly always started the same way. I would always seem to be the last in the dormitory to wake up and I would start by sitting up and looking around to see who else was about. Mammy, and the other mothers who worked outside the hostel, would have gone hours before, and the ones who didn’t share their beds with their small children would have left their beds neatly made. I could rely on Bridie always to be there, keeping an eye on me. The older children would be getting washed and ready for school. I would sit up in the bed, which I still shared with Mammy, watching everyone bustling around me. All of us small ones had to wait for permission to get up.
Once the schoolchildren had all left we leaped out of bed, always brimming with energy, and made use of the enamel chamberpots, or ‘poo-pots’, as we called them, which lived under our beds, all of us sitting in a line doing our business and chattering away. There was no sense of embarrassment about anything to do with nudity or bodily functions; it all seemed normal. Some of the women didn’t always empty the pots as quickly as they should have done and the dormitory could end up reeking as a result. Such matters were usually resolved by those who were slow to clean up their children being chivvied into action by the complaints of other, more fastidious mothers.
Bridie would then round us up in our pyjamas and march us, one at a time, to a white enamel basin which was filled with hot water from the big kettle they boiled in the fireplace. I was lucky enough to have my own wash bag, so she always knew which face towel and soap to use on me. Once we were clean she would help us dress, encouraging us to do it for ourselves as much as possible. Right from the start we were encouraged to be independent and self-reliant in all things.
Breakfast was usually a mug of tea, white bread and jam and an egg with black pudding. It would be served up at a long table in the dormitory with benches for us and some chairs for the mothers. The black puddings were my favourite, although I had no idea at the time that they were made from animals’ blood. We had a constant supply of eggs from the chickens we reared, and all the jams were home-made. The plates and mugs were made of enamelled metal. Sometimes, if there was nothing else, we could be given potatoes to keep us going.
Once breakfast was over we would race outside to play, giving Bridie a well-earned rest until one of us inevitably came back inside in tears for some reason.
Mammy relied on Bridie totally. She knew that Bridie looked after me, day and night, seven days a week and she couldn’t do without her. Mammy wanted so much for me, and much of the burden for providing everything I needed landed on Bridie’s exhausted shoulders. In order to be able to afford the things she wanted me to have, Mammy had to work every shift in the restaurant that she could get, which meant that she hardly ever got to see me in those early years, except when I was fast asleep in the bed beside her. Bridie would fill her in on whatever I had been up to each day.
My days revolved around play and make-believe. There were no books from which to learn or read, and no writing to practise. Nothing was organised and there was no preparation done for the first day that we would be sent off to school. My best friends were Connor, who was the same age as me, and Bridie’s son, Joseph, who was five years older but seemed more because of his serious nature. Joseph was often designated the task of looking after me and was as much like an older brother as a friend. We saw ourselves as the ‘three amigos’.
Lunch and dinner were very similar. There was no real choice. One meal was pretty much guaranteed to be the same as the next. We always had cheap cuts of meat, things like pigs’ trotters, liver, heart and kidney, all kinds of offal. Then there were potatoes at every meal, presented in every way from boiled to mashed, and, of course, cabbage. Meats like chicken, beef or pork were considered luxury items in those days, and having never had them I didn’t miss them. Since I was always hungry, perhaps because I burned up so much nervous energy, I wasn’t fussy about food and never complained about anything that I was given. I would quite happily chew on a whole pig’s trotter and eat whatever offal was put in front of me. It would be many years before I learned to hate them.
After playing all day I would be tired and hungry again by about four in the afternoon, but Bridie would insist that I wash the mud and filth off me before I sat down to eat.
‘Why are you always so much dirtier than all the others, Francis?’ she would want to know.
‘Because I was looking for leprechauns and their treasure,’ I would inform her, wondering why she found what seemed to me to be perfectly valid excuses so funny.
The sisters and some of the mothers would prepare the early dinner, which was free for all the children in the hostel. We all gathered in the Meeting Room or common area, the only place in the hostel outside the dormitories where all the mothers and children would meet, and we ate whatever was put on our plates. The best part of the meal was the cocoa drink that was served at the end in an enamel cup. Sometimes they had extras left over and Connor and I would go up to ask the sisters for more, saying ‘We’ve been good today.’
Just next door to the Meeting Room were the communal washrooms. Once a week, usually on Sundays, Mammy or Bridie would bathe me in a rough-edged metal bath. I hated the feel of it against my skin when I sat in it, but I never complained when it was Mammy, no matter how hard she scrubbed, because I just wanted to be close to her. She was strict about cleanliness and took no nonsense from me. I could be a little devil at times and would complain a lot given the slightest opportunity, but I looked forward to those bath times because it was a treat to be with her, even if it meant having to endure the uncomfortable metal scourge on my bottom. I didn’t get to see much of her and I missed her.
Mammy worked at least six and a half long days a week in the restaurant in the city centre. Serving customers all day was hard on her feet. She always had a half-day off on Tuesday or Sunday afternoons, when she would visit her mother’s home outside Dublin, although I didn’t know that at the time. As far as the world outside the hostel was concerned she was a normal single lady, friendly and hard-working. No one had a clue that she had a child, not even her own mother. She never mentioned anything about me to anyone. I was her secret child.
Mammy had lots of secrets, but I think I was the biggest one. Her mother and family were completely oblivious to her real life, believing that she lived alone in a rented room somewhere in the city. She told me later that her mother would frequently ask her about her social life.
‘Have you met any nice young men, Cathleen?’ she would enquire.
‘Oh, I will never marry,’ Mammy would insist. ‘I am quite content with my life as it is.’
When I was five years old Mammy said that I had to start going to the local school, which was just a few minutes away from the hostel, but illness interrupted her plans. Living in open dormitories, with a general lack of hygiene, sickness was common among the children. I always seemed to have something wrong with me, even if it was no more than a cough or a cold, but at five I became seriously ill and I was hospitalised for many months. I don’t remember what it was that was wrong with me, but I do remember it was the first time I had been outside the walls of Regina Coeli since my birth.
Talking to Mary that day over a cup of tea was the first time I had ever talked about my mother’s life like this. That, coupled with the familiar surroundings, which were bringing back so many memories, was stirring up emotions that I hadn’t realised were lurking beneath the surface. I stopped talking for a moment and sipped the tea which had now grown cold, avoiding Mary’s eyes as I struggled to regain my composure. I had finally shared the secret with someone. My mother had made me promise that I would never speak to anyone about our time at Regina Coeli. It was the way she wanted things to be, and I felt that I had betrayed her secret. I felt embarrassed but at the same time relieved.
‘My goodness,’ Mary said, kindly. ‘You remember a lot about your childhood here. Let me top up your tea.’
She refilled my cup and I mumbled my thanks, finding it difficult to speak as I tried to stifle the tears.
‘You know,’ she said as she sat down again, ‘I clearly remember the two big wooden gates next to this building that you mentioned. I was sorry to see the old buildings being taken down, or rather, falling down. We still only accommodate women here, but not just single mothers. We now have residents who have problems with drugs and alcohol. These are the new problems. Regina Coeli doesn’t have as many people here as we used to, but it still operates on a charity basis.’
After a pause, which I still didn’t fill, she carried on.
‘Your memory serves you well. We did have caretaker mothers looking after the children. It was the only way the other mothers could go out and earn money to support themselves and their children in those days. All the women had to work. They were all afraid to reveal anything about their illegitimate children to the outside world. It was a complete taboo. The Catholic Church was very against the idea of women having children out of wedlock. Contraception for women and men was banned in Ireland, so naturally when a woman fell pregnant it had to be a secret. I believe this was the only hostel in Ireland where you could keep your baby. Very few people actually knew about it, because none of us wanted to draw attention to its existence, so a lot of the poor girls ended up going to the Magdalene Laundry and losing their children, never knowing that there was another option available to them.’
‘How did mothers like my mammy find work without people knowing about their situations?’ I asked, finding my voice once more.
‘The hostel had a network of business people who helped place the women in work around the city. They were people who believed in and supported the work of the hostel, people who felt that mothers were entitled to a choice and that keeping the children with their mothers was better for them. You are right that a single mother looking for work in any other way would almost certainly have had to lie about her situation. There was a terrible stigma attached to the whole business all through the fifties and sixties.’
‘My mammy worked in a restaurant in the city centre called Burns. She was a waitress there.’
‘I remember the Burns family. They came from Germany after the Second World War and so they understood suffering. They were great supporters of the Regina Coeli network. They were one of a few small businesses that helped in their own discreet way. Tell me more about your mammy.’
I took a deep breath. ‘My Mammy was thirty-five when she had me in 1953. It was very old to be having a first baby in those days and the doctors were very worried for her.’
Mary nodded. ‘Most of the women here were very young. I do remember an older woman. Was she sometimes known by the others as “the Lady”?’
‘Yes!’ I could hardly contain my excitement. ‘Yes, that’s what they called her.’
‘I didn’t meet her personally,’ Mary said, ‘but I remember people talking about her. She was famous for being one of the very few who left to get married. As you say, most of the mothers had more than one name, and more often than not they were false names to help protect their anonymity. The common fear was that somebody would come looking for them. Because the hostel did not require them to reveal their true identities, neither did we have any records as to who these women really were.’
The excitement of hearing that my mother was remembered in this way after so many years added to the emotions which were threatening to overwhelm me.
‘Would you like to have a look around the old place?’ Mary asked.
‘I would love that,’ I said, although I had no idea what I was hoping to see.
Taking my tea from me she led me upstairs, where there were two dormitories. To my amazement they had barely changed in fifty years apart from the installation of some new washbasins. Mary then opened the door to the chapel. It was exactly as I remembered, only much, much smaller. She got down on her knees and blessed herself while I stood behind her a little awkwardly. In years gone by I would have done the same as her, but I didn’t believe in religion any more. I had become a cynic. Mary didn’t appear to notice, content in her own, quiet faith.
She then led me out into the grounds, the playing area where I remembered being so happy.
‘There was an old tenement building over there,’ I said, pointing towards some new-looking prefab buildings, ‘three floors high, containing all the dormitories where we lived.’
‘They were demolished, so they were,’ Mary said.
There were single-storey prefabs crowded into virtually every inch of the grounds, making them look small and congested, a far cry from the wide open spaces I remembered. I stood still and stared around, remembering hordes of children screaming and running wild, chasing each other or pushing broken prams around, playing hopscotch or swinging on ropes. It seemed a sad, silent place now. The high stone walls that had marked the boundaries of my world for so long were still there, and I could even see the mental institution next door, still as menacing as ever with its broken windows and weeds sprouting through cracks and holes in the walls.
‘The mothers told us so many scary stories about patients escaping over the walls at night,’ I said. ‘I guess they wanted to discourage us from climbing over the walls in the other direction.’
Mary laughed. ‘You and your mother must have done well after you left for London?’
‘Actually,’ I said, ‘it wasn’t a bed of roses. But Mammy was happy and I did well with the opportunities that came my way.’
I couldn’t believe I was opening up in this way to a woman I had only just met. I didn’t elaborate any further about all the ups and downs Mammy and I had been through together. If I had, I would have been there all day, and I had already given away too many of my mammy’s secrets for comfort. I thanked Mary for her kindness and for the tea and took my leave. As I walked down the hill, after waving goodbye to the small figure at the door, my mind was buzzing. It was as if I had opened a Pandora’s box of memories, a box that my mother had firmly instructed me to keep closed for ever.