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