me show you the chapel,’ Sister Peggy said, leading Cathleen back into the house and up to a door next to the dormitory where she had slept. ‘We have services on Sundays and Holy Days, which I hope you will join us for. The local priest leads them for us.’
Sister Peggy knelt down in front of the small altar, slowly crossed herself and whispered a prayer so quietly that Cathleen could not make out the words. After a few seconds she knelt down beside her, placed her palms together, lowered her head and closed her eyes. The two women remained there for several minutes, silently thanking the Lord for everything they had.
‘Now,’ Sister Peggy said, pulling herself to her feet, ‘let me show you the rest of the hostel.’
The buildings, which had once been a British army barracks, were set in three acres of grounds. There were several blocks of forbidding, three-storey, grey stone buildings. Some parts were depressingly run-down, with broken windows and missing doors.
‘It’s enormous,’ Cathleen said as they walked towards the first of the buildings.
‘So it is,’ Sister Peggy agreed. ‘We don’t fill every building, just a few of the more habitable floors. About a hundred and fifty women live here at any one time, usually with one child each. You will come across to one of these buildings once you are up and about after the birth.’
The wide open spaces on the inhabited floors had been turned into gigantic open dormitories, their stone walls and high ceilings blackened by smoke from the open fireplaces which burned Irish turf all day long and provided both warmth and basic cooking facilities, heating pans of water for washing and making tea. In these blocks there was only one toilet for every forty people, less if there was a blockage, and to make life easier many of the women kept their own enamel basins and chamber pots under their beds.
‘Do they have no privacy?’ Cathleen asked as she looked around.
‘You soon get used to it, my dear.’
Sister Peggy introduced her to a few of the women, but none of them seemed particularly interested, doggedly carrying on with their daily chores.
‘These are care mothers,’ Sister Peggy explained, ‘the ones like Bridie who are looking after the children for those who go out to work.’
Cathleen was relieved to think that it was going to be Bridie who was looking after her baby rather than any of these morose and silent girls.
‘What happens on the other side of the perimeter walls?’ Cathleen asked as they walked back to the red brick building.
‘You mean outside our prison walls?’ Sister Peggy said, her eyes twinkling mischievously. ‘There’s a wood mill over there. It’s more like a warehouse for the timber. The Dublin bus depot is over there. That,’ she said pointing to particularly dark and forbidding-looking building, ‘is part of the Grange Gorman Mental Institution. We call them “the crazy ones”, Lord bless their souls. The children are terrified of them. They think they’re going to escape over the walls and attack them.’
‘Oh,’ Cathleen couldn’t hide her own disquiet.
‘Don’t worry, my dear, they can’t get out. They’re locked up tight for their own good. Sometimes you will hear their screams in the night, poor creatures. You’ll get used to the sounds. Would you like to go back to the dormitory now and rest? You look a little tired.’
Cathleen was grateful for a chance to lie down and think about everything she had seen. However sweet Sister Peggy had been to her, and however grateful she was to find a refuge from the cold, wet streets of Dublin, the idea of bringing her child into such a place brought a chill to her heart. She racked her brain to try to come up with a better solution to her predicament, but could think of nothing. There was one person who might help, of course, but she could never ask that of him. At least here she had a bed and food and they would let her keep the baby. She told herself she must be grateful for such mercies and that she would find a way to get out once the baby was born and she had regained her strength. If all these young girls could bear to live here, then surely to God she could manage it too.
Over the next two months she threw herself into the routine of the hostel, never leaving the premises and making herself as useful as possible with the other mothers in the kitchen or in the dormitories, gradually making some sort of contact with those who were willing to talk to her and spending as much time as she could with Bridie.
One evening, when the two of them were sharing a well-earned cigarette by the fireplace, Cathleen confided some of her fears about the impending birth.
‘It’ll be fine,’ Bridie assured her. ‘Before long you’ll have a beautiful baby and that will make everything you’ve gone through worthwhile.’
‘I’m not so worried about the birth, it’s more the future that concerns me. I want so much more than this for my child and I don’t know if I will be able to provide it.’
‘Love the child, Kay, that’s all you have to do. Material things don’t matter. Children don’t know the difference between expensive clothes and cheap ones.’
‘In here they might not,’ Cathleen agreed, ‘but what about outside? There’s a big heartless world out there where people will judge my child for not knowing who his father is.’ Bridie reached over and squeezed her hand, not able to think of any words of comfort. ‘Your Joseph is such a lovely boy,’ Cathleen went on, ‘so kind and considerate with the other children, and so helpful to you. You’ve brought him up well. Thank God it’s going to be you looking after my child.’ Bridie gave her friend’s hand another squeeze, embarrassed by the praise.
Most of the other girls paid Cathleen little attention but there was one, Bridget Murphy, who seemed to have taken an instant dislike to her. Bridget was a big, fat bully of a woman who seemed to see Cathleen as some sort of challenge to her authority. Cathleen had seen her reducing one of the youngest girls to tears.
‘Empty my piss pot,’ Murphy had instructed the girl.
‘Empty your own piss pot,’ the girl retorted, her bravado undermined by the tremble in her voice.
‘Empty my piss pot you fucking whore,’ Murphy screamed as the girl scuttled tearfully from the room. Everyone else averted their eyes, not wanting to attract Murphy’s vitriol onto them.
‘And you …’ Murphy screamed at Cathleen. ‘You need to watch yourself around here with all your airs and graces. Who do you think you are? Think you’re too good for the rest of us, you do.’
Cathleen didn’t respond, and from then on Murphy referred to her as ‘the Lady’, a nickname that the others also started to use for her, but as a show of respect rather than a term of abuse.
On 25 February 1953, Cathleen gave birth to Francis Gordon – that’s me – her secret child, and my life at Regina Coeli was under way.
Chapter Three
In 1947, six years before I was born, Cathleen, my mother, was still living at home with her widowed mother and Mike, her unmarried older brother, in the village of Lucan. She was twenty-nine years old and unmarried and becoming increasingly fearful that if she didn’t do something soon her situation was never going to change. She didn’t necessarily feel the need to be married; she just didn’t want to spend the rest of her life in Lucan, living exactly like her widowed mother before her.
Nothing had changed in those parts of rural Ireland in living memory. Farming was virtually the only industry, and poverty was considered normal for most of the population. Young people with any ambition were leaving the countryside and heading to Dublin or London, or even further afield, much as they had done for centuries. Cathleen’s other brother, Christie, had left for work and marriage in Dublin. Her older sister, Lily, like most of her friends from school, had married and lived nearby, trapped in the same cycle of poverty as their parents and grandparents. Cathleen had a rare