Bird of Passage (45 page)

‘Don’t be so silly,’ said India when she caught her sister in tears yet again. ‘It isn’t
uncommon
, Lolo. In fact it happens all the time. Just because they’re splitting up, it doesn’t mean they don’t love us.’

‘She must love Finn more. Else why would she go away with him?’

‘But she hasn’t really gone away. Only to Dunshee. She’s sort of gone back there, hasn’t she? And that’s home as well. Or as good as.’

‘Not to me. Besides,
he
’s there. And I don’t like him.’

 ‘If you mean Finn, it’ll be alright. You’ll see.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I just do. Besides, it has its advantages, you know.’

‘What?’ asked Flora, blowing her nose. ‘I can’t see any.’

‘Well, we get two of everything for a start.’

‘Oh Indie!’ said Flora, and started to cry all over again.

So long as she was allowed to come and stay at Dunshee with her beloved great grandfather, and play the fiddle with him, so long as she was allowed to see plenty of her mother, India found that she didn’t much care what else happened. She was already planning trips to the States with her father, but Dunshee had  always been her favourite place, her lodestone, a still point in her busy world. She didn’t even mind Finn being there. She didn’t like him very much, it was true. He frightened her a little, although he was always kind to her, in a detached way. He seemed aloof and unemotional. But she could put up with him.

Flora, on the other hand, missed Ealachan, missed its flower garden, its woodland paths where she had once walked the dogs, its summer house where she had organised picnics for her soft toys. Charlie McNeill was accommodating, and when she was on the island, she would always accompany her mother to the gallery, but Charlie had made changes, and her sense of ownership had gone. When her father was away on business, as he so often was these days, she chose  to spend most of her free time in London, with Annabel. Annabel took Flora shopping for new clothes, let her dress up in her high heeled shoes, showed her how to use make-up, allowed her to watch unsuitable programmes on the television.

Alasdair had taken a long time to come round to the new state of affairs. They suspected that he had still not quite come to terms with it. Kirsty sensed that he was disappointed in her and arguably, that was worse than if he had been really angry.

‘You shouldn’t be doing this’ he said, severely. ‘I understand how you feel, but there are some things that are just wrong.’ He shook his head. ‘Just plain wrong. Those wee girls…’

There was nothing either Kirsty or Finn could say or do to make things better. Oddly enough, it was India herself who started to talk him round.

‘These things happen,’ she said, airily. ‘We just have to make the best of them.’

‘Is your sister making the best of things?’

‘No, not at the moment. But she will. Once she’s settled down at school.’

‘And that’s a good thing, is it?’

‘It will be. It’ll be alright. You’ll see. And at least mum hasn’t
bolted
completely.’ India had been reading Nancy Mitford.

‘Bolted?’ asked Alasdair, bemused. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘You wouldn’t believe how many mothers do that. My friend Tanya – at school - her mother ran off with the postman. Bolted, you know? Her mother
literally
ran off with the postman and set up house with him. Well it was a
squat
actually. Somewhere in Glasgow. At least mum’s only run up here to Dunshee. And we love it here, don’t we?’  She flung her arms around him and kissed him lavishly.

‘Aye, right’ he said, sceptically. But she made him laugh. ‘The postman eh?’ he said. ‘What a thing to do! And what’s a squat when it’s at home?’ 

Kirsty’s hair had grown a little longer. Now it fluffed in untidy red wisps around her face. They had brought a bottle of wine to the western edge of the island, in celebration of the solstice. She was wearing a long cotton skirt, green wellington boots, and one of Finn’s old sweaters. It was stiff with oil paint. Her nails were bizarrely pitted with the stuff. She could never get them clean.  It had been a constant source of irritation to Nicolas, but Finn didn’t even seem to notice. She was sitting on a blanket and sketching him. He sat up on a rock, gazing down at her.

‘Are you cold?’ she asked him. ‘Do you want your pullover?’

‘No. I’m fine.’ He grinned at her.

‘What?’ she asked him. ‘Why are you laughing?’

‘I was thinking what a fashion plate you make.’

‘That’s a very old fashioned expression.’

‘I know. My mother used to say it. I have this memory of walking through Dublin with her. “Would you look at that fashion plate, Finn ?” I think she kind of wanted to be a fashion plate herself.’

‘You’ve never told me, you know.’

‘Told you what?’

‘What happened. To your mother, and you. You’ve told me bits of it. But not the whole story.’

‘Even I don’t know the whole story. I was too young.’ He gazed at her. ‘But it’s true that I found out more. During those years when I was away. I made it my business. It was one of the things that kept me sane, when I was – without you. I studied, I worked. And I tried to find some explanations.’

‘And did you? Find them I mean?’

‘Sort of. The school I was sent to – well, you know a bit about that. It was an Industrial School. They used to have them over here once upon a time. They were a Victorian idea. For the poor. To teach useful skills to the sons and daughters of toil.’

‘Like in Dickens? Dotheboys Hall?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose so. Anyway, they were very hot on Industrial Schools in Ireland. England abolished them early on. In Ireland, the church and the state were hand in glove, and they managed to keep them for a lot longer. There may still be some around for all I know. But the one I was in, it’s a ruin now, derelict.’

‘So you did go back?’

‘Just the once. I went to Dublin, and drove out into the countryside, to the school.’

‘And were you alright? What was it like?’

‘A wreck. A ruin.’

‘Did it help?’

‘A bit. I used to think I’d like to go to Ballyhaunis, to see if my mother’s family are still around. I used to think about that a lot.’

‘I’ll come with you, if you want to go.’

‘I don’t need to go now. I don’t need anything or anybody else. Not now I’ve got you, Kirsty.’

‘So these schools...?’  she prompted.

‘They were run by the Christian Brothers – those were for the boys. Or the Sisters of Charity, for the girls.’ His mouth twisted into a little smile. ‘Ironic, eh? Neither very Christian, nor very charitable. But we had it drummed into us that we were charity cases and should thank God for what we were given, and believe me, that was little enough. It was... well, I’ll tell you what it was, it was a form of slavery. We were like slaves. We were taught a little, but we had no rights. And for the rest of the time, we worked.’

‘Not charity cases then?’

‘Not at all. No. Apparently, we were government funded and quite handsomely. I told you, I made it my business to find out. But the schools were paid per child, so it was in their interests to squeeze in as many kids as possible. Capitation.  Bloody disastrous. The cruelty men were on the look out for any children that could be swept in and they seemed to wield a very large broom. If you were poor, destitute, they called it, if you were morally at risk, whatever that meant, if you skipped school or stole a handful of apples – all that was enough reason. You would be taken to court, and committed until you were sixteen. The day before your sixteenth birthday, to be precise. I was seven when it happened to me.’

‘Dear God! But you weren’t destitute, were you?’

‘Not really. We were poor. But my mother was properly married, in the church too, even though my father had left her. She took me to mass on Sundays. She worked in a factory. She was a machinist. There was no money to spare, but we managed.’

‘Have you spoken to your mother about this?’

‘No. She’ll talk to me and about me, but not about the past. Just once, that first time we met, I think she maybe wanted to talk about it then, but I wasn’t ready. And now, if  ever she writes, it’s about the here and now. She prays for me a lot.’

‘Well, I don’t suppose you should turn down prayers. They may come in handy. One day.’

When he thought back to that time, before the school, before he lost her,  it seemed very happy, maybe happier than it really was.

‘I don’t remember my mammy even so much as raising her hand to me.’

‘So what went wrong?’

‘Mrs Maguire went wrong.’

‘I remember you telling me about her. Mrs Maguire with her flowery hat and her shiny handbag.’

That’s right.’

Mrs Maguire had been a bit of an anomaly, or so he had discovered later. The Legion of Mary weren’t exactly friends of the Industrial School system. They were all about keeping families together. But Mrs Maguire had been different.

‘She was a nosy old cow, really. My father had been away for years. There was man who worked at the factory. I think his name was Johnny, but I don’t remember his second name. Maybe I never knew it. He was nothing important. In fact I think he hauled the stock around or something. He always looked knackered. So God knows how they even met, but he and my mother did meet and he liked her. And she seemed to like him. They started seeing each other, now and then.’

‘So you remember him?’

‘I do. A little. He was older than she was. He had grey hair. A sad old raincoat.’

When he thought about it now, Finn realised that it had probably been his demob coat, from after the war, and he had still been wearing it. But he had been very kind.

‘They were as gentle as each other. No fight in them. He would come to the house but he never stayed over, as far as I remember. I think Mrs Maguire found out about them and reported her as an unfit mother. I don’t know. Maybe he was married. But that was when it all kicked off.’

He gazed at the sea.
What
had kicked off? He had let her in. It was all his fault. But why had that been such a disaster? A pebble, causing an avalanche? He still couldn’t remember. They knew Mrs Maguire, saw her at the church each week. Why should it have been such a crime to let her into the house?

‘They sent me to the school and my poor immoral mother finished up in one of those laundries, a Magdalene, washing away her sins. Except that eventually, she changed her mind and joined the enemy. Stockholm Syndrome, isn’t that what they call it? You identify with your captors. But maybe that isn’t the whole story. I think she’s genuinely contented now.’

‘And was the school terrible?’

‘You can’t begin to imagine. And I’m glad you can’t imagine. It was terrible in ways you couldn’t conceive of. ‘

‘But did nobody stop them? Was there nobody to see it happening? ’

He gazed at her helplessly. ‘I don’t have the words, even now. But I think the beatings were the worst thing. Not just the savagery but the sheer unpredictability of them. We were beaten constantly and for – well, for nothing that I could see. In all the years I was there, and with all the beatings I had, every week, sometimes every day, none of them ever seemed to make
sense
. It wouldn’t have been so bad if they had been punishments for something. But they never were. I’ve thought since, it was the sheer lack of cause and effect that was so terrifying.’

They had slept in big dormitories, dozens of beds in rows, and they would be dragged out in the middle of the night,  spread-eagled on the landing, shirts up round their armpits, and beaten senseless on their naked buttocks. He remembered the faces of the men wielding the canes, alight with a sort of avid pleasure. He couldn’t tell her properly, not even Kirsty. He was still ashamed to talk about it. As though it were all his own fault.

‘I think some of those men were crazy. Crazy. I think they should have been sectioned. I’ve wondered about it since: the violence, the ignorance. What made them do that to defenceless children? How could they? And why did everyone else turn a blind eye to it? Did they think we were less than human? I know they were different times and kids were beaten, but they weren’t beaten like that.’

‘Nobody ever laid a finger on me.’

‘It was like prison without the rules.’

‘You’d have been much better off in prison.’

‘We would. When I got older, I used to think that. Some of the older boys fought back, sure enough, but the younger ones – what could we do? We were half starved and filthy, we were cold, we were abused, and nobody came to our aid. The food was like pig swill, in fact the pigs had it better than we did; we had maggoty potatoes, bread and marge. You would eat the turnips out of the fields you were that hungry. You never had your own clothes – didn’t you wonder why my clothes were always too small for me when I came to the tatties?’

‘I remember my grandad giving you some of my dad’s clothes.’

‘He did, and I went back with them, but I never saw them again. Too good for me. They were whisked away and that was that.’

‘But did they not have inspections? Did people not come in from the outside?’