Blood And Water (28 page)

“A baby!” Joan gasped.

Martha shook her head. She suspected as soon as they started their trek from the front door that this wasn’t a place anyone would come on holidays and that there was another, less pleasant reason for Lillian being here. But this? A baby? Gráinne must be confusing her sister with someone else.

“No, we’re here to ask about Lillian Byrne. She was here but she died.” Martha hoped her loose explanation might put Gráinne straight and get the right girl in mind. “I can tell you when,” and, closing her eyes, she recited the date. “It was the 15th of September 1975.”

Her eyes opened and she waited expectantly for Gráinne to stand corrected.

“Well, I’m not one-hundred-per-cent sure and it was certainly before my time – I can check for you if you have the right date – but,” Gráinne paused, assessing the innocent young girls, Martha in particular, to make sure they were fit to understand what they had come to find out, “to the best of my knowledge there were very few girls who came here for any other reason but to have their baby.”

“But why here?” Martha questioned. “Why not a hospital?”

“Well, there were lots of reasons why,” Gráinne told them, “but mostly it was because many of the girls weren’t married and had no one to look after them.”

“Well, that couldn’t have been Lillian,” Martha told her categorically, “because we could have looked after her. Me and my mam. And anyway I don’t think she had a boyfriend.”

Her endearing naivety touched Gráinne. “You need to remember,” she explained gently, “that girls don’t like to be unmarried and pregnant – some feel huge shame and embarrassment. Maybe your sister didn’t want you to know she was pregnant at all.”

“Not Lillian,” Martha insisted, sitting bolt upright and shaking her head. “My sister wouldn’t have hidden away here. We would have helped her, she would have known that.”

Sensing that maybe a little time to think was in order, Gráinne got up.

“I’ll go and check,” she said. “Tell me again when she was here.”

“It was 1975,” Martha said. “That was the year she died too. Like I said, the 15th of September.”

“I’m sorry, dear. Let me see what I can find. Can I get you girls some tea, or maybe a mineral while you wait?”

“No, thanks,” they replied in unison and watched her leave the room.

“What the hell is she suggesting?” Joan whispered indignantly. “Do you think Lillian was having a baby?”

But Martha didn’t reply, too preoccupied and worried about what Gráinne was going to come back with. Inside her head the questions came and went.

Why was Lillian buried here? Who decided that? Why wasn’t her mother asked where she would like her to be laid to rest? And if she was having a baby, where was it? Where was the baby? Did he or she die too? Oh, good Jesus! Maybe she could ask.

She only realised she was thinking aloud when she noticed Joan looking on, her mouth agape.

“But I can’t. I’m too scared,” she finished with tears gathering in her eyes and, leaning into her best friend, laid her head on her shoulder and cried.

Hours seemed to pass before Gráinne returned, cradling a large box in her hands. She placed it on the coffee table.

“Well, I think I found your sister,” she told them, averting her eyes, looking instead at the dusty old box on the table, pushing it toward them. “Look – it’s got her name on the top.”

LILLIAN BYRNE
was written in blue block letters on the top and on one side. “These are a few of her things that somehow never made their way to you.”

“We never got anything,” Martha replied timidly, staring at it like it might move if she stared long enough.

Her sister’s name vibrated against the discoloured cardboard. Her things. This was all she had left yet it was more than she had ever had of her. Touching it, Martha was sure she could feel her sister’s breath on her skin and the touch of her hand on her cheek. Closing her eyes, she could sense her; she was so close right now, here in this sitting room, with her. Martha squeezed her eyes tighter and for the first time in as long as she could remember could see her sister’s face as clear as if she were standing there in front of her. Relief and joy filled her. She didn’t want to open her eyes in case the image never returned. She concentrated on the shape of her face, absorbing the colour of her skin, the pitch of her cheekbones, the curve of her lips and the sweep of her long yellow hair. Only when she was sure that she had etched her features indelibly into her memory did she open her eyes only to close them again quickly just to see and, yes, there she was again, set against the blackness of her eyes and she was smiling.

Martha opened her eyes again and pulled the box to her.

“Do you want to do this here?” Joan asked, to which Martha nodded.

Lifting the lid, a musty smell hit her nostrils. Inside, it appeared, were items from the top of a dressing table. She pulled first from the box a small tatty old photo frame with a picture of herself, Tommy and Lillian, taken not long before she left, their happy faces grinning out at her. If only they knew what fortunes were to follow that picture! A brown wooden hairbrush and mirror set. A little box that looked like it had at some time held something precious but was empty now. A bottle of perfume that still had some liquid in it and a container of sweet scented powder with a little pink puff and a perfectly tied bow on top. And at the very bottom of the box was a bundle of letters tied together with a blue ribbon. From the handwriting on the first envelope she could see that they were letters from her mother. She ran a gentle hand across the ink. Her mother and her sister present in the one spot. She missed them so much. She could almost smell her mother’s perfume and hear the sound of her voice telling her to “
buck up, whist and stop those tears”.
She tried but she couldn’t stop them falling.

Joan’s hand rubbed her back in a gentle circular motion while she cooed, reassuring her quietly.

“Can I have these?” Martha asked Gráinne when she had cried herself dry, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.

“Absolutely,” Gráinne replied. “They’re yours now. I’m only sorry it took until now for you to get them.”

Removing the picture from its old frame she placed it into the sleeve inside her purse. Now she would never forget what she looked like. Replacing everything else into the box, she secured the lid and placed it back on the table.

Gráinne stood, suggesting their visit was over. Looking up at her neither girl moved, both with the same question on their minds.

“But what about her baby?” Joan asked.

“I’m sorry?” Gráinne asked.

“The baby. My sister’s baby,” Martha urged. “What did she have? Was it a boy or a girl?”

“Well ... I don’t really know,” Gráinne said, her hands clasped tight in front of her.

“What happened to it?” Martha asked, cringing as she said ‘it’ like it meant nothing. But it did. “After my sister died what happened to her baby? Why did no one tell Mam?”

“Again, I can’t tell you … I don’t know.”

“But you must know.” Martha’s voice shook but she persisted. “You have to know. If it was here, you must know where it went, who took it!”

Shifting on her feet Gráinne cast her eyes to the floor and cleared her throat. When she looked up again she appeared composed, her poise recovered.

“Everything that is here about your sister I have given to you,” she said. “There is no file. The nuns who were here didn’t really operate that way.”

“Someone here must know – there must be records,” Joan challenged.

Gráinne shook her head solemnly.

“Well, who can we ask?” Joan demanded, standing up so she could look at her properly in the eye. “Who will know?”

“It was usual for the women who came here to have their babies adopted.” Her eyes refused to meet Joan’s. “It’s best you contact the adoption board. We wouldn’t keep records like that here.”

“Where would we find that?” Martha asked, feeling bewildered by what she had found out and what still needed to be uncovered.

“Wait – let me get you the address and telephone number,” Gráinne eagerly offered and hurried from the room.

“Do you think it’s true there are no records here?” Martha whispered.

“I don’t know, but then why would she lie?”

When Gráinne returned to give Martha the handwritten note it was as if she were sharing with her the address of a popular restaurant.

“Here you go,” she offered with a smile. “Best if you call before you go there – you might need to make an appointment. I don’t think they’d like you just turning up at their door.”

Martha took the paper and stood up. Clutching the box under her arm, she took Gráinne’s lead and left the room, Joan following after her. Their meeting was over, her initial delight at having received a treasure chest of memories dampened by the fact that she had more questions now than when she arrived.

They said their curt goodbyes at the door and Gráinne watched them walk away with Martha clutching the box tight to her chest with both hands. She stood watching till they were out of sight.

Closing the door she leaned against it and took a deep breath. She wasn’t paid enough to do this. She wasn’t there to lie for anyone and promised herself as she waited for her heartbeat to return to normal that she would never do that again. Enough was enough. While there were no girls left in the house, their memories were perpetually etched into the fabric of the walls and she was the only one left and charged to care for them. She knew only the last few to leave the house and held their stories in trust, watched over each and every last one of them, waiting for friends and relatives, just like Martha and Joan but more recently journalists and reporters, to come and ask. She walked back to her office and sat behind her desk. It was impossible to concentrate after a visit from someone looking for answers. Each time it happened a tiny piece of her once strapping faith chipped away. But she was never asked to lie, until now. She had witnessed so much hypocrisy, had a filing cabinet full of harrowing stories of young girls abandoned and shamed all in the name of their Christian faith. Good Catholic families who abandoned their daughters, hiding them away, in some cases never to return for them, ever. Yet still these morally staunch citizens had the audacity to look down on and disparage others who were apparently less perfect than they, families with religion in their blood and members of the cloth within their fold. How artful. How deceitful. How sanctimonious. This was the end, Gráinne thought. She couldn’t, wouldn’t do this anymore. Lillian Byrne’s story was the lowest of them all. And for what? She lifted a yellowed page from the dusty old file. A child, a birth certificate and a guarantee of no questions asked. At a price. Closing the file over, she placed it on the pile beside the shredder. With the nuns preparing the house for sale there was no need to keep files like this one any longer. There was no place for files where they were going, the few that were left.

True to his word, the landlord set about making both girls their Irish whiskey: their first, he assumed, in their young years. Jimmy still sat in his spot at the bar, smoking a cigarette while considering a seemingly never-ending crossword. Every now and then his eyes flicked keenly towards them. There was a peculiar tension in the air, like they were being watched and observed with bated breath.

Assuming it was because they were the only females in the dingy little pub, the girls were mildly entertained rather than bothered by the attention and took a seat by the fire. As soon as she was seated comfortably Martha opened the box again and took from it the bundle of her mother’s letters and laid them carefully on the table in front of her.

The barman brought them over their whiskeys.

“Easy now,” he warned in a fatherly tone. “I’ve watered them down a bit for yez, but they’re still fairly strong now for the unfamiliar.”

The whiskey burned as it went down, their comically squawky faces a giveaway that indeed this was their first.

“You alright?” Joan asked with a wrench in her voice.

Martha nodded her assent, lifting the glass to take another large gulp with her still shaking hand.

“What are you going to do with these letters?” Joan asked her.

“Read them, I suppose,” she said with a weak grin.

“Is it not a bit creepy?” Joan asked. “Ya know, a bit like eavesdropping on the dead?”

“I suppose,” Martha replied, picking them up to massage them in her hands. “Maybe I’ll just keep them, you know – I don’t have to read them.” She didn’t want to read them yet anyway – she dreaded to hear the sound of her mother’s voice in her head without having her actually there. She’d wait till she was alone.

“Yeah,” Joan agreed. “Fancy another?”

“How about we just have coffee?” Martha replied wisely. “It’s only just lunchtime.”

“You’re probably right,” Joan replied, returning to the bar.

Martha flicked through the little bundle, looking at each one: the date, the stamp, the feel of the paper to the curl of her mother’s letters as they spelt her sister’s name. By the time she got to the last one she was expecting more of the same, but this one was different: different because it wasn’t the same colour, it had no stamp and most of all it was different because it had her name on it. Just her name. Her first name.
Martha.

Her heart skipped a beat as she pulled it from the rest of the bundle. She held it up.
Her name.
She turned the envelope over in her hands to lift the flap at the back, and took out the faintly lined pages, each scripted beautifully with her sister’s elegant joined writing.

Dearest Martha,

By the time you read this I’ll be gone. I’m really sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye to you, but I really couldn’t face you. I can’t let you look at me, knowing what I have done. I feel so ashamed, I wish I could pretend it didn’t happen but it has. And soon you will know it. She is theirs now, so small and pretty. She looks just like you, Martha. She has your blue eyes and soft yellow curls. They’ll be taking her away from me and I know they’re right. What kind of a life could I possibly give her? And anyway, she doesn’t deserve to know how she came to be. No one really needs to know. I don’t suppose I could face her every day, but neither can I not have her near. I am lost. But I really don’t have a choice. They expect me to go home in a few weeks when I’m back to normal and behave like nothing has happened. How can I do that
knowing that my baby is miles away from me? And even though Mr. Bertram says he will find a way for me to see her every now and then, how will I be able to hold her or play with her knowing it’s only for a short while and then she will leave me all over again? I can’t bear to say goodbye to that beautiful face once more. And though I’d like to believe he means it, that in time he will be able to take me to her, even in secret, I don’t think I’ll ever see her again.