Children Of The Poor Clares (21 page)

‘My mother came to claim me when I was fourteen. I’d never seen her or heard from her. I suppose she thought I’d be fit for work and bring in a bit of money. The nun said “Here’s your mother, go and get ready to go with her.” I remember she was holding out a bag of pink jelly biscuits and I just snatched the bag out of her hand and ran away up the stairs with the nuns after me. I wouldn’t come down and I wouldn’t go with her. I did see her again, just once. I went to stay with her but I ran away after two days. It was a terrible house with no toilet or anything and the man she married drank. She’s living somewhere near Dublin now but I don’t want ever to see her again. Why should I?’

‘The nuns treated us according to our background. I got treated the worst because of my mother having all those children and because she was poor. The nuns picked on me a lot. They said I’d the devil in me.

‘The children in the national school didn’t talk to us much. We were always ashamed of our shabby clothes. The nuns used to call us by our surnames. I knew we weren’t like other children but I never understood why. I remember sitting in school and looking at the town children and wondering
why
we were different.

‘They’d clobber you for anything. They’d use a big black strap and sometimes we used to steal it and hide it down the hose-pipe in the garden so then they’d send us out to fetch a branch of a tree. They’d always take our clothes off to beat us. Sometimes just our pants, other times all our clothes and they would stand and stare at us. It used to make me feel funny.

‘I never knew when my birthday was until I was seven. One of the older girls was very fond of me and she sent me this beautiful big doll with blonde hair and a pink dress. I’d never seen anything like it. Mother Catherine came up to me and said “That’s far too good for the likes of you to play with.” She took it away and I never saw it again. The nuns hated us having friends. They used to watch in case we held hands or went round in twos.

‘Mother Catherine and Mother Anne used to fight something dreadful. Mother Anne loved brushing our hair. Mine was long and thick and she used to make it look ever so nice. Then one day they had a fierce row and Catherine said “McNeill, come here!” and she cut all my hair off There was murder over it.

‘When I was ten or eleven I was sent out to work. I was never much good at school—I can read a little and write my name but that’s all. I worked for a man who lived near the orphanage. I got up at seven and walked to the house. I was left back in the car at seven in the evening. They paid me half-a-crown
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a week which I handed over to the nuns. I had to work ever so hard. I remember being told to wash up the first morning. We only had plastic cups in the orphanage so I threw everything into the sink like I was used to. I had never seen a china cup in my life. Everything broke and the woman was mad. She hit me on the back with a brush and said she’d tell the nuns. Which she did. Then they beat me. I used to eat in the kitchen on my own from the left-over scraps.

‘The nuns nearly let me die once. I had this pain which went on for weeks and they wouldn’t listen to me. They told me to get up and get out to work and I had to lift this big, heavy baby, and me nearly fainting with the pain. I got so bad that Frances Devaney who was sick in the next bed rushed down to the nuns and begged them to get a doctor. I was operated on within an hour for a burst appendix.

‘I worked in the orphanage for a bit before I left. I used to look after the babies. We used to be very sentimental when they were adopted and we’d cry as we dressed them in their clothes for the last time. All the girls from Cavan cry easily.

‘I got my periods when I was fourteen. I couldn’t think what was happening so I told one of the other girls at a time when we were supposed to be silent. The nun caught me talking and made me stand in the corridor all day as a punishment. Next day I had to go to her because my sheets were all stained and she hit me across the face and said why hadn’t I gone to her the day before. I said I couldn’t because she had punished me. She handed me out a sanitary towel and a belt and hit me again. “That’ll teach you not to be so stupid.”

‘Mother Anne and Mother Catherine left the orphanage before I did and they kissed us goodbye. The first time in their lives. I turned my face away and wouldn’t kiss them: I hated the ground they walked on. When I left, the nuns sent me to Skerries, to a farmer’s family in a tiny cottage. I got ten bob
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a week but I hated it and used to cry every day. I saved and saved until I had £15 and then I went to England. I was happy there and people were good to me. I remember one family where the mother used to kiss me goodnight. I hated her doing it. I hated anyone touching me. I couldn’t feel any affection for them and yet I knew they liked me. One day I just walked out.

I’ve had so many jobs. Always domestic work. I’ve stayed a week in some, maybe six months, maybe one day. I couldn’t seem to settle anywhere. Then I met this Italian fellow and went with him to Italy and I worked there for two years with a professor’s family. I really like that chap. He was good to me and didn’t take advantage of me and explained things to me before he slept with me. The first time I nearly died, I thought it was so awful but after that I kind of got used to it. His mother came between us in the end—I suppose she thought I wasn’t good enough for him.

‘I came back to Ireland two years ago. I knew it was wrong to come back because I knew the awful things that had been happening to all the Cavan girls. I can’t explain it. I felt it had to happen to me as well and then we would all be equal. Everything went wrong for me. I started to drink and one night some fellow put acid in my drink and I kind of attacked him. I was put in prison and a doctor came to see me and the next day in court the judge said it was the fellow should be convicted and not me.

‘I’ve been in St. Brendan’s mental hospital twice. It was the doctors in there who really helped me. I stopped feeling different from everyone else. I could talk to them about things that I’d had inside me for years and they explained things to me. I’ve tried to kill myself three times. Always when I’d been drinking. I couldn’t see the point in living any more. I was all by myself and nobody cared about me. The only people who came and visited me in hospital were the Samaritans.

‘It’s terrible when you meet someone and they say “Where are you from? Where’s your family?” and you have no-one. Maybe all the bad things are over now. I know that if I hadn’t gone to Cavan I’d have been a nicer person. Some of the other girls have had terrible lives and one illegitimate baby after the other. I suppose I was lucky not to get caught but I’m terrified I won’t be able to have a baby.’

During one of her stays in hospital, after a suicide attempt, Mary had an IQ test and was assessed at 112. Social workers, encouraged by her obvious intelligence, willing manner and seemingly positive attitude, arranged for her to attend an adult literacy course. She agreed to go, but then never turned up. While in the hospital she got into a hysterical panic for no apparent reason. The cause was found to be the entrance into her ward of a visiting nun. She constantly washed and tidied herself. ‘I’m very clean, aren’t I?’ she kept saying to us. I like to have a bath twice a day. I don’t want to marry, I wouldn’t want a man making my sheets dirty.’

When she wasn’t in hospital—which she never wanted to leave—she always worked, sometimes in a factory, but usually as a domestic in a hotel, or as a mother’s help. She moved from place to place, job to job, constantly optimistic, always hoping that things would get better for her, that she would find a boyfriend who would understand, and that she would make a fresh start. People tried to help her, but to no avail. With her gleeful laughter, politeness and wholesome expression, she didn’t look as though there was anything at all wrong with her. And she was always so clean.

Frances, b. 1950

We met Frances just after the birth of her second child. She had been persuaded to keep him and not to have him adopted like her first child. She was a gentle and intelligent person, bewildered by the events of her own life. She was lonely and had few friends, except girls from the orphanage whom she met occasionally. She was very apprehensive about her decision to keep the little boy, but she hoped it might prove she was some good after all, when her childhood experiences had taught her to think she was worth nothing.

She talked freely about St. Joseph’s. She did so almost compulsively, smoking heavily. Sometimes after we had talked for a long time, she would have nightmares. ‘I want to get it right for you,’ she would say, ‘I don’t want to tell you anything that didn’t happen.

‘I went to the orphanage when I was four. I didn’t know my birthday until I was confirmed, then I used to figure out that I was a year older every Christmas. ‘She could remember little of the early years except that she got into trouble a lot. ‘The nuns didn’t like us having special friends or holding hands. If we were seen by Mother Catherine she’d say “Your bodies are the Temple of the Holy Ghost. They are sacred and shouldn’t be touched.” I suppose we were a bit wild, but sure we didn’t know any better. I had a terrible temper and I bit another girl on the wrist once and she bled like anything. And when one of them made faces at me through the pantry window I just put my fist through the pane of glass and all the bits went into her mouth. Some of us used to tell tales and suck up to the nuns, but we had a sort of loyalty amongst ourselves.

‘I remember the way the town girls treated us. They used to dance round us singing; “God help the poor orphans, they’re not normal.” But sometimes they’d ask us to their houses for tea. You’d call it entertaining the under-privileged I suppose, though I didn’t think that then. I went once or twice. We sang and danced for them. But the nuns made so little of me all the time, except for my singing. Nora O’Hanlon and me, we both had nice voices and something should have been done with them. We were always made to sing if visitors came.

‘When babies came into the orphanage the older girls had to look after them. When the twins came I must have been about fifteen. They were four days old and they were given to me to mind. I wasn’t told what to do, I just seemed to know by instinct or perhaps by watching the other girls. At night I had them by my bed and there were times when I could have killed them because I was up so often during the night and I had to go to school the next day. One night another girl fed them instead of me. She didn’t pin down the sheets the way I used to and the next morning one of them was dead. I suppose it must have suffocated. The other baby was taken away—by the mother, I suppose—though I never knew. The death was never mentioned again.

‘Bernadette was brought into the orphanage when she was two. She was a gypsy child and I just loved her the minute I saw her. She was so poor and desperate looking, I think she reminded me of myself. One summer the nuns sent me to work in a shop and I must have earned about £1 a week. I bought Bernadette a yellow jersey with fluff on the inside and a little blue checked pinafore and a ribbon for her hair and a pair of ankle socks. I spent my whole wages on her. She wore the clothes on Christmas Day and I never saw them again. Anything good we were given was always taken away. We never knew where it went.

‘She slept in a partition next to my bed and in the night she used to knock on it and call “Francie”, and I’d get up and go down this long corridor and bring her to the toilet. She was terrified of wetting her bed. Poor little Bernadette. My little darling. I adored her. I never loved anyone the way I did her, not even my own children. Her eyes were all twisted and she should have been given exercises. When I was working in Dublin I heard she was in hospital having an eye operation, and I went to see her. She stared and stared at me and then she said my name. I was so pleased. I haven’t seen her for years and anyway she wouldn’t remember me. I sometimes wonder would I be a good person for her to know after everything that’s happened to me.

‘The other little ones used to call me “Mother” and run to me for help with their homework, especially after I started at the secondary school—I was allowed to go on there after I got my Primary Certificate. I’ll never know why they let me unless it was so that they could get me to clean the whole bloody place for them. In the last year, Mother Francis Xavier and I cleaned the school together on Saturday afternoons. I’d have dropped dead for her. She was the only nun ever took an interest in me. We’d polish all the floors and clean out the bathrooms. I had to empty all the sanitary bins into newspapers and carry them down to the furnace and burn them. I hated that.

‘Mother Francis used to talk to me about her life before she came to the convent. Those were my hours of happiness. I loved watching her and being with her, she was so beautiful. Once she told me about a man who had come up to her in a bicycle shed and had tried to take off her bra. I used to seek her out and look for ways to be alone with her and then I would tell her stories about fellows kissing me. I’d invent them of course but it used to excite me being able to tell them. Once I remember after I’d told her a story, she said “And did he pull down your pants? Maybe you’re pregnant.” I didn’t even know what being pregnant meant, and I was fifteen at the time! I remember her saying “Do you want to kiss me?” I did like her, but I didn’t want to kiss her.

‘I hated Secondary School because I never had the right things. The girls used to laugh at me because I didn’t wear a bra. Cookery classes were awful because the teacher would tell us to bring in things like half a pound of mince. Where would I have got that? And the books. All the girls could buy theirs, but I had to go to Mother Ruth and once she said “Remember you’re not paying for these.” I felt so ashamed.