Children Of The Poor Clares (22 page)

‘There was a fancy dress party on at the school one Christmas and I asked Mother Catherine what could I go as. “Why not a scarecrow?” she said. So I asked her for some clothes and she laughed at me and said “Go as you are!” and I went to the party in my uniform with “Scarecrow” written across my back.

‘Father O’Toole used to come to the secondary school to give us a retreat and he gave us a form to fill in saying “Are you dating?” I had to ask Joan Thomas what it meant. Then he said he wanted to talk to all the girls privately. I don’t know how Anne and Catherine got to hear about it, but they got a group of us into a room and they said to me “What do you want to talk to that priest about?” and they banged my head against the wall till I thought they’d fracture my skull. I just cried and cried because I didn’t know why the priest wanted us. When I did get to see him I was shaking like a leaf and he said—I’ll never forget it—”Do you desire to take off my habit? I’ll turn round while you get ready. Are you wearing one of those corsets? “I can’t remember any more because I was crying so much. Looking back now I think he was just testing me because of what Mother Francis Xavier had told him about me being attracted to her. I much preferred women at that time even though we all thought Father O’Toole was lovely and we cried when he was moved to another parish. He had tears in his eyes at the Mass. I sometimes think he knew how we were treated.

‘Other people knew too. The nuns had beaten Tina Martin terribly on the legs once—she used to get it a lot—and she came into school all black and blue, and the teacher said “Tina, what happened to you?” and she said “I fell over a chair, Miss.” The teacher knew well she’d been hit but nobody would ever say anything to the nuns. They were bad, bad women when I think of it now. They ruined all our lives.

‘I remember some priest coming to give a lecture to them and we were forbidden to go out in the yard in case we got a glimpse of him. But I went out and of course someone told on me and Mother Catherine got a branch off a tree and beat me till white lumps came up. One of the girls was beaten black and blue for chewing the Communion bread instead of swallowing it. Why did they hit us so much? It seemed to be for such little things. Catherine was the worst. She had real tight lips and every time she came back from holidays she’d have a big boil at the end of her nose. Once in secondary school I lost my knitting needles. Actually someone had nicked them—we were always nicking things on each other—and I was told to go back to the orphanage and find them. I was wandering round not knowing what to do when Catherine found me. “Go upstairs into the shoe room!” she said, “and take off your clothes.” When she came up she just sat on a little box and stared at me naked and I stood there holding myself. In the end she beat me. Would you believe she did a Child Care course somewhere after she left Cavan?

‘I remember Mother Anne and Mother Catherine telling me the facts of life:

“Say the Hail Mary.

“Hail Mary Full of Grace, blessed art thou among women land blessed is the fruit of they womb—”

“Stop there. Do you know what womb means?”

“No, Mother.”

“Do you know where babies come from?”

“No, Mother”

“Do you know that part of the body where the man goes to the toilet?”

“Do you know that part of the body where the woman goes to the toilet?” “Yes, Mother.”

“Well, when those are joined together that’s what makes a baby and if a man ever puts his hand on your leg slap him across the face. Now you may go.”

‘I passed my Intermediate Certificate and I think the nuns were pleased though they didn’t say so. Then one day Mother Ruth came in when a whole crowd of us were talking in class and of course big mouth me was the only one to own up. “Get out of here” she said, “Get out and don’t let me see your face again.” That was the end of my education. She asked me to go back later but I was stubborn and I wouldn’t. I expect she only wanted me because she’d have nobody to clean the school.’

Two weeks later, the nuns sent for Frances and told her she was going to work in Dublin. She went into the shoe room and took a bottle of travel sickness pills off the shelf. “I’d swallowed sixteen when Tina Martin came in and grabbed them off me. If they’d been stronger I’d have been dead. I knew I wouldn’t even have a suitcase and that girls in Dublin would have lovely clothes and I didn’t even have a bra. I was frightened out of my wits. The day before I went I prayed hard I wouldn’t have to go.’

She left St. Joseph’s in 1967. She was given a paper bag containing a jumper and skirt and a change of underwear. The nuns kissed her goodbye.

‘I was sent to work for a woman in Donnybrook. I had to look after eight students and anybody extra who came for bed and breakfast. I was up at 7.0 a.m. and worked till 10.0 at night. I got £1 10s. a week and no insurance stamp. I had one half-day which began at 3 o’clock and I never had a Sunday off. I bought a bra with my first week’s wages but I hardly went out at all. I used to sit in my room and cry because I was so lonely.

‘Then I went to a doctor’s family in Newry. They were quite nice but they didn’t let me out much. I answered an advertisement in the paper for work in America and when the doctor’s wife heard about it she rang up the nuns and they said I wasn’t to go.

“I had a week’s holiday in Butlins when I was with the doctor. It was so terrific I’ll never forget it. I went in for a talent competition and I won it and the finals were the day after I was supposed to go back to work, and the doctor’s wife wouldn’t let me stay. I know I’d have won it and then maybe I’d never have had all these children.

‘When I left the doctor I went to the nuns in Gormanstown. They looked after old people. I worked in the kitchen and emptied bins and carried up their meals. I loved being near the sea, though many’s the time I felt like running in. I used to sit on the shore and cry. I felt there was a life outside that I wasn’t part of. There was a gardener there who used to take me to this little shed and make me take all my clothes off. I never knew what he was after. I really didn’t. I know it sounds daft but I just used to laugh. It never clicked that this was sex. How could I have been so stupid?

‘Then I got a job for the season in Butlins as a kitchen help. I got in with all the fellows and I used to go to bed with them. I didn’t like it a bit—I never have really—but I did it because I thought you had to. I’ve never had an affair that led to bed. I always went to bed first. The fellows wouldn’t take me out or anything. They weren’t even nice to me. Except for Jimmy—he was the father of my first child. He was married but he used to play table tennis with me and made me save my money. Then I started getting sick in the mornings and the supervisor sent me to the hospital. It meant nothing to me to be pregnant. I didn’t understand how serious it was.’

Frances stayed until the end of the season. Then one of the girls from St. Joseph’s who was working in Newry told her she could go to the convent there, but when she arrived they turned her away, so she went back to Dublin and got a job cleaning in a hospital.

‘I couldn’t live in so I stayed in the Legion of Mary hostel. Those were my worst days I think. It was a desperate place. We’d have to make our tea over an open fire and sit and look at all these old women. The place was full of spiders. The doors were locked at eleven and if I was out late I’d have to sleep in a park. Then I met this fellow who said I’d make a packet on commission selling tickets for him in the street and I could live with him and his wife. So I did that until I found it hard to stand on my feet, and he threw me out into the streets with my case. I went to a hotel—I had £1.60 in my pocket. The next morning the bill was £1.75 and I hadn’t enough. The son of the owner took me up to the room and said “Get into that bed” and I said :”Can’t you see I’m pregnant?” and he let me go.

‘After that I went to Ally
40
and I was sent to stay with Mrs. Flanagan. She was young and pretty and very kind. Then I went to a Mrs. Roche but I nicked things from her to help another girl furnish her flat. I’d never stolen before but I didn’t think she’d notice, and anyway, she had so many things. But her husband found out and I had to go. I had a couple of jobs after that—in cafes and shops. After the baby was born Mrs. Flanagan and Mrs. Roche came to see me and the café owner where I worked sent me flowers. I was so thrilled that I kept them till all the petals dropped off. I had no feelings for the baby: I remember signing her away and not even realising she was my own child.

‘After that I got a job in a factory. I’ve never been so happy. I loved going to work. I joined the table tennis club and the music club. I felt so normal, just like everyone else. Then I got kicked in the stomach at a dance while there was a row. I went to the doctor in the factory and I had to tell him that it hurt most when I went with men. He said he would give me the pill so that I wouldn’t get pregnant. But I wouldn’t take it because it was against my religion and I had this belief that I wouldn’t go
that
far, that I wasn’t
that
bad.

‘Then I got a job in another factory which I liked, and one night Mary McNeill arrived up in my flat with her baggage and this fellow who sang in a group. She had nowhere to go so I took her in. She was desperate really; she’d be in the bed with him going hard at it, and in the end I took him off her and got into bed with him myself. I liked him in a way because he was so good-looking but I knew well he thought nothing of me. He never took me out; he never even bought me a drink. I didn’t enjoy going to bed with him, but it was the only thing brought me any comfort. I think it was the same for Mary and for all of us from Cavan.

‘I had to leave the factory because I wasn’t well and I had no money to pay the rent. I went to stay with a woman who did a lot of voluntary social work. She persuaded me to keep Patrick. I’d no intention of keeping him—why would I when I’d already given away one? But she was very kind to me and she made it all sound so easy.

‘If I hadn’t kept the child I’d have been all right. I could have gone off somewhere, found a decent job in factory and made a go of things. It was the worst decision of my life. People tell you to keep your baby—I’d have a thing or two to say to them if I had the nerve. They don’t tell you about the loneliness of it, night after night, and the worry you have about everything. I thought keeping Patrick would stop me being bad, but it hasn’t, and what is he going to think of me when he grows up? I worry all the time, about money, a flat, security. I lie awake at night thinking that if only I had something to give Patrick then may he wouldn’t think too badly of me’

‘I know I’m not pretty but the only men that like me and don’t make little of me are the married ones. If I go out with John, he’s not ashamed to be seen with me, and he’s a doctor. He’ll take me to a hotel or a pub and buy me a few drinks first. I’d like to be married and have a normal life. I’d love the security for me and Patrick.

‘I still haven’t realised that he is part of me and that I matter to him. I’m not a good mother. How can I be when I get into bed with men? He woke up one morning when a fellow was getting dressed. “Is that my Daddy?” he said. The times I’ve thought of giving him up. He could be adopted or go into a Home. If I did that, do you know what would happen? My chapter in your book would end and his would begin. The girls from Cavan are all the same. We’re warped. We never learn. We never, never learn.’

Three years later Frances answered a knock on her door. Standing there was one of her brothers; she had not seen him for twenty years since she was put into St. Joseph’s, and he had come from England to trace her. He had spent his childhood in the vast Industrial School in Artane, Dublin, and had tried desperately to keep in touch with his brothers and sisters. He had written a number of times to Frances in Cavan; buying the stamps with money he got from stealing eggs on the Artane farm. She never received these letters: outside contact with relatives was always discouraged.

And then, in November 1981, an article appeared in a Dublin newspaper about a woman who was trying to contact the nine children she had abandoned when she ran away to England to escape her violent husband. She had re-married but had never told her second husband about her past. Now that she was widowed, she felt free to find her children. She had talked to her parish priest about it and he suggested she should start her search by talking to a reporter from an Irish newspaper.

Frances was one of the nine children. The next morning she rushed into the newspaper office to find the reporter who had written the story. He had her mother’s telephone number in England. ‘Why don’t you ring her now?’ he asked. She picked up the telephone, dialled the number and spoke to the mother she had not heard from nor seen for thirty years. Her mother’s voice was choked with tears. She wanted to come home, she said. She wanted to sell her house and live in Ireland with her children around her.

Two weeks later she came to Dublin and stayed with Frances. She was a thin woman with tidy gray hair. She said that Frances’ father had been a brutal, violent man, and she described how he had once taken his son’s pet mouse and held it over the fire until it burnt to death. She said she had ten children and three miscarriages in thirteen years. One of the children had died. They were so poor that they slept on straw and she had to beg for food. When she found her husband molesting her eldest daughter she decided to run away because then the authorities would have to take responsibility for the children and they would be better off.

Frances couldn’t accept that: ‘I didn’t see why she shouldn’t know what it was like for us’ she said later. She told her mother about her childhood in St. Joseph’s: about the beatings, the loneliness, the despair. Her mother cried and said she had no idea it would be like that.