Little Drifters: Part 2 of 4

‘Don’t be stupid, Kathleen!’ she chided, roughing me all the way down the stairs again. ‘It’s only a little holiday. You’ll all be coming back again.’

But I knew it wasn’t a holiday – we all did. Mammy just wanted us gone. We could see that. Now Brian was crying but she wasn’t putting up with any of it. We’d never seen Mammy like this before. She was impatient, aggressive, like she couldn’t wait to get shot of us.

Mammy dragged us outside and Brian kept crying and kicking at her. It was awful.

‘Please, Mammy!’ he begged. ‘I won’t be naughty any more. Just let me stay. Please!’

She marched us down the road towards the train station and after a while we stopped crying and fighting with her. It wasn’t making any difference. We hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye to Bridget, Aidan, Liam or the little ones. Once on the train, Mammy didn’t even kiss us goodbye. She just looked at us all sternly and ordered: ‘Now you all be good for your aunt. She doesn’t need you causing trouble for her.’

We got on board and Aunt Elizabeth followed on behind us – we had no bags at all, just the clothes we stood up in. Now it was sinking in what was really happening Tara started to sob. I put my arm around her and tried my best to console her: ‘Don’t be sad, Tara. Just think how happy Daddy will be when he sees us.’

But she couldn’t be comforted.

Eventually Aunt Elizabeth snapped at her: ‘Stop your bawling, Tara! I don’t need to be listening to you lot crying all the way back to Ireland.’

It was a sad journey home. None of us jumped about or ran around the train; we hardly even went on deck during the boat crossing and all the way back we were teary, silent and miserable. But we didn’t go straight back to Daddy’s. Aunt Elizabeth took us first to her home. Though Mammy’s family had been travellers when they were all growing up, most of them had now settled into houses. When we got there it was late at night and there was an old man with a wiry brown beard standing in the kitchen. He must have been our uncle, but he didn’t greet us. He didn’t even look at us. He just pointed his finger towards the staircase and said: ‘Straight upstairs.’