Little Drifters: Part 4 of 4

‘I’ve got so much to tell you,’ Tara babbled. ‘Oh Kathleen, I’ve missed you like crazy.’

Now I was the happiest person in the world. Tara lived a few streets away in temporary accommodation, a hotel, she told me. The baby was still just a few months old but you could never tell Tara was a mother – she was such a young girl herself and thin beyond belief. I had so many questions for her; we had so much to catch up on, but now was not the time. That day all my older brothers and sisters came to see, and each of them had kids, so the whole time we were surrounded by children. Liam and Aidan seemed happy to see me, so did Claire, who I hadn’t seen in ten years. She told me she had been in Dublin until she was 19 and then came to London to be with Bridget. She now worked in a hospice and had a boyfriend in London. It was lovely to catch up with everyone but all I wanted was to be alone with Tara. As she left that day she clasped my hands in hers and urged me: ‘Come to stay with me. Please come.’

Though I was to spend that first night at Bridget’s house, I knew it was only a matter of time before I would go to Tara’s. We had so much to catch up on, so much to say to each other. She had been smiling like mad all day long, but behind the smile I could tell something was terribly wrong. The way her eyes kept drifting off to stare into the distance, the way, every now and then, I’d catch her shaking her head as if shooing a bad thought out of her mind. And her body was thin, so painfully thin.

It had been overwhelming seeing everyone again and, despite my delight at being reunited with my family, they were still virtual strangers. Kind strangers, people who treated me like family, but they didn’t have a clue who I was any more. And I knew them even less. It would take time before we were all comfortable in each other’s presence again. So much had happened in the time we’d been separated. But I knew Tara. I knew my sister. And I knew for a fact something wasn’t right.

Chapter 20

A Child in London (#u6f874c31-bd5d-57b9-87a5-47ad6653e4cd)

‘Tara? What’s wrong, Tara?’ I’d been sent round to see my sister the day after my arrival. But when I got to the hotel where she was staying I found her sitting on the end of her bed, in her nightgown, her long dark hair hanging limply around her face, sodden and puffy from crying.

‘I don’t know,’ she said in a quiet voice, thick with tears. Her baby Sam was snoozing in his cot, peaceful and content.

I’d never seen such a beautiful baby!

‘It’s just all too much,’ she managed before collapsing back onto her bed and wrapping the sheets around her. I looked about me, the clothes everywhere, empty food packets strewn about the floor, unwashed dishes. I decided to set to work. So I started tidying up and cleaning their small room while Tara lay in her bed, occasionally letting out little whimpers as she cried.

Gradually, over the course of that first day, I found out that Tara had been in London just a few months before meeting the father of her child at a restaurant where they both worked. She had fallen pregnant so quickly it had been a shock to them both and they were trying to make a go of things – but Tara now seemed adamant she no longer wanted him in her life.

‘I don’t love him,’ she confided later that day. ‘I love the baby but I’m finding it so hard, Kathleen. It was all I could manage to come and see you yesterday but nothing could have stopped me. Nothing in the world. I’ve missed you so much, Kathleen. Stay with me? Please?’

I went back to Bridget’s that night and told her everything. She nodded and replied: ‘She’s got the baby blues. It’s probably best if you do stay with her for now. She needs someone to help her out.’

And that was that. I packed my small bag and moved into Tara’s room, sleeping with her at night, curled up together as we used to do as children.

To begin with, Tara barely spoke and hardly ate a thing. For the first few days she just lay in bed, occasionally getting up to feed or change Sam. I could see she adored her little boy, but it seemed everything was a struggle. At first Sam’s dad was living with us too but Tara told him two days after I arrived that she didn’t want him back again. He was shaking with emotion when he stood at the door, one hand on the handle.

‘Tell your sister that if I leave now I ain’t ever coming back!’

I looked over at Tara and she whispered: ‘Go! Just tell him to go!’

And hearing this, he turned around and left. From then on it was just me, Tara and the baby, and we soon got ourselves into a little routine, each taking turns to look after Sam. Gradually, Tara started to come back to herself, and one evening, while we were both sat watching TV, I managed to get up the courage to talk about what happened.

‘Tara, what did you do all them years?’

‘Oh, Kathleen, it was terrible,’ she started. ‘That morning they grabbed me they threw me in the car. I was screaming and crying. I didn’t know what was happening to me. When we arrived at the reformatory about 45 minutes later, a sister came out the front door and they brought me into this old building and said this was where I was going to be staying now. The Reverend Mother was there and I was just left in a room on my own, crying. I kept saying I wanted to go back to St Beatrice’s but they never listened. I didn’t understand it. I kept asking why I was there but nobody would tell me. The place was run like a prison.

‘From the moment we got up at 7 a.m. till bedtime it was the same. Get up, get dressed, go to church, back to the breakfast room, then cleaning up. Then it was school lessons for two hours and lunch. Then another couple of hours school and then I worked in the bakery for four hours every day, except on Saturdays when it was six hours, and the rest of the time it was cleaning, praying or eating meals. There was no time for anything else. Once a week we had to wash our own clothes by hand – even though there was a laundry right next door.

‘We did everything – we prepared our food, cleaned up after lunch, cleaned the dorms and the whole of the place. I used to cry over doing so much cleaning. In the house there were these glass doors and it was my job to clean them. I hated it. It was work, work, work all the time and no time to go out and play. Once a week on a Saturday they’d let us go into town with £1 pocket money but you didn’t get your pocket money if you didn’t clean your things right. And the worst part, the worst part was that we were locked in the whole time.

‘There were 12 of us girls there, and wherever we went they locked the doors behind us. In the dining room they locked us in, in the bakery we were locked in – everywhere. Even if we wanted to go to the bathroom they locked us in. In the whole time I was there I never opened a door for myself. Not once. All I kept doing was crying and thinking of you and the others. I missed you all like mad. I had bars on my window and at night I’d look through the bars to the sky and moon and think about you all endlessly.

‘Eventually, I realised they weren’t never going to let me out so I tried to escape. The second time I ran away it was me and four other girls and we went to Cork, but it didn’t take them long to find us. The third time I finally got away for good. I thumbed a lift all the way to Daddy’s, and when I got to the house Aidan and Liam were there too. Even Brian – I think he had been let out just a few weeks before.

‘I was there two weeks before the police came looking for me and when I opened the door I became frantic, hysterical and I was hanging onto the door and crying and screaming: “I’m never going back there. You can’t make me go back!”

‘Well, the police were shocked and I think they felt sorry for me because they said they wouldn’t take me in such a state. They said a social worker would come the following day to talk to me. So that night Aidan and Liam brought me over to England, and that’s how I escaped. I don’t know what I would have done if they’d sent me back there, Kathleen. It was awful.’

By now I was crying too – I felt so dreadful for my sister.

‘God, Tara. I’m so sorry!’ I wept. ‘It’s all my fault. If only I hadn’t told Sister Helen about what the daddy was doing to you all that time, maybe they wouldn’t have taken you away.’

‘Kathleen, I know it wasn’t your fault,’ she sighed. ‘Don’t blame yourself. It was them nuns – they were evil. They should have locked that daddy up in prison, not me. They don’t care about the children at all. I hate them. Hate them!’

She spat these last words with such vehemence I was taken aback.

She turned to me, her eyes burning with passion: ‘I don’t ever want to be locked up or told what to do ever again by nobody.’

‘Me too!’

‘We’ll stick together from now, Kathleen! They can’t keep us apart ever again and nobody will stop us doing exactly what we want!’

My heart soared – this is exactly how I felt too. Tara had clearly been through much worse than me in the years we’d been apart but we’d both come out with exactly the same feeling. It was only a matter of time now before I was free too and then Shane and I would come back here and live with Tara.

Tara was still battling her depression over Christmas at Bridget’s but I helped her as much as I could and every day she got a little better. By early January my thoughts had returned to the convent. I was back at Bridget’s house one afternoon and, as I helped her wash and dry teacups in the kitchen, I said: ‘It’s been lovely being over here with you and the others, but I suppose it’s time I should be going back soon.’

Bridget put her head to one side and looked at me, quizzically.

Then she said slowly: ‘But Kathleen, you’re not going back.’

‘What do you mean? Why am I not going back?’

‘The nuns didn’t send you here for a holiday, they sent you for good.’

I was shocked. It never occurred to me that I wasn’t going back to the convent, that I wouldn’t see Lucy, Colin and Libby again.

I had to be certain: ‘Are you sure, Bridget? Are you really sure I’m not going back?’

‘Positive.’

Some part of me wanted to be happy – this was what I’d dreamt of for so long: freedom. But I couldn’t be happy. This wasn’t how it was meant to be! I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving my siblings alone in that awful place. And now I knew I’d never see Shane again. I ran upstairs to Annie’s room and locked the door behind me before bursting into tears. Why hadn’t anybody told me? Why had they pretended it was just a holiday? I didn’t understand – I hadn’t had a chance to make any plans, to say goodbye even to my own sisters!

If only I’d known, I could have fixed everything. Now I realised why I’d never been punished for beating up Colleen – this was my punishment. Maybe they’d planned to send me away all along, but, in choosing not to tell me, they denied me the chance to make things right with the ones I was leaving behind. It was so cruel, so cold.

Suddenly, something occurred to me. I went to my bag and dug out the card Grace had given me. I’d forgotten it was there but now I tore open the white envelope. The picture on the front was a posy of violets and roses. As I opened it up, £40 fell out. I stared, disbelieving, at the money in my hand. English pounds! She had changed her own money into pounds!

‘To my dearest little Kathleen,’ the card read. ‘I hope you find happiness in your life and may all your dreams come true. I love you very much. Goodbye for now but I hope we will see each other again one day. Your ever adoring Grace.’

Even Grace had known I wasn’t going back there. Now I started to sob great big, snotty, heaving sobs. I would never see my beloved Grace again!

For a few days afterwards I felt low and sad. My mind kept returning to the ones I’d left behind in St Beatrice’s. Now it was Tara’s turn to cheer me up.

‘Don’t worry, Kathleen. It will be Colin next and then after that the others will come. It won’t be long and then we’ll all be together again.’

It was true – this was a new life for me now and I had to get used to it. Of course it didn’t stop me missing them, or Shane, but for now I had to adjust to a new world. There was too much to think about here for now – for one thing, we had to find a way to support ourselves.