The Four Streets: The Ballymara Road Part 3

'Well, it wasn't easy, Tom,' Rosie replied as she searched in her handbag for her office keys. 'It took the help of a tractor and a very good husband to see me onto the Dublin road, or I would indeed still be stuck in Roscommon. We had all our animals down on the lower fields to make it easier over Christmas, so it hasn't been too bad for us. I could at least commandeer the tractor without too much guilt, now. But that didn't stop yer man grumbling, and, sure, being as he's a farmer, he doesn't usually need much of an excuse, now, does he?'

Tom laughed out loud, feeling sorry for any man who tried to cross Matron O'Grady.

'Aye, well, you have still made it in and that is to your credit. We can complain all we like but to wake up on Christmas morning to a white Ireland, that was a miracle, was it not?'

Rosie smiled at Tom. It had been very special indeed. The fields and the church had looked magnificent. Even the old prison walls became magical and romantic.

'Aye, Tom, it was a miracle. Deep snow on Christmas Day, who would have thought it?'

'Shall I ring the kitchen, shall I? And ask Besmina to bring up your tea?'

'Oh G.o.d, wouldn't that just be grand. I'm parched,' Rosie replied. 'You can always rely on Besmina.'

'You can, that. She will always be grateful to you for the job you gave her. You have a loyal employee for life there, Matron, and that's for sure.'

Rosie's husband had done everything possible that morning, to try to persuade her not to travel to Dublin.

'Are ye mad?' he had said when she had asked him to tow her car out onto the main Dublin road, using his farm tractor. 'Phone lines are down all over the place. No one is driving anywhere. I will be halfway to Dublin by the time I find a decent stretch of road to leave you on, and then how in G.o.d's name would I know ye had made it in? And tonight, how will ye travel back if it freezes over? It's a Hillman Hunter ye drive, not a b.l.o.o.d.y tank.'

'Aye, I know that,' Rosie had replied. 'Calm down for goodness' sake. I don't expect you to take me all the way to Dublin. Just leave me on the first clear stretch and I will manage the rest of the way.'

It didn't matter how much he remonstrated with her, no one could alter Rosie's mind about anything when it was made up. Once she had set herself on a course of action, she was unstoppable.

'Jeez, the mule is less stubborn,' her husband had grumbled as he set about moving the tractor out of the barn.

As she opened the office door to the ringing telephone, Rosie hastily dropped her bag onto the floor and pulled off her leather driving gloves with her teeth. She noted that at least the hospital phones were working. Having removed the second glove, she just had time to lift the receiver to her ear before the caller hung up.

'Good morning, Rosie O'Grady, matron midwife,' she trilled down the line, cheered after her long and cold journey by the knowledge that tea was on its way to her office to warm her.

She secretly hoped that the office kitchen maid, Besmina, would pop a slice of thick, white, hot b.u.t.tered toast onto the tray, as she often did. It had been over three hours since Rosie had left home to set off for the hospital and the loud rumblings from her stomach were letting her know as much.

The crackling phone line was poor, which wasn't surprising, given the weather, but Rosie could just make out the voice on the other end as that of the Reverend Mother at the Abbey convent and laundry out in the windy west, near Galway.

She had been dreading this call.

Her heart dropped into her boots. There was only one reason why the Reverend Mother would be telephoning her now. Rosie was very careful to keep her distance from any of the laundries or the mother and baby homes run by the sisters. Their very existence made her uncomfortable.

For many years the Irish government had made use of the laundries to imprison women and hide them away. Rosie knew that girls were sent to the abbeys and convents by the authorities, for the most spurious of reasons, and would remain incarcerated there for their entire lives. Many were not, nor had ever been, pregnant. Some were sent for being nothing more than a pretty orphan, a.s.signed to the Abbey for her own protection, away from the lure of temptation and sinful ways.

These girls, known as penitents, were transferred to the Abbey straight from the industrial schools, run by the nuns and brothers. Many were country girls from the village farms, victims of incest and rape, or just a girl carried away at a dance, or a fair. Those who found themselves pregnant outside of wedlock would be deposited abruptly at the Abbey's doors by their parents or by the local priest. In their imprisonment, some went mad from grief and despair.

Many in Rosie's circle knew about the laundries. An industry run by nuns who made vast profits enslaving women deemed to be sinful. The sisters and the government, worked as a team.

This had made Rosie cross herself in shame when she last walked through the Abbey doors. If the penitents were lucky, after three long years of unpaid work in the laundry they might manage to buy back their freedom, provided that their families could supply the necessary one hundred and fifty pounds. However, before they left they would also be required to agree to give up their babies and to allow the Abbey to sell them on to American families.

For the country girls, there was no way to bypa.s.s their years of slave labour. There wasn't a farm girl from one end of County Mayo to the other who would ever see that kind of money in her entire lifetime.

For young Kitty Doherty from Liverpool, Rosie's involvement with Sister a.s.sumpta and the Abbey had been necessary.

A necessary evil.

Kitty was neither a penitent nor a country girl but, for her own sake as much as anyone else's, for a short while she had needed to become one.

Rosie had agreed to personally deliver the baby at the Abbey when Kitty's time was due, but, based on Rosie's examination a few months earlier, she had thought that wouldn't be until the middle of January at the very earliest.

Rosie was one of very few people who knew that Kitty's secret arrival in Ireland was in some way connected to the murder of the priest. The news of the murder had been all over the Dublin newspapers for almost a week.

Since it seemed like half the men of County Mayo had travelled to Liverpool, to work on the roads, at the docks or building new houses, anything that happened in Liverpool was news in Ireland too.

Rosie didn't want to know the details of why or how Kitty had become pregnant.. Sure, hadn't she seen enough girls in Ireland in the same position. The priest in Liverpool was not unique. She was delivering Kitty's baby under a cloak of secrecy, at the request of her sister-in-law, Julia, who lived in Bangornevin in County Mayo. Refusal was not an option. A girl was in trouble. It was the job of the women to find a solution to her problem. Kitty Doherty's name had been changed to Cissy so that no one would ever know she had been at the Abbey. It had been drilled into Rosie that no one must know where the girl was, who she was, or that she had given birth. Once she had done so, she would need to return to Liverpool as soon as possible.

Rosie was well aware, without having to be told, that the part she had played in helping to hide the child at the Abbey to have her baby had saved Kitty's father, Tommy, a good man, from the gallows.

The justice of the four streets was brutally simple.

An eye for an eye. A life for a life stolen.

The family had altered Kitty's name to Cissy, to hide her true ident.i.ty from the nuns, and Cissy her name would remain. Unlike the other girls in the Abbey, who had their name removed on the day they arrived.

No one was allowed to use her real name whilst resident at the Abbey. Hair was cut short, personal possessions removed and girls were not allowed to speak of their past. In fact, they were not allowed to speak.

Kitty's case was slightly different. She was to be resident at the Abbey for just a few months, rather than years. Kitty had not been dropped at the door. Nor was she a penitent.

Kitty wasn't even an Irish resident and had been registered under a false name from the very beginning.

'Shall I put the tray on the table, Mrs O'Grady?' Besmina whispered to Rosie.

For a second, Rosie almost lost her concentration and focus on what the Reverend Mother was saying, as her stomach responded to the smell of the hot tea and b.u.t.tered toast. She winked at Besmina who began to pour her tea from the aluminium teapot. The porter had slipped into the room with his arms full of logs and set about lighting the fire, hoping to warm the cold office, which had been empty for almost a week.

The voice at the other end of the line was as cold as the room.

'The child was delivered in the early hours of Christmas morning.'

There was no compa.s.sion in the words of the Reverend Mother.

Rosie felt a sudden chill, which had nothing to do with the temperature of her office.

The Abbey's delivery practices were barbaric. Pain was regarded as an atonement for sin. St.i.tching was not allowed. The perineal tears were looked on as a continuing physical reminder of the need to seek forgiveness.

'Where is she now?' Rosie had already forgotten about the tea and toast. She knew all was not as it should be.

Besmina, the kitchen maid, arrived at the hospital only a few months previously. It hadn't taken long for the staff, over tea and brack, to discover that Besmina had detailed knowledge of the Abbey, where Kitty had been left to deliver her baby in secret. The moment Rosie discovered that Besmina was familiar with the Abbey, she pressed her for information.

It had been a difficult task. At first she was very nervous but, gradually, she had opened up to Rosie. The staff had no idea why Rosie was so interested and she wanted to keep it that way.

She wasn't the only one keeping secrets. There was much Besmina hadn't told Rosie, or anyone else. She would never confess that she had been an unmarried mother herself or to having birthed her child at the Abbey to save her mother and grandmother from the shame. Or that she had escaped with the help of a child from Liverpool by the name of Nellie.

'Thank you, G.o.d, for sending Nellie to me,' was the opening line of Besmina's first and last prayer of every day.

Besmina had informed Rosie that, behind the Abbey, in the middle of a copse of trees, were graves, dozens of them, belonging to girls as young as thirteen. And babies. Lots of babies.

For this reason Rosie had been very glad that Kitty's family, related to her own, had asked her to deliver the baby herself.

Rosie knew that Kitty came from a loving and caring family. G.o.d alone knew how that priest had been able to do what he did.

The Reverend Mother had ignored both Rosie's question and the tone of her voice.

'I have given orders for her to be left in the labour room until you arrive. I do not want her working in the laundry any longer. A baby conceived in sin, but born in the Abbey on Christmas morning, is not viewed as helpful, Mrs O'Grady. I don't need to explain to you how unsettled this birth has made everyone. I would like her to be removed as soon as is possible.'

'Right, how is she?' Rosie asked. 'Was the delivery straightforward and is she recovering well?'

'You will be able to answer those questions when you collect her, which I hope will be today. Her baby was a boy. I had him removed to the nursery, immediately following his birth, and I am delighted to say that his new parents are making haste travelling from America to view him. They will take him back as soon as possible once a pa.s.sport can be issued.'

'View him? Well, goodness me, what an odd expression. That is very quick altogether, is it not?'

Rosie was no stranger to efficiency, but the Reverend Mother appeared to have moved with unseemly haste to have the baby adopted.

'It is our normal practice to keep the children until they are three. Adoption takes such a time to arrange in America. A letter can take as long as six weeks. When a new baby is available, we have the very best Catholic families on standby who will drop everything once they receive a telegram from us. I hope there will be no complaint? The girl has already signed a contract, stating that she relinquishes all rights to the baby and that she will never attempt to make contact with the child or his family, at any time in the future. What time can we expect you?' Her tone brightened as she added, 'Sister Celia would love to bake you a cake.'

In her state of trauma following the delivery, Kitty had signed the contract using her real name. The Reverend Mother, in her haste to have the contract signed, had not noticed Kitty's error.

Rosie was speechless. The journey to Dublin from Roscommon had been an ordeal. Now she would have to drive across country to Galway and then take the girl on to Ballymara.

'I hope to arrive at the Abbey at around two o'clock, all being well, so long as I am able to drive down all the roads, please G.o.d. Thank Sister Celia, I am very much looking forward to her wonderful cake.'

Rosie frowned as she replaced the receiver. She felt intensely uncomfortable but she knew that she must make her way to Kitty, as fast as she possibly could.

Rosie whispered a prayer, 'At least the girl is alive, thanks be to G.o.d,' and blessed herself. She quickly telephoned Mrs Doyle at the post office in Bangornevin and asked her to send someone across the road to fetch her sister-in-law, Julia, to the phone.

Whilst she waited for Julia to call back, she just had time to drink her tea and eat her toast before making another call to her husband, who was less than pleased by her news.

'Rosie, if the baby has been born, why can ye not wait for the weather to clear? I've been looking at the sky and, sure, 'tis as heavy as a sinner's heart. There will be snow tonight again, I am certain of it.'

'I will be fine. You know me, always the lucky one. Stop fussing now and get back to work. There won't be much light today.'

'Aye, right, well there is no use me arguing now. I will make sure Julia knows to put the watch on from Castlefeale and have them ring me, as ye pa.s.s through. Drive with care, Rosie.'

As Rosie finished her last phone call, she once again reminded herself how blessed she had been to marry a man like JT. Never once had she known him to lose his temper, which could not be said for some of the men of rural Ireland. On countless farms, husbands and fathers ruled by the fist.

She set off into the snow once again, this time with her Gladstone bag full of dressings, sutures and useful things she might need for Kitty, as well as a little extra knowledge, which she had artfully gleaned from Besmina as she cleared away the tea tray.

When Rosie turned in through the Abbey gates at three o'clock, the light was already fading fast. At the best of times she thought the Abbey looked like the coldest and most miserable of inst.i.tutions, but today in the frozen mist it appeared even more forbidding than usual as it loomed up, like a white effigy, against the dull grey sky.

To the right of the main building was a long gla.s.s corridor, which led to the laundry; on the opposite side lay the chapel and convent. Rosie knew the girls' dormitories were up in the roof.

She wiped the misty windscreen with her leather glove. From the window on the top floor shone the single, dim yellow light of the labour room, which was where Kitty would be lying, probably alone.

'Merciful G.o.d, the poor child,' she said out loud as she pulled up in front of the convent.

As Rosie turned off the engine, she saw a huddled procession of girls shuffling in a straight line down the steps, from the Abbey nursery to the laundry. Rosie wondered if this was the end of the one hour per day they were allowed to spend with their babies and children, and were being herded back to commence another five hours of hard work. Two girls looked directly at Rosie and then began talking to each other. One smiled at her nervously, as though trying to attract her attention, before being sharply prodded in the back by the nun walking alongside.

Rosie had been told by Besmina that whenever a child was adopted, the mother was made to carry it down the long corridor to the door at the far end. There, she would have to hand the baby over to the person who would oversee the handover to the new parents, at Shannon airport.

''Tis the walk of shame,' Besmina had said, 'and the nuns, they all line up in a row on either side, praying for forgiveness, which, if you ask me, never seems to come. If the mother breaks down, or becomes upset, Jesus, she is punished so bad.'

'How, Besmina, how?'

Rosie had asked this question before but it was not until today that Besmina had answered her, with uncharacteristic bitterness.

'They are taken into the Reverend Mother's office, where they have their heads shaved and painted with gentian violet. Then they are beaten with a cane, tied to a chair and left in a room, alone, for hours. The nuns can be witches, so they can.'

Rosie a.s.sumed purple gentian violet would be a physical warning to the other girls, should they dare to shed tears as they handed over their babies.

Besmina, who was a good girl, had told Rosie very little but what she did say had shocked her. Rosie was a good Catholic, but sometimes even she worried at the corruption of her religion, and wondered how there could be a justification for such places as the Abbey.

The Reverend Mother stood waiting, framed in the doorway, a vision in black. By the time Rosie had reached the top of the steps, a fl.u.s.tered, white-veiled novice was also hovering behind her, twittering.

'At long last. I thought you would never arrive,' Sister a.s.sumpta exclaimed impatiently, as though Rosie had travelled from the local village on a dry and pleasant day. 'I have tea ready for you in my office.'

At last, an acknowledgment of the dreadful conditions I have driven in, thought Rosie.

'We saw the lights of your car and had it made immediately. Sister Virginia, show Mrs O'Grady to the bathroom and wait to bring her back. Then you can have your tea and cake, midwife, and Sister Virginia will escort you to the labour room, to collect the girl. Sister Celia has made you the most fabulous sandwich cake and covered the top in melted chocolate. Can you imagine that?'

Rosie followed the novice down the highly polished corridor laid with a green Persian carpet, and lined with heavy, dark wood furniture, with ruby brocade curtains hanging at the windows. Against the wall stood an overpowering statue of St Anthony that had obviously been recently carved. She wondered exactly how much money the nuns were bringing in on an annual basis from their laundry work and baby selling, in order to fill the Abbey with such finery.

The ceremonial tea and cake in the Reverend Mother's room were consumed in minutes. Rosie was keen to see Kitty as quickly as possible, so she stood and picked up her heavy bag. She had to admit, to herself, it was the best slice of chocolate cake she had ever eaten. An unexpected sweetness.

'Er, before you take the girl, I am afraid we have a small problem.' Sister a.s.sumpta's voice, behind her, had now dropped an octave to sound almost menacing.

As Rosie turned back to face her, Sister a.s.sumpta averted her gaze and shuffled pieces of paper across her desk.

'And that would be what, Reverend Mother?' enquired Rosie.

The atmosphere in the room had taken a decidedly frosty turn.

'Do you have the money with you? There is a further eighty pounds outstanding, before the girl can leave.'

Rosie felt her blood boil. She had had a very long day and the last thing on her mind when she had received the Reverend Mother's call was driving to Bangornevin to collect what amounted to bail money. There had been only one idea in her head as she had replaced the receiver and that was to make haste to Kitty's bedside as soon as G.o.d and the weather would allow.

Rosie looked the Reverend Mother straight in the eye and spoke with more authority than she actually felt, especially as a painting of the Holy Mother seemed to be staring down at her with a touch of disappointment in the eyes that she had not noticed until now.

'No, I do not, as it happens, because you have given me no time to organize the payment. You appeared very keen indeed to have Kitty removed from the Abbey when you called me this morning, and so I am afraid you will have to wait until I can send someone over. You will have to take my word, unless you would like to hold me for a ransom?'

Both women laughed. A dry slightly shrill laugh, although not one even remotely funny word had been spoken.

Turning on her heel, Rosie crossed the acreage of plush carpet to the office door and almost had to edge the novice aside, to place her hand on the bra.s.s doork.n.o.b.

'I know my own way, thank you very much,' Rosie hissed as she opened the door with a flourish, almost flattening the simpering novice.