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Bridie took one look at Jodie’s face and the tell-tale suitcase at her side before ushering her inside the house, closing the door behind her. ‘Mam,’ she hollered in the direction of the kitchen, ‘is it alright if Jodie stays the night? We’ll have to top and tail,’ she said to Jodie. The television was on in the living room and Tiger, the family’s inquisitive tabby cat, poked her head around the door.
‘I don’t know why you’re asking,’ Mrs Sheehan said smiling as she appeared in the hallway, wiping her hands on a tea towel. ‘Jodie’s one of us, so she is.’
It was the kindness in the woman’s voice that did it. The floodgates opened and Jodie bent double sobbing. Mrs Sheehan hurried forward pulling her into her arms as she stroked her head and soothed her. ‘There now, it can’t be all that bad, surely?’
‘Oh, but it is.’ Jodie’s voice was muffled against the other woman’s chest. Edie was halfway down the stairs and she paused to watch the curious scene.
Mr Sheehan’s voice floated out from the living room, ‘Orna, what’s going on?’
‘Nothing for you to worry about, Colm,’ Orna said as she spied the battered old case. She looked at Jodie’s frightened face and back to Bridie and in that instance she knew. ‘Bridie, go and put Jodie’s case in your room and fetch a flannel for her to wipe her face with. Edie close your gormless mouth and carry on with whatever it was you were about to do. I think Jodie and I need to have a chat.’ She led her through to the kitchen and shut the door behind them. ‘There now, it’s just us. I’ll make us a cup of tea. You sit down, Jodie, love.’ She did so, watching Mrs Sheehan rattle around making the tea.
‘I knew your mammy well, you know that don’t you, Jodie?’ Orna poured boiling water over the tea leaves.
Jodie nodded.
‘She’d have wanted me to keep an eye out for you and I’ve done my best. I know you’ve not had an easy time of it with your da. He’s never been able to pick himself up from your mam’s passing.’
Jodie nodded. She didn’t know where the conversation was heading. Bridie appeared and she took the warm flannel from her gratefully. She held it to her eyes, the heat soothing.
‘Bridie, why don’t you leave me and Jodie for a little while? It’s going to be alright, love, I promise.’
Bridie hesitated, torn between trusting her mam and staying by Jodie’s side.
Jodie reached up and took her friend’s hand giving it a squeeze. ‘It’s fine.’ Bridie squeezed her hand back and left the room, closing the door behind her on her way out.
‘It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure things out. You’re in the family way, aren’t you?’
She nodded, not able to meet Mrs Sheehan’s gaze.
‘How far gone are you?’ Orna asked, putting the teapot down on the table before carrying over the cups and saucers.
‘Just over four months, I think.’ She sniffed loudly. ‘Sorry. My da, he told me to pack my bags and see if St Agnes' would take me in. I did what he said. I walked there but when I got to the gates, I was too scared to go inside. You hear things, you know?’ A hiccup escaped.
‘I know.’ Orna poured milk into the two cups. ‘I don’t blame you for being frightened.’ She put the strainer over the cups one at a time and poured the tea before pushing the sugar bowl toward Jodie. ‘There we are. Sweeten it up, it will help settle your poor nerves.’
‘Thank you.’ Jodie’s hand shook as she picked up the teaspoon heaping it full of sugar and dunking it in her cup. She stirred it in and tea sloshed over the rim as she raised the cup to her mouth. It was scalding hot but the sweetness did calm her.
‘You know, Jodie, I wasn’t always Edie and Bridie’s mam. I was a young girl too once and I met a fella who told me he’d take me to America with him. Can you imagine how exciting that sounded to a girl who’d never been further than Cork?’
Jodie nodded. America was a far away, mystical place.
‘He told me he loved me and that as soon as I turned eighteen we’d get married and sail to New York. I believed every single word he said and I lost myself in being in love. I got swept up and carried away with it all.’ Her lips tightened. ‘When I told him I was going to have a baby, I thought he’d marry me there and then, but no. He left town and the last I heard of him, he got on that ship by himself. I went to see his family but they wouldn’t give me a forwarding address. There was nothing for it but for me to go to the nuns. My mam took me to the mother and baby house on the outskirts of Cork City, Belmont House.’
If Jodie’s eyes hadn’t of been swollen they’d have been like organ stoppers at the turn Mrs Sheehan’s story had taken.
Orna sensed her shock. ‘The thing with the young, Jodie, is they think they’re the first to have done everything.’ She reached over and patted her hand, her smile kind. ‘Do you want to hear the rest?’
‘Yes, please.’ Jodie’s voice was barely audible. She had to know what had happened to Mrs Sheehan.
‘My mam packed my case and had me wear my best coat. It was turquoise blue; funny how vivid the colour of that coat is in my mind.’ She shook her head, a faraway look in her eyes. ‘I can’t stand the colour now, never wear it. Mam acted as though we were off on our holidays and Da never said a word from the moment the decision was made that I was to go to Belmont House. I was the oldest of six and, so far as they were concerned, I’d found work in England for the summer. We left when they were at school and I never even got to say goodbye. I can remember feeling very alone and very frightened but worse than any of that I felt so very ashamed.’
They were feelings Jodie could relate to.
‘Mam jollied me along when I wouldn’t walk up the driveway to that horrible place. I looked at it and I just knew that nothing good would come out of me going there. ‘Well now, Orna, you’ve only yourself to blame, come on with you,’ Ma said. And I had no choice but to follow behind her. She handed me over to the nuns without so much as a kiss or a backward glance. It took me a long time to understand how she could be so hard. I don’t know that I do now but I suppose the thought of being shunned by your neighbours and friends does funny things to a person.’ Orna took a sip of her tea and gave Jodie a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. ‘Have you heard enough?’
‘Did you have an awful time there?’ Jodie was hoping Mrs Sheehan would wave her hand and tell her ‘sure, it wasn’t too bad at all.’ Perhaps the nuns were kind to her and the other girls.
‘I did.’
Jodie felt her insides shrink.
‘I remember those big auld doors closing behind me like prison gates and that’s what it was like, Jodie, like being in a prison. Everything was taken from me and it was made clear that this was to be my home until my baby was adopted. I was given a starched dress that itched my skin and a pair of clogs to wear, and put straight to work in the kitchen. And work we did. It was penance for our sins and none of us dared complain. My knees would be red raw from being on them half the day scrubbing those ugly old tiles. All we did was sleep, work and pray. It was like our old lives had ceased to exist and there was just us ‘girls’ as we were called, and the nuns. We heard nothing from our homes or any news of what was happening outside those walls the whole time we were there.’
Jodie could see the distaste on Mrs Sheehan’s face as she paused to wet her whistle. ‘There were girls who had a harder time of it than I did. Girls who spoke up for themselves. They soon had their spirits crushed. It was my friend, Gill, who got me through my time there, and me her. Her story was similar to mine, all of us girls had similar stories but Gill and I we arrived within days of one another. We helped one another get used to the way things were and when one of us was low, the other would be strong. We had our babies within days of each other. Gill had a beautiful little girl she called Margaret after the princess and I had the loveliest baby boy.’ Her lip trembled. ‘He was born with a full head of hair and the brightest, knowing wee eyes. I called him James.’
Jodie hardly dared breathe as she waited for Mrs Sheehan to get to the end, instinctively knowing her story wouldn’t have a happy ending.
‘Gill and I used to imagine ways, as we fed our babies, we could keep them. How we could slip away with them and start a new life. We had no clue as to how we’d manage or where we’d go.’ Her voice tripped over her words in a hurry to get the words out that obviously still caused pain. ‘My James was adopted when he was three months old; took him from my arms they did and just like that he was gone. I don’t know who adopted him or where he went to live. All the crying and screaming in the world couldn’t bring him back or get them to tell me where he was.’
Jodie didn’t know what to say not even realising how tightly she’d wrapped her arms around her middle. ‘What about Gill’s baby?’
‘Gill’s baby died in the home. Poor wee Margaret caught a fever and in that draughty old place it worsened quickly. By the time they finally called the doctor it was too late.’
‘Oh.’
‘Gill and I left Belmont House together. I went back to my parents and life carried on as though it had never happened. It was understood it wasn’t to be spoken of and I never did until I met Colm. I told him the truth of it all when he asked me to marry him because I didn’t want to start our life together with lies between us. He was very sorry for what I’d been through but it didn’t change how he felt about me. He’s a good man is Colm.’
‘Do Bridie and Edie know?’ Jodie couldn’t imagine they did. Bridie would have shared her mam’s sad story with her.
Orna shook her head. ‘I could never find the right time to tell them, but now I’ve told you I think that time’s come. I’ve not told you my story to frighten you. I’ve told you so you understand you’ve got two choices. You can go to the nuns, and things might have improved for the girls behind those gates, but I’m not so sure. Or you can go to Gill.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Gill moved to London when she left Belmont House. She had no stomach for Ireland after what happened. She married a lovely fella but they couldn’t have any children and she was widowed five years back now. He left her well provided for.’ Orna leaned forward in her chair. ‘Gill and I made a pact when we left that awful place that if we could ever stop another girl from going through what we went through, we would. We can’t change what happened to us and our little ones but it doesn’t have to be that way for you, Jodie. You’re not the first girl Gill will have helped. She’ll look after you while you decide what you want to do, and if you want to keep your baby she’ll help you set yourself up.’
Jodie felt as though she’d been tossed a lifeline and she was going to grasp it with both hands. She would swim not sink.