Little Drifters: Part 3 of 4. Kathleen O’Shea

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СКАЧАТЬ worry. It’s not that difficult. We’ll just go step by step. First we have to learn how to spell. Let’s start here in the kitchen.’ She looked around and then went over to the cooker. ‘Right, this is a cooker.’

      She sounded the word out: ‘Coo-ker. Get your pencil out. I’m going to write it down for you.’

      So I scurried off to get my pencil and rough book. Bringing it back, she spelled out the word on the page then she pointed at every letter individually and read out each one: ‘That’s C-O-O-K-E-R. Right, now you try it.’

      So I looked at her work and saw the word and looked at the letters. One by one, I copied them out, saying the sounds in my head as I did so. Then Grace made me do it again and again.

      Then she pointed to one of the letters.

      ‘What’s that one?’ she asked.

      ‘It’s a K,’ I said.

      ‘Good!’ she smiled.

      Finally, she turned the page over and said: ‘Now try spelling it on your own without looking.’

      That was my first lesson. The next day we did table, then chair, fridge, floor, door, ceiling, plate and cup. By the end of the first week we’d exhausted all the words in the kitchen so Grace took me outside to the garden and we went through the whole process out there: sky, grass, house, window, boy, run. For weeks Grace put aside an hour every day to helping me learn to read and by the time I turned 11 I was able to keep up in class.

      The only other person I liked was my music teacher in school. At first we just learned the recorder but I found very early on that when it came to music I could hear the tune and just pick out the notes afterwards. I suppose that came from my father. The music teacher was a tall, slim English lady called Deirdre and she was one of the only teachers in the whole school who treated me with kindness and respect. Perhaps because I was good at music, perhaps because she knew I got picked on by the other teachers, or maybe because she was simply a nice person, but for whatever reason she was good to me and I lapped it up. Within a short time she’d moved me on to the piano.

      ‘Oh, you’ve got a fine ear, Kathleen!’ she praised me whenever I managed to master a new song.

      Twice a week for an hour, I shone. Me, Kathleen, the dirty tinker, the girl from the orphanage. I could be somebody. And I could make music with my own hands. I felt uplifted, I felt happy.

      And for much of the rest of the time I just muddled along. By now I could keep up in English and History but my Maths was shocking. So bad in fact that our male teacher gave up almost immediately. I was so far behind he simply refused to teach me, and during lessons I’d either sit at the back, working on something else, or I’d go out and walk around the playground until it was time for a new lesson. The nuns at the orphanage didn’t care – there were tests at school and most of the children sat them but they didn’t bother with us orphanage kids. We weren’t important enough, we were never expected to make anything of our lives so we just got left to sink or swim. If it hadn’t been for Grace the cook I would have gone through my whole school life without even being able to read.

      Three months into our new life at St Beatrice’s we saw Mammy.

      Every Wednesday the nuns herded all of the older children into the local swimming baths for an afternoon of swimming. It was fun – there would be about 60 of us all jumping, splashing, shouting and paddling around. There were no lessons so it took me a little while to learn how to swim. In fact, it was Tara that made me. I’d always be clinging to the edge, terrified of letting go. She’d pull me out to the middle of the pool and then swim away, making me doggy-paddle my way back to the edge. Eventually I stopped screaming in terror every time she did it and realised that I was swimming quite well on my own. From then, we had a grand old time, playing and swimming about.

      But afterwards, in the changing rooms, it was always a desperate struggle to get back into our clothes without being seen by the staff.

      Most of us now were growing and developing and we were embarrassed about our bodies. But there wasn’t a towel for everyone so we’d have to share and Tara and I would hold it up for each other like a wall while the other one changed behind it, sometimes clambering into our clothes still dripping wet. There was one member of staff who looked after another house called Winifred. Winifred was a harsh lady and we all hated her. She’d line up her girls in the changing room every Wednesday and insist they change in front of her. They’d all stand there, naked, shivering, wishing the ground would swallow them up. We tried not to look, afraid of being shouted at by Winifred or making the girls’ humiliation even worse. One poor girl was more developed than the rest – she had proper breasts and hair down there – and it was always torture for her to stand in front of everyone. This one girl always tried cringing behind a little towel but Winifred would whip it away from her.

      ‘What are you hiding yourself for?’ she’d demand to know. ‘What have you got that the rest of us don’t? Eh? Nothing special about you!’

      We were all thankful that Sister Helen and Rosie never felt the need to come into the changing room.

      Once changed, we would all be marched across town, set by set, led by a member of the staff from our house. One Wednesday we were just on our way back and Tara and I had fallen behind the others a little way. We were dawdling and messing about when suddenly Tara stopped dead, her face drained of all colour. I followed the path of her gaze towards a blonde woman across the street. It was Mammy!

      ‘Mammy!’ I shouted, and we both ran towards her. The woman turned round, alarmed, and in that moment I saw the face I’d been dreaming of for years. The face I’d longed to see so very much. But instead of being full of warmth and love, the face was a mask of fear. And then she ran. She ran as fast as she could and we raced after her, dodging in and out through the crowds of people, still shouting: ‘Mammy! Mammy!’

      She was so quick and nimble, we couldn’t keep track of her, and after a little while weaving between people we lost her. Tara and I stopped, looking all around, but we couldn’t see her. Bewildered and hurt, I turned to my sister: ‘She ran! Why did she run?’

      Tara now was cursing our mother to hell.

      ‘Why? Because she’s a stupid bitch! I hate her, Kathleen! I hate the living sight of her. I hate her and I hope that she dies!’

      My sister’s words were harsh – I could see she was hurting but I couldn’t feel the same, I couldn’t hate my mother. I was just devastated and baffled. Our mother had come back to Ireland; she’d even managed to find her way to where all her children had been taken. I didn’t expect her to come back and get us all – I knew we weren’t getting out now till we were 16. There was nothing she could do about that. But she could have stopped to say hello.

      After all these years dreaming of a reunion, silently praying for my mother to come and rescue me, to take me in her arms and tell me that she loved me, she had run away from me. Why had she run?

      That night in bed, Tara and I whispered to each other.

      ‘That was definitely Mammy,’ I told her, as much to reassure myself as her.

      ‘That was definitely her,’ she agreed. ‘If it wasn’t her, she wouldn’t have run away. Can you imagine, Kathleen? Running away from your own flesh and blood? Don’t you just hate her for it? I won’t waste another second thinking or talking about that woman. She’s as good as dead to me now. Our daddy was too good for her.’

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