My Mother's Children: An Irish family secret and the scars it left behind. Read online

  My

  Mother’s

  Children

  Annette sills

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, businesses, organisations and incidents portrayed in it are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons,

  living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published 2021

  by Poolbeg Press Ltd.

  123 Grange Hill, Baldoyle,

  Dublin 13, Ireland

  Email: [email protected]

  © Annette Sills 2021

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  © Poolbeg Press Ltd. 2021, copyright for editing, typesetting, layout, design, ebook

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978178199-421-4

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  www.poolbeg.com

  About the Author

  Annette Sills was born in Wigan, Lancashire, to parents from County Mayo, Ireland. Her short stories have been longlisted and shortlisted in a number of competitions including The Fish Short Story Prize, Books Ireland MagazineShort Story Competition and The TelegraphMagazine Short Story Competition. Her first novel, The Relative Harmony of Julie O’Hagan, was shortlisted in Rethink Press New Novels Competition 2014.

  Annette writes contemporary sagas set in the Manchester Irish Diaspora. She is fascinated by migration and belonging, and the dynamics of family life.

  She currently lives in Chorlton, Manchester, with her husband and two children.

  Acknowledgements

  Heartfelt thanks to:

  Lyndsay Hollingshead and Claire Winstanley for reading the early drafts, Dr Rob Boon and Dr Anita McSorley for their medical expertise, Jenny Raddings for her vast gardening knowledge, Nicola Doherty and Emily Hughes for their beady-eyed comments and editing.

  To the wonderful team at Poolbeg – Paula Campbell for taking me on and Gaye Shortland for her impressive editing skills.

  To the Manchester Irish Writers group, and to Liam Harte and John McAuliffe from the Creative Writing Dept at Manchester University for the thought-provoking discussions on writing, migration and belonging. It might have been a different story without those evenings in the Irish World Heritage Centre in Cheetham Hill.

  To my Short Story Club ladies for keeping me laughing throughout lockdown and for keeping the stories coming.

  To my extended family in County Mayo and the US, whose true-life dramas will always top my fiction.

  And to my lovely Nick, Jimmy and Ciara for their constant love and support xx

  Dedication

  For the survivors of the Irish Mother and Baby Homes and the women and children who perished in them.

  Author’s Note

  On March 3rd 2017, the Irish Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation announced that human remains had been found during a test excavation carried out, between November 2016 and February 2017, at the former site of a Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway.

  Tests conducted on some of the remains indicated they were those of children aged between 35 foetal weeks and 2–3 years. The announcement confirmed that the deceased had died during the period of time that the property was used by the Mother and Baby Home and not from an earlier period, as most of the bodies dated from the 1920s to the 1950s.

  The remains were found in an “underground structure divided into 20 chambers”. The remains were not thrown into a mass pit or sceptic tank as previously reported in the press.

  Chapter 1

  Mikey was always late. He’d turn up at weddings, birthdays and funerals hours after everyone else. I could see him as clear as day, perched at the end of the bar, laughing and running his fingers through his shaggy blonde hair, as handsome as hell.

  Karen nudged me. She was air-drumming to the refrain of Siouxsie’s “Happy House” floating in from the main function room. I joined in. Joe rolled his eyes, so I drummed harder. We were only having a laugh, for God’s sake. And tonight, of all nights, I needed a laugh.

  For once the lounge bar at Chorlton Irish was busy. There were rumours the club was closing. The older Irish were dying out and the young Irish were no longer coming over like they used to. If they did come, they frequented the tapas bars and Indian restaurants across the way. These days the club relied on outside events, fundraisers like this one, to stay open. Tonight’s crowd was a mix of locals and people from previous fundraisers. The auction of promises was under way in the main room, raffle tickets were flying and I was optimistic the Heart Foundation would reach the target they needed for the scanner that government cuts had denied them.

  Our crowd were gathered at a long table near the bar under a Mayo GAA shirt depressed in a glass frame and a poster advertising a film about women in the Easter Rising. I was touched by the turnout: friends from his clubbing days, colleagues from the gym, neighbours from the old house on Brantingham Road.

  I sat with my head in my hands sometimes and asked myself if it was true. I still couldn’t quite believe he was gone.

  A rangy bloke approached the table carrying a pint of Guinness. He grinned at our drumming and I dropped my imaginary sticks in embarrassment. Then someone knocked into him from behind and he lurched forward, dousing our table with the black stuff. A few minutes later he was mopping up the tar-like puddles, his long arm circling across the table like an eagle wing. He looked in his late forties. He had a craggy face with lines etched around moss-green eyes, like well-worn paths on a mountain side. His strawberry-blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail and a long scar ran along his forearm.

  “You missed a bit.” I smiled and lifted up a soggy pile of Stena Line leaflets so he could clean underneath. Then I pointed at the scar.

  “War wound?”

  Karen kicked me under the table. A therapist, she knew better than to ask people where they got their scars.

  He grinned. “I’m Dan, by the way.” He couldn’t keep his eyes off Karen. “Sorry about this. Let me buy you all a drink.”

  Karen sat upright and threw him the haughty look she kept for attractive men. “A glass of Sauvignon Blanc would be lovely.”

  Joe frowned down at his white shirt which had taken the brunt of the dousing and shook his head.

  I nodded. “I’ll have a Sauvignon too, thanks. I’m Carmel Doherty. This is my husband Joe and this …” I waved my hand in the air, “is my amazing friend Karen.”

  He smiled and I watched him walk back to the bar, a straggle of hair slipping from his ponytail onto his neck.

  When I looked back Karen was cocking her head and smiling.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “You are. You are so drunk.”

  “Yep.” I knocked back more wine. “My only brother died a year ago today. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  By the time Dan had arrived back with our drinks Joe had moved to the other end of the table to talk to a friend of Mikey’s who’d just a
rrived on his own. Karen had gone to the bathroom after placing a glass of water in front of me and telling me to get it down my neck. Dan looked around, disappointed as he put the drinks down on the table. I gestured at him to take the chair next to Karen’s. He didn’t need telling. He sprang towards it like a gazelle, pulling it back to make room for his long legs before he sat down.

  Picking up a Guinness beer mat, he cartwheeled it between his forefinger and thumb.

  “I think I met you briefly before at another Heart Foundation gig.”

  “Probably. My brother passed last year and Tess – that’s my mum – and I used to come to some of the fundraisers in his memory.” I reached for my wine. “And to get bladdered. It’s what he would have wanted.”

  He smiled. “Sounds like a good man.”

  “Most of the time.”

  “I think I met your mum too. She said she was from County Mayo, like my family.”

  “Tess passed in November too.”

  He dropped the beer mat. “I’m sorry. That’s very tough.”

  “I’m a walking talking tragedy at the moment.” I gave a brittle laugh and raised my glass. “Anyway, here’s to beautiful Mayo!”

  He lifted his glass. “To Mayo. My wife’s family are from Achill Island.”

  I gulped my wine. “I know Achill well. We used to go to Keem Bay all the time when we were kids.”

  He downed his Guinness, the liquid barely touching the side of his mouth, just like Mikey used to. Then his eyes travelled around the room and he picked up the beer mat again.

  “Why did you call your mum by her first name, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “She was more of a girl-woman, I suppose. Vulnerable. I looked after her more than she looked after me.” I sighed. “Anyway, how come you hang out at Heart Foundation gigs?”

  “I raise funds. My son’s been in and out of the children’s hospital for a while now. He has heart problems.”

  At that moment Karen arrived back from the bathroom, hair and lipstick refreshed. Like most men, Dan stared at my best friend of thirty years like he was shielding his eyes from a blinding sun. Five eleven and willowy, she had the startling combination of her Scottish mother’s translucent blue eyes and the brown skin and ebony hair she inherited from her Nigerian father. When we were teenagers, people used to stop and stare at her in the street. It’s never been easy living in her shadow. I was the ugly friend, a tall scraggy bottle-blonde with bandy legs and no chest. I’ve always been full of nervous energy and, as much as I tried, I could never put on weight. Joe always told me I had beautiful eyes, though. Cat-like, he said.

  Karen and I were approaching forty but she looked ten years younger. In the past year grief had ravaged my face as well as my heart. Burgundy half-moons hung under my eyes, my skin was pockmarked and lines had started spread across it like an expanding Tube line.

  The three of us chatted. Dan was good company. I couldn’t place his accent. It was a curious mixture of educated London peppered with Mancunian. It was like listening to a symphony with a quirky guitar thrown in.

  The wine started to make my thoughts wander. I kept thinking I could see them in the corner of my eye. Mikey was chatting up a random girl at the bar and Tess was sitting in her corner seat, smiling her enigmatic smile. I felt myself welling up. I missed the bones of them.

  Dan and Karen were getting on like a house on fire, so I left them to it and looked around for Joe. He was chatting to Bryonie Phillips by the door. She was standing behind a table stamping hands and selling raffle tickets under a heart-shaped helium balloon. Bryonie knew everyone and everything going on in Manchester’s grooviest suburb. She was a gossip and her daughter Tallulah was one of my first-year students. She waved and threw me a tight little smile. Little did I know how much grief those prying eyes would cause me later.

  I waved and gestured at Joe to join me at the bar. It was closing time at the pubs so people were flooding into the club and the small space was heaving with sweaty bodies.

  “Karen’s copped,” I said, as he joined me.

  He glanced over the table where Dan and Karen were engrossed in conversation and frowned. “He’s married. Didn’t you see the ring?”

  “I did. That’s never stopped her before, though.”

  My recollection of the rest of the evening is hazy. I remember drinking every glass of wine put in front of me, singing Mikey’s favourite “Cigarettes and Alcohol” with everyone around the table, crying a lot and telling strangers I loved them.

  After the raffle, Joe and Karen had to take me outside and pour me into a waiting cab. It was still early. Joe said he’d come back home with me but I insisted he stay. I could tell he wanted to. It was a warm evening and a large crowd had gathered by the smoking shed. Above their heads nicotine and vape-clouds drifted over the Chorlton chimneypots into a mauve-and-pink sky. I slumped back on the gashed leather seat and wiped a circle of condensation from the window. My face wet with tears, I looked through my porthole, searching for Mikey’s face in the crowd.

  Chapter 2

  I uncurled my legs and sat upright on the armchair.

  “She said what?”

  “She said you tripped over her table and knocked the raffle prizes flying.”

  “Christ.” I shook my head. “I don’t even remember. What else did she say?”

  Karen chewed the inside of her lip.

  “Come on. Spit it out, woman!”

  “She said it wasn’t really fitting behaviour for a university lecturer.”

  My jaw dropped. “She did not.”

  “Afraid so.”

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” I leant forward and put my head in my hands, closing my eyes briefly then opening them and raising my head. “You know her daughter is in my class?”

  Karen nodded, her lips suppressing a smile.

  I gave her the finger. “Get lost, Obassi!”

  We both started to laugh then I shook my head. “I really can’t remember any of it. So when did all this happen, exactly?”

  “In the toilets not long after you’d left.”

  “God. And who was she talking to?”

  “No idea. The hand-dryer came on and I couldn’t hear anything else. I waited inside the cubicle until I was sure they’d gone.”

  It was Saturday, the morning after the fundraiser. Karen and I were in her “white room”, the inner sanctum at the back of her Old Trafford terrace house where she practised yoga and mindfulness. A beige leather sofa in front of French windows overlooked a long narrow garden. Apart from a matching armchair, a pearl rug on white painted floorboards and a rolled-up yoga mat propped against the wall, there was very little else in the room. Chet Baker was playing on a lonely iPod on the grey marble mantelpiece and the lingering smell of fresh white paint was starting to make me queasy.

  I preferred the rest of the house, a happy chaos of books, colourful retro and eclectic second-hand furniture. The walls were busy with posters of gigs, art exhibitions and anti-racism marches, many of which Karen and I had been on together. Recently a shrine had appeared in the kitchen dedicated to my lovely goddaughter Alexia. She was a language student at Sheffield. Old trophies, photographs and random objects like shoes, schoolbooks and cinema tickets lined the windowsill.

  “She’s not dead, you know,” I said when I first saw it. “She’s only gone to Sheffield Uni.”

  Karen raised an eyebrow and gave me a look that said, ‘You don’t have kids, so how would you know?’ At which I yawned inside. To be fair, Karen wasn’t half as patronising about my childless status as some of my other friends were. The pitying looks, the comments about my clock ticking and what a wonderful mum I’d make. Some of them were driving me bonkers. What business was it of theirs whether I had kids or not?

  At thirty-nine, I still hadn’t decided. But I had good reason. Dad died when I was ten. Tess’s mental health deteriorated considerably afterwards. I had some help from a neighbour but I had to rear Mikey singlehandedly a lot of the time
. He was four when Dad died and, believe me, being a child carer for a rumbustious four-year-old was no easy task. I bathed my brother, changed him, fed him and played with him. If he got sick, I stayed off school to mind him. I knew how hard it was to raise a child so having one of my own was never going to be a decision I’d make lightly. I loved my uncluttered life, the freedom I had to travel now that I didn’t have Tess to care for and I’d worked hard to secure a permanent post at the university. I wasn’t sure I wanted to give up all that for a baby.

  The floor suddenly shuddered beneath my feet. I clutched the chair-arm as the room began to vibrate. Karen rolled her eyes, Chet Baker got drowned out and I put my fingers in my ears as the eleven thirty-two to Piccadilly screeched past at the end of the garden.

  Karen and I had both wanted to buy houses in Chorlton but by the time we were ready we’d been priced out of the working-class suburb where we were raised. In the nineties, fancy wine bars, cosmopolitan restaurants and a vegan food cooperative moved in and it transformed into Manchester’s bohemian suburb. House prices rocketed and locals like Karen and me were elbowed out. We both ended up buying a mile away in the arctic hinterland of Old Trafford, streets from the roar of the stadium. Karen bought her terrace house at a knockdown price when the railway track at the bottom of the garden was rarely used but now she endured a minor earthquake every half hour. Tragic circumstances and a windfall allowed Joe and me to return to Chorlton, but Karen remained out in the cold. She’d been trying to sell for years.

  Now, not long back from a run, she was lying across the sofa in cream joggers and a black vest top. Her golden curls had come loose from her ponytail and were spread across the cream leather. Honey-coloured April sunshine poured over her from the French windows, an endorphin halo hovered above her head and she glowed. Like Joe, Karen was a fitness freak. She ran five kilometres at weekends, worked out at the gym at least three times a week and did yoga at home.