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

by Annette Sills

  He leant forward, overwhelmed by a bout of wheezing that lasted for some time. He reached into his pocket, produced a perfectly ironed white handkerchief and covered his mouth.

  “Sorry about that,” he said. “It’s my asthma. It plays up in this weather and I came out without my inhaler.”

  I asked the passing waitress to bring some water and waited for him to recover.

  He drank the water. “So where was I?” he said then, dabbing his mouth and carefully folding the handkerchief.

  “Tess was pregnant and your father turned up with a shotgun.”

  “Yes. My parents wouldn’t speak to James’ family after that so I became the messenger between the families.”

  “He didn’t shoot the messenger, then.”

  Dempsey laughed. “Very good. No, he didn’t. Anyway, your grandparents pushed for marriage but James said no. Dorothy and Ronald said Tess and James and the baby could go and live at the Lodge anyway, but they didn’t know what Tess was like or how difficult or erratic she could be. Everyone, myself included, didn’t think she was mentally strong enough to bring up a child.”

  I sat back and sighed. “She brought up two. She had her moments but she was a very loving mother.”

  Dempsey covered his face with his thin mottled hands.

  “With hindsight I know what we did was very wrong, Carmel. But it was a different world back then.”

  “That’s what I keep hearing. It was a different world back then. Seems like an excuse for appalling cruelty to me. Some families actually allowed their daughters to keep their babies.”

  “In rare cases, yes. Usually by keeping it a secret and pretending the grandmother was the mother. But in a lot of cases it was the local priest who made the final decision. Father Tobin told your parents Tess had to leave the village because she’d brought shame on her family. He came to the house one morning and he and I took her to Tuam. There was no questioning his word and even if we’d fought for Tess to keep the baby, we’d have been powerless against the will of the Church. I know now we were wrong but we genuinely thought we were acting in her best interests.”

  He bent down and scratched the back of his calf.

  “You acted in the best interests of you, your parents, James, his family and the Catholic Church, I wanted to say. Tess and her baby didn’t enter the equation. You handed Tess in to the nuns knowing they would sell on her baby to strangers so people wouldn’t point at you in the street and talk behind your back at Sunday Mass. Tess wanted to keep her child as did most of the women in those homes. She suffered crippling mental health problems because of it. You played a part in ruining her life.

  But I said none of it, turning my head to the window and looking out instead. The sun had started to melt the snow sculpture and water birds were flocking to the boating lake where the ice was starting to break.

  When I turned back Dempsey was looking at me closely.

  “How did you find out that James and I took the child from the home?”

  “I traced a woman who was working there as a maid. She saw you. She remembered James’ sports car.”

  A coffee machine whirred in the silence that followed.

  “Were you and James together at that point?” I asked.

  Dempsey blushed and fiddled with the polo neck of his jumper.

  “Not at that point. I had feelings for him but it took James longer to come to terms with his sexuality.”

  “So Tess was his trial run?”

  “It wasn’t that simple. We were all very young and ignorant and confused.”

  He started to splutter and gasp for breath again and I handed him the glass of water. He gulped it down.

  “I need to go home for my inhaler,” he said, taking out his handkerchief again. His wheezing was worsening and he looked distressed. “Would you mind coming with me? It’s only a ten-minute walk.”

  “Not at all.” I said, helping him put on his coat. And I didn’t mind. I could get a later train if necessary. I wasn’t going anywhere until he told me the whereabouts of my brother.

  Chapter 37

  Dempsey and Stefano lived in a three-storey town house behind Battersea Park. Tucked at the end of a quiet road, it had a moss-dappled facade and a gravelled front garden lined with flower beds. Green-and-rust mosaic tiles lined a decent-sized porch with hanging baskets on either side of a butterscotch front door. Estate agents would have gushed about its secluded but relatively central location and slapped a price tag on it close to a million.

  Dempsey and I had shuffled through the melting snow for over half an hour to get to there. He had to keep stopping to regain his breath and was wheezing and coughing badly. By the time we got to his front door I was starting to get worried. His face was drained of colour and I was practically holding him up. I contemplated calling an ambulance but he assured me he’d be fine as soon as he got his hands on his inhaler. He kept on apologising and he was still saying sorry as the pair of us fell through his long narrow hallway. Gesturing at me to make my way into the kitchen, he disappeared into a room on the right that looked like a study.

  The kitchen was spacious and airy. A glass box structure had been added to what must have once been a very pokey room. Light flooded in from all angles and sliding doors opened out onto a small patio and long garden. I sat down at a mahogany dining table. The room was show-home tidy: the cream marble worktop sparkled, a row of shiny kitchen utensils hung above the Aga like soldiers standing to attention and lemon walls were lined with framed posters of Dempsey’s theatrical successes. There was also a picture of an Italian production of Dario Fo’s “Can’t Pay Won’t Pay” that I guessed had something to do with Stefano.

  When Dempsey’s coughing died down, I heard his footsteps in the hall then going up the stairs. I glanced at the clock above the door. If I was going to get my scheduled train I’d have to set off for Euston in twenty minutes.

  Dempsey returned a few minutes later with a weak smile and a bit of colour back in his cheeks. I declined his offer of coffee and insisted on keeping my coat on even though the room was toasty. He relaxed into the seat opposite me with a glass of water and I glanced down at my watch. Taking the hint, he launched back into Tess’s story.

  “Not long after Tess went into the home, James’ mother Dorothy decided she wanted to keep her grandchild and bring him up herself. The baby had actually been earmarked for adoption to an American couple but Dorothy was determined. There was no stopping her. She was in her early forties at the time and a very fit woman.” Dempsey coughed weakly. “So she paid the nuns a sum of money. And James and I collected him and brought him home to the Lodge when he was few months old.”

  I shook my head slowly. “Christ. So the nuns sold her own grandson back to her.”

  “For about three times the going rate.”

  I moved my chair back, the scraping sound making us both wince.

  “So he was raised in full view of everyone in the village but nobody bothered to tell Tess?”

  Dempsey looked down at the table and rubbed the tip of his forefinger along the grain of the wood. “Nobody knew where she was, Carmel. She’d cut off all contact after she left the home.”

  I folded my arms across my chest.

  “I don’t believe that for a minute. Someone, a friend or a cousin must have known she was in Manchester. Someone could easily have found her if they’d looked.”

  “People didn’t want to get involved. They were terrified of the priests and the nuns. There was always a conspiracy of silence where they were involved. The villagers didn’t talk.”

  “And my grandparents?”

  “They chose not to know,” he said, sipping his water. “The child was a bastard in their eyes and they wanted nothing to do with him. Dorothy told James she bumped into my mother one time in the village with the baby. Your grandmother took one look at the pram and crossed over the road.”

  “Christ!”

  “Oh, our mother was a piece of work, alright. James and I
went up to Dublin to study at Trinity shortly after we brought the baby back to the Lodge. Dorothy brought him up for the first three years of his life before the accident. She was driving home from Dublin after James’ graduation ceremony. It was a night of heavy rain and we told her to stay the night in a hotel. But Ronnie wasn’t well at the time and she wanted to get back to him. She was hit by a lorry just outside Mullingar and killed outright.”

  “God!”

  “She was the loveliest woman. James and I were devastated. We were in a relationship by then and about to move to London. James was desperate to leave Dublin. He said it was claustrophobic and homophobic. He was starting to get acting roles and wanted to try for jobs in the West End. We’d just got back to our lodgings after buying the tickets for the ferry to Holyhead when we got the news about Dorothy. James’ father was in the early stages of dementia and couldn’t look after the child so James and I took him with us to London.”

  “What? You and James raised him in London?”

  Dempsey’s face clenched, like a door shutting. “It has been known for gay people to bring up children, Carmel.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Yes. James and I brought him up. Well, it was me, mainly. James spent most of his time partying on the Kings Road and Carnaby Street with his actor friends while I was left with all the childcare. I got a job lecturing at King’s College so I was able to fit everything around school hours. Then when your brother was fourteen, James upped and left one day for Los Angeles. He got a part in a TV soap and never came back. He sent birthday cards and money for a few years afterwards but then nothing.”

  He turned to the glass door that led out into the garden and cupped his hands under his chin. A black cat stared in from the patio table then it ran away, leaving pawprints on the snow-dusted wrought iron.

  “James was the love of my life. He was beautiful and dangerously charming and I was heartbroken. But he wanted fame and a glamorous life more than he ever wanted a family.” He turned to me. “I never once resented your brother. I loved the bones of him. As far as I was concerned, we were father and son.”

  “And Tess?” I tugged at my jacket collar, my face and neck hot. “In all that time, you never thought of looking for her?”

  “I did everything in the boy’s best interest, Carmel. I really did. First he’d lost Dorothy, then James. I was all he had left. He was in his teenage years which were proving difficult for him. He needed stability and Tess wasn’t the most stable of characters. The last thing he needed was his mother to turn up out of the blue.” He lowered his voice. “And if I’m honest I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him.”

  “So what did you tell him? About Tess?”

  Dempsey sighed. “That she died having him.”

  I got up and paced across the room.

  “His name was on the list of children who died in the Tuam home,” I said.

  Dempsey lifted his head, startled.

  “What?”

  “When the scandal broke, a list of all the children who died in the home was published. Donal Dempsey was one of the names on it. Age of death two months. Cause of death heart failure.”

  Dempsey went pale. “The nuns.” he said.

  I nodded and rubbed at my neck. “Yes. The nuns. They created a fake death certificate to cover the fact they’d sold him on.” I sat back down. “Tess knew all of it. Not long before she died she read about the mass grave then she got hold of the list of the children who’d died. I don’t suppose for one minute she was expecting her baby to be on that list.” I glared at him. “I mean, why would she? Her brother and her family and the local priest had all assured her he would be adopted into a good family, hadn’t they?”

  Dempsey flinched then frowned. “But surely to procure a death certificate, they’d need a body?”

  I nodded. “That’s something I can’t bring myself to think about. Anyway, the cause of Donal Dempsey’s death on the list was heart failure. It was something the nuns just made up. Like I told you earlier my younger brother Mikey actually did die of heart failure. After his death we discovered he had a hereditary heart condition. Familial Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy.”

  Dempsey nodded.

  “You’ve heard of it?” I asked.

  “Unfortunately I have.”

  “Tess was a carrier. She blamed herself for passing the gene on to Mikey and she never got over his death. Imagine how she felt when she found her baby’s name on that list and learning he too had died of heart failure. She put two and two together as I did when I read it.”

  He sat forward with his hands over his face.

  “She thought she’d killed both her sons,” I said.

  He stood up, tears running down his cheeks.

  “Sorry, you’ll have to excuse me for a moment.”

  “I don’t have time. I have to get to Euston to get my train. Please. Just tell me where he is.”

  Walking over to a drawer by the Aga, he took out a large white envelope.

  “Ellie, my daughter-in-law, always sends me photos,” he said, sitting back down “She knows I prefer prints to digital. This is the most recent.” He pulled a large photo out of the envelope, placed it in front of me then wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

  “This is Daniel with his son Tim and the latest addition to the family. They don’t have a name for her yet.”

  I picked the photo up, my hand shaking. I blinked. My brother was smiling back at me. His long sandy-coloured hair fell loosely onto his shoulders and he was cradling a new-born in his arms. I looked closer and did a double take, every muscle in my body slackening. It was him without a shadow of a doubt. It was Dan, the bloke from the fundraiser in the Irish Club. Sitting next to him was the same tousled-haired boy I’d seen him with that day in Achill.

  “Daniel?” I said, still staring down at the photo. “You said his name was Daniel not Donal?”

  “Yes. When we got here I changed both our names to the English versions. It made life easier. Tadhg was always impossible to say or spell so I became Timothy. Donal became Daniel. He has his father’s surname, Sheridan. Most people call him –”

  “Dan,” I said as the photo slipped from my hands.

  Chapter 38

  The café in the Whitworth Art Gallery was an elegant oblong of glass and steel overlooking Whitworth Park in town. It had recently been added to the old red-brick gallery and sitting in it gave the sensation of being suspended, a bit like being in a tree house. I’d been there many times and was delighted when Dan asked to meet there. I chose a table with a view of the giant metallic tree sculpture in the grounds. The artwork had been created on the spot of an old tree that had died. It was meant to represent loss and renewal and the ghost of what had gone before.

  Plates clattered, a coffee machine whirred and Richard Hawley sang “Open Up Your Door” in the background. I concentrated on the words to stop my rising panic. I’d stopped taking the antidepressants but I’d popped a couple of beta-blockers earlier to calm my nerves. Outside the grass shimmered with a late January frost. It had been two torturous months since I made my discovery in Timothy’s kitchen in Battersea but now the waiting was over. I was finally going to meet my brother.

  When I saw Dan Sheridan staring back at me from the photo, I was left speechless and in a state of shock. Almost a year had passed since the fundraiser and my memory of that night was hazy because I was drunk. I remembered not being able to pin down his accent, him saying he had Mayo and Achill connections and I vaguely recalled him saying something about his son but I couldn’t remember what.

  How? I asked myself. How had our paths crossed that night? And again that day in Achill? Was it pure bizarre coincidence? Surely it had to be something more than fate or happenstance. I started to think Tess had a hand in it from the grave but then I told myself to cop on.

  As I sat in shock across the table from Timothy, I listened to him talk about Dan and his son Archie.

  “Like your
brother Mikey, both Archie and Dan are carriers of Familial Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy. Dan and Ellie found out a couple of years ago when Archie was in hospital for a routine operation. He’s in perfectly good health but he has to have regular tests. Dan too.”

  I thought of the smiling boy I’d seen eating ice cream that day in the car park in Achill. Then I remembered that Dan had told me he raised funds for the British Heart Foundation in Manchester because his son was in and out of the cardiac unit at the children’s hospital. But he didn’t go into detail about HCM. I’d have remembered if he had. He didn’t tell me that he was a sufferer, either. I sat back and shook my head slowly. So it wasn’t bizarre coincidence or destiny that had brought us together at all. We were both at the fundraiser because we were tied together by our genes and by HCM. But the meeting in Achill? After Dan emailed me to arrange to meet we exchanged a couple of emails. When I told him about seeing him in Achill he was as incredulous as I was. He said that his wife Ellie had recently inherited a cottage on the island from her aunt. They were back and forth a lot working on it. He also said that the shop where I’d seen him was the busiest hub on the relatively remote island so if we two people were going to bump into each other anywhere it would be there. I often went back to Achill when I went back to Mayo. It was my go-to place as it held so many good memories for me from the days when Dad was alive. After visiting the Mother and Baby home and feeling the keen loss of my baby brother, Achill was the natural place for me to head to that day. I cycled in search of solace and healing, having no idea what else my day would bring.