Hide Her Name

by Nadine Dorries

  Nellie walked slowly down the stairs. She had dressed Joseph in his pyjamas as if on automatic pilot. Her inclination had been to scream and to run down to the kitchen, but she didn’t. She held on.

  She had thought that they had been burgled. The press drawers were open, along with the wardrobe door. Alice’s apron, and a few of her clothes, were strewn around the room. Everything else that had belonged to Alice had gone.

  Everything, except for Joseph.

  She had looked in the wardrobe first. The hangers on the side that belonged to Alice were empty. The drawers in the press, likewise, and her few bits of make-up, her hairbrush and curlers, which lived on the top, had also disappeared.

  Her shoes. Her boots. Her coat. Her hats. Her gloves. Her everything. Gone.

  As Nellie came through the door at the bottom of the stairs, holding Joseph in her arms, she stopped dead in her tracks.

  Joseph put his thumb into his mouth, silently laid his head on her chest and stared at the scene in front of him, sucking slowly and steadily. The kitchen was still dark. The fire had now reduced from its initial roaring blaze to a softer, quieter flame.

  There was Kathleen, kneeling in front of the fire, and next to her knelt Bernadette. There was not a sound in the kitchen. When the coke in the fire slid down onto the grate with a sudden crunch, Nellie almost jumped out of her skin, but nothing altered.

  Bernadette’s hair had absorbed the warm light from the fire and radiated a red glow that wrapped itself around them all.

  Kathleen wiped her eyes and Bernadette put her arm round her shoulders. Nellie heard Kathleen talking to Bernadette, but she couldn’t hear what she was saying.

  Nellie wasn’t scared at all of Bernadette, her mammy, whom she loved without ever having known her. But she knew something was shifting, altering, that she was in their midst and that whatever was happening was beyond their control. Something was very wrong. Why else would Bernadette appear, and so openly too? But this feeling, in the kitchen, this was special. It was like magic. It felt like heaven.

  Nellie kissed the top of Joseph’s warm head and as he nuzzled in deeper, she hugged him. She felt an ache, very deep inside. A yearning. A longing. A need to be the one her mammy was hugging. A desperate loneliness flooded her and her eyes filled with pain, as she quietly sobbed and, for the very first time in her life, she cried the word ‘Mammy’ out loud.

  After what seemed like many minutes but was in fact only seconds, the spell was broken by the sound of Jerry lifting the latch of the back gate and the noise of Peggy and Little Paddy, shuffling along behind him in the snow, urgently shouting, ‘Jerry, Jerry, will ye wait. Come here while I tell ye.’

  Before the back door had even opened, Kathleen was on her feet and Bernadette had vanished.

  It was Christmas Eve.

  Daisy wanted to stand on the deck of the boat and stare as hard as she could until she saw the coast of Ireland and her family waiting for her.

  She had so many images in her mind of what they would look like and what they would say when they saw her. She had been told that her older brother, his wife and his eldest son and daughter would be there to greet her. Miss Devlin had said that when Daisy’s sister-in-law had spoken to Miss Devlin on the telephone, she had become so full of emotion and excitement at the prospect of Daisy being with them at Christmas that both she and Miss Devlin had been blubbing like a pair of eejits.

  They had made Miss Devlin promise that she would visit in the school holidays and, of course, she had said she would.

  After all she had been through, Daisy now had a family of her own and a friend in Miss Devlin.

  Miss Devlin had put Daisy on the boat and asked two elderly sisters who were also boarding, and whose names she discovered were Edith and Elsie, to keep a watch on Daisy. They assured her that they would and Miss Devlin explained that Daisy’s own family would be right at the gate when they docked, waiting and ready.

  She had asked the ladies if they would show Daisy where the toilet was, and help her to buy a cuppa and a biscuit to settle her stomach.

  The ladies, who were both from Dublin, were as kind and friendly as any Irish grandmother would be.

  ‘Of course,’ they had said, ‘no problem at all, you just stick with us, Daisy.’

  But Daisy hadn’t wanted to sit in the café inside. Daisy had spent almost her entire life inside. She wanted to gaze at the sea and watch for her family.

  The ladies had brought Daisy a cup of tea on deck. ‘We will be back out with another cuppa in half an hour,’ said Elsie kindly.

  Daisy had smiled and thanked her. Daisy knew her manners. She could count on one hand the number of times anyone had ever made her a cuppa, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know the right thing to say when someone did.

  She hadn’t stopped smiling since Miss Devlin had first read her the letter from her family. Tonight, she didn’t mind being alone. She had so much to look forward to. Daisy would never be alone again. She reached her hand up and stroked her felt hat, which had been presented to her at the play. It felt so soft. Daisy could barely believe her luck.

  It was as she bent to place the empty teacup onto the bench behind her that Daisy saw the man approach.

  ‘Hello,’ she said with a big friendly grin, as she stood upright. She recognized him immediately. ‘Are you going to Dublin too? Well, fancy. I am off to meet my family. I have a family, you know. My brother, he’s the state solicitor and he wants me to live with him and his wife. Can ye imagine that? I don’t want to go inside. I want to wait here. I don’t care about the cold tonight. I don’t really. I want to be the first to see my family waiting for me when we arrive in Dublin. Miss Devlin tells me they will be at the very front, waiting for me at the gate.’

  Daisy looked over the rail and across the sea as she giggled at her own words. She was beyond excitement. For the past twenty-four hours she had been seized by a euphoria that manifested itself as a new calmness and radiance. Everyone had noticed.

  ‘She cannot keep the grin from her face,’ Miss Devlin had said to Sister Evangelista.

  ‘I have noticed!’ the sister replied. ‘Sure, she is radiant indeed. Let’s pray to God that smile stays there forever because if anyone deserves to be happy, Daisy does.’

  Daisy felt the man’s hand on her back and turned to face him. ‘Will someone be waiting for you, too?’ Her smile was open. Friendly, happy, questioning. Simple.

  ‘Yes, they will. Daisy, your family, they have asked me to escort you. I am taking you to meet your brother, Daisy. You have to come with me now. Let’s move down to the front of the boat to be ready, so that we can be the first away.’

  Later that evening, Simon was on duty and had arranged to meet the super at his golf club where he was hosting a family celebration.

  The bobbies were becoming agitated. They wanted to be at home with their families, not sitting in police cars, doing absolutely nothing at all on the four streets.

  Simon stood in the glass foyer and lit a cigarette. He watched the doorman enter the restaurant and inform the super that Simon was outside.

  The super half stood, waiting for the waiter to remove his chair, and patted his mouth with his napkin. He cast a glance through the door to Simon and then, seeming to apologize to his guests, walked out into the foyer.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Simon, ‘but it’s Christmas Eve and the men . . .

  ‘Not at all, I am delighted you are here,’ said the super. ‘Look here, this is a good time to shut things down. The papers are on holiday and everything and everyone has gone terribly quiet. I have spoken to the chief, who agrees that we should keep the file open and stand the men down until something or someone comes forward. Best thing to do. Let the men go home.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Simon. ‘I will tell them straight away and let Davies know.’

  ‘Good man. Merry Christmas.’ And without another second wasted, the super walked back into the club dining room and returned to his party.


  ‘Yes, thank you, sir, Merry Christmas,’ said Simon to his retreating back.

  Simon left the club via its large revolving door and lit another cigarette. It was his last. As he slipped into the driver’s seat, he threw the red and white packet onto the ground.

  On his drive back to the four streets he called in to the station to make a call.

  ‘Investigation abandoned,’ he said in a low voice into the phone.

  ‘Are you sure?’ came the reply.

  ‘I’m certain,’ said Simon. ‘We are all safe.’

  As he replaced the receiver, he took a packet of Pall Mall out of the top drawer of his desk and headed back down to the four streets to send the officers home for Christmas.

  As he sat in his police car, he looked into his rear-view mirror and, flinching, he ripped off the Elastoplast dressing on the back of his neck, squealing as he pulled away some of the downy hair.

  ‘Bleeding cat,’ he hissed as he turned the key in the ignition.

  As Simon drove past the Grand on to Lime Street, he stopped at the pelican crossing outside the Shamrock pub to allow Alice Deane and Sean McGuire, their heads down, to run across the road. Sean was carrying two suitcases and they were both heading down towards the Pier Head. Neither noticed as they passed in front of his car. The snow on the main roads in town had turned to slush and his rear wheels slipped slightly as he accelerated away.

  As he drove down Church Street and then onto the Dock Road, he wondered how long it would be before he was summoned to investigate a missing passenger on the Dublin ferry.

  And then, letting out a deep sigh, he grinned as he turned left and headed up towards the four streets.

  Christmas morning.

  She had only Aideen to comfort her when her son made his arrival into the world. The snow had begun to fall at exactly the moment Kitty’s labour pains seized her. Within no time at all, the solitary overhead telephone cable fell and lay buried under a carpet of crystal-white snow. They were stranded from the outside world.

  Aideen almost chased the nuns out of the room when they arrived to impart the news that there was no telephone to contact the midwife and no way of getting a message into the village. She felt that, for some reason, the nuns were nervous, almost scared of what they said and did around Kitty. Aideen, who was sharp as a knife, took full advantage of this.

  Kitty was the only girl anywhere near her due delivery date and the resident midwife had taken herself home to Dublin for the Christmas break. As she slammed the front door behind her, her last words had been, ‘That girl’s not my responsibility.’

  Despite having chased the nuns from the labour room and having witnessed plenty of her own mother’s births, Aideen was terrified.

  Pain wrapped itself around Kitty’s waist like a metal band and each time its grip became longer and harder to bear. She heard screams filling the room but was too far gone to feel shame or embarrassment.

  ‘God, help me,’ she screamed over and over. ‘Mammy, help me.’

  Aideen held Kitty’s hands and walked her round the room. She sat next to her on the bed when she could persuade Kitty to lie down. She mopped her brow with cold water and gave Kitty sips of water. And all through the evening and into the night, the baby showed no sign of making an entry into the world.

  The girls from the dorm had sneaked bread into their apron pockets and slipped into the labour room to hand it to Aideen.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ said Aideen. ‘Did not one of them mean bitches think one of us could do with the disgusting slop they give us as soup? She has no energy. How is she going to push this thing out?’

  Juliette, one of the older girls, looked concerned as another contraction took hold of Kitty.

  ‘Would ye like me to take over for a while, Aideen? Maybe we should take it in turns to stop with her?’

  Aideen looked at Kitty, soaked in sweat and almost delirious.

  ‘No, thanks, I will stay and see the job done. I feel close to this poor girl.’

  Juliette nodded and left the room. She understood. They all felt close to her. She was a sweet kid and, God knew, the faces she had pulled at the nuns behind their backs had all but creased them up with laughter at times.

  ‘I’ll see ye later then,’ whispered Juliette from the door with a glance at Kitty who was oblivious, in a world of intense torment.

  By four o’clock in the morning, following hours of pain and screaming, Kitty had given up. She felt calm and no longer tried to respond to Aideen’s instructions to push. ‘No,’ she whimpered, ‘I can’t, I don’t want to do it.’

  It was now Aideen’s turn to begin to scream.

  ‘Push, ye fucking bitch,’ she shouted at Kitty. ‘Do ye think I’m wasting my night in here for you to decide you can’t be bothered to push? Push, now.’

  There was no response from Kitty. She wanted to die, in a place of her own, somewhere distant from the room and Aideen. She had had enough.

  ‘It is the perfect thing,’ she muttered in her delirious haze. ‘It is the perfect answer if I die. There will be no trouble for anyone and no problem. I just so want to die.’

  The slap across Kitty’s face hurt almost as much as the contraction that quickly followed. Aideen was yelling into her face to push.

  She had climbed up behind Kitty, dragged her up the bed and forced her to sit upright, resisting Kitty’s urge to lean back and lie down again.

  ‘Don’t let the fucking witches win. Don’t let the child’s bastard father beat you. Don’t let him win.’

  Aideen was now scared. She could see Kitty had disappeared somewhere and she didn’t know where. She was terrified that Kitty was indeed about to die.

  ‘Do you want the bastard father to win, do ye?’

  Kitty could hear Aideen. She was aware of her hands prodding and pushing her heavy, flaccid body. She was aware of Aideen’s words penetrating though her fog.

  The bastard father beating her? Was that what Aideen had just said?

  Kitty began to laugh.

  ‘For fuck’s sake.’

  Aideen climbed back down from the bed. ‘What in God’s name? Why are ye laughing now?’

  Kitty snapped back from the place where she wanted only to close her eyes and sleep. She didn’t want this baby. She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want to work in the laundry. She hadn’t wanted to be raped. But none of that mattered. Kitty didn’t want to live, she wanted to die, but she didn’t even have that. Aideen wasn’t going to let her. Aideen was going to make her live and have this spawn of the devil himself. Aideen thought that, in this way, Kitty would be winning. She wasn’t even going to let Kitty choose whether or not she died.

  It made Kitty laugh again, almost in hysteria.

  ‘Push,’ yelled Aideen, as the pain once again seized Kitty’s abdomen with an intense ferocity and made it harden like a rock. With all that she had left, Kitty pushed again.

  Following sixteen hours of screams and chaos, the labour room suddenly fell silent, apart from the tiny snuffles from deep within a white knitted blanket, which Aideen had found in the layette of baby clothes Rosie had left behind when she had visited to examine Kitty.

  An hour later, once she had managed to clear up the afterbirth mess and had washed down Kitty and the baby, Aideen suddenly felt giddy and sat down on a chair, before she fainted herself with exhaustion.

  Although Aideen had switched off the light, hoping that both she and Kitty could catch an hour’s sleep before morning, the room was lit with a vivid bright whiteness, reflected from the snow-laden sky and the newly covered trees.

  ‘Would ye look at him,’ said an exhausted Kitty as she lifted her new baby up to show Aideen. ‘Isn’t he just gorgeous?’

  Kitty now had no recollection of not wanting to have this baby. As she first laid eyes on him, no thought of rejection crossed her mind. He had brought his own love with him.

  As Aideen had finally delivered his thin and slippery body, without warning Kitty had been swamped by em
otion. Since the second he had been born, she had been unable to take her eyes off him.

  Aideen gave her a look of concern. ‘Aye, he’s sweet enough, all right, but in days he will be the child of a rich and fancy American couple, so don’t forget that and go getting all attached.’

  Without speaking a word, Kitty brought the bundle up to her face. She felt the warmth of his body lying against her own and nuzzled her face into the dark downy hair on his head.

  ‘He looks like me da,’ she whispered to Aideen in the dark. ‘Can I give him a name?’

  Aideen looked at her. ‘Aye, but I’m sure his new mam and da will want to choose his own name. What were ye thinking?’

  ‘John,’ Kitty whispered into her baby’s warm cheek where she had laid his first kiss, ‘his name is John.’

  There was a tap on the door as the girls from the dormitory tiptoed in one by one.

  ‘Would ye believe it,’ said Juliette as she came into the room. ‘Sister Virginia is first up. I told her about the awful night with no midwife an’ all and she gave me the key to the kitchen and said go and fetch the girls a tray of tea and some toast. Ye have certainly spooked them, having a Christmas baby, sent them all of a dither, that has, and it being you an’ all, Kitty. Would a sinner give birth on Christmas Day? In a right state they are!’

  Kitty looked up as the girls slipped in. The room filled with the smell of hot buttered toast and Juliette began to pour the scalding hot tea into cups.

  One of the girls, who, like Aideen, had to stay at the Abbey for the full three years and had already had her baby, handed Kitty a bottle of formula milk.

  ‘Did ye forget about the baby?’ she smiled at Aideen.

  ‘No, not at all, he just hasn’t bothered looking for a feed yet,’ Aideen replied. ‘I was just getting over me shock. I swear, God was holding my hands through that because I had no idea what I was doing.’

  Kitty was no stranger to feeding a baby a bottle and she expertly fed John, who latched onto the teat in a split second.

  ‘Look at him,’ Kitty laughed, ‘he nearly has it drained already.’