The Lost Child of Philomena Lee (Original Edition)

by Sixsmith, Martin

  Mother Barbara motioned her to be quiet.

  ‘Come in and sit down, Sister. Then you can tell me about it in good time and good order. Do the births first. What is the total for the week?’

  ‘Well, including the three from last night,’ Annunciata said, ‘I make it seven in total. That’s including a breech birth I did last Saturday and—’

  ‘Thank you, Sister. I don’t need the details. Any stillbirths to report?’

  Mother Barbara was making notes as she spoke, and she looked up to check Annunciata was following her questions properly.

  ‘No, Reverend Mother, thanks be to God. But that breech birth, the girl’s in a lot of pain, what with all the tearing, and I’m wondering if I could have the key to the cabinet and give her some painkillers, or get the doctor to stitch her up . . .’ She trailed off uncertainly.

  Mother Barbara looked at her and smiled.

  ‘Annunciata, I’m sure you’re not listening to me, are you? How many times have I told you that pain is the punishment for sin? These girls are sinners: they must pay for what they’ve done. Now, I don’t have all morning. How many admissions in total, and how many departures?’

  Annunciata gave her the figures and Mother Barbara entered them in the ledger. After a moment’s calculation she raised her head and said, ‘One hundred and fifty-two, unless I’m very much mistaken. We have 152 souls lost to God. And very lucky they are to have us to care for them, I would say.’

  Annunciata made as if to reply, but Mother Barbara was no longer listening.

  ‘Very well, child. Send me the new arrivals this morning. And I’ll see the new mothers this afternoon. Can any of them pay, would you say?’

  Sister Annunciata looked doubtful. A hundred pounds was a fierce amount of money.

  Mother Barbara saw twelve girls that day. As each girl told her story, she sat patiently with hands clasped before her. She did not think of herself as a cruel woman – the Church enjoined her to charity and the work she did fulfilled that obligation – but she was immensely sure of the boundaries between good and evil, and to her mind the greatest evil without doubt was love of the flesh.

  The girls who came to see her stuttered and blushed with the shame of their sins – and Mother Barbara encouraged them to recount those sins in as much detail as they could remember. One after another she heard their stories – the thirty-year-old Dublin shop assistant who fell for the charms of the Englishman who had promised her wealth and marriage but gone back to his wife in Liverpool; the red-headed Cork girl engaged to a car mechanic who disowned her when she fell pregnant; and the mentally retarded teenager from Kerry who cried the whole time and had no idea what had happened to her or why she was here. She listened to the farmer’s daughter whose father had always slept in the same bed with her, and to the schoolgirl who had been raped by three cousins at a wedding. And she asked the same, mechanical question she had posed to generations of young women who came to her for help: ‘Tell me, girl, was the five minutes of pleasure worth all this?’

  Philomena – Marcella, as she was now – was called to Mother Barbara late in the afternoon. It was six days since she had given birth and the breech delivery had left her torn and sore, but her lying-in was over and the rules said she should be back on her feet. She was made to wait in the corridor outside the superioress’s office with the other new mothers. The convent banned the girls from talking, but they chivvied each other along with little smiles and grimaces of understanding.

  Philomena answered the mother superior’s questions in a voice strangled by fear. Asked for her name, she replied, ‘Marcella,’ but Mother Barbara looked at her with an expression of derision.

  ‘Not your house name, girl; your real name!’

  ‘Philomena, Reverend Mother. Philomena Lee.’

  ‘Place and date of birth?’

  ‘Newcastle West, Reverend Mother, County Limerick. On the twenty-fourth of March 1933.’

  ‘So you were eighteen when you sinned. You were old enough to know better.’

  Philomena hardly knew she had sinned at all, but she nodded her head.

  ‘Parents?’

  ‘My mammy’s dead, Reverend Mother. From the TB. When I was six. And Daddy’s a butcher.’

  ‘So what happened to you children? Did your father keep you?’

  ‘No, Reverend Mother. Mammy left six of us and he couldn’t keep us all. So he put me and Kaye and Mary into the convent school, and he kept Ralph and Jack and little Pat at home with him.’

  ‘And what school did you go to, girl?’

  ‘The Sisters of Mercy, Reverend Mother. Mount St Vincent in Limerick City. We were boarders and we only ever got home for two weeks in the summer. We were there twelve years and we never went home for Christmas or Easter, and Daddy and Jack only came a couple of times. It was lonely, Reverend Mother—’

  Mother Barbara waved irritably at the black-haired girl in front of her.

  ‘That’s enough of that. What happened after you left the sisters?’

  ‘Sure I went to live with my auntie.’

  Philomena’s voice was barely audible, her sad eyes lowered to the floor.

  ‘And what is her name?’

  ‘Kitty Madden, Reverend Mother, Mammy’s sister in Limerick City.’

  ‘How long were you living with your Aunt Madden?’

  Philomena frowned and looked up at the ceiling as she tried to muster the facts of her short life.

  ‘Well, I was living with her for about – I left the school in May last year . . . And my auntie’s children were all gone away and she wanted me there to help her. And I met him – John – at the carnival in October, so . . .’

  But Mother Barbara wasn’t interested in this yet.

  ‘Your aunt, girl. What work does she do? Is she rich?’

  ‘Well, I think she is not, Reverend Mother. She works for the nuns at St Mary’s. She got me a job there – dusting around, cleaning, that kind of thing . . .’

  Mother Barbara, having decided there was little use pursuing financial enquiries, returned to her favourite subject.

  ‘And yet, with all her connections to the Church, your aunt failed to prevent you falling into sin. How can that be? Are you such a wilful sinner that you set out to deceive those who care for your spiritual welfare?’

  Philomena blanched and swallowed.

  ‘Oh no, Reverend Mother! I never did set out to sin—’

  ‘So why did you deceive your aunt, then?’

  ‘I did not, indeed. My auntie saw me going off to the carnival – she was with a friend of hers, and she said, “Off you go” – and off I went and . . . and then . . . the thing happened.’

  Mother Barbara snorted.

  ‘What do you mean, “the thing”, girl? You had no shame when you sinned, so you must have no shame in telling me of it now!’

  Philomena thought back to the night at the fair and tried to find a way to make Mother Barbara understand, but her voice caught in her throat.

  ‘He . . . he was handsome, Reverend Mother, and he was nice to me . . .’

  ‘You mean you led him into sin. And did you let him put his hands on you?’

  Philomena hesitated again and replied quietly, ‘Yes, Reverend Mother, I did.’

  Mother Barbara’s face darkened, her voice softened.

  ‘And did you enjoy that? Did you enjoy your sin?’

  Philomena’s eyes were brimming with tears and her words sounded to her as if they came from a great, lonely distance.

  ‘Yes, Reverend Mother.’

  ‘And did you take your knickers off, girl? Tell me that.’

  Philomena began to weep.

  ‘Oh, Reverend Mother. Nobody told me about all this. Nobody ever told us about babies. The sisters never told us anything . . .’

  Mother Barbara was in a sudden fury.

  ‘Don’t dare to blame the sisters!’ she shouted. ‘You are the cause of this shame. Your own indecency and your own carnal incontinence!’

&
nbsp; Philomena let out a sob. ‘But it’s not fair!’ she wailed. ‘Why is my mammy dead and gone? Why does no one care for us? No one puts an arm round us. No one gives us a hug . . .’

  Mother Barbara glared at her in disgust.

  ‘Silence, girl! What happened when you returned from the carnival?’

  Philomena drew the back of her hand across her eyes and sniffed sharply. She could remember that night easily enough . . .

  She had come home well after midnight but found her aunt awake and waiting for her, full of suspicion and reproach. At first she’d laughed and told her aunt not to fuss. Told her nothing had hap -pened: she’d just had a night out with the other girls. But her aunt smelt the beer on her breath and saw the flush in her cheeks. Her questions were insistent, stiffened by retribution if she didn’t tell the truth.

  In the end, she told.

  Yes, she’d met a boy – he was lovely, tall, handsome – but her aunt didn’t want to hear. ‘And what did you do together? What did you get up to?’

  ‘Nothing, Auntie. He held my hand. He’s the finest man in all the world. He’ll be waiting for me on Friday on the corner of—’

  Her aunt gave her a slap.

  ‘He can wait all he likes, but you’re not going out to meet some boy, not while you’re living under my roof!’

  The girl had felt the pain on her cheek and the tears in her eyes.

  ‘What do you mean, Auntie? I’ve promised him I’ll be there. I love him . . .’

  But Auntie was through with love. It had been many years since love had lighted her life and if she had anything to do with it, it was not going to light her niece’s.

  Philomena was sent to her room and told to stay there until her stupid thoughts had left her, until the stupid boy from the post office had come and waited . . . waited and left.

  It was anguish to be locked in her room when she knew the boy was waiting for her.

  After ten days, she gave in.

  She told her aunt she would never stay out late again; never talk to people outside the girls from her school; above all, never seek to find the boy.

  For the next few weeks she had brooded over plots for running away and finding him, but her aunt was watchful. She knew the passions that stirred in a young girl’s breast and she made sure her niece stayed at home.

  Then the baby had started to show, and Philomena’s surprise and remorse had done nothing to appease her aunt’s fury. The Church had told her kissing a man was sinful, but no one told her that was the way babies were made.

  ‘And what did your aunt do?’ Mother Barbara broke in.

  Philomena shook herself from the memories of those terrible weeks.

  ‘Well, Reverend Mother, she rang my brother Jack and my dad. And I think she wanted to marry my dad too, because he was on his own and she was on her own. But Da wasn’t having any of it. Then she got me up to the doctor’s in Limerick and he said I had to go to Roscrea. So I came here two months ago. I left school last year, so I was only a year out of freedom.’

  Mother Barbara waved her hand.

  ‘What did your father say? I see he hasn’t come to visit you here.’

  The question was deliberately hurtful; Philomena bit her lip.

  ‘My da was sad for me, Reverend Mother, I’m sure he was. But he couldn’t tell anyone about me, not even the family. Kaye and Mary think I’ve gone away to England. And now I miss my mammy and I miss being at home . . .’

  The utter loneliness of all the hundreds of girls in that place, and others like it across Ireland, was etched on Philomena’s face. Sent away for a sin they barely knew they had committed, they were in many cases mere children subjected to cruel, adult punishment.

  Mother Barbara noted the girl’s story in her ledger and brought the interview to a close.

  ‘Now, Marcella, you must go back to the dormitory. This is not a holiday home and we expect you to work hard. You must stay here and pay for your sins. The only way out is the hundred pounds. Do you think your family will pay the hundred pounds?’

  Philomena looked blankly at the mother superior.

  ‘I do not know, Reverend Mother. But if my da has not paid any money, then I think it means he does not have it.’

  FOUR

  Roscrea

  In the weeks that followed Anthony’s birth, Philomena began to see the true face of life in Sean Ross Abbey and it was not a happy one.

  Like the majority of Ireland’s homes for unmarried mothers, it was attached to a much older convent. When it was taken over by the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary in 1931, Sean Ross occupied an imposing Georgian mansion with extensive lawns and a walled garden. The remains of a medieval monastery still stood in the grounds and a small, neat graveyard contained the last resting place of a handful of nuns; the mothers and babies who died here were buried in unmarked graves in an adjacent field tended by no one.

  Next to the convent – but to all intents a separate universe – was another, darker building, all harsh lines and plain grey concrete. The Church’s vision of where sinful women should dwell did not extend to considerations of comfort or beauty. At its heart were the dormitories, one for expectant mothers, one for the newly delivered, and further rooms for those whose children were being raised in the adjoining nurseries.

  Like her fellows, Philomena was destined to progress through these dormitories, one among scores of girls billeted for three years on iron-framed single beds ranged under long cream-painted walls, starched white spreads on their mattresses and statues of Our Lady above their heads. A square window at each end of the room was placed high in the wall; even when the sun shone bright, the place remained in shadow.

  The girls gave up their own clothes on the day they arrived at Sean Ross Abbey. For the rest of their time there they wore coarse denim uniforms, loose and smock-like to disguise the swollen stomachs that were the shameful manifestation of their sin. They were given heavy wooden clogs that cut their feet. Their hair was cropped to avoid nits and their heads covered with crocheted skullcaps. Philomena had worn her black hair in a dramatic side parting with the ends curled under her delicate shapely chin, but now it was cut short and spiky like everyone else’s.

  The girls were forbidden to talk among themselves and told not to reveal their real identities or even where they came from. Their lives here were cloaked in secrecy, loneliness and shame. They had, as everyone said, been ‘put away’ to spare their families and society. Few if any received visits from relatives; the fathers of their babies never came.

  The dormitories sprang into life each morning at six when lay staff flicked on the lights and shouted the girls out of bed. Those who did not respond found the blankets ripped off them and strong hands shaking their shoulders. They were taken to the nursery to tend their babies and then to eight o’clock Mass, a hundred silent waifs, pregnant or newly delivered, shuffling down darkened corridors to the convent chapel. Each morning one or more would faint during Communion, something regarded as deliberate insubordination deserving punishment.

  After Mass the girls were set to work. They were assigned to one of three jobs: preparing meals in the convent kitchen, looking after the babies and young children in the nurseries or working in the abbey’s laundries. The kitchens were the most sought after – the work was hard and the hours long, but the girls could supplement their meagre rations by filching scraps. The girls who worked in the nurseries were supervised by nursing sisters in their long white robes and by lay staff the sisters employed. They worked day and night, washing and changing the babies and making sure they were fed by their mothers. To save on baby food the nuns insisted mothers should breastfeed for at least a year, and usually longer.

  The laundries were the least popular assignment – and the one Philomena was chosen for. Every day after Mass she would walk with the other laundry girls to the hot, dark rooms where vats of water boiled on coke fires and weary, sweating women brought piles of sheets, nuns’ habits and inmates’ uniforms to b
e thrown into the bubbling water. For hours at a time they stirred the steaming vats with wooden poles and worked the wet linen with hands that became raw and covered in sores.

  The sisters took in laundry from the town of Roscrea and surrounding villages, hospitals and state boarding schools. Few of those who sent their washing to Sean Ross could have imagined the hellish conditions in which it was done. The nuns told the girls their scrubbing, wringing and ironing symbolized the cleansing of the moral stain on their souls, but they were also profitable for the convent: the Church may have been saving souls, but it was not averse to making money.

  The morning shift in the laundry lasted until a short lunch break, when the mothers were allowed to see their children. Another shift followed and evenings were spent in cleaning and chores around the building. The hour after dinner was set aside for knitting and sewing. The girls had to make the clothes their children wore, and many became accomplished seamstresses. There were no radios or books, but the girls were allowed to sit in the nursery with their babies or in the day room with those who were already toddlers. It was this hour – the time they looked forward to most – which brought the girls close to their children and established the bond that would haunt mother and child for the rest of their lives. To allow such love to blossom seemed crueller even than taking the babies away at birth.

  FIVE

  Dublin

  While Philomena Lee was toiling in the laundries of Sean Ross Abbey, the Irish government was waking up to a problem it had long tried to ignore.

  In that interminably hot summer of 1952, Anthony Lee was just one baby among hosts of others in the Republic’s mother-and-baby homes, which for the most part were bursting at the seams. When Joe Coram researched the figures to give to his minister, he calculated that more than 4,000 illegitimate children from all corners of the country were in the care of the Church and there was little prospect of the number going down.

  Frank Aiken was not relishing the battle that lay ahead. The morning after the Jane Russell story, he had acted – belatedly – to protect his department’s interests. He told the Dáil that newspaper reports ‘were not correct in stating that the passport was granted to enable the child to be adopted in the United States’ – he knew this to be misleading, but there was nothing else for it. Miss Russell, he said, had told the consulate she was merely taking little Tommy with her for a three-month holiday. But at the same time he dictated an urgent telegram to all Irish legations and embassies, instructing them to refer to the department all future passport applications for children under the age of eighteen. ‘The whole business regarding the recent granting of a passport to an infant brought to the United States by an American film actress,’ the telegram concluded, ‘received a great amount of undesirable publicity. The reason for this instruction is that we wish to ensure an Irish passport will not again be issued in such circumstances.’