The Ballymara Road

by Nadine Dorries

  ‘Oh, Holy Mother of God, is she all right?’

  Maura’s eyes filled with tears. The longing to be at her daughter’s side clutched at her heart, robbing her of breath and dragging her down, till she was bent double over the counter with her free hand involuntarily clutching her abdomen.

  ‘The baby was born on Christmas morning. It was a boy and his adoption to an American couple was arranged even before he had filled his first nappy, so it was. I got her to Maeve’s as quickly as God allowed me. I have news, Maura…’

  The line crackled and hissed as Rosie’s voice faded.

  ‘Rosie, Rosie, are ye there?’

  The line was totally dead. The crackling had stopped.

  Maura cared nothing now of what Bill could hear. Rosie had just said that Kitty had had the baby and then – nothing.

  ‘Rosie!’ she yelled down the line.

  ‘Is everything all right, Maura?’ asked Kathleen, concerned.

  ‘I don’t know. She said she had news and then she disappeared.’

  With her hand outstretched and shaking, Maura handed the receiver to Kathleen.

  ‘Hello, hello, hello!’ Kathleen said loudly, and then she heard Rosie’ s return.

  ‘Kathleen, thank God you are there.’

  3

  IT WAS TWO days after Christmas. Within a second of her opening her Dublin office door with her Yale key, the black Bakelite phone on Rosie O’Grady’s desk rang. It was as though it had been patiently waiting for the first familiar sound of her return following the long Christmas break.

  ‘Oh, Holy Father, would you believe it,’ Rosie muttered to herself. ‘I’m not even through the door yet and it’s started already.’

  The previous evening Rosie had doubted that she would even make it into work after a sudden and very heavy Christmas snowfall, which had covered Ireland from coast to coast. The roads in Roscommon, where Rosie lived, had been impassable in places, but she was relieved to see that, in Dublin at least, some effort had been made to clear the main roads.

  Rosie had not missed a day of work in her entire life and there was no way she would allow the weather to defeat her now, despite the ploughed walls of snow on the roadside standing as high as six feet in places. As the head midwife at Dublin’s maternity hospital, senior midwife tutor and the chair of the Eire midwifery council, Rosie took her responsibilities, as well as her reputation for high standards and reliability, very seriously indeed.

  The midwifery block was reached via four red sandstone steps that led up to an imposing, semicircular entrance hall, complete with parquet floor, whose windows overlooked the car park. The administration office doors flanked a wooden arch beyond which lay the wards and the main hospital. Rosie occupied the most impressive office, in accordance with her status, for she also had responsibility for the training school from which she proudly turned out twenty well-trained midwives each year. The majority of Dublin’s babies were delivered at home, but a growing number of women were choosing to give birth in hospital, especially those who were likely to have complications.

  ‘Morning, Mrs O’Grady.’

  As Rosie passed through the revolving glass doors into the hospital foyer, Tom, the head hospital porter, greeted her from behind his high, glossy, dark-wood desk, tipping the brim of his cap as a mark of respect. She stamped the snow from her boots on a large coconut-hair mat before stepping onto the freshly polished wooden floor.

  The hospital caretaker had taken advantage of the Christmas lull to buff every floor in the hospital. Rosie stood for a moment as she removed her headscarf and shook the last of the snowflakes onto the mat, inhaling deeply the familiar smell of fresh lavender floor wax. It had a calming effect on her.

  ‘I said if anyone makes it in today, it would be you, with you having travelled the furthest an’ all. On ward three, there’s a midwife not turned in for her shift yet and she only lives across the river. You have put her to shame, so you have, struggling all the way in from Roscommon.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t easy, Tom,’ Rosie replied as she searched in her handbag for her office keys. ‘It took the help of a tractor and a very good husband to see me onto the Dublin road, or I would indeed still be stuck in Roscommon. We had all our animals down on the lower fields to make it easier over Christmas, so it hasn’t been too bad for us. I could at least commandeer the tractor without too much guilt, now. But that didn’t stop yer man grumbling, and, sure, being as he’s a farmer, he doesn’t usually need much of an excuse, now, does he?’

  Tom laughed out loud, feeling sorry for any man who tried to cross Matron O’Grady.

  ‘Aye, well, you have still made it in and that is to your credit. We can complain all we like but to wake up on Christmas morning to a white Ireland, that was a miracle, was it not?’

  Rosie smiled at Tom. It had been very special indeed. The fields and the church had looked magnificent. Even the old prison walls became magical and romantic.

  ‘Aye, Tom, it was a miracle. Deep snow on Christmas Day, who would have thought it?’

  ‘Shall I ring the kitchen, shall I? And ask Besmina to bring up your tea?’

  ‘Oh God, wouldn’t that just be grand. I’m parched,’ Rosie replied. ‘You can always rely on Besmina.’

  ‘You can, that. She will always be grateful to you for the job you gave her. You have a loyal employee for life there, Matron, and that’s for sure.’

  Rosie’s husband had done everything possible that morning, to try to persuade her not to travel to Dublin.

  ‘Are ye mad?’ he had said when she had asked him to tow her car out onto the main Dublin road, using his farm tractor. ‘Phone lines are down all over the place. No one is driving anywhere. I will be halfway to Dublin by the time I find a decent stretch of road to leave you on, and then how in God’s name would I know ye had made it in? And tonight, how will ye travel back if it freezes over? It’s a Hillman Hunter ye drive, not a bloody tank.’

  ‘Aye, I know that,’ Rosie had replied. ‘Calm down for goodness’ sake. I don’t expect you to take me all the way to Dublin. Just leave me on the first clear stretch and I will manage the rest of the way.’

  It didn’t matter how much he remonstrated with her, no one could alter Rosie’s mind about anything when it was made up. Once she had set herself on a course of action, she was unstoppable.

  ‘Jeez, the mule is less stubborn,’ her husband had grumbled as he set about moving the tractor out of the barn.

  As she opened the office door to the ringing telephone, Rosie hastily dropped her bag onto the floor and pulled off her leather driving gloves with her teeth. She noted that at least the hospital phones were working. Having removed the second glove, she just had time to lift the receiver to her ear before the caller hung up.

  ‘Good morning, Rosie O’Grady, matron midwife,’ she trilled down the line, cheered after her long and cold journey by the knowledge that tea was on its way to her office to warm her.

  She secretly hoped that the office kitchen maid, Besmina, would pop a slice of thick, white, hot buttered toast onto the tray, as she often did. It had been over three hours since Rosie had left home to set off for the hospital and the loud rumblings from her stomach were letting her know as much.

  The crackling phone line was poor, which wasn’t surprising, given the weather, but Rosie could just make out the voice on the other end as that of the Reverend Mother at the Abbey convent and laundry out in the windy west, near Galway.

  She had been dreading this call.

  Her heart dropped into her boots. There was only one reason why the Reverend Mother would be telephoning her now. Rosie was very careful to keep her distance from any of the laundries or the mother and baby homes run by the sisters. Their very existence made her uncomfortable.

  For many years the Irish government had made use of the laundries to imprison women and hide them away. Rosie knew that girls were sent to the abbeys and convents by the authorities, for the most spurious of reasons, and would remain incarcer
ated there for their entire lives. Many were not, nor had ever been, pregnant. Some were sent for being nothing more than a pretty orphan, assigned to the Abbey for her own protection, away from the lure of temptation and sinful ways.

  These girls, known as penitents, were transferred to the Abbey straight from the industrial schools, run by the nuns and brothers. Many were country girls from the village farms, victims of incest and rape, or just a girl carried away at a dance, or a fair. Those who found themselves pregnant outside of wedlock would be deposited abruptly at the Abbey’s doors by their parents or by the local priest. In their imprisonment, some went mad from grief and despair.

  Many in Rosie’s circle knew about the laundries. An industry run by nuns who made vast profits enslaving women deemed to be sinful. The sisters and the government, worked as a team.

  This had made Rosie cross herself in shame when she last walked through the Abbey doors. If the penitents were lucky, after three long years of unpaid work in the laundry they might manage to buy back their freedom, provided that their families could supply the necessary one hundred and fifty pounds. However, before they left they would also be required to agree to give up their babies and to allow the Abbey to sell them on to American families.

  For the country girls, there was no way to bypass their years of slave labour. There wasn’t a farm girl from one end of County Mayo to the other who would ever see that kind of money in her entire lifetime.

  For young Kitty Doherty from Liverpool, Rosie’s involvement with Sister Assumpta and the Abbey had been necessary.

  A necessary evil.

  Kitty was neither a penitent nor a country girl but, for her own sake as much as anyone else’s, for a short while she had needed to become one.

  Rosie had agreed to personally deliver the baby at the Abbey when Kitty’s time was due, but, based on Rosie’s examination a few months earlier, she had thought that wouldn’t be until the middle of January at the very earliest.

  Rosie was one of very few people who knew that Kitty’s secret arrival in Ireland was in some way connected to the murder of the priest. The news of the murder had been all over the Dublin newspapers for almost a week.

  Since it seemed like half the men of County Mayo had travelled to Liverpool, to work on the roads, at the docks or building new houses, anything that happened in Liverpool was news in Ireland too.

  Rosie didn’t want to know the details of why or how Kitty had become pregnant.. Sure, hadn’t she seen enough girls in Ireland in the same position. The priest in Liverpool was not unique. She was delivering Kitty’s baby under a cloak of secrecy, at the request of her sister-in-law, Julia, who lived in Bangornevin in County Mayo. Refusal was not an option. A girl was in trouble. It was the job of the women to find a solution to her problem. Kitty Doherty’s name had been changed to Cissy so that no one would ever know she had been at the Abbey. It had been drilled into Rosie that no one must know where the girl was, who she was, or that she had given birth. Once she had done so, she would need to return to Liverpool as soon as possible.

  Rosie was well aware, without having to be told, that the part she had played – in helping to hide the child at the Abbey to have her baby – had saved Kitty’s father, Tommy, a good man, from the gallows.

  The justice of the four streets was brutally simple.

  An eye for an eye. A life for a life stolen.

  The family had altered Kitty’s name to Cissy, to hide her true identity from the nuns, and Cissy her name would remain. Unlike the other girls in the Abbey, who had their name removed on the day they arrived.

  No one was allowed to use her real name whilst resident at the Abbey. Hair was cut short, personal possessions removed and girls were not allowed to speak of their past. In fact, they were not allowed to speak.

  Kitty’s case was slightly different. She was to be resident at the Abbey for just a few months, rather than years. Kitty had not been dropped at the door. Nor was she a penitent.

  Kitty wasn’t even an Irish resident and had been registered under a false name from the very beginning.

  ‘Shall I put the tray on the table, Mrs O’Grady?’ Besmina whispered to Rosie.

  For a second, Rosie almost lost her concentration and focus on what the Reverend Mother was saying, as her stomach responded to the smell of the hot tea and buttered toast. She winked at Besmina who began to pour her tea from the aluminium teapot. The porter had slipped into the room with his arms full of logs and set about lighting the fire, hoping to warm the cold office, which had been empty for almost a week.

  The voice at the other end of the line was as cold as the room.

  ‘The child was delivered in the early hours of Christmas morning.’

  There was no compassion in the words of the Reverend Mother.

  Rosie felt a sudden chill, which had nothing to do with the temperature of her office.

  The Abbey’s delivery practices were barbaric. Pain was regarded as an atonement for sin. Stitching was not allowed. The perineal tears were looked on as a continuing physical reminder of the need to seek forgiveness.

  ‘Where is she now?’ Rosie had already forgotten about the tea and toast. She knew all was not as it should be.

  Besmina, the kitchen maid, arrived at the hospital only a few months previously. It hadn’t taken long for the staff, over tea and brack, to discover that Besmina had detailed knowledge of the Abbey, where Kitty had been left to deliver her baby in secret. The moment Rosie discovered that Besmina was familiar with the Abbey, she pressed her for information.

  It had been a difficult task. At first she was very nervous but, gradually, she had opened up to Rosie. The staff had no idea why Rosie was so interested and she wanted to keep it that way.

  She wasn’t the only one keeping secrets. There was much Besmina hadn’t told Rosie, or anyone else. She would never confess that she had been an unmarried mother herself or to having birthed her child at the Abbey to save her mother and grandmother from the shame. Or that she had escaped with the help of a child from Liverpool by the name of Nellie.

  ‘Thank you, God, for sending Nellie to me,’ was the opening line of Besmina’s first and last prayer of every day.

  Besmina had informed Rosie that, behind the Abbey, in the middle of a copse of trees, were graves, dozens of them, belonging to girls as young as thirteen. And babies. Lots of babies.

  For this reason Rosie had been very glad that Kitty’s family, related to her own, had asked her to deliver the baby herself.

  Rosie knew that Kitty came from a loving and caring family. God alone knew how that priest had been able to do what he did.

  The Reverend Mother had ignored both Rosie’s question and the tone of her voice.

  ‘I have given orders for her to be left in the labour room until you arrive. I do not want her working in the laundry any longer. A baby conceived in sin, but born in the Abbey on Christmas morning, is not viewed as helpful, Mrs O’Grady. I don’t need to explain to you how unsettled this birth has made everyone. I would like her to be removed as soon as is possible.’

  ‘Right, how is she?’ Rosie asked. ‘Was the delivery straightforward and is she recovering well?’

  ‘You will be able to answer those questions when you collect her, which I hope will be today. Her baby was a boy. I had him removed to the nursery, immediately following his birth, and I am delighted to say that his new parents are making haste travelling from America to view him. They will take him back as soon as possible once a passport can be issued.’

  ‘View him? Well, goodness me, what an odd expression. That is very quick altogether, is it not?’

  Rosie was no stranger to efficiency, but the Reverend Mother appeared to have moved with unseemly haste to have the baby adopted.

  ‘It is our normal practice to keep the children until they are three. Adoption takes such a time to arrange in America. A letter can take as long as six weeks. When a new baby is available, we have the very best Catholic families on standby who will drop e
verything once they receive a telegram from us. I hope there will be no complaint? The girl has already signed a contract, stating that she relinquishes all rights to the baby and that she will never attempt to make contact with the child or his family, at any time in the future. What time can we expect you?’ Her tone brightened as she added, ‘Sister Celia would love to bake you a cake.’

  In her state of trauma following the delivery, Kitty had signed the contract using her real name. The Reverend Mother, in her haste to have the contract signed, had not noticed Kitty’s error.

  Rosie was speechless. The journey to Dublin from Roscommon had been an ordeal. Now she would have to drive across country to Galway and then take the girl on to Ballymara.

  ‘I hope to arrive at the Abbey at around two o’clock, all being well, so long as I am able to drive down all the roads, please God. Thank Sister Celia, I am very much looking forward to her wonderful cake.’

  Rosie frowned as she replaced the receiver. She felt intensely uncomfortable but she knew that she must make her way to Kitty, as fast as she possibly could.

  Rosie whispered a prayer, ‘At least the girl is alive, thanks be to God,’ and blessed herself. She quickly telephoned Mrs Doyle at the post office in Bangornevin and asked her to send someone across the road to fetch her sister-in-law, Julia, to the phone.

  Whilst she waited for Julia to call back, she just had time to drink her tea and eat her toast before making another call to her husband, who was less than pleased by her news.

  ‘Rosie, if the baby has been born, why can ye not wait for the weather to clear? I’ve been looking at the sky and, sure, ’tis as heavy as a sinner’s heart. There will be snow tonight again, I am certain of it.’

  ‘I will be fine. You know me, always the lucky one. Stop fussing now and get back to work. There won’t be much light today.’

  ‘Aye, right, well there is no use me arguing now. I will make sure Julia knows to put the watch on from Castlefeale and have them ring me, as ye pass through. Drive with care, Rosie.’