by Anne Bennett
‘We don’t need a café,’ Kate said. ‘And there would be people there too. I have a funny feeling that I’m not going to like what you are going to say and I would prefer it if we were alone.’
‘So would I.’
‘Well, then,’ Kate said. ‘Apart from here, the rest of the school is empty. Surely there’s a classroom we can use if we say that we have some private business to discuss.’
Kate was right; the volunteers opened one of the classrooms for them. It smelt of chalk dust and the chairs stored up on the tables were far too small but, apart from the teacher’s big leather one, that was all there was. Helen lifted two down, sat on one herself and indicated for Kate to use the other. Kate did so, squeezing herself into the small, hard, uncomfortable chair. ‘Go on then,’ she urged, although part of her wondered if she wanted to hear what this stranger was going to say.
And Helen seemed reluctant to start. She twisted her hands on her lap and licked her lips and Kate noticed her eyes were so very bright as she suddenly shot up from the small chair and paced around the room. ‘I don’t really know where to start.’
‘Well, do you know why we look so alike for a start?’ Kate asked, and Helen nodded and faced Kate. ‘Yes, I know why.’
‘I mean, they thought you were my mother.’
‘I know,’ Helen said, and her voice was little more than a whisper. Then she cried, ‘And, oh God, Kate, they were right. I am your mother.’
Kate jumped from the chair and stared at Helen, her eyes wide with puzzlement and disbelief. ‘What are you on about? What rubbish is this?’
‘It’s true, Kate,’ Helen said. ‘Philomena is your aunt and my sister.’
‘What?’ Kate cried in distress. She didn’t want what this woman had said to her to be true and yet she knew by the look in her eyes that it was. She felt as if her world, her secure and safe world, had slid from under her and left her without any base. She said in a voice brittle with the pain of rejection, ‘So you gave birth to me and then just gave me away?’
‘No, it wasn’t like that.’
‘What way was it?’ Kate demanded. ‘So, you’re telling me that all of my life so far has been based on lies?’
Helen took hold of one of the hands that Kate was wringing together. She resisted at first, but Helen held tight. She gave Kate’s hands a little shake and said, ‘Look at me, Kate.’
Kate lifted her head and stared at the woman claiming to be her mother, her mouth an angry and mutinous line. ‘I will tell you all,’ Helen said. ‘And you can ask me any questions you like. And when I am done, if you want nothing more to do with me, I will understand and I will bow out of your life again.’
‘Who was my father?’ Kate demanded.
‘Your father was a man known as Peter Donahue and he was a fine, brave man and one who had enlisted as a soldier to fight in the Great War.’
Memories stirred in Kate’s brain and she said, ‘You are the one called Ellie, Mammy’s younger sister. I suppose I should call the woman who brought me up Aunt Philomena, but that doesn’t sit well on me.’
‘And why would it after all this time?’ Helen said. ‘Call her Mammy. I won’t mind, I have no right to mind. So she talked about me then?’
‘Sometimes,’ Kate said. ‘Not that much.’
‘What else did she say?’
‘That you travelled to England with the family you were in service with.’
‘That’s right,’ Helen said. ‘Our parents and two brothers and a sister had died with cholera in the spring of 1912 and we had to vacate the cottage so the landlord could put another family in it. Philomena had been walking out with Jim and it was decided to push their marriage forward. After it she went to live in the farmhouse with his parents and his brothers, Padraic and Michael.
‘There was no space for me and, as I had left school, the priest found me a job in service with the Mountford family. They were devout Catholics but, as their house was just outside Derry, I couldn’t come home on my time off because it was too far.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Twelve,’ Helen said. ‘That was the age you left school in those days. I’d been with the Mountford’s three years when the family moved to England in 1915 and I went with them – there was nothing to keep me in Ireland and I knew that I would have to make my own way in the world. By that time, Jim’s parents had died, Michael had enlisted, and Padraic, the next eldest, split the farm three ways and had a house built for Jim and Philomena on his share of the land.’
‘I knew about that,’ Kate said. ‘But Mammy said nothing about any soldier.’
‘She didn’t know about Peter,’ Helen said. ‘But let me tell you the story from the beginning.’
‘Oh, please do,’ said Kate sarcastically.
Helen ignored Kate’s tone and began to pace again as she said, ‘I met your father one day in the Bull Ring when I was doing some shopping for my mistress and he was recovering from injuries inflicted at the Battle of Ypres. We got talking and he saw me home and, to cut a long story short, we began walking out together. It was a very secretive romance. Philomena wasn’t told because I knew that she wouldn’t approve, and she might have written to the mistress. We weren’t allowed what they called “followers”.
‘We forgot ourselves just the once, in October 1916. Far too many young men had died at the Somme and amongst the dead were many from Peter’s battalion. He would have been there with them if he hadn’t been injured earlier, and he felt so sad about their deaths, and almost guilty that he was alive and they were not. In a way, I could understand what he meant, and I tried to comfort him. One thing led to another and we went too far.’
Helen’s eyes suddenly looked far away and Kate knew she was remembering their brief and illicit passion. She remembered her own courtship with David and how often they had come very close to that themselves. She felt the first stirring of sympathy for Helen as she said, ‘Peter was very worried, especially because his medical was coming up and he was pretty sure he would be pronounced fit to return to active duty and he said that we must get married. But I was only seventeen and couldn’t marry without permission and he said I had to go home to Ireland and ask Philomena. Using the excuse of an illness in the family to the Mountford’s, I left as soon as I could for speed was essential.
‘Philomena was so pleased to see me that I felt ashamed at what I must tell her. I knew to secure her permission I would have to confess what Peter and I had done that might result in a child. I knew that I would find this more especially difficult as that very day Philomena had told me that she was concerned that she had seen no sign of a baby even though she’d been married over four years.
‘She said she found this harder to bear because Jim’s brother, Padraic, had married a woman called Bridget Murphy in the summer of 1914 and had a son, Timothy, just over a year later, and now she was pregnant again. I knew I was going to hurt her again and I had no wish to do that – she had more than enough on her plate, anyway, as Jim’s brother, Michael, had been invalided out of the army with shell shock. Philomena told me he was very odd at times; his nerves had been shot to pieces and he talked to himself and laughed and he was very jumpy and sometimes would shake uncontrollably. They were worried about him, though Philomena said he was a poor, lost wee soul and they certainly didn’t consider that he was a danger to anyone.
‘The following evening I was walking in the woods, going over in my head how I was going to broach the subject about Peter to Philomena, and so intent was I that I failed to notice Michael, who suddenly stepped from behind a tree directly in front of me. I had tended to keep out of his way since I had arrived because he unnerved me, and that night he bothered me more than ever – even in the dusky half-light I could see his unkempt hair standing on end, the light shining almost yellow in his eyes, his lips moving constantly as he mumbled to himself.’
‘That’s another lie I’ve been told,’ Kate said. ‘Mammy told me that Michael died in the war.’
> ‘In a way she was right,’ Helen said. ‘Because the war took the essence of him. The person who returned had a broken mind, and I don’t think he would ever have totally recovered. I didn’t know that then, of course. I didn’t know much except that I was so scared my legs were knocking together. I told myself not to be so stupid, that the man was sick, and so I gave a little laugh and said, “Oh, Michael, you scared me half to death.”
‘Suddenly his hand shot out and he grabbed my arm tight and asked me to go for a walk with him. I said I couldn’t, that I had to go back to the house, but he wouldn’t let me turn around. He dragged me deeper into the woods. I stumbled often on the uneven forest floor, but his grip was like a steel band and he kept me from falling.
‘The trees were closer together the further in Michael went, so that less light penetrated through them. I felt the mud and mulched leaves beneath my feet, branches tugged at my hair, scratched my face and snagged at the shawl I had around my shoulders. I’ll tell you, Kate, I have never been so scared in all my life.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Kate said. ‘Did he rape you?’
‘No,’ Helen admitted. ‘But he tried to. He wanted me to lie down and, in his words, “be nice to him”, and when I wouldn’t lie down, he gave me a punch between the eyes that knocked me down. I think I must have blacked out for a moment or two, because the next thing I remembered was lying on the ground and feeling the twigs and tree roots sticking into my back and Michael’s heavy weight pinning me down. The bodice of my dress had been ripped to the waist and Michael was kneading my breasts roughly.’
Helen stopped and dropped her eyes; Kate noticed her cheeks had gone rather pink and she said, ‘I feel awfully embarrassed to be telling you all this.’
‘I can understand that,’ Kate said. ‘But all this had been hidden from me all my life and so now I really need to know. I am a grown woman and an ARP warden, so I have seen some sights – I promise you I won’t swoon in shock.’
‘Maybe not,’ Helen said with a tremulous smile. ‘But I might.’
‘No, you won’t,’ said Kate confidently. ‘You are tougher than that. Go on.’
‘Kneading my breasts and me lying exposed like that was bad enough, but when I felt him pull off my bloomers and ram his fingers inside me, I felt I would die with shame and the agonizing pain of it,’ Helen went on. ‘And all the time I was writhing and squirming beneath him, but that achieved nothing, except to possibly excite him further. I was also pleading with him to let me go, but when I felt his fingers unbuttoning his trousers, I screamed for all I was worth.
‘He clapped a hand over my mouth so tightly that I was unable to breathe, but my mouth was still open and I bit down hard. He leapt away from me with blood dripping down his arm just as Jim and Padraic burst through the trees. While I was being pulled along by Michael, full darkness had fallen, and as I had told Philomena that I was going to walk in the woods, the men had been looking for me. That one scream alerted them to where I was. They took in the scene straight away: my battered face, my body lying exposed, bloomers on the ground and Michael, his hand dripping blood and his manhood dangling from his trousers. And now I knew rescue was at hand and I was safe from any further violation, shock had rendered me speechless.
‘Padraic took Michael away and Jim had to help me to my feet, where I staggered and would have fallen if he hadn’t got his arms around me. There was not one part of me that didn’t ache, my breasts throbbed and I could barely see out of my swollen eyes. But far, far worse was the pain between my legs because that was truly agonizing. As we made our slow and painful walk back to the farmhouse, Jim told me over and over how sorry he was and how ashamed that I should be so abused by his own brother.
‘Philomena had been very alarmed when Jim brought me in for I was in a terrible state. She was marvellous, though. She bathed all my cuts and bruises and put salve on and tucked me into bed with a hot-water bottle and slept in a chair by my bed all night in case I should want something.’
‘Mammy was always very good like that if ever we were ill,’ Kate said. ‘Did you ever tell Philomena what had really happened?’
Helen shook her head. ‘Jim assumed that Michael had had his way with me and that’s what he told Philomena and I couldn’t really tell them otherwise then anyway because I could still barely speak.’
‘The next morning, Jim came to tell us that sometime in the night Michael had climbed out of the window of the bedroom where he’d been locked overnight; when this was discovered they set out to find him and found his body hanging from a tree in the woods. I felt only relief and so, I think, did Philomena. I saw it in her face, though we never spoke of it.’
‘That sort of made him look even more guilty,’ Kate said.
‘Well, yes, it did,’ Helen said. ‘And even if I had had the ability to speak, I doubt I would have tried to absolve Michael of anything anyway.’
‘No, and I don’t blame you,’ Kate said. ‘I mean, if Daddy and Uncle Padraic hadn’t come then, this Michael might have done anything to you. I know you had bitten him, but in a way that might have made things worse for you when he had got over the shock of it.’
Helen nodded. ‘I thought that too, because not only was I no match for him, but I was also still dizzy and disorientated and in great pain. But, in any case, I couldn’t have found words to tell other people what he had done to me and I didn’t want to relive it. I wanted to forget it. After all, it’s been hard enough talking about it twenty-five years later, and then I was only seventeen.
‘I left the following day. None of them wanted me to go, but all I wanted was to come back to Birmingham and my Peter, though the events of that night had effectively driven from my mind the reason I had gone over to Ireland in the first place. I only remembered that as I watched the boat pulling away from the Irish Coast.
‘In the end it was a good job I came back when I did,’ Helen said. ‘Because Peter had his medical brought forward and he left two days afterwards. He was full of concern for me, especially when he saw my battered face and heard what had happened with Michael, and he fully understood my urgent need to get home. He wasn’t surprised that I had forgotten the original need for the visit. He said he hoped that everything would be all right and that we would get married on his next leave if at all possible.’
‘And then you found you were pregnant anyway?’ Kate said.
‘Yes, I was carrying you, Kate, Peter Donahue’s child,’ Helen said. ‘And that realization came just a few days before I heard news of Peter’s death at a place called Arras. I was heartbroken, for I had truly loved him so much, but I was also worried to death about having a baby and how I was going to be able to provide for you. You know what it is like to be an unmarried mother, Kate, the stigma attached to it – shame that drags whole families down.’
Kate nodded. She knew that well enough.
‘Well, it was even worse then,’ Helen said. ‘There were few options apart from throwing myself into the canal, and I wondered if I had the courage. Apart from that, there was the workhouse. In there you would be taken from me at birth and reared until you were of an age to go out to work. You would probably never know a kind word or deed and you would be known as a workhouse bastard all the days of your life.
‘I worried and fretted and shed many tears, and in the end the only viable option that I could see was to go back to Ireland and pass my baby off as Michael’s child, for I knew then they would feel responsible and look after you and your future would be secure. It was a terrible thing to do, but the man was dead and couldn’t be hurt further. So, for your sake, Kate, this is what I did.’
Kate looked back to her happy, carefree childhood in rural Ireland with her parents, and surrounded by her cousins, and she contrasted that with the dreadful tales she had heard about workhouses; she knew her life there would probably have been an unhappy and even brutal one. She thought of Helen, alone, frantic and panicking and quite desperate to do the best for her baby, and tears trick
led down her cheeks.
Helen put her arms around her, tentatively at first, and then with more confidence as Kate didn’t push her away, and tears poured from her eyes as she embraced her daughter for the first time in twenty-five years. The poignancy wasn’t lost on Kate, and when they eventually drew apart, Helen said, ‘What now? I have told you all and I will understand if you do not want to see me any more.’
‘I have a better idea,’ said Kate. ‘Why don’t we go back into that church hall. You can collect your things and come home with me.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘Why not?’ Kate demanded. ‘Have you somewhere else to go?’
‘No, but …’
‘No buts,’ Kate said. ‘Come on.’
‘Kate, I can’t,’ Helen said. ‘Your husband might object.’
‘My husband was a pilot,’ Kate said. ‘And he was shot down earlier in the year, but if he had still been alive, I’m sure he would have been pleased to meet you.’
‘I am so sorry, my dear.’
‘I am sorry too,’ Kate said. ‘For I loved him dearly. But I live in a three-bedroomed semi-detached house, and the only one that shares it with me is my sister.’
‘A sister,’ Helen cried. ‘You have a sister?’
‘Yes, and a wee brother who is still at home as he is only nine years old.’
‘Praise be that Philomena had children of her own.’
‘Yes, though she had a long wait for James,’ Kate said. ‘So, will you come then?’
‘You don’t know me, Kate.’
‘What dark secrets are you hiding?’ Kate asked with a smile. ‘Are you going to murder us all in our beds with an axe or what?’
‘No, of course not,’ Helen said. ‘But I am a stranger.’
‘Yes, and isn’t that just tragic that my mother is a stranger to me?’ Kate said. She reached for Helen’s hand and said, ‘Let’s put the past behind us and get to know one another.’
Helen gave a brief nod; she was unable to speak because her throat was so full.