‘come’ in the last line of ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ in English class that morning – ‘Of what is past, or passing, or to come’ – and pushed her book in front of me. I didn’t even laugh. Usually I would. Usually we’d both nearly choke laughing. But it just made me want to cry. And the words ‘perne in a gyre’ spinning round in my head.
After lunch we went out to the woods to collect specimens of moss and fern and suck insects into pooters. Beetles, mostly. And woodlice. I walked a little behind the rest of the class, the sleeves of my jumper pulled down over my hands. I had this weird feeling I was being watched, and even glanced quickly behind me a few times to make sure. The trees were bare; I could see right to the road; there wasn’t a soul about. Not even a car passing. The sky was milky blue. It looked as though it might snow.
Soon the walls of my bedroom would be painted in pastel shades for the baby, and my bed replaced by a cot. And how was I going to convince Mam and Dad to let me go to this disco when they’d already said that I could only go out (maybe) during the holidays? What if I never got to meet this boy? I could hardly approach him in the cemetery. It had to be a slow set. Somewhere dark, crowded, noisy, so that he couldn’t see or hear me too well. My mother was going to swell and give birth. I wouldn’t be the only one anymore. I would have to look after it when they were too old. They were going to die.
Mar ran back and handed me a woodlouse in a jar. ‘Here, you can look after this.’
‘Great, thanks a bunch, Mar,’ I said, putting a foot out to trip her up. At least I had her.
It was around that time that Celia’s book appeared on Mam’s bedside locker. Mam hadn’t said a word about it. Mind you, I’d hardly spoken to her after she told me about the baby. But I was sure she wanted me to find it. I was always snooping around her room, trying on her clothes. Sometimes even Dad’s clothes, I got so bored of my own. It was like when she left a copy of What’s Happening to Me? in my room. She didn’t say anything that time either.
She just waited.
I used to keep it under my mattress and take it out every night to look at the rude pictures of girls with varying sizes of boobs, and boys standing on diving boards trying to hide their erections. I never said anything to her about it. But then one day she just called me into her bedroom and read through it with me, very slowly. As if I couldn’t read. She read it straight through from cover to cover, then asked me if I had any questions. I said ‘No’ and got off the bed as quick as I could and went outside in the garden to play.
I knew that Gran had had to give Celia up because she wasn’t married. Mam and Uncle Patrick had had some kind of falling out over it. That was all I knew. If I ever asked Mam she’d just say, ‘I’ll tell you when you’re older.’ The book, which was called The Little Ones, was a black glossy hardback with a photograph on the front of a serious-looking little girl. She looked like she’d lost her mother, like I did once in the supermarket, only she’d lost her so long she’d given up bawling. It was inscribed inside ‘To Deirdre. With love from your sister, Celia’. I didn’t even know they were in touch. I couldn’t think of Celia being a grown-up. She was just this wee girl on the mantelpiece, suspended in the past. The back stated simply that Celia lived in Oxford with her two cats. I remember that making me cringe, the idea that she was one of those smelly cat women. She probably had no children. Probably treated her cats like they were human.
The introduction was brief:
Industrial schools were commonplace in Ireland up until the latter half of the twentieth century. Poverty-stricken families, mainly, and unmarried women were compelled to send their children to these institutions. Tens of thousands of children, only a small proportion of whom were actually orphans, ended up in detention.
The schools were run by Catholic religious orders, and were prevalent in cities and towns throughout the country. Contrary to popular belief they were not charitable but state-run organisations. The Department of Education provided a grant for each child committed by the courts. This institutionalised method of childcare was economically more viable than providing individual families with financial support. It also appeased the Catholic Church by allowing them to maintain a level of political power within the community.
One such school, established in 1869 and run by an enclosed order of nuns, was in operation for almost 100 years. What the girls suffered there is not unique. What is unique, however, is the way in which thirty-five of these girls so needlessly lost their lives.
On the night of 23 February 1943 a fire started in the laundry of the convent. As the fire intensified some girls tried to jump from the second-floor windows, while others were overcome by smoke or consumed by flames. The thirty-five girls who perished were buried in an unmarked grave.
What follows is a brief glimpse into the lives of these girls, a means of memorialising and remembering their all-too-short lives. Using what information I could glean about their backgrounds, their ages and the running of the school, through research and interviews with survivors, I have tried to give each girl a unique voice.
We need to be reminded not only of the systematic abuse here and throughout the country, but of the fact that these girls were not simply numbers. They had names.
She had very good English, I remember thinking, probably because she lived in Oxford. The thought of those girls used to keep me awake when I was little. I couldn’t have the curtains open, not even the tiniest bit, in case I caught sight of them at the window. And now I was afraid all over again, as if they would come for me in the night.
Denise, 12
I am number 17. That is not my age! It is the special number I was given when I first came here. Sometimes I forget that my name is Denise. My favourite thing is to make paper dolls and cover them in silver paper, which me and my friend Aisling get from the bin at school, from the townie girls’ sweet wrappings. We tear the wrappings into wee jumpers and skirts and boots. At night we put the dolls in matchboxes to sleep. Aisling doesn’t give hers any names even though I told her to. She says she can’t think of any so she just gives them numbers too, like us.
When I grow up I am going to be a nun like Mother Assumpta, not like Mother Carmel. I pray every day, even when I’m not supposed to. Everyone has to line up and pray first thing in the morning, at six. I get up at five because I’m afraid of being hit and because I like to pray before everybody else. And then we wash and go to mass and have communion, and say ‘Our Father’ and sing ‘Holy, Holy’. And I pray when I’m doing the scrubbing in the morning too, mostly the Hail Mary over and over until sometimes I start to get a bit dizzy and get the words mixed up. Then I feel bad for that and have to ask forgiveness. From God and from Our Lady.
I always bow my head when I say ‘Jesus’.
My other favourite thing as well as my dolls is Christmas. On Christmas we get to eat meat and gravy. The ladies from the cathedral come in to serve us, the ones that don’t have their own children. They’re the same ones who stay with Father Fagan in the room behind the altar on Sundays and then come out to give us communion. They don’t say very much. They’re a bit like Aisling that way. Maybe she will be like one of those women when she grows up, and she’ll see what’s in that room at the back of the cathedral.
My worst thing is Jeyes Fluid. It’s when the townies bring lice into class, and then we have to have our heads scrubbed with Jeyes until they’re almost bleeding. Sometimes they do bleed. It stings like when you cut onions. I don’t remember ever having lice before I came here. Mother Assumpta tells me I was six when I came. I don’t remember.
