My Mother's Children: An Irish family secret and the scars it left behind. by Annette Sills (epub e reader .TXT) 📗

kitchen and sat down with the Manchester Evening News and my coffee. From the hallway, the radiogram reproached me, like a frail old lady who’d been removed from her home of fifty years and put into care. I felt like stroking her sleek wooden lid and apologising.

As I looked down at the front page of the paper, a familiar face stared back at me. It took a few moments for me to realise who it was. I could just about make Conor O’Grady out under the unkempt mop of grey-white hair, bushy beard and three chins. I read the headline and gasped.

ARMY VETERAN ATTACKS

LOCAL POLITICIAN

Kahn was outside his mother’s house in Brantingham Road, Chorlton when he was approached by his neighbour on a mobility scooter. A passerby, who witnessed the scene, said she heard O’Grady shout, ‘Go back to where you came from!” as he produced a knife from under his jacket. He proceeded to stab the Labour MP for Withington three times. Kahn escaped with minor wounds to his arm and abdomen.

O’Grady, a former soldier who lost both legs while serving in Northern Ireland in the 1980s, was described by neighbours as a bit of a loner who kept himself to himself.

I looked down at Conor’s glassy eyes staring back at me. I clenched the edges of the paper and took a few deep breaths. I was back in the Irish Club car park again: the stench and heat of his breath, his grabbing hands and his gruff voice calling me a slag over and over. Rose O’Grady would be turning in her in grave and his poor father Tommy would never be able to hold his head up in Brantingham Road again. Not to mention Samira. She’d probably had to come back from Pakistan. Conor had never been right in the head. But this? Stabbing Adeel Kahn and telling him to go back to where he came from? What the hell? Adeel was born and bred in Manchester just like he was. They’d grown up together in the street and played together as kids. I shook my head. UKIP, the anti-immigration party was gaining support from nutters like Conor O’Grady every day and people were taking its leader Farage seriously. When did all the hate kick in? Conor O’Grady and Adeel Kahn were both the children of immigrants, for Christ’s sake. The world was going bonkers.

Ten minutes before the taxi got here. I checked my documents one more time then went into the hallway to get my coat. Stopping by the radiogram, I lifted the lid to see what damage was done and if it was still worth repairing. I knelt down. Two corners of the metal turntable that were slightly loose before had come apart. As I lifted up the arm of the needle the whole thing came off. A small white folded-up envelope slipped out from underneath. I picked it up and dusted it off then I took it into the kitchen, placed it on the table and sat staring at it for a while. The sun warmed the back of my neck and my heart pounded as I opened it. Inside were two newspaper cuttings from the Irish press.

One was one of the first reports of the discovery of the mass grave in Tuam. The other was a published list of the names of the seven hundred and ninety-six babies who’d died there.

Chapter 16

As the plane started to descend, the elderly woman sitting next to me held out a boiled sweet in her mottled hand.

“They say it’s good to chew when you’re landing,” she said in a pure Mayo accent.

I wondered what her story was. Did she leave Ireland when she was a girl and was returning to visit family who stayed behind? Or had her children left and she’d just spent a holiday tuning herself into the unfamiliar music of her grandchildren’s English accents? I took the sweet and thanked her. I felt guilty. Throughout the flight I’d avoided her attempts at conversation and turned back to my book even though I couldn’t concentrate on it. She had such a kindly face. I knew if we got talking I’d have to tell her everything – how all my dreams and hopes had been dashed that morning and how my despair was quickly turning to rage. As the plane descended I looked out of the window at picture-box Ireland: the scattered white houses, smooth strips of road and lush green fields. I gripped the arm of my seat, anger coursing through my veins. Babies were buried in unmarked graves in fields all over the country and my brother was among them.

The list of dead children had been published in a national Irish newspaper. I’d missed it in my search but Tess hadn’t. Seven hundred and ninety-six names, dates of birth, age and cause of death, all in chronological birth order from 1920 to 1961. Many died of flu, whooping cough and gastroenteritis. Others suffered from epilepsy, fits and convulsions and others died of respiratory illnesses. There were twins, Anthony and Mary, described as “congenital idiots” – probably with Down Syndrome, I guessed – who died at two and three months from bronchitis. The youngest baby, Haigh, died at ten minutes because he was premature. The oldest, Mary Connolly, died when she was seven after an outbreak of measles. One word “marasmus” recurred again and again. The dictionary definition was “undernourishment causing a child’s weight to be significantly low for their age”. Three children died in 1960. Donal Dempsey, my brother, was one of them. Dempsey – Tess’s name. His date of birth was listed as 29/11/1960, his age of death 5 months and the cause of his death was unexplained heart failure. Tess had underlined his name in black ink and beside it she’d written,

 “Rest with the angels, my beautiful boy.”

I let out an involuntary cry when I saw it. I imagined her discovering