Little Drifters: Part 3 of 4. Kathleen O’Shea
the same time Lucy started suffering from nightmares. But they weren’t like normal nightmares; it was as if she was fully awake. I’d be fast asleep in my bed when suddenly I’d be woken by a terrible screaming coming from Lucy’s room. I’d jump out of bed and run in to see her cowering in the corner, eyes wide open, shaking like a leaf.
‘Mammy’s here!’ she’d tell me earnestly. ‘Mammy’s here!’
‘Ah, Mammy’s not here,’ I’d say, trying to calm her down.
‘No, she is! She is, Kathleen! I seen her. She’s under the bed! Look under the bed!’
She was so convincing she’d have me crawling around on the floor, looking under the bed for our mother, who I knew couldn’t possibly be in her room. This happened a lot. One time Daddy came back, another time Mammy was there and she jumped out the window. Poor Lucy was haunted every night by the loved ones who’d let her down.
As for me, I couldn’t work out what to do. All our lives we’d survived by helping each other, but now, in this new world, we could do nothing to protect one another. In fact, it was the opposite. Our siblings could get into trouble just for being associated with us.
One time I had just come in from playing in the garden when Sister Helen stopped me in the hallway.
‘You’re filthy, you dirty tinker!’ she spat. ‘Just look at your skirt, covered in mud.’
‘Ah, sure, it’s only a bit of dirt, Sister,’ I said. ‘I’m sure God will forgive me a bit of dirt.’
Lucy was just standing innocently a little way off from me but Sister Helen had her in her sights. She grabbed Lucy and smacked her hard across the head. Lucy howled in surprise and pain.
‘What did you do that for?’ I asked, shocked.
‘That’s what happens when you back-chat me!’ Sister Helen replied. ‘Now go and get cleaned up!’
I was so mad right then I just wanted to run up to her and pull her stupid veil off her head. My fists clenched at my side, fingernails digging into my palms.
‘I said go!’ Sister Helen barked. ‘Get out of here, both of you!’
Lucy had already run upstairs and I followed behind, boiling with impotent rage. For the first time in our lives we could no longer protect each other. In Watersbridge we had to find a whole new way to survive.
Chapter 12
There was one nice person in our house and that was Grace, our cook.
She joined Watersbridge not long after we arrived, and from the moment she started working there our meals improved no end.
Now the fish that we had on Fridays actually tasted like fish, the sausages weren’t burned, the mash was creamy, not lumpy, and the stew was delicious, not just a watery bowl of tough meat and soggy vegetables. Grace was kind – she was an older woman with lovely curly, white hair, and unlike the other staff or the nuns she actually seemed to like us children. So I spent as much time as I could in the kitchen, helping her out and letting her peaceful, loving presence soothe and calm me.
One day, after I’d helped her wash, dry and put away the dishes, I sat at the kitchen table, staring forlornly out the window.
‘What’s the matter, Kathleen?’ she asked gently. ‘Don’t you want to go out and play with the others?’
I shook my head, scared to say what was on my mind.
‘Come on, petal,’ she urged. ‘Tell Grace. What’s wrong?’
‘Grace, how am I ever going to learn to read?’ I erupted. ‘All them other children can read and write and I don’t know how. I can’t even read the baby books!’
I was desperate to learn how to read and write but nobody at school ever made the effort to help me. The teacher was so fierce and angry the whole time I just tried to keep quiet and stay out of her way. All the while I was falling further and further behind. Now the lessons just drifted by in an incomprehensible blur. If I failed to do my homework I got called a ‘lazy tinker’ and made to stand outside the headmistress’s office. She had beaten me a few times too. Most of the other kids knew I was having problems and sometimes they’d do my work for me or they’d help me out if I was called on in class to give an answer. But it didn’t help me improve. I had been in Our Lady School for three months now and I was no better off than when I’d first arrived.
Grace looked at me with real concern.
‘I’ll teach you to read,’ she offered.
‘Really?’ I couldn’t believe my luck.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry. It’s not that difficult. We’ll just go step by step. First we have to learn how to spell. Let’s start here in the kitchen.’ She looked around and then went over to the cooker. ‘Right, this is a cooker.’
She sounded the word out: ‘Coo-ker. Get your pencil out. I’m going to write it down for you.’
So I scurried off to get my pencil and rough book. Bringing it back, she spelled out the word on the page then she pointed at every letter individually and read out each one: ‘That’s C-O-O-K-E-R. Right, now you try it.’
So I looked at her work and saw the word and looked at the letters. One by one, I copied them out, saying the sounds in my head as I did so. Then Grace made me do it again and again.
Then she pointed to one of the letters.
‘What’s that one?’ she asked.
‘It’s a K,’ I said.
‘Good!’ she smiled.
Finally, she turned the page over and said: ‘Now try spelling it on your own without looking.’
That was my first lesson. The next day we did table, then chair, fridge, floor, door, ceiling, plate and cup. By the end of the first week we’d exhausted all the words in the kitchen so Grace took me outside to the garden and we went through the whole process out there: sky, grass, house, window, boy, run. For weeks Grace put aside an hour every day to helping me learn to read and by the time I turned 11 I was able to keep up in class.
The only other person I liked was my music teacher in school. At first we just learned the recorder but I found very early on that when it came to music I could hear the tune and just pick out the notes afterwards. I suppose that came from my father. The music teacher was a tall, slim English lady called Deirdre and she was one of the only teachers in the whole school who treated me with kindness and respect. Perhaps because I was good at music, perhaps because she knew I got picked on by the other teachers, or maybe because she was simply a nice person, but for whatever reason she was good to me and I lapped it up. Within a short time she’d moved me on to the piano.
‘Oh, you’ve got a fine ear, Kathleen!’ she praised me whenever I managed to master a new song.
Twice a week for an hour, I shone. Me, Kathleen, the dirty tinker, the girl from the orphanage. I could be somebody. And I could make music with my own hands. I felt uplifted, I felt happy.
And for much of the rest of the time I just muddled along. By now I could keep up in English and History but my Maths was shocking. So bad in fact that our male teacher gave up almost immediately. I was so far behind he simply refused to teach me, and during lessons I’d either sit at the back, working on something else, or I’d go out and walk around the playground until it was time for a new lesson. The nuns at the orphanage didn’t care – there were tests at school and most of the children sat them but they didn’t bother with us orphanage kids. We weren’t important enough, we were never expected to make anything of our lives so we just got left to sink or swim. If it hadn’t been for Grace the cook I would have gone through my whole school life without