Till the Sun Shines Through (49 page)

‘Such things happen in war time,' the doctor said sympathetically. ‘I suggest you phone Oakengates and arrange an appointment with the supervisor of the place – a Dr Havering – and tell them what you have told me.'

‘I'll do that,' Bridie said vehemently. ‘Thank you, Doctor,' and she took the phone number and address the doctor had copied from the file and walked out of the hospital with Rosalyn, so happy she felt like she was floating on air.

Bridie would have gone into the first phone box they passed the minute they'd left the hospital and phoned, but Rosalyn stopped her. She had the feeling that the phone call, the first link in the process to Bridie getting her children returned to her, had to be planned carefully. Bridie was in such a state of nervous excitement, she might give doctors the impression she was a gibbering idiot.

As it was nearly lunchtime, Rosalyn treated them both to lunch and while they ate, they discussed what Bridie would say to the doctors at the orphanage. ‘We can go up straightaway instead,' Bridie suggested, but Rosalyn shook her head. ‘We can't, Bridie – look at the state of us. If you want to prove to them how capable you are of looking after your children, we both need to wash and change and look slightly more respectable.'

‘What d'you mean, prove I'm capable? They're my children.'

‘I know that,' Rosalyn said. ‘But it's how these people work – they'll need to see you're a fit person to look after children who have been through such an ordeal.'

‘If you're sure …' Bridie said doubtfully.

‘I am. Trust me,' Rosalyn said. ‘Make the phone call. Ask if we can go over tomorrow.'

It was torture for Bridie to wait another day and yet she saw the sense of what Rosalyn said. The person she eventually spoke to was none too keen on Bridie visiting at all. Visitors were not encouraged as they upset the children, the woman told her.

‘I'm not any old visitor,' Bridie said. ‘I have reason to believe two children taken in to your care on or around 25
^th
November are my children.'

Even that didn't move the receptionist at the other end. ‘Perhaps,' she said, ‘but you must understand that that is something I couldn't possibly discuss on the telephone. Most of the children we have with us are sick, mentally ill in some way, traumatised by their experiences. We have to be extremely careful not to disturb their emotional balance and at the moment they are highly excited by Christmas. Maybe if you left it to the New Year?'

There was no way on earth Bridie was going to leave it a day longer than necessary. Knowing she was in no position to insist, she resorted to pleading her case. Eventually, Dr Havering was brought to the phone and he agreed to see Bridie the following morning.

When Bridie put the phone down, her hands were shaking. What a performance just for the chance to possibly see her own children! She remembered the horror stories she'd heard about the care agencies getting their hands on children and refusing to return them, and remembered how frantic Eddie had been not to risk that with Mickey.

Rosalyn thought the whole thing ridiculous, but when she thought of the dingy, depressing room Bridie had, she felt her heart sink. Bridie though, she knew, looked no further than having found her children and bringing them home.

She said nothing about this until she and Bridie had stripped and washed in the kitchenette of Bridie's attic room and changed into clean fresh clothes, then she said carefully, ‘I think we need to find you another place – a better place – if you want your children back.'

Bridie looked around the room dispassionately. When she'd moved in there, she hadn't cared about anything or anyone, but now she saw it would never do. ‘I can't afford much,' she said. ‘Though I see this isn't right.'

‘What about the money Tom sends you?'

‘That probably still goes to the Mission,' Bridie said. ‘I didn't tell them I was leaving, I just walked out.'

‘Oh Bridie,' Rosalyn said in exasperation. ‘They are probably worried to death about you. Tom knows where you are, I suppose?'

‘Now he does – Mammy wrote and told him,' Bridie said. ‘He sent me the one letter, but no pay cheque, and I never wrote back. That time there was nothing to tell him except I had nothing to live for and wanted to die. He'd not want to hear that.'

‘No, of course he wouldn't,' Rosalyn said. ‘Let's hope after tomorrow you'll have good news to give him. But for now, we must go back to the Mission and tell them how and where you are. Maybe you can stay there for a wee while. If not, having Tom's money will give you a deposit, which you will need for a better place.'

Father Flynn was delighted to see Bridie, though he saw from her white, strained face, sunken eyes and extreme thinness that she'd been far from well. He welcomed Rosalyn warmly too, glad that Bridie had some support. He listened with excitement to match her own about the news of the children, but when she asked if she might bring them there eventually, he shook his head sadly. ‘The place is more full than ever now,' he said. I couldn't squeeze you in with a shoehorn. Father Shearer took some of my overflow just last week and now the presbytery is also bursting at the seams.'

There were three pay cheques of Tom's at the Mission which Father Flynn gave Bridie. She said she would write to Tom and ask him to continue sending his money there as she wasn't at all sure where she'd be living. However, the search for more suitable accommodation proved fruitless and increasingly depressing as they toured street after street. Sometimes there were rooms available, but they forbid pets and children, or were far too expensive. Most reasonably priced places were chock-a-block and many private houses had more than one family living in them.

‘Maybe I could get a job,' Bridie mused as the two made their way home from the General Hospital where they'd been to tell Jay the news. ‘Then I could pay out more. I had one before in munitions. I'd get another one easy enough. I was thinking of it anyway.'

‘And then how would you care for the children?'

‘I got Liam into nursery last time,' Bridie said. ‘Katie was at school all day.'

‘And you had people by to help you,' Rosalyn reminded her. ‘How would you get Liam off to nursery and Katie to school and be on time for work? And what would happen at half past three when Katie left school? Who would see to her until you came home? What about holidays? And how d'you think they'd fare anyway, being pawned off with strangers after all they've been through?'

Bridie, listening to Rosalyn, knew she was right. If her children were at the orphanage and were returned to her, they would need her to care for them, her constant presence to reassure them.

‘It's a bit like the chicken and the egg,' Rosalyn said.

It was depressing stuff all right, and Bridie told herself to take one day at a time. If the children at Oakengates were hers, then surely anyone could see they'd be better off with their natural mother, whatever situation she was in.

As they sat on the train on the first leg of their journey the next morning, Bridie told herself not to be so downhearted. God, more people than her lived in unsuitable accommodation in that war-ravaged city and they got by. She was sure she'd make the superintendent of the place see that she could cope.

Rosalyn had insisted they get up early and have a bath and change into fresh clothes. She said that looking smart would give Bridie confidence. ‘You're going to run out of clothes at this rate,' Bridie said, struggling into another outfit of Rosalyn's.

‘I might,' Rosalyn agreed. ‘I shall have to buy more. I'll give Todd a call and tell him to release some money into my account.'

She didn't, in fact, need to call her husband for that; she could withdraw money at any time herself. But she was in a quandary over Christmas arrangements and she needed an excuse to phone Todd. He hadn't been happy with her returning to bomb-riddled Birmingham at all just because a friend she'd not seen or heard of for years was in a spot of bother. But as she seemed set on it, he expected her to spend the festive season with him. How could she leave Bridie to fend for herself? And yet her husband stared danger in the face night after night. She owed it to him to be by his side.

Todd certainly saw it that way and told Rosalyn so forcibly. Rosalyn, however, said nothing to Bridie, feeling she had enough on her plate. When the ordeal at the orphanage was over, she'd perhaps have a better idea of how things stood.

The train soon left the city behind and they passed wide open countryside with fields of cows and others of sheep. Occasionally horses looked over the farm gates, watching the train pass. Except for the lack of hills, it could have been Donegal and Bridie felt a tug of homesickness.

The train pulled into Sutton Coldfield Station, and from there they had to take a Midland Red bus to the terminus past Four Oaks, where the conductor directed them further. ‘It's a tidy step,' he said, pointing ahead. ‘You go along that lane there for a mile or so. The place is on the left. Can't miss it.'

Rosalyn made a face. Her shoes were not made for trudging along muddy, country lanes in December. She said nothing, however; Bridie was already curled up as tight as a spring and so she took her arm and strode out boldly.

The conductor was right. No one could miss Oakengates, a huge and beautiful English manor house set in its own grounds. At the entrance to the drive, Bridie looked at Rosalyn a little fearfully. The sheer size and beauty of the place daunted her already fragile self-confidence.

Rosalyn gave her arm a squeeze. ‘If your children are here, it's through no fault of yours. Hold on to that.'

‘Do you know what struck me on the train?' Bridie said. ‘You remember the doctor saying they had two children in after that raid who died? I so didn't want them to be mine that I never asked questions about them. Maybe this is all a wasted exercise – maybe they did die after all.'

‘And maybe they didn't,' said Rosalyn, catching hold of her arm. ‘Come on.'

The gravel crunched beneath their feet and to each side of the path, where once Bridie imagined had been green lawns, were vegetable patches. The house looked even more imposing close up and they went up the three white steps that led to a terrace that ran along the front of the house and tentatively rang the bell.

They were expected and were ushered straight into the Superintendent's Office. As they entered the room, he left his place behind the desk to welcome the women with a hand outstretched. ‘I'm Doctor Havering,' he said. ‘Which one of you made the phone call?'

‘Me,' Bridie said. ‘My name is Bridie Cassidy.'

‘And you have reason to believe your children might be here?'

‘Yes. The doctor in the Children's Hospital told us about the two wee children you had taken in here a day or so after the raid on 22
^nd
November. A boy and girl, he said.'

‘And what makes you think they're yours?'

‘Just a feeling.'

‘Wait a minute,' Rosalyn put in. ‘Are they or aren't they? Don't play cat and mouse with Bridie like this. Surely the children were able to tell you their names?'

‘I'm not playing cat and mouse, believe me, Miss …'

‘Mrs,' Rosalyn told the man firmly. ‘Rosalyn Flemming. I'm Bridie's cousin.'

‘Ah, well, Mrs Flemming. The problem, you see, is that the children have not yet spoken.'

‘Not spoken,' Bridie said, aghast. She recalled that the doctor at the hospital had said the same, but she'd put that down to shock. But shock surely didn't last a month? ‘They can't speak at all?'

‘They can speak,' Doctor Havering said. ‘Their vocal chords are intact. It's trauma that's brought it about.'

‘Trauma!'

‘The effects of the raid,' the doctor told her. ‘Eventually, with treatment and time, they will recover. We have a psychiatric wing in the hospital annexe. Many children we take in are damaged in some way.'

‘Wouldn't returning the children to their own mother help them?' Rosalyn asked.

The doctor ignored Rosalyn and directed the next question to Bridie. ‘Mrs Cassidy, forgive me,' Doctor Havering said. ‘But I have no proof you have any connection with these children at all. Have you any photographs, anything to prove your claim?'

Bridie took out her shelter bag and pulled out the children's birth certificates and the photographs Ellen had taken. ‘These are a little out of date now,' she said. ‘Katie is six and Liam is just four.'

Doctor Havering knew that he was looking at the two children that he'd had in his psychiatric wing. The girl was so fine-boned and the boy so sturdy yet he'd thought them to be twins for they were the same size. He'd worked solidly to try and unlock their tortured minds, but while their physical injuries had healed, he'd been unsuccessful so far.

After almost three weeks they'd been physically well enough to rejoin the main wards of the hospital wing of the orphanage and he had hoped being with other children might help them to speak. To aid this process, he'd suggested separating the two and so Katie went into the girls' section and Liam to the boys'.

He had to admit now that this theory hadn't worked and if anything they'd become even more withdrawn. They sat, hour after hour, immobile and silent. The other children were puzzled and unnerved by them and so left them alone but not even that appeared to bother either of them. They seemed to be locked within themselves and he was sure they were in need of full-time professional psychiatric help. He himself was a doctor of psychology and if he'd had no success, what chance would a layperson have with them? But he needed to tread carefully – he could tell Bridie Cassidy was a desperate woman. ‘Why has it taken you so long to track down your children, Mrs Cassidy?' he asked, returning the photographs and certificates to her.