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  1 Canada Square,

  London E14 5AP, England www.mirrorbooks.com

  twitter.com/themirrorbooks Mirror Books 2018

  © Phyllis Whitsell

  The rights of Phyllis Whitsell to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted, in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  ISBN 978-1-907324-84-0

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

  retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior

  written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of

  binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar

  condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Printed and bound in Great Britain

  by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  Names and personal details have been changed COVER IMAGES: Topfoto, iStockphoto, Trevillion Images

  To both my Mums, Bridget Mary (my birth Mum)

  and Mary Bridget (my adoptive Mum).

  They had my best interests at heart and, in the end,

  I loved them dearly.

  Cathryn Kemp is an award-winning author,

  journalist and Sunday Times Bestselling Ghostwriter. Cathryn has written across the full spectrum of the British national press. Cathryn’s other books include Coming Clean: Diary of a Painkiller Addict (Piatkus),

  We Ain’t Got No Drink, Pa, and A Fish Supper and a Chippy Smile (both Orion), Jam Butties and a Pan of Scouse (Trapeze) and My Beautiful Struggle (Trapeze).

  introduction

  Letter to Bridget

  February 22, 2018

  Dear Mum,

  It is 61 years ago to the day that you walked into Father Hudson’s Home, an orphanage in Birmingham, and handed me over to the Moral Welfare Officer. I cannot imagine what must have been going through your mind when you gave the warm bundle of your nine-month-old daughter to a stranger, and left with empty arms and a broken heart.

  I know that you’d tried so hard to keep me. After giving birth you refused to give me up for adoption, took me home and did the best you could. For a while it looked like you’d tricked fate and stood firm in the face of the authorities who, back then, routinely separated unmarried Catholic Irish girls from their illegitimate babies. We wouldn’t stand for it now, but those were different times, brutal times, and it shows me how strong you really were to even try to keep me.

  But it wasn’t to be.

  You were battling terrible odds. Your life had been unbelievably hard; you had terrible experiences growing up in Tipperary, and were left alone and defenceless. You sank into despair, a despair made worse by the comfort you sought from drink and with no chance of a ‘normal’ happy life. I feel so sad knowing that, underneath the turmoil and drunkenness, was a woman desperately seeking love, desperate to be a mother to her child, but who was simply unable to cope.

  Our story began again when I found you, on November 9 1981. I had started my search for you two years earlier at the age of 23. I’d been told by my adoptive parents that you had died, but in my heart I never believed them. So I contacted the orphanage in 1979 and spoke to the very same Moral Welfare Officer, Mary McFadden, who had taken me from your arms all those years ago.

  I never told you that I’d tracked you down after all that searching and found, to my delight and terror, that you had lived less than nine miles from where I grew up, five miles from where I worked as a nurse. Neither did I tell you who I was because I feared I might lose you again, that seeing me and experiencing the guilt, shame and terrible sadness at our parting may have sent you fleeing. I just couldn’t risk losing you again, so I didn’t say a word. I don’t know if that was the right thing to do, but it gave me a chance to get to know the real Bridget, not the Tipperary Mary character you had become in the pubs and streets of the city we shared.

  When I discovered you were very much alive and living in Balsall Heath, my head spun with shock, not least by the news that at the time you were on probation for causing criminal damage! I knew I had to see you, though it took months before I came up with a plan. But my courage had temporarily deserted me. I decided that it was important to meet you from behind the safety of my district nurse’s uniform (though, of course, I wasn’t officially your nurse). I’d learnt enough about your fragile state of mind and health, to instinctively know that there was simply no other way. My uniform was the passport to you. It helped me to approach you and show you that, above all else, I was there to help.

  I’d been warned what to expect; ‘the local drunk’, the ‘bag lady’, Tipperary Mary with a bottle in her hand and a raised fist to the world, and at first you were wary of me, unable to trust a soul, arguing and fighting with a drink or three inside you. Over time, I came to understand so much more about your life, mum. While you never knew that the district nurse who came and tended you for nine years was, in fact, your long-lost daughter, ‘Little Phyllis’, as you called me.

  While I put cream on your cuts and bruises (earned from nights fighting in dodgy pubs), gently combed your matted hair or helped you shower and dress, you talked to me, telling me of the horrors that lay in your past. These things were so hard for me to hear, yet I yearned for your history because it is mine, too. You told me snippets and anecdotes, sometimes laughing, sometimes swearing, your face twisted with painful recollection, and over time I pieced them all together. The fragments of your story became a living, breathing whole over that life-changing nine years, and through that I grew to know and love you, and I vowed to let the world know what it was that had driven you to the life you now led.

  I still remember that day when I first met you. I couldn’t stop staring. My eyes travelled the contours of your bruised and swollen face, the lines that showed me you’d had a hard life, and I recall the thrill of noticing that we both had the same piercing blue eyes, the same pretty nose. I had never looked like anyone before, as any adopted child or orphan would understand.

  But there was something else about your face that was familiar to me, more than just a family resemblance. I later realised with amazement that our paths had crossed very briefly years earlier, when I was working as a nurse in the A&E department of Dudley hospital and you had been brought in with a head injury after a drunken fight. I had no idea who you were at the time but I remember thinking then, that underneath all the bluster and shouting was a very vulnerable woman.

  I listened to you for hours over the years when I cared for you. The only times it was impossible to be with you were when you were roaring drunk. On those days I’d make my excuses and leave, your pale face appearing at the window as I went, as if to say ‘come back’. And so I always did. For years I had the privilege of looking after you, the mother I’d never known, the daughter you thought you’d lost.

  In remembering our time together, I am still struck by your lack of bitterness, despite the chaos you were born into. You never complained. You shouted, you cried even, but you were never bitter, and I admired you for that. I saw clearly how you drank to numb your pain, and I have never blamed you for that either, nor for giving me up.

  I have talked about my own life, growing up as an adopted child, and how I came to find you again, in my book Finding Tipperary Mary, but I felt it was now time to tell your life story, leading up to the day when our paths crossed again. While writing I have tried to give you the voice you never had as
a child or as a vulnerable young woman. In reliving your life through your words, the stories you told me, and the research I have done here and in Ireland, I have come to understand you better. And the demons that drove you out of Ireland, from which you never seemed able to escape.

  You passed away on February 17 2003, but not a day goes by that I don’t think of you. I hope that in telling your story I am giving you back some of the dignity stolen from you, and in doing so, creating a legacy in your memory.

  I believe you never felt truly loved. So, I will end my letter by saying this: I love you mum. Your spirit is with me. I am sure you are looking down from heaven, watching over me now.

  This book is my gift to you.

  Love,

  Little Phyllis

  Chapter 1

  Growing Up

  January 1938

  “Race ye to the steeple!” I shrieked, turning towards the others who were running full pelt, trying to catch me, their hobnail boots clattering on the cobbled streets of Templemore, Ireland.

  The wind caught my long blonde locks, and I flew into action, knowing I was faster than all of them, faster even than my elder brother Robert, who was almost a man at 15 years old.

  I was just nine, but already wore the worries of the world on my shoulders as my mam’s right-hand woman, helping her with chores and looking after my brothers, who were all older than me.

  James, 12, or Jimmie as we called him, almost caught up as I climbed over the gate straddling one of the fields that surrounded our small town. I looked around me, taking in the familiar sights. Fields and hills as far as I could see, punctured only with church steeples like ours and villages huddled together. It was the landscape of my birth. I breathed in the frigid air and almost choked with the sheer sharpness of it.

  “Can’t catch me!” I jeered, laughing, my cheeks flushed from the cold. It was a particularly harsh winter’s day yet I was wearing my school frock and only a thin cardigan, which I wrapped around my slight frame. We didn’t have the money for luxuries such as winter coats so we all made do with what we had. It was a hard life, yet we knew no different, and everyone was in the same boat. We never had enough food to fill our bellies, and we never had enough clothes to keep us warm, but we got on with life as best we could, never once feeling sorry for ourselves. It was just how it was.

  “I’ll get ye so I will!” retorted Jimmie, giggling as he leapt over the fence. He was hot on my heels but I knew I would win, I always won our races. I was small, agile and filled with the heady freedom that came after the school bell had rung at the end of each day. Tearing away from the chalkboards and the strict nuns who taught us the sacraments, I couldn’t get out of our school fast enough, away from the stifling formalities, the lessons we learnt by rote and the endless hours of catechism, commandments and prayer books. After a day spent with Sisters Benedict, Angelica and Mary Agnes, I needed to breathe, taking in lungfuls of crisp, cold air that sent icy shivers down my back. I relished freedom like an animal released from its cage, with a wild abandonment that belied the sober young lady I was expected to be at home as a ‘little mother’ with so many tasks to fulfill each day.

  Robert had caught up, he grabbed at my cardie but I dodged him, laughing with pure joy. Then Jimmie, whooping, managed to ‘tag’ Robert and the two of them tumbled to the ground, play-fighting and making a racket.

  “I’m goin’ to win!” yelled Jimmie.

  “Get off me, ye’ve no chance,” blurted Robert.

  The pair were always fighting, their rough-and-tumble games sending Mam half crazy most days. My eldest brother, Michael, had already moved away to start a family of his own, at the age of 19, and so it was just me and my two brothers living at home with Mam and our stepfather Patrick.

  Michael was a quiet, law-abiding man, considered respectable and upstanding by the community, while Jimmie was the swaggering youngster with golden good looks and a cheek that won him praise rather than rebuke. Jimmie was the apple of Mam’s eye, a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy who could do no wrong. He had a sunny nature, was always whistling to himself or playing with his pals. In contrast, Robert, the awkward middle child, was left seething with envy. Robert was more known for his sulks and sullen ways, a ‘difficult boy’ as Mam often said to him. Robert’s personality seemed formed of everything left over from his brothers. He was sly and resentful, prone to telling tales on Jimmie, though it was often rewarded by a slap from Patrick. Robert was tall but puny compared to Jimmie, who shone at sports and could run faster than most boys in the village.

  “Get off me, ye bastard or I’ll beat ya,” shouted Jimmie. It was forbidden by our church to swear and so we enjoyed it all the more when we could get away with doing it!

  “Ye’ll have the priest onto us!” I laughed, picking up speed. The tall spire of Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church loomed over us. It was the backdrop to our lives as we lived in the street directly opposite it. The church, and our faith, was the beating heart of our community, the centre of our small world.

  We attended mass every Sunday without fail, and on all our Holy Days of Obligation. It was the moral censor and the emotional comforter for all of us. Our faith determined every aspect of our lives, from baptism to holy communion, from birth to marriage to death and everything in between. It was our guiding light, but already I felt the strictures of it. Even as the young girl I was, I felt the rub of its iron rules, the unmovable dogma that dictated how we lived, prayed, behaved and died; but then it was more of a niggle, the kind that most females felt was our lot at that time. I wanted more than anything to feel loved by my family, and mostly I did. I wanted to make Mam and my brothers happy, so I was happy to help out at home though I noticed even at such a young age, that it was to me that the extra chores fell rather than the boisterous boys!

  “Can’t catch meeee, can’t catch me…” I teased as I ran, hiccupping and gasping for air down the tree-lined avenue leading to the church precincts, running my hand along the cold stone walls, past the side entrance, round to the back, only stopping to double over, taking rasping breaths that plumed from my mouth like smoke from the priest’s incense.

  Holding my sides, my heart hammering in my chest, I panted like a dog as my lungs demanded air. It was Robert who found me first. He stopped a metre or so from me. He didn’t appear to be any worse the wear for having run so far.

  “Oh Robert, there y’are. I beat ya again! That was grand, but I thought for a minute I’d lost the lot of yer,” I grinned, able to breath more easily now. I stood upright.

  “What in Our Lady’s name are ye staring at?” I giggled, though I registered Robert’s intense gaze.

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “Where’s Jimmie? He hates losing, especially to a girl,” I joked, but the laughter caught in my throat. Robert was looking at me, standing without moving. There was something strange about him, as if he was seeing me for the first time. I felt immediately uncomfortable, but I couldn’t figure out why.

  “Stop that, Jaysus Robert… Come on, let’s go an’ find the others.” I made to move off but Robert moved faster. Within a stride he was facing me, my back to the wall, standing so close he was almost touching me. All of a sudden I felt the sensation of being trapped. What was he playing at?

  “Robert, go on, what are ye doin’? I don’t like it, didn’t ye hear me?” I tried to shove past him but my brother was a man in all but name and had the strength of one already. In answer to my pleas he stepped forward again and grabbed my wrists, pinning me to the wall. It was cold against my back and I shivered.

  “What are ye doin’? Let me go. I need to get back and help Mam with the dinner. Get yer hands off me!” I demanded, feeling suddenly angry. Why did Robert always have to be so, so… intense?

  I’d caught him gawking at me a few weeks’ previously, his eyes boring into me as I performed some task at home. I was on my knees beside the old tin tub we all bathed in, scrubbing the boys’shirts in readiness for school the next day, wh
en I felt the hairs at the back of my neck rise. I turned automatically and saw Robert. He made no attempt to stop staring. I blushed but shrugged it off, thinking that if he was so idle that he had time to play silly games, he could be washing his own shirts instead.

  Obviously I couldn’t say anything like that to Robert, or to my mam. I’d have got a clip round the ear for cheek, and extra Hail Marys as penance at confession on Saturday evening. I carried on scrubbing, the oily suds from the cheap soap barely making a difference to the greying clothes, but I felt him there for a good few minutes before he started whistling an out-of-tune song, and wandered off, leaving me feeling like someone had walked on my grave. I’d forgotten about it quickly enough, I had too much to do to spend time fretting over things I didn’t understand. And so, I thought no more about it. After all, he was just my brother.

  But this was something else. Now he had his hands on me, pinning me against the wall. This was akin to holding me hostage and I didn’t like it one bit. I struggled. “Take yer filthy hands off me, ye devil,” I spat at him.

  This seemed to break the spell. Robert scowled. He was never a man of many words, and still he didn’t speak, instead he bent his head towards me and for a moment I thought he was going to kiss me the way I’d once seen Mam kiss our stepfather.

  “Go away, get off me!” I squirmed.

  As if touching something hot, Robert recoiled, dropping my wrists and stepping back. He still had the look of strange intensity on his face but there was also confusion there.

  I laughed, lightening the moment. “Get away with ye Robert, come on let’s find the others.”

  It worked. Robert hesitated. His demeanour changed yet he was still looking at me with that peculiar leer on his face. The moment evaporated. I took my chance and leapt off like a young gazelle. Free again, but from what this time?