Who do you think you might be?

Mary had a room of her own for three months. Hidden away, 19, pregnant, silenced and a hundred miles from the tiny village of Mohill in County Leitrim.

A month later, she was locked in a lunatic asylum to prevent her giving evidence against the priest who was the father. Two months on, her baby was dead and a doctor murdered to bury the truth.

In 1923, Dublin appeared a far-flung city, easily able to shut away shame. On January 29th, Rose howled her way into a freezing winter. No painkillers, even for the many stitches. Mary had screamed for the midwife to cut her open as the baby arrived.

Later, she’d sipped sugary tea and ate buttery toast, as she wondrously inspected her dark-haired, blue-eyed girl, kissed her blood-streaked skin that Mary would love forever and keep secret until long after her death.

 Father Edward Ryan, at twice her age, had turfed up, two weeks later, on Sunday, February 13^th. He must have said mass that day, then travelled two hours by train, offering codswallop excuses at the nursing home. Nobody would have questioned a word, simply replied, yes, Father, no, Father, three bags full Father. I wonder if he held Rose, the baby he'd demanded the country doctor to abort?  It makes my blood boil a century later.

Mary had been his housekeeper just a month when she became pregnant. Three priests swished about that rural rectory in their vestments. I imagine Mary up at the crack of dawn, scurrying after them, breakfast, lunches, dinners, endless bloody tea, scouring cleaning, doing everything asked of her. And obviously more. The previous young housekeeper had vanished like frost in May.

Maybe Nana hoped that once Edward set eyes on little Rose, his heart would have melted. That he’d tell her he was leaving the priesthood and they’d set sail to America. He had family cash; he could have done something other than preach. Rose in her arms, the slight weight, gorgeous milky scent and soft buttery feel of both tiny feet in one of Mary’s hands as her pearly splayed fingers rested on her mother’s heavy-veined breasts.

 Edward’s plans were brutal. He ordered Mary up and dressed. She must have still been bleeding, unable to move easily as she stumbled out of bed, pulled on a shabby servant dress. Did he watch as he parcelled up the baby’s clothes, as he spelt it out? They would leave Rose on the doorstep of Black Church; a foundling discovered after vespers. Perhaps Rose began to cry and Mary asked to feed her, one last precious time, while God’s right-hand man looked at the floor and informed this teenager that she could pick up the threads of her life again. He would find her another position. Mary’s breasts would have tingled and leaked as Rose opened her mouth, pink and clean as a kitten’s. Her gums latching Mary’s cracked nipples, enough to make her wince. Mary might have pleaded; she was certainly weeping at Edward’s determination to reclaim his life.

            But for three women, Father Ryan's plan would have worked. He led Mary into the freezing, rainy night, through Russell Square. There, three mothers, shawls tucked snugly across shoulders, smoked outside a tenement, sheltered in a shadowed doorway. They gossiped, backs aching, worn to-the-bone but it was grand having a break and a roll-up. One clocked the couple enter the empty quadrangle. On odd sight. She’d stilled, nodded to the others, cigarettes held mid-air, ends glowing. The young girl’s face was glassy with tears, a baby hugged to her breasts, shielded from rain. No infant should be out on a night like this.

‘Will you look at him, dressed up to the nines. God have pity on that poor cailin, in tatters, and the wee one.’ Kathleen whispered. The other women said nothing, watched as Father Edward pulled Mary on. The women’s curiosity hardened when the pair turned a corner, swallowed by darkness and mist, leaving the sound of a mewling baby and scent of peat in the glimmer of gas streetlamps.  The women followed, their heels clacking on rain-glossed pavements. Father Ryan looked back and on the third time spoke in a superior, commanding tone:

‘Be off with you. We’re on our way to church.’

The women stopped, observing the girl fall against him. They lingered until the couple turned into St Mary’s Square, then sidled along dark, damp walls, following the drift of frankincense. The Black Church lived up to its name in the rain, its looming roof and sides pitch dark under a sickle moon, heavy clouds billowing across. There’s a legend if you run three times round the chapel you could summon the devil on nights like this. Vespers was still in progress, candles shimmered through stained-glass windows. Father Ryan hesitated, then halted at a large, dark house next door and the women saw him shake the girl by the shoulders. He placed a paper bag on the steps. Mary wiped her nose with the back of her hand, cradled Rose closer, stroked her face. The priest walked off, slowly at first, then picked up pace. Mary looked after him, back at Rose, hesitated, and with one wail that could have brought down heaven. gentled Rose down and pelted after Edward.

A minute later, there was a hue and cry. The three banshees giving chase at the top of their voices. One carried Rose, another held the bag of clothes, The Guarda arrived as parishioners poured out of Black Church and a crowd cornered the couple. Mary looked at the baby, shaking like a leaf. You could have blown her over, it was stated in a report. It was then they saw his dog-collar, hushed a bit. The priest, his eyes hard, remained tight-lipped.

‘I was helping this woman,’ he explained, used of commanding a crowd.

‘He was pulling that wee cailin along. She was crying over the bairn,’ remonstrated Kathleen, looking at the infant, her two friends nodding.

‘She wanted to leave the baby,’ said Father Ryan. ‘I was helping her take it to the church but there was a service and the woman insisted on leaving the infant on the steps of the house.’

Oh, such a righteous man of God. The Garda looked decidedly uneasy. It would be one thing facing down outraged women and a pale weeping girl. But a priest and all those witnesses.

Mary had a room of her own with my father, her eldest son, here in Perth. It was filled with photographs of her four boys. As if there was little life before them. She never got on well with the heat here, sat in shadows, got up early before the swelter began and when I asked her about the weather there, she told me it changed every five minutes from black herds of rain to watery sun, to spiteful gales that blew smoke down the chimney, to gentle barley-blowing wind, howling rain or leaf-rustling breezes always at your back, cool rain reddened from the south west and lung-emptying gust one minute followed by cracking-the-flags sunshine the next.

I’d loved her Irish accent, would do anything to hear her talk about the home-made butter she stirred on her tiny farm, churning creamy milk until it thickened and turned golden, was cut into slabs, patted between ridged boards and wrapped in muslin. Her hands blue with cold from November to March. While World War One swept across the globe and the Easter Uprising brought bloody local fighting, she fed chickens and milked cows, her head resting against furry warm bodies. She clammed up when I mentioned church, politics or the IRA.

 Her parents must have thought she won the lottery when the priests’ housekeeper disappeared. Mary was the rapid replacement, an uneducated local; in awe of priests. Malleable. I imagine her mum kitting her out, as best they could, so she wouldn’t bring shame on them now their daughter was as near to God on earth as possible.

Mary returned to Leitrim from the asylum and married four years later. I have a picture of her, jet hair, a heart-shaped face with cheekbones that could cut glass. Her eyes are light grey in the black and white picture. She is reed-thin and looks so young. Her right arm slipped through the left crook of her much older husband’s, the tips of her slim fingers hidden within his hand, as if he’s worried, she might bolt.

A local farmer. He would likely have known her secret. He looks kindly; his head the shape of a King Edward’s potato and body not much different. Nana never told me about the room in Dublin, or her only dead daughter. Not a word. But I know the doctor was shot and his pregnant wife never got justice and Father Ryan died, a drunk, in an English mental asylum.