Sixsmith - The Lost Child of Philomena Lee (Original Edition)

A Mother, Her Son and a Fifty-Year Search

MACMILLAN

I wish to thank the many people who spoke to me in recorded interviews or over a pint of Guinness and furnished the memories, information and documents that made this book possible. Their stories are the stuff of the pages that follow. I am also grateful to Conor OClery, Don Murray, Besty Vriend, Stephen Taylor, Mary Sixsmith, Brian Walsh, Tobias Hoheisel, Jane Libberton, John Cooney and Kit Grover for their generous help with my research and their attentive reading of the text.

The New Year of 2004 had come in. It was getting late and I was thinking of leaving the party was flat and I was tired but someone tapped my shoulder. The stranger was about forty-five and a little tipsy. She told me she was married to the brother of a mutual friend, but she wasnt planning to remain so much longer. I smiled politely. She put her hand on my arm and said she had something that might interest me.

Youre a journalist, arent you?

I used to be.

You can find things out, cant you?

It depends what they are.

You have to meet my friend. She has a puzzle she needs you to solve.

I was intrigued enough to meet the friend in the cafe of the British Library a financial administrator in her late thirties, smartly dressed with sharp blue eyes and jet-black hair. A family mystery was troubling her. Her mother, Philomena, had drunk too much sherry that Christmas and had broken down in tears. Shed had a secret to tell her family, a secret shed kept for fifty years...

Do we all yearn to be detectives? The conversation in the British Library was the start of a search that lasted five years and led me from London to Ireland and on to the United States. Old photographs, letters and diaries now litter my desk the hurried, anxious scrawl of an eager housewife, tearful signatures on sad documents and the image of a lost little boy in a blue jumper clutching a toy plane made of tin...

Everything that follows is true, or reconstructed to the best of my ability. There were clues to be found and no shortage of evidence. Some of the actors in the story kept diaries or left detailed correspondence; several are still alive and agreed to speak with me; others had confided their version of events to friends. Gaps have been filled, characters extrapolated and incidents surmised. But thats what detective work is all about, isnt it?

Saturday 5 July 1952;

Sean Ross Abbey, Roscrea, County Tipperary, Ireland

Sister Annunciata cursed the electric. Whenever there was thunder and lightning it flickered so desperate it was worse than the old paraffin lamps. And tonight they needed all the light they could get.

She was trying to run but her feet were catching in her habit and her hands were shaking. Hot water slopped from the enamel bowl onto the stone flags of the darkened corridor. It was all right for the others: all they had to do was pray to the Virgin, but Sister Annunciata was expected to do something practical: the girl was dying and no one had a clue how to save her.

In the makeshift surgery above the chapel, she knelt by the patient and whispered encouragement. The girl responded with a half-smile and something mumbled, incomprehensible. A lightning flash lit up the room. Annunciata pulled up the covers to shield the girl from the blood on the sheets.

Annunciata was barely older than her patient. Both of them were from the country; both from the depths of Limerick. But she was the birth sister and people were expecting her to do something.

In the chapel below, she could hear Mother Barbara gathering the girls, ordering them to pray for the Magdalene upstairs a sinner like them, who was dying. The disembodied voices sounded distant and harsh. Annunciata squeezed the girls hand and told her to take no notice. She lifted the patients white linen gown and wiped her legs with the warm water. The baby was visible now, but it was the childs back she could see, not the head. She had heard about breech births; another hour and she knew mother and baby would both be dead. The fever was setting in.

The patient was flushed, her speech reduced to quick, stumbling phrases: Dont let them put him in the ground... Its dark down there... Its cold down there. Her blue eyes were wide with panic, her jet-black hair stark against the white pillow.

Sister Annunciata bent down and wiped the girls brow.

The girl had no idea what was happening to her. Shed had no visitors since she arrived, and that was nearly two months ago. Her father and brother had put her in the nuns care, and now the nuns were going to let her die.

Annunciata thanked God that it wasnt herself lying there, but she was a practical girl, from a farming family. She gripped the babys flesh. It was warm and alive. Mother Barbara said sinners deserved no painkillers, and the girl was screaming, screaming for her baby: Dont let them bury him... Theyre burying him in the convent...

With her strong fingers and then with the hard steel forceps Annunciata pushed and twisted the tiny body. It moved, reluctantly, loath to abandon the sensuous warmth. A gush of pale red liquid spilled onto the white sheet. Annunciata had found the babys head. Now she was pulling it steadily forward, dragging a new life into Gods world.

Sister Annunciata was twenty-three. She had been Annunciata for five years. Before that she had been Mary Kelly, one of the Limerick Kellys, one of seven.

The night the priest came he had sat for a drink and commiserated with old Mr Kelly on the ill luck that had denied him sons. After the third whiskey, he had leaned forward and said quietly, Now, Tom. I know you love the girls. And what better could you be doing for them than look after their futures. Surely, Tom, you can spare one of them for God?

Five years later, here she was Sister Annunciata, spared for God. For the next few days whenever Annunciata was with the little one she nursed him as if he were her own. It was she who had delivered him, saved him, launched him into the light. He had been christened Anthony at her suggestion and she felt they had a special bond. When he cried, she comforted him; when he was hungry, she longed to feed him.

The boys mother was called Marcella by the nuns in here no one was allowed to use their real name. Abandoned by her family, she clung to Annunciata. In turn, Annunciata gave Marcella comfort, reassuring her that she did not condemn her like the other nuns did. Defying the decree of silence, they would find quiet corners in which to exchange the secrets of their past lives. Cupping her hands round Marcellas ear, Annunciata whispered, Tell me about the man. Tell me what it was like...

Marcella giggled, but Annunciata leaned in closer, desperate to understand.

Go on... What was he like? Was he handsome?

Marcella smiled. The few hours shed spent with John McInerney now seemed like a flash of light in a benighted life. Since her arrival at the abbey she had treasured them, dreamt of them, endlessly reliving the memory of his embrace.

He was the handsomest man I ever saw. He was tall and dark... and his eyes were so gentle and kind. He told me he worked for the Limerick post office.

With a little encouragement from Annunciata, Marcella told her all about the night her baby was made when she had still been free and happy, when she had still been Philomena Lee.

The evening had been warm; the lights of the Limerick Carnival, the music from the ceilidh and the smells of candy floss and toffee apples had given it the thrilling feel of adventure. Philomena had locked eyes with the tall young man from the post office who laughed with her and gave her a shot at his beer glass. They had looked at each other with a mixture of wariness and excitement. And then... and then...