Anne's Song Read Online Free PDF Page A

grounds scraping all the bark off a tree trunk. On another occasion, one of the other girls and I decided to run away. We weren't unhappy; we were doing it out of sheer devilment. After lights out, we grabbed our coats, climbed down the fire escape and made our way through the grounds and out of the main gates.
    'And where do you think two young girls like you would be going at this time of night?'
    The voice of the local bobby stopped us in our tracks about a hundred yards from the convalescent home.
    'Dublin, Constable,' I answered with a bravado that I certainly wasn't feeling.
    'Then I think you're going to have a long walk,' he replied, 'because you're on the road to Cork. Dublin is that way.' He waggled his thumb over his shoulder.
    As a punishment, my friend and I were put on a side ward. There were only two beds in it and we had to stay put for a week, only permitted to get out of bed to go to the toilet. It was the isolation unit, screened off by glass from the main ward. I can't say it made me upset, just angry.
    Of course I used to have the occasional bout of homesickness during all this time, but I've always had the ability, even as a child, to rationalise these things. I wasn't going home in the foreseeable future so what was the point of wasting my emotions on wishing I could be back with my family?
    I made my Confirmation in the convalescent home and Maureen made her First Communion. I was ten; she was seven. It was at about that time that I went to Lourdes. We had a neighbour in Raheny who worked for an organisation that sent sick people there, and Mum asked her to put my name on the list. However, my mother couldn't come with me. I was put on a stretcher and lifted on to a night train, sleeping in a couchette enshrouded by a privacy curtain. When the party got to Lourdes, I stayed in a hostel with other young people. I was perfectly capable of walking although, on the occasion I was taken to the Basilica, I was placed in a wheelchair and pushed by one of the Boy Scouts. I didn't mind. I was an obedient child even though I was spirited, too. To be honest, I think I rather enjoyed the drama of it all. I remember it very clearly. There was a procession in the evening when hundreds of people carried candles down a hill to the village, an absolutely amazing event for a ten-year-old girl who'd been stuck in a home in Ireland. All you could see were candles in every direction. All you could hear was beautiful singing. Eventually, I was taken to the grotto, dressed in a special robe, and told to get out of my wheelchair and walk through a sunken stone bath filled with freezing water. At the other end, there was a statue of Our Lady. I was told to kiss her feet and, as I did so, I was dunked under the water. The strange thing was that, the moment I climbed out of the bath, I was completely dry in a matter of seconds.
    My mother said she was convinced I was cured while I was there, but of what no one could rightly say. It occurs to me now that I could perfectly well have told the doctors in the convalescent home that the pains in my legs had stopped and then maybe I'd have been allowed home – but that wouldn't have been true. They ached in just the same way before, during and after my trip to Lourdes. Anyway, I wasn't desperately unhappy there, so why pull a stunt like that? Maybe, if I stayed a little longer, they'd discover what was causing the trouble and then I'd be cured and released.
    There never was a convincing explanation and, to this day, I still get aches and pains, immediately below my knees.
    In the summer of 1961, Mum made another trip to England and her enthusiasm for moving to Blackpool was reignited. Again, Dad was reticent. He loved Ireland. Why would he want to move to England? But then Fred Daly, who she'd met on her previous visit, decided to come over to Dublin to convince my father to change his mind.
    Fred was the managing director of a company called Union Printers. He had no connection