The Irish Nanny

by Sandy Taylor

‘Because that is God’s plan. We are born and we die and in between, we do the best we can.’

Mammy brushed my hair back from my face and I leaned into her. She smelt of kindness and love and security. She smelt of home.

My mammy was beautiful, with eyes the colour of the sea. Only Bridgy, the youngest, had inherited her eyes and everyone said that...

Mammy when she grew up. My eyes were like the sea as well, only on a grey day, when ...

Life wasn’t easy for Mammy. My lovely daddy was a sailor and he died just before Bridgy was born. Someone had left a hatch open on the ship and he’d fallen to his death. I had been too young to realise how heartbroken Mammy was, because she just carried on caring for us. I have since learned that we were

almost taken into the workhouse, but the Navy took responsibility for the accident and Mammy was awarded a small pension that was enough to feed and clothe us and to pay the rent on our little cottage.

I could walk through the town with my eyes closed and still know my way home to our cottage in Cross Lane.

I gazed out over the sea at the fishing boats silhouetted against the calm, still water. Everywhere was bathed in that golden light that only happens at the end of a fine day. The sun was still burning brightly, a huge globe hovering over the sea, not quite touching it, so that all the waves were capped with light that they carried in towards the shore.

The old lighthouse stood tall at the edge of the land as it had always stood my whole life, like a good friend who never changes. The sun had painted its seaward side

rose-gold, the colour of the petals of the flowers that my mother so loved to grow, and the glass window at the top blaz...

I watched as the last of the sun touched the horizon and bled into the welcoming arms of the sea. I could almost hear the hiss as it sank below the waves. The day was coming to an end.

Me and Erik had the last waltz together. It was lovely but I kept thinking that I would never see him again and that made me feel… I’m not sure exactly how I felt. Maybe I felt I was losing something I’d only just found. Maybe that was how I felt. We walked back to the

Summer was lovely but there was something about autumn that lifted my heart. Autumn didn’t have to blaze down on you to herald its arrival. You could see it in the changing of the leaves, the way the greens turned to browns and yellows and oranges, the way

they drifted down and gathered in secret corners, the way they settled like a carpet of brilliant colours beneath your feet. It was as if autumn was aware of its beauty and needed no fanfare to prove itself. Autumn was my favourite season and I was glad to be sharing this day with my sisters and Erik.

All around, big old trees and smaller shrubs had grown up, so that the impression was of a mass of green, with the grey stone peeping through, as if it was almost embarrassed to be there, amongst so much wildness. The graveyard

sloped downhill away from the church. Most of the old stones were tilted; it seemed like some playful earthquake had tipped them at different angles. Others lay crumbling and broken on the ground, all of them forgotten, no one left to mourn, no one left to care. All of them covered in lichen and moss, the etchings yellow with age. Some said the place was creepy but I found it peaceful.

place. ‘I live in a small fishing village called Reine,’ he said, smiling. ‘Our house is right on the shore of the Norwegian Sea. As children, my brother and I would wait for the little boats

to come back and we would help them unload their catch. We’d arrive home stinking of fish and our

mother would make us strip off all our clothes before she would let us into the house. The sea was always calm and the deepest blue you could imagine. Sometimes in the mornings a mist would come down from the mountains, covering the surface of the water like a grey quilt. In springtime the meadows are covered in ...

Daddy had been right. Agnes spoke when she needed to. Mrs Feeny said the child was very sparing with her words but those words were always worth listening to. I liked Mrs Feeny, even though I wasn’t so taken with her daughter.

think,’ she said, ‘that Holy God guides us in the direction that He wants us to go, even if we don’t want to go there. I think He sends people in the form of angels, who take our hands and lead us onto the right path

and I think He’s wanting you to go to England. That’s what I think, Rose.’

Mrs Feeny’s words came back to me. The child is very sparing with her words but those words ar...

‘She said that if she was given the chance to go to England, she would go.’ ‘She said that?’ ‘She did.’

‘I’d say there is a depth to that child that we have yet to understand.’ ‘I think so too.’ There was a big ship moored up on the quay and it reminded me of Erik. I hadn’t heard from him, but Mammy said it was the same with Daddy. Sometimes it would be months before she had a letter and

Mammy knelt down in front of me and gathered me into her arms. ‘Hush now, my darling girl,’ she said, wiping away my tears. ‘This will always be your home and your family will always be here, waiting for your return. You are not alone, you will never be alone and if you need me and there is no boat available, I’ll swim to England and carry you home with your coat between me teeth.’ I burst out laughing, imagining

my mammy swimming the Atlantic Ocean and then Mammy was laughing and our laughter woke my sisters, who stumbled, half asleep, down the stairs and they started laughing even though they didn’t know what they were laughing about. When Father Luke

‘And isn’t laughter and tears the same thing, Father?’ whispered Agnes. ‘Aren’t they both feelings?’

‘What in God’s name would I do with a baby? I’m only fifteen. No, it will be adopted by a good Catholic family and it will have a better life than I can give it.’

She looked like an angel wrapped in a rainbow. She sat on the bed

‘My darling child,’ she said. ‘You must have been exhausted, for it is almost noon.’

‘You see, we are both flesh and blood. We both have hopes and dreams, we are no different. So, you shall call me Alice and I shall call you Rose and we shall be friends, yes?’

lay in the comfy bed and tried to understand what had just happened. I had never met anyone like her in my whole life and I couldn’t easily explain to myself how she made me feel. Mammy would have said that I was being fanciful and that she was just a person like the rest of us but she wasn’t. It was as if she had just been born, still all shiny and new, like nothing bad or unclean had touched her. She reminded me of someone but I couldn’t think who and then it came to me: Alice reminded me of Bridgy, she reminded me of a child.

‘Well sure, I had a meeting up here in the convent yesterday, so I decided to stay with the nuns, so that I was able to meet you this morning.’

‘Jesus, Rose, where did he get that old head from?’

This made us all laugh. Bridgy always made us laugh.

I looked back at Mary and was reminded of that other Mary, the young girl I’d met on the boat. I closed my eyes. ‘Have pity on her, Jesus, in her time of trouble, for she is one of your own, and didn’t you say yourself, “Suffer the little children to come unto me” and Mary Kelly is but a child who has lost her way.’

I looked out across the river. ‘I don’t think we can go back, Polly. I think we have to keep moving forward and learning and growing.’

‘Do you know what, Rose? I think that England is changing you.’ ‘Maybe it is and maybe that’s not such a bad thing. I mean, what’s the point of discovering new things if it doesn’t change you in some way?’

‘He says, “You have to listen, Rose, you have to protect Alice.”’

‘Jesus, Mary and Holy Saint Joseph, are you telling me that the boy calls his mammy by her name as well?’

‘I feel sorry for people who aren’t Catholic, don’t you, Rose? They have no one to forgive them and they’re doomed to spend the rest of their lives lugging around all those sins. It must be a mighty burden to be carrying around.’

‘Maybe you’re not supposed to, maybe just being there is enough. People aren’t always looking to be fixed. Some things can’t be fixed; sometimes you just have to accept them. If people were always fixing things for you, how will you learn to fix them yourself? I’ve always thought that quiet acceptance is more healing than words.’

I smiled at my little sister. ‘You have more wisdom than all of us put together, Agnes.’

She looked so beautiful in the candlelight, her hair a mixture of reds and browns and golds, like an autumn tree in all its glory.

I looked around at my family and I realised that all the crystals in the world would never shine as brightly as these people that I loved so much.

It was one of those beautiful winter days when the frost sits on the branches of the trees like cotton wool and the ground crunches beneath your feet.

The green patchwork of fields on the far bank were now covered in a silver frosting, like a Christmas cake.

It was a different kind of cold to the cold in London. It was a cold that was familiar, one that was in my blood.

I peered out onto the lane until my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. A pale wintry sun struggled through the dark sky, rising up behind the rooftops, rooftops that were as white as the driven snow. I felt a tingle in my tummy, like every Christmas morning of my life. I felt like a child again.