Once I was out of sight of the hotel I slowed down, my heart still thumping in my chest as I forced myself to stroll at a more leisurely pace towards the O’Connell Bridge with its ornate stone carvings and elegant Victorian street lanterns. I believe it is the only bridge in Europe that is as wide as it is long. Half-way across the bridge I stopped amid the bustle of people and traffic. Little had changed, except for me. Last time I had stood there, waiting with my mother for the meeting that was going to totally alter the course of my life, I had been too small to see over the side, peering through the stone balustrades and jumping impatiently up and down, wanting to get a better view of the detritus of the city as it drifted in the waters flowing under the bridge.
I leaned for a few moments on the rough stone which had then been taller than me and looked down at the flotsam and jetsam moving in the water below, the memories flooding my brain in a confusing montage of images and emotions which seemed more like half-remembered dreams, making my heart crash in my chest. Every direction I looked triggered more memories; the bridges, the buildings, the people. Every church spire seemed familiar, probably because I had been inside most of them at one time or another. Even the buses, which had been my first passport to the outside world, were parked in the same place on the embankment, or ‘Quays’, as they were known.
Now I might be able to stay in a hotel suite in the best hotel on the south side, but it was the north side that I came from; that was where my roots were, and that was where Patrick Dowling was waiting for me with whatever information he had managed to glean from the archives of half a century before. Breathing deeply, I steadied myself and continued on my way to my appointment at the old City Hall building where the children’s courts used to be, checking the map at every turn.
I felt like a small boy again as I announced myself to the receptionist and told her I had an appointment with Patrick Dowling. She made a call but hung up without saying anything.
‘He’s on the phone,’ she told me. ‘Take a seat and I’ll try again in a minute.’
As I sat staring at the sweeping metal staircase, not knowing what I was about to find out about my own past, my heart was thumping like it used to when I was a boy running wild around town in search of an adventure. It was like I was waiting for the curtain to rise on an eagerly anticipated new show. Every time someone came down I watched to see if they were likely to be looking for me, and after what seemed like an age a smartly dressed man with slightly wild grey hair descended and walked towards me with his hand extended.
‘Would you be Gordon Lewis?’ he asked with a friendly smile. ‘I’m Patrick Dowling. Welcome to Ireland. I hope it wasn’t too difficult to find us; we’re a bit tucked away from the other buildings in this area.’
He was tall and slim and I guessed he was in his forties, dressed in a dark two-piece suit, white shirt and tie, carrying a file in his other hand. He kept pushing strands of hair out of his face as he guided me towards a door on the ground floor, making polite conversation as he went, putting me at ease with typical Dublin humour.
Once inside the small room he closed the door and indicated for me to sit across the desk as he opened the file in front of him.
‘So, Gordon, you want to locate the home you lived in when you were a child?’
‘Yes,’ I nodded, hardly able to breathe in my anxiety to know what the file was going to reveal.
‘You would be amazed how many people like you come here looking for information about their past in Ireland. We do our best to keep records, but sometimes there are details which may be lost, or just not recorded.’
What was he saying? I felt a twinge of anxiety. Was he preparing me for disappointment? I nodded my understanding but couldn’t think of anything to say. After a moment he looked down at the file again.
‘A home for single mothers in Dublin in the 1950s, you say?’
‘Yes,’ I said, clearing my throat to stop the emotions from choking me. ‘My home, where my mother brought me up until the beginning of the sixties.’
‘The most infamous one, of course, was the Magdalene Laundries, where we now know that the girls and women were treated very badly, worked like slaves until they were old in order to atone for their sins. But those mothers weren’t allowed to keep their children. Usually the newborn babies were taken away for adoption or put into orphanages. But as I understand it, this didn’t happen to you?’
‘No.’ I didn’t trust my voice to say any more.
‘You were a lucky boy to have your mother to take care of you. Is there anything else you can remember about it?’
‘There were a lot of single women there, lots of us children too. Boys and girls. It was on the north side of the river and it was run by nuns.’ He was staring at me blankly as I racked my brains for more details. ‘I distinctly remember there was a mental hospital next door.’
He looked back down at his file for a moment. ‘There was a mental hospital in the area near this one.’ He pushed a map across the table and pointed to an area on the north side. ‘The institution was closed many years ago and the building is due for demolition. I don’t know what you’ll find if you go up there. The whole area is very run-down. It is bound to have changed a great deal since the fifties.’
He fell silent for a moment as I picked up the map and stared at it, trying to make sense of it, searching for names that might ring a bell, but to my confused eyes it just looked like a mess of lines and letters. Nothing made sense. I needed time to calm down and digest the information.
‘Does the name Morning Star Avenue, mean anything to you?’ he asked. I thought for a moment before shaking my head. ‘How about the Morning Star Hostel for Men? Or the Regina Coeli Hostel for Women?’
Regina Coeli. Was that a bell ringing somewhere at the back of my most distant memories? Or was it just that I wanted so much for something to sound familiar?
‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t think so.’
‘I’m sorry we don’t have more details. There should have been files for every woman and every child in all these homes, but we had a burst water pipe about ten years ago and many files were ruined. All the names from that period were lost. I’m sorry that I can only give you so little to go on after you’ve come so far.’
At that moment I pictured myself going back to the hotel, picking up my stuff and catching the next flight back to New York, and the feeling of disappointment was overwhelming. I could see that Patrick was genuinely sorry not to be able to be of more help as he said goodbye at the door. I stood for a few moments on the pavement outside, not sure what to do next. I was still holding Patrick’s map. There didn’t seem any harm in at least going to look at the area he was talking about. Something there just might trigger my memories. I found Morning Star Avenue amid the jumble of print, worked out which direction I should be going in and set off.
It wasn’t long before the landscape began to change, all signs of the prosperity of the city centre gradually fading into areas of industrial wasteland. I don’t know how long I had been walking before I felt some vague stirrings of recognition. None of the street names rang a bell (though I wouldn’t have been able to read them when I was a boy anyway), but every now and then I saw a building or a view which I thought was familiar among the ruins and the occasional new developments. Then I would dismiss the idea again, telling myself I was imagining these things just because I wanted so much for them to be true.
Reaching the end of a long road I saw a large red-brick building, very different to everything that surrounded it. It looked imperial, like it had been a British headquarters of some sort. It seemed so familiar but no matter how hard I concentrated I couldn’t