She told me her early life on the family farm in Co. Mayo had been very hard
ily, and she told me that her eldest son – by Patrick Lennon – was called Sean and she had a second son named Patrick, as well as a daughter, Anne.
I briefly wondered whether her son Patrick was named after me or after his father. The dark irony of Margaret living with two Patricks, having already given up her first Patrick, appeared to be entirely lost on her.
As we talked, it quickly became apparent from whom I’d inherited my reputation as a chatterbox. Margaret was now busily nattering away about her late husband, her children and six grandchildren and her dog, Bobby – in considerable detail.
Was that because she, too, was nervous? No, I decided; it was clearly a diversion because Margaret was conspicuously asking me nothing about my life. Absolutely nothing at all.
Not where I was brought up, not what my adoptive parents George and Betty were like, not whether I’d been happy at home and school and not whether I had any stepbrothers or sisters.
I have to confess I was puzzled. Why wasn’t she interested? Was it too difficult for her, even after all this time, to hear about the adoptive parents who’d brought me up? Maybe she didn’t want to be told that I’d had a very happy childhood?
The only question Margaret asked me was whether I was either married to Amanda or planning to marry her. Luckily, as it turned out, I fibbed and told her we’d probably be getting married at some point. She nodded her approval and said she hoped our wedding would take place in a Catholic church.
We talked about Ireland, and she told me her early life on the family farm in Co. Mayo had been hard. I mentioned that I happened to be going to Belfast in a few weeks’ time.
This brought an immediate halt to her flow of chatter. ‘I don’t like the people from the North of Ireland – the ones who aren’t Catholic,’
she said sternly. Why did she dislike them? ‘They have funny views,’ she replied. ‘They believe in abortion and gays. Which are both mortal sins.’
Well, that decided it. This was hardly the time to confide in Margaret that her first-born son was gay.
Looking at my watch, I saw that 30 minutes had already elapsed and I was none the wiser about the real reason I hadn’t been whisked away for adoption as soon as I was born, let alone why she’d left me in an orphanage for over two years.
She was now rattling away about her life with Patrick Lennon, who’d died in 1990 and obviously had nothing at all to do with me.
As if she could read my mind, Margaret said: ‘My husband never knew anything about you. I didn’t tell him. I didn’t tell anyone. My family in Ireland never knew. No one knew.’
Very gently, or so I thought, I asked: ‘Margaret, can you tell me about my father? Starting with the most important question: who was he? Is he still alive? And if so, are you still in contact with him?’
I certainly didn’t expect the response she gave me. ‘I don’t remember, I don’t remember anything about him,’ she said.
‘Really?’ I said, barely able to disguise the note of scepticism in my voice. ‘But you told the nuns at the orphanage that you intended to marry in the summer of 1961, which was four months after you put me in the orphanage. It’s in my Nazareth House report.’
She stared at me blankly. ‘Is that what I told the nuns? I don’t remember.’
‘Well, is it true, Margaret? Were you planning to marry my birth father?’
She stonewalled me again. ‘I don’t remember. I can’t remember. Because, you see, it was a sin.’
‘I don’t understand. What precisely was a sin?’ I asked, feeling as if I’d suddenly found myself on stage in some avant-garde, totally incomprehensible play.
‘What I did. Getting pregnant when I wasn’t married. Sex outside of marriage is a sin,’ she explained slowly, as if to a particularly dim child. ‘I knew that. I have had to pay for that sin all my life. That’s why I can’t remember anything.’
I repressed a wicked urge to exclaim, ‘Wow! What an utterly brilliant idea. “I can’t remember because it’s a sin” could cover just about anything in life, from petty theft to murder.’
Forty minutes had now elapsed and Margaret had hardly touched her tea, declined a second cup and refused any food. No longer content to stick to generalities, I tried lobbing her a few more questions.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t tell you anything, because I have absolutely no recollection of any of it.’
As for visiting me at the orphanage in Cheltenham – not easy for a nurse on a tight budget, working shifts in Birmingham – she insisted: ‘I’ve put it out of my mind for good. I don’t know how I got there.’
Did she have any recollection of why she placed me there? Or why she left me at the orphanage for over two years, or why she finally decided to give me up?
She fell silent, staring down at her cup, before repeating her mantra: ‘I don’t remember. I don’t know why you were in the home for that amount of time.’
Our conversation, such as it was, had now stumbled to a halt. So I decided to try the direct approach. Staring straight into Margaret’s eyes, I said slowly: ‘Margaret, who is James Coffey?’
Her eyes narrowed as she stared back at me. ‘Who? Who did you say?’ I repeated the name slowly. ‘James Coffey. Who is he, Margaret?’
There was another long pause before she shook her head and said emphatically: ‘I don’t know who he is.’ When I asked her if the name sounded even vaguely familiar, she shook her head and reiterated: ‘No. I don’t know who he is.’
I then pointed out, as gently as I could, that in my adoption file, she had identified James Coffey in her own handwriting as my father.
‘Oh. Did I?’ Margaret mumbled, carefully avoiding my gaze. ‘I don’t remember.’
I took a deep breath, trying not to show my increasing exasperation. Was it possible she’d truly forgotten? Had she buried, deep in her psyche, like nuclear waste, all memories of my conception, birth, Nazareth House and the deepest and darkest secret of all – her relationship with my father?
But I quickly realised it would be senselessly cruel to point out the obvious inconsistencies in what Margaret could and could not remember.
How, for instance, could she recall in great detail her nursing career, her engagement and her marriage to Patrick Lennon, in July 1963, yet be unable to remember anything about Nazareth House, the nuns or visiting her young son that same summer? Well, there was clearly no point in prolonging our conversation. Not today, anyway.
Margaret had put a time limit on our first meeting, because she didn’t want to leave her dog alone for too long.
When we had just five minutes left, Amanda returned.
Smiling, Amanda asked her: ‘Did Andrew tell you that he’s a very successful and famous journalist?’
Margaret looked at me. ‘Is that so? I didn’t know that,’ she said.
Amanda looked startled. By now,
Margaret was arranging her scarf – her best one, she told us, which she was wearing in my honour – and getting ready to leave.
Watching her, I felt ashamed of my momentary irritation at her total lack of interest in my life.
She was, after all, an 83-yearold lady who must have found meeting me both tiring and emotionally draining.
I walked her to the front of the department store and offered to pay for a taxi, but she was having none of it.
‘I’ll go on the bus,’ she said adamantly, ‘If I arrived home in a taxi and people saw me, they would know that’s not something I’d ever do. I don’t want to be seen doing anything out of the ordinary.’
I found myself thinking, ‘Hmm… still covering your tracks Margaret, even after all these years!’ And then, cross with myself for being so cynical, I asked her if she’d been pleased to meet me.
‘Oh, yes! I’m so happy to have met you today, Andrew,’ she said, with a big smile.
I told her I really hoped we could arrange to meet again, by which time she might feel more relaxed in my company, Margaret gave me another beaming smile.
‘I’ve felt really relaxed,’ she added. ‘I was a little bit nervous before I met you, of course. But you’re a really charming fellow.’
At which point she reached up and kissed me directly on the lips.
‘Thank you,’ she continued, ‘for making my day. Making my week. And in fact, thank you for making my life.
‘I’m a happy woman, and I’ll see you again soon Andrew,’ she promised. Then she delivered another of her knockout smiles and walked swiftly away. She never looked back.
Amanda and I made our usual trip to the pub and in Margaret’s honour we bought a very nice bottle of rosé – quite unlike the terrible bottle we’d downed in record time the day Amanda first knocked on Margaret’s door and she denied any knowledge of giving up a child for adoption.
But, still worrying about her, I called Margaret at home.
‘I’m just checking that you got back OK,’ I told her. ‘And that you’ve no regrets about meeting me?’
Margaret sounded happy and cheerful. ‘It’s nice of you to call Andrew. I’m fine and I’ve no regrets about seeing you.
‘And I don’t know if I said it to you – but you’re a fine looking man,’ she added
I couldn’t resist. ‘Do I look more like you or my father?’ Quick as a flash, Margaret replied, ‘Ah – if only I could remember.’
Both in the pub and on the way back to London, I endlessly replayed to Amanda what had happened between Margaret and myself.
She was struck by the fact that Margaret had asked me nothing at all about my life. Absolutely nothing.
She had shown no interest in what had happened to me since the last time she’d seen me at Nazareth House Orphanage when I was only two and a half years old.
We both decided that Margaret would have undoubtedly found it far too upsetting to hear endless stories about how happy I had been with my adoptive mum and dad.
The only mum and dad I had ever known, or wanted.
We also thought it might be Margaret’s way of protecting her own feelings, because my reappearance in her life must have stirred up some very painful memories of her pregnancy – about which, of course, no one must know anything.
Not to mention going through the birth on her own, the misery of the mother and baby home and then visiting me in Nazareth House.
Although, she was now claiming to have no memory of anything, let alone of who my father might have been which I found simply impossible to believe.
Margaret had told me she had become more absent-minded as she had grown older, but her memory seemed good.
She knew all about her marriage in Birmingham to her husband Patrick and told me about her three children, six grandchildren, her church and working as a nurse.
So, I was quite confident that when we next met, that the answers to some of my questions would come tumbling out.
I thought that perhaps she just needed more time to really feel at ease talking with me.
The experience in the department store must have been daunting, especially being asked to open up and recall painful memories to her first-born child, someone who was in fact, a complete stranger to her.
I was already looking forward to the next time I would see her. Maybe I could persuade her to meet me in a restaurant or smarter cafe, where she might find it easier to talk over lunch.
When she said goodbye, Margaret had pledged that she would see me again and had repeated the promise when I telephoned her to check that she’d got home safely.
But as I was to discover, with painful consequences, it seemed that she had no intention of keeping her word.
I’m happy to have met you today, Andrew. I’ll see you again soon