Hush, Little Baby Read online

  Shane Dunphy

  HUSH, LITTLE BABY

  Contents

  Preface

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  PART TWO

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  PART THREE

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  Follow Penguin

  For Harry, Noël, Karl and Tara – in celebration

  Hush, little baby, don’t say a word,

  Daddy’s going to buy you a mockingbird.

  And if that mockingbird don’t sing,

  Daddy’s going to buy you a diamond ring.

  And if that diamond ring turns to brass,

  Daddy’s going to buy you a looking glass.

  And if that looking glass gets broke,

  Daddy’s going to buy you a billy goat.

  And if that billy goat won’t pull,

  Daddy’s going to buy you a cart and bull.

  And if that cart and bull turn over,

  Daddy’s going to buy you a dog named Rover.

  And if that dog named Rover won’t bark,

  Daddy’s going to buy you a horse and cart.

  And if that horse and cart fall down,

  You’ll still be the sweetest little baby in town.

  Traditional Lullaby

  Preface

  Hush, Little Baby is the third part of a story that started with my first book, Wednesday’s Child, and continued with Crying in the Dark; but the narrative stands on its own and is not dependent on a knowledge of the previous volumes.

  I have been involved in childcare and social-care my entire adult life. All the events described in this book really happened, but I have taken stories from right across my career and compressed them into a five-week timeline for ease of reading. To protect the identities of the children and families involved, I have altered certain details and characteristics – names, genders and ages – but the essence of their struggles and victories remains firmly rooted in fact.

  The city in which Hush, Little Baby unfolds is a composite of many cities I have known. It is simply a backdrop: the events recounted in this book could have happened anywhere, at any time. What is important is that they did happen.

  I have reproduced actual procedure as closely as I can, but the reader must take into account the fact that guidelines and practice differ from region to region, so personal experiences may vary. I have tried to keep technical language to a minimum, but where jargon does occur, I try to explain it as plainly as I can.

  PART ONE

  Beginnings

  What put the blood on your right shoulder, Son, come tell it unto me. That is the blood of a hare, Mama, you may pardon me.

  The blood of a hare never ran so red, Son, come tell it unto me. That is the blood of my youngest brother, you may pardon me.

  ‘What Put the Blood’, traditional traveller ballad,

  from the singing of JOHN REILLY

  1

  The smell of junk burning on bonfires in the freezing winter’s evening was thick, and stuck in my lungs like sawdust. Bricks, blocks of wood and glass bottles, some filled with urine, soared over the high railings with alarming regularity, clattering and smashing off the cracked, frost-whitened concrete and adding to the existing debris.

  November: dark clouds, pregnant with rain – or more probably sleet – gathered above the city, an ill omen for the task ahead. From where I stood, a safe distance away among the police cars and marias, I had a clear view of the crowd of angry men and women within the halting site, and could hear their raised voices, see the accompanying plumes of steam in the darkening air. Some of them were speaking in Ceannt, one of the many traveller languages, and I couldn’t understand any of the words. I have a smattering of Shelta, another nomadic dialect, but the Sheltan I could discern was spoken so quickly it was wasted on me. The tone of it all, though, was clear: they were frightened and enraged.

  The travelling people make up a relatively small percentage of Irish society, numbering in the region of 30,000 people. They are generally nomads, preferring to travel from place to place in small family groups or clans, but since the 1960s Irish governmental policy, combined with the deeply unsympathetic attitude held by the wider settled population, has led to the long-term housing of more than half of their number, mostly in local-authority estates. However, a determined few still spend the year moving around the country, stopping at places that have been traditional halting sites for centuries, and make a living through horse-trading, metal-working and selling scrap – the ancient gypsy trades.

  To my left, Ben Tyrrell, my boss, spoke rapidly to Detective Inspector Charles Brophy, going over a map of the halting site, pinpointing the caravan we would be making for and marking out the homes of possible relatives that could be used as hiding places. Ben is something of a legend in social-care: he was the first manager of a residential setting in Ireland who was not a priest, and, for a manager, is remarkably hands-on.

  The detective and the ten men he had brought with him were dressed in protective clothing – flak jackets and helmets – and carried reinforced plastic shields and metal batons. Ben and I were bundled up in scarves, gloves and overcoats to protect us against the elements. We were social-care workers from the Dunleavy Trust, a charitable organization set up to work with children in extreme cases of abuse, neglect or disturbance, and would not engage in any violence. Our task was to get in and out of the halting site as quickly as possible. The police were there to cover us.

  I lit a cigarette and listened to the cries and exhortations of the travellers behind the railings, wishing there was some other way to do this. But I knew there wasn’t.

  I had been brought into the case at a late stage, only a week previously, and was largely responsible for this stand-off. Under Section 12 of the Childcare Act 1991, the police and social workers can, without resorting to the courts, remove children from their home, by force if necessary, if there is a serious and immediate risk to their well-being. This process of forced removal is usually referred to by the professionals involved as ‘doing a Section 12’. I had, after five rather strained visits to the filthiest, tiniest caravan I had ever been in, decided that something needed to be done immediately, and the application of this particular piece of child-protection legislation seemed to be the best course of action.

  The Currans, a transient family, had been living in the halting site for a month. Official, state-approved halting sites were first built in Ireland in the 1980s, as an attempt to quell some of the tensions between the settled and the travelling communities. These sites, unlike their traditional counterparts, many of which are now car parks or farmland, were built on land bought by the state and were properly equipped for nomadic families, with points where the caravans could access electricity, water and sewage.

  Gerry and Tilly Curran, and their six children, lived in a caravan meant, at a stretch, for two people, and that had no capacity to make use of the available amenities. They eked out a meagre living trading in junk, doing odd jobs and begging. The children, ranging in age from six months to ten years, had never seen the inside of a school, and the public-health nurse had been unable to find the family, who were constantly on the move, to carry out any developmental checks. The children were mostly non-verbal, meeting my overtures with vacant, slack-jawed stares. All were desperately
undersized for their ages, and the three-year-old, who should have been walking for at least a year and a half, was still crawling and in grey terry-cloth nappies. The family seemed to subsist on a diet of soup and fried bread, and all the children were lice-infested and covered in psoriasis. It remains one of the worst cases of neglect I have ever seen.

  Neglect is the most common form of abuse I encounter. It is an absence of the things that make up basic care. Often, by working in partnership with the parents involved, the situation can be greatly improved. Adults rarely neglect children on purpose. Many are unaware that they are actually being neglectful. Despite the horrendous conditions this family were living in, and even though the children were obviously seriously developmentally retarded as a result, I thought it was possible to help them. Some regular visits from myself, combined with carefully organized sessions with a family-support worker – to assist with things like diet, the management of their finances and caring for the children – could well set this family on the road to a healthier future. At least those were my thoughts until I visited the cramped mobile home earlier that day.

  Gerry Curran, the children’s father, had been absent during all my previous visits. On this particular morning he was very much in evidence, sprawled across one of the caravan’s small couches. He was as filthy as the rest of his family, and reeked of cheap cider and bile. He seemed to be badly hung over, and dozed throughout most of the forty-five minutes I was there. Tilly Curran, the children’s mother, had taken Polly, the baby, and gone out to visit friends in a neighbouring caravan, giving us space to work. The mobile home itself consisted of a single room, each wall lined with cluttered shelves and narrow padded seats that doubled as beds. There was no toilet, no running water and no electricity. Meals were prepared and water, brought from a communal tap outside, was heated on a tiny gas burner. Everything was covered in a fine layer of grease and dirt, and the place stank of sweat, piss and frying.

  It was when I was leaving that things went bad. Johnny, the six-year-old, rarely made any sounds at all. He was a skinny, frightened little creature, with a shock of dark hair through which red scabs, where he had broken the skin scratching, could be seen. He had enjoyed the games we’d been playing, and, as I rose to leave, he began to jabber and cry, wanting the fun to continue. This was actually quite a breakthrough for such a silent child, so I decided to play on for another few minutes. As I sat down again, Gerry, whom I had thought asleep, suddenly opened his bloodshot eyes and looked at me. ‘You go on now,’ he said, his voice guttural and cracked.

  ‘We’ll have just one more game,’ I said, gently but firmly. ‘I won’t be in the way more than another five minutes, I promise.’

  Johnny, as if to clearly state which side of the argument he was on, went over to his father and said, ‘No, Da. Play now.’

  It was not spoken in a tone of defiance. There was no challenge there. This was simply a little boy telling his father he wanted to play some more. How was the poor child to know that those four words would unleash a maelstrom that would nearly drown us all?

  Gerry Curran, without even pausing for breath, punched Johnny full in the face. I remember the sickening sound of bone crunching as the child’s nose shattered, and then his tiny frame crumpling as he fell backwards on to the soiled carpet of the mobile home. The other children went very silent, averting their eyes and moving quietly to stand by the walls, the elder two picking up the younger two, neither of whom could walk. I was momentarily stunned, but, as the initial shock passed, I sprang up, reaching to grab the man’s arm, but he had already leaned over and brought the heel of his fist down on his son’s head where he lay on the floor. Again I heard a terrible popping sound, but it was drowned out by my shouting as I caught Gerry and shoved him aside, then bent over to scoop up Johnny’s prone figure.

  ‘What … what the fuck are you doing?’ I said.

  Johnny felt like a rag doll, a bundle of lifeless limbs. I could smell the rich, metallic scent of blood, which was oozing now from his nose and ears.

  ‘He shouldna’ spoke agin me,’ Gerry said. ‘He won’t from now on.’

  ‘You can’t hit a child like that,’ I said, feeling rage bubbling up in me.

  The desire to lash out at him was almost overpowering. With an effort I turned and shoved the door open with my foot. If I had stayed any longer, I would have said and done things I may have regretted. Tilly, the baby in her arms, was standing at the door of a much larger caravan (the travellers refer to them as ‘trailers’) a few yards away when I emerged into the light. The fact that I was holding the prone body of her son seemed to have little impact on her. She shook her head when I said I wanted her and the children to come with me.

  ‘He’s had knocks before. He’ll be grand,’ she said, looking tired and annoyed.

  I couldn’t fit all the children in my Austin, and I did not have time to argue with her. I was desperately conscious of the limp child seeping redness into my shirt.

  ‘He’s hurt, Tilly,’ I said, walking quickly away towards my car. ‘I’m taking him to the hospital. I’ll be back later for you and the other kids.’

  ‘You can come back,’ she called after me as I laid her child on the back seat of my car and tried to get the seat belts around him. ‘We won’t be goin’ nowhere wit’ ya.’

  I ignored her. If she wanted to play it that way, then so be it.

  I have worked with members of the travelling community a great deal, and in a number of different roles. I am proud to say that I have friends, quite close friends, in fact, who are travellers. I am fully aware of the shameful history Ireland has regarding its treatment of these native people and take no pride in sometimes having to add to the burden society has placed upon them. I knew, as I waited for the doctors to finish making Johnny comfortable, that his injuries and the terrible neglect he and his siblings had grown up with were not the result of his being a traveller. They had been caused by poverty, by lack of education and by generational abuse that long predated my dealings with the family. For Gerry and Tilly to believe such brutality was normal spoke of violence in their childhoods. Abuse and neglect cross all boundaries of race and class.

  Johnny had sustained a shattered nose, a broken jaw and a fractured skull. The strain of these injuries on a system already compromised by malnutrition would be severe, the doctor told me. His prognosis was not good. The head trauma in particular could lead to lasting brain damage.

  I went to the children’s ward, but the boy was still unconscious. He looked small and pathetic in the white hospital bed, his nose packed and reset now, bruises already darkening the area about his eyes, a bandage round his head. I left him, feeling brittle and dry inside, and drove straight to the local police station, ringing Ben Tyrrell en route. It took us a couple of hours to persuade the police that action needed to be taken, but a call to the hospital to confirm Johnny’s condition, coupled with several existing complaints on file from concerned travellers the family had encountered on the road, sealed the deal. As a bitterly cold evening settled over the city, I parked my old Austin behind Ben’s jeep just outside the halting site and prepared to keep my promise to Tilly Curran.

  I had gone in ahead of the police, to see if the children, and preferably their mother, would come quietly. I had no reason to believe that Tilly was directly violent towards the children. She had been supportive of the work I had been doing with them, and I hoped, as bad as it may sound, that she simply had become acclimatized to the violence her husband meted out. The police cars and vans had of course been spotted, and I got some black looks as I walked up the narrow pathway between the lines of trailers in their berths. Most were well maintained and clean, some decorated with potted flowers, some painted in the traditional gypsy colours of bright red, yellow and green. Traveller dogs, a peculiar cross-breed of greyhound and Irish wolfhound, ran here and there, and tethered outside several berths were piebald ponies, munching on the grass that grew in the verges. I knocked on the Currans’ door. Their
ancient Hiace was there, so I knew they hadn’t fled. There was no answer for several minutes. I knocked again. Scuffling sounds came from inside, and finally the door was opened by Gerry.

  ‘Wha’?’

  ‘Johnny is badly hurt,’ I said to him. ‘He may not fully recover.’

  ‘He wasn’t never righ’, tha’ one. Sumtin’ bad ’bout ’im.’

  ‘That’s not true, Gerry. He just wanted to play. I don’t think you ever really played with him, did you?’ I felt rage building again and pushed it down as far as I could. It was not productive – not now, anyway. ‘What you did today was wrong. You didn’t just slap him this morning; you beat him with your fist closed and broke bones in his head. The pressure on his brain could damage him permanently.’

  Gerry Curran shook his head, annoyed and, I thought, maybe just a little ashamed. ‘I never hit ’im that hard. You’re romancin’, boy.’

  ‘I wish I was. I’ve come to see Tilly and the rest of the children. Are they here?’

  I heard steps on the thin wooden floor of the trailer, and another man appeared behind Gerry. He had the familial likeness of a brother, but may have been a cousin. Traveller families intermarry, and kinship ties can get very confusing. First cousins marrying and subsequently having children is not considered out of the ordinary.

  ‘You’ll not see my girl or the babbies,’ Gerry said, the shame having apparently passed. ‘You move right along now, or you’ll bring trouble down on yoursel’.’

  I sighed deeply. These things are never easy.

  ‘The police are outside. We’re prepared to come in and take the children if we have to. It would be far less upsetting for everyone if you just handed them over.’

  Gerry lunged out of the door at me, swinging his fists. His brother/cousin was right behind. Gerry was around my size but still looked tired and sick with his hangover, and his brother was a head shorter than he was. Although they weren’t much of a threat, I did not want to get into a physical confrontation with them in the halting site. I could sense the atmosphere getting nasty, and wished I had told the gardaí to stay back out of sight until I’d had a chance to assess if we needed them or not. I dodged a blow, caught another on my right arm, and then turned tail and ran. I could already hear murmurs of unrest about me, and a couple of missiles came in my direction as I sprinted for the gate.