Little Girl Lost

                          Little Girl Lost. – A true story.



      Croagh Patrick is an imposing building that stands on a hill overlooking the city where I lived for twenty years. I don’t know when it was built but I know that it became an orphanage in 1926. It was home for hundreds of children until it closed in the mid 1980’s.

      I had walked past it many times. It wasn’t its rambling gardens with its statues and fountains that made me go out of my way to stroll by. It fascinated me so much that I would end up, standing in front of the iron gates, peering in expecting to see someone… or something. It is an entity that stands eerily on foggy nights, its yellow garden lights spotlighting its black windows and highlighting its ghostly, white balconies. It is there looking down on you day and night, a silent monument watching … or something is.

      I am not sure that it was an orphanage all that time but I do know that it was empty the day that I met it. I say ‘met it’ because the house is like that. 

      We went in through the care takers rooms at the back. He lived there with his daughter but he was away. His daughter was ill and he had taken her to Sydney to see a specialist. He had asked Vicky to do a ‘walk through’ each afternoon as there had been some disturbances. And me? Well I jumped at the chance to see inside its walls. Feel its secrets.

      Vicky told me as walked through his kitchen and unlocked a heavily bolted door, that he thought that there had been squatters in the main building but he could not find them or where they could possibly have entered. They had just moved things around, nothing serious.

      The door opened into a passage that led us through a huge kitchen with several large ranges. The cook tops were rusty and the walls were black and smoky from years of cooking. From there we entered into a large dining hall. There was no furniture so our hollow footsteps echoed loudly down the passageways.

      We were both lost in our own thoughts as we walked in silence taking in our own experience of that place. We left the hall and walked down a passage that took us through to the bathrooms. There were two of them. Large cold rooms tiled in green tiles with a row of rusty showerheads along one wall. Over the basins were narrow shelves with a row of little holes running along them. Behind the holes written on the wall were names. Near one hole ‘Annie’ was crossed out and ‘Jessica’ was written above it. I imagined the worn out tooth brushes with their tattered bristles lined up like tired little soldiers.

      We retraced our steps and followed a passage that led us through an office. The only thing that took my interest there was a red telephone. It was placed on top of a stand that looked like a Corinthian column. I remember how it struck me as being an odd object in a room that clearly belonged to another century. I wondered if it was connected.

      From the office we found ourselves in the foyer. It was vast with ornate stained glass surrounding the heavy wooden front door. Opposite the office was a door that was padlocked. When we peered in we could see that it was a chapel.

      A faded rug lay at the base of a wide, polished wooden staircase. As we climbed the lower set of stairs we were amazed by the magnificence of the scene depicted in a stained glass window above the landing. It was huge and reached to the ceiling on the next floor.

At the back of the second floor we found the cloisters where the nuns slept. They were so small and spartan that I felt claustrophobic. The rest of the floor housed the dormitories for the orphans. Some were small with only four beds and some were much larger. The beds were covered with sheeting to protect them. As we wandered from room to room I could not help thinking about the lives of the children that found themselves parentless and in the care of the sisters. I wondered about how they slept and what they dreamt of.  There were no pictures on the walls.   

      There was nothing to indicate comfort except on one bed there was a little wooden doll. It was crudely made with its limbs wired to the torso. A child had painted its face. It’s eyes, not quite in the right place, were wide and sad. I thought of the little hands that had caressed it and the little eyes that had seen only beauty in its wooden form. I noted how it lay twisted as if tossed aside quickly.

        Further on there was a book. It was open at page 39. The pages yellowed and dusty. The chapter was called “Little Girl Lost”. I picked up the book and began to read. The words spoke of a lonliness and abandonment. Suddenly I felt pain and despair. My heart raced and my chest tightened. It was unbearable. I dropped the book and ran out of the room.

        Vicky had already left and was walking down the hall towards an open room at the end. I caught up to her. She didn’t seem to notice my distress but continued on into the room. I could see it was scantily furnished with a small cupboard and a narrow bed. She told me that this was the room that was being disturbed. The door had a key in the lock so she locked it and put the key in her pocket. I tried the doorknob to make sure the locked worked. All was secure so we went back down through to the caretaker’s rooms. As Vicky went to place the key in a cupboard she stopped. It was if we had exactly the same thought at exactly the same time.

      We flew up those stairs. As we passed the dormitories we could see that all the beds were upended. The dustcovers scattered over the floors. When we turned the corner we could see the room at the end of the hall. The door was wide open! On the bed arranged side by side were, a book opened at page 39, a doll with wide sad eyes, a red telephone …ringing.



By Valmai Holm