A grey-haired woman in her 60s cuddles an enormous orange stuffed rabbit. She strokes him tenderly. His name is John. Beside her, an attractive redhead smiles and makes small talk.
It's mostly a one-way conversation, because the older woman seems unable to comprehend her companion's questions. So the younger woman serves the older one cake and tea, while the chat takes on a nonsensical Alice In Wonderland quality. They hold hands briefly and, for one warm moment, the two women connect, look into each other's eyes. The older woman leans close to the younger woman and they share a laugh.
"Who am I to you?" the younger woman asks.
"You're Marian," says the older one.
"No, I'm not Marian. Who am I?"
The older woman mutters something irrelevant.
"Who am I to you?" the younger woman asks again.
"You're my mother," the older woman guesses.
"No," says the younger woman. "Do you remember me when I was a baby?"
The older woman is silent for a moment. Then she says: "The ground opened up. It was the devil, holding a bloody raw chicken."
The experience of childbirth, for a frightened and possibly disoriented 22-year-old, could have been traumatic. The younger woman has given up expecting any answers. The older woman says she never had a boyfriend, never had any babies. Sex is dirty, she feels.
Yet this elderly woman, who treats her stuffed rabbit like a baby, is a mother. Whether or not she remembers it, the younger woman feeding her cakes and tea is the daughter she gave up for adoption 40 years ago. Her daughter's adoptive name is Audrey O'Grady, and she has spent the past 10 years looking for answers about the woman she is with.
Everyone needs to know who they are. All children love hearing about how their parents met and the circumstances of their birth. It doesn't have to be a happy tale. We just need to know. When you're adopted, the need to know the most basic facts about your biological origins can take on a consuming urgency.
When O'Grady started asking who she was, 10 years ago, she wasn't expecting her birth mother to be a princess, but she was unprepared for the shocks in store. The knowledge she uncovered would be painful enough, but what would make it even more agonising was the manner in which she would receive it.
Over the next decade, getting reliable information from the authorities would be like pulling teeth, and she would feel that however well-intentioned the authorities may have been, she was the only one who felt the pain.
In 1992, two years after she started her search, O'Grady sat in a children's playroom, in a child's chair - the only one available, she says - to be told by an Eastern Health Board social worker about her biological origins.
O'Grady's birth name is Imelda Anne. She was born on March 25th, 1960. According to a letter from the St Louise Adoption Society - every titbit of which seemed like gold - she was born at St Brendan's psychiatric hospital in north Dublin. The actual birth is registered as having taken place at Stanhope Terrace, a unit run by the health board.
The letter stated: "You were a normal healthy delivery. Birth weight was not recorded" - why, O'Grady would wonder: was she not important enough to have her weight recorded like any other baby? - "but you were 12 lbs, 14 ozs at 12 weeks. Length at birth was 20 inches. You were admitted to St Patrick's home on 1st April 1960, and baptised at Rathmines RC church (date unknown)."
Information followed about vaccinations and her discharge for adoption in September 1960; then came the stunning news. "In April 1960, your maternal aunt enquired in St Patrick's about adopting you, but her father would not allow this."
An aunt later wrote to O'Grady: "I really regret not being a part of your childhood. When I went to Grangegorman when you were born I was overwhelmed. Your poor mother was in a state of shock. I was hoping with seeing you and how beautiful you were would bring her back to us, I held you in my arms. Then you were taken back into a darken room. I said to her sister, who accompanied her on the visit, 'let's take her home'. She said my Da would go mad at the thought of us even knowing. In those days people didn't talk about babies before marriage . . . I love talking to you, you put me in mind of O'Grady's birth mother when she was well . . . It's amazing how you have entered my heart, because when you're with me or talking to me, it's as though your birth mother was back."
From the moment she discovered the circumstances of her birth, O'Grady's life has been altered. "That is the potential
out-come that anyone seeking their biological parents needs to be aware of", a psychiatrist wrote after discussing O'Grady's situation with her, at the request of her solicitors.
O'Grady was prepared for the emotional turmoil that was to follow, but it has not been easy. She doesn't expect to be mothered by her birth mother. She wants a connection. And she wants to know more about her biological family.
She was initially told there were no records of any siblings, but after persistently demanding further answers, O'Grady later discovered she had a half-brother, also born while their birth mother was a patient at St Brendan's, in 1972. She does not know his identity, but has his birth certificate.
Secrecy seems to have surrounded the pregnancies. O'Grady's maternal grandfather protested to Richie Ryan TD when he discovered that his daughter had given birth three weeks previously, without his being informed by St Brendan's Hospital.
In 1972, Dr Gerald Gorman, the clinical director of the south-east area service, wrote to the sister of ward 9 at St Brendan's, saying Ryan had contacted him after the complaint from the grandfather, who wanted "an inquiry into all the circumstances which allowed these events to happen".
Gorman wrote: "Under the most unfortunate circumstances of this case, I consider it an appalling blunder on the part of the ward staff that this man was not informed of the baby's birth. I must ask you to take every necessary step to ensure that a similar situation does not arise in the future."
The Northern Area Health Board of the Eastern Regional Health Authority have refused to comment on the case.
Even though there has been so much secrecy for the past 40 years, O'Grady is persevering. Now she wants to know who her father was. Was she conceived in St Brendan's? Was her father a patient? If so, could she be at any risk of poor health?
Dr Dermot Walsh, the Inspector of Psychiatric Hospitals, says he would be "amazed" if there had ever been a pregnancy conceived between two patients in a psychiatric hospital in the 1960s. The sexes were strictly separated at St Brendan's, he says.
Could O'Grady have been conceived outside the hospital? Without seeing the records, it is impossible to say. The health board has told her that the records of her birth mother's case, between 1960 and 1966, have been lost.
O'Grady has received some of her mother's records from 1967 onwards, and these have been seen by The Irish Times, but to protect her mother's privacy they are not included in this article.
Strangely, O'Grady was initially given the records of another woman, with the same name as her mother, who supposedly had a baby at St Brendan's in 1969, nine years after O'Grady's birth. The fact that two women with the same name may both have given birth to children at St Brendan's would be an "extraordinary coincidence", says Walsh.
O'Grady's barrister has concluded that her attempt to find out her father through legal routes is doomed, because there is no legal precedent. Her only hope is that someone may come forward who remembers.
O'Grady's solicitors have written to the Adoption Board, asking where the records for 1960-66 may be and asking: "Someone must remember the rumour at the time as to the identity of the father. Presumably there are porters, nurses, patients, doctors still living who would remember this event?"
As an adoptee, O'Grady is not entitled to her mother's records. She has copies of some of them, but not enough to know her mother's movements around the time of O'Grady's conception.
The Adoption Board have written to the health board with a series of questions. The board will not comment, but did express concern that O'Grady had never received adoption counselling, which it now wishes to offer her.
O'Grady feels that after 10 years of struggling to get answers, however, it would be difficult for her to have a trusting relationship with health-board personnel.
"I feel in my heart and soul that something was very, very wrong. It's my anger that keeps me going in my quest," she says. As for her relationship with her mother, O'Grady feels there is a fundamental bond - and that's all that matters.
It has been disturbing at times, but O'Grady gets through by identifying with her birth mother's qualities: humour, generosity, gentleness. Her happy childhood with loving adoptive parents strengthened her and her adoptive mother, now dead, supported her search and met her birth mother. O'Grady would love truly to have known the young woman who gave birth to her at 22, but she has learned to appreciate the connection she has.
kholmquist@irish-times.ie