Free Scars that Run Deep by Patrick Touher

where as a young boy I fetched buckets of water for Bridget Doyle. I could see that Seamus was gazing down the hill and across to Carty’s Green. I knew that he was reliving his lost childhood, as I was.
    Mrs Doyle looked as healthy as ever as I put my arms around her. I wondered where Margaret and her brother John were. Before I could ask, in walked Margaret, followed by John – tall, thin but strong-looking, and smiling. As I greeted them, Margaret first, my heart missed a beat. As I turned to shake John’s hand I couldn’t believe how much older than me he looked. I just smiled and cried with joy. I thought of Margaret as my sister, and how I wished to God that she truly was.
    Mr Doyle was seated by the open fire in an old well-wornarmchair, smoking his pipe; Shep the dog, his muzzle now grizzled with grey, was by his feet.
    Bridget was putting homemade apple pie and bread into the oven. She turned to her daughter Margaret. ‘Why don’t you take the lads across the hillside for an hour. Tea will be ready when you return. ’Twill do yeese good, sure. Be back by five o’clock.’
    Just then the old clock on the black dresser struck four. The sweet sounds of the chimes brought back fond memories when I was one of the family and believed I was one of them and not just some kid passing through. ‘Ye better be going before it’s time to come back, Margaret,’ Bridget said as she closed the oven door. She raised herself upright, wiping her hands in her colourful pinafore. The beautiful aroma of the apple pie and homemade buttermilk bread in the oven filled my lungs, made me feel hungry. I wished – not for the first time – as we made our way from the cosy hillside cottage that Bridget was my mother.
    After the walk with Margaret, we had tea and then I said goodbye to the Doyles. I stood on the green hilltop for a better view of the picturesque landscape that opened up before my eyes. All the beauty of Barnacullia to Glencullen, and behind us lay the ever-changing colours of green and gold that formed part of the Dublin hills, and, belowSandyford, Stepaside to Enniskerry. My dreams were real. The visions I harboured as a prisoner in Artane Industrial School were not imaginary after all. I smiled sadly as I thought that so much I had missed of a normal life as a child can’t ever be brought back.
    What I would have given for a foothold in this beautiful hillside, a cosy cottage home with an open log fire, a dog like Shep, a clock on the dresser and a mother like Bridget with a heart of gold. To come home to the aroma of fine cooking where I could sit and dwell and dream by the fireside sure would be real nice, I thought.
    I stared down the hillside. Although I was free, each night I had awful nightmares, I walked in my sleep. I shouted and screamed until perspiration dripped from me. Then there would come the calming voice of the kid holding me. ‘You are all right, Paddy, you’re back from hell or wherever it was you were at. Come on back to bed.’
    For a long, silent moment, alone with myself in paradise, my thoughts ran wild, ran free in my childhood days walking down the hillside with my pals, in the gold of autumn, trundling through the piles of crisp fallen leaves and collecting pocketfuls of shiny chestnuts – gosh, at that moment, though I was free, I wept, as I muttered I wish to God that Artane was really only a very bad dream.
    As I meandered across the hillside to meet Seamus I cried,yet I wanted to scream and shout out this is where I lost out, my childhood snatched, stolen and brutally crushed by state, power and fear. ‘Fear of the collar,’ I muttered as Seamus approached me.
    â€˜Talking to yourself as usual,’ said Seamus grinning at me.
    â€˜What do you mean?’ I asked him. ‘Well, nothing much really, except you’ve always talked in your sleep. Come on, Paddy,’ he said, ‘let’s go home. A shame, I