Living With Evil (26 page)

I was so furious I wanted to slap Mother Dorothy’s face. How dare she humiliate Margaret like that? She had such a short life, and Mother Dorothy caused her untold misery, just like she had me. I would never let her destroy me.

It took me a very long time to get over the fire, and bedtimes became even more frightening. A rumour went round the town that the fire had started when one of the kids dropped a cigarette down the back of the settee, and I’d lie in bed at night imagining Mammy dropping one of hers when she was drunk.

I told Mammy my fears, but she didn’t listen. ‘Always thinking of yourself, Cynthia,’ she said. ‘What about that poor family?’

She made me read out newspaper articles she’d clipped out of Daddy’s papers, and told me not to be so stupid when I complained and said it upset me. ‘You need to read them, Cynthia,’ she said. ‘You need to cry. Why don’t you cry, Cynthia?’

It seemed to really bother her that I didn’t cry, but I felt frozen inside. I could tell my reaction disturbed Mammy though, because she wouldn’t let it drop.

I’d tell her to leave me alone, but she shoved the pictures of the little white coffins under my nose and taunted me time and time again. I couldn’t cry. I was paralysed with grief, but Mammy said I was a heartless bitch. She said that to other people too, but I knew it wasn’t true. If anyone came to the house, she forced me to read out the clippings, and when I didn’t cry she scoffed, ‘Here, see. Didn’t I tell you she was a heartless bitch?’ She never let it drop, ever.

Mammy had told me to ‘shut and stop complainin” so many times that I had become quite good at stopping myself from crying. Another thought struck me one day, and it frightened me. If I started to cry, how would I stop? Would I cry for my baby too? I didn’t want to do that, it was too hard, and it would cause too many arguments.

Finally, one time when Mammy shoved those photos under my nose and ordered me to cry, something snapped. I flew into a wild rage, smashing cups in the sink, throwing shoes at the walls and knocking down pictures.

‘There now - is this what you want?’ I screeched. ‘You wanted me to react - are you happy now?’ But still I didn’t cry.

Mammy just laughed at me, and then she took great delight in telling any visitors to our house that I had gone crazy and smashed it up, just because she asked why I didn’t cry for that poor family.

One night, when I was lying in bed unable to sleep, she crept upstairs with a matchbox containing a horsefly.

She knew I was scared of those straggly-legged insects, and she dropped it on top of me, laughing hysterically and saying, ‘Why don’t you cry, Cynthia? Why don’t you cry!’

Bedtime had always been terrifying, but Mammy’s behaviour added a frightening new dimension. Daddy was still hurting me in bed as much as ever, and I was still being dragged to that awful building.

It had become a never-ending torture I just had to survive it as best I could. Mammy’s violent friend, the ‘thug’ still attacked me regularly too.

Now, Mammy’s erratic behavior was turning me into a complete nervous wreck. I had never known what to expect from her, but now she was getting even more unpredictable, as if she was losing her mind completely.

I was petrified of her killing herself, or killing all of us in our beds. I feared we would die in a fire, just like the family down the road. When my head hit the pillow, I never relaxed. I felt tense, and I trembled all the time, always anticipating the worst.

I spent the summer escaping to the youth club with my friends whenever I could, drinking cider and trying to forget my worries, but it never worked.

I never felt happy, not really. Even when I was laughing and joking, I felt numb inside. My heart never fluttered with joy, and I wasn’t comfortable joining in when my mates started talking about pop stars they fancied and crushes they had on local boys. I didn’t want to know about boys, but I did want to grow up fast, just so I could get away from Mammy and Daddy and leave all the bad things behind.

Leaving primary school and going to the Tech would be a step in the right direction. I’d dreamed of the day I would be old enough to finally walk away from Mother Dorothy, and when it came I whooped with sheer delight and relief. I never wanted to see that wicked old bag again as long as I lived. I hated her with a passion.

I was nearly thirteen now, and getting bigger and stronger. I was moving on, and life was going to get better - wasn’t it?

One day, I vowed, I would get my revenge on all the people who had hurt me.

All those men would pay for what they did to me, and I would make Mammy pay for what she did to my baby, too.

When I joined the Tech as a determined and rebellious thirteen-year-old, my teacher told me I was intelligent and could become anything I wanted, if only I could focus on my work.

The problem was, I couldn’t focus on anything except the enduring horrors of the abuse I was suffering at home and in the awful building I was still being taken to.

My brain felt permanently fogged. However much I wanted to learn and make something of my life, every day felt like a huge emotional struggle. Try as I might, I simply couldn’t put all the bad things that happened away in a box in my head and pretend they didn’t exist. The abuse was continuing, and by the time I was fourteen I realized I was pregnant again.

I recognized the symptoms from when I had Noleen, and I left school as soon as was legally possible. I didn’t want to have to deal with questions about my changing shape, I just wanted to hide away. I didn’t tell my friends about the pregnancy. I had been brought up to keep secrets, and I was still very much under my mother’s control, so I said nothing.

While they spent their leisure time lazing around the beaches and going to discos Mammy, or Ma as I’d started calling her, started locking me in the house. She hid my shoes, threw my clothes in the bin and refused to give me any money.

I felt very mixed up. I stole her alcohol whenever I could and crashed out in bed, too tired to argue or care. I had no energy, and nothing to get up for. Many days just passed in a blur of boredom, misery and fear.

I gave birth for the second time in June 1976. This time my baby was stillborn. He was an incredibly tiny little boy with transparent skin, and I can only assume he was extremely premature. I was flooded with a feeling of enormous relief when he didn’t breathe. Ma couldn’t harm him. I couldn’t love him and lose him. The decision was made, and he was already gone.

Afterwards, for the first time in a long time, I remembered Noleen very clearly. My heart ached for her, but I felt new emotions too: bitter hatred and anger towards Mammy. I no longer cared what she said or did to me, and I rebelled more than ever, smashing the house up and refusing to help with the chores.

When she hid my clothes, I’d wear anything I could lay my hands on, just to escape. My friends were fantastic and always accepted me, whatever state I turned up in. They were the ones who took me to hospital when I threw myself on to the jagged rocks in the sea one day, not caring whether I lived or died and, again, a week later, when I deliberately rode a Chopper with broken brakes down a steep hill and into a couple of parked cars. After both incidents, I was cut to ribbons and bruised black and blue, yet my parents never said a word. Granny told me the devil was trying to ruin my life and I would burn in hell. Suicide is a sin in the Catholic Church, and that’s all she cared about.

Mammy’s response to my behaviour was to pack me off to live with Esther in Wales when I was fifteen. My friends cried when they waved me off at the ferry at Dun Laoghaire, and tears streamed down my face. I stood on the deck holding a carrier bag with a few clothes in it, feeling utterly alone. I knew I would miss them so much. We had had such fun singing songs and mucking about together, and they had been my only source of happiness. I was devastated at leaving my four younger siblings too. I’d been like a mammy to them all, and I hated being apart from them, but as usual I couldn’t argue with my mother. She ruled with a rod of iron.

Esther’s house was lovely, and she made a huge effort to welcome me at first, but I struggled to settle in. I missed my friends too much, and the Welsh girls I met were so different to me. They had different tastes in fashion and music, and they didn’t drink and smoke like I did at home.

I upset Esther by borrowing shoes and clothes from her neighbours’ daughters, like I did with my friends back home, but it wasn’t the done thing in her neighbourhood. We fell out, and after just six weeks I begged Mammy to let me go home. I started playing loud music and staying out late at night to make sure Esther would be glad to get rid of me, and eventually I got my way.

It probably sounds insane that I wanted to go back home, but I didn’t see it as returning to 4 White’s Villas. I saw it as returning to my friends and my siblings and everything that was familiar to me in Dalkey. The abuse had stopped after my second pregnancy. I assume, now, that I simply became too old to be a victim of child abuse, but I didn’t work that out then. I was just relieved that that part of my life was over. Looking back, I think I was so traumatized that some sort of self-defence mechanism kicked in, making me shut out the memories so I didn’t have to keep reliving the horrors of my past.

The sleeping arrangements had changed when I got back home. My nine-year-old brother was in the back bedroom. Little Theresa, who was five and like a sister to me, was in the double bed in the front room with my parents, and my other brother, also five, had the single bed in the same room, which I shared.

Almost as soon as I’d got back home, I noticed Mammy using Daddy as a threat to get Theresa into bed at night: ‘If you’re not in bed when Daddy gets home, he’ll get angry and beat me,’ she said.

Her words made me shudder, but I wasn’t sure why.

One night, I heard my sister whimpering very quietly in the dark. Next she was sobbing, and I could hear Daddy shuffling in the bed.

I lay awake, too scared to sleep. Surely Daddy wouldn’t hurt her? My own abuse was pushed so far to the back of mind I didn’t think about how he had abused me in the past. I didn’t want to remember. I was still a child inside, and a severely traumatized one at that. I didn’t have a clue how to handle the situation.

When it happened again the next night, I called out. ‘Daddy, are you talking in your sleep? I think you’re frightening Theresa.’

He was drunk and ignored me, so I crept downstairs and told Mammy that Daddy was scaring Theresa. Even at that age, and despite my rebellious episodes, I was still terrified of both my parents.

‘He’s just rolling around drunk,’ said Mammy casually. The words nearly killed me, because all of a sudden I remembered when she had said that to me. I erupted with anger. ‘Go up and get that filthy bastard off my sister or I will smash this house up.’ Mammy laughed and said I was crazy. The next night she sent me to sleep in the back bedroom, and I obeyed. Being in that house made me feel like a helpless child again.

I drank to forget whenever I could, but one night Theresa smiled at me with her beautiful brown eyes and I felt an enormous pang of guilt. How could I stand by and let her be harmed?

I now drank whatever I could get my hands on. For a while I even downed bottles of cough mixture, just to block out my past and what was happening now. I drank cider regularly with my friends at the youth club, too, and it was there that I met the man who became my first husband, when I was fifteen and drunk.

The first time I took him home, Mammy amazed me by welcoming him with open arms, and she seemed thrilled when he eventually proposed. I agreed to marry him, mainly because I desperately wanted to get out of 4 White’s Villas.

Around this time, I had dreadful flashbacks of Noleen dying. I saw blood on her face and a knitting needle in a hand. I knew something awful had happened in my childhood, but I was terrified of confronting my memories, and I just didn’t analyse them. I hoped moving out might help me leave the terrors of the past behind.

I was nineteen and pregnant again when I got married. Daddy came with me in the wedding car. I wanted to feel lovely sitting there in my flowing white gown, but when I looked at Daddy’s dirty fingernails and smelled the stale smoke on his breath, I just felt sick. I knew he was part of the horror of my childhood, but I didn’t dare think too deeply about it, even when the familiar feelings of pregnancy tormented me with dark and distant memories. They were just too horrible to explore.

I’d been elated when the doctor confirmed I was expecting, and I told myself I would cherish this baby and surround it with so much love you wouldn’t believe it. That was my plan. I was moving on to a happy new phase in my life, or so I hoped.

I gave birth in the summer. When my waters broke, it stirred terrible black thoughts in my head, but again I tried to block them out. Ma had offered to be with me for the birth, but I didn’t want her anywhere near me. She still scared me, even now I was a married woman. She offered to knit a jacket for the new baby, despite the fact she hadn’t done any knitting for many years.

Her behaviour baffled me at the time, because she was being uncharacteristically helpful, but I know now she was trying to put the past behind her too, to save her own neck. If only it were that easy.