Living With Evil (27 page)

It was a difficult birth, and my baby son was placed in an incubator. ‘Mammy loves you,’ I whispered, holding his tiny hand in mine. I felt an overwhelming surge of love for him. It was so powerful it took my breath away. I knew in that instant that I had never loved anyone as much as I loved that little boy. ‘I will always love you,’ I told him. ‘I will never let anyone take you away from me.’ I loved being a mum and tried to make a success of my new start, but I couldn’t escape my memories and soon found myself having nightmares about my younger siblings left at home. Many times I got up and raced miles through the streets in the dark, banging on Mammy’s door to check they were safe. Each time, she shooed me away nastily and said I was crazy.

One day, my little sister Theresa had volunteered to babysit for me and didn’t turn up, which was very unusual. I knew something was wrong, and I got it out of her that Martin, now sixteen, had tried to gas himself in the kitchen at 4 White’s Villas.

I dashed to the hospital, to learn that this had been no cry for help: he had been very lucky to survive. Ma arrived soon afterwards, marching manically up the corridor searching for news.

‘Oh look at the nosy cow,’ she crowed. ‘She
would
have to get her big nose in, wouldn’t she!’

‘You don’t know if your son is dead or alive, but you can always take a moment to attack me,’ I scowled back. ‘You need to look after him better.’ After this, I invited Martin to my flat often, but it wasn’t much of an escape for him, as I had my own problems. My husband and I weren’t getting on, and we split up when our son was a young boy.

Sadly, for reasons I can’t discuss, I missed out on many years of my son’s childhood. I tried everything in my power not to lose a single day with him, but all I can say is that fate was unbelievably cruel to me. The pain of not seeing my son was unbearable, and I felt it every day. For a long time it hurt me just to breathe.

When we ended the marriage, I found myself homeless too, because in Ireland there was then no State housing for women who left their husbands and the family home. Friends helped me out, and I even moved to England for a while, just so I could stay in a homeless hostel and receive benefits. It didn’t work out, and one night I was forced to return to 4 White’s Villas. I simply had nowhere else to go.

Michael and Theresa were fifteen-years-old by then, and both were bright and beautiful people. I loved spending time with them again, but something made me shudder when I saw how they slipped silently out of the room when my daddy walked in. He seemed to make their brightness fade, as if he cast a black shadow over them. It was unnerving.

I couldn’t bring myself to sleep upstairs in the house that first night. I told myself it was because the beds were filthy, just like they always were, and because that stinking toilet bucket was still on the floor, after all those years. The truth was I didn’t want to relive my childhood. How could I even begin to cope if I allowed myself to remember so many terrible things?

I slept downstairs and, the next morning, before anyone else was awake, I slipped out and caught a ferry back to England. I found myself digs in Worksop, where I’d stayed before and had friends, but I wasn’t living. I was barely functioning.

After a while, I moved to a block of flats, and there I met Tony. I was desperate for love, and I welcomed his attention whenever he called in for a chat and a cup of tea. He kissed me one day, and a flicker of life sparked inside me.

I put my arms round him and enjoyed his hugs.

Tony made me feel human and lovable for the first time in many years. When we started sleeping together a few months later, he would hold me all night long, while I cried on his shoulder for my son.

We’d been together several months when I realized I was pregnant. I’d been on the Pill for years now, and I was horrified when the doctor confirmed my suspicions. My relationship with Tony was far from perfect. I started behaving unreasonably, resenting him for making me pregnant, and our relationship quickly started to unravel. By the time I gave birth, in the summer of 1987, Tony and I had separated. All I wanted to do was focus on my new baby boy. This time, I vowed that nothing would go wrong. I ached to be a mother to this child, and was determined nothing would ruin things.

I fell in love with Christopher the moment he was born. He was beautiful, and I hugged him to my chest and started to cry. He reminded me of another little baby, but I couldn’t remember which one. I lay there for hours, trying to work it out, but it didn’t come to me. Perhaps I wouldn’t let it.

Christopher was a month old when I bumped into Simon in the street while I was out shopping for nappies. I’d known him for a while through my friends in Worksop, and when he saw me alone with the new baby he offered to come round and help me out.

I’d moved into a council house, which my friends had decorated while I was in hospital, and for the first time in my life I had a home I felt proud of. I was besotted with Christopher, and when I saw Simon lift him tenderly out of his cot, something in me stirred. He looked like a daddy - a proper daddy. Christopher gurgled, and Simon and I exchanged smiling glances.

We spent many more happy hours together after that. Simon never shouted or swore. He didn’t criticize me or bully me or run me down. Instead, he paid me compliments, made me laugh, he held me tight and listened. Before long, I was besotted with him too. When we made love, it was so tender and loving that I felt completely safe for the first time in my life.

I started to sleep more soundly than I ever had, and Simon told me many times, ‘I’m here for you. I’ll never let you down.’ I joked to my friends that he was like someone you read about in a girls’ magazine. He was my perfect man in every way, and he became a perfect father to Christopher. I was happier and more settled than I’d ever been.

One dark night in 1990, I woke up screaming from a nightmare. It started out as the same nightmare I’d had the night before, and the night before that. I was a small child sleeping in the single bed in the front room at 4 White’s Villas. It was dark and cold, and someone got into bed with me and put their arms around me, but it didn’t make me feel safe and warm. I felt scared.

On previous nights, that’s where the dream had ended. But this time, when the person hugged me, I saw who it was. It was my father, and I was trembling and shaking. He terrified me, and I sat up in bed, struck with panic.

‘It’s all right,’ Simon whispered. ‘Don’t cry! It’s just a nightmare. You’ll be all right in the morning, you’ll see.’ I lay awake for hours, Simon’s arms wrapped round me, and when dawn broke I sat up in bed feeling nauseous. I felt the blood drain from my face, and my legs went weak. I ran to the toilet and vomited.

The same thing happened without warning many more times over the next year. I knew I wasn’t pregnant, as I’d chosen to be sterilized after Christopher’s birth. But before my period each month, my stomach swelled up, I was moody and irritable and my breasts were sore. After each nightmare I wanted to vomit, and I couldn’t face wearing bright colours. I wanted to dress only in black. It felt like I was in mourning, but I didn’t know who had died.

I was almost thirty-years-old by then, and I was determined I wasn’t going to lose the new life I had. Simon and Christopher meant everything to me. I wasn’t going mad, was I? I went to my doctor and asked for help. ‘I think I have some issues to deal with,’ I said, not knowing what else to say. ‘I think I need to talk to a professional.’ Within weeks, I saw a psychiatrist, who told me almost immediately he had good news. ‘You aren’t mad,’ he said. ‘I think you just have some unresolved problems from your childhood.’ I was referred to Maureen, a community psychiatric nurse, who was to give me therapy to help me solve the issues.

Around the same time, Theresa asked if she could come and stay for a while, and Simon and I readily agreed. She was almost twenty now, and we got on brilliantly. Not only that, but she could help out with Christopher while I went to my therapy sessions. It was perfect.

Maureen didn’t judge, she just listened. I was starting to feel better. Theresa and I went on bike rides, sang Diana Ross songs into our hairbrushes together like teenagers and took Christopher to feed the ducks.

One morning in November 1991, we were standing in my bedroom by an open window. It was a crisp winter’s day, and the view of the open countryside with the dawn mist lifting off the fields was breathtaking. Theresa started talking to me. I didn’t hear her words at first, but as I turned to face her, the beautiful views in my brain suddenly turned to black.

‘Daddy sexually abused me as a child. Mammy told me last time I visited.’ My stomach turned over. ‘How can you be sure?’ I heard myself saying. ‘Do you remember?’ Theresa said she had memories of Daddy doing something to her in bed at night. She remembered crying a lot, and feeling a lot of pain. The memories made her feel suicidal, and she confided she had tried to take her own life several times.

As she spoke, I heard a muffled sort of cry, a cry I’d heard before. My mind started to spin, and I thought I was going to pass out. I sat on the bed to steady myself. ‘Do you really believe you were abused, Theresa?’ I asked.

She nodded, looking embarrassed. I looked at her sad brown eyes and I saw the beautiful little girl I played mammy to all those years ago. ‘I will support you. I will do whatever it takes,’ I told her, though my mind was in turmoil.

Deep down, I knew those nightmares I had about Daddy meant he had touched me too, in a way he shouldn’t have. That’s why I had asked for therapy. It all clicked into place. I knew what it meant, and I knew I had to face it.

I trusted Maureen implicitly, and I told her everything Theresa had said, adding that in my nightmares I was sure it was my father abusing me. It felt like the earth was shifting beneath my feet, and dark doors were opening in my mind. Coping with daily life became a struggle. Without Simon’s support, I would not have got through each day.

I spent much of that year in a pit of depression. Every memory that came back broke my heart. I remembered the neglect, the filth and the poverty. I could feel the headlice and the fleas and the beatings, and I recalled the drunken fights and violent arguments.

My parents were alcoholics, and they abused and neglected me.

I had never acknowledged how dysfunctional they were. As the truth dawned, I became a nervous wreck. I shouted at Simon and snapped at Christopher. I wished I could turn back time and throw all my memories back into that black box, locked away for ever in the back of my mind. But it was too late for that.

One morning, I felt a powerful urge to clean the house. Everybody was out, and I walked into Christopher’s bedroom to tidy his toys off the floor. I looked at his bed and, in a daze, lay down on it. The second I touched the duvet, my body seemed to shrink. I felt like a little girl again, and suddenly my body started to jerk up and down. My mind was travelling back down dark corridors, back through the years. When it stopped travelling, I was in the single bed at home in Dalkey. Daddy was in the bed with me, and I started crying.

‘No, Daddy, no! Please, Daddy, no!’ I cried out. My mind went oil black as the pain ripped through me. I thought I was going to split in two.

Moments later, I was back in Christopher’s room, looking at his blue-striped duvet cover and the picture of Spiderman on the wall. I didn’t move for hours. I just lay there sobbing.

I told Simon that night that my father had raped me as a young girl.

‘I will look after you,’ he told me tenderly, but I could see he was in shock too. And I was inconsolable.

I tried to carry on living as normal a life as possible, for Christopher’s sake. He had started school, and I joined a secretarial college, where I worked as hard on my studies as I did on trying to appear happy and normal like everybody else.

One Sunday night, in April 1993, I was lying in bed when a series of vivid memories made my spine stiffen. They came from nowhere, and I felt like I’d been electrocuted.

‘Oh my God, I was pregnant as a child!’ I called out.

Bizarre images blazed around my head. I saw sanitary towels and a sanitary belt, vitamins and raw eggs and liver. I tasted salt water in my mouth.

I had to tell Maureen. I had already confided to her that my father had actually raped me, but it was even harder telling her I was pregnant as a child.

I said it quietly, eyeing her carefully to judge her reaction.

‘I know,’ she said, nodding gently.

‘How can you know?’ I gasped.

‘I’ve been waiting for you to tell me, Cynthia.’ I was astonished. I sat rooted to the spot as Maureen explained how many of the other memories I’d shared, plus the vomiting and bloating I experienced around my periods, pointed to me suffering a pregnancy in childhood. She had had to wait for me to mention it first, because that was the way therapy worked. Everything had to come from me.

I shared all this news with Simon, but felt guilty burdening him. He didn’t doubt me or judge me, and I loved him more for that, if it were possible.

‘I’ll stand by you, come what may,’ he said.

I needed every ounce of his love and compassion, especially when I started having vivid recollections of the night Noleen died and the many sickening ways in which my father abused me.