No One Wants You (15 page)

On the following Wednesday night we arranged to go to the cinema. As far as relationships went, I still felt the same way as I did with George. I wanted a relationship with a man on the basis that we could go out dancing or to the cinema or theatre together, and that was it. There was to be no physical intimacy.

I had to struggle with my extremely different needs. On the one hand, I wanted a relationship without physical intimacy, while on the other hand I wanted to be married
and
have children. An Immaculate Conception as experienced by the Virgin Mary would have suited me fine, but even Harry Roberts, with all his ‘pull’ within the Catholic Church, could not have supplied that.

And yet my need to have children was very strong. I just loved kids. I knew that this was a problem I could not avoid for ever.

Over the years I had many problems with my internal reproductive system. I seemed to spend half my time visiting gynaecologists. At each visit, the result of the examination always had the one common conclusion – it would be unlikely that I would be able to have children. Those gynaecological conclusions, while very pessimistic, always left me with a tiny hope that I might be able to have a child. This hope was indeed very small. Most of the gynaecologists predicted that I would not be able to live any form of stable life, never mind have a baby. While I knew the damage to my reproductive tract was serious, deep down I kept nurturing that spark of hope, however miniscule.

Of course, I did not mention any of this to Harry on our first date. We went to the cinema and afterwards he took me for a cup of coffee. Of course, Harry wanted to know about me. He began to ask all the usual questions that come up when two young people meet. My personal background loomed large once again. Having suffered through the pain of George’s recent rejection, I decided that I was not going to let it be an issue again. I was not going to waste my time with somebody, if I was then going to be unacceptable, when they found out the truth about my background and parenthood. Towards the end of our first date I decided to declare my parental status. I came straight out and told him, ‘I am illegitimate.’

I waited for the usual response of concealed shock but none came. Looking back, I should have realised the disadvantage at which I had placed myself. But I didn’t. I
gave
all my power away in one small sentence. I let him know my weakness without knowing anything about him. I was to greatly regret parting with my secret so casually. But I did not realise it at the time.

If only we all had the benefit of hindsight. If only I had had the benefit of some maternal advice or support. I was on my own. I had to make my own decisions, whatever their consequences. At the same time I could not disclose my secret to everybody; otherwise I would not be wanted. It was the nightmare scenario that I wished to avoid at all costs.

Harry did not seem to mind. As he walked me home, he asked me to marry him. Yes, on the first date, he said, ‘Will you marry me?’ He was always joking, so I laughed it off, but afterwards I thought that it was a cheeky thing to do on a first date, particularly since I had just told him my biggest secret. I was glad though that, even knowing about my illegitimacy, he genuinely seemed keen to see me again and be with me.

Harry worked as a security man in a city-centre bank. As we both worked shift hours, we met at all different times in the days that followed. We met two or three times a week initially. We usually went dancing or to the cinema. Neither of us drank alcohol. I was very pleased to be taken out dancing, especially by somebody to whom I felt totally acceptable. Before that I had not felt acceptable at all to anybody; Harry seemed like a knight in shining armour to me.

We began to spend more and more of our free time together. I sometimes cooked for him at the flat that I now shared with Lucy and some other nurses. Five of us had moved out of the nurses’ home a few months earlier, as we had begun to earn a little bit more money when we qualified. We also used to work back-to-back shifts to make extra money. It was worth it to get away from living under curfew!

We may have kissed on the lips occasionally but no sexual intimacy ever took place between us. I felt unable to contemplate any sexual behaviour and Harry seemed content to have that type of relationship with me. I was quite happy to continue together on this basis and in July 1972 we became engaged to be married. None of my friends ever criticised Harry but none of them ever commented on Harry in a positive way either. Harry was just Harry. He did not offend anybody. He never antagonised anyone. Neither did he ever engage anybody in any kind of serious debate. Everything was relatively simple in Harry’s life. He had simple personal rules, which he adhered to. He knew his place in the way of things and in the world, and he was not going to rock the boat.

Harry came from Graiguenamanagh, County Kilkenny in Ireland. His parents had a small farm and a large family. Harry was the youngest of a family of 12 children, five boys, six girls and Harry. The farm was not large enough to sustain and educate 12 children, so at 15 Harry had left school. He was sent to work in his cousin’s pub in Dublin. When we met, I didn’t know or care what formal education Harry had behind him. His aspirations and prospects as regards a career were not even an issue. Here was somebody to whom, I, an illegitimate bastard child, was acceptable. That was all I needed to know.

We decided to get married early in the following year.

Our relationship continued on through the summer of 1972 and into the following winter, much the same as it had begun. We went dancing quite a lot at the Irish Club, where they had many dance bands or show bands. The show bands were very popular in Ireland at the time and were very popular with the Irish crowd who went to the Galtymore Dance Hall in Kilburn, North London. The only time we touched physically was when we were dancing. The fact that we were engaged to be married changed nothing. This suited me perfectly. I do not know how I would have reacted to
sexual
advances from Harry at this time. I imagine that I would have rejected them. I would have used the excuse that any sexual behaviour, outside marriage, was unacceptable to me. Harry had been brought up in a strict Catholic regime, within a strict Catholic family and his moral values were those dictated by the Catholic Church. The hierarchy of the Church tolerated no deviance from the rules and Harry followed these dictates to the letter. His obedience to the laws of the Catholic Church and its God was absolute. The Catholic faith dictated that pre-marital sex was sinful and not to be engaged in. It was not allowed.

But people did engage in pre-marital sex. I was proof of that. I wondered how did he see me in this context? I didn’t ask him but I believed that he did not hold me in very high regard. It was the teaching of the Catholic Church in those days that illegitimate children had to pay for the sins of their parents, with their own suffering. The nuns at the orphanage told me that, frequently. I heard that message so often, that I detest hearing it, in any context, to this very day.

How did Harry view my parents?

All his life he was indoctrinated in the teachings and propaganda of the Catholic Church. It inculcated itself in Harry to such a degree that to this day he thoroughly believes himself to be a far superior human being to people who are not supporters of, or who have fallen foul of, the Catholic Church’s rules and regulations. My parents were an example of sinners who had broken its laws, by indulging in sexual relations with one another, while unmarried. If he had known them at the time, he would have regarded them, as sinners of the highest order. I’m sure he would have seen them as unfit to consort with, at any level. I, as their product, would not have rated much higher. And there, the dichotomy introduces itself. I should have realised it at the time, but didn’t. I continued on with the plans for the wedding, unaware.

There was no love between us. The word love was never mentioned. The same feeling that I had for George did not develop in this relationship. The feeling of wanting to be with someone special, all the time, did not exist. I just knew that I wanted to be married and to have children. All my friends were getting married, so I assumed that it was the normal, natural and proper thing to do. Harry must have assumed the same thing, as he never once told me that he loved me during our engagement.

During the Christmas holidays of 1972, I was working most of the time. I would work so that other nurses with young families, who would prefer to be at home with them over Christmas, did not have to miss out. I was not bitter about working the unsociable Christmas shift-hours. London was a cosmopolitan city, as opposed to the incestuous, Catholic-dominated atmosphere of Ireland, at that time. On the wards there were many nurses of different religious backgrounds, to whom working over Christmas was just another day. As I had no family to visit, it was better for me to have the distraction of work. The girls in the flat had all gone home to visit their families, so I had the entire place to myself.

I worked the 8 am to 5 pm shift on Christmas Day and went back to the flat after work. Harry had Christmas dinner with his brother Paddy and his wife, and was due to come and see me at the flat later in the evening. I hadn’t been invited but I was on-call anyway with a nurses’ agency. As he arrived I had just finished cooking my own Christmas dinner. It consisted of two sausages. That was all that was edible in the flat at the time. It sounds very meagre fare for Christmas, but I was not one bit bothered.

Harry arrived and we listened to some music. After an hour or two had passed, an extraordinary thing happened. He compromised himself and his strict adhesion to Catholic moral standards. He made advances towards me. I was
unprepared
for such an approach and also shocked. It was totally out of character for Harry.

‘What are you trying to do?’ I asked.

‘I want to have intercourse with you,’ he replied.

I quickly made it known to him that his advances were being rejected. Having sex with me was definitely out of the question.

‘It won’t matter, I’ll marry you anyway,’ he persisted.

‘No way,’ I replied. ‘It cannot happen.’

‘All right so,’ he huffed.

With that, he sucked in his breath, stuck out his chest, turned and marched across the room, slammed the front door with an almighty crash as he left. We managed to patch things up after this, but sex or ‘intercourse’ in Catholic Church terminology, as used by Harry, was never mentioned again between us while we were engaged.

Over the years, I had written to Father Bernard regularly, but not as often as previously. I had gone to see him in July in Glenstal when I got engaged and told him that I was getting married to Harry and that the ceremony was to take place in the spring of 1973. Father Bernard said that he was so pleased for me and insisted that he would perform the ceremony, wherever it might be.

When we had announced our engagement in July 1972, we had arranged to be married in St John’s Cathedral in Kilkenny City in Ireland on February 24, 1973.

A wedding breakfast and reception for 50 guests was also booked at the time. I had wanted to have a small quiet ceremony in London without fuss. But when Harry’s parents heard that their youngest son was to be married, they insisted that it had to be at home in Ireland. While they insisted on the geographical location, they did not insist that they would pay for any of the expenses. I had to fund everything.

In the lead-up to our nuptials, the number of uninvited
players
in my life increased. I had no control over who they might be. I had no guidance from anyone about how to handle the unexpected intrusion into my life of so many new, unknown people.

First of all, was the arrival in my life of Harry’s parents. They turned out to be a couple in their mid-sixties. They made a poor but honest living on the home farm, which was now being run on a daily basis by one of Harry’s brothers. They were a conservative, uneducated, but pleasant couple, who lived their lives according to the strict moral teachings of the Catholic Church. They were not unusual in the rural Ireland of the early 1970s.

As I was now going to be a permanent fixture in Harry’s life and, more importantly, as I would be his legal wife, problems arose. The first problem had been Harry actually telling his parents that he was going to get married. As most of the remainder of his 11 brothers and sisters were already married, I hadn’t thought that Harry getting married would come as a great shock to his parents. I assumed that they would accept it as fact and give him their blessing. In fact, at the time they didn’t seem very pleased, but we got over that. His father wrote me a letter a few months later to welcome me into the family.

The second problem was, of course, that he was not getting married to just anyone! He was marrying an ‘illegitimate girl’. Harry was under pressure.

‘’T’would kill Mam and Dad if I told them that I was getting married to a bastard,’ he announced to me one evening.

My heart sank. Here it was again. My past had come back to haunt me once more.

‘Tell them that my parents are dead,’ I offered immediately, without doubt or hesitation. I had used this explanation so often previously that it tripped off my tongue as easily as if I had available as proof in my handbag a
validated
copy of their death certificates, and a letter from the Pope to say that he himself had officiated at their burial.

‘That would be for the best,’ Harry accepted gratefully. ‘We won’t say anything to the brothers and sisters either, ’cos they wouldn’t approve if they knew the situation,’ he added, taking a mile, having been given an inch.

When I met both his parents for the first time, Harry introduced me to them and, barely pausing for breath, he added, ‘This is Celine that I am getting married to. Her parents are dead!’

It was his first denial of me.

I did not remark on it, but to hear myself introduced in such a manner, hurt me. I ignored the hurt and carried on with the pretence. After all, I had been the one to suggest it in the first instance. I felt so insignificant and of such a low social standing, that I would have agreed to any excuse about my parenthood. I wanted to be acceptable to his parents, and if my illegitimate status was so bad it might cause their premature demise, my parents were going to be dead first. It worked. Everyone just assumed that if my parents were dead, they must have been legally married to each other before they died. Once again we had ‘an Irish solution to an Irish problem’. And so it was that the entire Roberts family thought that my legally married parents were dead. I was therefore entitled to become Harry’s wife. While I understood about his parents, I could not really figure out why he could not tell some of his brothers and sisters the truth about me. I also wondered why I was so acceptable to him and not the others. The bottom line was that he did not have the courage to tell anyone that mattered to him that I was illegitimate. It was for his own protection. He felt that he would have been lowering himself, in their eyes, if he had to declare my illegitimacy.