I didn’t have a choice anyway. ‘Off you go, Cynthia! Now look after Aunt Ann, won’t you? Don’t go giving out any cheek! I’ll hear about it if you do!’
My heart sank when I realized I had to share a bed with Aunt Ann. She and Granny shared a bedroom in their tiny terraced house and Aunt Ann said I was to sleep in the same bed as her.
The bed had a mattress that had turned grey and saggy. When I climbed into it, I held my nose. All the bedding absolutely reeked and looked caked with dirt, even worse than our bedding at home.
I felt very tense lying in those filthy bedclothes as I waited for Aunt Ann to come to bed too. I started to fret and panic. Getting into bed with an adult made me feel wary. But Aunt Ann was my old spinster aunt. She wasn’t going to touch me, was she? Aunt Mag’s face loomed into my mind. Oh God, no! Not Aunt Ann as well! No, I was being silly. I was worrying too much, but I couldn’t help it. I was trembling, and my teeth were chattering with cold and fright.
Aunt Ann was in the bed now, wearing a ragged, grey cotton nightdress. My mind hazed over, because I felt something bad was going to happen. It did that a lot lately. My brain just seemed to freeze and close part of itself down. Aunt Ann was leaning over me now, her twisted features far too close to mine. ‘You are a dirty little bitch!’ she taunted. Her bad breath swamped me, and her teeth looked like they were covered in mould. ‘Let’s see how much of a dirty little bitch you are!’
She lunged at me and pawed at my chest and legs. Her wrinkled fingertips felt like sandpaper on my skin. I was shocked to the core. I felt like I was bolted to the bed, lying there motionless and powerless against this horrible, smelly woman who seemed to be enjoying making me sob huge tears into the sheets.
I stared at her dressing table while she touched me, desperately trying to take my mind off what was happening. Aunt Ann had perfume bottles, puff powder and sparkly pieces of jewellery. It looked pretty. I wished I was pretty, but I felt very ugly and very dirty. I felt like I would never get rid of her foul fingerprints on my body.
Aunt Ann did the same thing to me many more times over many more months. Telling Mammy would be a waste of time. I knew she would do nothing to help me, but one day I blurted out that I hated Aunt Ann. I just couldn’t face going round there again and being subjected to her torture. I told Mammy I hated the way Aunt Ann ‘beat’ me, but I was too embarrassed to tell her what else she did.
‘Why do people treat me like that?’ I asked. ‘It’s not fair, Mammy. Why me?’
‘Have you ever thought you must have done something bad to deserve it?’ was all Mammy said. Had I?
I tossed her words around in my head for days trying to make sense of them. They really upset me, and made me wonder if I really was as bad as Mammy said. I’d done nothing wrong. I was sure of that. But perhaps I shouldn’t be making such a fuss? Was I odd for not liking what Daddy did, and what Mammy had done to me, and now what my uncle and aunts were doing to me? I didn’t know. I really wasn’t sure. All I knew for certain was that things seemed to be getting worse and worse, and my mind seemed to be feeling foggier and foggier.
Mammy had started sharing her tablets with me when I said I had a sore head. I was very grateful, because my head hurt a lot.
I never got enough sleep, and when I drank the cider Mammy forced on me, it made my head bang even worse instead of helping me fall asleep.
The tablets were the ones Uncle Frank had given her in the big white tub. I saw her crush them up and put them in a sandwich for me once, and in a glass of milk, sometimes when I hadn’t even complained about a headache.
The tablets helped, I think. They made my head feel like soft cotton wool. When horrid thoughts came into my head, they seemed to dissolve in the fluff. I couldn’t think about them for very long, which was good.
Christmas was coming again. Every time I had a bad night with Daddy or a bad day with Uncle Frank and Aunt Mag, or Aunt Ann, it felt like another bit of my mind clouded over. I wanted to forget all the horrible things, but the way my head felt seemed to spoil the happy things too.
I wasn’t really bothered what presents I got, or how we might decorate the house. Granny took us to a party, held by a rich lady. I’d loved it last year, but this time I went through the motions, not really caring if I got the last seat in musical chairs or the last sausage roll. I didn’t know why I felt so strange. Maybe I was just growing up? Maybe that was why I didn’t giggle and play like the other kids?
I had heard that Mammy was having another baby, but I wasn’t excited at first. I was very worried about how we would fit another little one in the house, and how much extra work it would bring me.
One day she asked if I wanted to listen to the baby. I put my ear to her tummy, trying to hear a heartbeat, but I couldn’t hear a thing. She allowed me to put my hand on her belly to feel the baby move, and I was amazed when I felt a sharp little kick hit the palm of my hand.
It was incredible, and from that moment on I stopped worrying about how we would manage and started to count down the days until the new baby arrived. It was actually due on Christmas Day. I loved newborn babies, and I couldn’t wait to see this one. Christmas suddenly seemed a lot more exciting.
I had no idea how babies were made. I guessed it was one of those things only grown-ups talked about, and I didn’t want to make Mammy cross by asking her. It just seemed magical to me.
The big day was drawing very close now. Food and drink were arriving at the house daily, and Daddy won a giant turkey in a pub raffle, which he seemed to do every year.
I had the usual tussle with Daddy about getting him to hand over his money for my present, but I didn’t let it spoil things. Whatever nightmares happened to me in bed were pushed out of my head as far as possible too. Why should those horrible things spoil Christmas? I didn’t have to think about them all the time, did I?
Mammy was very big, her bulging tummy pushing up the front of her dresses so the hem curved up, making the skirt look a foot shorter at the front than the back. She’d bought a new black pram for the baby too, and I couldn’t wait for it to arrive.
I was disappointed when I woke up on Christmas morning, because the baby was still in Mammy’s tummy. Mammy had got all the dinner prepared the day before again, and she looked tired, and Daddy just stayed in bed.
When Mammy told me to take Daddy his dinner up, I thought I would faint. I instantly and vividly remembered what had happened the Christmas before, but I didn’t cry.
I pushed my feelings deep inside me, squashing and hiding them deep down. I walked up the stairs with the dinner like an obedient servant, my head all thick and heavy with dread.
There was a lightbulb in the bedroom, as a special treat for Christmas. I switched the light on, but Daddy boomed, ‘Switch it off - and come here!’
I hesitated, and the plate started to wobble in my hands.
‘Get here now, you!’ he growled. I put the plate down on the dressing table and got onto the bed.
His hands were on me now, pulling off my underwear while I flopped about like the yellow-haired rag dolly Mary was playing with downstairs. His eyes looked dead and his mouth was set in a snarl. Usually, it was very dark when he did these things, and even though I had switched off the light as instructed, the fact it was daylight outside and there was some light trickling through the side of the blanket on the window meant I could see Daddy clearly. It made everything seem more real and more menacing.
Now he was behind me, thank God. I didn’t have to look at his face as I lay frozen solid while he did what he wanted to do.
My bottom hurt, and I stared at the Christmas dinner going cold on the plate, trying to take my mind off the pain.
It felt more intense than ever and seemed to set my whole spine on fire. The food looked disgusting as the gravy glazed over it. I let my eyes glaze over too. I wanted to be in a foggy bubble. I wanted to be anywhere but here.
In the end, baby Michael didn’t arrive until 12 January 1971. He was an incredibly pretty baby, and my mammy proudly put him in the big black pram she’d bought for him. I was delighted to have a new baby brother and willingly threw myself into helping out with bottle feeds and changing nappies.
Not long afterwards, I found out my big sister Margaret was having a baby too. Margaret was seventeen, and seemed very grown-up and sophisticated to me. She had her baby girl in hospital in August that same year.
Daddy caused a huge row that night. He shouted at Mammy and told her Margaret had to have the baby adopted, which I think meant the baby had to live with somebody else. I cried in bed when I heard him say that. The baby was called Theresa, and I was longing to see her.
‘We’re not having another baby in this house - no way!’ Daddy bellowed. ‘There are already too many of us here. Michael is only seven months old!’
Mammy argued and wailed and pleaded with Daddy for three days and nights after she had been to visit Margaret and Theresa in hospital.
‘You’ve got to let the baby come home,’ she begged. ‘I’m not allowing that child to be adopted. Think of poor Margaret! Think of the child!’
The more Daddy argued, the more Mammy dug her heels in, until eventually she ran away for three days in protest.
The house felt calmer without her, and I didn’t miss her at all. It was a relief not to have her around, but I wanted Mammy to come back so she could keep fighting to have the baby brought home. It didn’t seem fair that baby Theresa couldn’t live with us.
Daddy sent me and Peter out to search for Mammy in the end, and we walked for miles before finding her, sitting down on the pier in Dun Laoghaire, smoking a cigarette.
‘Tell your father I’m not coming home until he lets poor baby Theresa home,’ she shouted. ‘Go on, tell him.’
Peter and I ran home anxiously with the news, knowing it would infuriate Daddy, but knowing we had to risk his temper, otherwise Mammy, Margaret and the baby might never come home.
‘This has gone on long enough!’ he roared. ‘I don’t want any more shame brought on this family. Tell your Mammy to come home - and the baby can come too!’
I will never forget the first time I saw Theresa. Margaret carried her home from hospital in a pink blanket, and I had to stand on the dwarf wall in the front garden to peep inside the bundle. My heart melted, and I fell in love with her instantly.
She was perfect, and I wished her arrival would bring good things. By now, I knew better than to get my hopes up, though. From the moment I saw her, I was afraid that her being there would cause more rows and trouble at home.
Chapter 11
Daddy’s Friends
‘Come on, Cynthia, we’re goin’ out!’ Mammy said, pulling me out of bed.
It was very dark in the bedroom. Black blobs danced around in my head. I must have been fast asleep, because I hadn’t heard Mammy come in. ‘Get dressed quick!’ she hissed.
‘Why, Mammy, what’s happening?’ I stuttered. I felt scared, yet I was still half asleep. I didn’t know where I was. Why was Mammy pulling me out of bed?
‘Your da is already up there!’ The black shapes stopped me from thinking properly. I wanted to wake up fully. I wanted to snap out of my sleep, but I couldn’t. My head felt fuzzy. My brain felt like a heavy iron ball slamming around, banging on my skull. The pavement was wet and the air felt damp. My legs were freezing and my eyeballs felt icy cold in my woolly head. Mammy was taking me somewhere. ‘Keep walking! Act normal!’ she said.
Mammy knew where she was going. ‘Daddy is already up there,’ she said again, breathlessly. It felt as if I was going through a dark tunnel. I didn’t argue, I just kept walking, feeling like I was sleepwalking through the streets.
‘We’re here! Here we are, Cynthia!’ Mammy said at last. I looked up and saw a creepy-looking building.
I’d never been here before. Why was I here now? Why did Daddy want me here with him in the middle of the night?’
I turned round to ask Mammy what was happening, but she had gone. She had pushed me in the door, and I was standing in a big, cold room on my own.
There were more dark shapes now, but they weren’t in my head. They were in front of my eyes. The shapes started moving and talking. ‘She’s pretty!’ one of the shapes said. ‘Who’s first then?’
Candles flickered, and I could see faces lighting up inside the black shapes. I recognized Daddy’s face, and there were lots of other men too; I could hear them laughing as they came towards me.
My whole head felt like a bulging black cloud now. I wanted it to explode. I wanted to cry and shout, but my body wasn’t working properly. When the men started touching me and passing me around, I felt like I was wading through concrete that was slowly setting around my limbs.
I couldn’t control my body at all. They seemed to be able to move me around however they wanted.
They lay me on a table and took turns to hurt me really badly while the others watched. They were smiling and enjoying themselves, but I was in agony. Couldn’t they see? I think I passed out.