Scars that Run Deep (13 page)

The man introduced himself as Melvin, and asked me if I wanted a supper of tea and toast. I hadn't eaten for eight hours, and was very grateful for all the kindnesses he was showing me. Melvin called to me to get into bed and he would serve me supper there. It was a measure of how naive I was that I didn't think anything was unusual.

As I was getting undressed, Melvin appeared with the tea and toast, and I jumped into bed, embarrassed that I was almost naked. He placed the tray in front of me: buttered toast, strawberry jam, a pot of tea and two cups, and a tub of Vaseline. It never dawned on me to ask what the Vaseline was for.

Melvin quickly undressed and got into bed. I started to feel worried. It struck me that no one in the world knew where I was. I froze as he started to rub Vaseline all over my bottom. When he tried to penetrate me, I started to scream, and he quickly backed off. He explained to me that he had assumed that I knew what he wanted when he picked me up at the
train station. Thankfully for me, he now realised that I had very little experience of the world, and he backed off.

The next morning I woke up to the smells of coffee, bacon and eggs. After we ate, Melvin dropped me off in Piccadilly, and his car sped away as soon as I closed the door. Once again I was alone, and I swore at Mando for leaving me the way he did.

I soon found myself at a bakery, Lyon's of Cadby Hall in Hammersmith, where I was hired on the spot to work six nights a week. They also recommended a boarding house for me. It was clean, had a nice view of London, and I found that I was settling in to work and my new life quite well. I even met Stewie at a dance in the Emerald Ballroom. He told me that he had found his parents and discovered that he had three fine sisters. I felt over the moon for him.

Stewie wasn't the only ex-Artaner I met. In fact, I was even working with one: Oxo, the great escape artist.

The first real contact I had with Oxo was early in February 1952 when I went to work in the refectory. Oxo had tried to escape many times, and had been caught many times. For that he was stripped and whipped with a long, hard leather until his bottom was raw and bleeding, or beaten on the soles of the feet, and had his head shaved, but instead of stopping him from leaving, it just made him more determined to escape.

I liked Oxo a lot – he took me under his wing when I arrived in the refectory. I admired his determination to escape from Artane, even though I never would have had the courage myself.

The day that Oxo escaped Artane for good, Stewie, the Burner and Jamjar staged a diversion by pretending to fight at tea one night. The fight instantly brought all nineteen divisions to their feet, and the noise of 900 boys stamping their hobnail boots on the rustic red-tiled floor and beating the table was overpowering. I prayed that Oxo would make it to London, and that I would see him there someday. I knew that if I had only half of Oxo's steely courage I also would have been scaling the walls to escape from Artane.

Oxo told me his story over many nights working in Lyon's bakery in London. He told me he had made his way to London after his last escape from Artane. As we sat in the bakery canteen night after night I listened to him reliving Artane. I began having nightmares again as we talked about marching to Mass at twenty to seven every morning, through hail and rain, and on to breakfast which consisted of a quarter of a loaf of bread, an ounce of margarine and a mug of tea. I wondered if a time would ever come when I would be able to forget Artane.

Oxo told me how, before he fled for good, he had escaped from Artane and gone home, only to be brought
back by his own mother. ‘Well, you see, after the first time I ran away, my Ma convinced me to go back, promising she would see to it that the Brothers would take it easy on me. She convinced me they would, so I went back with her. They promised her that they wouldn't hurt me, but once me Ma was gone, the bastards dragged me by the hair across the parade ground and let dozens of boys beat me. Then, as before, I was shaved and this time the bastards stripped me naked and sadistically flogged me. I could feel the blood run down my buttocks, down my legs, across my toes – the pain I suffered! You know, Paddy, I couldn't shit for a week after the beatings, my arse was so cut up. But I wasn't going to be bested, and when I got the chance, I scarpered.'

There was a real sense of sadness about him as he continued, ‘The bastards never got me again. They taught us to hate England, but I got away, Paddy. I love England and what's more, the people here are more Christian than the Christian Brothers could ever be. Sure, they don't go to bloomin' Mass every morning, but so what?'

Oxo paused, and I could see the tears well up in his eyes as he told me that he couldn't forgive his mum for sending him to Artane in the first place, and sending him back after he escaped. ‘I never returned home to me Ma and, what's more, I have not seen her since.'

In December I was feeling very homesick for Ireland, and working nights was starting to affect my health. One night I was at work when I felt peculiar. I was working on a huge travelling oven when I suddenly collapsed. I was taken to hospital, where I spent ten days. The doctors told me to give up the night work, and also the bakery trade. If only I could, I thought. While I was resting in hospital, I had plenty of time to think about what I needed to do next. London had been a hell of an experience, I was treated well at work and I was earning plenty of money. But I was longing to be in Dublin, in my own Ireland, in Bridie's place – sitting by the embers, soaking in the craic – and to find someone like Noeleen or Isabelle to communicate with. ‘If only,' I thought. Meeting a girl was all desperately part of what I wanted. Finding her was one thing: holding on to her would be a real problem for many years to come because of my overpowering total lack of experience of dealing with the opposite sex. Yet I had an overriding burning desire to learn. I was over-anxious to please the girls whom I dated. I assumed I was doing okay, while of course they left me without me ever knowing what I'd done wrong. I had done nothing – perhaps that was my problem.

WHILE I WAS
in London I kept in touch with the Mooneys and the Cashins. One day I was sad to learn that Bridie was moving shop from Fairview Strand to Macken Street, near Westland Row. ‘Blast,' I thought. ‘There goes another good lodging house for me.' However, I was delighted to learn that I would be welcomed home for Christmas if I could make it. Well, I made certain I would, and I never looked forward to Christmas as I did then.

I had saved most of the money I earned while I worked in Lyon's of Cadby Hall, and by the time Christmas came I had saved a few hundred pounds. It was easy to earn good money then, and lodgings were cheap. I was working over sixty hours a week at night, which left me with little time for enjoyment. I quickly realised that machines had taken over from the skills of the baker. All the good was taken away by the fact that anyone could get a job in Cadby Hall as mere machine operators.

I came out of hospital about the twentieth of December. All I was concerned about was getting back to Dublin; and I was blessed to get a standby fare on an early morning flight when some passenger failed to turn up.

It was the homeliest Christmas I've ever had. The Cashins were to me what love and warmth were all about. While I was with them that Christmas I began to realise that it would be hard for me to stay away from Ireland for any length of time.

I was back working in the bakery that January. Eddie and Mando were also there. Mando explained to me why he left me in Liverpool, but I knew I'd never travel with him again. Eddie was about to leave to start a new bakery around the corner in Jim Behan's shop. Stranger things still were to happen. Matt returned to work with us. I always thought it was difficult for an ex-Artane lad to make the grade – always returning to their roots or the humble beginnings from where they began on leaving Artane. I got to like Matt much more now and began finally to understand him and his ways.

As I couldn't stay with the Cashins, I needed new lodgings for a few months before my travels. My boss Mick Bradley called me up to the house. ‘I want you to take this basket of breads up to the Pear Tree, Pat. They're mighty fine folk and who knows, they might even be able to get you fixed up in new lodgings for a while.'

I made my way that Sunday morning up to the old grocer's
shop, the Pear Tree, and old Mrs Moore gave me an address. ‘Molly will put you up, son. Tell her I sent you and don't you forget it.' As I turned to leave the colourful old grocer's shop, she called me in her loud southern accent. ‘By the way, you make the best buttermilk bread I've ever tasted. God bless you, son.'

Molly kept a fine homely lodging house. Her home cooking and baking was one of her many fine features. She was a widow in her sixties, her family married and living all over the place from County Dublin to New York and one of her two sons was out in Australia.

Molly was a happy, talkative woman and enjoyed a good chat with her lodgers. She liked to keep to the back of the old red-bricked, two-storey house, spending most of her time in the kitchen.

The wireless was her one great companion and she rarely ever switched it off except when at night she retired to her room upstairs. Molly could often be heard saying the Rosary at eleven o'clock each night, a sure sign to any lodger who was home to tiptoe and keep quiet and a nice way of reminding us to say our prayers. I knew Molly found faith and strength in that way.

I felt really at home in Molly's house and I settled in very quickly, but my luck was soon to change.

I had just got in for tea when I heard a knock on the front door. I got up to answer it. When I pulled open the door I almost swallowed my tongue. I couldn't believe my eyes – my past had caught up with me. Brother Simon Davaro was standing on the doorstep. He sounded anxious. ‘I was given this address. I was told I would get fixed up here.'

I was mesmerised, dumbfounded. He stared at me. I said eventually, ‘Yes, sir please come in. I'll inform the landlady you are here.'

In shock I told Molly that a man had come to see about the rooms. Molly said, ‘Tell him to sit down and to join you for tea. There is just the two of you and he can share your room. It is a double and you are only paying me for a single.'

I hurried back to finish my tea, not prepared to argue with her. I took my seat opposite Brother Davaro yet I found it too incredible to believe. I really thought I was imagining things as I sat facing a face from the past.

‘Don't I know you from somewhere,' he said, as he placed his cup down gently on the saucer.

I stared at him for a long few seconds. ‘Yes, you do Brother.'

He smiled when he realised I was a pupil of his. He reached out to shake hands and said, ‘I'm Simon Davaro. Pleased to meet you again and in nicer surroundings too.' He smiled. I shook my head, still in disbelief.

I became silent and curious for the remainder of the
evening tea, not knowing what to say. I decided to remain silent and to let Simon tell me his story. He told me that he worked in the city centre for a semi-state body in a nine-to-five job. He was reasonably happy with his position in the office working for the company. But otherwise he was rather subdued. His mind was somewhere else, I guessed.

I feared his presence in the same house, and having to share my bedroom with this man. Not just any man, this was Brother Simon Davaro, an ex-Christian Brother, this was the Sting, Angel Face. It was very confusing for me – on one hand I liked him, but I was scared of him and of his past.

While he sipped his tea I studied him for a long moment. I hoped he hadn't come here to relive his past and off-load his experience upon me. ‘I'll get more tea.' I stood up to go to the kitchen.

His voice was soft. ‘Thank you, Pat. Your presence helps to make me feel at home, so to speak.' My mind went blank. I was shocked, in awe, and confused.

Molly was standing by the gas cooker, a half-smoked cigarette between her lips, rollers in her hair held in with a net. ‘So you know each other, Pat. What's he like?'

‘He was a Christian Brother in Artane, not so bad though.' I lifted up the teapot. Molly blew out a lungful of smoke. It clung like a cloud to the high ceiling.

‘Are you scared of him, Pat?'

‘No, not in the way I feared most of them in Artane.' But I am apprehensive, sort of scared of him I guess.

‘He's a very good-looking man, Pat.' She faced me. ‘Tell me, don't be scared. I can tell that you've been abused. It shows in you. I'd say they had boys like you, Pat, for pleasure. They had the power, Pat, they interfered with a good many boys, Pat. Am I right?'

Her gaze was fixed on me. I could tell she was reading my mind. ‘Yes, ma'am, you're right. I better bring him in the tea,' I said, unsure of myself and what to say, or indeed how I should react, to this man from the dark, draconian past.

I was about to leave when she spoke again ‘They were an anti evil shower of bastards, Pat, unchristian, a lot of 'em. I know a lot about them, Pat.' She tapped out the butt in the ashtray. Her gaze met mine, her smile was soft. ‘Look, Pat, he's here with us. He won't harm you, I'll make sure of that. Any problem, come and tell me, okay?'

I thanked Molly and left with the pot of tea.

‘Sorry it took so long,' I said as I poured his tea.

‘That's okay, really. I'm used to waiting, Pat. I'm sure you know what I mean.'

I nodded in silent agreement. ‘I'd love to have an office job like yours, going to work at nine o'clock and home at six, every weekend off, no night work. Could you help me to get a position like that?'

‘To be honest, Pat, no. You'd need a degree. Without the education I'm afraid you'd be lost. I'm sorry to be so frank with you but it's true. You got no chance whatsoever of getting into the corporate jobs, or semi-state, such as the Civil Service, unless you got the education.'