Authors: Anne Nolan
Now, as a mother myself, I find their decision to leave me in Ireland utterly incomprehensible. I know my mum found it a wrench, but she still agreed to it. Not so long ago, I spoke to my Aunt Teresa about being left behind and she said she'd told my mother that she thought it was disgusting. I was a little girl of eleven being abandoned by her whole family with just my mother's Aunt Lily to keep an eye on me. Lily did come and visit me and I loved her, but it felt so strange imagining my mum and dad and all my brothers and sisters living in another country in a house which I'd never seen and couldn't conjure up in my head.
Then, in the following October, without warning and just a month shy of my twelfth birthday, I was suddenly signed off. My mother put it down to my being cured at Lourdes, although I felt exactly the same as I did before I went there. My condition hadn't changed one jot but the doctors said I could leave the convalescent home. Heaven knows why. Maybe they thought it would be more beneficial for me to be reunited with my family. If so, no explanation was ever given for my release. I went to stay with Aunt Lily for a couple of days before her husband Alfie, and their daughter Trudie, came with me on the boat to Holyhead. Almost as soon as I arrived in England, I went to the Victoria Hospital in Blackpool for a complete medical check-up – my heart, my blood, everything. Apart from the deep-seated murmur, they could find absolutely nothing wrong with me, an opinion that remains the same to this day.
I hadn't been out of the four walls of the convalescent home for a year and a half, never mind the unfamiliarity of finding myself in an alien country. The drive from Holyhead seemed to go on for ever through a landscape where everything looked strange and foreign. I tried concentrating on what was going on inside the car in an attempt to anchor myself to something – or someone – familiar. I remember laughing at Trudie while she repeatedly licked her fingers and wet her hair as she put in rollers. I'd never seen anything like it. As we eventually reached Preston, the huge volume of traffic was at a virtual standstill, something I hadn't encountered before. I was so naive that, as we approached Blackpool, I was fully expecting to see an enormous black pool.
Uncle Fred's house was a redbrick semi and posher than where we'd lived on the Raheny estate in Dublin. It was in an area of Blackpool called Layton, some of which was quite smart and some a bit run-down. Uncle Fred's house was in the nicer bit. There was a small front garden and a little raised path leading to the front door. There were two living rooms downstairs and a long, narrow kitchen leading to a yard beyond. The three bedrooms were upstairs. One of them was Uncle Fred's, another was my parents' and Denise, Maureen, Linda, Bernie and I were all in the third. Tommy and Brian slept in the back lounge downstairs. There was also a bathroom and toilet.
The culture shock was acute. It was pandemonium.
On top of it all, it was odd being reunited with my brothers and sisters, very odd. Denise still tells a story about my mother saying to her something to the effect that she wouldn't be needed any more because I was coming home. She would no longer be the eldest daughter. What Mum meant was that Denise would be relieved of some of the duties of helping look after the little ones, but she was terribly hurt by this comment. That helped to explain, I think, why Denise seemed rather resentful of me when I got to Blackpool and was standoffish with me at first.
Generally speaking, my brothers and sisters seemed rather wild, all yapping and scrapping the whole time, almost like strangers to me for a while. They weren't mean to me, and they tried their hardest to include me, but I'd grown unused to the rough and tumble of family life and I'd missed out on so many shared experiences, especially those of Denise and Maureen, the two sisters closest to me. I was like a little mouse after all those months being shut away. My confidence had been sapped to the point where I almost didn't feel like one of the family. I felt very young for my age.
I realise now that I was shy in their company, which may be a funny thing to say about your own family but it was true. In time, though, I began to be rehabilitated back into family life. Activities that involved all of us were a real help. My dad was keen on Monopoly, so we'd have evenings when the whole family would play. Or we'd all join in card games: Snap or Rummy or Whist, or something called Uno. He always had time for us all. Sometimes, we'd sit and listen as he read us stories from the Bible.
It was alreadv the middle of the Christmas term, so everyone was at school, with the exception of Bernie who was still a toddler. For some reason, it was decided that I shouldn't start until the beginning of the new academic year the following September. It meant that I missed the first year of senior school, but maybe my parents were still concerned that I should be properly well again before I took on the demands of a full-time education in what was to me a foreign country. Not that I got any tuition from either of my parents in preparation for going to secondary school.
While I may have been timid to begin with, I was always strong beneath the surface and I started to come out of my shell. Soon I began to assert myself. On one occasion, we were in the park where there was a jazz swing, a large wooden plank that you could sit on as it swung back and forth. I was over the other side of the park on the swings. When I looked over to where Denise and Maureen had been playing, I saw a girl I didn't know ordering them off the jazz plank so that she could swing on it alone. I walked over and asked them what was going on. They pointed to the girl. 'She made us get off,' said Maureen.
I put my hand on the plank and stopped it from swinging. I turned to my sisters. 'Right,' I said, 'get back on.'
The girl said, 'No, they're not.'
I wouldn't back down. 'Yes, they are,' I said, 'and you're getting off
So she did and we had a fight. I pulled her hair and pushed her and knocked her glasses on to the ground. 1 picked them up, handed them back to her and then told her to push off. I'm not a naturally aggressive person, but I can't bear injustice, particularly when it comes to my own family. I'm a Scorpio, very loyal but with a sting in my tail.
I liked the weekends, and also when Denise, Maureen and Linda came home from school each weekday afternoon because they were company for me and we could play together, but the weekdays during term time dragged on endlessly. Between October 1962 when I arrived in Blackpool and the following September when I finally started at secondary school, I was stuck at home – at Uncle Fred's – every day. I'd do a bit of housework or watch TV or help look after Bernie. Mum had a job with a football pools company, but Dad didn't work during the day. He relied on the money he made singing in the clubs at night. So it was just him and me and Bernadette who wasn't yet two. With the house to himself, Dad had free rein to do what he wanted.
And that's when it began.
What happened to me at the hands of my father remains crystal clear in my mind and yet I can't remember the first time he started touching me. I think I know the reason for that. I was eleven, just about to be twelve, and I knew nothing about sex. This was the early sixties and, if sex education was taught in some schools, it certainly hadn't been in the convalescent home. Nor was ours the sort of enlightened family where a subject like that was openly discussed. My mother never told us when she was pregnant and I have no recollection (with the exception of her last pregnancy with Coleen) of her changing shape.
Whether what I'm going to describe was the first time or not, I don't know, but it was certainly typical of what happened. I can remember being in Uncle Fred's kitchen. There was an open fire which was lit because it was winter. Dad was sitting on a chair. He pulled me towards him and sat me on his knee. That wasn't something he'd ever done before, as he wasn't a demonstrative man, but I can't say it rang any alarm bells in my head.
It was cosy in there and I thought my father was merely wanting me to curl up and have a little snooze. Everyone was still keeping an eye on me because of my medical history and because I was still getting aches and pains in my legs and I'd been told that I had some sort of a heart murmur. It seemed natural that I should be encouraged to take a rest during the day.
I relaxed against his body, my head tucked into the nape of his neck. He started stroking my hair with one hand and then he put his other hand between my legs. He was stroking me down there and saying soothing words. I wasn't sure what was going on, but I don't remember feeling awkward. He was being so reassuring, telling me how special I was to him. Then I remember him saying that, because I'd been away so long from the family, he wanted to do something nice for me. I trusted him. He was my dad. It must be OK. Maybe this was something other dads did with their daughters.
That's perhaps the wickedest aspect of it all: he played on my ignorance, my innocence. It's difficult to be precise about every detail of what went on because this was a journey on my part into uncharted territory. I can remember the physical sensations he was unleashing in me, but I couldn't have any idea what was happening to his body. As an adult now, I can only assume that he must have had an erection because otherwise it wouldn't have made any sense, but, at the time, I didn't notice whether or not he'd become hard for the very good reason that I'd never seen a grown man naked. I wouldn't have known what happened to his penis when he was aroused. Also, he hadn't undone any of his clothing, so I couldn't see that part of his anatomy. However, on subsequent occasions, he began moving me around on his lap at the same time as stroking me between my legs, a pretty clear indication to me now that I was being used to bring him to orgasm.
My father didn't speak one word while this part was going on and nor did I. My overwhelming reaction was one of puzzlement. I remember thinking to myself: 'Why is Dad doing this?' He continued to gently move me back and forth in his lap, his hand still between my legs as his breathing became heavier. I wasn't frightened, just a bit confused. I didn't struggle to get away from him. I let him carry on and then, suddenly, without warning, he stopped. He lifted me off his knee and then got up and walked from the room without a word.
A couple of days later, it happened again and then the day after that. By now, I was beginning to feel the first unformed stirrings that this was something unnatural. It wasn't yet as strong as revulsion, for the good reason that I was ignorant about what was really happening, but buried somewhere deep in my subconscious mind was the dawning realisation that my father was doing something wrong. Why otherwise did I instinctively know to keep it a secret? Dad had never once asked me to. If I'd thought this was something that fathers and daughters often did together, I'd have mentioned it to my mum or I'd have asked Denise or Maureen whether he did it with them. But I told no one.
It didn't happen every day and, of course, never in the school holidays because all my brothers and sisters were in the house then, but when it was just my dad, me and Bernie, it was a fairly regular occurrence, almost every weekday by the end. And I began to enjoy it. It makes me feel so guilty having to admit that, but so angry, too. He never referred to it as such but my dad's 'special treat' started giving me a pleasant sensation. What a terrible violation of a vulnerable child! All that followed – and we had a fabulous career as the Nolans – is tainted by what he did to me. He killed stone dead the unquestioning love a daughter should feel for her father. I love my mum unconditionally. I feel nothing for my dad.
To this day, I'm convinced my mum knew nothing of any of this. I think it might have killed her if she had. She never once asked me any leading questions or dropped any sort of hint that she suspected something might be going on. If she did know and was in denial, she must have been an extremely accomplished actress. But my mum wasn't like that. Her emotions were always on the surface, which is why I'm sure – although I cannot, of course, prove it – that she was entirely unaware of the dark deed going on under her roof. I was never tempted to tell her, though. For a start, I was still getting to grips with whether something bad was happening. But this was all mixed up with a simultaneous feeling that somehow I should be feeling guilty about what my father was doing to me. It all seems clear cut enough now. But I was a child of twelve at the time and not a very sophisticated one at that.
There was never any penetrative sex, but abuse is abuse. This adult was bringing himself to orgasm – not that I understood what that was – day after day and using me, a naive child, as the means to achieve it. Also, in time, he was bringing me to orgasm, too. I'm certain that was entirely-incidental to him – he was only interested in his own pleasure – but to achieve that by masturbating your own child is unforgivable.
The routine never varied although he did sometimes try fondling my breasts, such as they were, but I never liked that and would push his hand away. I didn't say anything – neither of us ever spoke – but I do remember he laughed the first time he tried to do it. I didn't like that, which may explain my reaction, but, to this day, I don't really understand why I let him caress me between my legs but recoiled from the idea of him touching my breasts. He never kissed me, though.
My body must have got used to what was happening because I'd reach orgasm more and more quickly. My own father had awakened me sexually, a thought that still fills me with utter revulsion now that I can understand its full implications. He never hurt me, never slapped me around, but in some ways I wish now that he had, because that would have frightened me and I'd have known that what he was doing was wrong. I might even have said something to my mother. As it was, this was our little secret, an apparently gentle and loving act that seemed to please him and didn't upset me at the time. Only later was I able to see it for what it was.
In time, he started getting bolder. When he was moving me around on his lap, his breathing seemed to change; it was more urgent now and even heavier. That frightened me a bit and puzzled me, too. My dad had allowed me to think that he was giving me a pleasurable feeling. Was he getting pleasure out of it as well? If so, that didn't seem right, although in a way I couldn't quite articulate. I was gradually growing up and the doubts were starting to creep in. I began wondering why I made a point of deliberately not discussing what my dad was doing to me with anybody else. Why was I so determined to keep it quiet? Why wasn't I telling my mum that my dad was doing something to me that I really liked? Surely, that was some sort of subconscious recognition that this was a dirty thing? Slowly, the feeling began to take root that this was something we shouldn't be doing.
The memory of that game when the little group of seven-year-olds undressed for each other would come unbidden into my mind. I'd been told in no uncertain terms by my mother that what we'd been doing, however innocently, was wrong. I never saw my father naked, but by now he was putting his hand inside my knickers, stroking my vagina with his fingers. I'd learned from that childhood experience never to let anyone else see that private part of my body, not even my mother – and yet my dad was letting me think it was all right for him to put his fingers inside me. I was in turmoil. If Dad was doing what he was doing, it must be all right, I reasoned. He was my father. He loved me. But no, it couldn't be OK, could it? I remembered my mum had given me a good whacking for taking my clothes off and getting ready to parade naked in front of a little boy. These were called my private parts, she'd explained, and with good reason.
That childhood transgression, one that thousands of other children must have indulged in almost as a rite of passage, now assumed more significance than it might otherwise have done. What was my own father doing, touching me like that? I didn't have the definitive answer but, instinctively, I knew that this was worse than a childhood prank. Much, much worse.
Although my parents had no problem making babies, my impression was that theirs wasn't a particularly highly charged physical relationship, although I can't know what went on behind their bedroom door. I don't think my mother would ever have denied him sex – she adored my father – but it just wasn't in her nature to flirt with him in front of her own children, and Dad was much too enclosed, too buttoned up, to be so free with his feelings. However, for a long time I've had my suspicions that he was a serial adulterer. He had enough opportunity. He'd be away singing solo spots in clubs and I know women found him attractive. I'd seen that with my own eyes when I'd visited various clubs. They were always buzzing around him. Nor was he swatting them away. Given that he was prepared to pleasure himself using me as a means, I can't believe he didn't grab whatever chance presented itself for sex with anyone willing and available. Any female must have seemed fair game to him, but this is not something I can prove.
I want to think and hope that he never subjected any other young girls to what he put me through, but I have no way of knowing. I think he was slightly obsessed with me. I was his eldest daughter. I was the first to grow into a young woman before his eyes and under his roof. That doesn't for a moment excuse his actions, but it may go some way to explaining them. What it doesn't tell me is whether the incestuous acts that he performed on his twelve-year-old daughter meant that he was also a paedophile outside the home. Certainly, no whisper of that has ever reached my ears, but then, he was clearly able to keep his true nature hidden. In some ways, he was like two different people. He could be so warm and wonderful. He'd be the one we'd show our work to when we got back home from school. He was the one who'd taken us to the seaside at Bray when we were young and bought us fish and chips on the promenade. My mum was part of it all, too, but he took the initiative in all things. He was the boss, the one who ran the household. I might not have been comfortable with what had happened when we were alone together but he was still my dad.
Unlike most men of his generation, he would help bath the babies and change their nappies, and I truly don't believe there was any sick motive behind that. He was simply helping my mother and enjoying being part of family life. He drew the line at some things, though. It was Mum who used to do all the dirty work of going to the pawn shop when we lived in Dublin to get money to buy us shoes, and she was the one who'd scour the second-hand shops for clothes for us kids. We were poor because there were so many mouths to feed, although I can't honestly say I remember having a deprived childhood. There was just never quite enough money to go round.
Later, he used to drink heavily – whisky and brandy were his favourite tipples – but, back then, he didn't have that excuse – if you can ever have an excuse for what he did, for molesting me. What he did, he did stone cold sober, and it seemed to be an almost daily requirement of his during that period when he had me to himself. I still have so much pent-up anger about what he did. To this day, I hate him for making me feel guilty when I discovered the true implications of his actions, but, thinking logically, I tell myself that I didn't know any better and that it was a nice feeling, which is why, in my innocence, I didn't try to stop him.
That period of almost a year in Uncle Fred's house, before I started attending secondary school, was when I was subjected to a barely broken time of sexual abuse. Once I began school, nothing was ever like that again, mainly because my father simply didn't have the opportunity. But that didn't mean he stopped trying.
I don't know how he could look at me and, more especially, at himself after he'd done the things he did. It was as if he could put the parts of his life in separate compartments. I distinctly remember we were all watching a programme on child abuse on the television. 'How on earth can people do something like that?' he said. 'It's just plain disgusting.'
And I was thinking, 'Am I making this all up? Am I dreaming?' But I knew I wasn't making any of this up. I knew I wasn't dreaming.
I still don't understand how I could have kept my silence about everything my father had done to me. Part of the explanation, I suppose, is that I was frightened of how he'd react. I didn't fear physical violence at his hands – that wasn't his way – but he was a powerful and persuasive man. Who was going to believe this teenage girl when he dismissed, as I knew he would, my accusations as mere fantasy? Anyway, if I'd endured months and months of sexual abuse in Uncle Fred's house, why had I never said anything to anyone; It would have made no sense. The fundamental reason why I protected my father's grubby secret was that I was scared of him.
I was terribly unhappy and unable, however foolish that may sound, to find a release for my unhappiness by unburdening myself on anyone else: my mother, my Aunt Teresa, one of my sisters, a friend. So I tried as hard as I knew how to fill my mind with positive thoughts. They didn't entirely obliterate what had happened – how could they? – but it is possible to separate different aspects of your life. Otherwise, you'd go mad. That didn't mean I found it easy to deal with; it was particularly hard when I was on my own or lying in bed at night, turning it all over in my mind.