That night, I climbed into bed feeling more terrified than ever. There was simply no escape. Even if I ran screaming from the bed when Daddy got in, Mammy would send me back and tell me not to be such a silly bitch. I knew that now, so what could I do?
A great idea came to me as I trembled in the dark. What if I lay with my head at the opposite end of the bed? It would be harder for Daddy to reach me, and maybe he would give up and leave me alone.
I was shaking so much I could hardly shuffle down the bed. I curled into the tiniest ball possible and pressed myself against the wall, hoping maybe he wouldn’t even see me. I clung on to that thought for hours as I lay there shivering, waiting for him to come home.
The key in the lock startled me as usual, but I was sure my plan would work. It was a fine plan. Daddy would leave me alone. He might not even see me!
Moments later, I felt the mattress ripple as Daddy got under the bedclothes. A wave of cold air swept over me. I was curled up so tightly I could feel my own hot breath on my chest and fingertips, as I had my hands balled up in front of my face like a little mouse.
Something sharp dug into my leg. It was Daddy’s toenail spiking in my shin. I felt it dig in again. It wasn’t an accident. He was kicking me hard.
‘Get here now!’ he growled. I couldn’t move. I was too scared, but he was still kicking me, and there was a strange pulsating feeling in my legs.
‘Get here now!’ He sounded even scarier this time, and the fear jolted me to my knees. I crawled to the top of the bed, crying and struggling.
Daddy’s arms felt like they were all over me. He was trying to unfold me and turn me around to face him, but I didn’t want to look at him. I kept myself rigid and curled up, shaking my head and saying, ‘No, Daddy. Please, Daddy, no!’ I felt his grip on my arms loosen, and the mattress rippled again. He was out of the bed!
I panted for air. I could breathe again. I could hardly believe it. I’d got rid of him, but I didn’t dare move. Seconds later, I heard his belt buckle clink and the sound made me catch my breath again. Surely he wasn’t going to beat me? No, one thing was certain: he never beat any of us kids in our beds.
I felt the cold leather across my chest now, but he hadn’t hit me. It was tar black in the room and I couldn’t make out what was happening. What was he going to do with the belt if he wasn’t going to beat me?
Next I felt the leather shift across my back, and then the buckle tighten on my chest. He had tied his belt around my arms and chest.
‘Try struggling now!’ he snarled, climbing on to me and hurting my whole body. As always, the pain was unbearable, but I had to endure it. There seemed no way out. It seemed worse than ever, because I was tied up like a prisoner. I cried myself to sleep after many hours. He left me tied up all night, and in the morning the buckle had left a deep imprint in my chest, reminding me of the horrors of the night before. I struggled and wriggled free when he undid it, but inside I still felt like a prisoner.
During the daytime, whatever the day brought, it felt as if everything I did was spoilt by memories that flashed in my head, reminding me what Daddy did in bed. He frightened me and hurt me so much I couldn’t ever stop thinking about it or worrying about what was to come.
I had always loved escaping from the house to play on the street, yet everything I did felt tainted.
The boys mostly played football, but sometimes we would all hold hands in a circle and play ‘The farmer wants a wife,’ ‘Little Sally saucer’ or ‘Ring a ring a rosie’.
We played skipping-rope games too, like ‘I’m a little girl guide all dressed in blue’, using a rope begged off our neighbour. It was such a happy-go-lucky song, but how could I sing like I didn’t have a care in the world? I was sore and scared. I had an itchy head and dirty nails and scruffy clothes. I’d love to be a little girl guide all dressed in blue, but I knew I never would be. I was Daddy’s slave, and that was all I was ever going to be.
The egg man called every week and told us the eggs could talk. I’d be in stitches as he put on silly voices and made the eggs dance around, saying: ‘Good day to you! How are you this fine day?’ I wished Daddy would make me laugh like that, but he never did. He just made me cry.
Once the rag-and-bone man came down the street on his horse and cart shouting, ‘Any old rags, any old rags!’ like he always did.
In exchange for bits of old cloth and materials he would give us a brightly coloured balloon. Normally, I had nothing for him, but I hated Daddy so much that day I gave the rag-and-bone man one of his best shirts, in return for three huge balloons.
I didn’t care if I got a beating. Nothing could hurt me as much as Daddy hurt me in bed, or as much as Mammy hurt me by ignoring what was going on. I might as well have a bit of fun, and for a few minutes I did, as I ran down the street with my three red balloons dancing behind me. Moments like that stopped me going mad, I was sure.
My ninth birthday was coming up, but I didn’t expect it to be special. Martin’s birthday was just a couple of months before mine, and Mammy had sent me to the Golden Gift shop in the village to buy him a yellow truck and a big card. ‘Martin’s my favourite child,’ she told me. ‘Make sure you get a great big card!’
‘It’s my birthday next week,’ I informed Mammy one afternoon. I knew it was in October. I’d remembered from the year before.
‘No it isn’t,’ snapped Mammy, without looking up at me. She was making the beds, and it had become her routine to ask me to help her make them in the afternoons, after Granny had called round for a cup of tea at 4 p.m.
‘You’re wrong. You’re lying,’ she snarled.
I knew Daddy kept all the birth certificates downstairs in a box in the dresser. I wasn’t going to let Mammy get away with this. She didn’t have a clue about dates, because she couldn’t read or write, and we had no calendar or diary, but I ran downstairs defiantly and pulled the box out. I found my certificate at the bottom of the pile, and I was right. It was my birthday next week.
‘See, Mammy, I wasn’t lying! It is my birthday! Can I have a present like Martin…’
She didn’t answer me, and so I carried on poking my nose around in the dresser. Mammy kept her photo album in there, and she looked through the pictures quite often, adding little keepsakes. She liked to keep a lock of hair from dead relatives and weird things like that.
I leafed through the book quickly, in case Mammy went mad if she saw me. The album fell open on a photograph of me and Esther. Mammy had drawn a big red heart around Esther’s head, and scrawled a thick black cross over my face.
Mammy walked up behind me and made me jump. ‘Why have you done that, Mammy?’ I asked nervously. I wasn’t really that shocked, because Mammy had told me lots of times I was her least favourite child, but it still hurt me deeply.
‘I did that because you’re an evil bitch, Cynthia Murphy! You’ve got the devil in you - didn’t you know?’ she taunted.
I didn’t react. I’d heard it all before. I simply showed her the birth certificate and told her I was right about my birthday. ‘Look, I didn’t lie. Please can I have a present?’
‘No,’ she barked, ‘you cannot! Nosy little bitch. Here’s a few shillings to get yourself a card, but that’s your lot. Bring me back every scrap of change.’
I raced to the shop, glad to escape, and picked out the prettiest and most expensive card I could afford.
When I got home Mammy held out her hand for the scraps of change and told me to write in it myself: ‘Happy Birthday to Cynthia.’ She’d made me do that before and I never thought too much about it. This time I stared at the words blankly. They meant nothing at all, except how little my mammy thought of me.
Daddy went mad the moment he got home. ‘Who’s been at the certificate box? Get here, you!’
I was wearing a knee-length skirt and ankle socks, and before I even saw it coming Daddy’s leather belt was splitting the skin open on the backs of my legs like they were ripe tomatoes bursting in the sun.
‘Please stop! Mammy, tell him to stop,’ I panted, scrabbling at the sofa to stop myself hitting the floor. Mammy just laughed.
‘Why should I?’ she asked coldly, watching with her arms folded as Daddy shoved me to the ground when he’d finally run out of breath.
I looked at the card above me on the mantelpiece and cried. It wasn’t worth it, it really wasn’t.
My Confirmation was coming up. It was a huge occasion in every Catholic child’s life, but I found it impossible to look forward to it. I never got my hopes up about anything any more.
The Bishop of Dublin was coming to the village. I got new socks and a new dress - the first since my First Holy Communion - but my heart barely fluttered when I tried them on.
My head felt thick and heavy, like it did after I drank the cider. I had nasty thoughts and images invading my mind all the time. In my mind’s eye I could see Daddy’s black fingernails. I could see him coming closer to me in bed, and I could see myself wrinkling my nose when I smelled his foul sweat.
The images popped into my head at school and in church, and when I played with my friends in the street. Why did he do that to me? Why did he hurt me so much?
Things always went wrong for me. They always turned bad. I always seemed to end up in tears. It was best not to build up my hopes, so I didn’t get excited about my Confirmation.
Peter and I were to be confirmed together. I was pleased about that, because we had to go to the altar in pairs of boys and girls holding hands, and it would be less embarrassing holding hands with my brother than with another boy.
Before I made my Confirmation, I had to take ‘the Pledge’, which meant I promised hand on heart never to drink alcohol.
I wondered if I should confess to the priest that Mammy already gave me cider, but I immediately thought better of it. Instead, I stuck to the same invented confessions every week, telling fibs about stealing and cursing, and then being chastised by the priest and Mother Dorothy for my fictitious sins. I actually came to enjoy seeing the pair of them explode with rage at my repeated audacity.
It was all very confusing. Mammy and Daddy drank every day, yet they were ‘good Catholics’. At least that’s what Mammy told me, and they must be because they had a picture of the Pope on the wall and holy statues on the mantelpiece. Drinking alcohol couldn’t be that big a sin. Mammy even put whiskey and sherry in the younger kids’ bottles to get them to sleep at night.
I took ‘the Pledge’, then went home to witness Mammy drinking glass after glass of sherry, forcing me to drink cider before she sent me to bed and ranting at my father when he came stumbling in from the pub.
It didn’t really make any sense. Grown-ups seemed to live by a separate set of rules to us kids. Maybe now I was getting older I would start to understand their rules more. Maybe that would make my life a bit better? I hoped so but, deep down, again, I didn’t really believe it.
Chapter 9
Scarlet Ribbons
I loved it when Granny came round for a cup of tea. She came at 4 p.m., and it was my favourite time of day.
‘Mammy, Granny’s here! Have you finished makin’ the beds?’ I shouted up the stairs. Mammy was still in bed, but that was my secret message to her to warn her Granny was here and she needed to come downstairs.
While Mammy threw on her dress and a pair of saggy ankle socks, Granny and I drank hot, sweet tea. Granny had brought me a juicy pear and cut the black bits off for me, and I gobbled it down in three mouthfuls. I sat by her legs and begged her to tell me the story of how the Black and Tans used to knock on her door for a meal. It was one of my favourites and I knew it off by heart, but I got Granny to repeat it.
‘Well, Cynthia, the Black and Tans brought me food, and then I would use it to prepare a lavish meal for them,’ she explained patiently. ‘To tell the truth, the food had probably been stolen from a local store, but I never let on I knew anything about that!’
She leaned her rosy cheeks down towards me, and I could see her blackened teeth as she spoke. ‘D’ya know what, Cynthia?’ she whispered. ‘I hated the Black and Tans, but they always left us plenty of food after those dinners! We were so poor, and our children so hungry, that I would pray to God to send them knocking on our door!’
I laughed and laughed, and when we’d finished our tea I begged Granny to let me walk her home so I could be with her longer. Sometimes she let me come in, and she played me her accordion or showed me how to do an Irish jig.
‘Mammy, is it OK if I walk Granny home tonight?’ I asked hopefully.
‘Not tonight, Cynthia,’ Mammy said. ‘I need you to help me finish the beds.’
I sighed and felt sad when Granny left. Mammy was already back upstairs.
‘Come straight up and help me now, Cynthia,’ she shouted. I couldn’t tell her mood from her voice, and I felt a bit worried. Was she angry with me? I wasn’t sure.
As soon as I walked into the front bedroom, Mammy marched over to the bed I often shared with Daddy and pulled the bedclothes off in a fury. My heart sank. She was in a bad mood, and I was about to find out why.