Living With Evil (3 page)

I didn’t cause problems, I tried to avoid them. Yet I always seemed to end up in the most trouble. I couldn’t work it out. I’m sure I gave Mammy no reason to hate me.

Sometimes she was nastier to me when she had been drinking a lot. I knew drinking was her favourite pastime, and that other mammies didn’t stay in bed all day, but I didn’t blame the drinking for the way she treated me, because Mammy always drank. I didn’t know any different.

Daddy usually had a reason for beating me, but Mammy seemed to pick arguments out of thin air and turn the whole house upside down in a split-second.

It didn’t seem to make any difference what I said or did, she always had it in for me, and twisted everything I said into an argument. She’d smack me round the head all the time, so I was often scared of asking the most basic questions, even when I got older. Throughout my childhood, I thought twice about most things I said, afraid of her reaction.

‘Mammy, please can you buy some soap?’ I asked once. I picked my moment carefully, while she was looking calm, doing her knitting and listening to Johnny Cash on the radio.

‘What do you want soap for?’ she shouted, throwing her knitting needles down and clouting me round the ear. ‘You’re a dirty little bitch, who are you washin’ yourself for?’

I had no idea what she was on about, I just wanted soap because I didn’t want to be smelly. I didn’t understand how I could be called dirty for wanting to clean myself with soap.

Mammy used the word ‘dirty’ a lot. She also called me a ‘filthy whore’, and often told me that my private parts were ‘filthy’ parts of my body. She made a fuss of dressing or undressing in front of me, and if I walked into the bedroom when she was in her bra or nightdress, she shouted: ‘What are you looking at, you dirty bastard!’

Of all us kids, everybody said I looked the most like Mammy. People would see me in the local shops and say: ‘You’ve got to be Josie Murphy’s daughter - you’re the image of her!’

Later on, I would wonder if, for some strange reason, that was why she hated me so much. Did I look too much like her, despite my blond hair? Was that why she had it in for me? It didn’t make sense, but there had to be some reason.

I remember unsuspecting relatives and neighbours often used to say, ‘Poor Josie, she’s got her work cut out!’ They seemed to feel sorry for Mammy because she had lots of kids and not much money.

I didn’t really understand why they said she had her work cut out though, she barely did any work at all. I think they thought she was stuck in the house, working her fingers to the bone, but I knew that wasn’t true.

Daddy worked really hard though, and he seemed to be well respected too. Even though he was always dressed in shabby old clothes, he still made a good impression, like you couldn’t ignore him when he walked into a room. He didn’t scare me as much as Mammy, but I was still afraid of his temper, and I always tried not to make him angry.

He drank for hours every single night, but he didn’t get drunk as often as Mammy. And at least he worked; even at weekends he did extra jobs to get more money. He always put food on the table, as well as plenty of cigarettes and alcohol for Mammy, and in return he spent every night in his favourite pub lounges at the Club, McDonagh’s, Hogan’s, the Arches or the Queens in Dalkey. Mammy didn’t complain. I think she was glad to have him out of her sight.

Daddy was employed by the local Dun Laoghaire Corporation all his working life, first as a street cleaner and then as the clerk of the town hall. He wasn’t particularly badly paid, but we went without lots of things because he and Mammy chose to spend nearly all of the money on drink and cigarettes.

Daddy’s job seemed to give him some recognition in the community. Everybody knew him and seemed to like him, and they treated him like a big man.

‘Give my regards to your da!’ shopkeepers would call out as I walked by. ‘How’s your Daddy doin’? Tell him to call round and see me soon. I’ll see him for a pint in Hogans!’

Daddy used to regularly come home with things he had been given, and at Christmas we got huge joints of ham, a giant turkey, bags of coal, yet more cigarettes and cases of beer, sherry, port and whiskey, all from Daddy’s friends.

When she’d had a few drinks, Mammy loved to reminisce and tell colourful tales about the past and her courting days with Daddy.

I lapped up every word when I heard her describe how she used to dance the night away wearing glamorous dresses in the local dance halls, with Daddy swinging on her arm.

She said plenty of other things too - some I didn’t understand at the time, and some that turned out to be lies.

Over the years, I’ve pieced together the truth about my parents’ history. My mother was born in 1933 and christened Josephine, but everyone called her Josie.

She grew up with my Granny Mary O’Neill, three sisters, Ann, Mag and Cathleen, and a brother, Henry. Her dad died when she was seven.

She had my oldest brother, Joe, when she was seventeen, but she wasn’t thrown into an unmarried mothers’ home in disgrace, as young Catholic girls often were in those days.

Instead, she stayed at home with baby Joe, and Granny made quite a fuss of her, from what I hear. Mammy eventually got a job as a housekeeper for a rich family, which meant she was earning quite a bit of money to help pay her keep.

It wasn’t long before she was out drinking and dancing again, and she met my father on a night out in Dalkey.

They married when my mother was pregnant with my sister Esther in 1953, and she spent her ‘honeymoon’ in Holles Street Hospital giving birth.

My father, Peter Murphy, was six years older than my mother, born in 1927. Unlike her, he never once reminisced or even made the slightest reference to his past. As a child, all I knew was that he grew up in an orphanage with his two brothers and four sisters, but he never mentioned any of them, ever.

‘Tell me, Daddy, have I got cousins on your side of the family? I’d love to meet them - can’t you tell me where they are?’

His reaction was the same every time. ‘Will you shut up asking? I can’t remember. The past is in the past and leave it at that.’

He wouldn’t even tell me what date he was born, so it felt as if he had no past or history behind him, and as soon as a day was over in his life he never spoke about it again. Sometimes I wondered if he’d been dropped off at our house by aliens.

Now I know he was placed in a Catholic orphanage from the age of two and a half, along with his siblings, after my grandmother died. My mother once said my father was sexually abused in the orphanage, but he refused ever to talk about it.

Little wonder my father never discussed his family background.

I’m sitting in the big blue cot in the front bedroom. Peter is wedged up next to me, and we’re both sucking on a bottle. It’s one of those banana-shaped bottles with teats on both ends, and we’re both sucking away like mad, trying to get more milk than the other. The milk tastes sweet, and we can’t get enough of it. We’re glugging away like demons, pulling silly faces at each other and making slurping sounds. When the milk has all gone we suck air for a while, making funny squeaking noises, and then everything goes very quiet.

We sit with our legs dangling through the bars of the cot, wondering what to do next. My tummy feels warm under my jumper, but my bare feet are stinging with the cold. I’m nearly four years old, and Peter is six.

The room is dark, even though we can hear the birds singing in the morning sky outside. The grey curtains are shut, and behind them the black blanket is firmly nailed in place. Mammy likes to sleep in the daytime while everybody else is out, and we know not to disturb her.

I peep over at her, lying in her double bed next to the cot. Her hair is splayed all over the pillow. I think it looks like golden threads, and I’d like to touch it, but I’m not allowed to touch Mammy. Even when she’s awake she doesn’t like me to touch her. I wonder what it would be like to hold her hand or sit on her knee. I’d like to try it, but I know she doesn’t want me to, because she always shouts something nasty or shoves me away if I get too close.

Her skin looks lily-white against the darkness of the room, and I think she looks pretty, like a lady on the telly, although she isn’t in a fancy bed. She’s lying on her side, with a brown overcoat piled on top of the covers. The sheets and blankets have hundreds of little holes in them and look very old. Some of them have blood on them. Mammy doesn’t seem to mind though. I never see her wash or change them.

The room smells horrible, as usual, much worse than our outside toilet. My jumper has the same smell, and so does the blanket in the cot and all the dirty clothes on the floor. Even my dolly’s hair has a stinky smell, and sometimes I can’t get to sleep because of the stench that hangs in the air after Daddy uses the bucket late at night.

There is a glass dish next to Mammy’s bed that’s piled high with ash and the end bits of cigarettes, and I can still smell the smoke from last night. It mustn’t smell that bad to Mammy though, because she never empties the bucket or the ashtray, even when they are full, and she always sleeps very deeply, like nothing bothers her at all.

I stare at her face. Some days her cheeks are red and puffy, but Mammy always puts bright-red lipstick on at night to sit in the chair and have a drink, or to do her knitting while she listens to country and western music or watches the news. This morning she’s still wearing her lipstick. It’s a little bit smudged, like the way it looked when I put it on my dolly once, but there are no sores spoiling Mammy’s face today, so that’s good.

There was a fight downstairs last night.

This one began like lots of others, when Daddy came in from the pub. It was very late when I heard his key in the lock, but I was still wide awake. I couldn’t sleep because my head was really itchy, and I couldn’t stop scratching it.

I felt scared when I heard the front door creak open, wondering what would happen. I held my breath, listening to see if Mammy and Daddy would start shouting or hitting each other.

‘You’re a selfish bastard!’ Mammy yelled, and my heart went cold. ‘You’re a good-for-nothing lazy bastard!’

I heard her race across the room into the hallway and hit Daddy lots of times with her fists. I think he slapped her across the face, because I recognized the sound it made from when Mammy slapped my face. ‘Fuck off, you mad whore!’ Daddy yelled. ‘Get away from me, you madwoman. Go back to your sherry.’

I didn’t want to hear any more. It made me so sad and afraid, and I wanted it all to stop for ever. Even though Mammy isn’t ever kind to me, and Daddy doesn’t seem to notice me, I want them to be happy. Then maybe I will be happy too.

I buried my head deep under my blanket, held my hands tightly over my ears and said a little prayer. ‘Please God, can you make everything nice and quiet? Amen.’

I think He might have heard me, because when I woke up, Daddy had already gone to work, and Mammy was fast asleep under the coat.

Now the house is ever so quiet. All I can hear is the birds and the rustling of trees in the breeze outside the window, and Mammy breathing deeply.

When I hear the rag-and-bone man outside, shouting, ‘Any old rags! Any old rags!’ I climb out of the cot and peep through a tiny crack in the side of the blanket on the window to catch a glimpse, making sure I don’t let too much light in and wake Mammy.

I scuttle around quietly in my bare feet, knowing full well that if I make any noise or knock one of Mammy’s holy statues off the sideboard by mistake there will be big trouble.

I watch the rag-and-bone man for ages, longing to run down the street after him. I see him give a little girl a bright-yellow balloon and wish I could have one too. Mammy won’t let me open the front door or go out on my own.

Sometimes we didn’t have enough money to pay the rent or the milkman, so Mammy never let any of us kids open the door, in case it was someone ‘knockin’ for money we don’t have’.

Even when I was allowed to play in the street with the older ones, all of us had to use the back door.

Today, I can see other little ones out for a stroll with their mammies, but my mammy never takes me anywhere. A neighbour goes by. She has lots of little kids but still looks like a teenager, she’s so fashionable in her patterned mini skirt with her hair all piled up. She’s holding hands with two of her children as they walk to the shops, all of them chattering and laughing.

Mammy doesn’t like her. ‘Look at her - she looks like an ol’ whore! A prostitute!’ she said the first time she ever clapped eyes on her. ‘No married woman should dress like that!’

I wondered why Mammy said that and what it all meant. The neighbour was a very nice mammy. I wished my mammy would get herself washed and dress up in nice clothes. I wished she would take me for a walk with her hair all done and talk to me and make me laugh, but she never once did. My mammy wore dirty dresses with cigarette ash spilled down the front, and she hardly ever left the house.

We had a television downstairs, but if anybody asked what was on, the answer was usually ‘on the bloody blink’. I wasn’t allowed to touch anything like that while Mammy slept. Sometimes Peter and I made up games with a couple of dolls that had been scribbled on with biro, or some old wooden blocks. We made the dollies whack and kick each other to pass the time.