Sins of the Mother (20 page)

‘Right,’ she announced. ‘You and the kids are coming to stay with me. No arguments!’

Thank God she made the decision for me. I didn’t have the strength to leave on my own. By now Agatha was twenty-six, a mum of one and living with a fella after separating from her husband.
We stayed with her for a while but when I got back after a few days Paul was full of remorse, tripping over himself to apologize.

‘It won’t ever happen again,’ he vowed. ‘I love you so much, Irene. I’m so, so sorry.’

And, fool that I was, I believed him.

So I carried on as usual, washing, pressing and laying out his clothes every day, making him his dinner and taking care of the kids. On the surface it looked like everything
was fine, except it wasn’t. Our marriage had become a grim perversion of the fairy tale I had imagined for myself. Paul was going out every weekend now and coming back drunk just to beat me
up. I learned to cover my face during these assaults – it was an instinctive thing but it didn’t always work. He sometimes left visible bruises or gave me a black eye. Occasionally he
apologized but often he didn’t bother. Six months into this destructive pattern I found out he was seeing someone. And once again, I was too ashamed to tell anybody.

My life had taken on a new nightmarish reality. It was a cycle of drink, violence and infidelity. Agatha knew what was going on but there was nothing she could do to stop it. We saw each other
once a week usually but she never mentioned the bruises – there was no point and, besides, where I lived it was normal to see a woman with bruises. That was just how some marriages were and
we all thought we had to stick with it for the sake of our children. That was what the church said anyway.

Now I would dread the weekend, knowing that he would be going out drinking and sooner or later he would be home to smash up our house and my body. Paul was a big guy and a boxer; I
couldn’t overpower him. If he was sober I could hold my own, but with a drink inside him his strength seemed to double.

I wanted to leave. I was desperate to take the kids and get out but the boys loved their father and I felt it was wrong to deny them the relationship. Still, I couldn’t bear the thought of
having any more children so I went on the Pill. I felt trapped and downtrodden. Now that Paul had a mistress to maintain, he stopped giving me money for the housekeeping. I had to get by as best I
could with just our welfare payments but it wasn’t easy and there were lean times when we had nothing but porridge for days on end.

Then I found out I was pregnant again. It was devastating – how could I bring another child into this terrible situation? There were times the violence got so bad I had to leave and a
couple of times I took the children with me, but somehow Paul always managed to get us back home. He was sorry, he was always sorry, and he promised me over and over that it wouldn’t happen
again. He promised me the baby would be a fresh start for us both, he said he would turn over a new leaf. But it was lies, all lies.

Anna was born on 23 December 1982 and the two boys were delighted with their new little sister. As for me, my heart melted once more for another innocent child, and I promised
to protect her for the rest of my life. But I didn’t know how I planned to do this – after all, I couldn’t protect myself any more from the daily beatings.

Paul went out the night before Anna’s christening and when he got back he laid into me with his fists again. He got up the next day and left, missing his own daughter’s christening.
I stood at the altar, trying to ignore the questioning, confused looks from my family and the priest. They all wanted to know one thing – where was the child’s father? But I had no
answers for them. And still I took him back, scared of denying my children a father, scared of being on my own. I felt trapped – in marriage, in poverty, in motherhood. Just like my mother
had been. Just like so many poor Irish women had been before me.

Not long after the christening we moved out of the flat and into our own council house in an estate outside the city centre. It was tiny and a bit like living in the Stone Ages because there was
no bathroom and the toilet was outside – but I loved it. Something inside me knew that this house represented a new start in my life, a way out of my marriage. The only way to bath the
children was by filling up the twin tub washing machine with water from the tap. It was a small house and very basic but I didn’t care. The moment I walked in, I knew that in this house I
would finally be happy. One day Paul got so drunk he put his foot through the glass of the front door. It woke the children up, who began to cry, and it was then that Justin, my eldest son, showed
me that we didn’t need Paul any more.

‘You should leave,’ he said to his father, in a voice far too mature for his years. ‘We don’t want you here and we don’t need you here any more. I’ll look
after Mammy and you can go.’

From that moment I knew my children needed a stable home life more than they needed a violent father. Shortly after Justin made his Holy Communion, Paul came home one Friday after work and told
me he was spending the night at his mother’s house as he was off to visit his brother the next day, who was in prison for robbery. Straight away I knew he was up to his old tricks.

‘If you leave now and you don’t come back tonight,’ I told him in a quiet, calm voice, ‘then don’t come back at all.’

‘Yeah, yeah . . . whatever!’ he said as he stomped out the door. He didn’t come back that night and the following morning I went into his wardrobe and got out all his clothes
then shredded the lot with a pair of scissors. Every last stitch of clothing.

Then I put all his shoes in a big pile in the back garden.

‘Hey, kids,’ I called. ‘Want to have a bonfire?’

I burned the lot.

Two days later Paul’s cousin came to collect his clothes for him.

‘Tell him to come himself,’ I replied.

‘He won’t do that, Irene.’

That’s fine,’ I sighed, then I went into the house and came back with two black bin bags full of the shredded clothes. There was no going back. This was it.

I borrowed a gun. I knew if he ever did come back, he was coming for my life. That first night, I sat at the upstairs window all night long with the gun. Thank God he never showed up!

As morning broke on a new day, I realized that, for the first time in years, I was free. Truly free. The following day I returned the gun.

Of course, it took a lot longer to shake off the fear that Paul would one day return to get his revenge and, for a year after that, every Friday night was spent sat at the window, waiting in
readiness. If ever he was coming to get me, I knew it would be on a Friday night when he always drank the most, and I had to be prepared for him.

Over the next few months the kids and me started to relax and enjoy ourselves. Slowly, my strength and confidence returned, though it was tough at first to make ends meet. One
thing I made sure of, my kids were always well fed, clean and wore decent clothes that fitted. It wasn’t easy to survive on £40 a week welfare – by the time all the bills were
paid I was usually skint so we had to make do with very dull food. We ate mostly porridge and stew that first year but I made every penny count and though we very rarely ate meat, there was always
enough to fill our bellies.

At night I still fought the demon, but I could never give in to the depression that threatened at times to overwhelm me. After all, these kids had nobody but me and I had promised them I would
never let them down. So I shrugged on my tough outer skin once more and hardened up. I was a single mother now, with all the social stigma that brought with it. I knew that people judged me, I knew
that they thought there was something wrong with me, but how could I convince them I’d done nothing wrong? It felt so unfair – my husband had been a philandering, violent drunk. Why was
I the one to pay with my reputation?

One thing was for sure, I wasn’t going to be scared or intimidated by anyone ever again. That man had nearly destroyed me but I’d finally found the courage to throw him out. I
wouldn’t be bullied or beaten down ever again.

A year after Paul left for good, we were offered a bigger council house near my mother’s place. Apart from the one obvious drawback of living near my mother, I didn’t feel I could
turn it down. Located down a quiet street, the new house had an indoor bathroom, toilet, three bedrooms and a garden, and it faced a park. I knew the children would be able to play out and have
friends. This would be a fresh start for all of us, I resolved, an opportunity to make our lives even better, and two days after signing the lease we moved in. That year, aged twenty-six and a
single mother of three, I enjoyed the first peaceful Christmas I had ever had.

15

IRENE AND MATT

A Connection
IRENE

‘Your kids have been throwing stones at my car!’ The big, muscular man stomped up the road, all pumped up and red in the face.

‘MUM! MUM!’ My boys Justin and Philip ran ahead of him, terrified. When they got to the front door they babbled over one another:

‘He says we threw stones on his car—’

‘But we never did—’

‘We saw who did it—’

‘It wasn’t us. It was that Gemma from number twenty-three.’

‘That Gemma. It was her.’

I cut them off. ‘I saw it too. Don’t worry – I know you didn’t do it. Now get inside. Let me deal with this.’

The kids didn’t wait another second, they dived into the house behind me and I stood on my doorstep, legs splayed apart, arms folded, poised and ready for the fight. This wasn’t the
first time I’d had to stand up for my boys and I knew it wouldn’t be the last. From the moment we had arrived on the estate my kids had been bullied, teased and used as scapegoats. We
were the only single-parent family in the street and nobody liked it – they saw me as a threat. Single mothers were nothing but trouble, that’s what everyone thought, and they assumed I
would bring gangs, crime and violence to their homes. It was ridiculous – and horrendously unjust. I was vilified just for refusing to live with a cheat who beat me black and blue every
weekend! From day one, I’d had to deal with my children coming home crying because other kids teased them for having no daddy. Now they were a target for the parents too? It wasn’t
right.

So I kept my eyes open – when the children played outside, I watched them. I wasn’t above punishing my children if they did something wrong but I wouldn’t have them getting
blamed for things they didn’t do. Today, I’d seen the little girl throwing the stones and I wasn’t prepared to let my children become the community punchbag. The man was at my
front gate now, shouting and swearing his head off. I recognized him as one of our neighbours from down the street.

‘Why don’t you keep your bastard kids under control?’ he yelled at me, arms flying all over the place. ‘Running wild! Little bastards, I’ll show them the back of my
hand, so I will! They need to be taught respect for other people’s property.’

I was calm when I spoke but I didn’t mince my words. ‘Please do not come into my garden. I’m warning you now – if you come up to my door, you won’t be walking down
again.’

‘Where are they?’ The man didn’t listen to a word I said. ‘I’m after giving those little runts a piece of my mind.’

‘I was standing here and I saw what happened,’ I told him in an even voice, though my temper was rising now. ‘It wasn’t my lads but that Gemma Meekin. If you want to take
it up with her daddy you go ahead but you leave here now.’

‘Bollocks! They need the belt to them, so they do!’

I was breathing hard now, my anger bubbling to the surface. How dare he! Who did he think he was? ‘You’re a big man,’ I snapped, my eyes flashing. ‘You’re a big man
and I’m just a small woman. And you think you can come here, threatening me like this? No man is ever going to raise his hand or his voice to me again!’

And with that, I picked up the axe I had hidden behind the front door and held it above my head. In that instant, I saw a vision in my mind. I could see a man in a snow-white shirt that was
slowly turning red with blood. I could see it so clearly and then . . . he ran.

I stood there for a while and watched him disappear off down the road, shouting something about a ‘mad woman’, and for a while I couldn’t move. Out of the corner of my eye I
noticed a few net curtains twitching and heads shaking from side to side. I brought the axe down gently to my side.
Good! Let them see
, I thought.
They should know I’m not going
to take shit from anybody
. I was a tough woman now – I kept an axe by my door and I slept with a knife under my pillow. I wasn’t going to argue – that wasn’t in my
nature. Either they were going to walk away voluntarily or I’d kill them. He had known that – he’d seen it in my eyes.

I closed the door and went back to the kids. It was time to get their tea on. We had settled into our new life now and, though I did my best to give them a good home, underneath I was still a
very angry woman. I was outraged with how the world judged me – even my own parents thought I’d brought it all on myself! There was no sympathy from them, no kindness. My father drank
in the same pub as Paul and he knew, even as they bought each other rounds of pints, that Paul’s own children went without.