Living With Evil (2 page)

I would lie in bed picturing exactly what I was hearing.

Mammy would be stalking round in her dirty, floral dress with her knitted cardigan swinging wildly across her bosom, and Daddy would be swaggering around in the same saggy black trousers he wore every day.

I never really knew how or why the argument started, and I wondered if they did themselves. It seemed that even just the sight of each other made them so angry they wanted to hurt and lash out.

I said lots of prayers to God asking them to stop fighting, but no matter how much I pleaded nothing changed.

Once my father had got into bed with me that first time I prayed even harder for them to stop. I was scared his fights with Mammy might make him act more strangely and hurt me more, but I soon learned that there was no routine at all.

When my prayers
were
answered, it was such a huge relief, because I knew that when Daddy fell asleep, he never stirred again until 7 a.m.

He would get out of bed the minute he woke up and rarely said a word to anyone. Every day he put on his dirty clothes off the floor, smoothed Brylcreem through his greasy black hair, washed his teeth over the kitchen sink using a bar of carbolic soap and the family’s one toothbrush, splashed on some Old Spice and stormed off to work.

That was his routine every working day, and I loved hearing the door slam behind him as much as I loved hearing him fall asleep at night.

Even if Daddy left me alone in bed, though, I never slept well. My head itched really badly. It didn’t matter how much I scratched and scratched, the lice kept crawling all over my scalp, driving me mad.

I clawed and dug my fingernails deep into my scalp to make them stop, but that made the itching worse.

My skin crawled too, because all our beds were jumping with fleas. I knew this because if ever we had a visitor, Mammy used special powder to get rid of them, but otherwise she mostly didn’t bother.

I could feel them biting me all over as I lay there. I’d try my best not to itch, but when I couldn’t stand it any longer I would rake at my skin with my fingernails, making the bites bleed and weep. It felt like a thousand fleas gnawed at me every night, but however deeply I scratched the itching never stopped.

There was no heating in our house either, save for the coal fire in the living room, so in winter the bedroom was freezing cold. All the blankets and sheets smelled terrible and had dirty marks all over them. Some had blood and other nasty stains, but it was so cold I had to use them.

When there weren’t enough blankets to go round I put coats on top of me to keep warm. They prickled my skin and smelled of dust and dirt, but the cold was so bad I’d have huddled under anything to stop myself from freezing.

I always slept in just my vest and knickers, or just my knickers. I never owned a pair of pyjamas.

Mammy usually slept in her clothes. She did own a few satin nightgowns, given to her by one of my aunts, but she rarely bothered changing into them. She stayed up all night. Sometimes she didn’t come upstairs until just before 7 a.m., when Daddy got up. It meant they were hardly ever in bed together. Mammy said she had jobs to do downstairs at night like cleaning and washing, but our house was never clean and our clothes were always filthy.

The lino on the floor had a thick layer of dirt on top, the white bits on the patterned wallpaper were stained yellow like Mammy’s fingers and the kitchen at the back of the living room was covered in thick grease and grime. Daddy had to shout at Mammy to get her to wash his shirts for work when they got too dirty.

I felt very lonely lying in bed in the dark feeling smelly and dirty and itchy. I always stared into the blackness for hours, only falling asleep when misery and discomfort had sapped my very last drop of energy.

It was pitch black in the bedroom, even in summer, because Mammy insisted we always had a thick black blanket nailed over the window. It was the same with all the front windows in the house. The downstairs was just one room, and the front window looked on to the street, but you could never see out.

Mammy told me it was to keep the sun out, which I thought was a shame, because it meant the house always felt cold and gloomy and suffocating.

Mammy was forever telling us that what happened at home was ‘nobody’s business but ours’. I wondered if she put the black blankets up because really she didn’t want people to look in. ‘Don’t you go telling anyone what goes on in our house,’ she’d warn. ‘I don’t want anyone poking their nose in our business, do you hear?’

I knew she felt strongly about this, because usually she gave me a clout round the ear to emphasize her point. ‘Keep your mouth shut, you little bitch. Don’t answer the door. Don’t let anyone in, d’you hear me?’

The hall window was the ‘strictest’ window of all in the house, and Mammy was always going on about it.

‘Don’t you dare move that blanket, you little cow!’ she warned me, time and time again, raising her hand to show me what I would get if I disobeyed her.

Mammy only allowed us to have one lightbulb in the house, and that was usually used in the living room. I hated going to the toilet at night, not just because I was scared of spiders crawling up my ankles outside in the dark, but because I was terrified of picking my way through the pitch-black house and into the backyard to use it.

Mammy would sometimes put extra lightbulbs in if one of her relatives visited, but she took them out as soon as they left. It made me think that it couldn’t be right to keep the house in darkness - so why did she do it? Why didn’t she want us to see at night?

She told me it was because we couldn’t afford lightbulbs, but she said it with an odd look on her face, which made me think it wasn’t true. I knew we could afford cigarettes and alcohol, because we always had lots of Mammy’s favourite drinks, and she and Daddy smoked sixty cigarettes each a day. Lightbulbs cost less than cigarettes, didn’t they? I didn’t think we could be that poor.

The front bedroom of the house was the most stifling room of all, because of the smell from the toilet bucket and the stink of stale smoke and sweat that always hung in the air. Every night I felt as if I was trapped there all alone, even when I wasn’t.

There were always other kids in the house. I already had five older siblings when I was born in October 1961, but I always felt like the odd one out, the one who didn’t fit in, and was on my own.

My oldest brother, Joe, lived round the corner with Granny, and my three big sisters were much more grown-up than me. Esther was nearly eight years older, Margaret six years older, and Catherine was almost five by the time I was born.

My other brother, Peter, was just two years older than me, but he always acted really grown up and had a reputation for being tough and streetwise. Mammy adored him. I looked up to Peter and wanted him to like me. I felt safe when I was with him, because everybody in the neighbourhood thought he was ‘hard’. He seemed to carry this reputation like a badge of honour. It was almost as if, the worse he behaved, the more Mammy protected, loved and cherished him.

With me, she was totally different. She never said a kind word to me or gave me a cuddle, and she regularly started fights and beat me.

‘Cynthia, will you empty the bucket now!’ she said to me one day. It was 4.30 p.m. I’d already done the washing-up after school and been to the shop for her cigarettes, while she had just got out of bed after another late night. That was her routine every single day.

‘I won’t be a minute, Mammy,’ I shouted. My stomach turned over at the thought of emptying that toilet bucket, but it was one of the many chores I had to do, or else. Mammy kept an old jam jar by her bed that she’d spit and cough phlegm into, and it would be my job to empty that out too. I loathed it.

Peter was nowhere to be seen, and my big sisters were out, as usual. I felt like the baby stuck at home with Mammy doing the chores and being shouted at, smacked and hit, however hard I worked.

‘Get up here now, you lazy bitch,’ Mammy screamed again. ‘The bucket needs emptying right now!’

I ran upstairs in a panic. She was in a terrible mood, and I didn’t want to risk a bad beating, so I grabbed the bucket quickly and headed downstairs.

It was full to the brim, and the smell was diabolical. I retched and stumbled, and suddenly I was falling: I had dropped the bucket and the stinking contents slopped everywhere.

I didn’t see her coming at me, but the next thing I felt was the smashing of Mammy’s fists into my back. I gasped in shock, breathing in a cloud of vile-smelling air, and retched so badly my stomach felt as if it had jumped up into my throat. When I looked around I felt a stinging ‘slap, slap, slap’ across my cheeks.

Mammy was looming tall over me, her green eyes flashing crazily and her red hair dancing like flames around her.

‘Sorry, Mammy, I’ll clean it up quick, Mammy,’ I cried.

But there was no stopping her now, and she started to punch me in the stomach and down my arms, then in my face. My head was spinning and I was sure I was going to throw up, what with the smell and the pain.

‘You stupid little bitch. Didn’t I tell you you’re a stupid, lazy little bitch!’

I didn’t think I had been lazy. As usual, I’d done the washing-up the minute I got in from school, hoping it would make Mammy less likely to give me a beating. The water was so cold it made my fingers numb. Maybe that’s why I dropped the bucket? I really wished I hadn’t.

I winced in pain as I tried to clean up the mess with an old rag and more ice-cold water, still trying to work out why Mammy called me lazy. I always worked hard to keep the dishes clean. She left them there all day, waiting for me to come home. How could
I
be lazy when
she
was the one in bed all day?

The washing-up was a tough job. Mammy never bought washing-up liquid or any other cleaning products, and we only ever had one dirty old tea towel, which was never washed. It meant the dishes were never properly clean. It didn’t help that when Daddy came home drunk he would often wee in the sink, regardless of whether the dishes were in there or not.

Whatever mess was left for me, I always tried hard to get rid of the smell and wash the dishes as best I could. I mustn’t have done it well enough that day. That must be the reason Mammy called me lazy, because I couldn’t think of anything else.

Daddy came in unexpectedly that night. He usually went straight to the pub from work, but tonight he’d come home for his tea.

For a second I was pleased to see him. Maybe it was the day he gave Mammy her housekeeping money, which usually made her happy for a while.

But Daddy looked furious and was sucking hard on a cigarette when he came into the sitting room. He spoke to Mammy in an angry voice, and then I felt his beady eyes track me across the room.

‘Get here now!’ he screamed, pulling his leather belt off his trousers. I froze in fright, and in a flash I was being dragged across the living-room floor, and my bare legs were being whipped and whipped.

‘Please, Daddy, no!’ I yelped. ‘Please stop!’ I was already bruised and sore from my mother’s beating. The extra pain was unbearable.

He was coughing and choking with the effort of beating me and didn’t seem to hear my pleas. The lashings went on and on, with him shouting, ‘Fucking bitch! Messy little bitch! I’ll teach you. Fuckin’ little cow.’

The belt buckle cut into the tender skin on my thighs and smashed across my knuckles when I tried to defend myself.

He left me crying in a crumpled little heap on the cold floor while he ate his tea, swore at Mammy about the state of his boiled ham and cabbage and went to the pub saying, ‘Fuck the lot o’ you.’

I couldn’t sit down comfortably for days afterwards. I didn’t even bother showing Mammy, because I knew she would show no sympathy and wouldn’t even offer me a plaster.

I knew she didn’t care about me, and that I was her least favourite child. The only time she spoke to me was to order me about, tell me to do the housework or to insult me.

‘You’re trouble,’ she’d tell me. ‘You’re the awkward one. Get out of my sight. Don’t you know, Peter is my favourite? I don’t like you, Cynthia! Didn’t I tell you that already?’ Then she’d cackle like a witch or give me one of her funny false smiles, which scared me.

She regularly told my siblings and relatives I was bad, and seemed to delight in doing so. ‘That child is trouble. Don’t trust her, she’s an evil little bitch. She’s a lying little cow. A devil child.’

I didn’t know why Mammy said those things, and nobody seemed to argue with her or defend me. I didn’t blame them, I was just very confused about why Mammy hated me so much.

I worked hard and listened to what the priests in church and the nuns at school taught me about being a good girl. Living in a strong Catholic community, it was drummed into me all the time that ‘bold’ girls were sinners, and I knew what happened to sinners: they would burn in hell.

‘Be sure your sins will find you out,’ Mother Dorothy would say at school. From a young age, I’d tremble in my seat, imagining the flames of hell licking up my legs because I’d forgotten to say my prayers or had missed church on Sunday again.