Living With Evil (4 page)

It was always cold in the house in the daytime, because the fire was never lit until Mammy got up. My bare feet stung every time they hit the ice-cold lino, and you could see your breath in front of you on winter days.

Sometimes I would root out some old clothes from under the stairs. There were always loads of bags of stuff. Daddy brought them home after there had been a jumble sale at the town hall, and seeing as we didn’t have wardrobes, it all stayed in big piles in cupboards.

I’d pretend it was a treasure chest, trying on old belts with shiny buckles and cotton dresses with fancy buttons. Everything smelled of dust and made me sneeze. Nothing looked like it went together, some things had stains on and smelled sweaty and musty like my Granny’s long skirts, but it was something to do, and much better than being cold.

At lunchtime, Esther came home. ‘Peter, Cynthia, come on and get your dinner!’ she shouts, daylight flooding in behind her. Her arrival was the highlight of my day. Esther was kind, and I loved her to bits. Sometimes it felt as if Esther was actually our mammy, because she looked after us so much when Mammy was in bed.

She came home every lunchtime on schooldays and at weekends to fetch us bread and cold meat and give us a drink of milk or water. We never went hungry, although usually there was only just enough to go round and you had to be quick to get your fair share.

Peter and I tucked in like a pair of demons, tearing at the warm bread and gobbling up the scraps of corned beef greedily, stuffing it into our mouths with our dirty fingers.

It was an extra treat if we got to go round the corner to Granny’s, because she gave us fruit too. She was great at getting fruit. Some days I went with her to the grocer’s at closing time to ask for ‘spoilt’ fruit and then Granny would chop off the bruised bits and we’d gobble up the guts of a plum or a pear.

Granny was a great storyteller too. ‘Come here and sit with me, Cynthia,’ she would smile. ‘Did I tell you the story about the banshee?’ Mammy and Daddy hardly spoke to me at all, let alone told me stories that made my eyes widen like saucers.

I’d sit on the floor beside Granny’s long skirts for ages listening to her tales. I loved the one about the banshee, who was an old woman with long white hair who came to warn you of death. Granny told me it again and again, but it was one of my favourites and I lapped it up every time.

‘If the banshee howls three times before midnight, then someone in the house will die,’ Granny would say with a glint in her eye. ‘If you happen to come across her yourself, usually sitting on a wall, combing her long white hair, and she throws her comb at you, then you will die instantly!’

I loved my granny. I heard people say she looked pious, but I wasn’t sure what that meant. She looked like a jolly nun to me, with her round face, big red cheeks and shoulder-length grey hair, which was so straight it looked like it had been ironed. She was sweet and kind, and always made me feel special.

‘Be good now, you two,’ Esther smiles after lunch when she leaves us at home again, Mammy still in bed. ‘I’ll be back as soon as you know it.’

Every time I watch my big sister disappear round the corner of our street, my heart aches for her to come back.

Often I sit on the greasy lino under the kitchen table, scratching the bites on my legs. Sometimes I scratch so much I make myself bleed, and then yellow stuff bubbles up on my skin, so I wipe it away with the squares of old newspaper we use as toilet paper.

I scratch my head too. I can feel things crawling in my hair. I try to pick out whatever it is, but I can never tell if I catch anything because my fingernails are black. I don’t think I do, because the itching just gets worse and worse the more I pick.

It seems like I spend hours some days, just sitting there doing nothing, waiting for the bigger ones to get home, wondering how long they will be.

When they do come home, Mammy gets out of bed and lights the fire.

I like the warmth and I like the bustle when the house first starts to fill up, but on some days it feels like living in a big cooking pot. With so many of us around, I sometimes feel hot and bothered, like something is going to boil over at any minute.

One day it does. Mammy suddenly yells something out so loudly it makes my ears whistle. She sounds livid, as if she wants to kill someone. ‘Who did that? How dare you!’ Now she is hitting me with a sweeping brush, bashing it into my back. I have no idea what has caused this particular outburst, but I have no choice but to endure it.

I shut my eyes as tightly as I can, so tight my whole face aches. I can hear my howls and screams echoing round my head, and my bones are rattling inside my body.

I keep my eyes glued together and huddle myself into a ball. I make myself as small as possible as Mammy moves away from my cowering body. I just want to be invisible, so nobody will notice me and I won’t get another beating for getting in the way.

When Mammy’s voice gets near to me again, I hug my knees in closer to my chest, pulling my skirt down to make a tent over my ankles and pushing my forehead into my kneecaps.

Amongst the shouting and screaming I hear the front door open and shut, and I freeze when I hear my oldest brother Joe’s voice. ‘Jesus, what’s up with you?’ he says.

Joe only ever comes round at night when Daddy is in the pub. He lives with my Granny, so I’m not used to him being around much.

I always pray Daddy won’t come in when Joe is there, as any change in routine can set Daddy off on a rant. It doesn’t take much. Any one of us can be the cause of a fight. Drink makes it all much worse. He will explode with anger and start telling anyone, but especially Joe, to ‘Fuck off out of here’.

Mammy will defend her oldest son and start fighting with Daddy. Sometimes, I sit hugging my knees for hours, praying for calm. My mind often clouds over, and I try to think about nice things. Maybe I’ll be allowed to go to school with my big sisters soon? Nobody ever talks to me about school, but I imagine it to be some magical place, like stepping into a whole new shiny world of friends and books and fun.

I don’t think my dream will come true any time soon. I never dare hope that good things might happen to me, ever. Peter is two years older than me, and he doesn’t go to school, so I think I have a long time to wait until I can be a big girl, instead of being stuck in the cold, dark house all day.

But, a few weeks later, Mammy said she had something to tell me. I was surprised because she hardly ever spoke to me or told me anything.

‘Now, Cynthia, you’re going to be starting school tomorrow with your brother,’ she announced, no warmth in her voice at all.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and was worried that Mammy was telling me lies, but she said Peter and I were to join the baby class together, on the very same day!

‘You’re jokin’ me, Mammy, aren’t you? Is it true, is it really true? How come we’re starting together?’

Mammy told me Peter couldn’t start school until he came off the bottle, and now he was six he was old enough to give up his milk. ‘Aren’t you the lucky ones, starting together? It’ll keep the two of you out of trouble,’ she said.

Mammy had another baby by now, my little sister, Mary. I was no longer the baby of the family, and I was starting school. I felt incredibly grown up. I was thrilled to be joining my three big sisters, and delighted my big brother would be in the very same class as me.

Best of all, I didn’t have to stay stuck in the house any more. I hated it. Even having a new baby sister hadn’t made it any more of a home. I loved babies, and Mary was adorable, but she cried a lot and Mammy seemed more tired than ever, because she even slept when Mary was screaming.

I did my best to help Mammy get the milk and change the cloths she used for nappies, because that’s what the older kids were expected to do in our house, but school would be much more fun.

I imagined myself surrounded by hundreds of storybooks and mountains of pens and paper, devouring every word the nuns said to me. That’s what happened at school, wasn’t it? I was sure it would be much better than being at home.

I’d never been shown a book before. I’d been told that Mammy couldn’t read or write, and we had no books in the house. Daddy read the newspapers, and I often looked at the pictures, but he never read anything out to me. Now I was going to learn to read like a big girl, and I couldn’t wait to get started.

I’d make friends too! And not just with the kids who lived in the council houses by us who I saw in the street and the shops sometimes. I’d make friends from all over Dalkey - with kids from the fancy big houses up by the beach and the mansions around Dalkey Hill and Killiney Hill, where Esther sometimes took me for a walk or a picnic.

The night before I started, I picked up a few things about the school from my sisters. I heard it had a great reputation and lots of parents fought over places. We only lived a ten minute walk away, so all the Murphy kids got a place without a fight.

I wanted to make a fine first impression. There was no uniform, so I went rummaging under the stairs.

As well as the clothes Daddy brought home from the jumble sales, there were bags of clothes kind people had left on the doorstep, knowing there were lots of kids to clothe in our house, as well as some navy-blue school knickers donated by the St Vincent de Paul charity.

I was thrilled beyond words when Esther helped me get dressed for my first day. I had a navy skirt I didn’t remember any of my sisters ever wearing, so that was officially mine. I added a long-sleeved shirt, and an old V-neck jumper of Peter’s, I rolled the sleeves up because they were too long. It wasn’t perfect, as girls were meant to wear roundnecks, but I was happy with it all the same.

All I needed was shoes. The only ones that looked the part and more or less fitted had broken buckles, but Mammy told me not to wear them in any case, because I didn’t have any socks. Instead, I finished off my outfit with a pair of blue Wellingtons, and we were off!

Esther walked me and Peter to school on our first morning. I looked at the other kids, all with their mammies, and wished my mammy could walk with me to school too. But I knew she was still in bed. She never walked any of her kids to school or even got up to wave us off.

It didn’t matter. I was beside myself at the thought of meeting the holy nuns who would teach us, imagining them to be very wise and kind old ladies who would fill my head with fascinating facts and amazing stories like the ones Granny told me.

I’d seen nuns at church, even though we hardly ever went. Daddy would go to funerals or First Holy Communions, which were always very big occasions in our village, but Mammy didn’t like going to church at all. She had pictures of the Pope and Jesus hanging on the walls, holy ornaments on the fireplace, and once there was even a pot of holy water we had to dip our fingers in on the way into the bedroom.

But Mammy told us only sinners went to church, to ask God for forgiveness. ‘We’re better off at home,’ she’d say. ‘I’m not going again and havin’ posh folk lookin’ down their noses at us!’

Sometimes the parish priest would come hammering on our door of a Sunday evening, demanding to know why we hadn’t been in church again. Daddy would go mad about being ‘shamed’ on his own doorstep like that.

Mammy would stub out her cigarette and rush to the door to tell the priest one of us kids had been ‘so very ill, Father’ even when I was sure everyone was well. I thought it wasn’t right to tell a fib to the priest, but I knew better than to say anything.

The following Sunday an older sibling would have to take us to church to ‘shut the priest up’ and ‘stop him sticking his nose in where it’s not wanted’.

On the rare occasion I did go to church, I liked the feeling of peace there. Nobody shouted, and I knew nobody was going to hit me, what with the good priest and holy nuns all around. I believed in God and said lots of prayers. I felt safe, and it was nice and clean and bright compared to our house.

I was sure being taught by nuns in a grand school was going to be just like going to church, only better. I simply couldn’t wait to start, and I grinned all the way there on my first day.

The school stood like a giant palace by the sea. The blue water was twinkling behind it, and it looked so grand it took my breath away. Although I was only four-years-old, the closer I got to the towering building, the tinier I felt.

By the time I walked through the doors I felt as small as one of the grains of sand on the beach, and butterflies started to flutter in my tummy.

It was busy and noisy in the wide hallway, and I was relieved when Peter and I were ushered into a classroom. It felt safer in there, even though there were lots of children filing in around us. The sound of shoes on wood echoed around me, and I saw that there were row upon row of wooden desks. They seemed to go on for ever, and were raised on steps the further back you looked.

I squeezed Peter’s hand and tucked myself into his side.

‘My name is Mrs O’Reilly,’ said an old lady with fluffy white hair, clapping her hands sharply to make us all look round. She was standing by a big blackboard at the front of the class and looked stern. I felt scared.