I presume that after my parents left, everybody concerned then sat there talking about the meeting. I was never privy to these discussions, so I can only speculate as to what might have been said.
The next thing that happened was that Tom O’Sullivan, officially now my father, had called a family conference for the following Tuesday evening. He did not know that I had spoken to my mother on the previous Sunday. I was still reeling from her rebuff and the realisation that they had been married to each other all along. The family conference consisted of his wife Doreen, and his nine children, at their house. The spouses of the married family members were not invited.
He sat them all down and addressed them with, ‘When your mother and I were young … ‘At the end of the speech, he had then apparently said that he was going to phone me, and that they could all speak to me. Months later, my youngest sister Thelma told me that between the Saturday of the confrontation and the Tuesday of the family meeting, she knew that something major was afoot. She thought that one or other of her parents had been diagnosed with a serious illness. Tom, her father kept asking her, ‘Do you still love me, Thelma?’ She had thought he was going to die. He seemed to need the reassurance, as if a major life event was about to take place.
On the Thursday of that week, my father had then made that first monumental call to me.
Even a few days after the call, my heart was still away and racing with excitement. I could not get over the fact that I had spoken to my father.
The following days were a blur and a flurry of domestic activity.
Cakes were baked.
Meat dishes were prepared.
Tables were set.
Tables were reset.
Recipes were consulted.
All was ready.
Especially me!
Harry just let me get on with it and Anthony was excited. Ronan was too young to understand what was going on.
Sunday arrived.
It was to be the most important day of my life.
Preparations continued throughout the day. Everything was in place. I tried not to think of what was about to happen. I was going to meet my father. I was going to meet my father and my mother. I suppose, having got to this stage, I really expected him to come on his own.
I had also expected a more immediate response from him. I wanted to have him alone. Instead, the dark spectre of my mother loomed. One part of me still had not recovered from her rebuff when she answered my telephone call. The other half of me now expected my father to have solved the issue of my mother’s attitude to me, over the remainder of the week.
I expected him to solve all my problems. I thought that he would make my mother love me. I expected everything to be ‘absolutely beauoooootiful’ from now on. Everything would run smoothly in my life, because my father was here to solve all my problems. It was stupid of me to think like that, but my thought processes were blinkered.
In reality, I knew that my mother did not want any part of my reappearance or intrusion into ‘her’ family. She could never accept me as part of her family. My opinion now is that she gave me life and, at five months old, she got rid of me. She locked the doors of her heart and mind to me, and consequently, she could never accept me.
I often think back to the meeting in the convent. It was at my request. Up until that meeting she had control over my disappearance. After that day she had lost some of that control and I became a very tangible threat. I think she may have realised that I was not going to disappear and that she was going to have to cope with my existence. I think it made her hate me.
I had flowers in their bedroom. I checked and rechecked them. I got dressed for going to the airport. Then myself, Harry and the two boys went to six o’clock mass at St Bart’s Church in Norbury. I could not concentrate on the service. I was really apprehensive. In the middle of the mass ceremony, I decided that the outfit that I had so carefully chosen to wear to the airport was not suitable. Harry and the two boys had to stand up and I ushered them out of their seats. They were frog-marched down the aisle, out to the car and home again, where I continued to deliberate over what to wear for my father.
I got changed again and eventually we headed for Heathrow Airport. We arrived punctually, parked the car and set off for the arrivals hall. We all lined up at the barrier. Anthony and Ronan were extremely well-behaved. They really were. They did everything they were asked. They must have known how anxious I was. There wasn’t a ‘bip’ out of Harry either. I think that he was gob-smacked by what was going on.
I saw my mother first. There was a man walking beside her. That was when I saw my father for the first time. When I first saw him, I knew it was him. He was wearing a beige Crombie coat, beige trousers and brown leather shoes. He was a tall well-built man, who walked towards me with a strong confident stride.
I left Harry and the boys. I reached my mother first. I barely kissed her. I reached for my father’s outstretched arms and cried in his strong embrace for five minutes. We returned to Harry and the boys at the outside of the barrier. He kissed the boys and shook hands with Harry. Harry carried their luggage out to the car.
My mother wanted to go to the bathroom. I showed her where it was, but I quickly went back to my father. I could not leave him for an instant. I felt that if I let him out of my sight, he might disappear again. My mother reappeared and we walked towards the car. While Harry and my father were putting the luggage in the boot of the car, my mother said to me, ‘Your father does not know about our meeting at Cruise’s Hotel. And I would rather that he did not know.’
I said to her, ‘Because of my birth, I have had to lie all my life and I refuse to lie anymore.’ My reply really set up another barrier between my mother and me. Perhaps it got things off to a bad start between us, but I was not prepared to go along with what my mother wanted anymore. This was the first time that I had refused to do what my mother wanted. I had gone along with everything she had ever said, up to this moment. After the horrific shock of finding out how much she had lied to me, I had decided that I was not going to do so anymore.
We then drove back to our small but spotless home. I had fed the boys and had dinner all prepared before I left for the airport. I cooked the meal and Harry put the boys to bed. Then Harry, my mother, my father and I sat around the table and ate the meal that I had cooked.
I was in seventh heaven. But I was nervous. I was nervous about how I could live up to their expectations.
Having seen my parents, I thought that they looked so elegant and distinguished. They were expensively dressed. I had dreamt that they were aristocratic and wealthy. I thought they fitted the fantasy perfectly.
The atmosphere throughout dinner was strange. I was having a meal with my mother and my father in my home, yet I did not know them. They were strangers to me. They would say things to each other in an intimate kind of way, as any married couple would, but I felt excluded during those familiar little exchanges between them.
The conversation between us was all small talk and was stiff. My father mentioned that he would not know his way around London anymore. I tried to ask a lot about his family, who were actually my own brothers and sisters. It was my father who did most of the talking, and who filled me in on who they were, what they were doing, and whom they were married to.
As the meal ended, Harry began clearing the dishes from the table to the kitchen, for washing. I think he was glad to have something to do. My mother offered to help Harry to do the wash-up. She said to me, ‘You two stay and talk. You have been without him long enough.’
I was surprised and was glad to go into the sitting room with him. I sat on the sofa beside him, holding his hand. At one point he said, ‘You know, your mother always wanted to be a nurse.’
One of the things that surprised me at the time was that when I asked about my brothers and sisters, I expected to be told that they all had extremely high-flying business or academic careers. This turned out not to be the case. They seemed to have pursued successfu
l but normal careers. As far as I was concerned, they had their parents, their education and a family upbringing. I thought that if you had those opportunities in life, you could be successful in any career. I could not understand how people who had everything that I did not have, could not be exceptionally successful financially.
I thought that if you had parents, the world was your oyster.
The more that I learnt about my siblings’ careers, the easier I began to feel about myself. I began to think, ‘I am successful. I have achieved as much academically and careerwise as any of them. I am somebody, and I did it on my own. I did it without anyone else’s help.’ This was for me the beginning of a growing feeling of self-worth.
I began to feel that maybe, ‘I am not the scum of the earth. I am somebody to be respected after all.’ I began to see myself in a whole new light and it felt good.
I saw parents as protecting their children from all the bad things in the world. I asked my father, ‘If you had known that I existed, would you have wanted me?’
He did not give me a satisfying answer. He said, ‘Yes.’ But he qualified it by saying, ‘If you had been put in another place, where my sisters were nuns, you would have been looked after.’ That reply gave me the nagging feeling that he did not want me either, really. I felt that he too did not want the shame of an illegitimate child. He thought that it would have been all right if I had been sent somewhere where I would have been safe, but hidden.
I went back to talking about my brothers and sisters, my new family, all nine of them. When I had started to look for my father, I had no interest in his other children, as I had presumed that I would only be their half-sister, but now I wanted to know all about them and I could not wait to see them.
Harry and my mother had completed a very long and extended dishwashing session and broke up the conversation on the sofa by their reappearance in the sitting room. It was decided by general consensus that we should all go to bed for the night and talk more in the morning. I hugged my mother briefly, and I hugged and kissed my father for at least another five minutes. Everybody then went to bed.
I could not sleep. My mind was in race mode.
My father had turned out to be everything that I had wanted him to be. Although there was one surprise – he was not a solicitor. He actually worked as a waiter. He was strong and he was smart. He was so handsome. I felt somehow, for the first time in my life, that there was a man I could trust, who could protect me. He was someone that I could be so proud of and, most importantly, someone I could finally call Dad.
My mind raced on into the night.
On November 13, 1983, I had met my father for the very first time in my life. I was 35 years of age!
The next morning I got up and cooked enough breakfast for an army.
My father said that he was going out to the shops to get a newspaper. I thought that he might have been more interested in talking to me, but then he came back and handed me a birthday card which had printed on the outside, ‘To dear daughter’. On the inside he had written, ‘To Celine, lots of love, Mum and Dad.’
Of course, it was my birthday. I had forgotten in all the excitement. It was November 14, exactly 35 years to the day since I was born.
It was the first birthday card that I had received from my parents. I was really thrilled to get the card, but I was slightly disappointed. The pre-printed words had been written for a daughter who had always known her parents, and did not reflect our relationship at all. Moreover, I had not expected anything from them, but given the card, it seemed strange not to bring some little gift, however small, to mark the occasion of the first birthday we had ever spent together.
I had hoped for some memento of their visit or some gift, however small, for my children. At the airport, my father had had a parcel under his arm as he arrived. As we had got to the car, he said, ‘There’s a present for ye both. Thanks be to God I can leave it down, ’cos it has my right arm broken.’
It had turned out to be an uncooked Limerick ham.
I wanted something to remind me of of that special day, which was, apart from the births of my children, the most significant day of my life. Somehow an uncooked Limerick ham did not quite seem to fit the bill! I had thrown the ham with uncharacteristic force into the freezer, to keep for Christmas. It was not enough to be a lasting memory of my most important day.
May and June, my good neighbours, came across for a few minutes, to meet my parents. Ronan was at nursery and Anthony was at school. My mother just sat there and did not say very much, but my father and I spent a lot of time talking.
After my neighbours left, initially nothing very personal was spoken about. We just engaged each other in general chit-chat. He wanted to know where I went to when I visited Ireland and whom I stayed with. I told him that I used to go to the Limerick races with Carmel Dillon. He said that he was always at the Limerick races, and that if he had seen me he would have recognised me, due to the physical similarity to my mother.
Then he asked me where I had grown up. I told him that I was brought up in Kilmallock.
‘Where in Kilmallock?’
‘Ballyculhane.’
He said that he knew the place. He asked, ‘Did something happen there?’
‘It did.’
He said, ‘I knew that place and I knew the reputation of that house.’ He turned to my mother and asked her, ‘Did you know that your daughter had been raped there as a child?’
I couldn’t believe that he had asked the question in such a very matter-of-fact way. I was astonished that he knew of my foster-parents’ house. I was even more shocked that he knew of ‘our’ house’s reputation.
My mother answered his question in a haughty manner, ‘Some people should never be allowed to bring up children.’
I thought that was rich, coming from her, but she meant it. She obviously saw herself as a fully acceptable member of the child-rearing community.
I said, ‘What happened during my childhood, has affected my entire life.’ I haltingly began to explain about the sexual problems in my marriage. I don’t think my father knew what to say because he went on to ask about the same relatives in Kilmallock that Paddy O’Sullivan had inquired about when we first met. Since meeting my parents, I was having quite a few flashbacks. Occurrences that had made no sense at the time were now finally becoming clear. My father asked me if I knew O’Sullivan’s pub. I said that I had actually worked there for a short period. The mention of Jimmy O’Sullivan immediately triggered a flashback. Before I had ever met my mother, I had always begged Sister Bernadette to ask my mother to write a letter to me. While I was working for Jimmy O’Sullivan and his wife Nonie, one day I received a letter, by post, from Sister Bernadette.
Enclosed in the envelope was a further letter addressed to ‘Celine’. Sister Bernadette wrote, ‘I am enclosing the treasure that you have been waiting for.’ I opened the envelope marked ‘Celine’, which had no address. It had contained a letter, which read:
My very own darling little Celine,
It is very hard for me to find time and to get an empty room, to write to you, undisturbed. Your father has never been told of your existence. If he found out now, it would break up his marriage and destroy the family. I pray for you every day and I pray that I shall hold you in my arms before I die. Now that you are sixteen years of age, you still need guidance. Go to Sister Bernadette for advice. She knows the world and will give you good advice.
Signed,
Your ever-loving mother
I had been really thrilled to receive this letter. I wanted to show it to everybody. As far as I was concerned, it proved that I had a mother who loved me. In my excitement, I showed it to Nonie. After reading it, she asked, ‘What is your mother’s name?’ I said that it was Doreen. Casually, and with a certain vagueness, Nonie said, ‘The only Doreen that I ever heard of is married to Jimmy’s first cousin in Janesboro, in Limerick. But I don’t think that it could be her, as she has nine children.’ At one small mome
nt in time while I was 16, I almost found out who my father was.
If only I had realised, how close I was to that knowledge. But even then, people like me could not ask questions. I could not have rocked the boat anyway. I was the housemaid, with a history and the baggage to prove it.
The next visitors that arrived to see my new exhibits were Harry’s brother Paddy and his wife Kitty, along with her sister. I felt embarrassed that Kitty’s sister was there. I felt that the whole family situation was my shame. I had been telling everybody that my parents were dead for years. It was coming as a bit of a shock to some people to find that they were suddenly resurrected, especially people who had been at my wedding.
This resurrection was of truly biblical proportions. Both of them were now alive and well, having been dead and buried for so long. I had prepared Paddy Roberts but I did not want it to go any further, outside the immediate family. I felt so ashamed that I did not want Kitty’s sister to know about it. I was embarrassed because the Roberts portrayed themselves as a very upright and morally conservative family, whereas I was ashamed of my birth. Paddy Roberts made some crack about the prodigal daughter but my parents didn’t react.
My mother started by talking to Paddy Roberts about how ‘some people should not be allowed to bring up kids’. My father joined in and agreed with her.
I sat there in shock as they then went on to expose some of my worst lies for all to see. My parents were leaving my pious in-laws in no doubt as to my upbringing and they began to talk about my past in detail. I was in shock and Harry, in his role of Catholic Church mainstay, said nothing. I had told my father and mother about my years of horror, in trust. I felt that they had a right to know. And here they were talking about me to the Roberts family, as if I was a stranger, exposing my past to their certain disapproval. How could my parents take such a high moral ground after condemning me to the cesspool of life? I was livid, seething and torn apart. I felt so betrayed.
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