No One Wants You

by Celine Roberts

I wondered if I would have a nickname, but of course, I didn’t.

  I asked Thelma, ‘What will my nickname be?’

  She just laughed.

  I also realised during this conversation that all my siblings had second or even third Christian names, such as Thelma Dolores Ellen. But I had only one – Celine. Instead I’d had a few different surnames. I realised that I would never be part of that family unit.

  And the jealousy set in again.

  Compared to what I had growing up, they had a perfect life. They had food, clothes and beds to sleep in. Every time that I felt excluded, it brought back horrible memories for me. They never had to steal food. I was always hungry because I was barely ever fed. I had to take food whenever and wherever I could get it.

  In summer I could eat raw vegetables that were being cultivated in the surrounding fields. I ate raw potatoes, swedes, turnips, cabbages and onions, anything I could get. Later in the year I could rely on mushrooms from the fields, while blackberries, strawberries and raspberries all grew wild in the hedgerows. In winter and other times I could always rely on the bounties of the Catholic Church. At the worst of the worst, when I was really starving, I would go to the Catholic Church in Kilmallock and eat the wax candles. These were always in good supply. They were on sale for a penny, to people who wanted to ‘light a penny candle’ for a special intention.

  I think that by lighting a candle people were led to believe that it would give them a special intercession with God. He was supposed to look more favourably on their request if they bought a penny candle. I can still taste the candle wax to this very day. I realise now that I was very lucky not to be caught eating the candles. I would probably have been arrested and brought to court but not taken away from my foster-parents. I would have been killed if they had found out. It was bad enough knowing that God and Our Lady were watching me and could come and get me. I believed that they were real and could throw you into hell. I used to look up at the stained glass windows, with all the saints looking down and I knew they were watching me being bad, eating the candles.

  Although I did not know it, my reputation was probably not great at that time. I was called a lot of different names by the local children and adults alike. I was not held in very high esteem. People would call me, ‘ride’, ‘prostitute’ and ‘whore’ among others. I didn’t really know what the words meant but I knew from the vicious way that they were said to me, they were not good.

  By the age of ten years my body had acclimatised itself to abuse and its attendant pain. I felt no pain or feeling in the lower half of my body. If men wanted to abuse my body, then they went ahead and did it, as long as they had the approval of my foster-mother. I realised after a while that the men gave my mother money for ‘fucking’ me.

  I found that if she got paid for letting somebody ‘fuck’, then she treated me with a type of fondness. ‘Good on ya, ya little ride ya,’ she would say, as she pushed me out of her way or gave me what could be considered a playful whack on the back of the head, as she was counting the money. A push was about as much as I could expect in the way of affectionate physical contact from her. She was so nasty most of the time that I could not afford to go near her to try to get some affection. However, I found that she could be even nicer if I gave her money that I had ‘earned’ from my own enterprise rather than from her contacts.

  I found that some of the men who wanted to ‘fuck’ me were even quite pleasant before the event and some even after the event. If they met me in the street they studiously ignored me. But if they met me somewhere where there were no other people, then they would talk to me and say nice things to me. They would make me feel special. But then it always had to end with them saying that they were going to ‘fuck’ me.

  When I was 12, a man whom I only knew as ‘the workman from Hannon’s farm’, in Kilmallock, used to give me a ten-shilling note if ‘you let me fuck you in the churchyard’. This happened many times over the summer in the long grass near the evergreen trees beside the thick town wall, behind the astonishingly large church in Kilmallock. I remember lying on my back as he had sex with me and thinking that the steeple of the church was so high that it must touch the sky. When he was finished, he was always very nice to me. He smoothed down and brushed my crumpled clothes. He always gave me a ten-shilling note, reminded me not to tell anyone about us and told me when to meet him again, behind the church.

  When I used to give my foster-mother the ten-shilling note, she would really be pleased with me. ‘Ten bob, begor, that miserable auld so-and-so has it bad, what did the clergy ever do to him, good geril yerself.’ But I did not know what I was doing. How could a ten-year-old girl turn around and say no? Of course, giving my foster-mother money usually turned out the worse for me. I would be sent to Meade’s Pub for Guinness and whiskey. This would mean a party where everyone would get drunk. Back in the days when my foster-father was alive, he would get really drunk. When he got drunk, he would get aggressive and beat anyone who was near him. He never hit my foster-mother because he was afraid of her. She was well able to stand up for herself. If he had hit her, she would have hit him back twice as hard. He could only beat on somebody who could not defend themselves. I was beaten so often with the leather belt from the bellows beside the fire that I could only lie in pain, often for days, before I could move again. I gradually learned to take my cue from Spot the dog. When they began to get drunk, Spot would slink away and hide. He knew something was different and became uneasy. This was our time to head for my sleeping area. There Spot and I curled up together and hoped that they would forget about us. As they got progressively drunker, Spot would disappear altogether. He used to squeeze himself under a low cupboard where nobody could reach him. I was not so lucky. Of course, after my foster-father died, a party meant the same men calling to the house and I was never left in peace.

  One major consequence of meeting all the members of my family was that I began to have these ‘flashbacks’. I rarely used to have them before that. I suspect that meeting my siblings and feeling so much jealousy caused these flashbacks to my horrific past. I could not help but compare my unhappy childhood to what I perceived as the idyllic childhood experienced by my siblings. These flashbacks that I experience to this very day can fill me with depression. Depending on the severity of the painful memory, it can take me days to recover. With all of my heart, I long to be free of these nightmares of my past.

  After I had my hysterectomy, my father phoned me every night in hospital. When I went home, he called me every night as well. This caused a rift between my father and my mother. During one of the conversations, I told him that I was feeling worse at home with my mother and Harry fighting.

  Immediately he said, ‘Come on home to Limerick and you can recuperate for six weeks.’

  While I had by now realised that he was far from being the perfect father, I was still in awe of him. He was still the personification of my fantasy father-figure and of how I had visualised him to be, over all the years of not having a father. I respected him so I reluctantly decided to take up his offer and go to Limerick for six weeks of recuperation in the bosom of my family. I really wasn’t sure about going. I was ceding control to someone whom I did not really know and I was uncomfortable with that aspect of it.

  I informed Mother of the travel arrangements. She wanted to go as soon as possible. She could not wait to get away from Harry and the house and London. Ronan and I, along with my mother, were to go to Limerick. Harry was to stay in London and look after Anthony, who was still at school. As I was under strict instructions from the hospital not to do any heavy work, I had to travel as an invalid. I bought tickets for Ronan and myself. The three of us headed for Heathrow to fly to Shannon.

  As we prepared to board the plane, mother was offloaded. She was flying on a stand-by ticket. She was furious. As Ronan and I were being wheeled down the boarding chute to the plane, my last view of my mother was of two uniformed security men trying to restrain an irate, screaming woman. I w
as too unwell to care. I pretended that I did not know her. I knew that my father would be waiting for me at the other end of the flight, so I kept going.

  My father collected us at Shannon and took us home to Janesboro. I told him what had happened to Mother. He was not bothered about it. ‘She knows what to expect, she will get a seat eventually.’ When we got home, I was put to bed to rest. Rosaleen, my sister, became real pals with Ronan.

  The next day passed and there was no sign of Mother. It was a beautiful quiet day. The following day a hurricane blew in the front door. Mother was back.

  She was really angry with everyone. When she was offloaded, she had to get a taxi back to my house from Heathrow. She got back to the house and knocked on the door. When the door opened, she barged past a bewildered Harry. She demanded that Harry would have to give her a lift back to the airport the next day. He made some excuse that he was unavailable. There was no way he was going to drive her to the airport, after the abuse he had been put through. Harry is a generous person in most respects, but he would have given anyone else in the world a lift to the airport before he would have driven my mother to Heathrow that day. She had to return to the airport by taxi.

  As Shannon is a small destination in the world of aviation, there are few flights that go there each day. They are usually full. So stand-by is a bad way to get there. It may be cheap but you can get left behind. It wasn’t so much the time involved that bothered my mother, but it was the ignominy of having to admit to or being seen as a cheapskate.

  She could not get a flight the next day. She had to go back to Harry again by taxi. She barged past Harry once again. He had not expected to see her because if he had realised that she could not get a flight for a second time, he would not have opened the door to her. She did not ask for a lift to the airport for the following day, as I think she knew that she would not get one. She got a seat on a flight on the third attempt.

  Once she was installed in her own home, she took to her bed. She never got out of her bed to help me. Every morning my father would go off to work, thinking that my mother was looking after me. I had to light the fire each morning. I had to cook for Ronan and myself and anybody else that was there. When she did get up she complained that Ronan and I were eating them out of house and home. She flew into rages about our eating habits. I tried to explain to her that she was taking too many prescription drugs, particularly Valium. I thought this was the reason for her irrational behaviour towards me. She was on uppers and downers and so many tablets, that it was unbelievable. I was concerned, but she saw it as interference.

  Once again I was getting no help and my health was getting worse. I weighed just over six stone at this time.

  I thought I was going to die and I wanted to go back to London. Every time that I said this to my father, he would persuade me to stay by saying that my mother wanted me to stay and that she loved me. When he was at home, she pretended that we were the best of friends. One time, in his presence, he told my mother and I to hug each other. In that embrace I knew that she did not want to be anywhere near me. I could feel her physically cringe when I hugged her.

  With all the physical work that I had to do, I was exhausted. There were so many rows between my mother and I. It was obvious to me that she did not want me there. My father wanted to believe that my mother wanted me to be there. He saw my mother from a different point of view. He could think no ill of her.

  While I was in Limerick, some gypsy caravans parked in a field nearby. One day some gypsy children came to the door with a small tin can and asked my mother for some water. Mother refused to give them water and ran after them brandishing a brush. I was shocked and I was angry. ‘How could you refuse somebody a drink of water?’ I screamed at her. She just looked through me and said nothing.

  Ronan used to talk and play with the gypsy children. They used to have great fun together. He used to think that they were very funny, the way they used to say, ‘Waaather’. They used to copy his English accent. One evening, in front of some neighbours, Ronan asked my mother for a ‘cup a tay’. She was so embarrassed that she nearly died of shock, but Ronan got such a reaction from her that he kept it up for days. I used to hear the deep belly-laughs from them all and think that it was so innocent. I used to look at the gypsy children and think how badly dressed and unkempt they looked. They were weather-beaten and looked like they never washed themselves.

  I suppose I saw myself in those children and, in her response to them, my mother’s rejection of me.

  After three weeks of misery I plucked up the courage to return to London.

  NINETEEN

  No Celebration

  WHEN I GOT back to London, I was so relieved. I was thrilled to see Anthony. Ronan was also very happy to be home with his dad and his brother. It felt strange to be back, but I was glad to be in my own home. Thelma was still there and part of me wanted her to stay but another part would have liked to get back to just the four of us. It wasn’t so bad because she’d got a new job and wasn’t in the house that often.

  Life went back to normal. I did not have to cope with a hysterical mother who did not want me in her sight.

  My father was uncomfortable with my coming back to London after only three weeks, as he knew I was off work for six weeks. He still had tunnel vision regarding my mother. He phoned me about twice a week and I called him more often. Much more often! My phone bill became appreciably high. Consequently we ran short of cash to pay some of the domestic bills.

  Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative government had introduced the controversial poll tax. There was a lot of opposition to paying it at the time, from all corners of the political spectrum. It was just another bill as far as I was concerned, and I wanted to pay it. I had no argument with any British government, be they Tory or Labour. Whatever any of them did was all right by me. I was not particularly interested in politics as I had enough going on in my life, just to survive. But I would not hear a bad word said against whatever political party was in power or against the Royal Family.

  As far as I was concerned, the British establishment had treated me very well. They had accepted me unconditionally and they did not ask about my parental status.

  I was made to feel welcome in Britain. I was treated with respect from the very first day that I turned up on its shores searching for a new life.

  But in this instance there was no cash to pay the poll tax. After a ‘board meeting’ between Harry and I, it was decided that Harry would ask his brother Paddy for a loan so that we could pay the tax. Harry rang him up and explained the situation. Paddy agreed to meet Harry under the railway bridge on our road and give him the money. When Harry came back with the money, he said that he’d had to endure a lecture from his brother. Paddy had told him that he knew that the money was not for the poll tax, but because I was making far too many phone calls to my father in Ireland.

  I was raging. Somebody visiting or babysitting had told him. They could quite easily have seen a phone bill lying around the house or Harry may have told them that I was calling my father a lot.

  It was then I decided that I had to leave that house. I decided that I wanted a change. I wanted a new house. Harry just went along with the decision to move while I started to look for somewhere else to live. I put the house on the market. I justified it to myself by saying that it was not my real choice to live there in the first place. The Roberts had left a bad taste in my mouth. I wanted to shake myself free of them as much as I could.

  Harry and I looked at an end-of-terrace house in Surrey. We both decided that it would be suitable, so we made an offer of £46,000 and it was accepted. Our old house sold for £43,000 shortly afterwards.

  I was happy to move out and we all, including Thelma who was still with us, moved into the new house on December 8, 1984. No changes had to be made to Anthony’s school or Ronan’s nursery arrangements.

  I just wanted some peace and quiet in my life.

  * * * *

  After things had settle
d down a bit and I was starting to feel better, we went to Ireland to visit Kit and Tony. Going to Thelma’s 21st party in Cloughaun GAA Club was also on the cards. Thelma had got caterers from Shannon Airport for the party and there was going to be a big crowd. We had come over by ferry with the boys and I picked Thelma up at the airport on the Friday. We brought her up home and my father came out to welcome us all, but my mother stayed at the door. I was helping the boys get out, as Thelma went ahead into the house. She was hugging and kissing my mother and the boys were waiting behind her. My mother completely ignored them, even though poor little Ronan, who was only four and a half and was looking for a kiss. I didn’t say anything, but I was furious. My father made us a cup of tea but we all felt uncomfortable. I told Anthony to take Ronan to Auntie Avril’s as we were staying there that night and she lived nearby. We left ourselves soon afterwards.

  I went out that night with all my sisters for a drink at The George Hotel. It was quiet enough but I was glad to be there. It made me feel part of the family.

  The next day I went shopping before the party. All the children were being looked after in Avril’s house. That night I got into my new clothes and we went up to the GAA Club. Everyone was in the bar watching the Barry McGuigan fight. My mother and father were greeting people at the door but I think my dad was more interested in the fight. I ignored my mother because of the day before. I just didn’t want to talk to her. She didn’t react. We went on into the main hall and helped ourselves at the buffet. We were sitting with some of my brothers and it felt a bit strange to be out in public with them all for more or less the first time.

  I was starting to relax a bit when my father brought my mother over to try to force a reconciliation, but I could see she wasn’t interested. She said she didn’t want to talk to me. I’d had enough and saw red. I said I didn’t want to talk to her either, as she had hurt my children, who had done nothing to her, and that I wouldn’t put up with it. I was really angry. She had thrown me on the scrap-heap and had made it plain that she wished I’d never been born, but I wouldn’t allow her to hurt my children. She hated it. She forgot all about her pose as ‘a grand lady’ and lunged at me to slap me in the face. Niall, my second youngest brother, jumped up and pulled her back. He hustled her away before I could even say anything.