In Fear of Her Life

by Sandra Smyth

  Mark got away without a beating that day and it wasn’t long until Aoife left the house and moved into a flat with him.

  My husband could be some bastard when he wanted to be. He was so clever too; he always picked on people who weren’t able for him. Mark was a quiet, sensitive guy; the sort who wouldn’t stand up to Johnny.

  Molly’s boyfriend however was another matter. She started going out with Keith about a year after Aoife met Mark. Molly was always a little bit tubby when she was young, and he was the first boyfriend she’d ever had. Keith was a feisty young fella who came from a similar background to her.

  Although I worried about the girls getting attached so young and worried too that they could end up with violent husbands, I was glad they now had some form of protection from Johnny.

  What’s more it gave them hope of a happy future; hope was a quality that all of us lacked living with Johnny Smith. Although I had long ago given up hoping myself, I didn’t want my girls to beaten down at such an early age. I wanted them to have the life I’d been denied.

  chapter twenty-five

  YOUNG FRANCES STILL lived at home with me back then. Out of all the girls she got away with the most. Johnny always had a soft spot for her and rarely hit her. She’d get upset when she saw him attack me but for some reason she’d forgive him afterwards and blame it on the drink.

  “He’s an alcoholic Ma,” she’d say. “It’s not his fault.”

  Her reaction would upset me but at the same time I knew how manipulative Johnny could be. She was torn between her parents.

  The other two girls lived with their boyfriends nearby, but we were in regular contact. Most days they’d call around for tea. A year after Aoife moved out she had a little boy. Molly also had a baby boy and I now had two lovely grandchildren and I was a proud grandmother.

  The day after Molly was released from hospital, she and Aoife called in to see me. It was a sunny day and we were all standing outside the house that afternoon when Johnny arrived home. He was angry and drunk when he got out of the car. He’d recently bought it and he loved that car.

  “What the fuck are you doing standing in the driveway with that child?” he roared at Aoife for no reason.

  Then he spat in her face and the spit fell on to the baby whom she was holding in her arms. Johnny laughed and walked into the house.

  Aoife said nothing. She was used to that sort of behaviour from her father. She could have let it pass but for some reason she lost her temper and took revenge that day. And what a revenge it was.

  She wiped the spit off her face as she went inside and handed the baby to me.

  “Mind him for a minute Ma,” she said. Her face was full of anger. Then she grabbed a hammer from the press in the kitchen and ran back out into the driveway.

  I’ll never forget the look of determination on her face as she wielded that hammer—throwing it back and swinging it with all her might, she was poetry in motion. First she smashed the side of Johnny’s car. Smash, bang, the glass lay in pieces on the ground and the sound seemed to echo around the street. Like that, a group of kids appeared and stood at a distance watching her.

  Then she wielded the hammer again, this time going for the front window of the car; the hammer came flying through the air and straight through the windscreen. The glass went everywhere—inside the car and all over the road. It lay scattered like shards of diamond, glinting in the sunlight.

  The neighbours were talking now.

  “What’s she doing? Is she alright?” I could hear muffled voices and the sound of doors opening. More children appeared as if from nowhere, some had bicycles, they giggled and shrieked each time she smashed a window, enjoying the sheer drama of the whole scene.

  I could tell by her face that each time she wielded that hammer and smashed through the glass of Johnny’s precious car she felt a little freer. All those years of pent-up emotions, of anger and pain and fear were coming to a head and this was her way of expressing them. She had purpose in her aim as she went for the back window of the car and then the lights—first the back and then the front ones. She didn’t stop until she had broken every piece of glass on the vehicle. As she broke the last window, she dropped the hammer on the ground and suddenly broke into tears. She looked at me with a forlorn expression on her face. Just then a round of applause broke out among the kids on the street. They were clapping and cheering.

  “Go on you mad thing,” one cheeky, young fella shouted. “Will you do my car?”

  Aoife laughed. We all laughed; we had to.

  Just then Johnny appeared at the door. The look on his face was priceless as he stared at his beloved car. He was white with anger.

  “You fuckin’ bitch,” he roared at Aoife. Then he ran and threw himself at her. He fell on top of her and they both fell to the ground.

  He punched Aoife in the face with all his might and her screams echoed around the road. Even the kids were quiet. They stood and watched in amazement.

  Just then however another car pulled up and this time it was Aoife’s boyfriend Mark.

  “Leave her alone you bastard,” he roared at Johnny as he got out of the car and ran for him.

  He was on Johnny’s back now, scratching at his face and biting his ear. Johnny stood up and he fell backwards but Mark got to his feet and landed a punch right on Johnny’s jaw. Johnny stood back, foaming at the mouth, and then he hit poor Mark and knocked him to the ground. Aoife was still lying on the pavement and the fight between the two men had moved into the centre of the street by now. Johnny had the upper hand; he was beating poor Mark to a pulp.

  Molly was standing watching the whole scene and she suddenly turned to me. There was panic in her voice.

  “Ma what are we going to do? Da is going to kill Mark.”

  Suddenly she made a running jump at Johnny’s back. He stood up and she fell back on to the concrete and screamed as she clutched her stomach. She had only been released from hospital the day before and the stitches from her caesarean section had yet to heal. I ran to her side. She lifted her jumper and there was blood and pus oozing out of her stomach; the stitches had burst.

  I looked up and Mark was kicking the daylights out of Johnny who lay on the ground.

  “You bastard,” he shouted over and over again.

  “Stop it Mark,” Aoife was on her feet now. She ran to his side and pulled him away. The fight was over and Johnny lay on the ground, curled up in the foetal position with his hands over his head.

  We had to call an ambulance that day. Poor Molly had to go to hospital to be restitched.

  It was a hard price to pay but I don’t think Aoife ever regretted wrecking the windows of his car. She still talks about it proudly to this day.

  chapter twenty-six

  AFTER I TOOK the first overdose, I spent three days in hospital; they were three long days. After Johnny was thrown out he didn’t come near me again. The girls came to see me and Helen and Fiona stopped by, but I still felt isolated. A hospital ward can be a very lonely place.

  I felt mortified—ashamed and guilty. I felt like the most private part of my life had been exposed and I was raw and vulnerable.

  The hospital staff were kind and sympathetic but not one of them brought the subject of Johnny up again. I think they didn’t want to know. They were probably used to battered wives; no counselling service was offered to me despite the fact that I’d tried to kill myself and no one suggested I contact the guards.

  I was relieved when they finally let me go home. I had no one to bring me back that day so I called a taxi. It’s funny how being away from a situation for a few days can make it seem clearer. As I sat in the back of the taxi, I stared out the window and my mind drifted back over the events of the past few years.

  In the days before, as I lay in hospital, I’d been trying to pinpoint when exactly I stopped coping. I suppose I’d been trying to explain my attempt at killing myself. As I sat in silence in the back of the car and looked out the window at the grey, urban l
andscape, it came flooding back to me. I wasn’t taking in the housing estates with their row upon row of same-looking council houses, the burnt out cars lying abandoned in patches of littered, greenery or the lifeless look of the people I passed, I was thinking back to the night Johnny had raped me.

  Of course he’d been drunk, he was always drunk but that night he was in a vicious mood, angry and belligerent. He’d wanted sex and for once I’d refused him. I was sick at the time; I had terrible pains in my stomach. I couldn’t stand the thought of sleeping with him; I just couldn’t bare it. I’d gone to bed early in the hope that maybe he’d leave me alone.

  “Perhaps he’ll come in and fall into bed, drunk out of his mind,” I thought to myself. But no, Johnny wasn’t tired that night. I listened as he climbed the stairs and there was purpose in his step. By the time he reached the bedroom I was shaking with fear.

  “Think you can fool me?” he slurred as he slammed the door.

  “I know all your little tricks,” he hiccuped loudly. “You’re not asleep and I know it.”

  Then he jumped on to the bed and made a grab for my breast. I was angry now and upset. “Why should I have to give in to this beast of a man?” I thought. I sat up in the bed and pushed his arm away from me.

  “No Johnny, you can fuck off, I’m not sleeping with you tonight. I’m not well. Just leave me alone.”

  But even as I said the words I knew I shouldn’t have. He was furious, angry and determined.

  “You’re my wife and I’ll fuck you if I want to,” he roared at the top of his voice. I was terrified; I knew that he was capable of anything. I wanted to run but my body just froze with fear.

  And then he was on top of me, pushing down on my body, heaving and groaning. I screamed at the top of my voice, using every ounce of energy and determination I possessed.

  “No” my voice seemed to echo around the room and I thought that the whole neighbourhood must have heard me, but they didn’t. Nobody heard my pitiful cry for help. And then he covered my mouth with his hand.

  “You fucking bitch, how dare you deny me,” he snarled. “I’ll show you.”

  His dirty fingers were in my mouth and I thought I was going to suffocate or choke, but there was nothing I could do.

  He grabbed both my arms with his other hand and held them over my head. I was pinned to the bed with him on top of me, pushing inside and the pain was horrific.

  “You bastard,” I wanted to scream out loud. I felt like tearing his hair out and gouging his eyes with my fingers. I wanted to kill him, but I couldn’t. He was on top of me and I couldn’t move. Then he came inside me and I wanted to die.

  This wasn’t about sex or love or alcoholism, this was an act of power and nothing else. He wanted to control me and I was powerless to stop him.

  Afterwards I lay whimpering in the bed beside him, while he rolled over and snored for Ireland. My whole body ached and I felt dirty, filthy, the lowest of the low.

  “If this is living,” I thought to myself. “Then I don’t want to do it anymore.”

  But worse was yet to come. Within a year, I found I was pregnant again. I was utterly shocked when my GP told me. Ever since I’d had young Frances I’d been on the pill. I was still on it at the time and I just couldn’t understand how I could possibly be pregnant.

  Looking back however I suffered from chronic diarrhoea, which I have no doubt was a direct result of the constant fear in which I lived. The pill must have passed through me at some stage.

  I was so shocked when I discovered I was pregnant that I went into a state of denial. I started laughing hysterically when the doctor told me and I left the surgery that day denying the truth to myself. For years the only thing that had kept me going was the knowledge that I could one day leave my husband.

  “Once young Frances reaches 16-years of age,” I’d think to myself, “I’m out of here. I’m gone out that door, never to return.”

  The irony was I’d nearly reached that stage. The girls were getting older, Frances was the only one still at home. All of them were becoming more independent and they needed me less and less.

  I didn’t want another baby. The thought of having to change nappies and look after a child again killed me, but more than anything I didn’t want this child because it meant I was trapped; chained to Johnny for at least another 16 years and I just couldn’t face the prospect.

  For a few weeks, I blocked it out of my mind and convinced myself that I wasn’t pregnant. I didn’t tell anyone including Johnny. But little by little the realisation dawned on me and I had to tell my husband. He acted like it was no big deal. He was cold and aloof as always. I suspected that he was secretly pleased at the prospect.

  I confronted him a few nights later, I broke down and told him there was no way I was having the baby. I wanted an abortion. To my surprise Johnny agreed.

  That afternoon I looked up the Yellow Pages and phoned the Well Woman Centre. It was around the time of one of the abortion referendums in Ireland and they told me to get hold of a Northern Ireland phone book and to ring a number there. I remember going into the GPO in the centre of the city and searching for a number.

  Eventually I found one, I took down the details, but I never rang them. It didn’t take long for Johnny to change his mind. That evening he came back drunk.

  “You think you’re having an abortion do you?” he roared. “There’s no way I’m letting you kill our child.” I knew he didn’t care about the child. It would only be another one for him to beat up for God’s sake. He knew he had me trapped and there was no way out. Helen came to visit me the next day. She knew all about Johnny by now so I had nothing to hide from her. Johnny didn’t like me seeing her but she insisted on calling at the house and there was nothing he could do about it. At that stage I didn’t care what he thought, I knew he’d beat me anyway. I wept bitter tears as I sat in the front room and told her the news.

  “Frances why are you crying? Sure it’s great that you’re having another baby. It’s never a bad thing,” she said gently, trying to comfort me.

  “You don’t understand Helen,” I shook my head and wiped my nose with a tissue.

  “It means I’m stuck here, stuck with Johnny forever.”

  Helen knew my situation was bad but nobody could quite understand it unless they’d lived through it. She probably thought I was over reacting.

  I realise now that in the weeks that followed, I wasn’t thinking straight. All I could think about was the pregnancy and after a while I slipped back into a state of denial. I didn’t eat properly at the time and the bump on my stomach was very small so nobody noticed it.

  Helen was worried about me. She told me afterwards that Johnny had turned around to her one day when I was out of the room.

  “She thought she was going to leave me?” he’d said. “She thought she was going to walk out on her husband? I showed her. She’s never going anywhere without me.”

  The nine months leading up to the birth of the child passed in a blur. For years I had drifted along with my head buried in the sand, refusing to face reality.

  Now I was beginning to realise the truth about my life and I was in a state of profound despair. It was as if all the years of suffering had finally caught up on me.

  When the baby arrived, I was totally unprepared. I hadn’t bought any baby clothes. I didn’t even have an overnight bag packed for when I went to hospital. But Helen was great at the time. For months she’d been begging me to face up to the situation.

  “You’re going to have a baby Frances, you’re pregnant,” she’d say to me and I’d laugh at the notion. Then she’d get angry.

  “It’s not funny Frances, you have to start looking after yourself.”

  Johnny drove me to the hospital on the day I was to have the baby. We had another little girl and she was born perfectly healthy. I called her Caitríona.

  Despite the fact that I’d denied I was pregnant and had been dreading the baby’s birth, once they placed the tiny littl
e thing in my arms I loved her as much, if not more, than all the others. She was cute and adorable and as her little hand clasped around my finger, I thanked God for this beautiful child.

  Fiona came to visit me in the recovery room after the birth. She later told me I looked like death warmed up and she’d been very worried. The birth had taken a lot out of me.

  I had to stay in hospital for two weeks to recover. They gave me a blood transfusion because I was anaemic. I was very run-down at the time.

  chapter twenty-seven

  THE DAY I was released from hospital I called into Helen’s house with the baby, on the way home. I felt very weak while I was there but I put it down to recovering from the birth. Helen drove me home that day and I went to bed.

  The following day however I still felt weak and I had to lie down for the day. At one stage my temperature climbed so high, I was delirious.

  That evening Johnny was in the pub and young Frances was off somewhere with her friends. I lay awake in the house with Caitríona in the cot at the end of the bed.

  From the moment I took Caitríona home, all the girls had doted on her. Johnny hadn’t shown much interest but then he’d long ago lost interest in his family. All he cared about now was drinking and robbing to feed his alcoholism. He was drinking more than ever. He’d wake up with his hands shaking and they wouldn’t be steady until he’d downed his first drink in the early house. He didn’t even try to stay off the booze anymore, it was as if he’d given in and resigned himself to a life of alcoholism.

  That night as I lay in bed, my temperature climbed so high I was convinced that I could see a figure standing beside the cot and in my fevered state I thought it was my grandmother; who I had stayed with as a child. I could see her standing there; her hair was white and her features looked exactly as they had in real life. She was beckoning to me. Funnily enough I didn’t feel afraid. Perhaps I wanted to die.