In Fear of Her Life

by Sandra Smyth

  A young guard was standing nearby and he must have noticed what was happening. He came over.

  “Mrs. Smith, are these men bothering you?” he said politely.

  “Yes, guard they are,” I replied.

  Then he asked them to leave the courtroom. One of the men glared at me as he stood up. He didn’t have to speak; I could see the anger in his face. Johnny was sitting at the other side of the courtroom. Suddenly he also stood up and left as well.

  When the case was called, there was no sign of Johnny. He’d disappeared. There was no need for me to give evidence. The judge ordered that a warrant be issued for his arrest.

  Shortly afterwards he was picked up for another crime but he was sent to a rehabilitation centre for men with drug and alcohol addictions.

  He was there a couple of weeks and for the whole time he plagued me with phone calls.

  The children felt sorry for him and visited him a few times.

  Before he was picked up by the guards, I’d been asking him to sign the house over to me. It was in both our names at the time.

  Johnny told Aoife to tell me that he’d sign it over if I agreed to drop the assault charges against him.

  “Tell your Ma, I’ll sign over the house and leave her alone. I’ll do anything if she gets me out of here,” he said to Aoife, who promptly relayed the message back to me.

  I agreed to his request. If the house was in my name then I could sell it and escape from Johnny once and for all. I should have known better however. As soon as he was released he refused to sign it over. What’s more he was round at the house, demanding that I let him come back.

  This time there was nothing I could do to stop him. I tried complaining to the guards again but they took me less seriously than before because I’d dropped the charges against him the first time. In the following two years I rang them regularly about my husband. In that time, I got five barring orders against Johnny but they weren’t worth the paper they were written on.

  On one occasion I left with the kids and went to live with Helen. Of course Johnny came home that evening and was furious. He rang my mobile but I turned it off and refused to answer it. The next evening we were sitting watching television in Helen’s house. Aoife and Molly were there too and we were all squashed into the small front room with Helen.

  I was sitting in an armchair with Molly at my feet when suddenly I heard a noise behind me. Before I could even turn around, I felt a hand clasp my hair from behind and a knife was placed at my throat. I panicked but I couldn’t move my head. Then I heard his voice.

  “Think you’re great don’t you, leaving your husband who’s stood by you all these years?”

  He was drunk; I could smell the alcohol off him.

  “Didn’t I always tell you, you’ll die before you ever leave me.”

  I could only see ahead of me and Molly was on her feet now.

  “Leave her alone Da, leave her fuckin’ alone,” she screamed, and then Helen spoke.

  “Johnny, put the knife down, put the knife down slowly Johnny.”

  The tension in the air was tangible.

  Helen lived in a flat and in order to get in, he must have glided the front door with a credit card, then climbed five flights of stairs and glided the front door of her home. He did it in complete silence, none of us heard him coming.

  Suddenly Molly stood up and went for him, Johnny’s hand slipped and I thought for a second he’d slit my throat. I screamed but no, the knife had fallen to the floor. Quick as a shot however he’d picked it up and when Molly went to grab him he got behind her and held it to her face.

  “Think she’s pretty do you?” he directed his comments at me. “Well she won’t be very pretty when I’ve finished with her. If you don’t come back with me now, she’s going to get it. I’m going to slash her pretty little face in two and it will be your fault.”

  I was distraught. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t believe Johnny was willing to slash his own daughter’s face.

  “Okay Johnny,” I broke down. “I’ll come home with you. I’ll do anything you want. Just please leave Molly alone,” I begged him.

  “You’ll come home now?” he questioned me further.

  “Yes,” I screamed. “Yes. I’ll come this minute. Just put the knife down, please Johnny. Don’t hurt her.”

  He paused for a second, enjoying his victory and the momentary power he possessed.

  “Okay then,” he dropped the knife.

  Molly fell to her knees and began sobbing uncontrollably.

  “Right so,” my husband turned to me.

  “It’s nine o’clock now and you’d better be in that house when I get home tonight.”

  He walked out of the room and into the hallway.

  “I’ll see you when I get home,” he called after him as he jumped down the steps.

  I had no choice but to return and he beat me black and blue that night.

  On another occasion when I stormed out with the kids we went to my father’s house. He was getting older and his health wasn’t the best. He recently had open-heart surgery.

  Da took us in and said we could stay for as long as we wanted to. I told him I was leaving Johnny and he didn’t seem shocked. He had heard about how Johnny treated me from Helen and Fiona. I don’t think he ever knew the full extent of the situation however and it was probably better that he didn’t. I knew it would just worry him.

  The night after I arrived in my father’s house we were sitting in the front room when suddenly there was a sound outside. It sounded like breaking glass. I ran into the hallway to see a sledge hammer coming through the front door.

  The stained glass panes were broken and the frame of the door was being chopped to pieces with the hammer. Of course it was Johnny. Who else would it be? Young Frances was with me at the time and she ran after me into the hall.

  “Jesus Ma,” she said. “It’s Da and he’s not very happy Ma.”

  I had to go home that time too because he threatened to kill us with the sledgehammer if we didn’t go. My poor father was in a terrible state. He’d never seen Johnny as bad and he was terrified out of his wits. What’s more, he was worried for our safety.

  “Will you be alright love?” he looked at me with a fearful expression.

  “Don’t worry Da. I’ll be okay,” I blatantly lied knowing well that Johnny would beat me up as soon as I got home. I didn’t want to worry my father because of his health. The poor man didn’t need to worry about us on top of everything else.

  chapter twenty-nine

  AROUND THAT TIME I sensed something was up with Johnny. For years you could always set your clock by him. He’d be gone early in the morning, he’d take the girls to school then you wouldn’t see him until the afternoon when he’d bring them back. He’d come back about the same time each evening but in the last few months he’d started to stay out late and come in at odd times.

  One night he arrived in at four o’clock in the morning. He woke me up as he came in the bedroom door.

  “Where the fuck were you?”

  I sat up in bed. “Oh, I was too drunk to come home. I fell asleep in the car, parked in a car park.”

  I smelt a rat immediately. I’d seen Johnny drive when he was so drunk he couldn’t even stand, and being drunk had never stopped him coming home before. At the same time I thought maybe I was being paranoid.

  “Sure where would he possibly be?” I thought in all innocence. But there were other signs that something strange was a foot. He had become over-protective of his mobile phone.

  I remember one day he was lying on the couch, drunk when it rang. He jumped up immediately.

  “Don’t answer that,” he warned. I wasn’t going to answer it anyway but I was taken aback at his reaction. He was very on edge.

  Another night we’d had a fight and I was in the front bedroom, crying my eyes out. He’d gone into the girls’ room to make a phone call. Aoife and Molly were staying over and he thought they were asleep at the tim
e but they weren’t.

  They told me the next day that they’d heard him talking to a woman. They couldn’t make out what she was saying but they suspected it was a female voice. I still wasn’t convinced that Johnny could be having an affair.

  “Sure it was probably Paul’s wife,” I said. Paul was one of Johnny’s mates. Looking back however why would he have been talking to his mate’s wife in the small hours of the morning? It didn’t make sense.

  Then there were times when we’d fight in the middle of the night and he’d disappear. In all the years I’d known him he had never done that before. I still refused to believe Johnny could be unfaithful. My sisters backed me up.

  “There’s no way Johnny would ever have an affair Frances,” Helen shook her head when I told her. “He’s just not the type.”

  Fiona agreed.

  “No, you’re imagining it Fran,” she said. “Sure he rants for hours about other men and how they have affairs outside of marriage. He hates women too; he won’t enter a barber’s shop if there’s a woman working there. Johnny would never be unfaithful. Anyway who would have him?” she added.

  Then we all laughed and I put the idea out of my head. Eventually the truth came out.

  It was Robbie, a friend of Johnny’s, who finally told me the facts.

  We were sitting in a bar one evening. Johnny was deep in conversation with Robbie, and I was talking to Robbie’s sister. When she got up to go the toilet I overheard some of the conversation between the two men. I didn’t mean to listen, but I couldn’t help it.

  “If I had what you have Johnny,” I heard Robbie say, “There’s no way I’d do that.”

  “What do you mean?” said Johnny.

  “Well you’ve a gorgeous wife and four lovely kids, sure what do you want to go and do that for?”

  I knew then that something was up and I was determined to find out the truth, but it wasn’t the time or the place. Those remarks went round and round in my head for days afterwards.

  Although I had caught Johnny chatting up two dolly birds at Butlins years ago I had never seen him with another woman since, and I honestly believed he would never have an affair. He often used to say to me, “You’d never be with another man. Sure you wouldn’t! I’d never go with another woman.”

  Shortly after that I was in the same bar with Johnny, Robbie and Fiona.

  When Johnny went to the toilet I turned to Robbie.

  “I need to know the truth Robbie. Is Johnny seeing somebody else?”

  Robbie was sitting at the bar. He stared at the ground for a few moments and there was silence. I waited with baited breath. Then he looked at me. His voice was grave.

  “Fran,” he paused, “Do you know Polo?”

  This was a nickname for a mate of Johnny’s who lived across the road.

  “He’s with Polo’s sister Sarah.”

  I couldn’t speak with the shock. Maybe I should have seen it coming, call me a fool but I didn’t. I sat there with my head spinning for a few moments, and then I got up. I had to get out of that bar before Johnny returned. I knew I couldn’t face him without him knowing that I knew, and I could never let on that Robbie had told me. He would have killed Robbie outright.

  “Thank you Robbie,” I managed to say and then I made a run for the door.

  I ran all the way home, crying as I ran. I wasn’t sure why I was running; I just wanted to get home as quickly as possible.

  When Robbie had said Polo, I’d presumed it must have been the daughter in the family who was about 18 at the time, but later I found out it was actually the mother and not the daughter. She’s in her fifties and older than Johnny. That was the nail in the coffin. I couldn’t believe Johnny would betray me for an older woman.

  Still, I didn’t confront Johnny with the truth. I told the girls, and Helen and Fiona, but I had no evidence to back up the allegations. I bided my time, waiting for the truth to come out.

  Shortly after that I went away for a weekend with Johnny and his mate Vinny. There was a hurling final in Galway and they were going to “work”. I remember sitting in the hotel in Galway when I got a phone call from Molly.

  “Ma, it’s Molly. Where’s Da?” she said.

  “He’s sitting here beside me darlin’,” I said to Molly. “Is everything alright?” I had left Caitríona who was still a baby with Molly and Aoife for the weekend.

  “Everything is grand Ma, I just thought I’d ring to check,” said Molly but I knew from her voice she was worried about something.

  I needed to speak to her, but I wanted to do it in private and there was no way Johnny would let me out of his sight.

  The next morning I got out of bed early. Leaving Johnny behind me snoring loudly, I went down stairs to use the hotel phone.

  “Aoife, it’s Ma, I couldn’t talk yesterday but I just wanted to check everything is okay love?” She couldn’t talk at the time.

  “Everything’s fine Ma, but could you ring back in half an hour?” she said.

  About an hour later I’d just finished breakfast with Johnny. He disappeared to buy a newspaper and I thought, “Right, this is my chance.”

  I used the mobile this time. Aoife answered.

  “Is Da with you?” she asked and I told her he was gone to buy a paper.

  “Are you sitting down Ma?” I said I was. “Well a young child came to the door last night with an envelope, she’d been sent by a woman who was standing on the road watching her. The child handed in the envelope and I opened it Ma,” said Aoife her voice shaking.

  “Inside was a bunch of keys belonging to Da and a letter. The letter said the keys had been left in the woman’s flat two nights before.”

  Supposedly she’d heard him talking to me on the phone one night and as a result she’d thrown him out of her flat. She’d left her phone number on the end of the page for me to ring her.

  I knew then I had to face the truth. There was no doubt about it; Johnny Smith was having an affair. There was silence from my end of the phone as the truth gradually sank in.

  “Are you alright Ma?” said Aoife, her voice was worried.

  I was sitting in the lobby of the hotel, crying my eyes out at that stage.

  “I’m alright love,” I sniffled down the phone. “Don’t worry about me.”

  But she was worried.

  “Ma, don’t say anything to him down there, he’ll only get drunk and beat you up.”

  I knew better however.

  “Don’t worry love, I won’t,” I said as I put down the phone.

  I felt shattered. All those years I’d put up with beatings, and they had been worse than ever recently, and now on top of it all, he’d gone and had an affair. I resolved not to mention it to him immediately, but as soon as he came back he saw my tears and started questioning me.

  “Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with you now?”

  I could feel the blood rising in my cheeks then and I just couldn’t hold back the words.

  “I know Johnny, I know you’re having an affair with that woman, Sarah,” I spat the words out and I was defiant and angry. I didn’t care what the consequences were I had to confront him.

  “What?”

  He acted like I was mad; denied the allegation completely.

  “That knacker? Sure what would I be doing with her?” he said implying that I was paranoid and over- possessive.

  I walked away from him then. Aoife had given me the woman’s phone number and I had to hear it from her own mouth. I stepped outside and phoned her on the mobile. My hands were shaking as I dialled the number.

  “Hello,” I said hesitantly. “Is that Sarah?”

  Her voice was coarse and deep. She sounded like she’d smoked too many cigarettes in her lifetime.

  “Yeah, who’s that?” she replied.

  I took a deep breath.

  “It’s Fran Smith,” I said.

  There was silence on the other end. When she did speak she told me everything; how they’d been seeing each other for months, h
ow he told her he was going to leave me because I was mad, how he’d wanted to leave me for years but couldn’t because of the children. There was an air of triumph in her tone.

  It may sound ridiculous but even then I didn’t quite believe he was having an affair.

  “Maybe she’s lying,” I thought to myself. “Maybe she’s the mad one?”

  Johnny had denied it emphatically and I still believed that perhaps it was all just a vicious rumour. “How do I know you’re not making this up?” I asked the woman.

  “Well,” she paused for a second. “I have a photo of him on top of my television,” she said.

  “It was one of the two of you in the Canary Islands a few years ago. I tore it in half and kept the piece with him in it. If you don’t believe me you can come round and see for yourself.”

  I knew that photograph well. It was taken one time when Johnny had insisted on taking me to the Canary Islands for my birthday a few years ago. I hadn’t wanted to go but as usual I had no choice. He’d spent most of the holiday drunk and I couldn’t relax because I was afraid of what he was going to do next. It was one long nightmare and I was glad to get home after a week.

  Johnny looked well in the photo. He was standing by the pool at the time and he had a bottle of beer in his hand. I, on the other hand, looked completely miserable. The woman offered to meet me and show me the photograph and I agreed.

  chapter thirty

  I CONFRONTED JOHNNY with the details as soon as I put down the phone. I was furious. It was bad enough that he’d been cheating on me, but worse still that he couldn’t even admit it to my face. We drove back to Dublin with his friend Vinny in the car. When I reached the house that night, I told Johnny that I’d arranged to meet the woman. He was still denying the affair.

  “If it’s not true then why don’t you come with me?” I said to him.

  “I’m not coming with you,” he said.

  “Right so, I’ll get her to come here,” I said. Johnny walked out of the house.