by Jane Harris
If you listened to my mother, this man my father wanted but two things in life. One to be dancing and two to have her pinned to the wall by his jack upon which organ by her account you could have slung a packsaddle. Strange to say, as soon as old Whacker discovered that ‘the love of his life’ was carrying a child, away off he jigged out of town taking his jack with him, never to be seen nor heard again, well I don’t suppose his jack made a sound. Mind you perhaps it nickered.
As for my mother Bridget, due to a fondness for Dutch gin and various knocks to the head, her recollection of the past was shocking and in her time she claimed variously that I was born on a Tuesday or perhaps a Thursday in April or more likely May. It was the middle of the night, or just before teatime, this was in the year ’47, ’48 or ’49 and the birth took place in either Dundalk or Drogheda, or possibly somewhere else altogether. ‘How am I supposed to remember all that!’ my mother would cry if ever I asked about the circumstances. ‘I was in PAIN! I was GIVING BIRTH!! It began with a ‘D’! D something! Was it Donaghadee?’
But wherever we were and whenever it was, she was ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN of one detail and that was that she was in the middle of a fight when I came out. In her melancholy cups, when I was only small, she’d fix me with a watery gaze and declare, ‘Look at you! You were born with wigs on the green!’ a notion that caused me a certain amount of confusion at the time.
One other thing she does remember is that while she was carrying me she took a powerful notion to smoke a pipe. Any time I asked about my birth it was this first pipe that my mother went on about claiming that it was only the very final puff of the very last little ember in the bowl that gave her any pleasure whatsoever. Jesus Murphy the pounds of tobacco she had to smoke her way through with dogged determination in order every time to get down to that final glowing little coal. ‘It was a wonder,’ she used to say, ‘that when I came to term I had a child at all and not a flipping fall of soot.’
My first memory is of light, pretty dappled patches of light playing across the dusty floorboards of a strange house where my mother had took me, this was back in Ireland. A gentleman lived in the house, he had straw-coloured moustachios and blue eyes like chips of sky. My mother had went into the next room with him and they had closed the door, telling me to stay put and amuse myself with a wooden clothes peg. I soon got bored and so drank off the dregs of the strange mans glass (my mother had left none) and went to listen at the door. It seemed that my mother and he were dancing in there, at any rate they was out of breath and I could hear the creak of the boards, which stopped when the man made a terrible sound like his throat had been cut and moments later my mother hurried out the room counting coins then bundled me from the house and up the road. She has killt him and took his purse! I thought, until we saw the very same gent the very next day, not a mark on him! He was in the street, walking arm-in-arm with a fine lady. I was most glad he was alive and my mother not a murderer (though I did not doubt she was capable of it, she was forever threatening to kill me).
I waved to the gent and gave him good afternoon, for he had been kind and chucked my chin and made me a present of the clothes peg, but he just frowned and steered his lady away across the square and then sure did my mother not practically yank the arm off me as she dragged me up an alley. Christ the Night I had put her in a foul temper, you knew that because of the way her eyes flashed and her nostrils flared. When you got her in a rage you were never sure exactly what she would do but you knew she was bound to lash out. This time she spat at me through her teeth, ‘DON’T-YOU-EVER-DO-THAT-AGAIN! ’ each word accompanied by a blow to my head or backside. ‘Else I’ll THROTTLE YOU!’
From that day forth I never in public acknowledged a man I recognised unless he had greeted me first, and I did this even if a man was a frequent visitor to our home and even if the last time I seen him my mother had—let’s say for instance—been sat on his knee and letting him like a big baby suck on her titty, excuse me but such is an example of how I viewed the confusing and disturbing scenes I witnessed from an early age.
My mother always used to claim she worked in a shop that sold umbrellas, a notion I never questioned until I got a bit older and then could not understand why the umbrella shop was open only at night instead of like other shops in the daytime. When I asked my mother about this she told me don’t be daft she didn’t sell the umbrellas, not at all, what she did, she had to be up all night fabricating them for to be sold the next morning. Fabricating them. Her very words. It took me a long time to realise that whatever she was fabricating it was not umbrellas.
By the time I was 8 or 9 (or 10, she didn’t know), we had settled in Dublin and lodged next door to a pie shop, in a room at the very top of a dark narrow stair. More often than not I would wake up in the morning and my mother would be back from ‘work’ and there would be some man or other dossed down in the bed recess or on occasion just crumpled in a heap in the middle of the floor as if overnight he had fell from the ceiling. All shapes and sizes and sorts of men were to be discovered in the mornings, sometimes two or 3 of them were laid out on the floor and snoring in a row. The smell of drink would knock you down and when my mother woke up she would glare at whoever was there like she hated them and demonstrate shocking bad form until they gave her the money they owed her for the lodging and went away. Whereupon she would take her sore head straight back to bed.
Unless of course they was a young handsome man and she was in love with them, in which case it was a different story altogether, Jesus Murphy she would be fastened onto their coat tails and trying to drag them back between the sheets if they even so much as glanced at the door. There was always this one or that one that she made a fool of herself over, chief I remember among these was a piece of work named Joe Dimpsey and a more slippery article never pulled on an elastic sided boot. It was said that Joe Dimpsey came originally from good stock and had rich relations over in Scratchland and that he had even attended the Queens college for a while before he had to sell his textbooks to pay off a debt. Thereafter things didn’t go too well for Joe and by the time my mother met him he was working odd jobs at the racetrack but he soon gave up that profession in order to lay about our hearth ½ clad, his main tasks seemed to be to flex his muscles while flicking through the racing pages until the early hours when my mother would return from the so-called umbrella shop with more money or another bottle.
Right enough, Joe Dimpsey was very good-looking, he had dark curls and an insolent grin and when he thought that nobody was listening he would stand in front of the glass and tell himself, ‘Flip me but you are one handsome scut.’
My mother would not hear a bad word said about Joe Dimpsey, as far as she was concerned he was the Angel Gabriel and had a great future ahead of him as a learned Man of Science just as soon as he took it into his head to resume his studies. After some months, when he showed no signs of taking anything into his head apart from liquor (indeed it was his party trick to suck a measure of gin up his nose), my mother bought him the necessary textbooks herself but he barely opened them and preferred instead to while away the time when she was not at home by catching the gas of his farts in his hand and trying to make you smell them, that was the nearest thing to Science that passed in our house while Joe Dimpsey was in residence.
One afternoon, Joe came back from the track looking very down in the mouth and early next morning away out he went with the textbooks under his arm. He returned an hour later, empty-handed and looking rather shifty. Even I could guess that he must have sold the books. I watched him from my little tick on the floor as he tried gently to wake my mother, never an easy proposition, you might as well have danced a jig at a milestone. Finally, he gave her a shake. She opened one eye a crack and looked at him crossly.
‘I’m going,’ he told her and jerked a thumb at the wall, behind which lay nought but the attic of the pie shop, I did not know much but I didn’t think that was where he was headed.
‘What?’ says my mother, a bit grog
gy and also probably ½ drunk, she still had her frock on if I remember right. ‘Where to?’
Joe glanced over his shoulder, out the little window and after a pause he said, ‘Over the water. I’ve bought the ticket. I’m away today.’
My mother leapt out the bed recess and grabbed his arm. ‘What?’ she squawked. ‘You can’t! You can’t leave me here on my own! On my ownnn!!!’
It seemed, not for the first time, that she had forgot she had a child, even though I was sat on the floor, right in front of her! sucking on my breakfast, a lollipop. Joe shrugged her off. ‘I have to,’ he says. ‘It’s that or stay here and decide which arm gets broke, the right or the left and I can’t decide, so I’m going before they come to get me.’
My mother wept and pleaded as she dipped slyly into his pockets, looking to pinch the boat ticket and destroy it but Dimpsey had been with us long enough to have her measure and I reckon the ticket was tucked well down his boot or hid in some other private orifice, at any rate she didn’t find it. She tellt him she’d pay what he owed but no matter how much she begged he would neither change his mind nor reveal his destination—which was, he claimed, ‘for her own safety’ in case excuse me ‘the bastards’ came after her. At this, my mother prostrated herself on the bed, calling him some names and when he tried to pat her shoulder she screamed at him, ‘Flip off you SCUT!’ and lashed out a series of vicious kicks at his tallywags.
I think Joe seen this as reason enough to leave. My mother clung to his legs and screamed at me to help restrain him but I knew better than to get involved in disagreements between Bridget and her men, I had done so once before and got a bruise on my arse the size of Canada for my trouble. So I stayed where I was and took only the twin precautions of removing my lollipop from my mouth (as in those days you were always hearing of terrible accidents involving lollipops) and of lifting aside a glass of ale I had found and planned to drink later. Just in time, for Joe dragged my mother by the hair right over the spot where the glass had been, then threw her on the bed like a sack of coal. Before she could sit up he’d slipped out the room and turned the key in the lock from the outside.
It took an hour before any scut responded to our cries for help but at last we attracted the attention of the pieman who had stepped out the back of his shop in order to relieve himself into a drain as was his habit. He had to bust the lock, for Joe had took the key with him. As the door came in my mother turned to me and said, ‘You stay put until I come back or I’ll skin you alive.’ And with that she flew down the stairs and out into the street. I was fond of my skin and had no wish to be parted from it so I did not budge.
My mother returned in the late afternoon, long-lippit and alone. I was highly delighted to see that Joe was not with her but knew better than to show it so I sat on my smile and kept quiet. That night, before she went to work she seemed very thoughtful, chewing the stem of her pipe as she stared at the cinders in the grate and every so often throwing me a dirty look. I had no idea what I had done wrong. This set of circumstances was not uncommon but in hindsight I believe I know exactly what was going on in her mind. After numerous scowls and sighs and shakings of her head she seemed to cheer up and come to some kind of decision.
‘You’ll be all right now, won’t you?’ she said.
I did not like the sound of this, not one bit, and so was cautious in my reply.
‘ . . . When?’ I says, eventually.
‘When I go away with Joe,’ she says. ‘You’ll be all right here on your own for a few years until you grow up, will you not?’
I jumped out my seat in a panic. ‘YOU WOULDN’T!!’ I cried.
My mother grinned, showing the space between her front teeth, a gap so wide you could have slotted a shilling through it. Clearly she was glad to see the fear evoked by her suggestion of abandonment, I could have kicked myself. I sat down again quick.
‘You’re lying,’ I tellt her. ‘Joe’s gone. He’s left.’
She was still smiling, with one eyebrow raised. She seemed very confident. What did she know that I didn’t?
‘Well that’s funny,’ she says. ‘Very flipping funny.’
I said nothing, didn’t even bother to look at her, only out the corner of my eye. ‘Oh yes, very amusing,’ she says, but I didn’t rise to the bait. ‘That amuses me greatly,’ she says and when I still made no response she pointed her finger at me and continued, ‘And I’ll tell you for why. Because who did I see down at the dock.’
I gasped and whipped round to face her. ‘You did not.’
‘I’m not going to argue with you. I seen Joe and we made up. He was very nice to me, very apologetic. All over me, so he was.’
My heart sank. It was just possible that this was true. My mother and Joe was forever having fights and then making up.
‘The long and short of it is,’ says my mother. ‘He wants me to go away with him.’
And seeing as how I wasn’t included in this plan she took the opportunity to gaze at me with great pity.
‘Where—where to?’ I says.
‘Across the water, to Scratchland. But the passage costs a flipping fortune and Joe says we can’t afford to take you. But sure you’ll be all right if we leave you here on your own, won’t you?’
I just stared at her.
She shifted her pipe from one side of her mouth to the other and gazed into the hearth. ‘You’ll probably have to beg for food,’ she says, ‘but if you ask very nicely you might get the odd scrap off the pieman.’
I am sorry to say that at this point I began to cry.
My mother laughed. ‘Och,’ she says. ‘Don’t be such a big baby. You can look after yourself for a change. And sure if you get thrown out of here you could always sleep on McSweens doorstep.’
At this prospect, I fell wailing at her feet. She let me weep many hot and bitter tears into her lap, while she stroked my hair and told me to ‘Shhh’.
‘Don’t—leave—me—mammy!’ I sobbed. ‘Please—don’t—go—away!’
‘Well now,’ she says. ‘I wonder.’ She tutted and sighed and shifted in her seat and when, a moment later, I looked up into her face she was scratching her head and looking thoughtful. ‘There might just be one way that you could come with us.’
I grabbed her hand in both of mine. ‘Oh mammy, please. Please let me.’
‘Och, I don’t know,’ she says. ‘You would have to do everything I tell you.’
‘I will, I will, I’ll be good.’
She pointed a finger at me. ‘You’ll only get one chance,’ she says. ‘And if you muck it up, that’s it. We’ll have to leave you.’
‘I won’t muck it up, I promise, mammy, please?’
‘Well, we’ll just have to see.’
And then she sat me by the light of a candle and proceeded to paint my face. Oh it was a great game at first. I was very excited to have all her attention for a change, I wished she would always sit with me and stroke my hair and tell me I was a good girl and pretty as a picture. However. As much as I liked the thought that I was old enough now to wear paint, I soon began to dislike like the feel of it on my skin. But when I tried to rub it off my mother smacked my hand.
‘Stop that!’ she says.
‘I want to take it off,’ says I.
She snorted. ‘You will not!’ she says. ‘What’s the use of a shop without a sign?’
At the time I don’t think I understood her comment. I believe I confused the shop she mentioned with the umbrella shop—for she herself always put paint on her face before she went out to work there. And so I arrived at the conclusion that—finally!—I was going to get to see where she worked, and I was even to be allowed to help her. That was how we were going to make the money for my ticket, I was to become a fabricator of umbrellas!
Of course I don’t have to even tell you, that was not at all what my mother had in mind.
But perhaps that is enough of my past for now. Much of what went on in those days is a source of great shame for me. It is difficul
t to write about and I am sure not a very pleasant read! Indeed it makes me feel queasy to remember some of the terrible things that followed and I dread writing about it. For the moment, I have said all I can but I will return to this subject later since I have been told to leave nothing out and I want to be helpful. The incidents I lay down here are not Creations of the Brain, but the Truth. As events occurred so they will be given. I am confident that should my words remain in private hands they will not be lightly read since those distinguished gentlemen that have encouraged me in my efforts at authorship are gentlemen every inch of them, gentlemen to their backbones, to their very TOE NAILS.
But now to return to Castle Haivers, where I was still laid up with the bokes.
For three days in all, I didn’t budge from my little attic room. Then on the 4th day I woke to find that I was well enough to return to work. I did consider shamming illness and remaining in bed but curiosity got the better of me and so I roused myself and dressed in one of dear darling Noras blasted frocks. In fact, I had not yet dismissed the possibility of vacating the premises, the notion of stalking out in high dudgeon if missus put one foot wrong held some appeal and so I left my bundle in the cupboard, ready to grab at a moments notice. But I couldn’t bring myself to leave just yet. For I couldn’t believe, in my heart of hearts, that she would truly disengage from me.
I spent some time making sure my hair was tidy then presented myself downstairs. There in the kitchen was missus, her back to me, transferring eggs from a basket to a bowl. She didn’t hear me come in. I could have went up behind her and done anything, put the heart across in her by shouting ‘Boo!’ or I could have bashed her on the head with the rolling pin or I could have slipped my arms round her and kissed her throat or any scutting thing I wanted. But as a matter of fact I hadn’t a baldy notion what I wanted, so I just stood in the doorway and watched her put the last egg in the bowl and then turn around.