If I Was a Child Again

by Caroline Finnerty

  But we would always know that; his anger seeped through the cracks in the door long before he turned the key. She cooked corned beef and cabbage on Sundays. If I try, I can still hear the cups on the dresser rattle as the door closes coffin-like behind him. The air feels threatening, my sister, brother and I sitting like unwanted additions, hoping we might somehow drift into the faded flowery wallpaper of the small front room.

  His eyes would speak first, angry. No dinner yet, no plate filled, no place set. I would watch him untie his boots, his big strong hands with nails of ingrained dirt and lines that mirrored a rugged, ragged face. The steaming pot would be billowing smoke signals from the scullery, smelling of York cabbage and boiled meat. We would wait. We didn’t eat; him first, always first. Through the corner of my eye, I would watch him cut the meat. Then the blind raging anger hovering since the moment he turned the key would release itself, and the plate with corned beef and cabbage would go flying through the air.

  My mother would say nothing. It was best not to, not when he was like that, and not ever. I remember how the door would slam shut, and he would be gone, leaving us as castoffs in his broken wake. We would sit in silence – in case he might come back – bruised that way only children know. Today, older, I see the man differently. In part, I can carry his pain as he drowned his sorrow with Arthur Guinness, as he walked the tenement streets, as he faced his family, the anger of his failures weighing heavy on his shoulders. In some ways I am with him as he fires that plate with corned beef and lame cabbage and I can see a life as shattered as the willow pattern on that broken plate.

  If I was a child again, I’d turn to my little girl self when she was sad and scared. I would reach down and gently take her by the hand. I would tell her none of it was because of her, and she will be okay. I would want to take her to a place where the anger is no more. I have that place now.

  In part her sadness has made me who I am. I still feel her pain and the feelings of isolation and shame, but there was respite too. It was found in the imagination, and the love within the anger and loss. If I was a child again, I would know that there is always light within the dark.

  Born in Dublin, Louise Phillips’ work has been published as part of many anthologies, including County Lines from New Island, and various literary journals. In 2009, she won the Jonathan Swift Award for her short story “Last Kiss”, and in 2011 she was a winner in the Irish Writers’ Centre Lonely Voice platform. She has also been short-listed for the Molly Keane Memorial Award, Bridport UK, and long-listed twice for the RTÉ Guide/Penguin Short Story Competition. In 2012, she was awarded an Arts Bursary for Literature from South Dublin County Council. Her bestselling debut crime novel, Red Ribbons, was shortlisted for Best Irish Crime Novel of the Year (2012) in the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards. Her second novel The Doll’s House was published August 2013. For more information, go to www.louise-phillips.com.

  Story 40: Dear Mam . . .

  Margaret Scott

  In 2004 two monumental things happened in my life. I got married and moved out of home for the first time, and six months later my mother sadly passed away. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think of her, especially since I had my own two little girls. In this open letter I’d like to confess that some thirty odd years later, I guess there was method in her madness after all . . .

  Dear Mam,

  It is possible to have too many pets. Four dogs, two cats, a rabbit, two donkeys and a pony all seemed like a good idea at the time. Less so when they all line up to be fed. Twice a day. If the cats could call a truce and stop their middle-of-the-night altercations it would help. It’s also a bit of a nuisance that one of the cats can open doors, which then enables the dog to noisily tap his way across our bedroom floor. And who’d have thought a rabbit could be so grumpy and ungrateful? I thought of you recently as I picked dandelions for him in the pouring rain under a golf umbrella. We had two rabbits and six guinea pigs at one stage when I was small. That was in addition to the seven cats, five dogs and poultry too numerous to mention. How did you do it? And why?

  There’s an ongoing campaign in our house now for a goldfish. I wish I could ask you why you stopped short at fish – is there something I should know? Was it that they’re not cuddly? Or the inevitable trauma when they’re found floating upside-down in the bowl? Because that’s the thing with pets, they don’t live as long as we do. We buried so many pets over the years that in centuries’ time they’ll excavate our garden and exclaim with glee that they’ve stumbled across the remains of a small zoo. I can still remember how much I cried when our Yorkshire Terrier, Pip, died, and how you tried to comfort me. I thought I’d never cry like that again. But I did, though not until many years later . . .

  The pony I wanted to keep in the garden was another issue. You stood firm on that one too. And boy, did I put in a long and vociferous campaign. I ranted and railed, even going so far as to draw up plans on how the henhouse could easily convert to accommodate a small 13.2 hands high Welsh Mountain Pony. But the answer was no and it stayed no. I didn’t appreciate it then but that “no” did me a huge favour. When I eventually realised you meant business I started to make up stories of how I did have a pony in the henhouse. As the weeks went on that henhouse got bigger and bigger until at last Craddoxtown Stud was born and the stories became so complicated that they had to be written down. And sure the rest is history . . . I have a real pony now, you know, and you were right, the henhouse probably wouldn’t have worked so well. And yes, they cost a fortune to feed.

  On the subject of feeding, I now know that it was not only entirely reasonable but also totally practical to have set dinners on set days. Many’s the time I complained about Bacon and Cabbage Wednesday but it’s now time to confess that it’s still alive and well in this house. Oh yes, right there with Leftover Monday, Stirfry Tuesday, Pasta Thursday and Whatever-you-like-I’m-wrecked Friday. And actually back when we were small, hungry, demanding children, there wasn’t even the pasta option. I’m not sure if it was simply not available or just viewed as foreign and new-fangled, but I can still remember the first time you discovered spaghetti: it was like Columbus getting his first peek of the American shoreline. It rapidly replaced Liver and Turnip Thursday and in some weeks staged a hostile takeover of Pork Chop Tuesday too.

  Is it too late now to say I feel your pain? That there’s nothing I’d like to do more than roll my eyes and say, “Mam, give us an idea for dinner this evening would you?” Because there is no doubt but that the “What are we having for dinner?” question struck as much fear into your heart as it does mine, topped only by “My tummy feels funny” or the dreaded “I had a bad dream, can I come into your bed?”

  Which brings me nicely to sleep issues. I remember objecting strongly to going to bed one night. I’d say I was about six or seven. Anyhow, eventually you turned to me and said “I don’t care if you’re not tired. You don’t go to bed early for you, you go to bed early for me.” In recent years the fatigue that must have been behind those words has become only too clear to me. Bedtime in our house is a full hour of mayhem. And I try to do everything the books say. I try to start early, and wind them down with stories and soft music. But inevitably it degenerates into a situation where the oldest girl is screaming for one more chapter whilst the youngest, who is now the grand age of four, does laps of the house with no clothes on. That same four-year-old has only just started sleeping through the night. Four years of waking twice or three times a night can do awful things to your will to live. Is it any wonder she’s the youngest? I think I was a good sleeper – I only remember venturing out of bed for the occasional bad dream, but then maybe you were just better at handling the situation than I am. You had four of us to get to bed. Who was the mad one in our house?

  Frantic bedtimes aside, at least my girls are small enough for me to know exactly where they are every moment of every day. And I still worry. I never imagined the worry that came with having children. It starts from the moment you
know they exist and I’m starting to doubt that it ever goes away. It now makes perfect sense that I was grounded for most of my teenage years. Don’t get me wrong, by today’s standards I was an angel, but it’s tomorrow’s standards that frighten me. I’ve tried not to think too far down the line, but lately the stories I’ve heard of what faces our teenagers make my blood run cold. There is a horrible world out there for people who want to be part of the “gang” or who are prepared to do anything to be just like everyone else. You taught us that it was okay to dance to our own beat. That we wouldn’t jump into the fire if Mary down the road told us to, so why would we want to do anything else she recommended? I try to instil this sense of self-belief and self-worth into my two. But it’s so hard to do that without allowing them to walk all over me. So I try instead to pick my battles. I let them pick their own clothes to wear at weekends with the only stipulation being that they’re warm leaving the house and in no way resemble Rhianna’s little sister. If the selection includes a fireman’s outfit or a tutu, that’s okay too. It’d be boring if we were all the same, I tell them. Now, it’s not all plain sailing, let me assure you. I shot down a request for a television in their bedroom lately only to be met with a whine of “but everyone else has one”. So I sat them down and explained that it would save them a lot of hassle down the line if they accepted right now that what “everyone else” does or has will never affect a decision I make for them.

  And if none of this works? Well, I’ve also warned them not to go making any plans for those years between thirteen and twenty-two . . .

  You were right to make me read by the way. And to read well. Anne of Green Gables, The Secret Garden, The Pilgrim’s Progress – they were all your suggestions and I now read them to my girls. You even bought me Gone With the Wind when I was a teenager; and we didn’t know it then, but discovering that heroines could be feisty, determined and ruthless when it came to getting their own way would come in very handy one day. My six-year-old loves to read, and I wonder if the day is coming when she too will try to sneak another chapter under the covers with a torch. I hope it is. I have all the books we read together ready for her . . .

  As children, when we weren’t reading we were drawing and painting and you’ll be pleased to know this tradition is still going strong too. I’m not sure if the youngest is actually gifted or if it’s just another vehicle for her to drive me crazy, but arts and crafts is very definitely her thing. Drawing or painting was always the remedy for boredom in our house. Every Christmas without fail we all each got a brand-new sketchpad and whatever colouring materials were most appropriate to our age, for some reason the little boxes of Flying Eagle crayons being the ones I remember most.

  I can remember practically every Santa present I ever received, not because they were few in nature but because each one was exactly what I wanted – whether I realised it or not. I only appreciate now how much planning a Santa of that magnitude must have taken and how, on a limited budget as surely yours was, the purchasing must have been ongoing all year round. Each Santa present arrived wrapped too, with a typed label, and when people laugh at me now for wrapping Santa, I just tell them that that’s the way I was taught. It adds to the wonder and the excitement and sure isn’t that what it’s all about?

  But Christmas didn’t just stop with crayons and sketchpads. It was an event that took months of planning. From September the first of the mince pies would start to appear in the kitchen and vast basins of pudding mix sat waiting for the magic stir. And even that last Christmas, when nothing was as it should be and we floundered in a state of terror and disbelief, you got me to take out a notebook and you made me write down how to cook a turkey. The day before Christmas Eve you decided to leave us to it and whilst the rest of that whole holiday was a sea of chaos and grief, the turkey was cooked and we ate it as if you were still sitting there with us.

  Which brings me to one final point. I really need to say thanks for making me enter all those school writing competitions and for sitting up with me, night after night as we tweaked poems into the wee hours. Okay, it took a while for it all to pay off, but I’ve written a book, Mammy, a real live book. One that I think you’d enjoy (not too much B.E.D. as you used to say). But then, of course, you know all that. I could feel you there with me, into the wee hours as we tweaked it line by line. Well, don’t go anywhere, apparently we have to do it again . . .

  Missing you so much,

  Margaret x

  Margaret Scott lives in Kildare with her husband Keith Darcy, two little girls Isabelle and Emily, four dogs, two cats, two donkeys, a pony and a rabbit. An accountant by day, she recently fulfilled a lifelong dream of being a published author and her first book Between You and Me (published by Poolbeg Press) enjoyed several weeks in the ROI top ten bestsellers list. Margaret’s writing focuses mainly on the trials and tribulations of family life and she is currently working on her second novel.

  Story 41: Front Page News

  Áine Toner

  Only children can come in for a lot of stick – you’re selfish, you’re spoilt, you get everything you want whether you deserve it or not. But your parents think you’re wicked, in the cool, hip-to-the-groove kind of way. You get masses of Christmas presents and Santa’s struggling under the weight of his gift sack – all of which is for you. And for the lucky ones, some of that’s true.

  Yes, only child Áine did get away with feeding the local pigeons with the next day’s lamb dinner. Yes, there were no recriminations when I dyed my hair bright red with permanent marker (more on markers later). Yes, I did get away with making a not insignificant hole in my bedroom wall (not discovered until my parents were selling our house, erm, twenty years later) . . . but my only-child experience was by the book, literally.

  We are a bookish family; my parents adore reading and there’s always a pile of library books sitting on one of the several mahogany tables decorating our living room (my mother likes tables, my father likes mahogany, they won’t admit it, but they do). Sundays aren’t complete without my father getting his serious broadsheet to read commentators’ analysis of the world’s biggest headlines – and me oogling the designer whatnots on the fashion and beauty pages. Growing up, I had books for the bath, for my pram, for bedtime and virtually everything in between. When I wasn’t reading or being read to, I was upping my penmanship, not quite the way you’d imagine . . .

  I had a penchant for tattooing my dolls with Biros as a child so perhaps a career in writing wasn’t so startling. I don’t think my Tiny Tears ever recovered from the number of hearts and arrows branded upon her teeny plastic person (and who would have thought pen was so difficult to remove?), and don’t even mention the inked Barbies, all neatly lined up for their unwanted yet destined appointment in Áine’s Tattoo Parlour. Mind you, tattooed TT was still able to wee, as my soaked father could attest.

  It wasn’t all personalising my toys – I used to love creating books of pictures and writing, using the ‘good’ stationery usually reserved for letters of complaint and as many of my father’s permanent markers pilfered from work as possible. Permanent markers were something of a luxury in Belfast; you were the belle of the playground if you had one – if they got as far as the playground and you hadn’t tried to dye your hair with them.

  I used to present these booklets frequently. My mother still has the This is Your Life booklet created by her one and only for some special occasion. The opening line, “You were born my mummy”, never ceases to make her laugh. And I know she has a curled-up faded piece of paper in her purse with the lines, “I love you, Mummy, I like you, Mummy” that I devised circa 1986.

  There was also the Great Complaint Letter of 1988 when seven-year-old Miss Toner gave out yards to a local theatre about a production of Postman Pat and the overuse of dry ice (I doubt I knew the term “dry ice” – “smoke” was probably my word of choice). Sadly, or fortunately, the missive never reached the office – so vehement was my delivery.

  Artwork and annoyance
aside, my childhood was dominated by homework. Let me explain before you think I was that nerdy kid in school who didn’t have any friends while the cool pupils swanned about kissing boys and pretending they were in Jem and the Holograms (it was 1980s Belfast, there wasn’t a lot going on).

  Okay, I was a nerdy kid in school, I have the photographs to prove it, bedecked as I was in skirts, blouses, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comedy slippers (I didn’t wear jeans until I was about eighteen) and Deirdre Barlowesque glasses. I loved school; I was the kind of person who’d rewrite their copy if there was one teeny tiny error. I relished starting a new copybook and the thrill of a fancy pencil case at the beginning of each academic year. Okay, term – I was quite spoilt.

  I realise I’m not exactly selling myself here but bear with me. One of the best parts of my day was getting home, having my tea in front of the telly (usually Button Moon or The Raggy Dolls), eating half my father’s dinner when he came home and Doing My Homework. This was a big deal; most of it would have been done by the time he’d arrive home but I always believed in sharing the load.

  Obviously homework changes as you get older – it becomes more taxing, it makes you think more and you have to be more imaginative. This is where my parents stepped in, willingly I like to believe.

  For, ooh, fourteen years, they helped me every single night with my essays, questions and spellings. If I needed a sentence wherein I could use the word “fluorescent”, they would provide it. If I couldn’t understand the relevance of working out the angle of a bucket hanging on a ladder positioned against a wall, they would at least help me with the equation. No homework task was too big or too small and I felt guided and encouraged by them every single step of the way.