It was incredible, and from that moment on I stopped worrying about how we would manage and started to count down the days until the new baby arrived. It was actually due on Christmas Day. I loved newborn babies, and I couldn’t wait to see this one. Christmas suddenly seemed a lot more exciting.
I had no idea how babies were made. I guessed it was one of those things only grown-ups talked about, and I didn’t want to make Mammy cross by asking her. It just seemed magical to me.
The big day was drawing very close now. Food and drink were arriving at the house daily, and Daddy won a giant turkey in a pub raffle, which he seemed to do every year.
I had the usual tussle with Daddy about getting him to hand over his money for my present, but I didn’t let it spoil things. Whatever nightmares happened to me in bed were pushed out of my head as far as possible too. Why should those horrible things spoil Christmas? I didn’t have to think about them all the time, did I?
Mammy was very big, her bulging tummy pushing up the front of her dresses so the hem curved up, making the skirt look a foot shorter at the front than the back. She’d bought a new black pram for the baby too, and I couldn’t wait for it to arrive.
I was disappointed when I woke up on Christmas morning, because the baby was still in Mammy’s tummy. Mammy had got all the dinner prepared the day before again, and she looked tired, and Daddy just stayed in bed.
When Mammy told me to take Daddy his dinner up, I thought I would faint. I instantly and vividly remembered what had happened the Christmas before, but I didn’t cry.
I pushed my feelings deep inside me, squashing and hiding them deep down. I walked up the stairs with the dinner like an obedient servant, my head all thick and heavy with dread.
There was a lightbulb in the bedroom, as a special treat for Christmas. I switched the light on, but Daddy boomed, ‘Switch it off - and come here!’
I hesitated, and the plate started to wobble in my hands.
‘Get here now, you!’ he growled. I put the plate down on the dressing table and got onto the bed.
His hands were on me now, pulling off my underwear while I flopped about like the yellow-haired rag dolly Mary was playing with downstairs. His eyes looked dead and his mouth was set in a snarl. Usually, it was very dark when he did these things, and even though I had switched off the light as instructed, the fact it was daylight outside and there was some light trickling through the side of the blanket on the window meant I could see Daddy clearly. It made everything seem more real and more menacing.
Now he was behind me, thank God. I didn’t have to look at his face as I lay frozen solid while he did what he wanted to do.
My bottom hurt, and I stared at the Christmas dinner going cold on the plate, trying to take my mind off the pain.
It felt more intense than ever and seemed to set my whole spine on fire. The food looked disgusting as the gravy glazed over it. I let my eyes glaze over too. I wanted to be in a foggy bubble. I wanted to be anywhere but here.
In the end, baby Michael didn’t arrive until 12 January 1971. He was an incredibly pretty baby, and my mammy proudly put him in the big black pram she’d bought for him. I was delighted to have a new baby brother and willingly threw myself into helping out with bottle feeds and changing nappies.
Not long afterwards, I found out my big sister Margaret was having a baby too. Margaret was seventeen, and seemed very grown-up and sophisticated to me. She had her baby girl in hospital in August that same year.
Daddy caused a huge row that night. He shouted at Mammy and told her Margaret had to have the baby adopted, which I think meant the baby had to live with somebody else. I cried in bed when I heard him say that. The baby was called Theresa, and I was longing to see her.
‘We’re not having another baby in this house - no way!’ Daddy bellowed. ‘There are already too many of us here. Michael is only seven months old!’
Mammy argued and wailed and pleaded with Daddy for three days and nights after she had been to visit Margaret and Theresa in hospital.
‘You’ve got to let the baby come home,’ she begged. ‘I’m not allowing that child to be adopted. Think of poor Margaret! Think of the child!’
The more Daddy argued, the more Mammy dug her heels in, until eventually she ran away for three days in protest.
The house felt calmer without her, and I didn’t miss her at all. It was a relief not to have her around, but I wanted Mammy to come back so she could keep fighting to have the baby brought home. It didn’t seem fair that baby Theresa couldn’t live with us.
Daddy sent me and Peter out to search for Mammy in the end, and we walked for miles before finding her, sitting down on the pier in Dun Laoghaire, smoking a cigarette.
‘Tell your father I’m not coming home until he lets poor baby Theresa home,’ she shouted. ‘Go on, tell him.’
Peter and I ran home anxiously with the news, knowing it would infuriate Daddy, but knowing we had to risk his temper, otherwise Mammy, Margaret and the baby might never come home.
‘This has gone
