Daddy was employed by the local Dun Laoghaire Corporation all his working life, first as a street cleaner and then as the clerk of the town hall. He wasn’t particularly badly paid, but we went without lots of things because he and Mammy chose to spend nearly all of the money on drink and cigarettes.
Daddy’s job seemed to give him some recognition in the community. Everybody knew him and seemed to like him, and they treated him like a big man.
‘Give my regards to your da!’ shopkeepers would call out as I walked by. ‘How’s your Daddy doin’? Tell him to call round and see me soon. I’ll see him for a pint in Hogans!’
Daddy used to regularly come home with things he had been given, and at Christmas we got huge joints of ham, a giant turkey, bags of coal, yet more cigarettes and cases of beer, sherry, port and whiskey, all from Daddy’s friends.
When she’d had a few drinks, Mammy loved to reminisce and tell colourful tales about the past and her courting days with Daddy.
I lapped up every word when I heard her describe how she used to dance the night away wearing glamorous dresses in the local dance halls, with Daddy swinging on her arm.
She said plenty of other things too - some I didn’t understand at the time, and some that turned out to be lies.
Over the years, I’ve pieced together the truth about my parents’ history. My mother was born in 1933 and christened Josephine, but everyone called her Josie.
She grew up with my Granny Mary O’Neill, three sisters, Ann, Mag and Cathleen, and a brother, Henry. Her dad died when she was seven.
She had my oldest brother, Joe, when she was seventeen, but she wasn’t thrown into an unmarried mothers’ home in disgrace, as young Catholic girls often were in those days.
Instead, she stayed at home with baby Joe, and Granny made quite a fuss of her, from what I hear. Mammy eventually got a job as a housekeeper for a rich family, which meant she was earning quite a bit of money to help pay her keep.
It wasn’t long before she was out drinking and dancing again, and she met my father on a night out in Dalkey.
They married when my mother was pregnant with my sister Esther in 1953, and she spent her ‘honeymoon’ in Holles Street Hospital giving birth.
My father, Peter Murphy, was six years older than my mother, born in 1927. Unlike her, he never once reminisced or even made the slightest reference to his past. As a child, all I knew was that he grew up in an orphanage with his two brothers and four sisters, but he never mentioned any of them, ever.
‘Tell me, Daddy, have I got cousins on your side of the family? I’d love to meet them - can’t you tell me where they are?’
His reaction was the same every time. ‘Will you shut up asking? I can’t remember. The past is in the past and leave it at that.’
He wouldn’t even tell me what date he was born, so it felt as if he had no past or history behind him, and as soon as a day was over in his life he never spoke about it again. Sometimes I wondered if he’d been dropped off at our house by aliens.
Now I know he was placed in a Catholic orphanage from the age of two and a half, along with his siblings, after my grandmother died. My mother once said my father was sexually abused in the orphanage, but he refused ever to talk about it.
Little wonder my father never discussed his family background.
Chapter 2
Don’t Wake Mammy
I’m sitting in the big blue cot in the front bedroom. Peter is wedged up next to me, and we’re both sucking on a bottle. It’s one of those banana-shaped bottles with teats on both ends, and we’re both sucking away like mad, trying to get more milk than the other. The milk tastes sweet, and we can’t get enough of it. We’re glugging away like demons, pulling silly faces at each other and making slurping sounds. When the milk has all gone we suck air for a while, making funny squeaking noises, and then everything goes very quiet.
We sit with our legs dangling through the bars of the cot, wondering what to do next. My tummy feels warm under my jumper, but my bare feet are stinging with the cold. I’m nearly four years old, and Peter is six.
The room is dark, even though we can hear the birds singing in the morning sky outside. The grey curtains are shut, and behind them the black blanket is firmly nailed in place. Mammy likes to sleep in the daytime while everybody else is out, and we know not to disturb her.
I peep over at her, lying in her double bed next to the cot. Her hair is splayed all over the pillow. I think it looks like golden threads, and I’d like to touch it, but I’m not allowed to touch Mammy. Even when she’s awake she doesn’t like me to touch her. I wonder what it would be like to hold her hand or sit on her knee. I’d like to try it, but I know she doesn’t want me to, because she always shouts something nasty or shoves me away if I get too close.
Her skin looks lily-white against the darkness of the room, and I think she looks pretty, like a lady on the telly, although she isn’t in a fancy bed. She’s lying on her side, with a brown overcoat piled on top of the covers. The sheets and blankets have hundreds of little holes in them and look very old. Some of them have blood on them. Mammy doesn’t seem to mind though. I never see her wash or change them.
The room smells horrible, as usual, much worse than our outside toilet. My jumper has the same smell,
