by Irene Kelly
Anna was born on 23 December 1982 and the two boys were delighted with their new little sister. As for me, my heart melted once more for another innocent child, and I promised to protect her for the rest of my life. But I didn’t know how I planned to do this – after all, I couldn’t protect myself any more from the daily beatings.
Paul went out the night before Anna’s christening and when he got back he laid into me with his fists again. He got up the next day and left, missing his own daughter’s christening. I stood at the altar, trying to ignore the questioning, confused looks from my family and the priest. They all wanted to know one thing – where was the child’s father? But I had no answers for them. And still I took him back, scared of denying my children a father, scared of being on my own. I felt trapped – in marriage, in poverty, in motherhood. Just like my mother had been. Just like so many poor Irish women had been before me.
Not long after the christening we moved out of the flat and into our own council house in an estate outside the city centre. It was tiny and a bit like living in the Stone Ages because there was no bathroom and the toilet was outside – but I loved it. Something inside me knew that this house represented a new start in my life, a way out of my marriage. The only way to bath the children was by filling up the twin tub washing machine with water from the tap. It was a small house and very basic but I didn’t care. The moment I walked in, I knew that in this house I would finally be happy. One day Paul got so drunk he put his foot through the glass of the front door. It woke the children up, who began to cry, and it was then that Justin, my eldest son, showed me that we didn’t need Paul any more.
‘You should leave,’ he said to his father, in a voice far too mature for his years. ‘We don’t want you here and we don’t need you here any more. I’ll look after Mammy and you can go.’
From that moment I knew my children needed a stable home life more than they needed a violent father. Shortly after Justin made his Holy Communion, Paul came home one Friday after work and told me he was spending the night at his mother’s house as he was off to visit his brother the next day, who was in prison for robbery. Straight away I knew he was up to his old tricks.
‘If you leave now and you don’t come back tonight,’ I told him in a quiet, calm voice, ‘then don’t come back at all.’
‘Yeah, yeah . . . whatever!’ he said as he stomped out the door. He didn’t come back that night and the following morning I went into his wardrobe and got out all his clothes then shredded the lot with a pair of scissors. Every last stitch of clothing.
Then I put all his shoes in a big pile in the back garden.
‘Hey, kids,’ I called. ‘Want to have a bonfire?’
I burned the lot.
Two days later Paul’s cousin came to collect his clothes for him.
‘Tell him to come himself,’ I replied.
‘He won’t do that, Irene.’
That’s fine,’ I sighed, then I went into the house and came back with two black bin bags full of the shredded clothes. There was no going back. This was it.
I borrowed a gun. I knew if he ever did come back, he was coming for my life. That first night, I sat at the upstairs window all night long with the gun. Thank God he never showed up!
As morning broke on a new day, I realized that, for the first time in years, I was free. Truly free. The following day I returned the gun.
Of course, it took a lot longer to shake off the fear that Paul would one day return to get his revenge and, for a year after that, every Friday night was spent sat at the window, waiting in readiness. If ever he was coming to get me, I knew it would be on a Friday night when he always drank the most, and I had to be prepared for him.
Over the next few months the kids and me started to relax and enjoy ourselves. Slowly, my strength and confidence returned, though it was tough at first to make ends meet. One thing I made sure of, my kids were always well fed, clean and wore decent clothes that fitted. It wasn’t easy to survive on £40 a week welfare – by the time all the bills were paid I was usually skint so we had to make do with very dull food. We ate mostly porridge and stew that first year but I made every penny count and though we very rarely ate meat, there was always enough to fill our bellies.
At night I still fought the demon, but I could never give in to the depression that threatened at times to overwhelm me. After all, these kids had nobody but me and I had promised them I would never let them down. So I shrugged on my tough outer skin once more and hardened up. I was a single mother now, with all the social stigma that brought with it. I knew that people judged me, I knew that they thought there was something wrong with me, but how could I convince them I’d done nothing wrong? It felt so unfair – my husband had been a philandering, violent drunk. Why was I the one to pay with my reputation?
One thing was for sure, I wasn’t going to be scared or intimidated by anyone ever again. That man had nearly destroyed me but I’d finally found the courage to throw him out. I wouldn’t be bullied or beaten down ever again.
A year after Paul left for good, we were offered a bigger council house near my mother’s place. Apart from the one obvious drawback of living near my mother, I didn’t feel I could turn it down. Located down a quiet street, the new house had an indoor bathroom, toilet, three bedrooms and a garden, and it faced a park. I knew the children would be able to play out and have friends. This would be a fresh start for all of us, I resolved, an opportunity to make our lives even better, and two days after signing the lease we moved in. That year, aged twenty-six and a single mother of three, I enjoyed the first peaceful Christmas I had ever had.
15
IRENE AND MATT
A Connection
IRENE
‘Your kids have been throwing stones at my car!’ The big, muscular man stomped up the road, all pumped up and red in the face.
‘MUM! MUM!’ My boys Justin and Philip ran ahead of him, terrified. When they got to the front door they babbled over one another:
‘He says we threw stones on his car—’
‘But we never did—’
‘We saw who did it—’
‘It wasn’t us. It was that Gemma from number twenty-three.’
‘That Gemma. It was her.’
I cut them off. ‘I saw it too. Don’t worry – I know you didn’t do it. Now get inside. Let me deal with this.’
The kids didn’t wait another second, they dived into the house behind me and I stood on my doorstep, legs splayed apart, arms folded, poised and ready for the fight. This wasn’t the first time I’d had to stand up for my boys and I knew it wouldn’t be the last. From the moment we had arrived on the estate my kids had been bullied, teased and used as scapegoats. We were the only single-parent family in the street and nobody liked it – they saw me as a threat. Single mothers were nothing but trouble, that’s what everyone thought, and they assumed I would bring gangs, crime and violence to their homes. It was ridiculous – and horrendously unjust. I was vilified just for refusing to live with a cheat who beat me black and blue every weekend! From day one, I’d had to deal with my children coming home crying because other kids teased them for having no daddy. Now they were a target for the parents too? It wasn’t right.
So I kept my eyes open – when the children played outside, I watched them. I wasn’t above punishing my children if they did something wrong but I wouldn’t have them getting blamed for things they didn’t do. Today, I’d seen the little girl throwing the stones and I wasn’t prepared to let my children become the community punchbag. The man was at my front gate now, shouting and swearing his head off. I recognized him as one of our neighbours from down the street.
‘Why don’t you keep your bastard kids under control?’ he yelled at me, arms flying all over the place. ‘Running wild! Little bastards, I’ll show them the back of my hand, so I will! They need to be taught respect for other people’s property.’
I was calm when I spoke but I didn’t mince my words. ‘Please do not come into my ga
rden. I’m warning you now – if you come up to my door, you won’t be walking down again.’
‘Where are they?’ The man didn’t listen to a word I said. ‘I’m after giving those little runts a piece of my mind.’
‘I was standing here and I saw what happened,’ I told him in an even voice, though my temper was rising now. ‘It wasn’t my lads but that Gemma Meekin. If you want to take it up with her daddy you go ahead but you leave here now.’
‘Bollocks! They need the belt to them, so they do!’
I was breathing hard now, my anger bubbling to the surface. How dare he! Who did he think he was? ‘You’re a big man,’ I snapped, my eyes flashing. ‘You’re a big man and I’m just a small woman. And you think you can come here, threatening me like this? No man is ever going to raise his hand or his voice to me again!’
And with that, I picked up the axe I had hidden behind the front door and held it above my head. In that instant, I saw a vision in my mind. I could see a man in a snow-white shirt that was slowly turning red with blood. I could see it so clearly and then . . . he ran.
I stood there for a while and watched him disappear off down the road, shouting something about a ‘mad woman’, and for a while I couldn’t move. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a few net curtains twitching and heads shaking from side to side. I brought the axe down gently to my side. Good! Let them see, I thought. They should know I’m not going to take shit from anybody. I was a tough woman now – I kept an axe by my door and I slept with a knife under my pillow. I wasn’t going to argue – that wasn’t in my nature. Either they were going to walk away voluntarily or I’d kill them. He had known that – he’d seen it in my eyes.
I closed the door and went back to the kids. It was time to get their tea on. We had settled into our new life now and, though I did my best to give them a good home, underneath I was still a very angry woman. I was outraged with how the world judged me – even my own parents thought I’d brought it all on myself! There was no sympathy from them, no kindness. My father drank in the same pub as Paul and he knew, even as they bought each other rounds of pints, that Paul’s own children went without.
So I put on a front, I pretended that I didn’t care what anyone thought and I made sure there was always music and laughter in our house. At night and alone, I fought the demon as best I could. Ever since my admission to the mental hospital I had been on and off antidepressants, but these days they didn’t work so well. The only thing that seemed to keep the misery at bay was a drink or a joint. The dope calmed me down, made me less aggressive, and even the psychiatrist I’d started to see after Paul left agreed that if it worked for me, I should just carry on. Sometimes of an evening my friend Ellie, who lived up the street, would come round and we’d drink tea, listen to music and smoke dope. That was my one way of relaxing and forgetting all my troubles.
One night, Ellie called to ask if her cousin could join us for a smoke – she confided he was on the run from the Garda and laying low at her daddy’s house for a while. I didn’t mind that he was a criminal – my brother Peter had been into crime for as long as I could remember. I knew it didn’t make you a bad person. Peter had stolen his whole life and mainly to stop us all from starving to death. As a man he had married a woman used to the finer things in life and, to give her what she wanted, he carried out armed robberies. It was what he knew – stealing to make his loved ones happy – but of course he got caught. Most people who lived on the fringes broke the law one way or another, even if it was just buying a little hooky from the market. When you didn’t have much, you had to make do.
Ellie knocked at around 8.30 p.m. that evening and behind her came a small, lithe young man with big blue eyes, long mousy brown hair and a watchful face.
‘Hi, I’m Matt,’ he said. His movements were graceful and smooth, like a dancer’s.
‘Come in,’ I said. ‘I’m Irene.’
We sat down for a while and had a little smoke then Matt jumped up and started pacing. He seemed edgy and uncomfortable.
‘Will you not sit down a while and have a cup of tea?’ I offered.
‘Ah no, I’m going off,’ he replied. ‘I’ve got to go to London.’
London? Really? I thought. How rude! You come into my home and don’t accept my hospitality? Cocky little upstart!
‘Alright, well go on then,’ I replied tartly. ‘There’s the door – off you go.’
Matt
When I met Irene, I was twenty-two and she was twenty-nine. She was a striking-looking woman with long dark hair, a sexy laugh and a confident smile. She was outspoken but I liked that – she stood up for her kids and didn’t let other people bully her. There were some folk who were scared of her but I liked Irene from the start and, when I sat and talked to her, I realized she was a good and honourable person. On our own, she dropped the attitude and she was soft and sweet. I think that’s what drew us together – I saw that we were both acting these tough roles in our lives that neither of us had chosen. I’d been doing it from the day I was born, and by the time I met Irene I was sick of my life. I was sick of robbing, running and doing time. I wanted more and I knew she did too – I just didn’t know how to make the change. It was Irene who saved me.
I was five years old when I first went out shoplifting. Back then, I was the second eldest son out of four kids but this changed annually until there were ten of us in total: nine boys and one girl. My mother Lilian was small and thin, with long black hair – she was easy-going and calm most of the time, except when she had a few drinks in her and then she would say exactly what she thought.
Mum kept a tidy house but it wasn’t easy for her, not with my father Kieran going away all the time. As a well-known bank robber and gangster, that was just part of life for him. So when Dad was inside and there was no money coming in, I skipped school and went down the city centre to shoplift. At first I only took food – I was blatant, filling up a trolley of food in the supermarket and just walking out with it. Later on, I went into clothes shops and came out pushing whole rails of clothes which I knew I could sell for cash.
We lived in a three-storey tenement block in the middle of the city – it was a poor area but everyone knew each other and we all helped each other out. Your door was always open and there was always somebody around who would buy whatever you were selling. In my world, you did what you had to do and you never complained. That was just the way it was. Dad was always clear about that.
‘You can have the criminal life or you can have the nine-to-five,’ he told us kids. ‘But you can’t have both. And if you’re going to have the criminal life then you must respect the code. You keep your mouth shut, you don’t talk about stuff you do and you don’t take anyone down with you.’
Dad was head of his firm – as a child I could see that he was the man in charge and I respected him for it. There were always hardened criminals in our small flat, planning their next job, as well as large bags of cash and guns lying around. When Dad was at home he provided well for the family – we had plenty of food, clothing and toys – but when he was away we just had to make do on our own. Nobody taught me how to steal, I just went out and did it. And nobody told me I had to do it – I wanted to because I knew it was my duty. As the second eldest it was my role to help my mum and to get whatever she needed. We always looked out for each other.
Getting sent down – well, that was just part of life. I got my first charge when I was eight years old, which wasn’t bad considering I’d been out stealing for three years already. I was caught with a £1.90 set of Christmas lights and sent to reform school for four weeks. At the time, I felt myself swell a little with pride. It seemed very grown up to get charged, just like my daddy. I did as I was told – I kept my mouth shut and my head down. I was one of the lucky ones – as my father’s son I had respect from the other boys and they left me alone, but the kids who didn’t have visitors, who didn’t come from known families, were bullied, beaten up and robbed every day. There were fights all the time
but I tried not to get involved. I didn’t enjoy Christmas much that year, away from home in a dormitory full of other boys, eating horrible food instead of my mother’s home cooking.
It wasn’t until I was ten years old that I began to get a sense of the limitations of my life. At first it didn’t bother me that I wasn’t at school but when the other kids much younger than me could read and write and I couldn’t even spell my name, it was embarrassing. I stopped going to school altogether because I was too far behind to catch up. I wasn’t stupid but that’s how the teachers treated me and I was frustrated at times that I couldn’t read letters, notices or newspapers. It was worse when I was locked up. There wasn’t much to do besides read and you couldn’t communicate with the outside world unless you could write, so being illiterate made me feel even more isolated and alone.
As I got older, I noticed my father fell far short of my expectations. He talked to us boys about ethics and being a good family man, but behind my mother’s back he played around with other women. I knew this because I saw him in the pubs at night. I saw it with my own eyes. He even fathered a love child with another woman. This hurt because I loved my mother and she already had it hard without my dad cheating on her. But more than that, I was disappointed in my father. He was my role model, the man I’d admired and copied all my life. Yet here he was – a hypocrite and a cheat. He said one thing and did another, and I didn’t like people like that. I knew early on I didn’t want to grow up and be like him.
But then at twelve years old I made a terrible mistake that kept me locked in a life of crime for far too long. I got hooked on heroin. It happened so easily and so casually, almost like an accident. Today I know that becoming an addict was probably inevitable for me, considering the world I lived in. This was the early eighties – before HIV and before we even knew about the dangers of addiction. Addiction wasn’t a word back then, it wasn’t a thing the way it is today. Nowadays you can be addicted to everything from prescription pills to pornography, but in those days we didn’t talk about getting addicted, we only talked about chasing the high. Heroin was cheap and readily available and most people I knew had tried it at least once. The problem was that if you did it more than a couple of times, you were hooked. It happened to me, like it happened to all my siblings and many of my friends too. We all had our own stories of how we accidentally fell into addiction.
