by Sandra Smyth
“I want to go home, Da,” she said to my father.
“We’re not going home love. You’re going to stay here with your brother and sister for a while. The nuns will look after you and I’ll come and get you soon.”
That set us all off. Even Anto, who was 11 at the time, was crying. We didn’t want to be left in that horrible place and my father knew it. I think it broke his heart to leave us there. He hugged all three of us before leaving and I clung on to his neck with my little hands. He had to tear me away.
“Be a good girl, Frances,” he said, as he kissed me on the head and turned to walk off. His footsteps echoed down the corridor as his figure disappeared into the distance. I felt deserted and utterly forlorn. As soon as he’d gone the nuns turned on us. They’d been charming in his presence but now they were like different people; they were stern and aggressive and we were terrified of them.
Boys and girls were segregated in Goldenbridge so we were separated from Anto immediately. I clung on to Helen as we were escorted to a big dormitory full of other young girls most of whom had been there for years. They all looked underfed and frightened. It’s no wonder; the food was horrific and the nuns treated us like animals.
For a five-year-old it was a horrific ordeal and I began to wet the bed at night. There was a laywoman working there who took a dislike to me and the first time it happened she turned on me. She was a big, stout woman with a hard face and narrow eyes. I’d say she was in her early 20s. Her short, chopped hair and slight moustache on her upper lip gave her a menacing look. I was terrified of her, as were all the girls. We’d hear her heavy step and rush to hide under the bed covers. That morning she took me by the ear and marched me into the laundry room. It stank of disinfectant and I remember how cold the tiles of the floor were. I was bare foot.
“Wash those sheets, you little brat,” she screamed, as she threw me towards a steel bath-like structure where the laundry was done. My head banged off the basin and I fell to the ground.
I was dizzy from the bang on my head but I managed to pull myself up. I began crying pitifully and that just angered her more. Then I tried to wash the sheets but I was so small I couldn’t reach into the water. She grabbed me by the hair and lifted me off the ground with her other hand. I was plunged into the hot, dirty water and she held my head underneath so I couldn’t breathe. I flayed around and tried to pull away from her but she was too strong.
I nearly drowned and by the time she let go, I was purple and splattering for air. Since that day I have a phobia of water. I don’t even like to be near it and I’ve never learnt to swim. Anto was only in the orphanage a few days before he escaped. He came up to us in the yard where we played and whispered to Helen and I that he was going. He planned to jump out the second floor window of the dormitory in the middle of the night.
“Don’t worry, I’ll come back to get you,” he said, as he patted me on the head. That night he ran away. The nuns were furious but there was nothing they could do. We waited and waited for his return but he never came back and eventually we resigned ourselves to a life at Goldenbridge. After Anto escaped, my father came to visit us one Sunday afternoon. We thought he had come to take us back. We were overjoyed and ran to hug him. He lifted both of us into his arms at the same time and covered our face with kisses.
“Ah, my lovely girls,” he smiled. “I’ve missed you both so much. Have you been good for the nuns, have you?”
He placed us back down on the ground and we nodded at him. The nuns had already warned us not to say a bad word about the orphanage.
“If you do,” the sister had said, “there’ll be beatings.”
That was enough to frighten us into staying silent. We’d already seen what the nuns were capable of doing. They regularly beat many of the other girls in a cruel, sadistic fashion and they often whacked us over the head with their hands.
When my father questioned us about our life in Goldenbridge we acted as if we were happy there. There was a nun standing right beside us at the time listening to make sure we didn’t spill the beans.
“Are we going home Da?” I whispered to him when the nun wasn’t looking. There were tears in my eyes.
“Soon my love, soon,” he promised.
But he didn’t take us home and we had to return to the cold dormitory that night crying our little hearts out. He had brought us a cake as a special treat. Of course we never saw it after he left. The nuns took it off him promising to give it to us later. They must have eaten it themselves.
Once more we went to bed cold and hungry, wanting to be home and missing our family and friends. In our innocence we thought we’d done something wrong to be sent to the orphanage, so we blamed ourselves. It wasn’t long however until Da returned and took us home. It was like being released from prison.
I couldn’t talk about my time in Goldenbridge for years afterwards. I pushed it to the back of my mind and didn’t even discuss it with Helen. It was only when, as an adult, I saw a documentary about it that I started to think about my time there and mentioned it to my sister. Neither of us talked about it for years because we felt ashamed. To this day I’m afraid of the dark and I can trace back my first feelings of fear to my time in the orphanage.
Once I was home, however, I put Goldenbridge out of my mind and got on with my life in the inner city. My mother had been released from hospital by the time we returned. She never mentioned Golden- bridge and I honestly don’t think that she cared about our suffering there. She was always too wrapped up in herself to worry about us.
chapter three
THE ONLY OTHER time I was away from home was when I was sent to live with my grandmother for a few months. I was seven-years-old at the time and it was quite common back then for one child to be farmed out to a grandparent.
It was my mother’s decision for me to go and I remember my father being unhappy about it, but he dared not go against her wishes. She was such a strong, dominant personality. I think she wanted rid of me even back then. One day she came in and coldly announced that I was moving. She put the few pieces of my clothing into a small suitcase and took me by the hand as we walked down the street. I was crying but she didn’t seem to care.
My grandmother was a tough street trader who lived a ten minute walk away from my family home. Although she was hard as nails she was as devout as my mother. I remember her getting up at five o’clock each morning to be in mass by six before she went to the fruit market. She used to come in to me each night when I was in bed and bless me with holy water before I went to sleep.
On Saturdays I accompanied her to Smithfield fruit market where she bought her stock for the city centre stall. I’d spend the day hawking it with her.
I thought I was great standing at a stall beside her. I’d watch her talk to the customers, lick her lips as she scooped the apples and oranges into a bag and tie them deftly with a knot. She knew everyone in the area and she had regular customers who would always buy their fruit and vegetables from her.
“Get your apples and oranges here,” she’d call out in the way only Dublin street traders can. “Five for truppence.”
I can still hear her voice in my head. You’d hear it for miles around and it had that hoarseness that comes with years of working on the streets in all weathers. I could never throw my voice the way she could and I didn’t have her way of dealing with the customers. I was too shy.
Although I was glad to get away from my mother, I hated living with my grandmother who was just as strict and severe. I missed my brother and my sisters and I wanted to go home. I’ll never forget the day my father suddenly appeared at her front door.
“Da,” I screamed, as I ran to hug him. “Da, I hate it here. Please Da, can I come home?” I cried.
“Get your suitcase young Frances,” he said quietly as he lifted me off the ground and into his arms. “You’re coming back with me.”
I never found out what was said between my parents but my father obviously had his way in the end.
Looking back now I realise just how strict my mother was. If we broke any of her rules, we were beaten. She used to whack us on the face or over the head with the back of her hand and she often took a belt to us. On one occasion she turned on my sister Helen who had disobeyed her. My mother had had a fight with my father at the time. He had moved out of the house for a few days and was staying with his sister and we were all forbidden to talk to him.
One day she caught Helen having a conversation with him on the street. She was livid with anger. Poor Helen was only 10-years-old at the time. I remember her arriving in the door of the house that evening.
“There you are, you little brat,” my mother screamed at her. “I saw you speaking to your Da today.”
“I’m sorry Ma, I’m really sorry,” said Helen trying to run past her up the stairs.
“Come here to me,” said my mother, and she ran up the stairs after her.
Helen legged it into the bedroom and banged the door behind her. We were already in bed, cowering under the sheets, afraid of what was coming next. There was nothing quite like my mother’s temper and we knew it. The door banged open. Ma walked in, her face full of rage. She had a wire coat hanger in her hand—one that she had purposefully bent open so she could use it as a stick.
“Bend over and lift up your jumper,” she screamed at poor Helen. We all started to cry as she proceeded to beat her across the back with the hanger. There was blood on the floor and Helen lay in a heap by the time she had finished.
When we got a bit older we took to sitting around on the steps of the flats. We’d tell ghost stories and gossip about everyone in the neighbourhood. We knew all the neighbours. One of them was an old woman called Granny. We used to call her “Nasty Granny” and we hated her as children. The poor woman was the butt of many a joke and we plagued her by ringing her doorbell and then running away. But then she always seemed to be causing trouble for us. She lived in the flat below ours and she seemed to spend her life looking out the window. She didn’t miss a thing.
My brother Anto was short-sighted and had to wear a pair of national health glasses when he was a child; they were plain brown, rimmed glasses and he hated them. He was supposed to wear them all the time but he didn’t. He used to leave them on the windowsill of Granny’s flat while he was out playing and then put them on before he’d go back into the house so my parents wouldn’t know.
Granny used to come out of her house and scream at the top of her voice, “Anto you forgot your glasses! They’re here Anto, come and get them.”
If anyone in the neighbourhood shouted the whole area heard it. It used to drive him mad because my mother would hear and come running out onto the balcony. She’d force him to wear the glasses. My mother seemed to spend half her life on that balcony. I can see her now standing there with her hands on her hips, shouting abuse at whoever was on the street below. She always had something to give about.
At the time there was an old man called Fred who was disabled and he used to sit outside the gates of the flat complex. My mother came looking for me one day. I saw her coming and ran past Fred, up the steps and down the other side of the flats. I thought I got away with it.
“Is our Frances there, Fred?” she shouted. I nearly died when Fred answered her.
“Yes. Mrs. Reilly. She’s over the other side with her mates”.
I was furious with him for telling her. I knew she’d kill me.
“You see you,” I said to Fred when she’d left. “I’ll lift you out of it and leave you for dead.”
Once I went on the mitch from school. The school phoned to tell my mother but she pretended to know nothing about it when I returned that evening.
“Did you have a nice day at school Frances?” she wanted to know.
“Yes, Ma. It was a good day,” I lied.
I had actually spent the day hanging out in the bike shed in the grounds of another school, which wasn’t far away. I was thrilled with myself, thinking I’d got away with it. I nearly died when she marched into the schoolyard the next morning and clobbered me around the head in front of the other pupils.
“Thought you got away with it?” she sneered. “I’ll show you, young Frances Reilly!”
I was so embarrassed I didn’t dare to do it for a long time after that.
chapter four
MY LIFE CHANGED the day I met Johnny Smith. I’ll never forget the first time we met. I was 12-years-old and he was all of 15 and a half.
My God, he was gorgeous—all the girls fancied him. He was tall for his age—about 5 foot 6 with a pale complexion and chiselled features. He had straight, jet-black hair, streaked back with Brylcreem.
Johnny always wore the best of clothes and took great care with his appearance. I can see him now in his flares, his well-ironed shirt and his v-neck jumper. He used to a wear a black leather jacket that was too big for him in the shoulders but it gave him an air of authority. His shoes were always perfectly clean.
It was the late 70s and he was a rebel without a cause. There was an air of coolness about him—a presence you might say. Heads turned when Johnny Smith walked into a room.
I’d seen him around and I knew who he was. Johnny’s reputation preceded him. He was a tough guy who lived just around the corner from my flat. He was the kind of fella you wouldn’t bring home to your mother.
We met for the first time at a teenage disco. I had just started to go to the disco with my sister Patricia. We had to be home by nine o’clock but we looked forward to it all week. Looking back we were very innocent then; we were only children on the verge of adolescence.
Johnny approached me one night outside the disco where we were queuing to get in. It was a lovely, sunny evening and he strode up to me decked out in his finery. My heart skipped a beat when I realised he was walking towards me.
“Have you got a membership card?” he said, looking me straight in the eye and smiling. I could hardly speak with the excitement. Here was Johnny Smith talking to me Frances Reilly. I knew the whole queue was watching us. Somehow I got the words out.
“I do, but I’m not signing you in,” I giggled, trying to act cool in front of him. He was head and shoulders above me and I was quaking inside. I’d never had a boyfriend and I didn’t know how to talk to strange boys.
“It’s not for me, it’s for my friend,” he said. “Ahh, go on, please?”
He looked at me with those ice-blue eyes of his and smiled, and for a few seconds the world stopped turning. It was the kind of smile that would break your heart in two—all innocent and doe-like. He always killed me with that smile. In the space of a few seconds I was a gibbering mess and I would have done anything he wanted.
I already belonged to Johnny Smith and nothing could tear us apart. Of course, he didn’t know that yet and it took some persuasion on his part before I agreed to sign his friend in.
“Was that Johnny Smith?” said June, my best friend, half in awe and half in disapproval. “You’d want to stay away from him. My Ma says he’s bad news.”
But it was too late. I’d already fallen for the man who would make my life a living hell. Later in the disco he sidled up to me when no one was around.
“Look what I have,” he said looking around the run-down function room as he spoke. He produced a handful of coins from his pocket. I panicked. It was just a few pounds but it was more money than I’d ever seen in my life.
“Where on earth did you get that from?”
I was shocked.
“Do you want some money?” he grinned at me, pleased at my reaction.
“I do not,” I said, feigning disapproval. “Where did it come from?”
“I got it from the slot machine,” said Johnny puffing out his chest and grinning from ear to ear.
There were two poker machines in the disco and he’d obviously been working them that night. I was impressed but I wasn’t going to let him know.
“Go away from me,” I pushed him away jokingly and laughed. He laughed too. Then he turned a
nd strutted off.
“Sure I’ll see you around,” he called over his shoulder, catching my eye as he left.
At first we simply hung around together. We were walking down the street one night when Johnny tried to take my hand in his. Jesus, I nearly died on the spot.
“What are you doing?” I pulled my hand away from his. I’d never had a boy hold my hand before and I wasn’t sure how to react.
“Sure I’m only trying to hold your hand Frances,” he said, kicking the pavement with his foot. Now he was embarrassed. I blushed profusely and that seemed to please him. He lifted his head, looking sheepish and smiled. Then I held my hand out and he grabbed it. We walked down the road like that until two of his mates passed us on their bikes.
“Well look who it is? Johnny Smith, and holding a girl’s hand! Are you in love Johnny? Ooh, Johnny’s got a girlfriend.”
Now we both blushed and the lads thought it hilarious.
“Johnny’s in lur-ve, Johnny’s in lur-ve,” their singsong chorus echoed down the street as they sped off on their bikes. That was it. The whole neighbourhood knew about us. Johnny Smith fancied me. I was the girl everyone wanted to hang out with. I was cool. I was cooler than cool. I was Johnny Smith’s girl.
Johnny had a part-time job but he soon gave that up and became a motorcycle courier for a big company—a job that gave him his own motorbike and completed his already cool persona. I thought I was in heaven. Not only did I have a boyfriend—I had a boyfriend with a bike! I was still in school at the time and he seemed so sophisticated to me. He was a working man—a man of independent means.
We used to ride around on the bike for hours at a time—me on the back, holding on for dear life and him proud as punch, grinning like a Cheshire cat as we sped along. He was supposed to be out delivering packages for the company he worked for but more often than not he was with me.
I used to bunk off school to be with Johnny. I wasn’t particularly good in school. I was a bit of a dreamer and didn’t apply myself. To me, studying was just a chore and I got out of it whenever I could.
