by Lily O'Brien
It took what felt like forever to get to our dad’s village and, on the way, we had to stop about six times just to go to the toilet. But eventually, the man stopped the cab and turned the engine off, and for a moment there was nothing but silence. I lifted my head to see what was going on and then he told us that we had to get out of the cab and walk the rest of the way to our dad’s house. Because the rest of the road was far too bad for his cab to go down and he would get stuck in the mud if he tried to drive down it. So we got out of the cab and Kevin paid the man a couple of extra pounds as a tip and we began walking along the road; but after a couple of seconds, the road disappeared and we had to walk the rest of the way down a wet and muddy lane, in the pitch black of night.
We kept walking, stepping through deep puddles that came up to the ends of our clothes and stepping on cobblestones that stuck up through the mud and were making us trip and slip, every now and then, as we slid over them. We kept walking in an almost uncontrollable manner until we came to the end of the lane and we had to stop in front of an old wooden gate. Exhausted, I put my things down in the mud and then I looked up; only to see a huge dark horse standing in front of me, and the horse was looking down at me as if I were standing in its way and it was waiting for me to move out of its way. But as I turned to get out of the horse’s way, a hand appeared from behind the horse and pulled on the chain that was around its neck; and with a rattle and a clanking of the chains, the horse slowly moved to one side, leaving a tall and ageing man standing in its place. I took a step back, but as I moved back, I tripped and fell onto my bum and I ended up sitting in a puddle of mud that splattered over everyone.
The man looked down at me and then Kevin turned to us all and said, ‘That’s our dad.’ And I could tell from the look on dad’s face that he knew we were coming, and as I looked up at him, I could just see a twinkle of joy creeping through his hard, cold face that gave me a feeling of being welcome and an instant sense of security. I smiled and picked myself up, and then we all stood still in front of him and we said nothing while we tried to work out what was going to happen next. But before we could say or do anything, our dad opened the wooden gate and told us all to move along and to get inside the house.
So, dragging our little belongings behind us, we walked and splashed our way up past the horse and up towards the front door of the house. Not knowing what was going to happen to us once we got inside the house, Simon and I struggled our way to the top of the one stone step that led up into the house. But just as I stepped inside the doorway, I dropped my things and I had to leave them sitting at the top of the step as the others pushed me into the house.
Once inside, we were swiftly moved into the living room, with our dad moving quickly past us and into the centre of the room, then he placed himself on an old wooden chair where he just sat and looked at us. And with a little smile creeping over his face, he could not control his emotions any longer and he said, ‘Come over here to me, my children.’ We all looked at each other and we slowly moved closer to him, but before we got a chance to do or say anything, he leapt up off the chair and put his arms around all four of us at the same time; telling us that he loved us, and that he had missed all of us so much and that he was so very sorry for not contacting us. Then he said that he thought our mum was coming back with us. Kevin then told him that she didn’t want us anymore and that she did not want to come back to Ireland ever again.
Dad said nothing and he began to cry with happiness and he held us all so tightly together that I could hardly breathe. I looked over dad’s shoulder and I could see four other people standing in the room behind him. He then got up, turned around and said, ‘These people are just some of your family, your brothers and your sisters’, as he pointed at three of the people in the room. Then he grabbed them by their arms and pulled them over to us. ‘And this is your aunty’, he said, as he grabbed the other person by her arm and pulled her over to touch and cuddle us.
‘Come on’, she said. ‘I will make you some dinner and give you all a drink before I put you to bed.’ I had no idea who she was, so I ran back to Kevin and grabbed him by his legs and wouldn’t let go. I looked up at Kevin and told him that I wanted to go home, back to mummy in London, but dad told me to let go of Kevin and to go with our aunty. Then he told Kevin to go and get his coat on, as he was taking him down to the pub for a drink and to meet the boys.
Then they both went off to the pub, leaving us with our aunty, who fed us dry cornflakes with no milk, and then she made us all go upstairs where she put us all into one very large bed. I was still wearing the clothes that I had travelled in and so was Simon and Daisy, but she said that it didn’t matter and that she would be back later to see if we were ok. I wanted to laugh at her, but I was so exhausted that I never made a fuss; I just lay down on the bed and I shut my eyes and the others did the same. I tried to forget everything that was going on around me and it must have worked, as it wasn’t long before I went into my own little world for the rest of the night. I know it sounds strange, but the second my head hit the pillow I felt safe and happy, and I think Daisy and Simon felt the same.
Our aunty never came back that night and when I woke up the next morning, the bed we had all slept in was soaking wet. One of us must have wet the bed during the night, but because we were all so exhausted from the travelling, we had not woken up to go to the toilet and we never knew which one of us had wet the bed. So now, we had to face all the strange people again and we thought they were going to kill us for wetting the bed, so we all got off the bed and we pulled at the sheets, pulling them off the bed, and then we pushed and kicked them under the bed before someone walked in and discovered them.
When we had finished with the bed sheets, it was still very quiet in the house so we opened the bedroom door and we ran down the stairs as fast as we could and, on the way, we made enough noise to wake even the devil. We still had all our clothes and shoes on from the night before, so we thought we could head straight for the front door and escape before anyone realised what we were doing. But as we got to the front door, we couldn’t open it as the handle was too stiff to turn, and there was a big bolt sticking out of the top of the door that was pushed into a piece of wood that was keeping the door closed and locked tight.
We stood back from the door and we looked for another way out, but as we stood for a moment, an arm came over the tops of our heads and grabbed the bolt on the door. Then the person slowly moved the bolt to one side and opened it, and then they moved their arm down to the door handle and unlocked the door. I didn’t want to look behind me, but I just had to, so I slowly turned around to see who it was and it was our dad and he just looked down at us and smiled as he pulled the front door open, letting us all run out into the daylight and what to us felt like freedom. It didn’t matter to us that our clothes were still wet or that we hadn’t had any breakfast, all we wanted to do was escape outside and see if everything we remembered from the night before was real and that we had not dreamed it all up, and it was.
The horse was still standing by the wooden gate, but the gate was locked and it was keeping the horse from getting out of the yard. And I could see that the horse was looking over at the tall grass in the field next to the house and I knew the horse wanted to get to the grass, but I was too frightened to go over to the horse on my own because it was so big. Then I looked over the gate and the mud and puddles were just the same as I remembered them from the night before, but then I noticed a boy standing over by a wall in the corner of the garden. He was much older than we were and, as I looked at him, he shouted over at us all that he was our brother and that we had to do exactly what he told us to do or he would hit us.
Then our dad came out of the house and he told the boy to shut the fuck up and to go get some food from someone, anyone, and he said that it didn’t matter who the food came from as long as he got something for us. So the boy, our brother, jumped over the wall and ran off down the lane, throwing stones and shouting back at us that he was
n’t going to get us any fucking food and to go get it ourselves. We didn’t know what to do, so we just walked over to the horse and we pretended that nothing had happened.
Then our dad followed us over to the horse, telling us that the horse’s name was Rose and that she was a good horse and she would look after us kids whenever he wasn’t around. It all sounded a bit strange to us, but it didn’t really matter because we had no idea what he was talking about, so we just patted the horse on the legs and then we smiled up at her. Then dad told us that he loved us and that he was going to be out for the whole day, so someone else would be coming to the house later to see if we were ok. Then he opened the gate and walked off down the lane, leaving us standing alone in the garden, looking at each other and not knowing what to do next. We waited for dad to walk out of sight, then we turned around and went back into the house; we walked into the living room and, not knowing what to do we sat down on the sofa next to each other.
We had only been sitting down for a few seconds when suddenly I heard a strange noise coming from within the room, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, and then we all heard it. And it was coming from a large old trunk over in the corner of the living room. ‘That’s strange’, I said. Then suddenly the lid of the trunk moved and an old scruffy looking dog pushed the lid open and jumped out. The dog stopped for a moment and then looked at us; but before we could touch it, the dog ran out of the room and out of the front door, with all of us running behind it. Then the dog jumped over the old wooden gate and ran down the lane after our dad, barking and making a big fuss as it ran off and disappeared around the corner and out of sight.
We looked at each other and then we turned around and went back into the house, wondering what to do next; but this time, we closed the front door behind us just in case something else popped up out of the trunk, but nothing did. I had no idea where our other brother had gone after dad shouted at him to get us some food, but we all needed clean clothes and something to eat, so we looked around and we found the case that we had brought with us from London and we opened it. It was full of our old clothes that we used to run around in back at mum’s, so we all changed into some dry clothes; and just as we had finished, Kevin came down the stairs and told us all to shut up and to be quiet. He said that he had a bad pain in his head and he felt sick because dad had taken him out to the pub last night and got him drunk. Then he turned around and ran into the kitchen to be sick, but he didn’t make it to the sink and he was sick all over the kitchen floor, so he slammed the kitchen door shut and shouted at us to hurry up and to get out of the house.
We quickly put on our shoes and headed towards the front door; but as I reached for the door handle, the door opened and in walked our aunty. She had some eggs, bread and milk with her. ‘Go and sit down at the kitchen table’, she said and, as we all walked into the kitchen and sat at the table, she began to make us all breakfast; while Kevin hung onto the kitchen sink and continued to be sick.
At first, the smell of the food was so nice and we all stuck our noses up into the air with excitement and anticipation, and I kept turning around in my chair to have a look at what she was doing. ‘Yippee, good’, I said, but then Kevin began to choke on his own vomit and our aunty had to stop and help him at the sink; but she left the food on the stove and it all burnt, and when she had finished with Kevin she gave the burnt food to us.
And it resembled something that looked like a steaming pile of shit on a plate and she said that it was the best that she could do and that she would give us a drink of milk to make it all taste better. We were so hungry that it didn’t matter what it looked like, we just giggled to each other and ate the food as quickly as possible. Drinking the milk at the same time, so the taste of the burnt food wouldn’t stay in our mouths for very long, and she was right, it worked. She then said that our dad was a very busy man and we should all be good kids for him when he was around; but for now, we should just go outside and play for the rest of the day until he gets back. So we all got up and we did what she said, but we didn’t know what to do or where to go, so we just stood around at the front of the house, looking at each other.
However, it wasn’t long before a small group of children walked up to the front of the house and they said that they were our brothers and sisters; and by the end of our conversation, we were a grand total of seven kids, four girls and three boys. And for the rest of the day, we all sat around and exchanged stories, with them telling us about our dad and Ireland and us telling them about mum and London.
They told us that they all lived in the house with dad and that he would just come and go whenever he felt like it, and sometimes they would not see or hear from him for a week or two at a time. We didn’t really understand what they meant, but we could tell that everyone done just about, whatever they wanted to every day and that was the way of life in our dad’s house.
We shrugged our shoulders and then we just got on with copying what everyone else did. We knew mum didn’t want us anymore and we hoped that everyone in Ireland would like us and that we would fit in, so we did whatever we could to keep out of trouble. And for the next few days, our older brothers and sisters looked after us by showing us around the village and teaching us basic things, like how to steal whatever we needed from farms, shops and other people who lived in the village.
CHAPTER 3
All on Our Own
With dad coming and going whenever he felt like it, it soon became very clear that if we were going to survive we would have to look after ourselves. Occasionally, he would turn up and, when he did, he would leave us some food, but it was never enough and after a few hours, it would be all gone. And when dad was home, he was nearly always drunk and he would just sleep until he was sober enough to go back to the pub again; and while he was drunk, he never once thought about us for one second.
I remember one day he came home with a dead rabbit, it must have been road kill or something as it was almost flat and it looked a mess. He walked into the kitchen with it and he chucked the rabbit onto the table, and with one swift swing of his arm he picked up a large kitchen knife and chopped the rabbit’s head off and then its feet, and then he pulled at its fur and skin with his hands until it all came off the rabbit’s body. We all stood around and looked at him as he put the rabbit and its feet into a pot of water and then he began to make dinner for us all; but as the pot began to warm up, the rabbit began to stink and the kitchen quickly filled with a nasty smell.
When the rabbit was finally cooked, dad put the whole pot onto the kitchen table and he sat down and ate most of the rabbit himself, while we all stood around him and watched. And when he had finished and his belly was full, he pushed the pot into the middle of the table and left all of us to fight over the scraps, but he had only left a few bones and what looked like the skin for us kids to suck and chew on. And he began to laugh at us as he left the kitchen, and as he walked away he said that we were all little beggars and he told us to fuck off out of his sight.
I grabbed the pot and I ran out of the house with it, but I had forgotten all about the step outside the front door and, as I ran outside, I fell. The pot flew out of my hands and then it hit the ground and rolled over, tipping what was left of the rabbit onto the ground; and within a second, the dog ran over and savaged the remains of the rabbit. I was so unhappy and hungry, I got up and walked back into the house and towards dad, but he just looked straight through me like it didn’t matter that I was starving. Then he walked off back to the pub, with the dog following behind him, both with stomachs full from the rabbit they had just eaten, and I stood hungry and sad in the middle of the garden, watching them as they walked away happy and content with themselves.
At the end of each day, I would try to have a wash, but dad never had a boiler in the house, he only had a wood-burning stove to heat the water and it was never lit, so the water was always cold. We never had soap to wash with and I never once saw a towel in the house, so I always smelt bad, my skin was always dir
ty and my clothes were never washed. I was only five years old, and after playing outside all day, I would be filthy, but no one cared; and at the end of each day, I would climb into my bed covered in dirt and I would have to make the best of a bad situation.
But with four of us girls all sleeping in one bed, it meant that almost every night one of us would wet the bed and we would all have to lie on the wet sheets until morning. Then, when we all got up, we would leave the bed covers pulled back so the sheets could dry out on their own during the day, then in the evening we would climb back into a dry bed again. However, most evenings when I got back into bed, the smell from the sheets was so bad that I would gag and choke for the first few minutes until I got used to the smell again, and I would get dizzy from the fumes off the sheets, but eventually I would fall asleep. I slept in the bed for months until the smell got so bad that I couldn’t sleep or even stay in the bedroom without coughing or choking, so I decided to change the sheets myself; but we never had any, so I went out and I stole some from other people’s washing lines.
