Kathleen turned white and clenched her fists.
“Don’t you give me advice on family matters!” she hissed. “Not you, with your broken home and dysfunctional mother. Don’t you dare.”
Bronwyn let go of the suitcase and marched back up to Kathleen.
“Why are you under the impression that my mother is dysfunctional?” she asked quietly. At the sight of the fire in Bronwyn’s eyes, Kathleen shrank back against the wall.
“She is.” Kathleen pulled herself up to her full height and looked Bronwyn square in the eye.
“And your father – where’s he, then?”
“My father left us, as you know. And I couldn’t give a shit about that. Barry and I have done all right without him, just like Rosina will be fine without you.”
With that she picked up the case and opened the door. She paused as she studied the crowd that had gathered again in the street to watch the James’s ongoing soap opera and she turned back to Kathleen once more.
“It must feel lousy, Mrs J.”
“What?” Kathleen frowned.
Bronwyn smirked and started to walk down the path.
“Losing your only child,” she called over her shoulder.
Kathleen kicked the door shut and slumped in a heap on the floor. It was several minutes later before she stopped shaking enough to haul herself up. Clutching the wall for support, she went over to the mirror hanging in the hall and stared at her reflection. They all thought that she was a cold-hearted bitch. Her neighbours, Bronwyn, even her own daughter. Well, they were right. It was the only way she had been able to survive. So deeply ingrained was this instinct, it had totally taken over every other human emotion.
* * * *
Belfast – 1960.
Kathleen was going on her first date. Well, it was a double date actually, with her best friend Susan. They were both sixteen and, after a lot of cajoling and pleading, both sets of parents had agreed to the date. They had, of course, insisted on meeting the boys in question and, when finally they were satisfied that the lads had nothing untoward in mind, they let the girls go. Kathleen was nervous as she fixed her hair in front of her bedroom mirror, her mother sitting on the bed behind her issuing instructions.
Finally, Kathleen turned around.
“Mam, it’s just the cinema. The picture finishes at nine, and I’ll be home by half past. Now, how do I look?’
Glenda Morris appraised her daughter and smiled.
“Perfect,” she replied.
Satisfied, Kathleen picked up her bag and took one more look in the mirror. She did look okay; smart black trousers and a black satin shirt, nothing that would give out the wrong impression to Marty.
“And this Marty, you like him?” asked Glenda casually.
Kathleen grinned and Glenda saw the look of puppy love in her daughter’s eyes.
“He’s okay,” she said and kissed her mother on the cheek. “Bye!”
Glenda followed Kathleen down and sat on the bottom step as Kathleen called out to her father, Mick, who was reading the newspaper.
A car horn sounded outside and Glenda suddenly looked horrified.
“He’s driving?” she asked. “How old is he?”
Kathleen laughed and the young and carefree sound tugged at Glenda’s heart.
“It’s a taxi, mam, he’s in a taxi!”
Glenda nodded and was about to repeat all of her earlier warnings when Mick came out into the hall.
“Quiet, you.” he directed at Glenda. “Let the poor girl go.”
“Thanks, Dad.” Kathleen opened the door and closed it softly behind her.
“Have a good time!” Glenda called out, but the door was already shut.
And they did have a good time. The picture was not up to their expectations so, halfway through, the foursome held a muttered conversation and decided to leave. By eight o’clock, they found themselves in the diner across the road from the cinema, frequented by the high school kids. They ordered coffees and chatted about the film, school, and what they had all done over the weekend.
Marty held Kathleen’s hand under the table, and she wondered nervously if he would kiss her at the end of the night.
Later, much later, she looked at her watch and was aghast to find that it was ten o’clock. Her parents would be furious! She stood up and grabbed her coat.
“I’ve got to go!” she said. “I didn’t realise it was so late!”
Marty stood up and reached for his coat.
“I’ll walk you to the taxi rank,” he said and, after a moment’s consideration, she nodded her consent.
Two streets away they stood at the empty taxi rank, Kathleen wringing her hands in despair.
“Calm down,” said Marty. “Look, here’s one now.”
Relief flooded through her and she raised her hand to signal the taxi to stop. When it drew up alongside of them, she turned to Marty.
“Thanks for tonight. Sorry I have to rush off.”
He leaned in and kissed her, so fast that she barely realised it had happened. As he pulled back, she saw him blush and she squeezed his hand before jumping in the taxi.
“Manchester Road, please,” she said and, as the cab pulled away, she turned to wave to Marty.
When he was out of sight, she pulled out her purse to have the cab fare ready. When she opened it, though, she was mortified to discover she didn’t have enough by half to get home.
“Driver, could you just take me as far as Station Road please,” she said, inwardly cursing herself for spending so much that she had left herself short. Now she would be even later in getting home, and her parents would be frantic.
Ten minutes later she was standing alone on the corner of Station road in Belfast town centre. She shivered as she pulled her coat tighter around her. She was in Protestant territory now, and she hoped to God she wouldn’t run into any trouble as she made her way home. Well, you won’t get home just standing here. So Kathleen put her head down and started the fifteen-minute walk home. She was almost onto home ground when she heard someone walking behind her. She cast a glance over her shoulder and nervous laughter bubbled up as all she saw was an old man walking his dog. She watched the old man turn down a side street and turned to walk on again. Wham!
Kathleen was knocked off her feet. For a second she lay looking up at the night sky, not knowing what had hit her.
Then a face came into her vision, and Kathleen stared into a pair of ice blue eyes, so blue and so cold they looked dead. She opened her mouth to scream, but the man clamped his hand over her mouth so tightly it cut off all sound.
Still keeping his hand over her face, he moved around behind her and dragged her back into an alleyway.
Kathleen was petrified. He was a Protestant. He must know she was Catholic. He was going to hurt her! Shoot her!
Then he was in front of her again, and she yelped as he kneeled down on her chest, both of his legs pinning her arms to her side. She looked at his hands, trying to see the gun he would surely use but she saw nothing. He grinned suddenly. As he leaned back and his hands went to the zipper on his trousers, her blood ran cold.
Survival instinct took over and she thrashed around beneath him, desperate, willing to take a bullet or a knife if it meant he didn’t do that to her. For a second he looked surprised at her sudden attempt to get free, before he gained control again by grasping her hair and banging her head hard on the concrete. She lay dazed. As her head
thumped with pain, she knew that this was a fight she had lost. Sensing her inability to struggle anymore, he worked quickly. He tore off the new black trousers that weren’t supposed to give anyone the wrong impression, and threw them carelessly to one side. It didn’t last long, but the pain was intense and she turned her head to one side, stuffing her fist in her own mouth to stop herself screaming, lest he hurt her even more.
Towards the end, she drifted away, near to unconsciousness, and it seemed like a lifetime later when she realised that he had gone.
“
Oh, my God…Jesus Lord Christ, help me…” she muttered as she struggled to sit up. The pain in her head intensified, and she slumped back to the ground.
“Help me…please…” she cried.
But nobody answered her plea.
How Kathleen got home in the state that she was in, she didn’t know. When it became clear that nobody would come to her aid, she grabbed her discarded clothing and staggered off down the street. When Kathleen finally reached home, she started to weep as she saw her mother standing on the front step.
Glenda, anxious as she glanced at her watch, caught sight of Kathleen staggering up the road. She blanched as she took stock of her daughter with her bloodied, tear streaked face, clutching her trousers in her hand.
“Mick!” She screamed and ran up the road to meet Kathleen. She stopped a few feet short of Kathleen and knew immediately what had happened. It was every mother’s worst nightmare; that your boy goes out for the evening and ends up kneecapped or your girl comes home raped. Murders, general muggings, car accidents – these all happened, but, for some reason, the scenario that occurs to every mother that frets when her daughter is late is always this one. And now, for Glenda, it had all come horrifyingly true. Glenda reached out, wanting desperately to gather Kathleen up in her arms and comfort her like she had when she was a little girl and had fallen off her bike, but something stopped her. Maybe it was the sight of Kathleen’s chubby, white thighs streaked with blood and shiny, silver mucus, or the mass of grass and twigs that clung to Kathleen’s hair.
“Mammy?” Kathleen whispered in a small voice and Glenda snapped out of it, realising she had been staring at her daughter with an almost morbid curiosity.
Suddenly, Mick was there. With one look he also knew, and with an order for Glenda to call the police, he scooped Kathleen up in his arms and took her into the house. The rest of the night was a blur of action. Police statements, examinations and questions, and then a dash to the hospital to have five stitches in the back of her head.
“Was it Marty?” Glenda asked at one point and Kathleen shook her head fiercely. Dear Marty, he won’t want me now.
In those days, rape was an uncomfortable subject to discuss and the three of them dealt with it in their own way. Glenda was weepy, Mick refused to discuss it, and Kathleen blacked it out completely.
In fact, she avoided thinking about the event so successfully that when she discovered she was pregnant, for a moment it confused her totally.
How can I be pregnant? I’m sixteen years old and I don’t have a boyfriend. I’m still a virgin!
But pregnant she was and, as a Catholic, abortion was totally out of the question.
“You’ll have to marry the father,” said Glenda in a moment of madness. Kathleen stared at her mother with undisguised shock.
“Mam, the father raped me! I don’t know where he lives! I don’t even know his name!”
Glenda flinched at the word rape, and while the broken family tried to come up with a solution, life went on.
It was early into Kathleen’s third month of the pregnancy, as she was taking a hot bath, when Glenda came into the bathroom and closed the door quietly behind her.
“I brought you a drink,” said Glenda and set a tray down on the floor. Kathleen, who had been dozing, opened her eyes and looked down at the tray. Her eyes bulged at the tray’s contents and she raised her eyes to meet her mother’s. Glenda refused to look at her daughter. Instead, she stood up and as quietly as she had entered she left the room.
Kathleen clutched the side of the bath and looked again at the tray. There were only two items on it – a full bottle of gin, and a wire coat hanger. She lay back in the hot water and tentatively touched her stomach. It was still flat, no sign of life yet, but she knew it was there.
How she hated it.
How she instinctively loved it.
Two such powerful emotions and both at the same time, directed at the same thing, were totally overwhelming.
She glanced back at the tray and picked up the bottle of gin. Before she could lose her nerve, she flipped off the lid and watched as it bounced across the bathroom floor. Then she held the bottle to her lips and took a long swig. It was her first taste of gin and she nearly vomited then and there. But she swallowed and took a second gulp of the foul liquor. Over the next thirty minutes or so she managed to down a quarter of the bottle. Her stomach began to churn. She put the bottle aside and picked up the coat hanger. Concentrating on unwinding the hanger so it became a neat strip of wire, she tried not to think about what she had to with the thing once she had finished. Soon it was straight, and Kathleen lay back again and stretched her legs out in front of her.
I can’t do this!
She hurled the coat hanger across the room and it landed near the door, next to the gin bottle lid. Maybe the gin will work on its own.
She topped up the bath water from the hot tap and retrieved the bottle of gin once more. After a couple more swigs, she studied the bottle of gin intently. What am I doing? This baby is not its father. It’s half of me, a part of me. Reaching over, she poured the rest of the bottle into the sink. When she came downstairs in her dressing gown, she sat opposite Mick and Glenda on the couch.
“I think I should go away for a while,” she said.
That was how Kathleen came to travel eighty miles south of Belfast, to a small town called Crossmaglen. When she decided she was keeping the baby, her parents began to make arrangements. Her name was changed to Kathleen James and Mick sorted out the house on Willoughby Street. It was frightening, but liberating at the same time. For the last part of the pregnancy Kathleen was able to convince herself that this baby was wanted. The story for the neighbours was easy. Kathleen was a child bride who was now a young widow. They bought the story and, due to her aloofness, they mostly left her alone. The labour, when it happened, was mercifully quick. So fast, in fact, that when the midwife arrived, Kathleen had already done most of the work.
Later, when she had been cleaned up and was resting in her bed, the midwife handed the baby to her.
Kathleen waited until the woman had left the room before she looked down at her child.
“Rosina,” she murmured, and pulled aside the shawl that the baby girl was wrapped in. She waited for a moment for the lightning bolt of love for her child to hit her. When it didn’t, she turned her head and, through her tears, stared out of the window. I hate my baby. Dear God, I hate her.
Things didn’t get better. While the baby had been in her womb, Kathleen had wanted it, or at least convinced herself that she did. But now that it was out and in her arms, the child just served as a reminder of what had happened.
Kathleen waited patiently for her parents to visit her. Her mother would know what to do; she would be able to teach her how to stop the baby crying, show her the right way to bathe her. Her parents never arrived.
That was the way it was to be. Kathleen and Rosina, on their own, in Crossmaglen for the foreseeable future.
When Rosina started school, she questioned Kathleen about her father. Kathleen told her what she had told the neighbours; her father was dead.
The maternal feelings never came. Rosina grew up and never wanted for anything. Anything that is, except the most important thing – a mother’s love.
That was Kathleen’s story.
After more than twenty years of misery raising Rosina, the girl had done her the biggest disservice by running off with a Protestant.
As Kathleen stared at herself in the mirror, she felt emptiness so deep in her soul that life barely seemed worth living.
Chapter Seven
A Fresh Start
When Mary and Rosina returned home later that night, Bronwyn was waiting on the front steps with Rosina’s suitcase.
She stood up when they came through the front gate, and gestured to the case.
“Piece of cake,” she said.
Rosina shook her head in wonder and wished that she could handle her mother the way Bronwyn could.
Mary nodded and opened the door.
“You have to treat this as your home now,” she said, and disappeared into the lounge. “Kettle’s in the kitchen, stick it on for us.”
Bronwyn tugged at Rosina’s sleeve as they made their way up the hall to the kitchen.
“What’s she like?” asked Bronwyn in a stage whisper.
“Nice,” Rosina whispered back. “She was like ice when I first met her, but we talked and she’s on our side. I think she could be just as scary as my mother, though!”
“Don’t worry about Kathleen anymore. You’ve got us now,” said Bronwyn. “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”
Rosina thought briefly of her mother as she filled the kettle with water. No, she wouldn’t think about her. Kathleen had done nothing in her life to support her. As much as it saddened her, she would just have to forget that she ever had a mother.
* * * *
The 17th December dawned as a perfect winter morning, crisp and bright, with a layer of frost on the cars, and the promise of early snow in the air.
Rosina awoke early, and for a moment couldn’t figure out where she was. With a jolt, it all came back to her and she felt a simmer of excitement as she realised she was in Connor’s house. What would the arrangements be when Connor came home from the hospital? Rosina couldn’t very well see Mary allowing them both to stay in the same room, let alone the same bed. Never mind, being in the same house was satisfaction enough for her. She hopped out of bed and pulled open the window. The view was not much different from her bedroom window; row upon row of terrace houses and miles of cobbled streets. Streets that she knew so well already from her sneaking around here in the last six months. She heard the faint sound of a radio coming from the kitchen. She was about to close the window and venture downstairs, when the window below her opened and she saw Mary stick her head out. Mary glanced left and right before lighting up a cigarette. The smoke drifted slowly up to Rosina’s window.
Freedom First, Peace Later Page 5
