Whose Life is it Anyway?

by Sinéad Moriarty

  My father and uncles decided that Uncle Pat needed stability, so they set him up with Auntie Sheila, who was Auntie Denise’s second cousin. Auntie Sheila was thirty-seven, worked as a nurse and drank only on birthdays and at Christmas. She had told Auntie Denise that she was afraid she’d never get married and she desperately wanted children. She was getting on and needed to find a man. She said she wasn’t fussy what he looked like or did for a living, as long as he was a good person.

  Uncle Pat’s brothers decided she was perfect for him. She was older, mature and sensible. Marriage and children would keep him at home and out of the pub. They encouraged him to go out with her. Somehow Pat managed to keep it together most of the time he was courting Auntie Sheila. She’d seen him drunk all right, but not on a daily basis. She knew he was a drinker, just had no idea how bad he was. On the morning of the wedding, he was found passed out in our front garden, face down in the grass. My father and mother plied him with coffee, threw him into the shower and managed to get him coherent enough to go through with the ceremony.

  Marriage, however, didn’t stop him drinking. Neither did fatherhood. He got worse and worse. Once when Auntie Sheila had thrown him out of the house, he had come to stay with us for a few days and I’d had to give up my bed. On his last night, he had peed in his sleep, and when he left to go to rehab, I had refused to get into my bed until my mother had bought me a new mattress.

  I dreaded Uncle Pat’s visits because he had nasty breath and was always crying into my hair because I looked like Granny O’Flaherty. I tried to make myself scarce when he was around. And now he was going to ruin my favourite day.

  ‘Why, Mum? Why do they have to come? They’ll ruin Christmas. Uncle Pat’ll just get drunk and cry and fall over. It’ll be awful.’

  ‘Don’t be so selfish. Poor Auntie Sheila could do with a nice day out and your cousins have had a hard time with Pat not being so well. You should be generous to them, poor things. Besides, we’re not ones to be taking the moral high ground, with Siobhan pregnant before marriage.’

  Great! Now, because of Siobhan’s lusty ways, we were the poor cousins whom everyone felt sorry for. My God, Uncle Pat’s family probably felt sorry for us. How weird was that? We were the loser cousins for once. I needed to talk to Finn.

  I pounced on him when he came in from training.

  ‘You’ll never guess who’s coming for Christmas dinner?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Smelly Pat and his family.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus. We’d better hide the drink and get the plastic sheets out.’

  ‘Do you think we’re the sad cousins now because of Siobhan?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you know, because she got pregnant and it was shameful and hush-hush.’

  ‘Dunno. Do you think we are?’

  I shrugged. ‘Mum said something about it.’

  ‘Wow. That’s embarrassing.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. Do you think we’ll have to share our presents?’

  ‘I hope not. I’m not sharing my skateboard with anyone.’

  ‘Yeah, me neither.’

  ‘Are you getting one too?’

  ‘No, you thick, I’m getting a stereo for my bedroom.’

  ‘What’s Siobhan getting?’

  ‘A year’s supply of Pampers.’

  We had a good laugh about that.

  Christmas Day arrived, and Santa was as generous as always. We were given everything we asked for. Liam spent Christmas in our house as his family had disowned him, and Santa had given him and Siobhan a second-hand car. They were thrilled. Liam was all emotional when my father handed him the keys. Siobhan said she liked it, but would have preferred a red one – my mother whispered, ‘Hormones,’ to my father to stop him getting annoyed.

  I got my stereo and the new A-Ha album, so I was thrilled. Finn got his skateboard and a Rubik’s cube. My father was keen for him to improve his concentration. Finn may have been a great footballer but he didn’t do a tap of work, and maths was not his best subject. My father reasoned that focusing on doing the Rubik’s cube would somehow make him better with figures. I knew it’d end up in the bottom of his cupboard.

  While we were outside admiring the car, Uncle Pat and Co. trooped up the drive. Uncle Pat was swaying from side to side and I heard my father mutter, ‘I’ll kill him,’ under his breath. My mother rested her arm on his.

  ‘Leave it, Mick. He’s too far gone now. Talk to him tomorrow when he’s sobered up.’

  ‘That’s another thousand pounds down the drain. I’ll kill him.’

  Uncle Pat’s ‘holidays’ were getting more expensive. I had heard my parents talking about them before and five hundred quid seemed to be the going rate. Obviously he had been sent to a new place. At this rate we’d be broke in no time. Shamed and broke – we’d really be the poor cousins then. My dislike of Uncle Pat intensified.

  My cousins, Sally and Brian, looked really pissed off, while Auntie Sheila, who had outdone herself with the makeup today, bounded up the driveway full of cheer. She was talking very loudly and kept laughing hysterically at nothing.

  Uncle Pat hugged us and told us we were wonderful kids, that our father was a saint and our mother an angel. My recently canonized father didn’t seem very saintly as he grabbed Uncle Pat’s arm and frogmarched him into the kitchen. Auntie Sheila kissed us, leaving large red lipstick marks on our faces and Sally and Brian mumbled, ‘Happy Christmas,’ avoiding eye contact with any of us.

  My mother took charge and ushered everyone in out of the cold. She closed the kitchen door to drown my father’s raised voice telling Uncle Pat ‘Drink the bloody coffee or I’ll make you drink it myself.’

  Auntie Sheila continued to laugh hysterically. My cousin Sally was fourteen and Brian was fifteen; they were always very quiet at family gatherings. They stuck together like glue and said little.

  My mother always made a fuss of them. You could see she felt sorry for them having Uncle Pat as a father. But they seemed to be doing OK. Brian was really good at the violin, and Sally was clever in school – a fact my mother never failed to remind me of. ‘If poor Sally can get good grades with that useless fecker as a father, what’s your excuse?’ asked Mum.

  She sometimes called Uncle Pat a ‘useless fecker’ when my father wasn’t around. I could see she thought he was a lost cause, but she never stopped my father sending him to dry out. Family was family and that was that.

  ‘Maybe the teachers feel sorry for her and give her good marks because of him,’ I suggested.

  ‘Maybe if you spent less time giving cheek to your mother and more time to studying your grades would improve.’

  ‘Sally’s a weirdo. She hasn’t got any friends. No wonder she has so much time to study. Would you prefer it if I was weird too?’

  ‘Now, you listen here, madam. Your cousin has a very difficult home life and you should be extra nice to her. You should be friendly to her, let her pal around with your gang and introduce her to your friends.’

  Did I look like a masochist? Sally hang around with my gang? I was just about hanging around with them myself. Dragging my younger cousin along would tip the balance and I’d be an outcast. Besides, she was in the year below me. Everyone knew that you never hung around with anyone in the year below. It was a capital offence and guaranteed you a place among the goons. But I could see that my mother thought this was a great idea and I wanted to get her off the subject of my brainy cousin ruining the meagre street cred I had in school so I nodded.

  We had been told on Christmas Eve that we had to give one of our presents to our cousins. Naturally we moaned and groaned and kicked up a fuss, but my father insisted this was a good lesson for us in giving. I reluctantly agreed to give Sally my Just Seventeen annual, even though it had a really cool pull-out poster of Duran Duran in the middle, with John Taylor looking utterly divine, his long tousled hair blowing in the wind. Finn agreed to give Brian the Rubik’s cube, but my father insisted that he part with so
mething bigger so he gave him his new dartboard.

  My mother handed the presents – our presents – to Brian and Sally, who were clearly embarrassed, while Auntie Sheila oohed and aahed and said how marvellous it was and how we shouldn’t spoil them and how generous we were and how good we were and how she hoped we didn’t think that they had come here today expecting presents. It was enough of a gift not to have to spend Christmas alone with ‘him inside’ and how she had hoped and prayed that, for once, they’d have a peaceful Christmas but he’d started again two days ago and – She began to cry and my mother asked us kids to go into the playroom and play.

  Children play. Teenagers shuffle around feeling awkward, which was what we did. Well, all of us except Siobhan, who lay on the couch like a beached whale. Liam sat beside her looking a bit lost. Christmas Day in his house probably didn’t seem so bad after all.

  Finn broke the silence by asking if they’d seen the new Back to the Future movie. Sally said she didn’t go to the cinema and Brian said he’d been supposed to see it two days ago but his father had got drunk, started a fight and been arrested, so he’d gone with his mother to bail him out.

  That was a conversation stopper, I can tell you. We shuffled around some more until Siobhan piped up that Uncle Pat had better get a grip on himself because our father wouldn’t be able to pay for him to dry out any more as he had to help her and Liam buy a house once the baby was born.

  ‘Shut up,’ I hissed. I couldn’t believe she’d said that. The cousins were shocked and embarrassed. ‘Don’t mind her. It’s her hormones. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.’ I blushed at my sister’s insensitivity.

  ‘My mum said your baby will go to hell because it’s a sin to have sex before marriage,’ said Sally, clearly not as meek and mild as we’d thought.

  ‘How dare you say that? Your dad’s just a sad old piss-head who bleeds everyone around him dry. If anyone’s going to hell it’s him,’ said the future mother.

  ‘I hope he does,’ said Brian, quietly. ‘The sooner the better.’

  ‘That’s your dad you’re talking about,’ said Finn.

  ‘Has your dad ever turned up to a hurley match drunk out of his head and pissed behind a tree?’

  Finn looked appalled. Christmas was beginning to seem more like Hallowe’en. Thankfully, before Brian could tell us a few more horror stories about his dad, Mum popped her head round the door. ‘It’s very quiet in here. Everything all right?’

  We nodded, but she sensed the tension and ushered us all into the lounge. Uncle Pat was having a ‘rest’ upstairs – I prayed not in my bed – so we sat in front of a roaring log fire and watched It’s a Wonderful Life for the zillionth time. I sank back in the couch, flooded with relief at not having to make conversation any more. Some things were better left unsaid. Even the fact that Siobhan had eaten all the strawberry, coffee and orange Quality Streets didn’t bother me. I had a father who peed in the bathroom. Life was good.

  20

  After Christmas, Siobhan went from big to absolutely huge. She had to wear tent-type dresses and moaned about her back being sore. Even Mum got fed up and told her that pregnancy wasn’t an illness, it was a natural condition, to stop complaining and get on with it.

  ‘But you don’t understand, I’m in agony,’ she whinged as Nuala came in and put the kettle on.

  ‘I had three children, Siobhan. I understand perfectly,’ said Mum.

  ‘Stop your groaning. You’re young and healthy,’ said Auntie Nuala. ‘Think of those poor pregnant African women walking twenty miles for water and giving birth on the side of a road.’

  Siobhan glared at her and waddled out of the room.

  ‘She’s a regular ray of sunshine,’ said Auntie Nuala.

  ‘Ah, leave the poor thing alone, she’s just big and uncomfortable,’ said Mum. ‘Besides, she’s bored here all day long. She misses her schoolfriends.’

  ‘You should never have allowed her leave.’

  ‘I couldn’t send her in there with a big pregnant belly on her. It wouldn’t have been fair. Besides, with the baby due in March she wouldn’t have been able to sit the exams anyway. She can go back and finish next year, if she wants to.’

  ‘You should make her go back or she’ll end up a frustrated housewife like the two of us.’ Auntie Nuala sighed.

  ‘Are you frustrated?’ I asked.

  ‘No, we’re not,’ said Mum, giving Auntie Nuala a stern look.

  ‘Well, I am,’ Auntie Nuala said. ‘I wish I’d studied harder, gone to university and had a career.’

  ‘What would you like to have been?’

  ‘A lawyer, I think,’ said Auntie Nuala, smiling. ‘I’d have made a very good one.’

  ‘You’re good at talking, all right,’ said Mum.

  ‘And you’re very persuasive,’ I added.

  ‘Oh, well, ’twasn’t to be. I was barefoot and pregnant at twenty. What do you want to be?’ Auntie Nuala asked me.

  ‘I used to want to be an air-stewardess but now I think that’s kind of crap. I’m thinking of being a beautician.’

  Mum choked on her tea. ‘Over my dead body will you be painting people’s toenails. Your father’s paying a fortune for a private education and you’ll not waste it on that rubbish.’

  ‘Why don’t you be a doctor?’ asked Auntie Nuala.

  ‘I hate science and I’m crap at it.’

  ‘OK, an accountant, then.’

  ‘I’m even worse at maths.’

  ‘What about a lawyer? You’ve the gift of the gab,’ said Mum.

  I shrugged. ‘It seems kind of boring.’

  ‘OK, let’s try a different tack. What are you good at?’ asked Auntie Nuala.

  ‘English and tennis.’

  ‘Well, it’s a bit late for Wimbledon so what about journalism?’

  I’d never thought of being a journalist. It sounded like a great idea. I could write about pop bands and work for Just Seventeen. It’d be fantastic.

  ‘Thanks, Auntie Nuala, that’s exactly what I’ll do.’ I beamed.

  ‘It’s no profession for a girl.’ Mum sniffed. ‘They’re a rough lot, those journalists. You’re going to university, young lady, and while you’re there you can figure out what it is you want to be. But whatever happens, you’re not going to mess up like Siobhan. So put your head down and work on your maths and science. Do you hear me?’

  ‘Loud and clear,’ I muttered, as Auntie Nuala winked at me.

  A few weeks later I was making myself a sandwich when I heard Siobhan shouting my name. Assuming she was being her usual dramatic self, I ignored her and continued to pile HP sauce on to the bread… until I heard a bloodcurdling howl. I dropped the knife and ran into her room.

  ‘Are you deaf?’ she roared. ‘I’ve been calling you for the last ten minutes.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘My waters have broken.’

  I stared at her blankly. She might as well have been talking Swahili.

  ‘Don’t just stand there! Get Mum! The baby’s coming.’

  ‘She’s gone out.’

  ‘What? Where?’

  ‘To have her hair done.’

  ‘Jesus Christ! Well, call an ambulance – DO SOMETHING!’ she screamed, as water trickled down her leg on to the carpet.

  I ran in and dialled 999. Then I boiled some water, ripped up a sheet and went back to her.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ she snapped. ‘And why have you cut up that sheet? It’s one of my favourites.’

  ‘They do it in the movies when someone’s having a baby. The doctor always says, “Get me some hot water and sheets.”’

  ‘What for?’

  I shrugged. ‘They never show you what happens next – you just hear the baby crying and it’s all over.’

  ‘How long did the ambulance say it’d take?’

  ‘Ten minutes.’

  ‘Aaaarggh – I don’t think I can wait that long. I’m going to die – the baby’s going to die. I’m in
agony,’ she said, doubling over.

  I began to panic. What if she had the baby there on the floor? What was I supposed to do with the sheets and the hot water? I got up to ring Dad’s office, but Siobhan grabbed my arm. ‘Don’t leave me – I’m scared,’ she said, beginning to cry.

  ‘It’s OK, Siobhan, you’ll be fine,’ I said, trying to reassure her.

  ‘What the hell do you know – with your sheets and boiling water? I want Mum.’

  ‘I’ll ring the hairdresser.’

  ‘No – the baby’s coming! Oh my God – it’s coming out. Help!’

  Jesus, please don’t come now, I prayed. I haven’t a clue what I’m doing. Stay in there! Was I going to have to look up my sister’s fanny? If I saw the head could I push it back in until the ambulance arrived?

  Siobhan screeched again and began to roll around on the floor. ‘I want Liam! I want Mum! I want Dad! Why the hell are you the only one in?’

  ‘I wanted to go out, but Mum made me stay here in case anything happened,’ I snapped. I’d rather be in double maths right now, I thought, fuming.

  ‘Oh, the pain – it’s excruciating. Do something!’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Wipe my brow.’

  I put a corner of the sheet into the water and wiped.

  ‘Ooow! You stupid cow, you burnt me!’

  Fuck fuck fuck. Where was everyone? Before Siobhan had a chance to abuse me again I heard a siren.

  I charged out to open the door for the ambulance men, who rushed in to my screaming sister. They had a midwife with them who checked Siobhan, then told her firmly to calm down. ‘You’ve only just started labour, love. You’ve a long way to go. You need to stop shouting and conserve some energy for later. You’re not even one centimetre dilated.’

  ‘Give me something for the pain,’ she begged.

  ‘Too early for that. You’ll have to grin and bear it for a bit longer,’ said the midwife.

  As they were putting her into the back of the ambulance she barked orders to me: ‘… and don’t forget to pack my favourite pillow and my new pink pyjamas and bring me some magazines and…’