My job in the bank was coming to an end, and I worried that I would have to go back to baking. I really didn’t want to do that. I had grown used to the hours, and dreaded the thought of going back to my old life. I applied for an office job in the post room of an insurance brokers’ firm, and was over the moon when I got the position. If change is as good as a rest then it had the opposite effect on me. I soon realised how little I knew, being computer illiterate was a huge drawback. However, I toughed it out and I learned a great deal, gaining invaluable experience and knowledge from so many wise and very mature people there. It was a job I held until my retirement in December 2007.
It hasn’t all been plain sailing. On holiday in Malta in September 2002, I began to be troubled by weakness and shortness of breath. To walk any distance was a great struggle for me. After an extremely bad night, during which I was rushed to the hospital, I was told that I had severe blockage of my main arteries and would need a heart bypass within six months. I stayed in hospital in Malta for months while I built up enough strength to be moved to a hospital in Ireland.
Finally I was given the all-clear to return home on the condition it was by air ambulance. I was released from the hospital to a nursing home where I remained for a few weeks until the arrangements were made. Finally the day came to leave Malta. I boarded a small Cesna air ambulance with just one other male patient, a doctor and a nurse. The plane landed in France for refuelling and I was allowed to get off to enjoy some fresh air and coffee. But slowly I began to feel the strain, and pain and tension crept up upon me.
The next part of the journey was to Manchester. The flight seemed to take all day. Perhaps it did. When we had another refuelling stop at Manchester I felt so bad my legs went from under me. I woke up in the cardiac care unit in Wythenshawe Hospital, Manchester.
An English nurse was standing by my bedside. Her smile was soft and filled with warmth. The doctor who came with me from Malta assured me I was in the best place. He kindly explained everything to me – I was to be kept here in Manchester for a few weeks to be fully checked out. He asked me for Paula’s number – she would be waiting for me at the airport – and called her using his mobile phone. He passed the phone down to me. ‘Take your time.’
Hearing Paula’s voice made me feel better. It raised me up as she quickly explained how they were all so anxious to come over and see me in Manchester. ‘I promise you, Dad, we will all get over. In fact, I can’t wait, Dad, I promise you we will come over as soon as we can. I promise you, Dad, love always, bye.’ It was a promise she faithfully kept.
I will always remember being wheeled into the operating theatre on 12 November 2002. I’d heard so much about how run down the British health system was. Not a day went by without the National Health Service being held up to ridicule on TV and in the newspapers. Yet here was I, lying in a state-of-the-art operating theatre undergoing life-saving surgery. I prayed to Pauline for strength and help to get me safely through it.
After the angioplasty the cardiologist came by my bedside and confirmed to me the wonderful news that the surgery was a complete success. My prayers had been answered.
I left the South Manchester Wythenshawe Hospital in late November 2002. I am extremely grateful for the wonderful treatment and care given to me by the doctors, nurses and staff at the hospital and, in particular, for the fantastic treatment I received from the cardiac team and the consultant cardiologist there. As a result I have been able to live and work, and lead an active normal life ever since. I have been given a second chance.
There are times when I can’t help but wonder how differently my life would have been if I hadn’t been sent away to Artane at the age of eight. My life in Barnacullia had been idyllic; I was happy and healthy doing my chores and playing in the fresh air with my friend, Shep the dog. Bridget Doyle looked after me, and loved me, and I was safe and secure in the warmth of her home. There wasn’t much money to go around, but I was well fed on good food, school was a place of learning and my sleep was filled with good dreams, not the nightmares that would come to plague me in my later years.
Artane was the complete opposite of my life until then. I was sometimes abused, often hungry and always scared. I developed nightmares and would walk in my sleep. Christian Brothers that were charged with looking after us in fact tormented and sexually abused us. We orphans, with no family to worry about us, were placed there by the state, forgotten about by society and used at the Christian Brothers’ pleasure. And we were denied the one thing that could have improved our later lives immeasurably: education.
But if I had stayed in Barnacullia, content and happy, would I ever have had the drive to travel, to see and live in exotic countries? Possibly not, and I would have missed out on some of the most enriching experiences of my life. Would I have met Pauline and brought up my three wonderful children? Chances are, my path never would have crossed with Pauline’s, and that is unthinkable. And I would never have had the urge to write, and to tell my story. The fact is, you have to make the most out of what you have been given, and while Artane may have broken my body and cowed my spirit, it also instilled within me a drive to succeed, as a baker, a family man and a writer.
Artane may have marked me, it may have shaped me, but I made myself the man I am today. I have confronted the demons of my past and I have made peace with them. It has been a long, tough road – over fifty years long – and I am a different person to that poor, institutionalised boy who left Artane, terrified of the world outside its walls. And Ireland is different too; I hope that no other generation of children will be forgotten about, suffering and living in fear as I and my mates did, so many years ago.
It is 17 November 2007, a typical autumn day, wild with rain and blustery with wind. Today, though, is not a day for looking back at the past: today is filled with hope for the future. I am with my daughter Paula, and we are outside the beautiful grey, sandstone church of St Peter’s and Paul’s in Balbriggan. The church bells are pealing, announcing the arrival of the bride. Paula is as beautiful and as radiant as her mother was on our wedding day, and my heart swells with pride as I take her arm in mine and we enter the church.
Everyone’s faces turn towards us as we enter. There is Alan Ryan, Paula’s fiancé, soon-to-be husband, waiting for her at the end. I see my son, John, and his beautiful girlfriend, Margarita Gormes, on the bride’s side of the church. My son John is easy going, very honest. He is sincere and very hard working. They’re looking after Paula’s baby son Cameron, my first grandson. And there beside them is Suzanne, my youngest, with the man she is soon to marry, Phil Waring, smiling and looking so happy for her sister. She’s a teacher, now. My family, here in this church, celebrating the marriage of my eldest child: there is no happier or prouder man on earth than I at this moment.
I give my daughter away, and step back to observe the rest of the proceedings. I feel Pauline’s presence beside me. November is the month in which she died, and it is the month that holds my darkest memories, but my youngest was born in November, and now there is another happy memory to add – my eldest daughter’s wedding.
On this wild and wet but beautifully glorious November day, the shadow that Artane cast over my life has all but disappeared. I will always have the scars, but they have long since healed, and are finally beginning to fade.
With my children (from left to right): Suzanne, Paula and John
Acknowledgements
It is with the greatest of pleasure I get to this part, knowing this book is complete. It’s like letting go of a magnificent obsession! I would like to thank the following people for their invaluable help: Colin Guild, my very helpful next-door neighbour, for the huge amount of faxes and emails, and his wife Ellen. My brother-in-law Jim Brennan. I was almost overwhelmed by the encouragement of Jim’s wife, Anne. My typist Carine O’Grady. And to Rachel Gordon, April and so many in their office for all the kind help. ’Twas great.
When getting a job done I believe it is the little things that count f
or so much. I’m so grateful to you all.
My heartfelt thanks to the doctors, nurses and staff of the Medical Centre, Balbriggan for their kind support for Pauline, and to the Irish Motor Neurone Disease Association. To the Eastern Healthboard and Fingal County Council, whose support to Pauline was invaluable.
To all the readers of my last book Fear of the Collar for helping it to become a bestseller in the UK. You all deserve this one. Thank you.
To the staff of Ebury Press: the executive contracts manager James Peak – ‘it’s as good as it gets’, thanks James. To Two Associates, Getty and Alamy for the superb cover design and photographs. To publicist Sarah Townsend. To my editor Justine Taylor for the excellent and expert job you have done editing my huge manuscript. It can’t have been an easy task. It flows as it goes now, Justine. For those who have faith and hope and believe in themselves can succeed and achieve their goal. To commissioning editor Charlotte Cole, whose wisdom, vision, faith and belief in my story made this possible. Beholden to you Charlotte.
May the road rise to meet you and fate be kind to you all.
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Published in 2008 by Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing
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This is a revised and updated edition of Free as a Bird,
first published in Ireland in 1994
Copyright © Patrick Touher 1994, 2008
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Scars that Run Deep Page 21
