by Liz Nugent
I felt bad for him, but what could I do? ‘Sorry, Luke, you have to go home.’
Brian dithered; he obviously felt more guilt about the situation than me. But his love for Jamie Lee Curtis outweighed his love for Luke. ‘Just tell Mum you didn’t get in. She’ll understand.’
The film was very funny and we sat in anticipation of the big reveal. About fifteen minutes into it, the sour-faced ticket-office woman came in, scouring the audience with her flashlight. Brian was somewhere over the other side of the cinema. Steve, Jim and I scrunched down in our seats in case she’d start asking questions, but she methodically went through the cinema row by row until she found me. She didn’t even whisper.
‘You!’ she said. ‘Your brother’s outside and he’s hysterical. Come out now!’ Everyone in the audience protested and shushed her, but I had to leave. I tried to look for Brian, but I couldn’t see exactly where he was sitting.
Outside, I grabbed Luke roughly by the arm and dragged him away from the cinema. ‘What is it? You’re ruining everything!’
‘It’s Mum! I went home and there’s a man having sexual intercourse with her!’
‘What?’
‘In her bedroom!’
‘Wait, what? Was he attacking her? Was she screaming?’
‘Yes!’ His lip quivered.
‘Did he see you?’
‘No, I was so scared that I came to find you.’
I ran. As fast as I could. I didn’t even look to see if Luke was behind me. The house was only five minutes away, four if I sprinted.
When I got home, Mum was in the sitting room drinking gin and tonic with Nicholas Sheedy, a musical director she had worked with from time to time. She looked perfectly demure, apart from her hair, which was like a whinbush at the back.
‘What are you doing home already? I didn’t expect you for at least another hour.’
I bet she didn’t. Luke arrived then, breathless.
‘God, not you as well. Where’s Brian?’ said Mum.
I gave Luke a fierce look and I could see the colour and confusion rising in his face.
‘Yeah, well, the film wasn’t appropriate for Luke, so I brought him home.’
‘What a considerate young man!’ said Nicholas.
‘Really?’ said Mum. ‘What wasn’t appropriate?’
‘There was nudity,’ I said.
Mum and Nicholas hooted with laughter and I wanted to kill them both.
‘I rather thought that’s why you wanted to go and see it,’ said Mum.
That was why Mum wanted us all out of the way. I’d suspected before. She’d always been flirty, but now I had proof, or Luke had. Why didn’t Dad ever do anything about this? He knew what she was like. I’d seen her touching other men in front of him. He’d be still, and silent for days afterwards. Why was my dad such a doormat? I’d never let a woman treat me like that when I grew up.
Later, I tried to convince Luke that what he saw was his imagination. I swore him to secrecy. I told him that if he ever told anyone what he’d seen, Mum would go to hell. He was still obsessed by hell and heaven at that time, and which one we’d go to. Brian had come home crowing about the size and shape of JLC’s breasts. Apparently, the whole cinema had cheered and thrown popcorn in the air.
So that day, Brian saw tits and Luke saw tits, even though they were Mum’s, and I saw none.
7
1998
Daisy was the best thing to ever happen to me. I couldn’t believe that Susan and I had made this perfect, beautiful child. I know every parent says this, but there was something special about our child. Daisy was clever and funny and much smarter than other kids her age. Susan had done the hard work, the messy stuff like feeding and changing and laundry, and I know I got off lightly, but I happily did those tasks whenever I was around.
By the time Daisy was four years old, I was travelling a lot, to film festivals around Europe, trying to get co-financing deals with producing partners for our second feature film, to get meetings with bigger distributors who might take a risk on a small Irish company who’d had a one-hit wonder with The Inpatient.
But coming home to Susan and Daisy from those trips abroad was the best thing a man could ask for. Susan was back at work in the bookshop, part-time, and Daisy was in her first year of school for a few hours every day. She had adapted to all these changes like a little trouper. And when she heard me come in the front door saying ‘Where’s my little Daisy?’ she would run full tilt towards me, arms in the air, grinning widely. I’d sweep her up and she’d cover my face in wet, sloppy kisses, and then Susan would appear behind her in the hallway with a ‘Howdy, stranger!’ and we three would embrace. My perfect little family.
We thought Mum would love the opportunity to babysit in the early days, but she quickly made herself clear: ‘I’ve already done babies – three of you – thanks very much. I’m not doing it again.’ I thought she meant the nappy changes and the feeding, but even when we visited her house with a beautifully dressed sleeping baby, Mum showed no interest. When we got Daisy to sing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ for Mum, my mother declared, ‘The child hasn’t got a note in her head. She certainly doesn’t take after me.’
Susan’s mum was different. She very rarely visited from Detroit, but when she did, I thought we might have to stop her from kidnapping Daisy and taking her back home. She saw what I saw, a wonderful, beautiful and talented child full of love and promise.
So why did my mother pay no attention to her? Aren’t grandparents supposed to adore their grandchildren unconditionally?
It was only after Daisy was born that I missed my dad. I wondered if he had read stories to me in my cot every night while Mum was on stage. I wondered if he had cut the crusts off my toast or took me out on my tricycle. I searched through the family photos but could find none of Dad and me without Brian or Luke being in the photos too. I know that developing rolls of film in our childhood was expensive and that the camera was rarely used. Still, there were lots of photographs of Mum accepting awards in the company of dignitaries. Probably photos taken by other people and sent to her.
The earliest family photos were of all of us on the beach. Dad, Brian, pregnant Mum and me sitting around a sandcastle that Dad must have built. I can’t be more than two years old in the photograph.
I wondered if he ever felt truly proud of me, beyond a ‘Well done, fella’ when I got a good school report card. I wondered if he ever looked at me the way I looked at Daisy. The truth is that I always felt Dad was weak, that Mum was more important. I felt sorry for him. Did he sense that? My wife was so much easier on me than Mum had been on Dad. I never gave him credit for the way he managed her moods.
When I read Daisy a story at night before bed, she would sit in my lap and trace the words with her finger. She was an early reader – she knew the alphabet when she was three. She was chatty and her vocabulary was definitely advanced for her age. Sometimes when I went into her room in the morning, she pretended to be asleep, and then bounced vertically into a standing position and screeched ‘Daddy!’ with a voice full of joy. I’m not supposed to say this, or think this, but I loved her more than I loved Susan – not that I didn’t love Susan, at the time.
When Daisy fell in our neighbour’s yard and was knocked unconscious on a sunny afternoon, I fell apart. Susan was out at the supermarket and I was in the house on my own, watching the golf on TV.
The woman next door banged on our back door, distraught. She’d already called an ambulance. It couldn’t have taken me more than thirty seconds to hop over the low wall and pick up my motionless child, but the horror of those moments will never leave me. I cradled her in my arms, pinching her lightly, kissing her, trying to get some reaction. The neighbour, Eve, assured me that she was still breathing, but I was too frantic to be sure. Eve’s daughter, Tracey, older by two years, was hysterically screaming ‘Daisy is dead!’ and I reached out and smacked her across the head while gripping my child to myself. Eve said nothing but sent he
r child indoors. I did not speak to her in those endless minutes while we waited for the ambulance to arrive. She gabbled that Daisy must have climbed on to the wall and toppled off it. It was possible, I suppose. I had seen her do it before. Susan had scolded her and warned her not to do it again, but I had been proud that my girl was so brave and agile.
In the ambulance, Daisy regained consciousness and I exhaled and wept. The ambulance men, who had seen it all before, speculated that it was probably just a concussion, that she’d be ‘right as rain in no time’. She couldn’t speak though and she didn’t seem to be able to focus on my face. She was whisked away for a CAT scan as soon as we arrived at the hospital and I tried to fight my fears as I gave my details to the nurse. Susan arrived shortly after, white-faced and thin-lipped. ‘Why weren’t you watching her?’ she snarled, and that was the first time I saw her anger and frustration directed towards me, though not the last.
I felt my face crumple again and I was embarrassed. I turned away and Susan put her hand on my shoulder. The gesture seemed to make things so much more serious. When I was growing up, we were not a particularly tactile family. I had made sure I was different with Susan and Daisy. On Sunday mornings, we all had breakfast in bed together, snuggled against each other in a cocoon of warmth and love. Susan’s physical act of comfort convinced me that my little girl must be dying.
Susan and I sat by Daisy’s bed when she was wheeled back from the X-ray department. She was whimpering but brighter, and relieved, I think, to see us. She clung to her mother, and when I tried to take her, she screamed until Susan held her again. I was jealous. She had always been Daddy’s girl.
We were informed that there was no bleed on the brain. The ambulance men were right, it was concussion, but they were going to keep her in for a night for observation. The ward was busy with all kinds of kids with physical and mental disabilities. Nurses were running from one place to the next. I couldn’t trust they would be able to observe Daisy properly. We had been told there was a risk of seizures. Neither of us wanted to leave her and they allowed us two chairs beside the bed. Other parents, mostly mothers, slept on rolled-out mattresses at their children’s bedsides.
Daisy improved and we were allowed to give her a little juice, which stayed down, and that was a good sign apparently. By ten o’clock that night, well past her bedtime, she was chatting to her bear and, apart from the grape-sized lump at the front of her head, she was almost back to normal. When she eventually dozed off, I took Susan’s hand across the bed, but she pulled it away fiercely. ‘You were supposed to be minding her.’
We took Daisy home the next day. She had been checked out and deemed fit and healthy, but we both watched her like hawks for the following week. We were careful around each other too. I knew that Susan didn’t really blame me for what happened. It could just as easily have been her at home when Tracey called for Daisy. They had played together often since Eve had moved in.
Eve dropped in a note and a cake to apologize but I didn’t blame her either. Kids fall over. It’s part of growing up. I accept that now. But when it’s your kid, it’s different, and you feel like you’ve let them down and failed in the most fundamental way.
We got back to normal after a few weeks. Then we noticed a ‘For Sale’ sign on Eve’s house. I got talking to her one Saturday afternoon. She was uncomfortable around me. ‘I thought you liked the area?’ I said.
‘I do.’
‘So, did you get a new job somewhere else?’
‘No.’
I felt like there was resentment in her voice.
‘Is everything okay?’
‘Ask your mother.’
‘What? What do you mean?’
She turned her back and walked up the path and slammed the door behind her.
Later, on the phone, Mum said she had only given Eve ‘a friendly warning’.
‘It can’t have been that friendly. She’s moving house!’
‘Good.’
‘What did you say to her?’
‘William, stop being so dramatic. I just told her that if my grandchild ever suffered any after-effects from that fall, I would sue her.’
‘You … what? Sue her for what?’
‘Well, I don’t know, do I? It’s just a thing people say. I think she should be more careful with other people’s children.’
‘Mum, it happened five weeks ago. You haven’t even called to see Daisy and yet you found the time to visit my neighbour and threaten her.’
‘It’s the principle. You’re my son.’
Susan and I both tried to persuade Eve not to sell up, but the incident had rattled us all and the brief chats at the gate were always awkward and stilted after that. Before she moved, we invited her to dinner and Tracey came too and had a sleepover. We apologized for my mother and I think Eve accepted it. It was another two weeks before we saw Mum. When we told her that Eve had moved, she just sighed in relief. ‘Safer for the child, then,’ she said, pointing at Daisy.
I’m not sure what that said about Mum. Brian, as Daisy’s godfather, had shown a lot more concern for Daisy than she did. He had rung regularly since hearing of the accident to see how she was, and yet Mum had acted like a lioness about the grandchild she took little interest in. I knew it was because she was my child.
Luke phoned from Manchester about a month later and had to be reminded about the accident. ‘Oh yeah, Brian told me,’ he said. ‘That child is an angel, you gotta keep her safe, man,’ and I was proud and irritated at the same time.
8
1981
Dad always made a fuss at Christmas. He took two full weeks off work to coincide with our Christmas holidays from school. Mum always worked a lot around the festive season, doing concerts and recitals. The showband era was over, but Mum had been classically trained and could sing an aria if she rehearsed hard enough. ‘I’m no one-trick pony,’ she would declare, and in the same breath bemoan, ‘The bloody Messiah, again!’ but she loved it. We were forced to sit through it so often that we grew to hate it passionately.
In 1981, Dad had lost his biggest client. He had an insurance company, but 60 per cent of his business had come from a chain of supermarkets that had just been bought out by a bigger chain who used their own insurance company, a global brand. There was no way Dad could compete.
This year, Mum had been forced to take a job in panto, a theatrical form she had always said was beneath her. It was gruelling work. Nine shows a week for the six weeks surrounding Christmas, with only Christmas Day and St Stephen’s Day off. Worse for her, she was deemed too old to play Cinderella, and was in the role of the wicked stepmother. The costume designer had made her a fat suit and she had to apply prosthetic warts to her face. Mum was not happy about this and she constantly and insistently reminded Dad of the sacrifices she was making for the sake of the family. Dad grovelled and made her breakfast in bed every day and we kept the house spotless because we knew it wouldn’t take much to push Mum over the edge into one of her moods.
Brian and I, at twelve and thirteen, no longer believed in Santa Claus, but we liked the fact that Luke believed even though we mocked him behind his back. Dad made us go through the whole charade of writing letters to Santa for Luke’s sake. We both wanted Raleigh Chopper bikes. Luke, the martyr, wanted a new pair of school shoes because the ones he had were pinching him. Dad tried to persuade Brian and me that we should follow Luke’s example and ask for something we needed rather than wanted. My brothers always got my cast-off clothes and shoes, but the zip in the jacket that was now Brian’s had bust and the shoulder had ripped. All of my trousers were rising up my ankles as I grew taller, but still Brian and I wanted new bikes ‘like everyone else’ had. Christmas and birthdays were the only times in the year when we were entitled to actual gifts of our choosing and we weren’t going to be palmed off with what should have been provided as routine by most normal parents. Dad sighed and got Mum to talk to us. She lost her temper with Brian completely. ‘We can’t afford bloody bic
ycles! We can barely afford the heating oil, you selfish little pig. Even Luke understands that!’
‘Luke’s a spazmo,’ said Brian. Mum didn’t disagree but raged on.
‘Well, I’d rather have a spazmo for a son than an ungrateful brat who doesn’t mind his mother working her arse off night and day to keep food in his mouth.’ Brian tried not to cry in front of us and went to bed.
‘Mum,’ I said when I got her on my own, ‘I’ll get a bike, won’t I?’ She smoothed my hair and grimaced. ‘We’ll see, William.’ I wasn’t very hopeful.
Usually, on Christmas Eve, we went to the panto matinee and got fish and chips on the way home, but this time, because Mum was in it, she was going for a drink with her fellow cast members after the show. That morning she had said to Dad, ‘It’s just one drink, for God’s sake. I’m entitled to one damn night off. I’ll be with you for two whole days before I have to get back into the fat suit.’
Seeing Mum in the panto had been as mortifying for us as it was for her. She looked garish and ugly and the fat suit included an enormous fake low-cut bosom that I really didn’t want to see. Luke had freaked out a bit when she first appeared and I had to swap seats with him so he could sit beside Dad. Afterwards, we went backstage to see her, but she was busy signing autographs for other kids. Dad said not to worry, we’d see her later.
We stopped for fish and chips and watched The Wizard of Oz on TV while we waited for Mum to come home. Dad was fretful and kept looking at his watch. At nine p.m., he sent Brian and Luke to bed, but I offered to stay up with him to gift wrap our bicycles. He snapped at me then.
‘You’re getting one bicycle between you to share. Do you ever think about anyone but yourself?’ It was uncharacteristic of Dad to be so irritable or direct, and I went to bed then, upset. Not about the bike, particularly, but because Mum hadn’t come home, the realization that maybe we really didn’t have any money and also because Christmas Eve, which had always been a harmonious night in our home, had been ruined.
