by Liz Nugent
I tried to ask Dad about it. I said that God might be cross with me for something I had lied about. Dad told me not to worry, and that I could tell the priest at confession next week. All that week, I had a sore pain in my stomach. I knew it was the devil. I knew he was growing inside me. I knew it was just a matter of time before the woman in the woods came to take me away.
15
1989
We were invited to play a gig at midnight at the Olympia. Sean was really excited about this. It was a 1,200-seater venue and the biggest we’d played by far. I’d scraped through my first-year exams in UCD and we had been touring around the country all summer in a clapped-out van, playing small pubs and clubs, but now it was November and I hadn’t been to a single lecture because we were busy getting a name for ourselves. The Wombstones were on the map. We’d been busy writing and rehearsing songs and Sean was trying to raise money to record an album. UK promoters regularly turned up at the Olympia to scout for new talent, so for the first time there was a slim chance of a record deal.
The horrific panic attack and weird visions that had overwhelmed and terrified me at our first gig were a thing of the past and I was incredibly lucky that I had Sean on my side because after that first debacle, despite our success, Alan and Jamie had to be convinced to play with me again. I had freaked everyone out, including myself. But the second gig had gone smoothly. And Alan and Jamie were a bit friendlier to me now, though they openly called me Lucifer. Sean persuaded them that I was the person the crowds came to see, and they were mostly girls. Alan and Jamie loved the female attention. I had as much sex as I wanted but I wasn’t that interested after the first few months. They thought that was weird. I was used to people thinking I was weird.
The thing that nobody in the band could agree on was the type of music we wanted to play. Sean wanted to add a synth player to the line-up for a modern sound, but Alan wanted us to write and play old-fashioned rock-and-roll arrangements while Jamie’s smooth bass playing was more jazz-orientated, so we played a bit of everything and I altered my voice accordingly. Sean said my range was fantastic but that I needed to work on my vocal strength.
I had developed a ‘look’ over the last few months. I knew it was ridiculous, but it seemed like ridiculous was fashionable. My hair was halfway down my back. I washed it regularly but rarely combed it, so it was messy and curly. I shaved once a week on a Tuesday so that by Friday and Saturday my stubble was just the right length. I wore tight jeans and, because I was tall and slim, I bought the biggest-size children’s T-shirts I could find and it didn’t matter whether they were boys’ or girls’. So they were emblazoned with Cabbage Patch dolls or toy soldiers or whatever the kids’ department had. Sean thought the kiddy image really worked for me, and for the band. Girls loved it. Sean had dragged me into the ladies’ toilet in one club to see all the graffiti on the wall declaring how gorgeous I was. I never knew I was good-looking before that. Nobody had ever told me I was good-looking except Auntie Peggy, and she said that about all of us, even Brian with his crooked nose.
For this important gig, I had borrowed a pink sequinned jacket of Mum’s to wear over my Care Bears T-shirt. She said it made me look effeminate. I didn’t care. She and Auntie Peggy were coming to this concert with Brian and William, even though they said it was an outrageously late starting time. The Olympia was popular because it had a bar licence while the gigs were on. And there were few places you could drink in Dublin after pub closing time at eleven p.m. in winter. I’d managed to get my family seats in a box so that Mum wouldn’t have to mix with the drunk and rowdy crowd.
I was feeling good during the soundcheck and, for a change, I wasn’t nervous. I was about to make my family proud. Sean was hyper, saying, ‘This is it, lads! This is the big time. This is our chance.’ He kept checking with me – ‘Are you okay, Luko?’ – afraid that I might freak out like I did the first time, and I smiled and reassured him and necked another can of Harp to prove how cool I was. We even had a warm-up act on before us, a band Sean had chosen because they were hopeless and couldn’t possibly upstage us. We’d high-fived them on their way down to the stage, a bunch of Cure-heads wearing black lipstick. They grunted their warmest wishes back to us.
By the time we got to the stage, it was 12.45 a.m. and the smell of sweat, hash and booze hit us like a wall. I let the lads go on first to tune up briefly before I strode on to the stage and bowed theatrically. I expected the usual cheers and whistles but they didn’t happen. I looked up towards the box as Jamie strummed the bassline of the intro. William was looking pointedly at his watch, as if to chastise me for being late. Mum had brought her opera glasses and was surveying the rest of the audience. Auntie Peggy was beaming at me, pride and astonishment all over her face. Brian looked mildly interested, as if he was watching a wildlife documentary on BBC2. Some girl I didn’t know was sitting between Brian and William.
I sang the first lines of our opening number. There was little reaction from the audience, who all seemed to be talking and laughing among themselves. I gestured to the sound engineer to turn up the vocals on my mic. Sean glared at me. We’d already agreed the mix in the soundcheck, but we knew you had to adjust for a live audience. He nodded towards the sound engineer to turn everything up. We crashed into the second song with the more raucous chorus and then the audience paid attention, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t what we were used to. Sure, we’d only played small places before, but we were going to be on Anything Goes on TV in a few weeks’ time and this audience was showing little interest. At the end of the second song, I asked Sean off-mic if I should ask the audience to be quiet and to listen. He said absolutely not. We just had to get through it.
When we announced our interval break, I glanced up into the box and my family were all looking bored out of their minds, except for Auntie Peggy, who smiled and waved when I caught her eye.
Backstage, I was furious. ‘What’s wrong with them? We’re giving them a show. Why aren’t they reacting?’ We had several theories. It was a glorified bar, people weren’t here for the music. They were an older crowd, in their late twenties and thirties. The front-of-house sound must be terrible because the songs that had previously worked just weren’t doing it for us tonight. Sean suggested I needed to loosen up. Alan said I was singing like I had a poker up my arse. I felt like crying, but Sean told Alan to back off, that I just needed to be a bit more relaxed. Jamie threw his eyes to the ceiling.
I really didn’t want to go back out there and humiliate myself further in front of my family. Will and Brian had seen one or two gigs before, but I knew that Mum would have something really cutting to say tomorrow at Sunday lunch. Why couldn’t she have come to a gig where girls were chanting my name, where I crowd-surfed to the back of the room?
We trudged back on to the stage. My eyes flicked up to the box. It was empty. I was surprised to feel nothing but relief. The pressure was off. As we kicked into our second act, I let fly. I didn’t care any more. By midway through it, the crowd was firmly on our side. The aisles were illegally crowded with the throngs of people who had come out of the two bar areas. Every seat was taken but nobody was sitting. We raised the roof and I felt golden again. We took three encores and still they wanted more, and when we were back up in the dressing room ten minutes later, we could hear them chanting and cheering and hammering their heels on the floor. We looked at each other and laughed and, in a moment of genuine affection, we hugged each other.
‘We took that one back from the bleedin’ abyss,’ Alan said.
We poured beer down our throats and punched the air. The venue manager came in after five minutes, offering us a residency for January and February, every Friday and Saturday night. We left Sean to sort out the details. We guessed that any A&R men or talent scouts would have left after the first ten minutes, but we hoped they’d come back when word went around about how we’d rocked the venue.
At Sunday lunch the next day, Mum didn’t mention the concert at all. Any time the boy
s talked about it, she would busy herself with serving vegetables or clearing plates while clattering cutlery. Brian and William wanted to explain to me why they thought the gig was so bad. William said it was a pity I wasn’t better-looking and that my voice wasn’t stronger. Brian said I should really start going back to lectures because the band was never going to break through. Mum eventually asked that I not ever wear her jacket on stage again, but that was the only reference she made to the night. I didn’t have to say anything. Because I knew in my heart that we were going places.
I was only half right. At the end of January, a producer from Sony got in touch with Sean. He was offering a record deal but not for our band. He only wanted me and my songs. He offered money and flights and the studio time in London that we had all dreamed of. At first, I couldn’t imagine how I’d do anything without my bandmates. It would be such a betrayal. They were the ones who’d taken a chance on me and even given me second chances. And I had written only four of our songs. It was insulting that they just wanted my voice. I told Sean to tell him no, not without the band. Sean was grateful for my loyalty and went back to Sony with my conditions. He returned with a more interesting suggestion. Sony had offered me more money, as a solo artist, but Sean was offering to be my manager. I trusted Sean. I liked him. He had really been the only one to encourage me. We said yes.
Alan and Jamie never spoke to us again.
16
1984
I wasn’t allowed to go to see Bob Dylan at Slane Castle with the rest of the family because I was only thirteen. I didn’t mind. I hated big crowds, even though I would have liked to see inside a real castle. I stayed the night in Auntie Peggy’s house. She let me toast marshmallows in her fireplace and I played with her dog, Rusty.
Auntie Peggy was my mum’s sister but she was nothing like her. She didn’t have children of her own and she adored all of us brothers. She loved us all the same and, no matter what I did or what I said, she would never hit me. When I knocked over her favourite vase that the King of Siam gave her, she said it didn’t matter because it was one less thing to dust. I loved going to her house, especially on my own. She would show me a few ancient photos of her and Mum when they were little babies in a big family with four other brothers and sisters before their mum and dad died in a tram accident. Once or twice, I met those uncles and aunts in Auntie Peggy’s house, but Mum never invited them to our house. They always referred to my mother as Little Moll, even though her name was Melissa. The other brothers and sisters had never been fostered and had grown up in orphanages. Auntie Peggy said that her and Mum’s foster families weren’t very nice to them. She said that her real family was a bit too rough for my dad. I never knew what she meant by that. The uncles were big men who spoke with cigarettes in their mouths or behind their ears. The aunts had stalls that sold toilet paper and bleach on Thomas Street. Mum got annoyed when I asked questions about them or her parents. She said she didn’t even remember them, so they didn’t feel like family. I asked Dad and he said he was sure they were good people, but it was a shame they’d never had an education. He said he was proud of Mum because she had pulled herself out of the gutter and worked at her singing and made something of herself.
They all had a terrible time at Slane Castle. Brian came home in a sulk because someone had stolen his autograph book. William was mugged and beaten up and ended up in hospital. Dad was really cross with Mum, but she was acting the strangest of all. She went to bed and didn’t want any of us talking to her. Dad slept on the sofa. I guessed they’d had an argument and then Brian told me Mum had gone missing in the castle and nobody knew where she was. I thought she might have been cheating on Dad again. Maybe he’d caught her this time. I think Mum might have been a sex maniac.
I was worried that I was a pervert too. In the previous year, I’d discovered that by rubbing myself down there I could get some great feelings, and sometimes it even happened in my sleep and I leaked. Brian shared my room, but he never noticed or mentioned anything. The priests in my senior school had hinted at it but they said this was a great sin. Eventually, I had asked Dad about it. He said it wasn’t a sin, but it was something I shouldn’t talk about and I should keep it private. So it still felt like a sin. I asked Dad if I should tell the priest about it in confession and he said absolutely not.
That summer, my brothers would happily play with the neighbours down at the local shopping centre or in the woods behind our house. Those woods were still creepy to me. I’d regularly met the old woman in my nightmares and she always told me she had news for me. I would wake up before I found out what the news was, but I was pretty sure it was bad news that I didn’t want to know. I realized these were only dreams. I wasn’t a kid. I didn’t believe in bogeymen any more, but these visions came often and they still frightened me. Will and Brian laughed when I told them and made fun of me for talking about witches, so I learned to say nothing. I didn’t have many friends. The boys in my class called me a weirdo and the neighbours’ kids avoided me. I didn’t mind. God was on my side.
One morning, about ten days after the Slane concert, Brian and Will were out somewhere pretending to be cool and probably smoking. I was lying on the sofa on my own, watching an old black-and-white film. If my brothers were home, we’d have to watch endless tapes of MT-USA on the dodgy video recorder Dad won in a raffle. This old film was really funny, about these two men who pretended they were lady musicians to get away from baddies, but there were two beautiful women in the film too. One of them had this funny high lispy voice and every time she walked her bum wiggled and her hips swayed. I didn’t even realize my hand had wandered down into my underpants until Mum screeched at me from the living-room door. ‘For God’s sake, you’re all the same! Filthy animals!’ She glared at me with furious anger.
I pulled my hand up instantly, but she had seen what I’d been doing. She smelled sour and her hair was sticking up and knotted at the back. She looked like she’d been crying. She slammed the door and stalked out and I heard the kitchen door slam too. I was nervous because Dad had said wanking was okay but private and maybe Mum didn’t know about it. I followed her out to the kitchen. ‘Sorry, Mum,’ I said.
She sat down heavily and I offered to make her a cup of tea. She nodded but didn’t look at me. ‘Wash your filthy hands first.’
When I had my back to her at the sink, she said, ‘I was raped.’
‘What?’
‘You know what that means, don’t you?’
I felt all the blood rushing to my head. I didn’t know what to say. Of course I knew what it meant, but I’d never talked about it before, with anyone.
‘It happened when we were at Slane. Jack Gogan did it.’ I was afraid to turn around. ‘You know who he is?’
I remembered being at a Christmas party at the Gogans’ house. Their two children were around the same age as us, a boy and a girl. I remembered Mr Gogan kissing Mum on the cheek under the mistletoe and I didn’t like the way he looked at her, but that was years ago.
I continued to make the tea and placed it on the table in front of her. She gestured me to sit down.
‘I might as well tell you. There’s nobody else who will understand, you know, what it’s like … to be … scared. I can’t tell anyone else. Just sit down and listen.’
I sat down and heard the words I didn’t want to hear. I let them wash over me and occasionally tuned in to hear ‘he forced my legs apart …’, ‘I was too terrified to scream …’
I tried humming a tune in my head. As she continued talking, I concentrated on her mouth, old to me, with lines radiating from her thin lips. There were more lines around her eyes. I looked at her long ears and I could see the white roots of her dyed auburn hair sprouting at her hairline. She was hunched over the table. It came to me suddenly, but with absolute certainty, that my mother was the old woman in my dream. I had already been sent to live with her. She scared me.
When she had finished speaking, she reached for the biscuit tin and gave me a ch
ocolate biscuit.
‘What do you think of that?’
For a moment, I thought she was talking about the biscuit.
‘It’s terrible, Mum. You should tell the police.’
‘If I went to the guards, it wouldn’t stay out of the papers. It’s the price of fame. Don’t you understand?’
‘Why can’t you tell Dad?’
‘There are things that must not be said between a husband and wife because it changes the way we see each other.’
‘Like with you and Nicholas Sheedy? Did he rape you as well?’
Mum was startled. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I saw you … with him, in your bed.’
‘When?’
‘Last year, the year before? I don’t know, a while ago.’
‘Shut up, Luke.’ She cried, but her voice was filled with anger. ‘I thought you would understand.’
I was angry too. ‘Yeah? Why me? Why not tell William or Brian?’
‘You have nightmares all the time. I have just lived one. I thought you’d get it, but instead you fling Nicholas Sheedy in my face, as if that had anything to do with it.’
‘Sorry, but –’
‘You think it was my fault, you think I asked for it?’
‘Of course not. It’s just that they were both … sex.’
‘You’re too young. I should have known. Forget that we ever had this conversation. Never mention it again.’
‘Mum?’
‘What?’
‘Why do you always tell me the bad stuff?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You tell me secrets all the time, but they’re always about nasty things, about that young girl and her baby dying in the grotto and about us not having enough money last year.’
