Living With Evil (6 page)

I shut my eyes and bit through my lip as the poker-hot pain shot from the palm of my hand and through every vein and nerve in my body.

Everything jangled inside me, and my whole arm felt numb.

‘Hold your hand out again, child. Do it now!’

I tried really hard to lift my shaking arm and hold my hand out flat, but the mixture of pain and fear racing round my body made me pull it away the next time Mother Dorothy brought the cane down.

Now she was raging at me even more, shouting and screaming and showering me with froth from her mouth. ‘I do not tolerate sinners! Have you no respect? Have you no fear of God?’

It felt like I stood there for hours as Mother Dorothy ranted at me again and again to hold my hand out, but each time she brought the cane down I instinctively pulled away.

‘Twenty lashes!’ she screamed. ‘Thirty lashes! Forty lashes!’ but I still couldn’t hold my hand out straight. Even through the pain and shame I could tell this wasn’t going well for Mother Dorothy. I could hear other children letting out gasps and whispers as they sat glued to the awful spectacle.

Eventually Mother Dorothy threw me outside the classroom and told me she would deal with me later. ‘There will be severe consequences,’ she warned, which I learned meant being called more bad things like ‘evil child’ and ‘wicked little madam’, receiving several sharp slaps across the face, or being marched back down to one of the lower classes so I felt ashamed in front of the younger kids.

Some of my classmates thought I had deliberately defied Mother Dorothy, forcing her to count up in tens until she got to a hundred and looked like she would explode. It happened time and time again, and afterwards they always told me I was really brave.

I did develop a bold and rebellious streak as the years went by. But the truth was I felt terrified of being hit and I couldn’t bear the terrible pain it caused. ‘You’re wrong, I’m a coward,’ I told them, but they didn’t believe me.

After that very first caning I ran home from school in tears at the end of the day and told Mammy how horrible Mother Dorothy was. I wanted Mammy to see the angry red line across my palm which was still hot and smarting, but she barely looked at me.

‘You must have done something terrible to make a holy nun so mad at you,’ was all she said, giving me a clip round the ear. I stumbled towards the bedroom door feeling shocked and dazed. ‘Don’t leave empty-handed!’ my mother called after me from her bed. ‘Take my dirty cup downstairs with you, you lazy bitch!’

I tried to tell Daddy too, but he didn’t seem to want to listen either. ‘You must have deserved it! Why can’t you behave yerself ? If those nuns come knocking on this door I’ll beat you myself and you’ll have even more to whinge about!’

I stopped telling them about school after that, and they never asked me anything. They didn’t go to any parents’ meetings or open days like other mammies and daddies, so I guessed they had no interest in what I was learning or doing all day.

Anyway, they had another baby now, so my school was the last thing they’d care about. My little brother, Martin, was born when I was nearly six-years-old and Mary was just two. He was Mammy’s eighth child and, like Mary, he was a beautiful baby.

I worried about how we would cope with another child in the house. I could see how we struggled already, and I feared a new baby would only make matters worse, causing more fights and arguments. It meant that, despite the treatment I was getting from Mother Dorothy, I still preferred to be at school than at home.

I liked the smell of chalk dust, pencil shavings and freshly cut paper, and I was relieved to get away from the smell of stale cigarettes and dirty toilets that hung around at home.

I loved the quiet time best of all, when the teachers ordered us to sit in silence and read a book. Other kids groaned, because they found it boring, but even when I couldn’t read a word on the page I lapped up the chance to have some unbroken peace.

At home I never knew when a fight or an argument would break out, but in those reading times at school we always had at least ten minutes to ourselves, and I absolutely loved it.

Mammy told me I had to come home to eat at lunchtime. ‘People will be talking about what you’re are eating. I don’t want people talking,’ she said, but I worked out that the real reason was that she didn’t want the bother of making pack-up lunches. Instead, whichever kids were around picked up the bread and meat on the way home and shared it out.

Sometimes, when I was a bit older, I was allowed to go to Granny’s. I loved those lunchtimes. Granny gave me a smile and a cuddle as I stepped inside, then fed me sandwiches and warm, sweet tea. I didn’t mind that her house was even dirtier and colder than ours. I sat on the mucky floor lapping up Granny’s tales about the Black and Tans or the Easter Rising, and basking in the warmth of her kindness.

I always wished I could stay longer at Granny’s, and I often walked back to school with a lump in my throat, wondering what the nuns might do to me next. I was so scared of Mother Dorothy that on many days it didn’t feel much better going to school than having to stay at home.

Quite often, Mammy kept me home from school when, say, the electric man was coming for his money. She didn’t want to have to get dressed and come downstairs to answer the door herself, so she kept me at home to do it for her. The older I got, the more she did it. I found it strange, as it wasn’t like we had loads of people coming round to pay us visits.

I hated being stuck in the house. It reminded me of the long, cold days before I started school. I didn’t really like being anywhere much. At least the classroom was warmer and brighter, and there were plenty of things to do and learn, but school certainly wasn’t the refuge I’d hoped it would be.

Peter wasn’t in my class for very long at all, but the good thing was that all the other kids knew I had a big brother in the school who would stand up for me if they bullied me. I think it worked, because most of the time the other kids left me alone.

I had my own friends now too, who came from big families like me. They also got picked on by Mother Dorothy sometimes, so we stuck together and looked out for each other. One of my best friends was Eileen. We poked fun at the nuns behind their backs, copying how they walked and talked and collapsing in fits of giggles. The posh kids sometimes said nasty things to me, like: ‘I’m not sitting by you, you stink!,’ but after a while it didn’t even make me flinch. I had my friends, and I was used to Mother Dorothy saying much worse things.

I remember making Eileen laugh with a silly impression at the back of the classroom when Mother Dorothy marched in with a face like thunder.

‘What’s that smell?’ she bellowed, pointing her long nose high into the air and taking long, slow steps across the front of the classroom.

Her heavy black shoes made deafening thuds through the silence that had fallen instantly over the room. My face fell and I twitched with nerves.

She had Mr Greeny in her hand, and she banged it fiercely into the wooden floor every time she took a step.

I just knew I was going to catch one, and I could tell it was going to be a very bad one. My nerves felt like elastic bands being catapulted around my body as I sat there waiting to hear what sin I had committed, and what penance I would have to pay. Hell was waiting for me, I just knew it. But I wasn’t going to die first, I was going to get the roasting of my life right here and now.

Chalkdust puffed up from the floor, making little clouds against Mother Dorothy’s black habit as she stomped towards the back of the classroom.

Other kids looked sideways with puzzled expressions on their faces, but they weren’t frightened like me. I knew I was the one who was in trouble. I stared into the dark, black stain at the bottom of my inkwell and started to feel nauseous.

Mother Dorothy marched up the steps to the rows of desks at the back, getting closer and closer to mine.

‘Does anybody know what that awful smell is?’ she demanded. My stomach was doing somersaults by now and I was feeling very hot. I thought I might faint.

‘Shall I tell you what it is?’ she boomed. She was sniffing very dramatically, as if she had found the source of the foul smell, and she was walking straight towards me with her eyes on fire.

‘That smell is dirty knickers!’ she shrieked. I was so shocked by what she said I blushed bright scarlet. I could feel my heart pumping blood furiously to my face. Nobody ever talked about underwear in our house, let alone dirty knickers. To hear a nun say that took my breath away.

‘You might well feel embarrassed, Cynthia Murphy,’ she went on.

‘You are the culprit! You are the dirty girl wearing dirty knickers. I can smell them. I can smell your dirty knickers!’

I wanted to shrivel up and die with shame. My palms were sweating, and I hung my head so low the back of my neck ached, but she hadn’t finished yet.

‘I’m warning you, Cynthia Murphy, wash them out every night, or I’m doing a knicker inspection!’ she barked. ‘I’m pulling your knickers down and caning you if they are dirty!’

I was wearing the second-hand navy-blue knickers donated to the family by the St Vincent de Paul charity. I knew all too well by now that they marked me out as being from a ‘poor’ family, and just the thought of the class seeing them made me cringe.

Mother Dorothy hovered over me as if she was waiting for a response, but I was dumbstruck. Even Eileen, who usually shot me a little look of encouragement when I was in the firing line, looked away in utter embarrassment. What could I say? The terrible thing was that I knew my knickers did smell. I only had one pair, and wore them for weeks on end, as Mammy hardly ever did the washing.

I thought Mother Dorothy must know all this, or she wouldn’t be telling me to rinse them out myself. Why was she making such a show of me if she knew it wasn’t my fault?

Daddy shouted at Mammy and hit her sometimes when his shirts were too filthy for work, and then she would wash them at night when we were all in bed. I don’t think she did a good job, because she always did it when she had been drinking for hours and was very tired. I was used to wearing the same dirty clothes all the time.

I tried hard with my work and wanted to read and write well, and not be like Mammy, who had to ask me to write all her lists when she sent me to the shop. It just wasn’t fair. Why was I treated so badly?

One day I was struggling with a word in class and asked Mother Felicity to help. She leaned over my copy book and started talking, and as she did so blobs of spit flew out her mouth and landed on my work, making my ink blot all over the page.

I didn’t want to be rude and say anything, but when she saw the blots she went mad and slapped me across the face really hard. ‘Don’t spit on your work, child,’ she warned. I was cross and confused. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. She had it in for me too. Why? It didn’t make any sense.

I dreaded Mother Felicity looking at my work, because she did the same thing every single time. It seemed so weird, and in the end I decided she must enjoy slapping my face and seeing me flinch and cry. There was no other explanation. She had to be mad.

At break time she had another game. She would rummage in the dustbin, find a half-eaten sandwich that was mouldy, and thrust it in my face.

‘Be glad you have something to eat,’ she warned. ‘The black babies in Africa would be glad of that sandwich.’

The way the nuns treated me had made me start to rebel, so once I replied that I would hate to do the black babies out of a bite and handed the sandwich back to her, saying, ‘If the babies are so hungry, I wouldn’t want to deny them food, so why don’t you post it to them?’

She slapped me again for my cheek, but I was glad I stood up for myself, and it gave my friends a bit of a laugh.

I got beaten and called names and was picked on whether I was good or bad, so I thought I might as well have some fun if I was going to be punished anyway.

I worried about my penance though. It still worried me how you knew you’d done enough. I had no idea, and sometimes I said extra Hail Marys or recited the Our Father in my head, hoping it would save me from hell and purgatory and eternal damnation. I didn’t want to end up there, I really didn’t. Those things sounded worse than any of Mammy and Daddy’s fights or beatings, or any punishment the nuns could give me.

In one lesson, Mother Dorothy announced to the class that we were all preparing for our First Holy Communion. I knew this was a really special event and that all little girls making their Communion wore beautiful white dresses. I couldn’t quite believe I was going to be one of those little girls. Maybe it would make me holier too, and less likely to burn in hell?

My head filled up with images of myself parading through the village to honour the Blessed Virgin Mary. In my daydream I was wearing a long satin dress and holding a wicker basket full of pretty pink rose petals. I smiled as I took them out of the basket one by one and kissed them before throwing them on the ground behind me.

That’s what happened every year at the May procession that took place before the Holy Communion. I’d seen it several times, never dreaming I’d be taking part myself one day. People hung out yellow and white papal flags from their windows and on the street lamps and smiled and waved as the children paraded past their houses.