Two Walls and a Roof (2 page)

The madness began on a cold M
arch day in 1950. I came into the world some weeks late I believe, and actually arrived on the thirty first, barely ahead of fool’s day. I used to think my mother held a great secret from me all my life and that I arrived after midnight, but of late she swears it was not so and she should know I suppose.

I was the resu
lt of a marriage a year earlier
between a young woman of nineteen years, a
nd a much older man who was
thirteen years her senior. My mother had been ‘matched’ to my dad because her mother
, t
he Nan
,
felt that ‘he had p
rospects’ and would take
a useless fun-
loving girl
off her hands
, such was the Nan’s opinio
n of her own
daughter.  On the other hand,
my paternal grandmother known as Gracie was
dead
against the match. She saw
her favourite son as a
businessman with great
prospects
,
soon to
be lumbered with a useless fun-
loving girl,
a
description
of my mother
held in common
by both of my grandmothers. Gracie only
finally
consented t
o the marriage after being
convinced t
hat my mother had a large dowry
which she would bring to the marriage table, and which wo
uld later enhance both families.  S
o Gracie agreed to hide her doubts inside a future bag of O’Mahony money. She was to be sadly mistaken on tha
t account, as my Nannie
was
stone broke at the time, and the penny only dropped after the honeymoon
was over
, when Gracie began asking for her share of the loot. My Nannie had conned her counterpart
, getting her son to take a
useless daughter off her hands, and from that day on, they became black enemies, with my mother and us in the middle.

When it was my time to be born, my father Hugh Cahill had a dance band and he had become very successful both as a musician and as a band leader. His band used to play music all over the country in the style of t
he great Glenn Miller
. I
n fact he called his band The Hugh Cahill Orchestra, mimicking his idol from America. Because of his profession
,
it was quite likely that when it came for my time to be born, he would probably be en route to a dance hall or to a pub, though he was anything but a drinker at that time. In either case it was unlikely that he would be at home for my birth, and so the matchmaker, my maternal gr
andmother
, took charge, and Gracie wanted nothing to do with my birth whatsoever.

My Nannie was one hell of a tough woman, and you did not cross her ever. When she made up her mind about something that was it
she would not change it
, and in her mind, mother would need her and she would take care of the new child
, because in her mind a useless funloving daughter obviously could not take care of it
. My parents lived just across the road from my Nannie
’
s house on the eastern side of the town on the main street. Their litt
le home was originally an alley
way to the Awbeg River, where coach horses used to be sheltered before someone decided to turn it into a house
in the late eighteen hundred
s
. I believe this happened around 1890 and the people were
called Coughlan
s. T
o turn an alleyway into a house
,
they
added a front wall and a back wall and later a roof, and in so
doing they turned this right of way to the river
into the smallest
house in Buttevant. I call it ‘Two Walls and a R
oof’, because that’s what it was, with the other two walls being the gable ends of our neighbours
’ houses.  The gable end on the c
hurch side was owned by our very good neighbour Eily Paddy Murphy, and on the other side
the gable end was from a parish house where
vari
ous Catholic priests lived
over the years.

Some time later in my life, this little house would become my magic place. It would be an escape from the Nan
-
the matchmaker, and her black moods, a place of fun, madness, great discussions, chess games, a workshop for inventions, numerous chemical experiments and also home to most of the rest of our family. Above all though, it was a place where I could always count on a smile from my mother and a gentle feeling coming from both her and my father. In still later years, it was my place of chips fried in dripping with an egg, or French toast on a good day, but those good
days
were few and far between.

When I finally did arrive into this world, I was quite delicate, being two weeks late, underweight and miserable. My most striking features were a squint in my left eye, and a tongue which stuck out like a small snake, not the very best way to start off in life, but I had arrived at last, even if it was barely ahead of the fool’s day.
My long tongue, with its snake-
like properties
,
was a great cause for concern and embarrassment to everyone, especially my Nan
nie
, who
spent all of her time trying to get it back in my mouth, and more importantly, keeping it there. It was a terrible battle and she only won in the end by dipping my dummy
,
known as a ‘gollie’, into some kind of sugary stuff which I loved, and this kept my snake inside. I’m quite sure that this concoction was very bad for my teeth
,
but it was either that or I’d never be shown off in public.   The Nan did finally succeed, and at long last I could be displayed to the world, albeit at the Nan’s whims, and that was where the first troubles began.

From the moment of
my
birth I was being held captive by my Nannie
. M
y father only saw me at her behest, and mother saw me just a little bit more. Nannie got away with this by using the excuse that
,
“Sure he’s delicate and ye can
’
t mind him anyway
. H
e’s out all the time
(
referring to my dad
)
,
and you
’
r
e useless
Belenda”. The Nan would refer to my father as ‘he’
in
her way of demeaning the man, and she called my mother Belenda whenever she was angry with her
. M
ost other times she would not use her name at all, preferring to imply my mother
’
s existence rather than acknowledge that she might have borne a ‘useless’ daughter
called Belenda
.

I’m quite certain that my captivity in the Nan
’
s abode continued for some months
,
probably two or three. Of course this soon became intolerable, and my father demanded me back from the Nan, telling my mother to do the
actual
demanding. He was much too afraid of her himself to do any such demanding and I suppose he pressed mother to ‘take her on’. When she did ask for me back, Nannie flatly refused to give me up, telling mother to
,
“Clear out of my house and don’t darken my door again”.  Mother left Nannie
’
s and reported back to her husband
,
and who knows what they planned to do next
. I
t’s likely that they decided to just sleep on it, both being really afraid of the Nan
because of her terrible temper
.

Somehow the mother
’
s demanding must have been playing on the Nan’s mind, and in a fit of rage which was typical of the woman, she
wrapped me up in a blanket,
took me across the road in my basket,
and
then she left me on the street outside their door. There was no knocking or calling out, she just dropped me at the door and walked off across the street to her home. At the best of times this act would be a strange kind of thing to do to a baby, but considering
I was only a few months old, it was three am in the morning
and there were no str
eet lights, it was quite insane
and showed her raging temper. At that moment she didn’t care if the
rats or the roaming dogs got me. As far as she was concerned, t
hey c
ould have me back
.

My screaming must have woken my paren
ts from their sleep of decision-
making, and I was saved from the dogs, the rats, or the cold
.
I do know that both my parents were truly happy to have me home at long last. I would also guess that at some deeper level, even as a baby
,
I too felt very glad to be home with my real parents.  Next day my father rose early, hel
l-bent on proving to his mother-in-
law that he was a good father and could earn lots of money for his new son.  Unfortunately, while he was gone and while mother was washing my one and only napkin, she saw from the corner of her eye, a dark
figure glide up her stairs, come back down
and then disappear out the front door. It was my Nannie of course, with me under her black shawl, stolen by sheer bravado from under her daughter’s nose, and I would never return as their firstborn again.

Later that evening father arrived home with his money, full of joy, clutching his first ten shilling note for his boy
. S
traight up to my cot he went, but no John was inside it. 
He got a terrible fright and ran down the stairs shouting, “Belenda, Belenda, he’s gone, he’s gone.
O
ur child is gone, where is he gone”. Of course mother had to tell him where I was gone and how, and there and then their marriage seems to have ended. I feel he gave up on it all, not being man enough to go after his child because he was never a fighter, and my mother having being reared by this tough woman had no chance at all of ever getting me back, and so they resigned the
mselves to losing me for
ever. Father, not a drinking man in those days, took consolation in Arthur Guinness
,
and mother
,
always the optimist
, felt sooner or later
maybe her mother would give me up, but she never did
.
I was destined to be reared by my to
ugh grandmother
while my real mother only lived a few yards across the street, but she may as well have been living on the Moon.

For my part I became conditioned into believing that this woman across the street was a stranger, and that Nannie was my real mother, though I knew instinctively she was not.  Nannie was a master at mind games and from the beginning she tried to alienate me from my real mother, though I have no doubt that it was done because she loved me herself.  Pretty soon Nannie began to treat me as if I was her own child, and I accepted this. I slept in her bed, was fed by her and adored by both her and her son Michael
,
my uncle. He used to call me ‘chicken’ and I have incredibly fond memories of him lifting me up high and taking me round on his shoulders, while Nannie would be roaring at him to
,
“Put the child down, don’t you let him fall”. Like my mother, poor Michael was also considered by Nannie to be worse than useless, a favourite word of hers in those days.  But today I know that her ‘useless’ son Michael had sac
rificed his life and his dreams
so that she would have a roof over her head and food on the table in her old age, and few sons will do that today.

More than anyone else
,
I believe Nannie truly loved me. She did this loving with a kind of jealousy that’s dangerous. She did her best to
alienate me from my father also:
not in a direct way, but subtle and crafty. She was a terrible woman for holding a grudge and would plot and scheme for years if necessary to get even with any wrongdoer, and she used this psychology on me and later on my sister Eunice who would also begin living with us.  I suppose
,
considering what we know today about psychology, it’s not surprising she acted like she did, as she herself had lost a child earlier in life and I was to be his replacement. I’m sure too that my mother, who was always a giver, even gave up her own firstborn out of sheer love for her own mother, and that takes some doing, but that is my mother.

As I got older
,
the fun started. I believe I was about four years old when I found the lemonade bottle full of paraffin oil on her stairs. I sat and drank it all down
,
not sure of the taste, but it seemed to be good at the time.
Nannie spotted me and went into an immediate panic, shouting at Michael to get the doctor, “Quick, quick, he’s drank the paraffin, he’ll die.
R
un for the doctor will you”
. S
he used to use this paraffin oil
to light the fire and I had dru
nk it. I remember feeling no discomfort of any kind, and the excitement seemed to be great. She was hugging me and saying
, “D
on’t die, don’t die on me
,
please God spare him, save him dear Lord”
.
I don’t remember what they did next, but I do know that I was sure determined to
drink more of this oil stuff at
the first chance I got, just because of all the affection shown to me by them all. Michael was blamed for letting the oil on the stairs, even though it was the Nan that lit the fire each morning, and this blaming becam
e a pattern for all of his life. H
e was
always
blamed for all things she did wrong, and praised for nothing good he did right, yet we would all have been lost without him.