Put In Your Place

(Summer 1995)

The crowd huddles close together as the priest and undertakers struggle to bring the coffin out of the church. The rain is lashing down, angrily, urged on by a strong wind that has already whipped backwards any umbrella opened to shelter people from the rain. As soon as the coffin is loaded into the hearse, the rain and wind stop. The hearse slowly nears the graveyard gates, there are no words like “DAD” or “DARLING” spelt in flowers in its windows. My mother disliked them and so do I. They seem almost insincere. As the priest begins the final part of the funeral proceedings, the clouds in the sky part and the sun shines down on those present. A searing heat can be felt in the graveyard as the priest mops his brow and says the final prayers before the coffin is lowered into the ground. Some people who were practically hiding in their cars and under anything that gave them shelter from the rain and then the sun’s rays come forward to sympathise with me. I shake their hands and thank them, nodding. It was the same last night at the removal and the night before that at the rosary. People coming up to say “sorry for your troubles”. Of course I can never admit that the previous 20 years were when they should have been shaking my hand and telling me that rubbish and that today, despite the doom and gloom is probably the best day of my life. I know that I too will have to meet my maker one day but at least now I can have some peace and enjoy and savour life.

As I pass a local electrical shop on the way home with our two daughters, I see a ticker tape on a TV screen declaring that a heat wave is on the way. I think of you and realise that you will miss the hot weather this year. What a pity. You liked hot weather didn’t you? The perfect opportunity for a nice cold drink, although it was always drinks in your case. Me? I hated summer and especially warm weather. So every year as temperatures rose, I had to find a reason for not wearing lighter clothing with shorter sleeves. Luckily, or unluckily, perhaps, I was very slight of build then so people thought I hadn’t enough body fat and felt the cold all the time. I thought that they wouldn’t realise that I was covering up the umpteen bruises, sores and cigarette burns along my arms, shoulders and back put there by you. Now I realise that they probably knew but felt that they could not ask. Mind your own business and all that. No one knows what goes on behind closed doors and other stupid clichés. It was always everyone else’s fault, never yours. And I, along with our children, colluded with you. We had to. We could tell the truth but you would make sure that the truth didn’t set us free. We were prisoners in our own home and you were the one who handed down the sentence: Life, without the possibility of parole, as the Americans might say. Only we did not commit any criminal offence known in any penal code here or anywhere else. It was my mistake, really. I believed your act. Wasn’t that foolish of me? Then you took it upon yourself to punish me for that for the rest of your life.

Life at first was agreeable enough. You were so anxious to make me your wife. I wish that I had remembered that “wife” rhymed with “life”. Was being your wife worth my life? No, it was not. I thought that I was going to lose my life so often that it would have been a welcome release. Then I stopped believing that there was a God because He refused to let me die. And I was not going to give you the satisfaction of seeing me hanging from a tree. Make you the poor man who lost his wife to suicide? And leave the way clear for you to hassle my parents for what they might have left me? NEVER! No matter that one or two said later that they had a feeling that you weren’t right, weren’t 100 per cent. Funny how those gits never ever offered one word of sympathy when you were alive. Or maybe they were afraid that if they so much as showed any concern for me that you would be round to trash their home? So I became like the kid who gets bullied in school. The bully with his or her gang target a child they dislike but one or two stand up to the bully. Then the bully and his gang give the defender or defenders so much hassle that they give up and the target is attacked with even greater ferocity.

When did the madness start? I think it was when we were on honeymoon. The honeymoon certainly lived up to the medieval term (a month of drinking honey mead) for you because you managed to stay constantly intoxicated to some extent for the fortnight. If it had been for a month you would have managed it. Initially I thought, oh well, we’re away from home and it’s not like we have to drive anywhere. But back in our hotel in the early hours, you decided that I should go to sleep only when you felt like it. On one occasion when I nodded off through sheer tiredness, I was roughly shaken awake with the words, “Get up you useless whore, make me some dinner!” When I pointed out that there was no cooker, you then started roaring things like “If you don’t get me some fucking food now, you stupid cunt, I’ll split you!” so loudly that the guests in the neighbouring rooms started knocking on the walls asking you to keep the noise down. That was unacceptable to you, so you started yelling back at them. Of course it was my fault when security officers came up and were accompanied by the police. Did you think really that I forced them to arrest and caution you?

When you told me to fuck off at the airport on our return and not to bother expecting you home, I decided to cut my losses and headed to my parents’ place for a few days and move away. I had already contacted a solicitor to find out if I could get the marriage annulled by the state. Lucky you, I couldn’t divorce you then because that hypocrite De Valera and his henchmen had years earlier created their own little paradise. Not for them was Ireland going to be sullied with people divorcing. In Ireland, free of British influence, there was to be no divorce. There would be no grounds for such an abomination. Didn’t people know that their vows specifically said “till death you do part”? In other words, offer it up or suck it up but you were not getting out of it except in a coffin.

The annulment inquiries came to naught. Someone must have told you. I forgot that my solicitor would have had to send you a letter at your parents’ home. No doubt those two snitches passed on the good news to you. Not that they hated me but a fool like me wasn’t going to make your family look bad. So back you came, all apologetic. It would never happen again, you said, you had drink taken that night. Since my parents were of the belief that everyone deserves to be given a second chance and they said that I had to make the best of things, I felt that I had no option but to give you that. I am so sorry that I did.

Our first born was a girl, to your utter disgust. “What use is she? She’ll never be able to run a business or farm!” you sneered. Yet what business or farm were you running? Putting money into the tills of publicans who were then able to buy farms and houses does not really count as farming or running a business. And only the most deluded would have let you manage their business. Heaven’s sake, you couldn’t manage yourself. But you were very good at controlling me and the children. What a shame that there was no control business, though I am not sure that you would have been very good at that. When our second was born, she too had the audacity to be female. So when I became pregnant a third time I hoped and prayed that this one would be a boy, if only to stop you ranting. No doubt you would continue to tell the girls how they were only useless little tramps but if it was a boy at least you could say that you had a son. I still clung to the hope that you might see sense. Then that night happened.

You had been away all day that Sunday. The Cork hurling team were playing in either a Munster final or further on in the All-Ireland Championship. I used to dread the start of the GAA season because I knew that you would stay out all day at matches. And the girls and I would dread your return. We didn’t dare to go to bed. I knew that I couldn’t go to bed until you got home, not since the honeymoon but the girls were worried for me so they asked if they could stay up. I was uneasy about this but they insisted and to be honest I was glad to have someone to talk to.

The car roared up outside the house, showering gravel up on the living room window sill and rattling on the windowpane. I had heard of poitín (moonshine) being sold locally and an elderly woman said that it would be great in Christmas cake but I didn’t expect any of it to make it into any cake in our house. More likely that it would end up in your stomach and sure enough I saw the empty bottle thrown outside at the back of the house. The radio reports of the hurling match declared that Cork had lost. When I heard that, my heart sank. You had probably bet the children’s allowance money on the result and not only were you drunk, you were broke too.

The front door was pushed open and you started your roaring. I told the girls to get to bed without delay. Out in the countryside, you could shout as loud as you liked without any one coming to tell you to keep the noise down. Then you started thumping me, pulling my hair so hard that I knew hanks of it were being pulled out. Pulling me to face you, you then stood back and started kicking me, on my legs, arms and to my horror, my abdomen. “Please don’t, you’ll hurt the baby,” I sobbed, trying to protect the child but failing dismally, as your steel toecap boots rained blows on my hands, bloodying them. “Why the fuck should I care? The scabby little thing probably isn’t mine anyway. Is it? Who is the father? Bet you don’t know how he was, you waste of space. Scotland Yard wouldn’t be able to tell you who that was.” When you were done kicking me, I was close to passing out but I heard you yell, “don’t you dare lie down there, you miserable bitch. Sit up on the chair and don’t move until I tell you to.” Then you started moving what little food was in the kitchen cupboards into the fridge in the utility room and locked it. Then you locked me into the kitchen. Did I look like I wanted to eat? Was I likely to make a run for it? I was drifting in and out of consciousness but already I knew that the child was dying within me. You murdered your own child. I hoped that you would also die that night but when I heard the key turning the next morning I concluded that God had really decided to work in mysterious ways because you lived and convinced the doctor to come to the house because I had miscarried. No mention of how you helped it happen, of course. And you made sure that I didn’t betray you because you stayed in the room and listened as the doctor sympathised with me and said that the child was already deceased and that when miscarriages start, there’s no way to stop them. For some reason the doctor was agreeable to my not going to hospital. Maybe he was afraid of you like so many others. Your reputation did go before you, after all. I don’t know if it bothered you that the baby was a boy and was the image of you. Oh, yes, actually it did, or at least you told me as much during another rage. “You bitch, you murderess! You made me kill him!” you snarled as you thumped me and forced yourself on me because there was no such thing in the statute books as raping your wife back then. In any case it was yet another justification for your violence.

Why did I stay? I didn’t have a choice. It was because whenever I left you found me and threatened not just me but the people whose help I sought. And sometimes you made good your threats. Like when you burned my cousin’s car and smashed all the windows of her home. In the end it seemed easier to let friendships go, because you were so unpleasant to them. Sometimes people asked me not to see them because they knew your capabilities. After you murdered the child and got away with it though, I decided that if the Gardai and the courts couldn’t sort you out, I would. A stupid little bitch like me would never have the brains to get the better of you, you said. And for a long time I actually believed you. Then after I saw how you killed your own kid and still insisted that we all go to Mass, to pray for our sins, not your sins, I knew that it was going to be up to me if I lived for much longer.

Familiarity breeds contempt and in your case I had come to despise you. The girls hated seeing me endure beating after beating but one night recently, when you were away hobnobbing with some GAA snobs who probably did the very same thing to their wives, I told them, “I’ve been a fool for long enough. I’m going to sort this out once and for all. This will be last time he raises his voice or a hand to me. You must never repeat this to anyone.” They nodded, fearful that something awful would happen. Was Mammy going to do away with herself? Was she going to do away with him? They couldn’t tell anyone or she might go to jail. Who would look after them then? They never called you Dad or Daddy, you told them they were useless and that you weren’t their father so many times that you killed any love they might have had for you.

Did you enjoy your bottle of poitín the night before you died? Was it nice? Don’t some poitín makers distil their product in contaminated stills? Who’s stupid now?