Feeding Strawberries to Pigs Read online

  EDUCTION, EDUCTION, EDUCTION

  Old habits die hard, and even though Sister Margaret does not look like a nun, with her lack of a formal habit, I am reverent and polite. Yes Sister, no Sister. I am sitting in her office at Bethlehem house, a statue of Jesus is still exposing his bleeding organ for all to see. Some things never change.

  ‘Doctor Clarke, I’m glad you could see me at such short notice, there are a few things I would like to discuss with you, regarding your mother’s condition.’

  I remember the bumper sticker that the Americans are rather fond of. ‘Be nice to your children-remember they will choose your care home.’

  ‘Your mother can be, now how should I put this, difficult and rather profane.’

  ‘You mean she swears?’

  ‘Well yes, Doctor Clarke.’

  I stifle a laugh, look serious and say, ‘oh dear, that must be difficult for you Sister.’

  ‘Yes and it feels as though your mother doesn’t seem to like nuns, Doctor Clarke.’

  ‘Yes Sister, I know.’ Was all I could reply.

  Essex 1966

  There are two radios competing with each other in my house. My big sister Angela has a transistor that spills out its tinny offerings of the latest hits. Football fever is gripping the nation and the best song on offer is ‘World Cup Willy’. My parents’ wireless in the kitchen is tuned to the Home Service. I am sitting in my brushed polyester dressing gown, eating toast, trying to prolong the time before I will have to leave for school. Everyone knows today is the day, but no one mentions it. Too much rests on today, my family’s hopes, and the reputation of the entire Irish nation.

  My mother has ‘notions’ she wants her family to be successful, to prove to those back home that leaving was the right decision, but so far things have not worked according to plan. My father picks up his sandwiches wrapped in the empty bread bag and looks at me. He pauses, and then says, ‘Goodbye Philomena’ and leaves. Mother looks at me and says, ‘Sure why are you dawdling? Don’t you know the clock races when it gets to eight.’

  Angela thunders down the stairs carrying my little sister. Mother hands them their lunches and then suddenly all hell breaks loose.

  ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, what are you wearing?’

  Mother gives Angela one of her filthy looks.

  Angela has dressed Dolores and she is certainly a sight, I suppose you could describe it as tarty. I never understood at the time, why my mother called her last daughter Dolores and why Angela had sole care of our little sister.

  When I arrived at school the atmosphere was so highly charged it was palpable. There were some that were nonchalant. The 11 plus results did not concern them, their futures were written on clocking-in cards, endless forms with obscure numbers or the never-ending factory conveyer belt or Woolworths. Others were cocky unable to contemplate any sort of failure. But many were like me and knew that this day would be forever etched on their memory. I am back there now, a day that is far more memorable than my wedding day.

  The bell goes and we file into the hall where the Headmistress says we must wait to hear if our name is called. I am low in the alphabet. ‘Karen Allway’. Of course, she is in group G like me. Who did those teachers think they were kidding, calling our groups G, B and F? They must have realised that we would work out quite quickly that the initials = Good, Bad and Fair. I stand frozen hardly able to breathe. I should be next. I hear ‘Mary Parker’ and think a mistake has been made. When Mrs Moss announces that the ten successful candidates are excused lessons that day and will be having a party, I feel like dying. At break time, I am crying as I press my face against the cool hall window watching my friends. I am a failure.

  Mother weeps again when the letter arrives, a standard letter with the highly arrogant phrase- is not deemed suitable for higher education. She threw it into the fire, but I pulled it out and still have it, the words hurt more than flames ever could. All hope had gone. She looked at me with her face that had years of disappointments etched into the lines beside her down-turned mouth and said, ‘We had such high hopes for you.’

  My saving grace was that my mother knew how to play the game- ‘Irish Catholic’. When the shock had subsided, she began her campaign. She started with distributing the brown carrier bags throughout the parish for the church Christmas bazaar donations. Then she moved on to embroidering tray cloths full of shamrocks, to sell on the linen stall. Having been seen to do what was required, she made an appointment to see the Reverend Mother to plead her case.

  On the day of the appointment I prayed like never before, down on my knees in front of the picture of the Sacred Heart, a bottle of Lourdes water and a postcard of the dead President Kennedy for good measure. Mother arrived home graven faced; she had walked all the way in her good pair of shoes. She took off her blue coat with the fur collar and sat exhausted in the chair. I was watching ‘Blue Peter’ with Dolores, trying to memorise the things that Valerie Singleton said, because if I got into the Convent I was going to have to speak with a good English accent.

  We waited in silence until dad got home. When we heard him wheeling his cycle up the side passage my heart leapt and my face burnt; I thought I would die from suspense. Dad came in and took his donkey jacket off, looking even hotter than I was; he had cycled hard, to be home quickly to hear the news.

  ‘Well Nancy?’ was all he could manage, mother started in a very Irish way that I was to find so infuriating in later life. She told every detail in its exact order. How she rang the big brass bell and an ancient nun bent over like a hairpin had opened the door and invited her in her broad Kerry accent, to sit in a room with lovely big heavy oak chairs and tables. How the Convent smelled of lavender furniture polish and had beautiful vases of flowers by every statue, how the Reverend Mother was ‘upper bracket’ English and spoke to her in haughty tones, but how the rest of the nuns were Irish. All we wanted to know was could I go, how much would it cost and how would we afford it? We eventually heard the words. ‘Well she can go, but...’ Time stood still, to have got so near but so far would destroy me.

  I had been thinking about the uniform for weeks. I had dreamed I was wearing the navy skirt which had to lay a regulation four inches on the ground as you knelt. The red girdle that was worn tied around the waist. The navy and red striped tie. The blazer with the red badge with the swirly red S.M. and C. intertwined on the breast pocket. The soft navy felt hat and the straw boater in the summer worn with the royal blue shirtdress and white cotton gloves. The word ‘but’ lay heavy in the air. We waited for mother to continue.

  ‘She will have to behave herself and work very hard. They could not have anyone who would let down the reputation of St Mary’s Convent.’ My mother gave my father a knowing look and they both lowered their heads. They looked embarrassed and guilty; I found this strange at the time.

  Things changed in our family. My mother joined Angela at the shoe factory and father worked extra shifts. I learned that to be Irish was considered by some to be unacceptable, so I lost my accent quickly. My new accent upset others and I crossed the road to avoid gangs of disaffected English children, who attended schools that taught them envy and hate.

  At school, girls called Helena, Verity and Felicity who lived in big houses with hand basins and televisions in their bedrooms, found me amusing. But their parents who knew where I lived were wary; they always asked what my father did for a living, I lied.

  At school I learned that wealthy girls were allowed to stay in at lunchtimes, whilst poor girls were expected to stay outside and freeze. In my second hand uniform I was definitely a second class pupil.

  I smile at Sister Margaret and say, ‘It’s a terrible disease Alzheimer’s, but she is in the b
est possible place for her.’

  I hand her a cheque for new altar cloths for their chapel and leave with a clear conscience. Happy that at last my mother no longer has to bow and scrape, and has the freedom of spirit to behave as she really wanted to all those years ago.

  MICHAEL MURPHY'S LAW

  Michael put his head out of the door and sniffed loudly, there was the distinct smell of spring, a sort of freshness that promises gentle warm days and a softness to the ground which a shower leaves behind. He was glad that winter was behind him, it had been a time of hibernation and the all pervading smell of hatred and death. Spring meant new beginnings, and with Easter early this year he felt as if he was crawling out from under a stone that had pinned him down for too long.

  He felt a sudden urge to get out of the house that had bound him and take a walk. He stepped back inside to get his summer coat, it was still in the polythene bag from the dry cleaners and as he pulled the coat off its hanger, the hanger bent and snapped like a broken bone but he smiled to himself. He grabbed his straw hat and opened the front door a little, the stale odour of his house escaping like air from a balloon. As he stepped out he was knocked to the ground by a hooded teenager who was riding his bike on the pavement. Michael picked himself up and giggled. The sound was surprising, like a piece of music that he hadn’t heard for a long time, yet knew so well. He used to giggle a lot as a child and was even known as ‘the giggler’ at school.

  A sudden breeze blew his straw hat off and it went dancing down the street and into the road where a passing car flattened it with a crunch. Michael chuckled and felt his ribs shaking new life into him. He dodged the banana skin which lay in his path and walked under a ladder and grinned, to no one in particular. His car was parked in the lay-by; it had a broken windscreen and a flat tyre. Michael thumbed his nose at it and a loud explosion of a laugh shot out of him somewhere deep inside. A trouser button popped off and his trousers descended with a comical air. Michael shrugged and pulled them up and held them as he walked.

  He looked for his victim’s van it had disappeared and he wondered how long it had taken, leaving the keys in the ignition would have helped, for once a thief had done him a good turn. He passed the shop and remembered that he needed milk, but the man in front bought the last carton and when Michael went to pay for his paper and cigarettes he realised he must have dropped the wallet when he was knocked over and he burst into paroxysms of laughter, he was so caught off guard that he ended up letting slip to the puzzled shop keeper that it wasn’t even his wallet.

  He decided he would walk to the park and take a look at the spring flowers. He deftly dodged a roller blader and headed for the walled garden.

  When he woke up he was puzzled to find himself in a gown and lying in a hospital bed. A nurse came in and smiled.

  ‘Mr. Murphy sure you’re awake at last. Well can I say you are a lucky, lucky man you have beaten all the odds now. The rescuers said that it was a million to one chance that you should have been walking under that tree when it fell on the old walled garden, showering you with bricks. The doctors said with a head injury like yours you’d be lucky to ever wake up again and here you are again proving them all wrong.

  Michael smiled to himself. He hadn’t a clue what the woman was on about, but if he just kept smiling he’d be fine.

  It slowly dawned on him that of course eventually they would find out what he’d done, but it was too late to change a single thing. The man was dead now and that is what he deserved.

  All his life Michael Murphy had lived up to his name and had put up with bad luck, the old adage ‘what could go wrong would go wrong’-Murphy’s Law. It had been a minor irritation really and then something really bad did happen.

  He learnt one night what being unlucky really meant. They said she was unlucky that’s all, unlucky that she accepted a lift from a man who’d had a few too many and unlucky that the seat belt was faulty, such bad luck. He’d had to identify her body, had seen how her beautiful face had been transformed by hitting the crash barrier. That’s how they had explained why her sweet smile was wiped away, but her eyes stared back, intact, challenging him to take revenge.

  He’d made her a promise the day she was born, that he would protect her in life. He made another, that he would get his revenge for her death, as he sat in court and watched her killer go free. His previous good record had held the man in good stead; he was fined and inconvenienced by the loss of his license for two years. He’d tried to keep it, said he needed to drive his van containing the tools of his trade as he was a plumber. Her killer walked out of court and back to his life, Michael heard the man’s friends saying it was a cause for celebration and promised him a night to remember at their local bar.

  Michael’s hatred had grown and festered, he’d lost all sense of time without her to make sense of his world. Then one day in the depths of the frosty winter his own bad luck brought him a fair solution. He had woken to the sound of water and found he had a burst pipe. He scoured the phone book for the number and made a sweet request to the man he hated. What plumber wouldn’t want to help a poor old man with a burst water pipe?

  Waiting for him to arrive was hell. He’d plotted the act down to the last detail. He’d chosen his weapon well. The man could have no suspicions; he wouldn’t recognise the address as his daughter had lived with her mother. There were enough Murphys in the town, so no suspicions would be aroused by his name. Michael would make sure this man suffered.

  He was punctual Michael had to hand that to him, and he walked in without any problem, didn’t recognise the dirty old man, wouldn’t have seen any similarity to the smart clean shaven dignified father who’d stared at him in the court over two years ago. Michael had removed her photos which covered most of the walls of his house, in case he saw them. Michael followed him up the stairs and pointed to the cupboard under the sink in the bathroom where he said the stop cock was situated. The man got down on his hands and knees just as Michael knew he would, and as he had planned. Still crouching the man had said ‘But there’s no stopcock in here’ and that is when Michael struck him sharply and firmly on the back of the neck. He was down, but not dead when Michael managed to find the strength to lay him in the bath. Michael tied his hands together and slit his wrists, Michael replaced the bathroom mirror with a photograph of his darling daughter. He wanted her face to be the last thing this man ever saw. The bucket of ice cold water brought him to, for just long enough and Michael was surprised when the man stared at the photograph and shed his last tear.

  The nurse showed a young man into the room, ‘This is Paul, Mr. Murphy he wants to visit your home to see what adaptations you are going to need You’re going to need things like a rail in your bathroom, so you can get in and out of your bath safely. Is it alright if we give Paul your keys, we found them in your coat pocket?’

  Michael looked at the man, he was glad it wasn’t a young girl; this chap looked as though he could handle things.

  Michael smiled and nodded and did a thumbs-up sign. He’d wiped the smile off that plumber and when his mates find out what his fate had been, Michael knew they’d give him a good send off.

  Michael heard the nurse say to Paul, ‘he’s such a sweet old man, to tell you the truth from the state of him when he came in here I don’t think having a bath was high in his priorities. Brace yourself Paul for the state of the old fellow’s house.’

  Michael laughed so much that he cracked a rib. He wondered what would happen to him now. Life was unfair at times, but if he had his way, he’d make sure that people always got what they truly deserved.

  Never mind Murphy’s Law he thought, as he waited for the fireworks to begin.

  FINDAPADDY.COM

  ‘What will I tell June?’

  ‘Is that the best you can say Mammy? I’ve just told you I’ve left Paul and all you care about is what you should say to your sister in Cricklewood!’

  Anne slammed the door as she stormed out of her mother’s house. She had to g
et away from her mother and her attitudes, which were frozen in aspic circa 1930. She sat on the front wall smoked a cigarette and swore loudly. She knew this would irritate her mother, who always worried about what the neighbours thought. A few minutes later her mother came out, having first checked none of the neighbours were watching.

  ‘I’m sorry Anne; it’s just that I don’t want to give my old bitch of a sister anything to crow about.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about Aunty ‘June’, that’s not even her real name for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘That’s typical of her too, wanting a ‘sophisticated English name’. Sure, what’s wrong with the name Bernadette? And there’s no need to blaspheme Anne.’

  ‘I ought to go,’ Anne stubbed out her cigarette and threw it on the lawn, her mother retrieved it.

  ‘I’m sorry about your marriage, but I never warmed to him. Thank God your father never lived to see this day. You know we wanted you to marry a nice Irish boy. Isn’t it best to keep the blood pure.’

  ‘Mother, when are you going to realise that the world has changed? You haven’t been to Ireland for years you wouldn’t recognise it now.’

  ‘Tis an awful shame, didn’t we keep our genes to ourselves for hundreds of years.’

  ‘What do you think the Vikings were doing Mammy? Anyway I’ve told you now, and if anyone wants to know why, you can blame it on bringing me up with the English heathens. Times change Mammy, you and your sister need to move with them.’ Anne recognised the faraway look in her mother’s eyes. The look she often had when she thought about Ireland and the past.

  ‘Do you remember that nice boy you used to see down at the Irish Association? Declan Doyle, lovely eyes. Good looking boy, he came from a nice family. His uncle was a brain box, wasn’t he an Urologist or something to do with brains?’

  ‘A Neurologist Mother, but Declan was no brain box, I can tell you.’

  ‘Then there was Patrick O’Flaherty, he was a good looker now, he had lovely teeth.’