to take his medicine’. The medicine took the form of a long lecture about life and his responsibilities as a husband and father of twin boys. My father later admitted, ‘Awaiting the arrival of my mother and mother-in-law was punishment enough.’ He said he felt like Kafka, facing the wrath of two determined women. In Kafka’s case it was his lovers, Stella and Vanessa. In my father’s, it was two traditional Catholic grandmothers who knew my mother was pregnant with her third child.
They must have scared the daylights out of him because he joined the Pioneers, a Catholic lay organisation of men who pledged not to drink alcohol so they could be closer to God. He also became a member of the Society of St Vincent De Paul, dedicated to doing charitable works and helping the poor and sick. My father was recognisable as a Pioneer by a heart-shaped pin displayed on his jacket lapel, signifying dedication to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. For a young man who had never been troublesome or fond of alcohol, being a Pioneer was a mammoth step towards a more conservative lifestyle – a step he later considered served him well, as he fathered eight more children. With such a large family there was no room for alcohol or for ‘good times with the boys’, he would later say. His decision to ‘take the pledge’ provided my mother with reassurance he would behave himself. Twenty years later, however, he put the Pioneer pin in a drawer and began a love affair with French wine, a passion he shared with my mother until her death.
My childhood memories of my mother can best be summed up with the words, ‘dedication’ and ‘love’. She was dedicated to her growing family and to her Church, and she loved her husband, children and God with much the same intensity. She had an ability to describe situations and people with exactitude and wit, allied to a peculiar idiomatic use of language and imagery, a talent I may have learned from her. Her ability to find humour in the midst of hardship never ceased to amuse and intrigue me. With ten of us children sharing one bedroom, she would joke with friends, saying she, ‘stacked us in beds and cots like a deck of cards’. Her command of language, coming from a young woman with little formal education, was impressive. When a friend suggested she must surely be proud of the success of her ten children, she replied, ‘Yes I’m proud of all of them. But some have the spark of genius, and the rest have ignition trouble.’
In my formative years, I was very close to her even though my father watched over my school homework and took me for long walks over Belfast’s Cave Hill and in the Divis and Black Mountains. I saw in her a gentleness and an inner strength I rarely witnessed in other women later in life. She managed to maintain a youthful spirit, matched with boundless energy. Twenty-four hours after the birth of one of my sisters, she was on her hands and knees scrubbing the floors of No 7. Her greatest joy was her belief she was married to the ‘best-looking guy in Belfast’. She insisted he was the spitting image of Cary Grant. With any saved money, she paid her brother, Willie Joe, to make tweed jackets, which my father wore until they were threadbare.
She never offered me an explanation for her yearly pregnancies. But after the birth of two of my sisters, my father felt it was time to bring me and my twin, Damien, then aged seven, into his confidence. He took us for ice cream and it became an annual ritual I later noted in a journal:
THE DAYS OF ICE CREAM AND MYSTERIES
There was nothing mother ever said to encourage questions. She had the same rounded belly and ungainly walk, but we knew something was happening. Father, too, was silent until it was time for ice cream. It always seemed like summer when he clasped our hands, dragging us into his longer strides. A secret was in his dark features and in the heart beating steadily behind his woollen shirt and tweed jacket. He ate his ice cream without ever licking it. ‘Your mother’s going to have another baby, and its God’s will,’ he would mumble. God and my mother! It was too miraculous to contemplate. And what of my father’s will? I couldn’t quite formulate that question in the days of ice cream and mysteries. I would have to find out for myself.
My parents were deeply attached to Catholicism and a strict observance of its rules. I have often asked myself whether their devotion, which bordered on the obsessive, was a response to deep convictions or the proximity of our home to St Peter’s pro-cathedral. The whole family attended Mass and Communion every morning. I firmly believe she thought it elevated us religiously to a cut above the rest.
‘A family that prays together stays together,’ my mother would assure us, restating the Catholic Church mantra of the time. Sadly, it would prove not to be the case. When we got older, many of us drifted apart, some of us never to speak again because of perceived slights and inheritance disputes.
One of the curious things at that time was the excessive amount of time my father spent in Fr Armstrong’s confessional every Friday evening. Subsequently, I learned any confession with Fr Armstrong had the potential to be a lengthy experience, more akin to an interrogation. He liked to talk and was curious about the minutiae of the lives of his penitents. As an altar boy, I had first-hand experience of his eccentricities, or more pointedly his obsessive-compulsive behaviour, especially when he handled the bread and wine during Mass. Later, I would recall these early experiences with Fr Armstrong:
THE ALTAR BOY
I poured water into Christ’s blood as the chalice turned 180 degrees in Father Armstrong’s gnarled fingers. He talked into it before holding it aloft, waiting for its energy to find the rest of us. When he wiped it clean, not a speck of the Body or Blood was left behind. I carried it into the sacristy, its coldness expelling warmth in my tiny hands, terrified to look inside for fear a voice would speak to me from Calvary.
When I walked to my grandmother’s in No 4, I would gaze up at the twin spires of St Peter’s towering over the Lower Falls. I asked my uncle, WJ, why the spires were so tall, and he jokingly replied they were there to remind Protestants in the nearby Shankill area we Catholics existed. Protestants, I felt, needed no reminder since there was a Protestant church fifty yards from my home on nearby Albert Street.
It still puzzles me why St Peter’s needed such towering spires in a tiny area like the Lower Falls. It was perhaps as much a political as it was a religious statement in a city where two communities shared a competitive fervour. When I was seven years old, I developed a fear of those sometimes dark, foreboding spires, each capped with a metal cross. On wet days when rain made it hard to see the tops of them, I held my mother’s hand tightly on the way into church. My fear was heightened by a large hawk that visited the spires from time to time and left pigeons’ carcasses splayed across the church steps.
Most days, my grandmother Clarke’s sisters, Sarah and Bridget, sat by the fire in No 4, praying for the ‘conversion of Russia from Communism’ and for the ‘black babies in Africa’. My aunts raised other monies for the Church, believing they would be used to convert ‘Communist heathens’ in Russia, once a ‘God-fearing nation’, which had to be restored to the faith.
‘Why aren’t we praying for the Protestants on the Shankill Road?’ I once asked Aunt Bridget.
‘We’re not!’ Her reply was sharp and was intended to blunt my inquisitiveness.
‘Why not? Uncle Willie Joe calls them heathens too.’
She fixed me with a disapproving stare before responding. ‘You didn’t hear right. Your uncle probably called them hooligans, but they are probably heathens as well. Then again, that uncle of yours wouldn’t know the difference.’
She briefly allowed herself a smile, thinking my curiosity had been satisfied. But children have a tendency to be persistent.
‘Shouldn’t we just pray for Protestants to become Catholics?’ I asked, somewhat sheepishly.
‘No. You see, the difference between Protestants and Communist heathens in Russia is that the Russians were once Catholics, and Our Lady will return them to the faith. Protestants
