Anne's blog

Grandma fell ill after walking in the rain to Laman Griffin’s. They took her to hospital and now she’s dead.

  The Irish Army is looking for boys who are musical. They want to train them in the Army School of Music. They accept my brother, Malachy, and he goes offl to Dublin.

  ‘My family is disappearing in front of me,’ says Mam.

  Laman Griffin doesn’t climb down to go to the toilet. He uses a pot in his room.

  ‘I have a job for you, boy,’ he says to me one day. ‘You’d like to help your mother, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I would.’

  ‘Well, that pot up in my room is very full. Iwant you to empty it in the toilet, wash it out and take it back up.’ The first few times Ido it I’m sick behind the toilet.

  He says I’m a good boy. I can get a book for myself at the library and borrow his bicycle. He laughs and Mam looks at the dead ashes in the fireplace.

  I’m nearly fourteen and it’s June, the last month of school forever. Mam takes me to the post office to see about a job as a telegram boy. ‘You can’t start until until you’re fourteen, ’ says Mrs O’Connell, ’so come back in August.’

  Mr O’Halloran tells the class it’s a disgrace. ’Clever boys like McCourt, Clarke and Kennedy are thrown away in this free Ireland. You’re too good to be telegram boys. You must get out of this country and go to America.’

  Laman Griffin’s house is not our house and we don’t feel free in it. We have to be quiet when Laman comes home and goes to bed. We stay out until after dark, but then there’s nothing to do.
  Mam tells us to go to bed and read a book. ‘I’ll just take up Laman Griffin’s last cup of tea and I’ll come to bed myself.’ There are nights when she never comes down. We hear noises. Malachy says it’s too hard to climb down in the dark. He’s only twelve and he doesn’t understand. I’m thirteen and I know what they’re doing.

  In church the priest shouts at us boys. ‘You must not have dirty thoughts and do dirty things to yourselves. It’s a sin. When boys do dirty things, the Virgin Mary turns her face away and cries. Why does she cry, boys? Because the Holy Ghost lives in your bodies and you are making your bodies dirty. Every time you do a dirty act, you take a step closer to hell. Keep your hands to yourself and take a step back towards heaven.’

  I can’t keep my hands to myself. I pray to the Virgin Mary and tell her I’m sorry. I go to the priest and tell him I’m sorry, but he doesn’t believe me. He tells me I must give up this terrible sin. I go from church to church looking for an easy priest. Paddy Clohessy tells me there’s one who is ninety years old and can’t hear any more in a church near him. Every few weeks I telll the old priest about my sins and he says I should pray for him. Sometimes he falls asleep and I don’t wake him.

  One Friday night Laman Griffin comes home drunk as usual. He tells my mother to make him some tea. She says there’s no coal for the fire. He shouts at her, ‘You great fat thing living under my roof for nothing with your horrible kids.’ I want to hit him for the way he talks to my mother.

  ‘Did you empty my pot?’ he asks me.

  ‘Oh, I forgot. I’ll do it this minute.’

  ‘You forgot, ’he shouts. ‘I give you twopence a week to empty my pot and you forgot.’

  ‘He was at school all day, ‘says Mam. ‘Then he had to see the doctor for his sore eyes.’

  He tells her to shut up and she goes quiet by the fire. He tells me to shut up and go to bed.

  ‘You’re not my father. You can’t tell me what to do.’

  He pushes the chair back from the table. He sticks his finger between my eyes. He hits my shoulders and then my head. My mother jumps up and tries to pull him away.

  ‘I’ll kill you, you little beggar, ‘he shouts.

  Mam is screaming and pulling at him. He falls back. ‘Come on,’ she says, ‘he’s only a child.’

  He goes up to his bed. I expect Mam to come and put her arm round me. But she goes up to him.

  I can’t stay here. I leave the house. I dream about learning to fight and killing Laman Griffin. I go to Grandma’s house. Since Grandma died, Uncle Pat has lived there on his own. He’s sitting up in bed eating fish and chips. He says there’s no food in the house, but I can sleep in Grandma’s bed tonight.