Thankfully there are no casualties to report
this morning, although I dare say that quite a few of you have suffered some
form of pillow, or cat, abuse during the night.
Tough, self-inflicted injuries do not count, suck it up and let’s get on
with it. For those among The Illuminati
who do not abuse yourselves, you will be aware of my obsession with counting
words. It’s not really an obsession but
something that seems to govern my working day.
So I can say that yesterday’s blog contained sixteen hundred and two
words. I know, it is a lot more that the
fifteen hundred I set out to produce daily and yes if the truth be told, I am spoiling
you, but you’re worth it. However, of
the sixteen hundred and two words produced yesterday, and that excludes the
title, there was one important word in the whole shooting match.
Well; for me there was one important word, I
don’t know if you noticed it or sensed its relevance to placing me into a story
that has rocked Ireland for a good number of years. I was about to say ‘my
mother,’ but as you all now know I have
two mothers, one in Warrenpoint and one running around the North of Ireland
selling flowers and singing about the rain in Spain staying mainly on the plain. So how can I differentiate between them? Should I use an old armed forces method and
have mother number one and mother number two?
Mother number one, the one in Warrenpoint, the one who brought me up,
well sort of brought me up, she had always said that they went into the baby
shop and all the babies were sitting on shelves. Listen, when you are a five year old Irish
child you believe this sort of rubbish.
I was the prettiest one on the shelves so they bought me and took me home. There’s that word again, bought.
I knew that the pervert priest had organised
the adoption, that it was his connections that brought about the whole thing. I was also always told that my adoption was special,
social workers were not involved, only the church and cold hard cash. Why it had taken thirty plus years for the proverbial
penny to drop I have no idea, but drop it did.
We had all heard stories of how rich Americans would come to Ireland and
buy babies; they were the only people who had a spare thousand pounds knocking about. Normally each baby would cost one thousand pounds,
which of course was regarded as a donation to the convent, to recompense the
nuns for the time and effort they would have put into looking after the mother and child. So I now knew that I had been bought and sold
like a bag of sweets, something that certainly messes about with your head. But there were other factors that were simply
not allowing me to think straight.
I had been brought up in a strict Catholic
family, with two uncle’s priests, one a leading pervert, and two auntie’s
nuns. We even had mass celebrated in our
house, to tell a lie was the most horrendous thing you could do, well; I
thought it was until got to boarding school where I learned much more effective
ways of sinning. Now I knew that each
and every one of them had lied to me for my whole life. Can you imagine telling a child that their
mother is dead, while knowing what you were saying was completely untrue? Not a bit of wonder every nun in the North of
Ireland knew me, I could imagine them at a Saturday morning market, in Belfast,
holding me up by the scruff of the neck and shouting, “Gather round people, I don’t
want ten pounds for this wee fella, I don’t even want five…”
Suddenly I knew that I hadn’t let anybody down,
it was the other way around. On the day
that I had been given all this information all I could think of was that Malachy
was a lovely name, I still do, but the following day I began to wonder about my
mother, the other one, mother number two.
I had been given reports written by social workers who were involved in
my birth. My mother and father were
married in the January and I was born the following May, even the village idiot
knew that May minus January was not nine months so in Catholic Ireland this was
a big no no. I had been conceived out of
wedlock and according to the church my mother would now live with the nuns as
her body began to show signs of the pregnancy, give birth to me in the convent
and then return to her village, minus brat and bump. Of course she would have to work to pay for
her accommodation during her stay and of course the medical attention during
the birth.
As all of the pregnant girls in the convent,
being looked after by the nuns, were sinners, harlots, and whores, they
did not deserve any pain relief during the birth process, the pain was God’s
little way of showing them how bad they had really been for dropping their knickers
before walking down the aisle. This is
why so many mothers and babies died during the process. So, in a way I was lucky to be alive, in fact
it’s a wonder I had been allowed to live, for when I was born I carried a mark. It could have been the mark of God or it
could have been the mark of the beast himself, depends how crazy the nuns on
duty were, but I had been born with six fingers on my left hand. I know, not only was I deformed but I was a
little bastard, this pleased me no end, as I had often been called one and
knowing it was almost true, pleased me enormously. But now I could see why the nuns could never
sell me on their market stall, I was a shop return, ex-display, a factory second;
I was end of line goods
For the first and last time in my life my head
was overloaded. I was unable to think
straight about any of the issues that now came to the fore. I found myself looking at each person I met,
wondering if they were some relation. I
had often thought the pervert priest was my father but now I knew differently
he was out of the frame completely, thank God.
I had to get away from Ireland. Nobody
cared about my findings, even the O Neill twins, when I announced that we had
the same surname were not impressed. I
wanted to tell the world about my discovery but the world was not
interested. I remember thinking that I
needed to brief Pat on everything I had found out. Pat was with the civil service in Belfast so
apart from having access to most departments she would be invaluable for
helping me with my search, should I choose to find my family, I still wasn’t sure
what to do.
Pat and I went to a small pub in Rostrevor
which is not the best place for an ex member of the British armed forces to go for a
pint. It’s the sort of place where you
could shake a tree, any tree, and fifteen IRA men will fall out. Admittedly I
went to school with most of ‘the boys’ but there would be a new generation out
to make a name for themselves. Like the
old gunfighters in the cowboy films, it wasn’t the grizzled old quick draw
merchant that would get you, but the spotty sixteen year old who came up behind
you with his uncle’s gun. We went to The
Kilbroney where we knew the landlady very well and knew she would keep an eye
out for us. We were still very good friends, I suppose the only thing my father
had said to me, that I actually listened to, was ‘If you are going out with a
girl, imagine that in twenty years’ time you will meet her, her husband and two
children walking along the street. You
must be able to look them all in the eye.”
That was his advice on how to treat women on a date.
But this was the evening that Pat and I were in
deep conversation when a fellow walked over and set a pint of Guinness in front
of me. We hadn’t noticed him before as
we were so engrossed in our conversation, well; I was engrossed, telling Pat
all about what I had discovered. “You won’t
remember me,” said the fellow, which I didn’t.
But I was still immediately on edge; I already knew where the exits were
and now looked about for anyone who looked like they could be his accomplices. “You’ve always been my hero Boris, and always
will be, enjoy the beer.” He was
referring to the time I took all the canes out of Violent Hell on to the croquet
lawn and smashed them to pieces, before, as I have said a long time ago, before
I experienced my first ever illegal rugby tackle and we didn’t even play rugby
at Violent Hell. I was immediately expelled
of course, once the priests had finished kicking me about the school grounds,
but they were decent Christian men, they knew exactly what they were doing and
that it was right, in the eyes of God, just like the nuns did.
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