My Mother Wore a Yellow Dress Read online

  ‘A brilliantly evocative memoir .... beautifully written ... with humour and sorrow.’

  Belfast Telegraph

  I have never read anything like this book, it’s so different to any biographies, especially from Ireland either north or south.

  Christina McKenna seems to have had a very unhappy childhood and didn’t let this effect her in later life, but rose to the challenge to become a painter first, then a poet and now a writer.

  She writes so beautifully, you are taken on a journey back to her childhood in a very imaginative and engrossing way.

  She tells about her awful father and his brothers who lacked a spiritual side, but instead of hating them she forgives them, so it’s really a very spiritual book and has a message of hope for everybody especially women who might be in a similar unhappy position.

  The haunting chapter is amazing, it’s hard to believe it happened but you don’t doubt it for one moment. Some parts of this book will stay with me for a long time, its message is so very powerful. It is a book that every woman should read.

  Review by Marie Flynn on Amazon

  For my mother,

  Mary McKenna née Henry,

  in memoriam,

  and

  Mr Kiely

  This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds. To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance. A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky, rushing by like a torrent down a steep mountain.

  Gautama Buddha

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgements

  A Glossary of Ulster Scots

  Prologue

  Honeymoon

  Lessons in Heaven

  Lessons in Hell

  Unhappy Home

  Great-aunt Rose and the Goat

  Lipstick, Glamour and Death

  A Port of Dreams

  Bombs and Motorbikes

  One Friend, Many Strangers

  The Haunting

  The Master and The Provo

  Leaving the Sunlight for the Gloom

  The Big School

  The Weird and the Wonderful

  Three Days in Purgatory

  At War with Colour

  John Henry and the Maltese Broad

  Facing the Void

  Offering it Up

  Roll-call of Death

  From Fear to Love

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The following are poems quoted in the text.

  Philip Larkin (1922-85)

  To My Wife 5

  Spring 11

  Love Songs in Age 41

  ‘Long roots moor summer to our side of earth’ 56

  Days 105

  Strangers 117

  Maiden Name 222

  Deceptions 227

  Louis MacNeice (1907-63)

  Autobiography 11, 153, 214, 219

  Prayer before Birth 145, 156

  Oliver Goldsmith (1728-74)

  The Village Schoolmaster 29, 117

  Wilfred Wilson Gibson (1878-1962)

  Flannan Isle 133

  Seamus Heaney (1939-)

  Exposure 154

  Follower 154

  Sunlight 154

  The quote on page 216 is from Edmund Spenser (1552-99); that on page 233 is from Anthony Robbins (1960-); the final quote on page 245 is taken from Salut au Monde by Walt Whitman (1819-92).

  A GLOSSARY OF ULSTER SCOTS

  at the back of the cause of

  bate to beat

  bee t’ be must have been

  blade a quick-witted woman

  blether to talk nonsense

  boys a dear Is that so?/You don’t say!

  brae a hill-slope

  carnaptious grumpy, irritable

  ceilidh a visit, to visit

  clatt a dirty or untidy person

  craic lively conversation

  cretur an unfortunate

  dander to stroll

  declerta I declare to [God]

  dizzier a local female character

  drig to drink greedily

  footer to potter, to work in a time -wasting way

  gulpen a stupid person

  gype a fool or clown

  hoke to forage, rummage

  keep fut till to keep up with

  larnin learning

  lock a small quantity/a few

  make a shape to woo/make a move

  mine to remember

  nearderhan nearer

  pallions unnecessary clothing

  plunther to plod, trudge

  puke an unfriendly or proud person

  quare very, considerable, strange

  quet to stop

  rickle an unstable object

  rig-out an outfit [of clothing]

  sappy sorry, unfortunate

  schaghey an odd mixture of food

  sheugh a drain or ditch

  slooter a sloppy person

  spraghal to walk awkwardly

  stotious drunk

  taig a Catholic

  tarra terrible

  tekelin a very old vehicle

  thole to put up with, endure

  throughother all mixed up, disorderly

  tight smart, sharp, brave

  too much ground extravagant

  trig neat, smartly dressed

  wan one

  wain a baby

  wheen a few

  whitred a weasel

  wile terrible, very

  PROLOGUE

  I learned about conflict from my parents. My mother used words as weapons; my father used the angered silence. Within the confines of this senseless arrangement they produced nine of us and gave rise to the fear and insecurity that would dominate most of our lives.

  My parents are dead now: all that furious, unfocused energy gone – stilled together in the grave. They surely rest in peace. My mother was in need of a concentrated dose of it. But the anger and resentment and the thwarted logic that fund such emotions is apparent from time to time in my siblings and me; such is the legacy we have been left to grapple with.

  This is the story of my journey out of a lonely childhood into the dissonant world of the adult. It’s about the mother who cared for me and tried to smooth the way, and the father who couldn’t, who charged on ahead regardless, letting the briars and branches of his discontent crash into me, to cause me to stumble, to defeat me and make me bleed.

  It’s about a few good people who loved me and urged me on. It’s about the many who could not love themselves and so held me back, wrecking the pure and present oneness of what I tried to be.

  Throughout the journey there was God, bending to fit the cliché of what others said He was. It took a supernatural event in our home in 1970 to confirm for me the existence of this supreme being. It would also trigger in me the need to question the reality of things rather than blindly accept everything ‘as is’. Finding the truth beneath all the limiting belief systems I grew up with then became my quest.

  That search is not an easy one. The fearful past strives to keep me bound, while my higher self calls to set me free. I realise, however, that understanding the people and events of those earlier years, rather than blaming them, is what leads to peace and draws me closer to that truth or the divine spark that lies within all of us. Following this path is a life’s work. It involves the continuing education of my heart and soul.

  HONEYMOON

  They were married in April 1946. The wedding photo shows a striking pair. My mother was beauty itself: pale complexion, lovely cobalt eyes and luxuriant, wavy hair that would stay stubbornly black till the day she died. In the picture she stands beside the seated figure
of my father. His face is stern and handsome, hers wears a tranquil and knowing smile. This arrangement would be emblematic of their lives together: my mother always on her feet, the worker bee; my father forever the seated, sedentary drone.

  Who knows what was going through their heads as they gazed into the lens and out towards their unresolved futures? I sense little affection in this image. They do not link arms or hold hands. They inhabit separate worlds. This then is not a marriage of passion but of need.

  The camera shutter shuffles and clicks several times in Keogh Photography Studios off St Stephen’s Green. The scene is frozen and framed. They walk out into the bustle of Dublin city in their stiff new clothes and so their married life begins.

  After the muted ambience of the studio the city startles anew. The brightness, the noise, and the leaden air. There is a clash of colours and smells: a mix of burnt hops from Guinness’s Brewery, the putrid yellowing of a smoke-filled sky and the stench of the Liffey. This stench is the worst. My mother feels unwell and my father is anxious. He rushes ahead of her down Grafton Street. He does not think to take her hand or ask how she is and, if he does, feels too awkward to put deed to thought. She has difficulty keeping up and collides with a cyclist, making him swear and swerve. Her new shoes show little sympathy for her feet.

  She knows that her husband is looking for his older brother Robert, who has been waiting outside Brown Thomas for the photo session to finish. Robert has accompanied them on their honeymoon because he’s familiar with the city. My parents have never been to their nearest city Belfast, let alone Dublin. They’re like lost children in a maze and are glad of Robert’s guiding hand.

  When they finally see him amid the crowd they both breathe a sigh of relief. He is easy to spot because he cuts an impressive figure; with his trilby, belted gabardine coat and serious air he resembles a spy left over from the war.

  Robert acknowledges the pair with a brief nod and strides ahead. No words are spoken and they are grateful to see that he’s heading into Bewley’s Oriental Café. Once inside, they form a clumsy trio round a table, and after much hesitation order a cream tea. The air quivers between them. They feel this new experience as a panic rising in them, making the hands unsteady, the words unsure. While all about them conversations ebb and flow, laughter rolls and ripples, fragile cups are raised and lowered, forks sink through pastry, making the china clink and ring. A whole symphony of sound and movement unfolds around them and they feel excluded, ill at ease in the carefree élan of the gathering.

  Mother eases off her shoes and sighs. She reaches for a cake and is suddenly conscious of her red, coarsened hands. She’s 27 and has been a workhorse for most of those years. She coughs to cover her embarrassment and looks forward to a better life – a life that will not include the endless scrubbing of shirttails and collars, the drudgery of keeping five brothers presentable. They’ll just have to find someone else to skivvy for them, and her mother will have to find someone else to bully.

  With this thought a light snaps on in a new world, lighting up the house that she has planned; a home of her own at last. She imagines moving through its coloured landscape, making the contours of it fit the shape of things to come. She sees the sky leaning in at spotless windowpanes, sun-plated surfaces that shine, a washed floor drying without trespass, floral curtains, scented rooms, potted plants on sills.

  She longs for the space that was pulled from her as she grew up and sees it now unfurling in the parlour she will sit in, the garden she’ll look out on. The urge to stay in this other world is strong; she lets her thoughts roam through the quiet spaces of her dream house, not wanting to return to the noise and bustle of the café.

  But return she does, grafting her dream onto the man at her side, her newly acquired husband. She looks at him now and all he offered her: a handsome face, a promise of money, a gold wedding band and – perhaps most important of all – a ready escape.

  So for your face I have exchanged all faces,

  For your few properties bargained the brisk

  Baggage, the mask-and-magic-man’s-regalia.

  She allows herself a rueful smile and looks out of the café window, to the trams and carts of the homeward bound – a film with the sound turned down.

  Spent cigarettes still fume in the ashtray. The brothers are talking but have made no attempt to include her; a river of words running past her, leaving her stranded. A woman is a foreigner in their company. It is hot and humid in the café and cigarette smoke hangs like a great amorphous witness over the three of them. Robert steals covert glances at the bride’s perfect profile and marvels at her beauty. He regrets that he couldn’t have made a shape himself and resents his brother for having achieved the elevated status of the married man. After all he, Robert, is a man of letters, has been out in the world; educated at college in London – qualified with honours – and is blessed with all the concomitant aspirations and awareness that go with these things. A flame of resentment flares up in him now, a flame that will flicker and burn in him for the rest of his days. He tries now to contemplate the implications of the married state, but his mind contracts. He cannot, or rather will not, envisage such intimacy and suddenly cancels the reverie with a comment.

  ‘Grand place this, asay.’ He gazes up at the ceiling as he speaks.

  But father isn’t listening. He’s parted one of the sandwiches and is examining the contents.

  ‘What sorta schaghey’s that?’ he asks.

  Mother, being a woman, feels moved to respond to this culinary query.

  ‘It’s salad. Y’know: lettuce and tomato and stuff …’ she trails off uneasily.

  ‘I don’t care what it is!’ the bridegroom snaps. ‘Wouldn’t fill a bloody rabbit, let alone a man.’

  He closes the sandwich, returns it to the plate, and selects another for examination. Robert can no longer ignore his brother’s crude antics and glares at him.

  ‘Are ye gonna do that with evirything on the plate, are ye? We have to ate too, y’know. Could ye not conduct yirself when yir outtamong the people?’

  ‘Sappy lotta people,’ says father, looking around. ‘Pack of oul’ pukes. And thir’s no need for you to be gettin’ so carnaptious.’

  He wolfs the sandwich and takes a noisy slurp of the tea. Several patrons cast glances at their table. Mother, somewhat embarrassed and sensing a dispute between the brothers, rushes in to keep the peace.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Robert,’ she says. ‘I’m finished anyway.’

  Father, to the relief of all concerned, decides that he too has eaten enough, and throws back his head to drain the dregs in the teacup. He puts it down with a clatter on the saucer and announces, ‘Quare tay that … better than that bloody British dishwater you get up in the North. They know how to do things in the Free State, I’m tellin’ ye.’

  He now turns in his seat to have a good gape around. He will never be one to observe the refinement and dignity certain situations demand, being more prone to the cock-up and the clanger. His discourtesy invites some strange looks but he assumes not to notice. ‘Not used out, just up for the day’ is probably the consensus that ripples through the onlookers.

  Father’s hobby is carpentry and when it comes to furniture he shows an obsessive interest in how things are put together. He now thumps the back of the chair, gives it a right good shake and announces to the gathering that it’s about an inch off true and made of plywood – ‘only oul’ rubbish.’

  A waiter hovers nervously, faces strain with astonishment; a tide of pink creeps up my mother’s neck. She’s shocked, but sooner rather than later will have to get used to her husband’s idiosyncrasies. Robert goes looking for the toilet.

  My father’s forensic interest in joinery and his habit of attacking unsuspecting pieces of furniture in public will not diminish with the years. Once, while staying in a B&B in Donegal, my sister and I were summoned from our bedroom by an almighty thundering on the stairs. We found him hammering away on the banister, testing t
he firmness of its anchorage. He concluded aloud that it was only ‘an oul’ rickle’, oblivious to the fact that the lady of the house had appeared behind him in a speechless state, clutching at her nightdress and on the verge of collapse. No doubt she’d thought she was being burgled – or worse. We mumbled our apologies, backed father into his room and took the precaution of locking him in.

  But that was later.

  For now, for my mother, these things are a portent of what is to come. She is aware of a chink in the armour of her chosen prince. She wonders at this coarse betrayal – that inconsiderate display. Robert, ever the schoolmaster, sees her distress and takes control. He beckons the waiter with a nod and very soon they are out of there.

  Robert now realises that his brother cannot be trusted in reputable establishments, and swiftly aborts a plan for alcoholic refreshment at the Gresham Hotel. Something needs to be done, he thinks, and duly adjusts his itinerary. So he forgoes the genteel tea shops and hotels in favour of the less salubrious cafés and much frequented hostelries. There are many pubs in Dublin and he now heads for the dingiest one he can think of: The Mizzen Mast, near Amiens Street train station.

  Robert finds its atmosphere ideal: a nexus of Mickies and Paddies from the mountains and bogs, with their flat caps, stubble and toothless talk. Once inside, the schoolmaster can relax, content in the knowledge that his brother will blend seamlessly with this rough assemblage. His sister-in-law is not so content; what with her new pink suit and newly acquired airs, she certainly has no wish to spend time in this dive. But on an intellectual level she understands the logic of Robert’s choice. The men drink whiskey, the lady a sweet sherry. The bridegroom drinks for courage and Robert drinks to forget. And the bride, well, she drinks for luck. She really feels she’s going to need it.

  One year later my mother was pregnant with her first child. She would give birth to nine more, her once youthful body collapsing and thickening under the strain. I came in as number seven. My youngest brother was born in 1963, and we as a family were complete.

  LESSONS IN HEAVEN

  Which of us can bear witness to their earliest years? As I roll out the map of my life and look at that used-up part of it, viewing my past through the present, one region remains tightly closed, unable to surrender its mysteries and proceedings: my infancy.