Uncle Hilary
I’m staring at – or maybe into – a black and white photo of my Uncle Hilary jiving on the dance floor of his local club in Belfast. In the photo he appears to be about 19 years-old and is wearing a dark-coloured suit, matching tie, waistcoat, and black dress shoes. His head is inclined forwards and downwards as he monitors his moves in what I assume to be an effort to get it right. At that moment this is all that matters to him, getting it right, probably so that he doesn’t let himself down in the eyes of the girl who is dancing opposite him.
Belfast was buzzing in the early 1960s with showbands and with the vibes
from the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Righteous Brothers etc, etc. The city was
fully alive and heedless of the ugly dark corners where sectarianism and violence
were festering. The portents were there, but many didn’t perceive them or chose
to ignore them. Looking at the photo I like to think that Uncle Hilary was
blithely unaware of any of this; my uncle prioritised enjoyment and fun, just
as every young person should. When I think of him I recall the endless rides in
his lorry where, to my horror, he let me – a 4 year old - do the steering while
he worked the pedals. In the Falls baths, I begged him to throw me in the deep
end to find out if I could swim and to my disappointment, he outright refused.
On another occasion he bought me a tortoise as a pet and did not intervene when
I tried to teach the poor creature how to swim in a basin of water. A few years
were to pass before I recoiled in horror and my own cruelty, born out of
ignorance.
When mammy hanged herself, the fun and laughter went out of everybody’s life. There were no more photos of Uncle Hilary jiving in the dance hall and no more rides in his giant lorry. But I do recall cuddling up to him on the sofa – aged five - while we both looked at photos of mammy on Sunday afternoons. After Dad remarried, I never saw those photos again or indeed, much of Uncle Hilary for a while. That is until he secretly began to collect me from school in his car and take me to Milltown Cemetery where mammy is buried. Those trips to the cemetery were our secret, only ours, because my little sister was too young to understand. Even though I was only six at that time I remembered each and every visit to the cemetery, especially that cold winter’s day when I stood on the edge of Mammy’s grave feeling as bleak as the landscape around me and wishing I was in the grave with her. Wishing that she had taken me with her on the evening she put a rope around her neck and stepped off that chair.
Uncle Hilary and granny were
the only ones I could talk to about my sorrow. As often as I could escape from
my new home, I ran to the phone box and reversed the charges to my
grandmother’s house on the other side of Belfast. More often than not, Uncle
Hilary would be out working; that was when I told granny that my new stepmother
beat us for the least misdemeanour. We were unhappy but dad didn’t intervene to
stop the cruelty, so could we come and live with her and Uncle Hilary? I never
got a straightforward answer to that question, so I decided to take matters
into my own hands at the next opportunity.
Dad and Kathleen sometimes went to the cinema together, leaving me and my younger sister in the care of the next door neighbour, Mrs O’Hare. I knew that she never called into our house to check on us, so the time had arrived for us to flee. As we were just children, 6 and 4 years old, we couldn’t carry grown ups’ suitcases, so I packed a few of our clothes into two shopping bags – no room for toys. The journey from south Belfast, where we lived, to our grandmother’s house in west Belfast entailed catching two buses to get there. That was easy for me because I’d purposefully paid close attention to the route on the few occasions we’d made the journey with dad. Relations between my stepmother herself and my deceased mother’s relatives were sour, so, she didn’t take us. Granny said my stepmother was “horse faced” while her own daughter, my mother, was the “Grace Kelly of West Belfast”. She never forgave Dad for marrying such an ugly woman.
The next day Kathleen questioned us about the cigarette butt. She was puzzled because she knew that my sister and I hated anything to do with cigarettes. When Dad arrived home that afternoon, he looked at us strangely and then disappeared into the parlour with Kathleen. Apparently, Uncle Hilary had telephoned him at work to appraise him of what had taken place. When Dad explained to us that he knew all the facts, I studied his face for hurt and disappointment but found none. We were nothing more than a massive inconvenience to him.
It was a different matter for my stepmother though. She interpreted what had happened through the lens of rejection and this fuelled her anger and ultimately her cruelty toward us. Beatings became more severe and she did everything she could to ensure there was no contact between my sister and I and our mother’s family. She rang my grandmother in a fury and warned her that contact between us and them had to stop forthwith. Even Christmas presents were forbidden. Uncle Hilary learned this the hard way, when his Christmas presents for Elaine and me – a beautiful TIMEX watch and a toy piano – were returned to him by my stepmother. He looked broken when he came to the house to collect them.
Once communication had been cut between us and my mother’s family, my sister and I only had each other to turn to. We comforted and supported one another when Kathleen lashed out at us, and she knew what she was doing was wrong because she made sure that the marks were under our clothes, invisible to teachers and anyone else. Her own family never intervened when she became violent toward us. They just turned away and said nothing.
When the Troubles broke out in Belfast, Dad was quick to make a decision to leave, and we did leave – but without telling my mother’s family. Once we had settled into our new life in England, we thought we’d never see them again, and we didn’t for a long while. By the time they found us I’d been working in the civil service for a year and my sister was in her final year of school. Uncle Hilary came to see us in England with his new wife, Anne Marie, and they stayed in the small hotel opposite our house in Heywood. Before they arrived, Kathleen and Dad stressed they’d been pressured into accepting the visit and stipulated that at no point were we to be left alone with them.
And that is how it was. Both my parents were assiduous in their determination to ensure that one of them was always around when Uncle Hilary was there. I was furious at the lies they manufactured about us leading a happy life, but I had to listen in silence, mute acceptance of their cover-up. However, on the final morning of their visit I found myself in Uncle Hilary’s car with Dad and my sister. Suddenly, Dad recalled that he’d left something important in the house, his wallet, perhaps. That was my opportunity to speak my truth and I took it. In about three minutes I told Uncle Hilary about the abuse, both physical and psychological to which we had been subjected to for years. When I talked about the ongoing beatings and humiliation, Uncle Hilary’s eyes widened in shock because he’d believed what my parents had said and that was the story, the sham, he’d been about to take back to my mother’s family in Belfast…
When Dad got back in the car, there was silence. Uncle Hilary said nothing and neither did Dad. That same silence prevailed when Uncle Hilary had a fatal accident six years later and died a young man in his thirties. Dad and Kathleen alleged they forgot to mention it, that they didn’t think I’d be bothered or even care. Uncle Hilary had been the one who talked to me most about my mother, the one who assured me that she had loved me greatly, even from the depths of her own suffering. Now he too was gone, so suddenly and tragically., leaving me only the memories and dreams.
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