My Mother Wore a Yellow Dress (24 page)

She probably realised that release would only come through that most ultimate of departures. For now she'd make do with these snatches of happiness, holding on to them like pools of essence in her hands, the inevitability of their transience enabling her to keep at bay for a while the sorrow of letting them go – just for a little while.

I sensed her fear too, that undercurrent of foreboding that tugged at the most innocent of rituals, made me realise how unworthy she felt, and confirmed the same feelings in me.

I could glimpse it in her face and in her actions: at the bus-stop getting the fare out of her purse too soon; in a restaurant putting up with inadequate service; in shops not asking the assistant for a receipt when it was forgotten. She never wished to incur displeasure, in case she drew attention to herself. She was afraid to engage fully with the world and to take her rightful place, because no one had given her the acceptance she was entitled to or the validation that should have been hers. The Church had rendered her practically powerless and father had finished the job.

As mother tried to pray her way out of her distress, I painted, sublimating pain with my paintbrush. Those days at art college were important inasmuch as they focused me on my emotional incompleteness, and created a need in me to explore and search for answers.

J
OHN
H
ENRY AND THE
M
ALTESE
B
ROAD

I
n 1979 Margaret Thatcher became Britain's first woman prime minister; the newly elected Pope John Paul II visited Ireland, and I graduated with an honours degree in painting from the Belfast College of Art.

I also became aware of a far more important qualification I needed to study for, and one which would serve me better than any piece of paper. To acquire it I knew that I must travel beyond the accepted standard of what I had become, to apostatise the dogmas that had reinforced it. I knew in short that, in order to see the light beyond the shadows, I would have to piece together meaning from the fragmented truths and fictions I'd grown up with.

That year will also be remembered for less laudable events. On 27 August Earl Louis Mountbatten, the queen's cousin, was killed by an IRA bomb at Mullaghmore, County Sligo. A few hours later the tranquillity of the beautiful seaside town where I once lived was torn apart; the bombers had struck again, slaughtering 18 British soldiers at Narrow Water, one of Warrenpoint's most picturesque spots.

On 30 September the pope addressed an audience of 250,000 at Drogheda in the Irish Republic and made an appeal for an end to violence in Ireland.

To all of you who are listening, I say: Do not believe in violence; do not support violence. It is
not the Christian way. It is not the way of the Catholic Church. Believe in peace and love, for they are of Christ. On my knees I beg of you to turn away from the paths of violence and to return to the ways of peace. You may claim to seek justice. I too believe in justice and seek justice. But violence only delays the day of justice. Violence destroys the work of justice. … Do not follow any leaders who train you in the ways of inflicting death.

Two days later the IRA responded to the Holy Father. ‘Force is by far the only means of removing the evil of the British presence in Ireland,' they stated. ‘We know also that, upon victory, the Church would have no difficulty in recognising us.'

Such arrogance in the face of righteousness! Yet it is true to say that men who create war do not live by the laws of a higher power but by the selfish dictates of a lower one: their own ego.

My days in Belfast's war zone were numbered however. My last summer holiday from art college ended with my graduation day. In many respects this day resembled my First Communion, but I'd swapped the white frock for a black robe and the artificial piety for real pride. My mother and brother John came to witness my big moment.

Father could not be trusted to behave himself among the academic elite; we were sure he'd go out of his way to embarrass us. I had visions of him challenging the strength of one of the tables at the post-reception buffet, sending the food to the floor and us into hiding.

Our fears were not entirely groundless. Just such an incident had loomed at Helen's wedding when my
parents were guests. Mother was alerted to danger by the sound of shivering cutlery, and saw the wedding cake leaning at an angle to rival the Tower of Pisa. She found father in the nick of time, crouched by the top table, examining a leg joint.

So my graduation was father-free and therefore risk-free. He couldn't have cared less anyway. When asked if he'd like to attend, he responded with the evasive enthusiasm that characterised his whole life.

‘Naw,' he said sourly, ‘I'll not bother me head.'

That this occasion would be a one-off event did not seem to impact on him. He was not a man to mark the success of his family.

He was as predictable as the seasons that he never tired of commenting on. My landscape paintings would be held up for his approval, and rejected one by one. The skies were too blue, the mountains too flat, the houses too big, too small, too this, too that. Early on I realised that it was impossible to win his favour, and simply gave up trying.

Mother was forever the go-between, smoothing the way and trying to keep the peace. She ignored his criticisms and was so proud of my achievement. In the end that was all that really mattered to me.

This time around, thank heavens, she did not suggest Station Island, Lough Derg, as a reward for all my efforts. Instead I got something far beyond anything I could have imagined: a three-week holiday in California. We were off to visit my Uncle John, mother's long-absent brother whom she had not seen in 33 years.

Her five brothers were the complete opposites of my father's family. They were kindly, light-hearted men, who had gone out and engaged with the world at an early age, doing backbreaking work to sustain themselves while following whatever youthful dreams they had. Unlike the
McKenna boys' situation, there were no pots of money or acres of land to detain the Henrys at home, or stanch the course of their lives until death took the parents and delivered the goods.

The two youngest, John and Peter, had emigrated to the United States in their early twenties. Dan, Frank and Paddy had married, raised families and, like mother, chosen to remain close to their roots.

Dan was the uncle I came to know best; mother and he were very close. His calm, endearing personality showed me how mother could have been had she not come under father's baleful influence. Being in Dan's company was like being near a warming fire; he melted any reserve you might have, and brightened your spirits with compliments and praise you felt you didn't deserve. What I never heard from father I heard from him; Dan's generosity of spirit made up for the shortfall. I was always told I looked well, even when I didn't, and given smiles to lift me when I was down. Truly spiritual people are a rarity. Uncle Dan had achieved his serenity through an effortless acceptance of himself. There were no masks or barriers, no rigid viewpoints to be strenuously defended, no need to be always right. He had managed to subdue the ego so that his spirit was fully alive. The memory of his humility has left a lasting impression on me. He was living proof of Emerson's belief that ‘the best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.'

So I was looking forward to meeting Uncle John. Mother had a fund of stories about the devilish young prankster. He had been the joker of the family, the life and soul. His CV was impressive: he'd left home at 17 to work in a factory in England. From there he travelled to Australia where he stayed for a year. On his return home he discovered he couldn't settle and set sail for
America with little money in his pocket but big ideas in his head. He worked his way across the Land of the Free and finally settled in Sacramento, California, where he married a Maltese-Canadian by whom he had three children. John had always promised mother that he'd visit Ireland, yet she knew he never would. If she were to see him again she'd simply have to bridge the distance herself.

Quite naturally mother wanted to look well for her brother, and that meant dieting. She had a month to lose a stone and knew from experience that willpower was not always enough.

She therefore enlisted the help of her GP, who prescribed for her a course of slimming pills. In reality they were amphetamines, and were very successful. She lost the weight – but she lost sleep as well. She soon developed a non-stop urge to continue talking and working into the small hours. I used to hear her at four in the morning, washing and hoovering and singing to herself, a tornado in a housecoat, capable of amazing feats, sweeping all before her. She might have been going crazy but the pounds were falling off and her self-esteem was rising. John Henry would see a svelte Mary after all.

The pills worked, that is certain. Just how effective they were was shown to me at a rock concert at Slane, County Meath, later in the year. I observed the ageing lead singer of a headlining band leaping round the stage for a full two hours with the energy of a ten-year-old. I suspected where that lean energy might have come from: mother had it in a bottle under her bed.

The countdown to our departure began, and she still wasn't losing the weight fast enough. A sweat suit seemed the answer. As long as there are overweight people wobbling about this planet of ours there will be no end to the gimmickry that is peddled with the empty promise
of a quick-fix, minimal-effort solution. Mother's sweat suit was one of them.

She bought it by mail order from the back page of a Sunday supplement, believing the dubious claims of the snake-oil merchants that you could lose ten pounds
while you slept
. Each night she retired to her bedroom looking like a Soviet cosmonaut, ponderously moving down the hallway before climbing into bed to sweat. In fairness, the pounds did disappear but I fear this was due entirely to water loss. After several cups of coffee she'd have regained it all. I didn't dare tell her this of course. She was very pleased with the result, convincing herself that the ‘needless' expenditure was worth it, and I willingly colluded in the fraud to keep her happy.

We were unused to air travel, mother and I, and the journey to Uncle John's home was a gruelling one for us: ten hours in total with a night transfer in New York. We finally arrived exhausted, legs and feet swollen like figures in a Beryl Cook painting. At Los Angeles we changed in the airport toilets, re-applied our make-up yet again, trying vainly to cover the cracks of that sleepless journey. Mother donned her yellow dress for this very special moment; we walked out into the hazy Californian sun and waited to be claimed.

John Henry ran from nowhere with arms outstretched. Even after all those years he'd no difficulty in recognising his sister. They embraced for what seemed a long time, shedding tears of joy in the full realisation of that landmark moment. It was a moment they never believed would come. I looked at this tableau of reunited siblings and knew I was witnessing the acme of my mother's life. It was the happiest she had ever been – and would ever become. There was nothing left for me to do but aim my Pentax and shoot that amazing moment.

John was 55 when we met and mother six years older. He was a jaunty, agile little man, fully alive to the moment, a coruscating presence who ‘dressed smart' and ‘talked quick'. And boy, just like those Yankees, he could talk!

With his thin moustache and glinting specs he could easily have passed as an understudy for Sir John Mills. He'd prepared for this occasion with care. He was dressed in a dapper, nautical outfit: navy-blue, brass-buttoned blazer, white slacks with matching shirt and loafers, the ensemble finished off with a red silk cravat, and a crimson handkerchief that spilled out of his breast pocket to add a rakish note.

He drove us to his home in a gigantic Oldsmobile saloon, he and mother sitting way up front. I travelled in the rear, dwarfed by that vast interior, rolling from side to side like a pea in an empty suitcase. I thought of John Mallon's bubblecar and mused idly that if Mr Mallon were put behind the Oldsmobile wheel he might well believe he was at the controls of a Boeing 747.

John's driving encouraged me to think that he had probably attended the Mrs Potter school of motoring. The car bounced and floated over the road as he regaled mother with rapid-fire commentary on the sights that unfolded, casually negligent of adherence to the Highway Code. He'd brake suddenly following yet another near miss, stick his head out of the window to holler ‘I pay my road tax too, you gaddamn bastard!' while mother crossed herself and I curled up into an even tighter ball. I never fully appreciated the usefulness of seat belts until I travelled with John Henry.

We finally arrived at the house, exhausted, distraught and extremely hungry – we hadn't eaten for hours – and concealed our discomfort lest we cause offence.

We were introduced to the ‘Maltese Broad', John's moniker for his wife Carol. She was waiting for us on the
lawn together with the children. They had two sons and a daughter, who grinned and gushed the requisite words of welcome before scampering off to do more exciting things. I was not much older than them yet felt like a pale old dud beside all that tanned, handsome vigour. I wanted to join them but there was no invitation so I reluctantly retired with the adults to the air-conditioned coolness of the house.

The Maltese Broad was a large, sweet lady who spent most of her time in the kitchen ‘fixing' food. Unfortunately she bore the evidence of this obsession all too clearly, and mother was thrilled to discover that by comparison with Carol Henry she was a mere Twiggy. The irony was that both John and his wife were so excited with our arrival that they forgot to offer us food. This was an occasion for celebration and we felt obliged to accept the whiskey and Budweiser on offer; we ended up merry as well as famished. Eventually, about six hours later, with John getting more animated and voluble with the help of Jack Daniels, we repaired to a Chinese restaurant for that longed-for meal.