No One Wants You (16 page)

I have often thought over the years: ‘Who is he, to consider himself so important in the grand scheme of things,
to
deny me? Who are his family, that they are so important that I had to pretend that I was something I was not, just so their dignity would not be tainted by my existence?’ At the time though this did not bother me, as my goal was to get married and have children.

I was going to achieve that ambition, whatever it took.

Whatever we had to say to his family, to maintain the status quo, I would agree to it. The scandal, created among the neighbours in Graignamanagh, County Kilkenny, when it became known that the youngest son of Harry and Cathy Roberts was to marry an illegitimate girl, would have been too much to contemplate.

The day of the wedding finally arrived, February 24, 1973.

On the night before the wedding I stayed with one of Harry’s sisters, Alice. As Harry did not drink alcohol, he did not have a stag night. He stayed at his parents’ home, a few miles away. It was all planned between Harry and I, to be a very low-key wedding, an event to be got through, with a minimum of fuss.

On the morning of the wedding I was up at dawn. I could hardly sleep, as excitement, such as I had never allowed myself to experience previously, took over. First of all, the dresses! Under no condition was I wearing anything that was less than perfect. With my history of second-hand clothing from charitable organisations, there was no way that I was getting married in anything less than brand-new.

For months I had devoured women’s magazines, looking for suitable ideas for my wedding dress.
Bride Magazine
provided the answer. Their ‘Wedding Dress of the year 1973’ was the one for me. Nothing less would do. The dress was white, with lace on the cuffs and a low-cut neck. It was for sale from Berketex for £265 in London and I duly purchased it for my most special day, without the slightest consideration of the cost.

I had my own bridesmaids for the day. Breege Dolan, who was also a nurse and had trained with me, was my chief bridesmaid. Anastasia O’Mahoney, Harry’s niece, was the second one. I also had a page boy, Harry’s nephew. The bridesmaid dresses had been subject to the same level of pre-purchase search as my own. They turned out to be turquoise and white with a matching hat. All our shoes were white and plain enough, but they were as expensive as I could find. I did not want to be reminded of the time when I could not afford shoes at all. Their flowers were white carnations, with entwined ivy.

All organisation and preparation for the wedding was done by myself, or with the help of my friends. I had no family to help me. Part of my ‘manufactured’ family began to arrive at the house later that day. It consisted mainly of my previous employer Mrs Cooke’s extended family. Mrs Cooke’s health had deteriorated dramatically following surgery and she had died about two years after I had left her employment. I had gotten on very well with the entire family and had kept in touch with her relatives. They were very genuine, good people. If I could have looked upon any of my employers as being family, the Cookes were as close as it came. When they heard that I was getting married, they were thrilled and genuinely delighted for me.

Old Mrs Dillon, who was Joan Cooke’s mother, had asked me what I wanted as a wedding present. Without hesitation, and half in jest, I had replied, ‘A family.’

‘Without any parents,’ I had added cautiously.

‘I will be your grandmother,’ she said with a grin. ‘John, my son-in-law, will be your uncle,’ she added, obviously enjoying the proposed charade. ‘And Carmel, John’s wife, will be your aunt. What else do you need in the way of manpower? A chauffeur? A butler perhaps? I am really going to enjoy this wedding.’

John ‘my uncle’, who was to ‘give me away’ arrived early
on
the day, looking much the worse for alcoholic wear, from the night before in his favourite pub. He headed straight for the kitchen and became another liability for Alice. She had to cope with my hung-over ‘uncle’ and his ceaseless requests for more whiskey and copious amounts of tea, which he insisted he needed to drink to carry him through his ‘niece’s’ wedding day. Every time he mentioned ‘his niece’, he stared in my direction, catching my attention with a very exaggerated wink of his left eye, simultaneously accompanied by a short nod of the head. Every time he winked at me, all I could do was collapse with laughter.

My chief bridesmaid, Breege, could not be roused out of the bed. She had arrived from London, late the previous evening, also a bit the worse for alcoholic wear. She had travelled over with about five of my friends, who were all nurses in London hospitals. I think that there was quite a lot of alcohol drank on the journey from London to Kilkenny. Not all Irish nurses in London at that time were teetotallers! Six off-duty nurses on their way to a wedding in Ireland were quite a formidable force to contend with. But they promised that they would be on their best behaviour on the day of the wedding.

Alice and I dragged my hung-over bridesmaid out of the bed. Hot strong sweet tea, with a shot of Jameson whiskey added for fortification, did the trick. She was stuffed into her very expensive bridesmaid dress, which she had only tried on in London once before. The dress fitted perfectly. Breege had not put on an ounce of weight. She was pretty well ready. Anastasia, the other bridesmaid, had been waiting patiently the whole time and was ready. We had packed the page boy off with his father, so he was ready at the church.

My ‘uncle’ John was ready.

Alice was ready to leave.

I was the only one who was not ready. My hair was being done by a local stylist, and was taking ages.

Breege had joined John at the kitchen table, as he had produced a bottle of Bushmills whiskey. He was looking for willing assistants to help him drink the bottle dry. She was keen to accommodate him.

The place was in bedlam. It was now ten o’clock and I had to be in the church by eleven.

I eventually separated John and my chief bridesmaid from the, by now, half-empty bottle of whiskey. Outside, I bundled John, along with myself, into a waiting white Ford Zodiac. I had booked it as a wedding limousine to take us to the church and afterwards to the hotel. The February air was still and chilled, as we followed Alice’s husband’s tiny, post-war baby-Austin, with the bridesmaids inside. After three long miles, along the narrow road, twisting down the hill to the church, we arrived in convoy.

It was five past eleven. I was getting married, and I did not want to be too late, just in case Harry changed his mind.

There was no great excitement at the church. Michael, Harry’s brother, the best man, with his lean and angular good looks and self-assured cocky attitude, was already waiting at the door of the church. He smiled when he saw us arriving on schedule. He gave us a two-handed thumbs-up signal and disappeared into the gloom of the church entrance. He came out again almost immediately, brandishing an unfinished cigarette, to explain his hasty reappearance. It made a large arc through the air as he flicked it from between his fingers, to where it landed on the ground, close beside me. ‘Stub that out, will ya, before ya come in,’ he ordered with a grin, before he turned and disappeared once more into the darkness.

I ignored both the cigarette and the accompanying order as I took hold of my ‘uncle’ John’s proffered arm. We stopped in the entrance hall of the church. I took a deep breath, while John coughed up his lungs, the result of too
many
early-morning cigarettes. As our eyes met, in an eloquent look, the two of us moved off.

Breege held open the inner door, as we passed through. When she opened the door, the church organist began to play the leading strains of ‘Here comes the bride’.

One step in, ‘Oh sweet Jesus, where is my bouquet?’ I shrieked.

‘Oh Christ, it is in the holy water font,’ said Breege, as she rushed to get it. I had left it there, as I smoothed out the imaginary wrinkles on my dress, before my triumphal march up the aisle.

‘Jaysus, it’s wringin’ wet,’ said Breege, as she manically shook the living daylights out of the once-pretty bunch of roses, intertwined with scented white hyacinth tips.

‘They will do as they are,’ I groaned, as I aggressively snatched them from her.

John shrugged his broad shoulders and inclined his head towards the altar as if to ask, ‘Are we ready now?’

Off we went again, on our second attempt at progress towards the contrasting brightly lit, high altar.

I noticed that the number of people on each side were somewhat unbalanced. On ‘my side’, on the left, were about six or seven of my colleagues from nursing, my ‘aunt’ Carmel and my ‘granny’, old Mrs Dillon. But on the right-hand side we were outnumbered by about five or six to one. We were running at 70 or more – so much for a small wedding! Harry’s relatives had appeared out of every nook and cranny, for Harry’s big day out. There was nothing that I could do about it now.

Father Bernard’s beaming, welcoming smile, beckoned. When we reached the gates of the railings that enclosed the altar area, John took hold of my hand and placed it in Harry’s hand. Harry had appeared, as if out of nowhere.

As John left me and moved away, time and space seemed to stop for me for an instant. A cold, clearly defined thought
flashed
through my mind. Its guilt-laden reality said to me, ‘That man who has just ‘given me away’ should have been my father!’ This was immediately followed by, ‘I wonder what he looks like?’ It was such a small instant in time but it really shook me. In 25 years of my life, I had never asked myself that question. On the few occasions that my father’s identity had arisen, for example, when in conversation with my minder, Sister Bernadette, it was always made into a non-issue. ‘Your father is now married with a family of his own, and if he were to find out about you, it would wreck the whole family,’ is what I was always told. Consequently, I never even thought about him.

I could not contemplate being the cause of the disintegration of his entire family, especially of his two sisters who were nuns. I had been told about them a million times at the industrial school and that, as Mercy nuns in Cork, if they were embroiled in a scandal involving my father, the results would be cataclysmic for both them and possibly, the entire Catholic Church in Ireland. Subconsciously, I had decided that I was not going to take on those responsibilities. I had enough to deal with at that stage, just trying to survive every day. But then at the very moment that I was going to take my prospective husband’s hand in mine, at my wedding, I wanted to know what my father looked like! I could not believe it. I was just about to get married and all I had was a blank picture of my father in my mind and I wanted to know what he looked like.

I did not realise it then, but it was to be a life-changing moment for me.

After that tiny immeasurable pause, I was brought back to reality, by the reassuring touch of Father Bernard’s hand. He grasped my wrist and whispered, ‘Celine, I am so happy for you today.’

He then turned to Harry and said, ‘Harry, I know that you will make a wonderful husband for Celine. I have
known
her for a long time. She is a special friend of mine.’

There may have been an implicit threat to Harry in Father Bernard’s comments, but I think he could see that I looked like I was happy in my choice, and he was willing to respect that. Harry detected no obvious or even subtle threat, as they subsequently became very good friends.

The remainder of the ceremony went really well. Everyone gave the correct responses when asked. Michael, the best man, produced the gold wedding ring from his inner jacket pocket on cue. Father Bernard pronounced us man and wife for better or worse, for richer or poorer, until death us do part.

As we were officially married, I felt an emptiness. Whatever magic I had expected to feel just wasn’t there. I just hung on to the fact that I had to get married.

We then accompanied Father Bernard and our best man and chief bridesmaid, into the sacristy, a little room just off from the main altar area, where we both signed the State Register of Marriage. Michael and Breege, who for a short space of time were transformed from best man and bridesmaid, into witnesses for the state, duly witnessed our signatures. Once the paperwork for the governing bureaucracy was completed, we returned to our positions at the altar rails. We kissed and walked back down the aisle, arm-in-arm, smiling and bowing to the attendant Roberts’ family to our left, while grinning at the exaggerated fawning of the fake ‘Clifford’ family on our right-hand side. I still couldn’t quite believe that this was really happening to me.

Out into the bright February sunlight and a photographer awaited us. When we emerged, it was high jinks from everybody as we were showered with rice and confetti. In front of the church we were pushed to and fro by the photographer and ordered to smile on demand, as he clicked his camera shutter and wound on the roll of film to the next
frame
. In between shots, we chatted to everyone who wanted to extend their best wishes to us for our future married life together. It was all an exciting whirl to me.

Then, ‘The bride and groom with their respective parents,’ ordered the photographer. ‘Granny’ and ‘uncle’ John obliged immediately on cue. They stepped forward and arranged themselves at Harry’s side, without a prompt. Harry never batted an eyelid. He participated in the parental charade, as if he, himself, had been at my parents’ wedding. The photographer completed the various permutations and combinations of all the possible groups that might have been offended, if they had not been included in a photograph.

Then Harry and I sat in the back of the Ford, which was all decked out in various coloured ribbons, and away we went. We were at the head of a posse of cars, all blowing their horns and generally making quite a din, in Kilkenny City just after midday on a Wednesday. When I got out of the car at the hotel, I was mortified to find that our car had three or four old rusty tin cans, accompanied by three or four old worn-out leather boots, tied to the rear bumper. I always thought that the tradition of old boots and cans was beneath me. I must have had some little bit of pride in me, however small and difficult to locate at times.