No One Wants You (25 page)

On that Tuesday night, I had a phone call at home, at about 9 pm.

A strong, clear, male voice, with an Irish accent said, ‘Hello, can I speak to Celine?’

‘Celine speaking,’ I replied.

‘You must be my long-lost daughter?’

I felt about seven feet tall.

I cried.

He cried.

He said, ‘I love you and I can’t wait to see you. I have a big gang here waiting to speak to you. You will never be on your own again. All your brothers and sisters want to meet you. They are all going to speak to you and they will each tell you their names.’

A female voice then came on the line and said, ‘I am Eileen. Hello, big sister.’

She cried.

And then I cried.

Eight more voices, four male and four female, came on the line, each one identified themselves and then broke down in tears.

I cried with them each time.

After nine different voices, my father came back on the
line
. ‘Your mother and I want to go over to London and meet you and our grandsons. Would you be able to accommodate us?’

I replied, ‘It would be my privilege.’

He then said, ‘I lived and worked in London after the war.’

‘Where did you live in London?’

‘Regent’s Park,’ he said.

‘Well, I live in a much more humble part of London. I live in Streatham.’

‘We will travel to London on Sunday next, if we can get a flight. I work at Shannon Airport, and we will be on standby.’

I gave him my address. I told him that we would collect him at the airport.

He then ended the phone call with, ‘Goodbye. Good luck until we meet!’

When I put the phone down, I was in absolute shock. I was shattered emotionally.

I somehow dragged myself to the sofa and lay down. My mind was in a whirl.

As excited as I was, I could not help but have questions about my parents’ first trip to see me. Why did they not fly over immediately? Why wait for a ‘stand-by’ flight when I would have happily paid for the tickets?

And most of all, where does my mother stand in all this? She had not communicated a word to me since her last, angry, phone response.

I hoped these questions would be answered soon enough.

SIXTEEN

The Royal Visit

PREPARATIONS FOR THEIR
arrival began. I spring-cleaned the entire house from top to bottom. Nothing could be too good or too clean for the arrival of what I now considered to be ‘my royal family’.

On Tuesday of that week, in the early afternoon, my new-found sister Eileen phoned. She said, ‘I can’t wait to see you. I was thinking of cashing in my insurance policy to pay for my fare.’

‘Don’t do that, I am sure we will meet soon,’ I said.

‘Daddy is delighted to have found you and he can’t wait to see you, either. He was mad at Auntie Rosaleen for not telling him about you.’

I found that remark really strange. I expected my father to be really angry with my mother for not telling him about me for so many years. But that did not seem to be an issue. I did not pursue it with my new sister as I was trying to build bridges, not destroy them.

She said that she had lived in London when she was first married. She asked about my children and I reciprocated. It turned out that her daughter and my son Anthony were born in the same year. We ended by saying that we would meet soon.

Finally, she said, ‘I love you, Sis.’

I said in reply, ‘I love you, my new-found sister.’

I found it really strange, saying such things to someone that I had never met and had just spoken to for the first time.

I discovered later that events had spiralled out of control after I had been to visit Clifford at Clarina. The following day he had set off for Janesboro. He was going to see my mother and tell her that I had visited Clarina and had talked to Paddy O’Sullivan. On the bus he had met Charlie Healy, who I would later learn was my brother-in-law. He was married to my oldest sister, Eileen. Clifford had told Charlie about my visit and my existence. Charlie had been gobsmacked and recognised imminent trouble on the family horizon.

Charlie told Clifford not to do or say anything to anyone, until he got back to him. He had then contacted his sister-in-law, who was married to Eileen’s brother, Tommy O’Sullivan Junior. They had met and discussed the situation. Marion had been shocked to hear about me. They had decided to talk to their respective partners and then to question my mother.

When Tommy Junior arrived home from work that evening, Marion had told him that he had a full older sister whom he had never met. He was incredulous, but said that if he had another sister, he wanted to meet her and know her. Charlie meanwhile took Eileen to the pub that night, bought her a few stiff drinks and told her about me.

Her first reaction was, ‘That is a load of rubbish. There are nine of us in the family and I am the eldest child.’ As a throwaway question, Eileen then asked Charlie, ‘As a matter of interest, what is her name?’

Charlie replied, ‘Celine.’

‘Holy lamb of divine Jaysus, it must be true. Mammy’s name is Doreen Marie CELINE,’ said Eileen.

Charlie then told her that Tommy Junior and his wife Marion also knew that I existed, so the four of them had got
together
and hatched a plan. They had all agreed that the following Saturday evening, November 5, 1983, while my father pursued his favourite pastime of greyhound racing and its attendant gambling, they would entice my mother to visit Eileen’s house. When they had her on her own, they would ask her if they had a full sister, called Celine. Charlie’s part in the plan, was to collect Tom O’Sullivan from the dog track, and on the pretext of discussing some business with him, take him to his house where Doreen would be waiting.

When Saturday came, the plan had been put into action and was executed faultlessly. Tom O’Sullivan was at the dog track. Charlie had collected Doreen, my mother, and taken her to his house. When she got there and all the preliminary greetings were over, Marion and Charlie, being the in-laws, retired to the kitchen, while Tommy Junior and Eileen confronted their mother.

They told me much later that Tommy Junior said to her directly, ‘Have we got a sister called Celine?’

My mother, apparently, looked at him aghast and said, ‘How do you know?’

Tommy Junior said, ‘It does not matter how I know, is it true?’

My mother then answered, ‘Yes, it is true. You do have a sister called Celine.’

Then Eileen asked, ‘Who is the father?’

My mother answered, ‘Your daddy is, of course, but he has never been told of her existence.’

When Clifford had spoken to Charlie initially, he mentioned that I had seen Paddy O’Sullivan, Tom’s brother, and that he was aware of my existence. When the four ‘conspirators’, Charlie, Eileen, Tommy Junior and Marion, had talked together, they all assumed that Paddy O’Sullivan had always known about me, from day one.

Tommy Junior had then said to his mother, ‘Paddy
O’Sullivan
knows about Celine, do you want him to be here, when Daddy comes over, after the dog racing?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

Eileen had then phoned Paddy O’Sullivan, and asked him to drive over to her house. He agreed and had arrived shortly afterwards, with his wife Mary. Charlie was then dispatched to collect his father-in-law from the dog track.

The grand finale was ready to unfold. In some ways I wish I could have been there.

Tom O’Sullivan had had a good night at the dogs and was in great form as he had won some money. After they got out of the car and were approaching the house, he had recognised cars belonging to various members of the family, and said, ‘You never told me that you were having a party.’

‘I don’t think that there will be any party tonight, Tom,’ Charlie had muttered.

They entered the house and Tom had sat down beside my mother Doreen, slightly bewildered. Everyone was in the room. As Tom looked at everybody quizzically, Paddy O’Sullivan asked his brother Tom, ‘Do you remember back 35 years ago, to 18 Sarsfield Street, to when Doreen and you were young lovers?’

Cautiously, Tom said, ‘Yes, I can. I make no apologies; I took advantage of a situation.’

Paddy had then said bluntly, ‘What you do not know, is that out of that love a baby girl was born that you have never been told about.’

Tom wheeled around and stared at Doreen and said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I was afraid,’ she replied.

Paddy added, ‘You will be very proud of her. She is a nurse. She is married. She has two children and she lives in London.’

Tom had been shocked. He had then said to Doreen, ‘I
am
extremely hurt by this. You know that I would never have left you.’

There was no more to be said at this particular time. Tom suggested that it was time to go home and Charlie had got the unenviable job of driving them back to their place.

I asked my father, many months later, how he had felt at that particular moment. He told me he wished, ‘that the ground would have opened up and swallowed him.’ He felt so ashamed. He said that night he recalled the house that they used to make love. He remembered asking Doreen, around that time, if she was pregnant. I later asked my mother about this, and she said that she did not know what pregnant meant, at that age.

I presume that after my parents left, everybody concerned then sat there talking about the meeting. I was never privy to these discussions, so I can only speculate as to what might have been said.

The next thing that happened was that Tom O’Sullivan, officially now my father, had called a family conference for the following Tuesday evening. He did not know that I had spoken to my mother on the previous Sunday. I was still reeling from her rebuff and the realisation that they had been married to each other all along. The family conference consisted of his wife Doreen, and his nine children, at their house. The spouses of the married family members were not invited.

He sat them all down and addressed them with, ‘When your mother and I were young … ‘At the end of the speech, he had then apparently said that he was going to phone me, and that they could all speak to me. Months later, my youngest sister Thelma told me that between the Saturday of the confrontation and the Tuesday of the family meeting, she knew that something major was afoot. She thought that one or other of her parents had been diagnosed with a serious illness. Tom, her father kept asking her, ‘Do you still
love
me, Thelma?’ She had thought he was going to die. He seemed to need the reassurance, as if a major life event was about to take place.

On the Thursday of that week, my father had then made that first monumental call to me.

Even a few days after the call, my heart was still away and racing with excitement. I could not get over the fact that I had spoken to my father.

The following days were a blur and a flurry of domestic activity.

Cakes were baked.

Meat dishes were prepared.

Tables were set.

Tables were reset.

Recipes were consulted.

All was ready.

Especially me!

Harry just let me get on with it and Anthony was excited. Ronan was too young to understand what was going on.

Sunday arrived.

It was to be the most important day of my life.

Preparations continued throughout the day. Everything was in place. I tried not to think of what was about to happen. I was going to meet my father. I was going to meet my father and my mother. I suppose, having got to this stage, I really expected him to come on his own.

I had also expected a more immediate response from him. I wanted to have him alone. Instead, the dark spectre of my mother loomed. One part of me still had not recovered from her rebuff when she answered my telephone call. The other half of me now expected my father to have solved the issue of my mother’s attitude to me, over the remainder of the week.

I expected him to solve all my problems. I thought that
he
would make my mother love me. I expected everything to be ‘absolutely beauoooootiful’ from now on. Everything would run smoothly in my life, because my father was here to solve all my problems. It was stupid of me to think like that, but my thought processes were blinkered.

In reality, I knew that my mother did not want any part of my reappearance or intrusion into ‘her’ family. She could never accept me as part of her family. My opinion now is that she gave me life and, at five months old, she got rid of me. She locked the doors of her heart and mind to me, and consequently, she could never accept me.

I often think back to the meeting in the convent. It was at my request. Up until that meeting she had control over my disappearance. After that day she had lost some of that control and I became a very tangible threat. I think she may have realised that I was not going to disappear and that she was going to have to cope with my existence. I think it made her hate me.

I had flowers in their bedroom. I checked and rechecked them. I got dressed for going to the airport. Then myself, Harry and the two boys went to six o’clock mass at St Bart’s Church in Norbury. I could not concentrate on the service. I was really apprehensive. In the middle of the mass ceremony, I decided that the outfit that I had so carefully chosen to wear to the airport was not suitable. Harry and the two boys had to stand up and I ushered them out of their seats. They were frog-marched down the aisle, out to the car and home again, where I continued to deliberate over what to wear for my father.

I got changed again and eventually we headed for Heathrow Airport. We arrived punctually, parked the car and set off for the arrivals hall. We all lined up at the barrier. Anthony and Ronan were extremely well-behaved. They really were. They did everything they were asked. They must have known how anxious I was. There wasn’t a ‘bip’ out of
Harry
either. I think that he was gob-smacked by what was going on.

I saw my mother first. There was a man walking beside her. That was when I saw my father for the first time. When I first saw him, I knew it was him. He was wearing a beige Crombie coat, beige trousers and brown leather shoes. He was a tall well-built man, who walked towards me with a strong confident stride.