Family Affairs

Memories of life on an estate in Northern Ireland, glad a few of you remember the same estate so vividly!  We probably all need therapy to eradicate it from our brains.  But I am also so grateful for all the wonderful people I knew there.  So here's a bit about one family.

Family Affairs

We had neighbours on our estate called Wilson. I liked them. Jackie was the matriarchal figure of the family. She was benevolent and loving. Her husband had left her for another woman and she had brought up her four young children herself, in difficult financial and social circumstances. She was describing one day, her point of desperation. She’d had to move out of her house as debts demanded it, and she’d driven to a lonely road high on the mountains. There she had decided to take her life and that of her four children. The pain of life had become too intense and she could no longer cope. She drove back from that lonely road and faced the future. As it turned out, that future was hard, very hard, and yet she faced it. 

Donna was her daughter, a pretty teenager, who during the troubled marriage break up, had turned from a bright intelligent pupil to a resentful adolescent. Her exam results spelt an end to an academic life and meant she joined her place in the town’s dole queue with no other outlet. She turned with a vengeance to the social life available in the town. Discos and dances, these enlivened her week. I was always amazed at how she could transform herself from a reasonably attractive jean-clad figure in sloppy jumpers to a glamorous disco dancer on a mere pittance. 

David, Donna’s eldest brother, was only twenty-three but he was aware of his responsibilities. As the only breadwinner in the family, he had taken out a huge insurance policy. If anything happened to him, he wanted to be sure his mother and younger brothers and sister would be taken care of. It often struck me, as I watched his immaculate car and neat careful clothes in our disgusting estate, that David fought for order and decency in a world which didn’t play by the rules. It seemed so unfair that he be born in this mad world. He had problems buying his car, I remember. Because his dad had run up debts with almost all the banks, David was viewed as being tarred with a similar brush. It didn’t help that he had his father’s name and lived on the same estate. I often saw their father walking around with his girlfriend. They lived only five minutes away and he often came to visit his former wife. Jackie said she held no grudges and was glad to see him, but David behaved stiffly and formally when his father called. He was probably old enough to remember all the trauma of the marriage break up. 

Donna became pregnant. Okay, she should have known better, she should have taken precautions, but then who is perfect? The father was a boy from Derry and marriage was not on the cards. He will never know he fathered a son. Donna told her mother eventually and, although shocked, Jackie was supportive. Together they told David, who was angry but determined. He would support the new baby too. David’s broad shoulders just had to carry a little more, that was all.

Christopher was born and strangely, although unplanned and initially unwanted, he brought so much happiness to everyone in the family and even the street. He was the same age as my eldest son and they spent a lot of time together in our home. I loved Christopher. We all did. Sometimes the worst mistakes become our biggest joys. We lived only two doors away from Jackie and they were all a part of our lives. I remember having a morning makeover session in my living room where five of us had our hair done and make up applied. There was so much laughter and I still have a lovely photograph of Jackie’s finished work over. She is looking at the camera, self-conscious but with laughter playing around her mouth at all the fun of that morning. Christopher was four when Jackie was told she had cancer. It was too late to operate and she faded fast, much too fast for all of us to comprehend. Donna helped to nurse her and towards the end the doctor gave Donna two plastic bags full of heroin and morphine. Donna gave Jackie the injections alternately to help control the pain. It was hard. One day Donna called and wanted to borrow milk or sugar or something. I went to get it and when I came back she was slumped against the wall, crying. I was devastated. Bright, bouncy, Donna, who never gave a damn, was being beaten to her knees. I’m useless in these circumstances. I should have held her, comforted her, but all I did was mutter sympathetic noises and make some tea. She recovered quickly and I only saw her cry again at the funeral. It was hard though, and once over coffee, while Christopher played with my son, I asked Donna, ‘How do you stand it?’ Her chin jutted and her face lit up. She leaned over the table conspiratorially and said ‘as long as I have my disco on a Thursday, I can take anything!’ As long as she had her one night of laughter and dance, she could cope with the other endless pain ridden days and nights. When she said that, I suddenly had a lot of respect for the resilience of youth. Its joy of life and exuberance is something else. I admired Donna and saw there was something special about this family. Perhaps there is in every family, but somehow I felt theirs. I looked after Christopher the day of the funeral and kept out of the way. I took the boys to the playground and all their favourite haunts. I wanted to make Christopher happy, give him something. He’d lost his grandmother and somehow she was the kingpin of the whole set up. I was afraid the family would never be the same, lose its heart, and drift apart or something. Three months later Donna was pregnant again. It must have been conceived in those grief-ridden days. This time there was no one to tell but David and she didn’t tell him until she was five or six months pregnant. This time Donna was determined to give the child up for adoption. She didn’t tell anyone else but David she was pregnant. I directly asked her one day if she was pregnant, even under the floppy jumpers she wore, there was a bump visible. She denied it, and I believed her and mentally berated myself. She’d just put on weight, that was all. David had been against the adoption and refused to speak to Donna. There was a chill in the house and I sensed it and put it down to the effect of Jackie’s death. They were going to fall apart without her, I was sure of it. Donna went into hospital and had the baby. She left a day later without him. After two days she woke up in the middle of the night from a dream and woke David. She wanted the baby. David hugged her and drove her up to get the baby. Afterwards she said it was because she’d had a dream about the baby. When she’d left him at the hospital, it had been visiting time and all the other babies were wheeled down beside their mothers. Her baby had been the only one in a glass trolley in the nursery when she went in to say goodbye. That night in her dream that picture of her baby alone came vividly back, and when she woke she’d changed her mind. So Daniel joined Christopher and somehow Donna coped. They are two happy boys. There is something special about the family. Jackie had it, so do her children, and I think her grandchildren will have it too.