Without Hope by Naughton Barbara

Author:Naughton, Barbara [Naughton, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ebury Digital
Published: 2010-09-29T23:00:00+00:00

NINE

Crocodile Tears

Shortly before my 14th birthday my mother decided to bring all of us to the shrine at Knock. My father wasn’t too keen on the idea, but eventually relented. It was a beautiful day when we arrived in Knock, the sun was out and there was a clear blue sky. There were lots of stalls selling crosses, religious pictures and religious ornaments. My mother bought crosses for all of us.

My father approached one stall and began speaking to an elderly woman. After a couple of moments, I spotted him praying. At the time, I found the episode very confusing and wondered how my father could constantly criticise the church on the one hand and then pray on the other.

The Sunday afternoon after we got back, my father brought Patrick who was just about to turn 15 out in the car for driving lessons. At the time, my father was driving an automatic BMW. My brother was under the impression that he was a professional driver like his father.

‘There’s no way I’d ever crash; Dad’s too good a teacher,’ Patrick once told me.

While my father was giving Patrick instructions, my sisters and I were in the back seat. Suddenly Patrick turned the steering wheel a sharp right; the car went into a drain and kept moving.

My father grabbed the steering wheel and tried to control it. However it was too late and the car banged straight into a rock.

My sisters started screaming. I just smiled. I thought it was funny that my brother had managed to crash the car despite my father being such a ‘good teacher’. This would cost my father a packet. I was glad he’d have less money to spend in Galway pubs.

I held my breath and waited for the tirade of abuse to follow.

But my father told Patrick: ‘Don’t worry, I can fix the car.’

If Paul or I had crashed the car we would have been on death row.

My father got the car out of the drain and then said to him: ‘We’ll give Barbara a go now to drive. I know she’ll be a mad driver like I was.’

I wasn’t a bit nervous when I sat behind the wheel of the big car and drove fast down the lane.

‘Barbara drives like I did when I was her age,’ he told my siblings. He was laughing his head off; he thought it was so funny.

Patrick once told me: ‘If Dad was doing 100mph in the car, I wouldn’t be afraid to sit in the passenger seat.’ My mother was the same. She never feared sitting beside my father in the car when he was driving at speed.

There were nights I lay awake wondering how my father managed to drive home in his car, considering the amount of pints he had taken. Many nights, God forgive me for thinking it, but I wished my mother would get the news that my father had crashed and died. It’s a terrible thought but that’s how I felt at the time.

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