Author Michael Clemenger tells us: Due to the circumstance that I was born out of wedlock in the cold rigidly conservative Catholic Ireland of 1950, my fate was decided before I had drawn my first breath of shame.
Early Years
The one question that I have been asked over the years was – how I developed such a versatility with words and the ability to write considering the circumstance of my birth.
That question was partly answered in my mind following an interview I did with a journalist recently. For some reason she showed me a photograph on her mobile phone of her 5-year-old son. Her little boy had a cheeky grin on his face. To me his future looked bright and full of promise. As I looked at the photograph, I realised that it is the circumstance that determines one’s fate.
In my long life I know that a child that has never experienced the soft loving caress of its mother’s arms leaves a void that can never be filled. It is like looking through a cracked mirror and seeing a distorted world. Due to the circumstance that I was born out of wedlock in the cold rigidly conservative Catholic Ireland of 1950, my fate was decided before I had drawn my first breath of shame.
I was cast out with the sinful stain of illegitimacy writ large on my forehead and hidden away from the righteous virtuous and pure. I was destined to suffer, to repent on my knees, lick the cold ground and gather up the scars of shame within a heart that would never heal.
My fate looked grim. I was destined to be consigned to a life of misery, loneliness and failure like so many who had passed through the gates of shame. But the God of destiny must have had other ideas. When I was around 6 years old, I became aware of a world outside of myself. There were other boys in the same Dublin convent as I had been sent to due to my illegitimacy. One of those boys was named Jimmy. We bonded immediately on first sight. We did everything together learned our tables, ABC’s and prayers on our knees, and played blissfully in the convent yard. His smiling face was the first thing I saw in the morning and the last thing at night before I fell into a contented sleep.
Then one morning when I woke up Jimmy was not in his bed. Standing over me was the Reverend mother with a scowl on her face. She growled that Jimmy was gone, and I would never see him again. I frightened myself by the volcanic rage that erupted from my little frame. It took 3 other nuns standing by to pull me off her as I was scratching at her face with my nails.
Over the following few days, I was inconsolable and unmanageable. At mealtimes I would hide under a table in the refectory refusing to eat or drink. After about 3 days of this behaviour a nun’s hand pushed a little book under the table near my feet. At first, I ignored it completely until out of curiosity I picked it up. The Reverend mother told me that I could keep the book if I behaved. While peace broke out of sorts I never really relaxed around the Reverend mother for the rest of my stay in the convent, until I was 8 years old.
I did not know it at that moment, but books were to become my constant companion for the rest of my life. They have been my greatest consolation. They made me want to explore the world that I had been born into. They made me curious of a world that seemed alien to me. Books seemed to speak to me in a way a mother would with a child. Between the covers of books, I began to feel the caresses of protective arms. They replaced the bitterness and despair that seemed to be my fate in life and armed me with a resolve to face a hostile world and live life on my terms and not those determined by others. I was no longer an orphan in my own mind.
In 1959 I was transferred to an industrial school in Tralee Co Kerry. My main anxiety was would I have access to books. I need not have worried. Senior Christian brothers of influence developed an unhealthy preoccupation with me. In their rooms at night wandering hands explored forbidden places. My reward for not resisting was access to more books than there were days in a leap year.
Out in the World
When I was released from institutional state care at 16 years of age, I did not fully appreciate the stigma of illegitimacy or how profoundly it was entrenched in the Irish psychic. I was banned from using the front door of the hotel of my first employment job. My new manager instructed me to go round the back where the trash was.
I was referred to as a monoboy as if I had no name. It was a term I would have to contend with. It marked me out as separate and lesser – not quite human. Her behaviour reminded me of a time in the Industrial school when I was referred to as a black bastard and a product of sin not worth the feeding or educating.
My second employment as a labourer in a building providers advised me to become a pioneer since many monoboys were alcoholics. I agreed on the understanding that I would be given access to the local library.
It amused people to see me walking down the street in Tralee with a book under my arm. Even at 16 years of age I was determined that I would not allow myself to be defined by their prejudice and condescension. Books were my consolation. No need of acceptance of those who resented my very existence.
When I moved to Dublin for work sometime later I was lodging with a landlady who encouraged me to attend night classes so I could better myself – as she described it. However, a year later I met the woman who was to profoundly change the course of my life. She encouraged me to do my leaving certificate and go to Trinity College. I was happy to continue in the bosom of books and learning.
In the economic downturn of the 1980’s we emigrated to England where I completed an honours degree in biological science.
Over the years one of my favourite pastimes was visiting old bookshops in the centre of London. It was in one of those shops that I came across the black writers Maya Angelou and James Baldwin. These writers had experienced childhood trauma which attracted me to their stories.
It was Maya Angelou’s famous quotation that there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. That motivated me to write the story of my own traumatic years of childhood which I called Holy Terrors – later called Everybody Knew. When I saw my name written on the cover it gave my life a validation which surprised me. Some years later it was translated into French, and I got some joy seeing it in a Paris bookshop in 2015.
It was James Baldwin that had the greatest influence on me. He wrote in 1961 – that to be born inferior in the eyes of polite society and to be conscious of it had the capacity to engender a pathological hatred which if not controlled could destroy its victim.
In that context and in my writing, I never saw myself as a victim but a survivor. That realisation enabled me to cope with the vicissitudes of life and live to be an old man, still reading and writing. Although the rage has lessened with the years the capacity to forgive is problematic. Books taught me to appreciate the life I am living and so the title of this article ‘Books and Circumstance’.
(c) Michael Clemenger
About The Secret of the Clay by Michael Clemenger:
This book was written out of years of curiosity about the iconic image of Padraic Pearse’s surrender to the British forces commanding Officer Major General WHM Lowe in the 1916 surrender in Dublin Ireland. This image had a pair of concealed ankles of a woman whose name I did not know. Why she had been whitewashed out of the surrender picture I presumed was political.
I was surprised to see a full-sized portrait of this iconic picture go on display in Seanad Eireann in March 2021. At last, I had a name for the concealed ankles – Elizabeth O’ Farrell. I decided to find out more about her. I could never have imagined the exciting journey of discovery I was about to encounter.
Why had I not read more about Elizabeth O’ Farrell and other 1916 women in my history studies? The answer came when I discovered that Elizabeth O’ Farrell had been buried in Glasnevin cemetery with a woman by the name of Sheila Grenan.
In writing this historical fiction account of the role of Elizabeth O’ Farrell and Sheila Grenan I have tried to give a flavour of the life these women chose to live together as one until the death of Elizabeth in June 1957.
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