Milk

''The most enjoyable part of my life in Athlone was when, aged about seven, I was taken on as helper by the (to me) enormous Mr Molloy, our milkman, who delivered milk in his donkey cart to his customers at a decidedly leisurely pace every morning. The poor donkey, heavily laden, could not be blamed for taking its time... Mr Molloy, who was a quiet, redfaced moustached nan - he had been a rowing man in his youth but had badly 'gone to seed' - would take a ritual mid-morning pint. I minded the donkey. After I had 'served my time' and learned how to drive, to regulate the tap and to fill the measure (once or twice according to the customer's needs with always the small extra drop for luck or for the cat) it became Mr Molloy's practice to dismount slowly and solemnly outside the pub, enter a sweet shop, and bring me out a small twist of brown paper, filled with a pennyworth of sweets. We never said anything to one another. I knew real happiness for the first time in my life when he would hand me the reins of the donkey. I had absolute freedom and responsibility to drive the cart back to Molloy's farm at Ballymahon [Clonbrusk on the Ballymahon Road]. I was a Roman charioteer in full flight ... Mrs Molloy, a kind and gentle English lady, hearing us thundering down the hill on our way to the farm would caution me of the danger of a fall and the consequence of injury to myself. But I enjoyed standing up in the centre of the cart, aflame with the excitement, the clinking of the harness, and the iron clatter of the wheels on the road. Mrs Molloy probably rendered all of us in the family a very special service, for she always insisted that I take a can of milk home for my mother to make rice puddings and porridge and use for the tea. It became the only worthwhile feature of the otherwise bread-and-rhubarb jam diet of our class.''                                                                                                                                                                         From 'Against the Tide' by Noel Browne.

My dad Tommy, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Molloy, succeeded his father as a milkman on the East side of town. He added to his duties in Browne-like fashion by occasionally dispensing contraceptive advice to women whom he described as ''bled white by childbirth''. He often spoke of how the poorest people would have the money waiting in a jar by the door. But many among the middle class would 'have it for you Monday', then he would eventually be forced to accept a 'settlement' on their terms. 

Such experiences led him to pack in direct selling and sign up to the new Snowcream dairy in Moate. He also decided to put an end to his home being a kind of flop house for all the ne'er-do-wells in Athlone, ditch the motorbike, take a wife and start a family. It was a decision he was never entirely sure about, though an alternative explanation to his about turn is that his new wife, though gentle like his mother, laid down certain terms which were never breached. Either way, it worked.

He had the first milking parlour around Athlone, it could handle six cows at a time. He had 28 cows and 80 acres of land, half of it good. Prices were strong, a farmer knew where he stood and could make plans. He and she were able to build a new house, a bungalow with all mod cons. They worked hard to get there. Both were honest and kind, smart and funny. Both were popular and respected. Life was good.

Then a mistake crashed everything. I opened the wrong door in Cornamaddy NS.  Behind it was the most powerful man in Athlone, who was in the act of sexually abusing an older boy. Unlike the boy, I might have got away with it, were it not for a passing teacher who pulled the door shut and me out of there. A lengthy shaking was my first punishment. 

Canon James Prunty was the Administrator of St. Mary's Parish, as I understand it the bishop's man in the most populous/wealthiest parish in the diocese. Like every other kid in my class, I was sent to him for what was called 'First Confession'. I was also handed over to him at his request by the school on two occasions after that. I have no memory at all of what happened the first day, just the initial proud excitement at having been chosen. I remember a lot of what happened the second day though, starting with the cold dread at having been chosen again.

I had turned eight by that time. He drove me to a boarding school which was not yet open after the summer holidays. A younger man was waiting there, drinking tea or coffee and reading at a communal table. He was uncommunicative then and very brutal afterwards. I felt close to death and believed, rightly or wrongly, that only the late intervention of Prunty saved me. He might have intervened for the more pragmatic reason that at least six hours had passed since he had picked me up and people would probably be out looking for me (they were). 

He drove me to a place between school and home and let me out when it was safe. I went in the back door of the old house, which was never locked. Nobody was at home, but the fire was lighting. I took advantage by burning some of my damaged clothes and getting the story straight in my head, so as not to upset my parents or embarrass myself. 

Fate, or the priest's curse Prunty had half-promised me, soon hit us. All of our cows were lost to disease. My dad was heartbroken, but he kept it to himself and the pressure possibly led to his getting cancer. The last thing he needed was a dysfunctional, angry kid. But he got that as well.

                                                                          *****

Prunty became one of the 6% of investigated priests and brothers to receive a custodial sentence when he was sent to a pretend prison in the Curragh, where he served 9 months. His trial was shady in the extreme, dominated by male senior counsel and held in camera, for no justifiable reason, at Tullamore District Court. There was only one prosecution witness and 63 of the charges against him were dropped. My belief is that most of the convicted priests (certainly Brendan Smyth and William Carney) were involved to some extent in child sex trafficking and the powerful were being protected behind the perception of justice being served for individual transgressions. 

I was working my way back into life at the time of Prunty's incarceration. My annual income probably never made five figures, yet I managed to keep everything going and had some good plans. Then I made another bad mistake and said 'yes' to land speculators buying my 14 acres. It is dangerous to go from having nothing to having too much. Lawyers sniffed an opening and worked their plots, to this day needing favours from our courts to keep what they have taken.

Meanwhile, my parents got old and it became my responsibility to look after them. It was time consuming but rewarding, and not very difficult due to their general good health. Their late life happiness was troubled only by worry about what the football crowd was doing to me, but I kept it to myself as best I could. Both of them lived to good ages but perished in a hospital system which reserves the right to withdraw its care from selected elderly. I wish they had died natural deaths at home, but the system must be fed.

It's easy to despair when bad things happen, but despair is a luxury. Most people are good and yearn for integrity and decency to the point that they will believe it is there when it demonstrably is not. The good priests and lawyers fall into this trap same as the rest of us. It is the disconnect between our innocent trust in shows of probity and the reality of what people placed above the law are capable of doing that provides the opportunity for evil to thrive.

                                                                     *****

My childhood experiences turned out to have a positive side. If nothing else, they have given me a burning rage against the targeting of innocents by swaggering gangs of men in uniform. Without them, I would have had no chance against the barristers. With them, I have every chance - because understanding is the key to everything. 

What has been most striking is how the same great wall of protection (from police, media and courts) stands to protect the corrupt lawyers of today [*] as protected the corrupt priests of yesterday. Frustration when hitting this wall leads naturally to anger, but anger disrupts focus and even righteous anger poisons the blood. As I get older, I think back more and more to all the kind people in my life and how superior they were in every way, bar articulacy, to the self-important clowns who try to push us around. I am trying to learn from last year's epic hunger strikes, when four grace-filled people took on a government and national media which treated their sacrifice with indifference, if not contempt. They didn't win (because the public never received the cue to care), but they didn't lose either. 

[* It should be noted that solicitors who go freelance on corruption are NOT protected and are often sent to prison, but solicitors and others who come to an arrangement with the barristers, especially in our courts, are exempt from prosecution for any kind of fraud]

My much smaller stand is only still going after nine years because the law - not justice alone - is on my and my company's side. The corrupt will always win the popular vote; they expect to win inside and outside of court, but they have no way to make what they are doing legal. My recent application to the High Court is a simple one. It is for the 'settlement' to be struck out because the plaintiff has refused to honour it and because the order binding me to the settlement is a sham (the registrar remarkably failed to obey a previous order to amend it). Will barristers argue for the general right of insiders to defy High Court orders when it suits them? It should be interesting. 

                                                                       *****

Like Noel Browne and my granddad, seven year old me and my dad didn't have anything much to say to each other, but we got along alright. I used to enjoy watching him milk the cows, waiting especially for the magical moment when the first collecting glass spread out white from top to bottom. The radio rattled incomprehensibly from a cowshed which was known as the Parliament, not for its bullshit but for the serious political debate which went on there. Chief among the debaters were the Fitzpatricks, three (or was it four?) brothers who lived in a grinding poverty which was only interrupted by their being interned by the traitorous Dev during the Emergency. My dad used to sigh and ask, ''What were they fighting for?'' And now, all together but in an unmarked grave, the question stands.

The last of the Fitzpatricks, Sean, is the only one I remember. He would walk in to the old house carrying a can, an impervious expression on his face. Maybe he was a bit ashamed, I'm not sure. My childish fascination was with his soldier's gait, which I didn't associate with age and glasses. My mother would fill his can with milk, sometimes giving him a box of eggs. And he'd go on his way, and my mother to the well or some other thing. Nothing ever stopped, and nothing much got going. We were close to God then.