The Moth Man

By Nora Frances Atkin

The Moth Man is the story exploring a family surviving in an ever-emerging Ireland, it is the story of ‘the lost boy’ who ran to London to escape the oppression of growing up in a culture, which he found oppressive filled with cloying lies and an oblique lack of love and understanding. Like a ghost the shadow of the lost boy lives on in his family, both admired and reviled, what happens to him, how do the family fair with so much hidden hurt. A gentle father, admired and loved, his scientific nature denied to him. A mother hated and misunderstood, and the inability for generational healing to exist without true leadership.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Feb 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9781398458956

Nora Frances Atkin

Nora Frances Atkin was born on the east-coast of Ireland, and has returned to live there after spending many years living in the south-west of the country. She has two grown sons and two Collie dogs and spends a lot of her time walking and contemplating. She has a particular interest on the way land-scape affects the physic, the difference being easily comparable while living in different counties of Ireland, and how people respond and resonate to land-scape. Frances has a deep interest in the stories and myths of her country as well as the myths of England and the rest of the world. It is with great sadness that she perceives these myths fading as they did in Avalon, and feels that all mystery should not be solved, all darkness should not be lit, for without myth and secret, we humans become too self-assured and loose our place in the eco-system, deeply harming it physically, emotionally and spiritually and society must learn to keep balanced in all it does consumes and says.

Book preview

The moth Man

Nora Frances Atkin

Austin Macauley Publishers

The Moth Man

About the Author

Dedication

Copyright Information ©

Acknowledgement

Part 1

Part 2

Tommy

Epilogue

About the Author

Nora Frances Atkin was born on the east-coast of Ireland, and has returned to live there after spending many years living in the south-west of the country. She has two grown sons and two Collie dogs and spends a lot of her time walking and contemplating. She has a particular interest on the way land-scape affects the physic, the difference being easily comparable while living in different counties of Ireland, and how people respond and resonate to land-scape. Frances has a deep interest in the stories and myths of her country as well as the myths of England and the rest of the world. It is with great sadness that she perceives these myths fading as they did in Avalon, and feels that all mystery should not be solved, all darkness should not be lit, for without myth and secret, we humans become too self-assured and loose our place in the eco-system, deeply harming it physically, emotionally and spiritually and society must learn to keep balanced in all it does consumes and says.

Dedication

This semi-fictional memoire is dedicated to the late Francis O’Connor who came back to Ireland still a broken man by his past. However, his striving for social justice cannot be overlooked as he was one of the original members of the Grenfell action group, and he blogged and fought endlessly up to his death for those people and principles. May he be remembered for his love and care of those without a voice. Francis became my friend and I truly miss him.

Copyright Information ©

Nora Frances Atkin 2024

The right of Nora Frances Atkin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398458949 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398458956 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

To all my family.

Part 1

Today Tommy is four, trailing down the heat of summer, feet smudged brown from the dirt and dust of the alleyway as he trots along behind his sister, happy as always to be close to her, and today there is an added excitement, she is bringing him to buy an ice cream, a birthday treat.

As they walk, voices echo across clotheslines hitting his eardrums, bouncing off street corners, rising and falling in the tempo of children’s games, dogs bark and beg, half wild waiting for the fall of night, and he can hear the sound of crying babies who sweat behind blacked out windows, the ting-a-ling of a cycle bell, ridden by the butcher-boy on his daily rounds across the busy outskirts of the small city.

Tommy’s nose smells the salt coming in on the tide and the steam rising up from the soft dog dirt that he jumps over to avoid. There is a sour smell of urine around these back lanes but they don’t offend his boy nose in the slightest.

Tommy’s mustard brown eyes gaze out from his earnest face, right hand locked into his sister’s.

Her words fill his head, oh she is going to take him to wonderful places. Show him the town, go to the shops, buy his treat, bring him to the carnival on the east beach, and if there is any time left in the day, perhaps they will walk along the road with the view of the purple mountains, and see if they can see the roof of Auntie Mary and Uncle John’s farm.

It takes them twenty minutes to emerge from the suburbs into the hubbub of the small city.

Within minutes, Tommy’s eyes brighten as he fell in love with the city, captivated by the sights in the shop windows, the lilting voices of old women in their salty, Gaelic rhythm, selling vegetables; cabbage, carrots, potatoes, the sturdy clang of milk churns, the pulsating beat that hooked his young mind with its rich flavour.

They walked and walked until Tommy’s legs could carry him no further and his sister Sheila lifted him in her arms and carried him some more.

She leads him now towards the fair ground, sand washed and wind swept, she wished she had the money, so that they could have a go on the swinging boats, but money was rare enough in their lives, at least for luxuries or the greedy wants of children. She had learned early on, not to ask for anything least she get a sharp slap from her mother and that angry scowling face that glared at her for days. Sheila understood how easy it was to tip her mother into a black mood and avoided it, at all costs.

They walk around the carnival grounds, until they come to the swinging boats, painted yellow and red, scoured from wind and rain. They stand in a kind of awe, the desire for a go, overcomes Sheila, filling her with hope and determination, eventually an opportunity opens itself and she raises the courage to ask the man to facilitate their need.

‘May we have a go Mr? Please, it’s my brother’s birthday today,’ he eyes them, irritated, unsure if he knows them or not.

They’re locals to be sure.

He asks them their names, Sheila rhymes them to him, ‘Tommy and Sheila Byrne from Seaton row’ ah, yes,’ he thinks, something familiar in the face of the girl, pebbldashed as it is with freckles, and that tangled mass of blond hair.

Now he does what he always does when feeling generous with little girls, he lifts her up into his arms and holds her close, sweeping his eyes around the fair-ground for prying eyes, his hand lingers on her back and he catches her scent deep into his greedy nostrils.

He lifts her, so the worn cotton of her summer frock rises and his rough hand caresses her skinny bottom, she squirms. He grins and he places her in the swinging boat now, then he lifts and places the boy beside her.

Tommy smiles with delight as they pull the rope, and the rough man pushes them to and frow to and frow.

They are giddy after the fair, so they go and sit by the sea wall that leads to the sand dunes. They lie together, watching the clouds as they shape dreams across the roof of the world. Sheila wonders what is behind it, is heaven there, is holy god watching, does he know she got a free swing boat ride for her and her brother, should she confess it at Mass tomorrow, she thinks about sin, what it’s made from.

Her mother says she sins a lot, and it’s a good thing she made her Holy Communion last year, as she may well be on her way to hell.

Tommy falls asleep. Sheila watches him breathing, she admires his face. He has hair like hers, white-blond her father calls it. His skin is red-brown like the conkers they gather in autumn, up past blackberry lane, where the tinkers graze their horses, she’d spied them collecting water from the brook.

Sheila has heard many things stories about them, mostly from the women in her neighbourhood, how they use tinker’s curses on you should you offend them, and if they are hungry enough during sharp windy winters, that they eat their new born babies, and how they would rob the eyes out of your head if you weren’t looking.

Sheila can hear her mother’s voice saying, and you Sheila Byrne, you’re nothing but a tinker.

She wonders why Tommy has no freckles but her daddy says she got enough for both of them.

When Tommy wakes up his face is flushed, his legs are chaffed from the marram grass and he is hungry. He starts to cry, tears that streak dry-dirt down his face. Anxious, Sheila consoles him, lures him with the promise of the ice cream but still his size and sense of disorientation make climbing out of the dune difficult.

At last, they reach the road, Tommy can feel the turn of the wind on the wing of a gull that passes overhead. He regains his composure, an inherited gift from his father and pulls himself to his full height, then aims his body towards the town for his ice cream.

Inside the shop, it is cool and dark. Tommy’s eyes blink and his face is transformed with anticipation as he watches Sheila put in the order, showing the shopkeeper the money that was almost glued to the centre of her hand.

The ice cream was sold by the bowl-full, and the lady gave a good portion for their money. She hands the bowl to Tommy who, by this time, is seated on a tall stool by the counter. Tommy brings the first spoonful of the cold whiteness to his lips and tastes the creamy sweetness he eats gustily even though his teeth hurt and his brain freezes.

He feels the gaze of Sheila’s blue eyes and he sees the down turn of her lips, for a moment she looks like ‘mother’.

‘You’re to give me some,’ she demands in a matter of fact voice and takes both the spoon and the bowl from him.

She feeds herself the delicious stuff, letting it melt slowly, so that the taste will last longer, and then gives the remaining few spoonful to Tommy.

Revived now, they leave the shop and start the walk home, sun-kissed and happy.

Back in the house, Mr Byrne is saying the angelus, more to himself than to God, kneeling in prayer beneath the blue veil of the virgin statue, he prays for more work, though God knows he has been lucky enough this year.

He will be starting work within the next month, part-time, down in the sawdust strewn butchers shop, filling in for old Johnny who’s been fading fast with lung problems, and come harvest, he has work lined up out on his sister’s farm, and because of this, his heart has a lighter beat and his foot a lighter step. Some food and money, at last, for his hungry, growing children and hopefully a more pleased expression on the face of his lovely, God-fearing wife Margaret, known to all as Peggy, who at this very moment is attending the birth, the sixth no less, of Mrs O’ Dwyer next door.

Next door, Peggy moved through the dirty, ramshackle house in a sea of confused thoughts. Already, she had cleaned and swept the downstairs and tried to put some order to the vast array of torn children’s clothes, piled in an old tin bath, in the corner of the pantry, she felt a mix of anger and disgust at the disorder, yet her own movements felt too heavy to sustain these feelings for too long. She boiled water, as requested by nurse, and scurried off the O’ Dwyer children as they came, in and out, their mouths hanging open like hungry gannets, eyes wide with want.

Today when she looked at the lot them she felt her eyes go wet, felt the helplessness of it all, the endless concentric circles with no escape. No. She wasn’t feeling too good, caught as she was in snare of a depression [with reason she murmured to herself, with reason] vice-tight and black, this illness has plagued her for a long, long time. Still, for now, she kept moving up and down the stairs, taking orders from the nurse, lift this, do that, stand here, hold her hand now, be firm, be gentle.

It seemed an eternity to Peggy, but eventually the child’s head was crowning, a stock of black hair peeped its way through the bald vagina of Mrs O’ Dwyer who moaned and cried and cursed as if she had never experienced such a thing before-five minutes later, out slid the boy, breath rapid, face wrinkled, dry and crumpled like the old boiled towel that is spread between his mother’s legs.

His mother looks at his tiny face, and with nothing much to offer him, she declares his name, ‘William.’

Something inside Peggy coils and turns, something bitter and bile-like, and her tongue, blue like a viper’s, cuts through the small space stinging Mrs O’ Dwyre as much as her self-righteous conscience would allow, ‘A traitor’s name, just like your mother, is it an English man’s child then.’

Mrs O ’Dwyer felt scalded inside, but she let it pass without comment, there would be revenge for that sometime, sometime unexpected.

Half an hour later, to the astonishment of the women, there appeared between her legs a small baby girl, small maybe, but her cries were shrill, demanding to be fed.

Hot angry tears of frustration fall down the face of Mrs O’ Dwyer but through her shame and fear she names the child Lucile.

Peggy goes downstairs to make some tea and some toast for the new mother, birthing is hard work and she needs to feed those children very soon.

The doctor calls giving a nod to work barely recognised, his signature registers their birth, and then he is gone.

Peggy leaves now also, feeling the pull of chores and need from her own home, she slips out the back door and across the yard into the cool of the evening, she lifts her legs over the broken fence and walks into her kitchen, then climbs the stairs as if weights are tied