In any case, quite aside from the rigmarole of cooking and presents and the management of infant expectations that Christmas would demand from a single parent of eleven children, my father was rushed off his feet getting us to and from these various functions, and dealing with the preparations for overlapping performances. Walking through our house over Christmas was like a trip through the Warner Bros. lot in late-seventies Hollywood, only instead of showgirls and spacemen there would be assembled children dressed in their Sunday best, or as shepherds, or in the costume of some brutally crowbarred topical character favoured by school plays at the time. Many will remember my delighted turn as Reuben, the inexplicably French brother in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, not least for my having done the entire thing dressed as Eric Cantona.
The main event was our primary school choir performing Christmas carols in old folks’ homes and hospices, out of some misguided belief that the reedy timbre of our childish voices would provide balm to the elderly and dying. I remember finding the experience nice, in a way, although it was hard to gauge reactions since their clapping was generally quite slow and methodical, and having been told not to stare at the people with tubes connected to them, we decided to not look at anyone at all. My dad would be waiting for us to be done so he could take us home or, more likely, drive to the next place for another of us who was due at a similar engagement. It was actually worse if you didn’t have anything to do, since you’d still be going all over the place and waiting in the car while everyone else was performing, which was way more boring than singing ‘Frosty the Snowman’ to the infirm. One of those Christmassy mornings, my brother Shane was singing at three Masses in a row. That’s the 10, the 11 and the 12:15. After each, my dad would talk to a few fellow parishioners here and there, and pick up others of us who were at other Masses or concerts nearby. Owing to the comings and goings, headcounts got twisted, and on the drive back Shane turned round, surveyed the contents of the minibus and noticed that Dearbhaile was missing. She had been there in the chapel after the service, but had obviously stayed too long chatting to a friend and Daddy, understandably frazzled and depleted, had taken off without realising she wasn’t on board.
He turned tail and raced back to the church to pick her up. He was furious. ‘How did none of you notice she was missing?’ he fumed, and everyone felt chastened at their lack of awareness, imagining her now crying on the steps of the church alone, or worse, in the company of scandalised and judgemental parishioners – or clergy – wringing their hands, apt to be telling tales very soon about the poor, rudderless O’Reilly clan, demented by grief, incapable even of counting themselves. When the bus finally reached Dearbhaile, however, she was smiling and happy, and neither in the company of some sour-faced scold among the congregation, nor alone.
I was standing there, unmissed, beside her.
Having lived in more normal-sized social environments since leaving home, a lot of my childhood seems as insane to me as it might to an outsider. I grew well used to separating out the many personalities in my family, discerning how each interacted with the others, how they formed into groups or reacted to the groups of others, but when I actually think about the ordinary, daily life we led, I find myself asking the same questions strangers ask. How did any of us get to use a bathroom in the mornings? When did Daddy sleep? Were we ever actually alone?
Every single evening for the first ten years of my life, I spent some part of it with at least nine of my siblings, in one house. We are similar enough in ages that we now all feel like peers, but I have to make myself remember that, as children, the age disparities were sufficient to make each of us feel we had little in common with at least half of our siblings. This was, I’m sure, more pronounced for the eldest three, the Big Ones, who must have felt put upon by the babysitting demands that fell on them precisely when they felt least like looking after children. Few tasks could be less appetising to a freshly minted teen than supervising one of six or seven younger siblings who held them in varying states of awe. I don’t have to intuit this, since they said it quite openly all the time. When Dara and Shane were smashing themselves up on BMXs and sneaking fags, I was still using the tiny blue scissors to cut out pictures of dinosaurs that I could put in the cereal box of prehistoric bits and bobs I termed, rather grandly, my dinosaur den. I was as ignorant of their lives as I was of taxes, politics, or girls – although, in between snips, I do recall wondering why the latter’s bums went all the way round. Despite this, at my father’s insistence, I spent an inordinate amount of time with my older brothers. They already had to share a room with my little brother and me, which was probably not ideal, since when they were sixteen and fourteen years old, we were six and three, sleeping at the bottom of two bunk beds placed side by side. The room therefore operated on two different strata; on the top level, talk of football and fights and discos and illegal fireworks, while Conall, on the lower level, would be getting very detailed explanations about the dinosaurs I would point out to him – but never let him touch – in the snazzy cereal box he doubtless coveted.
Dara and Shane were charged with taking me into town or to football matches, probably just to give everyone a reprieve from my manic energy. They were less than thrilled about being seen in public with a small, strange ginger boy, and the fact that I carried around a box of dinosaur-related miscellany probably didn’t help. But take me they did, and I almost always returned home safely. It’s a curious thing that when time came for me to greet fatherhood at the age of thirty-two, I fretted a lot about whether I possessed the maturity and will to look after a child. I’d forgotten that so much of the guardianship I experienced in childhood was from children who actively resented my company. And in return I loved them more than anything.
I was well into adulthood before I realised most other people don’t have to list their family in one long run, and always in age order – Sinead-Dara-Shane-Orla-Maeve-Mairead-Dearbhaile-Caoimhe-Fionnuala-Conall – because they will, otherwise, leave someone out. Even though this is true, I still reserve the right to be offended if anyone asks if I know all my siblings’ names, which happens roughly a third of the time I mention the size of my family.
‘Well,’ I’ll say, to some friend of a friend, in between bites of tapas, ‘there is one brother whose name I’ve never caught.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, tall guy, lovely fella all things considered,’ I’ll say, spooning the last bit of tapenade onto a pitta, ‘but it’s just gone on too long. I’d feel rude introducing myself now that we’re all approaching middle age.’