Life without Parole: Letters from Prison: Maureen

Dear Lucy,

I am glad you understand that no one has ever held an exclusive claim on my story. Much of what is known about me, and about the events that brought me my small measure of notoriety, now lies in the public domain. There are many who possess the skill to gather, organise, and shape that material into a convincing account of my life from publicly available sources, and I admire this ability immensely.

My mother was not a woman who dwelt on her past, and I was very young when she left. What I have, I have pieced together from a handful of sentences she let fall over the years, from the few things others have uncovered after my story made national headlines, and from the particular kind of knowledge a child absorbs without quite knowing he is doing so. I offer it to you in that spirit.

I hope you will use this story to advance the wider narrative about the failings of the justice system, and perhaps to uncover facts that, even now, remain unknown.

Yours sincerely,
Ky

 

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Maureen

Maureen Walsh was born on the 18th of September 1932 into a very poor, strict and deeply traditional family. Even though they occupied the lowest rung of the social ladder and lived hand to mouth, in a society defined by extreme wealth imbalance, the thing the family clung to — the one pillar on which they built their entire existence — was the question of how they appeared to others. According to my mother, the criteria by which they measured and lived their lives were, in order of diminishing importance: what the neighbours thought of them, religion, patriarchy, the male members of the family, livestock, and at the very bottom, the women of the household, ranked by age.

If my grandfather were alive today, in this world of social media, he would probably photograph himself in front of expensive things he did not own and pose beside important people who had no idea who he was. The instinct was the same; only the means have changed. They were a large family, though I cannot tell you the exact makeup. From the fragments I was able to piece together, my mother had four siblings who died before their first birthday, and was one of six who survived beyond that. She never really spoke about her family, and what little I have comes from single sentences dropped within some other, unrelated conversation. With the exception of one sister called Gracie, I do not know anyone’s name.

My wife Joan once suggested that I draw up a family tree — find out at least my grandparents’ names. But if my mother had torn that chapter out of her life, I felt no desire to paste it back into mine. I also noted that they were all perfectly aware, when they last saw her, that she was pregnant; and the fact that not one of them ever tried to seek her out — her and her unborn child — I took as a sign that fate had no interest in that reunion either. I chose to respect it.

My grandfather was a farmer who tilled the land and kept livestock, as his father had done before him. He liked his drink but was neither industrious, skilled nor lucky. His shortcomings meant the family were perpetually on the verge of bankruptcy, hunger and poor health. I remember my mother recounting how, on Sundays, he would send his wife to carry a dish of lamb and potato casserole to the bar where he would be drinking with his sons and friends — to share with the company — while the rest of the family ate scraps at home. What mattered to him was that society saw him as a man of means, able to put meat on the table in abundance.

If a neighbour passed hearsay about any of my mother’s siblings — particularly the girls — there would be an inquisition, followed by consequences ranging from total family silence toward the accused, to a beating, to, as was the case with my mother, being cast out altogether.

At the age of fourteen, my mother became pregnant. The announcement was followed by her father’s pronouncement that she had brought the ultimate dishonour upon the family and had to leave. He did all the talking. Her mother did not lift a finger or look her in the face. On her way out the door, Gracie — with tears in her eyes — secretly pressed a bundle into her hands: a dress, some underclothes, and a package of cured meat.

She found a religious institution that took in unwed pregnant mothers. While it did provide a roof over the heads of the girls and women who were unfortunate enough to require their assistance, those who lived there were treated as slaves, without a shred of dignity or respect. They were expected to atone for their sins through hard, unpaid labour, prayer and punishment at the hands of the nuns. My mother was, by her own telling, fortunate in that she was not physically attractive. This spared her from the sexual abuse inflicted by clergy who attended these institutions. What she lacked in looks she made up for in resilience and sheer stubbornness. According to her, a central objective of the repentance process was to break the girls — physically and mentally. The nuns pushed her to her limits in their efforts to subdue her, and never quite managed it.

My mother admitted to me that had abortion been available to her, or had she known anything about it, I would not have seen the light of day. But the moment I drew my first breath, she made the decision that she was going to be my mother. Many people over the years have asked me whether I felt rejected or unloved by that admission. The short answer is: not really. Having lived long enough to understand how unfair life can be, I respect and love her for her honesty.

It was well known that many of the women housed in those institutions had their babies taken from them within days of giving birth. The majority were too confused, frightened and broken by the experience to understand what choices they had. The more persuasive nuns would convince the mothers that they had no chance of finding a man willing to marry an unwed woman with an illegitimate child. “Why would any man want to be burdened with your sinful actions?” If gentle persuasion failed, bullying would follow — until most signed away their children. Those who refused, were mentally and physically tortured to breaking point all while having to care for a new born. These dehumanising techniques broke many of those who resisted with some reverting to self-harm and suicide.

Thousands of newborns were taken from weeping mothers and never heard of again. Investigations into these institutions over the years shed some light on what became of those infants — many were sold to couples seeking to adopt; others were quietly handed to relatives of those running the religious orders. Investigators found locked doors, destroyed records, incomplete files and convenient amnesia.

According to my mother, after I was born, attempts were made to coerce her into surrendering me. She refused. When the mother superior confronted her directly — flanked, as my mother put it, by a couple of lackeys — she made her position clear. She told them that if I disappeared, she would throw each and every one of them from the top-floor window, and then make sure that the entire world knew what had been happening inside those walls. The following morning she was told to pack her things and leave.

I know that she somehow managed to find work that came with a roof and a bed for both of us, at a private club called the Daisy Chain that served gay men. She cleaned the premises in exchange for an attic flat and a small stipend. Before long she was helping with the accounts and the food ordering, and would tend the bar when needed. Her hard work was noticed and valued, and she began to set a little money aside. She used to tell me that since all of her work happened under the same roof, she was never far from me. I was, by her account, a quiet and agreeable baby, and there were colleagues and a few regulars who were happy to look after me when she could not.

The Daisy Chain came to an end after about four years. My best understanding is that the owner fell out of favour with the police or with certain politicians, because the raids began, and soon every patron vanished rather than risk being identified as a homosexual — which was, in those days, a criminal offence.

By then my mother had saved enough to rent a small place of her own, and with a good word from the club’s owner she found other work that kept us afloat.

It was around this time that a man she identified as my father came into our lives. I could never make sense of how he found us — until someone investigating my story turned up a photograph from a regional newspaper, showing the Daisy Chain, with my mother visible in the background. That picture must have been what led him to us.

I remember the first time he appeared at our door with a bunch of wilting flowers that looked as though they had been taken from a cemetery. After he left, she told me he was my father, but made it plain that the subject was better left alone — particularly in his presence.

After that initial visit, he would reappear periodically when he wanted something. I was always baffled as to how he managed to extract anything from us when we could barely make ends meet. My mother would resist, but after threats and violence, he would leave with whatever he had come for. I tried, once, to step in and was thrown against a wall. My mother was badly beaten that time, and she told me clearly that my involvement had only made things worse. I think, with hindsight, she was right — absorbing his demands was preferable to me being hurt. It took a considerable toll on her.

My mother was not loving or demonstrative in the way that mothers are typically portrayed in literature. But I never went hungry. I was always clean. I could count on one hand the number of times I had to wear a shoe with a hole in it. We were at the very bottom of the poverty scale, but largely through the people she worked for, I was pushed a social class above where I might otherwise have ended up. I never had the luxuries the other children around me took for granted, but I always had hand-me-downs that she would repurpose. My clothes had patches long before the countercultural movements of the 1960s and 70s.

My mother loved to read. She would read anything with words on it. She did not, as far as I know, use a library — most likely because she did not have the time or the fare to get to one. But as soon as those around her discovered her love of reading, they would pass along whatever they had finished. I have always thought that part of the reason she lugged a large shopping trolley everywhere she went was to ensure that, if she came upon a book or someone pressed one into her hands, she had a way to bring it home.

When she arrived home each evening, the ritual was always the same: she would change out of her work clothes, start dinner, and then draw out the reading material — books, that day’s newspaper — and spread it on the table. It was a particular pleasure on the evenings when the trove contained something written for children.

Mum never received a formal education, yet she saw learning as essential. Her daily practice was not the daily prayer but the daily read. We had a Bible in the house — as depicted in all the classic literature about families like ours — but for us it was a text, not a guide to salvation. The religious writing she probably aligned with was the Tripitaka, though it never dominated her life or told her how to live it.

I was brought up on the understanding that God did not exist and that praying would get you nowhere — education would. The small pockets of time we had together were built primarily around what we discovered in our literary adventures. Thanks to her, I learned to read at a very young age, and one of her great pleasures was listening to me read aloud, or to discuss, debate and occasionally argue about what we had read. It was our two-person book club. That is the memory of her I treasure most.

Her matter-of-fact attitude extended well beyond religion. I learned early that other children had more toys and new clothes because their families had more money. She made no attempt to cushion any of it: we were poor, life was not fair, and many people were inherently bad, benefiting from being cheats and liars, or from inherited wealth, or simply from the accident of being born into the right family. She was adamant that those who amassed extraordinary wealth had done so through exploitation — of people or of the systems around them.

Another passion of my mother’s was what I always called fontography — her love of typefaces. She considered fonts works of art, not merely symbols arranged together to carry meaning. She could describe a font’s balance, its consistency, its personality; she would hold forth on kerning and leading as though they were architectural decisions. Had she lived to see my first pay packet, the first thing I would have bought her was a calligraphy set. For all her efforts, I could never see what she saw. I know a serif from a sans-serif from a script, but the art of it never crossed over to me. I inherited her love of the written word; the visual sense was hers alone.

She was, without any formal schooling, genuinely intelligent. The journey from cleaning the floors at the Daisy Chain to managing its books speaks for itself. Considering everything life had put her through, I think her love of the written word became a kind of passionate anchor — it could have been drink, gambling, any number of destructive habits, but it became the thing that served her and, through her, served me.

After the Daisy Chain, she took on cleaning jobs. The truth of it, uncovered by researchers, is that she was hired and paid as a cleaner, but once certain employers recognised her abilities, they gave her expanded responsibilities without adjusting her wages. In one household she effectively became a nanny; in one business, a bookkeeper. This may go some way toward explaining why I received hand-me-down clothes, toys and other things that a cleaner, strictly speaking, would not ordinarily come by.

We were given a television at some point, and various small appliances that made life a little more comfortable. The television was really for me — I cannot recall ever seeing my mother actually watch it. She would occasionally listen to the news when preparing dinner with her back to the screen.

The Christmas period is amongst the fondest memories I have with her. She would mention, almost in passing, that the following day there was to be a party at work and she might be a little late, and I was not to worry. What that phrase came to mean to me was: Ky, when you get home from school, prepare the place, because we are going to have a party.

Upon returning from school I would do my homework, read for a while, and keep one eye on the clock. About two hours before Mum would normally arrive home, I would take the magazines we had already read, remove the staples, take my twelve-inch ruler and tear the pages into strips. I would draw a few Christmas cards to place on the mantelpiece. It was then a waiting game that came to a conclusion the moment I heard the key turn in the latch.

Mum would arrive home with her trolley, looking quietly pleased with herself, and begin producing neatly wrapped parcels of leftover party food and the occasional drink. Such occasions were to us what the anonymous turkey was to the Cratchit family. She would change into her home clothes, mix flour, water and salt into a paste, heat it, and we would use it to make our garlands from the strips I had cut. Then we would sit side by side, reading to each other or talking, working our way through the leftover food. It was grand.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were set apart. She only worked Christmas Eve morning. Christmas Day was ours entirely. I can recall three Christmases vividly.

Food was central to the festivities. The first course consisted of a pastry shell into which she placed macaroni in a Bolognese sauce. She would also incorporate two hard boiled eggs before covering the mixture with a layer of pastry. This was then baked in the oven. This dish was a double treat in that the macaroni mixture was cooked and we got to sample it before it was baked. When one cut into the baked macaroni dish one got the flaky pastry, the baked pasta and part of a boiled egg. I always left the pastry for last. With Joan I’ve experienced many renowned chefs but nothing every topped it.

After that came the main: ham the first year, a small turkey the second, spiced beef the third. Dessert was chocolate, nougat and pudding. The leftovers were rationed carefully over the days that followed — she had a gift for combining remnants into meals that made the whole period feel like a celebration. The sweets were portioned so they lasted into the New Year. I never felt closer to her than in those days. On the second of January, ordinary life resumed, but the Christmas memories lingered for many weeks.

During Christmas week we would go out together. During the reading sessions leading up to this period we would have noted down any free or affordable events and agree which ones interested us and plan around it.

A few days after my seventh birthday, my mother committed suicide.

That morning she woke me at the usual half past six. I prepared for school, had my cereal, checked my small diary for anything particular I needed that day — there was nothing. I looked at the calendar on the wall to see whether she had written anything in that day’s square. There was the usual note recording the time she would finish work; she filled in the week every Sunday.

I normally walked to school alone, but that morning she insisted on walking with me. The fifteen-minute walk was a silent one. Before we parted, she gave me a sealed envelope and told me not to open it until after school. She gave me a hug and a kiss, turned and walked toward her next job, and jumped from the roof.

After school I walked home and let myself in. I opened the envelope and emptied its contents onto the table. Inside: a letter, a second letter sealed and addressed to the school principal, 350 in cash, and the silver-plated chain with a small harp pendant that she always wore around her neck.

The letter said she was sorry. She could not give me the life I deserved. With her gone, she wrote, I would have a better chance.

In her characteristic way of keeping nothing hidden, she explained that the landlord had informed her the entire area was to be gentrified and we were to be evicted. She had looked for alternative accommodation but found nothing within our means. We were going to end up homeless, and without a roof over our heads she would lose her jobs. That downward spiral was unacceptable to her. With her gone, I would have a roof, and a more decent life than she could provide.

She then instructed me on the money: 25 in my pocket for ready access, the rest distributed between my socks, the bottom of my school bag, and the small pouch in the drawer beneath the television. She told me she had packed a small suitcase with a clean change of clothes, and that the following morning I was to take both my satchel and the suitcase to school and, on arrival, hand the sealed envelope to the principal.

She closed by assuring me that I was not, in any way, to blame. She reminded me of the conversations we had had — about the realities of life, about the decisions people are forced to make. She told me that what she was doing was, in her mind, both common sense and love. She compared herself to Valjean, in the moment he realised that his past could taint Cosette’s new life with Marius — confessing his secret, withdrawing quietly, dying in peace, ensuring her happiness, and allowing the truth of his sacrifice to be known in its own time.

Her last sentence gave me the chain from her neck: I hope that whenever you see it reflected back, you will see my face in it.

I cried myself to sleep. In the morning I put the chain around my neck, drank a glass of milk, washed the glass, and walked to school. I went to the principal’s office, waited to be called in, and handed him the envelope. He read it, left the room, and returned with one of the administrators, who took me to an office and gave me his lunch and a glass of milk. He suggested it might be a good idea for me to go to class, but offered to keep the suitcase in the office. Within the hour I had been collected by a social worker — suitcase and all — and taken to a fostering facility.

For many years I tormented myself over the signals I had missed. Mum walking me to school. The special instructions. The envelope. The chain no longer around her neck. I have spent a long time wondering why she did not simply arrange to place me in care herself, and I have turned over many possible reasons without arriving at one that satisfies me completely. What I do believe, with some certainty, is that in her mind this was an unwinnable situation, and that the only exit she could see — the one that gave me the best chance — required her to make the final sacrifice. I also believe, having learned over the years what those institutions did to the women inside them, that the cruelty she endured when I was born left marks that never healed, whatever her resilience led the rest of us to assume.

Over the years the handful of people who knew this story have proposed alternative theories and alternative endings. We will never know, because history is a single branch. What I have always said is this: everything I have described happened at a time when the attitudes toward unmarried mothers, the social structures that did or did not exist, and the definitions of what constituted disgrace were wholly different from anything we would recognise today. She was a woman who had been failed by nearly every institution she ever encountered — her family, the church, the state — and she did what she believed was right with the tools she had.

I am eighty years old. I have had a great deal of time to think, and prison, whatever else it is, does not lack for hours. What I keep coming back to is not the morning she walked me to school, or the envelope, or any of the questions I cannot answer. What I keep coming back to is the two of us at the kitchen table — the reading material spread out, the dinner on the stove, her finger moving along a line of text she wanted me to hear. A two-person book club in a small flat with secondhand everything and not much else. She gave me that. She gave me the understanding that a word on a page was worth more than anything you could photograph yourself standing next to.

She was not a soft woman and she would not thank me for making her one in the retelling. So I will simply say this: she was, in every way that has ever mattered to me, enough. More than enough. I have never stopped being her son, and I have never stopped being grateful for it.

 

Read on: Life without Parole: Letters from Prison: Joan

 

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