The powers that be. Just when you say that, I do remember lifting leaves and taking them home and putting them under my pillow. Thinking of this poor leaf. Afraid of it dying. Afraid of mummy dying, daddy dying if I didn’t do this. “If I do this mummy will die, or daddy will die. Or if I don’t do this.”
Tracey Mulholland, 2019
Tracey Mulholland’s interview
Tracey:
We were taken to the bar when we were little, everybody just went to the bar. And the bullet holes were still in the bar. My grandfather was killed in ‘75, I was born in ‘79. Up until recent years the bar remained like that. We never knew what these holes were, until my daddy had said, with a drop of drink in him, “That’s where your grandfather was killed.”
From that moment – and I remember being very young and probably not understanding death, or being killed, or murdered, or never coming back, “This is why we have no grandfather,” — from there it hit me and it’s been there ever since. Like a grief. How it affected daddy was another impact that it had on me.
All of the wee stories that he told me about when he was a child, about his daddy and things like that. It really did affect me and I understand it now as grief, but I didn’t then when I was a child. I remember crying for him, for my grandad. Daddy’s mental health then affected my mental health, probably. Innocence was cut short pretty early in life.
Philip:
Did that happen because of seeing those bullet holes in the bar?
T
It was because I knew my grandfather had been killed. Murdered, shot. Daddy started telling me a story, about going to identify my grandfather’s body and mentioned the bullet hole in his forehead, above his left eyebrow. It was that, that made this very real — murder, actually. It shouldn’t fleet through your mind, as a child of six or seven or eight years old. But because there was the suspicion of collusion with police and army, at the time, every time we were stopped by the army — probably unfairly and probably because it was the Mulholland name — we were tortured with them. That all became very real and I would’ve identified a soldier, or a policeman, as a murderer. And that was early in childhood.
P
That word collusion, how would you have told?
T
“It was the police and the Brits that done this,” that was in my head. Because the barman had recognised a voice and then there was somebody local arrested. That was all in daddy’s head and that was all spilled out. He needed an outlet and had none, so the child that listened — did.
… But he was young too, I suppose, and he had lost both his parents by his early 20s. He was 22, he was 22. And his mother, who he was very close with, had died two years prior to his father being killed. I know me at 22, you think you have the ability to control your life, but you don’t. Mummy and daddy got married in the August 1975 and then my sister was born in ‘77 and I was born in ‘79 and then my younger sister and brother in the early ‘80s. They were pretty young when they had us. And I suppose drink, and the bar, and drinking in that bar… that’s where daddy would’ve drank, y’know. A constant reminder. He would’ve said, “It’s one of them things.” Like it was a hereditary disease, “It’s one of them things,” is how he would describe it in sobriety. But not with a drink in him.
P
That’s what was unlocking him.
T
Yeah, I had an appetite to know, after he said — and it was in the bar he said it — “That’s where your grand da died, over there.” Shocking and of course you want to know more, and you’re inquisitive as a child as well. “How? What d’you mean?” From that point, it was always a banging drum in the head. You take on your parents’ pain, you do.
I can’t imagine losing both my parents at that age. I know he’s ill and I feel he never really got a life, he was diagnosed then with MS not long after my younger sister was born. I just feel so hopeless for him, that he never got a chance in life, really.
P
… that’s very pessimistic isn’t it?… I remember when my dad was being threatened I used to try being religious. You know we were talking about superstitions…
T
I am with you there. I don’t believe in any religion, I don’t know if that’s an effect, because I prayed and He wouldn’t listen. Probably coming from that. Superstition, magpies, and all that. Fairy trees you didn’t touch, or if you broke a mirror that’s it you were fucked for the next 7 years. I remember breaking a mirror and counting the years. “Now it’s gonna be this year when the curse is off me…” as you say it, it was a very pessimistic way of growing up and I don’t know if I’m as pessimistic, maybe I am. I try to be positive, but maybe I am pessimistic, because there’s been negativity in both my parents. It’s doom and gloom. Now both my parents have every right to be doom and gloom. Mummy, married a man who was the best of craic all before this, fell in love. Daddy said everyone was after him, apparently, he thought he was the blonde blue-eyed beauty. They had all these plans, but because of daddy’s illness that never happened. They both suffered with this illness, as did we as children because there was drinking and stuff like that going on. Daddy binge drinking because of his father, mummy a severe alcoholic for probably about 5 years, as a result of daddy’s illness I would safely say. And having four young children.
So it didn’t start off greatly. It didn’t start off great for any of us. I don’t know what my two sisters and brother felt like at that time, or if it impacted mentally more on me than them, I don’t know because, there we go again, we don’t talk about it.
P
We’ve kind of jumped in, into really quite a heavy bit. It’s completely fine, but there are some other things I want to ask. You were born in ‘79 and your grandpa was killed in ‘75. What are your very earliest memories?
T
My very earliest memory of my life is turning five years old. I have an older sister and a younger sister and my older sister was always the boss and could run faster than me. And I thought the day that I turned five, “I’m going to be fit to run faster.” That is my very first memory. A very prominent memory! On January 28 on that year I put a pair of purple corduroy trousers on and got my sister outside, and I says, “Right let’s run!” To see who was going to win the race. I just thought that you automatically run faster on the day of your fifth birthday!
(Laughter)
That is just innocence. I have got a boy who is four now and I listen to all his wild theories and it’s great to listen to. I probe at him just to see what his imagination is like! I don’t know if it’s because I don’t have many of those memories. Instantly able to run faster, I’ll never forget that day.
P
How did you do?
T
I think I lost! My big sister wasn’t going to let me win. I do remember being able to ride a bike for the first time. I cherish them wee memories…When mummy and daddy got married they’d very little money. They bought a barn off somebody called Biddy and we always called the house we grew up in Biddy’s, before it was renovated. It was just a barn, three rooms, kitchen, living room and bedroom… that’s all the memories…
P
She’s still got that role. But your role was different, you were the one who had this story placed with you. The first thing you talked about was being the carrier of this story… D’you think there’s some discomfort from your mum, and maybe your dad as well, about that story? And about the fact that you became the confidant…?
T
Maybe… I was absolutely heartbroken for a man I had never met. I cried for him (my grand da) and never met him. Even now, I understand I’m crying for daddy, for his pain, but as a child I was absolutely heartbroken. Gutted. I just couldn’t believe. You talk about praying, I was praying he would come back, having never met the man.
P
Sounds like a heavy weight for a little kid to be given.
T
I don’t think daddy done it purposefully, I was the one who was there who was listening to what he was saying. But he’d only do it with a drink. Later now, when I’m getting things correct, making him confirm things, he’s talking about it a bit more now. And more recently he’s talked about his father never having liked him… he’s opened up about how his father treated him as a child. And that is even more of a burden, because I’m thinking, he is feeling exactly the same way as I do about my mother. It’s even more intense… Here I am, telling the story of a man I grieved for as a kid, that I never met, and now feeling hurt for daddy because the man I’m talking about never liked him…
P
Do you think things get passed down not only through stories, but physically?
T
Yes I do… Mummy, I thought she was a very, very cross woman, who didn’t like me. And daddy who was a grieving man, as I understand it now. And stress in the house because daddy was away working and unwell at the same time and maybe mummy was trying to control it. I can’t pinpoint a time where I can honestly say, “There was a happy memory.” Being aged 5 and thinking I could run faster is the only prominent memory I have of a happy childhood. And that’s so simple. Maybe I am being pessimistic. I’ve spoken to the mental health team about it… I do think it’s passed down not by stories but, as you say, by tension and trauma they’ve experienced…
P
Do you remember a time of becoming aware outside of your family there was this tension?
T
I do remember the police and the British army would’ve hounded daddy. Probably because of his father, but prior to his father being killed, daddy would’ve wrecked about in cars. On the roads with cars and the police would’ve had every right to stop him and ask, “Is the race over yet?” That’s the time daddy tells me about. He was wild as a March Hare, so he was.
P
What was the significance of his father being killed? Had he done something? And why did that then bring the wrath of the police and the army down on his head?
T
I don’t know. There was a young man killed with my grand da and he was only 18. They would’ve been a sensible family.
P
Who killed who? Just to be clear, just for the tape.
T
It was UDR and RUC. From the HET Report, it was UDR and RUC.
P
HET. And what’s that?
T
The Historical Enquires Team.
P
So it was the police and the army.
T
It was the RUC and the Army, but as ‘The Glenanne Gang’. All of them were RUC Reservist, UDR, or full-time RUC.
P
But out of uniform, they were acting as The Glenanne Gang.
T
In the papers away back, it was a UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force, Loyalist paramilitary group) killing. But they now know it’s different, it was RUC and UDR personnel in boiler suits.
P
And so they walked into this pub and they shot.
T
They did. One was stood up and the other was crouched down, so they meant to kill. Take people by the ankles, or by the head.
P
What’s the significance of standing up and kneeling down?
T
Standing up, if anybody’s at the bar standing up you’re gonna get them head on. My grand da was shot seven times. In both ankles, both wrists, chest. Things like that. But probably the one to the head done it. If you’re gonna take a bar full of people out, take them by then ankles so they fall, or shoot them from above waist. D’you know? There wasn’t gonna be any missing.
I’m surprised that only two people died. There was seven injured. Two people died, my grand da and Eugene, who was sat opposite the bar entrance. I only know this stuff, their position in the bar, how many times he was shot — and daddy only knows it now — because of the HET Report. And who else was in the bar and where they were sitting, and how the whole thing went. You’ve got that imagery going on in your head too. As a child, whenever I thought about my grandad being shot, I thought about him being blasted away. Like in the movies or something, but as an adult it’s just as bad…
(Break in interview)
P
When we were standing outside we were talking about the little folk and superstition. Now, I kind of went into superstition and religion and stuff, when I knew what was happening with my dad and tried to plea bargain. With whatever. I wonder if you could tell me a little bit about the trees you would avoid?
T
A neighbour of mine, an outstanding member of the community, a Eucharistic Minister in the chapel, giving communion, he wholeheartedly believed in fairies down the back fields of where we were. He maintains that the fairies took over a cart, in years gone by, and imposed bad luck on this neighbouring man because he had took down a fairy tree. They coped (cursed) it. This man, he is sensible, very sensible – well, if he is saying there is fairies, there has to be fairies. I wouldn’t cut down a fairy tree, daddy wouldn’t cut down a fairy tree. Anybody I know, locally, older people, wouldn’t cut down a fairy tree.
To move the rocks, the fairy ring. Nobody would do that and I certainly wouldn’t… Those wee things. Or a magpie saluting them, I’m saluting magpies and I’m looking for the second one, two for joy… When Poitín (alcohol, anglicised as ‘potcheen’) was made you had to leave a cup outside for the fairies to drink — and if they drank it, the Poitin was good and if they didn’t, the Poitín was bad, it hadn’t been made right. I don’t know if it’s to do with science, or if there is fairies down the back field drinking Poitín. But the fairies down the back field drinking Poitín is what I would like to be real. I don’t rule anything like that out, that especially because it was told by a man who is very sensible and wholeheartedly believes. You couldn’t say, “Och now, come on.”
P
My grandma believed in fairies, my mum was kind of borderline, and the lady up our road believed in them and used to feed them. We had just got a young puppy and me and my little brother walked up the road with the dog and she saw there was milk and bread out, so she ate it. Then this lady came to the door and she was horrified, she was really horrified. We thought, “Oh this is funny!” And then we thought, “This is not funny at all.” She was scared. It wasn’t a larky thing, this was pretty serious.
T
Yes this minister was serious. It was a cart full of sticks I think. And then that man, he died capping cows on the road we live on. He dropped dead on the road, like that. The man who told the story about the fairies. When that happened I thought to myself, “Maybe the fairies has got to him!” Serious, serious.
P
When you say he was capping cows what d’you mean?
T
Herding, we call it ‘capping’… he dropped dead very close to his house, down near the back fields. Now, my mother has Lymphoma. She was making a garden. Down the back of our house there is a hawthorn hedge and further down that’s the back fields. She was making a garden and wrecking about and all the rest of it, then she discovered she had Lymphoma. Just went down to the hospital. And it does fleet through my mind every now and then about this man Pat telling the story about the fairies and not to touch anything down the back fields. Or to disturb them in any way… older people would believe in that.
P
Yes that’s what I remember, there was a guy we met one day, a shepherd, he had sheep and he was out on the hills with a stick. And he had a bottle in his pocket, but she’s obviously been drinking. He was talking about the White Lady coming and walking along the hills.
T
Banshees.
P
He wasn’t joking.
T
I believe — well, I hate to say “I believe” in case they come looking for me – but banshees scare me, so they do. I’m not religious in any way, but the spirit world I do believe in. And I do believe in the banshee. One time, when my youngest son was born, and I heard this “Waaaaaaugh!” Like the cry of a child, it really was. It freaked me out. Thankfully, I went out the next morning and I seen all this fluff. So it was a cat fight, thank God. I was gonna go straight to Mass! (Laughter)
I am superstitious, because I do believe. It’s not passed down through grandmothers, grandfathers, but it comes from insecurity within me I think. If I see one magpie, I’m looking for the next one, because I don’t want anyone to fall out with me, or feel somebody is going to fight with me. Even now, with my son’s daddy — because we always used to row — I’d be looking out for magpies, “Oh there’s gonna be a row here.” Breaking mirrors, I’m counting the years. I think it’s an insecurity.
P
And do you think that the insecurity has any relation to the story that your father told you, about your grandfather being shot in a pub?
T
Yes. Probably. Bad luck and wrong place, wrong time… you’re trying to avoid magpies, or a robin in the house that means somebody is going to die.
P
How do you think these beliefs are an antidote for insecurity?
T
I don’t know. Is it because you’ll blame that magpie you seen, you’ll put it down to that single magpie, or you’ll put it down to the robin if somebody close dies? You can put it down to something else, other than that happening to you.
P
Rather than believe in the world of random things and bad things just happening, it’s less scary.
T
To believe. To believe the superstition. If that robin hadn’t have come into the house then X wouldn’t have happened.
P
Do you think as a kid, because you’re quite powerless, you can’t affect what the adults are doing around you, that if you engage in those sorts of ideas they are at least —
T
A comfort. A comfort, or a reason to why something happened. What you knew then as a child, your mind is so simple. The likes of my grandad’s death and the way he died, to accept that… usually as a child you are accepting of everything, but whenever something bounces out of this normal world you live in… That sharp thing, that changes the whole way you look at life and you’ll blame superstition.
I had a friend who died of an epileptic fit and another friend of mine said, “Somebody seen a black frog. A black frog means somebody close is going to die.” We blamed the black frog, and that’s even in adulthood. You’re away racing around everyone you know, saying, “I love you and I think the world of you.” Only talking now, I’m making myself very aware of how superstitious I am. Black frogs, pictures off walls, robins, birds flying into the window, single magpies.
P
It can get very exhausting. As a kid, it used to take me two, maybe three, hours to walk home from school, because I couldn’t walk on cracks. I had to pick up anything that was worms, or little creatures, or anything that I thought needed to be saved. I had to move rubbish from the path in case anybody tripped up on it, I’d come home with armfuls of rubbish.
I remember being exhausted, just wanting it to stop. It was so much, you know? I suppose my family didn’t seem to acknowledge what was going on, my dad was set on staying whatever the hell came. And so I was trying to barter with —
T
The powers that be. Just when you say that, I do remember lifting leaves and taking them home and putting them under my pillow. Thinking of this poor leaf. Afraid of it dying. Afraid of mummy dying, daddy dying if I didn’t do this. “If I do this mummy will die, or daddy will die. Or if I don’t do this.”
P
It was like a ritual, a very, very strict ritual.
T
Everything had a consequence, nearly. “If I don’t close the curtains properly, something’s going to happen. So close them properly.” Have them closed so there is no light getting in. I do that now, to this day. But not because I think anything is going to happen. Or do I?
I followed those sorts of rituals just in case. And believed that everything has a consequence, because. My daddy’s friend called for him, my mummy and daddy were out house-hunting that day, daddy wasn’t there. Had he been there he probably would’ve went to the pub along with Eugene, but instead my grand da did. So he died there.
I think that comes from way back there, I’m thinking in my head, if that hadn’t happened then that wouldn’t have happened – don’t do this it has a consequence! It has to come from some sort of — that just doesn’t happen when you’re 10, or 9, or 6. It’s coming from somewhere in there, it’s something you don’t understand as a child. So we analyse it now, as adults, or try to.
P
I think that’s the trap as well.
T
Analysing?
(Break in recording)
T
I can’t understand that reason. Why, or how it was even in my head.
P
The idea of suicide?
T
The idea of suicide. And the want for it, sometimes. Which sounds a bit crazy. I do have depression and I have been in hospital recently. But that, as a child, contemplating your own death, somehow.
I’m not crazy, I do have health issues, depression mostly. But when I say that out loud, that sounds like the mind of a child who is going to grow up into being an adult who is going to explode. Really. And somehow, hopefully, I will explode in the right direction. It’s funny that you say that too. I don’t want to interview you, but how old were you?
P
It’s alright. I would’ve been about 10. And I remember one night, in the same room as my brother actually, standing with a knife. The scalpel that we used to use to make model aeroplanes. And drawing it across my wrist. But I couldn’t force myself, I broke the skin but I couldn’t force myself to really gouge it in. Which I always felt was very cowardly. That’s why I thought, “I have to atone.” Because I wasn’t strong enough to kill myself. Because I thought that was the only option. Because that would save my family.
T
Yes, I know. You’re a carrier as well, of the cross. So to speak.
P
Of course, that’s really uncomfortable for my family. My family don’t really know about that bit of it. Everybody dodges around it because of course nobody comes out of it very well. But in a family crisis, unfortunately, we replay some of these things.
T
I’ve self harmed, and — well I haven’t since last year, but I was very intent on suicide at the beginning of the summer last year. Thank God, I’ve popped out of that. That’s always been in my head. Not to do it, but should a problem come along, a huge problem, and you’ve options on the table, that is one. I think once you put that on the table the first time, think about it the first time, it always becomes there again. You do this, this, this, or this. It’s one of the options sitting on the table.
P
Do you think that option comes back to the bar, your grandpa being in the bar on that day? Or is that too simplistic?
T
I don’t know yet why. The first time I found out about death was in a violent way. Not that somebody has passed on and fallen asleep forever, but died violently in that way, made death almost an obsession. Maybe that’s where the suicide thing comes from. I’m curious about death, wonder how it feels to die. That sounds like a very sick mind, but I’m just being honest. I’ve a very strong curiosity about death.
P
And why wouldn’t you be curious? There’s a conundrum, there is a question you can’t solve… it was a very unsettling place to be as a child. And like you said that puts stuff on the table which is there forevermore and some of it is not good to be around, especially as a kid. And you lose a certain quality of childhood, because you’ve actually had to try to deal with some stuff that you’re not equipped to. Probably nobody is. So that’s when you’re floundering around, but also you carry that weight with you. That’s when we’re formed isn’t it? And you were formed in the middle of a crisis. In your case, the story that you get told isn’t Little Red Riding Hood, or Jack and Jill.
T
…Who is Tracey, what has Tracey done? A lot of heart-searching. Especially now I’m coming up to 40. They say life begins at 40. I’m still waiting patiently!
(Laughter)
ENDS
Tracey Mulholland was interviewed by Philip Davenport, in Belfast 2019