Changing Lives, Changing Times

Peter Sheridan is flushed with rage. He's just come from listening to a quartet of reviewers on RTE's Arts Show describe his new book, 44: A Dublin Memoir, as "immensely moving", "beautifully written" and "even at points like Hemingway". He's also about to launch the book today and knows similar plans are in place to publish it in France, Britain, Germany, and beyond. In other words, he should have more than a million reasons to be not just cheerful but gleeful.

Instead, he leans towards the microphone, fuming. It's as though this is the first time he's felt completely free to reveal himself publicly, and he finally has a chance to articulate feelings that are deeply ingrained in his psyche. What's on his mind right now is the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland in 1999, and specifically, Archbishop Desmond Connell's recent comments about family planning.

"The events of the past week have proven, once again, that we are living in the Stone Age," he says. "And shown us how horrible the Church's attitude is in this area. The basic, fundamental underlying thing is that they hate the fact that sex is pleasurable. They hate the fact that sex is spiritual. Sex is the layman's spirituality. It's one of the few spiritual things left to us. We should be enjoying it. We should be indulging in it. It's one of the great ways for a couple to end their day, in an embrace, in a sexual union, in loving each other. The problem is the absence of love. O'Connell has it all wrong. This 'contraceptive culture' he talks about, what does that really mean? That people have choice. They didn't have choice before. Now they have choice." (Moves closer to microphone) "That is a good thing. Get this clear. This is good. You guys have it wrong. The absence of choice is B-A-D."

Peter Sheridan sits back in his chair in the lobby of Dublin's Shelbourne Hotel.

"To tell you the truth I was saddened more than angered when I first read what Connell said," he continues. "Ordinary people voted on this issue. We now have a society where people exercise choice in terms of what form of contraception they use. That speaks for itself. But the reaction of the Church is like a petulant child. It's like the child having a tantrum because they've been proven wrong. So the Church says 'let's get at them by saying there is something wrong with the kids'. It really is a tantrum, the Church going, 'oh my God, we've been wrong, they're actually all doing it now, how can we get back at them?'. It really does sadden me, because I thought we had progressed at least some distance from the '60s."

Peter Sheridan agrees that Desmond Connell's comments could be seen as "child abuse by another name". It's an issue that is bound to hit a raw nerve in the man. Peter Sheridan was abused as a boy and one consequence of the abuse was that, for years afterwards, sex was not so much pleasurable as pleasure-less. In his book, Peter tells of the time when a lodger staying with the Sheridans, "Mossie", locked him in a toilet on a train as they travelled back to Dublin from a day at the Killarney Races in 1965. Peter was 13, Mossie was much older and clearly still pissed after passing pee the colour of whiskey into the sink.

"Shake that out for me, little Fella."

He nodded towards his penis.

I'd never touched a penis that wasn't mine before. I reached out and took it in my hand. I shook it a few times into the sink.

"Shake out the drops."

It turned into a stick in my hand. Like Moses in the film The Ten Commandments when he turned the snake into a rod before the pharaoh. I ran my hand along the stick. It grew stiffer.

"Tighter, tighter. Squeeze them all out."

And so it continues until Sheridan finally decides:

I didn't want to be there anymore. I wanted to be asleep in my own house. A room of my own. A bed of my own. No lodgers. No brothers. No sister. Just Ma. Sitting at the end of my bed watching me sleep.

Unfortunately, following this experience, Peter Sheridan found he rarely slept well, his nights disturbed by nightmares about snakes.

And there were other effects too which, even today, Peter is slow to discuss.

"Let's just say I would have been very scared of touching myself for a long time after that incident. And didn't. I was afraid of it, scared of it, didn't want to go where that might lead me. That was my reaction to it, on a deeply personal level," he says.

Then again, reactions to child abuse rarely are so linear or simplistic that they can be reduced to single feelings such as "fear". It's a point which is highlighted in Sheridan's book. Later in its narrative, after Mossie leaves the Sheridan household, Peter admits he misses the man, saying: "I wished he was still there. He'd taken a part of me with him and I wanted it back. I still felt connected to him. Like he had a power over me." He also blames his Da, accusing him of passing him over to Mossie, allowing the lodger to become a kind of father-figure. So did this lead to hatred of his father?

"Hatred is not a term I would use in relation to my father," he reflects. "What the narrator feels is betrayal. Never, at any point in the story do I hate my father. I sometimes don't like his rages, or his bullying, but I never hate him. Yet, at that stage in the story, I am thinking 'should he have been there to protect me on the train? How did I end up in that situation? Did I do something wrong? Should I have known something like this would happen?' These are all the things that someone who has suffered abuse, fears, feels, senses. That they actually did something wrong. Not, necessarily, in a sexual way, but that they played it wrong, got the whole thing so wrong.

"Naturally, at that point in the story I want to explore all these different thoughts that I had as a kid. But they are resolved later on, in that I do realise that it wasn't my father's fault. It wasn't his fault. But that is the natural reaction of anyone who has gone through an experience like that. A loss of faith in the father, the parents, the guardians you always believed they are supposed to be. At all times."

So did Peter Sheridan tell anyone about his experience at the time?

"No," he responds, categorically.

When was the first time he told someone?

"In my adult life."

If, on the other hand, his own children were abused would he want them to tell him immediately?

"Yes. And I think it is much easier nowadays because the whole issue is out there in the open. But back then, like the physical abuse in schools and, obviously, sometimes sexual—when kids were getting bashed at school or when I was expelled from school, I didn't go home and tell because that might lead to another clatter.

"For example, I didn't tell my parents I was abused on a train, because none of those things would have been comfortable for them to hear or me to say. Many years later, though, I did speak to my mother and father about the abuse on the train."

What was their response?

"Concern," Peter reflects, softly. "And, naturally enough, they were a bit hurt that I was in a position like that, when they were in the parental role. I'd feel the same in terms of my own kids. I'd feel somewhat responsible if some guy interfered with one of my children."

What about Mossie? In the book Sheridan says what he did was "wrong but he'd done it because he loved me." So is Peter suggesting that the guy was gay?

"I wouldn't have thought so, no," he says. "Just like so many of the Christian Brothers would have sat beside guys and put their hands down their trousers, I don't think they were gay. A lot of them were just in a position of power and that seemed to be a form of expression for people who were extremely disturbed with their own sexuality.

"But with Mossie I do, as part of that resolution I spoke about earlier, end up feeling sorry for the guy. But then, as with so many cases of abuse, the abuse happens with someone a child is extremely fond of, that they're really close to and that they love. So it's not a question that this ogre or monster does anything to you. It's a situation where it's somebody that you actually have a relationship with. Like, Mossie always treated me well. I was Mossie's favourite in the house. He made a little pet out of me. He always called me 'little fella' and gave me the sweets to share out."

All of which must have compounded Peter's confusion when he was actually abused by the guy.

"Absolutely," he says. "There was this aberration which, obviously caused me pain, but also seemed to be an aberration in terms of his character, cause it only happened once. There were other opportunities. He could have put me in all sorts of positions, but didn't. But, afterwards, he never even talked about what had happened on the train. Though I think the reason he moved on was because of that. There was, obviously, a huge discomfort between him and me after that happened. Even though, naturally, you don't change how you feel about somebody overnight. But I was torn in terms of how I felt. Because, on one level, I wanted to stand back but, at the same time, he was someone who had been very kind to me. And loving."

Even so, the aftershock left Sheridan similarly torn in terms of his own sexuality. Be it in a loving situation, or otherwise.

"As I say, it did, yeah," he responds, almost as if in quiet contemplation. "And it's not just me. That is what happens in terms of any abuse at a very young, tender age. It's bound to leave you with residual stuff to deal with. And many people find they don't come round to dealing with it until they are adults. They don't deal with it in their teens or even as a young adult. It's much later. That's how it was for me. It wasn't until I got into my thirties that I actually began to look at that issue and got some help for it. I froze it out, suppressed it, then found this issue came up for me and I had to get help for it. Part of that help was going to talk to Ma and Da about it."

But was it also professional help Peter felt he needed at that point?

"Yeah."

So, if there is any young person reading this who has recently been or was, once, abused sexually, what would Peter advise?

"Tell someone about it right now," he stresses. "And, because it is a different generation, I think my children would be more open than I would have been with my parents. But the first port-of-call for anyone out there who has been abused is to ring somebody to get advice about how to deal with it, how to even tell your partners. There now are helplines, organisations that will help children or young people in this situation. And John Bradshaw talks about 'naming the thing', saying what it is that happened: that this is the first step in recovery."

Does Peter ever feel that the final step in recovery, for him, would be to shake Mossie's hand and say "I forgive you"?

"I'd shake Mossie's hand, without question. Along the way I mightn't have, but I've dealt with it all now so, sure, I'd tell him I forgive him. But only because I have, finally, dealt with the whole experience in my adult life. And, obviously, the fact that I did influences how I wrote that whole section of the book."

But is there even a tiny part of Peter Sheridan that believes the part that Mossie took from him that day was an essence of an innocence he can never recapture?

"No," he asserts. "But that is how I talk about it in the book. Because that is how I felt at the time. And the whole book spins around those two experiences that I do say takes away the innocence of the narrator: my being abused on the train and my brother's death. Frankie. Both are inter-linked in the book and both are pivotal."

Anyone who read the Jim Sheridan interview in Hot Press three years ago will be aware that the death of Frankie Sheridan, as a result of a brain tumour, was the defining moment in the lives of the Sheridan family. Ma. Da. Sister. Brothers. Indeed, in that interview, Jim Sheridan admitted that until he drills inside himself and addresses the very specific effect of Frankie's death on himself and his family, he will continue to impose their history on much of his own work. Similar tendencies have been evident in playwright/poet/novelist Peter Sheridan's life, going way back to his earliest play, produced with brother, Jim, The Liberty Suit.

"I accept what you're saying," Peter Sheridan responds. "I admit that in my adult life there have been various times where what happened to Frankie, and the impact it had on our family, was something I was forced to address. In my work and in my everyday life. Even though it was something that had happened quite a long time ago. It was still one of those events that leaves a very deep emotional scar. Because when you are 15 and your brother dies and he's ten, you, naturally, think 'why didn't God take me?' And you think 'maybe that would have been easier on my parents'."

"That's pretty deep, spiritual stuff to be dealing with when you are 15. And then you don't have the language or life-experience to deal with it. When you are 30 and you are in crisis, you think it is about a relationship you're in, but then you scratch the surface and find the crisis is about your brother's death 15 years earlier—that's when you realise you are going to have to deal with it, at whatever level."

But does Peter agree that, like Jim, he has been writing around the subject of his brother's death, working towards this point of catharsis and creativity, in the course of all his writings?

"Definitely, without question," he says. "For example, The Liberty Suit is filled with people I went to school with. That's who the characters are. But they are on the outside of this experience which, obviously, is something I had to work my way into. If I was really honest, I'd say that everything else I've done has been a kind of apprenticeship to doing this kind of work. This book."

So, does this mean that brother Jim now no longer needs to write his version of the Sheridan past—that he can simply film 44?

"We'll certainly talk about it," says Peter, smiling almost conspiratorially. "It's very filmic, very visual, it's got the elements of a story that good films have, which is a unique point-of-view. This is a family in the turmoil that all families are in, all the time. And, apart from specific details such as Frankie's death and my being abused on the train, the book also covers a very specific period in the history of Ireland. It's no accident that De Valera stopped being the Taoiseach in 1959, which is when the aerial goes up in our house, and we're trying to get television pictures from England.

"Because my father wanted to embrace the world. He wanted to open and expose our family to all those influences that he thought were good, when most of society here in Ireland was saying 'no, they are bad'. My father was 20 years ahead of everyone else. He was the one who would have been saying 'England is more Christian than we are, because their health system is better than ours. They don't have to take in lodgers to pay for education, because it's free'."

"These are the issues that underpin the book, that the audience feel, without having to be told, which I feel should be the purpose of any good story. That you connect to it on a primal level, on a very emotional level, but it seems to be very light in many ways. And the story in 44 is very light, in ways. It's funny. It's whimsical. It's nostalgic. But underneath is a deep, emotional, primal layer that I am trying to get to all the time. And, in that way, I'm very like Jim. We're both very primal animals. We try and deal with raw emotion and then dress it in some way that masquerades what it really is, but it's still pumping underneath, very strongly."

Sean O'Casey's Shadow Of A Gunman and Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot are both cited in Peter Sheridan's book as having had a profound impact on the author as a young man. But is there not a danger that he is appropriating the work of others—even violating these texts—to help tell his own family's story?

"I don't see all this as violating anything," says Peter. "Certainly, in terms of O'Casey and Beckett I think I'm liberating them. And I understand, exactly, what you are saying, in terms of appropriating something and turning it only into what you want to see. Or need. But that's what people do all the time.

"And, okay, maybe a book like 44 is not a place to go into it. It's not an academic exercise. But, to me, the soul of the O'Casey plays had been lost in the way they were performed. O'Casey was a communist. He was railing against something, angry, powerful. He saw the drama as a means of transforming something, trying to turn people around to see the truth of what was happening, what was going on. But by the time I was 15, those plays had become museum pieces for the delight of the middle classes. That's wrong!

"So, of course, I'm going to appropriate them and say 'that's not what they fucking are!' They are my front room because we were a family struggling to make sense of the world. The people who came into my front room, as lodgers, and paid for our secondary school education, that my ma slaved fuckin' eighteen hours a day to cook for them and clean their fuckin' clothes: that's what his plays are about. That's the point I make in the book. And when I talk about my father standing in Frankie's grave, doing Pozzo's speech, that's where he fuckin' was! And if Sam Beckett wasn't standing at his fuckin' mother's grave, then Waiting For Godot is not the play I know it is! The plays are only a reflection of some profound reality that we all are trying to make sense of, that we are using to try and connect, emotionally, to people.

"But what really gets me is that Samuel Beckett, in contrast with say Elvis Presley, is seen as the preserve of academics. Beckett is a blues singer. He's the best fucking blues singer of them all! And my Da was able to articulate, through Beckett's voice, the kind of pain that, as Jim told you in that Hot Press interview, he had not been able to articulate in his everyday life. As Jim said to you, my father formed that theatre group after Frankie's death, because it was the kind of family where kids don't die.

"You talk about things that mean something to ya. When we did Waiting For Godot it was a blues song to our family, the working out of so many things like my brother Gerard, on any day, waiting for Frankie to come home. Then you think 'this fuckin' genius, Sam Beckett, wrote the play for us to perform'. I did that play, first, in 1969. I could still take you through that play, from the first to the last line, as if it was the Hail Mary. The play never left my consciousness. It went in and it never left again. Every moment of that play became so special to me."

Finally, does Peter Sheridan feel now that the true story of the Sheridan family has been told, that he, like a character in Tennessee Williams' play Night Of The Iguana, can say: "God, can it end now? Please let it end"?

"Yes and no," he responds, helpfully. "I would say that 44 is not the whole story because there are other realities involved. As in, my trying to connect my ma's pain with not just the loss of her son, Frankie, but the loss of her innocence in Dundalk when her mom died. All of these things come to mind now as I focus not so much on 44 but the next instalment of the story. Because I do, now, realise that there are other layers to their story that I didn't explore. So much so that there is at least one other book in the Sheridan saga!"