Before My Actual Heart Breaks by Tish Delaney

‘If I was sixteen again, I’d do things differently.’ Many would agree, but few have reasons for regret as compelling as Mary Rattigan’s.

When she was young Mary wanted to fly. She was going to take off like an angel from heaven and leave the muck and madness of troubled Northern Ireland behind. But as a Catholic girl with a B.I.T.C.H. for a Mammy and a silent Daddy, things did not go as she and Lizzie Magee had planned. Now, five children, twenty-five years, an end to the bombs and bullets, enough whiskey to sink a ship and endless wakes and sandwich teas later, Mary's alone. She's learned plenty of hard lessons and missed a hundred steps towards the life she'd always hoped for. Will she finally find the courage to ask for the love she deserves? Or is it too late?

I enjoyed Before My Actual Heart Breaks so much that I approached the author for an interview. I was thrilled when she agreed. Tish Delaney was born and brought up in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. Like many people of her generation, she left the sectarian violence behind by moving to England. Her superb debut novel Before My Actual Heart Breaks explores emotional isolation and the long-lasting repercussions of trauma. Along the way there is plenty of wry Ulster humour to lighten the mood.

Like Delaney I was born in Northern Ireland, and I also left for England to escape the Troubles. The Roman Catholic community that Mary Rattigan lives in is familiar to me, but as a mirror image, because my family were Protestants of the Presbyterian variety. Their religious and political views could not have been more different from those of the Rattigans, but in lifestyle they were similar.

My Interview

Why does Sadie Rattigan treat her daughter Mary so harshly?

Sadie Rattigan is a monster but she’s Mary’s monster. They’re inextricably linked, one has made the other. Sadie demanded perfection, Mary failed to deliver it so they have to battle it out for the entire course of the book. Above all else, her children’s happiness, her husband’s needs, she strives and succeeds at keeping true to the message of her best friend, Good Holy God. She’s taken the extremes of the Catholic faith to her heart and works hard to make sure her family appears faultless but as we discover, behind closed doors, there is a very different story.

She rules with an iron hand, it’s her way or nothing and she doesn’t mind doling out plenty of unchristian punishment to protect her lie. She is, in fact, based on a Sister of Mercy who had a fine line in casual violence. I was always intrigued how this bride of Christ could so easily slap or shout or aim a heavy book straight at any hapless head! My memory of being young was that there was very little sympathy to be had for all sorts of complaints, physical, emotional or mental. I suppose it was to make us tough – you have to be tough when there’s no-one with any time to mollycoddle you. It’s a side-effect of large families… when there’s eight, nine or ten of you and counting and a farm to run, scraped knees are far down the list of things a mother had on her plate.

What makes mothers blame themselves if their households are imperfect or somehow different?

Losing face was the worst thing that could happen because then everyone – and it was always everyone – would know that you had failed at something, no matter how minor. There was no room for mistakes, people suffered in silence inside bad marriages, with debt problems, with unhappy relationships of all sorts. It was such a different time compared to today when one’s entire life, flaws and all, is lived in plain sight. It’s even recorded and photographed unlike the days of my childhood when not a single complaint was ever written – the instruction when sending cards or letters to America to the relatives was to ‘tell them nothing’! Again, it was the women who were in charge of these complex emotions  at the time - as far as any of us knew, men didn’t have any emotions other than indifference or rage – and they worked hard at keeping that front in place. It was part of the lies we all told each other, we were all fine, we were all trucking along. The reason women and mothers kept at it is they didn’t have the strength to break. If they broke they’d have to talk and they didn’t have the words to describe the kind of crushing disappointment, struggle or heartache that might be the absolute centre of their daily life.

In many parts of the world women suffer because they must fetch water and lack an indoor toilet. Were you thinking of their situation when you described Johns Farm?

I wasn’t so generous of spirit as to be thinking of other, much poorer people. The story in the book of having no electricity, no running water or indoor toilet is based on my own life. I lived in such a house until I was ten. We had Tilly lamps and a terrible facility called the Tin House. The well was a dangerous ride away and one of my jobs was to get the two water buckets on the handlebars of a bike, get them filled and get them past a large Alsatian who liked to tag-team with a Collie when I was on the way back! Once, I dropped them both and was sent back – and why not? None of could do without water.

My uncles also lived in a house with no modcons and several friends of my parents had the same. Their houses had red tin roofs. The rain really does beat a loud drum on them. It wasn’t unusual. I’ve read a review of my book which questioned how such a state of affairs could have been allowed to carry on, but Ireland was poor in the 1970s, especially Northern Ireland. There was no will to improve houses and no money even if the will could be found. It was a great experience and of course, it seems a lot more romantic looking back on it rather than ‘enjoying’ it at the time. The dream was to build on land that had to be bought, to be secured and like many families, that’s what we did.

It seems to me that there are elements of modern slavery in Mary’s story. Am I right?

I certainly never considered that Mary’s story would be interpreted as having any element of modern slavery. More, she was a woman of her time. It was absolutely expected that a woman would be subservient to her husband in 1970/80s Ireland. Her parents were much older, perhaps two generations away from her in terms of years so they’re from the 1920/30s. They are the ones who have trained her to this role. Her mother certainly doesn’t want any possibility of change or fairness. What I hope came across in Before My Actual Heart Breaks is that John Johns is rather more modern in his thinking. He is well-read, he has travelled, he’s had his own social difficulties. He immediately understands how naïve Mary is and, in fact, does not force her to do anything. She chooses what she does, but it suits her to blame him because ultimately she is responsible for the mistake that she feels has ruined her chance to be someone else, somewhere else. It’s a very Irish complaint to have itchy feet and again, the characters reflect the nation’s desire to up sticks and travel – always towards ‘a better life’. When this doesn’t happen, Mary immediately assumes she has failed to get her ‘happy ever after’.

Do you think it is more difficult for women to make their voices heard in Northern Ireland than in other parts of the UK?

I don’t think it was more difficult in Northern Ireland than anywhere else in the UK. I think the problems I describe in the book are more of a class problem or a problem with religion. Women were expected  - at the time the book is set in the 1970/80s - to be docile, to not have strong opinions or to have any desire to see things change. I was 13 when Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister and I remember the outrage that a woman would be in a position of power. Of course, she was a one-off and she had a strict stance on the situation in Northern Ireland. I was very aware that she was blamed as a woman rather than as a politician – most notably during the hungerstrikes. This is not unusual for women in power even these days. It goes deep, that idea that a woman should be gentler, more pliable, that she should never display her steel. Some of the things that the character Mary Rattigan starts to feel and think marks the first steps towards that attitude changing. She has been kept down but through the love she finds outside of her home and away from her mother, she can start to imagine – and to live - a different life.

 What do you think causes the continuing split between Catholics and Protestants in Ulster?

I haven’t lived in Northern Ireland since 1984 so I’m cautious when I have to speak about experience on the ground. Just writing that tells me a lot about how I feel about the place – it’s a place where you have to watch your step and to watch your mouth. This nervousness, I believe, exists on both sides of the divide and despite all the work that is surely being done, there is still a divide. There always will be a divide…unless one side gives up totally its dream. It’s hard to give up dreams when people have died for them. When people have died violently, it’s nigh on impossible. When I was writing, I relied heavily on the excellent book Making Sense of the Troubles by David McKittrick and David McVea – never was a book more aptly titled. I would encourage anyone with an interest or a connection to Northern Ireland to read it. The situation is so complicated, so steeped in history and in such a dire need for everyone ‘involved’ to understand it that all we can do is to educate every generation coming up. Hope is a wonderful thing but it’s hard to beat knowledge as a way through any huge challenge.

—

Before My Actual Heart Breaks by Tish Delaney is out now in paperback, ebook and audio (Hutchinson Heinemann)