I was 11 when my brother Leonard Winston Cross was murdered. He was only 18 years old, and a happy-go-lucky teenage boy. He was flirty and funny and did anything for laughs. He worked in Ebrington Barracks as a painter and he was leaving his work one Friday in November 1974, to join the regular army on the Tuesday of the following week.
When he didn’t come home on that Friday night, my mother presumed he had gone out for a drink with friends. His best friend, Joseph Slater, known as Bert, was with him. They never came home.
The IRA had abducted both of them from a bar across the border. They were taken to Buncrana and tortured for three days. Then, they were hooded and shot on Sheriff’s Mountain. Then they were left lying at the side of the road, with black bin-bags over their heads.
At first, the IRA said that he was an informer for the military, because he worked in Ebrington Barracks. Then they said that it was a case of mistaken identity and they apologised for taking him and shooting him. That part is hard to take.
Winston is gone. Winston isn’t coming back, and so what then? I keep saying this to people, and no one understands. What about the aftermath? Nobody ever came to ask us how we were or what life was like for us after he was murdered. From that day on, we had a terrible, terrible life.
My father became an abusive alcoholic after Winston died. My mother became totally dependent on drugs and tried to commit suicide. She tried everything to end her world. We didn’t exist after Winston, she had no more children, there was nobody else in her mind but him.
My childhood was horrific. I could have disappeared off to anywhere and nobody would have noticed me gone. I was up the back lane drinking bottles of Mundies at the age of 13. Nobody knew.
I don’t blame my father for how he turned out. I blame the circumstances. Doctors came and gave my mother Diazepam, sleeping tablets, nerve tablets, injections, and he was left sitting in the corner. People thought, ‘ah, you don’t need anything, you’re a man.’ He was never once asked if he needed any help and so he went on the drink.
He got very abusive and violent towards my mother and the boys. He drank six nights a week. It was awful. Sunday was the only day that pubs didn’t open so I’d always wake up on a Sunday so relieved. Then it would be Monday and the drinking and violence would start again.
My mother worked twelve-hour shifts as a cleaner, and I once saw my father beating her face off a mirror before she went out to work one morning. It was just so violent. He didn’t ever justify himself or explain himself. Sometimes after a fight or violence, he would sit up the stairs crying.
We didn’t exist as children anymore. I wasn’t classed as a child anymore. I swore when I left the house that if I ever had children, I would tell them I loved them every day of their life. We have always done that, and still do. We bring our problems to the table and we talk about it and support each other.
That’s what the problem was in our house, nobody got support after our Winston died. There was nothing and nobody.
An extract from Beyond the Silence, published by Guildhall Press and available for download, from Amazon, priced 99p
