Rory & Ita

  ‘I took fatherhood in my stride. I never considered it as a philosophical thing to look into. I just went about my business. The children came along as a result of this miraculous thing that happened. I enjoyed it, of course. But Ita did all the making and mending. I might have changed a nappy, once or twice. But under extreme provocation – absolute necessity. That wasn’t part of the curriculum at all. The children came along, and you made room for them; they became part of your life. But I didn’t think about it in any special way. Don’t forget, I was one out of nine children. I was surrounded by the whole idea of procreation as something natural in life – and family planning was in its infancy.

  ‘I enjoyed the teaching. I met some very peculiar and very funny characters.‡ One of them was Butch Moore. Butch was a nice young fellow, always a smile on his face; you could hear him warbling in the back of the class. I went down to him one day, and said, “Whatever chance you have of earning a living as a typesetter, you’ve none as a singer.”* I got on well with the students, with only one or two exceptions. The vocational teaching service didn’t allow corporal punishment, so I’d take the fellow to one side and tell him that if he didn’t behave himself I’d put him out of the class, and then report the matter to his employer. This could have serious consequences for the apprentice. Every second year, we’d get a new batch of students who suddenly realised that, unlike the Christian Brothers, we couldn’t use a stick, and they thought they could do what they liked on us. So, a couple of times, if someone did something that was over the top, I’d give him a gentle nudge in the ribs. It was risky but the fact is, I got two years of absolute peace and a reputation – “Don’t mess with Doyle or he’ll do for you.”

  ‘My trade was compositor, which was setting and arranging type for printing. So, I was teaching the craft of composing, and its associated crafts, which included readers’ marks, how to correct, how to do proofing, how to design print. In my later years as a teacher, I taught typographic design, how to design books, how to lay out magazines, and all that sort of business. It was quite an extensive curriculum. I worked about a thousand hours a year.† I went in at nine every morning, to half-twelve, and then two o’clock till half-five. I taught night classes as well, for my troubles. I got an afternoon or a morning off if I had a night class. The night-class students were studying for the Senior Certificate examinations. Some of them did the higher levels of the City and Guilds of London examinations. I preferred lecturing to the senior fellows, because I could go on rambles of imagination, and bring them with me. And the holidays were marvellous. End of June, classes finished, and that was it till September. Now you couldn’t just take off at the end of June. There were roll books to be filled up, and other curricular activities. Eventually, the principal would say, “Off you go.” And then it was heaven. I didn’t realise until much later that a huge part of the attraction was the holidays. I didn’t work at all. I’d be sitting in the garden, listening to cricket. I saw the great test matches, between England and Australia – on the wireless. Very pleasurable.

  ‘My nickname was Doyler. I was also called Rip Kirby, after the comic-strip detective in the Evening Mail. He had curly black hair and horn-rimmed glasses. They thought I looked like him.’

  ‘I remember, Ita went into the nursing home, and the little boy was born. And the high delight, and then Dr Chapman phoned me up and told me that the baby was being moved to Temple Street. We didn’t have a phone; it was our neighbours, the Coghlans, he phoned – I think: the baby was being moved to Temple Street to have him checked up. So, he was brought to Temple Street and, after a day or so, he died. He was a beautiful baby, a lovely child. I still remember him. Dr Chapman asked me if I minded if they had a post-mortem, that it might help someone else. I said, “Have the post-mortem.” And then he told me, the baby would never have lived outside the womb, that his organs were all mixed up inside – some congenital thing.

  ‘I had to buy a little white coffin. Kiernan Coghlan drove me, with the little coffin, up to Glasnevin. And I had the little fellow buried. I just think of it in terms of carrying the little white coffin. A profoundly sad experience. I don’t know where I got it – some undertaker I was told about; somebody else had had the same problem. And because of the cost of the nursing home, the undertaker said that we could also have the baby buried in the Angels’ Plot, for ten shillings. And that is where he is.

  ‘After the funeral, myself and Máire went to visit Ita in the nursing home. I had an umbrella that Ita’s stepmother had given me for Christmas. And when we came out to get the bus, we saw it was on the point of leaving, so we both started running. I let the umbrella fall, and what I picked up was the bottom of the umbrella, and a heap of chalk – the handle was filled with chalk or some kind of plaster. I was left holding this thing in my hand – comedy on a day of tragedy.

  ‘It was a distressing time. It was traumatic. But we both took it. Certainly, Ita did. She just looked sad but she didn’t – she is not that way, the kind that kicks up a fuss. She just took it. We had to live with it. And we did. In those days, short of dying, you went to work – no such thing as taking time off. I think Aunt Lil looked after Aideen and Pamela while Ita was in the nursing home. I think it was Lil – my memory isn’t too clear on that, forty-five years ago.’

  ‘We bought Tintawn* for the floors; it was marvellous. It was made in Ireland, in Youghal, from tough grass, sisal, grown out in Africa, and they could weave it into a tough floor covering. It was quite popular. So, we had red Tintawn in the hall, and an oatmeal one in the sitting-room. It was everlasting, and it caught all the dirt and dust, underneath, where it couldn’t be seen. The kids’ legs must have been made out of steel, because they sat and played on it, and it was really tough stuff. But that was a big thing; we no longer had to go around with a knife and wet newspaper, renewing the newspaper under the skirting boards, to keep out the drafts, because the Tintawn was fitted right up to the boards. We still had lino in the dining-room.

  ‘And the washing machine came to stay – no more of the old handwashing. And then we rented a television after RTE began to broadcast. I was absolutely gobsmacked by the whole thing. The wireless wasn’t a common thing in most people’s homes for most of my youth. And now, not alone the wireless, but a television. It was a marvellous window on the world. I thought at the time that it would have a tremendous educational effect on people, and on our children. It had a profound effect on everybody. Visual news had a very great impact. Discussion programmes were humanised – the people were literally in your room. I also enjoyed the sports. For the first time I enjoyed watching a hurling match, because I could now see the ball. We also got a phone but it’s important to remember that, in my working days, when you went to work, you went to work and you left your family behind. No woman would have dreamt of phoning her husband to come and settle problems; whatever they were, you heard about them when you got home. Things happened at home during my time at work that I didn’t see or experience, but heard about later. That’s a difference from today, when it’s an all-enveloping thing: you go to work but you’re looking over your shoulder or someone is talking in your ear. The universal usage of the phone hadn’t been thought of. So, the phone in the house did make a difference but, then, it was still only a phone.

  ‘We had a bungalow with a garage. The garage looked very nice, but it never crossed our mind that we’d ever own a car. We could put the pram in it, and other things, like bikes – it was a handy thing to have. However, after I’d become a full-time vocational teacher – permanent and pensionable – I decided that we might be able to afford a car. For a few years, after a couple of rises in salary and a couple of increments, we’d had £4 or £5 left at the end of the month, so I’d opened a bank account – that was a big thing – in the Provincial Bank, in Capel Street. And I knew we could get a very good second-hand car for around £200, so I went down to the bank and I asked to see the manager. I went into his office and he sat me down, and asked, “What can I d
o for you?” So I explained that I wanted a loan, and the bank manager, a little, fat, pompous shit with a moustache like Ronald Colman’s, told me in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t getting a loan, that there was no way that the bank would even consider giving the likes of me a loan. And so, I left the bank, humiliated, shaken, and I never went back.* When I got over the shock, I went up to Raheny and opened an account in the Bank of Ireland, and transferred any money I had from the Provincial Bank, shook the dust off it.

  ‘Later, I decided that getting a second-hand car, no matter how good, wasn’t an option. I didn’t know anything about motor cars so, if anything went wrong with it, I hadn’t the skills that a lot of other fellows had, to be able to raise the bonnet and talk about the innards and fiddle with them. So, I decided I’d go the bold step and buy a new one. One day, while mulling this over, I saw an ad in the paper – a dealer on Usher’s Island had Ford cars for sale. A new Ford Anglia; it was £500-odd – £10 a month, for God knew how long. And I decided I’d have it.

  ‘In the meantime, my sister Nancy’s husband, Brendan Walsh, gave me about half an hour’s driving lesson in his Volkswagen, up and down the coast road, the James Larkin Road. Half an hour – that was my training. I never did a driving test. I got my licence and insurance, no bother whatsoever.† Eventually, the car was delivered to Usher’s Island, and I went along to collect it. I asked the dealer would he drive me across the city. He did, and stopped the car outside the Cat and Cage pub, in Drumcondra. I got in and hit the accelerator and took off up the road without killing anyone or myself.‡

  ‘The following Sunday, we all set off, a carload of kids and all, to visit Ita’s father in Terenure. And the car kept jumping, every time I changed the gears; it was ferocious.* The next day, our neighbour, Leo Mulvaney, who had originally been a mechanic, took a look at it and discovered about two inches of white twine stuck in the carburettor. It was a miracle the car went at all. But afterwards, the kids would say, “Make the car jump, Daddy.” But I could never make it jump the same way again.’

  * Ita: ‘We did it, between us.’

  * Ita: ‘The preacher was saying, “You want to be saved? You all want to be saved. Sailor in the corner, put your hand up if you want to be saved.” And the sailor obviously put his hand up, and the preacher goes, “Sailor, you are saved!” And I thought, “God, wouldn’t that be handy.” Do all the devilment you wanted to do, and then go to this thing and hold up your hand, and you’re saved for ever more.’

  * Rory: ‘Unfortunately, that boy, Gerald, when he grew up, drowned in that dreadful Fastnet disaster [in 1979]. He got interested in sailing in Kilbarrack. They were things that happened that you could never have expected.’

  * Tom Round: joined the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, 1945; Sadler’s Wells, 1952–8; best known for his rendition of ‘Take a Pair of Sparkling Eyes’.

  † Joe Lynch: actor and radio presenter; best known for the character Dinny, in the Irish soap Glenroe.

  ‡ Eamon Keane: actor, raconteur, broadcaster.

  * Rory: ‘After a number of moves, the Mays ended up in London, where they bought a boarding house. Barney was shot dead by one of his boarders, and Ena was badly injured.’

  * Ita: ‘Fish and meat, bread and tea, everything, even to the baby’s food; and there’d always be some kind of sweet thing as well. She really kept us going. And the grocer, Peter Butler, let us run a book, because he knew we’d pay. I’d never owed money to anyone.’

  † Ita: ‘I was much relieved when the whole thing was over. I used to put money by each week, for rates and ground rent, and I’d stopped that. It took us months and months to catch up, even with the pay increase.’

  * Ita: ‘I told him we were expecting a salary cheque within a few days, and then we’d pay the rates. He became very abusive, and bullying.’

  † Rory: ‘A perpetual payment on the lease of ground, in our case paid to the builder, at first; he sold it on. Eventually, we bought it out – a move facilitated by a Fianna Fáil government.’

  * The Doctor.

  *‘That’s fine.’

  † The Trade Certificate.

  ‡ Rory: ‘I was down in the Dollymount Inn one day, having lunch, and this little oul’ fellow came up to me and said, “Hello, Mr Doyle. Do you remember me?” I didn’t remember him at all, and then my mind flashed back nearly half a century to this little fellow, who was still a little fellow. He was one of my pupils, all those years ago. “I’ve just retired,” he told me. “I’m a grandfather as well.”’

  * A showband star, Butch Moore sang Ireland’s first Eurovision Song Contest entry, ‘I’m Walking the Streets in the Rain’, a good song, in 1965. It came sixth. He died in 2001.

  † Rory: ‘Eventually the TUI (Teachers’ Union of Ireland) was formed, and I became one of the organisers of that. We had Charlie McCarthy as the general secretary and he was first-class, really very good. We got the teaching hours down to a maximum of nine hundred and sixty a year. We enjoyed the luxury.’

  *Tinteán: fireplace, hearth; home.

  * Ita: ‘He came home livid. As soon as he could manage it, he took our huge wealth away from the Provincial Bank and put it into the Bank of Ireland.’

  † Ita: ‘I never drove. At one stage I was going to learn, and I lost my nerve and I didn’t bother. I often regretted it. In later life, I regretted it.’

  ‡ Ita: ‘I didn’t know he was driving it home, but he arrived at the gate with the new Anglia, and I’ll never forget the gorgeous leather smell inside it. It was beautiful, it was wonderful; we were made for life.’

  * Ita: ‘It stalled on Portobello Bridge; it wouldn’t start. And then it hopped, before it started again. We were at the stage where we felt like throwing it back at the dealer because, every time we stopped and Rory tried to start it again, it would hop along. I remember, the kids in the back enjoyed it thoroughly.’

  Chapter Nineteen – Ita

  ‘I’d knitted Aran sweaters for the children, and I must point out that they weren’t knitted especially for Kennedy’s visit.* But I think it was an NBC crew came over to us. They were very keen to put the four kids on camera. They filmed them waving at thin air, but they were going to make it appear as if they were waving at President Kennedy. They told us it would be on American television that night but, naturally, we didn’t get to see it. But when he came out of Áras An Uachtaráin† in the car, we had our cine-camera ready – there weren’t many other people there – and he waved out at us. I was amazed; it was very easy to see him, while he’d been crowded out everywhere else. But all we got on the cine-camera was his hand. The rest is darkness, but the hand is still there.

  ‘The camera came from my brother, Joe. He was over here on holiday.‡ He slept in Terenure, but had most of his meals with us and we went around a lot with him. And when he went home to Washington, he sent us this cine-camera. It was a great thing, a Kodak Brownie. We got it the year Shane was born, and we have his christening, the First Communions and holidays on film, and people like my father and stepmother, and aunts and uncles, in Coolnaboy and Kilmuckridge, and Rory’s mother; they’re all long dead now.

  ‘Joe wasn’t bad at that time. He was slow walking but he was able to drive. He was still working, over in the embassy in Washington, so he was able to care for himself, more or less. But he often said that the people he worked with over there were more than kind to him, and he probably couldn’t have stayed that long, only for them. The one name he mentioned above all others was Noel Dorr.* He said he was the kindest man that could have been. He’d often get Joe up in the mornings and bring him in to work. He was very slow, and I’m sure he was suffering. It was rheumatoid arthritis.’

  Her father died in 1963. ‘He wasn’t ailing for long. I was in bed with the flu – I very seldom got sick. We still had no phone, but Mrs Rosney next door took the message and she came in and told me. He’d had an operation; we didn’t know what for – we didn’t ask. We didn’t think he’d die; I thought he’d be alr
ight. He’d stayed in good form while he was in the hospital. He was buried in Mount Jerome, with my mother. He had a fine big funeral, but I’ve very little memory of it. When my father retired he used to go walking in the park off Templeogue Road and he’d meet three or four other retired men, and the state of the universe would be discussed. We went in to see him in hospital nearly every night, and these men were often with him, chatting and talking. I think they got a bit of a shock too, when he died.