‘My heart problems started earlier than they were officially recorded. I had a bad spell of not feeling well, and Ita sent for J.J. O’Leary, my doctor. He took a look at me, and said, “Put on your coat,” and he brought me up to Beaumont.* I spent about a day and a half there, for assessment, but I didn’t show any of the classic symptoms of a heart condition. They told me I had this oesophagus ulcer; I can’t remember the exact name of it.† So, I came away; and every time I got this pain across my chest, I was to take Gaviscon, a stomach tablet. I’d go for a walk and, every now and again, the pain would come and I’d take one of the tablets.
‘It went on for about two years. Until one famous night, after the Fianna Fáil Árd Fheis. We always had a party, hosted by Michael Woods. This one was in a restaurant in Howth. We were upstairs, and we were enjoying ourselves and, suddenly, I saw spots, shooting stars, in front of my eyes, and then pain across my chest.‡ And I began to perspire, at a terrible rate. In fact, I’d a good suit on me and it was absolutely saturated.* I heard my good friend Noel Leech: “Leave him alone and call a fuckin’ ambulance.”†
‘I was carted by stretcher, down the stairs, and into the ambulance.‡ And I remember, as it turned up Kilbarrack Road, driving along, no siren on, I said, “Every other night, you fellows wake me up with your sirens. And here’s me coming up Kilbarrack Road, and not a sound.” So the driver said he’d soon fix that, and he let the sirens go.§
‘So we arrived in Beaumont, and I was taken to the intensive-care ward. I was put into a bed, and tubes were stuck in me, and various people prodded and tapped me and consulted dials.¶ I passed out, and woke the next morning and looked up at the window, and there was a blue, blue sky. A nurse came in and said, “What are you smiling for?” I said, “I’m looking out at a blue, blue sky that I never expected to see again. And,” I said, “that makes me very happy.”
‘Innumerable tests were done on me for about four or five days. I’d had a heart attack; they agreed on that. But not one of the standard tests suggested that I had a bad heart – no high blood pressure, no high cholesterol. So they said they’d send me home.* I rang up Ita to tell her that I was coming home that day. Then I went down through the wards, to get a newspaper – to walk through the wards in Beaumont took considerable exercise – and I got the paper, came up, was sitting on the side of the bed reading it, when the sparks started again. So I pressed the button, and everybody came running.† They decided to go a bit further, with probing tests, and discovered that I needed a bypass.
‘I remember going to Blackrock‡ on a Sunday, a very pleasant day. And being put into a nice comfortable bed. And that night, a priest came along. He was a Franciscan, and he looked rather solemn. He said, “Do you want to go to confession?” And I said, “No. At this stage in my life, all the sins I’d like to commit, I’ve neither the money nor the inclination for. So, I don’t have anything troubling me at all.” And he said, “Would you not like to think of the sins of your past?” And I said, “No. One of the benefits of increasing age is that you can forget the things that you don’t want to remember. So, I can’t even remember a sin I ever committed.” So he said, “Would you like me to anoint you?” I said, “Yes.” So he anointed me.
‘The next morning, the surgeon, Maurice Neligan, came and took a look at me, and then another man came along and said, “I’m the anaesthetist,” and it suddenly struck me: it reminded me of the story of the English hangman, Pierpoint, coming to the cell and looking at his client, his height and weight and all, to determine the length and strength of the rope. I said this to the anaesthetist, and he said, “You’re pretty close to it; that’s what we’re doing.” He was trying to work out how much anaesthetic I’d need. I was to have a triple-bypass heart operation. I was taken off then, someone gave me a jab, and I remember nothing else.*
‘I woke up feeling all clustered with wires, tubes all around me, people looking at me. And I was with the fairies. I hadn’t a clue where I was. One of the nurses said, “You’ve done very well.”† They’d opened up my leg and taken a vein from it – “harvested,” they called it. This was for the purpose of replacing silted-up heart arteries. I still have the scar; it goes from just above my ankle, up to my thigh. They were rather proud of the job, the sewing-up, a gaping big hole in my chest but no stitches, all very neat. And I was still with the fairies.
‘I spent two or three days in bed, and then I was visited by this very large, formidable-looking lady, and she said, “Up! You’re going to walk.” I said, “I can’t walk.” “Yes, you can,” she said, and she just put her arm around me – I’m twelve stone, not a light-weight – but she hoisted me up on my feet and marched me up and down the corridor several times.‡
‘Everybody who visits Blackrock Clinic says, “Look at the lovely menus.” As far as I was concerned, the food could have been dog dirt. I was no more interested. The food was beautifully done, and everybody came in with “oohs” and “aahs”. But I wasn’t interested.* It took me quite a while; I only really ate again when I got home. I lost an awful lot of weight. I couldn’t sit, I lost so much weight; the hardness of the chair was killing me.
‘It struck me later that the anaesthetic had had a lingering effect on me, for some months. I had waves of fuzzy thoughts, and waves of black depression, and I just fought them off. I couldn’t concentrate enough to read. It was tough going, but if you make up your mind to fight, you’re not going to be overwhelmed by depression, or become a burden. I came through it alright, and I was fine. That was in 1992. I had a minor relapse when I was switched to aspirin, as an alternative to warfarin. It didn’t work; I began getting pains again. I had to spend several days in Beaumont, so that I could be balanced out. I now have a fine selection of tablets,† about eleven, to be taken morning, noon and night. They appear to be doing the business. About five months after the operation, I saw an advert for a leather jacket. I liked the look of it, and decided to make a statement of survival. I bought the jacket. I still have it.
‘I don’t worry about death. It’s inevitable. The longer you live, the more people you lived with are gone. But I don’t regard them as gone; they’re still around, somehow. I can still think of them and I don’t feel any pain or sense of loss.
‘I hope that I don’t become a burden. I know that I’m into old age, what some people would call old age, but I don’t think it’s old at all. I’m quite happy with it. I can’t jump over things or climb ladders any more, to clean gutters. I was through the trauma of the heart attack, and thought then that I was going, so I’m quite prepared to go when the time comes, but not too soon. I believe we cross over to another, very pleasant place. I don’t know what it is; I don’t speculate.
‘I’m now living in a totally different world. The availability of space, travel, movement, colour, and people’s outlook – it’s so totally different. We have much more in the way of material things, much more money and travel. It’s a very mobile society today, and a very pleasant one. And the country – every time I go out now, say, to Ennis* – a dreary town has become a vibrant, colourful place. And all the towns of Ireland reflect this lively image. Young people and no dreariness, and good hotels and restaurants. And some idiots go on about how corrupt the country is. There’s been corruption since Adam got booted out of the Garden of Eden.
‘And Dublin has become a very cosmopolitan, colourful and lively place. The streets throb with the sound of multiple accents and languages, and there’s a very obvious presence of different races, and a noticeably large number of young people. I wish our young people would get over the current phase of overdrinking, but then I seem to remember episodes from my own past years.’
*1961.
† Rory: ‘I still have it. It’s in the china cabinet, in the front room.’
* Rory: ‘It became Anco in 68 or 69.’
* Rory: ‘They had originally been provided for the British Civil Service, and the Irish Stationery Office had continued to order them. I was very interested in
calligraphy, and had tried unsuccessfully to find such a knife myself. The Stationery Office was in Beggar’s Bush Barracks. During the War, around 1942, paper stocks ran very low. One morning, an especially large amount of paper was taken away, and there, behind the stack, were two little old men – book binders. They’d been working there and, when the British left in 1922, no one had told them to go away, and nobody knew they were there. They’d been drawing their wages from another office.’
* Rory: ‘The change from “Lane” to “Road” was considered a good move. “Kilbarrack Lane” would nowadays be considered “posh”.’
† Ita: ‘And I got plenty of exercise, picking up chip bags, wrappers, empty cans and, on one memorable occasion, ladies’ underwear, adorned with little red roses – stuck in the hedge.’
* Violet Fullam.
† Ita: ‘We had a lot of her furniture in the front room for a few years. We couldn’t get into the room.’
‡ Ita: ‘She was here for many, many years. Until she got so old that she herself couldn’t manage any more.’ Vi died in 2000, aged ninety-eight.
§ 1966.
* Rory: ‘We called it the Kilbarrack cumann. Then our friend Tony Canning died, so we changed the name to the Tony Canning cumann.’
* Rory: ‘The sitting Government organised the extent of electoral constituencies. Under the Proportional Representation system it was important to have balanced electoral areas. It’s probable that some governments would be tempted to nudge these changes to their own advantage. The sitting Minister, James Tully, was a bit too drastic in the changes he made, and they backfired on the Government in the next election. It created a new term in politics, the “Tullymander”.’
* Ita: ‘Joe worked with him, in Washington, and liked him. He liked his brand of humour.’
* Rory: ‘I was subsequently National Executive representative for Dublin North East for a number of years.’
* Ita: ‘I wasn’t frightened; all I could do was laugh. Rory sang “Nearer My God to Thee,” and a Scottish woman said, “Jesus! The Titanic!”’
† Ita: ‘We decided to play it by ear.’
* Ita: ‘We walked the legs off ourselves.’
† Ita: ‘The people all looked miserable. I don’t think I ever saw any of them laughing, and they were all in these badly made suits, what we would have described as Guiney suits, from Guiney’s on Talbot Street – good value, but they wouldn’t have been the finest workmanship. And anoraks that looked pretty miserable. They all seemed to be dead serious going along, and they had medals on their chests, the best sweeper of the week, the best typist, the best hairdresser – they all seemed to have these medals.’
* Ita: ‘We were warned not to take photographs of bridges, or other things like that. But we always bring cameras and forget to use them. We’re like that.’
* Ita: ‘Some of them were rough-and-ready places, and some of them were very elegant.’
† Ita: ‘She pointed to horsemen in the distance, and said, “My people.”’
‡ Ita: ‘For some reason, they always put the Irish in front.’
* Ita: ‘The rain lashed; the roof of the big tent leaked. It was real rough and ready, but great fun. They say that horsey people grow to look like horses, and the circus lady with the bear must have been a long time with the bear; the only difference between them was the spangled tights.’
* Beaumont Hospital; northside of Dublin.
† Ita: ‘It was reflux of the oesophagus.’
‡ Ita: ‘The next thing, I looked around, and he went falling over the table.’
* Rory: ‘I’d paid a lot of money for that suit – Maurice Abrahams was the tailor – and it was never quite the same again.’
† Ita: ‘And Noel Leech shouted out, “Get the fuckin’ ambulance.” I can still hear that.’
‡ Ita: ‘I can remember putting my hand on his forehead, and it was saturated. People talk about breaking into a cold sweat. He was frozen, and this perspiration pouring out of him.’
§ Ita: ‘So, the ambulance driver put on the alarm, and he said, “Now are you satisfied?”’
¶ Ita: ‘A nurse came over to me, and she said, “Is your husband in the VHI?” and I said, “Yes, he is.” And she said, “Have you got his number?” I said, “I didn’t expect this to happen.” So, she said, “You’ll have to pay a fee, £10.” I thought, They don’t let you away with much; there I was, waiting to hear was he dead or alive. And I paid her the fee.’
* Ita: ‘I think he was there a few weeks. Time seemed odd at this time; I can’t recollect.’
† Ita: ‘I got a phone call to say he’d had a relapse.’
‡ Blackrock Clinic; southside of Dublin.
* Ita: ‘The matron took me down, just after the operation. He looked dreadful, grey – wires and tubes all over the place. And I was told that he’d be taken off life-support the next day, and that this was a crucial time.’
† Ita: ‘I phoned up at about half-twelve the next day, to find out, and I was told that he was grand. He’d been taken off the support at eleven.’
‡ Ita: ‘The anaesthetic affected him badly. I remember, he was talking about being out in the corridor – and this, mind, was before he was walking again – and he said that when he’d been out there, he’d met a crowd of black men. And I remember you saying to him, “They must have been the Harlem Globe Trotters.”’
* Ita: ‘He went to skin and bone; I’d never seen him so thin.’
† Ita: ‘My sister Máire was telling me about a neighbour of hers, a very cheerful man who’d had a triple bypass. He was only a month out of the hospital, and Máire asked his wife how he was: “I don’t know what it is with him. He’s very slow. He comes home and goes to asleep. I can’t understand it – he’s on the best of tablets.”’
* County Clare.
Chapter Twenty-one – Ita
She first saw the letters in 1963, after her father’s death. Dear Sister Ellie – I am elated to hear you are going to be married, and if you make your husband as good a wife as your sister Mary made me, he can thank his stars. ‘They were from a John J. Beekman, in Hempstead, New York. I read two of them.’ Ellie was her mother, Ellen. ‘And I remembered: there were little poetry books in the house when I was a child, with the name John J. Beekman on the covers. And I realised that the wife of this John was my mother’s sister, and that her name was Mary.’ Another letter was addressed to ‘Dear Sister Ellie and Brother Jim’. ‘But I’d only barely started the letters when my stepmother came in and told me that I’d no right to be reading them, because everything now belonged to Joe, and to put them away. Which I did.
‘Pearl was in a very disturbed state after my father died. I decided, out of sensitivity for her feelings, I’d leave the things as they were, for the time being. I left the letters in the bureau.* There were photographs as well; some of them had writing on the back, and press clippings. They meant nothing to me.
‘But I was quite elated. I’d found out that I had relations in America and that, at least, I had this Mary. They stayed there for many years, but I never forgot them. I knew they were there.’
‘I always wondered, it was always in the back of my mind: who was she? I even remember, when I was younger, walking around and wondering, saying to myself, “That person could be related to me!”’ She knew very little about her mother. ‘Nothing really. Just the few little things I remembered. There was a neighbour on our road, Mrs McGahon, and she used to go walking with my mother, pushing the prams, and she said that my mother was always in good humour. Then there was Mrs McManus, who lived beside us; I remember her saying it too – she was always in good humour. That was all I knew about her.’
She didn’t know that her mother’s maiden name was O’Brien. ‘Not for years and years. It was kind of in the background, a memory of the name “O’Brien”. But not for years. Her name was never mentioned. I’m sure this happened for some good reason. Not to cause upset for her children or possibly to avoid upset
ting my father, who must have been going through a dreadful time. The awfulness of his situation only really dawned on me when I was an adult myself. I certainly lay no blame on him. The saying “Little children should be seen and not heard” was very much adhered to in 1929, and neither my sister nor my brother nor I would have dreamt of asking questions. And the arrival of a stepmother when I was ten certainly put paid to any chance of questions, or answers.
‘All my life I wondered how things would have been if she’d lived. Apart from one photograph which, in the style of the times, made her look a lot older than she could have been, I had no idea what she looked like. My appearance was no help in that regard. I remember, as a young teenager, crossing Enniscorthy Bridge, and an old lady looked at me and said, “Which of the Bolgers are you?” All through the years, I wondered had she brothers or sisters? If so, where were they? Had they children? The only memory I have – it came suddenly to me, only recently – is of a box coming to the house, at Christmas, after she died. I can’t remember what was in it, other than it was wrapped in white paper. It was for me. Who it came from, I don’t know. Some mention was made that whoever had sent it had been related to Mammy. But it’s so vague, I can’t confirm it, and it’s the one and only memory I had of her family.’*
There are five letters, all written by John J. Beekman. The first is dated February 14th, 1921. The last is dated February 14th, 1929. The others are dated February 16th, 1921, September 10th, 1922, and August 9th, 1925. The first three are typed; the ink is light blue. The remaining two are handwritten; the ink is black. All five letters are in a white envelope, addressed to Mrs James Bolger, 25 Brighton Gardens, Terenure, Dublin – Ireland. The envelope was franked on the 14th of February, 1929, in Hempstead, New York.
‘Joe died in 1974.
‘If I’d mentioned the letters to him when he was alive, he’d have said, “Take them; look at them.” But I didn’t, because I didn’t want to upset my stepmother. Some years later, after she’d gone into a nursing home, I had a good look at the letters. I glanced through them, and then decided to bring them home. I remember feeling – not sentimental; that doesn’t cover it – but, certainly, highly emotional. So, I brought home the small black folder, with all the letters in it. There’d been more letters the first time I’d seen the folder, in 1963. And the paper cuttings; I presumed that they were related in some way to the letters – but they were gone. The black folder also contained what I presumed was my mother’s wedding ring. It was a beautiful deep gold. She must have had a small finger; the ring fitted on my hand, which is quite small.