Rory & Ita

  ‘The Fianna had a uniform; they dressed in slouch hats and a green jacket and, depending on your age, either shorts or britches, the britches with the leggings – it all looked very, very attractive.* So, eventually, it came to the time when I asked my mother what were the chances of me getting the uniform. So she said, “What uniform?” And I said, “The Fianna Boys.” “What Fianna Boys?;” whereupon I explained about the Fianna Boys and Dan McCabe, and there was a terrible row and my mother made a visit to McCabes’, where she left them in no doubt as to what she thought of them leading young boys astray. So I was drummed out of the Fianna Boys and that ended my flirtation with the IRA. My father was a member of Fianna Fáil, and that was what incensed my mother, but I didn’t realise it at the time; I didn’t fully realise the differences between the Fianna Fáil men and the IRA. The subtleties were lost on me. They were essentially the same kind of people, friendly to each other, but deeply divided on the question of the legitimacy of the State. Fianna Fáil came about when men realised that fighting and shooting wasn’t going to advance the cause, but the diehards refused to fall in, and set about creating trouble. But the distinction was often very muted. When it came to election times, the diehards would often join in and canvass for Fianna Fáil, even though they’d be calling us names for the rest of the year. My mother was incensed because my involvement with the Fianna Boys was a slight on my father. He never found out.’

  He remembers the Blueshirts.* ‘Tallaght was crawling with them. I was too young to be involved but I remember my father mentioning the blaggards and my mother nearly nailing the door to stop him from going out to a meeting; they were going to sort out a few of the local Blueshirts. I can remember my mother almost forcibly stopping him from doing his duty.’

  They moved house in the late 30s. ‘The house was pretty crowded by then, shortly after Rosaleen was born, and we moved to a new house. We moved down to Newtown Park and the only one who came with us was Lil.’ And then he left school. ‘One of the apprentices at Juverna Press, a lad called Raymond, died of TB. That left a vacancy and Jack O’Hagan spotted it for one of his own. And that is how I became a compositor.’

  * John McCormack (1884–1945): Irish tenor; his record sales rivalled Caruso’s. He sang at the Eucharistic Congress mass, in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, June 1932.

  * Founded by Eamon de Valera, in November 1926, after he resigned the presidency of Sinn Féin.

  † Margaret Pearse; sister of Patrick Pearse, commander-in-chief of the rebel forces during the Easter Rising in 1916.

  ‡ Garda Siochána: the police.

  * A popular brand, sold in cans.

  † Fianna Fáil’s main, often bitter, opposition; actually still called Cumann na nGaedheal at the time of the 1932 election.

  * The 9th of October, 1934.

  † Released in 1937.

  ‡ Rory: ‘There was literally an open door for cheap imports, and food, in general, became very cheap. A tin of Black Eagle salmon from North America, about five inches high, cost threepence. Australian butter, very yellow in colour, was considerably cheaper than Irish butter, and cheapest of all was the Chinese ham. I remember seeing them hanging from a window in Dame Street. These hams were not the same shape or colour as Irish hams; they were more rounded and they certainly stirred some primitive instinct in my young teen’s sensibilities. But some vested interest, no doubt, put out a rumour that the Chinese had so many women that they were slaughtering the surplus and selling it off as bacon, and that would have accounted for the distinctive shape of the hams. The sales of the Chinese bacon declined, and stopped. No doubt the unsold stocks were donated to orphanages, along with the unsellable fruit and vegetables and such like, the donation of which, in the minds of the donors, advanced their standing on the heavenly ladder.’

  § Directed by Howard Hughes (1930) – ‘Celebrated early talkie spectacular, with zeppelin and flying sequences that still thrill’ (Halliwell’s Film Guide).

  * Suburb of Dublin, about two miles west of the city centre. Rory: ‘Inchicore was a foreign country, compared to Tallaght. People had totally different outlooks and attitudes. It was an industrial suburb, physically and socially dominated by the GSR (Great Southern Railway) engineering works. Hundreds of small houses were occupied by railway workers and, strangely, when the GSR changed the colour of their rolling stock, this change was reflected in the colours of the doors and windows of many of the houses.’

  † The other twin, Frederick, died a few days after the birth.

  * Argued.

  † A member of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association.

  * Anyone from outside Dublin.

  † Sat by final-year primary students, to determine level of secondary education and scholarships.

  * Slaps on the hand.

  † Rory: ‘I remember the night myself and Ita were out celebrating our engagement, and we were at the lift in the Metropole and out of the lift walked Johnny Roebuck with a lady. And I said to him, “Mr Roebuck, we’re celebrating our engagement.” And he said, “Be the hokey, so are we.”’

  * Rory: ‘Nannie was very kind to her younger sisters, particularly my mother and Lil. When their mother died, she looked after them. She didn’t live too long after her mother. So my mother looked after her children, even though they were nearly as old as my mother. There wouldn’t have been more than ten years between them.’

  † A Christian Brothers school.

  ‡ Mitching; playing truant.

  * 1903 – allowed tenants to buy out landlords with Treasury loans.

  † Magazine, published by the Christian Brothers.

  ‡ Flowers of the Poets.

  § The Midnight Court by Brian Merriman. Published in 1800; a satire on Irish sexual life – with certain passages that were suitable for a Christian Brothers’ anthology.

  * The Behans had moved from the inner-city to the new Corporation estate of Crumlin.

  † Rory: ‘It was finally closed in the 1940s when the last of the line, Joe Doyle, died. He was a bachelor.’

  * William Cosgrave (1880–1965): born in Dublin; attended first Sinn Féin convention; fought in 1916; Sinn Féin MP for Kilkenny, 1917–18; supported the 1921 Treaty; President of the Second Dáil and Chairman of the Provisional Government, after the deaths of Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith, 1922; founded Cumann na nGaedheal, 1923; leader of Fine Gael, the main opposition to Fianna Fáil, 1935–44.

  * Rory: ‘He was a great amateur Dublin boxer.’

  * Rory: ‘We always referred to “going into Dublin;” it was never “into town”.’

  † Fianna Eireann – youth wing of the IRA.

  ‡ The statue; the real lad died in 1702.

  § The house of parliament.

  * Rory: ‘Years later, I saw groups of them, from the North of Ireland, and I found it a bit off-putting that, after so many years, they hadn’t advanced the style of the uniform.’

  * Founded in 1933; a Fascist organisation, linked for a time with Fine Gael.

  Chapter Seven – Ita

  ‘I was very annoyed because I wasn’t let go. I was too young. I can’t remember if Joe was, but I don’t think it would have perturbed him a lot if he hadn’t been. But I wasn’t let go to the Mass in the Phoenix Park.* I remember going out to the back garden and kicking the wall. I had to get it off my chest, that I couldn’t go to this marvellous thing that was happening. I remember my patent leather shoes; the wall was very solid, not very good for patent leather. I think they realised how frustrated I was. Máire came home full of stories about it.

  ‘Máire did the Primary Cert and she was due to go on to Eccles Street,† and I was taken out of national school and sent there with her. I think it was to keep us together. I was too young for secondary school, so I went into the junior school. I loved Eccles Street from the day I started. I literally never missed a day. I made friends straight away, and I felt at home. There was Sister Alvero, and a Sister Acquin. They were very nice, gentle people. Everything w
as lovely there. I can’t say it wasn’t in the other school too; it’s just that I don’t have such strong memories of it. I can’t remember any difference between the junior school and secondary – I just moved up. I had all the same friends, the same girls in my class, and a few extra ones who came in from the national schools. We had classes for a half-day on Saturday but that didn’t bother me, because I was happy at school. Extra hours meant nothing to me.

  ‘We went to school on the bus, from the end of our road to Eccles Street, and it brought us directly home. And it was two pence, each way. If we got out at the Pillar* and walked the rest of the way we could save a ha’penny. And if we did it on the way home we saved another ha’penny. There was a cake shop on Dorset Street – I think it was called the Rutland – and you could buy a cream slice for a penny in there. It was worth the walk. And I enjoyed the walk back down to the Pillar because there was always a group. We always had a laugh and a chat.

  ‘I made my Confirmation from Eccles Street, in the church on Berkeley Road. I can recall having the most awful velvet dress. It was made by a dressmaker; an awful lot of work went into it. It was a green velvet, and tiny buttons up along the front – and I just hated it. I don’t know why, but I thought it was a disaster. And I had a navy coat, which was part of the school uniform, and a navy hat, known then as a riding hat. I was quite happy with the hat and the coat. There were these two unfortunate sisters – they were twins; I can’t remember their names – and they were dressed up as if for their First Communion. They had white dresses and white veils. I felt so sorry for them, but then, maybe they didn’t feel sorry for themselves. All I can remember then, after the Mass, is that my stepmother met me and we went straight home, and that was it. I have no memory of going anywhere or doing anything special.’

  Her father had married again. ‘I remember her coming to the house the first time. She brought sweets. They were awful sweets but they were better than no sweets. We didn’t know why she’d arrived, or why she was introduced to us. We had no idea that it was going to be a full-blown romance, or anything like that. But she came a few times. We used to play cards. She seemed OK, and then it was announced that they were getting married.’

  She was introduced as Mrs Byrne. ‘She’d been married before. She’d had rather a sad life. She was married very young – I think she was only eighteen or nineteen – and she had a little girl. Then her husband died when she was in her early twenties and the baby died from meningitis. When my father met her she was the housekeeper in a house in Fairview,* for a widower who had a young son. I never met them but she spoke highly of them. I can’t remember the surname; the boy was called Ted.’

  Her name was Pearl. ‘Her real name was Margaret. Pearl was kind of a pet name.’ Green was her surname before she’d married. ‘Her mother was still alive; her maiden name was Kearns. Pearl had two brothers. John was the elder of the two, and he went to America. He was well-gone by the time we became acquainted with her. He’d disappeared; no one heard from him.† And the other brother, Frank, was left at home with his mother. He was a pathetic man, really. I remember going to Mass with him in the pony and trap, and the old lady looked and acted like Queen Victoria. She barely nodded to neighbours. And when we’d come near the church there was always a line of men on both sides of the road, and Frank always said, “Here we come to Gawk Alley.” He was a very nice man, and had a miserable life. A dull, dreary old life. He was doing a line with a girl called Chrissie, whose father was a postman. A really nice girl, a very nice family, but not nearly good enough for Ma Green. I remember one day, she was the worse for drink and she said, “Little did I know when I was rearing you and putting you into your little sailor suits and driving you in my carriage to Mass, that you would end up with the postman’s daughter.” But I always liked Frank. He was very kind to us.

  ‘She also had two sisters. One was Minnie. She lived in England, in Birmingham, I think. She had been married and had a family but the marriage had broken up. Then there was Baby – they all had funny names. The story about Baby was, there’d been a family row, after the father’s will was read, and Baby went off and hid and that was the last they heard of Baby. She just disappeared. That was years and years before I came into contact with them.’

  She doesn’t know how her father met Pearl in Dublin, but ‘the strange thing I do know is that he’d met her years before he met my own mother. He met her in New Ross. Her father was an RIC man at the time, based in Rosbercon, outside New Ross. My father had been banished to New Ross. I think she might only have been a schoolgirl; I’m not sure, but I do know he met her. And then they lost touch; he moved back to Enniscorthy and then up to Dublin. How and when he met her again, I have no idea.

  ‘Her mother’s people came from Avoca.* They were farmers. And her father had a very nice place in Aughrim,† after he’d retired from the RIC, a pub and grocery.‡ It was a beautiful place and I believe that, in their day, they were quite wealthy but they’d lost it all; her father drank himself out of it. And her mother moved back to Avoca, to live in her home place.

  ‘I heard my stepmother described as a fine girl by a man in Wexford, when I was a teenager. She was tall, rather heavy, and very heavy legs. She had a preference for ankle-strapped shoes.§ She was able to drive. And she was a marvellous pianist.¶ She had been educated but, for some reason or another, it didn’t rub off on her. She was an amazing woman – but I don’t want to speak too ill of the dead; it doesn’t seem fair.

  ‘I thought that this was going to be great, that it would be great to have a mother. Joe resented it bitterly, because he was such a pet. Máire more or less accepted it, without much enthusiasm. But I thought it would be great. And, I suppose, looking back, there were good times and bad times.’

  The wedding took place in Avoca but the children weren’t at it. ‘We went to school. My father gave us each money, to buy a present. I think it was ten shillings, which was a fair bit of money. I remember buying a condiment set on the way home from school, in a jeweller’s shop called Lawrence, on Henry Street. Salt and pepper and mustard; they had silver tops and a kind of flowery base. Joe bought a glass jug and six glass tumblers. I can still see them; they were yellow and blue striped. I can’t remember what Máire bought, but we each had a bit of change, which was great, because he let us keep it. And that was our celebration, keeping the change.

  ‘The wedding was, I gather, very private. Pearl’s brother Frank was the best man.* I don’t know who the bridesmaid was. I think they came home on the same day and, if they didn’t, it was very soon after. Lillie, the maid, left soon after that. And Miss Dunne left, although she was still living on the same road. And I was told that my father still paid her; he didn’t just cut her out.

  ‘And life changed completely. From being waited on hand and foot, from being rather cosseted, I was left to do everything by myself. From the age of ten, I had to wash my own clothes. Bed things were sent to the laundry but personal things I had to wash myself. I’ve no idea how I managed, but I did. There was a big mangle outside the back door that you could run the clothes through but they had to be hung on the line to dry, and I have absolutely no recollection of how I did it, but I did – it had to be done. And the cooking deteriorated rapidly. She used to do a good steak, in the pan; that used to be grand, but she’d do a pile of potatoes and mash them and reheat them, and you’d be sick of them by the end of the week. She wasn’t a good cook but, there again, we didn’t die of starvation. We got our meals. And my father seemed content. That was the main thing, really.

  ‘She was alright, as a rule. But there was nothing warm about her. And we always felt that she’d have preferred if we hadn’t been there. She never touched us; she never hit us. I suppose, mentally, she could be cruel, and I don’t think she really meant to be; it was just the make of the woman. She was very mean. When we were finished our tea in the evening, we weren’t allowed to eat any more. I remember taking bread and butter and putting sugar on it, and putting it
up my sleeve and going upstairs to eat it. You can imagine the state of my cardigan by the time I got up the stairs. But I never felt hard done by. We’d talk about what she did and what she didn’t do, what she should have done. But I was always resilient and happy by nature. I kind of accepted it; I could have been worse off. I also had a great way of keeping my mouth shut. Máire gave the odd answer back but it did her no good. And Joe was very unhappy and hated the situation. He went very much into himself. He was a very jolly, cheery fellow but he became kind of sullen around the house; it completely changed his character. He shook it off later in life but, to put it mildly, he hated her guts.

  ‘But there were lots of things that happened. She was a bit fond of the drink and that, really, was the cause of a lot of the trouble. She managed to cover it up for quite a while. We used to get the groceries delivered from Findlater’s, in Rathmines, and there was always a bottle of whiskey in the order. Maybe a friend of my father’s would call at the weekend and they’d have a drink. And the rest of it would disappear. But she kept it well-hidden. Saturday was the usual day, when we were older; when we came home from school she’d be intoxicated. She’d go up to bed, and get up perfect. I don’t think she ever had a hangover.

  ‘I got a fountain pen one year, for Christmas. I had it a few months, and it went; I thought I’d lost it. It was very nice, speckled black and white – I can still remember it. The following year, when my father asked what I wanted, I said I’d like a pen. He said, “I gave you a pen last year and you lost it.” He was a bit cranky but he got me the pen, the same type, but green and white this time. But that pen also disappeared. And, years and years later – I was well-married – and there was a robbery in the house in Terenure and Máire phoned to tell us, and we drove over. When we arrived we went upstairs and the place was in chaos. There must have been about fifty handbags lying on the bed. She must have had a thing about handbags. Even the Guards came in and said, “Jesus, missus, you had enough handbags.” Anyway, there were loads of things lying on the bed – including my two little fountain pens. We often felt she liked to see Daddy annoyed at us.