‘There was another Christmas, and he came in and, as he often did at Christmas, he put four or five little things down on the table and said, “You decide what you want there.” And one of them was a pen – again; I always loved fountain pens. And I said, “I’d like the pen.” And Mum said she wanted it. So that was it; she got the pen. But the following Christmas my friend Noeleen was given a present, and it turned out to be the pen. I said nothing to Noeleen and I didn’t say anything to Mum, but I thought it was awful; it was terrible.
‘She used to go down to Avoca for a few weeks every year, to stay with her mother, and that used to be like a holiday for us. She adored her mother. She was heartbroken when she died. Her mother used to come up every year for a few days, after the harvest was saved. I would say she’d been a handsome woman in her youth; she was rather blocky in build.* They’d go off shopping together. I remember fur coats being bought; her mother had a thing about fur coats. Clery’s was the place for the fur coats. That can’t have been every year, but I remember a few fur coats.
‘I can remember going in and out of town with Pearl on a few occasions, and she was alright. And a few trips to Bray.* I remember her pointing out this big hotel on the sea front where she had worked in some capacity, I don’t know what. But she was always eager to come out and look at it again. Maybe she had happy memories of it – I don’t know.
‘There were times when it was OK but, on the whole, it was pretty dull and dreary. And loveless. It was just, when I saw the mothers in other houses and the affection they had for their children, I never got any of that. And I always felt a bit in the way. She had her good moments, but they were scarce. I’m glad to say that, at this stage, I never do anything, only laugh about it. It wasn’t funny at the time but, looking back, I think it stood to me; when you have things hard early in life it makes you appreciate all the things you have later. My sister and myself often discuss it, and both of us feel the same. We just got on with it. You didn’t rebel; you just accepted it. That was your life, and that was it. But it was an awful shock when it happened. But I suppose, there were a few good times, and we were kept pretty comfortable. There were people who were hungry and cold but we were OK. And the neighbours around us were very nice and I had lots of friends.
‘And my father was a very good man. He was completely undemonstrative, but he was a very good, straight man. He was always looked on as a pillar of the community. I remember my aunt saying that she had never met such integrity. He was a very methodical man.* And the job was so important to him. He didn’t take his holidays sometimes until it would be pushing into the winter. He had this silly idea that they couldn’t get on without him, things might go wrong; he’d wait until all the others had had their holidays. He worked in the Department of External Affairs, on Stephen’s Green. He had the key to the wine cellar, and they couldn’t have given it to a better man. There was no chance in a million years that he would rob a bottle or touch a bottle. I remember invitations coming to him for this function and that function, but he never went. They’d be stuck on the mantelpiece and he’d say, “I’m not getting into a monkey suit for anybody.” But he loved going to the Abbey.† Every first night, he was there. And the very odd trip to the pictures. He loved Laurel and Hardy. And the one who really impressed him was Clark Gable. He thought San Francisco‡ was wonderful.
‘I remember the first film I was at, Babes in Toyland,* with Laurel and Hardy, and I had my head stuck under my father’s coat from the beginning to end; I was terrified. Every now and again I’d peep out and I’d see these things moving around, and back my head would go. I remember my father laughing and Joe and Máire laughing, but I have no recollection of the film.’
She overcame her fear. ‘We used to go to the Stella in Rathmines every Sunday afternoon. Four pence in it was. I loved the cowboy films. I went with my friend Noeleen and, of course, we were beginning to move into the romantic era and the two of us would come out with tears rolling down our faces. And we thought it was great value; anything that made you cry was marvellous – if the heroine died at the end or got TB, or if they split up. Jeannette MacDonald in Smilin’ Through,† with Brian Aherne – he was good, handsome; he was mostly a cowboy – and she died at the end. That was smashing; we loved that. And we went to the Classic when it opened in Terenure, where the old steam tram‡ had been. There was an actor in one of the films and he was bald; I can’t remember who he was, but someone shouted, “Hey, you, head of skin!” And someone else shouted, “Do you comb your hair with a towel?” The little boys; the noise used to be dreadful. When the cowboys and Indians were fighting or the sheriff was pursuing the gangsters, the boys would tell them where to go and what to do and what not to do. It was all part of it, great fun.
‘Our road was full of boys our own age and we knocked around with them, but there was no real pairing off or anything like that. Really, teenagers didn’t exist; there was no such thing – you were thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, but never a teenager. I suppose, we kind of eyed boys and men up and down but, other than that, we used to go around in a crowd of our own age. You’d prefer one to the other, but that was as far as it got. Young people were the same as anyone else; you did what you were told.’
She continued to enjoy school. ‘I always enjoyed English. I can still remember nearly every poem I learned. Oh, to have a little house, To own the hearth, the stool and all, The heaped-up logs against the fire, The pile of turf against the wall.* I have dozens. And, of course, Shakespeare; I was happy with Shakespeare.
‘I remember once, we did a play, The Admirable Crichton.† And one of the teachers, I think it was Miss Burgess, was Crichton. She was very good. She was the only one who was allowed to wear trousers on the stage. There was another play we did – I can’t remember the name of it – but there was a grocery shop, and I was the grocer. I was playing a man’s part but I had to wear an apron over my skirt. I had to stand behind the counter with my apron on. I had a cap, and my hair was stuck up in the cap. I wasn’t allowed to wear trousers, but the admirable Crichton was.
‘We also did “The Hound of Heaven,” by Francis Thompson.* I fled Him down the nights and down the days, I fled Him down the arches of the years, I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind, And in the midst of tears I hid from Him, And under running laughter. I can’t remember the rest, but it’s not too bad. Anyway, we were all kinds of things, and my role – there were rocks and chasms, and I was a rock and chasm. I had a purple robe, and all the rocks – there were three or four of us – we had to sit at one side and drape these purple robes over ourselves, to give the appearance of rocks. And we were asked, “Rocks and chasms, whom do ye seek?” I can’t remember the answer; I mean the official one – we gave a different answer every night. But I do remember, the highlight of the whole thing was that de Valera attended.
‘I hated maths. To this day, I hate maths. And I started off great guns with Latin, but it went. There was an A class and a B class, and I was in the A class. In the A class you did Latin and in the B class you did Domestic Economy. I’d have preferred Domestic Economy, the cooking, but there was no way I was going to be demoted to the B class. So, I managed. I didn’t shine in exams, but I never failed. I was quite happy with Irish. History, I loved, and was happy enough with Geography – it was different then, just mountains, rivers, places. I was fairly good at art. I was good at design, and I could draw a still life, a few apples in a bowl.
‘My closest friends at school were Aileen Cusack, who lived in Howth – she’s a Dominican nun now – and Brenda McDunphy, who lived in Clontarf. Her father was Douglas Hyde’s secretary.* They were my best friends, along with Noeleen. Brenda and myself and Máire went to the Gealtacht,† to Ballinaskelligs, in Kerry. It was great – different. I think it was an old army barracks we stayed in. They called it a college. It was pretty basic, bare boards and miserable beds. But that was no problem. We used to have Irish lessons in the morning and, in the afternoon, we’d have trips, to plac
es in Kerry. We went to Skellig Rocks, by boat, and Daniel O’Connell’s house, in Derrynane. And we had a céili‡ every night, and that was grand. We had picnics, and a sports. I remember coming second in a race and getting half a crown.
‘I read an awful lot – for two reasons. I loved reading; the house was full of books. But, secondly, when I got a bit older I was never allowed out in the evening, but a library opened in Terenure and it was a blessing to us all, because it was the excuse we needed to get out. If there were no evening devotions on in the church, there was always the library. You met your friends en route, you went to the library, you picked your books. You couldn’t delay too long – you might be timed – but you had a chat with your friends as you all walked home together, and you had the new book. You read it as quickly as you could, so you could have another night out. When the Miraculous Medal Novena started every Monday night, we were in our seventh heaven. We all got a great devotion to the Virgin Mary. We felt the Holy Mother was on our side. She had given us a copper-fastened excuse to meet.
‘Nearly all of my father’s books were of Irish interest. I remember going along the quays with him, the second-hand bookshops. He’d root through the books, and he always ended up buying one or two of them. I read all of Annie M.P. Smithson’s books.* I thought they were lovely. I couldn’t read them now; terrible things. And I loved Maurice Walsh.† The Key Above the Door, The Small Dark Man, Blackcock’s Feather – I thought they were wonderful. Again, I couldn’t read them now, but they were great stories in their day. And, of course, we had all the P.G. Wodehouse books. My father loved poetry. And I did too. And he also had – you don’t get them any more – things called broad-sheets, with the words and music of Irish songs. I think they sold them outside Croke Park. They were only a few pence each, published on paper like newspaper, a rough kind of paper. They were different colours, not very bright pink and orange, yellow and pale blue. I still have them.’
She was fourteen in September 1939. ‘I was in Coolnaboy the day war was declared. And I can still remember – whether it was that day or a few days after, I don’t know – but I was being brought to Oilgate, to get the bus home, and myself and Katie were talking about refugees and children in England being sent down the country. And I asked, if I was a refugee could I come down to Coolnaboy. And I remember, Katie laughed and said, of course I could.’
* Part of the Eucharistic Congress celebrations, June 1932.
† Dominican College, Eccles Street, north of the city centre.
* Nelson’s Pillar, on O’Connell Street; blown up by the IRA in 1966.
* Suburb of Dublin, two miles north of the city centre.
† Ita: ‘Many, many years later, a daughter of his managed to get in touch with Pearl. She was in her fifties by then, this woman, and her name was also Pearl. And she told Pearl Sr. that her father, John, and his next-door neighbour had both cleared off one day, deserting both wives and families.’
* In County Wicklow, south of Dublin.
† Also in County Wicklow.
‡ Ita: ‘I didn’t see the place until a couple of years ago. Myself and Rory went into the pub for a sandwich and I was sitting there, and I remembered her giving out about the people who’d bought the place, as if they hadn’t paid for it, as if they’d no right to it. But when her father died, they were bankrupt – that I know – and the place had to be sold. But she was quite venomous towards the people who’d bought it. And I was sitting there, and I was waiting for a claw to come out and grab me for even paying them for the price of the sandwich. I had this awful feeling, that somehow she’d appear and say, “What are you doing?”’
§ Ita: ‘Years later, a friend referred to ankle-strapped shoes as “hoorin’ boots”.’
¶ Ita: ‘She came out to us one Sunday, and she hadn’t touched a piano in years and years, and she sat at our piano and played jigs and reels, and I couldn’t believe it.’
* Ita: ‘Frank got married years later, to Chrissie. The mother died and Frank finally got married, and my father and stepmother travelled down to the wedding. I was married myself by then. And the next time I went over to visit them, I said, “Well, what did the bride wear?” and my father said, “A scowl from beginning to end.”’
* Ita: ‘We met a sister of her mother’s years later. She was the image of the mother. Her married name was Kavanagh. And she was a great character. She went out to Montana; she actually went in one of those covered wagons. It was during the Gold Rush days. And I met her great-great-granddaughter years and years later, Kathy, and she told me that this lady had set up a bakery, making pastry for the miners. She told me that the pastry was diabolical but that it was better than no pastry. And she opened a little shop and she sold everything and anything – a dry goods store. And she really flourished, and opened more shops. If any of the miners misbehaved she’d get them by the scruff of the neck and throw them out. She ended up with a whole row of shops called Kavanagh Groceries, in Butte. She was known locally as Bow-Legged Biddie. Her name was Bridget alright, but whether she was bow-legged or not, I don’t know because she was very old by the time I met her and her skirts covered her knees. She was also very fond of the drink.’
* Seaside resort, south of Dublin.
* Ita: ‘When he died, he left lots of papers. They were all very well-organised, and held together with elastic bands. But among these papers was a memory card to a Bernard Ryan, and it said: “… who died for Ireland, on the 14 of March, 1921, interred in Mountjoy Jail.” Myself and Rory put it in the glass case in the front room and it was there for well over thirty-five years; why I kept it in the first place, I don’t know – the fact that it was historical, I suppose – I didn’t want to tear it up. Anyway, last week [end of October 2000] I read an article in the Irish Times about the removal of the remains of Kevin Barry and others who had been executed in Mountjoy Jail in 1921. And, lo and behold, there was the name, Bernard Ryan. Rory remembered the name and went in and took out the memory card. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t know why my father had it. I don’t know whether there was a family relationship – he had Ryan second-cousins – or whether he was a Wexford man or a GAA man; they would have been his connections.’
† The Abbey Theatre; the national theatre.
‡ Released in 1936. ‘The loves and career problems of a Barbary Coast saloon proprietor climax in the 1906 earthquake. Incisive, star-packed, superbly-handled melodrama which weaves in every kind of appeal and for a finale has some of the best special effects ever conceived’ (Halliwell’s Film Guide).
* Released in 1934; also called The March of the Wooden Soldiers. ‘Santa Claus’s incompetent assistants accidently make some giant wooden soldiers, which come in handy when a villain tries to take over Toyland. Comedy operetta in which the stars have pleasant but not outstanding material; the style and decor are however sufficient to preserve the film as an eccentric minor classic (Halliwell’s Film Guide).
† Released in 1941. ‘Three generations of complications follow when a Victorian lady is accidentally killed by a jealous lover on her wedding day. Flat but adequate remake of the 1932 original’ (Halliwell’s Film Guide).
‡ The depot of the Dublin and Blessington, where Rory’s father had worked.
* ‘The Old Woman of the Roads’ by Padraic Colum (1881–1972): born in Longford; author of poetry and plays; The Saxon Shillin’ (1902); Broken Soil (1903); The Land (1905); Thomas Muskerry (1910); Collected Poems (1953).
† By J.M. Barrie; gentle satire on the British class system, first staged in 1902.
* It was a favourite of Eugene O’Neill’s. ‘When the mood struck him, in Jimmy the Priest’s or in the Hell Hole, he was given to reciting Francis Thompson’s “The Hound of Heaven,” a lachrymose and somewhat hysterical account of God’s remorseless pursuit of a soul strayed from grace. It was the hypnotic versification and giddy imagery that drew him, though, and not any possible resemblance to his own circumstances’ (from ‘Master of the Misbegotten’ by Barba
ra Gelb and Thomas Flannagan, New York Review of Books, 5 October 2000).
* Douglas Hyde (1860–1947): co-founded the Irish Literary Society, 1891; co-founded the Gaelic League, 1893; first President of Ireland, 1938.
† An area where Irish is the predominant language; most of the Gaeltachts are in the west of Ireland.
‡ A dance.
* Annie M.P. Smithson (1873–1948): born in Dublin; midwife and district nurse; converted to Catholicism; took part in the siege of Moran’s Hotel during the Civil War; secretary of the Irish Nurses’ Organisation, 1929. Works include Her Irish Heritage (1917); Carmen Cavanagh (1921); The Walk of a Queen (1922); Nora Connor: A Romance of Yesteryear (1924); For God and Ireland (1931).
† Maurice Walsh (1879–1964): born in Kerry. Works include The Key Above the Door (1926); Blackcock’s Feather (1932); The Road to Nowhere (1934), and many others. The rights to his story ‘The Green Rushes’, first published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1933, were bought by John Ford, and the story eventually became The Quiet Man (1952).
Chapter Eight – Rory
‘We left the old house, with a horse and cart loaded with furniture, and a hand-cart, and we walked down through the town, a short mile down the road to Newtown, and into No. 8. An empty house, bare floorboards. That was a novelty, after the hard cement floors in the old house, the wooden floors and the general air of space. We started lugging in the furniture, and decisions were made as to what was to go where, decisions on how to light up the new range, how to make sure we had enough water for washing. A water barrel had to be put under the down pipe from the roof. The pump had to be located, where’d we’d get our fresh water – it was just up the road. Then we surveyed this huge expanse of garden, nearly an acre. We’d had a yard before, walled in; this was open.’