Rory & Ita Read online

  ‘There was another very kind girl called Lillie; she was about sixteen. She came from the North and she was lovely. She was a beautiful cook and baker. For Christmas one year she gave me a bar of Palmolive soap and a small Cadbury bar, both luxuries at that time. A strange thing about Lillie; it was very sad really. By that time we were in secondary school and we had our school uniforms, and we had cases, for our books. Lillie had her half-day on a Thursday, and Lillie got a new outfit one year and it was as near to a school uniform as you could possibly buy. Black shoes, and she had the navy beret – it wasn’t the kind of outfit you’d expect a young girl to buy when she had enough to buy a real outfit – because I think she got about twelve pounds a year, and her keep. So, I met her one day going off on her half-day and she was carrying a school case and wearing the outfit and I remember, I thought it was odd but, looking back on it now, I think it was sad.’*

  None of the maids wore a uniform. ‘They’d wear an apron, but it was more to keep them clean than anything else. Everybody wore an apron in those days, what we would have called a crossover bib.’ Unlike the housekeeper, Miss Dunne, the maids were known by their first names. ‘We didn’t really think of them as maids; they were more like friends. We were conscious of who they were, not what they were. We would never have dreamed of asking them to do anything.’

  Her first school was Presentation Convent, on Terenure Road West.* ‘It had a big, high, high solid wooden gate, and you went in through that. And I can remember being in rooms, nice bright rooms. I remember being there but I can’t remember my first day.’ She remembers two teachers but she isn’t sure which was the first. ‘I remember a Miss Byrne, and Miss Byrne lived to be a hundred; she’s only a few years dead. And there was a Sister Evangelist, who was the Head. I must have been a bit of a chancer; I remember, now and again, saying that I was sick and being kept at home. There was nothing wrong with me. I can hardly remember it but I do remember staying at home, and the luxury of lying in bed.*

  ‘There was a mixture of children in the school, all statuses, types. There was a lot of poor children there. As a child you don’t look at these things as poverty – but children who, in the summer, would have little short-sleeved dresses and, in the winter, they’d have a jumper with the same short-sleeved dress over it. I can remember children who wore berets on their heads. And these kids used to have sores on their heads, and it must have been from some form of malnutrition, although the sores could spread to kids who were well-cared-for. But it was always a sign that they had these sores on their heads, when they had these berets on. I can’t remember bare feet, but I often saw kids with shoes and no stockings. I remember, there was a scheme – free milk, little cartons of milk. It would have been means-tested, and I was never given milk, and I was livid because I got nothing. They used to get a bun and a carton of milk but we’d have to bring in sandwiches and I thought this was terrible discrimination.

  ‘I remember a man once, at Christmas, a Mr Ryan; he might have been a solicitor, I’m not sure. But, whatever he was, he wasn’t short of a few pence, because he sent in boxes of sweets to the school and they were brought around the classes. Everyone in the class got two or three sweets. We didn’t get many sweets, so I went home in great delight with my sweets and I still had two left when my father came home. And he said, “Where did you get the sweets?” And I said, “Mr Ryan left in a tin of sweets and we all got sweets.” “And who is this Mr Ryan?” and I said, “Mary Ryan is in my class.” “Oh, I know who you are talking about,” and he said, “Will you go back with those sweets tomorrow and tell that nun that if my daughter needs sweets I’ll buy her sweets and we don’t want anybody’s charity.” Needless to remark, I didn’t bring back the sweets. Nor did I tell the nun what he had said.

  ‘Another time, Máire went on a message for Mrs Murphy, across the street, and Mrs Murphy gave her two pennies. And Máire was sitting at the table playing with the two pennies, and Daddy said, “Where did you get the money?” and Máire said, “Mrs Murphy gave it to me. I did a message for her.” “And you have to be paid to do a message for a neighbour?” And Máire said, “No, I didn’t have to; she gave it to me.” So, Máire was taken by the hand and brought across the street and the two pennies were given back and Mrs Murphy was told that Máire would go for messages in future but payment wasn’t needed.

  ‘When Christmas came around he really had no idea what kind of a present a child might like. I think I was about five or six and I got a beautiful sewing basket. I hardly knew what a needle was for at the time but it was beautiful, padded with a high lid on it, a lovely thing altogether – beautiful threads and spools and all kinds of things in it. I was fascinated, but I didn’t know what to do with it. And the following year, I got another sewing basket. I never got a doll. I never got those kinds of things. There were quite a few single ladies in his office, and I think he got advice from them as to what to buy us, and they had as much a notion about what to buy a child as he had.

  ‘Every Christmas we were taken into Baggot’s, in Rathmines. It was a lovely shop, with pens and stationery and books. So, we were taken into the shop and we could choose our present, provided it was a book. Well, to be fair, you could choose either a book or a fountain pen. So I had a good collection of fountain pens and I had a great collection of books. They weren’t frivolous books either. They were books that would do your mind good. One year, when I was ten, I got The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, and I still have it. But, I can tell you, I wished Omar Khayyám anywhere other than lying at the end of my bed that Christmas.

  ‘My father had a dread of draughts. He seemed to find draughts where we wouldn’t notice them. Dottie Mulhall’s brother was a handyman, John Mulhall, and he used to come over with long lengths of felt, and the felt was hammered right around the door and the door forced closed to prevent these draughts from coming in. But, no matter where he sat, he got a draught. I think he used to attract draughts like some people attract wasps.

  ‘He knew the words of every Irish song and he had books and books of Irish songs, but he couldn’t sing them. He hadn’t a note in his head, but we got “The Boys of Wexford,” “Boulavogue,” all those marvellous songs. But the only time he sang was in the bathroom.

  ‘He used to catch the tram at the end of Brighton Road, in Terenure. He went on it every morning and came home every evening. I happened to be with him one day; we must have been going to town for something. There was quite a few people waiting, and the tram arrived, and they were all extremely mannerly; one would stand back to let the other on, and there was no rushing. The conductor was saying, “Hurry up, come on, get on quickly.” And I still see my father: he wore black toecap boots and the memory I have is of the toecap boots standing still and the voice saying, “Do you know what? If you didn’t stop to let people on, you would get there much quicker.” Then he proceeded along. He was much cheered by those behind him, but I was mortified.

  ‘He always wore toecapped boots. I can still remember, one pair replaced the other – they were replicas of each other. He had a short leg, which I was told happened when he fell off a horse as a child. He always had to get a raised heel on one boot. But you would never notice it; he never limped or anything like that.*

  ‘He won a junior championship medal for hurling, in 1910. And that has a story too. When he reported for the Enniscorthy Echo, he used to attend County Council meetings. And there was one member of the County Council who sat at the top table, probably chairing the meetings, and he had a gold chain. A lot of men wore them then, a watch at the side, and the chain attached to the buttonhole on the waistcoat. This particular man had a row of medals on his chain. And before the meeting one day, one of the other young reporters borrowed all the medals he could find and fitted them on to his own chain. And towards the end of the meeting he stood up, displaying these medals to the councillors. He looked at his own watch but pretended it wasn’t working, and said, “Excuse me, sir, could you tell me the time by your watch – and chai
n – and medals.” My father had given him his medal for the chain. And then – I was about eight or nine – and a box came to the house, addressed to me, no note, and wrapped in cotton wool was the 1910 medal. It came from Daddy’s friend, Teddy Redmond, who ran a printing place in Enniscorthy. He had come across the medal and, instead of sending it to Daddy, he sent it to me.

  ‘In the evenings, if the weather was fine, he’d look out the kitchen window, and say, “I think I’ll go for a walk on the headland.” He’d go out the back door, into the very small garden and he’d do the whole thing in, I suppose, one second flat. But he’d walk up and down and up and down, and every day he’d say the same thing: “I’ll go for a walk on the headland.” I think he lived and died a countryman in spite of living in the city for so long.*

  Sunday was her father’s big day, when he travelled around the country to report on GAA games for the Irish Independent. St Patrick’s Day was another important day, the Railway Cup Final, at Croke Park. ‘I remember him going to a match down the country, I think it was Thurles, one Sunday. And he arrived back that night with a grandfather clock he’d won in a raffle. It wasn’t a great big one but he was delighted with himself bringing it home.

  ‘He wasn’t a drinker. He liked a whiskey but he never went drinking. I only once in my life saw him drunk. He had been at a match down the country and he was delivered home. I didn’t know what was wrong. I must have been very young because I’d never seen a drunk man before.

  ‘He was a very, very quiet man but, sure, he must have been dead lonely.’

  * From the Irish word tuille – a little extra.

  * Rory’s parents’ landlord, when they lived on Terenure Road.

  * She met Lillie again, years later, at a friend’s house. ‘And there she was, married. He was a funny-looking man, but a nice little man, and they were obviously comfortably off. I don’t think she recognised me. But if she did, I didn’t pretend to recognise her because I don’t think it would have been fair. But I did get talking to her, and she had two sons and they were attending a very good school and I was more than pleased to see how she had got on; I was delighted, because she had been very kind. I saw her death in the paper a few years ago.’

  * It was also Rory’s first school. He might have been in Ita’s brother Joe’s class.

  * Ita: ‘Sister Evangelist was still there when my nieces went to school. Máire brought her daughter up to the school and Sister Evangelist asked her was I still delicate or had my health improved.’

  * Ita: ‘I had forgotten all about toecapped boots until two weeks ago, I was sitting in Coffey’s, a coffee shop in Sutton, and there was a young man at the next table, his legs crossed, reading the Irish Times, and he had jeans on and a fashionable sweater. But he had toecapped shoes. And, immediately, it came into my vision, standing at my Uncle Bob’s [Robert Brennan’s] grave in Mount Jerome and looking at the feet beside me. I always say, at my height, I’m nearer feet than heads. And looking along the side of the grave, there were three or four or maybe more pairs of toecapped boots, all well-polished. And one pair belonged to De Valera, and one pair belonged to Dr Jim Ryan who was a TD (member of parliament) at the time. And I don’t remember who the others belonged to but they were all fine, upright citizens.’

  * Ita: ‘When he eventually got a slightly bigger garden, he put a fence across it and he grew vegetables, and his greatest worry was keeping the dog out. And, eventually, when the poor old dog died, he was buried with the vegetables. My father kept a diary, and in it is written: “Poor old Bouncer. He now lies in the spot I spent hours and hours trying to keep him out of.” He wrote in the diary every day. Everything – going for a walk in the park, “met so-and-so,” “went to so-and-so’s funeral,” “he lived too long, nobody knew him any more” – those kinds of comments. Some nights he wrote: “And, as another great diarist said, ‘And so, to bed.’”’

  Chapter Four – Rory

  ‘I remember my grandfather’s funeral, and the wake. Shortly after that, we were living in Tallaght. But I’ve no memory of getting there.’

  The house* was rented from the Dominicans. ‘It had two big gates to the yard and a couple of stables, sheds for holding the hay and coal, and a big sty. It was a long, single-storey house. The front door also had a half-door, outside; when the front door was open, the half-door kept hens out and children in. The kitchen was the living space, a very large kitchen, and the rafters were open. The stove for cooking was at one end, a big dresser at the other end. And a very, very large kitchen table. There was no electricity and no such thing as running water, no flush toilet. The only luxury would have been the oilcloth on the table, and then linoleum was bought for the floor. At a later stage, my mother put her hand on some money and the rafters were timbered and closed in. The back door led to a kind of store, coal in bags for delivery, up on shelves.’

  The bedrooms were off the kitchen, ‘in both directions, various bits and pieces added to the house. A double bed carried four children, two at the top, two at the bottom; a double bed on each side of the room, so there would have been eight in the one bedroom. I remember, we had a beautiful statue of the Virgin Mary done up for the May altar – a beautiful lace veil put on it, and flowers and all, and a candle, carefully burning. And Aileen it was, came along and messed with the thing and the veil caught fire. The lace was ablaze, and the screeching and roaring. My Aunt Lil came down and she had a bucket of water and she just lashed the contents into the room and put out the fire and drenched the whole lot of us.’

  When he’d lived in Terenure his mother had bought him Tiger Tim every week. That stopped when they moved to Tallaght. ‘One, it wouldn’t have been available and, two, there were too many other calls, too many other voices.’ There were his sisters, and more sisters and brothers on the way; there were his six cousins, the Kellys and the Poyntons; there were Aunt Lil and Uncle Bob. But he remembers no resentment at the sudden expansion of the family, ‘no loss. You accepted it. You were just part of the whole thing – and it included horses and pigs.’

  The Kellys, Jack and Hugh and Patsy, were the sons of his mother’s sister, Nannie. ‘Their father had the forge in Tallaght and when the mother died my grandmother took them in, to look after them, because she thought the father wouldn’t be able to. She took two of them, Jack and Hugh. Patsy went to serve his time as a barman; he lived over the pub, Fleming’s, on Trinity Street. My grandmother died in 1916 and Jack and Hugh just lived on in the house. Then another sister of my mother’s died of cancer, Mary, and my mother took four of the five children into the house. The Poyntons. Tom, Frank and Seán were the boys, and the girls were Chick and Marie. Chick’s real name was Bridget but she was never known as anything else but Chick.

  ‘Aunt Lil was my mother’s sister. She was with us all of her life. She was a small, good-humoured woman. She never had a job. She just lived in the house and did anything that needed to be done, looked after the children and that sort of thing. She was, generally, part of the house; she was never regarded as a poor relation. She was unique; she had an old-world sense. Nothing bothered her. I remember once, my mother sent Lil into town to get her some china; she wanted a set of delph. And Lil came back with a cup and saucer. And my mother said, “What’s that?” And Lil said, “It’s china. But,” she added, “it’s hand-painted.” She’d bought it in Camden Street, hand-painted, and spent all the money on it.’

  Uncle Bob was Bob Mullally, his mother’s brother. ‘A single brother. He worked at hitting and tipping – doing bits of jobs around the place, nothing permanent – knocking down hedges for farmers, that kind of thing. If you asked him to trim a hedge for you, he’d go at it with a slasher; he was a most unhandy man. In actual fact, he could only drive a horse and cart. But he didn’t work in the family coal business because there’d been a row between himself and my grandfather, a big falling out. But he still lived in the house. He had a box with his own food in it. He sat at the end of the long kitchen table, and he went to all
the Dominican services and joined in the hymn-singing, with great enthusiasm. He was famous all over the world, wherever there were Irish Dominican missionaries. Later, when we moved to Newtown, we had to erect various outhouses to hold people, and Bob, who was part of the clan, was given an outhouse of his own, a lean-to where he lived. He did his cooking outside in the back yard, on a type of brazier. He used an old perforated bucket as a firebox and, to get it lighting, he’d swing it around, and he’d be singing “Tantum Ergo” and “O Salutaris” and all sorts of hymns like that, to our irreverent amusement. Also, in later years, he discovered this amazing thing, that people threw out all sorts of treasures, threw them into the bins – the service having been recently introduced by the County Council – and he used to go through the bins, much to my mother’s mortification. But the point is this: Bob was there and she regarded it as her duty to look after him.

  ‘She kept a sow in the yard, and I remember a litter of little pigs. And then, one day, Joe the Jingler arrived. He had a sharp penknife and he performed a very painful operation on about half the pigs – neutered male pigs were less aggressive. He then poured iodine on the poor unfortunate pigs. The squeals were unforgettable. Joe the Jingler married a widow with a farm near Crooksling and set up a milk delivery service. He would juggle with the milk jug, to my mother’s great annoyance, flinging it into the air and catching it just inches from the ground.’*

  A stream ran beside the house, to the River Tymon, on the other side of the Dominican College. ‘It came down from Whitestown – it’s up near Jobstown – and it came down the field opposite our house. It went underground, under the road, culverted. I crawled along the culvert once, under the road. It was a terribly dangerous thing to do; the water level could have changed at any time. The stream then went on, behind the wall that divided our house from the College. There was a water-wheel in there, and you could hear it turning. The stream ran through the College grounds, and down into a big tank that was known as the College Pond. In Dublin, someone in dead trouble might have said, “Well, I’m going to throw myself into the Liffey,” or something like that, but in Tallaght the saying was, “Oh Jesus, here’s for the College Pond.”’