Rory & Ita (33 page)

‘I think it’s an awful pity that the rediscovery of Maeve’s work didn’t happen when she was alive. But I think she’d have been thrilled with it. I’m delighted for her, that it’s back. I love the stories; I can see bits of the life we all led in them – certainly in the ones about Dublin, even in the names. Mr and Mrs Baggot – there was a Baggot shop in Rathmines, near where she lived. All these names crop up. And the house where they live is nearly a replica of Cherryfield Avenue, where Maeve’s family lived and, indeed, Brighton Gardens, where I lived. They were all red-bricked, three-bedroom houses.’

‘Joe was in and out of Cappagh a lot. They were very good; they did their best to make him mobile, but he went kind of introverted. His friends in Foreign Affairs were excellent, all through the years; they’d call and visit him. Now and again, I’d go out to him and say, “So-and-so is here,” and he’d say, “I don’t want to see them.” But we wouldn’t allow that, and we’d bring them out. And once they’d arrived, he’d be grand; he’d be chatting and talking. I remember once, Brendan Quinn, who
was actually a cousin of Rory’s, came to visit Joe; he knew Joe.
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They were outside, in Joe’s room, and, of course, there was a bottle of whiskey opened and Brendan began talking about the Dublin team; Brendan had trained the team. All the talk was about Gaelic football and the Dublin team and this team and that team. I can’t remember the player’s name, a Dublin player, but Joe said, “He was a very nice fellow.” And Brendan said, “He was an impudent get.”

‘We had a buzzer, between Joe’s place and our bedroom, and later that night, after Brendan had gone, we weren’t long in bed when the buzzer went, and Rory went out, to find Joe on the floor. But the fall hadn’t hurt him; he’d had a good night and hadn’t felt it. We had to lift him back into bed.

‘But he was getting more and more frustrated with his lot. He went into Cappagh again,
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to get something else done; I can’t remember whether it was his feet or his hands – he could never walk again, anyway. But he got pneumonia, and the nuns had always said that he’d have little hope if he ever got chest trouble, because his ribs were kind of digging into him. So he died there;
he died very peacefully, within a few days. He was fifty.
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And another most unusual thing: the nuns asked us if they could use one of their habits to lay him out in. So, he was buried in a blue Child of Mary habit which, I think, would have tickled his sense of humour no end; if he’d been alive to see himself he’d have broken his heart laughing. And I must say, while there was a lot of sadness, we were relieved for him. Because he was getting worse, but there wasn’t a thing wrong with his mind. So, really, it was a blessing.

With all the drink he’d brought from America, he kept saying that we’d have a big night. As a matter of fact, the day he was buried, we had a bit of a meal here. We took out the liquor and put it on the table and let whoever liked dive into it. And there was a bit of a party that night. A few weeks later, we went to a christening and, on the way home, I asked Shane – he’d been very upset about Joe’s death – I asked him, “Did you have a good time?” And he said, “Yes. It was great but it wasn’t as good as Uncle Joe’s funeral.”’

‘The first time I went abroad it was to Rimini, in Italy, in 1974. We hadn’t managed to go on holiday while Joe was with us. The flight was at night and I had never been in a plane before; it was such an experience, I wouldn’t have dreamt of dozing or anything like that. And I remember, we were told that we were over the Alps. I kept looking down, and I thought I could see a little house on top of a mountain; I could see the light. Eventually I realised it was a light at the tip of the wing. ‘I remember being taken to our hotel, in the bus; it
was about six in the morning, maybe a bit earlier. And all the shops were opening up, and people were coming to life. I couldn’t take my eyes off this scene; it was so different to anything we ever had. I remember that day we had a pizza – our first ever pizza. We only stayed a week, but it was marvellous. We went to Florence and Venice and San Marino. I thought it was all wonderful. It was like the smell of the first car, that leathery smell – nothing could ever come up to it again. Then we went to Spain, to Benidorm and Torremolinos. And we went to Russia, and Greece and Crete.
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And Yugoslavia, twice, and back to Italy. And Budapest and Vienna, a week in each. And, of course, we went to Ballybunion.’
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‘We were on holiday in Spain when my neighbour Jo Eastwood died. I was very upset over it; she died suddenly. But, fortunately, not long after that, I went back to work, and it was the making of me.

‘My friend Gladys Williams, who used to live down the road here, had moved to Malahide, but we’d always kept in touch. She worked for a solicitor called Martin Kennedy, in Malahide. She phoned me up one day and said that Martin was looking for a bookkeeper, and hadn’t I done books? I said I had, but I hadn’t worked for twenty-five years, and I was sure that the bookkeeping I’d done was old-fashioned. So she said, would I try it; she’d love if it was someone she knew who got the job. So I said I would. At first, I was a bit dubious
about it; Shane was still in school. But I felt it was such a great chance, and he was nearly due to leave school anyway; it was his last year.

‘So, I set off the first day; I hardly knew where the place was. With Gladys’s help, I soon settled in. The work wasn’t very intricate. I made mistakes, but Martin Kennedy was completely patient. The original idea was I’d go there for a week, to bring the books up to date. Then I was to go in two days a week, to keep them up to date. But Gladys took ill, and had to go into hospital, so I was thrown in at the deep end. It was Dictaphone typing, which I hadn’t done before. I was slow at first, but I managed. I used to come home exhausted, because answering phones, taking messages, typing whatever I could – it was all new to me. But, at the same time, it
was
all new, and it was grand. When Gladys eventually came back, Martin decided that he was busy enough for two of us, and he said he’d like me to stay permanently. And I did. I was twelve years there. And I enjoyed it; it was great. After twenty-five years of being at home – where I was perfectly content, but the kids were all growing up and moving out – it was absolutely marvellous. It was a whole new life opened up to me.

‘My stepmother had problems with her legs; they were very, very swollen. She was hardly able to walk around; she was very bad. We put the bed in the living-room, downstairs, in her house. And we had to get a home help, a marvellous woman; she came in every morning, got her out of bed, gave her breakfast, put a meal on for dinner, and then she’d come back in the evening and put her to bed. That went on for quite a while. We continued to go over, but there was little we could do to help her. And the neighbours were very good; they were
in and out helping her. But when everybody went at night, she was there on her own; she wasn’t able to get out of the bed. She was terribly helpless. So, her doctor said that, really, he couldn’t be responsible for her any more, and it was then that we started looking for a home for her, and, eventually, we found one, in Rathcoole.

‘But she was very discontented, always a bit contrary, always giving out about people; it was her nature to complain. She was there for quite a while. My cousin Joan
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went to visit her. Joan also married a Doyle, Jimmy Doyle, and they brought her a bottle of sherry. Jimmy noticed that she was kind of licking her lips, and he said to her, “Are you thirsty?” And she said, “I am.” So he said, “Will I get you some water?” And she said, “I’d like something stronger.” She’d spotted the sherry; she was nearly ninety at this stage. So Jimmy poured her a glass and she looked down to the end of the bed, and she said, “Ho! Winter’s Tale. Good.”

‘She died of old age; she was over ninety. It was a quiet enough funeral. She was buried with my father, in Mount Jerome, and I might as well be honest; I didn’t grieve for her.’

‘Rory, being semi-state, had to retire when he was sixty-five. I could have gone on; nobody was trying to get me out. But Rory was on his own. He never complained or suggested that I retire, but I felt, myself, that he was on his own all the time. So, I said to Martin Kennedy that I thought I’d retire. He was always a very agreeable man, and he said, whatever I felt. And Gladys decided that she’d retire too; we’re the same age. Martin had a
little evening for the two of us, and I ended up with so many bouquets I didn’t know where to put them. I was putting them in buckets and everywhere else, all over the place. I was very touched, and pleased, with the treatment I got.

‘But it was quite exciting; I didn’t regret it. I settled at home straight away. I’d been very happy at work but I was quite happy to be at home. We made a life for ourselves and it was lovely and free and easy. I never got out of the habit of getting up early; the clock still goes off in my head.

‘It’s only lately that I’ve had any sense of getting old. And it isn’t mental; I don’t feel any older mentally.
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But when I sit for a while and stand up, or sometimes if I do a lot of walking; up to a while ago, I’d stand up and go out and do the garden or something, but I find now that I have to slow down in that respect. And sometimes it annoys me, but I suppose it’s a nudge, to tell me to take it easy and I’ll last longer. I never think about my death. When I’m with people my own age, we might mention the subject, but we only laugh at the idea of us being the age we are. We decide that we’ve better things to talk about than what might happen. My greatest worry would be to be dependent. I’d like to go out in a blaze of glory, rather than be dependent – that, I would hate.

‘The biggest change, from our point of view, is the security thing. When we were married, and for years afterwards, we’d go up and down to the shops and never lock the doors; it never crossed my mind to lock the door – we’d no side gate, no double locks, none of these
things. And then myself and Máire used to go out at night; we’d meet in town and window-shop. In those days, neither of us could do a lot other than window-shop, but we enjoyed it. The windows were lit up. We’d meet at Cassidy’s, the material shop, in O’Connell Street; we’d just wait there, at the entrance. You couldn’t do that now. You’d feel a bit insecure, standing there.
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It’s not as safe as it used to be.

‘I still go into town, but I don’t go in very much at night. It’s not a case of being afraid to go in; it’s just a case of age catching up with you. I’d have to be in a bad way before I’d stop going into town during the day. I love Dublin. I love everything about it.

‘Some of the modern things I think are absolutely amazing. Even if I can’t fathom them. Even the phone – I think it’s marvellous, and the television. It’s unbelievable that Clinton or Bush can be over there and we can see them. I’d never miss watching Bush walking out with his arms away from his sides and his leather jacket on. I can’t admire the man; I really can’t. And the films; I’d miss them. And computers – if I was still working, I’d learn how to use them. The fact that you can stick a page into a machine and press a button and it comes out in England or America – that, I can’t fathom. I say to myself, “You don’t have to understand them.” I enjoy it all thoroughly. I can walk out to the end of the garden and keep talking to people on the phone, or down the hall and into the bedroom. Many times I’ve said it to myself, “Isn’t it marvellous?” All these things are wonderful.

‘We’re extremely happy. Just now and again, you have a certain nostalgia for the times when you could leave the door open, the times when the children could run out and play and you could leave things lying around and nobody would touch them. That happens, now and again, when you’re talking to your own contemporaries. But, sure, goodness gracious, the comforts today are unbelievable, towards what we had. And I never get blasé about having things. Even going out for a meal – it’s still a treat, no matter how often I do it. We both enjoy the time we are living in. We make the most of it. I just wish to God the taxis were better.’