Rory & Ita (5 page)

‘There was another couple, just the husband and wife, the Dees. They were very nice. He worked in a shop on Camden Street called Gorevan’s. It was a fine big shop and he was in the shoe department and Joe always referred to him as “the Head of the Boots”.

‘Joe had a satirical streak in him; there were always remarks. I always referred to him as a brat, although I got on very well with him. But he was kind of wild. He was very much the favourite. He went everywhere with my father. The funny thing is, while myself and Máire felt this, we kind of accepted it: Joe was the pet, and that was it. Anything that Daddy was going to, Joe went with him; they’d go to football matches together. But he had lots of his own friends. He wouldn’t have played in our group, except for the odd time to torment
us. There was a group of boys he used to play with and I remember once they got up a soccer team and they called themselves Oakland Rovers. And my father, being such a staunch GAA man, I think he’d have dropped dead on the spot if he’d known that his son was playing soccer. But they managed to get jerseys – how Joe managed it, money-wise, I don’t know. They were green with a yellow stripe, and Joe’s jersey was hidden under his mattress and my father never found out. Now, where they played I don’t know, except that it was only on the street. One of them was Tom Hingerty, my friend Noeleen’s brother. In those days boys wore short trousers until they were in their teens and even late teens. And, for some reason, Tommy Hingerty had the nickname “Pot” Hingerty – I don’t know why. But they had a back door leading into the garden and when Pot Hingerty got his long trousers somebody drew a saucepan on the door with the long trousers coming out of it.

‘My sister Máire was very quiet. She was very studious; she played on the road to a certain degree but not to the extent that I played. She was more sedate and always very quiet, and her head in books from a very early age.’

After their mother’s death, the children were looked after by a housekeeper, Miss Dunne. ‘She arrived very soon after my mother died. I thought at the time she was old but she was probably only about forty, not much more. And we also had a maid – we were spoiled. The maids came with amazing regularity but they were all lovely and they were all very nice to us.

‘Miss Dunne’s name was Mary Teresa but she was “Miss” Dunne. And she really did look after the four of us. She taught me lots of music hall songs, and I still remember them. Her favourite was always [sings]
Joshua, Joshua, why don’t you come and see my ma, She’ll be pleased to know that you’re my best beau. Joshua, Joshua, sweet as lemon squash you are. Yes, by gosh you are – Joshua, Joshua, Joshua
. And then there was another one: [
sings
]
I’m a hoity-toity girl, A high and mighty girl. My old stick-in-the-mud took me for a wife. Fancy me wearing bags, riding bikes and smoking fags, Showing off my bits of rags at my time of life
.

‘Miss Dunne told us that she only had one brother, Willie, and Willie was killed in the War and she hadn’t another relation in the world. And she had a boyfriend, and the boyfriend was Tom Dunning, and he lived in what was called the Hospital for the Incurables, in
Donnybrook. And every Wednesday, which was her half-day, she went to visit Tom Dunning, and sometimes she’d take us with her. He had a small room and we’d go in and say hello to him. He always wore a cap – I don’t know why; I never knew if he was bald. I believe it was arthritis he had and he was very crippled, and quite a youngish face but, always, the cap. He used to lever himself out of the bed. And along the corridor there were alcoves and fires in them, and seats. We’d sit away from them, so I never knew what they spoke about. But he was a very nice man, very kind and nice in every way. It was very sad, really. I remember he smoked a pipe and every Christmas my father used to send him plug tobacco, even after Miss Dunne died. She died before him. She had a heart condition. I remember her coming home one day; somebody was helping her, holding her arm – I can’t remember who. Her lips were blue and she was shaking. I didn’t understand at the time, but she’d had a heart attack. I was three when she came, and I was ten when she left. She retired. She lived in a flat further up the street. She was in hospital when she died, very soon after. I remember somebody saying, “She reached out to get a glass of water and fell dead.”’

Dottie Mulhall was one of the maids. Unlike most of the others, Dottie wasn’t very young. ‘She would have been in her thirties. Her mother lived in a little white cottage off Terenure Road North. She was a lovely old lady, and she had a canary and we were very fond of it. We used to pick groundsel – it’s a small summer plant, a small form of dandelion – but the canary used to love the groundsel and we’d pick the groundsel just for an excuse to go in and see Mrs Mulhall. She always had lovely scones or biscuits. Joe was very fond of Dottie
and Dottie spoiled him – which we were always delighted about afterwards, because when he got the arthritis he suffered so much. But at least he’d had a spoiled childhood.

‘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.’
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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.